771 Again, the author would not have been best pleased at the sacrifice of monorhyme: “As for the poetry of foreign languages, it consists of no more than farfetched figures and convoluted exaggerations and it is impossible to write a whole poem in them with a single rhyme throughout. You find them varying the rhyme and introducing little-used and uncouth words; and despite that, because of their inability to follow this system [of monorhyme], they say that a poem with only one rhyme is to be regarded as ugly. What hideous words and what appalling ignorance!” (al-Shidyāq, Sirr, 4).
772 Peled, “Enumerative,” 129.
773 Zakharia, “Aḥmad,” 510.
774 Peled, “Enumerative,” 139.
775 The author appears to have developed the preferred format for the presentation of such lists in stages. Thus, at the occurrence of the first such list (104 words related to augury and superstition, Volume One, 1.16.7), he first provides the list of words without definitions, then some lines later repeats all but fifteen items (those omitted being presumably the most familiar and thus the least in need of definition) in the form of a table, with headwords in one column and definitions in another (Volume One, 1.16.9), in effect rendering the first list redundant; to avoid reproducing two identical lists in the translation, the first iteration is reproduced there in transcription, resulting in the spectacle, possibly bizarre in a translation, of a block of text consisting entirely of Arabic. Thereafter the two-column table format prevails. Further, this first tabular list is not integrated syntactically into the narrative while most of those that follow are (exceptions include the “five work groups,” Volume Two, 2.16.8–63). The alphabetical principle applied to the tables also varies, with some arranged by first letter (e.g., Volume One, 1.16.9–18) and others by last letter (e.g., Volume Two, 2.1.11–16), with occasional anomalies. Even after arriving at the two-column table format, the author continues to ring changes on it. Thus, after a short table of words and definitions relating to attractiveness of the face (Volume Two, 2.4.6), he switches to a non-tabular format (Volume Two, 2.4.7 to 2.4.12), which allows him to group together words with the same root or that are metatheses of one another, while continuing to provide definitions, e.g., “and her ladīds have a ladūd (the ladīds are ‘the sides of the neck below the ears’ and the ladūd is ‘a pain that affects the mouth and throat’)” (Volume Two, 2.4.11). Later, he interrupts tables with “notes” (see, e.g., Volume Two, 2.14.13), a technique that allows him to enrich the lexical mix by introducing antonyms to the words in the tables.
776 The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, of which I became aware, unfortunately, only very late in the translation process, was also used to a limited degree. It has the benefit of offering a selection of words many of which are as rare and recondite as those in al-Sāq and might provide the best starting point for any future renditions of these lists.
777 Rastegar, “On Nothing,” 108. On the relationship between title and contents, the author himself says, “Every one of these chapters, I declare, has a title that points to its contents as unambiguously as smoke does to fire; anyone who knows what the title is knows what the whole chapter is about” (Volume One, 1.17.3.). Though the author may be teasing the reader a little here, the majority of titles do in fact reflect the topic dealth with (“The Priest’s Tale,” Volume One, 1.15; “A Description of Cairo,” Volume Two, 2.5, 2.7; etc.), while others either allude to the governing concept of the chapter (e.g., “Raising a Storm,” Volume One, 1.1) or — and this is especially true when the chapter ranges over a variety of topics — consist of or contain a word that is to be found within the chapter (e.g., “Snow,” Volume One, 1.17, or “Throne” in “A Throne to Gain Which Man Must Make Moan,” Volume Two, 2.4) in a manner reminiscent of the names of certain sūrahs of the Qurʾān.
778 Relying largely on Geoffrey Roper, “Fāris al-Shidyāq as Translator and Editor,” in A Life in Praise of Words: Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq and the Nineteenth Century, edited by Nadia al-Baghdadi, Fawwaz Traboulsi, and Barbara Winkler. Wiesbaden: Reichert (Litkon 37) (forthcoming; details are provisional) and personal communications.
779 Muḥammad al-Hādi al-Maṭwī, Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq 1801–1887: ḥayātuhu wa-āthāruhu wa-ārā’uhu fī l-nahḍah al-ʿarabiyyah al-ḥadīthah. 2 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1989.
780 Simon Mercieca, “An Italian Connection? Malta, the Italian Risorgimento and Al-Shidyaq’s Political Thought.” Unpublished paper.
781 The birth date 1805 or 1806 (rather than, as in many sources, 1801 or 1804) is based on a declaration in the author’s hand dated 6 August 1851 accompanying his application for British nationality in which he gives his age as 45 (National Archives, Kew, ref. H01/41/1278A) (Roper, personal communication). The plausibility of this date is reinforced by the statement of a visitor to Malta in 1828, who met “Pharez… a most interesting youth, about 22 years of age” (Woodruff, Journal, 47).
782 Roper, “Translator,” 5.
783 Roper, “Translator,” 5.
784 Roper, “Translator,” 5.
785 Roper, personal communication.
786 Roper, “Translator,” 5, 8.
787 Mercieca, “Italian Connection,” 13.
788 Roper, “Translator,” 7.
789 al-Maṭwī, Aḥmad, 91.
790 al-Maṭwī, Aḥmad, 92.
791 Egypt did not finally withdraw from Lebanon until February 1841. If al-Maṭwī is correct in believing that al-Shidyāq returned to Malta in October 1840 (for the start of the academic year at the University of Malta) (al-Maṭwī, Aḥmad, 92), the author’s words fa-sārat al-ʿasākir mina l-bilād (“and the soldiers left the country”) (3.14.5) would have to be understood as meaning that they withdrew from Mount Lebanon to the coast. Al-Maṭwī’s timetable would also require the author to have left Qraye after 10 October (the date of the defeat of the Egyptian fleet), traveled to Damascus, stayed there long enough to recover from his accident, go on to Jaffa, and return to Malta all in twenty days, which, while not perhaps impossible, seems unlikely.
792 al-Maṭwī, Aḥmad, 125.
793 Roper, personal communication.
794 Roper, “Translator,” 8.
795 Roper, “Translator,” 8.
796 The author wrote at least twice to the joint committee of the SPCK and CMS complaining of his treatment; the letter referred to in the text is probably that send by al-Shidyāq in March 1844 (Roper, “Translator,” 8), which resulted in his eventual reinstatement (idem 9).
797 Roper, personal communication.
798 al-Maṭwī, Aḥmad, 103
799 al-Maṭwī, Aḥmad, 103.
800 al-Maṭwī, Aḥmad, 126.
801 al-Maṭwī, Aḥmad, 105.