LessonsImruʾ al-Qays: The Long Night, Travel, and the Wolf (Verses 43–51)Quiz

فَقُلْتُ لَهُ لَمَّا عَوَى إِنَّ شَأْنَنَا
قَلِيلُ الْغِنَى إِنْ كُنْتَ لَمَّا تَمَوَّلِ
“When it howled, I said to it: our lot is a scant share of prosperity, if you too have not yet gathered wealth.”

Fa-qultu lahu explicitly addresses the wolf. Lammā ʿawā marks the occasion of the speech, while inna shaʾnanā qalīlu al-ghinā characterizes their shared lack of means. Lammā tamawwal suggests not having acquired wealth up to that point.

This is a poetic imagined dialogue, not documentary evidence that an animal conversed as a human. The speaker projects his own deprivation onto the only other living being audible in the wilderness and establishes a kinship of hardship.

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Verse 50: an imagined conversation with the wolf

Imruʾ al-Qays: The Long Night, Travel, and the Wolf (Verses 43–51)

فَقُلْتُ لَهُ لَمَّا عَوَى إِنَّ شَأْنَنَا
قَلِيلُ الْغِنَى إِنْ كُنْتَ لَمَّا تَمَوَّلِ
“When it howled, I said to it: our lot is a scant share of prosperity, if you too have not yet gathered wealth.”

Fa-qultu lahu explicitly addresses the wolf. Lammā ʿawā marks the occasion of the speech, while inna shaʾnanā qalīlu al-ghinā characterizes their shared lack of means. Lammā tamawwal suggests not having acquired wealth up to that point.

This is a poetic imagined dialogue, not documentary evidence that an animal conversed as a human. The speaker projects his own deprivation onto the only other living being audible in the wilderness and establishes a kinship of hardship.