Note 223 — Chapter IV · NOMADISM AND AGRICULTURE.

This satirical reproach of the Bedâwî often occurs, e.g. sometimes in the Romance of ʿAntar in passages which are not accessible to me at the present moment. We meet with it also in the Persian king Yezdegird’s satire on the Arabs (Chroniques de Tabari, transl. by Zotenberg, III. 387). Later also, in Ibn Baṭûṭâ, Voyages, III. 282, where the Indian Prince describes his Beduin brother-in-law Seif al-Dîn Ġada, who had at first charmed him, but afterwards been disgraced for his want of manners, by the epithet mûsh châr, i.e. ‘field-rat-eater;’ ‘for,’ adds the traveller, ‘the Arabs of the Desert eat field-rats.’ See also Aġânî, III. 33, l. 4 from below, where Bashshâr b. Burd accuses a Bedâwî of hunting mice (ṣeydu faʿrin).