“Some work all day long, toiling with both hands and both feet, quite possibly without uttering a single word; examples are those involved in arduous industries. Others move neither hand nor foot nor shoulder nor head and pronounce only a few words on certain days of the week, the rest of which they spend coddled in comfort, lolling in luxury’s lap; examples are preachers, homilists, and religious guides. Some murder, batter, wound, and kill, such as soldiers, while others treat, medicate, cure, and revive, like nurses and the Friends of God Almighty, men of extraordinary spiritual feats and miracles.6 One man is hired to bring about divorces,7 another as a ‘legitimizer,’8 one for impregnation and another for inhumation, one to put asunder and another to make peace between persons. Some lurk in their houses and hardly ever leave them unless obliged to do so, while others climb mountains and lateen yards, trees, and pulpits or descend into valleys, drains, and cesspits. Some stay up all night writing books, while others can’t sleep a wink till they’ve burned one. Some rule and others are ruled. Some lead and others are led. And yet, for all that contradiction and contrast, all their efforts and actions bring them to the same end, which is that, when a person gets up each morning, he sticks his nostrils into a foul smell before sniffing the scent of flowers and enjoying the pleasures of the daylight hours.”
2.1.6
واعجب من جميع ما مّر بك من هذه الاحوال حالتا اصحابنا السوقيين والخرجيين * فان حرفتهم لما كانت لا تتوقف الا على استعمال اداتين فقط * اى المخيّلة والقَسْم دون افتقار الى آلة اخرى * وكان مورد اقوالهم * ومصدر جدالهم * ومبنى انتحالهم * وجلّ راس مالهم * قولهم يحتمل ان يكون هذا الشى من باب المجاز الاسنادى او اللغوى * او من مجاز المجاز او الكناية * او من حمل النظير على النظير * او النقيض على النقيض * او من باب ذكر اللازم وارادة الملزوم او بالعكس * او من قبيل ذكر البعض وارادة الكل او بالعكس * او من نوع اسلوب الحكيم * او من باب التهكم * او من طاقة التلميح * او من كوّة الالتفات * او من خرق الحشو * او من خرت الادماج * او من خصاص الاكتفآء * او من شقّ الاحتباك * او من سَمّ عكس التشبيه * او من خلل سوق المعلوم مساق غيره * او من فتخات التجريد * او من فرجة الاستطراد * او من ثقوب التورية * لم يكن من اللائق بهم ان يخلطوا هذه الاَوّات وتلك اللَوَّات بشى
Stranger, though, than any of the situations you have just passed in review is that of our friends the Market-men and the Bag-men. Given that their trade depends on the employment of just two tools, namely surmise and assertion, and has no need of any others, and that the wellspring of their statements and source of any tirade, the basis of their claims and greater part of their stock-in-trade is to say,9 “It is likely that this thing to which you refer falls under the rubric either of the trope attributive or the trope lexical, or the trope tropical or the expression periphrastic, or it may be that it belongs to the category of referring like to like, or opposite to opposite, or under that of ‘expressing the intrinsic while intending the extrinsic’ (or the reverse), or belongs to the type known as ‘mentioning the part while intending the whole’ (or the reverse), or to the category known as ‘the method of the sage,’10 or is to be approached via the door of irony, or the aperture of allusion, or the peephole of person-switching,11 or the rent of redundancy, or the casement of carefully crafted composition, or the inlet of implication, or the tear in ‘tight weaving,’12 or the spiracle of the quasi-paradoxical simile, or the knot-hole of the substitution of what is known for what is not, or the toe rings of the generalization of the attribute, or the eyelet of the appositional aside, or the portholes of punning,” it is inappropriate for them to mix in among all these “ors” and “ifs” any of the following:
2.1.7
| من العَرّادات | العرّادة شى اصغر من المنجنيق * |
| والدَبَّابات | الدَبّابة آلة تتخذ للحروب فتدفع فى اصل الحصن فينقبون وهم فى جوفها * |
| والدَرّاجات | الدبّابة تعمل لحرب الحصار تدخل تحتها الرجال * |
| المنجنيقات | المنجنيق آلة ترمى بها الحجارة كالمنجنوق معربة والمنجليق المنجنيق * |
| والنَفّاطات | النفّاطة اداة من نحاس يرمى فيها بالنفط * |
| والخَطّار | المنجنيق والذى يطعن بالرمح * |
| والسَبَطانات |
السَبَطانة قناة
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