Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded. Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī

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.

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11.2.22

      (فائدة) إذا نُقِعَ الحَنْظَل في مقّة الغزل بعد استوائه ورُشّ بها في المحلّ وهي حارّة قتلت البقّ ولم يبق منه شيء وإذا ظهر النمل في محلّ فيه البقّ أكله قال الشاعر [وزن غير معروف]

أكل البق آلمني	جسمي ما حمل بقّهْ
جبت النمل ساعدني	ما خلّى ولا بقّهْ

      (وأمّا النمل) فيمنعه رائحة القطران ويمنع البعوض دخان النخالة

      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.

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11.2.23

      (مسألة هباليّة) ما الحكمة في أنّ الشخص إذا أكلته قملة أو قرصه برغوث أو شيء ممّا يؤذي يسري ذلك الأذى في جسده ظاهرًا وباطنًا حتّى يشمل الكبد والرئة والقلب ونحو ذلك مع أنّ القمل أو البرغوث ونحوه لا يتوصّل إلى باطن الجسد إلّا أن دخل من منفذ من المنافذ وإذا دخله نادرًا ربّما مات في الحال قبل وصوله إلى باطن الإنسان وكثيرًا ما يدخل البرغوث في أذني فيمكث قليلًا في حركة وأذيّة ويخرج بسرعة أو يموت فما وجه ذلك (الجواب الفشرويّ) عن هذا البحث الهباليّ أن يقال إنّ الجسم باطنه وظاهره في التألّم على حدّ سواء لأنّ الروح سارية فيه كسريان الماء في العود الأخضر فإذا حصل الأذى في ظاهره تألّمت الروح وسرى الألم في جميع الجسد ظاهرًا وباطنًا وأمثّل لك مثالًا فشرويّ وهو أنّ الشخص إذا حبس في خزانة صغيرة مثلًا وكانت لا تسع غيره وليس لها منفذ وطال سجنه فيها فإنّ جسمه يضعف ويتغيّر وتعتريه الأمراض ويتألّم ظاهرًا وباطنًا خصوصًا إذا حصره البول وبال فيها حتّى ملأها أو ضرط فيها أيضًا فتصعد تلك الروائح إلى العلوّ فلا تجد لها مصرفًا فتعود على لحيته وشواربه فتضرّه ضررًا بليغًا خصوصًا صاحب اللحية الطويلة العريضة ما لم يكن عرضها ضرّ طولها فيخفّ الضرر أو قلّ طولها فكذلك على كلّ من الحالتين فانكشف الحال عن وجه هذا الهبال

      A Silly Topic for Debate: What is the wisdom in the fact that, if a louse bites a man or a flea or any other harmful creature stings him, the pain spreads through the body, outside and in, until it comes to embrace the liver, the lungs, the heart, and so on, even though the louse, the flea, and the rest do not have access to the inside of the body, unless one of them should enter through one of the orifices; and if, on some rare occasion, it should enter, it usually dies immediately, even before it reaches the interior of the body, as indeed a flea has often entered my own ear and stayed a while moving about and doing damage and then quickly come out or died? What is the explanation for this? The fatuous reply to this silly enquiry is: it may be said that the body experiences pain to the same degree internally and externally because the spirit circulates within it the way sap circulates in a green branch. Thus, if any damage is done to the body’s surface, the spirit feels pain and the pain spreads to the whole body, outside and in. Let me draw you a facetious example, to wit, if a man is imprisoned in a small closet, for example, that is too small to hold anyone else and has no outlet and the man is locked up there for a long time, his body weakens, changes, and sickens and he feels pain both externally and internally, especially if he is pressed by the urge to urinate and does so until he fills the place, or if he farts there too and the resulting odors rise upwards and then, finding no escape, come back down on his beard and mustache, causing him grievous harm, especially if he is the owner of a long, broad beard (as long as its breadth has not rendered its length odious, in which case the damage will be less, or it has not become less commode-ious, in which instance it is the same for both cases).¹⁴⁹ Thus the situation’s now revealed, the silliness no more concealed.

      ٢٤،٢،١١

11.2.24

      ثمّ إنّ الناظم شرع في ذكر مصيبة أخرى ابتلى بها وهي في الجملة أشدّ ضررًا من القمل والصيبان لكونها من جهة الأقارب فقال

      Next the poet embarks on the description of another disaster that afflicted him—one yet more damaging, taken as a whole, than lice and nits, for it comes to him from the direction of his relatives. He says: