Suffering the Sons of Eve: Animal Ethics in al-Maʿarrī’s Epistle of the Horse and the Mule

In the year 1021 CE, blind author and skeptic Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī (d. 1057 CE) wrote Risālat al-ṣāhil wa-l-shāḥij (The Epistle of the Horse and the Mule), a winding prose work populated by animal characters who talk about poetry, grammar, riddles, and Syrian society on the eve of the crusades. Traditionally forgotten as a source for al-Maʿarrī’s pacifism, and his vegan worldview, the Ṣāhil lets readers see his thinking on animals more than most other works. After a brief survey of animals in Islam, which shows a mainstream desire for balance between human and non-human needs, as well as exceptional cases that strongly uphold animals as subjects per se and which stand as key inter-texts for al-Maʿarrī, this paper considers how the Ṣāhil champions non-human creatures through images of animal cruelty deployed to shock readers into compassion, and through poetry and popular sayings (amthāl) recast in a zoocentric mold. It, therefore, advocates with more fervor than anthropocentric Islamic writings on animals, such as Kalīlah wa-Dimnah or the letters of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ. However, this happens in a way that makes it hard to pin down the sources of al-Maʿarrī’s thought. Furthermore, al-Maʿarrī seems to contradict himself when, for example, he employs literal meaning when it comes to animal justice, even as he avoids literalism in other contexts. This calls his concern for animals into question in one sense, but in another, it affirms such concern insofar as his self-contradictions show an active mind working through animal ethics in real time.


Introduction
"We are the tribes of equus-hardships are thrown on our necks and attacks heaped on our backs." So whimpers the horse to the mule in the Risālat al-s .ā hil wa-l-shāh . ij (Epistle of the Horse and the Mule) of blind poet, philologist, and skeptic Abū l-( Alā ) al-Ma ( arrī (d. 1057 CE). 1 Writing around the year 1021 CE (Smoor 1982, p. 50), al-Ma ( arrī meant the S .ā hil ostensibly as a plea to the Fatimid-vassal governor of Aleppo, Abū Shujā ( Fātik ( Azīz al-Dawlah (d. 1022 CE) 2 , to pardon a land tax owed by al-Ma ( arrī's relatives. This real life impetus mirrors the epistle's narrative frame, in which a cast of distressed animals-the titular mule (al-shāh . ij, "Brayer") and horse (al-s .ā hil, "Neigher"), as well as the dove (al-fākhitah, "Cooer"), the camel (Abū Ayyūb), the hyena (Umm ( Amr), and the fox (Thu (ā lah)-try and fail to deliver a message to the governor. In the process, they swap rumors about contemporary Syrian society on the eve of the crusades, but in fact, the bulk of the work is a paean to language itself: Qur )ā n, h . adīth, poetry, grammar, popular sayings, riddles, and other genres.
Surviving in two manuscripts at the H . asaniyyah Archive in Rabat, Morocco, the S .ā hil was edited and published in 1975 by (Ā) ishah ( Abd al-Rah . mān "Bint al-Shāt . i ) " (daughter of the riverbank), whose critical introduction joins a mere handful of secondary studies (Smoor 1981(Smoor , 1982Barkoudah-Raoux 2009). Given this state of the art, people have often discounted the S .ā hil as a window onto al-Ma ( arrī's vegan 3 , pacifist worldview. This paper corrects the oversight with a study of animal ethics in the S .ā hil, such as they are. Moving from the general to the specific, the paper starts by surveying early Islamic thought, in order to situate al-Ma ( arrī, who left behind few unambiguous statements about what he believed and why, in the context of other thinkers and texts. The first part of this survey establishes the mainstream tendency of Islam, which is to balance compassion for animals against human need for them as a life-giving resource. The second half of the survey considers that stand out from this norm, including Sufi animism and Turco-Persian reincarnationism, in giving greater priority to animals as moral exemplars or as subjects deserving justice in their own right. These cases represent key antecedents and inter-texts for understanding al-Ma ( arrī.
There follows a sketch of animals as portrayed throughout al-Ma ( arrī's texts. He is in many ways a more convinced animal ethicist, and a more zoocentric writer overall, than those, such as the Ikhwān al-S . afā ) , who uses animals mainly to comment on human society. That said, the finer points of his thought make it hard to pin down where he got his inspiration; he explicitly rejects Indic doctrines of reincarnation, and his focus on animal life per se departs from Byzantine neo-Manichaean groups, especially the Bogomils, whose avoidance of animal products draws on the (fundamentally anthropocentric) dualist struggle between spirit and matter. Such a challenge in establishing textual sources for al-Ma ( arrī raises the possibility that more ephemeral matters, such as biography or psychology, played a role here. 4 The paper's last two sections each inspect a rhetorical tactic of the S .ā hil itself. The first is a grim parade of human cruelties as recorded in poetry, popular maxims (amthāl), and folklore, in order to shock readers into sympathy for nonhuman creatures. The second is a recasting of poetry and popular amthāl in a zoocentric mold, one that stands at odds with traditional interpretation. These two strategies affirm al-Ma ( arrī's concern for animals, yet at the same time, they raise puzzling incongruities about intellectual and cultural history that are hard to answer for certain. The point is not to solve such questions, but instead to show al-Ma ( arrī working out his animal ethics-contradictions and all-in real time.

Considering the Nonhuman in Early Islam
To build his brick house of animal ethics, the Islamic thought tradition gave al-Ma ( arrī plenty of straw. The main current of that tradition tries to balance between nonhuman creatures as sacred, respect worthy creatures, and as useful resources for humans, who often take priority. This balance is struck elegantly and succinctly in two Qur )ā nic verses about bees (16/al-Nah . l: 68-69): And thy Lord revealed unto the bees, saying: 'Take unto yourselves of the mountains, houses, and of the trees, and of what they are building. Then eat all manner of fruit and follow the ways of your Lord easy to go upon.' Then comes there forth out of their bellies a drink of diverse hues wherein is healing for men. Surely in that is a sign for a people who reflect. 5 God esteems the insects by addressing them in their own right, yet simultaneously consecrates their "diversely hued" output (mukhtalifun alwānuhu)-honey-for human benefit. This counterpoise obtains in the h . adīth corpus too, wherein people are allowed to use animals, but within strict guidelines; they must provide for them, show kindness and relieve their suffering, and avoid their abuse. 6 3 An admittedly anachronistic term, "vegan" comes closest to describing al-Ma ( arrī's avoidance of all animal products, including fish, milk, eggs, and honey, plus his exhortation that everyone else should avoid them, too. For further discussion, see (Blankinship 2019b, p. 261), footnote 1. 4 Thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting further discussion of this point. 5 (Arberry 1955), vol. 2, pp. 293-94. 6 For an overview of h . adīth that spell out these guidelines, see (Furber 2015, pp. 7-17). One sees an overall concern for animal welfare in h . adīths that tell of the Prophet praising a man for giving water to a thirsty dog (the matn states, "There is a reward for every moistened liver" [fī kulli kabidin rat . batin ajrun], meaning that every good deed, such as wetting the liver of thirsty Metaphysically, the h . adīth tradition but above all the Qur )ā n honors animals as one of a few communities, alongside humans, angels, and jinn, who owe their existence to God and receive His mercy. Hence, Sarra Tlili's claim that the Qur )ā n is basically theocentric and not anthropocentric-"any being that worships and obeys God obtains God's pleasure and is rewarded in the hereafter" (Tlili 2012, p. ix). Animals belong to God, a beneficent sovereign who cherishes them as valuable creations, and therefore how humans treat them can tip the scales of final judgement. 7 Moreover, mainstream Muslim belief holds that, like humans, animals will resurrect physically after death (ibid., p. 10).
For jurists, theologians, and philosophers, these factors all point to justice: do nonhumans deserve it, and if so, to what extent and on what grounds? The Muslim tradition, while typically prioritizing human need, does show compassion to animals because they have the ability suffer, which in turn suggests the ability to feel and perceive, similar to humans in kind if not degree. Early Arabic lexicography, kalām, fiqh, and Qur )ā nic tafsīr all classify a given animal as dhū rūh . , literally "who has blown breath" but roughly "life force" or "soul," a concept which in early texts had a wider semantic range, but which becomes more closely linked to humans after the nineteenth century (Tlili 2017, pp. 18-21). In The Healing (Al-Shifā ) ) and Salvation (Al-Najāh), Avicenna concedes to both humans and nonhumans a faculty called wahm, "estimation," which occupies a place "as the highest power among the soul's animal faculties" and can be thought of as a "pre-intellectual grasp of non-sensible intentions at the core of the judgements in question" -his favorite example is that of sheep sensing hostility from a wolf (Black 1993, p. 220).
Animals also enjoy powers of perception in the "Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn," which takes up most of Epistle 22 of the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān 1957, vol. 2, pp. 203-377, at 213;Goodman and McGregor 2009, pp. 113-14). The segment about "The Acute Senses of the Animals" (Fī bayān jawdat al-h . awāss fī l-h . ayawānāt) speaks of horses hearing footsteps in the night, or of ewes locating their farflung lambs one by one. Nonhuman characters also play a role in another philosophical allegory, Ibn T . ufayl's H . ayy ibn Yaqz .ā n, whose title character is raised by a compassionate gazelle. After reflecting further, H . ayy turns to vegetarianism to avoid "opposition to the work of the Creator," insofar as that work is embodied by His creatures (Ibn T . ufayl 2008, pp. 77-79;T . ufayl 2009, pp. 144-45).
While Ibn ( Abd al-Salām's brand of counterbalancing humans versus animals is dominant within classical Islam, some groups deviated from this norm in their strong support for nonhuman justice, often as a cosmic principle. It is worth considering these cases for a moment as meaningful precursors and inter-texts to al-Ma ( arrī. One of the most obvious-and controversial-was the doctrine of metempsychosis, tanāsukh, sometimes called "projection," burūz, namely the movement of souls from humans into animals after death, which seems to rule out doing violence to animals on ethical grounds. Many observers associated this doctrine with extremist (ghulāh) Shi ( ites who rebelled against the early caliphs (Daniel Gimaret, "Tanāsukh," EI2), but it could have prevailed among the first Mu ( tazilīs, especially the disciples of Abū Ish .ā q Ibrāhīm al- Naz . z .ā m (d. 835 CE). In the Kitāb al-h . ayawān (Book of the Living), al-Jāh . iz . calls them as . h .ā b al-jahālāt, "those who deal in absurdities," and credits them with panpsychism, i.e., the belief that everything possesses reason and, therefore, moral responsibility, even stones, mountains, flies, and lice; the as . h .ā b al-jahālāt apparently went so far as to say that each of these communities had a prophet sent by God (Crone 2012a, pp. 34-39). 12 Al-Jāh . iz . himself scoffs at the claim, evoking objections raised by Stoicism and other prior schools who denied the intrinsic moral value of animals on the grounds that they lack reason (Lagerlund 2018, p. 759). Whether his reports do justice to these beliefs in reality, they were taken up later by heresiographers like al-Shahrastānī (Walker 1991).
As an aside on al-Jāh . iz . , although he dismisses panpsychic beliefs as false, he does have a section in Kitāb al-h . ayawān called "Disputing the Slaughter and Killing of Animals" (h . ijāj fī dhabh . al-h . ayawān wa-qatlihi) (Al-Jāh . iz . 1938, pp. 427-36). 13 Addressed to a notional group of objectors who claim that Islam permits them to kill and eat animals, al-Jāh . iz . offers a rebuttal based on the principle of mercy, which, as al-Jāh . iz . puts it, "Is all of a piece [al-rah . mah shakl wāh . id]: whoever shows no mercy to the dog, also shows none to the gazelle; whoever shows none to the gazelle, shows none to the goat; 11 The passage on animals comes near the end of this section and the beginning of the next "On Classification of Rights into Unequal, Equal, and Disputed" (Fas . l fī inqisām al-h . uqūq ilā al-mutafāwit wa-l-mutasāwī wa-l-mukhtalaf fīhi) (Al-Sulamī 1991, vol. 1, p. 168;Al-Sulamī 1991, part 1, p. 225). 12 Al-Jāh . iz . ascribes a number of unorthodox opinions to these as . h .ā b al-jahālāt, by whom he also meant the Jahmiyyah, that is, followers of slain theologian Jahm ibn S . afwān (d. 745 CE). He shows them, for instance, promoting extreme voluntarism, namely a denial of inherent differences between physical objects, since the only real difference lies in God's will. Supposedly the as . h .ā b al-jahālāt held to his view against al-Naz . z .ā m's doctrine of "latency," al-kumūn, which says that traits like wetness, dryness, heat, and saltiness inhere in the objects themselves. The logical conclusion of the Jahmiyyah viewpoint, at least as recounted by al-Jāh . iz . , is that, "apart from God, nothing really exists" (Crone 2012a, p. 29). 13 Thanks to Geert Jan van Gelder for this reference. whoever shows none to the sparrow, shows none to the human boy. Small and simple things lead to bigger ones [wa-s . ighār al-umūr tu ) addī ilā kibārihā]" (ibid., p. 428).
Returning to the doctrine of metempsychosis, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries CE, this doctrine found a beachhead within millenarian movements in the Islamic East. The Nuqt . avīs or "Dottists" openly promoted a materialist-reincarnationist worldview (Amanat 1996;Babayan 2002, pp. 57-117), while the Mughal emperor Akbar the Great (d. 1605 CE) installed a cult that worshipped his person as divine and professed metempsychosis, and, by extension, vegetarianism (Moin 2012, pp. 130-69;Crone 2012b). Many occultist thinkers, physicians, and advisers to Persian-Turco-Mongol rulers believed in reincarnation but equivocated in public for fear of being tarnished as kuffār. Among their numbers were Sayyid H . usayn Akhlāt .ī (d. 1397 CE), the personal physician to Mamluk sultan al-Malik al-z .ā hir Barqūq (r. 1382-99 CE), and Akhlāt .ī 's disciples Ibn Turka (d. 1432 CE) and Badr al-Dīn of Simavna. While scholars once thought that the ideas of these men grew out of Jainism, emerging research shows that they were neo-Pythagoreans, especially since Pythagoras himself gave credit for his reincarnationist veganism to an ancient Persian sage: Zoroaster (Melvin-Koushki forthcoming, pp. 32-34). The problem of whether Hellenic or Indic currents supplied Islam with metempsychosis and related beliefs still breeds controversy (Crone 2012a, pp. 29-30).
To many thinkers, including al-Ma ( arrī, the movement of souls reeked of another strange doctrine: the equation of reality with divinity, dubbed "unity of being," wah . dat al-wujūd, by Ibn ( Arabī's disciples (Ibn ( Arabī himself never used the term, calling it instead "real being," h . aqq al-wujūd) (Chittick 2020). Strict monotheists thought that this was too close to pantheism, and, therefore, polytheism (shirk), to pay it any heed, but it rang true for Sufi devotees. Of significance to animal ethics are the pietistic stories that show Muslim holy men communing with lions, dogs, fish, and, birds, since all of these creatures share in the divine essence. 14 Many such stories are preserved in the Persian-language Tazkirat al-awliyā ) (Memoir of the Saints) by poet and mystic Farīd al-Dīn ( At . t .ā r (d. 1221 CE). There, one reads about Khorasan-born jurist Sufyān al-Thawrī (d. 778 CE) and the "compassion that he had for all of God's creatures" (az shafaqat kihū-rā būd bar khalq-i khudāy). In one anecdote, Sufyān frees a caged bird, which then visits him every night and eventually dashes itself to the ground following Sufyān's death and burial rather than live without him ( ( At . t .ā r 1905At . t .ā r -1907( At . t .ā r 1966, pp. 169-70). Ibrāhīm al-Khawwās . (d. 903 CE), a figure known for advocating "self-abandonment" (tawakkul) (Leonard Lewisohn "Tawakkul," EI2), narrates in the first person about how he rescued a lion by healing its injured paw, after which the lion returned wagging its tail, bringing along its grateful cub (bachchah-iū) and a round breadloaf (gardah) for the holy man ( ( At . t .ā r 1905At . t .ā r -1907( At . t .ā r 1966, pp. 169-70). Speaking of lions, legends about , recount that lions, dogs, and other wild beasts freely visited him, and that he would feed and take care of them. For this reason, according to ( At . t .ā r, when a Sufi disciple once asked to come see him, he cautioned, "If you're afraid of lions, then don't spend time with me (agar tu az sibā ( mī-tarsi bā man s . uh . bat madār) ( ( At . t .ā r 1905At . t .ā r -1907( At . t .ā r 1966, p. 204). Such Franciscan tales tie together a strand running throughout philosophies like Sufi animism or Turco-Persian reincarnationism, namely that animals stand as moral exemplars. One sees al-Ma ( arrī tugging at this thread to weave his own defense of animals.

Animals in Al-Ma ( arrī's Works
Throughout his career, al-Ma ( arrī looks to be a committed stalwart for animals. Many of the poems in his later collection Luzūm mā lā yalzam (Self-Imposed Necessity) plump for them unequivocally, though typically en route to condemning humans for cruelty or lack of scruple. On this idea, despite an outwardly greater focus on animals as subjects in their own right, he retains the anthropocentrism of texts that use animals to discuss good human society, like Kalīlah wa-Dimnah, translated to Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa ( , or the Al-Namir wa-l-tha ( lab (The Leopard and the Fox) of Sahl ibn Hārūn (d. 830 CE), director of the bayt al-h . ikmah and a staunch shu (ū biyyah partisan, that is, a champion of non-Arabs and especially Persians in an Arab-dominant society. 15 That al-Ma ( arrī uses animals to comment on humans brings up the question as to whether and how far one should take his interest in nonhumans at face value. In one poetic couplet, for example, al-Ma ( arrī wants above all to prosecute his own kind as base and evil. To do this, he compares them unfavorably to wild birds, who do not indulge the same cruelties as people (meter: t . awīl) (Al-Ma ( arrī 1891-1895( At . t .ā r 1905-1907 in Arabic): Tas . addaq ( alā l-t . ayri l-ghawādī bi-sharbatin/ mina l-mā ) i wa-( dud'hā ah . aqqa mina l-insī Fa-mā jinsuhā jānin ( alayka adhiyyatan/ bi-h .ā lin idhā mā khifta min dhālika l-jinsī Donate sips of water to birds, gone by morning, and count them worthier of alms than men: their kind commits you no harm at all, even as you fear it from your own Or in another poem, warning of death like so much of zuhd discourse, al-Ma ( arrī says that it is only right for fate to be silent and callous-humans themselves cannot keep from being so reticent about their grisly treatment of animals (meter: khafīf) (Al-Ma ( arrī 1891-1895Al-Bat . alyawsī 1991, p. 67): Wa-wajadtu l-zamāna a ( jama faz . z . an/ wa-jubārun fī h . ukmihā l-( ajmā )ū I found fate tongue-tied, bereft of mercy, while the dumb beast's blood goes unavenged.
If a wrongfully wounded beast remains as jubār, "unavenged, unretaliated" (Lane 1984, vol. 1, p. 377) 16 -a state of affairs for which humans are to blame, as al-Ma ( arrī seems to imply-then it faces cruelty for no reason. Why, then, should humans expect such a reason when faced with their own looming, cruel demise? That they are found, in al-Ma ( arrī's calculus, morally lacking compared to animals recalls Plutarch's imagined chat between Odysseus and Gryllus, one of the crewmen whom Circe changed into swine, and who, still in his porcine state, lists dozens of ways in which animals prove more virtuous than people-"for without command or instruction, 'unsown and unploughed,' it were, [the souls of beasts] naturally bring forth and develop such virtue as is proper in each case" (Plutarch 1927(Plutarch -2004.
In the alleged Qur )ā n parody Al-Fus .ū l wa-l-ghāyāt, at the start of the chapter rhyming in bā ) , for example, al-Ma ( arrī singles out proverbially industrious insects, like the common honeybee (al-jārisah, "buzzer") or the psyche moth bagworm (al-surfah, Psyche quadrangularis 17 ), to show that the structures they build are worthier than human-made products like wine or weapons (Al-Ma ( arrī 1938, pp. 39-40). In his chancery style guide Ih . kām s . an ( at al-kalām (Perfecting the Craft of Prose Speech), Andalusī vizier ( Abd al-Ghafūr al-Kalā (ī (d. 1148 CE) quotes animal fables that he claims are salvaged from al-Ma ( arrī's lost Kitāb al-qā ) if (Book of the Tracker). They include tales of a lion who turns to veganism, or of an ant brought close to death, and who, when its fellows fret for the sake of its soul, soothes them with talk of an eternal reward-"and this, since I never once spilled another's blood" (wa-dhālika annī lam asfik al-dam qat . t . ) (Al-Kalā (ī 1985, pp. 204-6).
The closest thing to a Ma ( arrian treatise on animal ethics are his exchange of letters with the Cairo-based Fatimid Shi ( ite missionary al-Mu ) ayyad fī l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 1078 CE) (Al-Ma ( arrī 1982, pp. 83-140;Margoliouth 1902). 18 In what one could call a public relations maneuver-a learned debate put on display to garner intellectual and spiritual converts-al-Mu ) ayyad asks al-Ma ( arrī to explain a poem in which the latter comes down against animal products of any kind, including fish, milk, and honey. 19 The real question, however, is why al-Ma ( arrī went in for the vegan life at all, since, as reviewed in the first section, mainstream Islamic though allows people to eat meat. 20 Al-Ma ( arrī's answer revolves around a hub of divine justice. Replying to al-Mu ) ayyad's charge that anyone practicing veganism tries to outdo God in mercy, since Islam condones using animal products, he hints provocatively that the God of Islamic tradition is less merciful than reason suggests. "The prophets recall, peace be upon them, that The Creator-exalted be His strength-is gracious and merciful (ra )ū f rah .ī m)." 21 However, we see evidence to the contrary: if He is merciful to the Sons of Adam, then He must also show mercy to other living beings (as . nāf al-h . ayawān), which suffer pain in the slightest thing" (Al-Ma ( arrī 1982, p. 109-12, at 110). However, God does let animals suffer, says al-Ma ( arrī, as when a lion preys on weaker flesh, or when humans steal cow calves to eat them as veal. How can one therefore credit Him with mercy? Lest al-Ma ( arrī court charges of unbelief (kufr) or atheism (ilh .ā d) for calling God's pity into question, he defends vegan practice on agnostic grounds: the question of evil in this world is what poses the true mystery (sirr khafiyy), not God's compassion (ibid., p. 105). Lacking more certainty about where evil comes from, including the evil of animal cruelty, "those who profess religion have always been anxious to avoid meat, since it cannot be obtained without harm to a living creature" (wa-lam yazal man yantasibu ilā al-dīn yarghabu fī hijrān al-luh .ū m li-annahā lā yūs . alu ilayhā illā bi-l-īlām li-h . ayawān) (ibid., p. 107). By offering his zoocentric counsels, al-Ma ( arrī departs from a more human-centered thinker like Abū H .ā mid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111 CE), who writes of the purifying effects of hunger on the human soul-including heightened spiritual "insight" (bas .ī rah)-in the section "Kitāb kasr al-shahwatayn" (On Breaking the Two Desires, i.e., overeating and sexual desire) from Ih . yā ) ( ulūm al-dīn (Winter 1995, trans., pp. 117-32). 17 Found in the grasslands and deserts of Central and Southwestern Asia, bagworms are known proverbially in Arabic for industriousness due to their oddly distinctive log cabin cocoon: as . na ( min al-surfah (craftier than a bagworm). The cocoon is often made with twigs from the saxaul tree (al-rimth) and is known colloquially as mukh . ulat al-dhīb, "the wolf's antimony jar," since it appears in the branches of far-off trees, familiar only to wolves (Ibn Manz .ū r 1999, vol. 6, p. 244-45). 18 For a fuller study of these letters with respect to veganism, see (Blankinship 2019b). 19 The complete poem can be found in Arabic at (Al-Ma ( arrī 1891-1895; and in English at (Blankinship 2019b, pp. 284-87). 20 The Qur )ā n endorses humankind's profiting from animals as a natural resource, whether of flesh and milk (e.g., 23/al-Mu ) minūn: 21-2), wool, fur, and skin (e.g., 16/al-Nah . l: 80), or prowess in hunting (e.g. 5/al-Mā ) idah: 4). 21 This verbiage comes directly from the Qur )ā n, e.g., Q 2/Al-Baqarah 143, inna llāha bi-l-nāsi la-ra )ū fun rah .ī mun ("Truly God is All-gentle with the people, All-compassionate," Arberry 1955, vol. 1, p. 46); Q 9/Al-Tawbah 128, bi-l-mu ) minīna ra )ū fun rah .ī mun ("gentle to the unbelievers, compassionate," ibid., p. 223).
Where did al-Ma ( arrī come by his beliefs? The question has bedeviled observers for centuries. Without evidence to the contrary, al-Ma ( arrī's tendency toward compassion may have been a natural one. Blind from childhood and having lost both parents before middle age, he seems deeply affected by life's tragedies, if his statements to al-Mu ) ayyad fī l-Dīn-made at the very end of al-Ma ( arrī's life-describing physical and emotional suffering are any indicator. That believing Arab-Muslim authors in many eras faced their own hardships and still did not voluntarily avoid animal products reinforces the point. In addition, due to al-Ma ( arrī's 18-month sojourn in Baghdad, many commentators single out Indo-Persian origins as an influence. However, this is less likely when one considers that al-Ma ( arrī himself attacks Hindu beliefs-especially reincarnation, of which more below-in Risālat al-ghufrān, as well as what he sees as an abhorrent practice: satī or widow burning. 22 As for pre-Islamic Persian creeds, in his first letter to al-Mu ) ayyad, al-Ma ( arrī explicitly mentions-and rebuffs-Manichaean dualism as the answer to the problem of evil and as grounds for vegetarianism, as did Augustine before him in The City of God (Al-Ma ( arrī 1982, p. 106;Augustine 1957, book 1, p. 20).
Another imaginable yet little discussed channel for vegetarian belief in medieval Islamdom was the Hellenic one. Al-Ma ( arrī lived at a time of religious ferment in Byzantium, less than a hundred miles to the northwest and which some biographers say he visited in his youth. 23 Especially conspicuous in that realm was what Dmitri Obolensky called Balkan neo-Manichaeism, flourishing from the tenth to fifteenth centuries CE and whose forerunners had been hounded as heretics under Justinian II in the seventh (Obolensky 1948, p. 27). It spanned a number of groups, such as the Paulicians, the Massalians, and the Blakhernites, but above all the Bogomils, a dualist, vegetarian sect denounced by Cosmas the Priest in the tenth century CE (not to be confused with Cosmas I or II, both subsequent patriarchs of Constantinople) (ibid., p. 104). 24 Some of this Manichaean tumult might have fueled al-Ma ( arrī's thinking, but his distinctly zoocentric approach, fixated on sparing God's creatures from suffering, parts ways with the Byzantine dualists, who based their ideas on the permanent struggle between spirit and matter and the moral superiority of the former. Thus, even if Bogomilism fired up the engine of al-Ma ( arrī's thought, he would have ultimately taken it down a different path. Still, it is clear enough that al-Ma ( arrī knew of canonized Greek medical authorities like Galen, 25 who had suggested restricting one's meat intake for better health (Al-Ma ( arrī 1982, p. 111;Margoliouth 1902, p. 319).
Given the history of building vegetarian practices atop a reincarnationist groundwork, it seems crucial to ask: did al-Ma ( arrī think that human souls migrated after death? If so, then he convincingly hid any such views. 26 In fact, judging by the poetry of Saqt . al-zand, he knew about-and dismissed as false-the doctrine of metempsychosis from an early age, maybe even before his trip to Baghdad circa 1007 CE. In Qas .ī dah Number Five, following the chronology of H . usayn et al., al-Ma ( arrī answers a poem by a certain Shi ( ite notable (sharīf ( Alawī) called Abū Ibrāhīm Mūsā ibn Ish .ā q. With memorable disdain, the line in question plays on this Abū Ibrāhīm's name in order to invalidate his belief in reincarnation (meter: wāfir) (Al-Ma ( arrī 1945, vol. 1, p. 276, line #51;mboxcitealp[vol. 3, p. 1337 . usayn et al. 1944, pp. 555-56), while Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qift .ī says he visited Latakia (Al-Qift .ī 1950, vol. 1, p. 49). Even though such details differ, the biographers who mention this episode all agree that al-Ma ( arrī traveled beyond Greater Syria in his youth, and that the trip affected his worldview. 24 In the twelfth-century Byzantine historical epic The Alexiad, at the back half of Book 14 and the middle of Book 15, Princess Anna Komnene (d. 1153 CE) exposes various dualist offshoots for the perceived threat they posed. She calls the Bogomils "a serpent lurking in its hole" and describes how, like a viper, their ideas had slithered into small towns and villages, taking hold especially among the peasants (Komnene 1969, pp. 455-63). 25 For more on Galen as a canonical source of Byzantine medicine, see (Nutton 1984). 26 Muh . ammad Salīm al -Jundī rolls out statements by al-Ma ( arrī on a number of theological positions, especially those for which he was charged with unorthodox views. (Al-Jundī 1962-1964, vol. 3, pp. 1398 [al-tanāsukh], which is an ancient belief held by the Indians [ahl al-hind]. It has also become common among a group of Shi ( ites [jamā ( ah min al-shī ( ah]. We ask God for success and protection (Al-Ma ( arrī 2013-2014 That al-Ma ( arrī puts reincarnation squarely in India belies sophisticated contemporary knowledge-above all by the Persian traveler and polymath Abū Rayh .ā n al-Bīrūnī (d. 1050 CE)-of non-Indic and especially Hellenic writings on metempsychosis (Walker 1991, pp. 220-22). 28 In addition, given the fact that al-Ma ( arrī was regularly accused of heterodox belief in "Brahmanism" (al-barhamiyyah) for his vegan lifestyle 29 ; and given the fact that he thought, as others did, that some Shi ( ites believed in reincarnation, it is remarkable that neither he nor al-Mu ) ayyad fī l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī charged each other more vehemently with such beliefs.
One might think that by snubbing these different groups, al-Ma ( arrī was just "writing between the lines," that is, concealing his unorthodox views for fear of being persecuted (Strauss 1941, p. 490). This possibility again brings up the question: how far should readers take his concern for animals at face value? However, most of the time, he is quite pleased to trumpet his thoughts, plus the fact that his disdain for Sufis, Hindus, and extremist Shi ( ites stays consistent throughout his writings. Short of equating literary discourse with reality, it is safe to assume that he in fact disavowed these ideas as he claims. In addition, as noted, the content itself-being the main way to know how he got his ideas, short of new evidence coming to light-is not enough to tell which sources inspired him. Several are possible, especially Balkan neo-Manichean groups like the Bogomils; Iranian breakaways from Zoroastrianism like the Khurramīs or neo-Mazdakīs (Babayan 2002, esp. pp. 137-54, 262-92); Indic religion as conveyed by medicine; or some blend of these. 30 But the details of his thought depart enough from any single point of supply as to rule it out as the only one. The best one can do is to orient him to other thinkers and texts, as the preceding sketch tries to do.
Perhaps the weightier influences on his thinking are lost to history. Returning again to the trip to Baghdad or the childhood stay in Byzantine lands, it is unlikely that new evidence will emerge of conversations with travelers, chance encounters with eccentric folk beliefs, and so forth. Nor should one overstate claims about the past without a basis in historical data. However, to discount the possibility that undocumented conversations or encounters made their way into al-Ma ( arrī's worldview would mean over-textualizing a past that often evades written capture. 31 As Thomas Glick says regarding Christian-Muslim cultural transfer on the Iberian peninsula, "of all the processes of acculturation, non-formal cultural diffusion is perhaps the most important" (Glick 1979, p. 152). Therefore, so too 27 As Kathryn Babayan points out, the Sufi belief in wah . dat al-wujūd-which here al-Ma ( arrī conflates with metempsychosis-was, at least in the mind of heresiographers, shared by Iranian neo-Pythagorian movements like the Nuqt . avīs. 28 Nor is this for al-Bīrūnī's lack of knowledge about the Indic tradition, reckoning by his commentary on yoga philosophical texts (Al-Bīrūnī 2020). 29 For examples of such accusations, see (Al-Jundī 1962-1964. 30 Recent research casts doubt on some of the stark lines that have been by scholars between Hellenic and Indian thought, judging from centuries of direct contact between the two (Stoneman 2020). 31 Many thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting further discussion on this point. might al-Ma ( arrī have seen, heard, or read things for which no trace remains. Perhaps he did indeed absorb Indic or Hellenic injunctions against animal harm, or, on the other hand, perhaps he happened to meet a single individual with similar ethical concerns. Together with his apparently inborn awareness of nonhuman suffering and a strongly felt sense of justice, there are unlikelier explanations than these for how al-Ma ( arrī came by his convictions.

Shocked to the Point of Compassion
As stated, the action of the S .ā hil-such as it is-unfolds as one animal after another passes by the waterwheel-bound mule (al-shāh . ij) and asks about its plight. The mule, in turn, falls on these passersby to carry a plea to the governor of Aleppo, ( Azīz al-Dawlah, since it suffers daily beatings at the hands of a "lazy day laborer" (ajīr kaslān) (Al-Ma ( arrī 1975, p. 98). This scenario already betrays a concern for animal welfare, although Pieter Smoor's judgment that the mule in fact represents al-Ma ( arrī suggests that readers should not draw neat correspondences, at least not in this section (Smoor 1981, pp. 57-61).
Instead, where one finds the thinnest veneer between literary discourse and what must be al-Ma ( arrī's actual view is the first monologue of the horse, the titular s .ā hil, "neigher" (Al-Ma ( arrī 1975, pp. 108-65). The mule begs it for help delivering a message to ( Azīz al-Dawlah by appealing to biological relations, calling the horse "brother of my mother" (yā khālī) (ibid., p. 96). This appeal by the horse rejects in typical Ma ( arrian fashion, that is, with a long list of homonyms or near homonyms-many of them animal names-that refer to different things despite sounding or looking the same, such as the clan of Dhi ) b within the Azd tribe, versus the wolf (dhi ) b) that "schemes evil plots" (yahtabilu bi-jaddin nat .ī h . in) (ibid., pp. 110-13, at p. 112). The point is that language can deceive, as when the mule calls the horse "uncle" despite there being no such relation, at least from the horse's perspective. "So don't let names dupe you," it chides the mule-"before someone observed the lightning, the sky was already there" (qabl al-shā ) im kānat al-samā ) ) (ibid., p. 113).
Then the horse goes to work on the second part of the mule's plea: the fact that it wants help from a human, ( Azīz al-Dawlah. "Don't you know that the Sons of Adam are the sovereigns of the earth? [mulūk al-ard . ] . . . As for us, we are the tribes of equus (ma (ā shir al-jabhah). Hardships [ghamarāt] are thrown upon our necks and attacks [ghārāt] are put upon our backs" (ibid., p. 115). There ensues a litany of evils inflicted upon animals by humans, a litany which, despite the horse's aim of logically proving that humans are not trustworthy, is vivid and disturbing enough that the intended shock to readers becomes its own form of argument.
For instance, time and time again, the horse reminds the mule that domesticated animals form bonds with humans, only for the humans to betray those bonds and kill them. "What about cows that till the ground? [al-muthīrāt al-kawārib]" it asks rhetorically. "Humans use them, and then they eat them!" (ibid., p. 128). When a bull's flesh is sufficiently marbled with fat (lammā shurija lah . m Abī l-Muzāh . im bi-l-nayy 32 ), it is taken to market and carved up, setting aside the erstwhile society between man and beast (ibid., p. 130). Ranchers give food to chickens not out of sympathy, but rather to dupe them into sticking their necks into a trap (al-sit . a) (ibid., p. 128-29). However, this is not all, continues the horse: wild animals (al-wah . sh al-bāhilah) suffer no less than do tame ones (al-bahā ) im al-ahliyyah). It recalls goats ascending up a mountain (al-aw (ā l al-(ā qilah), whom hunters paralyze (fa-qa ( adūhā) by shooting their haunches, then take them for food and leave their orphaned young (ghufr waqil) (ibid., p. 140). When wild jennies (al-(ā nāt) make a loud commotion (al-jarabbah), it is not enough scare off hunters from killing them (ibid., p. 134). Further, with ostriches, people will stab them and steal their eggs for food (ibid., p. 144), and so on with many different species, including 32 The word for fat, nayy, "raw" or "untouched by fire," is originally written nay ) . Traditionally, desert Arabs distinguished fat as an uncooked substance from flesh, sometimes called nad .ī j, "cooked" (Lane 1984(Lane , vol. 2, supplement, p. 2930. Abū l-Muzāh . im, or sometimes Ibn al-Muzāh . im or simply muzāh . im, "fighter," can by association mean a raging elephant or, in this context, a bull with broken horns (munkasir al-qarnayn, reading munkasir for munkar in the text) (Ibn Manz .ū r 1999, vol. 6, p. 29). rabbits, foxes, lizards, jerboas, bees, and even snakes and mice, which some sources say the Bedouin would eat (ibid. pp. 151-53).
Of the more ghoulish practices recalled by the horse, certain Bedouin tribes would supposedly waterlog their camels over ten days before a long desert journey, letting them fill their humps on the first day, then starving them of water for another eight days, and finally letting them drink again on the tenth day-as al-Ma ( arrī says, z . amma )ū al-ibl ( ishran ("they thirsted their camels for a ten-day period [eight days without water]"; Lane 1984Lane , vol. 2, p. 2103. Then, when all the water had run out and circumstances in the barren wastes grew dire, they would rip open the camel's stomach and drink the excess water (baqarū but .ū nahā fa-sharibū al-faz . z . ). 33 In the voice of the horse, al-Ma ( arrī quotes several poets who allude to this practice, at least in the horse's (and probably al-Ma ( arrī's) estimation. For example, here is line 49 from a mufad . d . aliyyah in the basīt . meter by ( Alqamah ibn ( Abadah "al-Fah . l" (fl. mid-sixth cen. CE) (Al-D . abbī 1921, vol. 1, p. 818, poem #120;vol. 2, p. 337): Wa-qad us .ā h . ibu aqwāman t . a (ā muhumū khud . ru l-mazādi wa-lah . mun fīhi tanshīmū And time was that I went around with a people 34 whose diet is the dark-hued water of provision bags, and rank, fetid meat. Most commentators, 35 including al-Anbārī (ibid.), understand the phrase khud . ru l-mazādī to mean either water pouches, normally made of goatskin, in which the water is covered by algae, or else stomachs (kurūsh) removed from animals and used as water bladders. Regarding the strange color, Ibn Manz .ū r explains that "the water has remained a long time in the waterskins and thus gone green/darkened 36 with age" (inna l-mā ) baqiyat fi l-adāwī fa-khd . arrat min al-qidam) (Ibn Manz .ū r 1999, vol. 14, p. 152). The stomachs may also contain meat, as Ibn Qutaybah says about the word tanshīm ("rotting," "putrefaction"): "Whenever the desert Arabs went military campaigns and crossed long distances, they would carve up meat and stow it in an animal's stomach [used as a provision bag]; and after many days, the meat would go bad, and this is [the meaning of] 'its rotting'" (kānū idhā ghazaw wa-sāfarū qat . a (ū l-lah . m fa-ja ( alūhu fī kirsh fa-idhā atā ( alayhi ayyām taghayyara fa-dhālika tanshīmuh) (Ibn Qutaybah 1953, vol., 3, pp. 381-82;Al-Bat . alyawsī 2008, vol. 1, p. 387). However, the horse in al-Ma ( arrī's story quotes ( Alqamah's line because it thinks-or it wants readers to think-that it is about slaughtering camels in order to consume their stomach content. This demonstrates al-Ma ( arrī's method of creatively reinterpreting well-known passages to fit his pacifist, zoocentric message, although at least one commentator, al-Akhfash al-As . ghar, does support al-Ma ( arrī's understanding of the line by ( Alqamah (Al-Akhfash 1999, p. 643). 37 More on such interpretive somersaults by al-Ma ( arrī in the next section. 33 In literature, disemboweling and the like seems emblematic of a particularly gruesome death. In his Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded (Hazz al-quh .ū f bi-sharh . qas .ī d Abī Shādūf ), seventeenth-century Egyptian author Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī (d. ca. 1700 CE) includes an anecdote about a wolf cub raised on the milk of a ewe, which it then eviscerates (Al-Shirbīnī 2016, vol. 1, pp. 40-41); and about a hyena raised by a Bedouin man, whose stomach the hyena later rips open (ibid.). Apart from highlighting the starkness of the violence, these stories are meant as evidence that humans, like animals, "will not escape their inborn nature" (lā yakhruju al-insān min t . ab ( ihi, ibid., pp. 38-39). 34 There is a variant reading of the first hemistich: Wa-qad us .ā h . ibu fityānan t . a (ā muhumu, "and time was that I went with young warriors [geared for raiding] whose food was" etc. 35 Many thanks to Geert Jan van Gelder for checking my understanding of this line, and for suggesting the various references that appear in this paragraph. 36 Khud . r can mean green, but also brown or black in classical Arabic-presumably this refers to how the water was colored by the dark contents of their stomachs, but possibly also bile (this seems less likely). 37 "Whenever the desert Arabs rode through a barren wasteland, i.e. one without moisture, they would give water to a sturdy camel, then pierce its snout [to bind it] so that it could not chew its cud. Then, when thirst overtook them, they would puncture the camel's upper chest and drink whatever water was in its stomach. The name of that water is faz . z . , 'pressed-out'" (kānū idhā rakibū mafāzatan jardā ) , ay lā mā ) fīhā, arwaw ba (ī ran thumma jadhdhū mashāfirahu li-allā yajtarr, fa-in ajhadahum al-( at . ash nah . arūhu wa-sharibū mā fī jawfihī min al-mā ) , wa-ism dhālika l-mā ) al-faz . z . ).
Going further, the horse character says that the Bedouin also used to open the veins of camels and drink their blood, 38 and that for the truly destitute, dead camel carrion offered relief from hunger. Again, poetry serves as proof of such horrors, with anonymous lines quoted in rajaz meter and with a tinge of black humor (Al-Ma ( arrī 1975, p. 125): Inna l-sa (ī da man yamūtu jamaluh ya ) kulu lah . man wa-yaqillu ( amaluh Happy is he whose camel dies, so he eats the meat, saves himself the work! 39 The horse goes on to describe how humans wear out their camels with overmuch walking, or how, as in a poem attributed-incorrectly 40 -to Juwayriyah ibn Asmā ) al-Fazārī, travelers slaughter their riding camels so that an attacking wolf will eat them instead of the humans (ibid., p. 126).
This gallery of crimes echoes an earlier text to which al-Ma ( arrī's S .ā hil might owe a debt, however indirectly, in its display of human cruelty for the sake of persuading readers: The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn, by the Brethren of Purity. Throughout the trial, the spokesman of the beasts (za (ī m al-bahā ) im) is in fact a mule (baghl), making for a conspicuous link between this work and al-Ma ( arrī's. 41 The mule of the Brethren of Purity bemoans how humans have treated nonhumans from the earliest days (fī bad ) al-khalq), driving them from their homes and enthralling them as beasts of burden (Ikhwān 1957, vol. 2, pp. 203-4;Goodman and McGregor 2009, pp. 99-100). Then, in the section "On the Animals' Complaint of Oppression by Humans" (Fī bayān shakāwat al-h . ayawān min jawr al-ins), readers find a long list of crimes that indict humans on their face.
"As for feeding and watering us," charges the mule in Goodman and McGregor's English, "these things are not done out of kindness or compassion, as he [the human spokesman] claims, but for fear lest we die and lest they lose their investment in us and the benefits they take from us" (bal makhāfatan an nahlika fa-yakhsarū athmānanā wa-tafūtahum al-manāfi ( minnā) (Ikhwān 1957, vol. 2, p. 215;Goodman and McGregor 2009, p. 116). Such alleged self-interest flouts the counsels of an author like Ibn ( Abd al-Salām to care for animals even when they give no direct benefit. Then, as if on cue, other animals take up the mule's mantle and chime in with their own objections. The ass (h . imār) complains of being overburdened with bricks; the ox (thawr) protests being chained to human waterwheels and 38 In his edition of Ibn al-Kalbī's Kitāb al-as . nām (Book of Idols), Ah . mad Zakī Bāshā reproduces a marginal note from the unique Egyptian National Archives manuscript (Ibn al-Kalbī 1995, p. 3) explaining the phrase inna llāha arāh . akum min al-sajjah wa-l-bajjah, "God has given you respite [i.e. freed you] from the pagan god Sajjah and the practice of blooddrinking." The note glosses al-sajjah as "an idol once worshipped alongside Allāh" (s . anam kān yu ( bad min dūn Allāh), and al-bajjah as "phlebotomized blood which the desert Arabs would consume in times of crisis" (al-fas .ī d alladhī kānat al-( arab ta ) kulu fī l-azmah). In his Kitāb al-bukhalā ) (Book of Misers), al-Jāh . iz . mentions majdūh . , a Bedouin "emergency dish" made of blood mixed with other things (Al-Jāh . iz . 1948, pp. 216, 218;Al-Jāh . iz . 1997, trans. Serjeant, pp. 195, 197;Ibn Durayd 1987-1988). Thanks to Geert Jan van Gelder for the references in al-Jāh . iz . and Ibn Durayd. Setting aside the question of historicity, such references show that, in the Arab popular imagination, opening the veins of mounts and pack animals was considered a standard tactic of Bedouin desert survival. 39 Also appearing in the "Kitāb al-t . a (ā m" (Book of eats) of Ibn Qutaybah's ( Uyūn al-akhbār (Book of Choice Accounts) (Ibn Qutaybah 1996, vol. 3, p. 213). 40 There is a confusion, as noted in (Ullmann 1981, p. 88, note 84), with the well-known poet Asmā ) ibn Khārijah al-Fazārī (on whom see e.g., Sezgin 1974e.g., Sezgin -1995; Bint al- Shāt . i ) , editor of the S .ā hil, did not notice this. Perhaps al-Ma ( arrī misremembered; Ullmann thinks it is due to copyists. Ullmann gives all eighteen lines in transliteration, translation, and with extensive commentary (Ullmann 1981, pp. 87-96). The lines are from a poem by Asmā ) ibn Khārijah ( Ah . mad and Hārūn 1955, pp. 48-52). Many thanks to Geert Jan van Gelder for pointing out the misattribution and recommending these sources. 41 Other talking mules in Arabic literature include the donkey-shaped jinn that appear in the fourth and final section of Ibn Shuhayd al-Andalusī's Risālat al-Tawābi ( wa-l-zawābi ( (The Treatise of following spirits and whirling demons) (Al-Andalusī 1967, "H . ayawān al-jinn," pp. 147-52), and in the Thousand and One Nights (Mahdi 1984(Mahdi -1994, the deceitful donkey of "H . ikāyat al-h . imār wa-l-thawr" (The Tale of the donkey and the ox) (Thousand and One Nights, Mahdi 1984Mahdi -1994Heller-Roazen 2010, pp. 13-15). millstones (dawālībihim wa-arh . iyatihim); the ram (kabsh) resists having its kids stolen so that humans can eat them and steal their milk; the horse (faras) denounces being bridled and bitted; the rabbit (arnab) laments being hunted by dogs; and on and on. As in the S .ā hil, such testimonies pile up with nearly physical force, pressing readers into the ironic position of siding with nonhumans against their own kind.
In the end, however, the pleas fall short of convincing the jinn king, who tosses out the animals' case. To account for the discrepancy between this result and the tale's overall egalitarian tenor, Tlili pits the Brethren's hierarchical worldview, which triumphs in the end, against an even-handed view of animals deriving from the Qur )ā n (Tlili 2014). Of course, the result of the trial may be more complicated than this; the humans emerge victorious simply because a tiny number of them are saints, which leaves untouched the accusation that the vast majority of humans are worse than animals. 42 Meanwhile, al-Ma ( arrī himself sides with his own horse character's verdict, if one gauges from the short, token rebuttal offered by the mule. It spends barely two edited pages-in patent contrast to its conversation partner's lengthy descant-quashing the horse's claims and pointing out human charity (ih . sān) before moving to the issue of whether some lines of poetry count as rajaz or not (Al-Ma ( arrī 1975, pp. 173-75). While no explicit position is advanced, if one reads between the lines, there are differences of length, detail, and enthusiasm between the horse's talk and that of the mule that serve to confirm al-Ma ( arrī's support for nonhuman justice.

From Poetic Myth to Zoocentric Reality
As the foregoing shows, literary discourse gets pressed into the service of arguments pro and contra during the horse's monologue, as it does throughout Risālat al-S .ā hil wa-l-shāh . ij. Although a tried and true rhetorical move in classical Arabic-one which would be familiar even in the hypothetical text world of the S .ā hil, a text world for which one assumes a basis in culturally Islamicate discursive genres-using poetry and maxims (amthāl) for historical, sociocultural, or rhetorical evidence is something that the horse still feels it needs to justify. "All of this represents more than enough desert Arab poetry to establish proofs [of my point]," it says defensively (Al-Ma ( arrī 1975, pp. 134-35). "I only produce it here like a bearer of news showing you the sun [kamā yushīru al-muh . addith ilā Umm Shamlah 43 ], or the night rider showing you the moon's halo" [wa-yurīka rākibu laylihi al-sāhirah]-in other words, to show the mule, plus any eavesdroppers, 44 the source of its own ideas and the trajectory of its thought.
In particular, pre-and early Islamic hunting poetry enters the mix, especially Hudhalī verse, with its "depictions of animals, especially onagers and oryx, that are killed by hunters as representatives of the ineluctability of fate" (Miller 2016, p. 118). At one point, al-Ma ( arrī's horse brings out nine lines of a 44-line poem by Sā ( idah ibn Ju ) ayyah, 45 a mukhad . ram-a poet whose life spanned before and after the coming of Islam-who, along with his rāwī (transmitter and pupil) Abū Dhu ) ayb Khuwaylid ibn Khālid (d. ca. 649 CE), also a mukhad . ram, form a distinctive school among the Hudhalīs; according to Nathaniel Miller, they share common characteristics "in the depictions of rain storms, honey-collectors, vocabulary and stylistic devices like repetition" (ibid., p. 312; see also pp. 377-79, 389-92). 42 Thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers for pointing this out. 43 Al-muh . addith normally carries the technical meaning of a h . adīth transmitter. So it may here too, although the full Arabic statement is general enough not to mark it either way. Umm Shamlah is a nickname for the sun; it can also mean wine or, more generally, the world and its fleeting joys, "so called because compassing [shamlah] the intellect of a man and concealing it" (Lane 1984(Lane , vol. 1, p. 1610 In discourse analysis, sociologist Erving Goffman is credited with the distinction between "overhearers," i.e. those who are privy-or potentially privy-to a conversation not directly "intended" for them, and "ratified participants," namely those for whom a conversation is intended, whether or not they happen to be listening (Goffman 1981, pp. 124-59). Whatever one thinks about an author's ability to imagine future readers, if one assumes that there are readers whom the author has not thought of, but who may in fact one day read his works, then they could be described as overhearers. 45 For more on this poet, see (Al-Sukkarī 1965, vol. 3, pp. 1095.
The ibex fled the high mountain ridge, then fell forward onto the bare bolt, which pierced its gut through to the ribs.
In these lines, later Arabic commentators saw the human-centered fatalism so familiar to pre-Islamic verse. Even the pre-Islamic and mukhad . ram poets themselves felt this way, a fact that can be discerned from the case of Abu Dhu ) ayb, the pupil of Sā ( idah, who expanded his mentor's themes into the single most celebrated Hudhalī poem: an elegy to his five sons who died of plague within a single year, and in which the tragic abruptness of their fate is likened to wild asses (jawn, "humpbacked," and jadā ) id, "plump [she-asses]") killed by a hunter's bow and arrow; a lone oryx (shabab) attacked by hounds; and two champion warriors (sing. kamiyy, pl. kumāt) who slay each other in battle (Jones 2011, pp. 493-524).
customary place of animals in poetry. Jaroslav Stetkevych writes that the journeying poet's she-camel (nāqah), along with the oryx (shabab or mahā) or onager ( ( ayr or fara ) ) to which it is often compared, assumes a legendary, unicorn-like quality, comparable to the curios of ( ajā ) ib and nawādir literature, since all three creatures appear by epithet more than by name (Stetkevych 2002;Bauer 1992, vol. 1, pp. 35-38). One should not overstate the point about myth, since camels, oryx, and onagers still existed when the early ( Abbāsids wrote their commentaries, unlike the mythical geography of place names or topographical features common to pre-Islamic poetry. However, it is an intriguing conceptual foil al-Ma ( arrī's approach, in which animals begin as symbols for human fate, only to wind up as real, pitiable beings. In fact, not just poetry but also popular sayings (amthāl) become zoocentrized in the S .ā hil. Sometimes they show up as proof of human cruelty, as for instance when the horse reproduces rajaz poetry "on urging [people] to eat spiny-tailed lizard [genus: Uromastyx]" (fī l-h . athth ( alā akl al-d . abb) (Al-Ma ( arrī 1975, p. 150), since lizard gut fat is a proverbial Bedouin delicacy: At . (  Taken as a maxim, these lines mean, "be generous to others," but the horse turns them-ironically-into a reason to mistrust others. Other times, popular amthāl serve as plot points, like the expression "more deceptive than a dove" (akdhab min fākhitah), which comes up as the mule and horse debate whether to let the dove character, al-fākhitah, convey the mule's message (ibid., p. 211). Earlier in the story, the mule had also cited poetic description of horses as noble creatures, in order to flatter the horse character (al-s .ā hil) and prove its competence to carry a message to ( Azīz al-Dawlah' (ibid., p. 156-57). Most of the time, al-Ma ( arrī is playful and keeps his eye on literary effects when he shifts the focus of poetry and amthāl to the animals themselves. However, if one assumes that he is being earnest, especially when he tries to prove animal agency, then he ignores another writer's advice from two hundred years earlier about equating allegory with reality. In the Kitāb al-H . ayawān, al-Jāh . iz . had urged readers to mark off proverbs referring to the natural faculties of animals, e.g., "stupider than a bustard" (ah . maq min h . ubārā), from proverbs that figuratively treat animals as if morally responsible, such as "more deceptive than a dove." Al-Jāh . iz . warns against interpreting the second type of proverb literally, thereby confusing human and animal status, since only humans have reason and thus moral agency (Miller 2017, pp. 105-7). Any claims to the contrary, reasons al-Jāh . iz . , look like the panpsychic beliefs of the as . h .ā b al-jahālāt mentioned above.
The prospect of al-Ma ( arrī taking things too literally, at least considering what others say about literary allegory, introduces a sweet irony. Here is a man who constantly resorts to non-literalism-allusions, riddles, double entendre, and obscure meanings for everyday words-to dupe readers into critical self-reflection. Granted, by zoocentrizing the Arabic written tradition, he offers an exceptional way to understand that tradition, even out of a Midas-like yearning to make everything he touches into a pacifist, vegan cautionary tale. Yet at the same time, this method tries to bend the meaning of certain texts to suit his needs, in a way that many commentators would not support. Furthermore, his approach equates literary discourse with historical reality, a tactic that al-Ma ( arrī dismisses out of hand whenever readers take his dubious statements at face value, or, as seen previously in Risālat al-ghufrān, when readers buy into overly literal visions of the afterlife. However, he seems more sanguine to do it himself, at least when it affirms God's justice for nonhuman beings. 52 Also found in (Tha ( lab 1960, vol. 2, p. 506;Al-Ābī 1980Al-Ābī -1991Al-Tawh .ī dī 1988, vol. 6, p. 162, quoting Ibn al-( Amīd; Al-Maydānī 1959, vol. 1, p. 431, no. 2271). Ironically, the uromastyx lizard appears again in the S .ā hil-though only in passing-as "judge of all the animals" (qād .ī al-bahā ) im) (Al-Ma ( arrī 1975, p. 214).
These perplexing chinks in al-Ma ( arrī's armor could be a sign of anthropocentrism masquerading as animal ethics. Perhaps, as with texts like Kalīla wa-Dimnah or the letters of the Ikhwān al-S . afā ) nonhuman creatures stand for human behavior whether good or ill. However, from another viewpoint, the fact of self-contradiction speaks not to insincerity but instead to an active mind working through ethical quandaries. This point recalls the words of James Montgomery on al-Jāh . iz . , who, appearing at times to contradict himself, exhibits from another perspective a nimble intellect at work on the difficulties of large-scale thought: "As with other great systematizers such as Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine or Montaigne, the integrity of the system is at its most vibrant when evidence of its development is most conspicuous" (Montgomery 2006, p. 21). Seen in this way, irreconcilable points about al-Ma ( arrī speak to his deeply held concern for animals, which no amount of literary equivocation or apparent anthropocentrism could keep hidden.
Funding: This research received no external funding.