6Unless otherwise noted, definitions added by the translator have been taken, here and throughout the translation, from Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Fīrūzābādhī (= Fīrūzābādī), al-Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿah al-Ḥusayniyyah, 1344/1925–26) (see Glossary), from which only one of what are frequently several possibilities has been chosen.
7Muntahā l-ʿajab fī khaṣāʾiṣ lughat al-ʿArab: this work is also mentioned by the author in his Sirr al-layāl fī l-qalb wa-l-ibdāl (Mattityahu Peled, “Enumerative Style in Al-Sāq ʿalā al-sāq,” Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 22, no. 2 (1991), 132); it was multi-volumed and may have been lost in a fire (Mohammed Bakir Alwan, “Aḥmad Fāris ash-Shidyāq and the West” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1970), app. B).
8i.e. “space for the avoidance of falsity.”
9The author’s implicit claim appears to be that the uncommon “second” or “augmented” form of the quadriliteral verb is associated with intensity.
10Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505): a prolific polymath, much of whose 500-work oeuvre compiles material taken from earlier scholars.
11Al-Muzhir fī l-lughah: the full title of the work is Al-Muzhir fī ʿulūm allughah wa-anwāʿihā (The Luminous [Work] on the Linguistic Sciences and Their Branches).
12Aḥmad ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), known as al-Lughawī (“The Linguist”), wrote on most areas of lexicography and grammar. It may be that the author’s choice of the name “Aḥmad” on his conversion to Islam was an act of homage to this scholar.
13i.e., the author does not regard such a straightforward figurative usage as a distinguishing characteristic of Arabic.
14By “the Fāriyāqiyyah” the author has been generally assumed to mean the Fāriyāq’s wife, but Rastegar makes the point that, “while the noun is feminine, it is not simply a feminization of his name (which would be Fāriyāqah). Fāriyāqiyyah should more correctly be translated as ‘Fāriyāq-ness,’ although as a grammatical formulation, it is feminine. Within the text, it is not always clear that it refers to his wife (although at times it clearly does)” (Kamran Rastegar, Literary Modernity between the Middle East and Europe: Textual Transactions in Nineteenth-century Arabic, English, and Persian Literatures, 105–6). The Fāriyāqiyyah does not appear again until Volume Three.
15Rāfāʾīl Kaḥlā of Damascus: a litterateur and collaborator of al-Shidyāq’s in Paris, who paid for the printing of Al-Sāq.
16“the table enumerating synonyms”: i.e., the “Enumeration of Synonymous and Lexically Associated Words in This Book” (in fact, a list of the lists of synonyms, etc.) that occurs near the end of Volume Four and to which the author added further items.
17See 2.3.3.
18“had not been mentioned” (lam takun shayʾan madhkūran): cf. Q Insān 76:1.
19“dots that shine”: perhaps refers to the manuscript writers’ tradition of embellishing dots and other diacritical points with colored ink or even gold leaf.
20“with pulicaria / Plants…..” (bi-l- * rabalāti….): Pulicaria undulata (rabal) is a plant with medicinal properties that grows in the region; however, rabalāt may also mean “the fleshy thighs of women,” in which case it would prefigure “From them will come to you the scent of statuesque slave girls” three lines further on.
21“statuesque slave girls… plump slave girls” etc.: this list of desirable women is not simply a high-flown metaphor for the joys that the book holds, since the same (mostly rare) words used occur also in the main text.
22“And be not lazy in pursuing and realizing cunsummation” (wa-lā tatarakhkhā ʾan tudrika l-khurnūfā): the 1855 edition reads ḥurnūfā, a word not attested in the dictionaries; we have preferred to read khurnūfā (=khurnūfah) (“vagina”), supposing its usage here to be figurative, i.e., “the desired goal”; it then parallels the phrase used thirty-four lines later fa-tukhṭiʾa l-khur… fah (the ellipsis is the author’s) (“and so miss… summation”).
23Shiẓāẓ: a thief of proverbial skill.
24“I guarantee… hunger” etc.: i.e., the book will distract you from all pleasures and keep you awake at night, but everyone will realize that the book is the cause.
25“… summation” (al-khur… fah): see n. 22 above.
26“cutting character” (ḥarf bātir): or, punningly, “cutting edge.”
27“will pull back from you blinded” (yakuffu ʿanka kafīfā): or, punningly, “will pull back from you entirely.”
28“Isn’t ‘of a certain stamp’ the same in meaning as * ‘Of a certain type,’ with the addition of the thwack of a stick?” (a-wa-laysa inna l-ḍarba mithlu l-ṣanfi fī l-maʿnā wa-qarʿu ʿaṣan ilay-hi uḍīfā): ḍarb has “blow, stroke” as its basic meaning but also a subsidiary meaning of “type, kind” (synonym ṣanf); hence, things that are of a certain ḍarb may be conceived of (jokingly) as delivering a certain percussive force. The overall sense of these two couplets seems to be “Do not be offended if the contents of the book, and (perhaps especially) the various lists that I have compiled, is somewhat rebarbative.”
29“It does not strike the noses of mortals”: i.e., its injurious consequences harm none but me.
30“Raising a Storm” (Fī ithārat riyāḥ): compare the earlier description of the book as falling “like the wind in the valley when / Stirred up” (0.4.9); the first chapter of each of the four books of which the work is composed bears a title that, like this one, has little to do with the events recounted in that chapter but denotes the initiation of some energetic activity. For further discussion of chapter titles, see the Translator’s Afterword (Volume Four).
31“How many a pot calls the kettle black!” (wa-muḥtaris min mithlihi wa-hwa ḥāris): “From many a one such as he does he guard himself though he is himself a guardian,” a proverb “alluding to him who finds fault with a bad man when he is himself worse than he” (Edward Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 vols., London: Williams and Norgate, 1863 (offset ed. Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1968), s.v. muḥtaris).
32“You’ve made a bad business worse!” (ʿāda l-ḥays yuḥās): “The sloppy date mixture has been made sloppier,” said when someone is called upon to make good something done badly by another and makes it worse (Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Maydānī, Majmaʿ al-amthāl, 2 vols. (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿah al-Khayriyyah, 1310/1892–93), 1:316).
33“Make the most of what you’re given!” (khudh min Jidhʿ mā aʿṭāk): “Take from Jidhʿ whatever he may give you.” The pre-Islamic Ghassanid Arabs had been obliged to pay a certain king protection money; when the king died and his son came to collect his money from a Ghassanid named Jidhʿ, the latter beat him with his sword and pronounced the words in question, after which the Ghassanids stopped paying the tax (al-Maydānī, Majmaʿ, 1:156).
34“So what are you going to do about it?!” (shaḥmatī fī qalʿī): “My fat is in my shepherd’s bag.” The wolf, asked what he would do if he came upon sheep guarded by a shepherd boy, replied that he would fear the boy’s arrows that were in his shepherd’s bag, but when asked, “What if the shepherd were a girl?” replied as given, meaning “I should do with them as I liked” (al-Maydānī, Majmaʿ, 1:246).