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

point of view qill would be from the agitatedness (qalqalah) of events, that is, the speed with which they move, their intensity, and the distressing circumstances to which they give rise and so on. As the poet⁷⁹ says:

      Stir (qalqil) your stirrups in the steppes (falā)

      And leave the pretty girls at home.

      Like dwellers in the grave to me are those

      Who never from their homelands roam.

      —that is, move your stirrups “in the falā,” which means the wide-open spaces. The meaning is: “Go east and west, and acquire whatever will relieve you of having to beg from others, and be not a burden upon them, and do not humiliate yourself before them, and leave the ghawānī—plural of ghāniyah, which means ‘a female possessed of beauty’; that is, abandon any such and do not allow yourself to be distracted by her from seeking your livelihood, for that distraction may lead to inactivity and idleness, in which case you will not find the wherewithal to spend on her and her heart will turn to someone else, with all sorts of evil consequences. If, on the other hand, you bestir yourself and leave her and then come back with all the things she needs to assuage her hunger and clothe her nakedness, she will stay with you just as your heart would desire and in perfect felicity. And even if you benefit little from your efforts and journeys, what you get will still be better for you than doing nothing.” As the poet says:

      Man must work for what he needs,

      And Fate is not obliged to help.

      In one of the Revealed Books, the Almighty says, “My slave, I created you from motion; move and I will provide for you!” and the proverb says, “In activity is blessing,”⁸⁰ and the Imam al-Shāfiʿī,⁸¹ may the Almighty be pleased with him, says:

      Leave your lands and seek advancement!

      Go abroad, for there are five good things in travel:

      Escape from care and a way to earn your living,

      Knowledge, savoir faire, and the friendship of the noble.

      Though some say travel means abjection in exile,

      And loss of one’s friends and meeting with trouble,

      Still better a young man die than live

      In ignominy ’midst jealousy and tittle-tattle.

      Thus the answer now is clear, all can agree, and the nature of this derivation’s plain to see.

      11.1.19

      jismū (“his body”): the pronoun suffix refers to the poet, that is, “his body” means “his person,” the word being derived from tajassum (“corporeality”) or from al-mujassimah (“the Corporealists”), which is a sect that holds to the doctrine of incarnation and corporealization,⁸² may the Almighty disfigure them, or from jism al-ʿāshiq (“the body of the lover”), when the latter is worn thin by separation from the beloved and the poet can find neither medicine nor doctor for it.

      11.1.20

      mā yaḍal (“is ever”): a rural phrase, meaning mā yazālu, as discussed in Part One.⁸³ That is, his body is never free of want, toil, and discomfort.

      11.1.21

      naḥīf (“thin”): of the measure of raghīf (“loaf”); it is properly naḥīfan, with an alif of prolongation, the latter having been dropped for the meter.⁸⁴ The meaning is that his body became weak and thin from the succession of cares that afflicted it, and the injury and hardship that it had to put up with in the course of making a living and so on—for care weakens and sickens the body, unlike ease and abundance of comforts, from which it will be evident that the bodies of the rich and affluent are in general vigorous, attractive, and graceful, because of the excellence of their food and drink and the cleanliness and fineness of their clothes, and they do not, as a result, suffer any of the ill effects of care. Imam al-Shāfiʿī, may the Almighty be pleased with him, said, “He whose garments are clean has few worries,” and it says in the Tradition, “One’s garments should give glory to God”; if they get dirty, this glorification is brought to a halt. The body, in fact, is like a crop of plants: so long as its owner is careful to water it and tend it and clean out the weeds, it remains full of vigor and glows with good looks, but when he ceases to attend to it, diseases attack it and things take a turn for the worse. In the absence of sickness, on the other hand, slenderness and trimness of the body are desirable characteristics in both women and men, and one possessed of such characteristics is referred to as ahyaf (“slender waisted”). As the poet⁸⁵ says:

      Two slender-waisted creatures,

      One girl, one boy,

      At backgammon played.

      Said she, “I am a turtledove!”

      “Hush!” said I. “You are the moon above!”

      —and even more expressive are the words of the poet who said:

      A slender-waisted lass—should she tread on the lids of one with eyes inflamed,

      No pain from her footfall would he feel.

      Light-spirited—should she, of her levity, desire

      To dance on water, not a drop would wet her heel.

      11.1.22

      A Silly Topic for Debate: “Why did the poet say naḥīf rather than saqīm (‘sick’), though the latter is more appropriate in meaning and more elegant in expression and is found in the Mighty Qurʾan, in the words of the Almighty, «And he cast a glance at the stars, then said, ‘Lo! I feel sick (saqīm)!’»⁸⁶ that is, ‘I feel sick at your worship of idols’?” We declare, the fatuous response is that the poet avoided the latter word because it includes the meaning of the word that rhymes with it, namely, qaṭīm, and qaṭīm is, in the language of the country people, a passive sodomite, and, in another dialect, an unmarried man;⁸⁷ if he had used the word in the verse, they might have attributed passive sodomy to him, with harmful consequences. Or it may be said that, in this, he was following the rules of rhyme for poetry, so there is no problem. Our words are now clear, the silliness made to appear.

      11.1.23

      Next the poet sought to tell of a further misfortune by which he was smitten and which was a product of the aforementioned want, abasement, and lack of wherewithal. He says:

      TEXT

      11.2

       anā l-qamlu wa-l-ṣībānu fī ṭawqi jubbatī

       shabīhu l-nukhālah yajrufūhū jarīf

Me, the lice and nits in the yoke of my gown

      are like bran that they shovel willy-nilly

      COMMENTARY

      11.2.1

      anā (“me”): meaning “Me, Abū Shādūf, I inform you in addition, good friends, and I complain to you” of

      11.2.2

      (a)l-qaml (“lice”)—the well-known type that makes the rounds among people, not the type mentioned in the Mighty Qurʾan, for the latter is a type of worm or tick, according to some of the commentators.⁸⁸ (Useful note: al-Damīrī, in his Life of Animals,⁸⁹ mentions, on someone’s authority, that the tick lives seven hundred years, which is remarkable. End.)⁹⁰ Lice are born from the sweat and dirt of the body. The word is derived from taqammul (“infestation with lice”) or from the taqmīl (“licing”) of yarn, when the latter is dyed and sized and placed in the hottest sun, so that it dries and develops white spots that look like lice; thus one speaks of “liced yarn.” The paradigm is qamila, yaqmalu, qamlan (“to be infested with lice”); qaml is a collective noun, the female being