Page 32 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

22
aD Arabian Studies IV
thererare LtTwoded 6 ?9?’1 am inclined * *«

7 ^t¥.t(Whb/W-mr/’ImClh/’mhhw/'
I [It]/thy ‘z/b'm/’s'm/dmz Vwwe
° r/bythm w/blly/s'd tm/s3qt/btrm
hat ^ ^..R)h0d,0kana^is' ‘weil ’LMQH begabt und geschenkt
nat seine Magde, die von THY'Z, durch einen Mann, der gekom-
, ^ar u.n~ ^rem Haus in der sechsten Nacht viel Beunruhigung
v e rangnis) verursacht hat’. An objection to this is that it contains
no statement of what the deity ‘gave and bestowed on His
handmaids ; and at the same time, the rendering of the last two
words as ‘viel Beunruhigung’ is unconvincing. We should rather
take them as the direct object of whb/whmr. Now, of all favours
which a woman seeks from the deity, by far the commonest in our
texts and the most likely is the gift of children; and it is in this
sphere of meaning that we should, initially, seek an interpretation.
This would lead to associating s3qt with Ar. wasaqat ‘she
conceived’, and btrm with Ar. batraVmabturah ‘childless woman’.
The favour which the deity bestowed was ‘the conception of a
(hitherto) childless woman’. This was achieved ‘by means of a man
who came and wgr their family on the sixth night’, wgr is a hapax
so far as ESA is concerned,5 but clearly some term implying sexual
intercourse is required. One possibility is that it may be a
metathesis for jawara. In Bedouin language, jarah was a polite term
for a wife, and it could be suggested that the man ‘married into
their family’ is a polite way of saying that he had sexual inter­
course.
The most striking feature here is that the man is not named, and
that the act of wgr took place only five days after his arrival; from
which I would conclude that he was a passing stranger, and t^ at
the marriage was of a temporary character, like the Islamic mutah.
No social anthropologist will find it surprising that a c i ess
woman should seek to get offspring by a temporary mating m
such a person: the advantage of choosing a transient for e ro e
genitor is that he would not be in a position to claim the ng
pater over any child ultimately born, who would remain a me
of the mother’s family.
Part (c) runs:
9 [..] yqr’nhm w/khmy/'krws2 ’m/hyt
10 [$]Im tn/wb ‘dh w/fh brrw/lgtzfr
II [n/]b ‘m/’s'n/wnfq/bnh w/w$lm tn/
12 [. .]l/lhmw/wr’/kbh’t/hV’ttn/