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

ما يشيب من الكرام العارضان ومن اللئام العَنْفَقَة قال الشاعر [متقارب]

فَشَيْبُ الكِرامِ مِنَ العارِضَيْنِ	وَشَيْبُ اللِّئامِ مِنَ العَنْفَقَهْ
وَشَيْبُ الرُّؤوسِ بِما في النُّفوسِ	وَشَيْبُ الصُّدورِ مِنَ الزَّنْدَقَهْ

      Similes of this sort for white hair are legion. The word shayb (“white hair”) is derived from the shaybah (“artemisia”) that is sold at the druggist’s, because of its whiteness and the fineness of its roots and the way its hairs become entangled with one another, which is why they say, “They saw impurity in the artemisia” as a proverb.²²⁸ The paradigm is shāba, yashību, shayban (“to turn white (of hair)”). The fact that he mentions that the sides of his beard turned white first is an indication that he was a man of stature and nobility, for the first thing to turn white on a noble man is the sides of the beard, and on an ignoble man the hair between the lower lip and the chin. The poet says:

      White hairs on the noble start at the whiskers,

      On the vile above the chin.

      White hairs on the head by worry are fed

      And white hairs on the chest are a sin!

      ٩،٥،١١

11.5.9

      وقصره الشيب في عارضيه ليس على بابه وإنّما كان ابتداؤه في عارضيه ثمّ جرى في بقيّة لحيته بيقين فذكر الأصل والفرع تابع له وأمّا إلحاقه تاء التأنيث في الفعل فهو جرى على لغة الريّافة والناظم منهم وأيضًا لو قال شاب عارضي أو شابوا عوارضي لاختلّ الوزن فراعى لغته ووزن الكلام

      However, his restriction of mention of white hairs to those on the sides of his beard is arbitrary: they would begin at the edges and then progress ineluctably to the rest of his beard. In other words, he stated the root, and the secondary phenomena follow as a matter of course. As for his adding the feminine marker -t to the verb, he follows in this the language of the country people, of whom the poet was one; and, in addition, had he said shāba ʿāriḍī or shābū ʿawāriḍī, the meter would have been thrown off. Thus he acted in accord with both his own speech habits and the meter.²²⁹

      ١٠،٥،١١

11.5.10

      (مسألة هباليّة) لأيّ شيء قال ومن نزلة الكشّاف ولم يقل ومن نزولهم لئلّا يتوهّم سامع بليد الطبع أنّها النَزْلة الّتي تعتري الإنسان من حصول برد يحلّ به فينزل في رأسه ويتولّد منها العُطاس والأذى وغير ذلك ودواؤها أن تدهن الجبهة ببياض البيض ممزوجًا بالمصطكى فإنّه يخفّف ذلك وما الحكمة في أنّه أتى بعد العارضين بالقلب وهو بعيد عنهما وليس بينه وبينهما مناسبة وكان حقّه أن يأتي بالشاربين والعنفقة كقول الشاعر [رجز]

شواربكْ والعنفقهْ	في طيزِ كَلْبَه مْطلَّقهْ
وٱلْحسْ خراها يا فَهيمْ	ومَزْمِزُهْ بالمِلْعَقهْ

      (قلنا الجواب) أنّ النزلة على وزن العجلة والنزول على وزن العجول والعجول جماعة فاكتفى بالأقلّ دون الأكثر وأيضًا الأنثى ألطف من الذكر في الذات والصفات وإن كان الذكر أشرف وأيضًا الفلّاح عنده العجلة أو البقرة أكثر نفعًا من العجل والثور فيُعْلَم من هذا أنّ الناظم كان يهوى الأناث دون الذكر بخلاف مذهبنا نحن معاشر الفسّاق فإنّنا على حدّ قول أبي نواس [طويل]

عَجِبْتُ لِمَنْ يَزْني وفي النَّاسِ أَمْرَدُ

أَلَيْسَ رُكوبُ الفَحْلِ في الحَرْبِ أَجْوَدُ

      A Silly Topic for Debate: What makes him refer to the nazlah (“descent”) of the Inspectors instead of their nuzūl, when a slow-witted listener might imagine that the former refers to the nazlah that afflicts a person when he catches cold, that is, “catarrh,”²³⁰ and then descends (yanzilu) in the head and gives rise to sneezing and sickness and so on, the treatment for which is to anoint the forehead with egg white mixed with mastic, which alleviates it? And what is the wisdom in his immediately following a reference to the sides of the beard with one to the heart, which is located far from the former and has no meaningful connection with them? Should he not rather have talked about his mustache and the hair on his lower lip, after the manner of the poet who said:

      Up the ass of an unleashed bitch

      Shove your mustache, plus the tuft below your lip!

      Then lick her shit, good Connoisseur,

      And spoon it, sip by sip!?

      We respond: the reply is that nazlah is of the measure of ʿijlah (“female calf”) and nuzūl is of the measure of ʿujūl (“calves”), and ʿujūl is a plural, so he used the lesser to stand for the greater; likewise the female²³¹ is more refined in form and feature than the male (albeit the male is more honorable)—not to mention that, to a peasant, the female calf or cow is more useful than the male calf or the ox. From this it may be deduced that the poet loved females rather than males, in contrast to the school of reprobates like us—for we follow the words of Abū Nuwās:²³²

      I wonder at one who has sex with girls

      When there’s a beardless boy in sight.

      Aren’t we all agreed from the start

      Your stallion’s the better mount in a fight?

      ١١،٥،١١

11.5.11

      وأمّا ذِكْره القلب مع العارضين إنّما هو تغاير في اللفظ والمعنى واحد من حيثيّة أنّ الروح سارية في الجسد كلّه فإذا اهتمّ القلب وتعب سرى ذلك في الجسد ونشأ الشيب منه فيكون على معنى ما قارب