The Shabby Bird: Al-Baghath (البغاث) — The Slow, Dusty Bird the Arabs Called the Worst of Birds

I’ll be honest: I expected a grand bird from this entry, something with a story attached. What I got was a bird famous for being unimpressive — and somehow that made me like it more. The shabby bird is the underdog of the medieval bird world, and the Arabs who wrote about it did not spare its feelings.

A Name You Can Say Three Ways

Al-Damiri starts, as he often does, with pronunciation. The shabby bird’s name can be said with the first letter opened, lowered, or rounded — ba, bi, or bu — three accepted ways of saying the same word, with a dotted ghayn in the middle. That might sound like dry grammar, but it tells you this was a word people actually used, in different regions, in everyday speech.

Then comes the grammar of crowds. The grammarian Yunus worked out the plurals like a puzzle. If you treat baghath as a single bird, its plural is baghthan — the same pattern as ghazal becoming ghazlan (gazelles). But if you call both the male and the female baghathah, then the plural is simply baghath, the way na‘amah (ostrich) becomes na‘am. One little bird, two ways to count a flock.

Smaller Than a Vulture, Slower Than You’d Think

So what does it look like? The book gives a short, blunt portrait: a dusty-coloured bird, smaller than the vulture (al-rakhamah), and slow in flight. Picture it — not sleek, not striking, just greyish-brown, drifting along at its own unhurried pace while sharper birds cut past it.

And here is the verdict that made the shabby bird famous, or infamous: the book calls it one of the worst of birds, and counts it among the birds that do not hunt. In a world where birds of prey were prized and trained, a bird that could not — or would not — hunt sat at the bottom of the pecking order. “Baghath of the birds,” the book says, simply means the worst of them, the ones that never catch anything.

The Mother Falcon and the Shabby Bird’s Many Chicks

My favourite part is a verse by Abbas ibn Mirdas al-Sulami, and it flips the whole insult on its head: “Baghath of the birds have the most chicks, while the mother falcon is miqlat and nazur.”

A miqlat, the book explains, is a woman whose child does not live, or a she-camel that bears a single calf and never bears again — or, in another reading, a bird that builds its nest in dangerous places. Nazur means few in offspring. So the proud falcon, queen of the hunt, raises almost nothing. The shabby bird, the one nobody respects, raises a crowd. The falcon gets the glory and the empty nest. The shabby bird gets mocked — and a full one.

“The Baghath in Our Land Becomes an Eagle”

Then comes the proverb, and it is the reason this bird is still worth talking about. The Arabs said: “Al-baghath bi-ardina yastansir” — the baghath in our land becomes an eagle.

The usual reading is generous and proud: whoever settles beside us grows mighty through us. Take in a weak, shabby stranger, and under your protection he becomes something formidable. It was a boast about hospitality and strength.

But the book records a second reading, and it is much spikier: the weak one grows bold against us and shows off his strength over us. Same bird, same proverb, opposite warning. Help the weak, and watch out — gratitude is not guaranteed. A good proverb should praise you and warn you in the same breath.

Finally, the book gives its ruling in one short line: eating the shabby bird is forbidden, because of its foulness. That is the book’s own legal judgment, recorded as a historical belief, not advice for your dinner table. Just a dusty little bird, slow in the air, raising more chicks than a falcon, carrying a proverb about power and gratitude on its ragged wings. The falcon gets the songs. The shabby bird gets the last laugh.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is al-baghath, the shabby bird?

   Al-baghath is a dusty-coloured bird described in Hayat al-Hayawan as smaller than a vulture and slow in flight. The book ranks it among the worst of birds because it does not hunt. The entry does not identify it with a single modern species, so it is best understood as the medieval Arabs’ name for a shabby, non-hunting bird.

2. Why did the Arabs call it one of the worst of birds?

   Because it does not hunt. In a culture that prized falcons and other birds of prey, a bird that never caught anything sat at the bottom of the ranking. The book says “baghath of the birds” simply means the worst of them — the ones that do not hunt.

3. What does the proverb “the baghath in our land becomes an eagle” mean?

   It usually means that whoever neighbours a strong tribe grows mighty through them — even a weak guest becomes an eagle under their protection. The book also records a sharper reading: the weak one grows bold against his hosts and shows off his strength over them.