Quotes 2017 #154

"The first animal to learn of Adam's fall to earth was the eagle. It was a friend of the whale, and it came to him and said: 'Today I saw a large creature that was, by turns, dejected and happy, standing and sitting, coming and going.' The whale said: 'If what you are saying is true, then the time has come when I may not share the seas with him nor you the land. I bid you farewell.' So the vulture went to Adam and befriended him, and other beasts and birds came to Adam and befriended him, and wept alongside him for an age. When all of this weeping vexed them, they left him and only the vulture remained, and he continued to weep."

Shihab Al-Din Al-Nuwayri, The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition. (Elias Muhanna trans.)

What kind of book is this? Exactly something I have long waited...