🌟 Hunting in Paradise with Adi ibn Zayd [3]: Interactions with the Heavenly Fauna.

Our Protagonist & Adi have encounters with the Animals of Heaven as they set out to Hunt.

✨ The Story Continues:

Adi, instead of caring about lexical complexities and trivialities of poetry, instead asks for Ibn Qarih to join him in riding and hunting in the mounds of Paradise.

“Now, would you like us to mount two horses of Paradise and to drive them toward herds of wild cows, strings of ostriches, flocks of gazelles, and droves of onagers? For hunting is a pleasure for which I surely have raised your appetite!” Adi says to ibn Qarih (referring to the Qasida he had recited),

“But I”, replies Ibn Qarih, “I am a man of pen, and I have never been a horseman. I am not a man of ostentation and hype.”

“I have come to visit you at your place to congratulate you on having been saved from Hell, you who, through the Merciful One’s pardon, are now blessed and well! I do not want to take the risk of mounting a noble steed that is brisk, who has fed on pastures paradisiacal and has turned wild and demoniacal!”

“Nothing would save me if I ride such a ride. I am like the one who said this verse.” (referring to the following verse)

Lam yarkabū al-khayla illā baʿda mā kabirū || fahum thiqālun ʿalā aknāfi-hā ʿunuf

They never rode horses until they were old;
now they sit heavily, clumsily on their steeds’ sides.

“I may suffer the same fate as by the husband of Queen Mutajarrida¹, when he got on a horse riding to al-Yaḥmūm: doing what one is not wont to do leads to one’s doom.

Son of Zuhayr, he broke his neck when he fell from the coarse horse Dhū l-Mayr². Your own son too, ʿAlqamah, came to grief in the Fleeting World when, hunting he went for a ride, and met a fate deadly to him”…

“Perhaps the flying horse would throw me on to some of the Chrysolite and Emerald rocks and break my arm or leg, I may become a laughing stock to the People of Paradise!” Remarks Ibn Qarih.

Adī smiles. “Come now! Don’t you know that of accidents in Paradise one need have no fear, and that mishaps never happen to those that dwell here!”

So both of them mounted two fleet coursers from among the horses of Paradise. If either were compared with all the empires of the Fleeting World, from the first to the last, it would outweigh them and be more valuable.

Ibn Qarih sees a herd that grazes on the meadows of Paradise, and he aims his javelin (short spear) toward a flat-nosed, long-tailed oryx bull, who there did graze for long nights and days. When there is but a mere nail’s length between it and the spear point, the bull says, “Stop! God have mercy upon you! I am not one of the wild beasts created by God, praised be He, those that never existed in the Transitory World. But I lived in the abode of delusion; while I was searching pasture grounds in some wasteland or other, a caravan of believers came past. Their provisions had run out, so they killed me. They survived their journey because of me, and therefore God (exalted be His word) gave me compensation by making me dwell in Eternity.”

Thus our Ibn Qarih then spares him. He then at a wild ass aims his spear, from which he has nothing to fear. However, when the tip of the spear is no more than a fingertip away from it, the Ass says, “Stop, servant of God! For God has blessed me and saved me from harm. That was because once a hunter hunted me with a scythe; it was my skin that he was keen to make his prize. He sold it in a certain town, where somebody cut the skin down, to make a bucket for a waterwheel, which many an ailing person with its water did heal. With it, pious people performed their ablutions. So the blessings of all these encompassed me and I entered the Garden, where I subsist without any reckoning.”

Ibn Qarih then says, “You ought to distinguish yourself, for those of you that have lived in the Perishable World ought not to mix with the beasts of the Garden.” to which the wild ass then replies, “You have given us good advice, like a kind friend. We shall do as you tell us!”.

[Lets understand this classical verse further & learn Arabic using this couplet!]

🟢 Understanding The Arabic Words in Context of The Verse:

Couplet:
لَم يَرْكَبُوا الْخَيْلَ إِلَّا بَعْدَ ما كَبِرُوا
فَهُمْ ثِقَالٌ عَلَى أَكْنافِهَا عُنُفُ

💎 Meanings:

—> لَم : Negation particle (did not
—> يَرْكَبُوا : They ride (verb: past jussive due to lam)
—> الْخَيْلَ : The horses (collective noun, accusative)
—> إِلَّا : Except (exclusion particle)
—> بَعْدَ : After
—> ما : Temporal particle ("after that")
—> كَبِرُوا : They grew old (verb: perfect, 3rd person plural)

—> فَهُمْ : So they (emphatic subject pronoun + conjunction)
—> ثِقَالٌ : Heavy ones, burdensome
—>عَلَى : Upon
—> أَكْنافِهَا : Its sides (aknāf = flanks; hā = of the horse)
—> عُنُفُ : Rough, violent, harsh (plural or collective adjective)

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🔵 Intricacies of the Verse:

Clearly, this verse is alot more than just about horse riding. The verse itself mocks a group of people (implicitly the poet’s rivals or a satirized class of latecomers to virtue or valor) who "did not ride horses except after they had grown old." The metaphor is clear: these are individuals who delayed their pursuit of nobility, chivalry, and the martial life until a time when vigor had waned and the grace of youthful discipline was long past.

The second hemistich expands the ridicule: "so they are burdensome upon its sides, harsh riders." The use of "ʿunuf" (violent, rude, rough) and "thiqāl" (burdensome, heavy) further paints them as unfit for the life they’ve awkwardly assumed. This is not just a physical comment, it's a critique of their pretension: mounting noble pursuits when they are neither ready nor worthy.

On the literary level, this verse resonates with a long tradition of ḥikmah (moralizing satire) in Arabic poetry, where a person’s deeds are evaluated against the ideals of murūʾah³ (manliness/virtue). The use of antithesis (young riders vs. old, heavy, inelegant ones), irony, and tactile imagery (the poor horse groaning under unsuitable riders) is all elegantly compressed in this verse.

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🔘 Roots of words and Their Classical Usages:

🌟 Forthcoming:

Follows this is a conversation with the next poet Abu Dhuayb al Hudhali, the hunting scene continues and we run into our next poet. Conversation ensues and this verse comes up, which we shall discuss in our next post.

Footnotes:

1. Al-Mutajarridah ("The Disrobed One") was the wife of al-Nuʿmān III ibn al-Mundhir, the last Lakhmid king of al-Ḥīrah (late 6th c. CE). The famed poet al-Nābighah al-Dhubyānī praised her beauty in a line so sensual (describing her breast as like a polished mirror) that it nearly cost him his life, as the king suspected an affair. Al-Nābighah then fled to the Ghassānids!

2. Dhū l-Mayr (ذو المَيْر) was a legendary pre-Islamic warhorse. There are variant attributions in early sources, but some associate Dhū l-Mayr with al-Shanfarā, the legendary ṣuʿlūk (brigand-poet), or other famous raiders of the late Jāhilī period. Here Ibn Qarih attributes it to the horse son of Zuhayr was on when he had his accident.

3. In pre-Islamic murūʾah, learning to ride in youth was foundational. Failing to do so marked one as unworthy or non-aristocratic.

Warrior-poet and Uncle of the famous Imruʾ al-Qays, al-Muḥalhil is said to have raised his nephew in the arts of murūʾah; making him memorize tribal genealogies, master the sword, and perfect his poetic meter. Imruʾ al-Qays’ later fall into debauchery was often framed as a tragic failure of murūʾah, despite his literary brilliance.

Murūʾah came to be inculcated later with Islamic futuwwa. Ibn al-Qayyim even considered murūʾah essential for spiritual elevation, considering it essential in the “ladder of sainthood” (darajāt al-sulūk).