Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 94

beings, from the time of their appearance
on earth, to practise both hunting and
fishing together with the gathering of wild
fruits and grain, and mankind has accord-
ingly ceaselessly exercised its ingenuity in
finding the best methods here for achiev-
ing the maximum return for effort. Thus
there has been a constant striving towards
perfection in methods of hunting and
fishing.
For hunting game by land, the meth-
ods of capture ( maīda, miyada, mayada ,
pl. maāyid ) are numerous. A passive mode
costing the least effort is the setting of nets
( ª abak ) and snares with draw-nets ( ibāla,
uhūla , pl. abāyil ); and there is also the
covered-over pit-trap ( una, u ∞ wiyya,
mu ∞ awwāt, wa ¡ ra, dafīna ). Then comes
the method of hunting with a bow ( ramy,
rimāya ) or, otherwise, with a cross-bow or
blow-pipe and, at present, with firearms.
But out of the various methods, in the
Islamic world and during mediaeval times,
one of the most favoured by princes and
nobles was the chase ( ard, muārada, irād ),
on foot or on horse-back, with the aid of
domesticated or tamed carnivore animals
( ārī , pl. awārī, ayūd , pl. uyud ), such as the
gazelle-hound or salūī , the cheetah and
the caracal lynx ( anā al-ar ). These pre-
cious hunting auxiliaries were launched
against the gazelle, antelope, wild ass ( imār
al-wah ª ), ibex ( wal ) and ostrich. Accord-
ing to the region, they sometimes served
for tracking down wild beasts with furs,
such as the panther, leopard and even the
fennec fox. Parallel with hunting by the
chase, hunting by the air, i.e. with rap-
tors [see bayzara], was always a favoured
pastime for all social classes in the Muslim
lands, whether high-flying with falcons or
low-flying with hawks for the capture of
small, furry game, such as the hare and
of that with feathers, such as the partridge
( a ¡ al ), sand-grouse, bustard ( ubāra ), wild
geese ( iwazz ), duck ( ba ) and teal ( a £ af ).

Certain falcons were also trained to tie
down and blind antelopes and wild assess,
thus facilitating their capture by the hunt-
ing hounds. The smallest-sized birds like
blackbirds and thrushes were taken by
means of snares and nooses ( ª arak , pl.
a ª rāk ) placed in line on a taut cord.
According to Islamic law, the hunter
and fisher ( ayyād, annā ) were subject
to rules regarding the ritual slaughter of
captured game in order to preserve the
lawfulness of their consumption; all these
rules are set forth in detail by al-Damīrī in
his K. al-ayawānāt al-kubrā . From it, there
results that, in order for it to be lawful,
game should not be killed on the spot and
picked up dead, so that its throat can be
ritually cut.

(F. Viré)

Hawking

Bayzara (Ar.) denotes “the art of the
flying-hunt”, and is not restricted to the
designation of “falconry”. (Its Persian ori-
gin (from bāz : goshawk) is more closely
related to the notion of “ostring art”).
Derived from bayzār , “ostringer”, an Ara-
bicised form of the Persian bāzyār/bāzdār ,
it was preferred to its dual form bāzdara ;
the words bāziyya and biyāza were scarcely
used in the Muslim Occident. The use of
rapacious predatories ( kāsir , pl. kawāsir ) as
“beasts of prey” ( ¡ āri , pl. ¡ awāri ) was
undoubtedly known to the Arabs before
Islam, and Imru al-ays sketches, in his
ayyam al-ayd , some descriptions of flying-
sport. However, hawking only assumed
importance with them after the great
Muslim conquests which brought them
into contact with the Persians and the
Byzantines. It quickly won the favour of
the new leaders who discovered in it the
possibility of diversion and of satisfying