Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
5. Miscellanea from the
World of Fauna
Latin-Roman versions not yet identified
but attributed to the two authors Moamin
and Ghatrif. The Syrian Kurd Alī had
the happy idea of publishing (Damascus
1953) a treatise
Al-Bayzara
devoted to the
falconry of the Fāimid caliph Al-Azīz
bi-llāh (975-96); the anonymous author
offers us the profit of his own long experi-
ence and that of the specialists in hawk-
ing (
luāb
) in a style stripped of extraneous
erudition: poetical citations are arranged
in a special chapter. This work is by far
the most valuable of those we possess
in Arabic on the training methods. At
almost the same time Asad alas edited
(Ba
∞
dād 1954) the oldest known Ara-
bic text,
K. al-Maāyid wa 'l-Maārid
, the
work of the famous poet Al- Ku
ª
ā
¡
im
(d. 961 or 971). This complete treatise
on venery and falconry was one of the
sources most exploited by later authors of
cynegetic works; there emanates from it
unfortunately too great a preoccupation
with
adab
which relieves it of any practical
significance. Very different and far more
lively and useful are the “hawking-sport
memories” of Usāma Ibn Muni
£
(d.
1188) in his
K. al-Itibār
composed during
the period of the Crusades [. . .]
From the time of the Prophet the
question has been posed, with regard to
urānic law, of the legality of eating a
game-bird caught by means of a trained
(hawk) predatory; it was a question of
whether the bird ought to be slaughtered
in accordance with the rites. Averroes, in
his
Bidāyat al-Mu
¡
tahid
. . ., gives a clear
account of the different positions adopted
by each of the four schools of law. This
same question constitutes the introductory
part of all of the works dealing with fal-
conry and venery.
Hare
Grammatically the Arabic noun
arnab
(pl.
arānib
) is feminine and denotes the
hare, with the general meaning of a lep-
orid, either as a collective noun, or spe-
cifically the doe-hare. In all the Arabic
dialects the term maintains this mean-
ing, but in Ma
∞
ribī two plural forms
are found,
rawānib
and
arnānib
. Today its
archaic synonym
uwā
(fem.
uwāa
) seems
to have been forgotten. Arabic lexicogra-
phers relate
arnab
to a root
r-n-b
according
to the rules of triliteralism, but its etymol-
ogy should perhaps be sought in Sumer-
ian or Akkadian, from which a number
of animal and bird names in Arabic are
derived (like
£
ib,
∞
urāb, iwazz, kurkī
etc.).
Semantic equivalents to
arnab
are
¶
argū
ª
in Persian,
tavsan
in Turkish,
awtul
(pl.
iwtal
, fem.
tawtult
, pl.
tiwtalin
) in Berber
of the Ma
∞
rib,
emerwel
(pl.
imerwelen
,
fem.
temerwelt
, pl.
timerwelīn
) from the verb
erwel
, “to flee”, in Tamaa, while
abekni
(pl.
ibekniten
, fem.
tabeknit
, pl.
tibeknītīn
) is
little used.
Among the order of lagomorphs and
the family of leporids, the genus
lepus
is
represented in Islamic lands predomi-
nantly by the
lepus capensis
or Cape hare.
Its breeding ground stretches from Africa
(Cape of Good Hope) to China (Shantung,
bordering on the Yellow Sea of Asia). In
the Mediterranean zone it is found with
the plains species,
l. granatensis
(Spain),
l.
schlumbergeri
and
l. sherif
(Morocco),
l. medi-
terraneus
and
l. kabylicus
(Algeria)
l. tunetae
(Tunisia) and
l. rotschildi
(Egypt); in west-
ern Morocco the smaller
l. atlanticus
is also
found. In the hills are found
l. marocanus
and
l. pediaeus
(Morocco) and
l. sefranus
(Algeria). The characteristically desert
(F. Viré)
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