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of arquebuses, by which word, in deference to lexicographic authority, I have rendered the modern Arabic bundukiyat, although it is not improbable that it was inserted by some modern copyist in the place of benadic or kisiy el benadic, pellet-bows, as opposed to quarrel-bows (khetatif).[1] The word bundukiyeh (sing. of bundukiyat) means literally an implement for throwing pellets (bunduc) of clay or lead, and (although I cannot find any example of its use in any sense other than that of “gun”) was doubtless originally synonymous with caus el bunduc (sing. of kisiy el benadic), a stone or pellet bow, as was the earlier name of the hand-gun, bunduc, so used metonymically for caus el bunduc. The names of the old armes de jet were, on the introduction of firearms, transferred to the new weapons, e.g. midfaa, a cannon, lit. a pushing implement, hence a spring and (by metonymy) the tube in which the spring worked, a spring-gun, even as the word arquebuse itself appears to have been originally applied to the arbalest or pellet-bow, arcubalista, from which latter word or the Italian arcibugio (bow-hole or tube) it is much more probable that it had its derivation than from the German haken-büchse or the Dutch haekbus.[2] The Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor, though forming part of almost all known copies of the complete
- ↑ The word khetatif usually means “hooks”; but the context shows that it is here applied, by a common figure of synecdoche, to the quarrel or hook-bow.
- ↑ A curious confirmation of this reading is found in De Sacy’s Chrestomathie Arabe, where, in quoting from a poem composed in honour of the Buyide prince Seifeddauleh by the great Cufan poet El Mutenebbi (A.D. 915–965), he renders the words kisiy el benadic
