“How astonishing you are, you repulsive, ponderous contraption (1), elbowing the light, graceful bows and trying to race alongside them when you are not even fit for the track! Tell me: on what day have the armies ever taken you with them into war? When has a hunter carried you on the chase, or a traveller along the road? Have you no shame at the burden your weight lays upon men’s limbs, nor at your absence from the ranks of Islam on the day of encounter?

When eye meets eye, you keep well clear of the clash; and when the commanders of the host of weapons take up their positions, yours is the most remote station of all (2). You never fight except from behind a wall or a rampart, and if ever you were to face the enemy on open ground you would, without any doubt, be beaten and captured. Even supposing Allah—exalted is He—decrees and aids you so that you do appear before the foe alongside your supporters, you still have but a single bolt over which you grow conceited (3), and it may well miss; whereas I can shower you with a whole volley of arrows, some missing, others hitting their mark.

I assist my master in shooting whether he stands or sits, rests or travels, rides or dismounts; if your owner demanded the same of you, you would stand between him and his aim as an obstacle.

Ugly enough it is that your very shape resembles the cross, and for that reason some scholars understood the Prophet’s—peace and blessings be upon him—curse on you, among them ʿAbd al-Malik (4) ibn Ḥabīb.

Reproach enough as well that the first to devise you was the enemy of Abraham the Friend—indeed, the enemy of the All-Merciful—namely Nimrod ibn Canaan, as the historian of Islam relates.”