Page 87 - Arabian Studies (I)

The Cultivation of Cereals in Mediaeval Yemen 73
possibly because of its deep roots. Though it is a great nuisance it is good fodder
i'alaf) for beasts. Dr Said H. Mawly thinks wabal looks like Cynodon dactylon,
and another weed zibrah he thought must be Cyperus rotundas, but as the
samples I sent him were without inflorcsence he could not be certain. Zibrah he
thought is a sedge not a grass, and both weeds serious and difficult to control.
The action of getting rid of wabal isyuwabbil-uh. MM., 40a, says of it, ‘It is the
firmly rooted (mutaassil) grass which spreads (yisrah) in the ground and remains
there without its roots leaving, and it is the greatest pest (afah) to all
crops/cereals (zar').'
197. I.e. without a space between the first scatter-sowing and the next.
198. I.e. from a single channel (saqiyah).
199. The sharun knife (infra p. 57) generally used in all south Arabia and
even found in pre-lslamic excavations at Huqqah. If the lucerne be not cut at
ground level it rots.
200. Reading thus from MM., 29b.
201. Tahaf is known to Ah b. Yahya b. al-Murtada (ob. first half of the
9th/15th cent.), al-Bahr al-zakhkhar, Cairo, 1949, iii, 402; Landberg,j4ra&/cfl V,
Leiden, 1898, 213; Grohmann, op. cit., i, 215 for dates of sowing etc.
202. MM., 29b, reads for ‘good places’, ‘good ground’.
203. Jim is local pronunciation; mijran is also used.
204. There are three alternative readings here - m Ij t, m l h t, m h 11, the
last from MM., 29b, means ‘smeared, coated’.
205. The following section resembles MM., 31a. A 1954 note from Haitham
b. SaTd of Dathfnah runs, ‘Sesame has two seasons (mawsim), the first, sown
from the end of Rabr (probably March-early April) up to Saif, being called
Qaidf sesame (,galgul), and remaining in the ground seventy-five days. The
second is Kharfff sesame (simsim), remaining in the ground ninety days. To
return to Qaidf sesame — you will see its taste after being pressed is delicious,
and its colour white. The second variety however, the Kharfff, has a bitter taste
predominating and is red in colour. The reason for that is because the Qaid
(variety) comes in the Saif season when the sun’s heat is intense so that it ripens
in seventy-five days, whereas the Kharfff comes in the days of Kharff which have
much rain and cloud so that its proportion of fruit is small.’
206. The addition is made from the parallel passage in MM., 32a, which
reads, ‘And bound into sheaves and stacked Q’ukhaiyam), each stack consisting
of a load and more than that.’
207. Dahl (pi., dawalu) is what is irrigated by rain (ma yusqa bi- l-matar),
while saqT is what is irrigated by running streams {alladlu yashrab bi-’l-ghail).
‘Aqar (cf. fn. 91), synonym al-ba'l, is land sown in Shita’ with the rain of Kharff
{yuzra'fi ’l-shita’ bi-matar al-kharlf). (QadT Isma‘Tl).
208. Cf. note 170. A possible variant seems to be matlatn (pi., matalim)
which appears also in Haidarah’s Ta‘izz almanac, and of course tilm is in
common use.
209. This word is difficult, but the Cairo reading yurtadd is not supported by
MM. Irtadam is ‘to fall down together on top of one-another. Irtadam
al-saqf/al-qabr, the roof/sidcs of the grave, fell in. (Qadf Isma fl). Dozy,
Supplement, says irtadam means heaped up.