1 I.e., the Arabs, the consonant ḍād being regarded by the Arabs as unique to the language.
2 “when strung . . . and when dispersed”: i.e., containing both poetry and prose (elements reversed in the translation for the rhyme).
3 Both dhawq (“taste”) and ʿirfān (“knowledge”) have mystical as well as literal connotations. Thus, in the usage of the Sufis, dhawq expresses “the ineffable and incommunicable nature of spiritual, amorous, contemplative, and cognitive experience” (Dennis Gril, “Dhawq,” in EI3) while ʿirfān means “gnosis.” Similarly in this paragraph, ʿārif may mean both “man of knowledge” and “one who has undergone mystical experiences” and so also elsewhere (e.g., §2.2.3, yā akhā al-ʿirfān, “(O) my brother in knowledge/gnosis”). This evocation of the world of mystical experience may perhaps be explained by the fact that most of the elite at this period belonged to Sufi orders; to write was thus, in effect, to address brother Sufis. Alternatively, the writer’s use of such terms may be a way of teasing the reader by hinting at spiritual dimensions to the work that it does not, in fact, possess.
4 I.e., the visitors were so busy eating that their response of “Salaam!” came out in truncated form.
5 Cf. Q Āl ʿImrān 3:164 wa-in kānū min qablu la-fī ḍalālin mubīn «before that they were surely in manifest error.»
6 The words are intended to evoke one of the best known poems in Arabic, namely the “suspended” ode of the pre-Islamic poet Imruʾ al-Qays, which opens qifā nabkī (“Halt, my two companions, and let us weep!”), though the use of the plural rather than the dual verb highlights the speaker’s ignorance and lack of taste.
7 The same verse occurs in al-Shirbīnī, Brains Confounded (Volume One, §5.5), with three differences: the spelling لا (lā) in the Arabic is a representation often found in Middle Arabic texts of the intensifying particle la-; the apparently first person plural form of the verb (nuqaṭṭiʿ versus uqaṭṭiʿ) is, in fact, first person singular, as in certain Egyptian dialects (see Blanc, Nekteb-nektebu, and Davies, 17th-Century Egyptian Arabic, 114–15); the alif at the end of nuqaṭṭiʿū in the Arabic is a common orthography in nonstandard texts, generalized from the “otiose” alif found in other verb forms.
8 “is drawn from the ocean of madness” (fa-min baḥr al-khurāʿ): or, punning on another meaning of baḥr, “is drawn from the mad meter.”
9 The meter is kāmil, with allowed variants; the Arabic spelling (mutanāqiṣ) is unusual, in that prosodic mnemonics are normally written with the implicit nunation realized as a final letter nūn (i.e., متناقصن) to allow complete representation of the syllabic count; in al-Sanhūrī’s manuscript the nunation is suppressed throughout, as it is in the manuscripts of al-Shirbīnī. The mnemonic uses the root, n-q-ṣ, whose semantic range includes “lack,” “deficiency,” and “imperfection”; on the use of mnemonics formed from comically inappropriate roots to describe meters, as also in Brains Confounded, see the Introduction to the latter (Volume One, xli–xliii).
10 The line is set out in this way to demonstrate the division of the feet and its relation to the metrical mnemonic set out beneath it; see similarly Brains Confounded, Volume 2, §11.1.1.
11 “Hemistich” is normally miṣrāʿ, while maṣraʿ (used here, throughout, in such contexts; see §2.2.2 and §2.4.2) normally means “killing”; thus there may be a humorous evocation of the idea of “massacring” verse.
12 The Gate of the Chain, known today as Bāb al-ʿAzab (“the Gate of the Youth Levies”), is the main gate of Cairo’s Citadel (Qalʿat al-Jabal).
13 “al-ʿaḍīm . . . is from taʿḍīm not taʿẓīm”: the merging of ẓ and ḍ is widespread in Arabic dialects; overall, al-Sanhūrī seems to be saying that whether al-ʿaḍīm is from classical Arabic ʿ-ḍ-m (cf. ʿaḍm “winnowing fork”), which would render the wording meaningless, or a result of the phonetic convergence mentioned above, the oath would be void.
14 “ʿāliman should be, according to the rules of grammar, in the nominative”: see al-Shirbīnī, Brains Confounded, Volume One, 393n260.
15 Al-Sanhūrī’s objection is strange, as the use of the perfect (al-māḍī) following the conditional particle in is standard (see Wright, Grammar 2:14B).
16 Apparently meaning that the chaste speaker has the capacity to break verse into its components and reassemble it in the form of rhymed prose, which lacks the “tight” ordering of the former.
17 The mnemonic uses the root kh-b-l, whose semantic range covers “confusion” and “craziness.”
18 ʿArafshah (or ʿArafsheh or ʿArabcheh) is a village in Iran’s Zanjan province, which adjoins Daylam (see following note); the “chain” (silsilah) while referring, perhaps, to some feature of that place, also invokes the nonstandard meter of that name, which is related to the Iranian dūbayt meter (see Van Gelder, Sound and Sense, 126–27), even though the latter bears no relation to that of the verses quoted here.
19 Former name of present-day Iran’s Gilan province; by its “Great Gate” may be meant the conspicuously large gate of Gilan’s Rudkhan Castle, a Seljuq-era fortress of the Ismaili sect.
20 Q Baqarah 2:126 and passim.
21 I.e., it being his intention that his listeners should adopt his own vernacularisms, represented in this case by the omission of the interrogative particle.
22 I.e., the poets of the past enjoy the benefits of Paradise, happily oblivious to the faux pas of the poetaster under discussion.
23 Q ʿAlaq 96:5.
24 These verses occur also in al-Shirbīnī, Brains Confounded, with differences (Volume One, §5.6).
25 sūdu (“is black as”): the form is strange: see al-Shirbīnī, Brains Confounded (Volume One, §5.6.17).
26 dayyātik (“your handies”): apparently a plural, no longer attested, of colloquial īd (“hand”), see al-Shirbīnī, Brains Confounded (Volume One, 395n284).
27 “the ocean of what confusion may excrete ” (baḥr khurāṭ al-takhlīṭ): or, punning on another meaning of baḥr, “the meter of what confusion may excrete.”
28 The mnemonic uses the root kh-b-ṭ, which includes in its semantic range such concepts as “striking,” “trampling,” “dust,” “diabolical madness,” and “sheep bloat” (khubāṭ).
29 Arab geographers mention such an island, in the Indian Ocean.
30 “cubit” (dhirāʿ): a unit—historically highly variable—of linear measurement (today standardized as 0.58 meters).
31 “at their greatest extent” (bi-l-qiyās al-tāmm): or, punningly, “to use an example of perfect analogy,” referring to the fact that kilām (“wounds”) and kalām (“words”) have identical consonantal skeletons.
32 Q Isrāʾ 17:18.
33 On the employment by peasant leaders of fighting men, see al-Shirbīnī, Brains Confounded, Introduction (Volume One, xxviii).
34 The shukl (sg. shikāl) are “cords . . . by which a camel’s fore shank and arm are bound together” (Lane, Lexicon) so that it can only hobble on three feet.
35 The fasting month of Ramadan is followed immediately by ʿĪd al-Fiṭr (“the feast of the breaking of the fast”); i.e., the beloved will, after a lean period, find a feast of love in the poet’s arms.
36 The mnemonic uses the root h-z-l, which relates to “emaciation.” The metrical table in fact divides the line into three rather than four feet, perhaps reflecting confusion as to how to deal with the breakdown of the meter at binta l-aj, which can be resolved only by eliding the hamzah (glottal stop) of ajwād (binta l-ʾajwād → binta l-ajwād); the meter is also irregular in the second hemistich.
37 “a peeled withy” (ʿūdan muqashsharah): this reading requires amendment of the Arabic text and the assumption that the writer regards ʿūd (“stick”), normally masculine in gender, as feminine; thus, the translation is tentative. On the custom of substituting sticks for swords, see al-Shidyāq, Leg Over Leg, 1:179 (Volume One, §1.12.2).
38 Cf. Q Ḥāqqah 69:32 «then in a chain of seventy cubits’ length insert him».
39 These verses also occur in al-Shirbīnī, Brains Confounded (Volume One, §5.7), with differences.
40 tāyih . . . kirsāyih . . . mawlāyih . . . qattāyih: the representation of final ah as ih at the end of each hemistich indicates “pausal imālah,” i.e., the raising of a final a following a “front” consonant such as y before a pause in speech, a phenomenon well documented in both Egyptian rural dialects and older Cairene Arabic (see Blanc, Perte, 4, and Davies, Profile, 81–85).
41 “the ocean that with false witness is replete” (baḥr tazwīd al-tajrīḥ): or, punning on another meaning of baḥr, “the meter . . .” etc.
42 The mnemonic uses the root q-r-ḥ, which relates to “festering” and “ulceration.”
43 ʿa-l-ḥibbī . . . mi-l-tāyih: the colloquial contraction of ʿala l-ḥibbi to ʿa-l-ḥibbi and of min al-tāyih to mi-l-tāyih are required by the meter; see further al-Shirbīnī, Brains Confounded, Volume One, 396n307.
44 “This scansion . . .” (hādhā l-tafʿīl . . .): in the manuscript, these words are followed by two blank pages; the lacuna appears to cover the discussion of the first line of the mawāliyā, and the text resumes with the discussion of the first hemistich of the second line; see further Note on the Text.
45 “the allusiveness of whose opening” (barāʿat istihlālihi): barāʿat al-istihlāl is a technical term from the science of rhetorical figures (ʿilm al-badīʿ) for the “making [of] one’s opening indicative of one’s intention, not by explicit statement but by subtle hinting” (Cachia, Rhetorician, 8), though the larger reference is not made clear here.
46 This and the three following lines are quoted, with considerable differences and without attribution, by Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī (d. after 395/1005), who cites them as an example of extreme laziness (al-ʿAskarī, Dīwān al-maʿānī, 1:197).
47 “metrical deviation” (al-ziḥāf): literally, “dragging,” meaning certain permitted shortenings or elisions in the patterns of long and short syllables forming a metrical foot (e.g., fāʿilun → faʿilun; mutafāʿilun → mutfāʿilun (i.e., mustafʿilun) or → mufāʿilun).
48 I.e., saqqāʾū, for the meter; in the commentary, the regular form (saqqāʾ) is used.
49 The feet are misleadingly divided (they should properly be given as mukhāmilatun mukhāmilatun khamūlun); in the Arabic text, in the application, below, of mnemonics to the first hemistich, these mnemonics are in fact divided into three columns, though this has been emended in the English to fit the distribution of the words of the verse. The root kh-m-l has associations of “inconsequentiality,” “apathy,” and “lethargy.”
50 In the seventeenth century, Bāb al-Lūq, an area outside the precincts of the city of Cairo, housed slaughterhouses and tanneries (Raymond, Artisans, 1:312, 327) and was associated with prostitution and other low-status occupations (ibid., 2:609).
51 Two waterways—al-Khalīj al-Miṣrī and al-Khalīj al-Nāṣirī—traversed Cairo and were spanned by at least eighteen bridges (qanāṭir, sg. qanṭarah) (Pagano, True Description, 231–2; Raymond, Caire, 130); this particular bridge has not been identified and may be fictitious.
52 Perhaps a play on the name of a real gate of the Ottoman city, Bāb al-Kharq, “the Gate of Perfume” (now called Bāb al-Khalq).
53 “plummetry”: the Arabic has al-sanṭīr, which yields no sense (sanṭīr means “psaltery”). It is assumed, therefore, that the intended word is al-tasanṭīr, verbal noun of colloquial sanṭar (“to collapse heavily”).
54 “like the hawk carried . . . the hawker” (shabīha l-zuqqi taḥmiluhu l-saqāʾū [= l-saqqāʾū, for the meter]): an alternative reading of “like the wine (or water) skin (al-ziqq) carried by the wine pourer (or water carrier)” suggests itself, and the author’s reading may be a tongue-in-cheek exercise in squeezing abstruse dictionary-based meanings from straightforward language.
55 Q Najm 53:44.
56 Q Aʿlā 87:4.
57 Cf. Q Burūj 85:5.
58 The same line of verse occurs, with one difference, in al-Shirbīnī, Brains Confounded (Volume One, §5.2).
59 The mnemonic is based on the root th-q-l, which has connotations of “heaviness” and “boorishness.”
60 “is indeed a lout, stuck, immobile in his affairs, and a dunderpate” (innahu la-baqfun wāqifun fī-umūrihi wa-qafā): a similar play on words is used by al-Shirbīnī in Brains Confounded (Volume One, §5.3.15) in his commentary on the same line of verse.
61 The same verses occur, with differences, in al-Shirbīnī: Brains Confounded (Volume One, §5.8).
62 The meter is al-basīṭ, although the metrical pattern of the word ruḥiyyunā does not actually fit any permitted variants; the mnemonic uses the root r-q-ṣ, meaning “to dance,” triggered by the word raqqāṣ (“rattle staff”; literally, “dancer”); on the rattle staff, see al-Shirbīnī, Brains Confounded (Volume One, 399n355).
63 Cf. Q Ḥajj 22:45: «How many a city We have destroyed in its evildoing, and now it is fallen down upon its turrets! How many a ruined well, a tall palace!»
64 The “gatherer of fuel by night” (ḥāṭibu laylin) is a conventional metaphor for “one who confuses in his speech . . . and in his affair: or one who speaks what is bad and what is good . . . for this person sees not what he collects in his rope . . . so he collects bad and good” (Lane, Lexicon, 594); thus the writer implies that, by making the millstones speak, the poet is presenting a grab bag of incoherent images.
65 I.e., the word illā (“except”), which here is followed by wa-, giving it the force of a conjunction indicating unexpected action.
66 The implication is that the son of the shaykh of the village owns its only ox and rents it out to the villagers.
67 “esoterically and exoterically” (bāṭinan wa-ẓāhiran): meaning either “according to all possible readings of the authoritative texts” or “in both a mystical and nonmystical sense”; see further n. 7.
68 Cf. Q Isrāʾ 17:18.
69 Q Najm 53:1.
70 A popular Tradition.
71 The same verses occur, with one difference, in al-Shirbīnī, Brains Confounded (Volume One, §5.9).
72 The mnemonic is based on the root kh-r-f, which has connotations of “senility” and “foolish talk.”
73 The association of peasants with warfare is stressed by al-Shirbīnī (see, e.g., Brains Confounded, Volume One, §2.3).
74 “at the hands of a mashadd . . . [?]” (ʿalā mashaddin bihi shadabah mina l-maḥmūdah): an alternative reading of “at the hands of a mashadd (a kind of bailiff, see Glossary; or perhaps a mushidd, a ‘well-mounted warrior’) with a lopped-off branch (reading shadhabah for shadabah, for which no meaning is attested) of scammony” is possible but obscure; it seems likelier that the text is corrupt; note the similarity of consonantal skeleton between مشد به (which perhaps is to be read مشدبة) and the following شدبة.
75 I.e., the flood of bad verse would be so overwhelming that it would take little time to fill the tomes.
76 “the concoction of craziness” (ikhtirāʿ al-khurāʿ): perhaps a nod to the work by al-Ṣafadī of the same name (see al-Shirbīnī, Brains Confounded, Volume One, xxii).
77 I.e., “both insipid and hard to swallow.”
78 The mnemonic is based on the root h-w-s, which denotes “infatuation” and “being driven insane.”
79 Unidentified and probably invented.
80 “in a hole” (fī nuqrah): in al-Shirbīnī’s Brains Confounded, nuqrah refers most frequently to a hole or pit used for defecation (see Brains Confounded, Volume One, §2.17, §3.25, etc.), and that may be what is meant here; presumably, a hole is required to provide privacy.
81 I.e., indifferent to whether the food was good or bad for her, his motive being simply to get her to meet with him.
82 Q Ṭūr 52:1–2.
83 Cf. Q Tawbah 9:30 qātalahumu llāhu annā yuʾfakūn («God assail them! How they are perverted!»).
84 The terminology is taken from the vocabulary of Sufism; see n. 7.
85 Q Fāṭir 35:2.
86 This work is unknown, and the riddle given is not found in Ibn Hishām’s well-known Grammatical Riddles (al-Alghāz al-naḥwiyyah).
87 The terminology is again that of the mystics; see n. 7.
88 warā: according to modern practice, the word, which means “behind,” should be spelled warāʾ; however, omission of the final hamzah (glottal stop) is typical of the orthography of the author’s day and is required, in this instance, to make the word fit the answer to the riddle.
89 The thirteenth letter of the alphabet, transliterated sh.
90 “Just as the front end of the lance chokes on gore” (ka-mā shariqat ṣadru l-qanāti mina l-damī): the quotation is from a poem by al-Aʿshā Maymūn ibn Qays and is discussed further below (§3.3.5); see further Thaʿlab, al-Ṣubḥ al-munīr, 14:34.
91 The personal name ʿAmr is written with an unpronounced wāw in the nominative and genitive cases to distinguish it from the personal name ʿUmar, from which it would otherwise be indistinguishable if unvowelled (the author omits mention of the accusative, because a different rule applies there); the conceit is that ʿAmr lays claim to a wāw that does not belong to that name by right.
92 “as per the preceding mention” (ka-mā marra): i.e., “as indicated by the words ‘one who lays false claim to riches that are not his own.’”
93 The following lines were written by Abū Nuwās to mock the poet al-Ashjaʿ ibn ʿAmr al-Sulamī (d. ca. 195/811), who, though born an orphan in Basra, falsely claimed to belong to the ancient Arab tribe of Sulaym (cf. Abū Nuwās, Dīwān, 2:76).
94 I.e., the conjunctive pronoun mā, in order to be definite, must be part of a relative clause (ṣilah) with a referent (ʿāʾid), as in mā ʿindī min al-māl (“what I have of money, the money that I have”), the implicit contrast here being with the less common indefinite mā (mā l-mawṣūfah), as in marartu bi-mā muʿjibin laka (“I passed by something pleasing to you”) (see Wright, Grammar, 2:319); in this and the following case, the conceit is that mā, like an unreliable friend, lacks reliability and independent strength.
95 I.e., mā may, if attached to a preposition, be shortened, by omission of the letter alif, to -ma, as in the cases cited.
96 Q Naml 27:35.
97 Q Nāziʿāt 79:43.
98 ʿAmr ibn ʿUthmān ibn Qanbar Sībawayh (fl. second/eighth century) is regarded as “the creator of systematic Arabic grammar” (Meisami and Starkey, Encyclopedia, 1:718); his only work became so influential that it became known simply as Sībawayh’s Book.
99 I.e., in the close relationship of the possessive construct, the gender of the first member of the phrase may be attracted into the gender of the second, because, as an Arab lexicographer puts it, speaking of the same example, “the ṣadr of the qanāt is a part of the qanāt” (see further Lane, Lexicon, s.v. ṣadr).
100 The verses are by Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Mūsā ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Amīn al-Dawlah Abū Bakr al-Maḥallī (d. ca. 673/1275), a grammarian (al-Ṣafadī, Wāfī, 4:187–8; for the verses, 188).
101 E.g., raʾā (“to think, know”), ʿalima (“to know”), ẓanna (“to think, believe”) (Wright, Grammar, 2:48D).
102 I.e., verbs such as ʿalima (“to know”) cannot determine the case of a following embedded interrogative such as man (“who?”) that would otherwise, by rule, occupy the initial position in a clause (ṣadr al-kalām) (just as one cannot say in English “I learned whom is Zayd’s father”). In this case, however, because abū man is part of a possessive construct (iḍāfah), man annexes abū, and the rule is extended to the latter, even though it is not an interrogative and normally would not occupy initial position. In terms of the larger argument made in the preceding poem, the phrase abū man illustrates the point made in the first line, because abū has gained “elevation” (rafʿ) or, in grammatical terms “the state of being in the nominative,” and “prominence” (ṣadr) or, in grammatical terms, “precedence, that is, the role of being the ‘head’ of an utterance,” through its being “dependent on” (muḍāfan li-) or, in grammatical terms, annexed to, man in a possessive construct.
103 Q Kahf 18:12. Here the interrogative that must be in the nominative is ayyu; in other words, one cannot say ayya [accusative] l-ḥizbayni, and this is a clearer example of the rule, because here the interrogative actually occurs in initial position in the clause, and the issue is not complicated, as it is in the earlier example, by the presence of abū before man.
104 I.e., it is possible to say ʿalimtu Zaydun abū man huwa, with Zayd attracted into the nominative case by the force of the “eminence” of man; cf. Sībawayh’s statement wa-in shiʾta qulta qad ʿalimtu Zaydun abū man huwa (al-Kitāb, 1:121).
105 The line is from the section of the poet’s muʿallaqah (“suspended ode”) describing a rain storm (al-Zawzanī, Sharḥ, 40).
106 I.e., muzammal, though logically nominative, is attracted into the genitive by the noun that immediately precedes it. In terms of the argument, muzammalī has lost the status it should have as an adjective describing kabīru unāsin (“the chieftain of a tribe”) and been placed on the level of the relatively lowly “striped mantle.”
107 These lines are found in al-Ṣafadī, Wāfī, 7:316, where they are attributed not to al-Jazzār but to ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad al-Sirāj al-Warrāq (d. ca. 695/1296) (al-Ṣafadī, Wāfī, 23:76–116); on changes to this line in the Arabic text, see Note on the Text, xiin5.
108 “yet a form of it is known to be masculine” (wa-minhu qad ʿurifa l-tadhkīru): or, punningly, “and from it reminders are known [to emanate]” (the relevance of which will appear in §3.5.2).
109 “vessel . . . wit” (ẓarfun . . . ẓarfun): punning on two meanings of ẓarf.
110 I.e., maʾdhanah, as a word, may occur in either the nominative case (al-rafʿ; literally “raising”) or the accusative case (al-naṣb; literally “erecting”) while, as a building, it “has raised sides and foundations erected”; at the same time, mustaqirra l-bināʾ (“solid of construction”) may be taken, punningly, to mean “indeclinable,” though the joke is weak here, as maʾdhanah is, in fact, declinable.
111 The word is masculine in gender and justifies the earlier statement that “some forms of it [i.e., the word meaning ‘minaret’] are known to be masculine.”
112 “A landmark standing alone—if they raise it, they raise it upright for the sake of the call” (ʿalamun mufradun fa-in rafaʿūhū rafaʿūhū ʿamdan li-ajli l-nidāʾī): or, punningly, “a singular proper name—if they put it into the nominative case, they do so to make it straightaway into a vocative.”
113 This justifies the punning reference to “reminders” above (n. 108).
114 Meaning, perhaps, that the minaret, as a structure, encloses or defines a certain space; also, punningly, “an adverb of place.”
115 I.e., “the radiant women.”
116 aẓmatnī . . . makhālibā: the tenth and seventh lines of the poem.
117 Cf. Q ʿAnkabūt 29:43.
118 lawlā l-mashaqqatu etc.: from the poet’s eulogy of Abū Shujāʿ Fātik (d. 350/961), a general of Egypt’s Ikhshīdid dynasty (cf. al-Mutanabbī, Dīwān, 505, with differences); this is the forty-third line of the poem.
119 The incident reflects a story in which the caliph al-Manṣūr, while on a visit to Medina, asked for a guide familiar with “its ancient dwelling places and their remains” as “it is long since I visited the dwellings of my people, and I wish to refresh my memory of them” (al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, 10:107–8).
120 ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad, known as al-Aḥwaṣ (“the Slit-Eyed”) (40–105/660–724), a poet of Medina, who was once banished because of his affairs with women of high status.
121 In the source story, the official charged with paying the guide confesses that he has not done so.
122 The text of §3.9 and §3.10 is defective (see the Note on the Text); it has been recreated, in the case of the first anecdote (§3.9), using Ibn Khallikān’s biography of al-Qāḍī l-Fāḍil (Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, 3:161) where a similar anecdote is told, and, in the case of the second (§3.10), using al-Zamakhsharī’s Rabīʿ al-abrār (al-Zamakhsharī, Rabīʿ, 1:144).
123 “Button . . . Visit . . .” (zirr . . . zur): the two words appear identical when written without vowels and without shaddah, which indicates doubling of the r.
124 From this point until the translation resumes the text is fragmentary.
125 Al-Zamakhsharī (Rabīʿ al-Abrār, 1:144) attributes these verses to Ibn al-Jahm (d. 249/863), others (with variants) attribute them to Abū Tammām (ca. 189–232/805–45) or to Khālid ibn Yazīd al-Kātib (d. 262/876 or 269/883) or regard them as anonymous.
126 The ductus of some Arabic letters is common to more than one phoneme, the differences being marked by the use of one or more dots above or below the line (e.g., ص = ṣ while ض = ḍ, and ب = b while ت = t); taṣāḥīf (singular taṣḥīf) are changes, deliberate or in error, to the dots on the letters of one word that produce another, e.g., بنت/ثيب, bint/thayyib (“virgin/nonvirgin”) or ريح/زنج, rīḥ/zanj (“wind/Negroes”).
127 Perhaps meaning al-Ṣāḥib ibn ʿAbbād (326–85/938–95), the Būyid vizier famed for his literary brilliance.
128 I.e., the daughter of Bisṭām ibn Qays (d. 10/631–32), a warrior famed for his chivalry and courage.
129 A traditional metaphor for a beautiful person.
130 As elsewhere, the writer plays with Sufi terminology (see above, n. 7); the reference to hashish and to “those who tread the Path” (al-sālikīn) reinforce the association.
131 On taṣḥīf see above, n. 126; however, the first examples of word play in the poem (على/علا, ʿalā, and يَقينًا/يقينا, yaqīnā) are neither of taṣḥīf nor of palindromes but of paronomasia (see §3.13.2).
132 Presumably meaning that hashish is something “low” that the sagacity of the Sufis has nevertheless commended to him.
133 “its sound, meaningful first half” (shaṭrahu l-awwala l-ṣaḥīḥa l-mubīnā): the first half of حشيش, ḥashīsh, is حش, ḥash, which is “sound” because it contains no “weak” letters (i.e., wāw or yāʾ, letters that in certain environments undergo change) and can be regarded as meaningful if حش, ḥash, is reinterpreted as ḥashsha, “he cut”.
134 “the command of allusion displayed in the opening lines” (barāʿat istihlāl abyāt al-kalām): see n. 131; perhaps the allusion is to “getting high.”
135 I.e., each of the three “teeth” (i.e., raised tips) (sinn, pl. asnān) of which the letter ش is formed has the potential to become, and thus may be counted for these purposes as, a letter in its own right; shīn consists of three asnān, and, if each sinn is repointed, may yield n-y-n; when these are added to the initial ḥ and the latter is repointed by the addition of a dot below, the resulting word is جنين, “fetus.”
136 The number of “teeth” in each word (see preceding note) is seven, provided that the first bāʾ in the first word حبّبتني به, ḥabbabatnī bihi, which is doubled by the operation of the shaddah, is counted twice and provided that it is borne in mind that the final yāʾ of the first is written with a “tooth” when in nonfinal position; thus the diacritics could be distributed over the same ductus to produce the two different words (the first and last letters of each remaining unchanged).
137 شُحّ: only the consonantal skeleton is at issue: changes to the vowels and value (single or double) of consonants are discretionary.
138 شي: i.e., شيء (“thing”); the loss of the final hamzah (“glottal stop”) is typical of the orthography of the time and does not imply its absence in pronunciation.
139 “the most indeterminate of all indeterminates, in the eyes of those who speak Arabic featly” (ankar al-nakirāt ʿind al-muʿribīn): i.e., “thing” is the least specific way of referring to an object; at the same time, the author may be punning on the alternative sense of shayʾ as “penis” or “vulva,” the alternative sense of nakir as “reprehensible,” and the alternative sense of muʿribīn as “those who speak explicitly”; the whole phrase might thus be translated alternatively as “the most reprehensible of all reprehensible things, as used by those who speak obscenely.”
140 The line is taken from an encomium apparently written for one ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Abī l-Iṣbaʿ; its opening line goes “O mounts of the beloved ones, my tears/ fall as hard upon my cheeks as do you[r hooves] when you stamp upon the crumbling rock” (a-rakāʾibī l-aḥbābi inna l-admuʿā/taṭisu l-khudūda ka-mā taṭisna l-yarmaʿā) (al-Mutanabbī, Dīwān, 107–10; ninth line p. 108).
141 “the wonder of Hamadān” (badīʿ Hamadān): the writer flatters the soon-to-be-named “Shaykh Muḥammad ibn al-Sayyid Maḥmūd” by evoking the memory of Abū l-Faḍl Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Hamadhānī (358–98/968–1008), a writer of pyrotechnic linguistic skills, known as Badīʿ al-Zamān (“the Wonder of the Age”).
142 Shaykh Muḥammad ibn al-Sayyid Maḥmūd: the identity of this writer remains unclear; a possibility is al-Sayyid Muḥammad ibn al-Sayyid Maḥmūd al-Ḥamīdī (or al-Ḥumaydī) mentioned by al-Muḥibbī in his biography of Shihāb al-Dīn ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad (d. 1078h ) as one of the latter’s teachers and described by him as “known as a descendant of the Prophet, chief judge of the army, and syndic of the Ottoman possessions” (sharīf qāḍī l-ʿaskar wa-naqīb al-mamālik al-ʿUthmāniyyah) (al-Muḥibbī, Khulāṣat al-athar, 2:232); al-Muḥibbī does not, however, provide a biography of al-Ḥamīdī.
143 Thālith al-nayyirayn (The Third, after the Two Stars That Burn Bright): by al-nayyirayn (literally “the two brightly lit things”) the writer means “the sun and the moon” (on this rhetorical figure, known as “favoring,” see Glossary), it being his claim that his epistle is as bright as either of the foregoing.
144 The Extended (al-Muṭawwal): the term is sometimes used to refer to a longer version of a work; a candidate in this case is al-Taftāzānī’s commentary on al-Khaṭīb al-Qazwīnī’s short textbook on the rhetorical sciences called Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ (The Epitome of the Key), of which al-Taftāzānī also wrote a shorter version, al-Mukhtaṣar (The Abridgment).
145 “the Brilliant Reader” (al-Almaʿī al-Qāriʾ): the writer apparently suppresses mention of this critic’s real name, perhaps to minimize controversy, and instead refers to him using two ironically honorific epithets, “the Brilliant” (al-almaʿī) and “the Reader” (al-qāriʾ, meaning “reciter of the Qurʾan”).
146 al-Tibrīzī: Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī al-Khaṭīb al-Tibrīzī (421–502/1030–1109) whose commentary on this line in his al-Mūḍiḥ fī sharḥ shiʿr al-Mutanabbī reads in full: “The two moons: he may mean by this two equal moons, because a face that is regarded as beautiful may be compared to the moon, and it is not usual for there to be more than one moon on any night; and by the moon that she showed him he may mean the sun, because the sun and the moon do not meet. People make the sun into a moon when they put it together with the moon that rises by night, at which point they make the masculine preponderate over the feminine” (al-Tibrīzī, al-Mūḍiḥ, 3:317). Al-Tibrīzī seems to be saying here that, by “two moons,” al-Mutanabbī means either the real moon plus the moon-like face of the beloved or the real moon plus the sun-like face of the beloved. Al-Tibrīzī also points out that, when people say “the two moons,” they are using “favoring,” in which case the masculine word qamar (“moon”) subsumes the feminine word shams (“sun”).
147 “one moon plus another moon” (qamaran wa-qamaran): i.e., Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd understands al-Tibrīzī’s “two equal moons” to mean “a moon of one sort plus a moon of another sort,” i.e., “a real moon and a figurative moon, the latter being a human face” (see preceding note).
148 I.e., the end of the Brilliant Reader’s quotation from al-Tibrīzī.
149 “Our reading is more laudatory” (mā dhakarnāhu amdaḥ): i.e., the Brilliant Reader claims that it is more fitting in a eulogy to compare the subject’s face to a sun than to a moon as, on the surface, the poet seems to do.
150 “customarily” (fī l-ʿurf): i.e., according to the rhetorical figure known as “favoring” (see Glossary).
151 I.e., the end of Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd’s verbatim quotation from the Brilliant Reader. Hereafter, from §4.4 through the end of §4.18, the words are those of Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd.
152 An allusion to “the Brilliant Reader”; throughout what follows, Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd refers to the Brilliant Reader, sarcastically, as “that brilliant fellow,” etc.
153 “a mere building of castles in the air” (jadhbah bi-ghayr jādhibah): literally, “a pull of drawn thread, or yarn, with no one to pull it.”
154 The reference is unclear.
155 “‘metaphor by allusion’ . . . ‘declarative metaphor’” (al-istiʿārah bi-l-kināyah . . . al-istiʿārah al-taṣrīḥiyyah): on the theory of metaphor in Arabic in general, see Meisami and Starkey, Encyclopedia, 2:522–4. Here Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd appears to evoke the terminology of Yūsuf ibn Abī Bakr al-Sakkākī (555–626/1160–1229), a grammarian and rhetorician, who, in his influential Miftāh al-ʿulūm (The Key to the Sciences), distinguishes between the metaphor by allusion (e.g., “death” in “death sank its claws into,” where “sank its claws” alludes to the predator who is providing the underlying image; the author uses this same metaphor shortly hereafter) and “make-believe metaphor” (al-istiʿārah al-takhyīliyyah), here called “declarative metaphor” (al-istiʿārah al-taṣrīḥiyyah), which would have one believe, or declares, that there is a part of death that could be likened to claws. Thus, he is saying that the Brilliant Reader is subjecting one subject to two incompatible analyses, and the beloved’s face cannot be likened, at the same time, to both a sun and a mirror.
156 In other words, al-Mutanabbī’s use of the verb arā (“to show”) is not enough to imply a mirror, even though the word mirʾāh is derived from the same root.
157 The writer evokes the standard metaphor of “death sinking its claws” into a person (see n. 155) by proposing an inappropriate change of subject.
158 I.e., al-Mutanabbī.
159 I.e., the image of the moon reflected in the beloved’s face.
160 I.e., the Brilliant Reader has reversed his original assertion that it is the moon that is real and the sun that is figurative.
161 I.e., given that the poet has specified that he is referring to the real moon, it is invalid to claim that “the two moons” is an example of “favoring,” because the latter can only be either consistently figurative or consistently nonfigurative.
162 I.e., there is no call for the Brilliant Reader’s excessively elaborate figurative explanation, as it would be physically possible to see both the beloved’s face and the actual moon at the same time.
163 The writer appears to contrast a “broader and more comprehensive” simultaneity with a narrower and less comprehensive one, as though the sight of the beloved facing the moon and thus providing a vision of two moons ought to be visible for a longer time than the brief flash of the sun as it is reflected in her face.
164 I.e., “that we have imparted to you as advice not to be forgotten.”
165 I.e., if he had omitted mention of the sky, it would be possible to interpret “the two moons” figuratively; however, he did not, in fact, omit to mention it.
166 Generic names for beloved women.
167 The poem is attributed by ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī to Saʿīd ibn Ḥumayd, that is, Abū ʿUthmān Saʿīd ibn Ḥumayd ibn Saʿīd, a member of the chancellery under the Abbasid caliph al-Mustaʿīn (r. 248–51/862–66) (al-Jurjānī, Asrār, 291).
168 I.e., having previously vowed that he would, for example, give money to a charitable cause if his beloved made good on his promise, the lover discharged these obligations.
169 I.e., scintillating examples of the deployment of the image of “the full moon” in the sense of “the face of the beloved.”
170 The implication is that pre-Islamic poetry could not be equaled by later verse.
171 I.e., to improve his own material circumstances.
172 “the closest thing to which a smoothly pacing steed, if being given its head, might run” (wa-aqrabu li-an yubdhala tablīghu al-rahwān): the translation is very tentative and depends on amending al-rihān in the manuscript to al-rahwān.
173 I.e., the simultaneous appearance of two moons constitutes a novel and arresting image, the moon being, by nature, unique.
175 Q Inshiqāq 84:16 and 18. The writer apparently invokes these Qurʾanic verses to confirm the possibility of sun and moon appearing together in the sky; the argument is weak, however, as al-shafaq in fact means the remains of daylight after the sun has set. The syntax is strange, and the text may be corrupt.
176 Cf. Q Aʿrāf 7:116 saḥarū aʿyuna l-nās («[and when they cast] they put a spell upon the people’s eyes»).
177 Logically, “he” should mean al-Mutanabbī, but these jejune verses are certainly not by him and have not been found in other sources.
178 Cf. Q Qiyāmah 75:9; this is the quotation alluded to in the verse.
179 “She loosened three tresses . . . ” (arkhat thalātha dhawāʾiba . . .): this is the eighth line of the ode that contains istaqbalat etc. (al-Mutanabbī, Dīwān, 107 line 11), the point being that the poet has already, in the same poem, used the same kind of “declarative metaphor” (where “three tresses of her hair” equals “three nights”) and the Brilliant Reader should have taken this into account in his discussion of the subsequent line.
180 Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd seeks to refute the claim of al-Tibrīzī, quoted by the Brilliant Reader (§4.3), that the sight of “the two moons” occurred “on a night,” and the preceding claim of the Brilliant Reader that the lover saw the sun and the moon “at one time,” on the grounds that—even though the word al-qamarayni (“two moons”), which immediately precedes the temporal phrase, is compatible, logically and metrically, with layl (“night”) and the word maʿā (i.e., maʿan with lengthening of the final syllable for the rhyme and meaning “together, simultaneously”), which follows it, is similarly compatible with ān (“a specific time”)—al-Mutanabbī chose not to use either layl or ān, because the former is insufficiently “strange” (i.e., intriguing) and the latter invokes the idea of simultaneity but not that of accompaniment.
181 I.e., the Brilliant Reader.
182 Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd addresses the Brilliant Reader and al-Tibrīzī.
183 “halt, halt” (qifā qifā): see n. 6 above; here the verb is, appropriately, in the dual.
184 “Beware the insight of the believer” (iyyākumā wa-firāsat al-muʾmin): evokes a common hadith (more often given as ittaqū firāsat . . .) that continues fa-innahu yanẓuru bi-nūri llāh “for he sees with the light of God.”
185 Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd appropriates “the Brilliant Reader” sobriquet for himself.
186 Cf. Q Ṭā Hā 20:6 «to Him belongs all that is in the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, and all that is underneath the soil.»
187 Q Ṭā Hā 20:6.
188 Q Ṭā Hā 20:7; literally, «the secret and that which is yet more hidden.»
189 That is, this smear on al-Mutanabbī’s reputation.
190 Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd now addresses al-Mutanabbī.
191 Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd reverts to addressing the Brilliant Reader and al-Tibrīzī.
192 “good manners” (al-adab): or, punningly, “literature.”
193 I.e., we can only reflect their light.
194 Perhaps meaning, “they came first, and we came later.”
195 “and I am one of those” (wa-anā ʿalā): an elliptical reference to wa-anā ʿalā dhālikum mina l-shāhidīn «I am one of those that bear witness thereunto» (Q Anbiyāʾ 21:56).
196 Cf. Q ʿAnkabūt 29:8 and similarly Luqmān 31:15 «but if they strive with thee to make thee associate with Me that whereof thou hast no knowledge, then do not obey them»; Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd warns his readers against the fallacious arguments of “the Brilliant Reader” and al-Tibrīzī.
197 Q Shams 91:1–2.
198 Cf. Q Ṭāriq 86:11–12.
199 Q Shams 91:7.
200 Q Āl ʿImrān 3:119 and elsewhere.
201 I.e., the canon law of Islam and the mystic, or Sufi, path.
202 Q Fatḥ 48:26 (Pickthall, Meaning, 367).
203 Al-Sanhūrī abruptly endorses Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd’s opinions, and the work continues in his own voice to the end.
204 I.e., al-Shaykh Muḥammad ibn al-Sayyid Maḥmūd (see §4.2).
205 I.e., the Prophet Muḥammad.
206 I.e., “I started work on this book in . . . ”; the irrigation image returns later in the passage (“and I watered”).
207 The eighth month of the Islamic calendar; Shaʿbān 1058 H ran from 20 August to 20 September 1648 AD.
208 I.e., the departure of the Prophet Muḥammad from his native Mecca for Medina, where he was to establish the first Muslim state, in Year 1 of the Hegira.
209 “like a ball in Fate’s vastness, now in the cities, now in the countryside” (ka-l-kurati fī faḍāʾi l-qaḍā ṭawran bi-l-muduni wa-tāratan bi-rīfi . . .): if, as here, one reads this enigmatic phrase as referring to the author as someone with little time for writing, one may suppose that al-Sanhūrī’s career somehow required him to live in both the city and the countryside; it is tempting to speculate that he may have been a judge, shuttled from place to place at the behest of the authorities, and that the phrase fī faḍāʾi l-qaḍā is intended to be read not only as “in Fate’s vastness” but also as “in the vastness of the judiciary.”
210 Saxaul (ghaḍā) is a woody shrub or small tree, Haloxylon ammodendron, proverbial for the heat with which it burns.