Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 105

killing of the following four animal spe-
cies: the ant, the bee, the hoopoe ( hudhud )
and the shrike ( urad ). However the exe-
getes of the four judicial schools of Islamic
orthodoxy permit the destruction of small
ants ( £ arr ) when they intrude upon the
human domain and attack foodstuffs,
causing significant damage in homes,
shops and gardens or when they display
aggression with stings and bites; the only
means of repression formally prohibited
is the use of fire. Al-Damīrī suggests a
number of conjuratory talismanic for-
mulas for inducing ants to abandon the
places that they have invaded ( manmūl,
ar namila ); these formulas are similar to
those used for repelling grasshoppers. The
same author also describes certain practi-
cal and effective measures for being rid of
unwelcome ants; these include smothering
the ant-hill with cow-dung or depositing
there the excrement of a cat. If extermi-
nation is the object, it is sufficient to place
on the site a piece of calamite or “Lover's
stone” ( a ¡ ar al-ma ∞ nāīs ) or to sprinkle
it with ground carraway ( karāwiyā ) or
cumin ( kammūn ) or to spray with rue-wa-
ter ( sa £ āb ) or tar-water ( irān ) or to grind
sulphur ( kibrīt ) in the vicinity. Finally, ants
will not approach an object on which the
stained linen of a menstruating woman
has been placed.
According to urānic law, the con-
sumption of ants is absolutely forbidden,
as is the consumption of the cocoons or
false “eggs” ( bay, mazin, māzin, awrā,
awriyya, a £ rā ) and of the foodstuffs
( zibāl, zubāl ) which the workers transport
with their mandibles and their feet.
The “specific qualities” ( ¶ awā ) attrib-
uted to ants tend to be negative. Thus
the cocoons, if ground to a powder and
applied to the skin, prevent any growth of
hair. In order to disperse and put to flight
a group of persons, it is enough to throw
at them a few of these cocoons; a concoc-

tion of these taken in the dose of a single
dirham entails severe intestinal disorders.
Finally, an ointment composed of seven
large ants soaked for a day and a night in
a solution of calomel ( duhn al-ziba ) and
smeared on the sexual organs is reckoned
to be a powerful aphrodisiac. In onei-
romancy, to see ants arriving in one's
house with their stocks of provisions is
an omen of prosperity, while seeing them
leave presages misfortune. An invalid who
dreams of ants covering his body is sure
to die.
The feverish activity and small size of
ants have given rise in Arabic to a num-
ber of adages in the form of analogies;
examples include ara min al-naml “more
greedy than the ants”, aaf wa-ak º ar
wa-awā min al-naml , “more feeble, more
prolific and more vigorous than the ants”,
arwā min al-naml “more prescient than the
ants”, alaf min £ arra “more slender than
a small ant, a ª amm min £ arra “having
more flair than a small ant”, aba min
namla “more tenacious than an ant”.

(F. Viré)

Locusts

The Arabic word djarād (locusts) is a
collective noun, the nom. unit. being
¡ arāda , which is applied to the male and
the female alike. No cognate synonym
seems to exist in the other Semitic lan-
guages. For the different stages of the
locust's development the Arabic language
possesses special names (such as sirwa,
dabā, ∞ awghā, ¶ ayfān , etc.) which, how-
ever, are variously defined by different
authorities.
Being found in abundance in the
homeland of the Arabs, locusts were often
mentioned and described in ancient Ara-
bic poetry and proverbs. In the urān