46Heyworth-Dunne, 332; see also Ayalon, 565.
47These presses were international also in their day-to-day operations, with translators sometimes working with the European authors (who were employed in government schools, for example) to produce Arabic versions of textbooks; Heyworth-Dunne, 346.
48Ayalon, 561.
49Elisabeth Kendall, “Between Politics and Literature: Journals in Alexandria and Istanbul at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” in Modernity and Culture: From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, edited by Leila Tarazi Fawaz, Christopher Alan Bayly, and Robert Ilbert (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 332.
50Kendall, 350.
51See for example Stephen Sheehi, “Arabic Literary-scientific Journals: Precedence for Globalization and the Creation of Modernity,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 25, no. 2 (2005).
52Charles Montagu Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1888), 2:371.
53In an article entitled “Al-Jarāʾid al-ʿarabiyyah fī Amrīkā” (“Arabic Periodicals in America”), appearing in Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī’s journal al-Ḍiyāʾ, for example, the author refers to Arab writers in the United States as part of a worldwide Nahḍah: “Al-Jarāʾid al-ʿarabiyyah fī Amrīkā,” Al-Ḍiyāʾ: Majallah ʿilmiyyah adabiyyah ṣiḥḥiyyah ṣināʿiyyah 16 (Cairo, April 30, 1899): 502.
54As Lital Levy puts it, Nahḍah authors “viewed themselves as local agents of this global process” of historical change; Lital Levy, “Jewish Writers in the Arab East: Literature, History, and the Politics of Enlightenment, 1863–1914” (PhD diss., University of California Berkeley, 2007), 23.
55Both of these are titles of articles in Buṭrus and Salīm al-Bustānī’s biweekly Al-Jinān (Beirut, 1870), 1:160–4.
56Shaden Tageldin, Disarming Words: Empire and the Seductions of Translation in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 5.
57This description is not exclusive to Arab modernity. As the essays in Timothy Mitchell’s Questions of Modernity make clear, modernity in Western and non-Western contexts alike “had its origins in reticulations of exchange and production encircling the world,” making it “a creation not of the West but of an interaction between West and non-West;” Mitchell, “The Stage of Modernity,” 2.
58For an example, see the translator’s Afterword in Volume Four, and Rastegar, 113–25.
59Al-Bagdadi, 392.
60Luwīs ʿAwaḍ, Al-Muʾaththirāt al-ajnabiyya fī l-adab al-ʿarabī al-ḥadīth (Cairo: 1962), 28, and Shawqī Ḍayf, Al-Matāmāt (Cairo: 1964), both cited in Mattityahu Peled, “Al-Sāq ʿalā al-Sāq: A Generic Definition,” Arabica 32, no. 1 (March 1985): 35; Raḍwah ʿĀshūr, Al-Ḥadātha almumkina: Al-Shidyāq wa-l-Sāq ʿalā l-sāq, al-riwāyah al-ūlā fī l-adab al-ʿarabī al-ḥadīth (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 2009), 10; Paul Starkey, “Voyages of Self-definition: The Case of [Ahmad] Faris al-Shidyāq,” in Sensibilities of the Islamic Mediterranean: Self-Expression in a Muslim Culture from Post-Classical Times to the Present Day, edited by Robin Ostle (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008), 118–32.
61Al-Bagdadi, 394–95.
62Lexically, the adverbial phrase sāqan ʿalā l-sāq is also a figurative way of saying “one after another”—which is fitting for the text’s self-conscious attention to narrative sequence. Lane gives the example, “So-and-So had three children one after the other [sāqan ʿalā l-sāq].” Edward Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1968), 4:1472.
63Viktor Shklovsky, Theory of Prose, translated by Benjamin Sher (Normal IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1991), 147.
64For a reading of Leg over Leg in the context of al-Shidyāq’s intellectual challenge to ecclesiastical authority, see Al-Bagdadi, 391–401.
65See al-Ṣulḥ, 109.
66Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq, in Kanz al-raghāʾib fī muntakhabāt al-Jawāʾib, edited by Salīm Fāris (Istanbuclass="underline" Maṭbaʿat al-Jawāʾib, 1288–98/1871–81), cited in al-Ṣulḥ, 215.
67ʿAẓmah and Ṭarābulsī, 34.
68Rastegar, 104–5.
69Rastegar, 104–5.
LEG OVER LEG OR THE TURTLE IN THE TREE CONCERNING THE FĀRIYĀQ
What Manner of Creature Might He Be
OTHERWISE ENTITLED
DAYS, MONTHS, AND YEARS SPENT IN CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF
THE ARABS AND THEIR NON-ARAB PEERS BY
The Humble Dependent on His Lord the Provider
Fāris ibn Yūsuf al-Shidyāq
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.
THE DEDICATION OF THIS ELEGANTLY ELOQUENT BOOK
Praise Be to God
0.1
It being the custom of Frankish authors to dedicate their works to those distinguished in their day by virtues and praiseworthy qualities and of whom great achievements are reported regarding the patronage of scholarship and its servants, I have decided here to follow their example by dedicating this elegantly eloquent book to the esteemed and honorable Khawājā Buṭrus Yūsuf Ḥawwā,1 of London, for he is well known in this age of ours for all the commendable merits with which the eulogist adorns his songs and the author his words, while he is now also head of that house2 so long celebrated for its pedigree, pride, and elevated status. Many a time has he assisted in the attainment of virtuous qualities and provided those of his race, and others, with the means to obtain their highest hopes and realize their most distant goals, so that they leave him uttering praise, grateful to him for his generous ways. Moreover, albeit his standing exceeds what little may be contained in summary form in this book, it is nevertheless fitting that the latter be dedicated to him in sum. We ask that he accept it, take it under his wing, promote it, and grant it his approval, for whatever is unworthy regains, through appurtenance to him, its worth, and all that is incomplete is made whole.
From Fāris al-Shidyāq
Who Prays for His Honorable Person
AUTHOR’S NOTICE
0.2.1
Praise be to God, who each happy thought inspires, and to guide man to righteous acts conspires. To proceed: everything that I have set down in this book is determined by one of two concerns. The first of these is to give prominence to the oddities of the language, including its rare words.3
0.2.2
Under the category of oddities fall words that are similar in meaning and words that are similar in lexical association. Here I have included the most celebrated, important, and necessary items that need to be known, and in elegantly eloquent form, for, had they been set out in the style typical of our books on language, divorced from any context, the effect would have been wearisome. I have also taken care on some occasions to present them in alphabetical order and on others to arrange them in paragraphs of rhymed prose and morphologically parallel expressions.4