The Animal in Ancient Arabic Proverbs.

Abstract

The relationship between the researcher and Arabic proverbs goes back to 1075, when I published “Al-Wasit Fil Amthal” written by Al-Wahidi (fifth century). Eight years later I edited and compiled a dictionary of ancient proverbs (published by Dar al-Ulum, Riyadh, 1985 “two volumes”). In the preface of the dictionary, I promised the readers that I’ll offer them many papers, each studying an important topic in proverbs.
One of these topics is the subject of this paper. It deals with the animal in that period, both the wild and the tame, because I think that the animal was not away from the Arabian people’s life and thought. That was reflected by those books which were written by Arab Scholars in the Abbasid period.
The aims of this paper are: 1) to discover the ethics of the pre-Islamic people in order to know the cultural structure of that period, 2) to know the kinds of animals which existed at that time, their customs and manners especially those manners which the human beings were affected by and lastly, 3) to know the tales and fables of the animal and to relate them to the “Myths” and “Symbols”.
My way to realize these aims is to look for each proverb and its resources, and to read the stories of the proverbs. This research depends on facts and statistics, followed by analyses to reach solid facts and results.
What is amazing is that wild animals occupied the first rank: many proverbs belong to special wild animals like the “Wolf”. From among the domestic animals, the “Camel” comes first.
The paper attempts to deal lightly with the grammatical style; it also attempts to make lists of all animals which were mentioned in proverbs, and the manners and habits of each one, as well as the number of proverbs. The weak or small animals have one proverb each or none at all; the dull or stupid animals were neglected.