2.2.9
“As for the city’s waters, what a fine and wholesome head is theirs! Though, on the other hand, what a filthy tail!421 All the animals of the earth and every fowl of the sky pollutes it; even the fish of the sea, when they catch a summer cholera, leap on top of this tail and vomit onto it whatever it is that’s making them sick.
2.2.10
“The food they eat there is fava beans, lentils, chickpeas, darnel seed and darnel weed, water clover, kharfā vetch, julbān vetch, broad beans, the fruit of the ghāf tree, the black-eyed pea called dajr, khullar vetch, buls lentils, bitter vetch, lupine, the black-eyed peas called khurram, shubrum-lentils, black-eyed peas tout court, and everything else that makes the belly distend. This is because its people find nothing good in an empty stomach. It has even been reported to me that the women use a paste made of dung-beetles, eating some every morning so that they may grow fat and develop overlapping belly folds.
2.2.11
“The most noxious thing I came across there was Qayʿar Qayʿār.422 He came to the city from the Himyaritic lands423 and made the acquaintance of a group of Christians there, to whose houses he would repair, spending the evenings with them. Finding that they had no scribes among them, he appointed himself their scholar and said that he knew the science of ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’424 and of chronograms.425 He got hold of a few books, some of which were missing their beginnings and some their ends, some of which were worm-eaten and some so faint as to be illegible, and if anyone asked him about anything, he’d turn to one of these, open it, gaze upon it, and then say, ‘As I thought. This is one of those things over which scholars differ. Thus some of our shaykhs in the Himyaritic lands interpret it this way and some of them in the Damascene territories that, and they have yet to reach a consensus. When they do, they will certainly let me know.’
2.2.12
“Once,” the Fāriyāq continued, “I heard someone who was bothered about some urgent business ask him the time, and the man told him, ‘Such-and-such an hour and five minutes. Now, as to the word sāʿah (“hour”), from it are derived the words sāʿī (“errand boy”; literally “one who strives” or “makes effort”) and ʿĪsā.426 Sāʿī is so derived because all effort depends on the hours, for no-one can undertake any work outside the confines of time. All acts and motions are confined within time, just as…’ and he looked about him for something to use as a comparison and caught sight of a tin mug belonging to some child and said, ‘… water is confined within this p’tch’r.’427 Then he saw a palm-leaf basket belonging to some other child and said, ‘Or like this child’s lunch in this b’sk’t. As for ʿĪsā, it is so derived because ʿĪsā contained within himself all knowledge and branches of learning as completely as the hour contains the minutes. Note too that, when I say “five,” the real meaning is “four plus one” or “two plus three” or vice versa. They say khams daqāʾiq (“five minutes”) and not khamsah daqāʾiq in pursuit of a more concise form and faster speech,428 for the longer the words you use the more time you waste. The word daqāʾiq (“minutes”) that I just employed is the plural of daqīqah, which derives from the daqīq (“flour”) that is milled, for they resemble and correspond to one another in that each is a “congregator of fineness” (jāmiʿ al-nuʿūmah).429 There are many words that refer to time, namely masāʾ (“evening”), layl (“night”), ṣubḥ (“morning”), ḍuḥā (“forenoon”), ẓuhr (“noon”), ʿaṣr (“late afternoon”), dahr (“epoch”), abad (“eternity”), ḥīn (“point of time”), awān (“right time, season”), and zaman (“period”). The first six have “partings,”430 the others do not.’ Here, one of the important men who were present raised an objection, saying, ‘I am confused, dear professor, by what you say. Both my slave girl and her mistress have partings!’ The shaykh laughed at the man’s foolishness and told him, ‘My words here relate to the domain of time, not that of place.’ Then another asked him, ‘Where’s this Nuʿūmah Mosque that you said has the flour in it?’431 The man laughed again and said, ‘To us scholars, the word jāmiʿ is known as an “active participle,” meaning that it assumes the doing of something, whatever it might be (albeit for a long time I’ve had it in mind to discuss this terminology with them because someone who dies, or falls asleep, for example, cannot correctly be said to be “doing death” or “doing sleep”); when I used jāmiʿ, then, it was in accordance with the rule as recognized by us, namely as a noun descriptive of that which congregates a thing. It would be perfectly correct to apply the word jāmiʿ even to a church, because it congregates (yajmaʿu) the people.’ When he said this, the faces of his listeners turned dark.” The Fāriyāq resumed, “I then heard one of them muttering, ‘I do not believe the shaykh holds a correct Christian belief. Our bishops were right to forbid people to delve deeply into the sciences, and especially this science of logic that our shaykh refers to. How rightly is it said, “He who practices logic practices unbelief!”’ Then they all left him, muttering under their breath.
2.2.13
“And once a priest asked him about the etymology of the word ṣalāh (‘prayer’) and he said, ‘It derives from the word iṣlāʾ (“burning”) because the one who prays “burns” the Devil with his prayers.’ The priest asked him, ‘If the Devil has dwelt in hell fire these thousands of years without being burned up, how can prayer burn him?’ so the man picked up one of the books to extract from it an answer and declared, ‘A certain learned monk has said, “Burning is of two kinds: physical burning, as when someone is burned by fire, and figurative burning, as when someone is ‘burned’ by love as practiced by the tribe of ʿUdhrah.”’ Then he paused and sighed, saying, ‘Our Lord the monk was in error, because ʿadhrāʾ has to be stretched out at the end.’432 The priest, enraged by the thought that the Virgin could be stretched out if she did not so desire, declared, ‘Woe unto you! You’re another who doesn’t know the rules for the use of long and short vowels at the end of words, when the very children playing in the alleys in our country know them! Truly, it’s a good idea to keep to a minimum one’s conversations with those who accuse monks of error.’ Then he turned and left him, muttering under his breath.”
2.2.14
The Fāriyāq went on, “And once he told me, ‘My studies have shown me that the proper way to use the verb daʿā, if one intends the meaning of “to pray,” is to follow it with the preposition ʿalā. Thus one should say daʿawtu ʿalayh, just as one says ṣallaytu ʿalayh.’433 I told him, ‘Just because two verbs have the same sense doesn’t mean they should be followed by the same preposition,’ but this was too much for him; he couldn’t get his head around it. And once a man he knew complained to him that a bout of diarrhea was causing him pain, and he said to him — either to correct him or to amuse him—‘Thank God for it! I wish I were like you.’ ‘How can that be?’ said the first. ‘If it goes on too long, it is fatal and carries the whole body off with it.’ He replied, ‘It is a blessing from God. Do you not hear how everyone who has a worry says, “Lord, make it pass easily”?’ The merchant replied, ‘I’m not worried about things passing easily, I’m worried about things passing through my bowels too easily.’ ‘It comes to the same thing,’ the first told him, ‘because verbs of the pattern afʿala and those of the pattern faʿʿala both lend transitivity — one says either anzaltuhu (“I sent it down”) or nazzaltuhu (ditto) — and because both tashīl and ishāl contain the sense of “ease.”’434