Riddles are historically a significant genre of Arabic literature. TheQur’an does not contain riddles as such, though it does containconundra.[1] But riddles are attested in early Arabic literary culture, 'scattered in old stories attributed to the pre-Islamic bedouins, in theḥadīth and elsewhere; and collected in chapters'.[2] Since the nineteenth century, extensive scholarly collections have also been made of riddles in oral circulation.
Although in 1996 the Syrian proverbs scholar Khayr al-Dīn Shamsī Bāshā published a survey of Arabic riddling,[3] analysis of this literary form has been neglected by modern scholars,[4] including its emergence in Arabic writing;[5][6] there is also a lack of editions of important collections.[7]: 134 n. 61 A major study of grammatical and semantic riddles was, however, published in 2012,[8] and since 2017 both legal riddles[9][10][7]: 119–56 and verse riddles[11][12] have enjoyed growing attention.
Riddles are known in Arabic principally aslughz (Arabic:لُغز) (pl.alghāz ألغاز), but other terms includeuḥjiyya (pl.aḥājī), andta'miya.[2]
Lughz is a capacious term.[13] Asal-Nuwayrī (1272–1332) puts it in the chapter onalghāz andaḥājī in hisNihāyat al-Arab fī funūn al-adab:
Lughz is thought to derive from the phrasealghaza ’l-yarbū‘u wa-laghaza, which described the action of a field rat when it burrows its way first straight ahead but then veers off to the left or right in order to more successfully elude its enemies (li-yuwāriya bi-dhālika) so that it becomes, as it were, almost invisible (wa-yu‘ammiya ‘alā ṭālibihī). But in fact our language also has many other names oflughz such asmu’āyāh,’awīṣ,ramz,muḥāgāh,abyāt al-ma’ānī,malāḥin,marmūs,ta’wīl,kināyah,ta‘rīd,ishārah,tawgīh,mu‘ammā,mumaththal. Although each of these terms is used more or less interchangeably forlughz, the very fact that there are so many of them is indicative of the varied explanations which the concept oflughz can apparently support.[13]: 283–84
This array of terms goes beyond those covered byriddle in English, into metaphor, ambiguity, and punning, indicating the fuzzy boundaries of the concept of the riddle in literary Arabic culture.[13]: 284
Since early Arabic poetry often features rich, metaphorical description, andekphrasis, there is a natural overlap in style and approach between poetry generally and riddles specifically;[2] literary riddles are therefore often a subset of the descriptive poetic form known aswaṣf.[14][15] Indeed, some of the riddles included byAbū al-Maʿālī Saʿd ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥaẓīrī in his seminal, twelfth-century CE collection of riddles are verses selected from longer poems, in whose original context they are indeed metaphorical descriptions rather than riddles;[16]: 264 likewiseAbū Naṣr Aḥmad b. Ḥātim al-Bāhilī'sKitāb Abyāt al-maʿānī, while focusing on verses rendered enigmatic by the removal of their context, also included purposeful riddles.[17]
To illustrate how some epigrams (maqāṭīʿ) are riddles Adam Talib contrasts the following poems.[18]: 26–31 The first, from an anonymous seventeenth-century anthology, runs:
في دجاجة مشوية [من السريع]
دَجاجَةٌ صَفْراءُ مِن شَيِّهاحَمْراءُ كالوَسْدِ مِن الوَهْجِكأَنًّها والجَمْرُ مِن تَحْتتِهاأُتْرُجَّةٌ مِن فوقِ ناسَنْجِ
The second is from the fifteenth-centuryRawḍ al-ādāb byShihāb ad-Dīn al-Ḥijāzī al-Khazrajī:
شهاب الدين بن الخيمي في الملعقة: [من المتقارب]
ومَهْدودةٍ كَيَدِ المُجْتَديبِكَفٍّ عَلَى ساعدٍ مُسْعَدِتَرَى بَعْضَها في فَمِي كالِلسانِوحَمْلَتُها في يَدِي كاليَدِ
In the first case, the subject of the epigram is clearly stated within the epigram itself, such that the epigram cannot be considered a riddle. In the second, however, the resolution 'depends on the reader deducing the point after the poem has been read'.[18]: 30
The termmuʿammā (literally 'blinded' or 'obscured') is sometimes used as a synonym forlughz (or to denote cryptography or codes more generally), but it can be used specifically to denote a riddle which is solved 'by combining the constituent letters of the word or name to be found'.[21]
The muʿammā is in verse, does not include an interrogatory element, and involves clues as to the letters or sounds of the word. One example of the form is a riddle on the name Aḥmad:
awwaluhuthālithu tuffāḥatin
wa-rābi‘u ’l-tuffāḥithānīhī
Wa-awwalu ’l-miski lahūthālithun
wa-ākhiru ’l-wardi li-bāḳihī
Its first is the third of [the word]tuffāḥa (apple) = A;
and the fourth of [the word]tuffāḥ (apples) is its second = Ḥ;
and the first of [the word]misk (musk) is its third = M;
and the last of the wordward (roses) is the remainder of it = D[22]
Another example, cited by Ibn Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī, has the answer 'Saʿīd'. Here, and in the transliteration that follows, short vowels are transliterated in superscript, as they are not included in the Arabic spelling:
فَاخر الترس له أولوثالث الدرع له آخروخامس الساعد ثانٍ لهورابع السيف له دابر
The end of "turs" [shield] is for him the beginning / The third of "al-dir‘" [armor] is for him the end
The fifth of "al-sā‘id" [arm] is for him the second / The fourth of "al-sayf" [sword] is for him what follows[23]
The first known exponent of themuʿammā form seems to have been the major classical poetAbu Nuwas,[21][24] though other poets are also credited with inventing the form:Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (noted for his cryptography) andAli ibn Abi Talib.[22]
It appears that themuʿammā form became popular from perhaps the thirteenth century.[13]: 309–11
Muʿammā riddles also include puzzles using the numerical values of letters.[13]: 309–11
A subset of themu‘ammā is the chronogram (تأريخ,taʾrīkh), a puzzle in which the reader must add up the numerical values of the letters of a hemistich to arrive as a figure; this figure is the year of the event described in the poem. The form seems to have begun in Arabic in the thirteenth century and gained popularity from the fifteenth; as with examples of the same form in Latin, it was borrowed from Hebrew and Aramaic texts using the same device, possibly via Persian.[25] The following poem is by the pre-eminent composer in the form,Māmayah al-Rūmī (d. 1577):
وله تأريخ: مطر هلّ بعد يأس [من الرجز]
قَدْ جاءَنا صَوْمٌ جليلٌ قدرُهُوالحقُّ فينا قَدْ أرانا قُدْرَتَهْوعَمَّنا الانسانَ في تأريخِهِوأَنْزلَ اللهُ عَلَيْنا رَحْمَتَهْ
A chronogram-poem on rainfall after despair set in:
We were visited by a period of abstention of great duration
The Truth showed us his power.
And then it encompassed every human on that day (taʾrīkh)
that God rained down on us his mercy.[18]: 31
The letters of the last hemistich have the following values:
| ه | ت | م | ح | ر | ا | ن | ي | ل | ع | ه | ل | ل | ا | ل | ز | ن | أ | و |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 400 | 40 | 8 | 200 | 1 | 50 | 10 | 30 | 70 | 5 | 30 | 30 | 1 | 30 | 7 | 50 | 1 | 6 |
These add up to 974 AH (1566 CE), the year of the drought which al-Rūmī was describing.[18]: 32
Abyāt al-maʿānī ('verses of [ambiguous or obscure] meanings') is a technical term related to the genre ofalghāz. Ordinarily,abyāt al-maʿānī are verses quoted from longer compositions in anthologies calledkutub abyāt al-maʿānī ('books ofabyāt al-maʿānī'), which in their original context were not especially obscure, but which are hard to interpret when taken out of context. However,kutub abyāt al-maʿānī could also include purposefully enigmatic verses.[17]: 37–46 In a chapter onalghāz,Al-Suyuti defines the genre as follows:[26]
There are kinds of puzzles that the Arabs aimed for and other puzzles that the scholars of language aim for, and also lines in which the Arabs did not aim for puzzlement, but they uttered them and they happened to be puzzling; these are of two kinds: Sometimes puzzlement occurs in them on account of their meaning, and most ofabyāt al-maʿānī are of this type.Ibn Qutaybah compiled a good volume on this, and others compiled similar works. They called this kind [of poetry]abyāt al-maʿānī because it requires someone to ask about their meaning and they are not comprehended on first consideration. Some other times, puzzlement occurs because of utterance, construction or inflection (iʿrāb).
Kutub abyāt al-maʿānī include theKitāb al-Maʿānī al-kabīr byIbn Qutayba (d. 276/889),KitābMaʿānī al-shiʿr by al-Ushnāndānī (d. 288/901), and aKitābAbyāt al-maʿānī by al-Bāhilī known now only through quotations by later scholars.[17]
There is a significant tradition of literary riddles on legal matters in Arabic. According to Matthew Keegan, 'the legal riddle operates as afatwā in reverse. It presents an apparently counterintuitive legal ruling or legal outcome, one that might even be shocking. The solution is derived by reverse-engineering the situation in which such afatwā or legal outcome would be correct'.[10] He gives as an example the following riddle byIbn Farḥūn (d. 1397):
If you said: A man who is fit to be a prayer leader but who is not fit to be a congregant?
Then I would say: He is the blind man who became deaf after learning what was necessary for him to lead prayer. It is not permissible for him to be led by a prayer leader because he would not be aware of the imām's actions unless someone alerted him to them.
Legal riddles appear to have become a major literary genre in the fourteenth century. Elias G. Saba has attributed this development to the spread of intellectual literary salons (majālis) in the Mamlūk period, which demanded the oral performance of arcane knowledge, and in turn influenced written texts.[7]: 119–56 By the fourteenth century, scholars were starting to gather existing legal riddles into chapters of jurisprudential works, among themTāj al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 1370) in an eclectic chapter of hisKitāb al-Ashbāh wa-l-Naẓāʾir.[10][27]
The earliest anthologies specifically of legal riddles seem to have been composed in the fourteenth century, and the earliest known today are:[10]
These show three of the four main schools of legal thought producing riddle-collections; theḤanbalī school, however, seems not to have participated much in legal riddling. The overlap between legal riddles and literature on distinctions seems to have been at its greatest in Mamlūk Cairo.[7]: 120 A particularly influential example of a collection of legal riddles wasʿAbd al-Barr Ibn al-Shiḥna (d. 1515), who wroteal-Dhakhāʾir al-ashrafiyya fī alghāz al-ḥanafiyya.[31][10][7]: 137–39
The origins of the form stretch back earlier, however. According to someḥadīth, the use of riddles to encourage thought about religious constraints in Islam goes back to the Prophet himself. The genre of legal riddling seems to have arisen partly from an interest in other intellectually challenging jurisprudential matters:ḥiyal (strategems for avoiding breaking the letter of the law) andfurūq (subtle distinctions). It seems also to have drawn inspiration from literary texts: theFutyā Faqīh al-ʿArab ('The Fatwās of the Jurist of the Arabs') byIbn Fāris (d. 1004) includes 'a series offatwās that initially appear to be absurd and incorrect' but which can be rendered logical by invoking non-obvious meanings of the words used in thefatwās. This form was deployed soon after in the highly influentialMaqāmāt ofal-Ḥarīrī of Basra (d. 1122).[10]
The eleventh-century Andalusi poetIbn Zaydūn is associated with another riddle form, of which at least five Arabic examples survive in his work, along with a pair of Andalusi Hebrew-language poems in the same form exchanged between Abū ʿUmar ibn Māthiqa andYehuda HaLevi (though only Yehuda's side of the exchange survives in full).[32]: 325–35 [33] In this form of riddle, the poet composes a short poem. Each letter of the alphabet is then assigned the name of a species of bird, and the poem is encoded as a list of bird-names. The poet then composes a new poem, mentioning all these bird-names in the correct order, and sends that to its recipient, frequently claiming that it is being sent bypigeon post.[32]: 325–35 The namemutayyar (Arabic:مُطَيَّر) given to such riddles, usually used of cloth, means 'ornamented with designs representing birds'.[34]
One riddle attributed to theProphet is found in theBāb al-ḥayā of theKitāb al-ʿIlm of theṢaḥīḥ al-Buckārī byal-Bukhārī (d. 870)[35] and theMuwaṭṭaʾ byMālik ibn Anas (d. 796). Muḥammad says:إِنَّ مِنَ الشَّجَرِ شَجَرَةً لاَ يَسْقُطُ وَرَقُهَا، وَإِنَّهَا مَثَلُ الْمُسْلِمِ، حَدِّثُونِي مَا هِيَ ("there is a kind of tree that does not lose its leaves and is like a Muslim. Tell me what it is"). Thehadith tradition records the answer: the date palm (nakhla).[36] But it does not explain in what way the date palm is like a Muslim, which led to extensive debate among medieval Muslim scholars.[37] Thehadith is important, however, as it legitimated the use of riddles in theological and legal education in Islam.[10]
According to al-Subkī, the earliest known example of post-prophetic riddles concerns the Prophet's companionIbn ʿAbbās (d. c. 687), who is asked a series ofexegetical conundra such as “Tell me of a man who enters Paradise but God forbade Muḥammad to act as he acted”. (Ibn ʿAbbās answers that this isJonah, since the Koran tells Muḥammad "be not like the Companion of the fish, when he cried while he was in distress" insura 68:48.)[10]
There is little evidence for Arabic riddling in the pre-Islamic period. A riddle contest, supposedly between the sixth-century CEImruʾ al-Qays andʿAbīd ibn al-Abraṣ, exists,[13]: 296–97 but is not thought actually to have been composed by these poets.[5]: 19 n. 83 One of the earliest reliably attested composers of riddles wasDhu al-Rummah (c. 696–735),[38] whose verse riddles 'undoubtedly contributed' to the 'rooting and spread' of Arabic literary riddles,[5]: 19 though his exact contribution to this process is 'yet to be assessed'.[6] HisUḥjiyyat al-ʿArab ('the riddle-poem of the Arabs') is particularly striking, comprising anasīb (stanzas 1–14), travelfaḥr (15-26) and then twenty-six enigmatic statements (28-72).[5]: 19 [39] Odes 27, 64, 82 and 83 also contain riddles.[40][5]: 19–20 64 writes of the earth as though it were a camel,[6] while 82 runs:
وَجَارِيَةٍ لَيْسَت مِنَ ٱلْإنْسِ تَسْتَحِيوَلَاٱلْجِنِّ قَدْ لَاعَبْتُهَا وَمَعِى دُهْنِيفَأَدْخَلْتُ فِيهَا قَيْدَ شِبْرٍ مُوَفَّرٍفَصَاحَتْ وَلَا وَٱﷲِ مَا وُجِدَتْ تَزْنِيفَلَمَّا دَنَتْ اهْرَاَقَةُ ٱلْمَآء أَنْصَتَتْلِأَعْزِلَةٍ عَنْهَا وَفِى ٱلنَّفْسِ أَنْ أُثْنِي[41]
And many a shy maid neither human nor genie have I dallied with while I had my oil with me.
So I inserted into her an ample span-length and she cried out. And no, by God! she was not found to be committing fornication.
And when the time of emission (pouring forth of water) came near she became quiet in order that I might have the emission outside though desiring that I do it again.[42]
The solution to this riddle is that the narrator is drawing water from a well. The 'shy maid' is a bucket. The bucket has a ring on it, into which the narrator inserts a pin which is attached to the rope which he uses the draw up the water. As the bucket is drawn up, it makes noise, but once at the top it is still and therefore quiet. Once the bucket is still, the narrator can pour out the water, and the bucket desires to be filled again.
According to Pieter Smoor, discussing a range of ninth- to eleventh-century poets,
There is a slow but discernable development which can be traced in the Arabic riddle poem through the course of time. The earlier poets, likeIbn al-Rūmi,al-Sarī al-Raffā’ andMutanabbī composed riddle poems of the 'narrow' kind, i.e. without the use of helpful homonyms ...Abu ’l-‘Alā’'s practise, however, tended toward the reverse: in his work 'narrow' riddles have become comparatively rare ... while homonymous riddles are quite common.[13]: 309
Riddles are discussed by literary and grammatical commentators — allegedly beginning with the eighth-century grammarianal-Khalīl ibn Ahmad (d. 786),[43] (who was later even to be credited with the invention of the (rhymed) riddle).[44] What may have been the first Arabic book of riddles,Kitāb al-Armāz fī l-alġāz, was composed byAbū al-ʿAbbās al-Ḍabbī (fl. c. 1000), but it is now lost save for a small number of quotations.[16]: 265 Prominent discussions include the tenth-centuryIbrāhīm ibn Wahb al-Kātib in hisKitāb naqd al-nathr,[45][38] andal-Mathal al-sāʾir (chapter 21,fī al-aḥājī) byḌiyāʾ al-Dīn Abu ’l-Fatḥ Naṣr Allāh Ibn al-Athīr (d. 1239).[13]: 285–92 [46] Such texts are also important repositories of riddles.
Collections of riddles appear, alongside other poetry, in Abbasid anthologies. They include chapter 89 ofal-Zahra ('فكر ما جاء في الشعر من معنى مستور لا يفهمه سامعه إلاَّ بتفسير') byIbn Dā’ūd al-Iṣbahāni (868-909 CE); part of book 25 ofal-ʿIqd al-Farīd (specifically the section entitledBāb al-lughz) byIbn ‘Abd Rabbih (860–940);Ḥilyat al-muḥāḍara byal-Ḥātimī (d. 998); and the chapter entitledفصل في تعمية الأشعار inAbū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī'sDīwān al-maʿānī (d. after 1009).[38][47]
Among the diverse subjects covered by riddles in this period, thepen was particularly popular: theDhakhīrah ofIbn Bassām (1058-1147), for example, presents examples by Ibn Khafājah, Ibn al-Mu‘tazz, Abu Tammām and Ibn al-Rūmī and al-Ma‘arrī.[48] Musical instruments are another popular topic,[49] along with lamps and candles.[50][13]
Among the extensive body of ekphrastic poems byIbn al-Rūmī (d. 896), Pieter Smoor identified only one as a riddle:[13]: 297–98
Wa-ḥayyatin fī raʾsihā durratun
tasbaḥu fī baḥrin qaṣīri ʾl-madā.
In ba‘udat kāna ʾl-‘amā ḥāḍiran
wa-in danat bāna ṭariqu ʾl-hudā
The pearl-headed snake swims
on a small, self-contained sea.
If she recedes, blindness takes her place;
but in her presence, the right path can be distinctly seen.
The solution to this riddle is the burning wick of an oil lamp. The diwān ofIbn al-Mu‘tazz (861-908) contains riddles on the penis, water-wheel, reed-pipe, palm-trees, and two on ships.[51] The dīwān ofAl-Sarī al-Raffā’ (d. 973) contains several riddles on mundane objects, including a fishing net, candle, fan, fleas, a drum, and a fire-pot.[13]: 298–300 al-Maʾmūnī (d. 993) is noted for a large corpus of epigrammatic descriptions which shade into the genre of the riddle.[52]Carl Brockelmann[38] notedAbū Abdallāh al-Ḥusayn ibn Aḥmad al-Mughallis, associated with the court of Baha al-Dawla (r. 988–1012), as a key composer of riddles.[53]Abū al-ʿAlā’ al-Marʿarrī (973-1057) is also noted as an exponent of riddles;[2] his lost workGāmiʿ al-awzān is said byIbn al-‘Adīm to have contained 9,000 poetic lines of riddles, some of which are preserved by later scholars, principallyYūsuf al-Badī‘ī.[54] Al-Marʿarrī's riddles are characterised by wordplay and religious themes.[13]: 302–9 Ibn al-Tilmīdh (1074–1165) composed some verse riddles.[16]: 266 Usāma ibn Munqidh (1095–1188) developed the riddle-form as a vehicle metaphorically to convey personal feelings.[13]: 300–2 Al-Shākir al-Baṣrī (fl. second half of the eleventh century) composedKitāb al-Marmūs, containing riddles by himself and at least ten others, known now from quotations byal-Ḥaẓīrī; 74 verse and ten prose riddles by al-Shākir al-Baṣrī survive in this way.[16]: 266 The dīwān of Ibn al-Farid (1181-1234) contains fifty-four riddles, of themu'amma type.[43]
A vast collection of epigrammatic riddles on slave-girls,Alf jāriyah wa-jāriyah, was composed byIbn al-Sharīf Dartarkhwān al-‘Ādhilī (d. 1257).[55]Zaynaddīn Ibn al-ʿAjamī (1195–1276) composed the first surviving Arabic riddle-collection by a single author.[56]: 80
Riddles also came to be integrated into the episodic anthologies known asmaqamat ('assemblies'). An early example was theMaqamat byBadi' az-Zaman al-Hamadhani (969–1007 CE), for example in assemblies 3, 29, 31, 35.[57] This example of one of al-Hamadhānī's riddles comes from elsewhere in hisdiwān, and was composed forSahib ibn Abbad:
Akhawāni min ummin wa-ab Lā yafturāni ‘ani l-shaghab
Mā minhumā illā ḍanin Yashkū mu‘ānāta l-da’ab
Wa-kilāhumā ḥaniqu l-fu’ā Di ‘alā akhīhi bi-lā sabab
Yughrīhimā bi-l-sharri sib Ṭu l-rīḥi wa-bnu abī l-khashab
Mā minhumā illā bihī Sharṭu l-yubūsati wa-l-ḥarab
Fa-lanā bi-ṣulḥihimā radan Wa-lanā bi-ḥarbihimā nashab
Yā ayyuhā l-maliku l-ladhī Fī kulli khaṭbin yuntadab
Akhrijhu ikhrāja l-dhakiy Yi fa-qad waṣaftu kamā wajab
[There are] two brothers from [the same] mother and father
Who will not give up quarreling
Both of them are worn out
Complaining about the pains of perseverance
Each of the two has a heart enraged
Against his brother for no reason
The grandson of the wind
And the son of the father of wood provoke evil from them
Only by it do they satisfy
The condition of separation and anger
Their reconciliation brings about destruction for us
While their war yields property for us
O king who
Is always promptly obeyed
Figure it out the way a sharp-witted person does
For I gave an adequate description.[58]
The brothers are millstones, driven by a waterwheel made of wood.
Al-Hamadhani'sMaqamat were an inspiration for theMaqāmāt ofAl-Hariri of Basra (1054–1122 CE), which contain several different kinds of enigmas (assemblies 3, 8, 15, 24, 29, 32, 35, 36, 42 and 44) and establish him as one of the pre-eminent riddle-writers of the medieval Arab world.[59][13]: 291 One of his riddles runs as follows:
Then he said 'now here is another for you, O lords of intellect, fraught with obscurity:
One split in his head it is, through whom ‘the writ’ is known, as honoured recording angels take their pride in him;
When given to drink he craves for more, as though athirst, and settles to rest when thirstiness takes hold of him;
And scatters tears about him when ye bid him run, but tears that sparkle with the brightness of a smile.After we could not guess who this might be, he told us he was riddling upon areed-pen.[60]
Meanwhile, an example of legal riddling in the collection is this moment when the protagonist, Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī, is asked "is it permitted to circumambulate (al-taṭawwuf) in the spring (al-rabīʿ)" — that is, the question seems to ask whether the important custom ofwalking around the Kaʿba is permitted in spring. Unexpectedly, Abū Zayd replies 'that is reprehensible due to the occurrence of a repugnant thing' — and the text explains that he says this because the wordal-taṭawwuf can also mean 'relieve one's bowels' andal-rabīʿ can also mean 'a source of water'.[61][62]
The only medieval manuscript of theOne Thousand and One Nights, theGalland Manuscript, contains no riddles. Night 49 does, however, contain two verses portrayed as descriptions written on objects, which are similar in form to verse riddles. The first is written on a goblet:
أحرقوني بالنار يستنطقونيوجدوني على البلاءِ صبورًالأجل هذا حُمِلت فوق الأياديولثمتُ من الملاح الثغورا[63]
For my confession they burned me with fire
And found that I was for endurance made.
Hence I was borne high on the hands of men
And given to kiss the lips of pretty maid.[61]
The second is written on a chessboard:
Two armies all day long with arms contend,
Bringing the battle always to a head.
But when night's cover on them does descend
The two go sleeping in a single bed.[61]
However, several stories in later manuscripts of theNights do involve riddles. For example, a perhaps tenth-century CE story about the legendary poetImru' al-Qais features him insisting that he will marry only the woman who can say which eight, four, and two are. Rather than 'fourteen', the answer is the number of teats on, respectively, a dog, a camel, and a woman. In the face of other challenges, successful prosecution of al-Qais's marriage continues to depend on the wit of his new fiancée.[64]
Riddles have been collected by scholars throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and we can arguably 'speak of the Arabic riddle as a discrete phenomenon'.[65] Examples of modern riddles, as categorised and selected by Chyet, are:[66]
Arabic riddle-traditions also influenced medievalHebrew poetry.[67]: 443, 530 One prominent Hebrew exponent of the form is the medieval Andalusian poetJudah Halevi, who for example wrote
What's slender, smooth and fine,
and speaks with power while dumb,
in utter silence kills,
and spews theblood of lambs?[68]
(The answer is 'a pen'.)
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