Enslaved men and blacksmiths in the poems of Jarīr

         al-Bayzār "Plowman" : The name of a slave
         Baghthar "Not Too Bright" : The name of a slave
         Thu‘āla "The Fox" : A slave of Mujāshi‘
         al-Jaythalūṭ [Unspecific term of abuse] : A slave
         Dāsim "Mindful Worker" : The name of a blacksmith
         Za‘‘āb "Bearer of Heavy Loads" : A blacksmith belonging to Ṣa‘ṣa‘a
         al-Zubbayyān (sic) [al-Waqbān?] :
               A slave belonging to [Ṣa‘ṣa‘a's mother] Qufayra
         Shuqār "Red" : The name of a slave
         Ibn Ṣam‘ā’ "Son of the Woman with Dainty Ears" : A freedman
         Ḍāṭir "Big Guy" : A slave
         Qunābir (sic) : A slave
         Masrūḥ "Easy-going" : A blacksmith belonging to
               Ṣa‘ṣa‘a and Qufayra
         Makḥūl "Sooty" : A slave belonging to Taym
         Hurmuz [A royal name of Persia deriving from Ahura Mazda]:
               A slave belonging to Qufayra

A prosopography by Dr. Nu‘mān Muḥammad Amīn Ṭāhā, editor of
Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb's Commentary on the Collected Poems of Jarīr

Oil in classical Arabic tradition

Although there is no historical evidence by which a first discoverer of oil and its properties might be singled out, classical Arabic tradition can be identified as the premodern linguistic culture most permeated by words for oil, in its onomastics, proverbs, and poetry going back to pre-Islamic times. Occurrences of the word nafṭ in classical verse have modern political implications, highlighting the historical priority of the Arabs where oil is concerned, and the falsehood of Western claims to it. On this point, it should not go without saying that Western notice of oil in the region began with an Arab merchant from Bahrain, who mentioned it to a quartermaster of the British army while at Addis Ababa. That officer resigned his post forthwith and transferred to the Gulf in search of oil.

The word nafṭ calls attention for its antiquity and its particularity, indicating that Arabs have understood oil's nature for over 2,000 years. It denotes the reality of oil better than terms in use by the Europeans who, judging from basic appearances, called it petroleum, that is, "rock oil," as if it were a culinary oil pressed from rock. The Arabic designation of nafṭ is less naïve, designating a rare substance with distinct properties [from those of botanic oils, which are called in Arabic by a different word]. But those who hypothesize a relation between nafṭ and nabt "vegetation" [best defended through a shared connection to nabṭ, which is "the issue of water from the ground"] hit on the fact that geological oil is an organic substance. This would not preclude the possibility that nafṭ entered Arabic from another cultural domain, or that it derives from more ancient languages.

Nafṭ has an array of meanings in Arabic. As a substantive noun, it refers to petroleum. As an epithet, it conveys the sense of boiling, sneezing, or furious anger; correspondingly, the verb nafaṭa yanfiṭu is said of a pot [when it boils], a goat [when it sneezes], and a man [suffused by anger]. Nafṭ also signifies a blister filled with fluid that appears on the hand after manual labor. There is clear affinity among these meanings, in that they all have to do with the emergence of something with force and violence. And although this similitude was incomprehensible until modern times, the topology of an oil deposit resembles that of a blister on the skin.

Nafṭ also carries the meaning of tar (qār), which is properly speaking a category of nafṭ. Ibn Manẓūr in Lisān al-‘arab (art. √qwr) states that "Qār is a black substance that camels are smeared with [to treat their mange], and also boats, in order to prevent water from seeping in." The Arabs were well acquainted with the fundamental properties of tar, in particular the intensity of its blackness and the impossibility of its taking on other colors. There are many proverbs to this effect, such as "I'll do that when tar turns white" [i.e., never]. In Averroes's commentary on the Posterior Analytics (I.6), he mentions [tar, saying: "Whereas predication of essential attributes is possible when these are substances, it is necessary when they are accidents, in] the way that white is predicated of snow, and black is predicated of qār." [....] And Mu‘āwiya al-Ḍabbī said (meter: ṭawīl):

     Until I see tar gleaming like the dawn [mughraban],
         or I see the mute stones speaking, I am stuck here.

The word mughrab is glossed as "white" in Lisān al-‘arab (art. √ghrb), where the verse is explained: "The poet wound up in a spot that was disagreeable to him, from which rescue was impossible unless tar should turn white, or stones begin speaking—things that do not and should not happen in the normal course of events." These proverbial expressions are sufficient to indicate that petroleum was a familiar, everyday part of early Arab life. 

After the entry of the Mongols into Baghdad at the end of the Abbasid Dynasty, the scientific heritage of the Arabs suffered major losses, especially in the discipline of chemistry. However, the poems and stories that remain have a lot to tell us. Poetry has many functions, one of the most important being the witness it bears to matters that are not otherwise recorded, thereby preserving the history of the nation. Even low forms of verse spoken hundreds of years ago have important political and sociohistorical implications for our time. Among these is the fact that the Muslims of Baghdad were familiar with petroleum. Nor were they the only ones, but—as indicated in books of Islamic law and history, as well as poetry [of the 9th century CE]—Muslims were the first to establish a legal and administrative framework for the utilization of oil, which they extracted from deposits called nafāṭāt. The city of al-Qayyāra outside Baghdad was so named precisely for the number of nafāṭāt in that region. And Dhū Qār [site of the famous battle] was nothing but a boggy area where oil rose to the earth's surface.

To oversee the qayyārāt and nafāṭāt and regulate their exploitation by the oil sector, the Abbasid caliph appointed an "oil czar" (wālī al-nafāṭāt), whose office resembled present-day ministries of oil. This is attested in verses [by ‘Abd al-Ṣamad ibn al-Mu‘adhdhal] appearing in al-Zamakhsarī's Campsite of the Righteous, later quoted in the chapter "On vices of governorship" in Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad al-Bayhaqī's Virtues and Vices [and, before either of these, in the Virtues and Their Opposites of al-Jāḥiẓ] (meter: ṭawīl):

     By my life! You put on such pompous airs,
         as if ministering from the dais of al-Faḍl ibn Marwān. 
     And if, Abū 'l-‘Abbās, you governed in his stead
         as my superior, I would not expect your character to change.
     How proud would you be of musk and ambergris,
         if you're this proud to oversee pools of nafṭ?
     Brook your hauteur. Don't lose your humility.
         A governor of nafṭ ought not be haughty.

One of the topmost authorities of energy law in our time—a British legal counselor to the World Bank and a number of oil-rich countries—was reduced to amazement when I recited these verses and explained them to him, for Westerners think they were first to bring oil extraction within the domain of law in the late nineteenth century. And these verses highlight the fact that the Abbasids were the first to do this. 

From "Political Implications of the Word Nafṭ in Classical Arabic Tradition" (2018), a blog post by Anas Alhajji

Two new articles

1. "Night and Day in Islamicate Literary Dispute" appears in Disputation Literature in the Near East and Beyond, ed. Enrique Jiménez and Catherine Mittermayer (de Gruyter, 2020), 191-213. Thanks to Enrique, and to Geert Jan for the connect.

2. "Towards a Reconstruction of Abū Naṣr al-Bāhilī’s Kitāb Abyāt al-ma‘ānī" appears in Approaches to the Study of Pre-modern Arabic Anthologies, ed. Bilal Orfali and Nadia Maria El Cheikh (Brill, 2021), 37-83. (This is the forthcoming article mentioned in Larsen 2018, p. 210, note 78.) Thank you to the editors, especially Bilal who put me on the path to abyāt al-ma‘ānī in 2015.

Origins of the fold-in

On the poet Abu 'l-‘Ibar al-Hashimi (d. 866 CE), by Sinan Antoon,
The Poetics of the Obscene in Premodern Arabic Poetry: Ibn al-Hajjaj
and Sukhf (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 40:

¹⁸⁹  From the Book of Songs

Two personal announcements

ITEM ONE:
My article "Meaning and Captivity in Classical Arabic Philology" is on pages 177-228 of the Journal of Abbasid Studies 5:1/2 (2018). This article is Open Access, and available by clicking on the cover below.

ITEM TWO:
My translation of Ibn Khalawayh's Names of the Lion has received the 2018 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. To the Academy of American Poets, and judge Ammiel Alcalay, thanks!

Guest lecture by Martin Schwartz

If in Berkeley

Bookmen of Baghdad and Cairo

"Bookmen" [al-kutubiyyūn] were those who specialized in the sale of books, some of whom also did their own copying by hand. Among those who gained fame in this type of work were Jamal al-Din ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Yahya, known as al-Watwat ["The Bat"], Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Dimashqi, and the poet Ibn Sham‘un al-Kutubi. In Damascus, Muhammad ibn Shakir al-Darani al-Dimashqi was renowned. And there were many other bookmen of this class.

By itself, "the bookmen" was generally used without the word sūq to designate the book market. We find this usage in [al-Dhahabi's] text describing the events of 279 A.H./892 CE when, on assuming the caliphate, Abu 'l-‘Abbas al-Mu‘tadid ibn al-Muwaffaq forbade the sale of philosophical texts: "In that year, Abu 'l-‘Abbas banned the story-tellers and astrologers, and ordered the bookmen to stop selling works of philosophy and dialectic."

With the invention of paper, the markets and shops of stationers and bookmen became conspicuous throughout the Islamic world, and those who practiced the stationer's trade became a prominent class in society. Ibn Khaldun described them as "those who busy themselves with copying and correcting and bookbinding and other matters relating to books," mainly their traffic and sale. Scores of shops began to sell not only books, but the materials necessary for their manufacture, such as paper, ink, and writing implements - the most decisive indicator of the book trade's prevalence. For these had become indispensable to students and the learned alike, who copied what they needed out of books in addition to buying them in great numbers from the stationers' markets.

These shops began to spread through the urban centers of Islam, taking hold to the point that some parts of Arab cities became known as "the district of the bookmen" (or "books" or "stationers"). In Baghdad, seat of the Abbasid caliphate, stationers' markets appeared all over, but only one was known as "the stationers' district." This was a large area containing a large number of shops specializing in the sale of books - one hundred of them in the vicinity of the Basra Gate alone. Ibn Nadim gives evidence of one such market in his remarks on Ahmad ibn Abi Tahir: "The son of Khorasani parents, he used to sit in the stationers' market in the southeastern part of Baghdad." Another booksellers' district of renown was in the area around the Archway of al-Harrani, on the western side of the new bridge. It is mentioned that on the death of Ja‘far ibn Ahmad al-Marwazi in 274/888, "his books were taken to Baghdad and sold by the Archway of al-Harrani." And Abu 'l-Qasim al-Harith ibn ‘Ali, a stationer of Baghdad, is said to have sold and copied books for people in the western neighborhood of Qasr Waddah.

The stationers and bookmen's markets of Cairo are known from the description of al-Maqrizi: "To the best of my knowledge, the market between El Sagha and the madrasa of al-Malik al-Salih emerged around the year 700/1300, in the neighborhood of the mosque-hospital of al-Mansur Qalawun.... For a time, the book market was moved from this location to a roofed esplanade between the poultry market and the market of the mat-weavers, by the anointed pillar of the Grey Mosque. A number of the district's inhabitants joined in the raising of the roof, but the dampness of their cellars proved detrimental to books and some were ruined. So the market was removed to its current location, which is still a habitual gathering place for scholarly types."

"There used to be a book market in Fustat, on the eastern side of the mosque of ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, next to ‘Amr's house in the chandlers' quarter. Its vestiges were still there when I visited in 780/1378, but have since been swept away, and its onetime location is no longer common knowledge."

From The Traffic in Manuscripts by Dr. Abed Suleiman al-Mashwakhi (Cairo: Institute of Arabic Manuscripts, 2011)

Agriculture in Ancient Egypt

Oleiferous plants. The Egyptians took much care in pressing oils from different plants, as required by their cuisine, the blending of their ointments, perfumes and drugs, and their need for artifical light. In Arabic, the word for "oil" (zayt) is primarily applied to the oil of the olive (zaytūn), whose Coptic name is dʒi:t. Oils were also pressed from seeds of flax and safflower, juniper berries, and the nuts of the thorn tree, cedar, castor plant and Egyptian willow.

Medicinal plants. The advancement of ancient Egyptian botanical learning is best appreciated in their use of plants for fighting disease, most importantly: anise (Arabic yansūn, Egyptian ytkwn), cumin, dill, thistle, peppermint, boxthorn, poppy, juniper, henbane, pomegranate, fig, onion, garlic, coriander, the milk of the sycamore, and various oils. Space does not permit the mention of all the medical uses listed in the various papyri.

Fibrous plants. Flax was known in Egypt since the earliest times, and fragments of linen cloth have been discovered in the [Neolithic-era] graves of Merimde and Maadi. The stages in the production of linen are represented on the walls of the Beni Hasan tombs, from maceration, pounding and combing to its spinning, weaving and dyeing. The flax seeds preserved in the Fouad I Agricultural Museum and the Egyptian Museum of Berlin attest to the nobility of the ancient species.
        The special importance of papyrus was not limited to writing surfaces, as it was also used to line the bottoms of boats.

Garlands and bouquets. Flowers were of the highest importance in Egypt for their use in religious and funerary ceremonies. The flowers of the papyrus, lotus, acacia, and willow were bundled into garlands and bouquets, along with shoots of sycamore, celery and artemisia and sprays of camomile and saffron.

Timber. The most widespread of the big trees in Egypt were the sycamore, which was held sacred, and the acacia. The wood of the acacia was used in boat-building, its fruit (known in Arabic as qarad) was used in medicine and tanning hides, and its flower (called fotna) was woven into garlands for the dead. Most agricultural tools were made from acacia wood and from the tamarisk (known in Arabic as athl, which is its Egyptian name). The leaves of the weeping willow were used in funeral garlands, and knife handles made from its wood have been found to pre-date the Dynastic period. And pieces made from henna wood were among the finds of Schweinfurth.
        When the timber reserves of Egypt were no longer sufficient, trade with Lebanon was established in order to import lumber in pieces large enough for building their sarcophagi, ships and funerary and domestic furniture. Egypt's ebony came from Sudan, and myrrh was imported from the Somali land of Punt.

Peasant Life in Ancient Egypt. We end our account with a tale out of old Egypt. It comes from a story about the life of two brothers named Anubis and Bata, who were tillers of the earth. According to this story... [Here begins an abridged passage from The Literature of Ancient Egypt (Cairo, 1945), ed. & tr. by Selim Hassan:]
        Bata was a skilled farmer who made clothes for his brother and pastured his brother's herds. He broke the soil for his brother and harvested his brother's crops, and was filled to overflowing with God's breath, which increased his stature. Every day he went out with the herds to pasture, and every evening he returned to his brother's house with a load of milk and greens and dry kindling, and rendered them unto his older brother, bringing him pleasure as he sat with his wife. After eating and drinking his rations, Bata made his bed in the corral to watch over the cattle. At night's end, the new day's dawn found him preparing his older brother's meal. Then he would set it before him, and set off for pasture with his own, driving the cattle to lead him to the fertile fields. And the cattle grew fat, and their offspring were stout and numerous.
        When the time for plowing had come, the older brother said to Bata: "Yoke a pair of oxen to the plow, for the earth is no longer saturated, but ready for the plow. Prepare also the grain for sowing, and we will break ground in early morning." And the younger brother was delighted at all he commanded. At the new day's dawn, they went into the field, and took their place behind the bulls with firm resolve, and gladness filled their hearts, for they had begun the task of the new year. But their seed ran out before all the ground was sown, and the older brother sent the younger to the farm for another load.
        The young man entered the house "at a time of distraction of its folk", and found his brother's wife combing her hair. When he came out of the granary bearing his load, "she in whose house he was sought to seduce him," saying: " 'Come here, you,' " and promising him finer clothes and a better station. When he scorned her, she contrived to accuse him to his brother, and played the liar after the fashion of the well-known story of our master Joseph, peace be upon him.

Mahmud Darwish (Supervisor of General Education for Egypt's Ministry of Information), "al-Zira‘a al-Misriyya al-qadima," al-Filāha: Majalla Zira‘iyya Iqtisadiyya (a publication of the Association of Agricultural College Graduates / The Agricultural Club), 28:1 (Jan-Feb 1948). 28-30.
(See also: Veterinary Medicine in Ancient Egypt)

Veterinary Medicine in Ancient Egypt

Enclosed within the temple complexes of ancient Egypt (among them the temple of Memphis which predates 3000 BCE) were structures called "Houses of Life," where teachers and students were trained in the life sciences. Dissection and anatomy, chemistry, diagnosis of diseases and their remedies, the principles of mummification—the Houses of Life were the ideal place for study in all these fields, due to the embalming process which required the cutting open of human cadavers and animal carcasses, and the removal of their innards in preparation for mummification. This was the job of the medical diviners, who also tended to sacred animals and to the animals fattened for slaughter, whether as offerings to their gods or for human consumption.

Animal care flourished in ancient Egypt, and wealth in livestock increased among peasants and the landowners who kept large herds of cattle, sheep, goats and other ungulates. For horses and asses great care was also taken. They set up canopies in the fields, so that the animals might find rest and tranquility in their shade. Meanwhile, the herdsmen sat in the shade of trees, from where they would watch over them and apportion their feed—a scene that appears in the [tomb paintings representing the] fields of Ti, ca. 2550 BCE. In these settings, herdsmen gained experience in care and husbandry, tending to pregnant animals and supervising their delivery, seeing to their milking and the nursing of their calves, and isolation of the sick and their cure.

Mastaba of Ti, Saqqara. Detail from a photo by Richard T. Mortel

As the care of sick animals was left up to shepherds with experience and knowledge of cures, it was from their ranks that the veterinary doctor emerged, as affirmed by the English scholar Wilkinson in his book of 1878.

The life of the traveler Khuf Har is dated to the Sixth Dynasty, so it was 2350 years before Christ that he made his famous journey to the upper regions of Nubia in search of incense and ivory. For transport and communication outside the country he used 300 asses, and that same season he brought them all back, loaded with impressive treasures. This reflects the level of the ancient Egyptians' ability and their skill in tending animals.

In 1889, the English archaeologist Flinders Petrie discovered a Twelfth-Dynasty papyrus on veterinary medicine, whose date goes back to 2000 BCE, in the Ilahun subdistrict of the province of Fayyum. This text indicates remedies for bulls suffering from tear duct infections, as well as depression and sadness, and for dogs afflicted with internal parasites.

From Veterinary Medicine Between Past, Present and Future,
a 1990 publication of the Egyptian Veterinary Syndicate.
(See also: Agriculture in Ancient Egypt)

Jean Pépin on Sentence 16

hai noēseis ouk áneu phantasías
"This is Aristotle's celebrated thesis, more or less as formulated in On the Soul III.7 and again in the short treatise On Memory and Recollection. The passages in question are:
(1) oudépote noeî áneu phantásmatos hē psychē (On the Soul 431a)(2) Tà mèn oûn eídē tò noētikòn en toîs phantásmasi noeî (On the Soul 431b)
(3) noeîn ouk éstin áneu phantásmatos (On Memory 449b-50a)
One could of course mention other passages, among them On the Soul III.8: 'Speculative thought is necessarily applied to some mental image. For mental images are just like objects of sense, except that they are without matter' (432a). Noēmata are not the same as phantásmata, but they cannot exist without them."

"Of the above formulations, (1) and (3) make it clear that the phántasma is necessary for the intellect to function, but they do not say strictly whether it comes first. (2) on the other hand -- 'As for the forms, the intellectual faculty thinks of these in images' -- gives us to understand that phantásmata are not only necessary for operations of the intellect, but exist prior to them."

Commentary in Porphyre / Sentences, ed. by Luc Brisson
(Paris: Vrin, 2005), vol. 2, 447-8