The question of marriage has e’er a thorny matter been
And so for ay it will remain.
If divorce should e’er to the husband
Be permitted, at the drop of a hat his rights he’ll claim.
I don’t think it right then that his wife be stopped
From divorcing him too or from wedding again.
If they can’t agree on a friendly way out,
Let them do what’s moderate:
Whenever they want, get a divorce and separate.
“We laughed at his adoption of a position not found in the books in any shape, form, or way and told him, ‘Back to your donkey without delay! We think your opinion’s quite absurd, and ill you answered though well you heard!’535 Then we split up just as we’d congregated, each marveling at what he’d heard debated.”
CHAPTER 14: AN EXPLANATION OF THE OBSCURE WORDS IN THE PRECEDING MAQĀMAH AND THEIR MEANINGS
536
2.14.1
There is no word in this noble tongue of ours, or in that of any other nation, for an active subject or a passive object, or two actives, who, having participated in one and the same act for their own pleasure and advantage, are in need of someone to burst in upon them to inform himself as to what kind of “raising” and “erecting” they are engaged in.537 This may be demonstrated by the fact that our word zawāj (“marriage”) means the joining of one thing to another in such a way that each forms a conjunct (zawj) with its companion without, however, specification of time or place. Thus, if Zayd enters into conjunction (tazawwaja) with Hind on a plain or on a mountain top or in a cave, or on a Sunday or a Monday or a Saturday, and provided there is mutual consent to the man’s writing the woman a document publicly proclaiming that he has formed a conjunction with her, or he brings two men to bear witness to the same, then all is as it should be. This was the way of the earliest prophets and others, as recorded in their histories; in fact, they didn’t even tie themselves down with documents or witnesses.
2.14.2
As to the word nikāḥ (“copulation”), it means having a woman, however that may come about. This is because the Arabs of the Days of Barbarism had no conventions governing intercourse, or eating, or anything else. Then the Revelation came and classified the categories of intercourse and distinguished the permitted from the forbidden. Abū l-Baqāʾ states in al-Kulliyyāt (The Universals)538—well, I can’t find it in the chapter on the letter nūn but if I come across it in someone else’s work, I promise to get you the reference.
2.14.3
I’d hoped to cite what he has to say, namely that the noun nikāḥ539 remains in use until now and occurs in books of jurisprudence innumerable times, which is an argument against those Christians who deny this and anyone who throws up his hands in horror when it’s employed. Scholars of religion used it without embarrassment for several reasons. The first is that it was used anciently in the Days of Barbarism and that same usage was then confirmed in the Era of Rationality. The second is that it occurs in the Qurʾan. The third is that it is composed of four letters and thus accords with the humors, the elements, and the directions. The fourth is that the letters of which it is composed occur among the “mysterious letters”540 of the chapters of the Qurʾan; thus the nūn occurs in “Nūn. By the Pen and what they inscribe,”541 the kāf in kāf-hāʾ-yāʾ-ṣād,542 the alif in alif-lām-fāʾ,543 and the ḥ in ḥāʾ-mīm.544 The fifth is that if you write the word backward, you will find two noble meanings, the first being an active participle of the verb ḥ-y-y, the second an imperative verb formed from kāna;545 thus God’s creation is revealed, the essential truths made manifest to those whose eyes can pierce the veil to arrive at what’s concealed. The sixth is the lightness of the word on the tongue and its sweetness to the taste. The seventh is that its beginning signifies its end and its end its beginning, this kind of word play being called by some “the signifying of the end by the beginning and vice versa.” The advantage this bestows lies in the fact that, if a judge calls on someone to bear witness against the commissioner of such an act and the witness utters the letter nūn followed by the letter kāf546 and then swoons, or the judge swoons, from lasciviousness, those left standing in the judge’s chambers will understand what the speaker was trying to say. Similarly, should he be overcome in the course of his testimony by such longing and dread that he can no longer speak and all that can be heard from him is the alif and the ḥāʾ,547 this last part of the word, though consisting of only a small number of letters, will provide all the signification that could be asked for.
2.14.4
I declare, “This analysis is indeed elegant. It is not, however, to be found in the books of the rhetoricians and the stylists. Personally, I’m not fond of long words, so the best thing would be to create a new, shorter, one from that assemblage of letters by keeping only the end.548 If it be said, ‘But you used very long words when you described a bonnet as being mustaqbiḥah and mustafẓiʿah549 even though you could just as well have described it with short words,’ I reply, ‘That falls under the rubric of “maintenance of consistency,” for it is required by the height of the bonnet, whereas what is signified by the word in question doesn’t take long.’”
2.14.5
I started to say something at the beginning of this chapter and didn’t finish it, the pen, as usual, having drawn me unawares into another topic, and I doubt that Your Elevated Honor or Sublime Presence understood it. I now therefore declare: “If the ideal of marriage be that each of the two spouses take his companion for his own sake and not for that of his countrymen, acquaintances, or friends, the way that ʿUlayyān ate Umm ʿAlī’s chicken’s thigh,550 it would be unreasonable for someone wearing a bonnet to intrude upon them and tell the woman, ‘Don’t marry so-and-so because he wasn’t given the name Buṭrus’ and then to the man, ‘Don’t marry so-and-so because she wasn’t given the name Maryam’ or ‘Today’s Sunday, and marriage is not allowed’ or ‘This room isn’t licensed for the contraction of marriages.’ Nor would it be proper for him to say to them, ‘I want to see the kohl-stick stuck in the pot.’ Such things, I swear, are not fit to be spoken or written of by any.