{"id":102438,"date":"2016-09-08T12:37:11","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T16:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=102438"},"modified":"2016-09-08T12:45:16","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T16:45:16","slug":"sporting-with-cheetahs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/08\/sporting-with-cheetahs\/","title":{"rendered":"Sporting with Cheetahs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_102358\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/9780143107484-copy.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-102358\" class=\"wp-image-102358\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/9780143107484-copy.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"461\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-102358\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image: Gianni Dagli Orti.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>This week, we\u2019re publishing four short excerpts from<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/316708\/the-ultimate-ambition-in-the-arts-of-erudition-by-shihab-al-din-al-nuwayri-edited-translated-and-with-an-introduction-and-notes-by-elias-muhanna\/9780143107484\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition<\/a><em>, a fourteenth-century encyclopedia\u00a0of \u2026 well, everything, or everything known to Arab civilization circa 1314. Compiled with dogged dedication by Shih\u0101b al-D\u012bn al-Nuwayr\u012b, the book runs to more than nine thousand pages; an abridged version is now available for the first time in English.\u00a0<\/em>Ultimate Ambition\u00a0<em>lives up to its bold title\u2014its eclectic, protean entries cover lunar cults, the sugary drinks in the sultan\u2019s buttery, and how to attract your dream woman by burying a crow\u2019s head.<\/em><em>\u00a0Its translator, Elias Muhanna, believes the compendium affords\u00a0<\/em><em>\u201ca view into the kaleidoscopic and multifarious intellectual tradition of the classical Islamic world\u201d; the\u00a0<\/em>New York Review of Books\u00a0<em>calls it \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/daily\/2016\/08\/24\/in-the-attic-of-early-islam-shihab-al-din-al-nuwayri\/\" target=\"_blank\">a bizarre, fascinating book that illustrate[s] the sprawlingly heterodox reality of the early centuries of Islam<\/a>.\u201d Today\u2019s extract:\u00a0<\/em><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>On the Cheetah<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Aristotle said: \u201cA cheetah is a cross between a lion and a panthress, or a panther and a lioness.\u201d It is said that if a cheetah has a difficult pregnancy, any male cheetah that sees her will take care of her and share the fruits of his hunt. When she is ready to give birth, she secludes herself in a place that she has prepared and remains there until she teaches her young how to hunt. The cheetah is proverbial for its sleepiness.<\/p>\n<p>Al-Jahiz said, quoting Aristotle: \u201cIf a cheetah is afflicted with the disease known as cheetah-strangler, it may eat some dung and thereby be cured.\u201d And they say that there is no animal the size of a cheetah that falls so heavily and shatteringly upon the back of its prey. The females are more refractory and bold than the males. Modesty is part of its nature, such that if a man runs his hand along the body of a female cheetah, she will remain calm until his hand approaches the vulva, at which point she will grow agitated and angry.<\/p>\n<p>It is said that the first person to hunt with a cheetah was Kulayb Wail, or perhaps Hammam ibn Murra, a man of leisure and music. The first to carry a cheetah on a horse was Yaz\u0131d ibn Muawiya ibn Ab\u0131 Sufyan. The one most famous for sporting with cheetahs was Abu Muslim al-Khurasani, the leader of the Abbasid Revolution. The first to establish the practice of the hunting circle was al-Mutadid bi-l-llah.<\/p>\n<p>Cheetahs are found in the territories between the Hijaz and Yemen, the Hijaz and Iraq, and between India and Tibet. They are also found in Bariyyat Idhab, in the environs of Qus, in Egypt.<\/p>\n<p>The poets and eloquent ones have excelled in their descriptions of cheetahs, both in poetry and prose. For example, this hunting epistle by Abu Ishaq al-Sab\u0131:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had with us cheetahs darting like lightning, faster than arrows loosed at a deserter, more intelligent than lions, more cunning than foxes, stealthier than scorpions, lank-hipped and empty-bellied, dappled of frame. Red-cornered slits for eyes, open mouths, broad brows and wide necks, baring teeth like spear heads. The cheetah spies the gazelle at great distance, knows its sounds, tracks its droppings and resting places, scents its musk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Siraj described it thus:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Snarling mouth and paw possess<br \/> Cutting swords and slender spears <br \/> Night and day both claim a share of it<br \/> Cloaked in its pebble-printed garment <br \/> And the sun, ever since they nicknamed it the gazelle<br \/> Has risen over this watcher with dread.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Ibn al-Mu\u02bftazz said:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It hunts but with a single bound<br \/> Flying on four outsized legs <br \/> Of all the wind\u2019s offspring, it is the resplendent one<br \/> Trailing its tail on the ground<\/p>\n<p>It clings to the neck of its prey\u2028<br \/> Like the embrace of a spurned lover <br \/> When its enemy sees it chasing behind <br \/> Its conscience whispers words of perdition into its ear<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/316708\/the-ultimate-ambition-in-the-arts-of-erudition-by-shihab-al-din-al-nuwayri-edited-translated-and-with-an-introduction-and-notes-by-elias-muhanna\/9780143107484\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-102353 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/9780143107484.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"306\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>From\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/316708\/the-ultimate-ambition-in-the-arts-of-erudition-by-shihab-al-din-al-nuwayri-edited-translated-and-with-an-introduction-and-notes-by-elias-muhanna\/9780143107484\/\" target=\"_blank\">T<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/316708\/the-ultimate-ambition-in-the-arts-of-erudition-by-shihab-al-din-al-nuwayri-edited-translated-and-with-an-introduction-and-notes-by-elias-muhanna\/9780143107484\/\" target=\"_blank\">he Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/316708\/the-ultimate-ambition-in-the-arts-of-erudition-by-shihab-al-din-al-nuwayri-edited-translated-and-with-an-introduction-and-notes-by-elias-muhanna\/9780143107484\/\" target=\"_blank\">: A Compendium of Knowledge from the Classical Islamic World<\/a><em> by Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri; edited and translated by Elias Muhanna,\u00a0published by Penguin Classics, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Translation, abridgement, introduction, and notes copyright \u00a9 2016 by Elias Muhanna.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Translated from the Arabic by Elias Muhanna.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, we\u2019re publishing four short excerpts from\u00a0The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition, a fourteenth-century encyclopedia\u00a0of \u2026 well, everything, or everything known to Arab civilization circa 1314. Compiled with dogged dedication by Shih\u0101b al-D\u012bn al-Nuwayr\u012b, the book runs to more than nine thousand pages; an abridged version is now available for the first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1052,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[489],"tags":[1051,22649,24363,24392,24360,24391,12203,24354,24364,1773,24353,24355,4425,20236,24356,7221,165,2047,24357,24352,530],"class_list":["post-102438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-2","tag-animals","tag-arabic","tag-aromatics","tag-big-cats","tag-carpets","tag-cheetahs","tag-clothes","tag-compendia","tag-diseases","tag-egypt","tag-elias-muhanna","tag-encyclopedia","tag-islam","tag-knowledge","tag-miscellany","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-poets","tag-shihab-al-din-al-nuwayri","tag-the-uitimate-ambition-in-the-arts-of-erudition","tag-translation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ 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