Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq - Leg over Leg: Volumes Three and Four

LEG OVER LEG

Volumes Three and Four

LIBRARY OF ARABIC LITERATURE

EDITORIAL BOARD

GENERAL EDITOR

Philip F. Kennedy, New York University

EXECUTIVE EDITORS

James E. Montgomery, University of Cambridge

Shawkat M. Toorawa, Cornell University

EDITORS

Julia Bray, University of Oxford

Michael Cooperson, University of California, Los Angeles

Joseph E. Lowry, University of Pennsylvania

Tahera Qutbuddin, University of Chicago

Devin J. Stewart, Emory University

MANAGING EDITOR

Chip Rossetti

DIGITAL PRODUCTION MANAGER

Stuart Brown

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Gemma Juan-Sim

LETTER FROM THE GENERAL EDITOR

The Library of Arabic Literature series offers Arabic editions and English translations of significant works of Arabic literature, with an emphasis on the seventh to nineteenth centuries. The Library of Arabic Literature thus includes texts from the pre-Islamic era to the cusp of the modern period, and encompasses a wide range of genres, including poetry, poetics, fiction, religion, philosophy, law, science, history, and historiography.

Books in the series are edited and translated by internationally recognized scholars and are published in parallel-text format with Arabic and English on facing pages, and are also made available as English-only paperbacks.

The Library encourages scholars to produce authoritative, though not necessarily critical, Arabic editions, accompanied by modern, lucid English translations. Its ultimate goal is to introduce the rich, largely untapped Arabic literary heritage to both a general audience of readers as well as to scholars and students.

The Library of Arabic Literature is supported by a grant from the New York University Abu Dhabi Institute and is published by NYU Press.

Philip F. Kennedy
General Editor, Library of Arabic Literature

This paperback edition differs in a few respects from its dual-language hardcover predecessor. Because of the compact trim size the pagination has changed, but paragraph numbering has been retained to facilitate cross-referencing with the hardcover. Material that referred to the Arabic edition has been updated to reflect the English-only format, and other material has been corrected and updated where appropriate. For information about the Arabic edition on which this English translation is based and about how the LAL Arabic text was established, readers are referred to the hardcover.

Volumes Three and Four

BY

Amad Fris al-Shidyq

TRANSLATED BY

Humphrey Davies

VOLUME EDITOR

Michael Cooperson

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York and London

Copyright 2015 by New York University

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shidyaq, Ahmad Faris, 1804?-1887.

Leg over leg or The turtle in the tree concerning the Fariyaq : what manner of creature might he be / by Faris al-Shidyaq ; edited and translated by Humphrey Davies.

volume cm (Library of Arabic literature)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4798-0072-8 (vols. 1-2 : ppk : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4798-1329-2 (vols. 34 : ppk : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4798-3288-0 (ebook) ISBN 978-1-4798-8881-8 (ebook)

1. Shidyaq, Ahmad Faris, 1804?-1887. 2. Shidyaq, Ahmad Faris, 1804?-1887TravelMiddle East. 3. Arabic languageLexicography. 4. Middle EastDescription and travel. I. Davies, Humphrey T. (Humphrey Taman) translator, editor. II. Shidyaq, Ahmad Faris, 1804?-1887. Saq ala al-saq. III. Shidyaq, Ahmad Faris, 1804?-1887. Saq ala al-saq. English. IV. Title. V. Title: Turtle in the tree.

PJ7862.H48S213 2015

892.78503dc23 2015021915

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

Series design and composition by Nicole Hayward

Typeset in Adobe Text

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

OR

CONCERNING

What Manner of Creature Might He Be

OTHERWISE ENTITLED

SPENT IN

OF

AND

BY

The Humble Dependent on His Lord the Provider

Fris ibn Ysuf al-Shidyq

The writings of Zayd and Hind these days speak more to the common taste

Than any pair of weighty tomes.

More profitable and useful than the teachings of two scholars

Are what a yoke of oxen from the threshings combs.

CHAPTER 1

3.1.1

Are they not enough, the troubles to which men are subject by way of misery and care, effort and wear, toil and disease, hardship and dis-ease, of deprivation and lucklessness, despair and unhappiness? Men are carried to nausea and craving, born in pain and suffering, nursed to their mothers detriment, weaned to their imperilment. They crawl only to stumble, climb only to tumble, walk only to lag, labor only to flag, find themselves unemployed only by hungers pangs to be destroyed. They languish and grow weak when they go without, suffer indigestion when they eat and grow stout. When they thirst, they lose weight, and when they drink, become sick as poisoned birds, gulp air, and nauseate. Lying awake at night, they waste away, worried and fraught, and sleeping, their allotted share of hours goes by and gains them naught. Old and feeble, theyre a burden to kith and kin, yet, should they die before their time, they cause them such grief as may do them in.

3.1.2

In the midst of all this, they must strive to obtain the means to earn their daily bread, while tormented by the need to make a show of dress and thread. The bachelors desperate to find a woman to call his own, the family man preoccupied with spouse and care of children, be they young or grown. When they fall ill, he does so too and when they mourn, he mourns and grieves in turn. Woe to him should his wife be overly fertile, but so too should she be barren and sterile, for then he sees other married men surrounded by bonny faces and children with pleasing graces and says to himself, Verily, in sons lies all this worlds pleasure, and I am as one who dies (and what a fate!) leaving no successor!

3.1.3

How often by the fall of a single fingernail is the whole body defeated, how often by the extraction of a single molar is most, if not all, of its power to endure depletednot to mention the sicknesses that defy all doctors