«صَبَاحِ الْقُرُودْ وَلَا صَبَاحِ الأَجْرُودْ»

Two ways of opening the day are weighed here, and the speaker plainly picks one. Meeting monkeys at dawn is held up as the tolerable choice, while first catching sight of a man with no beard or moustache is treated as an ill omen. The two halves are linked by the rhyme of al-qurūd with al-ajrūd.

The saying reflects an old folk belief, not a statement of fact, that whatever greets a person first on waking shapes the luck of the whole day. It casts the beardless man as the worst first sight, worse even than creatures seen as unsightly, mocking a bodily trait and branding him a bringer of misfortune.

Fits discussions of folk omens attached to the first encounter of the morning. Because it disparages a man for his appearance and can wound or offend, it is safer to quote it as an example of an old superstition than to aim it at any real person.