and you went too far, crying: “He is no sword that can cut me down … yet a man may still be struck even by one he loves.” (1)
At that the creature screeched, “Zāgh! Zāgh! Zāgh!” shot into the air, and then tumbled into the satchel.
I exclaimed, “May God honour the judge—so he is a lover as well?!”
He laughed, and I asked, “What is this?”
He replied, “Exactly what you see. The governor of Yemen sent it to the Commander of the Faithful, and the Caliph has not yet viewed it.”
Saʿīd ibn ʿUfayr said: Yaʿqūb ibn al-Ḥārith narrated to us, from Shabīb ibn Shaybah ibn al-Ḥārith, who said:
I went to al-Shiḥr (2) to visit its chief (3). We began talking about the nasnās (4), and he said, “Catch one for us.”
When I returned to him later, there was a nasnās surrounded by the guards. It cried out, “I seek refuge in God and in you! (5)”
So I said, “Let him go,” and they released him. He sprinted away—for nasnāses graze only on plants. When lunchtime arrived, the chief said, “Prepare for the hunt; we are going out.”
At the pre-dawn hour we heard a voice calling, “Abū Muḥammad, dawn has—"
(1) Both couplets are quoted in al-Nujum al-Zahira, vol. 2, p. 317. Hayat al-Hayawan al-Kubra, vol. 2, p. 3, transmits them in its second chain, where the narrator says: “He asked me to recite some love poetry, so I recited:
Wa-laylun fi jawanihi fudul / mina-l-izlam atlasu ghayhaban
Ka-anna nujumahu dam‘un habisun / tarqaraqa bayna ajfani-l-ghawani
“A night whose recesses overflow with darkness, a pitch-black, dusky cloak; its stars are like imprisoned tears glistening between the eyelids of maidens.”
(2) The word is vocalized with a short “i” on the first consonant and no vowel on the second: siq‘, a district located between Aden and Oman.
(3) Mu‘jam al-Buldan explains that the place is named after a man of the Mahra tribe who enjoyed both authority and distinction.
(4) Hayat al-Hayawan al-Kubra (2:352–353) gathers several definitions: al-Muhkam calls the nasnas a humanoid creature, derived from mankind because of the weakness of its frame; al-Sihah describes it as a separate species whose members spring about on a single leg; al-Mujalasa of al-Dinawari, citing Ibn Qutaybah from ‘Abd al-Rahman b. ‘Abdallah, reports Ibn Ishaq’s statement that the nasnas lives in Yemen, each individual having one eye, one hand and one leg with which it hops, and that Yemenis hunt them.
(5) The correct wording here and in similar cases is: “I rely on Allah, and then on you.” The Musnad (5:384, 394, 398) and Abu Dawud (no. 4980) record, on the authority of Hudhayfa b. al-Yaman, the Prophetic directive: “Do not say, ‘What Allah and so-and-so willed’; say rather, ‘What Allah willed, and then what so-and-so willed.’” The chain is sound, with corroborations from Ibn ‘Abbas in Ahmad (1:214, 224, 283) and from al-Tufayl b. Sukhayra in Ahmad (5:72).