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MARINE BIOLOGICAL REPORT IN THE NUḪBAT AL-DAHR FĪ ʿAǦĀʾIB AL-BARR WA-AL-BAḤR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2014

Philippe Provençal
Philippe Provençal*
Affiliation:
Zoologisk Museum, Universitetsparken 15, 2100 København Ø, Denmark
*
Email: pp@nathist.dk

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present a medieval Arabic report regarding six animals from the Gulf of Aden, to provide a zoological identification of five of the animals in question, which may be identified, and to comment on the biological data provided by the report in the light of both contemporary and modern zoological knowledge and, thus, to evaluate the scientific standard of the report.

Résumé

Le but de cet article est de présenter un rapport d'origine arabe médiévale concernant six animaux du Golfe d'Aden, de fournir une identification zoologique des cinq parmi ces animaux qui peuvent être identifiés, et d'analyser les informations biologiques fournies par ce rapport à la lumière des connaissances zoologiques à la fois contemporaines au rapport et modernes, afin d'évaluer ainsi le niveau scientifique de celui-ci.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Arabic Sciences and Philosophy , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 169 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

INTRODUCTION

In the geographical work Nuḫbat al-dahr fī ʿaǧāʾib al-barr wa-al-baḥr (finished between 1324 and 1327 A.D.)Footnote 1 by Šams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Abī Ġālib al-Anṣārī al-Ṣūfī al-Dimašqī (1256–1327 A.D.),Footnote 2 we find a description of six marine animals from the Gulf of Aden (Baḥr al-Yaman).Footnote 3 These animals are the following: 1. Sawfishes Pristida, 2. Pufferfish Tetraodontidae, 3. Stingrays Dasyatidae, 4. Porcupine Fish Diodontidae and 5. Whale Shark Rhincodon typus (authors identifications, see below). The zoological identity of the sixth animal is unclear. This geographical work is of great interest, as much of the material it contains is not found anywhere else.Footnote 4 Ullmann is rather positive in his evaluation of the zoological contents of the Nuḫbat al-dahr, as the reports are independent of the constant reiteration of already acquired material, which often is the case with compilatory works of adab. Even though legendary matters have found their ways to the reports of this book,Footnote 5 some of these seem to be fairly accurate.Footnote 6 The report treated here may be counted as such an accurate one.

Al-Dimašqī was known as Ibn Šayḫ Hittīn. He was šayḫ and imām at al-Rabwa near Damascus and died in Safad. He wrote other works, of which the most interesting is a book titled: al-Maqāmāt al-falsafiyya wa-al-tarğamāt al-ṣūfiyya, which is an encyclopaedia of physical, mathematical and theological subjects.Footnote 7 For a very short introduction to the zoological contents of Nuḫbat al-dahr see H. Eisenstein.Footnote 8 H. S. Khalilieh and A. Boulos consider the Nuḫbat al-dahr together with the ʿAǧāʾib al-maḫlūqāt wa-ġarāʾib al-mawǧūdāt of Zakariyāʾ ibn Muḥammad al-Qazwīnī among the most famous Arabic geographic works, which documented marine creatures. Both work give descriptions of different sea animals, sometimes accompanied with drawings of the creatures described.Footnote 9

THE REPORTFootnote 10

  1. 1. In the sea of al-Yaman there is al-qirš. It is also called the Beast of Prey of the sea. It is of bluish-grey colour. Its skin is rough up to [the degree] where its neck and back is like a file. People use this skin as leather for [the manufacture] of sword sheaths. This fish has a tremendous proboscis, which is shorter than a cubit, but its body is longer than the length of four cubits. Its proboscis is looking like a saw, and [it has] two sides [i.e. there are teeth on both sides] with which this fish beats to the right and left.

  2. 2. There is an animal of round form like the shape of the green water melon in its roundness. Its colour is yellow speckled with black. Its [resulting] greyish [colour] is like the colour of the toad.Footnote 11 Neither head nor tail appears clearly on this animal. If it falls into a fisherman's net and he throws it on land, it will inflate itself with what is around it [i.e. air or water] until it becomes something like the double of its previous size. Then it will become slender [i.e. deflate], and then inflate itself [again], and become slender and inflate itself and become slender [and so on] until it dies or is returned to the water. The meat of this animal is not eaten because of a poison it contains.Footnote 12

  3. 3. There is an animal with the shape of plate or a shield. This is its shape: [it is] as if it is just a thin cake [ǧardaqa] or an open book [made] of skin. Its colour is whiteFootnote 13 going on grey speckled with brown [aḥmar]. It has a long tail; one span of the hand [in width] and what is under it [i.e. the underside of the tail] is about two spans of the hand. This tail is black and white. At the end of the tail [fī raʾsi ḏanbihi] there is a sting with which it stings. The animal it has stung [man ladaġahu] it will tear and cover the victim's flesh and keep on doing so, until the victim dies. This animal does not have any scales like fish scales,Footnote 14 and neither front limbs nor hind limbs, but only [a shape like] cloth, which is spread out, and a tail. It undulates with its two sides and moves around either fast or slowly. It has a mouth under its belly in the middle and escape openingsFootnote 15 [maḫraǧ] near its mouth. The size of its abdomen is one hand span by one hand span, and the width of its whole bodyFootnote 16 is one to two cubits equal by equal [i.e. the body is as long as wide], but God knows best.Footnote 17

  4. 4. There is an animal whose length is about one cubit. Spines [aḥsāk] are protruding from it, in shape like the quills of the hedgehogFootnote 18 and of great sharpness [ʿaẓīmat al-ḥadīd]. They are closed onto the body of this animal, but they rise in the bonds of its body. Its body is the body of a fish, and its face is [like] the face of an owl. It kills whoever touches it with these spines by boring through [the skin of the person touching it]. This is its form [as just described]. Its colour is blue going on green [i.e. a greyish blue-green colour], and the quills of its tail are white and black, but God knows best.

  5. 5. There is an animal that is called al-Bassa. Its length is about 20 cubits. Its back is very large and of dark [colour] beautifully and finely ornamented with whitishFootnote 19 [this is possible] as its skin is flattened. This skin is the material [ḏabl] from which people make combs and knife- and seal handles among other things. The flesh of this animal is [of a] good [quality], fat, oily, and tasty, fine to eat, without any rancidity. The fishermen say that the Bassa procreates by childbirth [i.e. is viviparous], but the rule is that each animal that does not have protruding [i.e. external] ears lays eggs and [whereupon] the eggs hatch [and produce] offspring, whereas each animal, which has protruding ears, procreates by childbirth, but God knows best.

  6. 6. There is a long and thin animal, which is called “Sea Cotton”. It is fished and dried and its flesh becomes like cotton. [This material] is well spun and its fabric is made into clothes that are called samakīn [i.e. the fish clothes]. These clothes are of grey-brown colour, but God knows best.

BIOLOGICAL COMMENTS

The animal called al-qirš in point 1. is the Sawfish (family Pristidae).Footnote 20 The Sawfish is a kind of primitive ray with a long saw like flatly depressed snout. The snout has a row of large lateral teeth on each side. The snout is with cartilage and it is long with respect to the body of the fish, flat and strong. The body is very shark-like with two large falcate or semi falcate shark-like dorsal fins. The trunk, tail and caudal fin are also shark like and covered with denticles,Footnote 21 which give the skin of the fish a texture like that of sand paper. Sawfishes swim by using the tail and not the pectoral fins, which are small and well separated from the head.Footnote 22 The sawfish slashes from side to side with its rostrum when feedingFootnote 23 in order to detect prey and, if possible, impale smaller preys on the large teeth on the sides of the rostrum.Footnote 24 Regarding the colour sawfishes are grey, and the species Anoxypristis cuspidate is blue grey. Sawfishes are found in all tropical and subtropical seas of the world.

It is rather difficult to know which cubit is referred to, as there were several different cubits in use in the Islamic countries. However the most used cubits for general purposes were the “Common Cubit (al-ḏirāʿ al-ʿāmma)” or the “Hand Cubit (ḏirāʿ al-yad)”. The former had a length of 54,04 cm and the latter a length of 49,875 cm.Footnote 25 Thus four cubits makes a body length that is approximately 2 m. As Sawfishes are large fishes, which may attain a length of more than 5 m, the measures provided here are within the range of the species.

Regarding the use of the skin to manufacture sword sheaths or scabbards, the skin of some sharks was and is still used in various leather products.Footnote 26 It nevertheless seems that al-Dimašqī to a certain extent mingled the description of real sharks with the description of Sawfishes. This is indicated by the appellations: qirš = shark in Classical Arabic and in Arabic dialectsFootnote 27 and Beast of Prey of the Sea, a name more appropriate for the actively hunting sharks than for the sawfishes living on the bottom. Nevertheless sawfishes also capture and eat fish.

Sawsharks Pristiophoridae do also fit the description given by al-Dimašqī in point one. Sawsharks look very much like Sawfishes. Their body and fins are very similar and they also have a long flatly depressed snout. The snout has a row of large lateral teeth on each side, but they differ with respect to the sawfishes in that their teeth are unequal in size. They usually alternate between large and small teeth along the length of the snout, and on each side the snout has one long barbel. The length of the snout is 1/4 of the total length of the animal,Footnote 28 which means that the shape of the fishes agree more or less with the proportions given by al-Dimašqī.

The description provided in point 2 refers to Puffer Fishes (family Tetraodontidae).Footnote 29 When provoked these fishes are known to inflate themselves by drawing water into their abdomen, or air if they are taken out of the sea, in order to expand their body to at least the double size and thus defend themselves.Footnote 30 Puffer Fishes are known for their venomous flesh, as a poison tetrodontotoxin is found in their tissues.Footnote 31 In the Red Sea twelve species of Puffer Fishes are found. The species Arothron diadematus and Arothron stellatus fit the description written by al-Dimašqī both in colours and colour patterns, especially Arothron diadematus.Footnote 32 The head is not clearly delimited, especially because Puffer Fishes do not have gill covers, and the body is round and plump. As they furthermore usually swim without using their tail fin but their dorsal and anal fins, and as the tail fin is often folded together, they give the impression of an animal where “neither head nor tail appears clearly” as al-Dimašqī puts it.Footnote 33

The description provided in point 3 refers to Stingrays (family Dasyatidae Footnote 34). Several species of stingrays are found in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Four species are widespread in the whole Indopacific region, these are Taeniura lymma, Taeniura melanospilos, Dasyatis kuhlii and Himantura uarnak.Footnote 35 The most common of these in the Red Sea is the Blue Spotted Ribbontail Ray Taeniura lymma (personal observation). Stingrays, like most rays and all skates, are flattened dorso-ventrally, and appear quite flat. The huge pelvic fins are fused anteriorly to the snout and posteriorly more or less to the posterior part of the body, so that the body together with the pectoral fins has the shape of a flat disc, which has the appearance of a flattened structure, whose form varies from the more or less oval to the square or quadrangular according to the different species. The rays swim by undulating their pectoral fins so that they seem to swim by “undulating with the two sides”. From the body disc protrudes the tail, which in Sting Rays usually is long and thin and sometimes whip-like, and bears a long venomous spine at one third tail length from its base, but in the Taeniura species they appear to be nearer the end of the tail.Footnote 36 This spine is sharp and has a series of recurved barbs along each edge. The sting can induce severe pain and the wound may be serious to a human victim.Footnote 37 The venomous spine is used in self-defence, as stingrays usually feed on benthic animals such as molluscs, crustaceans and worms, which they excavate from the bottom.Footnote 38 Stingrays, like all rays, have their mouth and gill openings on the underside of the body. These are therefore not visible when the fish lies on the bottom. The mouth is located on the medial part of the underside of the fish at a certain distance from the tip of the snout. Behind the mouth lies a row of usually five gill openings on each side of the body. The skin of stingrays does not have scales but is either bare or covered by denticles or small to large thorns.Footnote 39

The Honeycomb Stingray Himantura uarnak is found in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. It is a huge stingray (up to 1,25 m in wingspan) it has a pattern of dark brown spots on a lighter or whitish background. The body disc is subquadrangular. The tail is striped with black and white or light yellow. It is very long and whip like.Footnote 40 The colours of the Honeycomb Stingray thus fit nicely the description of colours provided by al-Dimašqī, but many other stingrays do have a light whitish background colour.Footnote 41

The body measures given in the description fit the Honeycomb Stingray if we consider the abdomen as being the real abdomen of the animal under the central portion of the disc excluding the huge pectoral fins. That which is termed scull or bowl (ǧumǧuma) in the report seems in all probability to refer to the actual body disc, which is confirmed by the mention of the equal length and width of the body, and its measurements are within the range of several species.Footnote 42 The remark of the width of the tail which is one hand span if measured from above, and twice that width if measured under the tail, may be explained if the second measure also refers to the two small pelvic fins, which are situated just below the root of the tail.Footnote 43

The reason for including the stingrays in this account of conspicuous animals from the Gulf of Aden is that they are rather conspicuous fish. They are large and they often forage in very shallow water near the beach in daytime, often lying on the sand or swimming at depths of only 0,5 m (Provençal, personal observations on stingrays in shallows at Zubāra in Qaṭar 2011).

The animal described under point 4 is a Porcupine Fish (family Diodontidae). The Red Sea members of the Diodontidae are known as Porcupine Fishes (genus Diodon) and Burr Fishes (Genus Chilomycterus).Footnote 44 The maximum lengths of Porcupine Fishes, which occur in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, vary from 30 cm to 65 cm according to the different species.Footnote 45 A length of about one cubit is therefore within the range of the species. Like the Puffer Fishes they are able to inflate themselves in the same way. Conspicuous sharp spines cover the head and most of the body. In Burr Fishes the relatively short spines are always erect, whereas the Porcupine Fishes have their longer spines lying along the body with the sharp ends pointing towards the tail. The fish only erect them when inflating itself.Footnote 46 Porcupine Fishes have large round eyes and very flat snouts, which means that the description of their face “as the face of an owl” is precise.Footnote 47 Porcupine Fishes do not have any venom connected to the spines, but as these fishes are related to the Puffer Fishes whose flesh is poisonous, and as infection may arise easily from injuries caused by their long and sharp spines, folklore may probably have considered them as venomous.Footnote 48 The colours of porcupine fishes are grey-brown, grey-green or grey-yellow with either small black spots or greater black patches. Furthermore the Porcupine Fish Diodon liturosus and the Burr Fishes Chilomycterus spilostylus have their white quills located in black spots on the skin of the fishes. Diodon liturosus has this feature especially on the posterior half of the body.Footnote 49 The description of the colouring of the fish given by al-Dimašqī is thus within the colouring of the species.Footnote 50

The Bassa described under point 5 is a Whale Shark Rhincodon typus.Footnote 51 Whale Sharks are huge sharks that live in the open sea and feed on plankton and nekton. Their size is usually between 4 and 10 m. The largest accurately measured specimen was 12 m long and two specimens with a length of about 14 m have been reported.Footnote 52 A length of 20 cubits giving a length of about 10 m is thus within the range of this species. The Whale Shark has a very neat pattern of whitish dots and stripes on a dark grey, bluish or greenish-brown skin of the back and sides of the animal.Footnote 53 The flesh of the Whale Shark is edible and in contemporary Taiwan its flesh is compared to tofu and fetches high prices. The flesh is soft and bland and has a high content of water.Footnote 54 The Whale Shark gives birth to live offspring as it uses an ovoviviparous mode of reproduction.Footnote 55 The skin of the Whale Shark appears to be smooth on sight,Footnote 56 even though it is covered by denticles, which, however, are small and permit divers and fishermen to ride on the shark's back.Footnote 57 The flat skin may also allude to the shape of the anterior part of the fish, which is broadened and flattened and thus, when the shark is seen from above, permits to give a very fine view of the overall patterns on the fish.Footnote 58

Regarding the remark made by al-Dimašqī on the reproduction biology of animals with or without external ears, it is not found in the zoology of Aristotle.Footnote 59 Aristotle knew that some reptiles and most sharks bear live offspring and he knew the difference between viviparism and ovoviviparism.Footnote 60 He also knew that viviparism, ovoviviparism and oviparism criss-cross the divisions of animals and he employed a physiological criterion using the classical notion of the four cardinal elements and their four properties i.e. the degree of heat, cold, moisture and dryness in the animalsFootnote 61 in order to explain these differences. Even if this section of De generatione animalium has faults in its translation into Arabic, the physiological explanation given in this translation widely surpasses the remark provided by al-Dimašqī,Footnote 62 although it could still be that this remark goes back to Greek sources.

CLASSICAL ARABIC MATERIAL

Concerning the Sawfishes, the description provided by al-Dimašqī is found again as a paraphrase in the Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā (1372) of al-Damīrī in the entry Kawsaǧ, which is translated here in its entirety:

The Kawsaǧ is a [kind] of fish [found] in the sea. It has a proboscis [shaped] as a saw, with which it tears [its prey] apart and sometimes it devours people. It gnaws [its prey] in two halves. This is the qirš, which is also called laḫm. It is said, that if it is fished by night, a piece of good fat (šaḥma) is found in its belly, but if it is fished by day, it will not be found. Al-Qazwīnī has said: Al-Kawsaǧ is a kind of fish, which in the water is more ferocious [šarr] than the lion on land. It cuts aquatic animals with its teeth the same way as a sword does. Al-Māḍī has said: I have seen it, and it is a fish whose size [miqdār] is one or two cubits, and whose teeth are like human teeth. It causes the marine animals to flee from it, and it has a fixed time of appearance, in which it becomes very common in the Tigris at Baṣra. (Its legality [according to the šarīʿa]): with the imām Aḥmad it is forbidden to eat, and one of his companions Abū Ḥāmid said: neither the crocodile nor the kawsaǧ may be eaten because they eat people and because they [li-annahu] have fangs [nāb].Footnote 63

In Classical Arabic texts on zoology the fish names qirš, kawsaǧ and luḫam are often identified with each other, but the different author's ideas about their identities are often somewhat vague.Footnote 64 This whole complex of the three names requires an interdisciplinary philological/zoological treating, which will be published separately. The author of the article has not found the other marine creatures described by al-Dimašqī in other classical Arabic texts. The Bassa is not known in the Dictionary of LaneFootnote 65 (1957), which means, that this animal name was not known in the main Arabic lexicographical works, on which Lane drew his information.

The fishes described in the points 1–5 are all well known by the Arabic speaking populations of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Persian Gulf and have different local names.Footnote 66

CONCLUSION

Al-Dimašqī apparently did not travel to Yemen as he spent most of his life in Syria, so his report is based on either oral or written sources.Footnote 67 These sources are not known. Nevertheless, the descriptions of the identified 5 animal species or families provided by al-Dimašqī are sufficiently precise to provide a certain identity for the fish families for the descriptions in the reports Nos 1–4, and a certain species identity for the description in report No 5. This kind of exactitude in the reports thus places this section of the Nuḫbat al-dahr fī ʿaǧāʾib al-barr wa-al-baḥr among the high quality writings in the medieval Arabic geographical literature. It is also an indication, that the high level of knowledge about the natural environment, which is attested among Bedouins and coastal inhabitants around the Red Sea in more recent time,Footnote 68 was also present in medieval Arabic coastal societies.

The reason for these six species being described in the report is that they are conspicuous, either by their size (the Whale Shark), their shape (the Puffer Fish and the Porcupine Fish) or their behaviour (the Stingrays and the Saw Fish). But the report must also be seen in the broader context of the interest for the sea, which arised in the Classical Islamic civilisation, thus authors of comprehensive works on geography included descriptions of seas and their flora and fauna.Footnote 69 To this must be added the mentions and descriptions of marine creatures found in works of science and of adab, e.g. the Ḥayāt al-ḥayawānāt al-kubrā (1372) of al-Damīrī. Al-Jāḥiẓ also writes to a certain extent of marine creatures in his Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, although he does this cautiously.Footnote 70

Al-Dimašqī seems to be one of the authors of geographical works, who wrote much about sea creatures.Footnote 71 Thus he mentions the luminescent jellyfish Pelagia noctiluca in his account of the MediterraneanFootnote 72 together with description of other marine creatures. These marine biological descriptions are also elaborated in al-Qazwīnī but other texts must also be mentioned, e.g. the list of 79 fish (i.e. aquatic animal) species found after the list of 144 bird species mentioned in full in the descriptions of the island of Tinnīs in Lake Manzala in the Delta of the Nile, which are given by Yāqūt ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Ḥamāwī (1179–1229) in his Muʿǧam al-buldān Footnote 73 and by Zakariyāʾ b. Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd al-Qazwīnī (1203–1283) in his Cosmography, Kitāb ʿAǧāʾib al-maḫlūqāt wa-ġarāʾib al-mawǧūdāt.Footnote 74 The geographical work of al-Dimašqī is therefore written in a cultural context or tradition, where the description of seas and marine creatures was a well established.

References

1 Cf. Ed-Dimichqui, Nukhbat ad dahr fī adschâ'ib al barr wal bahr, Cosmographie, ed. Mehren, August (Leipzig, 1923), pp. V–VIIGoogle Scholar.

2 Ibid., pp. V–VI. Mehren's edition is based on four manuscripts which were kept in Copenhagen, Paris, Leiden and St. Petersburg (see p. X).

3 See ibid., pp. 164–5.

4 Dunlop, Douglas M., “Al-Dimashḳī,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden and London, 1965)Google Scholar, p. 291.

5 Eisenstein, Herbert, Einführung in die arabische Zoographie (Berlin, 1990), pp. 82–3Google Scholar.

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7 Dunlop, “Al-Dimashḳī”, p. 291.

8 Eisenstein, Einführung, pp. 82–3.

9 Khalilieh, Hassan S. and Boulos, Areen, “A glimpse of the uses of seaweeds in Islamic science and daily life during the classical period”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 16 (2006): 91–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially note 2, p. 91.

10 Ed. Mehren, pp. 164–5, translated from Arabic by P. Provençal.

11 The earth frog in the text. According to Malouf, Amin, Muʿǧam al-ḥayawān. An Arabic Zoological Dictionary (Cairo, 1932)Google Scholar, p. 41, the toad is called the clay frog ḍifdaʿ al-ṭīn in Egypt.

12 Part of this section has been translated by Anwar Abdel Aleem, “Concepts of marine biology among Arab writers in the Middle Ages”, Premier Congrès International d'Histoire de l'Océanographie, Monaco 1966, 2 vols., Communications vol. 2, Bull. Inst. Océanogr. Monaco, Numéro Spécial 2 (1968): 359–67Google Scholar, where he writes p. 365: “‘rounded animal like green water melon; colour yellowish with dark spots; head and tail not distinguished. When captured in the fisherman's net and thrown on to the ground it blows up. Its flesh is not eaten because it is poisonous’. In the Leipzig edition of Dimiski's Mirabilia the following additions are made of this fish: ‘When captured in the fisherman's net it blows itself up, then deflates, then blows up again and so on until it is dead or returned to the water. The flesh of this animal is not eaten because it is poisonous’.” In relation to this, it should be noted that Mehren did not mention any manuscript in Leipzig, but he notes that the passage just cited is omitted from the manuscripts of St. Petersburg and Leiden (ed. Mehren 1923, p. 164).

13 For the use of azraq to denote light, whitish, shimmering colours cf. Fischer, Wolfdietrich, Farb- und Formbezeichnungen in der Sprache der altarabische Dichtung (Wiesbaden, 1965)Google Scholar, p. 252.

14 Usually meaning feather, the word rīš may also mean quill or bristle, here it obviously means scale.

15 This word is in the singular but must either be understood collectively or the author did not know the real number of escape openings (gill slits).

16 ǧumǧuma means scull, but it may also mean a bowl, cf. Edward W. Lane, Arabic- English Lexicon (London 1879; repr. Beirut, 1968) and Albin de Biberstein Kazimirski, Dictionnaire arabe-français (Paris, 1860). Here it is understood as designating the body disc of rays.

17 Part of this section has been translated by Aleem, “Concepts of marine biology”, where he writes p. 365: “An animal in the shape of a plate or shield; its colour is bluish green, with red spots and a long tail. This tail is white and black; at the end of the tail there is a sting, which can be deadly; its mouth is from below and its cloaca opens nearby; its belly measures one shibr by one [extended palm] and total breadth is 1–2 arms.”

18 The Hedgehog is usually denoted as qunfuḏ in modern Arabic (cf. Malouf, Muʿǧam), but in classical Arabic the Porcupine might also be denoted as qunfuḏ; cf. Kamāl al-Dīn al-Damīrī, Kitāb Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā (Cairo, 1954; repr. Beirut, n.d.), entry: Qunfuḏ.

19 Aṣfar, which denotes all shades of yellow in Classical Arabic, may also be used to whitish colours such as the white colour of ivory in the language of the old poetry, see Fischer, Farb- und Formbezeichnungen, p. 360.

20 Ed. Mehren (note 2) writes in his glossary to al-Dimašqī's book only “fish” under the entry qirš (p. LXV).

21 Compagno, Leonard J. V., “Systematics and body form”, in Hamlett, William C. (ed.), Sharks, Skates and Rays (Baltimore and London, 1999), pp. 1–42Google Scholar, on p. 29.

22 Compagno, “Systematics”, pp. 29–30 and illustrations p. 30.

23 Liem, Karel F. and Summers, Adam P., “Muscular system, gross anatomy and functional morphology of muscles”, in Hamlett (ed.), Sharks, Skates and Rays, pp. 93–114Google Scholar, on p. 103.

24 Compagno, “Systematics”, p. 6.

25 Hinz, Walther, Islamische Masse und Gewichte umgerechnet ins metrische System (Leiden and Köln 1970)Google Scholar, pp. 54 and 61.

26 Kemp, Norman E., “Integumentary system and teeth”, in Hamlett, (ed.), Sharks, Skates and Rays, pp. 43–63, on p. 48Google Scholar.

27 Cf. Kazimirski Dictionnaire; Malouf, Muʿǧam; Wehr, Hans, Arabic-English Lexicon (New York, 1976)Google Scholar, Oman, Giovanni, L'Ittionimia nei paesi arabi dei Mari Rosso, Arabico e del Golfo Persico (o Arabico) (Napoli, 1992)Google Scholar; Provençal, Philippe, “Animal names gathered by interviews with members of the Muzīn tribe in Sinai”, Acta Orientalia, 58 (1997): 35–46Google Scholar, Ibn Sīnā uses the term salāsī for sharks in his zoology forming the 8th part of his Kitāb al-Šifāʾ, Sīnā, Ibn, al-Šifāʾ, La Physique, VIIIe – Les Animaux, ed. Madkour, Ibrahim (Cairo, 1970)Google Scholar. The term salāsī is a transcription of the Greek term selachia, cf. Brugman, Jan and Drossaart Lulofs, Hendrik J., Aristotle, Generation of Animals, the Arabic Translation Ascribed to Yaḥyā ibn al-Biṭrīq (Leiden, 1971)Google Scholar.

28 Nelson, Joseph S., Fishes of the World (New York, 1984), pp. 58–9Google Scholar and cf. illustration, ibid.

29 Aleem, “Concepts of marine biology”, p. 365, has already made this identification.

30 Randall, John E., Red Sea Reef Fishes (London, 1992)Google Scholar, p. 174.

31 Ibid., p. 174.

32 Ibid., p. 176.

33 Eichler, Dieter, Tropical Marine Life (London, 1996)Google Scholar, p. 200 and illustrations p. 201, and P. Provençal, personal observations in the Red Sea.

34 Point three is only found in the manuscript from Paris (ed. Mehren, p. 164, note b). This identification has already been made by Aleem, “Concepts of marine biology”, p. 365.

35 Lieske, Ewald and Myers, Robert, Coral Reef Fishes (London, 2001)Google Scholar, plate 4.

36 P. Provençal, personal observation on Taeniura lymma, cf. Lieske and Myers, Coral, plate 4.

37 Randall, Red Sea Reef Fishes, p. 23.

38 Ibid., p. 22.

39 Compagno, “Systematics”, p. 39.

40 Cf. Randall, Red Sea Reef Fishes, p. 14.

41 Cf. Lieske and Myers, Coral, plate 4.

42 Cf. Randall, Red Sea Reef Fishes, p. 14, Lieske and Myers, Coral, plate 4.

43 Cf. Randall, Red Sea Reef Fishes, p. 14.

44 Ibid., p. 177.

45 Lieske and Myers, Coral, plate 138.

46 Randall, Red Sea Reef Fishes, p. 177.

47 Author's personal observation on live specimens of species of Diodon, cf. too Eichler, Tropical Marine, text and illustrations pp. 202–3.

48 Jørgen Nielsen, Zoological Museum, Copenhagen, pers. information.

49 Cf. Eichler, Tropical Marine, p. 203; Lieske and Myers, Coral, plate 138; Randall, Red Sea Reef Fishes, p. 177.

50 The drawings p. 164 in Mehren's edition of the Nuḫbat al-dahr of two of the animals mentioned were obviously made by a person, who never himself saw the animals in question. The animal to the right is the porcupine fish. The head is drawn like the head of a real owl with a beak put on a fish body. The quills are drawn as brittles on the side of the scaled body and the tail fin is forked. None of these characteristics apply to Porcupine Fishes. Their tail fin is rounded, they have no scales and their head is as described in the biological comments to the Porcupine Fishes under point 4 (cf. Lieske and Myers, Coral, p. 138 and p. 175). The animal to the left is obviously a cephalopod. It has the rounded body of an octopus, tentacles and even a tentacle with the broadened tip like the long tentacles of squids and cuttlefishes. As octopi continuously draw water in and out of their mantle cavity in order to breathe, the illustrator obviously misunderstood the description of the puffer fish as applying to a cephalopod.

51 A. Mehren identifies the Bassa with a sea turtle in his glossary to his edition of al-Dimašqī's book (p. XXVI). This identification is impossible on account of the size alone. The biggest known sea turtle, the leatherback turtle Dermochelys coriacea, never exceeds 2,5 m in length, i.e. about five cubits of those presumably used here. None of the marine turtles bear live offspring, as they all are egg-laying animals. Furthermore sea turtles are described rather precisely by our author p. 165 in Mehren's edition of the Nuḫbat al-dahr in the chapter about the Red Sea.

52 Colman, Jeremy G., “A review of the biology and ecology of the Whale Shark”, Journal of Fish Biology, 51 (1997): 1219–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Compagno, Leonard, Dando, Marc, Fowler, Sarah, A Field Guide to the Sharks of the World (London, 2004)Google Scholar, p. 174, cf. further the illustration in Møller, Jørgen L., Nielsen, Allan G., “Danske Hajer”, Natur og Museum, 3 (2000): 1–36Google Scholar, p. 34.

54 Colman, “A review”, p. 1228.

55 Ibid., p. 1224.

56 Eichler, Tropical Marine, illustration p. 97.

57 Harald Blegvad, Fishes of the Iranian Gulf, reprint from Danish Scientific Investigations in Iran, part III (Copenhagen, 1944), p. 35.

58 Cf. Møller, “Danske Hajer”, p. 34.

59 The translation of Aristotle's zoology was taken as a main reference work by the classical Arabic culture (cf. Ullmann, Die Natur und Geheimwissenschaften, pp. 8–9).

60 Aristoteles, De generatione animalium (translated by Platt, Arthur), in The Works of Aristotle, Translated into English under the editorship of Smith, John A. and Ross, William D., vol. V (Oxford, 1912), 732a32–732b1Google Scholar.

61 Ibid., 732b1–733a19.

62 Brugman and Drossaart Lulofs, Aristotle, Generation, pp. 52–3. In al-Jāḥiz, Kitāb al-Ḥayawān (established and annotated by ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn, 8 vols. [Beirut, 1996]), this feature of the role of the ears being apparent or not in determining whether an animal is viviparous or oviparous is mentioned in vol. VI, p. 33.

63 Kamāl al-Dīn al-Damīrī, Kitāb Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā.

64 Cf. i.a. Lisān al-ʿArab, compiled by Ibn Manẓūr al-Ifrīqī al-Miṣrī, Abū al-Faḍl Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Mukarram (Beirut, 1955); al-Jāḥiẓ, Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, ed. Hārūn; al-Qazwīnī, Zakariyāʾ b. Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd, Kitāb ʿAǧāʾib al-maḫlūqāt wa-ġarāʾib al-mawǧūdāt – El Cazwini's Kosmographie, ed. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld, Genehmigter Neudruck des Ausgabe von 1848–49 des Verlages der Dieterichschen Buchhandlung (Wiesbaden, 1967).

65 Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon.

66 Descriptiones animalium – avium, amphibiorum, piscium, insectorum, vermium quae in itinere orientali observavit Petrus Forskål, post mortem auctoris edidit Carsten Niebuhr (Copenhagen, 1775); Malouf, Muʿǧam; Oman, L'Ittionimia; Provençal, “Animal names”.

67 Cf. Mehren (note 2) pp. V–VIII; Dunlop, “Al-Dimashḳī”.

68 Cf. i.a. Hobbs, Joseph J., Bedouin Life (Cairo, 1990)Google Scholar; Provençal, “Animal names”.

69 Cf. Khalilieh and Boulos, “A glimpse of the uses”, especially note 2, p. 91.

70 Cf. Aarab, Ahmed, Provençal, Philippe and Idaomar, Mohamed, “La méthodologie scientifique en matière zoologique de Jāḥiẓ dans la rédaction de son œuvre Kitāb al-Ḥayawān (Le Livre des Animaux)”, Anaquel de Estudios Arabes, 14 (2003): 5–19Google Scholar.

71 Aleem, “Concepts of marine biology”, p. 366.

72 Ibid., p. 361. Ed-Dimichqui, Nukhbat, p. 144.

73 Yāqūt al-Ḥamāwī, Jacuts Geographisher Wörterbuch, ed. Wüstenfeld, Ferdinand (Leipzig, 1866–70; repr. Teheran), vol. 1, pp. 884–5Google Scholar.

74 Al-Qazwīnī, Kitāb ʿAǧāʾib al-maḫlūqāt, ed. Wüstenfeld, pp. 117–20.