Joseph L. Cumming
For example, the Arabs say that a certain person is ibn al-watan or ibn al-balad, or even ibn al-Nil [‘son of the nation’ or ‘son of the country’ or even ‘son of the Nile’]. This does not mean that al-watan or al-balad or even al-Nil took a wife and sired a child by her. It would be ridiculous to try to interpret these expressions in a literal way.
For an Arabic version of this paper and other papers by Joseph L. Cumming, follow this link to Yale’s Reconciliation Program.
