Riddles are historically a significant genre of Arabic literature. The Qur’an does not contain riddles as such, though it does contain conundrums.A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), pp. 14-15. But riddles are attested in early Arabic literary culture, 'scattered in old stories attributed to the pre-Islamic bedouins, in the ḥadīth and elsewhere; and collected in chapters'. 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,Khayr al-Dīn Shamsī Bāshā, ‘al-Alghāz wa-l-aḥajī wa-l-muʿammayāt', Majallat Majmaʿ al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya bi-Dimashq, 71.4 (1996), 768–816; volume at archive.org. analysis of this literary form has been neglected by modern scholars,Cf. A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), 14-18. including its emergence in Arabic writing; there is also a lack of editions of important collections. A major study of grammatical and semantic riddles was, however, published in 2012,Muḥammad Sālimān, Fann al-alghāz ʿind al-ʿarab wa-maʿhu l-Lafẓ al-lāʾiq wa-l-maʿnā l-rāʾiq; al-Alghāz al-naḥwiyya; al-Ṭāʾir al-maymūn fī ḥall lughz al-Kanzal-madfūn, ed. by Muḥammad Sālimān (Cairo: al-Hayʾaal-Miṣriyyaal-ʿĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 2012). and since 2017 both legal riddlesChristian Mauder, “In the Sultan's Salon: Learning, Religion and Rulership at the Mamluk Court of Qāniṣawh al-Ghawrī (r. 1501–1516)” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Göttingen, 2017).Elias G. Saba, Harmonizing Similarities: A History of Distinctions Literature in Islamic Law, Islam – Thought, Culture, and Society, 1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), . and verse riddlesFāṭima Hilāl Fawzī, 'Fann al-ʾalḡāz aš-šiʿriyya — al-ruʾya wa-l-taškīl', Majallat Buḥūṯ Kulliyyat al-ʾādāb, 134 (2023), 433–512, .Rifrāfī Bilkāsim, 'Fann al-ʾalḡāz aš-šiʿriyya fī al-šiʿr al-ʿarabiyy al-qadīm (tīmāt wa-fanniyyāt)', Majallat qirāʾāt, 13.1 (2012), 199–212. have enjoyed growing attention.
Terminology and genres
Riddles are known in Arabic principally as lughz () (pl. alghāz ألغاز), but other terms include uḥjiyya (pl. aḥājī), and ta'miya.G. J. H. van Gelder, 'lughz', in Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, ed. by Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey, 2 vols (London: Routledge, 1998), II 479.
Lughz is a capacious term.Pieter Smoor, 'The Weeping Wax Candle and Ma‘arrī's Wisdom-tooth: Night Thoughts and Riddles from the Gāmi‘ al-awzān', Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 138 (1988), 283-312. As al-Nuwayrī (1272–1332) puts it in the chapter on alghāz and aḥājī in his Nihāyat al-Arab fī funūn al-adab: Lughz is thought to derive from the phrase alghaza ’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 of lughz such as mu’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 for lughz, the very fact that there are so many of them is indicative of the varied explanations which the concept of lughz can apparently support. This array of terms goes beyond those covered by riddle in English, into metaphor, ambiguity, and punning, indicating the fuzzy boundaries of the concept of the riddle in literary Arabic culture.
Overlap with other genres Since early Arabic poetry often features rich, metaphorical description, and ekphrasis, there is a natural overlap in style and approach between poetry generally and riddles specifically; literary riddles are therefore often a subset of the descriptive poetic form known as waṣf.Ewald Wagner, Grundzüge der klassischen arabischen Dichtung, Grundzüge, 68, 70, 2 vols (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1987-88), 2:130-38.Yaron Klein, '' (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2009), p. 83. Indeed, some of the riddles included by Abū 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;Nefeli Papoutsakis, 'Abū l-Maʿālī al-Ḥaẓīrī (d. 568/1172) and his Inimitable Book on Quizzes and Riddles', Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 109 (2019), 251–69. likewise Abū Naṣr Aḥmad b. Ḥātim al-Bāhilī's Kitāb Abyāt al-maʿānī, while focusing on verses rendered enigmatic by the removal of their context, also included purposeful riddles.David Larsen, 'Towards a Reconstruction of Abū Naṣr al-Bāhilī’s K. Abyāt al-maʿānī,' in Approaches to the Study of Pre-modern Arabic Anthologies, ed. by Bilal Orfali and Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Islamic History and Civilization: Studies and Texts, 180 (Leiden: Brill, 2021), pp. 37-83 , .
To illustrate how some epigrams (maqāṭīʿ) are riddles Adam Talib contrasts the following poems.Adam Talib, How Do You Say “Epigram” in Arabic? Literary History at the Limits of Comparison, Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures, 40 (Leiden: Brill, 2018); The first, from an anonymous seventeenth-century anthology, runs: Khadīm aẓ-ẓurafāʾ wa-nadīm al-luṭafāʾ, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Huntington 508, f. 104b.}} The second is from the fifteenth-century Rawḍ al-ādāb by Shihāb ad-Dīn al-Ḥijāzī al-Khazrajī: London, British Library, MS Add. 19489, f. 117b (recte 116b: the manuscript is misnumbered).}} 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'.
Muʿammā The term muʿammā (literally 'blinded' or 'obscured') is sometimes used as a synonym for lughz (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'.G. J. H. van Gelder, 'muʿammā', in Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, ed. by Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey, 2 vols (London: Routledge, 1998), II 534.
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:
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: Lara Harb, 'Beyond the Known Limits: Ibn Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī's Chapter on "Intermedial" Poetry', in Arabic Humanities, Islamic Thought: Essays in Honor of Everett K. Rowson, ed. by Joseph Lowry, Shawkat Toorawa, Islamic History and Civilisation: Studies and Texts, 141 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 122-49 (pp. 136-37); .}}
The first known exponent of the muʿammā form seems to have been the major classical poet Abu Nuwas,Abū Nuwās, Dīwān, ed. by E. Wagner [vol. IV ed. by G. Schoeler], 7 vols (Wiesbaden, Cairo, Beirut, Berlin, 1958-2006 [vol. I 2nd edn Beirut–Berlin, 2001]), vol. V, pp. 281-86. though other poets are also credited with inventing the form: Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (noted for his cryptography) and Ali ibn Abi Talib.M. Bencheneb, 'Lughz', in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edn, ed. by H. A. R. Gibb and others (Leiden: Brill, 1954-2009), s.v.
It appears that the muʿammā form became popular from perhaps the thirteenth century.
Muʿammā riddles also include puzzles using the numerical values of letters.
Chronograms A subset of the mu‘ammā is the chronogram (, 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.Thomas Bauer, 'Vom Sinn der Zeit: aus der Geschichte des arabischen Chronogramms', Arabica, 50 (2003), 501-31 (p. 505). The following poem is by the pre-eminent composer in the form, Māmayah al-Rūmī (d. 1577): }} The letters of the last hemistich have the following values: +هتمحرانيلعهللالزنأو54004082001501030705303013075016 These add up to 974 AH (1566 CE), the year of the drought which al-Rūmī was describing.
Abyāt al-maʿānī Abyāt al-maʿānī ('verses of [ambiguous or obscure] meanings') is a technical term related to the genre of alghāz. Ordinarily, abyāt al-maʿānī are verses quoted from longer compositions in anthologies called kutub abyāt al-maʿānī ('books of abyāt 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. In a chapter on alghāz, Al-Suyuti defines the genre as follows: Kutub abyāt al-maʿānī include the Kitāb al-Maʿānī al-kabīr by Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), Kitāb Maʿānī al-shiʿr by al-Ushnāndānī (d. 288/901), and a Kitāb Abyāt al-maʿānī by al-Bāhilī known now only through quotations by later scholars.
Legal riddles (alghāz fiqhīya) There is a significant tradition of literary riddles on legal matters in Arabic. According to Matthew Keegan, 'the legal riddle operates as a fatwā 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 a fatwā or legal outcome would be correct'. He gives as an example the following riddle by Ibn 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. By the fourteenth century, scholars were starting to gather existing legal riddles into chapters of jurisprudential works, among them Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 1370) in an eclectic chapter of his Kitāb al-Ashbāh wa-l-Naẓāʾir.Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī, al-Ashbāh wa-l-Naẓāʾir, ed. by Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd and ʿAlī Muḥammad ʿIwaḍ, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1991), 2:311-49.
The earliest anthologies specifically of legal riddles seem to have been composed in the fourteenth century, and the earliest known today are:
al-Isnawī (d. 1370), Shāfiʿī school: Ṭirāz al-Maḥāfil fī Alghāz al-Masāʾil.al-Isnawī, Ṭirāz al-Maḥāfil fī Alghāz al-Masāʾil, ed. by ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm b. Ibrāhīm al-Maṭrūdī (Riyāḍ: Maktabat al-Rushd, 2005). Ibn Abī al-ʿIzz (d. 1390), Ḥanafī school: al-Tahdhīb li-Dhihn al-Labīb.Not yet edited, one of the manuscripts in which it is found is Princeton MS Garret 488Y (folios 100-134). Ibn Farḥūn (d. 1397), Mālikī school: Durrat al-ghawwāṣ fī muḥāḍarat al-khawāṣṣ ('the pearl-diver's prize on the discourse of elites').Ibn Farḥūn, Durrat al-Ghawwāṣ fī Muḥāḍarat al-Khawāṣṣ, ed. by Muḥammad Abū al-Ajfān and ʿUthmān Baṭṭīkh (Tūnis: al-Maktaba al-ʿAtīqa, 1979).