Page 121 - Arabian Studies (II)

Hunting Techniques and Practices in the Arabian Peninsula 113

bedouin drift towards a settled life, the skills and techniques
developed by them are forgotten, only to be preserved by a few
enthusiasts. We fear that in our lifetime we shall see all this pass into
history.
Our aim is, therefore, to describe plainly what we have seen,
practiced and often discussed in both tent and university. However,
mention must be made at this juncture of the well developed genre
of hunting literature — from pre-Islamic times involving the hound
and from the Middle Ages with both hawk and hound. Where they
describe the intricacies of the hunt and where they have seemed to us
of value and interest, reference has been made to them.
The connection between European and Oriental hawking is still a
subject on which must work remains to be done. The period of the
Crusades was obviously one in which ideas and techniques were
exchanged. The descriptions of hawking in the Kitab al-Ttibar3 of
Usamah b. Munqidh have more in common with those in De Arte
Venandi cum Avibus4 of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen than with any
hawking in the Peninsula. The genius of the Persian austringers Finds
its complement in China and not in Arabia. There, beyond the sown
and the reach of foreign influence, a tradition of hawking has been
developed which has survived other traditions in its widespread
practice and popularity. It is the hunting techniques of the Arabian
bedouin with hawk and hound which are the subject of this paper.
So extensively are the Arabic treatises on hawking inspired with
the spirit of adab rather than bddiyah that they form a separate
subject. When Vire5 writes of trained kites and falcons flown at
sparrows, he is relaying to us the imaginings of the medieval scribe
which are of sociological, but no practical, significance.
If the reader Finds our account jejune, it is because we have
preferred to deal in statement rather than claim, in the practical
rather than the picturesque views of the desert already expressed by
Dickson,6 Musil,7 Raswan8 and, in a more choleric vein, by
Doughty.9
Throughout the section on hawking the terms hawk and falcon
have been used indiscriminately. To the purist the falcon is the
female peregrine and the hawk a goshawk or sparrowhawk, but hawk
has become among English falconers a useful omnibus word as has
tayr among the bedouin. English technical terms have been used
throughout in the interests of brevity and precision. Glosses and the
equivalent Arabic words are listed together for easy reference. Again
we must differ from Vire1 0 in our belief that the Arab falconer does
not use a technical terminology or jargon. There are words for
describing practices or objects peculiar to hawking, but not special