اللي ما يعرف الصقر يشويه (illi ma yaʿrif al-ṣaqr yishwīh)

Literally: He who doesn't know the falcon, grills it

Example: “باع ساعة جده الأثرية بثمن بخس؛ اللي ما يعرف الصقر يشويه.” — He sold his grandfather's antique watch for next to nothing; pearls before swine.

English equivalent: To cast pearls before swine

Origin: Preserved in Arabic popular-proverb literature as a traditional folk narrative, not a documented historical event: a man owns a prized falcon, his sole source of income through hunting bustards, and one overcast day, despite poor conditions, sends the bird out anyway to hunt. When the falcon fails to return on schedule, the man searches the area where it disappeared and finds a shepherd already roasting it over a fire, having caught the bird and treated it as nothing more than ordinary game. Horrified, the man cries out that this was a falcon, not something to be eaten, and the shepherd simply replies that a bird is a bird regardless of what kind it is. The man's furious response — "whoever doesn't recognize a falcon roasts it" — became the proverb, now applied broadly to anyone who fails to recognize the true value of something or someone valuable placed in their care, and mistreats or squanders it as a result.