«رَأَيْتُ مِنْ أَعَاجِيبِ الزَّمَانِ أَنْ تَقَدَّمَ خَصْمَانِ إِلَى قَاضِي مَعَرَّةِ النُّعْمَانِ»
I witnessed one of the marvels of the age: two disputants appeared before the judge of Maʿarrat al-Nuʿmān.
Two litigants appearing before a judge normally invite a question of justice: which claim is valid? Here that framework also supports an interpretive puzzle because the object of dispute is described through elaborate, ambiguous language.
A court naturally structures a tale into claim, reply, clarification and judgment. The writer exploits that structure to sustain two questions at once: what really happened, and what do the speakers’ expressions actually refer to? The riddle is literary, while the setting remains formally judicial.