Bird: Al-Bara (البرا) — the Bird Called Al-Samwil 🐦

The Whole Entry, Quoted Complete

Here it is — the entire entry, beginning to end:

بضم الباء طائر يسمى السمويل وسيأتي إن شاء الله تعالى في باب السين المهملة.

“In form: with a dammah on the bā' — a bird called al-samwil — and it will come, GOD willing, in the chapter of the unvoiced sīn.”

That is all the book says. No description of feathers or beak, no story, no remedy, no poem. But every word of that line is doing a job, so let us unpack it the way a classical reader would.

بضم الباء — “with a dammah on the bā'.” The word is read al-bu-rā, not al-ba-rā and not al-bi-rā. Arabic script leaves vowels unwritten, so a bare word on a page can be read three ways, and three readings can be three different words. Al-Damiri refuses to let you mispronounce his bird. It is the lexicographer's reflex: get the name right before anything else, because a mispronounced name is a lost animal.

طائر يسمى السمويل — “a bird called al-samwil.” The bird has another name, and the book hands it to you like a second key. Perhaps the reader knows the bird as al-samwil and not as al-barā — the entry is a signpost between two names, so whichever word you looked up, you land in the right place.

وسيأتي إن شاء الله تعالى في باب السين المهملة — “and it will come, GOD willing, in the chapter of the unvoiced sīn.” The full entry lives elsewhere, under al-samwil, in the sīn chapter — and he specifies the unvoiced sīn (المهملة, “the neglected one,” as opposed to the dotted shīn) the way a librarian specifies the shelf. The book's alphabetical order is its filing system, and al-Damiri is filing this bird where it belongs, not where you found it.

Coming Soon, Medieval Style

We think of “coming soon” as a modern tease — a trailer, a locked door on a website. The medieval version was this: a single line standing in an alphabetical chapter, pointing forward to another chapter. No apology for it. The reader of the 1300s was expected to wait.

And the waiting could be long. The book moves through its alphabet slowly — alif, bā', tā', and onward — and the sīn chapter sits deep inside it, entries and entries away. A reader who stumbled on البرا in the bā' chapter and wanted the full story of al-samwil had a journey ahead of him. This series follows the book in order, so the wait is ours too: the full entry arrives when we reach س, and not a page earlier.

There is something honest about the one-line entry. A lesser author would have padded it — copied a description from elsewhere, guessed, filled the space. Al-Damiri wrote one line and moved on. The book would rather say nothing than say something unverified. In a book of five hundred-plus entries, that restraint is a kind of integrity — and it is exactly why this series refuses to invent facts either.

The Honest Ledger

So here is the strict ledger, and I will not cross it. The entry confirms four things and nothing more: (1) the word is read al-barā, with a dammah on the bā'; (2) it is a bird; (3) the bird is also called al-samwil; (4) its full entry is deferred to the sīn chapter. That is the verified core. The book gives no description of the bird under this name — no habits, no stories, no remedies. What al-samwil looks like, where it lives, what it does: the book has not told us yet. When it does, in the sīn chapter, this series will be there — and we will meet the bird at last.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is al-barā?

   Al-barā (البرا) is a bird, also called al-samwil (السمويل). That is all the entry says: one line giving the pronunciation (dammah on the bā'), the identification (a bird), the alternate name, and a pointer — the full entry is promised later, in the book's sīn chapter. No description exists at this point in the book.

2. Why does the book say “with a dammah on the bā'”?

   Because Arabic writing leaves vowels unmarked, so برا could be read ba-rā, bu-rā, or bi-rā — potentially different words. Al-Damiri pins the vowel down (al-bu-rā) before anything else, a lexicographer's habit: pronounce the name correctly first, because a misread name loses the animal.

3. When will we learn more about this bird?

   When this series reaches the sīn chapter, in book order. The full entry under al-samwil is waiting there, and the article for it will be written then — no sooner. Until then, the one line is the whole story, and this article keeps it that way.