[1] But riddles are attested in early Arabic literary culture, 'scattered in old stories attributed to the pre-Islamic bedouins, in the ḥadīth and elsewhere; and collected in chapters'.
Although in 1996 the Syrian proverbs scholar Khayr al-Dīn Shamsī Bāshā published a survey of Arabic riddling,[3] analysis of this literary form has been neglected by modern scholars,[4] including its emergence in Arabic writing;[5][6] there is also a lack of editions of important collections.
[13] As al-Nuwayrī (1272–1332) puts it in the chapter on alghāz and aḥājī in his Nihāyat al-Arab fī funūn al-adab: Lughz is thought to derive from the phrase alghaza ’l-yarbū‘u wa-laghaza, which described the action of a field rat when it burrows its way first straight ahead but then veers off to the left or right in order to more successfully elude its enemies (li-yuwāriya bi-dhālika) so that it becomes, as it were, almost invisible (wa-yu‘ammiya ‘alā ṭālibihī).
وله تأريخ: مطر هلّ بعد يأس [من الرجز] قَدْ جاءَنا صَوْمٌ جليلٌ قدرُهُ * والحقُّ فينا قَدْ أرانا قُدْرَتَهْ وعَمَّنا الانسانَ في تأريخِهِ * وأَنْزلَ اللهُ عَلَيْنا رَحْمَتَهْ A chronogram-poem on rainfall after despair set in: We were visited by a period of abstention of great duration The Truth showed us his power.
It is not permissible for him to be led by a prayer leader because he would not be aware of the imām's actions unless someone alerted him to them.Legal riddles appear to have become a major literary genre in the fourteenth century.
Elias G. Saba has attributed this development to the spread of intellectual literary salons (majālis) in the Mamlūk period, which demanded the oral performance of arcane knowledge, and in turn influenced written texts.
[7]: 120 A particularly influential example of a collection of legal riddles was ʿAbd al-Barr Ibn al-Shiḥna (d. 1515), who wrote al-Dhakhāʾir al-ashrafiyya fī alghāz al-ḥanafiyya.
The genre of legal riddling seems to have arisen partly from an interest in other intellectually challenging jurisprudential matters: ḥiyal (strategems for avoiding breaking the letter of the law) and furūq (subtle distinctions).
[10] The eleventh-century Andalusi poet Ibn Zaydūn is associated with another riddle form, of which at least five Arabic examples survive in his work, along with a pair of Andalusi Hebrew-language poems in the same form exchanged between Abū ʿUmar ibn Māthiqa and Yehuda HaLevi (though only Yehuda's side of the exchange survives in full).
The poet then composes a new poem, mentioning all these bird-names in the correct order, and sends that to its recipient, frequently claiming that it is being sent by pigeon post.
[34] One riddle attributed to the Prophet is found in the Bāb al-ḥayā of the Kitāb al-ʿIlm of the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Buckārī by al-Bukhārī (d. 870)[35] and the Muwaṭṭaʾ by Mālik ibn Anas (d. 796).
(Ibn ʿAbbās answers that this is Jonah, since the Koran tells Muḥammad "be not like the Companion of the fish, when he cried while he was in distress" in sura 68:48.
A riddle contest, supposedly between the sixth-century CE Imruʾ al-Qays and ʿAbīd ibn al-Abraṣ, exists,[13]: 296–97 but is not thought actually to have been composed by these poets.
[6] His Uḥjiyyat al-ʿArab ('the riddle-poem of the Arabs') is particularly striking, comprising a nasīb (stanzas 1–14), travel faḥr (15-26) and then twenty-six enigmatic statements (28-72).
According to Pieter Smoor, discussing a range of ninth- to eleventh-century poets,There is a slow but discernable development which can be traced in the Arabic riddle poem through the course of time.
[44] What may have been the first Arabic book of riddles, Kitāb al-Armāz fī l-alġāz, was composed by Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Ḍabbī (fl.
They include chapter 89 of al-Zahra ('فكر ما جاء في الشعر من معنى مستور لا يفهمه سامعه إلاَّ بتفسير') by Ibn Dā’ūd al-Iṣbahāni (868-909 CE); part of book 25 of al-ʿIqd al-Farīd (specifically the section entitled Bāb al-lughz) by Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih (860–940); Ḥilyat al-muḥāḍara by al-Ḥātimī (d. 998); and the chapter entitled فصل في تعمية الأشعار in Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī's Dīwān al-maʿānī (d. after 1009).
[50][13] Among the extensive body of ekphrastic poems by Ibn al-Rūmī (d. 896), Pieter Smoor identified only one as a riddle:[13]: 297–98
In ba‘udat kāna ʾl-‘amā ḥāḍiran wa-in danat bāna ṭariqu ʾl-hudā The pearl-headed snake swims on a small, self-contained sea.
The diwān of Ibn al-Mu‘tazz (861-908) contains riddles on the penis, water-wheel, reed-pipe, palm-trees, and two on ships.
[51] The dīwān of Al-Sarī al-Raffā’ (d. 973) contains several riddles on mundane objects, including a fishing net, candle, fan, fleas, a drum, and a fire-pot.
[52] Carl Brockelmann[38] noted Abū Abdallāh al-Ḥusayn ibn Aḥmad al-Mughallis, associated with the court of Baha al-Dawla (r. 988–1012), as a key composer of riddles.
[43] A vast collection of epigrammatic riddles on slave-girls, Alf jāriyah wa-jāriyah, was composed by Ibn al-Sharīf Dartarkhwān al-‘Ādhilī (d.
Akhawāni min ummin wa-ab Lā yafturāni ‘ani l-shaghab Mā minhumā illā ḍanin Yashkū mu‘ānāta l-da’ab Wa-kilāhumā ḥaniqu l-fu’ā Di ‘alā akhīhi bi-lā sabab Yughrīhimā bi-l-sharri sib Ṭu l-rīḥi wa-bnu abī l-khashab Mā minhumā illā bihī Sharṭu l-yubūsati wa-l-ḥarab Fa-lanā bi-ṣulḥihimā radan Wa-lanā bi-ḥarbihimā nashab Yā ayyuhā l-maliku l-ladhī Fī kulli khaṭbin yuntadab Akhrijhu ikhrāja l-dhakiy Yi fa-qad waṣaftu kamā wajab[There are] two brothers from [the same] mother and father Who will not give up quarreling
Al-Hamadhani's Maqamat were an inspiration for the Maqāmāt of Al-Hariri of Basra (1054–1122 CE), which contain several different kinds of enigmas (assemblies 3, 8, 15, 24, 29, 32, 35, 36, 42 and 44) and establish him as one of the pre-eminent riddle-writers of the medieval Arab world.
[59][13]: 291 One of his riddles runs as follows: Then he said 'now here is another for you, O lords of intellect, fraught with obscurity: One split in his head it is, through whom ‘the writ’ is known, as honoured recording angels take their pride in him; When given to drink he craves for more, as though athirst, and settles to rest when thirstiness takes hold of him; And scatters tears about him when ye bid him run, but tears that sparkle with the brightness of a smile.
احرقونى بالنار يستنطقونى * وجدونى على البلاءِ صبورالاجل هدا حملت فوق الايادى * ولتمت من الملاح التغورا [63]For my confession they burned me with fire And found that I was for endurance made.
For example, a perhaps tenth-century CE story about the legendary poet Imru' al-Qais features him insisting that he will marry only the woman who can say which eight, four, and two are.
[65] Examples of modern riddles, as categorised and selected by Chyet, are:[66] Arabic riddle-traditions also influenced medieval Hebrew poetry.
[67]: 443, 530 One prominent Hebrew exponent of the form is the medieval Andalusian poet Judah Halevi, who for example wrote What's slender, smooth and fine, and speaks with power while dumb, in utter silence kills, and spews the blood of lambs?