What? You think that I have nothing better to do than to go over the articles of Hassan Fattah to locate errors, mistakes, and biases? Today, the highly incompetent Hassan Fattah of the New York Times was talking about the Ramadan TV serials and only mentioned one, of the tens of TV serials showing, that would please MEMRI. He referred to its title as ""Hour el Ayn," or "The Beautiful Virgins,". He should have said "hur" and not "hour" and it has nothing to do with virgins, so his translation is quite off but that is not surprising. But this reinforces the silly reports about the "hur" al-`ayn" in the afterlife (see my article on Salon.com on Sex and the Suicide Bomber). The word Al-Hawar (n.) is the strong black of the eye and the strong white of the eye. When one says "hur al-`ayn" one refers to women whose eyes, according to ancient Arabs, resemble the eyes of cows and deer in the blackness of the black of the eye. Al-Asma`i said: "I don't know what the hawar of eyes is." It is said:
عيناءُ حوراءُ من العين الحير
or
فقل للحواريات يبكين غيرنا, ولا تبكنا الا الكلابُ النوابحُ
In the Qur'an, huru al-`ayn were mentioned of course in Surat At-Tur for example:
مُتَّكِئِينَ عَلَى سُرُرٍ مَصْفُوفَةٍ وَزَوَّجْنَاهُمْ بِحُورٍ عِينٍ
(Reclining on thrones arranged in ranks; and We shall join them to huri-l-`ayni companions)