Page 150 - Arabian Studies (II)

142 Arabian Studies II

57. Kushajim,Masayid, \31\Bayzarah, 145. For a comparison of the parts of
the body of the saluki and the horse, cf. Fig. 2 and Barazl,./tfwfc/, 17.
58. Mrs Lesley Rigby kindly drew our attention to the English translation of
this poem, and it has not been possible to consult the original Arabic. It is
described as a ‘classic poem’ written by Salim Abdulla Haj (Salim ‘Abdallah
y5jj?) in 1860 for the then ruler of Baljrayn; cf. Danah al-Khalifa, Living
Treasures of Bahrain, Bahrain, 1972, 48.
59. Dickson, Arab, 375, lists the following colours seen by him in Kuwait:
fawn, reddy brown, black, pale fawn. Jahiz, Hayawan, II, 78, says the best
hounds are those the colour of the lion; redness and being spotted he claims to
be a defect. On the same page he says the best salukis for hunting are the whites.
In Hayawan, I, 262, he reminds his readers of the prescriptions of the hadTth
literature that the black dog should be killed. We can nowhere trace such a direct
injunction, though the expression ‘the black dog is a devil [shaytan] ’ occurs in a
number of hadTth works. Cf. A. J. Wensinck, J. P. Mensing, J. Brugman,
Concordance et Indices de la Tradition Musultnane, Leiden, 1967, VI, 52.
60. Cf. E. Daumas, The Ways of the Desert (trans. S. M. Ohlendorf), Texas,
1971, 70, ‘... given liberally of a pate made of milk and dates’; Jahiz, Hayawan,
II, 48, describes a strange diet for the saluki of dried bread whose water is
covered by oil and fed with it; this produces a strong runner! He adds the recipe
for fattening up a hound: a cooked head, trotters, unskinned though boned,
together with a bowl of clarified butter (samn), this to be given two or three
times.
61. Cf. W. Thesiger, Arabian Sands, Penguin Books, 1959, 284, who writes
of a saluki dog too young to catch fully grown hares, though he caught the
occasional leveret. The saluki bitch of one of the present writers (Plate 5)
caught a fully grown brown hare, a larger animal than its Arabian counterpart,
when just less than nine months old, though she was not able to make a clean
kill.
62. E.g. Daumas, Desert, 69, ‘at three to four months’! Mercier, Chasse, 69;
Ash, Dogs, I, 195; Waters, Saluki, 35.
63. Cf. J. G. Mavrogordato, A Hawk for the Bush, Newton, Massachusetts,
1960,39.
64. See above, Legal problems.
65. It is interesting to note that our informants did not consider the saluki in
any way difficult to control and recall; nor was he aware that the saluki is far
more independent than his European cousins in the gazehound family. The only
written source to comment on this matter is Mercier, Chasse, 68, ‘... a peine
domestique, tres independant, tres sauvage....’ It seems to us, however, that the
i i
1 j unlimited freedom accorded to the saluki in the desert areas of the Peninsula
renders him more receptive to control by humans.
66. J. D. Lunt, ‘The Saluki of the Desert’, Country Life, 8 March 1956, 419.
. 67. Other remarks of interest concerning the care and training of the saluki
are as follows: Waters, Saluki, 36, on the authority of an observer of a number
of gazelle hunts in the Peninsula, reports that the salukis were ‘in the charge of a
specific family of the tribe, whose duties were handed down from generation to
generation, the family being responsible for their classified breeding, rearing,