كتاب الحيوان (Book of Animals) (850) - Page 15

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latent heat whose obstacle has vanished. This is how he ought to have spoken; this is his analogy. He claimed that if you saw a lamp burning until morning, the light you saw at the first moment has perished from this world, and it has snatched a portion of its weight and measure from time to the best of its ability, and so on for the second, third, and ninth. If you think that this lamp is the same one, it is not; but that place is not devoid of near, similar parts. Since there was no resemblance or sign in the first, you assumed that the lamp you saw at the breaking of dawn was the same one you saw at the setting of the twilight. He claimed that the lamp's fire did not eat anything of the oil nor did it drink it, and that fire does not eat or drink. Instead, the oil decreases according to how much smoke and fire—which were latent within it—exit from it. When everything has exited, it is its destruction. They also speak this way based on proverbs, etymology, and analogy. If you say: "But God Almighty said in the Book: 'Those who said, "God has made a covenant with us that we should not believe a messenger until he brings us an offering that fire consumes"'" Quran 3:183—after we know that God Almighty spoke to them in their own language. Aws ibn Hajar said:

He bound his soul within it, while he was resolute, And he cast his own ropes and relied upon it.
-> Its nails have eaten the rock, whenever The length of the ascent became difficult for him to climb.

He treated the carving and the chipping as "eating." Khaffaf ibn Nudba said:

O Abu Kharasha, if you are among a clan, * Then my people have not been eaten by the drought.

The "drought" is the year, so he treated the adversity of the drought and its constraints as another category of what they call "eating." Mirdas ibn Adiyya said:

The earth has returned to me like what it has eaten, * And they presented my deeds for the weighing of justice.

The earth’s "eating" of what has gone into its belly is its transmutation into its own essence.

A small horizontal decorative ornament consisting of a central diamond-like shape with stylized symmetrical leaf or wing motifs on either side.

Another Chapter

This is the saying of God Almighty: "Those who eat the property of orphans unjustly" Quran 4:10, and His saying, exalted be His name: "Devourers of the forbidden" Quran 5:42. It is said of them that they are such even if they drink wines with that money, wear garments, ride beasts, and do not spend a single dirham of it in the way of "eating." God Almighty has said...