Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 79

Egyptian cult of Ammon Ra, and it was
only definitively abolished by the ener-
getic repressions of the A ∞ labid amīr s,
in the 3rd/9th century. In veneration for
Abraham, Islam preserves the rite of the
sacrifice of the sheep on the 10th of
the month of u 'l-i ¡¡ a, the day
of the pilgrimage, culminating at Minā
called yawm al-nar “day of slaughter”; for
all the Muslim countries it is the “feast of
the sacrificial victims” ( īd al-aā ) or “feast
of the offerings” ( īd al-urbān ) and, in the
Ma ∞ rib, “the great feast” ( al-īd al-kabīr ).
Engaging in historico-religious arguments,
the apologist for the sheep would point
out the superiority of the former over the
goat on account of its wool, its milk and
its flesh; furthermore, in grazing, the sheep
does not have the “acid tooth” of the goat
which uproots the plants, damages the
bushes by devouring the buds and breaks
down buildings by its need to climb over
everything, whence the proverb al-mizā
tubhī wa-lā tubnī “the goat destroys and
does not build”. Finally, the sheep with
his thick fleece and covering tail decently
conceals his posterior, whereas the stump
of tail of the goats, shamelessly raised, is
a defiance to modesty, not to mention the
goatish odour which makes the company
of the tayyās “goat-herd” shunned. Lin-
guistically, to call someone a tays (pl. tuyūs ,
dialect. tīs ) was a great insult and, nota-
bly, in the expression mā huwa illā tays fī
safīna “he is only a goat in a boat”, allud-
ing to the nauseous and persistent smell
which the animal leaves wherever it has
stayed. On the contrary, the nickname
kab ª “ram” was eulogistic and flattering,
especially in the metaphor huwa kab ª min
al-kibā ª “he is a chief ram”, synonymous
with huwa fal min al-fuūl “he is a chief
stallion”, i.e. “he is a champion”. Against
these notions is the defender of the goats
āib al-māiz , in whom one should see, at
the time, either the i ¡ āzī or the Yemenī,

their respective homelands being particu-
larly abundant in goats; for such a person,
the goat outclasses the sheep as much by
the varied products which it supplies as by
its vitality and resistance. In the society of
goat-herds one would say of an energetic
man: huwa māiz min al-ri ¡ āl “he is a goat
among men”, whereas one would snub
the incapable weakling with mā huwa illā
na ¡ a min al-niā ¡ “he is only one of the
ewes”. Apart from the important place
occupied by goats' hair, as smooth ( sabad )
as flock ( mirizz ), the equal of wool ( labad,
ūf ) among weavers, goats' hide was and
still is the principal material for contain-
ers, bags, straps, shoes, cloths and covers;
although camel-breeders, the tribesmen of
Muar remained faithful to their red tents
of goats' hide.
In fact, this polemic, puerile as it may
appear, was not solely literary, for it was
the reflection of an old antagonism divid-
ing the tribes according to the kinds of
husbandry that they practised; a series of
more or less authentic Prophetic tradi-
tions testifies to this antagonism between
breeders and one of the most typical says
“Pride ( fa ¶ r ) is characteristic of the own-
ers of horses, brutal roughness ( ¡ afā ) of
the owners of camels, and serenity ( sakīna )
of the owners of small livestock”. Among
the great nomadic camel-breeders scorn
for the small nomadic sheep-breeders was
expressed by degrading proverbs such as
al-unū bad al-nū “the she-goats after the
she-camels”, stigmatising the misfortune
of a group forced by poverty to give up
camels for small livestock, for, to them,
this meant really a descent, since al-ilf
lā yurā ma al- ¶ uff “the cloven hoof [of
the small livestock] is not seen alongside
the hoof [of the camel]”. All these tribal
oppositions arising from the kinds of hus-
bandry were to vanish with Islam, for the
position of the Prophet in favour of small
livestock was very clear; having been a