What Time Is It?

Ubayd Zakani, excerpt from Kulliyat, in Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople. Edited and Translated by Bernard Lewis, Vol. II: Religion and Society (1974; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 281-282: A king had three wives, one Persian, one Arab, and one Coptic. One night he lay beside the Persian woman and asked her, "What time is it?" She answered, "It is the hour of dawn." He asked het "How do you know?" She answered, "Because the scent of the roses and basil is rising and the birds are beginning to sing." The next night he lay with the Arab woman and asked her the same question. She answered, "It is the hour of dawn. I know it because the pearls of my necklace feel cold against my breast." On the third night he lay with the Coptic woman and he asked her the same question and she answered, "It is the hour of dawn. I know because I have to go to stool."

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