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     145

CHAPTER NINE

VESTIGES OF ANCIENT ICONOGRAPHIES

a. The encircling dragon of rain, the number of leaves of trees, the number of stones and earth, the number of days of this e iconography of the circular dragon biting its world, and the number of angels, – all these a own tail, traditionally known by its Greek name number of times. The then twisted itself as ouroboros, was also known in the Islamic tra- round the Throne which was taken up by only half the serpent while it remained twisted around dition. is type of imagery is vividly described it. The Throne thereupon became humble.2 in surviving textual sources. e early medieval writer Muammad ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Kisāʾī who In the Jewish tradition a great silver serpent like- probably wrote not long before 1200 refers to the wise encircles the machinery of the throne of king authority of Kaʿb al-Abār, a Yemenite convert to Solomon and by operating the wheelwork, acti- Islam (probably in 17/638), when portraying the vates the mechanism.3 It is of note that Solomon’s creation of the Canopy and the rone of God: mechanical throne, which can be likened to a - iature universe, can only be put into motion by Then God created a great serpent to surround 4 the Canopy. Its head is of white pearl and its the serpent. body is of gold. Its eyes are two sapphires, and In his Qia al-anbiyāʾ (“Tales on the Prophets”), no one can comprehend the magnitude of the Abū Isāq Amad ibn Muammad ibn Ibrāhīm serpent except God. It has forty thousand wings al-aʿlabī al-Nīsābūrī al-Shāfʿī (d. 427/1035), made of different kinds of jewels, and on each describes the Kaʿba in Mecca, the central sanc- feather there stands an angel holding a jeweled tuary of the Islamic world, as a divine throne that lance, praising God and blessing His name. When is circumscribed by a dragon: this serpent extols God, its exaltation overwhelms that of all angels...1 Then Allāh surrounded it by a serpent. … this serpent wound itself around the throne and the A related description of the girdling dragon is latter reaches to half the height of the serpent given by Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Qur ubī, the thir- which is winding itself around it.5 teenth-century expert in adīth, sacred tradi- In the biography of the Prophet Muammad, tion, in a commentary on sūra 40 of the Qurʾān: al- alabī similarly relates how the serpent that When God created the Throne, it said, ‘God has dwells in the pit of the Kaʿba to guard the trea- not created anything greater than myself,’ and sures there, would: exulted with joy out of pride. God therefore caused it to be surrounded by a serpent having 70,000 ...leave its dwelling place and appear glittering, wings, each wing having 70,000 feathers in it, each viz. it exposed itself in the sun upon the wall of feather having in it 70,000 faces each face having the Kaʿba while its colour assumed a glittering appearance; and often it wound itself on the wall so in it 70,000 mouths, and each mouth having in it 6 70,000 tongues, with its mouths ejaculating every that its tail approached its head [emphasis added]. day the praises of God …, the number of drops

1 Qia al-anbiyāʾ, tr. ackston, 1978, p. 7. al-anbiyāʾ, tr. and ed. Brinner, 2002, p. 151. Wensinck 2 Al-Damīrī, ayāt al- ayawān al-kubrā, tr. Jayakar, (1916, repr. 1978, p. 62 and n. 3) notes that there are also 1906, vol. 1, p. 638; see also ʿArāʾis al-majālis fī qia Greek images in which the serpent is wound around and al-anbiyāʾ, tr. and ed. Brinner, 2002, p. 25. ascends above the , which o en has a sepulchral 3 Bet -Midrasch, 1853–73, vol. 5, p. 35. Cf. Ginzberg, character (Elderkin, 1924, pp. 109–16); for a discussion of 1909–38, repr. 1946 and 1955, vol. 4, pp. 157–9; Wensinck, the omphalos in literature, see Roscher, 1913, pl. IX, no. 6; 1916, repr. 1978, p. 63. and idem, 1914, pl. I, no. 1, pl. II, nos. 3, 4, 14. See also 4 Bet ha-Midrasch, 1853–73, vol. 2, pp. 83–5. p. 59 and n. 102. 5 Al-Thaʿlabī, Qia al-anbiyāʾ. Musammā bi ’l-ʿarāʾis 6 Al-Sīra al-alabiyya, Cairo, 1292, vol. 1, p. 189, 3–5, as al-majālis, Cairo, 1290, p. 13, as cited in Wensinck, 1916, cited in Wensinck, 1916, repr. 1978, p. 64 and n. 1. repr. 1978, p. 62 and n. 3; see also ʿArāʾis al-majālis fī qia 146  

In the Islamic tradition ( adīth), as Wensinck make covenant with him … This explains the points out, the description of the serpent is a story about the man who saw the huge metaphor for the ocean: that God had placed around Mount Qāf, which encircles the world. The head and the tail of this ...as the Ocean, the Mekkan [sic] serpent is glit- snake meet. The man greeted the snake, who tering in the sun and as the Ocean it is black returned his greeting and then asked him about 7 and white. Shaykh Abū Madyan, who lived at Bijāya in the e motif of the “serpent whose tail approached Maghrib. The man said to it, “How do you come to know Abū Madyan?” The snake answered, “Is its head” is well-known in Semitic cosmography. there anyone on earth who does not know him?11 A key passage in the book of Job (26:12) states: He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters According to a saying of the Prophet Muammad, at the boundary between light and darkness. Mount Qāf is separated from the world “by a region which men cannot cross, a dark area which e inscribed circle refers to the of the hori- would stretch for four months walking.”12 It was zon, which separates the inhabited world from thus a distant, marginal area at the boundaries the waters that surround it.8 ese waters are of the “civilised” world.13 Such liminal regions symbolised by , “the encircler,” who is were o en inhabited by demons. Descriptions primarily a sea monster.9 e name of the bibli- of and other mythical creatures abound cal monster Leviathan (Hebr. liwyātān) has been in such regions in the descriptions of medieval derived from lwh suggested by the Arabic lwy Islamic geographical and travel works.14 eir “turn,” “twist” and the Assyrian lamû “surround,” topical proliferation serves as a “cultural marker” “encircle,”10 underscoring the probablility of an (in James Montgomery’s words) indicating to the original serpent-like nature of Leviathan. 15 e same motif is used by the great Anda- traveller that he is in a distant land. Together lusian Arab mystic Muyi ’l-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī with other imaginary hybrid creatures, such as (560/1165–638/1240) whose works draw on many and , the presence of the dragon sources, including Gnostic, Hermetic and Neopla- may have signied the outer reaches of the known tonic works. In his discussion of the Pole (qub; earth. is vision of the fabulous distant lands at an elevated rank of sainthood in ūfī mysticism) the remote ends of the world is also found in the that represents the living Messenger (rasūl) in Alexander Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes. In the Kitab al-manzil al-qub (“Book of the Spiri- this legend many wondrous feats are ascribed to tual Dwelling of the Pole”), he describes an enor- Iskandar who made his way to the furthest west mous serpent whose head and tail touch and that and furthest east, the end of the world, entering encircles Mount Qāf: the “regions not illuminated by the Sun, the Moon and the stars and light as day” where he encoun- The Pole is both the centre of the circle of the ters creatures such as human-headed birds.16 universe, and its circumference. He is the mirror of God, and the pivot of the world. … God is However, Mount Qāf does not only encircle perpetually epiphanized to him. … He is located the earth: it also encloses the ocean which “forms 17 in Mecca, whatever place he happens to be in a girdle around the earth.” e symbolism also bodily. When a Pole is enthroned at the level occurs in the story of Solomon of the Alf layla of the qubiyya, all beings, animal or vegetable, wa-layla which recounts how Solomon on his y-

7 Idem, p. 64. the story of a tree being cut to size which then begins to 8 Wakeman, 1973, pp. 134–5. move and crawl away in the form of a giant dragon. Risālat 9 Gunkel, 1895, p. 47 and n. 1; Wakeman, 1973, p. 135 Ibn Falān, ed. Dahhān, S., Damascus, 1959, pp. 127–8 and n. 1. (fol. 4 206 wāw), as cited in Montgomery, 2006, p. 72. 10 Eadem, 1973, p. 64. Cf. Grünbaum, 1877, p. 275. Cf. the dangerous and monstrous creatures of Greek lore 11 e same story, in expanded form, of a man speak- that dwell at the edges of the earth, the eschatiai, or “most ing to a serpent appears in the Risālat ru al-quds. See distant lands,” and are very o en guardians of treasure, Chodkiewicz, 1993, p. 55 and n. 32. for instance, the golden apples of the Hesperides in the 12 Cf. Streck [Miquel], “āf,” EI2 IV, 400a. far west and the golden eece of Kolchis in the far east 13 In lore the ends of the earth were inhab- which are protected by giant serpents; see Romm, 1987, ited by primeval and/or mythical creatures (for instance in pp. 45–54. Hesiod’s eogony 270–6). Inaccessible by land, they could 16 Pseudo-Callisthenes II, ch. 40, tr. and ed. Stoneman, only be reached by the crossing of waters, o en described as 1991, p. 121. Related conceptualisations of sphinxes and world-encircling. man-birds appear in the Kitāb-i Samak ʿAyyār; see Gaillard, 14 Cf. Montgomery, 2006, p. 72. 1987, p. 120. 15 e fourth marvel of Ibn Falān’s Risālat constitutes 17 Streck [Miquel], “āf,” EI2 IV, 400a.