A stubborn character in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript
I love reading the Abbas Pasha Manuscript in its Arabic version. I find it entertaining, a bit like a novel. This is one of my favorite passages — my translation, and my annotations in brackets:
Shahata al-Hunaydees was asked: “Do tell us about your marbat [a Bedouin stud], by your honor and good fortune. From where did the Ubayyah al-Hunaydisiyah come to you? Which marabet [plural of marbat] do you recognize? To whom did she pass from you?
He declared: “She passed to my grandfather al-Hunaydis from al-Sharrak in person. Al-Sharrak was the maternal uncle of al-Hunaydis, and he gifted her to him as an elderly mare. As to her passing to outsiders [i.e., beyond his tribe], I will not tell you about it.
So Farhan al-Jarba went to see him, and from noontime till the evening he tried to trick him [into discussing the horses from his stud]; he even threw his children in the lap of al-Hunaydis [a Bedouin way of pleading with someone] so that he traces his horses, but he would not trace them.
Al-Hunaydis was eventually coerced to tell that: “a mare passed from us to al-Sardiyah [a small noble tribe in North Arabia] and a filly to al-Lumaylimi [of the Wuld Ali tribe of ‘Anazah] a long time ago, at the time of my grandfathers. And I, O Shahata al-Hunaydis, testify, a truthful testimony not a wrongful one, that the mare and the filly are from the marbat of al-Hunaydis; and I will not trace how they passed from me to al-Sardiyah and al-Lumaylimi [meaning he won’t reveal the intermediary marabets]. For the sake of Farhan and al-Jarba and his children, I told you that the two horses horses are from my horses. Even if you gave me the treasury of Egypt, I would not trace them for you, and I would not trace my marbat at all, never!”.
He was offered 100 ghazis [a ghazi is a 25 piaster Ottoman coin of the mid XIXth century], a she-camel of the riding ones, and a mare from the horses of Farhan al-Jarba just so he tells the story of his horses. He refused to take anything and to tell the story of his horses. Farhan al-Jarba the Shaykh of the Shammar and Fahd ibn Ghunaym the Shaykh of the Matarifah [a branch of the ‘Anazah] and those present at this gathering testified about what he had said above.
Gee. Talk about being stubborn. I would have taken the mare, at least.