Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded. Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī
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الّتي حصلت له من تغيّر الزمان وانقلابه ولم يكن أخبر عنها سابقًا بلفظ الماضي فأراد الإخبار عنها بلفظ المضارع الّذي هو يقول وإن كان في معنى الماضي صورةً وفي معنى المضارع حقيقةً قال الشاعر [طويل]
| فقالَ هو الماضي يَقولُ مُضارِعْ | وإنْ كان ذا الماضي له في الحقيقةِ |
وقال أبو الطيّب المتنبّيّ عفا الله عنه شعر [طويل]
| إِذا كانَ ما يَنويهِ فِعلًا مُضارِعًا | مَضَى قَبلَ أَن تُلْقَى عَلَيهِ الجَوازِمُ |
أي إذا نوى شيئًا مستقبلًا أمضى فعله قبل أن يدخل عليه ما يَجْزِمُه أي يمنعه عنه ويسكّنه عن الحركة عن فعله انتهى وأيضًا لو أتى بالماضي لاختلّ الوزن وإن كان المعنى باق على حاله فاتّجه الجواب وبان الصواب وقوله
A Silly Topic for Debate: What’s the explanation for the fact that the poet starts his verse in the present tense and does not use the past, unlike, for example, the author of The Thousand Lines on Grammar,47 God have mercy on him, when he writes, “Muḥammad, Mālik’s son, has said. . . etc.?”48 The Facetious Answer: It is the past tense of the verb, namely, qāla, from which the present tense, namely, yaqūlu, is generated, and from yaqūlu comes the verbal noun qawl, as already noted in tracing the origins of these verbs and nouns; thus the poet simply settled for using the derived rather than the base form. Or it may be that he wanted to enumerate the changes and vicissitudes of fate that had befallen him and, not having mentioned them earlier using past-tense forms, he determined to narrate them using the present-tense form, namely, yaqūlu, albeit this has past meaning formally speaking and present meaning in reality. As the poet says:
So qāla’s past, yaqūlu’s present,
Though the last is its past in reality.49
And Abū l-Ṭayyib al-Mutanabbī,50 may God excuse him his sins, says:
If what he intended were a present verb,
It would be past before any could negate it
—meaning, “If he intends to do something in the future, he completes the action before anything can ‘negate’ it,” that is, can intervene between him and its doing and silence the vowels of his verb.51 End. Also, if he were to introduce the past form, the meter would be broken, even if the meaning remained as before. Thus the answer now is right; the truth has loomed into sight.
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(أبو شادوف) هذه كُنْيته وغلبت عليه فصارت عَلَمًا كما قالوا في مَعْدِي كَرِب وبَعْلَبَكّ وبَرَقَ نَحْرُه ونحو ذلك وأمّا اسمه الحقيقي عُجَيْل تصغير عِجْل على ما قيل وسببه أنّ أمّه لمّا ولدته ألْقَتْه في مَدْوِد البقرة فجاء العجل ولحسه فسمّي بذلك أيّامًا حتّى اشتهر بهذه الكنية وسبب اشتهاره بها أقوال أحدها إنّه لمّا مال عليه الدهر كما تقدّم أجّر نفسه لسقي الزرع بالآلة الّتي يجعلوها أهل الريف تسمّى أبو شادوف وصورة فعلها أنّهم يجعلوا ناطورَيْن من طين على جانب البحر ويحفروا بينهما نقرة مثل الحوض الصغير ويضعوا فوق الناطورين خشبة صغيرة ويعلّقوا فيها خشبة أيضًا بالعرض حكم قصبة الميزان يضعوا في طرفها الّذي من جهة البر شيئًا ثقيلًا والّذي من جهة البحر الدلو أو القَطْوة الّتي ينضحوا بها الماء ثمّ إنّ الرجل يقف إلى جهة البحر ويتّكي على طرف تلك القصبة فيقع الدلو أو القطوة في البحر ويغرف الماء ثمّ يتركه فيثقل طرفها الثاني ويصعد الدلو أو القطوة ويفرّغ في النقرة مع مساعدة الرجل له ويجري الماء إلى الزرع وهكذا حكم ما شاهدناه مرارًا عديدة ويسموا مجموع الآلة والناطورين أبو شادوف وهو مشتقّ من الشدف وهو الغرف قال في القاموس الأزرق والناموس الأبلق شدف يشدف شدفًا بمعنى غرف يغرف غرفًا قال الشاعر [طويل]
| إِذا ما رَأَيتَ الماءَ فاشْدُفْ بِراحةٍ | فذلك للظَّمآنِ أَهنَى وأَطيَبُ |
Abū Shādūfi: this is his kunyah, but it took him over and became his primary name, as happened in the case of Maʿdīkarib, Baʿlabakk, Baraqa Naḥruhu, and so on.52 His real name was ʿUjayl, diminutive of ʿijl (“calf”), or so it is reported, the reason for his being so named being that, when his mother gave birth to him, she threw him in the cow’s trough, and then the calf came along and licked him, so they called him that for a few days, until he became known by the kunyah in question. The reason for his becoming known by the latter is variously explained. One version has it that when the times turned against him, as described above, he hired himself out to water the crops using the device made by the country people, called the Abū Shādūf.53 The way this works is that they construct two pillars of mud next to the river and excavate a hole like a small pit between them; on the two pillars they place a small beam and also, at right angles, another, resembling the arm of a pair of scales; to the land end of the last they attach a weight, and to the river end, a bucket or scoop,54 with which they raise the water. A man stands on the riverside and pulls the end of the crossbeam downward, and the bucket or scoop falls and scoops up the water; then he lets go, the other end descends under its weight, and the bucket or scoop rises and, with the aid of the man, empties into the pit; the water then runs on to the crops and so on, as we have ourselves observed on numerous occasions. The whole assemblage, consisting of the device itself with the pillars, is called abū shādūf, which is derived from shadf, which means “scooping” (gharf). It says in The Blue Ocean and Piebald Canon, shadafa, yashdufu, shadfan means gharafa, yaghrifu, gharfan. As the poet says:
If you see water, scoop (ushduf) carefully,
For