Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded, with Risible Rhymes. Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī

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СКАЧАТЬ double r) because it has been opened (infarajat) at the wearer’s front and what is beneath may be seen. They add a silk or other trimming, so that the beholder is amazed by the sight and the wearer finds it a true delight—glory be to Him who has embellished such people with elegant raiment, bestowed on them every kind of pleasant form as adornment, and made their women an embellishment! As the proverb has it, “The foundation is according to the builder, and all things resemble their owner,” for men grow up according to their God-given natures to be as they ought, and the like of a thing attracts its own sort. In the same vein, I myself said:

      I saw on his cheek both water and fire¹³⁶

      And, strewn about, those roses fair.

      Said I, “Behold what my Lord hath wrought—

      The like of a thing attracts its own sort!”

      11.2.17

      Next, the poet, realizing that the lice, nits, and other vermin present in the yoke of his jubbah were too many to be counted, decided to liken them to something resembling them in quantity and color, so he said:

      11.2.18

      shabīhu l-nukhālah (“are like bran”), which is the husks of wheat and barley that come to the top of the sieve when they are bolted. More information on this, and the etymology, are to come. This simile yields the likeness of the comparator from two perspectives. The first is that lice are white, and so is bran. The second is that, when they accumulate in heaps, they appear to the eye to be a lot, just as bran does. In other words, this is an appropriate comparison. The word nukhālah is derived from nakhl (“palm trees”) or from munkhal (“sieve”). In The Blue Ocean and Piebald Canon it says:

      The noun nukhālah is derived, as they recall,

      From munkhal and nakhīl¹³⁷ and, finally, from minkhāl.¹³⁸

      Barley bran is the best for one because, if it is steeped in water and heated and someone suffering from chest pains drinks it, it will cure him, if the Almighty so wills.

      11.2.19

      yajrufuhū (“they shovel”): that is, the lice and the nits and their aforementioned relatives.

      11.2.20

      jarīf (“willy-nilly”): originally jarfan, because it is a verbal noun with the alif omitted, the ī being added for the sake of the rhyme; or it may be a rural form; in either case there can be no objection.¹³⁹ It is derived from jarf or from mijrafah (“shovel”) or from jarrāfah (“shovel-sledge”). If it be said, “The poet ought to have referred the pronominal suffix of yajrufuhū to the nearest antecedent, namely, nukhālah,¹⁴⁰ and this would have been more appropriate,” we say, “He may have avoided using a feminine pronominal suffix for the meter, because, if he had used one, the line would no longer have scanned;¹⁴¹ or it may be a case of truncation,¹⁴² as in the line¹⁴³

      Gently now, Fāṭim!¹⁴⁴ A little less disdainful:

      Even if you would cut my rope, do it kindly!

      “—or he may have been referring it to the ‘husks of wheat and barley,’ which are called collectively nukhālah, in which case it should be taken as an example of the suppression of the first term of a genitive construct,¹⁴⁵ so there can be no objection.” And if it also be said, “One might understand from the poet’s words that the lice and nits were confined exclusively to the yoke of his jubbah and there were none of them whatsoever on his body, in which case what would be the point in his complaining about them?” we would reply, “The answer may be that one might say that his words ‘in the yoke of my jubbah’ mean that most of the lice were accumulated in and had risen to the yoke of his jubbah and then, in their abundance, came to resemble bran when shoveled and that it does not necessarily follow from this wording that the rest of his body was free of them. Indeed, if they were present in the yoke of his jubbah in such quantities, then, a fortiori, there should be some on the rest of his body, for the body is where they live and derive their nourishment, by sucking blood and imbibing the body’s wastes. In fact, it is the way of lice to spread first in the clothes, then expand throughout the body, sucking out the bad blood; and those that have had their fill climb up to the top of the body and stay there to take the air and rest, just as humans, for example, having eaten their fill, rest by keeping quiet and sleeping. This is their habitual way of behaving, according to custom, so the answer now is clear.”

      11.2.21

      Question: How come the poet does not raise a complaint against bedbugs, ants, and gnats and omits all mention of them, despite the fact that each of these is responsible for great harm and injury? This question may be answered from several perspectives. The first is that bedbugs, though plentiful—as the proverb has it, “The bedbug gives birth to a hundred and says, ‘So few children!’”—in general favor only cities because of their tall buildings, the large quantities of timber there, and the plaster and lime with which they are coated, because it is in these things that they live and breed; whereas the country villages have no tall, costly construction. If they were to be found in a village, it would be in the house of the bailiff or the tax farmer, for example, to which the poet would never have access and in which he would never sleep. In fact, their houses are mostly made out of slabs of dung mixed with urine and of daub, to which dung cakes are sometimes added. As a result, they are unacquainted with bedbugs and do not see them and tend not to frequent the same places. Ants, though found in the villages of the countryside, nevertheless favor only those places in which there are fatty things such as clarified butter and oil, and they like sweet things, such as honey and sugar; they come to these and feed off them simply by smelling them, as mentioned by the author of The Life of Animals,¹⁴⁶ resembling in this the cumin plant, which can live simply on the prospect of being watered. As the poet¹⁴⁷ says:

      Don’t treat me like the cumin in its plot,

      Whom promises content though it be watered not!

      Our poet never saw any trace of ants in his house because it contained so few fats and sweets, or, rather, because there were none of these whatsoever. As a result, ants would have no way of getting to him, whether via his clothes or his home, and this would be the reason for their failure to affect him. As for gnats, though these are found in the villages of the countryside, they come just on certain days and then go away again, unlike lice and nits, whose harm is constant and unremitting, in clothes and elsewhere, as mentioned above; and the harm done by something that hurts a little and is absent a lot is insignificant, and this may be the reason for his omitting to complain about the lot of them. Thus the answer’s clear.

      11.2.22

      Useful Note: If colocynth is steeped in water in which yarn has been thoroughly soaked and the place is sprinkled with that water while it is hot, it will kill the bedbugs and not one will be left, and if ants appear in a place where there are bedbugs, they eat them. As the poet says:

      My body couldn’t take another bug,

      Their bite was giving me such pain.

      I brought the ants. They helped me out—

      They spared not one and let not one remain.¹⁴⁸

      Ants are repelled by the smell of tar, gnats by the smoke made by burning bran.

      11.2.23

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