Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded, with Risible Rhymes. Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī
creep like a male scorpion (ʿuqrubān) as it moved.
The word ʿuqrubān is of the pattern of thuʿlubān, which means “fox” (thaʿlab). As the poet says:
Is there a lord on whose face the dog-foxes pee?
Contemptible indeed is he on whom the foxes pee!
The dual92 may be used as a form of address, as it is in the Mighty Qurʾan when the Almighty addresses the Guardian of the Fire, saying, «Throw (dual) into Hell …»93 and as in the words of al-Ḥājjaj, “Boy, strike (dual) his neck!.”94 As for the poet’s words in the first verse, “creep like a male scorpion,” this is the case because the louse is conventionally likened to the scorpion and the flea to the elephant, because the former stings while the flea bites. If it be said, “If the louse resembles the scorpion and the flea resembles the elephant, why is the louse not as large as the scorpion and its sting like the scorpion’s sting, and, by the same token, why is the flea not the size of the elephant and why does it not behave like one?” the reply would be that, because the louse is generated by and never leaves the human body for a specific beneficial purpose ordained by the Divine Wisdom, namely, the removal by sucking of corrupt blood, even though it may sometimes do harm too, it is in accord with the wisdom of the Almighty that it should be small and also that its sting should cause hardly any pain, because, were the louse the size of a scorpion, a human would have to be the size of a camel and would live in dread of seeing one and being tortured by its sting—but Almighty God is generous to mankind. Likewise, the flea, given that the Almighty has formed it to live in the creases of clothes and other tight places, is small like the louse because, if it were the size of an elephant, a human would have to be the size of a mountain. The word burghūth (“flea”) is the singular of barāghīth, and the female is a burghūthah; it is derived from birr (“charity”) plus ghawth (“help”).95 Al-Jalāl al-Suyūṭī,96 God have mercy on him, said:
Hate not the flea—
Its name is Charity,
And though you know it not
It also helps a lot:
In sucking bad blood
Its charity lies;
By rousing you at dawn for prayer
Its help it supplies.
The poet’s mention of the louse spares him the need to mention the flea, because the latter is subordinate to the former.
11.2.3
A Question: “Where is the wisdom in the fact that the flea can jump while the louse cannot?” The answer: “The louse, being born of the sweat and effluvia of the body, is correspondingly weak, and it is, moreover, female,97 and the female is weaker than the male. The flea, however, being born of the earth, is of a stronger clay, which is why it resembles the elephant, which is the animal with the largest body. Thus, its strength is inborn, which allows it to jump.” The situation’s now revealed, the problem no more concealed.
11.2.4
Some say the flea is more harmful than the louse. The poet says:
I complain to you of certain fleas with which I am afflicted.
On my heart a choking cup these have inflicted.
While I chase one, another comes to bug me,
And so goes the night, in hunting and ven’ry.
And how well the poet put it, when he said:
Gnats, fleas, and bedbugs clung tight to me:
They thought my blood wine and held its taste most dear.
The fleas would dance to the piping of a gnat,
While the bedbugs kept mum so the others could hear.
11.2.5
One of our hashish-eating brethren—may God prolong through the eating of hashish their conviviality and stifle with a jar of wine on sleeping their raucous hilarity—informed me that, if one drops a little hashish before sleeping, followed by a few jars, and then sleeps, he doesn’t feel the pain of fleas, or anything else, especially if he uses candy after eating the hashish, for hashish produces strange reactions and creates amazing effects, and the only thing that spoils it is eating sour things. As the poet says, incorporating words of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s, may God be pleased with him:
O you who’re stoned on dope for lack of wine
(That vap’rous draft around whose fires men meet),
When you are high, I do advise you, Don’t
Consume what’s sour, do eat what’s sweet!
11.2.6
My mother, may God excuse her sins, told me a riddle about fleas that I didn’t understand until I had mastered the sciences and spent time among people with a command of the best language. It goes as follows: yā shī min shī aḥmar ḥimmayr waraq al-jimmayr jarū warāh khamsah miskūh itnayn (“Something from something else!98 Red as red can be, red as the leaves of the heart of the palm tree! Five ran after it, two caught it!”). It may be interpreted as follows: yā shī (“O thing”): yā (“O”) is the vocative particle, that is, “O man, interpret to us a name that comes from something obscure and is” aḥmar ḥimmayr (“dark, dark red”): ḥimmayr (with double m, i following the ḥ, and no vowel on the y) being the diminutive of aḥmar (“red”), and meaning “of intense redness”;99 waraq al-jimmayr (“leaves of palm hearts”): that is, like the leaves of palm hearts in color, jimmayr being the diminutive of jummār (“palm hearts”), which are the core of the palm tree, while the “leaves” are the fibrous integument that is wrapped around them; jarū warāh khamsah (“five ran behind it”): namely, the fingers; miskūh itnayn (“two caught it”): two of the latter, namely, the index finger and the thumb. There is diacritical paronomasia between ḥimmayr and jimmayr.100 End.
11.2.7
The noxious effects of fleas may be prevented by using incense mixed with dried bitter-orange peel on sleeping. Lice may be killed with a woolen thread pounded with henna and mercury and hung around the neck. As for the beneficial qualities of lice, the author of The Book of the Physick of the Poor101 mentions that, if a migraine sufferer takes a louse from a head that is free of pain and puts it in a grilled bean and seals the latter with wax and hangs it at the point of the migraine, his head will get better, if the Almighty wills.
11.2.8
wa-l-ṣībānu (“and nits”): joined to al-qaml (“the lice”) by the conjunction wa- (“and”), these being the seeds that are born of the latter; in other words, the poet joined the branch to the root, since the former is a concomitant of the latter. They are generally found in the greatest numbers on the heads of children, because children’s bodies are tender and should be treated with fats and henna and by combing the hair and so forth. They are very prone to cause itching in the body but are less harmful than lice, because they are weaker and have softer bodies. The origin of the word is ṣibyān (“boys”) (with the b before the y), plural of ṣabī.102 Subsequently, they decided to avoid that plural, lest nits be confused with human children; so they put the y after the b and said ṣibyān. The word is derived from ṣābūn (“soap”) because of the whiteness of the creatures, or from muṣībah (“disaster”), or from the Bridges of al-Ṣābūnī. The paradigm is ṣabyana, yuṣabyinu, ṣibyānan.103
11.2.9
The poet is silent on another form of the offspring of the louse, namely, the nimnim (with i after the two n’s and no vowel after the two m’s),104 the latter, too, being a concomitant of the former and