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LRSN's avatar

Abu ‘Amir (the author of your cat poem) lived in the late 11th century CE, and not in Egypt but Gorgan (northern Iran), as indicated by his surname al-Jurjani. Otherwise, nice work.

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weird medieval guys's avatar

Oh dear, thank you for the correction! I'll update the text.

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Josh Kornbluth's avatar

Another fabulous post!! You are opening up whole new areas of human (and feline) history and culture to this ancient reader. And your writing voice is such a delight!

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weird medieval guys's avatar

Thank you so much!! This is high praise, I'm very glad you enjoyed :)

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anna's avatar

reading this genuinely made life feel a little brighter today, i'm obsessed with the fact people loved their cats back then as much as we do now (cutting off the sleeve so muezza could continue to sleep uninterrupted is my favourite i think aswell as the custom shoes so his cat can sit with him on his prayer rug - i will remember this forever)

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Anne Kadet's avatar

Yay so glad you are on Substack now!

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Abdulrahman.'s avatar

I think this distinction is clear since dogs in Islam are mainly used as a utility animal not a pet (with shepherds, security), cats take this place in most Muslim cultures as the favorite pet. Hence, all those IG cat videos from Turkey. They're still free roaming in the country. Another anecdote is the statue of the cat that died. https://www.boredpanda.com/laid-back-cat-statue-tombili-istanbul/

The muslim tradition is filled with animal cuteness in so many ways anyways hah.

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Sophie L. Smith's avatar

highly excellent post!!! I love reading about people who love cats so much! (I wonder if, at least in Egypt, the love of cats was at least partially a holdover from the old religion) a while back I was writing a story where one of the characters was a medieval Muslim from Alexandria and she was talking about the mosques there and I looked up pictures of some of the mosques for reference and one of the pictures was a cat just chilling in the sun in the mosque. had to include mosque cat in the story obviously. also evidence that the tradition continues :) I love you mosque cat

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Jenna Woginrich's avatar

This was great I loved reading it!

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Charlotte Henley Babb's avatar

I am a cat person as much as possible although at the moment I have no feline overseer.

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Keenan Weind's avatar

So did the Egyptians. There is a story of a Roman army who - when facing off with an Egyptian force - released bags of cats on the battlefield. As the story goes, the Egyptians became more interested in saving the lives of the cats, than their own (thus, the Romans defeated them thoroughly).

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Cheese's avatar

I love these stories of the adventures of medieval kitties.

On the ‘Cat’s in Islam’ Wikipedia page (one of my favourite page titles) it suggests one reason for cats popularity among the learned of the Muslim world was that Muslim scholars used paper wheras western scholars used vellum. Cats were valued to keep the mice from eating the books, and an Imam without a cat was suspect as poorly read.

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badass women in history's avatar

thank goodness for this post

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Ibraar Hussain's avatar

Brilliant - I’ve shared this widely

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Cory Panshin's avatar

The story about the cat and the liver has a deeper mystical meaning. It raises a question that also appears in Phil Dick’s Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. I think it has something to do with the absorption of the self into God.

And the story about cutting off a sleeve so as not to wake a sleeping cat is mirrored in a famous Japanese print of a woman cutting off the hem of her kimono.

https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.3925536498.0938/flat,750x,075,f-pad,750x1000,f8f8f8.jpg

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