Riddles (Arabic) facts for kids

Riddles are a very old and important type of writing in Arabic culture. Even though the Qur’an doesn't have riddles, early Arabic stories, sayings, and collections often included them. Since the 1800s, many scholars have also collected riddles that people tell each other.

For a long time, experts didn't study Arabic riddles much. But recently, more attention has been given to them, especially riddles about grammar, meaning, and law.

What are Arabic Riddles Called?

In Arabic, riddles are mainly known as lughz (Arabic: لُغز). The plural is alghāz (ألغاز). Other words for riddles include uḥjiyya (plural aḥājī) and ta'miya.

The word lughz can mean many things. A famous writer named al-Nuwayrī (who lived from 1272 to 1332) explained it well. He said lughz comes from how a field rat burrows. The rat digs straight, then suddenly turns left or right to hide from enemies. This makes it almost invisible.

Just like the rat's tricky path, riddles are meant to be tricky! Arabic has many other words that are similar to lughz, like mu’āyāh, ’awīṣ, and mu‘ammā. All these words show that riddles in Arabic can be about many different things, like metaphors, tricky meanings, or wordplay.

How Riddles Mix with Other Writing Styles

Early Arabic poetry often uses rich descriptions and metaphors. This means that poetry and riddles often share a similar style. Many literary riddles are a type of descriptive poem called waṣf.

Let's look at two examples to see how some poems are riddles and some are not.

The first poem is about a roasted chicken:

This poem tells you right away it's about a roasted chicken. So, it's not a riddle because you don't have to guess the answer.

Now, look at this second poem about a spoon:

This poem doesn't tell you the answer. You have to read it and figure out that it's describing a spoon. This is what makes it a riddle!

=Muʿammā Riddles: Puzzles with Letters

The word muʿammā means 'blinded' or 'obscured'. It can be another word for lughz, or it can mean a special type of riddle. A muʿammā riddle is solved by putting together the letters of a word or name.

These riddles are usually in verse (like a poem) and don't ask a direct question. Instead, they give clues about the letters or sounds of the hidden word.

Here's an example of a muʿammā riddle where the answer is the name Aḥmad:

If you take the third letter of 'tuffāḥa' (A), the fourth of 'tuffāḥ' (Ḥ), the first of 'misk' (M), and the last of 'ward' (D), you get AḤMD, or Aḥmad!

The famous poet Abu Nuwas is thought to be one of the first to use the muʿammā style. This type of riddle became very popular around the 13th century. Some muʿammā riddles also use the number values of letters to create puzzles.

Chronograms: Riddles that Tell Dates

A special type of muʿammā is called a chronogram (تأريخ, taʾrīkh). In these riddles, you add up the number values of the letters in a line of poetry. The total number tells you the year of the event described in the poem.

This riddle style started in Arabic around the 13th century and became very popular in the 15th century. It was inspired by similar puzzles in Hebrew and Aramaic writings.

Here's an example by Māmayah al-Rūmī (who died in 1577):

To solve this, you take the last line: وَأَنْزَلَ اللَّهُ عَلَيْنَا رَحْمَتَهُ. Each letter has a number value:

If you add these numbers together, you get 974. This is the year 974 AH (which is 1566 CE), the year of the drought the poem describes.

Abyat al-ma'ani: Riddles of Meaning

Abyāt al-maʿānī is a special term for riddles that are puzzling because of their meaning. A scholar named Al-Suyuti explained that some Arabic poems were not meant to be riddles, but they ended up being puzzling. Most of these are abyāt al-maʿānī.

These poems are called abyāt al-maʿānī because you have to ask about their meaning. You can't understand them right away.

Legal Riddles: Puzzles About Law

There's a big tradition of riddles about legal matters in Arabic. These are called alghāz fiqhīya. Imagine a legal riddle as a fatwā (a legal opinion) in reverse. It gives you a strange legal situation or rule, and you have to figure out how it could be true.

For example, Ibn Farḥūn (who died in 1397) wrote this riddle:

If you said: A man who is fit to be a prayer leader but who is not fit to be a congregant?
Then I would say: He is the blind man who became deaf after learning what was necessary for him to lead prayer. It is not permissible for him to be led by a prayer leader because he would not be aware of the imām’s actions unless someone alerted him to them.

The answer is a blind man who became deaf. He can lead prayers because he knows what to do, but he can't follow another leader because he can't hear their cues.

Legal riddles became a major type of writing in the 14th century. This might be because people started having intellectual gatherings where they would share difficult knowledge. Scholars began collecting these riddles in their law books.

Some of the earliest collections of legal riddles were written in the 14th century by scholars from different schools of Islamic law:

• al-Isnawī (died 1370) from the Shāfiʿī school.
• Ibn Abī al-ʿIzz (died 1390) from the Ḥanafī school.
• Ibn Farḥūn (died 1397) from the Mālikī school.

These collections show that three of the four main schools of Islamic law were involved in creating legal riddles. The Ḥanbalī school, however, didn't seem to participate as much.

The idea of legal riddles goes back even further. Some old sayings from the Prophet Muhammad suggest using riddles to make people think about religious rules. This type of riddle also came from an interest in other tricky legal topics, like ḥiyal (clever ways to follow the law without breaking its spirit) and furūq (subtle differences in legal cases).

Folk Riddles: Riddles from Everyday Life

Scholars have collected many riddles from people all over the Arabic-speaking world. We can see that Arabic riddles are a unique and important part of their culture.

Here are some examples of modern folk riddles, grouped by their style:

• Nonoppositional (The clues don't contradict each other)
  • Literal: Werqa ‘ala werqa, ma hiya? (l-beṣla) [leaf upon leaf, what is she? (an onion)] (Morocco)
  • Metaphorical: Madīnatun ḥamrā’, ǧidrānuhā ḩaḍrā’, miftāḥuḥa ḥadīd, wa-sukkānuhā ‘abīd (il-baṭṭīḩ) [a red city, its walls are green, its key is iron, and its inhabitants are black slaves (watermelon)] (Palestine)
  • Solution included in the question: Ḩiyār ismo w-aḩḍar ǧismo, Allāh yihdīk ‘alā smo (il-ḩiyār) ['Ḩiyār {='cucumber'} is its name and green its body, may God lead you to its name [=to what it is] (cucumber)] (Palestine)

• Oppositional (The clues seem to contradict each other)
  • Antithetical contradictive: Kebīra kēf el-fīl, u-tenṣarr fī mendīl (nāmūsīya) [big as an elephant, and folds up into a handkerchief (mosquito net)] (Libya)
  • Privational contradictive: Yemšī blā rās, u-yeqtel blā rṣāṣ (en-nher) [goes without a head, and kills without lead (a river)] (Algeria)
    • Inverse privational contradictive: Gaz l-wad ‘ala ržel (‘okkaz) [crossed the river on one leg (walking stick/cane)] (Morocco)
  • Causal contradictive: Ḩlug eš bāb, kber u-šāb, u-māt eš bāb (el-gamra) [was born a youth, grew old and white, and died a youth (the moon)] (Tunisia)

• Contrastive (Two opposite things are compared)
  • mekkēn fī kakar, akkān dā ġāb, dāk ḥaḍar (iš-šams wil-gamar) [two kings on a throne, if one is absent, the other is present (the sun and the moon)] (Sudan)

• Compound (Many different clues are given)
  • Šē yākul min ġēr fumm, in akal ‘āš, w-in širib māt (in-nār) [a thing which eats without a mouth, if it eats it lives, and if it drinks it dies (fire)] (Egypt)

Collections of Folk Riddles

Many books and studies have collected Arabic folk riddles from different regions. These collections help us understand the rich tradition of riddles. Some examples include:

• Giacobetti, A., Recueil d’enigmes arabes populaires (Algiers 1916)
• Hillelson, S., 'Arabic Proverbs, Sayings, Riddles and Popular Beliefs', Sudan Notes and Records, 4.2 (1921), 76–86
• Ruoff, Erich (ed. and trans.), Arabische Rätsel, gesammelt, übersetzt und erläutert: ein Beitrag zur Volkskunde Palästinas (Laupp, 1933).
• Littmann, Enno (ed.), Morgenländische Spruchweisheit: Arabische Sprichwörter und Rätsel. Aus mündlicher Überlieferung gesammelt und übtertragen, Morgenland. Darstellungen aus Geschichte und Kultur des Ostens, 29 (Leipzig, 1937)
• Quemeneur, J., Enigmes tunisiennes (Tunis 1937)
• Arberry, A. J., A Maltese Anthology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), pp. 1–37 (riddles alongside proverbs, folktales, etc., in English translation)
• Ibn Azzuz, M. and Rodolfo Gil, 'Coleccion de adivinanzas marroquies', Boletín de la Asociación Española de Orientalistas, 14 (1978), 187-204
• Dubus, André, 'Énigmes tunisiennes', IBLA, 53 no. 170 (1992), 235-74; 54 no. 171 (1993), 73-99
• El-Shamy, Hasan M., Folk Traditions of the Arab World: A Guide to Motif Classification, 2 vols (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995)
• Heath, Jeffrey, Hassaniya Arabic (Mali): Poetic and Ethnographic Texts (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003), pp. 186–87
• Mohamed-Baba, Ahmed-Salem Ould, 'Estudio de algunas expresiones fijas: las adivinanzas, acertijos y enigmas en Hassaniyya', Estudios de dialectología norteafricana y andalusí, 8 (2004), 135-147
• Mohamed Baba, Ahmed Salem Ould, 'Tradición oral ḥassāní: el léxico nómada de las adivinanzas' [Ḥassāní oral tradition: the nomadic lexicon of the riddles], Anaquel de Estudios Árabes, 27 (2016), 143-50 .

How Arabic Riddles Influenced Others

Arabic riddle traditions also influenced Hebrew poetry during the Middle Ages. A well-known Hebrew poet from that time, Judah Halevi, wrote riddles. For example, he wrote:

The answer to this riddle is 'a pen'.