IBN AL-R M 'S SINGING SLAVE-GIRL This Essay Will

SENSIBILITY AND SYNAESTHESIA: IBN AL-R�M�'S SINGING SLAVE-GIRL

This essay will explore the function of wasf (description) by dealing with the relation between verbal art and the musical art of gesture and singing in a medieval Arabic qasadah or ode from the ninth century A.D., which describes a singing slave-girl. Re-examining why and how the ode has entranced the listener or the reader, I shall make use of modern Western modes of interarts studies, while not neglecting conventional Arabic literary compo- nents and the medieval Arabic social, artistic milieu of singing-girls. As theoretical tools, I will use the concept of the "gestural" developed by Lawrence Kramer.' As to the social ambience, an essay on singing slave- girls by al-Jahiz (A.D. 776-869), one of the most prominent classical Arab litterateurs, will be our source. I will also rely on George Sawa's study of the theory and practice of musical performance in the classical Middle East.' For the purpose of re-discovering the quintessence of the qasidah, I hope that innovative and untried methods will provide us with wider and new perspectives on the poetic tradition. Wa?f (description) occupies a central role in the Arabic qasidah tradition and is commonly held to be characteristic of the genre.3 Description is one of the literary strategies used by the poet to reflect an aspect of "reality," either actual or fictional. The qasidah was evaluated negatively by tradi-

An earlier version of this article was delivered at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., Nov. 19-22, 1999. I would like to express my gratitude to Professors Claus Cliiver and Suzanne Stetkevych for their advice, comments and constant encouragement and guidance. I Lawrence Kramer, Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1984). 2 George Dimitri Sawa, Music Performance Practice in the Early 'Abbdsid Era 132-320 AH/750-932AD (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1989). He deals with his- torical Middle Eastern musicology and performance practice with reference to court musicians of the early 'Abbasid era, in combination with the analysis of classical Arabic music theoretical works by al-Farabi (circa A.D. 872/3-950), including Kitab al-Mùsiqá al-Kabir (Grand Book of Music), Kitab al-lqd'dt (Book of Rhythms), and Kitdb Ihsa' al-lqd'dt (Book for the Basic Comprehensionof Rhythms). 3 The poem I will investigate is often introduced as an excellent model of wasf in works on Ibn al-Rumi and other poetry studies. For instance, in the preface of Diwan of Ibn al-Rumi, the editor Ahmad Hasan Basaj introduces the poem under the categorization of wa$f Diwdn of Ibn a/-/?M/7u,ed. with notes, Ahmad Hasan Basaj, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al- 'llmiyyah, 1994), 1: 12-13. 2 tional Orientalists for what was thought to be its objective descriptiveness; they thought it lacked the expression of emotion. Gustave von Grunebaum, for instance, states in reference to the qasidah:4

The poet is wholly dedicated to the task of adequately describing his theme down to its most intimate and, at the same time, most typical peculiarities. There is no doubt that here the Arabs contributed a number of masterpieces to descriptive art .... Whatever the subject, it is presented for its inherent interest, never for any emotion it may have touched off in the observer or listener.... Whatever his [the qasidah poet's] subject, he will reproduce it as it is, or perhaps rather as tradition has taught him to see it, refraining care- fully from personalized comment or from putting his feelings unduly to the fore. If we disregard the perfection of form and language, the beauty of his presentation derives entirely from the fidelity of his observation, not from his reaction to the impressions that actually inspired his song .... The poet's organ of perception is the eye.5

Grunebaum's conception of the objective descriptiveness of Arabic poetry sees the poet's faithful, minute description as based on mimesis (imitation), which is intended to portray a visual/pictorial image.6 Rejecting this view, I have tried in previous studies to demonstrate the function and the mean- ing of description/wasf in the qasidah by investigating the psychological (emotional and affective), emblematic, metaphorical, and metaphysical lev- 7 els of the poems' ekphrastic descriptions of visual arts and architecture.? Pursuing this train of thought, I will argue in this paper that Ibn al-Rumi's

4 For a critique of the negative judgment of traditional Orientalists, see Jaroslav Stetkevych, "Arabic Poetry and Assorted Poetics," Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. Malcolm H. Kcrr (Malibu, California: Undena Publications, 1980), 103-23. Michael Sells has a comprehensive survey on the subject in "The Qasida and the West: Self-Reflective Stereotype and Critical Encounter," Al-'Arabiyya 20 (1987): 307-57 and "Guises of the Ghul: DissemblingSimile and SemanticOverflow in the Classical ArabicNasib," ReorientationslArabic and Persian Poetry, ed. Suzanne Stetkevych (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 130-64. 5 Gustave E. von Grunebaum, "The Response to Nature in Arabic Poetry," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 4 (1945): 137-51. Rpt. in Dunning S. Wilson, ed., Themes in Medieval Arabic Literature (London: Variorum Reprints, 1981), 139-40. Grunebaum continues as follows: "Descriptions, or similes, based on acoustical experience are relatively insignificant in number. Scent, while frequently made mention of, is practically restricted to the nasib." 6 In addition to the issue of descriptiveness,his remarks indicate that he has failed to heed or reconsider how significant for the qasadah poet are the conventional regulations contained in form, which are associated with the stereotypedness of classical Arabic poetry. ' For the relationship between visual art and verbal art, see Akiko Motoyoshi, "Reality and Reverie: Wine and Ekphrasis in the 'Abbasid Poetry of Abu Nuwas and al-Buhturi," Annals of Japan Association for Middle East Studies 14 (1999): 85-120. As regards architectural- verbal connections, see Akiko Motoyoshi, "Poetry and Portraiture: A Double Portrait in An Arabic Panegyric by Ibn Zamrak," Journal of Arabic Literature 30, no. 3 (1999): 199-239. On the use of synaesthesia in the description of the beloved in the pre-Islamic nasib, see Sells, "Guises of the Ghùl," pp. 139-41.