(a.) “hair, pelt”.

1. General.

The Arab poets, pre-Islamic as well as post-Islamic, often describe the hair of the women with whom they have fallen in love (al-ʿAskarī, Dīwān al-maʿānī , ii, 229; al-Raffāʾ, al-Muḥibb wa ’l-maḥbūb , i, 16-58; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāya , fann 2, ḳism 1, bāb 2; J. Sadan, Maiden’s hair and starry skies, in IOS, xi [1991], 57-88). The context in which these descriptions are found shows a fairly clear situation: the hair of the heads of beautiful women is observed by lovers away from the house, in the open air, on the public road,…