Barghan: The Wild Cow's Calf You Can Pronounce Two Ways 🐂

The Whole Entry, Quoted in Full

Here is the entry, complete:

بفتح الباء والغين المعجمة وضمهما ولد البقرة الوحشية.

“With the opening of the bā' and the dotted ghayn, and their joining: the calf of the wild cow.”

Eleven words. The entire entry. And — I checked twice — that is all there is. No story, no poem, no hunting anecdote. Just a word, its two readings, and what it means.

But hold on. Read it again, because this line is doing something the neighboring entries don't.

Two Readings, Both Official

Most of this book's entries pin a word down to ONE form. Not this one. Al-Damiri gives you options: فتح — open the bā' and the ghayn with a fatha, and you get bar-ghan. ضم — join them with a damma, and you get bur-ghun. Two pronunciations, both blessed by the book.

I love this. A 700-year-old encyclopedia that could have picked a winner and instead said: say it either way, you're right. This is not sloppiness — it is the book's ear for living speech. People in different tents said it differently, and the dictionary recorded both.

The Dotted Ghayn

Notice he doesn't just say “ghayn.” He says الغين المعجمة — the DOTTED ghayn. Because in Arabic script, غ and ع are the same shape; the only difference is the dot. One dot separates a gargling sound from a throaty one, and with it, one word from a totally different word.

Al-Damiri has seen what a missing dot can do to a manuscript. Yesterday's entry, al-bakhzaj, spelled out its letters one by one for exactly this reason. Here he is more economical: just the dot, thank you. The reader who knows the ghayn is dotted will never misread this word. Precision with minimum ink.

The Second Calf of the Wild Cow

Here is the part that made me grin. This is the SECOND word for the wild cow's calf in the ب chapter. Yesterday's entry, al-bakhzaj (البخزج), meant exactly the same thing: ولد البقرة الوحشية. Word for word, the same definition.

Two words. Same calf. One defined by spelling out its letters, one by declaring its two vowels. The book refused to drop either.

Why keep both? Because someone, somewhere, actually said both. The desert was big and the dialects differed, and al-Damiri's project was never “one true word” — it was every real word, kept safe. A hunter's word from one valley, a poet's word from another, each with its own entry, each pronounced the way its people pronounced it.

The Wild Cow Behind Both Words

The البقرة الوحشية — the wild cow — is what the classical dictionaries call بقر الوحش: the desert bovines, wild cattle and not farm animals, the oryx-like herds the old poets put next to the most beautiful things they knew. (That is the dictionaries' picture of the wild cow generally; al-Damiri's two calf-entries add nothing to it — and honestly say so.)

Old Arabic kept a whole nursery of words for the young: the جحش for the donkey's foal, the عجل for the tame cow's calf — and not one but two words, bakhzaj and barghan, for the wild cow's. A language built by people who watched herds the way sailors watch weather.

One Line, Then the Flea

And here is my favorite detail: this entry sits at the very top of page 177 — and the very next entry is البرغوث, the flea. The book goes from the calf of the wild cow, an animal you could ride, to a bloodsucking speck you can barely see, in the space of one line break.

That is Hayat al-Hayawan in miniature: no hierarchy, no favorites. The calf gets eleven words. The flea, as it happens, gets pages. Every creature weighed on its own scale.

So say it however you like — bar-ghan or bur-ghun. The book says you're right either way. Seven centuries later, the calf of the wild cow is still named twice, still safe.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What does al-barghan mean?

   Al-barghan (البرغن) is the Arabic word for the calf of the wild cow — the young of the wild bovine (بقر الوحش). Hayat al-Hayawan defines it in a single line, noting that the bā' and the dotted ghayn may take either fatha or damma, giving two valid readings.

2. How do you pronounce it — bar-ghan or bur-ghun?

   Both, according to the entry itself: بفتح الباء والغين المعجمة وضمهما — “with the opening of the bā' and the dotted ghayn, and their joining.” Fatha gives bar-ghan; damma gives bur-ghun. The book records both readings as valid, reflecting how different speakers said the word.

3. Is al-barghan the same as al-bakhzaj?

   They share the exact same definition — “the calf of the wild cow” (ولد البقرة الوحشية). Both sit in the book's ب chapter as separate entries: al-bakhzaj defined by spelling out its letters, al-barghan by its two vowel readings. Two dialect words for the same young animal, each kept.