Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
be reinforced by racial oppositions this
Bedouin's curse hurled at his adversary:
“If you lie, may you draw milk seated” (=
may Allah change your noble she-camels
into vile ewes). In the Ma
∞
rib, the shep-
herd is in the lowest rank of the country
proletariat, lower than the
¶
ammās
and
the jobbing workman and, in the mouth
of the countrywomen with their unpol-
ished language, the supreme insult hurled
at a rival is that of “maid for shepherds”.
In spite of so much disgrace and by
force of circumstances, the pastor of
small livestock remains, in all the lands
of Islam, one of the indispensable arti-
sans, ensuring the subsistence of the rural
and civic populations. Furthermore, the
shepherds, constantly observing nature
and the sky, and this since the domestica-
tion of the goat and sheep (the verb
raā
means at the same time “to pasture the
flock” and “to observe the stars”), have
made a great contribution through their
experience acquired in the progress of
the astronomy and meteorology proper
to each season. To be convinced, one
has only to consider the sum of precise
evidence preserved, in a concise form, in
the rhymed sayings that these contempla-
tors of the heavenly vault composed for
each of the twenty-eight
anwā
of the year;
these sayings mention the notable influ-
ences on the flocks of the evolution of
time in the course of the twelve months;
for the craftsman, their laconicness is very
telling. By way of example, two of these
sayings taken from the fifty best known
will suffice to sketch the rough contrasts
of climate which the shepherd had to
endure. The first evokes the dog-days and
the scarcity of water in these brief terms,
“When Sirius rises [at the end of June] in
the morning (
safarā
), if you do not see rain
(
maarā
), do not give food to the she-lambs
or he-lambs (
immarā
) . . .” [for they will risk
dying of thirst]. The second relates to
mid-December when the water becomes
ice, “When
al-Naāim
(“the Ostriches”,
i.e. Sagitarii) rise, the animals stay
motionless (
al-bahāim
) because of the con-
stant (
al-dāim
) ice, and the cold awakens
every sleeper (
nāim
)”. With this monthly
guide to the constellations the shepherds
regulate their migrations which, far from
straying, lead them where their flocks will
find the best conditions of subsistence.
Apart from the vicissitudes arising from
the harsh weather to which the animals of
the flock are exposed, they can also be the
victims of accidents and individual or col-
lective illnesses. In the past, with the lack
of effective therapeutics, the shepherds had
to lament a percentage of certainly high
losses. Epidemics (
wabā, mawtan
) would
occur periodically with their terrible con-
sequences; spontaneous abortion (
i
¶
dā
¡
,
isā, i
¶
fād
), agalactia (
ª
iā
) and sterility
(
ur
). The causes were attributable espe-
cially to many neighbouring viruses of the
brucella type entailing brucellosis or Mal-
tese fever (
ummā māliiyya
) and foot-and-
mouth disease (
¡
ilā
¶
, ummā ulāiyya
).
The sheep pox (
amīha, nab
¶
) also ravaged
them, as did coccidiosis (
¡
uām
), bring-
ing on diarrhoea and anaemia. Sarcoptic
mange or “blackmuzzle” (
na
∞
af
), pso-
roptic mange (
uāl
, dial.
bū agga
), gastro-
intestinal strongylosis and flukeworm due
to the small fluke of the liver (
Dicrocoelium
lanceolatum
), all leading to aqueous or dry
cachexia, also destroyed a good number
of animals. Microbial infections of the
feet and hooves such as foot rot (
iltihāb
al-fawt
) and hoof inflammation (
uwām
),
which could lead to the dropping-off of
the horn cover and decalcification of the
instep (
uāb,
¶
umāl
), condemned their
immobilised victims to enforced slaughter.
Infections of the respiratory tubes were
endemic, with pleuropneumonia of goats
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