Bonelli’s eagle. Questions on a bird of prey with a special name, mentioned in the oldest remaining Arabic book on falconry
Jablonkay Judit / Judit Jablonkay
Hadak útján. A népvándorláskor kutatóinak XXIX. konferenciája. Budapest, 2019. november 15–16. / 29th Conference of scholars on the Migration Period. November 15–16, 2019, Budapest
MŐK Kiadványok 4.1 (2022) 481–484
DOI 10.55722/Arpad.Kiad.2021.4.1_25
A keleti arab területeken sasfajokat ritkán alkalmaztak vadászatra – ha igen, akkor inkább a kisebb méretű fajok példányait idomították. Ezen fajok egyike a legkorábbi fennmaradt arab nyelvű solymászati munkában is említett zummaǧ. A faj szótárirodalomra támaszkodó beazonosítása során fölmerülnek bizonyos kérdések.
Kulcsszavak: arab, ragadozómadarak, solymászat, héjasas, fajmeghatározás
Members of the Aquilinae subfamily were never amongst the most popular sporting-birds in Arab lands of the Umayyad era. However, a medium-sized eagle called zummaǧ (Bonelli’s eagle, Hieraaetus fasciatus or Aquila fasciatus) is listed up in the oldest remaining Arabic book on falconry, Kitāb Ḍawārī ṭṭayr, written at the end of 8th century by al-Ġiṭrīf ibn Qudāma al-Ġassānī, the greatest falconer of his age and the master of the hawk-keepers of the Umayyad Court during the reign of Caliphs Hišām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (724‒743) and al-Walīd ibn Yazīd (743‒744). In the process of trying to identify the species, using mediaeval Arabic lexicographic sources like Tahḏīb alluġa of al-Azharī, we often come across an additional name of Persian origin applied to zummaǧ. Dubrāḏ is an arabized form of the Persian name do barādarān (two brothers), which is based on this species’ habit of tandem hunting. As F. Viré has pointed out, those two names may denote two raptorial birds of different species, both of them observed hunting in tandem, zummaǧ standing for Bonelli’s eagle, and do barādarān for Rufous-bellied eagle (Lophotriorchis kienerii), a relatively small-sized eagle found in southern and south-eastern Asia.
Keywords: Arabic, bird of prey, falconry, Bonelli’s eagle, identify the species
