Arabic Poetry

It's interesting in that it seems to be derived from a compound? Maybe some Persian influence there

al-Khubzaruzzi (d. c.327/938) Abū al-Qāsim Nasr ibn Ahmad al-Khubzaruzzi (Khubza'aruzzi, Khubzuruzzi, etc.), was an illiterate poet of Basra. He baked rice-bread (hence his name) in a shop in the Mirbad (camel market) of Basra, where Ibn Lankak and other élite poets of the city would visit him to hear his verse; for someone of such lowly social status to achieve such celebrity was clearly most unusual. He is said to have spent some time in Baghdad, and, according to a rather dubious rumour, was drowned by the military adventurer al-Barīdī after mocking him in a poem. He excelled primarily, however, in amorous verse (see ghazal), which was directed exclusively to males; the young men of Basra are said to have competed for his poetic attentions. His style is described as simple and unsophisticated, but delicate and effective. His dīwān, reportedly compiled by Ibn Lankak, survives in an unpublished Yemeni manuscript. His verses are also very widely quoted in later anthologies.Further reading Fullest accounts, with selections, in al-Tha'ālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr, Cairo (1956), vol. 2, 366-9, and al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Ta’rikh Baghdād, Cairo (1931), vol. 13, 296-9.E.K. ROWSON

Majallat Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿIrāqī, 1979, part 2, p. 165

Bio of the poet:

١- جار الزمانُ على الأحرارِ في تصرفه وأيُّ دهرٍ على الأحرارِ لم يَجرِ؟ ٢- عندي من الدهرِ ما لو أن أيسرَهُ يُلْقَى على الفلكِ الدوَّارِ لم يَدُرِ

—Fate Complaint—
⌛

Our precarious age oppresses us
and what age leaves the free uninjured?

The lightest fate that I've suffered
would stop the heavens from turning.

— al-Khubzaruzzī (d. 938)

An Arabic Wikipedia article provides the list:

ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%82%...

cover of Arabic book أسماء الأسد

Arabic has 348 words for "lion". Here is the cover of Ibn Khālawayh's (d. 980, Baghdad) book on the subject.

Either coincidence or a very attentive publisher... The author copies of my attempt at translating two #Ottoman texts on 16th-century #poetics arrived at my doorstep right on #InternationalTranslationDay!

Farrūkh, Tarīkh al-adab al-ʿArabī, 2:393

Arabic text قال في وصف الشدو (الغناء): شدُوّ ألذّ من ابتدأ العينُ في إغفائها، أحلى وأشهى من مُنى نفَسٌ ونَيلُ رُجائها.

—On a beautiful song—
🎶

A song more delicious
than an eye
beginning to sleep —

sweeter and lovelier
than a soul's wishes
and its attainment of its dreams.

— Abū ʿUthmān al-Nājim (Iraq, d. 926)

قد ذهب الناس فلا ناس وصار بعد الطمع الياس وساس امر الناس الاناهم وصار تحت الذنب الراس Quoted in Farrūkh, Tarīkh al-adab al-ʿArabī, 2:382

—These Days—
📅

Real people are gone, there's no one.
Greed's been replaced by despair.

The lowest rule over everyone;
the head is under the tail.

— Muḥammad ibn Dāwūd al-Jarrāḥ (Iraq, d. 909)

The author was a Shafi'i legal scholar. A transcription of the Arabic is in the alt text. Information on the manuscript can be found here, my source:

t.me/konashaadel/...

Manuscript image الحمد لله للإمام عبدالله بن أبي عصرون صاحب المصنفات الجليلة في الفقه على مذهب الإمام الأعظم محمد بن إدريس الشافعي قدس الله روحهما ونور ضريحهما وأعاد علينا من بركتهما بمنه وكرمه أؤمِّلُ أن أحيا وفي كل ساعةٍ ‏تَمُرُّ بي الموتى تُهَزُّ نُعوشُها ‏وهل أنا إلا مثلُهمْ غيرَ أن لي ‏بقايا ليالٍ في الزمان أعيشُها ——— مخطوط (143) مجموعة حضرت خالد بالمكتبة السليمانية مستفاد من أخي/ عبدالصمد السلمي

I hope to live while every hour
on swaying biers the dead pass by.

But aren't I just like them? Except that
I still must live through my remaining nights.

—ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī ʿAṣrūn (Iraq, Syria, d. 1189)

#New on #OCIANA, perhaps the first rhymed Dhofari text: an expression of weeping out of lovesickness, themes in Safaitic and in Jāhilī poetry.

'here, he has wept; in him is much weeping; because of his excess love (صبه), he is silent'

Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

A page from the the chapter on the proverb أبطأ من قاض

Classical Arabic proverb of the day:

أبطأ من قاضٍ

abṭaʾu min qāḍin

"Slower than a judge"

The Cairene underworld of Ibn Daniyal's shadow plays, loaded with references to beer-soaked, hashish-addicted entertainers and ne'er-do-wells, was anticipated by a couple centuries in the Cairo Geniza by this Judeo-Arabic legal document about the policies at Dammūh, a shrine at the edge of Fustat...

Wednesday Wisdom:

No one knows what’s in a shoe except for God and the cobbler.

Freytag, Arabum proverbia, vol. 2
no. 482 p. 554, 1839.

github.com/NoorBayan/Di...

Screenshot of Diwan's GitHub page

colab.research.google.com/drive/1c2AsP...

It could be عنصر in that case

Do you know what tamaẓlallet means? It would also help to see more of the MS, I'm not super familiar with the scripts in that part of the world.

Byzantine-era mosaic of a gazelle jumping

English borrowing from Arabic of the day:

"gazelle" comes from the Arabic ghazāl via medieval French.

Wednesday Wisdom:

Don’t sell a place with pure water for one with polluted water!

Freytag, Arabum proverbia, vol. 2
no. 462 p. 545, 1839.

Excellent opportunity to work with an excellent scholar Prof Nuha Alshaar at the American University of Sharjah (AUS) to work in the area of adab literary traditions, ethics, Qur'anic morality and... Excellent opportunity to work with an excellent scholar Prof Nuha Alshaar at the American University of Sharjah (AUS) to work in the area of adab literary traditions, ethics, Qur'anic morality and con...

If you look at the announcement it doesn't have much detail but according to Hany here it's to work with Nuha Alshaar, who I know has worked on Sicilian Arabic literature among other things

www.linkedin.com/posts/hany-r...

Cool post doc opportunity in Sharja for Classical Arabic literature.

www.aus.edu/employment/a...

A #Bilingual Reader

"ʽAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1143/1731)" herausgegeben von Lejla Demiri, Samuela Pagani und Astrid Meier

Theologische, mystische, juristische und literarische Texte des einflussreichen islamischen Gelehrten ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī.

www.mohrsiebeck.com/buch/abd-al-...

Hypothetical. Say you're the court physician of a caliph and he asks you to breed a monkey he got as a gift with your pet monkey, but you're worried that your pet monkey is too small to breed... whaddayado?

No, I cannot explain how my research got me here today. I was monkeying around.

Oof, thanks. My Arabic autocorrect sucks so bad.

Arab proverb of the day:

دَعِ الخلق الخالق

daʿ il-khalq li-l-khāliq

Leave well enough alone, lit. "Leave the creation to its Creator."

Here is the transcription of the highlighted and marked text in the image: كَانَ أَبِيٌّ طَوِيلًا is a phrase meaning "He had many male children." (T, TA.) أَبَيِّ Having a large membrum virile, or penis; (T, S, M, K;) like أَنَفِي signifying "having a large nose." (T.) Lane's Lexicon

"He had a long penis" in classical Arabic — kāna ayruhu ṭawīlan — was a way of saying "he had many male children", at least according to Tāj al-ʿArūs (TA in the image) of al-Zabīdī.

What if you want to actually talk about a long penis? There is a single word, uyārī, meaning "having a large penis."