Arabic Literary Thresholds

Sites of Rhetorical Turn in Contemporary Scholarship

Edited by Muhsin al-Musawi

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2009 Originally published as Volume 38 no. 3 (2007) and Volume 39 no. 1 (2008) of Brill’s Journal of Arabic Literature

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Arabic literary thresholds : sites of rhetorical turn in contemporary scholarship / [edited] by Muhsin al-Musawi. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17689-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Arabic literature—History and criticism. I. Musawi, Muhsin Jasim. II. Stetkevych, Jaroslav. III. Title.

PJ7510.A75 2009 892.7’09—dc22

2009021768

ISBN 978 90 04 17689 8

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Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands In Homage to Jaroslav Stetkevych: the man who made “the mute immortals speak.”

CONTENTS

Arabic Literary Thresholds: Sites of Rhetorical Turn in Contemporary Scholarship Muhsin al-Musawi ...... ix

Rewriting Literary History: The Case of the Arabic Novel ...... 1 Roger Allen

Abbasid Popular Narrative: The Formation of Readership and Cultural Production ...... 17 Muhsin al-Musawi

Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī and the Poetics of ʿAlid Legitimacy Elegy for al-Ḥ usayn Ibn ʿAlī on ʿĀshūrāʾ, 391 A.H...... 53 Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych

Early Islam—Monotheism or Henotheism? A View from the Court ...... 85 Samer M. Ali

Literary Hybridization in the Zajal: Ibn Quzmān’s Zajal 88 (The Visit of Sir Gold) ...... 111 James T. Monroe

“On the Battleground:”Al-Nābulusī’s Encounters with a Poem by Ibn al-Fāriḍ ...... 143 Th. Emil Homerin

Return to the Flash Rock Plain of Thahmad: Two Nasībs by Ibn al-ʿArabī ...... 207 Michael Sells

Poetry and Architecture: A Double Imitation in the Sīniyyah of Aḥmad Shawqī ...... 219 Akiko M. Sumi viii contents

Metapoetry between East and West: ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī and the Western Composers of Metapoetry—A Study in Analogies ...... 273 Aida O. Azouqa

“In a Language That Was Not His Own”: On Aḥ̣lām Mustaghānamī’s Dhākirat al-Jasad and its French Translation Mémoires de la Chair ...... 311 Elizabeth M. Holt

Curriculum Vitae: Jaroslav Stetkevych ...... 331

Index ...... 337 ARABIC LITERARY THRESHOLDS: SITES OF RHETORICAL TURN IN CONTEMPORARY SCHOLARSHIP

Muhsin al-Musawi

Preface

This Festschrift of essays dedicated to Jaroslav Stetkevych is not merely a compilation of articles in honor of a formidable scholar and sharp critic in our field of Arabic literary studies. This volume has a purposeful bent of its own expressed through a complementarity that brings individual texts together to form a coherent body of thought which we may refer to as “rhetorical turn”1 in Arabic studies. These articles complement each other in method and vision in their search to go beyond stock applications and premises. Confronting some established processes and regimes of truth, they try to assert a sense of validity and presence to different pursuits. The range of topics covered is extensive: e.g., the politics of translation; important figures often overlooked by official discourse such as al-Sharīf al-Raḍī and his poetics of ʿAlid legitimacy and Ibn Quzmān and his place in the lively Andalusian literary tradition; Sufi encounters that have not yet come to the foreground; the function of popular literature and urban narrative in terms of means of production; the role of assemblies in the legitimization of literary genres; poetry and architecture in Andalusian life; and the exchange among cultures and languages from native perspectives. Taken together these essays question the bases for institutionalized discourse and offer alternative interpretations of the relation between premises and beliefs in discussions on history, nature, reason, tradition, and the role of social agency in endowing literature with authority. These articles tend not to legitimize a tendency or a figure but rather to render a demystified literary terrain where subcultures and excluded or marginalized practices come to the foreground. In this volume literature stands at a number of thresholds where there is always suspense,

1 For more on the concept see Herbert W. Simon, ed. The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), esp. Simon’s introduction. x muhsin al-musawi hesitation and possible revival. Building on literary traditions, these essays endeavor to salvage meaning from either the wreckage or trea- sury of the past. The present is looked upon as a stage where texts and languages compete with each other, sustain a dialogue, or diverge in directions that resist compartmentalization and subservience to well- established schools of thought. Indeed, these articles take their lead from Jaroslav Stetkevych’s literary endeavors in more than one sense. While some contributors were once his students, his colleagues as supporters and advocates have not escaped his polemical but rigorous address. Stetkevych critiques a “regime of truth” which Orientalism has long established as the sole custodian of Arabic literature, a custodian whose influence penetrated the thought and practice of many nahḍah intellectuals and scholars including Ṭāhā Ḥ usayn. Modern Arabic scholarship made significant use of this regime of thought, often betraying enormous cultural dependency and adhering to many of its premises and methods without sufficient questioning and analysis. The nahḍah intellectual and those who inherited this tradition adopted the Orientalist discourse, which, in line with the Enlightenment and its own legitimization processes, paid no or negligible attention to popular literature, Sufi writings and non-official attitudes and figures. Without the types of revisions for which Stet- kevych argued, folk traditions and practices that once made up the cultural milieu of urban centers would have remained backstage literary pursuits. While I address here only a tendency for which there are certainly many exceptions, it is enough to remember too that Jaroslav Stetkevych, whose self-critique of a profession set the tone for this rhetorical shift, was a student of the prominent Orientalist Sir Hamilton Gibb. And Gibb himself proved open to modern literature, deeply interested as he was in interrogating wholesale premises and stipulations. It is almost impossible to speak of Orientalism nowadays without referencing Edward Said’s groundbreaking book, Orientalism (1978). This seminal work forged a new path in cultural studies and initiated a serious paradigm shift within the social sciences. Even the book’s opponents must confront its irritable ghost that reads between the lines and questions platitudes and stereotypes. However, Edward Said was focused then on representations of a so-called Orient, all provided, promoted, and disseminated through scholarship, travelogue, essays, reminiscences, memoirs, poems and other forms of narrative, including descriptive works and paintings, and all conveying a “Western” projection of an East or monolithic Orient stretching from Morocco to Tur- arabic literary thresholds xi key. The “eye of the beholder” becomes entrapped in its own visions, obsessions, desires, and whims while scholarship itself either declines to question these or keeps itself preoccupied with “difference” as an enlightenment demarcation criterion. Said is without doubt critical of Orientalist scholarship and its regimes of truth, pointing out its substantial dissemination of racist paradigms of difference. Preoccupied in his book with Western phenomena of serious consequence, Said was not concerned with a critique of “Orientalist” scholarship as voiced by its insiders. Towards the end of his life, Edward Said addressed himself to the significant contributions made by Jaroslav Stetkevych in his early works on the Arabic language.2 In an article entitled “Living in Arabic” published posthumously, Said commends Stetkevych’s book Modern Arabic Liter- ary Language as the “best modern book on the language”.3 Stetkevych’s book was an effort to direct attention to the ease with which Arabic has been able to appropriate since the so-called “awakening” new technical and cultural terms associated with achievements in Europe since the Industrial Revolution. Said’s article is important because of its relevance to the Arabic language at a time when mediocrity runs rampant and ignorance dangerously intrudes into scholarship. The article is a vindication of classical Arabic in a comparative context that leaves little space for apologists and their likes attempting to justify their failure to master Classical Arabic. The quote which Said takes from Stetkevych’s book is worth re-citing, for Stetkevych argues on behalf of the classical in terms of language as culture, not as medium or tool: “Venus-like, it [Arabic] was born in a perfect state of beauty and it has preserved that beauty in spite of all the hazards of history and all the corrosive forces of time.” Three years before Modern Arabic Literary Language was published, Stetkevych took upon himself as profession the task of engaging and debating Orientalism in his February 1967 address at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, appropriately titled “Arabism and Arabic Literature: Self-View of a Profession”.4 In this lecture Stetkevych dwelt on Ara- bic language, although his primary concern was to investigate endemic

2 Jaroslav Stetkevych, Modern Arabic Literary Language: Lexical and Stylistic Devel- opments (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970). 3 Edward Said, “Living in Arabic”, Al-Ahram Weekly, Feb. 12–18, 2004. 4 Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Arabism and Arabic Literature: Self-View of a Profession”, Middle Eastern Studies: Reprint Series. No. 4, Vol. 28, No. 3 (July 1969) 145–156. xii muhsin al-musawi problems in Orientalist scholarship. He began his lecture as follows. “We Orientalists are used to behaving like an exotic, esoteric clan. We think that the outside world does not and is not qualified to understand us. Our activity goes on within the polished cylindrical walls of our gremial ivory tower.”5 Stetkevych does not necessarily deny the impact of romantic, especially Germanic, idealism in influencing tastes and promoting interest in Arabic. He even recognizes the good done by “Orientalists as cultural historians”. However, he is careful to point out that this trend by Orientalists as historians takes its impetus from a “Western catalyst”.6 This seemingly passing remark is in fact the focus of his address. Are Orientalists interested in Arabic literature as literature? Are they so overcome by the enormous cultural classical Arabic corpus that they have lost track of what is distinctive about literature? Late in his career, the prominent Orientalist Sir William Jones expressed a sense of frustration with and even disappointment in the literature to which he had devoted his life. Had he remained content with only Greek tradition, he mused, he could have exited satisfied and happy as a first-rate classicist. Many concluded their careers with similar disappointments.7 To spread oneself so wide and so thin in Arabic culture is a problem. Stetkevych argues that Orientalists are “philologists, historians, or disguised social scientists”.8 He adds: “A look into even the best histories of Arabic literature that Orientalism has produced will reveal that we have not even come to grips with the concept of what makes literature and what should make a literary history.”9 Stetkevych’s conclusion resonates with Jones’s expressed frustration: “We even feel certain hostility to that literature which refused to yield to us its final secret.”10 What Stetkevych might have said is that Orientalist scholarship reached conclusions regarding Arabic literature and culture based on treatment of an enormous body of knowledge not as a corpus but as a corpse, dead matter dissected under the discerning eye of a specialist. This understanding is basic to a representation of dormancy as a state of mind, an understanding that betrays an acute failure on the part of the Orientalist. While there is no effort to see that Orientalist scholarship

5 “Arabism and Arabic Literature”, 145. 6 Ibid. 7 See Muhsin al-Musawi, Anglo-Orient (Tunis: Centre de Publication Universitaire, 2000) 19. 8 “Arabism and Arabic Literature”, 148. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. arabic literary thresholds xiii has only “recently, picked up the evolutionary nature of literary disciplines and methods [M]ethodology . . . as intellectual communication” is missing, and Orientalists have become “irrelevant to its pursuits” in the West.11 “If we disappeared, nobody would even notice it.”12 This sharp critique was thus meant to disorient an attitude in order to reconstruct the field, dissociating itself from platitudes and presump- tions to embark instead on a new pursuit that derives its sensibilities from Arabic literature. What worried Stetkevych at the time was the possibility that “at heart we would go on being staunch Occidental- ists” whose “relation to Arabic literary life would be that of observers only”.13 However, does this imply that he requires from them, himself included, some fieldwork? An anthropological enterprise? Or even a Margoliouth-like role in colonial administration? Far from it. Stet- kevych would like us to become Arabists, scholars with full knowledge of the Arabic language, in order “to think and feel in Arabic”.14 Stetkevych goes even further, asking: How can we come to understand Arabic literature beyond traditional readings by the likes of Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889) and others? In the preface to his seminal work, The Zephyrs of Najd (1993),15 on Arabic nasīb, Stetkevych addresses himself to “readers in the fields of European literature, comparative literature, and literary theory and to specialists in Arabic literature”.16 To read the classical (i.e., tripartite) qasīdaḥ , he offers three theoretical perspectives: “the rhetorical, the modal, and the mythopoeitic-anthropological”.17 Such an inter-theoretical approach allows multiple readings of the nasīb in order to broaden its prospective and bring it into a global literary context as a powerful poetics that deserves a place in any serious discussion on literature and culture. Stetkevych’s dialogue with cultural anthropology, especially with Arnold Van Gennep’s The Rites of Passage,18 stands as a primary contribution due to the coherence with which it endows a poetics that has oft been read as a spontaneous, unpremeditated form. What drives Stetkevych to delve deeply into

11 Ibid., 149. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 153. 14 Ibid., 154. 15 Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd: the Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasīb (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993). 16 Ibid., xi. 17 Ibid., xii. 18 Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage. Trans. Monica B. Vizedem and Gab- rielle L. Caffee. 1909 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). xiv muhsin al-musawi the structure of the qasīdaḥ is his understanding of the qasīdaḥ as the culmination of a poetic practice. Through this process, the qasīdaḥ̣ undergoes “a crystallization of theme and meaning and an accumulation of formal solemnity”.19 He concludes that, as a microcosmic world, “a pattern of the mind, a habit of thought, or a mode of vision, it then seems to fulfill a need for a comprehensive synthesis of an entire culture’s view on world, life, and historical experience”.20 The approach itself enlivens the poem, not because it is dead but mainly because it has long been read in a static manner that takes Ibn Qutayba’s discussion of the qasīdaḥ as an unwarranted tripartite movement, driven more by tradition than poetic need. In the process, this Orientalist mode of reading deprived Ibn Qutayba’s opus of an element of personal reverie, overlooking its recognition of change and of social and moral integration. Recalling Stetkevych’s pioneering lecture of 1967, the limitations imposed on Orientalist scholarship can now be surpassed through a more passionate understanding of literature by means of purposeful dialogue with current methodologies in the social sciences. The endeavor has definitely proved fruitful, not only in Stetkevych’s many studies that have indeed made “the mute poets speak” but also in the numbers of disciples, followers, and readers who have made use of his approach.21 Some readers may ask if there is a uniquely applied methodology that we can associate with Jaroslav Stetkevych. Indeed, there is, although I am not implying that Stetkevych came with a theory. What I argue is that he brought passion, love, rigorous scholarship, a daring mind and an interdisciplinary openness to current scholarship in the social sciences. Such qualities, combined as they are in his approach, have introduced the nasīb to our cultural life as a moment of reverie through which each sensitive mind passes every once and again. The same combination of traits led Stetkevych to write his book Muḥammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arabian Myth.22 Reviving the tradition that relates the prophet Muḥ̣ammad’s unearthing of a golden bough, Stetkevych attempts to study this theme in rela-

19 The Zephyrs of Najd, 1. 20 Ibid. 21 From Suzanne P. Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak (Ithaca & London: Cor- nell University Press, 1993), xv. 22 Jaroslav Stetkevych, Muḥammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arabian Myth (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996). arabic literary thresholds xv tion to mythical lore in ancient Babylonian traditions and in the Biblical and Greek mythical corpus. As he stipulates: “this study thus intends to introduce the corpus of largely unrecognized Arabian myth into the purview of a much broader comparative world of myth and symbol.”23 The Qurʾānic narrative of tribes and communities recounts the slaying of the Divine She-Camel (the She-Camel of Sāliḥ ̣) and Qudār’s (Abū Righāl) role as perpetrator of the abomination. This slaying incites Divine wrath that causes the subsequent destruction of the tribe and the perpetrator with his golden bough. However, Stetkevych has something else in mind in his reconstruction of the golden bough. The story becomes his starting point in a study of Islamic hagiography. He likewise undertakes “a comparative study of myth and symbol, beginning with the unearthed golden bough of the Thamūd itself (and with James G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough), but moving quickly to a more focused literary discussion of archaic, classical primary, and classical secondary epic.”24 The endeavor as pursued in Muḥammad and the Golden Bough is not primarily concerned with the Thamūdic failure to heed God’s warnings. Although a significant portion of the text dwells on this dimension as “a reminder of a tragic plan in the polity of the Thamūd”, its actual interest lies in the act of unearthing the golden bough. The lesson is brought forward to the present as warning as well as justification of the Islamic message. The past holds meaning for those who are able to read it in the right manner. It is through this encounter with the past, its symbol and perpetrator, that the Prophet establishes new evidence for his divine mission. The creation of a personal “mythopoeia” that unfolds through Stetkevych’s analysis builds on confrontations with figures that fit into the emerging mythopoeia as protagonists (Sāliḥ̣ ̣) and antagonists (Qudār). The ultimate outcome of this encounter is the “paradigmatic mold of the culture hero” in as much as he was a founder, a builder, and a lawgiver”.25 This daring project complements many others that have been making significant contributions to scholarship. Stetkevych’s contributions in the fields of pre-Islamic poetry and poetics are landmarks, to be sure, but his other writings in the field of Arabic literature have been

23 Ibid., ix. 24 Ibid., x. 25 Ibid., 112. xvi muhsin al-musawi an intelligent source of critical and cultural scholarship, always adding something new to further the reader’s knowledge. It is this field that has benefited greatly from the writings of this brilliant and superb mind. In a letter sent some time ago to the contributors to this volume, I explained the reasons behind this significant project, one that the Jour- nal of Arabic Literature was proud to publish in two separate issues, prior to publication in book form. I suggested that the time had come to celebrate Jaroslav Stetkevych: a towering presence in Arabic studies, a formidable scholar, a brilliant critic, and—to me at least—a very dear friend. To pay homage to Jaroslav now is somewhat belated, but it is—paradoxically—also timely in that, with the stupendous growth of Arabic studies (albeit for all the wrong reasons), we are now inevitably drawn back to the goal towards which Jaroslav has been striving for so long, namely rooting Arabic studies in the mainstream of criticism and cultural studies. Arabic studies should not be seen simply as a source of esoteric knowledge restricted to a select few or as the chosen pursuit of a handful of Arabists or Orientalists left frustrated after a career spent studying Arabic and mastering only a small portion of what they had come to regard as their own undisputed territory. By broaden- ing boundaries and bringing interdisciplinary methodologies into its purview, Jaroslav Stetkevych is one of the very few scholars (perhaps, the only one in this tradition) who have changed the way we now can read and understand Arabic literature. Certainly due to his impact pre- Islamic poetry is no longer read in the usual way. But this is only one of his many contributions, since his critique of older approaches has always been substantiated by practical criticism and the application of cultural anthropology and literary critical principles to the reading of tradition. However, focusing on such matters should not prevent us from also acknowledging Jaroslav Stetkevych’s other achievements, his brilliant readings of modern Arabic literary texts, not to mention his presence in the contemporary Arabic cultural scene, seminars, conferences, and other occasions. While his rigorous approach may intimidate some, there has always been a general and indeed enthusiastic recognition of his sincerity, commitment, and rich contribution to the field of Arabic literary studies. A word must be said about the material included in this volume. As usual, time and the demands of preparation necessitated that we limit the number of contributing scholars and critics in order to make the arabic literary thresholds xvii project feasible. I have borrowed the dedication’s subtitle from Suzanne P. Stetkevych’s The Mute Immortals Speak (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993). This volume has six major divisions: Arabic Lan- guage, Pre-Islamic Tradition, Islamic Literature, Orientalism Reconsid- ered, Modern Arabic Literature, and Arabic Literature in Comparative Contexts. The studies included herein apply to their specific topics those high scholarly standards that are exemplified in the many and varied publications of Jaroslav Stetkevych and stand to become a major source of study for students and scholars alike. As editor, I take responsibility for any shortcomings in this compilation. It is hoped that readers will find within the essays brought together in this volume a glimmer of the inspiration that Jaroslav Stetkevych has provided to us all.

REWRITING LITERARY HISTORY: THE CASE OF THE ARABIC NOVEL

Roger Allen

This tribute to a great scholar and teacher, my distinguished colleague, Jaroslav Stetkevych, takes the form of a study that is framed by Muh. ammad al-Muwayliḥī (1858–1930). That is only appropriate in that it was research on this renowned Egyptian writer that in 1966 took me from Oxford to Cairo as an aspiring Arabic literature specialist. I spent my first days at the Swiss Cottage Pension on Kasr el-Nil Street, and it was there at breakfast on the morning after my arrival that I first encountered Jaroslav, on sabbatical leave from his new appointment at the University of Chicago. I and several other graduate students residing in Cairo (including Michael Zwettler, now of Ohio State University) benefited enormously from Jaroslav’s generously shared wisdom during that interesting year, 1966–67—culminating, of course, in the June War of 1967. In this contribution I intend to take a retrospective look at the parameters of literary history as applied to the Arabic novel. That I should be doing so now [2006] is, I will admit, a product of the stage that I myself have by now reached in my own career—one that permits me to look back over more than forty years of reading works of Arabic fiction. It thus places me not merely in a somewhat ancient generation but also among the very first pioneers specializing in what was then (the early 1960s) a radically new and somewhat disparaged field—that of “modern Arabic literature studies.” I was and am, in fact, the first Oxford graduate student to obtain a doctorate degree in that subject (1968). That’s not to say, of course, that modern Arabic texts were not taught at Oxford before that decade, but merely to note that they were considered a “special subject,” something that you might dabble in if you so desired, but only after you had studied the texts of the major canon (or, at least, the Oxonian version thereof ). Subsequent decades in my scholarly career have seen a move from the beginning of the 20th century with Muḥammad al-Muwaylih.ī to later decades and encounters with a number of writers: Najīb Maḥfūz,̣ Yūsuf Idrīs, Jabrā Ibrāhīm Jabrā, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Munīf, and most 2 roger allen recently, several Moroccan novelists. My 1978 lectures at the University of Manchester were to become The Arabic Novel: an historical and critical introduction, the first survey work on the Arabic novel published in English (1982), subsequently enlarged (1995). More recently, the now finished project known as the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature first asked me to write two chapters on the novel for the “modern” volume, Modern Arabic Literature, published in 1992 (ed. M. M. Badawi) and then to embark on what has turned out to be a ten-year project, editing the recently published volume, The Post-Classical Period (2006). I am providing this personalized detail here as a prelude to and justification for what I would like to do in this study: namely, to suggest that these and other examples of literary-historical activity are not and should not be fixed entities and that literary-history and its products themselves have a history.1 In making this suggestion, I can, of course, take great comfort from the well-known words of Oscar Wilde: “the one duty that we owe to history is to rewrite it.” In brief, from a perspective of 2006 I wish to challenge many of the premises and organizing principles that have governed research and publication that I have done previously, not so much in order to suggest that they were not relevant or even useful for their time, but rather that the changing nature of Arabic fiction—a primary facet of its very essence, of course—requires a continuingly changing perspective in order to reflect both the creativity of Arab littérateurs and the kind of studies now being devoted to it. I will begin by citing two major parameters that result from the investigations that I have just mentioned and that now directly affect my own attitudes, and then consider retrospectively some of the corollaries that they seem to imply and impose with regard to the study of Arabic fiction. The first of these two parameters—and I am using that term in the sense coined by Thomas Kuhn as implying a major principle which has effects on a number of others—is the very nomenclature that we use, and specifically “Arabic literature” and “Arabic fiction.”2 Needless to say, universities and colleges where much research on those topics takes

1 I have already undertaken one foray into this topic in an essay entitled “Literary history and the Arabic Novel,” World Literature Today Vol. 75 no. 2 (Spring 2001): 205–13. 2 Thomas Kuhn,The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1962. rewriting literary history 3 place in the Western world choose to unite within single departments and the terms used to describe them large swaths of territory and culture. Whether we invoke as frameworks the hopelessly Westo-centric term “Middle East” or ʿAbd al-Nāsir’ṣ ringing phrase “from the Ocean to the Gulf,” we are talking about (or, at the very least, implying) a huge geographical space when we use the term “Arabic” as a means of identifying a region or disciplinary approach based on language. Within the Arabic-speaking world itself, the subdivision between Mashriq and Maghrib, however they are defined, is one of considerable vintage. Many Moroccans have observed to me, with a certain bemusement, that it is somewhat unusual for their country to be considered part of the “Middle East” when the meaning of the word used, Maghrib, is West. In a word, it depends on where you are standing, and that, of course, raises issues linked to attitude, bias, and senses of cultural hegemony. In the particular case of the novel and its course of development in this region, however it is determined, we can surely observe that, like its Western counterparts, it has paralleled and reflected significant trends in firstly politics, both international and local—not least, the development of senses of identity based on nationalism and opposition to foreign occupation (or “protection,” to use the polite terminology of the occupiers themselves), and secondly in society. If the earlier part of the historical development of the Arabic novel coincides with a period of nationalism and particularly of Arab—pan-Arab—nationalism as well as more local versions, then recent decades have witnessed what Albert Hourani, in a chapter of his renowned book, A History of the Arab Peoples (1991), terms “a disturbance of spirits”; in more literary- critical terms, a division into more local concerns and an analysis of khusūṣ iyyāṭ (particularities) at the national and regional level. What all this leads me to suggest is that, while our various titles (of researchers and conferences) may be able to use “Arabic literature” or “Arabic fiction” as a catch-all term, it is as well to admit that we are unable to “cover”—if we ever were—the entire genre of the Arabic novel in all its regional and generic variety (and criticism of it). In saying that, I am abundantly aware that, as noted earlier, I am the author of a work with such a title as well as umpteen articles on the same topic. In a spirit of true confessions therefore, I will admit that I have only read one novel from the Yemen and, until recently, less then ten from any Gulf country or Tunisia—just to provide some examples. As I have focused during the last seven years or so on the Arabic fiction of the Maghrib countries and especially Morocco, I have become increasingly aware 4 roger allen of quite how significant those khusūṣ iyyāṭ are. With that in mind, it seems to me to become an important role for Western scholarship to focus our attention on more variegated studies that examine particular genres and sub-genres, regions and their cultural particularities, and critical approaches. There will be no third edition ofThe Arabic Novel. Meanwhile the works of Stefan Meyer, Muhsin al-Musawi, Ibrāhīm Ṭāhā, Samah Selim, Muḥammad Siddiq, and Fabio Caiani3—in the publication of all of which I have been pleased and proud to be involved, and individual studies such as that of Wail Hassan devoted to al-Ṭayyib Sāliḥ,4 all these point in what seems to me to be the desired direction. My point here is to suggest, as one who has, perhaps foolishly, twice attempted to provide a historical framework for the development of the genre (“the Arabic novel”) and its study, that that very framework is in need of some radical rethinking. And I cannot finish this first section without drawing attention to the ways in which our research is hampered by the continually appalling situation in the Arab world itself regarding book availability across regions and nations (of which the recent [2005] Arab-world involvement in the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany provided a sadly vivid illustration), all of which makes our task outside the region and contacts with colleagues there (itself a rapidly developing feature of the last three decades) all the more important. The second parameter that I wish to discuss emerges with stark clarity from my experience as editor of the just mentioned post-classical volume of the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, and specifically the implications of our virtually absent knowledge of the literary production of the 16th–18th centuries for our understanding and use of the notions of pre-modernity, “renaissance” (represented by the Arabic term al-nahḍah), and modernity. If I do not extend the period involved back to some time in the 12th century, that is only because I detect a significant shift in literary studies devoted to what is generally known as

3 Stefan Meyer, The Experimental Arabic Novel: postcolonial literary modernism in the Levant, Albany: SUNY Press, 2001; Muhsin Musawi, The Post-Colonial Arabic Novel: debating ambivalence, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2003; Ibrahim Taha, The Palestinian Novel: a communication study, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002; Samah Selim, The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, 1880–1985, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004; Muḥammad Siddiq, Arab Culture and the Novel: genre, identity, and agency in Egyptian fiction, London: Routledge, 2007; and Fabio Caiani, Contemporary Arab Fiction: innovation from Rama to Yalu, London: Routledge, 2007. 4 Wail S. Hassan, Tayeb Salih: ideology and the craft of fiction, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003. rewriting literary history 5 the “Mamlūk” period and in terms of both quantity and quality; Thomas Bauer has recently gone so far as to term that particular era “one of the apogees of Arabic literature.”5 But to return to my retrospective mode. Studies of the movement of cultural change known in Arabic as al-nahdaḥ have been at some pains to point out that it involved two processes. The first of them is the one we all know and love: from a trans-cultural perspective, contacts with Europe—through the Christian community in Lebanon and more direct intervention via Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 and the French annexation of Algeria in 1830, followed by a number of British and French colonial excursions, with their differing impacts upon society, and especially education and culture; from a more indigenous viewpoint, missions (baʿthāt) to Europe, translation activities—the name of Rifāʿah al-Ṭahtāwị̄ (d. 1871) being particularly prominent, and then essays in generic imitation, assimilation, and so on. All this is familiar enough, has been subject to a good deal of research, and, coupled to the phenomena of resistance to colonial occupation and the development of national identity and nationalist movements, has become the predominant matrix in the crafting of literary histories devoted to the development of Arabic fiction. The second process, namely the linkage between developing notions of modernity (and the identification of those who are entitled to define it) and what can be termed pre-modernity, is considerably less well researched. It is here that my experiences with the preparation of the “post-classical” volume of the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature cause me to pause and take a long, hard look at the situation. It is one of the more ironic consequences, it seems to me, of the first strand of the al-nahḍah process that I have just described that, among the young Egyptian scholars who traveled to Europe for further study in the 19th and early 20th centuries, both Ṭāhā Ḥusayn (d. 1973) and Aḥmad Amīn (d. 1954)—to cite two prominent examples—learned their postures towards the second process (the role of the indigenous) very well at the hands of their French tutors (Ṭāhā Ḥ usayn’s dissertation at the Sorbonne was, after all, a highly critical study of Ibn Khaldūn’s history). Here are two sample citations: The doors to the Islamic world were closed after the Crusades; parts of it began to consume others. Muslims simply marked time. In the realm of

5 Thomas Bauer, “Mamlūk Literature: misunderstandings and new approaches,” Mamluk Studies Review IX (2) [2005]: 129. 6 roger allen

learning, there was just the rehashing of some books on jurisprudence, grammar, and the like; in crafts, there was no creativity and none of the old perfection; in tools and military skills, things were simply modelled on the old days. . . . It was all killed off by the prolonged period of tyranny. Knowledge consisted of a formal religious book to be read, a sentence to be parsed, a text to be memorised, or a commentary on a text or a gloss on the commentary; there was only a small representation of the secular sciences, something to be made use of solely in order to know the heritage of the past. . . .6 At the beginning of this [modern] era Arabic literature was content with its state, and confident that it was satisfying its readership’s need for artistic beauty expressed in words. It was also convinced of the ties linking it to decadent Arabic literature, believing that the latter constituted the highest form of literary writing, the closest possible to the ideals of literary aesthetics. At the beginning of and during the 19th century prose writers and poets believed they were fulfilling their duties if they crafted phrases and sentences according to the acknowledged manner of badīʿ, by coining literary devices of various kinds and alluding to aspects of meaning that occurred to them perhaps but otherwise to a small percentage of other people. These readers in turn were convinced of the rectitude of this type of literature; the elite hankered for it while popular readers turned instead to zajal, mawwāls, and popular narrative forms . . .7 The first quotation is from ̣Ahmad Amīn, while the second is a characteristic opinion of Ṭāhā Ḥusayn, which he was later to develop into a fully-fledged educational program in his famous treatise on Egyp- tian education, Mustaqbal al-thaqāfah fī Misr (1938). My point here is to pose the question as to how it is possible to make such blanket statements about a huge temporal period on the basis of a minimal knowledge of its literary production and an equally minimal awareness and appreciation of its (almost certainly different) esthetic criteria. The lessons imparted within an essentially European view of the tradition have, it would appear, been well learned by these prominent returnees to Egypt in the early 20th century. Assuming that the picture that I have just drawn of the postures involved is a reasonably accurate one, I believe that it is possible to point to at least three corollaries that have a major impact on our view

6 Ah. mad Amin, Zuʿamāʾ al-islāḥ (Cairo, 1948), pg. 7, cited in Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, The Post-Classical Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pg. 2. 7 Ṭāhā Ḥ usayn, in al-Jadīd, 1930; reprinted in Akhbār al-adab 186 (2 Feb. 1997), 30 cited in Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, The Post-Classical Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pg. 14. rewriting literary history 7 of the history of modern Arabic fiction. Firstly, and as the works of Peter Gran and Kenneth Kuno both suggest within a broader social framework, our general lack of knowledge of, and indeed our skewed attitude towards, the so-called “Ottoman period” (say, the 16th-18th centuries) radically downplays and fails to explore the role of the indigenous in the cultural movement known as al-nahḍah.8 While we may all be somewhat familiar with a figure such asʿ Abd al-ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1731), one wonders whether there are not other notable names during this period; the The Post-Classical Period volume of the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature suggests that there are, but that we first need to study the works in question (and to be fair, work on a few figures—al-Shirbīnī [d. c. 1687] comes to mind—is being done), but such studies are surely a drop in the proverbial bucket. The mention of al-Shirbīnī provides me with a convenient segue to the second corollary, namely the placement of and attitudes to those literary genres that were excluded from the literary canon, mostly on the basis of their level of language and performance modes. While figures like ̣Tāhā Ḥusayn and Maḥmūd al-Misʿadī may have endeavoured during the course of the 20th century to maintain a traditional attitude to what constitutes adab and what does not, Robert Irwin’s The Arabian Nights: a companion is merely the most accessible example showing the need to re-evaluate not merely the huge archive of Arabic popular narrative and, above all, the outlying case within this context of Alf laylah wa-laylah, but a host of other similar texts that seem to fall between the two evaluative linguistic-stylistic categories of fusḥ ̣ā and ʿāmmiyyah or dārijah.9 Within the literary-historical context in which I am trying to place this study, what is significant about this second corollary is that, as I hope to show below, even if we allow that the ignorance and ignoring of this narrative heritage may have led accounts of the development of modern Arabic fiction in particular directions during the earlier phases of its lengthy development, more recent decades (and one might perhaps point to 1967 as a kind of “turning-point”) have seen many writers returning to

8 Peter Gran, The Islamic Roots of Capitalism, Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1979; Kenneth Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 9 Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights: a companion, London: Penguin Books, 1994. For a recent discussion of the place of Alf laylah wa-laylah within the literary tradition, see Dwight F. Reynolds, “A Thousand and One Nights: a history of the text and its reception,” in The Post-Classical Period, pp. 270–91. 8 roger allen that very heritage and in a large number of creative ways. The third and last corollary of this set of attitudes combines the others in noting that the preference for the mostly European-based model of development on the one hand and the unwillingness to investigate continuities alongside ruptures on the other have served to make the Egyptian model, starting with Napoleon’s invasion in 1798, the preferred one—one model of al-nahḍah fits all, as it were. In this retrospective context, nothing illustrates the problems associated with such a developmental model better than the way in which Muḥammad Ḥusayn Haykal’s novel, Zay- nab, has been evaluated. The ascription of “firstness” to such a work and the total confusion in placing its antecedents into some sort of narrative categories or developmental sequence provide an excellent illustration of the consequences of the unbalanced picture presented by the failure of the scholarly community to come to terms with the nature of generic change as it was affected by attitudes to modernity and pre-modernity during the 19th century.10 Having identified what seem to me to be some of the principal issues involved in problematizing a literary history of Arabic fiction, let me now turn to a consideration of certain trends in that tradition that seem to me to necessitate a re-writing process. I will provide a few examples of more recent fictional creativity that seem to me to demand an approach to literary history that investigates in greater detail the balance between these indigenous and imported cultural forces. More specifically, I will suggest that, while European fictional genres and their introduction into the Arabic-speaking world certainly played an important role in the development of fiction during the late 19th and 20th century—a process crowned, one might suggest, by the award of the Nobel Prize to Najīb Maḥfūz ̣ in 1988 (mostly on the basis of the French translation of the Trilogy, the original Arabic texts of which were published in 1956 and 1957), more recent decades have brought other trends and influences to the fore. The first example involves the Libyan novelist, Ibrāhīm al-Kūnī, who reflects his own Tuareg upbringing in the Southern deserts of his homeland by writing fantasies that are firmly rooted in the lore of the desert peoples and an acute concern with the description of the environment. This last feature is seen at its most graphic in the series

10 I broach this topic in a section of my chapter, “The Beginnings of the Arabic Novel,” in Modern Arabic Literature ed. M. M. Badawi, The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 190–92. rewriting literary history 9 of aphorisms that he has published in several volumes. The following examples concerning “nature” are typical of hundreds of such short, terse texts (which he himself terms “nusūṣ ”):̣

In the unseen we live; in the seen we die.

Nature, an eye that never sleeps.

To ravish nature is to provoke the genie inside the bottle.11

In a previous study devoted to what I might term al-Kūnī’s more immediately approachable earlier novels, I described him as “a different voice” as he takes his readers out (or even chronologically back) into the desert environment of early Arabic literature, even further into that image-world than Kanafānī and Munīf had done earlier.12 And now, with these evocations of the prolific earlier tradition of aphorism in Arabic, he again challenges his modern readers to embark on new directions that strongly invoke a past. A second trend that I detect is clearly more widespread and perhaps less individually focused—but clearly al-Kūnī is too major a figure simply to ignore. I am talking here about the continuing recourse of Arab novelists to history, its themes and text-types, in writing novels. I myself have concentrated on (indeed translated) some examples of this trend from Morocco, but the tendency is widespread. The American scholar, David Cowart, has written a useful study of this phenomenon. He explains it thus: [T]he increasing prominence of historical themes in current fiction suggests that the novel’s perennial valence for history has acquired new strength in recent years. Produced by writers sensitive to the lateness of the historical hour and capable of exploiting technical innovations in the novel, this new historical fiction seems to differ from that of calmer times. A sense of urgency—sometimes even an air of desperation—pervades the

11 From Ibrāhīm al-Kūnī, Amthāl al-zamān, Beirut: Dār al-Nahār, 1999, nos. 38, 414, 510. 12 See Roger Allen, “A Different Voice,” in Tradition and Modernity in Modern Arabic Literature, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1997, pp. 151–9. With regard to Kanafānī, I am thinking primarily of Rijāl fī al-shams (1963) and Mā tabaqqā la-kum (1966); and for Munīf, al-Nihāyāt (1978) and especially the first volume ofMudun al-milh. : al-Tīh 1984). 10 roger allen

historical novel since mid-century, for its author probes the past to account for a present that grows increasingly chaotic.13 Cowart goes on to suggest that historical novels can be subsumed under four categories, the last of which is “fictions whose authors project the present into the past,” one that “makes special demands on the ingenuity of novelists.” Concerning this category he goes on to note that the “desire to mirror the present in the past finds expression most easily in a skewed or legendary or fabulous history more amenable than real history to the allegorical projection of the present.” On a broader scale, the works of Hayden White have already served to provide clear indications of the narrative links that tie history and fiction together. He suggests that “narrative in general, from the folktale to the novel, from the annals to the fully realized ‘history’, has to do with topics of law, legality, legitimacy, or, more generally, authority.”14 Within the context of the Arabic novel, we seem to be hearing in these quotations an echo of Hourani’s “disturbance of spirits,” as history is invoked by many contemporary novelists to draw attention to the nature of authority within the societies in which they live and write. The themes and lessons of history become effective means of portraying the otherwise inexpressible (and the famous aphorism of Santayana about history, “those who do not know the past are condemned to repeat it,” comes inevitably to mind at this point). Samia Mehrez has already provided us with a wonderful study of the way in which Egyp- tian novelists have adopted this particular mode, with Jamāl al-Ghītānị̄ as its most renowned exponent, but I would also draw attention to the ways in which ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Munīf, Salwā Bakr, Ben Sālim Ḥimmīsh and Aḥmad al-Tawfīq, to name the novelists with whose works I am most familiar, invoke earlier periods in Arab-Islamic history and imitate their recording mechanisms in order to point to the exercise of power in the contemporary Arabic-speaking world.15 A third trend that I wish to mention in connection with the contemporary Arabic novel is the resort to transtextual and even trans-generic

13 David Cowart, History and the Contemporary Novel, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989, pg. 1. 14 Hayden White, in The Content of the Form, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987, pg. 1. 15 Samia Mehrez, Egyptian Writers Between History and Fiction, Cairo: AUC Press, 1994. rewriting literary history 11 writing.16 In this connection we have already drawn attention to the way in which many novelists introduce actual historical texts into their modern narratives, and we can also point, as Samia Mehrez does in her book, to Suṇ ʿ Allāh Ibrāhīm’s resort to newspaper articles in many of his works of fiction. Beyond that however, I can refer back to the fact that Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān often, and not unnaturally, includes elements of the poetic in his early narratives contained in Al-Arwāḥ al-Mutamarridah and ʿArāʾis al-Murūj, while both Najīb Maḥfūz ̣ and Yūsuf Idrīs have specific elements of the dramatic in many of their works in short-story form (consider, for example, the stories and one-act plays in Maḥfūz’ṣ Taḥt al-mizallaḥ [1967] and Idrīs’s obvious prose-poem cum scenario- setting which begins his short story, “Bayt min lahm,” from the collection of the same title [1971]) Edward al-Kharrāt ̣ is perhaps a primary exponent of such writing, inspiring a whole generation of younger writers through the Galeria ’68 group and its journal and offering in his virtuoso novel-text, Rāmah wa-al-Tinnīn (1980), passages of word-play (which in his critical writing he has referred to as “isātah” [presumably implying “the creation of sound effects”]) which inevitably carry the reader back to the esthetic values of a pre-modern era so disparaged in the quote of Ṭāhā Ḥusayn cited above.17 I shall refer to this larger historical retrospective below, but for the moment suffice it to suggest that these various exercises in trans-textual and -generic writing (and I have only mentioned a few) point to the need to reconsider the place of al-Shidyāq and al-Muwayliḥī, for example—and the widely variant text-types that they incorporated within their works—in the development of modern Arabic narrative—something that requires of us yet again that we re-examine the status of Haykal’s novel, Zaynab, within the broader developmental scheme of things. The final trend that I wish to mention involves the contribution of women writers to the continuing development of Arabic fiction. Obviously, by identifying this as a “trend,” I am not referring to the emergence of women’s writing, something that is by no means a recent phenomenon, but rather to the fact that not only have women novelists

16 I would like to acknowledge here the examples of this phenomenon provided by Kawthar Ahmad Jabir in her excellent PhD dissertation, recently submitted at the University of Haifa, Israel, some of which I include here. 17 The role of Edwar al-Kharrāt. and the Galeria ’68 group are discussed in: Elisabeth Kendall, Literature, Journalism and the Avant-Garde: intersection in Egypt, London: Routledge, 2006. 12 roger allen been providing readers with carefully nuanced portraits of the complex relationships and situations within the domestic space of families and of society at large, but also they have been and are contributing in significant ways to the more experimental modes of fictional creativity, some of which have been mentioned above. In this context the sheer variegation in the number of writers and what they write is enormous, based to a substantial extent on predominantly social factors as practical as the rates of literacy among women, the availability of education, and gender attitudes. The increasingly rich and varied productivity that we witness today is one that can trace its history back (and here we owe thanks to the research of scholars such as Margot Badran, Miriam Cooke, Marilyn Booth, and Joseph Zeidan) through some prominent and courageous pioneers, only to disappear initially inside the houses of the more elite families.18 And here two comments might be made: firstly, that the question of readership—a little-researched topic in this context—comes to the fore to remind us that the largest group of readers of serialized fiction in Europe in the 19th century was female (perhaps, one might suggest, their husbands were off colonizing the Middle East and elsewhere). Research conducted regarding the situation in Egypt has already shown the existence of networks of writing, reading, and distribution among the female members of prominent families. And it is our good fortune that the Taymūr family and its famous library were particularly prominent, so that we have access to the writings of ʿĀʾishah Ismāʿīl Taymūr (known as ʿĀʾishah al-Taymūriyyah, d. 1902) alongside those of her nephews, Muḥammad (d. 1921) and Maḥmūd (d. 1973). Her Natāʾij al-ahwāl fī al-aqwāl wa-al-af ʿāl (1888?) may be set, as Marilyn Booth observes, among kings and princes, and yet it has important things to say about the benefits of education (and especially in the work’s introduction, which Booth has translated into English).19 Here then is yet another 19th century narrative work to insert into the earliest phase in the development of what was to follow. Let me turn in conclusion to what I deduce from these various observations about a literary history of modern Arabic fiction. Firstly I would like to suggest that the process of development within any fictional

18 Among many works that might be cited here I will mention: Opening the Gates ed. Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990; Marilyn Booth, May Her Likes be Multiplied, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001; Joseph Zeidan, Arab Women Novelists, Albany: SUNY Press, 1995. 19 See Opening the Gates, pp. 125–28. rewriting literary history 13 tradition must involve, as is the case with generic development in any culture, a multi-faceted, many-stranded course of change. In the case of Arabic fiction itself, I am not here advocating an either/or approach whereby we must abandon the literary-historical studies that have appeared thus far in order to adopt an entirely different set of data. The role played by the importation of Western literary genres is too obvious to ignore or even deny, but I would suggest that the single-track, one- version-fits-all history that has been generally espoused in dealing with the Arabic novel—which may have appeared to “work” up to a certain chronological point—no longer does so (if it ever actually did). What I am suggesting is a both/and approach. My proposed revisionist agenda would aspire to adjust the balance somewhat, and to an extent that, as I hope is obvious, cannot be assessed until much more research has been undertaken on many of the issues to which I have drawn attention above. In such a context, the example of the process of revisiting the literary-history of Moroccan Arabic fiction provides an interesting test- case, as it were. Summarizing a topic that is excellently explored in detail by my Spanish colleague, Fernando Gonzalez Parrilla,20 I would note that literary-historians of the Moroccan tradition of fiction, initially adopting the Mashriqi, meaning mostly Egyptian, model of al-nahḍah, made use of a matrix whereby the novel was seen as developing “relatively late”; its appearance was thought to be closely tied to the movement for independence from France and the achievement of that goal. In such a context the publication in 1957—one year after that political goal was reached—of Fī al-tufūlah by ʿAbd al-Majīd Jallūn, the “Moroccan Zaynab” if you will, was thus very timely. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallah al-Muʾaqqit al-Marrākushī, with his al-Riḥlah al-Marrākushiyyah (the date of publication of which is not certain but is probably 1930), is even on hand to serve as the equivalent al-Muwaylihị̄ figure within such a scenario. More recently however, a younger generation of critics has challenged such organizational logic and thus the model as a whole. Investigating the pre-1956 period and indeed its precedents in greater detail, they have formulated a much longer time-frame for the development of modern fiction, one that seeks to link developments in the 20th century to Morocco’s very distinct pre-modern history—and there is that reference to khusūṣ iyyāṭ once again.

20 See Gonzalo Fernandez Parrilla, La literatura marroqui contemporanea: la novela y la critica literaria, Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2006. 14 roger allen

In making this suggestion—that current trends in fiction-writing demand a renewed and different approach to the pre-modern era, I am, of course, aware that our colleagues who are themselves studying the earlier traditions of Arabic narrative are providing us with valuable evidence by which to justify a greater emphasis on continuities rather than “ruptures.” Andras Hamori, Julia Bray, and Phillip Kennedy are just a few of the anglophone researchers who have not only been presenting research on the generic characteristics of Arabic narrative but, equally important, have been demonstrating the linkages that connect the elite and popular traditions during the pre-modern era.21 Jaakko Hameen-Anttilla’s study of the maqāmah genre is an excellent beginning to the much needed process of examining and assessing the apparent popularity of that narrative genre through a prolonged period of literary creativity that we have mostly chosen to ignore; and Devin Stewart has certainly identified a huge number of examples that are in need of our attention.22 Such research will almost certainly show, among many other things, that Nāsīf̣ al-Yāzijī had no need to consult Sylvestre de Sacy’s edition of al-Ḥ arīrī in order to be reminded of the continuing presence of the “maqāmah spirit” in cultural life. If his maqāmāt are to be viewed as a continuation of that tradition, then it is al-Shidyāq, with his Al-Sāq ʿalā al-sāq, who moves Arabic narrative in entirely new directions. And. if there is already a clear narrative strand that links 19th and 20th century writers of maqāmāt: al-Shidyāq, ʿĀʾishah al-Taymūriyyah, al-Muwayliḥī, Ḥ āfiz Ibrāhīm, Bayram al-Tunisī, and ʿAbd al-salām al-ʿUjaylī, then perhaps the language, inter- and trans- textuality, and episodic nature of Emīl Ḥabībī’s Al-Waqāʾiʿ al-gharībah, all of them characteristics so redolent of the maqāmah tradition, can also be traced back through a different but clearly linked strand, passing by—on its way back in time—Tawfīq al-Ḥ akīm’s Yawmiyyāt nāʾib f ī al-aryāf, which thereby becomes as important in the development of modern Arabic fiction as the much ballyhooedʿ Awdat al-ruḥ by the same author.

21 Among many possible studies, I will single out for citation those that appear in two convenient collections: Story-telling in the framework of non-fictional Arabic literature ed. Stefan Leder, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998; and Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam: Muslim horizons ed. Julia Bray, London: Routledge, 2006. 22 Jaakko Hameen-Anttila, Maqama: a history of a genre, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002; Devin Stewart, “The Maqāma,” in Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical period ed. Roger Allen and Donald Richards. The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 145–58. rewriting literary history 15

In conclusion then, I return to my point of departure with Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī. As I look back and consider all the Arabic novels that I have read and endeavored to analyze and categorize, perhaps that decision that I made in 1964 to embark on a detailed analysis (and translation) of al-Muwayliḥī’s Ḥ adīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām was not such a bad one after all. When I told my revered Oxford superviser, M. M. Badawi, that I wished to do that, he told me that I should go to the Bodleian library and find out what had been written about al-Muwayliḥī. I came back with the news that there were two articles in French, both published in Algiers, and neither of them available. Admitting to me that he was not surprised, Badawi went on to say how lucky I was to be starting from scratch. That much at least has changed dramatically for the better, a symbol of which perhaps is that in 2002 I published the complete works of Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī in Cairo, including the first ever complete text of the much altered Ḥ adīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām.

ABBASID POPULAR NARRATIVE: THE FORMATION OF READERSHIP AND CULTURAL PRODUCTION

Muhsin al-Musawi

One way of dealing with Abbasid popular narratives is to study some of the best known collections which were translated, adapted, collected or created during the period under consideration. As my argument below plans to show, the Thousand and One Nights, and regardless of the specific contents of its early formation, may be the right one to focus partially on in relation to the actual demand that led to its compilation in book form. Its significance for studies of book compilation and production may be better understood when seen in relation to subsequent impetus to compilations of “nights,” the gathering of tales, and the justifications for such compilations by littérateurs. Writers on the Thousand and One Nights tend unfortunately to forget that the frame story which drew classical belletristic disparagement forced its structural and semantic attributes on the immediate outgrowth which was in circulation since the early ninth century.1 Its formulaic patterns called for other clusters, but they also invited Islamic ritualistic patterns of greeting, invocation, and benediction to saturate the collection. It also lent its designs of challenge and response, rewards and punishments, and narrative or art as an improvement on life, to the collection. The tale accelerates storytelling and makes one’s life contingent on its excellence and appeal. They also tend to forget that the tale and the khabar (event/anecdotal report) operate in a larger social context beyond the tastes of either the court or the privileged sites of discourse. Popularity of the tales and their like and their invasion of the caliphal palace as a private and sanctified domain should have been urgent enough to require the interference of mothers or grandmothers in the readings of the would-be caliphs, as the anecdote about Shaghab, al-Muqtadir’s mother, tells us. Writing in 320/932 Abū Bakr al-Sūlị̄

1 For dating the earliest evidence, see Nabia Abbott, “A Ninth-Century Fragment of the ‘Thousand Nights’: A New Light on the Early History of the Arabian Nights,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 8 (1949), 129–64. 18 muhsin al-musawi reports how during the reign of the Caliph al-Muqtadir (r. 908–32) and while he was tutoring his son Prince Muḥammad, the servants of the Prince’s grandmother, Shaghab, walked in and collected the Prince’s books and reading material, to come back later with the material, while the Prince, the future Caliph al-Rāḍī (934–40 C.E.) remarked in response: “You have seen these books and found them to be books of tradition, jurisprudence, poetry, language, history, and the works of the learned—books through the study of which God causes one to benefit and to be complete. They are not like the books which you read excessively such as The Wonders of the Sea, The Tale of Sindbad, and The Cat and the Mouse.”2 The divide between two tastes and binary distinctions between the acceptable and its opposite were already so strong as to warrant this explanation. More important, however, is the fact that the prince was aware of the existence of such books which he defined as contrary to the books of jurisprudence and tradition, the cherished targets of the court. This khabar as cited above is important for a number of reasons. It associates the courtly with the Godly, and the littérateur as instructor could not be trusted before passing through some careful screening and moral tests that covered his person, his background and texts. In terms of knowledge production, this screening covers the agent, the product or tools of production, and also the context of production and its relations. The screening was deemed necessary to protect rulers from moral damage or corruption according to the ethics of the age. The divide was already there between the insipid and the refined, the profane and the sacred. This distinction, however, cannot be fairly defined without some specifics that relate to the instructor as transmitter and also to the material used. On the other hand, this divide should not blind us to the facts that entailed its application, such as radical economic transformations and their impact on social and cultural relations. In the abovementioned quote producers of knowledge, as well as their products, cannot ensure the support of the court before an evidence of moral subordination and compliance. They are held suspect as long as there is some need for further evidence. On the other hand, the anecdote shows how the warrāqīn (copyists and booksellers) market was already involved in such large production of light literature. This light

2 Cited in Nabia Abbott, “A Ninth-Century Fragment of the ‘Thousand Nights,’ ” 146. abbasid popular narrative 19 literature was part of an oral tradition before being processed in writing and cultural production that increased soon after the introduction of the paper industry by the Chinese captives in Samarkand in 751 A.D.3 Producers of knowledge as well as their products were not the sole arbiters of taste and social or economic relations. They were part of a thriving business. Their status, however, could be as precarious as any producer in a rapidly changing society. They were no less so than adventurers, businessmen, aspiring people, and rising individuals. A pertinent comment by a young Khurāsānī nobleman writing to his father during the reign of the Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd might be worth citing here. Speaking of the growing affluence of Baghdad and some social classes, their stupendous wealth and lavish expenditure, he mentioned to his father how this drove many to travel for gain. Sindabad could have been from among these.4 Thus he wrote: “As for those who do not enjoy the exalted power and breadth of bounty of the kings, they begin to equip themselves with the good things after they have gone on journeys which gain them experience, show them wondrous things, and give them profits.”5 Baghdad of Hārūn al-Rashīd was at the center of learning and commerce, and it would be a grave misrepresentation if we take things for granted as clearly defined between the court and the market or the street, or between one segment of producers of knowledge and the rest, or even between the reception accorded to a transmitter and the treatment of his transmission at a later period. Although the khabar may pass, and used to pass, as transmitted material whose transmitter may not suffer blame or rebuke, it often gets mixed up with tales that could nevertheless draw disparagement. The conditions of taste apply strongly to generic divisions and gradations whenever there is a possibility of inscription. Scriptoria are the sites

3 For a review of this industry, see ibid. Also see ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn Khaldūn, on paper production. He says: As the “production of books and writings then developed greatly” and as government “documents and diplomas increased in number” there “was not enough parchment for all that. Therefore, al-Faḍl b. Yaḥyā suggested the manufacture of paper.” See The Muqaddima: An Introduction to History. Tr. and introd. By Franz Rosenthal (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2005), 328. See also Shawkat Toorawa, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭafūr and Arabic Writerly Culture (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), 56–59. 4 From a Khurāsānī nobleman to his father, last years of the eighth century A.D. Cited by Ilse Lichtenstadter, Introduction to Classical Arabic Literature: with Selections from Representative Works in English Translation (New York: Schocken Books, 1976), 357–362, at 361. 5 Ibid., 360. 20 muhsin al-musawi for scrutiny and conflict; otherwise both anecdotes and tales may be dismissed as hearsay. Although this applies to the matter of the report and the tale especially in the late Abbasid and postclassical periods, there is nevertheless a mounting attention to transmitters, preachers, storytellers, and narrators as responsible agents, accountable for what they circulate. Indeed the fact that their activity was within the purview of the market inspector speaks of new terms of accountability in a rigid transaction. On the other hand, the demand for this production intensified a deliberate blur between the khabar and the tale, especially as other genres like the maqāmāt and the long tale have already begun to assume distinctive labeling and application among the literati of the twelfth century onwards. This confusion is not random as the tale and the anecdotal report partake of each other. Historical or pseudo-historical stories are forerun- ners in this respect. But as long as storytellers create and appropriate whatever fits their impression and understanding of a single narrative and a frame to supply a demanding common audience, they understand- ably raid a repository of anecdotes and reports to meet this circulation activity. As late as 1835, the publication of the Būlāq version of the tales, this appropriation process has been the norm. At least, one fifth of this edition consists of reports and anecdotes. Vituperative criticism as well as the forebodings and restrictions of muḥtasibs (market inspectors) and some jurists convey also some sense of a dying court order that gives way to new powers which state apparatus tries to cope with through systems of discipline and punishment.6 The manuals on ḥisbah or market inspectorships may tell us as much. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Nasṛ al-Shayzarī’s (d. 1193?) book Nihāyat al-Rutba fī Ṭalab al-Ḥ isbah (The Utmost Authority in the Pursuit of ̣ Hisbah),7 is worth attention in this context as one model in market inspectorships. It partakes in the spirit of the age, with its stark conservatism in jurisprudence and intolerance towards other schools of law. This movement was part of the reaction against the Fatimids (906–1160 C.E.) as launched by the Ayyubids during their staunch implementation of a

6 The termh ̣isbah means the duties of the person in charge or muḥtasib, who, in his religious and juridical capacity, is entrusted with the supervision of the markets and any common or public sphere. 7 ʿ Abd al-Raḥmān b. Nasṛ al-Shayzarī, The Book of Islamic Market Inspector, Nihāyat al-Rutba fī Ṭalab al-Ḥ isbah (The Utmost Authority in the Pursuit of Hisbah). Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement. Tr. R. P. Buckley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). abbasid popular narrative 21 counter Sunnite movement (1171–1250 C.E.). The regulations that are within the purview of the Muḥtasib (market inspector) prohibit educa- tors from reciting Shīʿī poetry: “The educator must . . . not acquaint them [the boys] with any poetry composed by the Ṭālibī Rawāfiḍ [meaning the followers of the fourth Caliph and cousin of the Prophet, Imam ʿAlī, and the Shīʿīs in general]. Rather, he should teach them the poetry which eulogizes the Companions so that he fixes this in their hearts.”8 The matter is so urgently present in his mind and in absolute conformity to official discourse that he reiterates in another place that the market inspector should forbid the blind and beggars from “reciting the poetry which the Rawāfiḍ have composed about the Ṭālibīs, and from speaking about the death and such like, because all this incites the general public and it is therefore wrong to do it.”9 Nevertheless, these checks and balances are of some use for any study of the growth or demise of a narrative tradition. They are also telling insofar as theoretical positions or formations are concerned. As we learn from surveys of preaching and storytelling,10 there were ups and downs in cultural reception especially during periods of political instability or transition. These should have informed the formation of specific narrative attitudes and literary explications that may offer directives to an already unfolding literary theory of narrative. Not many scholars and critics believe in the existence of narrative theory in medieval Arabic literature, however.11 Many of the latest books on the Thousand and One Nights or recent readings in Arabic of dramatic and narrative elements tend to collapse issues under the impact of current theorizations and studies.12 Falling into the trap of Eurocentricism, while avowedly

8 In the footnotes the translator explains the meaning of these words, their reference to Shīʿīs (the followers of Imam ʿAlī Ibn Abī Ṭālib, the Prophet’s cousin and the fourth caliph), p. 120, and n. 4. 9 Ibid., 131. 10 See for example Jonathan P. Berkey, Popular Preaching and Religious Authority in the Medieval Islamic Near East (Seattle and London: The University of Washington Press, 2001). 11 The late Gustave E. Von Grunebaum makes the following comment: “Arabic literary theory does not provide for fiction. The concepts of plot and action are lacking.” Medieval Islam: A Study in Cultural Orientation (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1953), p. 287. See also among recent readings, Daniel Beaumont, The Slaves of Desire (Granbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2002), pp. 27–28. 12 For a survey, which is incomplete nonetheless, see ʿAlī B. Tamīm’s book, Al- Sard wa- al-zāhirạ ’l-drāmiyya (Beirut: Al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī, 2003). For a partial bibliographic listing of recent material, see Ulrich Marzolph, http://wwwuser.gwdg .de/~enzmaer/arabiannights-engl-elektr.html . 22 muhsin al-musawi debating its premises, many confuse texts and contexts, method and practice. More serious, however, is the tendency to measure medieval narrative in terms of a theory of fiction that was not effectively present in Europe before the 1850s. While readings in this vein have the advantage of raising questions and objections, they are less beneficial for a literary heritage that, despite its wealth and complexity, has often drawn philological studies at the expense of theory, or, if otherwise, has become the laboratory for one-track investigations of race and gender.13 My present reading accepts the premise of the existence of portions of racial and class discriminatory discourse within this huge repertoire, but it looks upon this in context of a large corpus, mostly presented in a medieval fashion by the male scriptor. This inventory invites discourse analysis and calls for meticulous tracing of relevant theoretical underpinnings. As I have investigated major issues in this trend somewhere else,14 my present paper will focus on terms of narrative production in a changing social and political order. Some early twentieth century scholars like the Egyptian Ḥ usain Fawzī were right in advancing the idea of discourse analysis in respect to the official tradition and its counteracting popular one. “It seems,” he argues, that “the official trend in Arabic literature discouraged narrative literature unless it aimed at philosophy or ethics.”15 Especially in narrative proper, it is incumbent to look upon this large output in terms of power relations and cultural dynamics, as they inform and enhance the emergence of narrative as well as the practice of theoretical writing. The culminating critique until the twelfth century was not merely an interest in the “profession of the raconteur,” as suggested by Charles Pellat,16 but a daring endeavor to challenge a dominant taste. Scattered and apologetic in this burgeoning process, the theoretical yield, its narratological stamp, is certainly much less conspicuous than chancery compendiums and studies of poetry. Theorists in this domain were not philologists or grammarians, but they were so well versed in these fields as to be able to advance a mul-

13 See for instance, Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Women’s Body, and Woman’s Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing (NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). 14 See “Early Arab-Islamic Narratology,” in Salma K. Jayyusi, Classical Narrative, forthcoming. 15 See Ḥ usain Fawzī, Aḥādīth al-Sundabād al-qadīm (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-Misrī,̣ 1977), p. 186. 16 Charles Pellat, EI: 1, art, nādira. abbasid popular narrative 23 tifarious critique of great validity to any discussion of medieval Arabic culture. Their grounding as well as their professional affiliations and needs inform their writings with a critique that also betrays predilections, orientations, liking and disliking of great value to the burgeoning art in its nascent khabar (anecdotal report) tradition. Politics and urbanity create an interactive milieu that gives this narrative phenomenon its distinctness and uniqueness through further enhancement of narrative as an art that does not strictly abide by authentication and documentation. To be true to life, but not real, is the normative procedure among many of these narratives. The Ḥ adīth transmission tenets were approached with ambivalence, not only because they were strictly doctrinal codes for the transmission of tradition as rightly associated with the religious institution, but also due to the nature of urban life in Baghdad and Basra as manifested, for example, in ʿAmr Ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiz’ṣ (d. 869) Kitāb al-Bukhalāʾ.17 While recognizing the need for factual detail and characterization for “piquancy and originality,” he understands the implication of speaking about real people. The issue of truthfulness and falseness was to assume significance in due time and become one of the primary concerns of narrative theory. The tendency to argue for the qasaṣ ̣ (singular: qisṣ ạ , broadly: story), the ḥikāyah (tale), the nādira (witty anecdote), the samar (nightly entertainment), and the muhātara (frivolous and insulting narrative response) since the ninth century should be seen in context of other genres, since competition among genres was never a passing matter, but a fact of life, as the following pages suggest. Literature in its cultural context is larger than poetry, for even if the latter was once the register of the Arabs, new imperial concerns since the Umayyads (661–750 C.E.) enforced other genres along with a transgeneric writing that accommodates poetry and prose and their sub-themes and divisions, while debating hierarchal gradations. Anec- dotal literature includes many pieces that argue for an encapsulating writing. Argumentation assumes many paths and methods, and writers in this transgeneric mode gather views from every aspect of life in the battle for generic prioritization. In Ḥ ikāyat Abī al-Qāsim al-Baghdadī by Abū al-Mutahhaṛ al-Azdī (Beginning of the fifth/eleventh century), Abū Sāliḥ ̣ al-Hāshimī speaks of poets only in terms of apology, not in

17 ʿ Amr Ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiz,̣ Al-Bukhalāʾ, ed. Ṭāhā al-Ḥ ājirī (Cairo: Dār Al-Ma ʿārif ), pp. 12–13. 24 muhsin al-musawi response to the Qurʾānic verse against the exaggerations and illusory wanderings of poets, but primarily against the emerging yardsticks for narrative and literary production and their emphasis on probability and verisimilitude: “for the poet acts humorously and seriously, approxi- mates and distances, hits or misses the mark, and cannot be blamed like a pious and knowledgeable person with expressive clarity.”18 In other words, poetry and poets had been on the defensive in comparison with other professions and modes of writing since the mid-ninth century. Very pertinent in this respect is ʿAmr Ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiz ̣ (d. 869), who quotes an epistle by one of his misers, Ibn al-Tawʾam, as he angrily argues against those who blame the tendency to accumulate rather than to squander and spend money and who use, for exemplary models, poets and orators. Ibn al-Tawʾam despises poets and orators: “who learnt logic for the art of material acquisition,”19 without a serious effort in his opinion to work for their living, as he must do. Other litterateurs should have been aware not only of these accusations as reproduced and made available through al-Jāḥiz ̣ ’s writings and books, but also of the mounting suspicion of the conservative jurists who might have found in them and their like competitors and upholders of some nonreligious leanings and views. Abū al-Ḥ asan Muḥammad Ibn Yūsuf al-ʿĀmirī (d. 992) for one writes, “Some of the pious ascetics may find fault with the arts, ādāb, and charge litterateurs with either seeking praise for eloquence and clarity, or being people who are after only the veneer of knowledge, a means to attain success and rank through the appeal to the mighty and the noble.”20 Abū al-Ḥ asan al-ʿĀmirī’s work falls within a mounting corpus of cultural production that deals with information, i.e. Iʿlām, with a purpose of acquainting and informing the public. This discriminating tone and the attention paid to different approaches to Islam indicate a growing humanistic tradition against an increasing conservatism. Such a trend is important as it conveys recognition of responsibility and accountability to this reading public. On the other hand, al-Jāḥiz ̣ remains a major source for anecdotes or

18 Ḥ ikāyat Abī al-Qāsim al-Baghdadī (Abulkasim) by Abū al-Mutahhaṛ al-Azdī. See also the present writer, Mujtama ʿalf layla (Tunis: University Publication Center, 2000), pp. 243–44. 19 ʿ Amr Ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiz,̣ op. cit., pp. 173–75. 20 See Abū al-Ḥ asan Muḥammad Ibn Yūsuf al-ʾ Āmirī, Kitāb al-i’lām bi-manāqib al-Islām. Edited by Aḥmed ʿ Abd al-Ḥ alīm Ghurāb (Cairo: Dār al-Kātib al-ʾ Arabī, 1967), 96. abbasid popular narrative 25 tales because he places them in contexts of difference, satire, competition, and polarity, the very aspects of urban life that are not strictly in keeping with the Islamic spirit of cordiality, cooperation, and solidarity. No matter how we look at the author’s collection, therein lies the combination of character sketching and narrative that makes up an art. The art is not without design or parody. Each miser justifies a predilec- tion and career as part of a counter logic, one that builds on the real and establishes an urban narrative that undermines court politics of allegiance, as enshrined in panegyric poetry. This strain is the staple of al-Jāḥiz’ṣ narratives despite all his claimed allegiance to the Abbasids. It was not quite coincidental that ʿAmr Ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiz,̣ who was wholeheartedly involved in argumentation, the study of rhetoric, and the practice of classical clarity and balance, was also behind the growth of a realistic urban strain in narrative. This interest may explain his relative disregard for poetry as his vocational preoccupation began to force itself in a market economy of large proportions. In the thriving industry of book production, the suqs of copyists, bookmen, and hack writers flourished. In terms of gradations of genres, al-Jāḥiz,̣ was also no less annoyed with chancery writers and epistolographers whose finesse he admired, but deprecated their lack of sincerity and commitment. In other words, the growing narrative phenomenon was gradually dislodging other competing genres, while establishing for itself a theoretical ground on the basis of urgency and need.21 Perhaps, Abū Muḥammad Ibn Qutayba’s (d. 889 C.E.) analogy for the new is no less significant than his often quoted record of poetic tradition and the tripartite structure of the qasīdaḥ . In ʿUyūn al-akhbār (springs of information; figuratively, the best of anecdotes) he uses the feast analogy to describe his book, an analogy that later compilers and raconteurs would use:22 “This book is like a feast with different dishes according to the tastes and likings of its attendants.”23 The feast trope is urban in the first place, as tradition

21 ʿ Amr Ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiz,̣ Rasāʾ il al-Jāḥiz,̣ ed. ʿ Abd al-Salām Hārūn (Cairo: Khānjī, 1964), letter 15, p. 199. 22 Al-Husrị̄ al-Qayrawānī approached both the literal and the symbolic meanings in relation to the art, see for example, Jam’ al-jawāhir, ed. R. K. ‘Akāwī (Beirut: al-Manāhil, 1993), pp. 14, 21. In a similar vein to Abū Muḥammad Ibn Qutayba, he argues: “In its variety of discourse, I made it like a feast comprising many dishes, for people’s dispositions vary and their drives differ.” 23 Ibn Qutayba, ‘Uyūn al-akhbār (Springs of information) (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyya, 1986), vol. 1: 45–49. 26 muhsin al-musawi and tribal ethics rarely speak of feasts in terms of display. Hospitality demands generosity, something that is admonished to be done or carried out in secrecy. On the other hand, Islamic asceticism rarely allows space for such display. But the jurist has something more to say on this matter. The feast is a trope for his book, in variety, eclecticism, freedom from restrictions, openness, and application of egalitarian principles that are in keeping with the rising classes. As such, “it is not meant to be solely for the seeker of this world, nor the seeker for the next, nor for the privileged class to the exclusion of the common, nor for royalty as opposed to the rabble.” The cultural attention to multiplicity evident here is unusual; the emphasis is on the parity of equals, readers from the common stratum as well the privileged classes. The appeal here is not to the old patron, the court or the viziers and their circles, for the emerging public is the arbiter. The implications of this ninth century compendium are worth pursuing, for this resistance to class gradation and partisan or religious affiliation brings literature to the newly emerging classes in an era of expansion and growth throughout the early ʿAbbāsid era (750–945 C.E.) and later the Buwayhid (945–1055 C.E.) and Seljūq (1055–1100 C.E.) periods. These classes demand something recreational and entertaining; for that reason even a conservative critic has to accept their presence and debate generic hierarchy. In a vein that differs considerably from conservative criticism at large, especially in eighteenth century Europe until some time in the nineteenth, this critique clearly treats its audiences as “readers.” As evident in the Fihrist of Abū al-Faraj Muḥammad Ibn Abī Yaʿqūb Isḥāq al-Warrāq al-Baghdādī al-Nadīm, readership is much larger than we may assume, and the amount of cultural production testifies to a growing public no longer limited to the privileged group that we usually associate with the court and its style of patronage. The maqāmāt address these new publics which had been prepared for some time to take up the fight on behalf of an obviously defeated caliph, i.e. al-Amīn. In other words, the writer has readers in mind, and his work is meant as a text to be read, enjoyed and discussed among a wider readership drawn from every class. Despite the continuing popularity of primary forms of storytelling and performance theorizations concerning the written text are of no minor significance. At a later time, Abū ̣ ayyānH al-Tawḥīdī (d. 1023 C.E.) in his Kitāb al-Imtāʿ wa al-muʾānasa (Book of Enjoy- ment and Good Company) addresses his patron, Abū al-Wafāʾ, in the thirty-eighth night in order to underscore writing as permanence; not abbasid popular narrative 27 only to aggrandize the art, and for that matter the artist, but also to demonstrate that scholarly or artistic erudition and meticulousness come with writing.24 Writing itself encourages the compilation of tales and anecdotes which otherwise remain scattered and dispersed. The compilation of the Thousand and One Nights should have been strongly present in the minds of copyists, as Nabia Abbot argues in her analysis of the early ninth century fragment. The emergence of the book form and its subsequent popularity were demonstrated not only in the recurrence of the word kitāb in almost every title after the collection of the Qurʾān and the prophet’s traditions; but also in relevant celebratory literature. The Caliph al-Maʾmūn was reported to be so impressed by the intellectual power of a Persian book that he asserted in consequence: “By God, this is worthwhile discourse, not what our tongues fill our mouths with.”25 Writing and the written text were no less valued for displacing hearsay and rumors, especially those directed randomly against the marginalized. Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī reported to the vizier, Abū ʿAbdullah al-ʿĀriḍ Ibn Saʿdān, how the Sufis whom he studied had collected their knowledge in ten thousand pages of some significance.26 Al-Tawḥīdī must have come across this material in available volumes, which could not have been produced without a demand from a large readership. Discontent with conservative jurists and the court and disappointment at the dominating ethics of the privileged classes were mounting, as we learn from historical records of rebel- lions, confiscations, conspiracies, and invasions. However, this report on Sufi production is particularly important on a number of levels. It reveals the growing Sufi output, to be sure, but also signifies a break with the dominating prose genres, especially its epistolary component. Sufi literature represents the unworldly side of things; it was being collected for posterity in order to ensure survival in times that for the Sufis were too materialistic, worldly, and self-serving. The vizier is so

24 See on this point, Muḥsin Jāsim al-Mūsawī, Sardiyyāt al-ʿasṛ al-ʿArabī al-Islāmī al-wasīṭ ,̣ p. 99. 25 Cited in ibid. pp. 43–44; also Al-Husrị̄ al-Qayrawānī, Jamʾ al-jawāhir, ed. R. K. ʾAkkāwī (Beirut: al-Manāhil, 1993), p. 121. 26 By this time, the Sufi corpus was already significant. There had been a good repository of their literature since the time of Imam al-Sādiq̣ (d. 148/765). When we reach Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Hawāzin aL-Qushayrī (b. 376–465/986–1072) there were compendiums, epistles, dictionaries, etc. For a survey of this literature, see Principles of Sufism, by al-Qushayri. Tr. B. R. Von Schlegell, with an introduction by Hamid Algar (Oneonta, New York: Mizan Press, 1990), i–xvii. 28 muhsin al-musawi surprised that he adds: “How many a thing of value comes from the seemingly petty,” and how many times he expresses his view of Sufis as no more than people with no wisdom or knowledge. He also notes that he once thought “they devoted their time to playfulness, fun and degeneration.”27 While this comment serves as attestation to the right path of Sufis, their unwordliness and detachment from the state and its circles, it also indicates the great gulf between elite understanding of cultural production and the changing terms of life and interest in the urban milieu. In other words, such diversity in opinion suggests a number of audiences and reading publics. Even the variety of terms and their applications are indicative of this multifaceted production. Some terms, such as samar and ḥikāyah, may indicate performance, storytelling and reading, as Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī’s Al-Imtāʿ wa ’l-muʾānasa indicates. These anecdotes, witticisms, reports and intellectual encounters were brought together as samars or nightly entertainments for Abū ʿAbdullah al-ʿĀriḍ Ibn Saʿdān the vizier, but they were written down as they are currently extant for the literary patron, Abū al-Wafāʾ Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā al-Būzjānī (d. 387 H.). The effort to address a reading public is central to the art, however, for it manifests both the damage done to the oral tradition, the form of which we can only conjecture in the absence of recorded versions, and the desire among some literati to dig into the marginalized culture or refine it through acceptable embeddings and translated framing narratives. Ibn ʿAbdūs al-Jahshiyārī (d. 942 C.E.) may well have been collecting and refining some of these under the title Thousand and One Nights,28 a project which he was unable to conclude in his lifetime. It is on record that writers and compilers of narrative were on the alert lest popular anecdotes be damaged by meticulous grammar and pronunciation.29 This effort also provides us with hints about burgeoning narrative theory. The anecdotal quality targets reading publics and assemblies and must be seen and studied in this light. Unlike poetry, its success depends on its circulation among readers in an urban milieu.

27 Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥīdī, Al-Imtāʿ wa-al-muʾānasa (Book of enjoyment and good company), eds. Aḥmad Amīn, et al. (Beirut: Al-Maktabah al-ʾAsriyyah,̣ 1962), vol. 3: 97. 28 See Gustave von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam: A Study in Cultural Orientation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 288. 29 Al-Husrị̄ al-Qayrawānī, Jamʾ al-jawāhir, ed. R. K. ʿAkkāwī (Beirut: al-Manāhil, 1993), pp. 21–22, 25–26. abbasid popular narrative 29

Between the written text and the reading public, there is a new urban bond that should be taken into account as the most celebrated and recognized. Urbanity liberates the text by offering it a presence, but it also violates its freedom by imposing new limits and constraints. The intersection is not an easy one, and it accommodates both bondage and release. In justifying his anecdotal method of moral assessment and balance on the basis of merits and disadvantages in Al-Maḥāsin wa al-masāwiʾ, Ibrāhīm B. Muḥammad al-Bayhaqī (during the reign of al-Muqtadir, 295–302/908–932) argues for the written text as a free enterprise that escapes authority, for “it is a treasure, one that makes no demands for obligatory alms and gives the Sultan no rights.” Yet it is “a treasure for the inheritor” since it is “an admonition to the ancestor.” This is an ingenious association between book production and the growth of a new public which is different from the court despite the binding autocratic allegiance to the caliph as the commander of the faithful. On the other hand, the art of writing or inscription, the pen, stands for the reachable and the unavailable, “the eyewitness and the absent side, as read by every tongue anytime.”30 There is no tribal- ism to be addressed, nor is there a class distinction to be indulged. The book is there for every reader. This is the parity of equals, going public through book production as the equalizer. Authority slips from the hands of its former owners, to be placed gradually in the hands of readers who evidently compose a good portion of the society. Even the dichotomy between the secular and religious is urbanized, whereas the emerging defendants of prudish discourse are belittled and ridi- culed. Islam is not what later jurists tried to depict as a closed system of obligations and prohibitions, but an open culture with a moral base that is quite accommodating to emerging literary taste. Taking the new public into consideration and thinking of it as the readers of such works, Abū Muḥammad Ibn Qutayba justifies book production, especially entertaining writing, as satisfying the needs of the new classes, their right to relax and enjoy themselves after a hard working day. He says: “Hereby I can invigorate the reader after tiresome hard work and arduous probity. The ear soon rejects, and the soul sours. Whenever humor is attached to the right and decent or almost so, in resemblance to its timings and needs, it is not to be disapproved or reckoned reprehensible, nor is it a grave or the lesser sin if God wills.”

30 Al-Mah ̣āsin wa-al-masāwiʾ (Beirut: Dār Sādir,̣ 1970), pp. 8, 12. 30 muhsin al-musawi

This statement is evidently directed at people who may object to this kind of cultural product, the upholders of religious or moral authority; as such the tone is tinged with apology and justification. However, its other side does not hide its authority, coming from somebody who knows what is right and what is wrong. On the other hand, the whole address is pragmatic and speaks for an urban class which is mainly mercantile and professional, as indicated by the emphasis on hard work and arduous labor. But does it indicate some radical change in literary and cultural standards? It does, but only if we understand it in context, for literary standards were not deeply involved in religious tenets and applications. Even the Qurʾānic verse against specific poetry and poets did not receive unusual attention. In view of the mounting opposition among some circles to free and rational schools of thought, there is in this discourse an effort to pacify hardliners and justify a new kind of writing. Compared to the emphasis on style and quality of writing as shown at a later stage in Abū al-Faraj Muḥammad Ibn Abī Yaʿqūb Isḥāq al-Warrāq al-Baghdādī al-Nadīm’s description of the Thousand and One Nights as “insipid” and “loathsome,” this critique falls within moral criticism. It acquires its authority from the writer’s grounding in moral and religious discourse. While upholding decency and authenticity, Ibn Qutayba argues also for resemblance as a realistic tenet. This appeal to the real links the discourse to the emerging urban classes. It is reinforced by further castigation of pseudo-jurists who were on the increase at that time, as other representatives of prudish classes.31 Not many scholars, even from among the conservatives, were happy with this increase. He argues therefore for openness against restraint, and outspokenness versus prudery. With specific reference to the mention of bodily and physical practices in narrative and the counter repressive discourse, he calls for openness in reference to body parts, for “there is nothing reprehensible in naming the body, for what is sinful is to slander morals, to lie and to defame people.” This qualitative discourse should be looked at in view of the figurative meaning of the title of Abū Muḥammad Ibn Qutayba’s book ʿUyūn al-akhbār, i.e. the best of anecdotes. The author refers to transmission,

31 Along with the Sufi and Muʾtazilite objections to jurisconsults, there was a tendency to counteract their increasing influence, an influence that was in keeping with the rising mercantile class. For the fossilization of jurisprudence, see Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC.: University of North Carolina Press, Sixth Print, 1986), p. 32. abbasid popular narrative 31 but he often puts this aside, relying on undefined authority, a practice that he also follows in his other works. This mixed position regarding antecedent authority is in keeping with contemporary attitudes that were not keen on sustaining successive transmission. Even in the instance of his often-cited reference to the qasīdaḥ structure, he quotes “some literary folk.”32 His use of akhbār or anecdotes may not be among the most skillful, but may well lead us to view the whole khabar practice as the most embryonic in Arabic literary tradition. Vague, undefined, or hedging reference helps to undermine and liquidate authoritative transmission with its imposed limitations on fiction. ʿAmr Ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiz ̣ (d. 869 C.E.) specifies the meaning of the khabar practice by saying: “Some thoughtful [wise] person said to his son: son, a human is a ḥadīth, discourse, [a subject of narrative]. If you can be a good one, be it.” He further adds: “Every secret on earth is an anecdote about a human, or hidden from a person.”33 The association between akhbār, secrecy, suppression, expression, human life and narrative is of great significance to any study of Arabic narrative, not only because of the emphasis on the dynamics of disequilibria as central to the art, but also because narrative is centered on human life, especially in times of social change and political turmoil. Even translations from other literatures, as well as philosophical narratives like Ibn Ṭufayl’s (d. 1185) Ḥ ayy Ibn Yaqzāṇ , cater to the needs of this changing society. Allegorical narratives and fables are an integral part of a culture that was undergoing theological, political and social conflict. Central to this association between human endeavor and narrative are curiosity, secrecy and desire that lie behind motivational narrativity. Yet there are a number of issues that need to be seen in context. Among these is the use of the past by traditionalists and polemicists like al-Asmạ ʿī (d. 213/828) to recapture its entertaining and edifying aspect. On the other hand, there is a sense of commitment to record anecdotal material spiced with popular lore, as the Qāḍī Abū ʿAlī ’l-Tanūkhī (d. 384/995) would do later. No matter how traditionalist was the former, he might well have been prevented from using a phrase that should not be spoken at the caliph’s court. On the other hand, the need for his anecdotal pleasantries was so great that he found these no less rewarding

32 Ibn Qutayba, Kitāb al-shiʿr wa ’l-shuʿarāʾ (Book of poetry and poets). Cairo: Dār al-Ḥ adīth, Third Edition, 2001, vol. 1: 74–75. 33 Letter, 3, p. 160, in Rasāʾil al- al-Jāḥiz,̣ vol. 1, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn (Cairo: Khānjī, 1964). 32 muhsin al-musawi than solid knowledge: “Through knowledge, I have received gifts, and through pleasantries, I have acquired riches.”34 Al-Asmạ ʿī appealed to the court and enjoyed privileges at the risk of being silenced by its chamberlains or viziers. That was not the case with later storytellers and narrators who were ready to take to the street and marketplace in order to sell their pleasantries to the public. The scene would become large enough to accommodate narrative at large as an oral performance and a written document. The diversity of tastes and predilections, as well as the demands of the Caliphal court and the residences of notables and courtiers, entailed both diversity in production and a narrative corpus, accompanied by concomitant theory.35 Although less sophisticated than theorizations for epistolary writing, narratology grows as sets of applications and justifications that take Islam as a cultural climate and probability and verisimilitude as yardsticks whenever applicable to non-allegorical or natural writings. The terms that emerged before the twelfth century deserve some attention as long as they relate to this foundational theorization. Terms like qasṣ ̣ were already in use to indicate, along with the act of telling, both the clipping and trimming of hair and tracking and interpreting marks on the ground, a dual usage that was already to be found in the Qurʾān and appeared quite late in Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm B. ʿAlī B. Tamīm al-Ḥusrị̄ al-Qayrawānī’s (d. 413/1022) Jamʿ al-jawāhir. The term implied these meanings and later added that of narrative, to tell, or narrate, for “naḥnu naqusṣ ụ ʿalaika aḥsana ’l-qasaṣ ”(wẹ narrate to you the best of stories), as the Qurʾān states in the Joseph chapter, where we also encounter “Yā bunayya lā-taqsuṣ ̣ ruʾyāka ʿalā ʾikhwatik” (Son, do not narrate your dream to your brothers). This application, not the function of the qāsṣ ,̣ would have been in use for some time in the pre-Islamic era, and variations on the root or further semantic nuances are in keeping with the emphasis on excellence and improvisation. Even the later use of the term qusṣ āṣ ̣ as doers or actors, the people who relate and narrate, fluctuates in relation to this Qurʾānic use. The term holds positive meaning as long as there is edification and an equation between the artist and art, its beauty and edification, for “aḥsana al-qasaṣ i”̣ involves both excellence and worthiness. In many instances, the term applies

34 See Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm B. ʿAlī B. Tamīm al-Ḥ usrị̄ al-Qayrawānī (d. 413/1022), Zahr al-Ādāb, 1:160; and Jamʿ al-jawāhir, ed. R. K. ʿAkāwī, p. 40. 35 See Anwar G. Chejne, “The Boon-Companion in Earlyʿ Abbasid Times,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 85:3 (Jul.–Sept., 1965), 327–335. abbasid popular narrative 33 to the preacher, since the use of narrative for edification was viewed as a viable educational tool for reaching the people: “How useful they are to the common people even if what they relate is untrue,” says Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1200). This statement must be taken seriously as indicative of a large public that forced jurists to think of making it a target through the medium of storytelling. Instead of emphasis on the erudite scholar, the humanist of the Islamic civilization, there was around Ibn al-Jawzī’s time a different focus on preachers and storytellers whose influence with the public was well- recognized. Ibn al-Jawzī’s justification is clear, for they are “closer to the discourse of the common people, who are likely to benefit from them much more than from the most knowledgeable.”36 Indeed even a conservative such as Ibn al-Jawzī was so impressed by the practice and morals of the storyteller Mansūṛ b. ʿAmmār that he wrote: “There was in his qasaṣ ̣ and speech something wonderful, as never related to people before.”37 Whenever the preacher works within these terms of reference, there is a positive recognition, but otherwise the term lapses into the pejorative. Ibn al-Jawzī quotes the Prophet’s cousin, the caliph ʿAlī, to document the two functions of the qusṣ āṣ ,̣ the positive and the reprehensible. In other words, the profession of the qusṣ āṣ ̣ was already there in early Islam, but the fear of negative influence on audiences was also behind the tendency to question and interrogate them before allowing them to preach in the mosque.38 In relating an anecdote as narrated by some “dilettantes,” al-Jāḥiz ̣ reports how “an Iraqi governor once bought a slave singer with an enormous amount of money. On one occasion he asked her to sing, but the first song she sang was as follows: ‘I go to the qusṣ āṣ ,̣ every evening, anticipating God’s reward in every step.’ He said to his slave: ‘Boy, take this fornicator [whore] to Abū Ḥirzah the qāsṣ .’̣ ”39 When he asked the latter on another occasion how he had found her, he was coyly told that he found in her two of the attributes of Paradise: coolness and width. Yet, when the word qusṣ āṣ ̣ applies to preachers, there is no guaranteed approval, as many qusṣ āṣ ̣ were categorically identified by Ibn al-Jawzī as either reprobates or liars or pious and

36 Ibid., p. 25. 37 Ibid., 93, 102. 38 See ʿAlī b. Tamīm’s book, Al-Sard wa ’l-zāhirạ al-drāmiyya, pp. 257–59, for a survey of positions. 39 Letter, 13, vol. 3, p. 128, in Rasāʾil—al-Jāḥiz.̣ 34 muhsin al-musawi

God-fearing.40 Even reporters of their narratives were castigated. Thus, al-Ḥ ārith al-Muḥāsibī (d. 857 C.E.), Abū al-Ṭālib Makkī (d. 990 C.E.) and Abū Ḥāmid al-Ṭūsī (d. 1111 C.E.) were not exempted from reproof and objection, as they “unwittingly included in their books groundless affairs and anecdotes, not realizing that they are untrue.”41 Like many jurisconsults, Ibn al-Jawzī was not inclined to treat this sub- literature candidly. Yet his serious objections to the profession should be seen as quite revealing insofar as its growth is concerned. Ibn al-Jawzī’s writings on sermonizers constitute only a portion of an output that includes anecdotes on simpletons and other marginalized groups. In Talbīs Iblīs as well as Kitāb al- qusṣ āṣ ̣ wa-al-mudhakkirīn he provides reasons behind his hostility towards the qusṣ āṣ .̣ The explanations fall under the following categories (revealing a good deal about the complexity of theological perspectives that vacillate between utility and religious tradition): Firstly, the practice is against tradition, normative custom and doctrinal authority, since there is nothing to be copied and emulated invoking a strict adherence to the Sunna, as whatever that has been set and established by ancient authority and, particularly, by the Prophet. Secondly, “the narrative, qasaṣ ,̣ of precursors’ records is rarely authentic” and can thus be so misleadingly appealing as to invite emulation. Thirdly, indulgence in such narratives “will keep people away from the more important occupation of reading the Qurʾān, reporting the Prophet’s tradition, and becoming more versed in religion,” whereas there are people who think that tradition “provides what should suffice and replace whatever else that is difficult to authenticate.” Fourthly, there is the foreign [i.e. the alien] aspect that comes in the form of narrative, and these qusṣ āṣ ̣ “insert into their qasaṣ ̣ things that deform the common people’s hearts.” In the jurist’s discourse the strange and the alien implies anything that sounds unfitting to his taste or to his understanding of propriety and ethics. Fifthly, the qusṣ āṣ ̣ “never worry about accuracy and rarely guard against error because of their scant knowledge and minimal piety.”42 The high moral ground takes obvious precedence in this critique of storytelling material and performance; although composed relatively late (the second half of the twelfth cen-

40 Ibn al-Jawzī, Kitāb al-qusṣ āṣ ̣ wa-al-mudhakkirīn, ed. Martin S. Swartz (Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1971), p. 75. 41 Ibid., p. 102. 42 Ibid., pp. 10, 21, 28, 102. abbasid popular narrative 35 tury), it coincides well with the growing conservative discourse and the emergence of hard-line Islamism in reaction to the crusades and the disintegration of the Islamic nation (umma). Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1200) was not alone in his views as we have already observed from al-Shayzarī’s ḥisbah manual. The mounting fear of popular tradition only testifies to its gaining momentum. As noted earlier, his evaluative yardstick only indicates how powerful was the qusṣ āṣ ̣ʾ role at that time. Whenever they had recourse to performance and acting, Ibn al-Jawzī regards them as dangerous since they can easily deceive the impressionable and uneducated masses. Some pretentiously shiver and cry; others tear their clothes and throw themselves on the minbar, while still others beat themselves on the head and face as though encountering utter loss and infatuation.43 In such a case, he approvingly quotes Abū Ḥ āmid al-Ṭūsī who says: “whenever the sermonizer is a young man, nicely dressed, refined in bearing, with unruffled demeanor fit for women assemblies, with a repertoire of poetry, gestures and motions, be wary of him.”44 Jurists and male scriptors share a belief in the impressionability and vulnerability of certain audiences, especially women. Paradoxically, some also believe in the wiles of women, as being categorically more enticing and ensnaring. It takes Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥīdī some time in Al-Imtāʿ wa ’l-muʾānasa (Book of enjoyment and good company) to negotiate his view of readership, and the need to approach women audiences as no less qualified than the rest, a viewpoint which his vizier patron did not uphold.45 Yet, the issue is more complicated than one merely involving class or political demarcations, for there was a love/hate relationship that drove storytellers to both fantasize and blemish the life of the court and the wealthy classes. On the other hand, there was also a fear/curiosity drive that impelled the court, for instance, to search for popular narratives. Both attitudes had great bearing on the narrative art, not only in matters of poetics and style, but also in the political context. In the first instance, we may refer to both al-Jāḥīz ̣ and Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥīdī, both of whom showed an interest in popular lore to the

43 Ibid., pp. 93–95. 44 Ibid., p. 94. 45 Abū Ḫayyān al-Tawḥīdī, ʿAl-Imtāʿ wa ’l-muʾānasa (Book of enjoyment and good company), eds. Aḥmed Amīn, et al. (Beirut: Al-Maktabah al-ʿAsriyyah,̣ 1962), vol. 1: 23; 2: 34–38, 44–49; 3: 204; also for the impact of al-Jāḥiz,̣ see Kitāb al-Ḥ ayawān (Cairo: Al-Ḥ alabī, 1938), 3: 534. 36 muhsin al-musawi extent of asserting the need to duplicate witty anecdotes and other pleasantries exactly as they are originally reported. The former argues, whenever “you hear of a witty anecdote (nādira) emerging from among the common people . . . never resort to iʿrāb (proper vocalization), as this will mar its enjoyment and distort its meaning.”46 Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥīdī says almost the same thing, for correct grammar “damages the witty anecdote,” and grammatical mistakes and their like “should not be objectionable when coming from wags and simpletons.” He further quotes from another source, “the pleasantry of a witty anecdote lies in its ungrammaticality, its warmth within its own proportion, its sweetness even in its short span. Whenever such traits come from a narrator who has fluency, a charming face, and a pleasant timely gesture, told in the right place and meeting the precise need, then the goal is reached.”47 No less so was the attitude of al-Husrị̄ al-Qayrawānī who, in Jamʿ al-jawāhir, argues for the same position, for “there is a tool for every art, and a condition for every merchandise.”48 The justification for an art as conceived in these extracts is widely at variance with the objctions that we have already noticed on the basis of morality and refinement. Any acquiescence to circumstance as being the operator in the constitution of storytelling or as a determinant of the nature of speech implies the application of new rules that will need time to be widely accepted among the literate classes. Nevertheless, they are already available as a basis on which to build a theory of narrative whose legitimacy derives power from reality and similitude rather than antecedent authority or classical taste. Along with this keen interest in popular anecdotal literature, there was a corresponding fear of the role of the populace that compilers and professional writers tried to dismiss and dispel. The mere tendency to do so is meaningful, for narrative itself cannot grow and flourish under social restriction, nor can it be solely the domain of the court and its associates. Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥīdī offers further examples in this regard. His patron, the vizier Ibn Saʿdān, was angry at “the common people, the rabble” as they “gossip about us, dealing with our affairs, tracking our secrets, and delving into our private life. I am at loss

46 See al-Jāḥīz,̣ Al-Bukhalāʾ, ed. Ṭāhā al-Ḥ ājirī, editor’s quote from al-Bayān, p. 302. 47 Abū Hayyān» al-Tawḥīdī, Al-Basạ̄ ʾir wa ’l-dhakhāʾir, ed. Aḥmed Amīn et al. (Cairo: Al-Taʾlīf wa ’l-Nashr, 1953), p. 105. 48 Jam ʿ al-jawāhir, pp. 21–22. abbasid popular narrative 37 what to do with them. On several occasions I have had the intention of severing tongues, hands, and legs and implementing harsh punishment, in the hope that such actions will put an end to this practice and enforce respect.” Here the vizier is impersonating Shahrayar’s role in the Thousand and One Nights, while Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥīdī fills the role of Scheherazade. He summons her art, but instead of offering a tale, he comes up with Abū Sulaymān al-Mantiqī’ṣ (d. 375/985) response to similar situations. Al-Tawḥīdī refers to him not only for his wisdom, but also for his “love for the state,” and worries about pitfalls and fail- ures. Thus, when he says: “The King cannot be without his subjects, as much as these cannot be without a king,” his words are accepted. Abū Sulaymān refers to a similar situation, when in the reign of the Caliph al-Muʿtaḍid, the Caliph asked his vizier how to handle a certain Shaykh al-Tabbān, whose assembly was attended by many people who interfered in the affairs of the State and kept gossiping about many unwelcome issues. The vizier suggested punishments ranging from death by fire to drowning. The Caliph looked at him in surprise, and asked him to show mercy and care for people by offering them good advice and compassion, since they were ignorant and helpless.49 The significance of the anecdote and then the session with the patron lies in its urban concerns, including state affairs. The scene reveals a state that is well aware of social and other problems that usually unfold within urban life. Statecraft has to develop a mechanism to meet and solve these problems. On the other hand the anecdote, equivalent of current press reports, conveys a scene in which the public has begun to make itself felt in various assemblies and gatherings that may seem reminiscent to bourgeois salons, clubs, and other meeting places, along with press conferences and their like, where the public makes itself felt as a counterpoise to absolute authority. In this extract the ruler or the caliph is the moderate; it is the vizier who tries to wield power against the threatening public. We should remember that high administra- tors and court officials were quite often responsible for the separation between the ruler and the public, as a means whereby to legitimize their use of power. Narrative makes use of these issues; the very assemblies that bother the viziers are narratives in performance. Whereas each vizier suggests repressive measures, intellectuals and writers defuse anger

49 Abū »Hayyān al-Tawḥīdī, Al-Imtāʿ wa ’l-muʾānasa (Book of enjoyment and good company), 3: 87–97. 38 muhsin al-musawi through art. Indeed intellectuals were able to separate themselves from the court and align themselves, albeit cautiously, with the public. Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī was aware of this public; and his reasoning through narrative is only representative of an age that had already witnessed the diminishing power of the administration as the source of legitimacy. In cultural terms, and taking into account the basic difference between European societies of the eighteenth century and late medieval Arab societies, a difference based on the Islamized understanding of the society as egalitarian at least in theory, we can borrow from Habermas his critique of a similar case.50 When the modern state apparatus separated itself from the monarch’s sphere, it gradually became its “counterpoise.” In the case of Arab societies, intellectuals who still searched for patronage among viziers and the remnants of courts felt the urge to stand for the growing public sphere. While objecting to the vizier’s anger at the public Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥīdī was ready at a certain point in his life to write vituperatively of other viziers. Thus, the Scheherazade motif should not be de-contextualized, for no matter what the nature of the production and accumulation, writers and artists obviously shared a moral and intellectual responsibility. Narrative, rather than poetry, became a means towards pacification, edification, and containment. The need for the art was obviously as real as the motivations behind its collection and compilation in book form. Al-Qāḍī Abū ʿAlī ’l-Tanūkhī (d. 384/994) leads his readers towards more urban motivations. He wrote a number of books and compilations, among them is the famous Kitāb nishwār al-muḥāḍara wa-akhbār al-mudhākara bi-alfāz ̣ al-mukhālafa (Book of shared conversation and memorable information by means of contrasted expressions; English translation: Tabletalk of a Mesopotamian Judge). A number of factors were involved in his effort to compile and collect these narratives in the tenth century. He had already noticed neglect in the recording of information, anecdotes and narratives at large. The reasons were two-fold: the court was immersed in physical pleasures, whereas the common people were focused on survival. Rulers and their associates pursued their corporeal desires, but everyone else was busy with daily

50 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1989), 30. 51 Al-Qād ̣ī Abū ʿAlī al-Tanūkhī, Kitāb nishwār al-muḥāḍara wa-akhbār al-mudhākara bi-alfāz ̣ al-mukhālafa (Book of shared conversation and memorable information by abbasid popular narrative 39 concerns.51 The implications are not limited to this societal complexity, for the impact on culture was serious enough to relegate Baghdad to a city of desolation and loss. Returning to it in the last decades of the tenth century, “I found its assemblies no longer thriving with discussions and argumentations.”52 Furthermore, the anecdotal repertoire was in danger, for “whatever I had stored in memory began to dwindle and fade, and the meaning and theme of material orally narrated by people suffered distortion, to the extent that those who reported what we had already heard began to put into it things that defiled and distorted it.”53 To conquer time through documentation and collect narrative art as a personal enterprise went hand in hand, for the written and recorded would survive time and pass safely to the next generation, as would the name of the collector and the compiler. Storytellers and narrators felt empowered by this demand on their art to compete with poets. If epistolographers were now in demand as a consequence of rising statecraft and the needs of the chancery, narrative compilers and storytellers catered to the needs of the rising classes, including the educated and learned. At this point, the Qāḍī Abū ʿAlī ’l-Tanūkhī would go so far as to argue his case as a would-be historian. This book was to address “whoever desired to read what could lead him to the morals of past times, their canons, means, customs and ways of life, to compare our condition with that of the past, and to learn how the world died and how tempers changed.”54 Yet these were not the only factors behind the effort. Al-Tanūkhī took it upon himself to be both novelist and storyteller. He was careful, however, to indicate its significance, for “it is useful to whoever has done with most of the sciences.” On the other hand, the material imposes on him the obligation to write it down. These anecdotes and narratives “would suffer misuse for not being written down.”55 While seemingly encumbered by a taste for the real, with its chain of transmitters, the author-compiler describes his work as based on “antecedent traditions.” On the other hand, he admits meddling and tampering with this material, creating it anew as artifact: “I intended mixing it

means of contrasted expressions). Edited by ʿAbbūd al-Shāljī (Beirut: al-ʿAsriyyah,̣ 1971), Vol. 1: 9. 52 Ibid., p. 10. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 3: 7. 55 Ibid., 1: 2–7. 40 muhsin al-musawi with other arts, of distinctive biographies and stories, telepathist and clairvoyant coincidences and dreams, strange spells and vicissitudes, the anecdotes of professionals, rulers and notables, and others of every station and sort, illuminating it with light verse, and recent prose and entertainment.”56 The actors and reporters, he notes, come from every station in life, including businessmen, beggars, knights, spies, wise people, peasants, notables, buffoons, and brigands.57 Among writers and geographers it became almost a recognizable practice not only to make use of every reporter, regardless of class and identity, but also to mix with every class and impersonate every character, as was the case with the geographer, Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbdullah al-Muqaddasī, whose book Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm (available between 985–986 C.E.) is recognized as the best of its kind.58 In other words, the tenet of reliable transmitters was no longer valid, nor was the restriction on reporting and fiction. This emphasis on diversity should not be cursorily bypassed. It had become part of an attitude that was quite customary among geographers, travelers, and compilers of narrative. To be sure the effort had a utilitarian motivation in that one had to accept and relate narrative on the basis of appeal. It also reveals an understanding of a process of change that no longer accepts elitism as a yardstick or touchstone. On the other hand, it betrays dissatisfaction with the long-respected tradition of successive and authentic transmission. No longer is there, as in al-Ḥ usrī’ṣ Jamʿ al-jawāhir and Dhayl zahr al-ādāb, an emphasis on authenticity and reliability. At the request of Abū ’l-Faḍl al-ʿAbbās b. Sulaymān, secretary to the chancellery in Qayrawān, al-Ḥ usrị̄ sifts the material that the latter has brought with him and applauds his own selections in a book that is neatly organized and carefully embellished with nawādir (rarities and witty anecdotes), pearls or beauties, strange anecdotes and happenings, news, and almost every kind of narrative of an appealing nature. He claims to be quoting both the ancient and modern, the wise and insane, the noble and reprobate, the generous, the prodigal and misers, the learned ʿulamāʾ and uneducated, the knowledgeable and simpleton, the elite and rabble, parasites and snobs,

56 Ibid., 3: 7. 57 Ibid. 58 See Ignati Iulianovich Krachkovski, Istiri Arabskoi Geograficheskoi Literatury (Arabic text; Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1987), pp. 227, 232–33. abbasid popular narrative 41 the gay and castrated, boys and women.59 He is aware throughout, of his readers, since he established principles for his selections in order to impose on the whole a flexible form and order. The artist, the night entertainer (musāmir), and the narrator of witty anecdotes and rarities (munādir) should be, broadly speaking, “delicately suggestive, deftly expressive, gracefully refined, eloquent, elegant, not boring or violent, adapting himself to every situation, and utilizing his abilities aptly.”60 While these are principles for the artist as narrator or entertainer to follow, the source material eludes classical strictures and relies on almost every attractive source regardless of race, class or gender. Narratologists as such oppose any literary canons that may obstruct the growth of this art. They are careful, however, lest the reader react with repugnance. From every source there is a choice, and the reader “should not look at the matter with resentment, putting the matter aside, whenever coming upon an insult or stupidity.”61 Now it is the reader rather than the court that is the arbiter. He/she is the patron. Indeed, King Shahrayar of the Thousand and One Nights is only a trope for this readership that searches for the pleasant and the entertaining. Al-Ḥ usrị̄ al-Qayrawānī (d. 412/1022) followed al-Tanūkhī (d. 384/ 994) in more than one respect. Both resorted to an unrestricted use of sources, and both contributed to the dominating narrative method involving a free use of material. Class and race inhibitions almost disappeared, and the appeal to entertainment and possible benefit became a priori at a time when even the court was keen on knowing more about the other culture, one that comprised marginal groups and newly expanding classes. For the narrative art this unrestricted use of material implied due recognition of every profession and craft. Both writers came under the impact of al-Jāhiz,̣ who set the stage for the development of the narrative art. Their reliance on both the acceptable and questionable, the canonized and deviational, should also indicate to us the tendency towards characterization and character sketching as an egalitarian art. The equation developed neatly by al-Jāhiz ̣ between the narrative art, especially in the portrayal of Khālid Ibn Yazīd (otherwise

59 Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm B. ʿAlī B. Tamīm al-Ḥusrī-Qayrawānī,̣ Dhayl zahr al-ādāb. Ed. M. M. Shākir (Cairo: al-Raḥmaniya, 1353H), p. 2. For the confusion between the two books, see EI., and also the other edition as already cited. Also for the exact quotation, see Jamʿ al-jawāhir, ed. R. K. ʿAkāwī (Beirut: al-Manāhil, 1993), pp. 13–14. 60 Ibid., p. 7, also 8, 51. 61 Ibid., p. 52. 42 muhsin al-musawi

Khālawayh the mukaddī), (also written as mukdī, “tramp”), and theft, or between the qasṣ ̣ as the latter practiced it and the acquisition of money, is no fleeting matter. Although al-Jāhiz ̣ provides us with other samples of miserly behavior, he decidedly gives voice to Khālid Ibn Yazīd, who leaves a testimonial letter to his son to remind him of his many professions and qualifications, and his readiness to relapse into either theft or qasṣ ̣ as a means of counteracting the threat of poverty and loss of wealth. This empowering narrative is another way of satirizing class distinction. All professions lead to wealth and social distinction. With this understanding, no source is better than another, and what applies to money is also applicable to narrative. “If my wealth goes, I will be a qāsṣ ̣ or a vagabond, as I was a tramp. My beard is abundant and white; my throat is voluble and robust; my demeanor is good, and people find me appealing.”62 Coming from Khālid Ibn Yazīd, the man who thinks that poets and orators use their skill in order to embezzle others, this kind of discourse unsettles and undermines the tenets of classical writing, including such matters as truthfulness, reliability and authenticity. Indeed, al-Jāhiz ̣ quotes another who insists that “people abuse lying and wrong it when they ignore its attributes and recall only its ills,” as they do “when applauding truthfulness by recognizing its attributes while overlooking its harms.”63 In the context of such utilitarianism and expediency the moral base loses. In relation to the burgeoning theory of narrative, this ambivalence is in keeping with the free use of source material and the unrestricted view of professions and social status. Narrative as such evolves not only as a classless mode of writing, but also as one with no moral obligations of the kind demanded by jurists. What Khālid Ibn Yazīd said and left behind, whether real or fictitious, found its way to such compendiums as al-Jāhiz’ṣ Book of Misers. Narrative is no less implicating for being so free. One way of avoiding reports of an insulting nature is to make passing reference to an anecdote, specifying its source, and then abruptly adding that there is a lot in this vein that may be resented. In other words, the compiler turns into a narrator while simultaneously inviting the reader to search for yet more demeaning and insulting material. As if not satisfied with this strategy, the compiler-narrator, like Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm B. ʿAlī B. Tamīm al-Husrị̄ al-Qayrawānī, will go so far as to implicate both narra-

62 ʿAmr Ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiz., Al-Bukhalāʾ, ed. Ṭāḥā al-Ḥ ājirī, p. 53. 63 Ibid., p. 4. abbasid popular narrative 43 tor and reader in a bond that anticipates reader-response theorists. He adds: “It is said: the narrator is one of the slanderers, and the reader one of the speakers.”64 Establishing this bond between the two, the writer consolidates a narrative theory that eludes social and political strictures, but forcefully strives to associate narrative with book production. To prepare space for this mode of writing, theorists tried to situate the genre within a historical understanding of evolution and change. In Al-Imtāʿ wa ’l-muʾānasa (Book of enjoyment and good company), Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥīdī argues for evolution as a historical given, “for in every hundred years people acquire a new normative custom.”65 Although he was advancing this idea in order to justify a deviation from his master, al-Jāḥiz,̣ and his method, the whole context of the discussion can be seen as a revisionist reading of tradition. Rather than accepting antecedent authority as a given, as the source of legitimacy and literary or cultural standards, the argument considers time as the determinant element of change. There are no dormant standards or applications. Imitation is ruled out, and innovation and fashion are the new criteria for evaluating works and literary products. Need, requirement, and time, these are the new considerations. With these new provisions the Islamic context works well, since it undergoes change like any other milieu; for that matter conservative jurisprudence was expected to cope with these requirements, and not abide by the Sunna as a posture of dormancy and fixity. Preceding Abū ̣Hayyān al-Tawḥīdī, al-Tanūkhī had already debated such a position and the claims of subordination to other standards and genres, for the art that al-Tanūkhī was advancing in a number of compilations, is “unprecedented and unique, and it is an original genre of its own” (lā nazīrạ lahu wa-lā shakl, wa- huwa waḥdahu jinsun asluṇ ).66 The emphasis on both uniqueness and originality is a romantic claim, to be sure, but its legitimacy acquires its power from faith in newness, not imitation. Tradition is laid aside, and the writer is left on his/her own to devise the right method for the material at hand.

64 Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm B. ʿAlī B. Tamīm al-Husrị̄ al-Qayrawānī, Jamʿ al-jawāhir, ed. R. K. ʿAkkāwī, p. 15. 65 Abū Abū »Hayyān al-Tawḥīdī Al-Imtāʿ wa ’l-muʾānasa (Book of enjoyment and good company), 1: 5. 66 Qāḍī Abū ʿAlī al-Tanūkhī Kitāb nishwār al-muḥāḍara wa-akhbār al-mudhākara bi-alfāz ̣ al-mukhālafa (Book of shared conversation and memorable information by means of contrasted expressions), p. 13. 44 muhsin al-musawi

However, the art described by al-Tanūkhī is more of a narrative amalgam, a practice that we can trace in other compilations and works, but which is also different from a number of other narrative practices. To have a better view of these narrative practices and accompanying theoretical explications, they can be categorized as follows:

Firstly, narrative compilation as proposed by al-Tanūkhī and Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm B. ʿAlī B. Tamīm al-Husrị̄ al-Qayrawānī, not only as collections of anecdotes and reports, embellished with proverbs, exemplary sayings, poetic gleanings, from ancient and contemporary sources, but also as a method of creating material anew through careful trimming, designing, appropriating, improvising and shaping. Secondly, narrative as originated by al-Jāhiz,̣ where characters, uniquely presented as misers for instance, justify their understanding of wealth and money as an accumulation that should resist attempts at deceit, extravagance, embezzlement and misuse. While framing these narratives with the serene, yet cynical, voice of the author, each miser is given enough space to argue and justify an attitude that may sound inappropriate and even less miserly for fellow misers (as is the case in the portrayal of Abū Saʿīd al-Madāʾnī). The whole narrative of al-Madāʾnī is a masterpiece, not only as a social tract in a vastly expanding urban milieu with enough identifications and significations to allow shared codes, but also as narrative proper that resorts to argumentation through dialogic principles of great variety.67 Thirdly, narrative as nights: While we have been deprived of al-Jahshiyārī’s 480 nights as recorded by the bibliophile Abū al-Faraj Muḥammad Ibn Abī Yaʿqūb Isḥāq al-Warrāq al-Baghdādī al-Nadīm (d. 385/995), the practice of offeringasmār , or nightly entertainments, in a Scheherazade-like fashion was popular enough to be used by Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥīdī in Al-Imtāʿ wa ’l-muʾānasa (Book of enjoyment and good company), whereby thirty-seven nights are addressed to the vizier. The practice here, however, follows al-Jāhiz ̣ in negotiating a method that carves a path carefully and cautiously through prohibitions, censorship, interests, and preferences. Almost every address needs to justify its presence between seriousness and flippancy, solemnity and laughter, silliness and magnificence, argumentation and narrativity. Yet, the writer is unlike the master in many things that he justifies in

67 See the present writer’s Sardiyyāt, pp. 62–63. abbasid popular narrative 45 terms of evolution, change and perspective, in what can be seen as an anxiety of influence. Of some significance in this respect is Abụ̄ayyān H al-Tawḥīdī’s recourse to questions and answers instead of argumentation or ḥijāj, the master’s renowned method. Fourthly, narrative as a one-day biographical story of a personal record, a slice of life, which represents the focus of some maqāmāt without being restricted to one topic or specific size, like al-Azdī’s Ḥ ikāyat Abū ’l-Qāsim al-Baghdādī. Although using ḥikāyah in reference to the vagrant hero, Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghdādī, the author does not intend to emulate his predecessors and contemporaries by either conjoining imitation and discourse or delivering a mere tale as narrative. The author’s third person narrative is fused into the hero’s first person perspective as he speaks of assemblies, recalls occasions, reels off jokes, pokes fun at society, exposes double standards and hypocrisy, inserts solemn extracts from current literature, acquaints us with problems of life both inside and outside Baghdad, cites joyful and pleasurable gatherings and refers to singers and responses to renowned slave singers and gay boon companions. While this book-length narrative is unique, Ṭāhā al-Ḥ ājirī compares it to another one, in four volumes, by Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥ atimī (d. 388/998).68 Surprisingly, two nights in Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥīdī’s Al-Imtāʿ wa ’l-muʾānasa (28–29) appear verbatim in al-Azdī’s Ḥ ikāyat Abū ’l-Qāsim, as I have noted elsewhere.69 Fifthly, popular tales, whether in translation, appropriation, adaptation, and subsequent framing in collections, as in the case of The Thousand and One Nights that were to grow as such between the ninth and fourteenth centuries. Sixthly, philosophical narrative, visionary revelations, allegorical and animal stories. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and Sahl Ibn Hārūn are merely two among many in this regard as recorded in al-Nadīm’s Fihrist. Among long narratives, Ibn Ṭufayl’s (1185/6) Ḥ ayy Ibn Yaqzāṇ stands foremost. Similar is the allegorical narrative Al-Asad wa’l-ghawwās ̣ (The Lion and the fox), written around 530 A.H.

More significant to the present discussion is the effort to theorize for each category of narrative. In Ḥ ikāyat Abū ’l-Qāsim al-Baghdādī al-Azdī offers us an interesting reading of the flourishing narrative tradition.

68 ‘Amr Ibn Baḥr al-Jāhiz ̣ Al-Bukhalāʾ, ed. Ṭāhā al-Ḥ ājirī, p. 47. 69 For a discussion of this art, see Sardiyyāt, pp. 80–81, 159–174. 46 muhsin al-musawi

He argues for the narrative art as being close to life, a slice of life. The author prefers to call it nādira, a rare witty anecdote, yet the story actually follows the career of a vagrant who is described as a colorful figure from the fringes of society, someone who has been in the company of every thug, ruffian, and parasite, but who has managed to acquire the ways of refined literati. In other words, he is the very crystallization of every aspect of society and every character, the epitome of sprawling Baghdad, with its positive and negative shades and colors. In this record of one-day happenings in which he is the actor, speaker and narrator narrative emerges as a series of responses to questions and requests from the audience.70 As such the language is not unified. The significance of this one-day tale of real happenings, albeit of very dubious nature, lies in a dialogic space that accommodates a number of languages, from every social and professional track and segment. Perhaps closer to the genre of the maqāma than any other narrative practice, especially in terms of the main hero as vagrant and the engagement in real situations among every social and professional class, Ḥ ikāyat Abū ’l-Qāsim al-Baghdādī sets the stage for the picaresque novel. However, the vagrant’s attendance at assemblies, as well as his openness to questions and requests, is not as smoothly handled as may first appear. The audience may proceed as follows: “But, Abū ’l-Qāsim, if you would only be kind enough to tell us more of these tales to complement the uns (pleasurable company) brought us by your Ḥ adīths,” but his response is: “No sir, search for some one else to make fun of.”71 In other words, he does not follow a Scheherazade- formula by either appeasing or delaying a request. Nevertheless, he is often inclined to jump to another anecdote and engage the company with both the pleasurable and shocking. The art is therefore more realistic than normal anecdotal narratives, in that it introduces into these assemblies material and detail that may be shocking to prudish or even refined tastes. On the other hand, the use of request and response as a device to perpetuate narrative and provoke the narrator is the other side of the author’s textual displays of allegiance to patrons. In the steps of al-Jāḥiz,̣ both al-Qayrawānī and Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥīdī wrote and compiled these narratives and justifications for the art in response to

70 Al-Azdī’s Ḥ ikāyat Abū’l-Qāsim al-Baghdādī, pp. 1–2. 71 Ibid., pp. 70–71. abbasid popular narrative 47 their patrons’ requests. These efforts parallel comparable ones, not only in poetic dīwāns but also in epistolary compendiums. Yet, al-Qayrawānī’s service to the art lies not only in following the earlier practice of al-Tanūkhī or improving on this unique and unprecedented art, as the latter deemed it, but also in his deliberately inter- changeable use of such terms as al-munādir wa’l-muhātir wa’l-musāmir (the narrator of witticisms, rare anecdotes, vituperative response, and night entertainments).72 His inclusion of the muhātir fits well with many of Abū ’l-Qāsim al-Baghdādī’s interventions. The term had not been much in use in combination with the other terms as applied to the practice. To include scathing, slanderous, and vituperative materials as narrative was not only a daring enterprise, but also an intentional one in keeping with the poetic tradition. Yet he has an explanation for this inclusion, not only in relation to the immediate response of the audience,73 but also and more often in view of language registers and metaphors. He argues that metonymy is often used as a figurative replacement for the indecent, gruesome and obscene; there is no reason, he says, not to deal with whatever is present in life.74 In other words, a great deal of language works in this domain the moment it is freed from the metonymic. Although not strictly written as a sequential narrative, as the case in many of al-Tanūkhī’s narratives, Abū Isḥāq al-Qayrawānī’s Jamʿ vindicates its presence as narrative in terms of the Arabic view of adab. The feast analogy is significant in this respect, for proper variety is the standard. He provides us with a prologue and epilogue that summarize this method. He justifies the combinational variety as being a gradual layering and neat gradation aimed at satisfying the soul’s craving for change, for “the soul is naturally prone to alteration,” and is innately restless.75 This restlessness he satisfies with different selections, and difference rather than sameness becomes his way of avoiding monotony, and gaining both attraction and appeal. “A thing that matches its object loses its radiance,” he argues. Yet, he also asserts the need to “include the tale with other tales, and the verse with other verses, for gathering

72 Abū Isḥāq al-Qayrawānī, Jamʿ al-jawāhir, ed. R. K. ʿAkkāwī (Beirut: al-Manāhil, 1993), p. 24. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid., pp. 85–86. 75 Op. cit., p. 17. 48 muhsin al-musawi is better than dispersion.”76 In the book’s conclusion, he is so sure that he has been following the method which he set out earlier that he describes himself as the “clever musāmir and skilful munādir,” someone who is capable of producing a neat book of proportionate wonders and marvels nicely and carefully assembled.77 Throughout his work he approaches the idea of compilation as jamʿ, a configurational site where every narrative insertion is prefaced with a theoretical explication. The uniqueness, if there is any, lies not only in the processes of selecting and joining, but also in the anecdotal effort to justify theory with more gleanings from history, life, and the rich cultural repertoire of the Arab-Islamic Empire. In introducing the second portion of the book, the stepping stone, the access, or the origination, he sets down the following procedures:

First: an appeal to the addressee or the audience, by moving from eloquent discourse to artful response; Second: a shift from open witticism or rare curiosity to smooth affront; Third: a move from unfamiliar convergence to wonderful confrontation; Fourth: a switch from actual resemblance to enlightening example; Fifth: the inclusion of whatever that enlivens the heart and dispels morbidity.78

In the first part of the book, the procedure functions as follows: Abū Isḥāq al-Qayrawānī specifies, for instance, that, when the narrator “is narrating a refined curiosity and charming insight, he should not deliver it grammatically and make it boring.” He also addresses length, eloquence, and appropriate delivery, following such sections with appropriate anecdotes that illustrate the principles without distracting attention.79 On the other hand, when he addresses length, he stipulates that the artist “should not elaborate and bore to death, nor should he skip and damage; there is a purpose and goal for every speech, but there is also a limit to the audience’s attention-span.” This is followed by an anecdote that accords with the systematic planning of the first part of the book, which serves as a theoretical introduction.80 Aside from

76 Ibid., p. 18. 77 Ibid., p. 420. 78 Ibid., p. 85. 79 Ibid., p. 21. 80 Ibid., p. 23. abbasid popular narrative 49 the need to explain the mechanism of the art, the author also caters to utilitarian preoccupations in that literature in this vein stimulates diversity, enlightens the mind, frees people from worries and turns them into pleasant companions. In other words, even this introductory section unfolds pleasantly in order to justify and elucidate theory and practice. Abū Isḥāq al-Qayrawānī is more faithful to a narrative tradition that opts at the outset for an authorial frame, whereby the author or the compiler evolves as the narrator of narrators, the person in charge of a large repertoire, often of an anecdotal quality. Scheherazade had already been established as the model for such an anonymous author. Hence, al-Qayrawānī’s claim to be the narrator of narrators is not a casual one. The author as compiler or vice versa no longer submits to an authority other than the self and its sources. Sacred and cherished ancestry almost disappears, and religion becomes a part of human knowledge where the whole legacy of the manqūl (transmitted knowledge), and maʿqūl (implying the sciences of the Greeks, Indians, Persians, and Arabs) are brought together as a repertoire to be used and reproduced for a new market. The demands of this market require production. Hence the feast analogy, adopted from Ibn Qutaybah in a similar application to the new compilation. The compiler is also an author, since to intervene in the material, as he and al-Tanūkhī admitted to doing, involves a deliberately revisionist strategy that caters to the tastes and interests of the addressee and reading public. The narrator may thus emerge as the actor whose use of others is an act of appropriation and digestion, since references or quotes are no longer the same when they are involved in a new textual terrain. The author as narrator, like al-Tawḥīdī, is the most conscious of sources. He therefore resorts to contemporaries, precursors, and unidentified material, only in order to supplement a perspective or evade censorship or confrontation with the patron or audience. On the other hand the author may pose as chronicler or archivist, while imposing a unified vision on a scene or a character, as al-Jāḥiz ̣ does, for example, in his book on misers. The book derives its significance not only from its meticulous care for a social category, but also from its argumentative principle that enables the reader to delve into the mind of each character and to read its own perspectives, views and strata- gems. The encapsulating vision is that of the author as narrator, one who holds every detail in hand, cynically pursuing threads of behavior and address, and yet careful in case too much exposure and revelation backfires. The novelist—narrator sets the tone for a realistic narrative 50 muhsin al-musawi that expands profusely in keeping with urban life, but that also adopts religion to new needs and interests without serious transgressions of basic rituals and obligations. Examined in context, Arab writers of fiction and realistic narratives worked out a preliminary theoretical framework of a cultural nature that has been only cursorily noticed, not because of its dearth or insignificance, but mainly because of the complexity of this transgeneric writing, its amalgam and the consequent challenge to available theories and yardsticks. The case is even more so because the literature of the Arabs has been most regarded as primarily poetic. Metonymic scriptoria and narrative at large suffer in comparison. If it is mentioned it is only to document a tradition or to substantiate a position. On the other hand Muḥammad Ibn Qutayba’s (d. 889 C.E.) feast analogy as a way of describing his book, ʿUyūn al-akhbār (Springs of information; figuratively, the best of anecdotes) epitomizes this kind of narratology; its invocation of variety, resemblance, and liveliness of details and characters substantiates and deepens urban narrative as developed and promoted earlier by al-Jāḥiz ̣ However, the feast analogy is important for another reason; it also signifies the nonverbal, hence its recurrence as analogy should alert us to theoretical appropriations of whatever participates in establishing the right equation between narrative and life. There is also a third reason for the significance of this analogy. The Arabic term adab has many connotations, and littérateurs of the classical period were not oblivious to the intricacies of the word, its root, and use, in relation to acquired knowledge and systematic attention to good manners. They were aware, too, of the close connection between the word and the feast where a number of people gather around a banquet table. As a collection of narratives the book is no less inviting than a meaty repast. The feast invites discussion, intimacy, and solidarity, as well as generosity and hosting. Reading may be a solitary endeavor, but not the feast as a meaty repast (maʾdubah). However, both operate on the human agent. Thereafter the person can never be the same. On the other hand, this feast analogy also occurs in a number of contexts that belie the premise that silence is equilibrium. Silence operates in many tales as instigator of other nonverbal motivations and actors who sometimes take over the stage so as to provide a reversal of a divine order. In an amazing instance in the second calendar’s tale in the Thousand and One Nights, we learn that he is told in a dream to go through a series of adventures which he will accomplish safely only on condition he doesn’t mention God. The condition, needles to say, defies Muslim abbasid popular narrative 51 culture and faith, as the mention of God is the most recurrent in the culture to the extent that it is a distinctive marker in any sociable discourse, greeting, feasting or even exercising. To demand such a thing or to set such a condition may be meant as an exercise in restraint. Al-Jāḥiz ̣ tells us of one slave girl who was reportedly so eloquent and dexterous that she could recite ten thousand lines where there is “not one mention of God, or of reward and punishment in the Hereafter.”81 Repression of the most recurrent element in an Islamic discourse functions as narrative with expected recognition and reward. Against Bakhtin’s premise,82 we may say that it is in parity with loquacity. The fear of God resides in the background, and people try to demonstrate their tact and acumen through human means. Scheherazade, as the trope for the anonymous author, has already proved the importance of a multifaceted approach to life and literary production.83 As the narrator of narrators she has prompted the compilation of a repertoire which storytellers have followed so as to meet the demands of the market and to offer entertainment as art. As the metaphorical taming of the Sultan is the ultimate purpose of good and entertaining narrative, the same process becomes also an operation towards the taming of rigid tastes and the gradual collapsing of barriers between light literature and belletristic prose.

81 Al-Jāḥiz,̣ The Epistle on Singing-girls, trans. A. F. L. Beeston (Waminster, 1980), para. 53. See also Hugh Kennedy, 174. 82 See T. Todorov, the chapter on narrative men in The Poetics of Prose. Tr. Richard Howard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977). 83 For a detailed discussion, see the present writer’s The Islamic Context of the Arabian Nights (NY, NY: Columbia University Press, forthcoming 2008) .

ALSHARĪF ALRAḌĪ AND THE POETICS OF ʿALID LEGITIMACY ELEGY FOR ALḤ USAYN IBN ʿALĪ ON ʿĀSHŪRĀʾ, 391 A.H.

Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych

Introduction

Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī’s qasīdaḥ rhymed in dāl that opens: “These are the abodes at al-Ghamīm, so call to them,” (hādhī al-manāzilu bi-al-Ghamīmi fa-nādihā) is generally described as an elegy to al-Ḥ usayn ibn ʿAlī and dated quite precisely to the Day of ʿĀshūrāʾ 391 (10 Muḥarram) A.H. (10 Dec., 1000 C.E.)1 The fifty-eight line polythematic poem goes beyond the normal strictures of rithāʾ to exhibit a complex generic hybridity. It is my contention that the poem’s composition is not haphazard or arbitrary, but rather the poet has masterfully manipulated classical Arabic qasīdaḥ conventions, including form, genre, imagery and diction, to promote a politico-religious claim for ʿAlid legitimacy—his own imminent Imāmate—and to create, at the same time, a meticulously crafted and perduring work of the poetic art. Several complicated and complicating personal and political circumstances mitigated against al-Sharīf al-Raḍī’s composing a generically

Author’s note: Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Nov., 1995 and the Aspects of Arabic Litera- ture Conference, convened by Prof. James Monroe, at the University of California, Berkeley, April, 1996. 1 This poem is recognized as one of a group of four or five elegies by al-Sharīf al-Raḍī to al-Ḥ usayn that are considered quite distinctive. This poem and others in the group, in addition to other poems to Ahl al-Bayt, are discussed at some length, albeit primarily descriptively, in the chapter on al-Sharīf al-Raḍī in Zakī Mubārak, Al-Madāʾiḥ al-Nabawiyyah fī al-Adab al-ʿArabī (Cairo: Matbạ ʿat Musṭ afạ́ al-Bābī al-Ḥ alabī, 1936) pp. 117–31. For this reason he does not treat these poems in his later book on al-Sharīf al-Raḍī (first published 1938, see below). Mubārak gives the year 390 A.H. for this rithāʾ, whereas most sources give 391 A.H. (p. 121). See also ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Muḥammad al-Ḥ ulw, Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī: Ḥ ayātuh wa-Dirāsat Shiʿrih, 2 vols. (Cairo: Hajr lil-Ṭibāʿah wa-al-Nashr, 1986) 2:92–93. I have consulted several of the published versions of al-Sharīf al-Raḍī’s Dīwān. For the text in the present study I have followed: al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, Dīwān, cmt. Yūsuf Shukrī Faraḥāt, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1995) 1:337–4. 54 suzanne pinckney stetkevych distinct, let alone “pure,” qasīdaḥ —whether of madīḥ, rithāʾ, or hijāʾ, or the more ritual or liturgical Shīʿite devotional poem—when the occasion was ʿĀshūrāʾ, that is the commemoration of the slaying of the grandson of the Prophet Muḥammad, al-Ḥ usayn ibn ʿAlī at Karbalāʾ on 10 Muḥarram 61/October, 680 (ʿĀshūrāʾ).2 First, there is his distinguished ʿAlid lineage. Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn Abī Aḥmad al-Ḥusayn ibn Mūsá al-Mūsawī al-ʿAlawī (359/970–406/1016) is commonly known as al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, from the honorific titles bestowed upon him by the Buwayhid amīr Bahāʾ al-Dawlah. He was born in Baghdad to a distinguished and powerful ʿAlid family. His father, the illustrious Abū Aḥmad al-Ṭāhir, held positions of influence at the Abbāsid caliphal court and with the Buwayhids. He was a distinguished diplomat and held as well the offices of naqīb al-ʿAlawiyyīn (marshal of the ʿAlids), responsibility for the mazāliṃ (complaints) and the Ḥ ajj, offices that would later devolve upon his sons, the two Sharīfs: al-Raḍī and his younger brother al-Murtaḍá (d. 436/1044), also a renowned Shīʿite poet, writer and theologian. Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī traced his lineage on his father’s side to al-Ḥ usayn ibn ʿAlī through the seventh Shīʿī Imām, Mūsá al-Kāziṃ and on his mother Fātimaḥ bint al-Ḥ usayn’s to al-Ḥ asan ibn ʿAlī.3 Sec- ond, al-Sharīf al-Raḍī lived in a period of great political and religious

2 Khalid Sindawi in a recent article deals with short Shīʿite devotional poems composed for recitation at the tomb of al-Ḥusayn. He does not deal, however, with any complex poetic structures, even though some of his brief quotations derive from long qasīdaḥ s, and does not mention al-Sharīf al-Raḍī. He seems to be unaware that the visit to al-Ḥusayn’s tomb in the hands of some of the major poets he quotes, and others, can function as a structural element within a complex and coherent qasīdaḥ - form (p. 257). In brief, there is some confusion in his study between short occasional poems composed with the goal of intercession in mind and full formal polythematic qasīdaḥ s in which the theme of the visit to al-Ḥusayn’s tomb may play a part in a highly sophisticated poetic and political structure. The article contains, nevertheless a valuable overview of themes and diction, examples and useful bibliography. See Khalid Sindawi, “Visit to the Tomb of al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī in Shiite Poetry: First to Fifth Centuries A.H. (8th–11th Centuries C.E.),” Journal of Arabic Literature 37 no. 2 (2006) pp. 230–58. For a thorough summary of the life of al-Ḥusayn, including the events surrounding his revolt and death at Karbalāʾ, and the classical sources concerning them, see L. Veccia Vaglieri, “Al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1954–2002). Hereafter EI2. 3 Moktar Djebli, “al-Sharīf al-Raḍī,” EI2. Djebli gives a concise overview of al-Sharīf al-Raḍī’s biography, poetic production and his literary and religious writings. In Ara- bic, al-Sharīf al-Raḍī is the subject of a number of biographies and literary studies. Of particular note are Zakī Mubārak, ʿAbqariyyat al-Raḍī al-Sharīf, 2 vols. in 1 (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1988) [Baghdad, 1938]; Iḥsān ʿAbbās, Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī (Beirut: Dār Sādir/̣ Dār Bayrūt, 1959); al-Ḥulw, Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī. For classical sources, see the bibliogra- phies of these works. al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 55 instability and complexity. The Iranian Shīʿite Buwayhids, a dynasty of Daylamī origin, ruled Baghdad while maintaining the Sunnī ʿAbbāsid caliph as a political puppet. Within the Buwayhid political framework of Imāmī (Twelver) Shīʿite domination, wealthy Shīʿites and Sharīfs played a powerful role and the ʿAlids (Ṭālibids) were organized into an autonomous body in order to counterbalance ʿAbbāsid power.4 At the same time, the Fātimiḍ Shīʿite caliphate, which traced its origins to ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and Fātimah,̣ had recently (358/969) conquered Egypt and established its new capital of Cairo.5 Meanwhile, in al-Andalus, though perhaps far from the immediate political scene, the Umayyad amīr ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (d. 350/961) proclaimed in 319/931 the restoration of the Umayyad caliphate at Cordoba and assumed the traditional caliphal title, amīr al-muʾminīn (Commander of the Faithful).6 Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī was both ambitious and frustrated in his political aspirations, shifting loyalties in the hope of achieving the recognition and position to which he felt his talent and ʿAlid lineage entitled him. His poetry is replete with references to his status and lineage, especially vis-à-vis the reigning Caliphs of his time, and his sense of grievance is often palpable. He apostrophizes theʿ Abbāsids, for example, demanding they relinquish the Caliphate, for their lineage cannot compare with his:7

Return the inheritance of Muḥammad, return it! For neither the staff nor the [Prophet’s] mantle are yours! Does blood like Fātimah’ṣ flow in your veins, Or do you have a grandfather like Muḥammad? He closes a qasīdaḥ to the ʿAbbāsid Caliph al-Qādir dated 382 A.H. declaring:8

4 For a concise treatment of the Buwayhids (Būyids) and in particular the role of the ʿAlids (p. 1352), see Cl. Cahen, “Buwayhids or Būyids,” EI2. 5 M. Canard, “Fātimids,”̣ EI2. 6 L. Molina, “Umayyads in Spain,” EI2. 7 Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, Dīwān, 1:377. 8 Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, Dīwān, 2:39. I prefer fikhār (Form III) to Faraḥāt’s fakhār (Form I). 56 suzanne pinckney stetkevych

When men compete in glory there is no difference between us At all: each of us is of the noblest origins— Except for the Caliphate: I am deprived of it While you are crowned! As for the Fātimids, he expresses his resentment that he should live in ignominy under the ʿAbbāsids in Baghdād, while in Egypt his kin hold sway:9

I am clothed in humiliation in my enemies’ abodes, While in Egypt rules an ʿAlid caliph, Whose father is my father, whose master is my master, While [in Baghdād] one distant [in kinship] oppresses me. My blood is joined to his by the two lords of the people, Muḥammad and ʿAlī. Above all, at precisely the period during which this poem was composed, al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, encouraged by the prediction of his close friend, the renowned Sabian secretary and man of letters, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm al-Sābị ʾ (d. 384/994) that he would rise to the caliphate in Baghdad, had appointed a dāʿiyah (agent, propagandist), one Abū al-ʿAwwām, to promote his cause among the Arab Bedouin tribes of Najd and southern Iraq. With the death of his dāʿiyah at the hands of some of the Banū Tamīm in 392 A.H., it appears that al-Sharīf al-Raḍī abandoned his aspirations to the caliphate and turned to a life of literature and scholarship, albeit as an active and distinguished ʿAlid dignitary, under the patronage of the Buwayhid amīr Bahāʾ al-Dawlah, who lavished honorific titles upon him. It was in this later period, for

9 Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, Dīwān, 2:502. al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 57 example, in 400/1010 that he produced his renowned compilation of the sayings, homilies and speeches attributed to ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, Nahj al-Balāghah. He was officially given the position of naqīb al-ʿAlawiyyīn in 403/1013.10 The poet’s relation to the subject of his “elegy” is thus complex and multifaceted. So close is his identification with al-Ḥ usayn, whom he addresses in the poem as “Grandfather” (v. 52) that the rāthī becomes the marthī, that is, the distinction between the elegizer and the elegized collapses.11 This collapse of identities establishes “mythic concordance” between al-Ḥ usayn and al-Sharīf al-Raḍī.12 It is no wonder then that the classical genre categories, too, are collapsed into one another: madḥ (praise) is equally rithāʾ (elegy) and fakhr (boast, self-praise). The sorrow and bereavement the poet feels are to a large degree for himself, and al-Ḥ usayn’s political and military defeat are at the same time his own. Moreover, the claim for ʿAlid legitimacy and call for vengeance transcend the ritual and poetic parameters of lament and elegy when the restoration of ʿAlid rule constitutes, ipso facto, the poet’s personal claim to the Caliphate or Imāmate. Essentially, then, there is no distinction

10 See Djebli, “al-Sharīf al-Raḍī,” and refs. above, note 3. Iḥsān ʿAbbās provides an especially lively account of al-Sharīf al-Raḍī’s period of political aspirations and what he terms his “ʿuqdat al-imāmah” or “Imamate Complex” along the lines of the “ʿuqdat al-nubuwwah” or “Prophethood Complex” of his celebrated predecessor and one of his chief poetic influences, Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Mutanabbī (d. 354/965). See ʿAbbās, Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, pp. 98–126, 148, 168. The later period of his life was replete with political prestige and poetic, literary and theological production. Cl. Cahen writes, “In Baghdād, the brother sharīfs al-Raḍī and al-Murtaḍā, were throughout the whole of the first quarter of the 11th century, the real masters of the town, acting as intermediaries between the Buwayhids, the Caliphs and the population, at the same time as the Shīʿī scholars and traditionists.” Cahen, “Buwayhids.” 11 A facile distinction between the poet as composer of the text and the poet as persona in the poetic text also tends to collapse, except where I am clearly talking about composition techniques. I have avoided the term “persona” in my discussion primarily because it is so cumbersome and unappealing. 12 I am extending Connerton’s term “mythic concordance,” which he uses to describe the identification between the originary events and their reenactment in commemorative ceremonies, to describe the relationship in this elegy, which we can consider a the verbal equivalent of a commemorative ceremony, between al-Ḥ usayn, who is commemorated, and al-Sharīf al-Radī, who seems not merely to reenact or perform the events of al-Ḥ usayn’s life, but to actually “relive” them in his own life. See Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember, p. 43 and ch. 2 “Commemorative Practices,” pp. 41–71, passim. For further applications of this concept as concerns the ritual and ceremonial aspects of Arabic poetry, see Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode, (Bloom- ington& Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 2002), index. 58 suzanne pinckney stetkevych between personal and political loss nor between personal and political claims. Moreover, inasmuch as the past—al-Ḥ usayn’s failed revolt and martyrdom—serves as an allegory for al-Sharīf al-Rāḍī’s own situation, there is no distinction between the past and present. Following the thesis propounded in my The Poetics of Islamic Legiti- macy (2002), that the form of the standard two- or three-part qasīdaḥ is by no means arbitrary, rigid or invariable, but rather is subject to extensive manipulation to subtend various expressions of allegiance and claims for legitimacy, I will argue here that al-Sharīf al-Raḍī subtly exploits the evocative potentialities of nasīb (elegiac prelude), rithā’ (elegy), madīḥ (panegyric), fakhr (self-praise/boast) and hijāʾ (invective, satire) and their associated diction and imagery to serve his very particular, both poetic and political, ends.

Translation and Analysis of the Text13

The poem, for analytical purposes, breaks down into the following structural/generic components or sections:

I. vv. 1–15 nasīb talalị̄ : elegiac prelude featuring the abandoned abode theme II. vv. 16–18 rithāʾ: elegy for al-Ḥ usayn III. vv. 19–32 hijāʾ: vituperation of the Umayyads IV. vv. 33–37 madīḥ: praise/fakhr boast of the ʿAlids V. vv. 38–41 taḥrīḍ: call to vengeance, restitution VI. vv. 42–53 nasīb-rithāʾ: reduplication and fusion of elegiac prelude and elegy VII. vv. 54–58 madīḥ: metapoetic expression of praise

I would like first to offer a close examination of the imagery and diction of each section before examining how the poet achieves a formal structure that is poetically unique and expressive. What will emerge from a close reading of the individual sections is that the “hybridity” of this qasīdaḥ consists not merely in the structuring of a variety of generic

13 For the text I have followed al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, Dīwān, 1:337–40. All translations from the Arabic in this study are my own. Please note that I have tried to capture the gist of the poem in English, rather than produce a literal translation. Where necessary, more literal translations are provided in the discussion or notes. al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 59 components (aghrāḍ) into a single poem, but in what we might term a rhetorical hybridity of images and diction within each section that reveal polyvalent significations that bind the various sections together.

I. vv. 1–15 nasīb talalī:̣ elegiac prelude featuring the abandoned abode theme

1. These are the campsites of al-Ghamīm so call to them, And after long restraint shed lavish tears. 2. If you owe the trace-signs a debt, now pay it; If you’ve ransomed your heart’s blood to the ruined abodes, redeem it now. 3. O, has a band of riders looking down from its highlands Quenched yet their burning passion? 4. [Look! There is] a drainage trench curving like a bow, 60 suzanne pinckney stetkevych

Before which stand black-cheeked [women], heirs to its ashes, 5. And the place where the tent-ropes were tied, the place where [once] the young braves sat— All the tribe’s firebrands are now extinguished except for them—, 6. And the place where the slave-boys trailed the halter-ropes of steeds ’Til they veiled the tents with roans and bays. 7. At [these] abodes I detained a gallant band, Whose hands were ever clutching at their hearts. 8. Grief-stricken, their eyes shed responsive tears, And they rent their robes with sighs. 9. They halted there until their camels’ legs Seemed fixed like tent-pegs in the ground. 10. At last they turned and went away, Supplied with tears for water, burning grief for provender. 11. Each was girt in the sword-belt of a ringing [blade], And teardrops ornamented each suspensory. 12. May there greet you, and revive your ruins, too, a rain unceasing Whose vernal showers, like sorcerer’s spittle, heal what ails the spring abode. 13. May herbage burst forth in the morning, lush as the velvet Of a Yemeni robe that fervid buyers haggle over. 14. What can you ask of the eyes, after they have gazed on you, But tears, and sleeplessness? al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 61

15. There was no store of tears that was not spent on you, Nor did any eye find sleep. In opening the poem with the tradition-sanctioned theme of the nasīb talalị̄ , that is, the elegiac evocation of the ruined encampment of the beloved, al-Sharīf al-Raḍī establishes its poeticity and authenticity. He identifies his poem in terms of genre as a qasīdaḥ in the classical Arabic tradition or declares his intention of presenting such a qasīdaḥ ̣ That is, on the level of poetic allusion, the effect of even just the opening line, in which the poet calls upon his companions to call out to and shed tears over a ruined abode, identifies this poem with all others of its genre. It also serves as a pledge on the part of the poet that he will observe the constraints and conventions of this genre. It is important to note that he does not explicitly identify the subject of the poem (lament for al-Ḥ usayn on ʿĀshūrāʾ), rather, as Gian Biagio Conte expresses it, “poetic discourse [. . .] reveals itself first and then that to which it refers.”14 My point is that al-Sharīf al-Raḍī does not intend to compose merely a Shīʿite liturigal lament for al-Ḥ usayn, but rather a poetic monument with the grander classical Arabic poetic tradition, and that, like the great works of that tradition, makes religious and political claims to legitimacy. Within the emotional or psychological trajectory of the qasīdaḥ -form, the emotional function of the nasīb talalị̄ is to evoke an archetypal, that is, a shared, non-specific, sense of loss, sorrow and nostalgia. At the same time, the poet subtly directs us toward the true subject of the poem. Verse 1 calls for recognition of the site of loss and sorrow and the pouring forth of tears that, whether due to repression or forgetfulness, had been withheld. The dramatic burst of emotion that results from the sudden recognition of the site of sorrow is rhetorically achieved through the pun on jamād, which means restraint or stinginess, but also drought, a dry year, and alludes to the poet’s dry eye. But it is also part of a multi-layered tibāq̣ (antithesis) with sakhī, generous, lavish. The effect of this word-play is to suggest the metaphorical overlap of shedding rain, shedding tears and, as further verses will confirm, shedding the blood of vengeance. In other words, however “conventional” the

14 Gian Biagio Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets, trans. Charles Segal (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1986), p. 45. 62 suzanne pinckney stetkevych opening verse may be, it nevertheless contains within its metaphorical overtones intimations of the poet’s more specific intentions.15 Verse 2 likewise appears to be a charming metaphor for the expressing of repressed emotions, yet here, too, the rhetorical language of debt (dayn) and ransom/redemption ( fidāʾ) is suggestive of unredeemed blood. This undercurrent rises more to the surface in verse 3, where the word ghalīl, which means thirst, thirst for revenge and violent passion, plays a decisive role. The verse reads initially as an expression of weeping out of sorrowful passion for the former inhabitants of the abode, thereby reiterating the conventional topos of weeping over the ruined abode that opened the poem, but inescapably bears a second meaning, for “to quench a burning thirst” is a standard Arabic metaphor for achieving blood vengeance. At the same time the poetic motif of thirst suggests the topos of the thirst of al-Ḥ usayn and his companions that plays a prominent role in the Karbalāʾ narrative (see below). With verse 4 the poet moves more deeply into the motifs and diction of the traditional nasīb, particularly those elements that serve as signs by which the poet and his band of companions identify the abandoned encampment and that spark memory and nostalgic reminiscence. The nuʾy is the drainage trench dug around a Bedouin encampment, defining its limits, and which, scoured by annual rains, becomes clearer with every passing year. The athāfī are the three fire-blackened stones that support the cooking cauldron and which, like the trench, remain long after the tribe has departed and signal its former habitation. As discussed at length by Jaroslav Stetkevych, these are fixtures of the nasīb talalị̄ as much as of desert geography, and the bearers of archaic and archetypal meanings.16 Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, however, adds an evocative metaphorical dimension. For he does not denotatively name the fire-blackened

15 Al-Ghamīm is among the names of places along the Ḥ ajj route from Iraq to Mecca that occur in al-Sharīf al-Raḍī’s poems that mention his dāʿiyah Abū al-ʿAwwām. According to Yāqūt’s Muʿjam al-Buldān (apud al-Ḥulw) it lies near Medina. See al-Ḥulw, Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, 1:198. The word ghamīm means green herbage beneath dry herbage [Edward William Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 vols., (New York: Frederick Unger, 1958 [London, 1863]), gh-m-m]. 16 Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Toward an Arabic Elegiac Lexicon: The Seven Words of the Nasīb,” in Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, ed., Reorientations: Arabic and Persian Poetry (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1994), 58–129. On nuʾy see pp. 68–74; on athāfī see pp. 89–105. al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 63 athāfī stones, rather he refers to them epithetically in the feminine plural as “suḥmu al-khudūdi lahunna ʾirthu ramādihā” (black-cheeked heiresses of the [campsite’s] ashes). In doing so, he unmistakably per- sonifies the athāfī as nawāʾiḥ, that is, the bereft and wailing women of the classical Arabic elegy, indeed of the entire Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean ritual lament, who tear their hair and smear their faces with ashes.17 What is striking here, as elsewhere in the greatest classical Arabic poetry, is the poet’s ability to connect the lexical and rhetorical minutiae of the specifically Arabic poetic tradition with the shared archetypal images of the Ancient world. Likewise, the nouns of place (asmāʾ al-amkinah) of verses 5 and 6: manāt,̣ place where tent ropes are attached; maqʿad, sitting place; majarr (place where something has been dragged) are to be understood as the physical signs or traces of the activities that took place when the encampment was inhabited and which serve now both to denote the campsite and to evoke the memory of those who once dwelt there. This is a particularly nasībic use of morphology, the maf ʿal form of the noun of place, not to designate the place where an act takes place or occurs, but rather the place, or trace of a place, now empty where an act once took place. Verse 5 compounds the meaning through the jinās (word- play) on zinād (s. zand), which means both fire-sticks and forearms. The literal translation of the second hemistich is, “the fire-sticks of the tribe are extinguished except for [the young braves’] fore-arms.” The flow of text and sub-text seems to suggest that the object of the lamenting women (v. 4) is the young braves, the riders of the tribe’s wealth of fine steeds (vv. 5–6). What is noteworthy within the broader context of the poem is that there is no evocation of the poet’s beloved

17 J. Stetkevych has already noted the association of the athāfī, their number always three, with loss and lamentation, first in the common comparison of the three soot- blackened stones to three unpaired doves (the dove that has lost its mate is a conventional image of mourning and loss in Arabic poetry) and further, to bereft mother camels who have lost their young. He has also connected this to the Christian legend and iconography of the Three Marys who weep over the body of Christ after he is taken down from the cross, etc. See J. Stetkevych, “Toward an Arabic Elegiac Lexicon,” pp. 94–97. Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī elicits further elegiac dimensions from this traditional topos. Perhaps there is also a subliminal verbal (call it “Freudian”) suggestion, for the word nāḥa/yanūḥu is used both for the cooing of the dove, especially for its lost mate, and for the lamentation of bereft women, termed nawāʾiḥ, s. nāʾiḥah. 64 suzanne pinckney stetkevych mistress or the departing/departed women of the tribe as we usually find in the nasīb talalị̄ , but rather the band of young braves. After this evocation of the former habitation and the young braves, al-Sharīf al-Raḍī resumes the opening theme of the poet and his own young band of braves stopping to weep. Verse 9 suggests the close identification of these two bands, as the legs of the mounts of the poet’s band become merged with the tent-pegs of the ruined abode. The tears and burning grief that serve as water and provender for the poet’s band in verse 10, together with the tear-stained sword-belts of verse 11, again convey a subliminal message of unavenged blood.18 As the poet’s band departs, the poet turns to a duʿāʾ, benediction, or more precisely, istisqāʾ, the poetic convention of calling for rain to revive the ruined abode (vv. 12–15). The meaning hinges on the word ḥayyat (3 fem. sing. of the verb ḥayyá), which means both to revive and to greet, as in ḥayyāka Allāhu, May God give you life! Here, as elsewhere, the springing up of fresh herbage after the rain carries broader archetypal or symbolic connotations of revival or rebirth. The performative efficacy of the benediction is alluded to through terming the rain-water nafth, sorcerer’s spittle; and the concept of blood-vengeance, which is also understood to be a form of revival, is suggested in the words yashfī saqīma . . ., cure an ailment, likewise a by-word for the achieving of blood-vengeance. The further introduction of tears and sleeplessness once again reminds us of the close metaphorical and symbolic association between rain and tears and, further, the association of tears and sleeplessness not merely with the poet’s sorrow over his lost mistress of the nasīb, but also with the dead hero of elegy and the poem of blood vengeance.

II. vv. 16–18 rithāʾ: elegy for al-Ḥ usayn

18 This verse recalls to us Imruʾ al-Qays’s Muʿallaqah, v. 9: al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 65

16. We were diverted from shedding tears for [ruined] abodes By our weeping for Fātimah’ṣ weeping for her sons. 17. No sorrow was more grievous than hers for the martyr Who had seen the sweet Euphrates gushing torrents but was kept from drink. 18. I wonder if she knew, when she gave birth, That al-Ḥ usayn would fall prey to the Banū al-Ṭardāʾ’s spears. At least as a poetic conceit, the poet, through the use of the verb sha- ghala, to distract, divert, preoccupy, (lit., “our weeping for Fātimah’ṣ weeping . . . diverted us from shedding tears over abodes”) presents the mourning for al-Ḥ usayn as displacing the weeping over ruined abodes. Further, as the Arab poet tells us, “one sorrow evokes another,” (inna al-shajā yabʿathu al-shajā), so that we can understand this as a poetic transition from the generic archetypal sorrow of the nasīb talalị̄ (however much it pointed toward more specific concerns) to the specific sorrow, that is the elegy for al-Ḥ usayn.19 The smoothness of the transition masks, however, a structural deviation from, or variation in, the normative qasīdaḥ progression, that signals to us that this poem

Then my eyes, from ardent love, sent down a flood of tears upon my neck, Until my sword-belt was soaked in tears. (Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim al-Anbārī, Sharḥ al-Qasạ̄ ʾid al-Sabʿ al-Ṭiwāl al-Jāhiliyyāt, ed. ʿAbd al-Sallām Muḥammad Hārūn (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1963), p. 31). Perhaps there, too, the theme of blood-vengeance for his slain royal father, which dominates the akhbār of Imru’ al-Qays, is lurking beneath the surface. See my discussion in Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual (Cornell UP, 1993), ch. 7, “Regicide and Retribution: The Muʿallaqah of Imruʾ al-Qays,” pp. 241–85. 19 The Arab poet is the Mukhaḍram Mutammim ibn Nuwayrah in a short elegy for his brother Mālik [Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Marzūqī, Sharḥ Dīwān al-Ḥ amāsah, eds. Aḥmad Amīn & ʿAbd al-Sallām Hārūn, 2d prt., 4 vols. (Cairo: Matbạ ʿat Lajnat al-Taʾlīf wa-al-Tarjamah wa-al-Nashr, 1967), no. 265, pp. 797–98]. For a translation and discussion of this poem, and of the intimate relationship between nasīb and elegy in the Arabic tradition, and in Abū Tammām’s Ḥ amāsah in particular, see Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, Abū Tammām and the Poetics of the ʿAbbāsid Age, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991), ch. 14 “Metaphorical Relationships,” pp. 313–32. 66 suzanne pinckney stetkevych is essentially one of lamentation and loss, and not of triumph. For in the normative structure of the qasīdaṭ al-madḥ what “diverts” the poet from the sorrows of the nasīb is an act of resolve, encapsulated in the concept of himmah—the poet’s aspiration to leave his sorrows behind and move on to greater and more manly pursuits—which forms the transition, structurally speaking, to the desert journey (raḥīl) and then the praise section (madīḥ), or, as happens most often in theʿ Abbāsid period, directly to the madīḥ. In other words, in this poem, rather than proceeding to the triumphal restoration of the madīḥ, the poet reverts to further loss and weeping. These three verses thus serve as a transition from the conventional and archetypal loss of the nasīb that redirects us to the ritual and liturgical Shīʿite lament for al-Ḥ usayn. Or, keeping in mind the madīḥ section (VII) that closes the poem, one could think of it as a sort of detour. Section II has a retroactive effect as well, that is, it belatedly identifies the young braves who once dwelt at al-Ghamīm as the companions of al-Ḥusayn (asḥ ̣āb al-Ḥ usayn), who died with him at Karbalāʾ,20 and the visiting poet and his gallant band as mourning Shīʿites or ʿAlids. At the same time it draws out or confirms the undertones of vengeance, redemption and restoration of Section I. All in all, in its bridging effect between thenasīb talalị̄ and the later sections of the poem, Section II falls under the traditional heading of ḥusn al-takhallus ̣ (beautiful transition). In this short transitional section there is a succinct encapsulation of the martyrdom of al-Ḥ usayn in the single motif of his thirsty death (v. 17). It is interesting that the historical narrative accounts of al- Ḥ usayn’s death present this as a factual occurrence: that when he was overcome by thirst and tried to reach the Euphrates to drink, but was prevented from doing so.21 It seems to me, however, that the insistence on this detail in the telling and retelling of al-Ḥ usayn’s martyrdom, whether in poetry or in prose, is due to its symbolic or metaphorical meaning. That is, in the Arab poetic or symbolic terms, to die thirsty means to die unavenged. The most oft-cited expression of this idea, as we read in the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt and elsewhere that the ʿArabs in the Jāhiliyyah believed that “if a slain man went unavenged, an owl would

20 They are said to have numbered 32 horsemen and 40 foot-soldiers. See Vaglieri, “al-Ḥ usayn.” 21 See Vaglieri, “al-Ḥusayn.” al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 67 emerge from his grave and cry, ‘Give me drink! Give me drink! (isqūnī, isqūnī) until the man’s killer was slain.”22 In the context of the present poem, in particular, the virtually liturgical reiteration of this detail of al-Ḥ usayn’s thirsty death adumbrates the explicit call for vengeance and, ipso facto, ʿAlid restoration, of Section V (below). Of interest, too, are the mariological parallels to Fātimah,̣ the bereft mother of the martyr/victim, particularly in the motif of the mother’s prescience of her son’s death. To Western readers this calls to mind Bellini’s Madonna of the Meadow (ca. 1500 C.E.) in the National Gallery in London, in which the death-like sleep of the infant is considered a pre-figuration of the Pietà, that is, the mother Mary holding the body of her crucified son.23 This, in turn, brings to mind its converse, that is, Michelangelo’s Pietà (1499 C.E.) at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, in which the extremely youthful-looking mother holds her crucified son in her lap in a way that evokes the image of Mary holding the infant Jesus.24 The point is that both traditions, the Christian and the Mus- lim Shīʿite, draw on the same emotional and figurative archetypes. A further prescience is suggested in the nomen est omen type of jinās (word-play) between al-Ḥ usayn, who is the tarīdaḥ , prey, and those who pursued him, whom the poet terms the Banū Ṭardāʾ (taradạ means “to pursue”) (v. 18).

22 Abū Muḥammad al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad al-Anbārī, Dīwān al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, ed. Charles James Lyall (Beirut: Matbạ ʿat al-Ābāʾ al-Yasūʿiyyīn, 1920), p. 132. Sindawi cites this as well, but does not explicitly make the connection between prayers for rain- fall and sprinkling water and its connection with blood vengeance—which, of course, comes much more to the forefront in al-Sharīf al-Raḍī’s poem than in the short poems for intercession that Sindawi treat. See Sindawi, “Visit to the Tomb of al-Ḥ usayn,” pp. 254–55. For a discussion of the metaphorical interplay between wine, water, tears, and the blood of vengeance, see S. Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, pp. 69–73, 172–88, index. For an extensive study of this motif, see Th. E. Homerin, “Echoes of a Thirsty Own,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 44 no. 3 (1985): 165–84. 23 The London National Gallery website gives the following: Madonna of the Meadow about 1500 BELLINI, Giovanni Died: 1516. NG599. Bought, 1858. ‘The Madonna of the Meadow’ shows Jesus sleeping in the Virgin’s lap. It is a natural pose yet anticipates the Pietà, in which his dead body is laid across his mother’s lap. http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/ wa/work?workNumber=NG599 Accessed 5 Feb., 2007. 24 Pietà by Michelangelo St. Peter in Vatican Rome 1499. http://www.romaviva.com/ Vaticano/pieta-michelangelo_eng.htm Accessed 5 Feb., 2007. 68 suzanne pinckney stetkevych

III. vv. 19–32 hijāʾ: vituperation of the Umayyads

19. There were funerals in Iraq that Umayyads in Syria Counted among their feast-days. 20. They did not fear the Prophet’s wrath, but thought That what the Prophet sowed was theirs to reap. 21. They sold the clear path of religion for pathless error, And for righteousness they purchased the perils of transgression. 22. They have made of God’s Messenger an enemy— What an evil store they have laid by for Judgment Day! 23. The offspring of the Prophet on their horses’ [hooves];25

25 I am not sure of my interpretation of this hemistich. Literally it reads “The offspring of the Prophet on their [i.e., the Ummayads’] recalcitrant mounts.” It seems to me it could either refer to the Ṭālibīs being trampled by the Umayyad squadrons, or to their women being carried off as prisoners. al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 69

Giovanni Bellini, ‘The Madonna of the Meadow.’

Michelangelo, ‘Pietà.’ 70 suzanne pinckney stetkevych

On the heads of their lances the Prophet’s blood! 24. O woe is me for an ʿAlid band Now subject to the [Banū] Umayyah after ruling them with might. 25. They placed in their noses the nose-bits of disgrace; About their necks they tied the neck-ropes of oppression. 26. [The Umayyads] claimed that religion allowed them to kill [the ʿAlids]. Isn’t this the religion they got from their forefathers? 27. Invoking their Jāhilī legacy [they slew them] And slaked [with blood] the burning thirst of ancient rancor. 28. They usurped the affairs of those that were absent, And imposed their will upon those who were present. 29. God got to [the ʿAlids’] souls before you [Umayyads] could; You obtained [nothing but] the sins of [slaying, defiling] their bodies. 30. If [the ʿAlids’] domed tents were pulled down, Then surely the tent-pole of religion was toppled first. 31. The Caliphate has been wrested from its [true] people, By those of the white [banners] [Umayyads] and those of the black [banners] [ʿAbbāsids]. 32. Umayyad infidels have defiled its minbars, Rapacious wolves, they mount the wooden [steps]. al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 71

Having introduced the death of al-Ḥ usayn in Section II, the poet now sets the political stage for Sections III and IV which contrast the vituperation of the perpetrators of al-Ḥ usayn’s murder and illegitimate usurpers of the caliphate, the Umayyads (Section III) with praise for the persecuted legitimate heirs to the caliphate, the ʿAlids. The competing and antithetical politico-religious claims of the ʿAlids and Umayyads are masterfully encapsulated in verse 19: the slaying of al-Ḥ usayn is the cause for ʿAlid lament in Iraq but Umayyad celebration in their Syrian heartland, for that event signals ʿAlid defeat and Umayyad triumph. The annually reiterated Shīʿite ritual mourning is an annually repeated celebration of revival (the etymological sense of ʿīd, an annually recurring holiday) for the Umayyads. The controlling theme of these two sections is the illegitimacy of the Umayyad claim to the Caliphate and, conversely, the legitimacy of ʿAlid claims. Inasmuch as Umayyad rule is therefore depicted as antithetical to true Islamic rule, tibāq̣ (antithesis) is the major rhetorical device employed in this passage. The Umayyads are portrayed as enemies of Islam and of the Prophet who have slain his progeny and thus spilled his blood (in all seventeen Ṭālibīs were massacred at Karbalāʾ)26 (vv. 19–23). Verse 20 seems to admit of two readings: first that the Umayyads felt it was their right to assume the Caliphate, i.e., the leadership of the Islamic community that the Prophet Muḥammad had instituted (sowed); or, taking the seed that Muḥammad sowed to mean his progeny, that the Umayyads considered it their right to slay, “reap,” the Prophet’s progeny. Verses 24–25 describe the humiliated and oppressed ʿAlids as beasts subjugated by ropes and nose-bits. In verses 26–27 the poet traces Umayyad antipathy to the Prophet’s family to their Jāhilī legacy, which I take to mean the Umayyads. The most likely reference would seem to be to the Battles of Badr (2/624) and ʿUḥud the following year. At Badr the Meccan “Polytheists” (mushrikūn) were led by Abū Sufyān ibn Ḥarb ibn Umayyah, who had long opposed the Prophet Muḥammad and his mission and did not convert to Islam until the surrender of Mecca (8/629). The accounts of Badr feature a pairing off in single combat between the Prophet’s kin and those of Abū Sufyān—or, more precisely, the relatives of his wife Hind bint ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah, the mother of the first Umayyad caliph, Muʿāwiyah, and

26 See Vaglieri, “al-Ḥusayn.” 72 suzanne pinckney stetkevych thereby the progenitrix of the dynasty. The Prophet’s uncle ̣ amzahH ibn ʿAbd al-Mutṭ aliḅ took the field against Shaybah ibn Rabīʿah; the Prophet’s cousin, ʿUbaydah ibn al-Ḥ ārith against ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah and the Prophet’s cousin ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib against al-Walīd ibn ʿUtbaḥ Ḥamzah and ʿAlī slew their opponents and then helped ʿUbaydah (who subsequently died of his wounds) finished offʿ Utbaḥ In all, Hind bint ʿUtbah lost her father, her uncle, her brother and, in addition, her son Ḥ anzalaḥ ibn Sufyān. The Meccans took their vengeance the following year at the Battle of Uḥud, especially remarkable for Hind ibn ʿUtbah engaging a black slave to slay Ḥ amzah ibn ʿAbd al-Mutṭ aliḅ with his javelin, and then Hind, in an infamous and visceral display of having achieved her vengeance, eating (some claim only biting) his liver.27 The point, in brief, is that the Umayyads’ Jāhilī ancestors were already “blood enemies” of the Prophet and his kin, and the Jāhilī institution of blood-vengeance, already exercised at Uḥud, was equally at play at Karbalāʾ. In verse 31 the poet refers to the usurpation of the Caliphate by both the Umayyads and (currently reigning) ʿAbbāsids, although he is careful in this case to simply allude to them by their banner colors. This suggests that all the poet’s railing against Umayyad usurpation, which by the time of the poem is largely a historical rather than current grievance (the Umayyad caliphate in Cordoba notwithstanding), may be taken more broadly to allude to ʿAlid claims or grievances against the ʿAbbāsids, as indeed others, such as Zakī Mubārak and Iḥsān ʿAbbās, have noted.28 In verse 32 the diction is carefully chosen to suggest sexual defilement and violation: the Umayyads are termedʿ ulūj (wild asses— with all that that implies of untrammeled and exaggerated sexuality, and which also means infidels—perhaps implying “uncircumcised”) and then wolves; the verbs tamasaṭ (defile) and tanzū (leap, mount) have the same sexual implications in Arabic as their English counterparts.

27 For Badr and Uḥud, see Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Mālik Ibn Hishām, Al-Sīrah al- Nabawiyyah, 4 vols. (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr, n.d.) 2:643–803 (Badr) and 3:837–967 (Uḥud) and Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarār al-Ṭabarī, [Taʾrīkh al-Rusul wa-al-Mulūk] Annales ed. M. J. de Goeje, 15 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1964–65 [photo-ed.]) 3:1281–1354 (Badr); 3:1383–1427 (Uḥud). I have discussed the role of Jāhilī concepts of blood-vengeance, elegy and taḥrīḍ (instigation to vengeance) in women’s poetry as it relates to Badr and Uḥud in S. Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak, pp. 199–205. 28 See Mubārak, Al-Madāʾiḥ al-Nabawiyyah, pp. 123, 126; ʿAbbās, Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, p. 85. al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 73

In sum, Umayyad rule is an abomination, an illegitimate usurpation of ʿAlid rights. We should note that the contents of Section III are largely standard pro-ʿAlid/anti-Umayyad political fare.

IV. vv. 33–37 madīḥ: praise of ʿAlids = fakhr (boast)

33. They are God’s elect to whom He sent His Revelation And to whose noble [Imāms] He related His decrees. 34. They took hold of glory at both ends, So men and jinn are forgiven for envying them. 35. Their ruthless warriors are yet pious and forbearing, And but for [fear of ] Allāh their pious would be ruthless warriors. 36. [They are] bands who swaddle their newborns with sword-straps, Whose infants’ cradles are the backs of steeds. 37. Their virtuous deeds are recited by their foes, Even though they ascribe them to their enemies. This short passage of praise that we have tentatively termedmadīh ̣, that is, praise or panegyric, is essentially polyvalent: like madīḥ it celebrates the legitimate rule, or claim to rule, of its subject. Thus, in verse 33, the standard ʿAlid and Shīʿite claim that God’s elect are the Prophet, inasmuch as God chose to reveal the Qurʾān to him, and the ʿAlids, as the closest blood-kin and genealogical descendants of the Prophet, and to whom, in accordance with Shīʿite tenets, God continued to 74 suzanne pinckney stetkevych convey exclusive knowledge. I would take awḥá in the first hemistich, in accordance with its customary usage in such contexts, to refer to the revelation of the Qurʾān to Muḥammad, and qaḍá ʾawāmirahu, to give orders or decrees, to refer to God’s continued communication or dis- pensation to rule to the Shīʿite Imāms in particular and to the ʿAlid line in general. To their divine appointment (v. 33), the poet then appends unsurpassed heroic and moral-religious virtues (vv. 34–37). Within the context of the poem, this passage can be classified as well as rithāʾ (elegy), for the poet is celebrating those who ought to rule the Islamic Ummah (community), but no longer do. Further, in light of the identity of the poet, and the essential tenselessness of the passage, it reads also as fakhr (boast) even though it is not expressed in the first person. In this light, the two bands introduced in Section I, the young braves who were the former inhabitants of the ruins (v. 5), whom we subsequently identified as the companions of al-Ḥusayn, and the poet’s “gallant band” (v. 7), whom we identified as the poet’s contemporary band of mourning ʿAlids, are both simultaneously the subject of the heroic description of Section IV. This will have interesting political implications for Section V.

V. vv. 38–41 taḥrīḍ: call to vengeance and restoration

38. O divine wrath, rise to defend God’s Prophet And draw the white [blades] from their sheathes 39. Against a band between whose Yazād and Ziyād The blood of Muḥammad and his sons was lost. 40. The gifts of God’s money fill their hands, While the hands of God’s people are in bonds. al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 75

41. With Muḥammad’s sword they struck his sons With blows like handmills that draw back only to return once more. Sections III and IV, which present Umayyad illegitimacy and usurpation of the Caliphate and their oppression of the legitimate rulers, that is, the descendants of the Prophet, pave the way for Section V with its invocation of moral outrage and divine wrath in a call to arms against the usurpers. This can be read as merely a liturgical reenactment of Shīʿite historical resentment, or can be understood in more immediate political terms. If the latter, it seems that we must understand here, and throughout the poem, that the traditional historical enemy, the Umayyad usurpers, function as well as an allegory for the contemporary usurpers, i.e., the ʿAbbāsids. Verse 39 explicitly names two Umayyad arch-villians, Yazīd (r. 60–64/ 680–683), the caliph responsible for the slaughter of al-Ḥ usayn and his companions and ʿUbaydallāh ibn Ziyād, Yazīd’s governor of Baḥrah and Kūfah, who was assigned to quell al-Ḥ usayn’s rebellion. The tibāq̣ (antithesis) between the significance of their names, to augment or increase (root: z-y-d), then serves to contrast and identify Umayyad gains with the loss of ʿAlid blood (ḍāʿat dimāʾu Muḥammadin // wa-banīhi). Verse 40 exhibits particularly intense rhetorical play again to express the illicit Umayyad usurpation of the funds of the Islamic community and their concomitant oppression and abuse of “God’s people.” Through a combination of double jinās (word-play), tibāq̣ (antithesis) and chiasmus (abba pattern) the poet succinctly expresses the inversion of justice that constitutes the Umayyad abomination: safadātụ . . .ʾakufffuhā // wa-ʾakuffuhā . . .ʾ asfādihạ̄ , where the first safaḍ means gift, and the second, bonds or shackles. Here we should note that Āli Allāhi, people or family of God, is a politically and religiously charged designation for the ʿAlids, a phrase consciously constructed to buttress ʿAlid claims that Muḥammad’s direct blood-line are God’s chosen leaders of the Islamic community. The idea is that the direct descent of the ʿAlids through the Prophet’s cousin ʿAlī and the Proph- et’s daughter Fātimaḥ trumps the less direct claims of kinship of the ʿAbbāsids, through the Hāshimite line, i.e., which claims descent from the Prophet’s uncle, al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Mutṭ aliḅ ibn Hāshim,29 and

29 See B. Lewis, “ʿAbbāsids,” EI2. 76 suzanne pinckney stetkevych

Umayyads, based on the precept that the Imāmate/Caliphate should be from Quraysh, the Meccan tribe to which both the Hāshimites and the Umayyads belong. Of course, all these genealogical claims as the basis for legitimate rule are in opposition to the Khārijite tenet that the legitimate Caliphate belongs to the best and most just of believers, without regard to lineage. Verse 41 seals the call to rise up against injustice and oppression with an image of the Umayyads using Muḥammad’s own sword, presumably a metonymy for the Muslim armies, to strike down Muḥammad’s sons. This image of ruthless slaughter is intended to provoke outrage and action and marks Section V as explicitly what the Arabic poetic tradition terms taḥrīḍ, that is, incitement to battle, especially to redeem unavenged blood.30

VI. vv. 42–53 nasīb-rithāʾ: reduplication and fusion of elegiac prelude and elegy

42. I said to [the driver of ] the weary riders like dust-hued eagles On lofty mountain peaks,

30 On taḥrīḍ, especially women’s poems of incitation to blood vengeance, see S. Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak, pp. 161–205. al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 77

43. As he was urging on with song the bow-backed camels, Whose stubborn ones obeyed him and subdued the docile ones, 44. Until you would imagine that their necks, Bobbing as they run, were flowing streams, 45. Stop with me, if only for the time it takes to twist a waist-wrapper, For mine is a heart afflicted by violent passion, 46. At al-Ṭaff where once of a morning the heart’s blood flowed And where their she-camels knelt for the sword-fight day. 47. The wasteland was their funeral-tent, the vultures their visitors by night, None but wild beasts came to call upon their sick. 48. For them tear-drops stream down, But only in the grains of hearts can [grief ] be weighed. 49. O Day of ʿĀshūrāʾ, how great the pains you bring! Their burning fairly makes the insides dance! 50. You have not returned except to bring my heart once more A passion that, however hard I try to cool it, yet still burns, 51. Like a snake-bit man, his hours filled with pain, Whom the slit-eyed serpents revisit yearly with new pain. 52. O Grandfather! May the squadrons of sorrow never cease To overwhelm the soul with their charging and pursuit 78 suzanne pinckney stetkevych

53. Forever over you, nor poured forth tears That weeping brings, if not at evening, then at morn. Section VI constitutes the emotional, liturgical and structural climax of the poem. The reiterative nature of the poetics, and psychology, of loss is nowhere clearer. In terms of structure and genre, the poet, rather than progressing to the madīḥ or praise section of the triumphant qasīdaṭ al-madḥ, creates a striking deviation of form, that is, a circular regres- sion to the opening of the poem. Section VI is not, however, merely a simple recapitulation of Sections I and II, but rather the reiteration of the distinct, or at least distinguishable, nasīb and rithāʾ components of Section I and II in a now totally fused nasīb-rithāʾ in which the object of loss and lament is now explicitly the slaughter of al-Ḥ usayn and his Companions at Karbalāʾ, or rather, more precisely, at al-Ṭaff. Section VI opens (vv. 42–44) with the delicately achieved nasīb motif of the poet with a group of weary riding companions, whose camel driver urges on their mounts with song. These lead, inevitably to the istīqāf, the well-known motif of the poet asking his companions to stop at the ruined abode, to assuage or evoke the “violent passion” that afflicts the poet’s heart (v. 45). Only here (v. 46) the site is explicitly identified as the site of al-Ḥ usayn’s martyrdom, al-Ṭaff; and the violent passion is that elicited by the unredeemed blood of al-Ḥ usayn and his Companions, here evoked through the traditional Arab poetic imagery for the unavenged: their bodies left to the ravages of the vultures and wild beasts (v. 47). The tears and heart-felt grief of verse 48 lead to an outburst of passion in verses 49 to 53 that we can accurately term a lament. In verse 49 the poet cries out in visceral pain, and here and in the following verses (50–52) we realize that we have exceeded our usual understanding of poetry and are experiencing the performance of a ritual lament: that is, the calendrical ritual reenactment of the loss and martyrdom of al-Ḥ usayn as a verbal performance. Certainly verse 49 in its direct and emotive apostrophe of ʿĀshūrāʾ and its burning pain in the gut is to be felt and experienced, not merely read or recited. At this point, too, we begin to realize that the poem, or in particular this section of it, operates as well as a spiritual or verbal performance of the Shīʿite ritual of pilgrimage to Karbalāʾ on ʿĀshūrāʾ. In an almost ironic inversion, whereas one of the liturgical elements of the ʿĀshūrāʾ al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 79 pilgrimage is the recitation of a poetic lament, here, rather than the pilgrimage ritual containing a poetic lament, the poetic lament contains the pilgrimage ritual or is the verbal performance of such a ritual.31 We should note once again how the motif of the poet and his band of riders and the istīqāf has been coopted into a religious, spiritual pilgrimage, a poetic transition that begins, apparently, with al-Sharīf al-Raḍī and his student, Mihyār al-Daylamī (d. 428/1037), and makes its way in later periods into Sūfī poetry and medieval madīḥ nabawī. The rituals and poetics of loss, as opposed to triumph, are carefully encoded into verses 50 and 51. In a manner that is closely connected to the inverse relation of the ʿAlid ritual lamentation versus the Umayyad celebratory ʿīd of verse 19, and also with the poetic tradition of panegyric poets offering celebratory ʿīd poems to their triumphant patrons, al-Sharīf al-Raḍī combines two rich poetic topoi into one. First, there is the well-known play on the root ʿ-w-d, to return, in the nasīb tradition to express ever-recurrent sorrow.32 Second, there is the equally familiar play on ʿ-w-d in the virtually obligatory celebratory poems that panegyrists presented to their invariably triumphant patrons on ʿĪd al-Aḍḥá and ʿĪd al-Fitṛ to expressed their seasonally, calendrically renewed allegiance.33 For the ʿAlids, of course, the calendrically obligatory reconfirmation of allegiance does not consists of a celebration of triumph, but, to the contrary, the ritually repeated lament that testifies to their unending sorrow and burning thirst for vengeance. The annual reenactment of grieving and lamentation is succinctly captured then in the extended word-play in verses 50 and 51 on the root ʿ-w-d: mā ʿudta ʾillā ʿāda qalbī ghullatun, (lit.: you never return but that a burning passion returns to my heart); and, at the end of v. 51, serpents that taʿūduhu bi-ʿidādihā (bring back his recurrent pain). The latter is an altogether astounding metaphor for the Shīʿite annual lament, for, as the lexica tell us, ʿidād means “A paroxysm of pain with a person stung or bitten by a venomous reptile suffers on the

31 On the liturgical elements of the short poem for the visit to the grave of al-Ḥusayn, although without any reference to how this motif or theme might function with a fully- structured qasīdaḥ , see Sindawi, “Visit to the Tomb of al-Ḥ usayn,” passim. 32 For discussion and examples of the nasībic use of ʿāda/yaʿūdu (to return), see S. Stetkevych, Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, pp. 228–230. 33 On the function of the qasīdaḥ for the reconfirmation of allegiance on calendrical holidays, that is, ʿĪd al-Aḍḥá and ʿĪd al-Fitr,̣ see S. Stetkevych, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, 185–212, 241–282, passim. 80 suzanne pinckney stetkevych completion of a year from the day on which he was stung or bitten.”34 Clearly in this context, the khuzru al-ʿuyūni (slit-eyed ones = serpents) alludes to the Umayyads and no doubt has the same connotations as it does in English. Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī’s intimate and recurrent grief over al-Ḥ usayn’s martyrdom is movingly expressed in verses 52–53, first through apos- trophizing him as “Grandfather” and further through the powerfully placed image of metaphorical “squadrons of sorrow” (katāʾibu ḥasratin) whose recurrent assaults overwhelm the soul. The metaphor is particularly powerful because at the same time that it reiterates the image of the Umayyad squadrons repeatedly and savagely trampling al-Ḥusayn’s body it captures the emotional reenactment of the commemorative ritual, and the obsessive repetition of the aggrieved and unavenged. That is, the original repeated physical assault on al-Ḥ usayn is verbally and psychologically (and politically?) identified with the reiterative liturgical sorrow of the ʿAlid lamentation. The jarring effect of a plea for squadrons to continue to charge back and forth over al-Ḥ usayn’s body is only alleviated by the following genitive, “of sorrow” (ḥasratin). The emotive intensity of the poet’s intimate identification with his grandfather’s suffering is heightened by the taḍmīn (enjambment) between verses 52–53: “charging and pursuit // Forever over you” (bi-karrihā wa-tirādihạ̄ // abadan ʿalayka). Metrically and emotion- ally it fairly takes the breath away and creates a total fusion between the physical suffering of al-Ḥ usayn and the emotional suffering of the ʿAlid poet who reenacts and reexperiences al-Ḥ usayn’s martyrdom on the day of ʿĀshūrāʾ. In ritual, as well as psychological, terms, a “mythic concordance” is thereby established between al-Ḥ usayn and the poet, al-Sharīf al-Raḍī.

VII. vv. 54–58 madīḥ: metapoetic expression of praise

34 Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, ʿ-d-d. The root seems to be semantically linked, as an intensive form with the strong consonant reduplicated, to ʿ-w-d (to return). al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 81

54. This is my praise, though I have not reached [the finish], Rather [my lines are like] horses gathered at the starting-line when the swift steeds reins are loosed. 55. Shall I say, “May the spring rains pour down generously upon you,” To you who are the spring rain of every abode? 56. Or shall I seek to increase your exalted rank through my praises? —But how the mountains tower above the hills and plains! 57. How can one praise the stars when they are high above The furthest distance that the eye can see? 58. The rising of the sun defies description In its glory, its radiance, and its distant [splendor]. Section VII itself almost beggars description and analysis, but in doing so reveals once again the complexity and hybridity of the poem. The poet begins by proclaiming, “This is [my] praise,” hādhā( al-thanāʾu), a phrase which, in its traditional usage serves as a line of closure at the end of a qasīdaṭ al-madḥ, indicates its completion, and refers, descriptively, to the preceding lines and to the poem as a whole.35 It is a bit disconcerting here, as the poem up until this point is dominated far more by the elements of rithāʾ, elegy and lament—what we would term the poetics of loss—than by the triumphant poetics of madīḥ, praise, but nevertheless it has the effect of declaring the poet’s panegyric intentions. The next phrase, mā balaghtu (this is [my praise], [but] I have not [yet] reached [it]), helps explain what is going on: the poet has not completed or reached the end of his praise, indeed, as the stunning metaphor that follows tells us, he has not even begun. Rather his verses up until this point are merely like horses at the starting line, whose reins have just

35 See for example, its use in the penultimate verse (v. 48) of his renowned dāliyyaḥ See al-Nābighah [al-Dhubyānī], Dīwān al-Nābighah, 3rd ed., ed. Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1990), pp. 14–28. For a translation and discussion, see S. Stetkevych, Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, pp. 17–46. 82 suzanne pinckney stetkevych been loosed (v. 54). It is almost as if the entire poem up until now has been preambular to the praise that is to follow. But just when we think the “steeds”/verses are going to take off at full gallop, the poet balks. In a strange sort of metapoetic and rhetorical feint, he expresses his praise through self-effacement, a claim that he is not up to the task before him (vv. 55–57). On the one hand these verses are typical of the hyperbolic praise of the ʿAbbāsid period: what al-Jurjānī terms ʿaks al-tashbīh, or inverted simile (e.g., “the rose is not as red as her cheeks.”). The convention of (false) modesty, the poet’s claim to inadequacy, here achieves an ironic inversion: the greatness of the mamdūḥ (object of praise) is all the more effectively expressed, thereby undermining the poet’s claim to poetic incapacity. Verse 55 plays elegantly on the qasīdaṭ al-madḥ convention of the benediction (duʿāʾ), “May rain fall on you,” to unfold the symbolic and metaphoric dimensions of a traditional trope. Through his repetition of rabīʿ (spring rain) the poet creates a jinās (wordplay) in which the word exhibits its literal meaning on the first occasion and its figurative meaning as generosity the second time. In both cases the image of spring rain carries symbolic undertones of life and revitalization. At the same time, the invocation of spring rains in the closure of the poem serves as a recapitulation and fulfillment of the duʿāʾ, the benediction or call for spring rains, on the deserted encampment in Section I toward the end of the nasīb talalị̄ in verse 12 and 13. It is, I believe, important to note that in this concluding passage of the poem the poet shifts from the second person singular of the apostrophe to his “grandfather” al-Ḥ usayn (vv. 52–53) to the second person plural in verse 55. It is hard to know for certain whether this is an intentional change in number and referent, or merely a case of the convention of iltifāt. For my purposes, I will read it as an intended plural, as the use of the plurals for the mountains (al-jibāl) (v. 56) and stars (al-nujūm) (v. 57) suggests. In this case, the second person plural in verses 55 and 56 signals a shift from al-Ḥ usayn to the ʿAlids generally, and from the lament for past loss to the celebration of present or coming glory. The insistent repetition of the interrogative voice in verses 55–57 creates a rhetorical momentum and tension, to which the answer, in verse 58, provides climax and release. The interrogatives of verses 55–57 employ naturalistic imagery—the spring rains, the mountains, hills and plains, the stars—to express the poet’s (at least rhetorical) inadequacy to describe the object of his praise. In a rhetorically stunning closing al-sharf al-raḍ and the poetics 83 verse, the poet both confirms and disproves this. For what greater praise is there than the allegorical/metaphorical identification of the ʿAlids with the glorious burst of triumph of the rising sun? If, on the surface, verse 58 pretends to confirm the poet’s declared inadequacy, this is immediately undermined or contradicted by the panegyric power of his claim and by the rhetorical mastery with which he has created this supreme verse of praise. The comparison of theʿ Alids to the rising sun is all the more powerful for not being explicitly stated, but rather it is expressed as tamthīl, allegory or metaphor. Rhetorically, I suppose, the point is that although the rising sun may be beyond all description, or more literally without or beyond the need for (taking ʾaghná ʿan to mean istaghná ʿan) description—by which the poet means praise—a stunning metaphor is never out of place. Occuring as it does in this madīḥ passage, “description” means “praise”—that is, the mamdūḥ is both above and beyond any praise the poet can offer. The image of the rising sun has many facets. At the basic level, it is associated with the physical concepts of splendor, radiance and distance (bi-jalālihā wa-ḍiyāʾihā wa-biʿādihā), but these soon take on figurative significations of unapproachable majesty, moral guidance and superiority. Symbolically, as is familiar in the Christian and other traditions, the rising of the sun symbolizes resurrection and restoration. Just as the sun represents majesty, royal glory and universal dominion (cf. Louis XIV as the Sun King), so too the rising of the sun, as is familiar in the Christian and other traditions (cf. “The East is Red,” referring to Mao Tse Tung’s becoming the leader of China), symbolizes resurrection and restoration. The poet employs the perfect form of the verb aghná, not for the past tense, but in its use to express timeless verities, what we would call “eternal truths.” Nevertheless, the poet’s choice of the rising of the sun (tulụ̄ ʿ al-shamsi), rather than just the sun itself, conjures up the vision, or hope, of ʿAlid restoration.

Conclusion

Once all the sections are put together, we see that the poem’s ultimate trajectory, is that of the qasīdaṭ al-madḥ: that is, from the nostalgic and elegiac sorrow of the lost past, as expressed in the nasīb-talalị̄ (Section I) to the triumphal celebratory encomia of the madīḥ (Section VII). Within these genre-defining parameters, al-Sharīf al-Raḍī has made 84 suzanne pinckney stetkevych what we have termed detours or deviations into other qasīdaḥ sub- genres (see list of Sections, above), in particular those identified with personal and/or political loss, with recurrent sorrow and unavenged blood. Thus Sections II, III, V and VI can be identified as poetic expressions of loss, interrupted only by the praise or boast (madīḥ or fakhr) of Section IV. When read structurally as a whole, the poem subsumes or encloses the elements of ritual lament (the poetics of loss) within the overarching structure/framework of the panegyric ode (the poetics of triumph). Perhaps it is precisely the contrast between the extended and obsessive expressions of recurrent sorrow and grievance that comprise almost all of the first 53 verses that give the highly condensedmadīh ̣ its dramatic power. And perhaps this contrast, too, is what gives the poem its heightened lyric expressiveness. Above all, it is clear that this complex and hybrid poetic structure is by no means disorganized or arbitrary. Rather, its overall framework and internal thematic components are intentionally and effectively structured to create a compelling emotional and political claim for ʿAlid legitimacy. EARLY ISLAMMONOTHEISM OR HENOTHEISM? A VIEW FROM THE COURT

Samer M. Ali

The work of Jaroslav Stetkevych has exemplified for Arabists the contemporary concern with the ways that language, performance and rhetoric reflect and constitute individuals and societies, often dubbed “the linguistic turn.” This concern has been in large part a response either to the Marxist-Weberian impulse to limit analysis to material conditions and their consequences on literary production and consumption, or the structuralist penchant for disengaging form and style from societal categories such as race, class and gender.1 In the case of Arabic studies, Jaroslav Stetkevych’s work has responded to yet another paradigm, that of downgrading the most aesthetic, emotive and societally operative of Arabic literature to something banal and hackneyed, as he illustrates in his 1979 article on the ailments of the field of Arabic literature.2 Jaroslav’s emphasis on the power of words, rituals and myths to both reveal and influence self and community takes form in his work on the

Note: This research project was funded by a Fulbright-Hays Training Grant, 1998– 1999, part of the Doctoral Dissertation Research Program of the U. S. Department of Education. I am pleased to thank the Fulbright commissions of Egypt, Germany and Spain for their assistance. Research was also supported by a fellowship at the Working Group on Modernity and Islam at the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, 2000–2001. It has benefited tremendously from discussions there with Friederike Pannewick, Margaret Rausch, Angelika Neuwirth, Renate Jacobi, Hilary Kilpatrick and Dale Eickel- man. Some evidence for this article has been adapted from Ali, Arabic Literary Salons in the Islamic Middle Ages (2008). 1 The “linguistic turn” and its intellectual and social implications has been grounds for discussion since the early part of the twentieth century, but has been largely overlooked in Middle Eastern studies: Burke (1935, 1937), White (1978, 1987) Davis (1987), and Kreiswirth (1995). For a critique of formalist and structuralist approaches to narrative, see Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. and ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). 2 Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Arabic Poetry and Assorted Poetics,” in Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. by Malcolm H. Kerr (Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publica- tions, 1979), 103–123. 86 samer m. ali nasīb section of the Arabic ode and pre-Islamic Arabian mythology.3 Here, I hope to drink and give drink from that cup by focusing on otherwise literary texts that reflected and impacted everyday theology for early Muslims. Abbasid society (750–1258), to those who closely examine both political art and religion, can be characterized by two tendencies in theme and practice. The first champions the absolute glory and oneness of God (Allāh = The Deity) over all else, exacerbated by a daunt- ing hierarchical divide between Divinity and Creation. The Qurʾanic prayer calls out, “O God who possesses kingship; you give kingship to whomever You wish. You snatch kingship from whomever You wish. You empower whomever You wish and You debase whomever You wish. You control blessings. You are capable of everything.”4 The repetition of the pronoun of address as well as God’s capacity to wish and act emphasizes God’s distance and privilege as the sole source of human authority. The second tendency seems to be somewhat pagan, where charm and power emanates from within a multiplicity of beings (king, sultan, saint, master-teacher, etc.), for skill or charisma, and is validated by the supplication of devotees and often the authority figure’s performance of miracles that are believed. Thus caliphs, masters, saints, teachers, and others patrons often generated a demand for their leadership and thus claimed sacral powers.5 At the Abbasid court, poetry was critical to the formation of this pagan power because it amplified the felt presence of the caliph’s authority to harm and benefit, making it memorable and transmittable to a wide audience. Poets though had to guard their craft against the “corrupting” effect of piety. Note, for example, that al-Asmạ ʿī (d. ca. 828), one of the early curators of pagan poetry, echoed a sentiment among littérateurs that the poetic tradition,

3 “Name and Epithet: The Philology and Semiotics of Animal Nomenclature in Early Arabic Poetry,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 45 (1986): 89–124; The Zephyrs of Najd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasīb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); “Toward an Arabic Elegiac Lexicon: The Seven Words of theNasīb ,” in Reorientations / Arabic and Persian Poetry, ed. by Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994) 58–129; Muḥammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arabian Myth (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). 4 Qur ʾan 3: 26. 5 See the important article of L. E. Goodman, “The Sacred and the Secular: Rival Themes in Arabic Literature,” inLiterary Heritage of Classical Islam: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of James A. Bellamy, ed. Mustansir Mir with Jarl E. Fossum (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1993), where he discusses the productive tension between the pagan tradition and the emerging monotheism. early islam—monotheism or henotheism? 87 rooted in the pre-Islamic Jāhiliyya (Age of Impetuousness), ought to be shielded from the moralizing influences of righteousness. Of poetry, “If goodness creeps in,” he says, “it becomes soft [lāna],” and “soft” in his diction meant that the poet was “hoping for rewards in the Afterlife.”6 It would appear that fear of God’s punishment or hope in his reward was fundamentally antithetical to the perceptiveness needed to produce “hard” poetry. Of course, if poets ought not take their inspiration from the ultimate patron in Heaven, then the harm and reward of patrons on earth matter most. In this piece, I will examine these two tendencies, the monotheistic and the pagan, that were particularly pronounced at the Abbasid court where both pious and profane sensibilities came face to face regularly. To illustrate the problem at the court, consider a narrative that appears in al-Shābushtī’s (d. 1000) Kitāb al-Diyārāt [The Book of Monasteries] pitting religious against secular authority over the issue of drinking wine. The two conflicting systems of authority face off, and in this particular case, the Caliph’s sacral power overrides the will of a father and, implicitly, of Allāh. Once, according to al-Shābushtī, after a ceremonial event marking the Caliph al-Mutawakkil’s (d. 861) order to circumcise his son (and potential heir) al-Muʿtazz (d. 869), the Caliph invited the pious elders (mashāyikh) to the palace for an assembly before him. Among the elders was Yaḥyā Ibn Khāqān, the father of al- Mutawakkil’s vizier, ʿUbayd Allāh. The social setting is important to bear in mind: The father/elder and the son/vizier are put on stage in front of the Caliph and other elders; we are told as well as that Yaḥyā was known for never drinking in public. In this assembly, al-Mutawakkil asked his vizier, ʿUbayd Allāh, to take a cup of wine, while draping a saqi’s towel over his shoulders, and put the glass in the hands of the pious father. The father lifted his eyes toward the son, probably in embarrassment or humiliation, and al-Mutawakkil sensed so much as to order him, “Do not refuse it!” The pious father/elder demurred, saying, “Of course not, O Commander of the Faithful,” and drank. Swallowing his pride in front of his peers, the pious elder added, “Your blessings are great in our view, O Commander of the Faithful.”7 It is conspicuous how

6 Iḥsān ʿAbbās, Tārīkh al-Naqd al-Adabī ʿind al-ʿArab: Naqd al-Shiʿr min al-Qarn al-Thānī ̣attāh al-Qarn al-Thāmin al-Hijrī, rev. ed. (Amman: Dār al-Shurūq, 1997), 38–39. 7 Abū al-Ḥ asan al-Shābushtī, Kitāb al-Diyārāt, ed. Kūrkīs ʿAwwāḍ (Beirut: Dār al-Rāʾid al-ʿArabī, 1986), 154–155. 88 samer m. ali the Caliph of God on earth not only rejects divine authority here (the prohibition of wine-drinking believed by the mashāyikh to be the will of God), but in fact gains a competing sacral authority by opposing it, as well as the divinely-given authority of the parent. The story in many ways illustrates an accrual of the Caliph’s power, for this story was certainly not told to discredit al-Mutawakkil—al-Shābushtī had no such agenda—but to vividly and shockingly register his awesome power as a heroic leader who constantly competes for greatness. The grandeur of the moment is compounded because he acts regardless of the double bind it might engender for Yaḥyā, his son, or the elders who must witness this scene. This paper will examine these two systems of manufacturing authority, the one monotheistic and the other pagan. It will become evident that the Abbasid court favored and promoted not monotheism, but henotheism, which elegantly suited a state hierarchy where patrons rewarded the praise, supplication and allegiance of subordinates in order for patrons to build reputation in life and legacy in death. Because these systems co-existed, the later being favored by the court, I will argue that there were two competing grand visions of religion in early Islamic society, one absolutely monotheistic promoted by pious men (mashāyikh)8 and the other henotheistic, that is, a system that enables

8 I have opted, instead of Ulema (i.e. savants or scholars), to use the courtly term mashāyikh since the Ulema, as a professional class trained in set core disciplines, had not formed in the ninth and tenth century, before the spread of state madrasas. The term mashāyikh (sg. shaykh) was preferred in court sources, referring to an assortment of loosely defined pious “elders” (Sunni, Shīʿī or Khārijī) who were other-worldly and piety-minded, devoting their allegiance to Allāh, not kings. They were concerned in common about God’s punishments and rewards in the afterlife, but differed in their varying emphases on communion with God, asceticism, and public morality. For a useful discussion of the various forms of piety (mystical, austere, Sharīʿa-minded in relation to Hadīth-minded), see Christopher Melchert, “The Piety of the Hadith Folk,” International Journal of Middle East Stud 34 (2002), 425–439. One can note that many of the identifiers that marked the Hadith-folk (unbreachedable solemnity, not reclining, relative egalitarianism, avoiding idle curiosity or wonder, wanting to know only what is necessary) were in direct contrast to those of courtly life: a premium on laughter and joking at the right occasion, reclining during banquets and drinking sessions, respect- ing power and hierarchy, delving into subjects for sheer pleasure or wonderment and indulging in the unnecessary (style, form, rhythm, playfulness, symmetry, décor, and the stuff of art). Famous example of pious men were the Qadis Muḥammad Ibn Nūḥ (d. 9th century) and Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal (d. 855) who refused to concede to al-Maʾmūn’s (d. 833) doctrine of the createdness of the Qurʾan at great personal expense. See J. A. Nawas, “A Reexamination of Three Current Explanations for al-Maʾmūn’s Introduc- tion of the Miḥna,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 26 (1994), 4:622. Note that Nawas argues that the primary reason for the miḥna (test of allegiance to early islam—monotheism or henotheism? 89 the worship of one God, while tolerating the supplication of other deities as well. Pious scholars, needless to say, were forced to respond in order to protect the dignity and oneness of God, which was their primary source of authority in society. I call these two tendencies “voices,” in order to emphasize how each camp’s verbal moves are saturated with ideological symbolism and coded diction, which inter-activates the other camp to respond.9 In the end, my aim is to show that, far from being ill and dysfunctional, these two voices created cultural and psychological tensions for individuals that by and large inspired civilizational production and creativity. In order to make this argument, I examine a variety of court sources produced by people who worked at the court daily. I will show that there was a palpable tension in practice between one’s obligations to Allāh on High (allāhu taʿālā) and to the Caliph and patrons here on earth. It will be shown more specifically that the Caliph, promoting henotheism, placed courtiers in a position where they had to prove their devotion to him at subtle implicit expense to their loyalty to Allāh. More importantly, by doing so, courtiers conceded the caliphate’s henotheistic vision, since the monotheism of piety-minded scholars could brook no divided allegiance to Allāh. Three types of court sources will be used that are considered traditional heritage: praise poetry directed to Caliphs and other patrons, architecture of caliphal palaces and bacchic ceremonies that were drunken and sexual. The most underappreciated

a superior) concerning the createdness of the Qurʾan was the Caliph al-Maʾmun’s (d. 833) apprehensions that the mashāyikh were exercising far too much influence in forming doctrine, creed and law (all perceived to be under the purview of the caliph as God’s agent). He states, “In al-Maʾmun’s times, men of religious learning, then a heterogeneous group . . . had succeeded in carving out for themselves a broad territory of influence and popularity among all strata of society, and they were a formidable force to reckon with. Had this authority continued unchecked, it would have led to a “house divided” and the caliphal institution adrift.” It is worthy to note that Nawas deems the threat of the mashāyikh more imminent than the threat of Shīʿī imams, who had claims to the caliphate widely considered legitimate. 9 Bakhtin’s usage of the term “voices” stems from what he perceives to be a fruitless divide between form and content in language, that is, formal features and ideological messages. To him the choice of, say, font, word, sound image, style, cadence, or accent all contribute to the ideological goals of a text and thus suggest a demographic, sociologi- cal constituency behind the utterance, see Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 259, 272. Most important, however, for our purposes here, just as words are oriented toward the objects to which they refer, they are oriented toward a perceived response from audiences, that is, a rejoinder to the word in a dialogue. Thus one voice inspires, provokes, incites or inter-activates other voices in ongoing exchange, Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 274, 280. 90 samer m. ali of these sources is praise poetry, so let me begin by discussing the need for engaging and using odes in praise of patrons.

The Place of the Qaṣīda

The Arabic court ode, the qasīda,̣ persisted in the Middle East as the prestige genre for fourteen centuries. It has remained however an orphan genre underappreciated by modern scholars in the west and the Arab world. Krenkow labels the ode “artificial,” “monotonous,” “nauseous,” and Tritton deems it “untranslatable,” “dull,” and “grotesque or even repulsive”.10 In the Arab world, likewise, one finds greater familiarity with the tradition, but if authors love it, they also love to hate it. Shawqī Ḍayf, who is considered the doyen of classical poetry in Egypt, alternates between adoration and disgust. In his survey work, al-ʿAsṛ al-ʿAbbāsī al-Thānī [The Second Abbasid Period], written in Nasserist- socialist Egypt, he attacks Abbasid poets for courting power to make a living, referring, for example, to al-Buḥturī (d. 897) as “greedy” and “opportunistic,” following the lead of his orientalist colleagues.11 More- over, some modern poets such as Nāzik al-Malāʾika have deemed the poetic norms of the courtly tradition stifling and stale.12 If controversy

10 Michael A. Sells, “The Qasīdạ and the West: Self-Reflective Stereotype and Critical Encounter” Al-ʿArabiyya 20 (1987): 307–324. Note Krenkow’s unhappy assessment of the qasīdạ as a genre: “a very artificial composition; the same rhyme has to run through the whole of the verses, however long the poem may be. In addition the composition is bound by a metre which the poet has to guard most scrupulously through the whole course of the poem. The result is that we cannot expect much beautiful poetry; the description of the desert and its animals and terrors may have a certain charm at first, but when the same descriptions recur in endless poems expressed in the same manner, only with different words, the monotony becomes nauseous” (emphasis mine,EI , s.v.‚ Kasīdạ in Sells, “The Qasīdạ and the West,” 308). Tritton’s condemnation comes under another heading in the same general work: “Arab poetry is essentially atomic; a string of isolated statements which might be accumulated but could not be combined. Sustained narrative and speculation are both alien to it. It is descriptive but the description is a thumbnail sketch; is thoughtful but the result is aphoristic. The poet looks on the world through a microscope. Minute peculiarities of places and animals catch his attention and makes his poetry versified geology and anatomy; untranslatable and dull. Forceful speech is his aim and the result is—to Western minds—often grotesque or even repulsive EI( , s.v. Shiʿr in Sells, “The Qasīdạ and the West,” 308). 11 Shawqī Ḍayf, al-ʿAsṛ al-ʿAbbāsī al-Thānī, Tārīkh al-Adab al-ʿArabī, 4, 7th ed. (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1990) 278. 12 Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977), 1:10. early islam—monotheism or henotheism? 91 is a marker of importance, then perhaps we can count the court ode as important, but there is a critical need to questions of meaning drawn from the literary methods of wider humanities. The poetic tradition, in many ways, remains a source of inspiration even today. For example, Arabs still seek traditional lyrical images in naming their newborns. For girls, poetic names are common, such as Dāliya (hanging grape-vine), Rīm (white antelope), Samīra (nightly storyteller), Ẓabyun ( gazelle), Ghādah (young), Ghīdah (tender), Fadwā (ransom-offering), Najwā (confidant),Lamyā ʾ (red-lipped), Lamīs (delicate), Khulūd (immortality), Fātin (femme fatale), Nashwā (wine- reverie), and there are archaic mythic names found in odes, such ʿAblā, Suʿād, Salmā, Laylā, and Mayy. For boys, names from poetry include Ḥ usām (sharp sword), Khālid (immortal), Fādī (ransom-offerer), Samīr (nightly storyteller), Ṭāriq (visiting lover) and mythic names such as Qays and ʿAntar. Whether these choices are selected directly from poetry or not, it is probable that idyllic images from the poetic tradition have bled into modern productions, such as novels, cinema, soap operas, political rhetoric and public ceremony that people today witness and consume. This study employs specifically the panegyric ode (madīḥ): heroic poems in praise of patrons, sometimes caliphs, and often delivered live at Abbasid courts before an assembly of nobles. These odes valorized the virtue, might and lineage of patrons, who would sacrifice a hundred thousand dirhams or more (the cost of a small Abbasid home) to secure the honor. In subsequent generations, praise odes served as lyrical songs celebrating the memory of bygone heroes. Panegyric was in effect a form of supplication to a hero. Patrons were deified using the dense language of poetry, so as to serve as divine beings who respond to human supplication. Caliphs, in particular, sought to capitalize on such heroism by rewarding talented poets who promoted their fame and legacy. Praise poems, in promoting heroes, provided a persuasive means for fostering a cult in memory of the named hero. Declarations of praise, however, must be put into a larger context that expressed and perpetuated the divinity of the caliph. This article examines two other supporting practices of Abbasid power: palace architecture and images of bacchic leisure. It will be shown that the triad were tightly-knit and interdependent strategies for projecting the divine glory of the caliph. Such glory elevated the caliph above the great divide of monotheism, which separates God from creation. Moreover, court odes promoted the material presence of the caliph relative to the 92 samer m. ali physical absence of God, by the use of the title in panegyric, khalīfat allāh, the Agent of Allāh, or the Heir to Allāh, which presumes the absence of Allāh in everyday life. From the perspective of the caliphate, proximity to God in rank was not sufficient. Certainly the caliph drew authority and legitimacy from his superior, as all subordinates must, but his relationship to God also entailed a subtle struggle for preemi- nence. In praise poetry the caliph was not seldom portrayed as a “near deity,” one who was more responsive to human supplication than God on High (allāhu taʿālā), the supreme “remote deity.”

Three Practices of Sacral Power

Panegyric The central strategy for manufacturing sacred power at the Abbasid court was panegyric ceremony. Within the privileged space of palaces in Baghdad and Samarra, poets would arrive usually invited or on a day of free audience, in order to woo the good graces of the king, and if the king so desired, the chamberlain would allow the poet access to the inner sanctum of the royal audience hall.13 The poet would deliver his glorious praise of the king before an assembly of high-profile guests who stood in strict formation according to their status.14 If the dec- lamation of praise was a pre-scheduled event with a prestigious poet, full ceremony accompanied the panegyric celebration.15 The panegyric

13 Muḥammad b. al-ʿImrānī, al-Inbāʾ fī Tārīkh al-Khulafāʾ (Leiden: Netherlands Institute [Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī], 1973), 91; Abū ʿUthmān al-Jāḥiz,̣ Kitāb al-Tāj fī Akhlāq al-Mulūk, ed. Aḥmad Zakī (Cairo: al-Matḅ ʿa al-Amīriyya, 1914), 51–52. 14 E.g. Ibn al-ʿImrānī, al-Inbāʾ, 128, also 69, 76, 77, 79. 15 Ibn al-ʿImrānī reported a ceremony wherein al-Mutawakkil announced the succession of his three sons. I quote it in full to give an impression of how occasional poetry elicits public witness, and consequently, whenever this story is retold new audiences are made “witnesses” to a message: And he declared covenants of allegiance for his three sons and rendered them heirs apparent. It was an auspicious day. It was Monday, the first of Muḥarram, 236. They are: Muḥammad, and his honorific is al-Muntasiṛ [Made Victorious by God]; al-Zubayr, his honorific is al-Muʿtazz [Made Mighty by God]; and Ibrāhīm, his honorific is al-Muʾayyad [Supported by God]. He set up a banquet the length of four farsakhs [3 miles each] in the garden that he planted in Samarra, known as the Jaʿfarī which was seven farsakhs in length stretching along the banks of the Tigris and one farsakh wide. It was said that it was filled on that day with life. Statues of ambergris and camphor were set in the hands of people as well early islam—monotheism or henotheism? 93 might occur on a special day marking a joyful occasion for the patron such as his wedding, the birth or circumcision of a son, victory at battle, return from Hajj, a holiday, recovery from illness or the building of a new palace.16 The aim very often was to send a communiqué to the world beyond the palace, especially to rivals and foes. A cadenced poem was infectious because it could easily be memorized and recited. Al-Buḥturī, for example, boasted of his poetry to his patron Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Qummī, The recitation of [this] broadcast verse will repeat uninterrupted. For its charm, even rivals chant it.17

as diffusers for musk—in sum all aromatic goods and substances. They were transported from storage in baskets and sacks. Everyone who drank a bowl of wine got some of it, smelled it, tucked it in his sleeves or handed it over to his servant in waiting. Whenever a rod of scent burned out, it was replaced. It was so from sunrise to sunset. Mutawakkil himself sat upon a throne of gold set with gems weighing a thousand mann [2 rothls each]. The heirs apparent stood before him, wearing jeweled crowns. Meanwhile, people were—according to their ranks [tabaqātihiṃ ]—sitting and standing. Sunrise glimmered upon the golden vessels at each place setting, as well as upon belts, swords and shields adorned with gold—it was well-nigh blinding. On that day, Ibrāhīm b. al-ʿAbbās al-Sūlī,̣ the Prince of Men, rose and recited among the ranks of men The lions of Islam—mixed with ‘Victory,’ ‘Might’ and ‘Support’—have manifested A Hashimite Caliph and three heirs apparent who safeguard the caliphate Their forefathers have safeguarded them, and they safeguard their forefathers. Thus they proceed with the noblest of souls and grandfathers (Ibn al-ʿImrānī, al-Inbāʾ, 117). For more on ceremony in various Islamic courts and the indispensable function of the ode in validating power, see S. Stetkevych, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gen- der, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2002); as well as Paula Saunders, Ritual, Politics, and the City in Fatimid Cairo (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1994). See Adam Mez,The Renaissance of Islam (Beirut: United Publishers, 1973). In Arabic, a valuable resource for early Abbasid court etiquette and ceremony is a work attributed to al-Jāḥiz,̣ Kitāb al-Tāj. 16 Men of authority simulated in their own lives the tokens of authority exhibited by the king. We see the king’s subordinates enjoying “kingly” privileges in courts of their own that vary not in kind, but in degree. For example, when al-Mutawakkil’s vizier, al-Fatḥ b. Khāqān, survived a drowning accident while fishing, he held audience, as his superior would, to receive well-wishers and visitors. Al-Buḥturī visited him in person and delivered a poem to declaim his relief. See Abū Bakr b. Yaḥyā Al-Sūlī,̣ Akhbār al-Buḥturī wa Dhayl al-Akhbār ed. Sāliḥ ̣ al-Ashtar (Damascus: Al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿArabī, 1958), 96–97. 17 Ibid., 153. 94 samer m. ali

In response to heroic poems, the patron would confirm the poet’s words with deeds. He would bestow on the poet a material gift of some sort, be it money, domestic servants, horses, jewels, scented oils, or perhaps even fiefs. Nothing was secretive about the exchange of praise for goods; the praise ceremony was intended to be public.18 Audiences of nobles at the court would witness and later recount the offer of praise, artfully presented, and behold the patron’s magnificent gifts on the poet. It was precisely at such events that the poet venerated the king to the level of “near deity” with his supplications. He would do so by projecting two images of awesome power: the first presented the king as a cosmic hero who fights the vagaries of Fate, and the second portrayed him as a generous deity. In both images, the king exhibited the capacity to command life and death. In doing so, he provoked the visceral reactions that sustained sanctity, that is, fear (hayba) of punishment and hope (raghba) of benefit. In the ritual of panegyric, the poet offered his words of devotion and the king reciprocated with bounty. The king had to confirm the poet’s words with his generous deed. This exchange of devotion for generosity persisted as a ritual in the iconography of Islamic kingship. In panegyric poetry, the king as cosmic hero must wage perpetual war not on infidels per se, but on evil, personified by Fate, Death, Days, Nights, or Time (al-dahr, al-manāyā, al-ayyām, al-layālī, al-zamān). In all cases, this force was hostile to innocent human life. Sperl observes that Fate was “master over life and death, generation and decay, but its rule is chaotic and arbitrary, amoral and hostile to human society”.19 In contrast, the king was the protagonist who protected human victims from the ravages of Fate. Sperl says, “the Caliph’s rule . . . is not arbitrary

18 Al-Jāḥiz,̣ for example, advises the king to bestow all honors to some extent publicly: “It is king’s etiquette that he bestow robes of honor on whomever brings him happiness privately, or publicly affirming his sovereignty. If the happiness is in and of himself, then he must claim the privilege of bestowing robes of honors on him within the comfort of his palace, in the presence of his nobles and entourage. If it affirms his sovereignty, then he must claim the privilege of honoring him in the presence of the masses, in order thus to spread his reputation and enhance storytelling-ability (al-uḥdūtha). Consequently, it will revitalize goodwill, and he will instill the desire to affirm his sovereignty and shore up its foundations” (al-Jāḥiz,̣ Kitāb al-Tāj, 70). 19 Sperl, “Islamic Kingship,” 32. On occasion court panegyric presents Fate as rightful, such as Abū Nuwās, Dīwān Abī Nuwās (Beirut: Dār Sādir,̣ 1962), 171—which is consistent with his professional reputation for overturning convention, confirming the overwhelming trope of Fate as humanity’s antagonist. early islam—monotheism or henotheism? 95 but in accordance with virtue, justice and divine will. His accession to the throne marks the defeat of fate”.20 In brief, a caliph was obliged to protect humanity from the malice of Fate, which, in poetic idiom, included the intimate pains and disappointments of life. Fate inevitably struck with an iron will causing humans to suffer lost love, poverty, old age, the death of loved ones, and of course, the unkindness of lovers. Consider for example how Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 809) received the supplication of Isḥāq al-Mawsilị̄ and channeled his disaffection. Isḥāq performed this heroic poem specifically in honor of al-Rashīd. Before an audience at the court, Isḥāq complained of his lover: I said to a lover who has a habit of not giving, “save it,” For that is something that goes nowhere...... My gifts have been those of a generous man giving graciously. Yet, I have received—as you well know—little! But how, after all, can I fear poverty or be deprived of riches, when the wisdom of the Commander of the Faithful is well? “How indeed?” cried the king, flattered to be seen as the savoir and ordered a reward of 100,000 dirhams.21 The poet’s plea could not fall on deaf ears, the Caliph had to respond to mortal needs. The ravages of Fate were constant, of course, and thus subjects had little recourse but to place their hope in the patron. Consider, for example, the supplication of Muḥammad b. Sāliḥ al-ʿAlawī, in the Book of Songs [Kitāb al-Aghānī]. Note particularly his rhapsodic diction addressed to the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (d. 861): You have kindled the bonds of the caliphate with Guidance. When you ascended to it, you calmed the eyes of the sleepless...... I have supplicated you (daʿawtuka) and you answered ( fa-stajabta) my supplications—death was but one hand-span away from me. You pulled me out from the bottom of the trough of demise safely, and you did not give credence to the claims of my foes. You released prisoners [ . . .] and you set the limbs of a man who had no bone-setter. You took pity on your blood-kin by which you aspire to the proximity of the Sovereign the Mighty.

20 Sperl, “Islamic Kingship,” 32. 21 A standard amount; Ibn al-ʿImrānī, al-Inbāʾ, 77. 96 samer m. ali

I seek refuge in the grace of your forgiveness (aʿūdhu bi-faḍli ʿafwika) if I’m caused to show wants at your door, the wants of a back-broken man.22 It was primarily through the expressive power of praise poetry that the king’s soteriological role was witnessed. Through him only, the poet and society was saved from destruction and redeemed. With this paradigm, the brute facts of submission were clothed in familial sentiments, such as loyalty, devotion and love. ʿAlī b. al-Jahm in his famed Rūsāfiyyạ ode told al-Mutawakkil: Faith alone is unacceptable without devotion to you. Does God accept ritual prayer without ritual purity?23 Indeed, both Sperl and Al-Azmeh have noted that loyalty to the caliph was a prerequisite of salvation in the eyes of the court.24 The second image of authority ritually depicted in praise poetry was that of caliphal generosity (karam). Generosity rewarded allegiance by responding to deprivation and was thus vital proof of legitimacy. When foiled by terror, generosity projected charisma, without which power could neither be legitimate nor self-perpetuating. Generosity was thus the material and ideological basis for the patron-client relationship, and thus virtually all relationships of dependency in society. As one adage warned, “Stinginess is the cancer of politics”.25 He who risked economizing with his subordinates risked rebellion and disgrace.26 One maxim even mocked the would-be miser: “The most stingy man with his money is the most spendthrift with his honor”.27

22 Al-Is fahānī,̣ Kitāb al-Aghānī, ed. al-Najdī Nāsif̣ (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Misriyyạ al-ʿĀmma lil-Kitāb, 1992–1993), 16: 370–371. 23 ʿ Alī b. al-Jahm, Dīwān, ed. Khalīl Mardam (Beirut: Dār Sādir,̣ 1996), no. 80, line 48. 24 Sperl “Islamic Kingship,” 32; Azmeh, Muslim Kingship, 58. 25 Ms. Esc. 724, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio, San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Madrid, Spain, f. 28b. 26 Cf. Abdellah Hammoudi, Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroc- can Authoritarianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 53, in reference to Moroccan kingship, where he says bluntly, “The monarch is definitely hated when he does not distribute favors.” Interestingly, he observes that Islamic law and ethics (the instrument of the Ulema) sought to curtail court spending on gifts, thereby threatening the sultan’s popularity (ibid.). Having interests and perspectives at variance with the court, the Ulema in Morocco realize that without gifts to his servants, “He loses their loyalty and takes the chance that his troops will choose to serve a more generous prince” (ibid.). 27 Ms. Esc. 724, f. 28b. early islam—monotheism or henotheism? 97

Though the importance of generosity was a matter of consensus in Arab Islamic culture, some authors have actually conceived of it as the mother of all virtues. A man who was generous, the reasoning went, knew how to give and sacrifice. All virtues of character were gifts to society, therefore a man who was generous was by nature virtuous. Ibn Hudhayl related, “Generosity (karam) is a term applied to every sort of virtue. It is a word that includes the ideas of forgiveness and munificence. Every trait that is good, every innate quality that is kind . . . falls under the name generosity.”28 Of course, the author played up the double meaning of karam, which can mean either generosity or nobility. In fact, well into the modern era, generosity was a means of acquiring and maintaining nobility, according to an ethic of noblesse oblige. To be generous to subordinates was to play the role of deity, to take on characteristics of divine perfection.29 Having and dispensing wealth was godly according to proverb: “Wealth is better than poverty, because wealth is a trait of Allāh while poverty is a trait of creations.”30 Another author advised in unequivocal terms, “If you give, you will be happy . . . Allāh is generous, so you be generous.”31 Statements such as these rarefied the act of giving, and lent credibility to anagogic interpretations of authority and its techniques. Generosity was a proud self- conscious ethos in Arab Islamic culture, which underpinned relations of inequality. Men of authority (altruistic or not) could countenance sacrificing wealth because it vested them with the worthwhile returns of legitimate power. In effect, it cultivated a mutually convenient dependency. The lord could expect absolute loyalty and obedience in return for his favors. As one unnamed poet advised, “Be generous to people, you will enslave their hearts. O how often people are enslaved by generosity.”32 Of course, a slave in Islamic culture was conceived as the perfect devotee or worshipper (ʿabd ), and thus emotion and service overlap.

28 ʿ Alī b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Hudhayl, ʿAyn al-Adab wal-Siyāsa wa Zayn al-Ḥ asab wal-Riyāsa, 2nd ed. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, n.d.), 105. 29 The oft-quoted Hadith stated, “Embody the characteristics of Allāh”takhallaqū ( bi-khuluq illāh). See, among others, Muḥyī al-Dīn b. al-ʿArabī, al-Wasāyạ̄ (Baghdad: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 1990), 9. 30 Ms. Esc. 724, f. 93a. 31 Al-Muḥassin b. ʿAlī b. al-Tanūkhī, al-Mustajād min Fiʿlāt al-Ajwād, ed. Yūsuf al-Bustānī (Cairo: Dār al-ʿArab, 1985), 201. 32 Ms. Esc. 724, f. 70b, margins. 98 samer m. ali

Just as there was honor in giving, there was honor in service. A particularly vivid example of such honor was a heroic poem by al-Mutanabbī saluting a state bureaucrat (kātib), Abū ʿAlī Hārūn b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. The poem sacralizes the patron’s generosity by setting him in proximity to Allāh, rendering service to him like worship. In return, the patron receives blessings from above, and channels them like merciful rain to those below. Of course, the poet raises expectations in this public document that Abū ʿAlī will shower him with gifts as well! The patron is portrayed as a mythic figure. The needy turn to him and he rejects no one, despite critics who disapprove of his softness.33 He stands ready to give his soul for whomever should ask (l. 30). He needs little himself; only what the poor leave untaken does he consider a “gift” (l. 31). But of course, largesse in Arab Islamic society is not simply altruism, it confirms noblesse. The stature that al-Mutanabbī ascribes to his patron, however, is not human, but sacral. Al-Mutanabbī continues, The dead are no greater than the living unless the living lose you (l. 32) He may be mortal, but his death would rob the living of his cosmic greatness. The poet declares “your name is without equal (ghayr mushārakin)” (l. 35). This seems to elevate him rhetorically above the realm of human conduct. It allows him to contend in greatness with Allāh, of whom the pious say, “he has no equal (lā sharīka lahu).” In fact, his greatness transcends the possibility of human praise, “all praise remains beneath you” (l. 36). Praise however is not without cause (or condition). The patron has received credit for munificence to the needy and helpless. Yet his aspirations leave him discontent with his achievements: You have been generous to the farthest extreme and pulled back as if almost “stinting” . . . O tears of joy! You have started precedents that are known by your initiative. And you have outstripped them leaving your precedents disowned (l. 37–38). Generosity was the economic and emotional fluid that worked the hydraulics of power and charisma. Here al-Mutanabbī certainly

33 Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Mutanabbī, Dīwān al Mutanabbī bi-Sharḥ al-ʿUkbarī, 4 vols. (Cairo: Musṭ afạ̄ al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1971), no. 3, line 29. early islam—monotheism or henotheism? 99 describes an ideal patron, but that ideal pitches a myth that is as difficult to forgo as it is to dislike. One’s patron stood as one’s “protector” in a sense. A rapport of need and trust meant that one had an intercessor against the horrors of a competitive world: rivals, poverty and helpless- ness. A rapport of material need did not preclude an emotional bond or the rhetoric of loyalty that it entailed. Expressing the ideal of absolute adoration, al-Mutanabbī proclaims, If you are praised you gain not height in rank. The grateful must simply thank the deity (l. 41). Throughout the praise section of the poem, there are philological and visual intimations to Abū ʿAlī’s divine status, but in last line (l. 41) it becomes undeniable. It is as if he is saying with you, as with Allāh, you do not need praise, yet your servants feel obligated to offer it in gratitude. Consistent with the man’s divine status, al-Mutanabbī accentuates his self-sufficiency, and his merit over nature: If you receive rain, it’s not for dearth: The Fertile Crescent is drenched, and the sea too enjoys rain. Clouds cannot mimic your bounty. They’re in a fever of envy, their droplets are mere sweat (l. 42–43). These images of glory were self-perpetuating. A reputation for generosity circulated provokes more occasions to demonstrate nobility. It is doubtless that the emerging scholarly profession took offense at these demonstrations of authority. We can see one voice inter-activating and dialoging with another in a heated cultural discourse. Heroic poems were blatant bids to steal praise and glory from the one “true” God, Allāh. God’s displeasure was made known through circulated Hadith: “Nothing changes Fate except supplication [to God].”34 That is to say, supplication to others is futile. In some cases, believers were warned that God becomes jealous when others are praised and glorified. Hadiths admonish: “There is no one more jealous than Allāh” and “No one likes praise (madḥ) more than Allāh.”35 With monotheism, as with monogamy, the beloved should have no rivals or competitors. We can also note that while the caliph drew authority from his superior, Allāh, there was nevertheless a bit of oedipal rivalry. The caliph was charged to fight the ravages of Fate, which bring death,

34 Ibn Hudhayl, ʿAyn al-Adab, 33. 35 Ibid. 100 samer m. ali destruction and sorrow to innocent human life. But in pious formulations, nothing befalls mankind but the will of God. God causes Fate. It seems that God took offense to the caliph’s fight against Fate, which is ultimately God’s will. A well-circulated Hadith said that God says, “The sons of Adam insult me. They say, ‘O how disappointing is Fate.’ But I am Fate! I turn its night and day.”36 From a pious perspective, the believer should trust in Allāh’s goodwill (ḥusn al-zanṇ billāh), however mysterious it may seem. To ordinary people in this formative period of Islam, it may have been far too much to ask them to trust an unseen, remote deity, who was seemingly capricious, instead of a living, near deity, who terrified and nourished society. We should bear in mind that pious monotheistic Islam was still a fairly new idea in the second century, while paganism, hero worship and henotheistic tolerance were much older and better established. The standard Qurʾanic argument against worshiping hand- made idols (they can neither benefit you nor harm you) could hardly have been effective in the case of hero worship. The hero could destroy, build, deprive and nourish with cosmic grandeur. Moreover, heroic poetry and palace anecdotes could serve as a means of broadcasting news of his actions. Concerning Hellenistic kingship, McEwan notes, “one might believe vaguely in the power and glory of the Olympians, but he could see and feel the glory and the power of the Diadochs. The local god fed nobody in time of famine, but the king could and did.”37 The emerging idea of Allāh on High (Allāhu taʿālā) was at a disadvantage in the Abbasid period. The caliph could hear supplications and immediately respond, whereas the emerging deity, Allāh, in early Abbasid society was considered mysterious, distant and unresponsive. In later centuries, scholars responded by dedicating thought and energy into improving God’s public image by promoting his reputation for mercy and generosity.

36 Al-Aḥādīth al-Qudsiyya. 8th ed., 2 vols. (Cairo: al-Majlis al-Aʿlā lil-Shuʾūn al-Islāmiyya, 1991), 32. Another colorful version of the Hadith asserts that Allāh says, “The sons of Adam insult me! They curse Fate, yet I am Fate. I will it. I turn night and day” (al-Aḥādīth al-Qudsiyya, 31). 37 Calvin McEwan, The Oriental Origin of Hellenistic Kingship. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization, no. 13. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1934), 26. early islam—monotheism or henotheism? 101

Palace Architecture: Entrapment by Design Architecture was also used to promote the cult of the king and disparage the pious establishment. In fact, palaces were designed and orientated to force greater abeyance to the caliph, in contrast to Allāh. Baghdad for instance was designed in the eighth century as a quadrilateral city with an uncommon radial shape. In an important article, Beckwith lucidly demonstrates the cultural influence of the Barmakids of Central Asia, who were Buddhist converts to Islam, helping to explain Baghdad’s novel shape.38 Beckwith illustrates that Khālid Ibn Barmak was echoing the design of a world-famous Buddhist monastery of Nawbahār at Balkh.39 At the center of the monastery was a shrine, and likewise at the center of the imperial city of Baghdad was the Abbasid palace and mosque.40 For Beckwith, the center of Baghdad was made sacred by its affinity with the shrine at the center of the Nawbahār monastery. It must be noted, however, that despite the sacredness of both the palace and mosque, Baghdad’s designers marked the priority of the palace with sheer size. The palace was four times as large as the mosque.41 In effect, the caliph’s sacred space dwarfed that of Allāh on high.42 These symbols lent credence to the suspicion that the king’s heroic claims dominated those of pious religion. Moreover, the orientation of the palace confirmed this. According to Herzfeld’s reconstruction, the palace was orientated with its axis of precession pointing north-east.43 The orientation of the palace was in perfect opposition to the direction of the Kaaba, the qiblah, south-west. The palace and the mosque abut one another, and thus to face the king was to give one’s back to the Kaaba. Consequently, bowing or prostrating would desecrate a direction which was in itself holy to pious Muslims because of its significance for ritual prayer and burial.44

38 Christopher Beckwith, “The Plan of the City of Peace: Central Asian Iranian Fac- tors in the Early ʿAbbāsid Design” Acta Orientalia 38 (1984): 143–164. 39 Ibid., 147–149. 40 Ibid., 147. 41 Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1994), 395, 574. 42 Ibid., 393. 43 Ibid., 395, 574. 44 Moreover, Hillenbrand notes, that the palace had four cruciform pavilions (sing. īwān) that were perfectly aligned with the gates of the city, stretching out indefinitely in four directions midway between the cardinal points (Ibid., 393). The round shape and four axes combined the cosmological concepts of heaven’s disc and the image 102 samer m. ali

These strategies were reused in constructing the gargantuan palaces of Samarra in the ninth century. The common theme of Samarran palaces was their colossal size. Jawsaq al-Khāqānī (836?) was the lead example, covering an area of 432 acres, an expanse that took researchers some twenty years to excavate.45 Planners designed the palace campus with enormous spaces open to the sky, areas for wide gardens and parks, open air fountains, canals, game preserves and polo-grounds. It should be noted, though, that the mythic proportions of the buildings were meant to reflect the mythic stature of the builder. The edifice confirmed the caliph’s possession of the world. Story had it that al-Mutawakkil asked Abū al-ʿAynāʾ—famous for his quick wit and sharp tongue—“What do you think of my residence here?” He replied, “I see people building homes in the world, but you build the world in your home.”46 Indeed, the size of the Samarran palace ordered a cosmos which al-Mutawakkil possessed and controlled like bodily appendages. This Samarran notion would later crystallize in the legacy of Jaʿfar al-Mutawakkil. When he completed a new palace city just north of Samarra, he identified it with his persona. He named it al-Jaʿfariyya and called its chief palace al-Jaʿfarī. He also sought to be buried there.47 According to Yaʿqūbī, he held audience and said, “Now I know that I am indeed a king, for I have built myself a city and live in it.”48 In a double overlay of metaphor, the palace was simultaneously an extension of the caliph’s person and a reduction of the cosmos.49

of the four quarters of the earth (El-Hibri, Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography, 1). No doubt, the middle of the circle was a domed throne chamber where the lines of the four axes converged (ibid., 395). In sum, this arrangement placed the caliph in opposition to the Kaaba, at the center of heaven’s disc and at the precise intersection of earth’s four quarters. 45 Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture, 399. 46 Al-Shābushtī, Kitāb al-Diyārāt, 9. 47 Ah ̣mad b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Rabbih, Al-ʿIqd al-Farīd, ed. by Muḥammad al-ʿAryān, Cairo: Dār al-Fikr, 5: 344. 48 In K. A. C. Creswell, A Short Account of Early Muslim Architecture. rev. and supp. James W. Allan (Cairo: American Univ. Press, 1989), 367. 49 The rhetoric of divinity was effected not just in size, but in design. Samarran architects contrasted vast open courtyards (very bright) with tightly-knit warrens (very dim), which enabled them to sufficiently awe visitors by physically and psychologically shocking them with the extremes of space-usage and lighting and, in the summer, temperature. Since in every palace the main axis was also processional, one might associate the discomfort of traversing long sun-baked courtyards with the rites of passage reflected in many ceremonial poems. In Bulkuwāra the processional corridor was some 575 meters (Ibid., 575), that of Istabulāṭ 1,000 meters (ibid.), and certainly the earliest and longest was Jawsaq al-Khāqānī with a processional corridor 1,400 meters, early islam—monotheism or henotheism? 103

The feeling of awe was also elicited with architectural symbolism. In Bulkuwāra (849–860?), Istabulāṭ (849–860?) and Jawsaq al-Khāqānī, the processional corridors lead to the seat of honor in the throne room, which was crowned with a small dome.50 Bulkuwāra and Istabulāṭ also compounded the symbolism by extending the throne chamber into four pavilions (sing. īwān) in the shape of a cruciform.51 Doubtless, the cruciform intersected above the throne. Qasṛ al-Jisṣ ̣ (877–882?) was in fact built as a square with the cruciform design dividing the entire structure into four quadrants, but intersecting at the center above the throne chamber. The cruciform, in addition to the circle and the ark, is one of the most common building designs for Near Eastern churches, and its conventional association with salvation reaffirms a belief in the caliph as a heroic savoir. His soteriological powers though stand in dialogic tension with other vehicles of salvation that were emerging in early Islam, namely divine law, prophetic example and direct union with God, promoted by pious and ascetic thinkers. As in Baghdad, the orientation of palaces with respect to the qiblah- direction was sometimes used to create an opposition with pious religion: At least three Samarran palaces, Qasṛ al-Jisṣ ̣ (877–82), Istabulāt,̣ and Qasṛ al-ʿĀshiq (877–82), were strategically orientated with the processional axis pointing north-east, again designing a conflict of interest for anyone with pious inclinations. Facing the king invariably meant giving one’s back to the Kaaba, and even worse if prostration is involved. It should be noted that giving the backside to the caliph constituted a gross breach of etiquette in the Abbasid court, and one can safely assume that it was an equal breach for the Kaaba and God on High. I view these symbolic strategies as interacting and competing voices in a cultural discourse. This view allows us to identify the extreme pressures placed on courtiers to surrender their loyalty to the caliph at the expense of God on High. No man can live under two masters, and here caliphs can be seen using architecture to entrap their courtiers.52

or nearly one mile. See Ibid., Creswell, Short Account of Early Muslim Architecture, 337; Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair, Islamic Arts, Art and Ideas Series (London: Phaidon), 52. The parataxis of staggering archways and vast courtyards offered the visitor a dramatic walk, sure to put his smallness in perspective as he pondered the majesty of his host and entered the proper frame of mind—that is, fear of his wrath and hope for his beneficence. 50 One should note that the ninth-century dome was an architectural marvel used solely in palaces. Later it would be appropriated for mosque architecture. 51 See plans in Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture, 575–577. 52 cf. Al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship, 123. 104 samer m. ali

Bacchic Leisure The caliph also served a mystogogic role as patron of carnal pleasures. He can be seen in contrast to God on High, who exercises authority over human desire by allowing a narrower range of pleasures and regulating them. In the privileged space of the palace, the caliph made bacchic pleasures customary at the court in defiance of pious stricture. The behavioral topoi of the court included the revelry of wine, wine- songs, ephebes ( ghilmān) and the love of the ubiquitous libation bearer (sāqī), and the love and music of minstrels (qiyān). Whereas Muslim piety and asceticism censured such practices, the king allowed it. Indeed, he sponsored it and guided the initiation of his closest courtiers, so they too would know its mystic joys. These themes reminiscent of the Dionysian cult provide vivid examples of how the early Islamic culture inherited Hellenistic ideas and practices from antiquity. Within the aesthetics adopted at the Abbasid court, these Dionysian themes were mythopoeic. The volume of speech on bacchanalia in poetry, anecdotes and treatises makes it certain that the courtly elite wanted to be famed for adopting an aesthetic that was evocative of the Dionysian cult.53 There was ample reason for their want. S. Stetkevych demonstrates that wine, as well as minstrels and libation bearers—along with their implicit sexual roles—were part of an old iconography that conferred immortality and evoked gardens of bliss.54 Homoerotic poetry also enabled the poet to challenge the patron’s veil of etiquette and the rigidity of decorum, forming a unique bond that permitted public satire.55 Moreover, Meisami notes that homoeroticism was the ideal

53 For a discussion of homoeroticism in the Persian ghazal, see Julie Scott Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987), ch. 6. Note Kai Kāʾūs b. Iskandar’s advice in the Qābūs Nāma on the advantages and disadvantages of women and ephebes. Without reference to any opprobrium he advised that rulers should not limit themselves, and that each kind of love had a most appropriate season of the year, A Mirror for Princes: the Qābūs Nāma, trans. Reuben Levy (New York: Dutton, 1951), 77–78. See also homo- and heteroerotic poetry ostensibly from the perspective of the Caliph al-Maʾmūn, Dīwān al-Amīn wal-Maʾmūn, ed. Wāḍiḥ al-Samaḍ (Lebanon: Dār Sādir,̣ 1998), 54, 57, 62, 66, 70, 71, 77, 79, 81, and 111–112. See also al-Shābushtī, Kitāb al-Diyārāt. 54 S. Stetkevych, “Intoxication and Immortality,” in Critical Pilgrimages: The Arabic Literary Tradition, edited by F. Malti-Douglas, special issue of Literature East and West 25:40–41. 55 J. W. Wright, “Masculine Allusion and the Structure of Satire in Early ʿAbbāsid Poetry,” in Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature, ed. by J. W. Wright and Everett K. Rowson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997) 1–23 2, 16. early islam—monotheism or henotheism? 105 of Persian love poetry ( ghazal ), and was seen as a means to courtly self-perfection. In idolizing the lover, the ghazal conditioned the audience to become the perfect lover, “and in so doing to transcend love’s human limitations.”56 Architecture complemented the aesthetics of leisure. Abbasid caliphs promoted both with the aim of giving the impression of divine power in a celestial realm. Hillenbrand acutely notes: “Immured within their colossal palaces . . . their lifestyle expressed in the most extreme form the ancient Near Eastern concept of the king as god, even though such a belief was utterly incompatible with [pious] Islam.”57 If taken in tandem, architectural design and symbolism, as well as bacchic leisure helped mythologize the court and its characters. In heroic poems and palace anecdotes, the king is no less than a mythic being. He is the patron of bacchic pleasures, initiating newcomers to a privileged realm and experience. There is a compounded relationship between this triad—pleasure, knowledge and power—according to Foucault.58 The patron initiated his disciple into a mysterious pleasurable ritual which yielded new knowledge. Both the pleasure and the knowledge come about by virtue of a patronage relationship, which in effect redoubles the power of the patron.59 According to Foucault, post-Victorian sexuality in the West was constrained to ensure confession. But by contrast, in many Islamic societies, carnal knowledge was to remain ideally a secret between confidants. To divulge the secret was to spoil the experience and the patronage relationship. There was a need, he argues, to hold the secret in “the greatest reserve, since . . . it would lose its effectiveness and its virtue by being divulged.”60 The king, as patron of bacchic rites,

56 Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry, 251–254. Robert Graves illustrates in his study of Greek myth that many of the superhuman patriarchs of Hellenic myth were famed for their catamites. Zeus loved his libation bearer, Ganymedes, Apollo Hyacyn- this, Laius Chrysippus, and so on, Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, comb. ed. (New York: Penguin, 1955), 116–117. The libation bearer possesses immortality and confers it, S. Stetkevych, “Intoxication and Immortality,” 29–48. He also provided the hope of homosexual romance that would “liberate” patriarchy from its sexual dependence on women (Graves, Greek Myths, 117). Like Greek philosophy itself, sexuality was a sport to be played without need of women (ibid.). 57 Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture, 395. 58 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. by Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books 1990), 57. 59 cf. al-Shābushtī, Kitāb al-Diyārāt. 60 Foucault, History of Sexuality, 57. 106 samer m. ali facilitated the attainment of carnal pleasure and mystical knowledge. In exchange for his patronage, he received power in the form of fame and divine glory.

Conclusion

Lest we think that the tension between monotheism and the paganism preoccupies only the court, I am reminded of a post-conversion ode by Kaʿb Ibn Zuhayr that illustrates the tension among the early audiences and performers of the ode. After a terrifying ordeal through the desert, the poet finds himself in a quandary at nightfall, caught between fearful passage and his need for sleep and rest. He decides to be pious to the tradition of Muḥammad and put trust not in his camel mares’ nature, but in the One the Sleepless: I halted my camel foal and I took her eyes as guard, and I asked myself which of the two paths should I follow? Should I give trust to her to watch over me in fear of incident dangerous to humans or should I have Faith. I swear by the Compassionate, and none other, by the right palm of a guiltless man, never to be broken, that I, knowing, don my humble rags surrendering to the dignity of He Who Gives and Takes Creatures’ Lives. He is the keeper of the sleeper at night, mortal as he is, be he chagrined to sleep, drowsy...... So when the stars finally set at dawn, I rode on; Arcturus and Spica Virginis had vanished.61 Tradition holds that this initial ending elicited a well-received alternate ending that adds a glorious veneration of the camel mare, virtually subverting the initial version, and the idea of trusting God, or at least fundamentally dividing the poet’s trust between heavenly and earthly resources. This article sought to interpret the tension between the pious and the profane in early Islam, and my hope is to bring this matter into sharp

61 Two of the brightest stars in the night sky: in folk astronomy, al-simāk al-rāmiḥ (Arcturus) is considered “armed” by surrounding stars, while the second, al-simāk al-aʿzal (Spica Virginis) is “alone” and “unarmed.” Kaʿb b. Zuhayr, Dīwān Kaʿb b. Zuhayr, commentary by Abū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan al-Sukkarī (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Misriyya,̣ al-Qism al-Adabī, 1995), 55–57. early islam—monotheism or henotheism? 107 relief. It would seem to me that these courtly sources indicate a period of hero worship. In the Abbasid era, kings were seemingly absolute authorities on earth vested with divine power and status. In courtly odes, subjects addressed kings like supplicants before a deity. Through palace architecture, kings expressed and perpetuated their divinity by the design and magnitude of their residences. The bacchic lifestyle of the palace evoked the myth of Dionysus as patron of earthy pleasures. From the perspective of the court, this imperial Islam was the only Islam. It would take centuries yet for pious and ascetic thinkers to respond and compete with formalized notions of law, madrasa-seminary learning and even mysticism. In time, pious ideals triumphed and endured in Islamic society, but court literature suggests that henotheistic ideals were promoted by the caliph in the early centuries of Islamic culture. It is interesting to note that the sources that promote the cult of the king remained in a sense fully Muslim. Court odes and palace anecdotes celebrated the sacral authority of great men, and the submission of followers to them, yet there remained something appealing about them to Muslims through the generations. One must bear in mind that these texts are not “reclaimed” for a revisionist enterprise. To the contrary, they have been actively selected and transmitted so that generations would know about their heroic ancestors. Their persistence attests to the fact that they have beaten the odds against transmission. Court odes, in particular, were considered the greatest cultural achievement of the Arabs. Despite the challenge they pose to exclusive monotheism, they were copied, memorized and recited for centuries after their debut. If Muslims themselves were able—have been able—to accept this “impious” tradition as a foil for understanding pious culture, a question remains why western scholars are reluctant.

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LITERARY HYBRIDIZATION IN THE ZAJAL: IBN QUZMĀN’S ZAJAL 88 THE VISIT OF SIR GOLD1

James T. Monroe

Introductory Remarks

The fertile imagination of the Ancients has left us a certain number of mythological creatures such as centaurs, satyrs, and sirens, which are, respectively, horse, goat, or fish from the waist down, and human from the waist up. To these one might add the Minotaur, who sports the head of a bull on the body of a man, or even that famous contemporary Mexican painting depicting the body of a deer bearing the head of Frida Kahlo.2 In all these examples, members of two incompatible species are hybridized so as to produce offspring that are neither fish nor fowl, ni chicha ni limonada, if one may be allowed to use a hybrid metaphor. The resultant combination is not a harmonious blending of two parents’ bodies, but rather, a grotesque juxtaposition of their individual body halves. In contrast, where other forms of hybridization are concerned, it is sometimes the case that one culture provides the form or structure, and another, the content or materials for the finished product. Consider, for example, the Mosque of Córdoba: Its structure is essentially that of a mosque, and yet many of the elements out of which it is built are borrowed from non-Islamic civilizations. Thus, its columns are Roman, its horseshoe arches are Visigothic, the alternating bands of stone and

1 It is a distinct pleasure to dedicate this study to Professor Jaroslav Stetkevych, whom I have known since my graduate school days, when he tutored me in Arabic; who, for better or for worse, inspired and encouraged me, in every possible way, to pursue this unusual but fascinating line of studies, and who has proved to be a loyal, lifelong friend as well as a most supportive colleague. I would also like to thank the anonymous reader for JAL whose illuminating comments and suggestions, graciously offered, were extremely helpful to me in reworking this article. 2 “The Little Deer,” 1946. See Hayden Herrera,Frida Kahlo: The Paintings (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), p. 189; Gannit Ankori, Imaging Her Selves: Frida Kahlo’s Poetics of Identity and Fragmentation (Westport, Connecticut: Green- wood Press, 2002), no. 75. 112 james t. monroe brick out of which those arches are built are Byzantine, its rows of superimposed arches were inspired by Roman aqueducts, while the mosaics decorating its miḥrāb were the gift of a Byzantine emperor to a Cordovan Caliph. And yet, despite the many foreign elements out of which this remarkable structure is built, it is unmistakably a mosque for, unlike the Arabs, the Romans, Byzantines, and Visigoths did not build mosques. In contrast to the mythological model provided by the Minotaur and his brethren, in the realm of architecture we are dealing with a phenomenon in which one culture introduces new structural principles, whereas another provides the local materials that are destined to be restructured in a new way.3 The same is true of literature and, in the case of the medieval Iberian Peninsula, I would like to examine one example that seems to exhibit this latter form of hybridization, namely the strophic genre of Arabic poetry known as zajal, in which a native, Romance poetic form served to house the content of the Arabic qasīdạ .

Th e Zajal and the Romance Tradition

In recent years, the study of the two Andalusī strophic forms of poetry known as muwaššaḥa and zajal has focused on four main questions: (1) Were these two forms originally of Eastern derivation, and introduced to Andalus by the Arabs after the conquest of A.D. 711, or were they native Ibero-Romance forms adopted by the Arabs in Andalus? (2) Which came first, chronologically speaking, thezajal or the muwaššaḥa? (3) Were the meters of these poems based on the stress-syllabic system used in popular Ibero-Romance poetry, or were

3 On the structure of the original Arabian mosque at Medina, see Jean Sauvaget, “The Mosque and the Palace,” Jonathan M. Bloom (ed.),Early Islamic Art and Archi- tecture (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2002), pp. 108–147, in Lawrence I. Conrad (ed.), The Formation of the Classical Islamic World, vol. 23. For this Arabian structure’s hybridization with local Iberian elements in the specific instance of the Mosque of Córdoba, see Jerrilynn D. Dodds, “The Great Mosque of Córdoba,” in Jerrilynn D. Dodds (ed.), Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), pp. 11–25. Andalus was hardly the only place where the Islamic Mosque imposed its distinctive organizational structure on local materials. The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, built on the site of a former church of Saint John the Baptist, made use of Byzantine mosaics and the square-based minaret typical of Christian churches in the region (see Finbarr Barry Flood, The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an Umayyad Visual Culture (Leiden and Boston: literary hybridization in the zajal 113 they based on the Ḫalīlian system used in Classical Arabic poetry? (4) Were these two genres composed for singing, or were they primarily intended for recitation?4 All four questions are closely interrelated and, depending on how each one of them is answered, the answer to the others will, of course, also be affected. Nonetheless, and viewed as a whole, these questions can provide us with some insights into the problem of origin and performance. In the case of the first question, namely whether the zajal and muwaššaḥa were of native or of Eastern origin, attempts have been made to derive the Andalusī strophic forms from the Classical Arabic strophic musammat,̣ but here we are faced with two major problems: (1) The individual lines of the strophic musammat ̣ never contain internal caesuras, while its matlaʿ or initial refrain5 normally contains four times (aaaa, bbba, ccca, etc.) rather than twice the number of lines normally found in the vuelta/simt ̣ of the zajal (AA, bbba, ccca, etc. [the structure of the muwaššaḥa is AA, bbbaa, cccaa, etc.]). (2) The musammat ̣ is a very rare form both in the East and in the West, of which hardly a dozen examples are known. It is, therefore, highly unlikely that a rare form composed in Classical Arabic, such as the strophic musammat,̣ could have given rise to an extremely popular genre of poetry. (3) The oldest musammat ̣ in Arabic (and it is not strophic) is from the early ninth century, and attributed to the Eastern poet Abū Nuwās

E. J. Brill, 2001), while the portico of the twelfth-century Maghak-i Attari Mosque in Bukhara contains elements typical of Zoroastrian fire-temples (see Edgar Knobloch, Monuments of Central Asia: A Guide to the Archaeology, Art and Architecture of Turke- stan [London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2001], p. 125). See too, “Masdjid,” E. I. 2, vol. 6 (1960), pp. 644–707. For hybridization as a cultural construct, see the remarks and useful bibliography in Charles Stewart, “Syncretism and its Synonyms: Reflections on Cultural Mixture,” Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism, vol. 29:3 (1999), pp. 40–62. I wish to thank my colleagues, Raymond K. Farrin, Ignacio Navarrete, Sarah Bowen Savant, and Harry S. Neale, for the above valuable references. 4 For a brief bibliography of discussions on these points, see Henk Heijkoop and Otto Zwartjes, Muwaššaḥ, Zajal, Kharja: Bibliography of Strophic Poetry and Music from al-Andalus and Their Influence in East and West (Leiden and Boston: E. J. Brill, 2004), p. 326, no. 2690. 5 If what is in fact the first strophe of the poem may be called a refrain, for which there is no evidence whatsoever, in contrast to the matlạ ʿ of the muwaššaḥa and zajal, which is unambiguously described as a refrain by medieval contemporaries, a fact that is borne out both by Arab musical practice, and by that of the zajal ’s putative Romance congeners. See Benjamin M. Liu and James T. Monroe, Ten Hispano-Arabic Songs in the Modern Oral Tradition: Music and Texts, University of California Publica- tions in Modern Philology, vol. 125 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press, 1989). 114 james t. monroe

(d. 200/815)6 whereas, as we shall see, a strophic, zajalesque poem that is certainly of the same age, and very possibly older, has survived in the Western tradition. Concerning the second point, namely which came first, the zajal or the muwaššaḥa, medieval sources inform us that the zajal was already in existence as early as ca. 319/931, although no individual is singled out as being the inventor of the genre.7 Since the zajal is couched in Colloquial rather than Classical Arabic, this circumstance would tend to suggest that the genre was originally popular and oral, and that it flourished among minstrels. In contrast, we are informed that the muwaššaḥa (which, with the exception of its Colloquial harja̮ is entirely in Classical Arabic), was invented by a poet at the court of the Cordo- van Amīr ʿAbdullāh (r. 275/888–300/912) around the end of the ninth or the beginning of the tenth centuries.8 That same source informs us that, in those cases where the poems had internal, blank, or unrhymed caesuras either in the vueltas/simtṣ or mudanzas/ġusṇ s, a series of later poets introduced the innovation of adding internal rhymes, first in the vueltas/simtṣ and then in the mudanzas/ġusṇ s. The earliest poems to have survived, however, are from the late tenth century, after these innovations had already been incorporated into the genre. Therefore, we have no examples of muwaššaḥas with internal blank caesuras. Such forms have, however, survived in the zajal, which did not experience the process of assimilating internal rhymes to such an extent as did the muwaššaḥa. This alone, would tend to suggest that the muwaššaḥa is a learned derivative of the zajal, and not the reverse.9 As far as the third, metrical question is concerned, the muwaššaḥa, being in Classical Arabic, exhibits regular quantitative patterns. These patterns, however, do not always coincide with those of the Classical Arabic Ḫalīlian system, and sometimes depart from them entirely.

6 See Gregor Schoeler, “Musammat,”̣ E. I. 2 (Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1993), vol. 8, pp. 660–662, whose general view of the problem is otherwise contrary to the one I have expressed above. 7 See James T. Monroe, “Which Came First, the Zajal or the Muwaššaḥa? Some Evidence for the Oral Origins of Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry,” Oral Tradition, vol. 4:1–2 (1989), pp. 38–64. 8 See James T. Monroe, “On Re-reading Ibn Bassám: ‘Lírica Rómanica’ After the Arab Conquest,” Actas del Congreso Romancero-Cancionero, UCLA (1984), ed. Enrique Rodríguez Cepeda and Samuel G. Armistead (Madrid: Porrúa, 1990), 2 vols., vol. 2, pp. 409–446. 9 See James T. Monroe, “Which Came First, the Zajal or the Muwaššaḥa? Some Evidence for the Oral Origins of Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry.” literary hybridization in the zajal 115

Indeed, they seem to have been superimposed on, and made to har- monize with, an underlying Ibero-Romance syllabic system.10 In the muwaššaḥa, as in medieval Spanish popular poetry, there are no lines longer than twelve syllables, and the only regular stress in each line falls on the accented syllable of its rhyme-word. In this sense, it would seem to be a hybrid system. In the case of the zajal, matters are even more complicated. Since the zajal is in Colloquial Andalusī Arabic, and that dialect lacked quantity,11 we might expect its metrical system to be purely syllabic. Instead, it appears to manipulate orthography so as to provide the illusion of long and short syllables12 and thus, of a regular quantitative meter when, in fact, all the syllables are linguistically and phonetically of equal duration. In the zajal, as in the muwaššaḥa, not to speak of popular Ibero-Romance poetry, the only regular stress falls on the accented syllable of the rhyme-word. Hence, the merely orthographic, quantitative system superimposed on a non-quantitative language seems to be an Arabic way of dignifying what is, in essence, a non-Arabic metrical system for, as in the case of the muwaššaḥa, and of medieval Spanish popular poetry, in the zajal too, there are no lines longer than twelve syllables. Here then, we seem to have a case of hybridization on the metrical level.13 On the fourth point, namely whether the Andalusī strophic poems were primarily songs, rather than poems intended for recitation, we have abundant evidence from the medieval as well as the modern period, that both muwaššaḥa and zajal were normally composed to be sung to previously existing melodies. In fact, in a tradition such as that of the medieval Arabs, in which musicians lacked a system of notation, melodies were transmitted orally, from teacher to student. Another way in which melodies could be transmitted, was by quoting, in the body

10 In a very recent and important article, it has been shown that Classical, mono- rhymed poems were also composed in Andalus with non-Ḫalīlian quantitative meters, and that there were even poems in Classsical Arabic with no discernibly regular quantitative patterns whatsoever. See Teresa Garulo, “Wa-huwa wazn lam yarid ʿan al-ʿarab. Métrica no jaliliana en al-Andalus,” Al-Qantarạ , vol. 26:1 (2005), pp. 263–267. 11 See Leonard Patrick Harvey, “The Arabic Dialect of Valencia in 1595,” Al-Andalus, vol. 36 (1971), pp. 81–115. 12 The Arabic script is of such a nature that one can immediately differentiate long from short vowels and syllables written in that script. 13 See James T. Monroe, “Elements of Romance Prosody in the Poetry of Ibn Quzmān,” Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics, vol 6, ed. Mushira Eid, et al., Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, vol. 115 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1994), pp. 63–87. 116 james t. monroe of the poem, an easily remembered line, or group of lines, usually the refrain, of an earlier song whose melody was well known. This is the technique used in the muwaššaḥa, in which the ḫarja, quoted from another poem, usually its initial refrain, and often that of a previously known zajal, had the function of alerting the singers to the melody to which the poem was intended to be sung.14 The muwaššaḥa is, therefore, primarily a case of musical contrafactura. This way of proceeding stands in sharp contrast to Classical Arabic poetry, in which poems were composed mainly for recitation, although there is no reason why they could not be set to music later. In sum, in the case of the muwaššaḥa and zajal, the melody came first, and the words were written for it, whereas in Classical Arabic poems, the words were composed first, for the purpose of recitation, and could either be set to music or not, at the discretion of musicians.15 Moreover, the very fact that muwaššaḥas often quoted refrains from earlier zajals as their harja̮ s, strongly suggests that the muwaššaḥa is based upon the zajal both metrically and musi- cally and, ultimately, that the latter genre antedated the former. It also goes without saying that, if a muwaššaḥa quotes a refrain from a zajal, as its ḫarja, in order to indicate the melody to which that muwaššaḥa should be sung, it follows that the quoted zajal must also have been sung, a fact confirmed by Ibn Quzmān, who specifically refers to the singing of his zajals.16 The features of the zajal and muwaššaḥa that I have just outlined are, it is only fair to admit, my own view of what is, in fact, a controversial subject. What is not at all controversial is the fact that the colloquial zajal coincides in form, if not in content, with the medieval rondeau, the virelai, the dansa, the cantiga, the villancico, the laude, and the ballata, all of which surface beginning around the thirteenth century, in Northern France, Provence, Galicia, Castile, and Italy respectively. Since the Arabic zajal is documented earlier, in the late eleventh century, while references to its existence go back as far as the early tenth,

14 See James T. Monroe, “Poetic Quotation in the Muwaššaḥa and its Implications,” La Corónica, vol. 12 (1984), pp. 230–250. The ḫarjas themselves, when in Romance, betray evidence of remarkable archaism in their usage of formulaic diction. See James T. Monroe, “Formulaic Diction and the Common Origins of Romance Lyric Tradi- tions,” Hispanic Review, vol. 43:4 (1975), pp. 341–350; Guillermo E. Hernández “Jarcha Antecedents in Latin Inscriptions,” Hispanic Review, vol. 57:2 (1989), pp. 189–202. 15 See James T. Monroe, “The Tune or the Words? (Singing Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry),” Al-Qantara, vol. 8:1–2 (1982), pp. 265–317. 16 See zajals 2:10, 10:1, 19:13, 37:7, 42:5, 54:8, 71:7, 74:7, 94:31, 182:5. literary hybridization in the zajal 117 the basic question arises as to whether it was the source of its putative European strophic congeners, or whether the reverse was the case.17 On this point, a text previously known to Celtic and Romance specialists,18 but that has, as yet, not been considered by Arabists, is that of a poem, in the zajal form, included in the Old Irish epic known as the Táin Bó Cúalnge (‘Cattle-Raid of Cooley’). It is a lament by a hero named Cuchulainn (‘The hound of Culann’), over the death of his close friend, the hero Ferdiad (‘The man [warrior, vīraḥ] of the pair’),19 According to Myles Dillon, the Táin “is a conflation of two recensions and dates probably from the ninth century. . . . it is believed that the story was committed to writing in the middle of the seventh century by a fili who was acquainted with the Latin learning of the monasteries and wished to record the native heroic tradition in a worthy form.”20 The poem goes as follows: 0 ‘Cluchi cách, gaíne cách Play was each, pleasure each, co roich Fer n˙Diad issin n-áth. Till Ferdiad faced the beach;

1 Inund foglaim fríth dúinn, One had been our student life, innund rograim ráth, One in strife of school our place, inund mummi máeth One our gentle teacher’s grace ras slainni sech cách Loved o’er all and each.

‘Cluchi cách, gaíne cách Play was each, pleasure each, go roich Fer Diad issin n-áth. Till Ferdiad faced the beach;

2 Inund aisti arúath dúinn, One had been our wonted ways, inund gasced gnáth. One the praise for feat of fields,

17 See James T. Monroe, “Ibn Quzmān on I ʿrāb: A ‘zéjel de juglaría’ in Arab Spain?” Hispanic Studies in Honor of Joseph H. Silverman, ed. Joseph V. Ricapito (Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1988), pp. 45–56; “On Re-reading Ibn Bassám: ‘Lírica Rómanica’ After the Arab Conquest.” 18 See Hednig Roolvink, “El origen céltico en la poesía rimada medieval, sobre todo en relación con el zéjel español,” Neophilologus, vol. 59 (1975), pp. 1–13; María Mor- rás, “¿Zéjeles o formas zejelescas? Observaciones para el estudio de un problema de historia literaria,” La Corónica, vol. 17 (1988), pp. 52–75. 19 This is the etymology given by Eric P. Hamp, “Varia VII,”Erin , vol. 33 (1982), p. 178. 20 Myles Dillon, Early Irish Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 3. For the following verse adaptation of the first five strophes, see George Sigerson, Bards of the Gael and Gall: Examples of the Poetic Literature of Erinn Done Into English After the Meters and Modes of the Gael, 3d ed. (Dublin: Talbot Press, and London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1925), pp. 119–120. In matters having to do with Old Irish poetry, I wish to thank my colleague, Professor Daniel F. Melia, for his expert and illuminating guidance. 118 james t. monroe

Scáthach tuc dá scíath Scatach gave two victor shields dam-sa is Fer Diad tráth Equal prize to each.

‘Cluchi cách, gaíne cách Play was each, pleasure each, go roich Fer Diad issin n-áth. Till Ferdiad faced the beach;

3 Inmain úatni óir Dear that pillar of pure gold ra f˙ urmius ar áth. Who fell cold beside the ford. A tarbga na túath Hosts of heroes felt his sword ba calma ná cách. First in battle’s breach.

‘Cluchi cách, gaíne cách Play was each, pleasure each, go roich Fer Diad issin n-áth. Till Ferdiad faced the beach;

4 In leóman lassamain lond, Lion fiery, fierce, and bright, in tond báeth borr immar Wave whose might no thing with bráth. stands, [ ...... Sweeping, with the shrinking sands, ...... ] Horror o’er the beach.

‘Cluchi cách, gaíne cách Play was each, pleasure each, go roich Fer Diad issin n-áth. Till Ferdiad faced the beach;

5 Indar lim-sa Fer dil Diad Loved Ferdiad, dear to me: is am díaid ra bíad go bráth. I shall dree his death for aye Indé ba métithir slíab, Yesterday a mountain he,— indiu ní f˙ uil de acht a scáth. But a Shade to-day.

6 ‘Trí díríme na Tána ———————————— darochratar dom láma, formna bó, fer 7 ech roda slaidius ar cech leth.

7 ‘Girbat línmara na slúaig ———————————— táncatar ón Chrúachain chrúaid, mó trín is lugu lethi ro marbus dom garbchluchi.

8 ‘Nocho tarla co cath cró, ———————————— níra alt Banba dá brú, níra chind de muir ná thír de maccaib ríg bud f˙ err clú.’21

21 The Old Irish text may be found in Cecile O’Rahilly (ed. and trans.), Táin Bó Cúalnge: From the Book of Leinster, Irish Texts Society, vol. 49 (Dublin: Dublin University Press, 1967), pp. 99–100, 234–235. Sigerson does not provide a rhymed literary hybridization in the zajal 119

The first four strophes of the poem exhibit a clear zajalesque structure, including an initial refrain, mudanzas/ġusṇ s with rhymes that differ from the refrain, and vueltas/simtṣ with rhymes that coincide with the latter, the only exception being that of the fourth strophe, which, due to a lacuna, lacks a vuelta/simt.̣ The last four strophes, in contrast, exhibit a different structure. If the poem is datable to the seventh century, then it is obviously earlier than the Arab conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, which took place in A.D. 711. If it is from the ninth, its date is still earlier than that of the earliest Arabic reference to the zajal in Andalus. Either way (and Dillon is not clear on this point) the existence of the Old Irish lament indicates that the zajal form was widespread in Western Europe at a date early enough to make it highly improbable that it was a genre imported from the Near East.22 Instead, it seems far more likely that it was a European form adopted by Arabic-speaking minstrels from their Romance-speaking colleagues at an early period,

verse-translation of the last three strophes (6–8), which I have, therefore, left untrans- lated, above. The more literal, prose translation, provided by O’Rahilly, does, in contrast, include a complete translation of the entire poem, as follows: ‘Game was all and sport was all until it came to my meeting with Fer Diad on the ford. The same instruction we had, the same power of guarantee (?). The same tender foster-mother we had whose name is beyond all others. ‘All was play and sport compared with my meeting with Fer Diad on the ford. The same nature we had, the same fearsomeness, the same weapons we used to wield. Scáthach once gave two shields to me and to Fer Diad. ‘All was play and sport compared with my meeting with Fer Diad on the ford. Beloved was he, the golden pillar, whom I laid low on the ford. O strong one of the tribes, you were more valiant than all others. ‘All was play and sport compared with my meeting with Fer Diad on the ford, the furious, fiery lion, the wave, wild and swelling, like the day of doom. ‘All was play and sport compared with my meeting with Fer Diad at the ford. I thought that beloved Fer Diad would live after me for ever. Yesterday he was huge as a mountain, today only his shadow remains. ‘Three uncountable bands there fell by my hand on the Foray. The finest men, the finest cattle and horses I slaughtered on very side. ‘Though numerous the army which came from stout Crúachu, yet I slew more than a third of them and less than half with the rough plying of my weapons. ‘There has not come into the center of battle, nor has Banba ever nurtured, nor has there travelled over land or sea any king’s son more famous than Fer Diad.’ 22 For other Old Irish examples of strophic poetry exhibiting a vuelta/simt,̣ see Kuno Meyer, A Primer of Irish Metrics (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co., 1909), p. 25, parag. 72; Gerard Murphy, Early Irish Metrics (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co., 1961), pp. 70–73. 120 james t. monroe when Ibero-Romance was still the predominant language spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. All roads, therefore, seem to lead, if not to Rome itself, at very least, to the westernmost outposts of its former Empire, while this circumstance strongly supports the view that the zajal, and its daughter, the muwaššaḥa, were Arabic poetic forms borrowed from the Romance tradition, and inspired by popular Ibero-Romance songs, of which the only surviving fragments are the Romance ḫarjas. As far as the content of these strophic forms is concerned, however, that is another matter, for a significant body of these poems exhibits a remarkable form of hybridization in which the Romance, zajalesque structure is used to house the content of the Arabic panegyric ode or qasīdạ . Let us then, turn to one such zajal, by that prince of the genre, Abū Bakr ibn Quzmān, for further illumination.

Ibn Quzmān’s Zajal 88: The Visit of Sir Gold

Not much is known about the life of Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Quzmān. One of the few reliable points of reference is that he flourished during the Almoravid period (483/1091–535/1145), which he outlived, having been born somewhere between the years 470/1078 and 472/1080, in Córdoba, in which city he died in 555/1160. Such meager biographical data stand in stark contrast to the extraordinary value of his poetry, which provides a unique perspective on the colloquial Andalusī zajal, as it was cultivated by an author already recognized in medieval times as the supreme master of his genre. I would like to take advantage of the present occasion to offer a reading of Ibn Quzmān’sZajal 88:

0 jā-nī zāyir waqaf li-bāb ad-dār A visitor came and stood before my door. laytu yā baʿad yā ʾaḫī qad zār Oh, brother, if only he’d done so before! 1 qāmat al-ḫādim an tarà man kān My slave-girl went out to see who he was. qāl la-hā qūl luh jī yarā-k insān He said: “Tell your master a man has come to see him; anta mašġūl bi-hammu A man who’s been on his mind for a ʾal-yawm zamān long time; kān bi-wudda-k tarā-h bi-layl A man he wishes to see both night and wa- nahār day.” 2 jāt ilayya qālat lī ʾaḫruj turād The girl returned, and said: “Come out; you’re wanted.” literary hybridization in the zajal 121

qultu qul luh lassan-hu waqti I replied: “Tell him: ‘This is no time for ʾiʿād visits. sīdī mašġūl kamā talạ ʿ My master is busy, for he’s gone upstairs la-l-ruqād to sleep’. yantazarnị̄ wa-ʾillā hū Let him either wait for me, or do as he ba-l-ḫiyār pleases.” 3 alla yaʿlam fuḍūlī hū la-l-bāb God knows I’ve got some busybody at the door, bi-ḫurāfah yuqūl-hā lī d̠āb d̠āb No doubt with some urgent nonsense to tell me. fa-nukūn māʿuh in daḫal f ī He’ll make me suffer if he comes inside, ʿad̠āb aw yawaqqaf-nī t̠amma Or else, he’ll detain me outside, at his la-l-palatāṛ 23 pleasure. 4 w-anā mašġūl wa-las nirīd I’m busy, and don’t wish to go out, naḫruj w-iḫtif āʾī min ar-rajul yasmuj Yet it would be rude to hide from the man, wa-min al-ʿār ʿalayya ʾan nanfuj And shameful for me to put on the dog, fa-tuqūl luh ʾilà qarīyatu sāṛ By having the girl say: “He’s gone to his country estate.” 5 fa-samaʿtu-h wa-hū yakarrar I heard him repeat the word “Amazing!” ʿajab t̠umma qāl baʿdi mā nqabaḍ Then he declared, after becoming wa-ġaḍab resentful and angry: ayya 24 qul luh ʾinsān yuqāl luh “Hey, tell him I’m a man called Sir Gold,” d̠ahab t ummạ ʾašyā yanfaʿ bi-hā Followed by matters it would be advisable l-iḫtisāṛ to abbreviate. 6 anā ʾay kunt samaʿtu hād̠ā As soon as I heard these words, l-kalām qultu ḥaq hū ʾaw taẓ ʿa hī f à I said: “Can this be true, or is it a vision in l-manām my dreams?” w-anā jālis wat̠abtu wat̠bah Though seated, I took a flying leap forward, lamām kayyalū f ī-hā buʿdi tisʿ aṣ̌bār Which was found to measure nine spans long. 7 ilà wastạ d-duwayra lam I didn’t stop till I reached the middle of nastadīr my little house: t irtụ lā šakk aw kunt qarīb No doubt about it, I flew, or was close to an natīṛ flying.

23 Spanish paladar (‘palate’), from Vulgar Latin palatare. 24 Spanish ea (‘hey’) from Old Spanish eya, Latin ēia. 122 james t. monroe

h ̣asba-k annī ʿat̠artu ʿinda l-bīr You need only know that I tripped on the well, wa-wat̠abtu-h wa-lam narā-h And jumped over it, without even seeing makkār 25 it! 8 adḫul aqrub wa-marḥaban “Come in! Draw near! Welcome! Sit w-artabaʿ down! w-anā ʿilja-k wa-ʿilj ʿād I’m your servant! Indeed, I’m your wa-rubaʿ servant plus one quarter! faʿal allah bi-d̠ā l-ḫadam May God curse this slave-girl! wa-sanạ ʿ las tarà wāḥidah min-hum Not a single one of them has any shame!” aššan-hu ʿār 9 yā ḥisāb nālā-h qul lī ḫādim I demanded an explanation: “Tell me, saw wretched slave-girl, ʾay huruba-k aḫruj ka-d̠ā Where are you fleeing? Come out as you la-l-ḍaw are, into the light! saḫat ̣allah ʿalà banī qawqaw May God be angry with the people of Gao!26 wa-laʿan-hum w-ablà qināwah May He curse them, and destroy all bi-nār Ghanaians by fire!27

25 Old Spanish maguer (‘although, despite’), from Greek makárie (‘blessed’). The word originally meant ‘God willing’, a meaning it still retains in Italian magari. 26 Kawkaw or Qawqaw was the Arabic name for the Western Sudanese kingdom of Gao. See Nehemia Levtzion and Jay Spaulding, eds, Medieval West Africa: Views From Arab Scholars and Merchants (Princeton: Marcus Wiener, 2003), p. 1; Nehemia Levtzion “The Early States of the Western Sudan to 1500,” inThe History of West Africa, ed. J. F. A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), pp. 114–151, at p. 136. During the Almoravid period, there was an active trans-Saharan trade, controlled by that dynasty, and involving southbound salt being exchanged for northbound gold and slaves. Levtzion points out that “Gold was the most important staple in this trade, and until the discovery of America, the Sudan was the principal source of gold both for the Muslim world and for Europe” (“The Early States of the Western Sudan to 1500,” p. 141). He adds “After gold, slaves were the next most important export of the Sudan to North Africa, and since the fifteenth century also to the Portuguese” (ibid., p. 144). Finally, he states that “Royal steles discovered near Gao in 1939 . . . are dated between 1100 and 1256, and some of these are carved on marble, the work of an Andalusian sculptor. This suggests some contact between Muslim kings of Gao and Spain” (ibid., p. 136). For more on Gao, see Robin Law, “Horses, Firearms, and Political Power in Pre-Colonial West Africa,” Past and Present, vol. 72 (1976), pp. 112–132, n. 11 and following. 27 According to Nehemia Levtzion and Jay Spaulding, Medieval West Africa, p. 23, the Arab author al-Zuhrī, (about whom nothing is known, but who traveled to Andalus in 531/1137 and again in 548/1154), “refers to the land of black people not by the Arab term bilād al-sudān, but by the corresponding Berber term for black people, Janāwa; other Arab writers also use variations of this term, such as Ganāwa, Gināwa or Kināwa occasionally.” It is a special pleasure to thank the Africanist, Professor J. Cameron Monroe, for his expert guidance in helping me to understand and contextualize the above references in Ibn Quzmān’s Zajal 88. literary hybridization in the zajal 123

10 lam nuqul lak las qatṭ ạ māʿī Did I not specifically tell you that I was šuġal not busy? aftaḥ al-bāb wa-kulli man jā Open the door, and let in all those who daḫal arrive! w-anā narḍà bi-mit̠li hād̠ā Am I to put up with such behavior on l-ʿamal your part? taḥta d̠ā kulluh anta qalbi To top it all off, you have the mind of a ḥimār donkey!” 11 ʿutnụ dūna-k taḥnat̠ qat ̣ I won’t go on; you’ll be spared all details. f à-t-tafsīḷ aš taḥīyatī w-aš salāman tawīḷ What greetings! What lengthy salutations! wa-raʾayt min surūr wa-min You would have seen, of joy and respect, tabjīl wa-min aš ḥal wa-min kif at And of “How-do-you-do-s” and “How- qintāṛ are-you-s,” a quintal. 12 wa-min ajlas wa-min matà As well as “Sit down.” “When did you kān mujī-k arrive?” wa-min allah yaʿlam Along with “God knows how dear you are maḥabbatī f ī-k to me.” wa-min innī masrūr wa-fāriḥ And “I’m delighted and overjoyed by bī-k you.” wa-min aš-šukr wa-t̠-t̠anā Plus a heap of thanks and praises. fašqār 28 13 wa-nirīd-ak wa-māʿi f ī-k mā “I love you and, through you, I get what I nirīd29 want: tabnī ʾad-dūr wa-taštarī l-ʿabīd You build houses and purchase slaves, wa-taqarrab f ī sāʿa kulli baʿīd And make available, at once, what is unobtainable, wa-tahayyī li-man tirīd aḫbār While making matters attainable to whomsoever you wish. 14 w-anta sīdī kamā tarà You’re my lord, as you know, and an wa-faḫam eminence; tusūq ar-ramki wa-l-baqar You provide mares, cattle, and sheep; wa-l-ġanam wa-tusūq ḫubzi la-l-ʿašā You provide me with bread for dinner, as wa-laḥam well as meat, wa-tizid-nī ʾid̠ā ʾaradt at̠mār Adding fruit, whenever you so wish.

28 Spanish fascal (‘heap of wheat-sheaves’), from Vulgar Latin fascale, a derivative of Latin fascis (‘bundle’). 29 Nirīd here appears to mean both ‘I love’ and ‘I want’, just as does Spanish querer. Does the Spanish word represent a loan translation from Colloquial Andalusī Arabic, of which there are many in Spanish? 124 james t. monroe

15 atta ʿindī nazāha w-at hū riyāḍ You are my delight and my flowerbeds; wa-ḥabīb las yujad bi-lā A beloved unheard of, who never rejects ʾiʿtirāḍ me, bi-dalīl anna qalbī las yabyaḍ In proof of which my heart never rejoices, illā ḥattà narā-k anā taḥmar Until I have seen you blush!30 16 wa-ʾidā lam narā-k nukūn When I don’t see you, I am of two aspects: šayyayn manḥūs uččuh musawwad My face shows distress, and my cheeks al-ḫaddayn darken. las yuqāl lī ʾilà ayn wa-lā jīt No one asks me where I’m going or min ayn whence I’ve come; wa-lā yusmaʿ lī qawl wa-lā My words go unheeded; my advice goes nustašār unsought. 17 wa-tarānī f ī baytī ʾid̠ najlas As I sit in my house, you will find las f ī ḥifzị̄ min as-suwar ġayr That I only remember the sūra of ʿabas,31 ʿabas wa-tajīnī l-ʿišā wa-natkaddas And when night falls, I squeeze f à r-rukaykan bi-ḥāl walad Into a small corner like Ibn ʿAmmār.32 ʿammār

30 There is an untranslatable pun in the last two lines of this strophe. In Arabic, the heart is literally said to “whiten” when it rejoices, whereas the “blushing” or “redden- ing” of Sir Gold is a reference to the gleaming of that metal. Therefore, by using motifs borrowed from love poetry (the modest, blushing lady, and the lover overjoyed by her presence) the poet is conveying his extreme delight at the sight of money. 31 This is a reference to Qurʾān, 80 (“He Frowned”). According to tradition, while the Prophet was attempting to convert some disbelieving notables in Mecca, a blind Muslim approached him in the hope of learning from him, but in his eagerness to convert the disbelievers, the Prophet frowned at the Muslim in order to dismiss him, for which the Prophet is reproached by God. There follows a condemnation of man’s ingratitude. See M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, trans, The Qur’an: A New Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 409–410. Ibn Quzmān is thus blasphemously comparing the state of depression he feels when he is rejected by Sir Gold, to the experience the blind Muslim must have undergone when he was rejected by the Prophet’s frown. 32 Ibn ʿAmmār (422/1031–476/1083) was a poet of humble birth whose talent was noticed and appreciated by al-Muʿtaḍid of Seville (r. 433/1042–461/1069). The latter became his patron and introduced his newfound panegyrist to his son, the future poet- king al-Muʿtamid (431/1040–487/1095). The two poets became inseparable friends and, were we to take one satirical poem by Ibn ʿAmmār at face value, they were even lovers. Eventually, after al-Muʿtamid succeeded to his father’s throne, that poem about the new king, written in his friend’s handwriting, reached al-Muʿtamid. The two quarreled, and the monarch first imprisoned, and then killed his former friend by repeatedly striking him with an axe. See A. R. Nykl, Hispano-Arabic Poetry and its Relations with the Old Provençal Troubadours (Baltimore: J. H. Furst, 1946), pp. 154–163. Ibn Quzmān is, therefore, comparing his situation to the state of depression Ibn ʿAmmār must have experienced while in prison, awaiting his death. literary hybridization in the zajal 125

18 wa-taʿtarīnī raqda wa-n-nās I become sleepy when people are julūs socializing, ʿalà janbī niqaʿ bi-ḥāl qaydūs And fall on my side like a water-wheel bucket, w-aḫir al-laylah yabruk And by night’s end al-Kābūs33 has parked al-kābūs himself wa-l-farazdaq ʿalayya sabʿa On top of me seven times, along with mirār al-Farazdaq.”34 19 wa-f ī d̠ā kullu qatṭ ạ maʿ man Amid all this, I asked Sir Gold: “With jīt whom did you come? kif daḫalt at-ṭ arīq̣ wa-kif How did you begin your trip? How did ḫallayt you end it? yumkin as-sāʿah anna māʿī Is it now possible for you to spend the tabīt night with me? ʿasà taḥbasa-k ʿindī al-aqdār May the vicissitudes of Fortune keep you with me!” 20 qāl lī asmaʿ baʿat̠-nī lak insān He replied: “Listen, I was sent to you by a man ʿatab ad-dahri f īk wa-d̠amma Who reproaches and blames Fate on your z-zamān behalf. wa-rabat-nị̄ wa-qāl lī mur He tied me up in a purse, saying: ‘Go to li-fulān So-And-So,

33 Al-Kābūs is an “[Incubus, or nightmare;] what comes upon a man (or rather upon a sleeper . . .) in the night . . . preventing his moving while it lasts . . .” Edward William Lane, An Arabic English Lexicon (London: Williams and Norgate, 1885), vol. 1, part 7, p. 2588, col. b. See too, the discussion in W. J. Prendergast (trans.), The Maqámát of Badí ʿ al-Zamán al-Hamadhání (London and Dublin: Curzon Press, 1973), p. 165, n. 3, where watạ̄ l-kābūs is rendered as “oppression of the nightmare.” See too, E. García Gómez, Todo Ben Quzmān (Madrid: Gredos, 1972), 3 vols., vol. 1, p. 457, n. 12, who thinks that it is an incubus producing nocturnal emissions in persons who are forced into involuntary chastity. One is tempted to wonder whether the Arabic term al-kābūs is in any way etymologically related to the Latin incubus which it resembles phonetically. The root k-b-s, from which al-kābūs is derived, further means ‘to exert pressure, press, oppress, squeeze’, and even ‘inivit una vice feminam’ (Lane, loc. cit. col. a), of which the latter is a major activity of the Roman incubus. In turn, this circumstance leads one to wonder whether the Spanish and Portuguese terms for ‘nightmare’ (pesadilla and pesadelo respectively, which are both diminutives of a nominalized participial form pesada, -o [‘heavy’] derived from the intransitive verb pesar [‘to be heavy, weighty’, etc.]) could be loan translations of the Arabic al-kābūs. For the latter suggestion, it is a pleasure to thank my colleague Professor Samuel G. Armistead. 34 Al-Farazdaq means, literally, “the lump of dough,” and was the name of a famous Umayyad poet, on whom, see E. I. 2, vol. 2 (1983), pp. 788–789. According to García Gómez’s conjecture (Todo Ben Quzmān, loc. cit.), here it may stand for another, as yet unidentified, incubus. For more on jinnī who produce bad dreams, see Edward William Westermarck, Ritual and Belief in Morocco (New Hyde Park, New York: University Books, 1968), 2. vols; vol. 1, pp. 270, 293, 360; vol. 2, p. 302. 126 james t. monroe

w-ajrī f ī-mā yirīd ʿalà l-iḫtiyār And act on his behalf, according to his wishes’. 21 fa-qasṣ adta-ḳ kamā tarà Hence, I made my way to you, as you see, bi-l-jarī on the double, wa-ʾanā nadrī min-ka mā Knowing what I know about you. nadrī f-aḥmad allah wa-ʾaškur Therefore, praise God, and thank az-zuhrī al-Zuhrī35 wa-bi-ḥaqq an yurāʿa d̠ā For his eminence is truly deserving of l-miqdār respect.” 22 fa-ʿamalt allad̠ī daʿānī ʾilayh Hence, I did as he required of me: wa-jamaʿt at̠-t̠anā wa-zidtu I gathered praise and added to it. ʿalayh t ummạ qām ḫātirị̄ ʿalà qad- Then my mind rose to its feet, amayh wa-basatṭ al-maʿānī bast ̣ And I displayed my conceits like a bride’s aš-šuwār trousseau. 23 w-aš ʿasà ʾan nuqūl aw aš Yet what could I say, or desire to say, that natmạ ʿ would satisfy you? madḥatī zīd suq mā tirīd awsaʿ Increase my praise, add what you will, expand upon it, fa-t̠anāʾī wa-ḥamdī ʾīd̠ yujmaʿ Yet my laud and encomium, when gathered together lammā yuʿtạ̀ las yabluġ And presented, will not reach one tenth of al-miʿšār what you deserve. 24 lā yuqās an-nadà f à aḥaddi Generosity is only compared with you, siwā-k wa-lā sāḥ ̣ib ʿulā bi-mit̠li ʿulā-k Yet no man’s glory is comparable to yours. f īk maḥāsin atʿallaqat You have virtues that cling to Pisces, bi-s-simāk alsun aṣ̌-ṣ̌ukri ʿan t̠anā-hā That the tongues of gratitude are too short qisāṛ to praise. 25 w-anta lafz ̣ aṣ̌-šaraf wa-ʾat You are the very signifier of nobility, as maʿnā-h well as its signified; w-allad ̠ī qayyad al-warà The very one whose gift attaches men to jadwā-h him;

35 This is a certain Ibn al-Qurašī al-Zuhrī, an as yet unidentified patron mentioned by Ibn Quzmān in the prologue to his Dīwān, and to whom the poet dedicated other zajals. See F. Corriente, El cancionero hispanoárabe de Aban Quzmán de Córdoba (m. 555/1160): “Isābaṭ al-ag˙rāḍ f ī d̠ikr al-aʿrāḍ” (Cairo: Majlis al-Aʿlà li-l-T̠aqāfa, 1995), p. 20. literary hybridization in the zajal 127

wat ̠abat f ī jawāniḥī maġnā-h Your usefulness has plunged into my heart, mawqiʿ at-ṭ allị f ī ʿuyūn As dew descends into the corolla of a an-nawār flower. 26 anā kin-nasʾal allah an yubqī-k Let me ask God to preserve you, wa-yaṣ̌arraf ummat To ennoble Muḥammad’s community muḥammad bī-k through you, wa-yurī-k ġāyat al-ʾamal f ī To realize your fondest hopes through banī-k your offspring, wa-yaʿammara-k atwaḷ And to let you live the longest of lives. al-aʿmār 27 wa-bi-majda-k tihabb al-arbaʿ Bearing your fame, may the four winds riyāḥ36 blow, mā maṣ̌at al-qadam wa-tāṛ As long as feet walk, wings fly, al-jināḥ wa-tawārà az-ẓ alāṃ wa-mā rā And darkness is hidden, so that all dawn s-ṣ abāḥ ̣ can see g ̇urrat aṣ̌-ṣ̌amsi f ī jabīn Is the blaze of the sun on the forehead of an-nahār.37 the day.

The surface structure of Zajal 88 may be summarized as follows: The poet is sitting at home, when his black, African slave-girl38 emerges to

36 In Arabic, one would have to say al-riyāḥ al-arbaʿ (lit. ‘the winds the four’). Our text contains a syntactic construction normal to all the Romance languages. See for example, Spanish los cuatro vientos (lit. ‘the four winds’). Is this expression another loan translation, this time from Romance into Andalusī Arabic? It should be added that loan translations, in which the linguistic form derives from one language, whereas the meaning is acquired from another, are themselves a type of hybridization at the micro-level of language. For example, English has two distinct terms to indicate a person who is either ‘wise’ or ‘learned’, as do French (sage and savant) and Italian (savio and sapiente). In contrast, Spanish uses the same word (sabio) to designate both attributes, as does Portuguese (sábio). Thus, Alfonso X el Sabio, often mistranslated into English as ‘the Wise’ should actually be rendered as ‘the Learned’. This is so because, in this instance, both Spanish and Portuguese are reproducing the meaning of the Arabic word ḥakīm, which means both ‘wise’ and ‘learned’. Thus, a Spanish and Portuguese word of Latin derivation (sapiens) has acquired a new meaning and function derived from Arabic. In this type of hybridization, therefore, the linguistic form is Romance, whereas the meaning is Arabic. 37 I have followed the Arabic text of the poem as edited by Federico Corriente, in El cancionero hispanoárabe de Aban Quzmán de Córdoba (m. 555/1160): “Isābaṭ al-ag˙rāḍ f ī d̠ikr al-aʿrāḍ,” pp. 274–281. I would like to thank Professors Clarissa Burt, Mustapha Kamal, and Noha M. Radwan, who went over my English translation of Zajal 88, and offered valuable suggestions for its improvement. 38 From Zajal 19:4, we learn that her name was Zād al-Māl. E. García Gómez cites another slave-girl, this time an Egyptian, with the same name (Todo Ben Quzmān, vol. 1, p. 102, n. 2). In the course of his visit to Ẓafār (a settlement on the coast of the 128 james t. monroe see who is knocking at the door. The unidentified visitor informs the slave-girl that he is one for whom the poet constantly longs, for which reason she should fetch him at once. When she returns to inform the poet that a visitor wishes to see him, the poet instructs the slave to inform the visitor that he, the poet, has gone upstairs to sleep, and is, therefore, unavailable, on the assumption that the visitor is some busybody with urgent but importunate nonsense about which he wishes to inform the poet. This reaction implies that Ibn Quzmān is not asleep, but is, instead making excuses. As he further ruminates over his situation, he concludes that it would be shameful for him to boast to the visitor knocking on his door, about his own material prosperity, by instructing the slave to tell the man at the door that he, the poet, is not at home because he has gone to his country estate (implying that he has no country estate and is, in reality, poor). This suggests that the poet is a liar and, therefore, an unreliable narrator. It also suggests that he does not wish to appear too wealthy, just in case there is money to be had from begging. Upon hearing the poet’s message from the lips of the slave-girl, the visitor, who will not take “no” for an answer, becomes angry and tells her to inform her master that his own name is Sir Gold. When the poet overhears this reply, he undergoes a sudden and dramatic change of heart: From a seated position (further evidence that he was not in bed

Indian ocean, today in the Southern Region of the Sultanate of Oman [see E. I. 2, vol. 11 (2002), pp. 380–381]), Ibn Batṭ ūṭ ạ (703/1304–770/1377), a native of Tangier, has the following interesting comment to make: “It is amazing how closely the inhabitants of that city resemble those of the Maghrib in their customs. I stayed in the home of the preacher of the main mosque, whose name was ʿĪsà ibn ʿAlī, a man of high rank endowed with a generous soul. He had slave-girls bearing names like those used in the Maghrib. One of them was called Buḫayta [‘Little Fortunate One’], and another, Zād al-Māl [‘May Wealth Increase’]. I have never heard names such as these anywhere else. The majority of the inhabitants of ̣afārZ keep their heads uncovered, wearing no turbans, while a reed prayer-mat hangs in every house, on which the master of the house prays, as is the custom among the inhabitants of the Maghrib. Furthermore, the inhabitants of Ẓafār also eat millet. All these similarities support the tradition according to which the Sanhāja,̣ as well as other [Berber] tribes from the Maghrib descend from the Ḥ imyarites of Yemen.” See The Travels of Ibn Batṭ ūṭ ạ (Beirut: Dār Sādir,̣ 1964), p. 261; Ibn Batṭ ūṭ a,̣ A través del islam, Spanish trans. by Serafín Fanjul and Federico Arbós (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1981), p. 353. The tradition according to which the Berbers descend from Yemenite Arabs is, of course, false. It was concocted to lend legitimacy to the rule of certain Berber dynasties. It is more likely that the similarity between Yemenites and Maghribites in customs, manners, and names, observed by Ibn Batṭ ūṭ a,̣ is the result of the decisive and prominent role played by Yemenites in the conquest of the Maghrib and Andalus. literary hybridization in the zajal 129 sleeping) he takes a nine-span flying leap forward, without so much as stopping until he reaches the middle of the house. This would be the courtyard, which, in Mediterranean dwellings, usually has a well at its center. In his utter enthusiasm for meeting Sir Gold, the poet informs us that he tripped and then jumped over the well without even seeing it. There follow a series of effusive exclamations in welcome of Sir Gold, in which the poet bids him to enter his home and extends his hospitality to him. These are interspersed with passages in which he upbraids the slave-girl, demands an explanation for her negligent behavior, and reminds her, for the benefit of Sir Gold, that he was not busy and had specifically ordered her to allow all those who might show up to enter. Since this statement is clearly false, it once again demonstrates that the poet is not only a liar, but also a corrupt, venal, and mercenary one at that. In the very center of the poem, (strophes 13–15) the poet expresses his love for Sir Gold, and enumerates the many material commodities the latter provides him. This passage is, therefore, a parody of thenasīb or amatory section of the Classical Arabic panegyric. The poet then proceeds to describe his condition whenever his beloved is absent: He is in distress, he is ignored, he either remains at home in a state of depression or, when he is in attendance at a social gathering, he collapses in a state of misery and, in his sleep, becomes the victim of two nightmare-inducing incubi named al-Kābūs and al- Farazdaq. After this passage, the poet continues to welcome Sir Gold, and to make polite and concerned enquiries about the latter’s journey. In a manner that is surrealistic avant la lettre, Sir Gold replies that he has been tied up inside a purse and sent to the poet by a man who is deeply concerned over the latter’s indigence. This man is declared by Sir Gold to be a certain Ibn al-Qurašī al-Zuhrī, an as yet unidentified patron mentioned by Ibn Quzmān in the prologue to his Dīwān.39 The poet is advised to thank this generous patron, which he proceeds to do, while at the same time indicating that no words can express the praise that al-Zuhrī deserves. After asking God to grant his patron the longest of lives, the poet ends his encomium by expressing the hope that the patron’s fame will last as long as night is followed by day, i.e., as long as this world lasts.

39 See n. 35, above. 130 james t. monroe

It should come as no surprise that the themes found in “Zajal 88,” like those in many other poems by Ibn Quzmān, are arranged in a chiastic pattern (ring composition) that is designed to reveal an underlying, deeper message.40 Let us, then, comment upon the ring structure of this

40 For ring composition as a universal literary technique, see Mary Douglas, Thinking in Circles: An Essay on Ring Composition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). That distinguished anthropologist states: “Ring composition is found all over the world, not just in a few places stemming from the Middle East, so it is a worldwide method of writing. It is a construction of parallelisms that must open a theme, develop it, and round it off by bringing the conclusion back to the beginning. It sounds simple, but, paradoxically, ring composition is extremely difficult for Westerners to recognize. To me this is mysterious. Apparently, when Western scholars perceive the texts to be muddled and class the authors as simpletons, it is because they do not recognize the unfamiliar method of construction” (ibid., p. X). Although Professor Douglas does not include Arabic literature in her study, the last sentence of the above quotation from it, accurately reflects much of what has been misunderstood about Arabic poetry by several generations of Western scholars. Let me take this opportunity to thank Professor Bridget Connelly, not only for kindly alerting me to the recent appearance of the above valuable publication, but also for generously providing me with a copy of it. For individual Quzmānī zajals previously analyzed by me, in which ring composition has been identified, see (1) “Prolegomena to the Study of Ibn Quzmān: The Poet As Jongleur,” in Samuel G. Armistead, Diego Catalán, and Antonio Sánchez Romeralo, eds, El Romancero hoy: historia, comparatismo, bibliografía crítica (Madrid: Gredos, 1979), pp. 78–128 (On Zajal 12); (2) “Prolegómenos al estudio de Ibn Quzmān: el poeta como bufón,” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, vol. 34 (1985–1986), pp. 769–799 (On Zajal 137); (3) “Wanton Poets and Would-be Paleographers (Prolegomena to Ibn Quzmān’s Zajal No. 10),” La Corónica, vol. 16 (1987), pp. 1–42; (4) “Salmà, el toro abigarrado, la doncella medrosa, Kaʿb al-Aḥbār y el conocimiento del árabe de don Juan Manuel: prolegómenos al Zéjel Núm. 148 de Ibn Quzmān,” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, vol. 36 (1988), pp. 853–878; (5) “The Underside of Arabic Panegyric: Ibn Quzmān’s (Unfinished?) Zajal No. 84,” Al-Qantarạ , vol. 17 (1996), pp. 79–115; (6) “The Striptease That Was Blamed on Abū Bakr’s Naughty Son: Was Father Being Shamed, or Was the Poet Having Fun? (Ibn Quzmān’s Zajal No. 133),” in J. W. Wright Jr. and Everett K. Rowson, eds, Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 94–139; (7) “The Decline of Courtly Patronage and the Appearance of New Genres in Arabic Literature: The Case of the Zajal, the Maqāma, and the Shadow Play,” Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 34 (2003), pp. 138–177 (in collaboration with Mark F. Pettigrew), (On Zajal 90); (8) “Improvised Invective in Hispano-Arabic Poetry and Ibn Quzmān’s ‘Zajal 87’ (When Blond Meets Blonde),” Voicing the Moment: Improvised Oral Poetry and Basque Tradition, ed. Samuel G. Armistead and Joseba Zulaika, Center for Basque Studies, 3 (Reno, Nevada: University of Nevada, 2005), pp. 135–159; (9) “Ibn Quzmān’s ‘Zajal 118’: An Andalusī ‘Ode to the Onion’ ” Proceedings: “Los quilates de su Oriente:” La pluralidad de culturas en la Península Ibérica durante la Edad Media y en los albores de la Modernidad: A Conference in Honor of Francisco Márquez Villanueva, ed. Ángel Sáenz-Badillos, Luis Girón Negrón, and Mary Gaylord (in press); (10) “The Mystery of the Missing Mantle: The Poet as Wittol? (Ibn Quzmān’s Zajal 20),” Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 35:1 (2006), pp. 1–45. See too, Guillermo E. Hernández, “El arte satírico de Ibn Quzmān: Zéjel núm. 20,” Actas del Congreso Romancero-Cancionero, ed. Enrique Rodríguez Cepeda (Madrid: Gredos, 1991), vol. 2, pp. 383–408; Raymond K. Farrin, “Season’s literary hybridization in the zajal 131 poem. In section A, comprising its first strophe (see the chart, below), an unidentified and, therefore, mysterious visitor appears before Ibn Quzmān’s door and asks the slave-girl to tell her master to appear in public to receive him, adding that he is one whom the poet desires to see both night and day. In contrast, in section A’, comprising the last strophe, the poet expresses the wish that his benefactor, whose identity has, by now, been made known to him, may have his fame made public as long as dawn turns to dark. It is even more telling that both strophes end with the same rhyme-word, namely ‘day’ (nahār). The motifs with which the poem begins and ends are thus night versus day, darkness versus light, concealing versus revealing, and anonymity versus identification. In the section of the poem here designated as B (strophes 2–4), the poet instructs his slave-girl to lie to the unknown visitor by telling him that this is not a good time for visits, because her master has gone upstairs to sleep. He is thereby making false excuses in order to conceal his lack of sincerity from the visitor. He further makes the assumption that the visitor will turn out to be a busybody and a bore; one whom he will not wish to see. However, he decides to stop short of pretending to be a man of the privileged class, by falsely claiming to be out of town, at his country abode, which would seem to imply that he does not have a country abode, and is, in fact, poor. This section corresponds to B’ (strophes 24–26), in which the poet who, as we have seen, is a liar, offers mercenary and, therefore, false praise to an identified patron, in the process of revealing the generosity and sincerity of that patron. The major motifs to be found in the second and penultimate sections of the poem are falsehood versus truth, concealment versus revelation, and insincerity versus sincerity. In the third section (C, strophes 5–6), the impatient visitor, finally angered by the poet’s avoidance, identifies himself to the slave-girl as Sir Gold, while the poet demonstrates his ability to abbreviate and omit the details of Sir Gold’s words of anger and reproof addressed to

Greetings: Two ʿĪd Poems by Ibn Quzmān,” Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 35 (2004), pp. 247–269 (On Zajals 8 and 48). For further bibliography on the Andalusī zajal, see Henk Heijkoop and Otto Zwartjes, Muwaššaḥ, Zajal, Kharja: Bibliography of Strophic Poetry and Music from al-Andalus and their Influence in East and West. See especially, the groundbreaking study by Raymond K. Farrin, demonstrating that ring composition also applies fully to the Classical Arabic poetic tradition as well: Reading Beyond the Line: Organic Unity in Classical Arabic Poetry (Doctoral Dissertation in Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2006). 132 james t. monroe himself; that is to say, he has the ability to censor or suppress those words of personal reproof that do not show him in a good light. By way of contrast, in the penultimate section (C’, strophes 22–23), Sir Gold has previously identified the patron to the poet as al-Zuhrī, while the poet now confesses his lack of ability to include sufficient details in his words of praise for the patron. The major motifs to be found in the third and the antepenultimate sections of the poem are thus identification, both of the visitor and of the patron, the poet’s ability to suppress words critical of himself versus his inability to express words laudatory enough of the patron. In the fourth section (D, strophes 7–12) the poet expresses his euphoria over the presence of Sir Gold, while simultaneously rebuking the slave-girl for having denied hospitality to him by carrying out the very orders the poet himself had given her, thereby establishing his own insincerity, hypocrisy, and disrespect toward a guest, along with his ingratitude toward the slave-girl. Finally, he expresses his gratitude to Sir Gold. In contrast, in the fourth section from the last (D’, strophes 16–21) the poet describes the deep sorrow he feels whenever Sir Gold is absent, and sincerely offers his hospitality to Sir Gold, thereby treating him with great respect. Finally, Sir Gold bids the poet to express his gratitude to the patron. The major motifs to be found in these two sections are: Euphoria at the presence of Sir Gold, and total depression over his absence. In this respect, the poet is portraying, in a parodic fashion, the manic-depressive state characterizing the disease identified by Ancient and Medieval physicians as melancholia, a disease caused by love, and involving wild shifts from joy to sorrow.41 The major motifs in these two sections are thus joy versus sorrow, presence versus absence, mania versus depression, hypocrisy versus sincerity, respect versus disrespect, and gratitude versus ingratitude. The central section of the entire poem (E, strophes 13–15) is itself arranged according to a mini-chiastic pattern: In strophe 13 (a) the poet declares his love for Sir Gold, thus assuming the active role of lover. In strophe 14 (b), which is the very heart of the poem, following the conventions of courtly usage, he addresses Sir Gold as his “lord,” and enumerates the material commodities with which the latter provides

41 On melancholia as the disease of lovers, leading to wild fluctuations between mania and depression, see James T. Monroe, “Wanton Poets and Would-be Paleographers (Prolegomena to Ibn Quzmān’s Zajal No. 10).” This disease corresponds to what modern medicine classifies as manic-depression, also referred to as bipolarism. literary hybridization in the zajal 133 him (mares, cattle, sheep, bread, meat, fruit). Then, in strophe 15 (a’) he declares Sir Gold to be his compliant beloved, thereby assigning to the latter a passive role. The major motifs to be found in section E are, therefore, lord versus servant, lover versus beloved, activity versus passivity, abundance of material advantages versus total absence of spiritual advantages to be obtained from the relationship. This implies that the relationship, though expressed in lofty and courtly love terms is, in reality, a hollow one based upon mere convenience. The following chart sums up the preceding discussion of the poem: A 1 Unidentified Visitor asks Poet’s slave-girl to request Poet to appear in public, for Poet has desired presence of Visitor night and day. Strophe ends with the rhyme-word nahār (‘day’).

B 2–4 Poet offers false excuses in the process of concealing his own insincerity from Visitor.

C 5–6 Visitor identifies himself as Sir Gold. Poet is entirely capable of abbreviating details of Sir Gold’s words of reproof addressed to him.

D 7–12 Poet is so overjoyed over presence of Sir Gold that he manifests a state of mania and is thus a manic-depressive lover. He insincerely upbraids slave-girl, thereby treating her disrespectfully. He expresses his gratitude to Sir Gold

E 13–15 a) Poet declares himself to be Sir Gold’s lover. (b) He enumerates MATERIAL OBJECTS made available by Sir Gold. (a’) Sir Gold is his ever-compliant beloved.

D’ 16–21 Poet is so sorrowful over absence of Sir Gold that he manifests a state of depression and is thus a manic-depressive lover. He sincerely offers Sir Gold his hospitality, thereby treating him respectfully. Sir Gold bids Poet to express his gratitude to Patron.

C’ 22–23 Sir Gold identifies Patron as al-Zuhrī. Poet is entirely incapable of adding sufficient details in his words of praise addressed to Patron.

B’ 24–26 Poet offers mercenary and, therefore, false praise in the process of revealing sincerity of Patron.

A’ 27 Poet expresses the wish that identified Patron’s fame be made public as long as night and day last. Strophe ends with the rhyme-word nahār (‘day’). 134 james t. monroe

From the above, it can be appreciated that the poem is a travesty of the bipartite panegyric qasīdạ , or ode, of Classical Arabic literature: It exhibits a nasīb, or amatory prelude in which the poet, after first establishing the unworthy and hypocritical nature of his persona through the incident with the slave-girl at the beginning of the poem, then proceeds, at its very heart, to declare his love for Sir Gold in the courtliest, but also most venal of terms, after which, he proceeds to the panegyric section or madīḥ, in which he praises his patron. The comic effect of the poet’s mad love of Sir Gold personified, is made all the more amusing by the usage of Colloquial diction, the function of which is to mock the pretentiousness of Classical forms of speech used in the formal Arabic panegyric. Ultimately, the poem seems to be examining one of the central courtly rituals of medieval Arab society, namely the literary representation of the ruler as the embodiment of all those ideals that Arab society respects and admires, only to conclude that, in the poet’s own age, for lack of worthy patrons, that ritual has been reduced to a mere exercise in money-grubbing, while the patron is being presented as a fool for rewarding so unworthy a petitioner. We find then, that in the case of Ibn Quzmān, the zajal, which was a poetic form of Romance origin, has been married to a parodic and inverted content inspired by the Arabic panegyric. Although he was no wandering minstrel himself, the hybridization of these two traditions, one popular and the other learned, affords our undoubtedly learned poet a populist, Bakhtinian perspective42 from which to scrutinize the relationship between poet and patron, only to declare that relationship to be virtually hollow and meaningless. As in many of his other poems, Ibn Quzmān is, once again, commenting upon the crisis in literary patronage that characterized the Almoravid period in which he lived.43

42 See Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). 43 For more on the crisis of patronage in the Almoravid period, see al-Saraqustī,̣ al-Maqāmāt al-Luzūmīyah, trans. James T. Monroe (Leiden, Boston, and Köln: E. J. Brill, 2002), pp. 10–11; James T. Monroe and Mark F. Pettigrew, “The Decline of Courtly Patronage and the Appearance of New Genres in Arabic Literature: The Case of the Zajal, the Maqāma, and the Shadow Play,” especially pp. 155–165. For specific examples of Eastern poets caught up in an earlier version of this crisis, see Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), pp. 181–182, 223–240, 273–277. literary hybridization in the zajal 135

Let me summarize the above statements by returning to the strong likelihood that the Andalusī zajal is a hybrid construction. From an oral, popular, and often, anonymous Western European tradition, widespread and ancient in nature, it borrowed its literary structure, namely its strophic form, its vuelta/simt,̣ its refrain and, in a remarkable example of syncretism, even its metrical system. In contrast, its literary materials are entirely Eastern, insofar as it exhibits the nasīb and the madīḥ of the bipartite Arabic panegyric qasīdạ , of which it offers an ironic travesty. By borrowing its structure from the native, conquered, and popular Romance tradition, and its materials from the foreign, dominant, learned Arabic culture, the zajal represents the opposite of the Mosque of Córdoba, in which the dominant Arabic tradition provided the structure whereas the conquered local tradition provided the materials. Insofar as there is no such thing as a “pure” culture, particularly in the case of the medieval Iberian tradition, these two forms of admixture are exactly what we might have expected.

Concluding Remarks

At the beginning of this study, it was pointed out that the Mosque of Córdoba was a hybrid monument, in which the structure was provided by the dominant, imported Arab-Islamic culture, whereas the materials were borrowed from the dominated, local Greco-Roman and Visigothic civilization. Exactly the opposite occurred in the case of mudéjar art, in which Christian churches, palaces, and even private buildings, first constructed in lands newly conquered from Islam in the Iberian Penin- sula and, later on, from Native Americans in the New World, adopted artistic materials borrowed from the Arab-Islamic tradition.44

44 The bibliography on mudéjar art is vast. Among many other works, see especially, Manuel Gómez Moreno, Arte mudéjar toledano (Madrid: Leoncio de Miguel, 1916); Bernard Bevan, History of Spanish Architecture, chap. 12, “Mudéjar” (London: B. T. Batsford, 1938), pp. 104–114; Manuel Toussaint, Arte mudéjar en América (México D. F., Porrúa, 1946), Basilio Pavón Maldonado, Arte toledano islámico y mudéjar (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Árabe de Cultura, 1973); Tudela, ciudad medieval: Arte islámico y mudéjar (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Árabe de Cultura, 1978); Gonzalo M. Borrás Gualis, “El arte mudéjar en Teruel y su provincia,” Cartillas turolenses, vol. 3 (1987); José Galiay Sarañana, Arte mudéjar aragonés (Zaragoza: Institución “Fernando el Católico” [C. S. I. C.], 2002); José María López Landa, Francisco Íñiguez Almech, and Leopoldo Torres Balbás, Estudios de arte mudéjar aragonés (Zaragoza: Institución “Fernando el Católico,” [C. S. I. C.], 2002). For an overview of mudéjar history, see 136 james t. monroe

In a forthcoming study, currently in preparation, it will be argued in far greater detail than is possible here, that the famous fourteenth- century Spanish literary masterpiece known as the Libro de buen amor (‘Book of Good Love’), attributed to a certain Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, is also a hybrid work. For the time being, let me very briefly indicate how this is relevant to the Quzmānī zajal. From a comparative perspective, the structure of the LBA is Ara- bic and Islamic,45 whereas its materials are largely Greco-Roman and Christian.46 Ultimately, the work is subversive, insofar as it attempts to criticize the rule of priestly celibacy that had been imposed on the Western Christian clergy by the Roman See only a century before the LBA was written. In this respect, Juan Ruiz was a literary precursor of Martin Luther. Years ago, the LBA was characterized by Américo Cas- tro, as being a literary equivalent of mudéjar art.47 To his illuminating suggestion, let me propose the following nuance: In both the LBA and the Quzmānī zajal, the literary structure is borrowed from the dominated culture (the structure of the Spanish LBA is Arabic and Oriental, whereas that of the Quzmānī Arabic zajal is Romance and European), in contrast to which, the literary materials of both works are largely borrowed from the dominant culture (the Arabic zajal ’s materials are

Pedro Chalmeta, “Mudéjar,” E. I. 2, vol. 7 (1960), pp. 286–289. To the bibliography provided in that article, add the more recent, and extremely valuable contribution by Brian A. Catlos, The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 45 As far as its structure is concerned, the LBA belongs to a derivative of the Arabic maqāma genre that has been modified by the technique of inserting “enframed” tales within its various picaresque episodes. This technique was borrowed from Arabic works such as the Book of Kalīla wa-Dimna, which was translated into Spanish, ca. A.D. 1251, at the command of Alfonso X, the Learned. The original Arabic maqāma genre has been further modified by an inversion of perspective, after the fashion of the Quzmānī zajal: In the Classical maqāma a victim narrates how he was successfully deceived by a trickster, whereas in the LBA, a would-be trickster narrates how he was unsuccessful in his attempts to deceive a potential victim, as all too often happens in the Quzmānī zajal. The structure of the LBA is, therefore, in itself, a hybrid of the maqāma, the frametale, and the zajal genres, all three of which either came to the Iberian Peninsula via the Arab East (as in the case of the maqāma and frametale), or were adopted and developed in the Iberian Peninsula by Arab poets (as in the case of the zajal ). 46 TheLBA tells of the numerous attempts, made by a Catholic Archpriest, to seduce various and sundry women, all of whom (with the exception of two nuns, as desperate for sex as he is) reject his advances. The work further includes characters adopted from Classical Antiquity, such as the Pagan divinities Venus and Eros. 47 See, for example, Américo Castro, The Structure of Spanish History, trans. Edmund L. King (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1954), chap. 12, “The Arch- priest of Hita and His ‘Libro de Buen Amor’,” pp. 392–465 and, specifically, p. 403. literary hybridization in the zajal 137 largely Arabic, insofar as they are borrowed from the qasīdạ , while those of the Spanish LBA are largely Greco-Latin and Romance). This feature appears to coincide with the fact that both of these works are subversive, insofar as they both offer a critique of certain social norms and customs prevalent in the two authors’ respective societies (Ibn Quzmān views the Arab and Islamic poet-patron relationship as mercenary and, consequently, hollow, while Juan Ruiz views the Western Christian institution of priestly celibacy as inhumane). It should be further pointed out that, if these two literary examples are any indication of the validity of a rule that has wider implications, we might suggest that when a hybrid work is subversive, it tends to abandon the norms that are usually expected of formal culture and to adopt, in their stead, norms and strategies borrowed from the popular rank and file (to begin, the zajal is couched in Colloquial diction even though Ibn Quzmān was a learned poet conversant with Classical Arabic, at the same time that Juan Ruiz, who obviously read Latin, and was a man of some learning, conceals his true nature behind the persona of a popular minstrel, writes in Castilian, and goes out of his way to stress his lack of formal learning). On this basis, we could postulate the following set of correspondences: (1) When the structure of a work is borrowed from the dominant culture, whereas its materials are borrowed from the dominated culture (Islamic mosques, Christian mudéjar churches), then a Classical medium of expression is adopted, in order to uphold official values. (2) When the structure of a work is borrowed from the dominated culture, whereas its materials are borrowed from the dominant culture (Arabic zajal; Spanish LBA), then a Colloquial medium of expression is adopted, in order to subvert official values. If the above two principles are acceptable, let us note that literary works such as the Quzmānī zajal and the LBA correspond to one another, insofar as they both belong to the second category identified above. The LBA is, thus, not a “straightforward” mudéjar work, as Américo Castro once postulated, but rather, it is an “inverted” mudéjar work. In a parallel fashion, the Quzmānī zajal represents an “inversion” of those principles of hybridization that characterize the Mosque of Córdoba, insofar as its materials are Arabic and, therefore, dominant, whereas its structure is Romance and, therefore, dominated. Both the LBA and the Quzmānī zajal are thus structurally parallel, if culturally opposite, expressions of that extraordinary, multicultural society that was medieval 138 james t. monroe

Iberia.48 Finally, it might be suggested that when a literary work is subversive, that is to say, when it is critical of certain social practices prevalent in the dominant culture, its author may prefer to adopt a literary structure borrowed from the subjected, underdog culture, as a convenient, psychological shelter from which to lash out with impunity at abuse and corruption in the high places of his own dominant culture. In so doing, the author is deliberately adopting the ambivalent critical perspective of the social half-outsider.49

A Verse Translation

A visitor came, and before my door stood. I’m eager, my friend, again that he should!

My slave-girl went forth to enquire who he was; He told her: “Your master I’d see now, because He’s ever concerned with my welfare, sans pause; He’s wanted to see me whenever he could!”

Returning, she said: “Sir, your presence is sought.” “Inform him this moment convenient is not: I’m busily napping at present: I’m shot! Advise him to wait or to leave, as he would!”

Impertinent fellow I’ve got at my door! Absurdly demanding me now; what a bore! And if I receive him, my fate I’ll deplore! My palate he’ll please not, in all likelihood!

I’m occupied now, and wish not to appear, And yet, it’s improper to hide while he’s here; To put on the dog is a shame, I much fear, Pretending I’ve gone to my country abode!

This marvel I heard, which the servant he told, While hinting he’d leave, and by anger made bold:

48 On the multicultural nature of those medieval Iberian literatures written in Ara- bic, Hebrew, and Spanish, see the recent and most welcome book by David A. Wacks, Framing Iberia: Maqāmāt and Frametale Narratives in Medieval Spain, The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, vol. 33 (Leiden and Boston: E. J. Brill, 2007). 49 On the concept of the “half-outsider” in Spanish picaresque literature, see Claudio Guillén, Literature as System: Essays Toward the Theory of Literary History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 80. literary hybridization in the zajal 139

“In that case, inform him my name is Sir Gold,” Along with more details that would incommode.

The moment I heard, all amazed, what he’d said, I thought: “Is this true, or just dreams in my head?” I jumped from my seat; with such swiftness I sped, Thereafter they measured nine spans where I strode.

The room’s very center I skirted forthright! I flew, I’m quite certain, or almost took flight. I stumbled right over the well in delight! In leaping, I never did see it, by God!

“Come in and approach me! You’re welcome right here! Your servant am I (plus one quarter); draw near! Accursèd’s this slave-girl! She’s useless, I fear! Lo, none can you find, all today are slipshod!

I’m deeply displeased! Wretched girl, tell me now, —Oh, where have you fled? I’ll disgrace you, I vow! To Hell and be damned with these Banī Qawqaw! If God would efface all you Negroes, I’d laud!

Not once did I mention that I was detained! Now, open the door; let no guest be disdained; With anything else, I’d remain deeply pained! To top it all off, you’re a donkey, you clod!”

Enough! With all further digressions dispense; What greetings transpired; what a welcome intense! You saw none but joy and respect now commence; “How are you?” Such phrases in hundreds soon flowed;

Words such as “Sit down,” or “Say, how did you come?” And “God only knows just how dear you’ve become,” “Indeed, I’m delighted to see you, my chum!” Of thanks and of praises I poured out a load!

I said: “I desire you; in you lies my need; ’Tis you who build houses; good slaves you concede, Available making my wants with great speed! On those whom you love, all your favor’s bestowed!

Behold, you’re my lord, as you know, and my coal; Fine mares you provide; cows and sheep you control; For supper you grant bread and meat for my bowl; You add tasty fruits to the gift that’s accrued!

140 james t. monroe

’Tis you who’re my solace; my garden for rest; My lover who gainsays not even in jest. My heart’s never bright; it lies dull in my breast, Until I’ve observed you shine forth golden-hued!

And when you are absent, I soon become sad; Unhappy’s my face; my complexion turns bad; While nobody asks if a good day I’ve had. My words go unheeded; ignored I soon brood!

Thus, sitting alone in my room, I’ll be found; Of chapters Qurʾānic, I’ll mind but ‘He Frowned’. When evening arrives, I collapse on the ground, And like Ben ʿAmmār, I then sleep all unrued!

You’ll thus find me dozing when revels begin: Upended like water-wheel buckets that spin; By night’s end Kābūs and Farazdaq come in; Descend seven times and upon me intrude.

Inform me: I know not with whom you have come; Your travels’ beginnings, nor whence you came from. I trust you will lodge with me ad libitum. That Fate might retain you beside me, I would!”

He answered me: “Listen, a friend sent me forth; Your need he’s bewailing; he pities your dearth. He pursed me while saying: ‘Reward Quzmān’s worth; Whatever he wants, that you grant it I’ve vowed!’

I’ve come here to seek you most diligently: For well I’m aware of your wants, as you see; Give praise to the Lord, and give thanks to Zuhrī; Respect for his eminence, shout it aloud!”

I did all the things I was bidden to do; I mustered my praises without more ado; My mind went to work, and my thoughts swiftly flew; Displayed a trousseau of ideas unflawed!

Yet what could I say that spontaneous you’d deem? My talent and genius are great in extreme; Encomium, however, falls short, it would seem; Compared to your gifts, all my praises sound odd!

In none save in you can one measure largesse; No rival in glory can close to you press; literary hybridization in the zajal 141

Your virtues to Pisces are clinging, no less! Too feeble are tongues for the thanks you are owed.

Nobility’s meaning and form lie in you; Your generous gifts all our debts do renew. My breast now enfolds benefactions not few, Like dewdrops they lie in a flower untrod.

To God do we pray that He grant you survive; Ennobled through you, may Muḥammad’s faith thrive; The fondest of hopes may your offspring revive, The longest of lives be you granted by God!

May, bearing your glory, the four winds long blow, As long as feet walk, and a-flying, wings go; As long as gloom hides, and the dawn’s joyous glow, The sun-blaze upon the day’s face, can applaud!

“ON THE BATTLEGROUND”: ALNĀBULUSĪ’S ENCOUNTERS WITH A POEM BY IBN ALFĀRIḌ

Th. Emil Homerin

On a Friday in 1105/1693, the distinguished Arab scholar, poet, and Sufiʿ Abd al-Ghanī Ismāʿīl al-Nābulusī made a pilgrimage to the Qarāfah on Cairo’s eastern edge. This sprawling cemetery contains many graves of persons regarded by Muslims as great religious figures, including the mosque-tomb of the seminal legal scholar Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/819), as well as a site said to be the resting place of Benjamin and Rubin, brothers of the prophet Joseph. At each stop along their itinerary, al-Nābulusī and his companions recited the short opening chapter of the Qurʾān and prayed for God’s blessings. The group continued their rounds until after the noon prayer when they entered the mosque and shrine of the celebrated Sufi poet and saintʿ Umar Ibn al-Fāriḍ̣ (d. 632/1235).1 Al-Nābulusī had long been familiar with Ibn al-Fāriḍ and his verse. While growing up, al-Nābulusī had read and heard Ibn al-Fāriḍ poems; he read most of the poet’s Dīwān with his childhood teacher Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī (d. 1061/1651) and then the entire work with his father Ismāʿīl (d. 1062/1652). Later, he again read the Dīwān with another teacher Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī al-Shabrāmallisī al-Azharī (d. 1087/1676). Moreover, al-Nābulusī was familiar with or had read commentaries on Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s verse including those by al-Suyūtị̄ (d. 911/1505) and al-Farghānī (d. 699/1300).2 This latter commentator was a follower

1 Al-Nābulusī, al-Ḥ aqīqah al-Majāz f ī Riḥlah ilā Bilād al-Shām wa-Misṛ wa-al-Ḥ ijāz, ed. Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Majīd Harīdī (Cairo: al-Hayʾah al-Misrīyaḥ al-ʿĀmmah lil-Kitāb, 1982), 195–98. 2 Al-Nābulusī, Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ f ī Sharḥ Dīwān Ibn al-Fāriḍ, ed. Muḥmmad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm (Cairo: al-Ḥ alabī, 1972), 1:12–13, 58–59. Unfortunately, this published edition is incomplete, containing only al-Nābulusī’s commentary on the Dībājah, and four of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s odes. Also see ʿUmar Kaḥḥālah, Muʿjam al-Muʾallif īn (Damascus: al-Maktabah al-ʿArabīyah, 1957), 7:153, and Elizabeth Sirriyeh, Sufi Visionary of Ottoman Damascus: ʿAbd al-Ghānī al-Nābulusī, 1641–1731 (London: Routledge-Curzon, 2005), 7. 144 th. emil homerin of the most famous and influential Sufi theologian Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 637/1240), whose life, thought, and writings were central to al-Nābulusī’s own. Al-Nābulusī was born in Damascus in 1050/1641, into a successful family of religious scholars descendent from the Banū Jamāʿah, who had served the Mamlūk sultans as judges and Sufi masters. Al-Nābulusī’s father Ismāʿīl subsequently served the Ottomans as a Ḥ anaf ī legal scholar, teaching at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, and occasionally serving as a judge. Under his father’s guidance al-Nābulusī memorized the Qurʾān by the age of five, and read Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Dīwān by the age of twelve. Then, as a young man, al-Nābulusī went on to study extensively the traditions of the prophet Muḥammad (ḥadīth), and, like his father, Ḥanafī jurisprudence. In addition to studying with a number of noted teachers, al-Nābulusī avidly read books, particularly those on Islamic mysticism, some of his favorite authors being the highly controversial North African philosopher Ibn Sabʿīn (d. c. 668–69/1269–71), ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī (d. 690/1291), the poet, scholar, and commentator on Ibn al-Fāriḍ, and, of course, his “greatest shaykh,” Ibn al-ʿArabī, whom al-Nābulusī regarded as his spiritual father and whose work he popularized and defended against its critics.3 In 1075/1664, al-Nābulusī traveled to Istanbul, perhaps to win influence there with the Ottoman officials, and while en route, he was initiated into the Qādirīyah Sufi order. Later, he would also join the Naqshbandīyah order, but in most of his mystical studies and writings, al-Nābulusī was largely independent of the orders and their teachings. Upon his return from Istanbul and following in his father’s footsteps, al-Nābulusī began to teach classes at the Umayyad mosque on works of ḥadīth and prayers, as well as the teachings of Ibn al-ʿArabī, holding additional study sessions in his home on Ibn al-ʿArabī’s writings, especially his Fusuṣ ̣ al-Ḥ ikam (“The Bezels of Wisdom”) and the Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah (“The Meccan Revelations”).4 In 1076/1666, al-Nābulusī married Musliḥ ̣ah bint Abī al-Rabīʿ, and shortly thereafter the two appear to have had a son who died.5 Later, in

3 Sirriyeh, Sufi Visionary, 1–15, and Barbara Von Schlegell, “Sufism in the Ottoman Arab World: Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1143/1731),” Ph.D. dissertation (University of California, Berkeley, 1997), 23–35, 43–44. 4 Sirriyeh, Sufi Visionary, 15–17; Von Schlegell, “Sufism in the Ottoman Arab World,” 44–49, 134, 161–69. 5 See al-Nābulusī’s commentary to verse 7 below, though he does not name the child’s mother. on the battleground 145

1085/1674, Musliḥ ̣ah bore al-Nābulusī a son, Ismāʿīl, who would survive him.6 Al-Nābulusī taught at the Umayyad mosque until 1090/1679, when he withdrew from public life due to what he termed “a severe despondency without reason,” most likely a form of depression, which included insomnia and agoraphobia.7 This depressed state would last for seven years, and al-Nābulusī blamed it on “a massing of enemies and envious people against me.”8 While this strikes a note of paranoia, al-Nābulusī was being criticized at this time by a small but very vocal group of religiously conservative Turkish Muslim reformers known as the Kādīzādeliler, named after Kādīzāde Meḥmed ibn Musṭ afạ̄ (d. 1045/ 1635). He and several generations of his followers severely criticized Sufis who followed the teachings of Ibn al-ʿArabī, and they condemned such religious practices as pilgrimage to the graves of purported saints and prophets, the use of coffee and tobacco, and chanting and dancing during Sufi recitations (dhikr), especially among the Mevlavī and Khalwatī Sufi orders, some of whose members and centers they physically attacked. Though the Kadizadeliler lost their official backing around 1097/1685, their reform-minded conservatism lingered among some religious functionaries, particularly preachers, including, according to al-Nābulusī, a group of Turks in Damascus who denounced Ibn al-ʿArabī, the use of music and dance in Sufi ceremonies, the gazing at young boys as a meditation on divine beauty (nazaṛ ), and smoking, all of which al-Nābulusī supported and defended in many of the twenty- five works he composed during his seven year retreat.9 In 1097/1686, al-Nābulusī returned to public life, teaching, and traveling. During his depression, al-Nābulusī divorced his first wife Musliḥ ̣ah in 1096/1685, only later to marry her sister ʿAlmā, who bore him at least one son, who died at eight years of age, and two daughters who survived their father. Al-Nābulusī continued to face his Turkish critics, one of whom declared him and Ibn al-ʿArabī to be infidels around 1103/1692. In addition to writing a scathing rebuttal to his critic, al-Nābulusī also wrote a separate work in defense of waḥdat al-wujūd (“the unity of

6 Von Schlegell, “Sufism in the Ottoman Arab World,” 36, and Sirriyeh, Sufi Visionary, 17. 7 Especially see Von Schlegell, “Sufism in the Ottoman Arab World,” 64–72, quote from 65, and Sirriyeh, Sufi Visionary, 49–56. 8 Sirriyeh, Sufi Visionary, 55. 9 Von Schlegell, “Sufism in the Ottoman Arab World,” 80–94, and Madeline C. Zilfi, “The Kadizadelis: Discordant Revivalism in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 45:4 (Oct., 1986): 251–69. 146 th. emil homerin being”), which he completed in 1104/1693. Then, in the summer of the same year, al-Nābulusī’s mother Zaynab died of plague.10 Two months later, al-Nābulusī left Damascus for a year-long pilgrimage, perhaps, in an attempt to leave behind his critics and to come to terms with his mother’s sudden death. While Mecca was his ultimate goal, al-Nābulusī stopped at many shrines of saints and prophets along the way. He often stayed at Sufi retreats, participated in Sufi ceremonies, and visited ecstatic hermits throughout Syria and Palestine until he eventually arrived in Egypt. In a later travel account about his pilgrimage, al-Nābulusī states that he was treated with the utmost respect by many noted Sufis and scholars, including Shaykh Zayn al-ʿAbidīn al-Bakrī (d. 1107/1695) in whose palace he stayed while in Cairo, and with whom he visited the shrine of Ibn al-Fāriḍ.11 Ibn al-Fāriḍ is the most celebrated Arab mystical poet of Islam, and his beautiful verse has been regarded by many Muslims as the product of divine inspiration. As a result, Ibn al-Fāriḍ was venerated as a saint shortly after his death, and since the late fifteenth century, pilgrims have visited his shrine on Fridays to recite from the Qurʾān, pray, and perform dhikr ceremonies. Often professional singers (munshid/pl. munshidūn) would recite Qurʾānic passages, followed by the singing of selections from Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s mystical verse. This poetry recital took a considerable time, as the singers repeated verses that they or their audience felt to be particularly moving. These repetitions together with the poetry’s own rhyme and meter served to heighten the emotional and religious tension of the session, and, frequently, participants would fall into an ecstatic trance. Such mystical states became a noted feature of these Friday sessions, which many believed were graced by the spiritual presence of the prophet Muḥammad, Ibn al-Fāriḍ and other great saints.12 Al-Nābulusī was a fervent admirer of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poetry, and

10 Sirriyeh, Sufi Visionary, 84–96. 11 Sirriyeh, Sufi Visionary, 96–128; Von Schlegell, “Sufism in the Ottoman Arab World,” 164–68, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib al-Āthār f ī al-Tarājim wa-l- Ākhbār (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, n.d.), 1:117. Also see Michael Winter, Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule 1517–1798 (New York: Routledge, 1992), 142–44. 12 Th. Emil Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint: Ibn al-Fāriḍ, His Verse, and his Shrine, rev. ed. (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2001), esp. 78–83. For a description and analysis of performances of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s odes by Sufi singers in the late 20th century, see Earle H. Waugh, The Munshidīn of Egypt, Their World and Their Song (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989), 3–34, 98, 104–125, 152–53, 188–207. on the battleground 147 he firmly believed in Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s sanctity. Therefore, upon reaching Cairo, al-Nābulusī soon went to pay his respects to the poet.

Al-Nābulusī’s Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Ibn al-Fāriḍ13

[After the Friday noon prayer], we entered the mosque of our master the shaykh Sharaf al-Dīn ʿUmar Ibn al- Fāriḍ, may God bless his heart. After visiting the grave of Shaykhʿ Umar and seeking his blessing to the greatest extent possible, I and Shaykh Zayn al-ʿAbidīn al-Bakrī, may God most high protect him, and the rest of the group sat down in a high gallery there overlooking that radiant presence. The (Sūfī) folk and all of those attending had read the sūrah “The Cave,” and they began to pray for the Messenger (Muḥammad), God’s blessings and peace be upon him, and for his majesty [the sultan]. They began Qurʾān readings in the meeting and read the sūrah “The Opening.” Then, all of the Qurʾān readers read something from the Qurʾān. Next a singer (munshid) arose and sang from the words of Shaykh ʿUmar, may God be satisfied with him. Everyone sat silently. A singer would rise and another would sit down, and whenever one of them sang a hemistich of a verse, those present would show ecstasy as they were gripped by a spiritual state. So the singer would repeat that hemistich, while the people sat jammed together. That mosque was so full that if someone was seized by a spiritual state, he would get up and throw himself upon the others, and they would all shout out together as the inner meaning of that verse of Shaykh ʿUmar’s speech pervaded them. A man came in from outside, then two more, then three, and they entered with great spiritual fervor and deep humility, stepping on the people while the latter found a place for them to sit. Had a thousand people come, a place would have been found for them all! That session expanded for all while their space diminished. Everyone was humble, weeping and sighing from the intensity of a spiritual state, great ecstasy, humility, and submission. So someone would shout, “Again!” And so, the singer would repeat what he had said. Then another would shout it, and he would repeat it and so on, until I, Shaykh Zayn al-ʿAbidīn, may God most high protect him, and those from the group with us were seized by an intense

13 Al-Nābulusī, al-Ḥ aqīqah al-Majāz, 279–80. 148 th. emil homerin spiritual state and by weeping, sighing, humility, and submission, and the secrets of the divine audition pervaded us to the point where we nearly melted away. No human being there could ever restrain himself from the intensity of that spiritual state which suddenly falls upon one. At times, some of the critics from among the Turks are there, but they are unable to constrain themselves from the spiritual state that suddenly falls upon them, or from the humility which overwhelms them. Once, I met one of them on another Friday after I had previously attended this audition along with some of my group. He said to me, “Sir, this thing that they do here at the shrine, is it permissible or forbidden?” But I would not talk to him, and I calmly endured him until the audition began. Then he was seized by a spiritual state, and I have not seen him since. I have witnessed at the time of the audition, and other times, people circling the grave of Shaykh ʿUmar, may God be pleased with him, calling to him for blessings and good fortune, seeking help from his attending spirit and his dazzling divine secrets. And God most high aids them and decrees their needs according to His most high saying [Qurʾān 5:35]: {“Oh you who believe, fear God and seek the means to Him!”} And there is no greater means unto God most high than the pure and noble spirits of His saints and the dazzling manifest lights of their graves, for they are a more noble means unto Him most high than works, words, spiritual states, pious deeds, or acts of worship. But how much more if to good works were added the perfect fortunate spirits! One who denies this will be driven from the gates of the noble ones, for he is conceited with what he has done in the shape and form of good works and pious deeds, which are empty of humility and reverence. Those like him are like one who brings a present to a great king while degrading and scorning the king’s closest friends and companions, casting every kind of insult upon them and yet, in spite of that, he is bold enough to expect that the king will welcome and receive him, and give him reward and abundant favor. If that man is not possessed, then surely he will be forever banished and cursed! We did not stumble during that audition though the attentive hearts and ears were intoxicated by the wine of divine love, until a man, who was said to have been Shaykh Shaʿbān, arose from among the singers and began to sing Shaykh ʿUmar’s al-Jīmīyah: On the battle ground between hearts and glances I am slain without sin or guilt! on the battleground 149

So the audience cried out in ecstasy, and some people bumped into others, while he repeated (verses) to them at their request. He became enraptured along with them until he came to (Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s) saying: Blessed be God, how sweet are his qualities! Then he threw off his turban and his wool robe, tore his cape and left in his underwear bereft of his senses! Then another singer, who was inspired, stood up after him and sang until the session came to an end. Then we arose having been impressed by the calls of spiritual states and the firm intentions of men’s sincerity! * * * * * * * Al-Nābulusī’s account of the events at Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s shrine is both detailed and compelling as he recounts the various stages of the ceremony, and its climax in the recitation of the poet’s al-Jīmīyah (“Ode Rhyming in J”). Al-Nābulusī vigorously defended the Friday audition sessions at the shrine, along with the cult of the saints in general, against their Turkish, probably Kadizadeliler, detractors. Al-Nābulusī asserted that the saints could intercede with God just as favored courtiers might ask a boon of their king, and so the saints were a sure way to God’s forgiveness and blessings. Not surprisingly, for al-Nābulusī, Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s saintly status was confirmed by his critic’s mystical conversion at the shrine, as he was overcome by the power of the Sufi poet’s verse. Throughout his account, al-Nābulusī draws attention to the emotional impact of the poetry. As the congregation became immersed in the chanted ode, faith was nearly palpable; Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s verse was moving, his saintly presence near. Absorbed in the audition, al-Nābulusī and his companions shared a collective experience of transcendence, affirming their religious and cultural unity, as self-will vanished in a moment of submission.14 Al-Nābulusī eventually left Cairo on the ̣ ajjH pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, and then he returned home to Damascus in 1106/1694; he again took up residence near the Umayyad Mosque, where he taught. However, in 1118/1706, a repressive Ottoman official, Sulaymān Pasha, became governor of Damascus, and al-Nābulusī lost his job

14 See my previous discussion of this account in From Arab Poet, 80–83, and see Waugh, Munshidīn, 98–100, 152–53, 192–93, 196–97. Regarding the transformative force of collective ritual see the classic work by Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, introduction and translation by Karen E. Fields (New York: Free Press, 1995), xl–xliii, 418–48. 150 th. emil homerin at the Umayyad mosque. Around the same time, al-Nābulusī moved away from his ancestral home, which was in an increasingly unsafe area. Once near his house, al-Nābulusī was caught in a riot of Turkish soldiers that left him blind in one eye. As a result, al-Nābulusī moved his family to the al-Sāliḥ ̣īyah section across from the shrine of Ibn al-ʿArabī, where he continued to teach and write until his death at age 93 in 1143/1731.15 One of al-Nābulusī’s later works composed at al-Sāliḥ ̣īyah was his commentary on the Dīwān of Ibn al-Fāriḍ, which he completed in 1123/1711 and entitled Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ fī Sharḥ Dīwān Ibn al-Fāriḍ (“Revealing the Hidden Secret in the Commentary on the Dīwān of Ibn al-Fāriḍ”). In his introduction to this work, al-Nābulusī stated that, after learning the ways of faith and Islamic law, one of the most noble and subtle areas of study was the divine realities (al-ḥaqāʾiq al-ilahīyah), and these matters were amply found in Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s famous collection of poems. However, al-Nābulusī could not find any commentary that clearly interpreted all of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s mystical verse. Al-Nābulusī indicated that he was familiar with Sufi commentaries on the poet’s longest and most important poem, the al-Tāʾīyah al-Kubrā (“Ode Rhyming in T—Major”), and he noted that he had read a mystical commentary on some of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s odes by Muḥammad al-ʿAlamī (d. 1038/1629).16 However, al-Nābulusī felt that al-ʿAlamī’s commentary was too recondite to be of use except to a very select few. Moreover, al-ʿAlamī had composed his commentary in rhymed prose thereby rendering it even more abstruse. Finally, al-Nābulusī pointed out that al-ʿAlamī’s commentary did not include the al-Tāʾīyah al-Kubrā, the poet’s riddles and short verse, nor the long introduction to the Dīwān composed by the poet’s grandson.17 Also lacking commentary on the introduction and the al-Tāʾīyah al-Kubrā was another commentary by the Syrian historian and poet, Ḥ asan al-Būrīnī (d. 1024/1615).18 Al-Nābulusī believed that, in this case, the omission was indicative of al-Būrīnī’s lack of knowledge on mystical subjects. Nevertheless, al-Nābulusī praised al-Būrīnī and his literary efforts to explain the proper vocalization of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s words

15 Sirriyeh, Sufi Visionary, 129–31, and Von Schlegell, “Sufism in the Ottoman Arab World,” 102–112. 16 See Kaḥḥālah, Muʿjam al-Muʾallifīn, 11:94. 17 Al-Nābulusī, Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ, Ibrāhīm edition, 1:12. 18 See the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 1:1333. on the battleground 151 and phrases, and the various meters, puns, and other rhetorical devices found in the poems. All in all, al-Nābulusī found al-Būrīnī’s commentary to be a pleasure to read, but still lacking, as al-Būrīnī commented only on poetic matters, reading the poems strictly as love songs on beautiful women, while avoiding any mystical meanings.19 As a result, al-Nābulusī decided to write a commentary on the entire contents of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Dīwān:20 A righteous jealousy seized me, and I was moved by holy zeal to protect the words of the people of God most high! This is not poetry, nor is it spoken by a poet to be taken literally and interpreted in erotic terms as heedless minds do. Just as was said by the greatest shaykh, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī, may God sanctify his spirit and illuminate his grave: Our words are not poetry and not from a poet but from an heir to the chosen Prophet. God caused him to speak them as He caused to speak the people of religion and the chosen elite! Al-Nābulusī went on to quote extensively from Ibn al-ʿArabī regarding the latter’s allegorical interpretations of his own love poems found in a collection entitled Turjumān al-Ashwāq (“The Interpreter of Desires”). Al-Nābulusī quoted from an introduction to this work in which Ibn al-ʿArabī claimed that he was once accused of composing erotic verse, considered by some to be unseemly for a man of his religious reputation, and this led Ibn al-ʿArabī to write his allegorical commentary on the poems. He declared that whenever he mentioned in verse any of the standard poetic motifs, whether a ruined campsite, meadows, clouds, rain, flowers, women, or anything else, he always intended them to be understood as indicating divine secrets that God had brought to his heart. Al-Nābulusī added a second account of the Turjumān al-Ashwāq incident, this time from Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah. There Ibn al-ʿArabī asserted that it is permissible to recite and listen to poetry that was composed specifically to recall God, whether it be a love poem or another genre, especially if the verse mentions His name and is appropriate to Him. However, Ibn al-ʿArabī cautioned that poetry originally composed as referring to some thing or some one other than God, should not be recited as referring to Him, and Ibn al-ʿArabī supported his opinion by quoting the Qurʾān, including 5:3: {Forbidden to you is

19 Al-Nābulusī, Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ, Ibrāhīm edition, 1:5–6. 20 Ibid., 1:6. 152 th. emil homerin carrion, blood, swine flesh, and what has been sacrificed in the name of other than God.}21 Al-Nābulusī concluded his introduction to the Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ by noting his general procedure for commentary: I follow the way of alluding to the inner spiritual meanings within the exterior forms, according to the divine inspiration and eternal emanation, so that those near and far might benefit. This is based on what was possible for me to understand and on what was disclosed to me of the allusions of knowledge by the aid of the living everlasting [God] . . .22 Finally, al-Nābulusī cited his right to relate Ibn al-Fārid’ṣ Dīwān based on his earlier readings of it with his father and teachers, tracing his lineage to Ibn al-Fāriḍ through two different chain of authorities, one via Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s son Kamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad (689/1290), and the other via one of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s students, Zakī al-Dīn al-Mundhirī (d. d. 656/1258).23 Al-Nābulusī’s Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ was read and copied many times in the 18th and 19th centuries. Then, a very popular abridged edition by Rushayyid ibn Ghālib al-Daḥdāḥ (d. 1306/1889) was published in 1853, with many subsequent printings.24 Daḥdāḥ added al-Būrīnī’s grammatical and literary gloss to his abridgment of the Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ, and so his edition of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s odes has proven invalu- able to many readers and scholars. However, Daḥdāḥ’s edition lacks the poet’s most famous ode, the al-Tāʾīyah al-Kubrā, while his abridged version of the Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ usually reduces al-Nābulusī’s at times lengthy commentary to a series of mystical equivalences.25 To obtain a better sense of al-Nābulusī’s aim and form in the Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ, we must return to his original, which I have done in the following translation.26 The only omissions that I have made are of: 1) the many brief citations that al-Nābulusī made from several

21 Ibid., 8–11, and see Ibn al-ʿArabī, Turjumān al-Ashwāq (Beirut: Dār al-Sādir,̣ 1966), 7–14, and his Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah (Cairo: Matbạ ʿah al-Thaqāfah al-Dīnīyah, n.d.), 3:561 (chapter 398). 22 Al-Nābulusī, Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ, Ibrāhīm edition, 1:12. 23 Ibid., 12–14, and see Homerin, From Arab Poet, 15–16; 20. 24 E.g. Sharḥ Dīwān Sultāṇ al-ʿĀshiqīn Sayyidī—ʿUmar Ibn al-Fāriḍ, edited by Rushayyid ibn Ghālib al-Daḥdāḥ, 2 vols. in 1 (Cairo: al-Matbạ ʿah al-ʿĀmmah, 1888). 25 E.g., R. A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921), 162–266; A. J. Arberry, The Mystical Poems of Ibn al-Fārid (Dublin: Emery Walker, 1956), and Shigeru Kamada, “Nābulusī’s Commentary on Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Khamrīyah,” Orient 28 (1982): 19–40. 26 For my translation, I have relied on a microfilm of MS 4104 (3223) from the Yahuda Section, Garrett Collection, Princeton University, 348b–65a. on the battleground 153

Arabic lexicons, noted below, which he used to gloss the Arabic words in each verse, and 2) parts of several very long poems by al-Nābulusī. The translation presents al-Nābulusī’s close reading of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s al-Jīmīyah, that ode that so moved him and his companions at Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s shrine nearly twenty years earlier.

From: al-Nābulusī’s Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ fī Sharḥ Dīwān Ibn al-Fāriḍ (“Revealing the Hidden Secret in the Commentary on the Dīwān of Ibn al-Fāriḍ”)

[1] On the battle ground between hearts and eyes, I am slain without sin or guilt.

[349a] . . . That is [he is slain] in the war between the beloved’s black eyes and the lovers’ souls. He alludes with the eyes to the manifestations of the epiphanies of the True Being (tajallīyāt al-wujūd al-ḥaqq), and their blackness is their engendered existence (kawn) as non-existent traces, since all of engendered existence is darkness. For [engendered existence] is the eyes of the True Being most high who has said [Qurʾān 2:115]: {Wherever you turn, there is the countenance of God. Indeed, God is omnipresent, omniscient!}. The lovers’ hearts are their souls that subsist in [their hearts], for lovers have souls with which they love passionately. While love is a veil to the beloved, it includes drawing near and falling down before him. Then (the poet) says “slain,” that is killed by the swords of the eyes of the True Beloved . . .“without sin,” that is, “[without] a crime being committed by my killer in killing me, “or guilt” . . . The meaning is that he is killed without his killer being guilty of a sin in killing him, either because killing him nullified his illusory life through the realization of true eternal life, or because his killer is free to do what he wants with his property, fair in his judgment, and so not to be questioned about what he does.

[2] Prior to passion, I bade my spirit adieu due to the beauty my two eyes beheld in that lovely sight.

. . . (The poet says) “my spirit” instead of “my body” and the rest of the limbs, meaning: “I know that my spirit is leaving me, as it is related to the command of God most high according to His saying [Q. 17:85]: {They ask you about the spirit. Say: ‘The spirit is from the command of my Lord!’}. So it is joined to the command of God, having ended its 154 th. emil homerin relationship to me.” He says: “my two eyes” . . . because there is double vision: the eye of sensible sight is in the visible material world, while the eye of insight is in the inner world of dominion . . . [349b] He says: “beauty,” that is, loveliness . . ., and it is said that it is the trace of the true beauty visible in everything, as He most high has said [Q. 32:7]: {He who made everything in His creation beautiful.} . . . He says “that sight” meaning the place of sight, that is, the face . . . He alluded with “sight” here to the countenance of the Real in everything. He most high has said [Q. 28:88]: {Everything perishes save His countenance}, and He most high has said [Q. 55:26–27]: {Everything upon (the earth) passes away, while there abides the countenance of your Lord}. He most high has said [Q. 2:115]: {Wherever you turn, there is the countenance of God} . . .

[3] By God, for your sake, eyelids are sleepless longing for you; a heart was choked by burning desire. [4] Ribs were wasted by heart-break, their curves nearly set straight by my fevered heart. [5] Tears rained down without end, and I was barely saved from oceans deep by the breath of passion’s fire.

(The poet) alluded with the eye ʿ( ayn) to the essence of the True Being and with the “eyelids” to the forms of created things. Therefore, the spirits are the upper lids, while the bodies are the lower lids. So when the upper spiritual soulful lids break apart along with the lower bodily lids, that is due to the requirements for acceptance [by the beloved] and the necessities of beauty, as is related [in a Divine saying of God]: “I am with all whose hearts were broken for My sake!” We have something of this kind in the opening of one of our odes:27 We are the lids guarding the eyes; we are the folk of remembrance, so ask us! And we also have in another ode:28 Oh, one to whom belongs all that is seen, and in the unseen there is no second, I am your broken eye lid, oh my eye,

27 ʿ Abd al-Ghānī al-Nābulusī, Dīwān al-Ḥ aqāʾq Majmūʿ al-Raqāʾq (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1986), 2 vols. in 1, 2:142–43. 28 Ibid., 2:123. on the battleground 155

and the decree from you is near me. So in this there is beauty and in the houris of the garden. . . . The direct address to “the beautiful sight” is by way of a shift from [the beloved’s] absence to [his] presence . . . Sleeplessness is an allusion to the absence of heedlessness in the darkness of engendered worlds, due to witnessing the light of the True Being revealing Himself by the name of the Merciful upon the throne of the entities (āʿyān), and a notice to [Q. 55:29]: {Every day He is in some task}. His saying “longing for you” . . . is the divine love for the divine countenance, as He most high has said [Q. 66:52]: {They seek His countenance}. [The poet intends] his “heart” to be an allusion to the core of the spirit, and it is the perfect intellect [350a] drawing near to the True Being most high as is related [in the traditions of the prophet Muḥammad]: “The first thing that God created was the intellect. Then He said to it: ‘Approach!’ So it approached. Then He said: “Go back!” So it went back.” Thus advancing is a heart, and retreating is a concupiscent soul (nafs) . . . “Ribs” are an allusion to noble qualities for which (the poet) was distinguished in the ways of God most high. He built his affair on them just as the body is built on the ribs. His saying “wasted” . . . is an allusion to the appearance of the weakness of these qualities in the epiphany of God most high with (the qualities’) realities, as has been related [in the traditions of the prophet Muḥammad]: “Qualify yourselves with the qualities of God!” . . . The fervor in his heart is from the divine love overpowering him . . . while the straightening of the crooked ribs is that their deviation ends, such that they return to their uprightness and come back to their divine origins, as we have mentioned. His saying “tears” . . . is an allusion to the sciences that come forth from the source (ʿayn) of the True Being, by way of divine epiphanies, meaning [the poet’s] tears are from the entity (ʿayn) of his reality . . . He alluded with “the breath” (tanaffus) to the appearance of his soul (nafs) and his isolation with it due to his return to separation after union. He says “of passion’s fire,” that is, love, for it requires a soul with which one loves, so that one becomes a lover. Therefore [because of this resulting duality], they say that “Love is a veil to the beloved . . .” He says “I was barely saved from oceans deep,” that is, “I was barely saved from the seas of those divine sciences flowing over me from the entity of my existence in which I subsist. At times, I am drowning in them, at other times, I slake them.” 156 th. emil homerin

[6] How lovely the sickness that for your sake hid me from myself; there stand my proofs before passion:

. . . His saying: “for your sake” is directly addressed to the “lovely sight,” that being the countenance of the True Being in everything, despite total transcendence. His saying “sickness” . . . [350b] that is, the weakness resulting from gnosis and the disorder resulting from realizing the truth of ecstasy (wijdān), caused by the appearance of the divine power that protects the engendered worlds. As He most high has said [2:165]: {“Power belongs to God completely!}. So temporal events are produced and come forth by (His power), and all states, actions, and statements appear by means of it. ʿAf īf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī [d. 690/1291], may God sanctify his heart, said in some of his verses:29 Were not everything undone by the power absolute binding them all together for sure, Then creation would not disappear for a day, nor would traces and markers fade with changing misfortune. But it is far beyond description and never blocked from turning. Were it to reach an end one day, nothingness would follow. But how? For it is being! And from one of our odes:30 Because of me, the disease of my existence is not cured, for the remedy, the remedy, is pure being! (The poet) says “hid me from myself,” . . . that is, “since I had passed away, I did not perceive anything of me without or within, let alone perceive something else. That was due to my realization that the power of my perception had passed away in that true divine power, as had the rest of my powers in my union.” Therefore (the poet) used “sickness” in the plural, not the singular, since it is in all of his inner and external powers, and the true weakness pervades all of his abilities. He says “there stand,” that is, in that sickness, “before passion,” that is, divine love, “my proof,” . . . that is, “my evidence and proofs regarding the sincerity of my love.” The gnostic of God, al-Būsīrị̄ [d. 694/1295],

29 ʿ Af īf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī, Dīwān ʿAf īf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī, ed. Yūsuf Zaydān ([Cairo]: Akhbār al-Yawm, 1989), 245–47. 30 Al-Nābulusī, Dīwān, 2:243, with slight variations. on the battleground 157 may God sanctify his heart secret, said in his panegyric rhyming in “m,” praising the prophet [Muḥammad]:31 How can you deny love after truthful tears and sickness testified against you, And rapture confirmed the evidence on your checks, two lines: one yellow from distress, one red from tears? [7] Morning and evening I grieved for you, but I never burst out: “Let the crisis end!”

“Morning,” that is: “In the morning, I entered the light of oneness, so the darkness of my engendered existence vanished, externally and internally.” He says, “For you,” that is, “in love of you and my desire for you.” He says “evening,” that is “like the condition in which I entered the darkness of my engendered existence.” He used his “evening” and his “morning” as similes; he regards his evening as a link to durability of his entity (thabūt ʿaynih) in him, his durability being a root cause of his entity’s [existence in the world of plurality]. As for his passing way in the morning of the light of divine oneness, it is an affair that suddenly overcomes him. So know that his affair and state are in two equal conditions. His divine love does not diminish when annihilation and passing away overtake him, just as [this divine love does not diminish] when he is heedless and returns to his engendered essence and psychological states. He says “grieved” . . . because proofs of the power of the Real most high are taking hold of him, obliterating and annihilating him, maintaining him and causing him to abide. This is his reality in which he is lodged . . . He says “crisis,” . . . and it has been related in ḥadīth that [the prophet Muḥammad said]: “Grow strong, oh crisis, then end!” . . . [351a] But the poet did not say this because of his inferior human nature relative to the human nature of the Prophet, God’s prayers and peace be upon him . . . For he, God’s prayers and peace be upon him, had the perfect human nature along with the perfect angelic nature. He most high has said [Q. 18:110]: {Say [Muḥammad]: “Indeed, I am only a man, like you; to me revelation is given.”} Perfect human nature in someone other than the prophets, peace be upon them, can not remain

31 Muḥammad al-Būsīrī,̣ Dīwān al-Būsīrị̄ (Cairo: Musṭ afạ̄ al-Bābī al-Ḥ alabī, 1973), 239, and also see Stefan Sperl’s translation and insightful comments on the Burdah in S. Sperl and C. Shackle, eds. Qasida Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1996), 2:388–411, 470–76. 158 th. emil homerin stable when the angelic epiphanies appear to it; indeed, one’s human nature is diminished due to a decrease in his perception of himself. Therefore, when Ibrāhīm the son of the Prophet, God’s prayers and peace be upon him, died, the Prophet, God’s prayers and peace be upon him, cried and said: “The eye, it cries, the heart, it grieves, for we are bereaved of you, Oh, Ibrāhīm!” But when a son of one of the friends died, he laughed. He was asked about that and said: “Indeed, I delight in what God most high has decreed, though He proceeds contrary to what human nature requires.” The Prophet, God’s prayers and peace be upon him, [also] proceeded contrary to human nature, following both the requirements of sainthood and prophecy, and he never had a deficiency in any of his ways of acting! . . . When I first began to travel (the Sufi path), my only son died. When it was time to look after his washing, shrouding, and burial, I was overcome with laughter, rejoicing in the will of God most high. When a well-meaning man came to me, wanting to comfort and con- sole me, he saw me in that state of happiness, and he was amazed, as he had never known this state of mine. Then that state left me, and I realized its inferiority. But following (the Sufi path) has its required ways of acting, and that was one of them, and God knows best about such matters.

[8] I fly to every heart obsessed with desire, and to every tongue addicted to love, [9] To every ear deaf to blame, to every eye untouched by sleep.

. . . The “heart” is the heart of the one traveling on the path of God most high, whose heart is occupied only with his love of God most high. This requires that God loves him, for He be praised said [Q. 5:54]: {He loves them, so they love Him.} But He does not love them until they draw near to Him by willing acts of devotion as in the Divine Saying: “And My servant continues to draw near Me by willing acts of devotion until I love him.”32 Yet [the servants] will not love Him until He loves them. Therefore, His love of them precedes their love of Him in the (Qurʾānic) verse . . . (The poet says) “every tongue addicted to love,” . . . that is, to mentioning passion and love often, for one who loves something mentions it often . . . [351b] The meaning is that he

32 This al-h ̣adīth al-qudsī or “Divine Saying,” know as the “Tradition of Willing Devotions,” goes on to state: “Then when I love him, I am his hearing and sight, his tongue and hand, so by Me he hears; by Me, he sees; by Me, he speaks; and by Me, he on the battleground 159 rushes with ardor and zeal only toward those, like him, who are lovers of beauty, possessing hearts occupied with divine love, tongues addicted to lordly longings, ears that turn away from critics and blamers, and eyelids that are always sleepless at night due to the passionate fever of the impassioned heart . . .

[10] There never was rapture with tear ducts dry, or burning passion with unkindled desires.

. . .The meaning of “rapture” here is an intensification of the love and affection for the divine presence . . .

[11] Torment me as you will, but not by separation from you, and you will find a faithful lover rejoicing in what pleases you.

. . . The direct address is to the true beloved as before, and he says “as you will,” that is, choose what type of torment, which is the sweetest pleasure for him as he knows who does it. For, if an intense blow falls upon the lover in darkness, it naturally causes great affliction. Then, if that darkness is drawn away from him [352a], and he finds that it was his beloved who had struck him with that intense blow, then that torment turns to sweetness, as the appearance of the beauty of the [beloved’s] countenance distracts [the lover] from feeling torment’s pain, contrary to nature. A poet, oblivious to sense perceptions, said: I remembered you while the swords attacked me, arms bound before the imam. But I loved the swords’ kiss for they flashed like the lightning of your honeyed smile! Another said: Oh for a night to share my bed in sleep with my love, whether in the verdant garden of paradise or in hell! (The poet) says “other than separation,” and separation is a veiling in two senses: a physical separation, such as a great distance between him and his beloved, and a mental separation as when he is occupied with

grasps.” Ibn al-Fāriḍ and other Sufis often allude to this saying; see William A. Graham, Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Islam (The Hague: Mouton, 1977), 194. 160 th. emil homerin something other than the beloved. Separation in both senses leads to torment’s pain. He most high has said [83:15]: {Indeed, they will be veiled from their Lord on that day!} . . . The poet Ibn ʿUnayn [d. 1233] said:33 Were they to punish me in passion with anything but being far away, I could hope for them and strive for patience. The burden of rejection is lighter that that of distance; in love, would that I were chosen! (The poet) says “you will find . . . a faithful lover,” . . . that is, a lover more faithful to the covenant than any other, and it is the covenant of lordship taken as required by servitude in His most high saying [Q. 7:171]: {“Am I not your Lord?” They said: “Yes, indeed!”} . . .

[12] So take what you left of life’s last breath; there is no good in love if it lets the heart stay.

. . . He alludes with that “last breath” to what remains of his soul (nafs) and his spirit (rūḥ), which the Real most high draws to Him by virtue of the fact that (the spirit) arose from His spirit, as He be praised has said [Q.15:29; 21:91]: {And I breathed into (Adam) of My spirit}. The lover also draws it to himself by virtue of His most high saying [Q. 16:111]: {On a day when every soul will come arguing on its own behalf}. The station of divine love requires this pull and intense struggle from both sides, such that we said in the opening verse to an elegy by us:34 My folk are gone; life is a cheat, for every meeting of people is a farewell. At this time, the [following] verses came to me revealing the station of the lover and beloved indicated in His most high saying [Q. 5:54]: {He loves them and they love Him}; thus, He loves them, so they are loved. Whereas the beloved is beautiful, the lover is argumentative; that is the point of our verses:35 Though I made claim for love in the time of trial, as passion desires and decrees,

33 Ibn ʿUnayn, Dīwān Ibn ʿUnayn, ed. Khalīl Mardam (Beirut: Dār Sādir,̣ 1946), 6, where the order of verses is reversed. 34 I did not find this verse in al-Nābulusī’s Dīwān. 35 Al-Nābulusī, Dīwān, 2:95–96. on the battleground 161

His command draws my spirit, which is His breath, while my soul charms it back and gets excited. Oh my impulsive soul,36 slow down here; how long does life’s struggle last? For it ends in the lover’s death, but when he dies, that only a beloved knows. The stars in the sky shine in our water, but once consumed water disappears, as the stars shine on. These are not two things, oh soul, understand my words! How many minds have been confused by this And gone astray claiming stars instead of their water.37 But as we have said: the fool, he takes the blame! [352b] [13] Who will help me spend my spirit for love of a fawn, his qualities sweet and mingled with spirits?

. . . That is: “What person will aid and assist me . . . in annihilating . . . my spirit (rūḥ), that is, my rational self (nafsī al-nātiqaḥ ).” It is stated in the Misbāḥ ̣:38 According to the Sunnis, the spirit is the rational self, which is predisposed to making known its thoughts through eloquence and (predisposed) to understanding speech. It does not perish when the physical body does, because it is an essential substance ( jawhar), not an accident (ʿaraḍ ), which is confirmed by His most high saying [Q. 3:169]: {Nay, they are living with their Lord, receiving sustenance},39 where these spirits are meant. Here the meaning of “spend my spirit” is the appearance of the self- existing divine command to (the spirit) without an intermediary. Now, this is true since (the divine command) is actualized by itself, in itself, whereas (the spirit) is actualized by the divine command and not by means of itself, for it is transitory and ephemeral in itself, and, with

36 Nafsī al-amārah. Al-Nābulusī alludes here to Qurʾān 12:53: al-nafs la-ammārah bi-al-sūʾ, “the self/soul instigating evil,” referring to concupiscence and its inclination toward selfishness. 37 Here al-Nābulusī refers to the poetic motif of the stars that herald the rainy season. Thus, they may be said to bring the water in which they are reflected. 38 This is the famous lexicon al-Misbāḥ ̣ al-Munīr f ī Gharīb al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr by Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Fayyūmī (d. 770/1368), used extensively by al-Nābulusī throughout his commentary. See E. W. Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1984), 1:xvi, 1180 (rūḥ). 39 This verse refers to those who have been martyred. The complete verse reads: {Do not consider those killed in the way of God as dead. Nay, they are living with their Lord, receiving sustenance}. 162 th. emil homerin regards to itself, it is spent. Rather, (the spirit) is actualized only by the appearance of the divine command in it, like the appearance of light in darkness . . . (The poet) says “fawn . . .” It is stated in the Qāmūs: “The fawn is a gazelle that is active and strong enough to walk with its mother.”40 This is an allusion to the measure of what appears to the divine lover in the epiphany upon him of his Absolute True Beloved, from the inner meanings of [the divine attributes] of majesty (jalāl), beauty (jamāl), and perfection (kamāl ). This is because a created thing is unable to perceive the Real most high save according to the measure of its predisposition (istiʿdād ), and that measure is a form of an engendered idea (sūraṭ maʿnā kawnī), nothing else. He most high has said [Q. 20:50]: {He who gave everything its form then guidance}, and He most high has said [Q. 6:91; 22:74; 39:67]: {They cannot give God His true measure!} For this reason, the Greatest Shaykh [Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 637/1240)], may God sanctify his heart, said: In our most complete attributes, we perceive Him like the bat perceives the sun’s splendor. For the bat perceives nothing of the sun’s splendor, rather, it perceives only a darkness that it links to the sun’s light. This is not the sun’s light but only a trace that the sun’s light manifests to the bat’s sight. Due the strength of the sun’s luminosity and the severe weakness of the bat’s sight, (that trace) is firm, at times, at other times, lost.41 The poet, may God sanctify his heart, compared (the beloved) to a “fawn” because of his youth and sociability among his own people and others. God most high has said [Q. 13:39]: {God eliminates or confirms what He wills, and with Him is the Mother of the Book!} The book is everything, and its mother is the True Being constantly manifesting Himself on the page of elimination and confirmation. It is the presence of possibility, and all created things in it are letters that bear simple and complex meanings on the levels of forms. Just so, the fawn and its mother live in the waterless planes and deserts, far from civilization, villages, and countries where people dwell. Similarly, this presence alluded to by the fawn does not appear until after [one] leaves

40 Theal-Qāmūs al-Muḥīt by Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-F īruzābādhī (d. 818/1414), is an extensive lexicon often cited by al-Nābulusī. See, E. W. Lane, Lexicon, 1:xvi–xvii, 1087 (rashaʾ). 41 Regarding Ibn al-ʿArabī’s teachings on God’s light and perception of it, see William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 220–25. on the battleground 163 the worlds of physical and ideal forms, for civilizations are the fetters of passions and spiritual and bodily pleasures. Therefore he said “spend my spirit,” instead of “my body.” The Greatest Shaykh [Ibn al-ʿArabī], May God bless his heart, objected to a person who wanted to establish for himself the existence of his Lord most high by means of demonstration and proof. So (Ibn al-ʿArabī) said in some of his verses:42 I say to one who points to His certain existence by the proof of the setting stars: “I’m right about your argument for Him Who avoids being chained down. “The proof was only that the sun in the sky is the brightest star of all.43 “The proof of gnosis subsists in creation, but in thought it is but a fading trace. “By gnosis one worships a Lord, but with proofs one worships the off-spring of reason! “But ‘He is not begotten!’44 So what is the affair? Tell me! “For (the gnostics) have no proof but Him!” One who worships his Lord with gnosis (kashf ) and certainty is wor- shipping the semblance determined for him, as He most high has said [Q. 16:60]: {To God is the exalted semblance in the heavens and the earth!}, so he (worships) according to the insight of what actually is. But one who worships his Lord through reason and proof [353b] is bound to what his intellect conceives, worshiping Him with an intelligible argument derived from texts passed on to him. Thought is his support concerning any sign that comes to him from the signs of engendered things, whereas the possessor of gnosis relies upon the certainty of being proclaimed by the heavens and the earth. So everything in itself is non-existent, while He exists with true being. Therefore, the lord of the possessor of proof is abstract and intelligible, while the Lord of one possessing gnosis is palpable and known for sure. He says “qualities,” that is, his nature and character . . . This means His names and attributes as has been related from the Messenger of God, God’s prayers and peace be upon him, who said: “God, most high, has

42 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Dīwān, 100. 43 Ibn al-ʿArabī alludes here to Q. 6:75–82, and the prophet Abraham’s rebuke of his people who worshipped the stars, moon, and sun as deities; that these celestial objects set was proof that they were not deities. 44 Q. 112. 164 th. emil homerin

117 virtues. Any one on whom He bestows one virtue, will enter the Garden!” . . . (The poet) says “his qualities sweet,” that is, His virtues are delicious effects, subtle secrets, and wondrous lights. This is the meaning of His saying {beautiful} when He most high said [Q. 17:15; 59:24]: {To Him belong the (beautiful) names!} . . . (The poet’s) saying “mingled with spirits” . . . is an allusion to the engendered existence of every thing shaped by the epiphany of His shaping names. He most high has said [Q. 59:24]: {He is the creator, the maker, the shaper}, and He most high has said [Q.2:3]: {He is God in the heavens and on the earth!} The Greatest Shaykh [Ibn al-ʿArabī], may God sanctify his heart, has this saying in a collection of his devotions (awrād): “He-ness is pervading the manifestations, bringing to light existence and non-existence, silence and deafness,” and so on. (The Shaykh’s) saying “existence and non-existence” clarifies his saying “He-ness is pervading,” that is, [pervading] existence, due to a pervading reality in what He decrees and forms from pure non-existence, so there can be no incarnation or unification [since He alone exists].45 The shaykhʿ Abd al-Hādi al-Sawdī al-Yamanī, may God bless his hear, said:46 Darkness and gloom vanished for them; they disappeared from the world of forms, And they witnessed your inner meaning spreading, permeating through all natures! I have on this motif something I said:47 Though existence mingles with its existing things, the two don’t really mix, so understand the course! [14] Whoever dies desiring him lives exalted to the highest degree among passion’s worthy ones.

He says “whoever dies” for him, that is, in love with the fawn mentioned in the above verse . . . [353b] He says “passion’s worthy ones,” that is, the divine lovers . . . The meaning here of death in love with the beloved, represented by the fawn, is the voluntary death in the annihilation of

45 Concerning Ibn al-ʿArabī’s notions of He-ness, see Chittick, Sufi Path, esp. 394n. 15. 46 This may be the Yemeni litterateurʿ Abd al-Hādi ibn Ibrāhīm (d. 822/1419); see Kaḥḥālah, Muʿjam al-Muʾallif īn, 6:202. 47 Al-Nābulusī, Dīwān, 1:112. Here, I have translated only the first verse of this poem of 17 verses. on the battleground 165 concupiscent selfishness and the confirmation of faithfulness to the covenants of lordship. He most high has said [Q. 33:23]: {Among the believers are men who have been true to their covenant with God. Thus some have paid their pledge (and died), while others wait and do not waiver!}. . . . It is related from the Great Shaykh [Ibn al-ʿArabī], God bless his heart, and others . . . that one who dies from love receives the reward of martyrdom. There are other sayings like this one, besides that of Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ [d. 187/803], one of the ascetics, who said: “One who dies a bachelor, his home is the fire!” Along with aforementioned voluntary death is the well known obligatory death, as He most high has said [Q. 44:56]: {There (in paradise), they will not taste death save the first death [on earth]}. Thus, the martyrs of love are those who have been slain by the swords during lawful struggle, about which He most high has said [Q. 29:69]: {Those who struggle for Us, We will guide them to Our paths!}, that is to the roads leading to the realization of Us. He most high has said [Q. 3:169]: {Do not reckon as dead those who have been slain in the way of God. Rather they live with their Lord, blessed!}. In a ḥadīth, (the prophet Muḥammad) said: “Die before you die!” and he means to die voluntarily before the requisite death. And in another ḥadīth: “Truly, you will never see your Lord until you die.” “The highest degree” is from His most high saying [Q. 3:163]: {(People) are in ranks before God.} All of humanity is in ranks before Him most high some above others. Those (ranks) leading below are named the descending stairs . . ., and they are the infidels and hypocrites, as He most high has said [Q. 4:145]: {The hypocrites are on the lowest step of hell fire!}. Those that lead above are named the ascending stairs, and each has its degrees, but the way to Him most high varies depending on the person. He most high has said [of Himself] [Q. 40:15]: {The highest of degrees, possessor of the throne}, and then He elaborated on the eleva- tion of the degrees leading to Him most high up to the highest, with His saying [Q. 40:15]: {He sends the spirit with His command}—for due to His shining radiance, a spirit looks toward Him, even the lowest spirit of His most high creation, namely the concupiscent soul (nafs)— {on whom He wills of His worshippers!}. This is the divine opening (fatḥ) from His most high saying [Q. 35:2]: {What God opens of His mercy upon people, no one can withhold, and what He withholds, no one can retrieve after that!} This mercy is the True Being appearing in every existing thing as He most high has said [Q. 6:54]: {Your Lord 166 th. emil homerin prescribed for Himself}—meaning His essence—{mercy.} What was prescribed was the fixed entities of possibilities a( ʿyān al-mumkināt al-thābitah), which are non-existent by themselves prior to their appearance to themselves and their possible ideal similitudes (amthāl) by means of the True Being. God most high has said [Q. 7:156]: {My mercy encompasses every thing! I shall prescribe it!} That is “I confirm it as written for those who are fortified by whatever I reveal to them.” They are predestined for it and for the sending of the spirit from the divine command as He most high has said [Q. 17:85]: {They ask you about the spirit. Say: “The spirit is from the command of my Lord! You have been given only a little knowledge.”} That (little knowledge) is the knowledge acquired by means of their concupiscent souls, not by means of their spirits. Whereas that sending (of the divine command) consists in confirmed revelation with respect to the sinless prophets, peace be upon them, since it is law codes of the [divine] commands, while it consists of special inspiration for the protected friends and those among their followers fortified by [divine] aid and success in the station of sincerity, faith, and Islam.

[15] He is a veiled one, but were he to pass in a darkness black as his forelock, his blazing face would need no lamp.

“A veiled one . . .” [354a] is a reference to the fawn in the earlier verse, and the meaning is that the concupiscent souls have covered and veiled him from themselves by means of themselves. But he is not veiled by himself, for “veiled” is a passive noun, which indicates that something has been overcome by something more powerful. But nothing is more powerful than the Real most high; indeed, nothing is even equal to Him most high in power, let alone more powerful! But the concupiscent souls, as suits their nature, have turned away from Him most high and so have forgotten Him and their wretchedness compared to His greatness. He most high has said [Q. 59:19]: {They forgot God, so He made them forget themselves.} Were that not the case, they would not have veiled Him from themselves, nor would they have covered His manifestation with their manifestation by means of Him. We have said something similar to this:48

48 Al-Nābulusī, Dīwān, 2:258. on the battleground 167

He honored my humanity with His divinity, He who is free from my quality and all description. Veiled behind humanity’s curtains, a young man’s echo alerts us to his voice. Sound distracts the thoughts away from him; their arrival points to his escape. Every one who has died in love with him attained his desire in his death. And from one of our odes:49 The ocean flowed over us, and we were fully filled within. The cover of blindness disappeared from us as there arose in us what the riddles and ruses hold. But the Real veiled others from Himself with their selfish souls bound to names and forms, So their affair with Him is different from what they thought, though our affair with Him is not! . . . (The poet) says “were he to pass,” that is, at night . . . He most high has said [Q. 89:4]: {By the night when it passes.} . . . “Were he to pass” refers to the night of engendered things referred to in his saying “in his forelock,” that is in a night black like his forelock. By “forelock,” . . . he means a tuft of hair (shaʿr), referring to consciousness (shuʿūr), namely perception [354b] . . . The meaning is: Were His True Being to pass by night in the engendered world that originated in His consciousness and in His knowledge of the things thought; they are the fixed entities in the True Being who remains pure and uncompromised. (The poet) says then, “he would need no,” or it “would suffice him” (aghnat-hu) . . . for He is self-sufficient (ghanī) in so far as He is eternal and everlasting, so He appears self-sufficient in His epiphanies in human forms . . . “His blaze” refers to the light of His noble face, as is related in a prayer (of the prophet Muḥammad), God’s prayers be upon him: “I take refuge in the light of Your noble countenance, which illuminates the heavens and the earth and makes the darkness shine, while it puts in order the affairs of this world below and the next (world) to come!” . . . (His blaze) would free him from needing shining suns, whose light banishes the darkness of night. The meaning of the verse is: This veiled one is covered by the selfish souls, as is the True Being. Were

49 Ibid., 1:258–59, vv. 9, 11, 17–18. 168 th. emil homerin his countenance revealed in every thing, that soul would no longer need any light whatsoever . . . Al-Qushayrī [d. 465/1037] mentioned in his Epistle someone’s saying:50 My night shines with your face while darkness passes through humanity. They are in the dark of night while we are in bright daylight! [16] So if I stray for a night amidst his dark locks, his brow’s bright morn gives guidance to my eyes.

“If I stray,” that is, “If I become bewildered in love” . . . This is the sense in the Qurʾān, in His saying most high [Q. 34:50]: {“If I go astray, then I error only against myself ”} . . . He says “a night,” that is, because of the night, or in the night, referring to the engendered temporal world, and (“night”) is indefinite due to its increase or decrease in its relation to him. He says “amidst his locks,” with the pronoun referring to the veiled fawn . . . The “locks” refer to engendered things issuing from the command of Him most high. Their engendered existence are locks because they are strands (shuʿūr) of the consciousness (shiʿr) of something in His knowledge; thus, they are from His knowledge, He is most high. As He most high has said [Q. 4:166]: {He sent it down in His knowledge}, and He most high has said [Q. 67]: {Did the One who created not know?} (The poet) says “gives guidance,” . . . that is, to be sent on the path of honor. He most high has said [Q. 17:70]: {Indeed, We have honored the children of Adam, and transported them}, that is revealed to them Our sustenance for them {on land}, that is, sensate objects, {and on sea}, that is, things of the mind. This honor is a grace from Him most high, a kind act of charity and a blessing given freely. (The poet) says “to my eyes,” that is . . . to the eye of spiritual insight, it being the heart [355a] . . . The meaning of this guidance here is to reach Him most high and to realize gnosis of Him . . . He alludes with “morn” to the dawning of the appearance of the light of the True Being in the night of the human soul . . . while “bright” alludes to unveiling, illumination, and enlightenment.

50 Al-Qushayrī, al-Risālah al-Qushayrīyah, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd and Maḥmūd ibn al-Sharīf (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Ḥadīthah, 1972), 1:246. on the battleground 169

[17] When he breathes, musk confesses to those who know its sweetness: “My fragrance spreads from his exhalation.”

“When he breathes (tanaffasa),” that is, when breath (nafas) appears from him . . . “His” refers to the fawn of the earlier verses. It is related in a ḥadīth that (the prophet Muḥammad), God’s prayers and peace be upon him, said: “I find the breath of the Merciful coming to me from the Yemen.” Now, (the Prophet’s) allies, the Ansār,̣ where people from Yemen, so he, peace be upon him, named them the Breath of the Merciful. Just as He most high has said with respect to them [Q. 6:52]: {Do not turn away those who call upon their Lord, morning and evening, desiring His countenance.} They are the breath of the Merciful manifest on the throne, and with (this breath) God most high dispels (naffasa) the anxiety in the hearts of believers by giving them victory with the strong religion [of Islam] and the clear truth. The Great Shaykh [Ibn al-ʿArabī], may God bless his heart, said in verses in the Meccan Revelations:51 The breathing of the Merciful’s breath is like the ringing of the Real’s revelation.52 And on this topic from our verses:53 Our merciful one has a breath that stirred excitement. I longed for it: ‘Aws and Khazraj. It brings me religion’s victory and ease after despair. The ‘Aws and the Khazraj are two tribes among the people of Yemen, and they are the Ansāṛ allies, may God be satisfied with them . . . (The poet) says “its sweetness” . . . which is an allusion to the fragrance of his faith in the Real when He came, appearing in a human

51 As in so much of this commentary, al-Nābulusī’s discussion of the breath of the Merciful is derived from Ibn al-ʿArabī; see the latter’s al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thiqāfah al-Dīnīyah, n.d.) 1:97, 2:290–92, and also see Chittick,Sufi Path, 127–32. 52 Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah, 2:390, with akwān (“engendered worlds”) instead of raḥmān (“Merciful”). The reference to “ringing” alludes to a tradition regarding the prophet Muḥammad that he sometimes heard the sound of a bell when revelation came to him; see Maxime Rodinson, Muhammad (New York: Pantheon Books, 1971), 74. 53 Al-Nābulusī, Dīwān, 1:106, verses 14–16. 170 th. emil homerin form, revealing Himself to (the form) by means of it, as indicated in the saying on the aforementioned people of Yemen by (the prophet Muḥammad), God’s blessing and peace be upon him: “The people of Yemen have the most refined minds, the most tender hearts, and the most attentive obedience!” . . . He also said, God’s blessings and peace be upon him: “Faith is (from) Yemen” (al-īmān yamān) . . . His sweetness” is mentioned with respect to His manifestation in the forms of the Ansāṛ allies who came at once to [aid] the religion of God most high. They are the realized gnostics of every age spreading the fragrances of their flowering souls and pure inner thoughts, and so they perfume the noses and nostrils of the longing disciples . . .

[18] Years of his acceptance are as brief as a day, but a day of his rejection is long like the years.

. . . [355b] “His acceptance” is the lifting of the concupiscent soul from the (lover’s) eye of spiritual insight . . . He says “his rejection,” . . . referring to the veiled fawn . . . meaning the veil of the concupiscent soul was lowered over the (lover’s) eye of spiritual insight.

[19] So if he is traveling far away, then my heart, depart, but if he is visiting near at hand, then my eyes, delight.

. . . (The veiled fawn’s) going far away is the veiling of His self-revelation due to the worshipper’s submission to the dominance of the command of his concupiscent soul . . . His saying “depart” to his heart . . . means its departure and destruction due to grief and yearning over the loss of its goal and its inability to behold its beloved. His saying “visiting near at hand” . . . is an allusion to the raising of the veil of the concupiscent soul and the departure of the concupiscent soul’s illusory duality, which it normally perceives. For the two [lovers] have cheerfully met eye to eye, without a speck or space between them.

[20] Say to him who blames and abuses me for his sake: “Lay off me and my affair; take back your poor advice. [21] “Blame is base; no one was ever praised for it!” Did you ever see a lover mocked for burning desire? on the battleground 171

He says: “Say, oh you person perfect for addressing this affair,” and that is the one who will be mentioned as “you of tranquil soul” [in the following verse] . . . The blamer is the heedless ignoramus deceived by the forms of external actions. He is bereft of pure states, splendid virtues, and overwhelming divine epiphanies [356a], and he confuses right guidance with going astray due to his lack of experience and lack of recognition of the stages of [enlightened] men. For he criticizes the gnostics based on his own limited understanding, trusting in the literal meanings of his tradition. . . . (The poet) says “lay off me,” that is, “get away from me.” “Tell him this as you speak in my place as you are my messenger to him . . .” (The poet) says [to his blamer] “my affair,” that is “my concern and my spiritual state that I am in and about which you know nothing,” as He most high has said [Q. 17:36]: {Do not try to grasp what you have no knowledge of. Indeed, the ear, the eye, the heart, all of them will be questioned about it.} . . . He says “‘your advice’ to me, in accordance with what you yourself suppose is true, as you suppose that I am wrong.” . . . He says “Blame is base,” . . . that is, blaming those possessing perfect faith for their perfect divine love, by those ignoramuses heedless of the spiritual states of the perfect gnostics, is obviously base. That (blame) issues only from a wicked, stingy person who does not recognize legitimate impartiality or know the spiritual states of the heart and the stations of realization. For, he is like the beasts hopping around before the weak and the strong alike, shitting in front of the slacker and one who is diligent, while all the while (the beasts) are unaware of what they do as they follow their only course of action . . . His saying “Did you ever see,” is addressed to (his companion) [356b]. He says “lover,” that is, one possessing divine love. Every divine love, even if it is in the external (world), is devoted to an engendered form, provided (that form) has realized its true potentials . . . He says: “mocked . . .,” meaning that no one mocks lovers because they are lovers, for love is by no means a shame or an abuse . . .

[22] You of tranquil heart, do not look to one who comforts me; profit from your own heart, beware the dark eyes’ spell.

“You of tranquil heart,” that is, one whose heart is tranquil, not pum- meled by pains of love and desire, not agitated by the troubles of the lovers’ states. He says “Do not look to one who comforts me,” . . . that 172 th. emil homerin is, “my beloved in whom I trust and in whose hands, I entrust all of my inner and outer affairs.” The meaning is: “Do not turn yourself to glance at and behold the countenance of my beloved, for you can not bear the power of his love and passion! So be patient until he turns to you, and unveils to you his noble countenance, and raises from you the veils of sensate and intelligible forms. Then he will set you firmly on his straight path, and teach you the rules of service. So, for the sake of what is holy, turn your eyes away from lusting for the vision of his beauty . . .” The meaning of “the dark eyes’ spell” is the manifestation of the essence (ʿayn) of the True Being in sensation and reason though its light exceeds what is manifest, while the darkness of (the essence’s) engendered creations and their nonexistent possible things exceeds (what is manifest) as well. Therefore, the senses and reason become confused, and one can not walk the straightest of paths. Then falsehood overcomes the truth, and, oh how far away one is from receiving divine providence! He most high has said [Q. 55:33]: {Oh troops of genies and humans, if you can, break through the zones of heaven and earth}—if you would be rescued from the blackness of this eye and so arrive at Him Who is all-encompassing light, as He most high has said [Q. 85:20]: {Truly, God is all-encompassing around them!}—{then break through}—that is do that by the strength of your souls and the determination of your spirits—{but you will not break through without authority!}, that is without the power and supremacy of the divine force, as He most high has said [Q. 6:18; 6:61]: {He is the conqueror over His worshippers}. Then He most high said addressing the senses and reason implicitly, and the genies and humans explicitly [Q. 55:34]: {Then how many bounties from your Lord will you deny?}. Their denial is undoubtedly true since they give in to the temptation of visible forms around them there. But He most high has said [Q. 55:26–28]: {Everything upon (the earth) passes away, while there abides the countenance of your Lord, possessor of majesty and beneficence! So how many bounties from your Lord will you deny?} As for the senses and reason of the heedless person, [357a] they both necessarily lie and can not tell the truth due to the passing away of every thing save the countenance of the Real most high with the abiding of the judgment of everything. This is a matter (amr) that is difficult to comprehend for the intellects and senses, which were not given authority by the command (amr) of God most high, so it overwhelms comprehension and defies comparison. on the battleground 173

[23] I am upright and kind, oh my friend, and I have offered all my counsel: do not turn aside to that quarter! [24] There, I stripped off my shame, and threw off piety and what was pleasing and approved of my pilgrim’s way. [25] Then my passion’s face grew bright from loving him, while that of blaming me for his sake turned black with proofs.

With “my friend,” (the poet) addresses the “one of tranquil heart” in the preceding verse. He calls to him with “oh” as if he were at a distance, because their situations are far apart. He says, “I am upright and kind,” . . . that is: “My companionship with you has been characterized by truthfulness, piety, and great compassion toward you . . .” Then he says, “I have offered all my counsel . . . in what I said to you before: ‘Do not look to one who comforts me.’ And I say to you, now, in addition to not look at the one who comforts me in the quarter . . . do not turn aside there . . . Do not stop or make camp there, and do not use the reins even to turn your camel’s head in that direction, for fear that you will be tempted by love and fall into the snare of trial and tribulation!” Then he elaborated on his own state to emphasize his frank advice to him, and said: “There,” that is in that quarter, meaning in love with the fawn veiled from them, “I stripped off my shame . . .” This is an allusion to his lack of concern regarding what he does . . . Then he says, “and I threw off piety . . .,” that is, “I threw off from my heart concern for anything but the Real; I devoted my attention to Him may He be praised, and I was not distracted from Him by pleasing acts of obedience and worship. I directed my endeavor toward Him most high, and He most high undertook to create worthy actions for me and appearing from me. Therefore, He used me to obey Him, inwardly and outwardly; He did this, not me.54 As the saying goes: Fill your heart with piety; take care, do not tarry. Devote yourself to a single face; that will suffice you all others! [357b] . . . He says, “my passion’s face grew bright,” . . . that is, “my ardor in divine love.” By way of a metaphor, he compared his passion to a

54 Al-Nābulusī alludes here to the “Tradition of Willing Devotions;” see n. 32, above. 174 th. emil homerin person with a face . . . The meaning is: “My passion became pleasing to me and to the Real most high, . . . while the face of my blamer,” also a metaphor, . . . “was not pleasing to him or to the Real most high, because (the blamer) was diverted from the way of God most high due to heedlessness and ignorance . . . So the blamer was not acceptable to me due to arguments and proofs, based on tradition and reason, regarding the perfection of the station of divine love and (love’s) nobility, and the excellence of its states, as He most high has said [Q. 5:54]: {He loves them, so they love Him.}” It was related from Muslim [ibn al-Ḥ ajjāj, d. 261/875] and Mālik [ibn Anas, d. 179/795] in his al-Muwatṭ ạ ʾ, and by Aḥmad ibn Ḥ anbal [d. 241/855] from Abū Hurayrah [d.c. 58/677], may God be pleased with him, who said: “The Messenger of God, God’s blessings and peace be upon him, said: ‘God will say on the Day of Resurrection: “Where are those who have loved Me for My majesty?”’ That is to say “for reason of My majesty,” and that is His most high manifestation in the beautiful form in which He reveals Himself. Thus, hearts love Him and are passionate for Him. But the ignorant misses out, while the realized gnostic gains certainty. Then beauty overtakes majesty . . . So He named beauty “majesty,” for there is no difference between the two of them, save with respect to His self-revelation, as has been related that both of His hands are right hands. While there is plurality in all of His, most high presences, especially in His names and attributes, this is in terms of His self-revelation, not in terms of Him most high. For He is one in His essence, one in His names and attributes, and one in all of His presences! The ḥadīth continues: “[God says] Today, I will shade them in My shade, on a day where there is no shade but My shade!”55 Shade is the trace of the appearance of the light of the sun, just as the entities of all engendered things are the traces of the figures of the names and attributes (standing) in the light of the True Being, by way of a profound comparison . . . [358a] There are many more ḥadīth of this type in the prophetic traditions.

[26] Blessed be God, how sweet are his qualities; how many hearts they have slain for him then brought them back to life!

55 For this divine saying see Graham, Divine Word, 141. on the battleground 175

. . . [Similarly using the expression “blessed”], I said in one of my odes:56 Blessed be the heart into which descended her revelation with true signs replacing her psalms! . . . (The poet) says “how sweet are his qualities” that is, how delightful are . . . his attributes, names, actions, and commands. The pronoun “his” refers back to the veiled fawn, and the sweetness (of his qualities) is the lover taking pleasure in their effects, whether that be tribulation or well-being . . . He says “How many . . . they have slain,” that is, those qualities, in that they have revealed to one who beholds them, that he has died to this life here below due to all that they have done to him outwardly and inwardly, but he had been unaware of that before then. As He most high has said [Q. 16:21]: {Dead, without life, and they do not know . . .}, and this is the voluntary death. Similar is the statement of [Abū Bakr] al-Siddīq[d.̣ 634], may God be satisfied with him, when the Prophet of God, God’s prayers and peace be upon him, died: “By God, God will not give you a second death; indeed, you hastened this one!”57 (Likewise, the prophet Muḥammad), God’s prayers and peace be upon him, said: “One who wishes to see a dead man walking on the face of the earth, let him look at Abū Bakr.” Indeed, each of them recognized the state of his companion. (The poet) said “then brought them back to life;” again, this is the fine qualities that [bring] the true divine life, which they reveal to the dead. So by means of this, he becomes certain and knows that he lives by means of God, not by himself. (The poet) says “for him,” that is for love of him . . . His saying “hearts” . . . is an allusion to the total person, outwardly and inwardly. I have said in the opening verse of an ode:58 Truly, if I die, I won’t be dead but alive in Him to whom I was rightly guided! And in another opening verse of ours:59 If only, if only, love would be good to me, then my love would be alive and all else dead!

56 Al-Nābulusī, Dīwān, 1:249. 57 This saying relates to the story of Muhammaḍ choosing to die and being with God immediately, instead of living a long life followed by Paradise; see Ibn Ishāq, The Life of Muhammad, translated by A. Guillaume (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 683. 58 Al-Nābulusī, Dīwān, 1:88. 59 Ibid., 1:94. 176 th. emil homerin

[27] To hear mention of his name, my ear desires one pressing me with blame, but blaming me never sinks in.

. . . He says “mention of his name,” that is, the name of that veiled fawn . . . [358b] As a poet has said: I love blame, for it repeats mention of the beloved to my ear. And I desire the spy, for he is only there when my love is with me! . . . He says “but blaming me . . . never sinks in,” that is, it will not enter (his ear) . . . This means: “I will never listen to one blaming me!” This is a kind of precautionary statement, like people saying: “Take it easy.” A poet said about wine: It was (a wine), that when it is seen among the folk by one seeking it, joy tells him: “Take it easy!” Al-Mutanabbī [d. 354/965] has in one of his odes:60 If you are away from Ḥ oms—maỵ that never be!— then, it will never be quenched by the first spring rains! [28] I pity the lightning flashing at night when it is compared to his smile, for it is shamed by the space between his teeth.

. . . The lightning is linked to the beloved’s smile and flashing, shining teeth such that, when lightning flashes, its flash and glow resemble his smile and teeth. The Great Shaykh [Ibn al-ʿArabī], may God bless his heart, said in some of his verses:61 Her bright smile appeared, and lightning flashed, but I could not tell which rent the darkness. And she said: “Isn’t it enough for him that I am in his heart, where he beholds me every moment? Well, isn’t it?” . . . The lightning’s shame before the “space” between the teeth of the beloved means that it is dejected and crawling away inside of itself,

60 Al-Mutanabbī, Dīwān Abī al-Ṭayyib Al-Mutanabbī, edited by Musṭ afạ̄ al-Saqqā, et al., 4 vols. in 2 (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifah, n.d.), 2:119. 61 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Tarjumān al-Ashwāq, edited by R. A. Nicholson (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1911), 17; also see his translation, 57. The beloved of this poem is on the battleground 177 because (the lightning) is compared to him in terms of its bright flash and glow, and so it fears that its inferiority to him will be exposed.62 This is an allusion to the manifestation of the command of God most high, which is as swift as the flash of an eye as He most high has said [Q. 54:50]: {Our command is only one (word, swift) like the flash of an eye!} The lightning is an allusion to the world of the spirits that issues from His most high command. (For this world of spirits) is like flashing lightning, as it is from the world of the divine command without an intermediary between it and the command. He most high has said [Q. 17:85]: {They ask you about the spirit. Say: ‘The spirit is from the command of my Lord!’} The world of creatures is also from the command, but it is by way of the intervening commanding spirit. He most high has said [Q. 7:54]: {To Him is creation and the command!}, and He most high has said [Q. 30:25]: {And among His signs are the heavens and the earth that subsist by His command!}, and He most high has said [Q. 65:5]: {That is the command of God Who sent it down to you.} We allude to that in one of our odes where we say:63 Go slowly, oh gleaming lightning, for your departing light arises to me! [359a] You fly in on a flash and in another are gone, so the camps and quarters love you. Are you the radiance of Salmā’s face when she appeared and confused the burning heart? Or did she smile one evening and call to us, as her bright, chaste teeth showered our world? She is the canopy64 of the loftiest tree, while all of us are her branches.

named Salmā as is the case immediately below in verses by al-Nābulusī. Likewise, al-Nābulusī’s ideas and Qurʾānic quotations in this section regarding the command and the commanding spirit are indebted to Ibn al-ʿArabī as well; see William C. Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 251–53, 276–77. 62 Ḥ asan al-Būrīnī (d. 1024/1615) praised this verse as highly original, particularly Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s comparison of the lightning flashing between intervals of darkness to the beloved’s bright teeth separated by the dark spaces between them; see Sharḥ Dīwān Sultāṇ al-ʿĀshiqīn Sayyidī ʿUmar Ibn al-Fāriḍ, edited by Rushayyid ibn Ghālib al-Daḥdāḥ, 2 vols. in 1 (Cairo: al-Matbạ ʿah al-ʿĀmmah, 1888), 2:57. 63 Al-Nābulusī, Dīwān, 1:310. 64 Reading al-samāʾ (“canopy”), in place of al-asmāʾ (“names”) as found in the manuscript and printed edition. 178 th. emil homerin

[29] Though he be absent from me every grasping sense sees him in every subtle sense lovely and pure: [30] In the melody of the lyre and gentle flute when they embrace in trilling notes of song, [31] In the meadows of the forest gazelle in twilight’s cool and daybreak’s glow, [32] Where the mist falls from clouds on a blossoming carpet woven from flowers, [33] Where the zephyr sweeps its skirts, guiding to me at dawn the sweetest scent, [34] And in my kissing the cup’s lip, sipping wine drops in secluded pleasure.

“Sees him,” is an allusion to the veiled fawn. That is, the five senses direct their attention to him sensually and, among the people with gnosis of Him, mentally as well. He says “though he be absent from me,” that is, His exalted essence is absent due to its being utterly free of all fetters and spatial limitations. Or, if (the beloved) is not absent from (the lover), then (the lover) is lost in (beloved’s) presence, and (the lover’s) shadow disappears in the manifestation of (the beloved’s) light. So nothing remains in the gnostic’s sight or insight, as everything returns to the original non-existence on account of it. Just as we have said in an ode of ours:65 You are a fetter of existence; it will disappear when you do, but whenever you appear,66 you are a veil. Just so, all engendered things high and low, He takes them as his dressing robes. All of this is with respect to your self; as for Him, in His essence, He is exalted, awesome! One, utterly free of fetters, indeed, free of the fetter of His freedom, it seems. He is in a house of glory and majesty; you will find no door to it, but you! . . . He says “every . . . grasping sense,” that is every organ of the human being that grasps an aspect of an affair, such as the eye that sees, the ear that hears, and so on, and by this he intends the five sense organs:

65 Ibid., 1:49. 66 The manuscript read zahartạ (“you appear”) for ḥaḍarta (“you are present”) cited in the Dīwān. on the battleground 179 the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, and the rest of the bodily organs. He says “in every subtle sense” (maʿnā), that is, the contents and meaning of some affair and what is alluded to by an allusion among things. Moreover, whatever the senses perceive, while it is sense perception, it is still conceptual, not dense, while the density is in the sight and insight of the heedless person. ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī, may God bless his heart, said in one of his odes:67 By a sense that made subtle the dense, so the hard mountain became a swaying branch, And a truth that united the distant wastes with the pool of Najd, the lion of the jungles with the oryx gazelle. Beyond that I couldn’t say, for it is a secret that mutes the speaker’s tongue. A command, to it, by it, from it, our entities are engendered and its existence robed. And by us in the opening of one of our odes:68 In Him we are the meanings of existence; we are with Him like words in Him. He is too awesome to compare, exalted beyond resemblance! When He reveals himself to us, we are effaced in His pure, radiant light. And if we see Him, we would not know it, for we are in a station near Him. We have at the beginning of another ode:69 See everything as subtle; don’t regard a thing as dense. For all are only meanings, whether exalted or base, The coloring of God Who prescribed one true faith. And we have in another ode:70 A face was manifold in my mirror, and all my sight was confused by it.

67 These verses are not found in the printed edition of his Dīwān cited earlier, as this printed edition does not yet include the entire Dīwān. 68 Al-Nābulusī, Dīwān, 2:198. 69 Ibid., 1:329–30. 70 Ibid., 1:20–21. I have translated the first two of seven verses. 180 th. emil homerin

All existing things by His command are a ripple on the surface of water . . . [359b] And we also have from another ode:71 We are all seasons for His rain, and we are ideas within Him. All things are shades of His command, while His essence is a sun in brightness ...... That divine epiphany and lordly manifestation become divided up into types of senses and meanings, so (the poet) says “in the melody of the lyre . . . and gentle flute.” . . . The meaning is that the True Being reveals Himself to him and is discovered by his ears at the time of mystical audition (samāʿ) in the wonder of the songs sung by the ravishing voice, because that is its purpose among the existing things that the True Being engendered. So they appear by means of Him, and He appears by means of them by way of His beautiful names and exalted attributes, while His essence is hidden due to its complete transcendence from the created universe, which will vanish, as all that is or was will pass away. . . . He says “In the meadows . . . of the forest gazelles” [360a]. The meaning is that the Real, most high, reveals Himself to him and appears to his eyes in the forms of the meadows of the gazelles amid the forest of close and intertwined trees. His epiphany and His manifestation were in all of that, because (the meadows, gazelles, and trees) are His creations that He engendered by the effect of His names in them. So He is manifest in them, and they are manifest in Him. He says “in twilight’s cool and daybreak’s glow,” . . . meaning that the Real most high reveals Himself to him and appears to a sense that perceives Him in the cool of the air in the evening and in the morning, for that is delicious to the spirits’ taste. He says “Where the mist falls from clouds on a blossoming carpet woven from flowers,” . . . The meaning is that the Real most high also reveals Himself to him in the places where the misty rains fall and where varieties of flowers are spread out like a woven carpet with various floral patterns. (The Real) appears to his eyes, thus revealed in the forms there.

71 Ibid., 2:124–25. I have translated the first two of twenty-five verses. on the battleground 181

He says “Where the zephyr sweeps its skirts . . .” In an allusive metaphor, he compares the passing of the wind over the land to a person with long robes trailing on the ground behind him . . . He says “guiding to me at dawn the sweetest scent . . .” The meaning is that He most high reveals Himself to him and appears [360b] in the places over which the breeze blows to and fro such that there arises from (these places) scents of perfume and fragrances of flowering boughs. So He be praised is revealed there to his nose, so he smells Him and savors His grace.72 He says “And in my kissing the cup’s lip” . . . using a metaphor . . . He says “sipping wine drops,” that is, wine, again by way of allusive metaphor, alluding to the disclosure of divine meanings and ecstatic truths. He says “in secluded pleasure,” . . . indicating that the secluded pleasure and whatever else one can mention, all of that are the epiphanies of divinity to the sense of taste and to the eyes in every form that is. But, they are His nonexistent creations in which He appears by means of the known presence of His existence.

[35] I never knew exile from the homelands while he was with me, and wherever we were my mind was at rest. [36] So my tent is where my love has settled, and whenever he appears, I turn aside at the shifting dunes.

“I never knew exile” . . . means “I do not recognize exile,” due to his turning away from all other than the Real’s self-revelation in the engendered things. The only person who understands the shame of exile and its hardship is the one who stays away from Him most high while being present, instead, with things in time and place . . . There is a ḥadīth: “Love of the homeland is part of faith.” The first homeland is the presence of pre-eternal divine knowledge, then the presence of the lordly will, then the presence of the pre-eternal mental word, then the presence of the exalted pen and the preserved tablet. Finally, engendered existence appears in this world below, and, so, one is exiled [361a] from his homelands. But if he beholds the Real most high not in His hidden essence, but present in the names and attributes in various epiphanies, he will never know exile from his homelands again.

72 I follow the printed edition’s latf̣ (“grace;” 2:59) instead of the manuscript’s lafz ̣ (“word”). 182 th. emil homerin

(The poet) says “while he was with me,” that is, the one referred to earlier as the fawn, “never separate from me in any state, because he is my True Being, by whom I exist, although I am transient, unreal, and non-existent.” He most high has said [Q. 57:4]: {He is with you wherever you are!} So we are engendered and have a spatial location, but not Him Who is, nevertheless, with all things (lahu maʿīyah) by means of the manifestation of existence in all levels of limitation . . . (The poet) says “my mind,” that is, what comes to the heart about arranging some affair . . . He says “wherever we were,” that is, any place we met, whether in this world below, or in the intermediate world of imagination (barzakh), or in the world to come. He says “was at rest,” that is, “not disturbed or afflicted by separation from the one I love or by a distance between us, because I behold him, visible, and self- revealing in all engendered things by means of the True Being in the non-existence of the entities.”73 [The poet is saying]: “I did not know exile from the homelands since he was with me, visible and self-revealing in every place . . . Therefore any tent, that is, any place, where I am in this world below, or in the intermediate world of imagination, or in the world to come, is my tent, meaning, my homeland, not the abode of exile, because he is with me. For I was, as He most high has said [Q. 57:4]: {He is with you wherever you are!}” (The poet) says: “my love,” . . . meaning “my beloved” . . .“has settled” (ḥāḍar), that is “he is not absent from me because he is my existence by which I exist in the appearance of the mystical state (ḥāl).” In fact, no one is absent from His existence, although one can be absent from the characteristics of one’s engendered being and its specificity, since that is, in fact, a non-existent matter. He says: “whenever he appears,” (badā) that is, any time he appeared, that is, he came out into the desert (bādīyah) from the town (ḥaḍar), being present (ḥuḍūr) with me . . .” The meaning is: “Whenever He is veiled from me with the manifestation to me of my non-existent forms,74 then He shows them to me as existing through His existence, for I had not recognized that they existed through His existence. This is the heedlessness about which He most high has said [18:28]: {Do not follow

73 In this section, al-Nābulusī follows Ibn al-ʿArabī’s teachings regarding the limited and ultimately non-existent character of creation, its various levels, and “exile from the homelands;” see Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah, 2:527–29, 557; Chittick, Sufi Path, 14–15, 88, 181, 132–33, 322, 364–66, 392 n. 35. 74 The al-Daḥdāḥ edition reads: “His non-existent forms,” 2:61. on the battleground 183 one whose heart We have made heedless to remembering Us, for he follows (his desire)}. That is because He most high controls the hearts and minds, and He transforms them as He wills and chooses . . . The meaning of “the shifting sand dunes” is to struggle in the Sufi way with humility and mindfulness on the path of God most high with complete ardor toward Him may He be praised, and by turning completely away from all other than Him most high. This is the rightful battle! So, one’s affair subsists in this condition, such that he finds his heart there. Then, it is as if his beloved has descended into (his heart) [361b], so that he finds him there, as the poet said: “He appears.” That is, he comes out into the desert, and “the shifting dunes” mun( ʿaraj al-jarʿāʾ), which are throughout the desert. (This) is an allusion to the states of the Sufi way on the straight path, which He brings to the places of the devoted wayfarer chosen by Him to share in the drink (tajarruʿ) of afflictions and the suffering of pains and hardships caused by leaving behind old habits (ʿawāʾid). So that shifting dune that is his beloved’s homeland becomes his homeland, as well, as [the poet says]: “I turned aside there.” So they are joined together in one homeland, as he returns (yaʿūdu) to witness Him and the revelation of the epiphany of His existence.

[37] Farewell to riders traveling by night in a light dawning from you as you go on their trek with them. [38] Let these riders do as they will for they are Badr’s men and shall not fear sin.

. . .[The poet] alludes with “riders” to that group among the people of God who are the realized gnostics according to His most high saying [Q. 17:70]: {Truly, We have honored the children of Adam, and transported them on land and sea}, that is the land of corporeal things, and the sea of spiritual entities. So they are carried on every spiritual state due to their witnessing the real means of transport and due to their subsisting in Him, without and within. Thus, they are riding, never walking, traveling with Him and to Him most high on His straight path . . . (The poet) says: “traveling at night” . . . and, of course, there is [Q: 17:1]: {He carried His servant by night . . .}”75 [The poet] alludes with night to the

75 This Qurʾānic verse serves as the basis for elaborate accounts of the Prophet Muḥammad’s night journey and heavenly ascension popular among the Sufis as a 184 th. emil homerin darkness of the engendered things. Thus, they are carried by Him, traveling to Him, with Him in the darkness of concupiscent souls and the gloom of natural dispositions, in order that they may realize there, that it is all His lordly epiphanies in His human presences. (The poet’s) says “you,” as a direct address to the beloved alluded to above. He says “with them,” that is, “you appearing with your true being in the decrees of their non-existent entities . . .” He says “with a light from you,” that is “appearing to them from the manifestation of your true being,” and that is the true light (al-nūr al-ḥaqīqī). This is a type of rhetorical abstraction as when one says “I saw Asad in Zayd.” As has been said:76

My night shines with your face while darkness passes through humanity. They are in the dark of night while we are in bright daylight! (The poet) says, “Let these riders do as they will” . . . [362a] according to their own personal desires, for their souls subsist with their Lord, as their souls are in the hand of their Lord Who deals with them as He wills. He dealt with them as He willed, and how He dealt with them was how they willed. He most high has said [Q. 76:30]: {You will nothing save God wills it!} The heedless person subsists in savoring his own existence, while he only knows of his Lord without savoring Him. For his knowledge is a veil to his taste (dhawq). But those riders subsist by savoring themselves by means of their Lord, and they are illumined in accordance with His most high saying [Q. 13:33]: {Who is it who stands over every soul regarding what it has earned?}, and His saying [Q. 85:20]: {Truly, God is all-encompassing around them!}, and (the prophet Muḥammad’s) saying, peace be upon him: “By Him whose hand holds my soul!” The Greatest Shaykh [Ibn al-ʿArabī], may God sanctify his heart, said:77 My pen and my tablet stretch throughout existence: the pen of God and His preserved tablet! My hand is God’s right hand in His World of Dominion. What I will, I do, and affairs are good fortunes! paradigm for mystical transcendence and union; see Michael A. Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism (New York: Paulist Press, 1996), 35–39, 242–50. 76 Al-Nābulusī quoted this verse earlier in his commentary; see n. 50. 77 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Dīwān, 46, where the final hemistich reads: “What I will, I yield to, and the marks are good fortunes.” on the battleground 185

He alludes with the pen to his intellect and with the tablet, to his soul. (The poet) says: “They,” that is the aforementioned riders, “are Badr’s men . . .” Badr is a play on words and so has two meanings . . . First, they are the men of the famous military expedition that the Prophet, God’s prayers and peace be upon him, undertook after the Hijrah and before the conquest of Mecca. The victory at Badr is well known in which leaders of the Quraysh were killed; on that day, Islam was founded. The date of Badr was the 17th of Ramaḍān, a Friday, eighteen months after the Hijrah.78 (Muhammad’s)̣ companions, may God be satisfied with them, were few, as He most high has said [Q. 3:123]: {God gave you victory at Badr when you were low}, meaning very few. They were 313 or 314 men, while their enemies numbered between 900 and a thousand . . .79 Some have said the number of men who fought, 314, is the numerical value of the sum of the letters of the name “Muḥammad,” . . . and this is a great secret contained in this honorable name. The second meaning is that they are the people ofbadr , meaning the full moon which, metaphorically stands for God’s epiphany to them and upon them and His unveiling Himself to them among them. This is like the sun that is revealed at night in the moon, appearing by this means to people in the night. So the light of the shining full moon is the light of the sun cast upon it as on a polished mirror. Moreover, (the sun) casts its light in its clarity without moving, no doubt about it. Just so, the True Being most high appears in the mirrors of engendered things. If the engendered thing becomes clear and the veil of the deception of duality lifted from it, then there appears in it the light of the True Being. The devoted wayfarer, the realized gnostic, will witness it and so become the full moon for the manifestation of the sun of oneness from the divine presence [362b]. (The prophet Muḥammad), on him be peace, said: “You will see your Lord as you now see the full moon without clouds,” and in another version, “as you now see the sun!” Thish ̣adīth is in the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim [ibn al-Ḥ ajjāj] and other (ḥadīth collections). On this meaning we have said in an opening verse to an ode:80 O rising sun or rising moon, you move slow and sure in the garb of shape and form.

78 The battle took place in 2/624. 79 For a history of the Battle of Badr, see EI2 1:868–69. 80 Al-Nābulusī, Dīwān, 1:205. 186 th. emil homerin

(The poet) says: “they shall not fear . . . sin.” The poet alludes with this to the meaning of what has been transmitted by al-Bukhārī, Muslim [ibn al-Ḥ ajjāj], and Abū Dāwūd with their chain of authorities going back to ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib [d. 40/660], may God be satisfied with him. According to al-Bukhārī, ʿAlī said: The Prophet, God’s prayers and peace be upon him, sent me on a mission along with Abū Marthad and Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām, each of us on horseback. He said: “Ride hard until you reach Rawḍah Khākh where there is a woman from the polytheists with a letter from Khātiḅ ibn Abī Baltaʿah to the polytheists.” We overtook her as she traveled on her camel at the spot where the Messenger of God, prayers and peace be upon him, said she would be. We said to her: “The letter!” She said: “I don’t have the letter with me.” We made her get down [from her camel], and we searched, but we did not find a letter. We said: “The Messenger of God, prayers and peace be upon him, does not lie! Produce the letter or we will surely strip you bare!” When she realized that this was serious, she reached into her waistband and produced it. We rode hard with it—and in another version—We rode hard with it to the Messenger of God, prayers and peace be upon him.” [The letter was from Khātiḅ ibn Abū Baltaʿah to people among the polytheists in Mecca informing them about some of the affairs of the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him.]81 ʿUmar said: “Oh Messenger of God, He has acted treacherously toward God, His Messenger, and the believers! Let me cut off his head!” The Prophet, God’s prayers and peace be upon him said: “I will not allow you to bear the burden of what you want to do!” Khātiḅ said: “By God, I am nothing but a believer in God and His Prophet! I only wanted to have among the folk [of Mecca] someone to assist God in protecting my family and property. Every one of your close companions has relatives there to help God defend their families and property.” The Prophet, God’s prayers and peace be upon him, said, “True. So we should not speak ill of [you].” But ʿUmar said: “He has acted treacherously toward God, His Messenger, and the believers! Let me cut off his head!” But (the Prophet) said: “Is he not from Badr’s men? Perhaps God has disclosed to them, saying: ‘You are Badr’s men. Do what you will, for I have granted you the Garden [of Paradise],’ or ‘I have forgiven you!’” Thenʿ Umar’s eyes welled up with tears . . . In one version, (God’s) disclosure is “to them,” that is His disclosure led to the epiphany of their realities, and this is the Station of Essence necessary for passing away in the existence of God most high. In the version (of this ḥadīth) by Muslim [ibn al-Ḥ ajjāj], His disclosure is

81 This addition is from al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, tafsīr, sūrah 60. on the battleground 187

“upon them,” that is, their realities are overwhelmed by the epiphany upon them and within them, along with their fixed entities thabūt( aʿyānihim), and this is the Station of Name and Attribute. This is the poet’s statement on what occurred, as you see, namely: “I am free of any sin until the world to come!” He most high has said [Q. 33:23]: {Among the believers are men who have been true to their covenant with God. Thus some have paid their pledge (and died)}—they are the foremost—{while others wait}—they are the later ones—{and do not waiver!} So God most high has granted them the pleasure of the truth of the affair concerning His edict. Now, [God] speaks “to” the first group and speaks “with” the second group. “To” is a reference to His most high saying [Q. 2:284]: {To God is what is in the heavens and the earth!}, and His saying [Q. 27:91]: {To Him belongs everything!}, and His saying [Q. 6:13]: {To Him belongs what lives in the night and in the day!}, that is, the night of corporeal bodies and the day of spirits. This crosses over into what can not be thought, indicating the failure of the intellect to comprehend these realities or to reach these subtleties. Similarly, “with” is a reference to His most high saying [Q. 16:127]: {You will not be patient save with God}, and His saying [Q. 11:41]: {“Ride in (the ark)! With the name of God be its course and anchor- age!}, and His saying [363a] [Q. 2:249]: {Many a time has a small band defeated a larger one with God’s permission!}. They are those who become agitated before (their) hearts find assurance in the oneness of the Knower of the unknown. (The prophet) Abraham, upon whom be peace, said [Q. 2:260]: {“Lord, show me how You bring the dead to life.” (God) said: “Do you not believe?” (Abraham) replied: “I do! But, I seek the heart’s assurance!”}—that is “To be reassured by You.” On this, the Greatest Shaykh [Ibn al-ʿArabī] said, may God bless his heart:82 I say “to” not “with,” for a person struggles with me with “with!” (God’s) saying [in the ḥadīth], “Do what you will!” means that He watches over your actions while you are in this mystical state. “Indeed, they are not your actions, but Our actions,” as He, most high, has said [Q. 37:96]: {God created you and what you do!}, that is, your actions.

82 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Dīwān, 218. 188 th. emil homerin

“Likewise, your willing is not your willing but Our willing,” as He, most high, has said [Q. 76:30]: {You do not will save as God wills!} (God) says: “For I have granted you the Garden (jannah),” that is, as a result from the emanation of grace. Now, junnah means a cover, therefore, (Paradise) is named the Garden (jannah) because (the people there) have screens protecting them from seeing others in this world below, for in the Hereafter, they behold the epiphany of the overwhelming oneness. In the other version (of the ḥadīth, God) says: “I have forgiven you!” that is, “I have screened you from being watched, due to the manifestation of the one, protecting reality. God most high has said [Q. 18:24]: {Remember your Lord when you forget!}, that is, “When you forget your self.”

[39] By my right to break from one blaming me because of you, and by the fire blazing in my ribs bound to rapture, [40] Look to a heart melted by burning love of you, and to an eye drowned deep in bloody tears. [41] Pity my stumbling hopes and my falling back on delusion in hopes of the heart’s83 release; [42] Turn toward my broken desire with a “Maybe” or “Perhaps;” ease my breast of anguish.

“By my right” (bi-ḥaqq) is an oath, that is, “I swear to you by the truth on which I stand!” Here, truth (ḥaqq) is opposed to falsehood. Or it could mean [the Real (ḥaqq)], one of the names of God most high by which He realizes every engendered reality, so He makes it established and existing. He most high has said [Q.17:105]: {In truth, We sent [revelation] down, and it came down with truth!}, and He most high has said [Q.14:19; 16:3; 29:44; 39:5; 45:22; 64:3]: {He created the heavens and the earth in truth!}, and He most high has said [Q. 17:81]: {Truth has come, and falsehood has passed away}—and everything save Him most high is falsehood—{indeed, falsehood is bound to vanish!} (The poet) adds “By my right” to “to break [from one blaming],” that is . . . to refrain from the whispers of others after the manifestation of the secrets . . . The person addressed [in “because of you”] is the one alluded to as a fawn in a previous verse . . . “The fire blazing” burns from

83 Al-Nābulusī cites al-qalb (“heart”) for al-waʿd (“the promise of ”), a common variant in manuscripts of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Dīwān. on the battleground 189 divine love [363b], and it breaks out in my heart due to my obedience to rapture (wajd ), namely, what I find (ajidu) of lordly eros and spiritual desire,” and that is a splendid affair and a beautiful state! (The poet) says, “Look” . . . which is addressed to the True Beloved alluded to earlier. What is intended is a mercy prepared specifically for him, or, if not that, then a general mercy including every thing, as He most high has said [Q. 7:156]: {My mercy encompasses everything!} With this (mercy), He mounts the Throne, as He has said [Q. 20:5]: {The Merciful mounted the Throne.} (Mercy) gave each thing its predisposition. By means of (mercy), the believer receives his faith, while the infidel does not. Instead, by means of (mercy), the infidel receives his infidelity, not faith, and this is the way it is for anything receiving something, as He most high has said [Q. 7:156]: {I will prescribe (mercy)}—that is “I will manifest it by the predisposition to faith—{for those who are mindful}—that is, those who are on guard against infidelity. He, may He be praised, has said [Q. 58:22]: {He inscribed faith in their hearts and supported them with a spirit from Him.} Regarding this is what has been told about Iblīs. He came to [the ascetic and Qurʾān commentator] Sahl ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Tustarī [d. 282/896], may God sanctify his heart, and said to him: “Oh Sahl, am I not something? He most high has said: [Q. 7:156]: {My mercy encompasses everything!}” Sahl was quiet. Then he thought: “I can defeat (Iblīs) by proof,” and so recited to him the rest of the verse in which God most high says thereafter {I will prescribe it for those who are mindful}.” Then Iblīs said: “Oh Sahl, now I see your ignorance concerning your Lord! The bond (qayd) is your attribute, not His attribute!”84 He means that the predisposition to belief without infidelity is your bond to God, and that your bond to Him is due to His absolute mercy. He provides His mercy absolutely and all-inclusively, without anyone knowing his bond in eternity, for that bond occurs in a time without time. (This is an all-inclusive mercy) and not specifically destined for those who are mindful. He most high has said [Q. 6:12]: {“Your Lord prescribed mercy for Himself.} He most high has said [Q. 20:50]: {He gave everything its creation.} Thus, He prescribed it, namely giving each thing its creation.

84 For an earlier version of this tale, and one probably known to al-Nābulusī, see Muḥammad al-Munāwī (d. 1031/1622), al-Kawākib al-Durrīyah (Cairo: al-Maktabah al-Azharīyah, n.d.), 1:438–39. 190 th. emil homerin

So everything has been treated with mercy in what it has been granted to it in terms of its creation according to what was prepared for it. Thus, everything is predisposed for something, and its having been given a predisposition is a mercy for it. Therefore, the all-inclusive mercy bestows the predisposition, while the specific mercy is giving each thing its [own particular] creation in accordance with its predisposition. His most high saying [Q. 7:156]: {I will prescribe} is in the future tense due to the time it will take for that aforementioned bestowal (of mercy) specifically to care for and magnify the station of those who are mindful, as written in the verse . . .85 [The poet] says “to a heart” . . . meaning by that the spiritual heart into which was breathed the lordly command. He says “melted” . . . alluding to its annihilation in beholding the divine command. For the spirit is breathed from the divine command as He most high has said [Q. 15:29; 38:72]: {I breathed into (Adam) of My spirit}, and He most high has said [Q. 17:85]: {They ask you about the spirit. Say: ‘The spirit is from the command of my Lord!’} Thus, (the spirit) is made from the lordly command without an intermediary. So when (the spirit) passes away with the passing of the proportioned body, nothing remains save the command. He most high has said [Q. 65:5]: {That is the command of God sent down to you.} [The poet] says “for burning love of you” . . . meaning for the True Beloved . . . with a sorrow, an inner passion, and a prolonged sickness . . . He says “to an eye,” . . . and this is a reference to the insightful eye for which he prayed to (the beloved) [364a] with respect to what (the prophet Muḥammad), peace be upon him, said in the “Tradition of Drawing Near by Willing Devotions,” [where God says:] “I become the eye with which he sees,” such that he looks at Him without a veil veiling Him. (The poet) says “drown deep in bloody tears” . . . that flood the eye (ʿayn) due to engendered forms that claim [an independent] existence by way of the pollution of a hidden polytheism. As He most high has said [Q. 9:28]: {The polytheists are surely polluted!}. Just so, blood is polluting, such that when added to tears, it pollutes them. But when the Real is the eye by which he sees, then he sees the passing

85 See Ibn al-ʿArabī’s more detailed explanation of the all-inclusive mercy and the specific mercy; Ibn al-ʿArabī, The Bezels of Wisdom, translated by R. W. J. Austin (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 187–97, and Chittick, Sufi Path, 130. on the battleground 191 away of the engendered worlds and beholds the True Epiphany in all entities (aʿyān). (The poet) says “Pity . . . my stumbling hopes” . . . meaning that, his hopes and desires sometimes stumble and fall, and at other times they stand tall. So he passionately desires union while giving up all hope of it. He says “my falling back . . . on delusion in hopes of the soul’s86 release,” . . . that is, “my concupiscent soul . . .” This means that the passionate desire of his concupiscent soul deludes him with freedom from grief due to the stress that he is in. Thus, the passionate desire of his concupiscent soul leads him to anticipate release and to covet achieving it. But there is no release in his union with the True Beloved due to the absence of any relationship between them whatsoever [due to the absolute nature of union]. We have alluded to this with our saying in some of our verses:87 Woe to passionate lovers of beauty confused by the sun between east and west. Their beloveds are always contrary to them: If the lovers tend to peace, their beloveds turn to war! (The poet) says “turn . . . toward my broken desire . . . with a ‘How are you?’ That is, “Ask after me, if only with a single ‘How are you?’”hal ( ); don’t turn completely away from me, though you do not turn toward me either. Mend my fracture and have sympathy for my broken desire for you.” His saying, “or ‘Perhaps . . .’ ” means that his beloved will say to him: “Perhaps I will grant you union with me,” or “Perhaps I will turn to look at you.” This is a coveted desire of the lover for the beloved [364b], namely that the beloved will call his lover to return to him . . .

[43] How welcome the words I was unworthy to receive from the bearer of glad tidings proclaiming relief after despair: [44] “Good news for you, so strip off what is on you, you have been remembered despite your crooked ways!”

[The poet says] . . . “I was unworthy to receive . . . because I have only recently undertaken good deeds and only lately achieved mystical

86 In his commentary, al-Nābulusī cites al-nafs (“soul, concupiscence”) in place of al-qalb (“heart”), which he cited earlier when quoting the verse. 87 Al-Nābulusī, Dīwān, 1:51. 192 th. emil homerin states . . .” He says “the bearer of glad tidings,” that is, one who bears good tidings from the world of the unseen, and it is the lordly rapture (al-wārid al-rabbānī) or other than that from the communications from the unseen world. On this the Greatest Shaykh [Ibn al-ʿArabī], may God sanctify his heart, has said in his verse:88 O the affliction in the morning, O the rapture that came and greeted us from a presence nearby. [So I said to it: “Welcome and greetings to a rapture coming with my glad tidings from a source of purity!”] (The poet) says “after despair,” . . . meaning the hopelessness of ever reaching the presences of acceptance. His saying “relief” is linked to the “bearer of glad tidings” who gives him joyous news . . . “Thus, when I was freed, I was distinguished by goodness and release, by two blessings of God for relief from the distress caused by the intensity of His unveiling . . .” Thus, the message is to the poet, may God sanctify his heart, from the bearer of glad tidings to him . . . It is called “good news” (bishārah) because it exposes the complexion (basharah) of the face, that is, it reveals the skin of (the face) [in the beloved’s unveiling]. (The messenger) says “So strip off,” that is, remove and get rid of “what is on you” of clothes, and that is the form from its world of natural dispositions and physical elements that imprisons the commanding spirit. Then he says, “you have been remembered,” . . . which is a reference to the presence of the Real most high [365a], where the perfect disembodied spirits are present subsisting together in the divine command that makes all of creation visible to the eye, as He most high has said [Q. 7:54]: {Truly, creation and the command belong to Him! Blessed be God, Lord of the worlds!}. The one who remembers is not stated though he is known since there is no one who remembers save Him, by His pre-eternal remembrance, as He most high has said [Q. 15:9]: {Truly, We sent down the remembrance, and We protect it!}, and He most high has said [Q. 2:152]: {Remember Me, and I will remember you!}, that is, “you will find Me remembering you in My knowledge and speech in eternity.” (The poet) says “despite . . . your crooked ways,” . . . namely, in his acts and mystical states . . .

88 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Dīwān, 360. I have included the second verse, since its reference to “welcome” and “glad tidings” is probably what brought the first verse to the mind of al-Nābulusī. on the battleground 193

* * * * * * *

Al-Nābulusī’s Responsive Reading

Al-Nābulusī’s reading of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s al-Jīmīyah was clearly an experience of interpretation as he was concerned primarily with meaning, and only secondarily with literary or rhetorical elements of the ode. This is in marked contrast to al-Būrīnī’s explication and explanation of the same poem, which examined the al-Jīmīyah in terms classical Arabic rhetoric and poetic norms, noting its continuities with tradition, while highlighting Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s innovations in images and style.89 That al-Nābulusī did not explore the literary dimensions of the ode was not due to any lack of knowledge on his part. As others of his writings amply demonstrate, al-Nābulusī was quite accomplished as a scholar of Arabic rhetoric and poetry.90 Moreover, he may have thought that al-Būrīnī had adequately addressed such issues in his earlier commentary of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s odes. In any case, al-Nābulusī probably assumed that his intended audience was readily familiar with Arabic rhetoric and the essentials of Arabic poetry. However, al-Nābulusī made fewer assumptions regarding what his readers knew of Sufism. Similar to some of his works on the thought of Ibn al-ʿArabī,91 al-Nābulusī’s Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ appears to have been intended for a more general audience of literate Muslims, and not exclusively for an elite few. In his commentary on the al-Jīmīyah, for example, al-Nābulusī reviewed such basic doctrines as the composition of the spirit (v. 13), the heedlessness of the concupiscent self or soul (nafs; e.g. 19), mystical annihilation in contrast with physical death (e.g., 14, 26), mystical knowledge, or gnosis, as compared to rational thought (e.g., v. 13), and the superiority of the prophets who bring divine law,

89 E.g. al-Būrīnī’s comments on v. 28 above, n. 62; also see Arberry’s translation and notes on the poem in The Mystical Poems of Ibn al-Fāriḍ (Dublin: Emery Walker, 1956), 27–34. Concerning such “pre-Romantic” readings of poetry, see Jonathan Culler, “Literary Competence,” in Reader-Response Criticism, ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 107. 90 See Pierre Cachia, “From Sound to Echo in Late Badi Literature,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 108:2 (Apr.–Jun., 1988): 219–25, and his The Arch Rhetorician or the Schemer’s Skimmer: A Handbook of Late Arabic badīʿ drawn from ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī’s Nafaḥāt al-Azhār ʿalā Nasamāt al-Asḥār (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1998). 91 Von Schlegell, “Sufism in the Ottoman Arab World,” 77. 194 th. emil homerin to the mystics who receive spiritual inspiration (v. 14). Repeatedly, he returned to his central topic of the ontological relationship of humanity and the rest of creation to God. Beginning with the poet’s mention of eyes in the first verse, al-Nābulusī unfolds the image of the beloved whose eyes alone show through the veil, and al-Nābulusī takes this as the divine epiphany within all of creation where the divine countenance may be found, as noted in Qurʾān 2:115: {Wherever you turn, there is the countenance of God.} The poet was slain by his beloved, and so became a martyr of love. Mention of the departing spirit (rūḥ) in verse two leads to further Qur’anic quotations including 17:85: {They ask you about the spirit. Say: “The spirit is from the command of your Lord”}. While al-Nābulusī understands that the poet intended the spirit to be that within each human being, his Qur’anic quotation conveniently confuses this spirit with the spirit of revelation thus allowing him to link the spirit within a person to the divine command, kun (“Be”), which initiates creation. As in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s commentary on his Turjumān al-Ashwāq, al-Nābulusī draws on Arabic etymology, word-play, and double-en- tendre to find symbols, metaphors, and deeper meanings, as in verse three where the eye (ʿayn) becomes the source (ʿayn) of True Being, as well as the entity (ʿayn) of the mystic, while, in verse five, the breath (tanaffus) alludes to the appearance of the poet’s soul (nafs). Another interpretive strategy applied by earlier commentators of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s verse, and one used by al-Nābulusī in commenting on the al-Jīmīyah, is to read the poem as Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s spiritual autobiography. Thus, in verse four, the ribs represent the poet’s good qualities, while his love sickness mentioned in verse six, and elsewhere in the poem, is the direct result of his ecstasy in union and mystical annihilation. Similarly, in verse seven, al-Nābulusī compares the perfect human and angelic natures of the prophet Muḥammad to the poet’s inferior human nature that causes him to be overcome by rapture. Here, al-Nābulusī adds an important personal statement about his own experience of being overwhelmed by a spiritual state at the time of his only son’s death. Al-Nābulusī continues in the same vein in his commentary on the following verses regarding the love between God and the poet. In his commentary to verses eight and nine, al-Nābulusī cites the “Divine Saying of Willing Devotions” in which God states that when His loving servant draws near to Him, He loves him in union, assuming His worshipper’s senses. Al-Nābulusī then circles back to God’s spirit or breath on the battleground 195

(rūḥ) and the spoken divine command (amr) as the origin of the spirit (rūḥ) within each human being, who has a pre-eternal covenant with God. In this way, humans are intimately bound to Him who, nonetheless, remains one, alone (vv. 10–12). Al-Nābulusī quotes Ibn al-ʿArabī’s account of how a bat may sense the sun’s presence but never see it, as an analogy to the human being’s relation to True Being (v. 13). In verse fourteen, al-Nābulusī discusses the death of selfishness and the martyrdom of love, while in his commentary on verses fifteen and sixteen, he again relies on etymology to find meaning, as the locks of the beloved’s hair (shaʿr) become the strands of divine consciousness (shuʿūr) that will be engendered when the divine command is spoken. With verse seventeen, al-Nābulusī focuses his commentary on the plight of the poet/mystic in search of union with True Being, and on the pain of separation and the joy of acceptance. When the poet dismisses those who blame and abuse him for his love, al-Nābulusī takes the opportunity to swipe at critics of Sufism, likening them to animals hopping around and shitting in public (vv. 20–21). He then goes on to highlight the poet’s spiritual advice to his protégé regarding the difficulties of love, the destruction of selfishness, and the ultimate enlightened life of the spirit brought by the divine command (vv. 22–28). The play of light and dark are prominent features in these verses as faces shine and lightning flashes in the dark night. In the course of his commentary, al-Nābulusī hits upon a metaphor to account for creation’s plurality in relation to God’s oneness. Referring to the divine saying in which God promises to shade His elect on the Judgment Day, al-Nābulusī states: Shade is the trace of the appearance of the light of the sun, just as the entities of all engendered things are the traces of the figures of the names and attributes (standing) in the light of True Being, by way of a profound comparison. Not surprisingly, al-Nābulusī interprets the beloved’s qualities of verse twenty-six to be God’s names, attributes, actions, and commands. Although the Daḥdāḥ edition provides individual commentaries for verses twenty-nine through thirty-four, al-Nābulusī actually treats these verses together as a thematic unit regarding the effects of love and the divine epiphanies on the poet’s senses and entire being. While God remains ever transcendent, He is, nevertheless, present and immanent in all existence as implied in this extraordinary pantheistic passage. Perhaps recalling his own experience at Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s shrine, when discussing v. 30 with its mention of tunes, songs and voice, al-Nābulusī states: 196 th. emil homerin

The True Being reveals Himself to him and is discovered by his ears at the time of mystical audition (samāʿ) in the wonder of the songs sung by the ravishing voice, because that is its purpose among the existing things that the True Being engendered. The divine presence and epiphany continue to be the focus of al-Nābulusī’s commentary on the next three verses as he speculates on the beatific vision and the ranks of the martyrs of love in light of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s use of the word badr, with its two meanings of full moon and the name of the place of the prophet Muḥammad’s first victory over his Meccan opponents (vv. 35–38). Al-Nābulusī creates another thematic unit with verses thirty-nine through forty-two, which compose the poet’s oath of fidelity and plea for mercy. In his commentary to verse forty, al-Nābulusī returns to his key theme of the of the spirit’s relation to the divine command: [The poet] says “to a heart” . . . meaning by that the spiritual heart into which was breathed the lordly command. He says “melted” . . . alluding to its annihilation in beholding the divine command. For the spirit is breathed from the divine command as He most high has said [Q. 15:29; 38:72]: {I breathed into (Adam) of My spirit}, and He most high has said [Q. 17:85]: {They ask you about the spirit. Say: ‘The spirit is from the command of my Lord!’} Thus, (the spirit) is made from the lordly command without an intermediary. So when (the spirit) passes away with the passing of the proportioned body, nothing remains save the command. He most high has said [Q. 65:5]: {That is the command of God sent down to you.} Al-Nābulusī then invokes again the “Divine Saying of Willing Devotions” as the basis for the mystic’s beholding a divine epiphany. In his commentary to the final verses, al-Nābulusī, returns to the opening image of the veiled beloved and Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s mystical condition. Al-Nābulusī states that the poet is the recipient of glad tidings and rapture from the unseen world of God, intimating union and spiritual revelation. He supports his claim by noting that, etymologically, the Arabic word bishārah “is called good news because it exposes the complexion (basharah) of the face” (vv. 43–44). For al-Nābulusī, this face or countenance of God denotes the presence (ḥadrah) of True Being to be found in all of existence though it has been veiled by name and form. Throughout his commentary on theal-Jīmīyah , and elsewhere in the Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ, al-Nābulusī refers to the divine epiphanies, the self-revelation of True Being in its various “presences” of His names and attributes (e.g. vv. 13, 15, 25, 29–36). Clearly, for al-Nābulusī speech is on the battleground 197 critical to the creation of meaning and existence itself.92 Not surprisingly, al-Nābulusī’s theology is logocentric, which Jacques Derrida claims is to be “bound up in the determination of the being of the existent as present.”93 In his commentary to verse thirty-six, al-Nābulusī states: The first homeland is the presence of pre-eternal divine knowledge, then the presence of the lordly will, then the presence of the pre-eternal mental word, then the presence of the exalted pen and the preserved tablet. Finally, engendered existence appears in this world below . . . But to move from the mental presence to engendered existence requires speech, the divine command “Be,” as al-Nābulusī stresses throughout his commentary, including that on verse sixteen: The “locks” refer to engendered things issuing from the command of Him most high. Their engendered existence is locks because they are strands (shuʿūr) of the consciousness (shiʿr) of something in His knowledge . . . Al-Nābulusī explicitly distinguishes between God’s thoughts as possible but not existing objects, and the engendered objects that result from the divine command.94 Thus, True Being is manifest by language, first with the divine command and then through His names and attributes, making God immanent, yet transcendent, as all engendered entities are but traces of His original speech. As the literary critic Jonathan Culler has noted in discussing the Western tradition regarding speech as natural and direct: Speech is seen as in direct contact with meaning: words issue from the speaker as the spontaneous and near transparent signs of the present thought, which the attendant listener hopes to grasp.95 For al-Nābulusī, this speech issues from the divine presence of True Being. Moreover, as speech requires breath so, too, the human being requires God’s breath or spirit, and, so, al-Nābulusī recognizes the command as the primordial point of the divine spirit issuing into each

92 Once again, al-Nābulusī generally follows Ibn al-ʿArabī’s teachings on these matters; see Chittick, Sufi Path, 5–6, 213, 226. 93 Quoted in Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), 93. 94 See al-Nābulusī’s similar comments on verse 28 of the Wine Ode cited in Kamada, “Al-Nābulusī’s Commentary,” 29. 95 Culler, On Deconstruction, 100; also see 89, 93–94, 107, 151–52. For similar notions involving Kabbalah, see Harold Bloom, Kabbalah and Criticism (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), 25–26. 198 th. emil homerin human being, linking God’s presence, His thought, countenance, and word to all meaning and existence. To a significant degree, al-Nābulusī’s attention to the divine countenance, spirit and other themes in his commentary of the al-Jīmīyah was triggered by elements in the poem.96 By contrast, in earlier and very popular commentaries on the Wine Ode and the al-Tāʾīyah al-Kubrā, Dāwūd al-Qayasrị̄ (d. c. 748/1347) provided extensive introductions that articulated a mystical theology and code to frame his own reading of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poems.97 Al-Nābulusī’s interpretations, however, appear more associative as words, images, and themes in the ode usually led him first to verses in the Qurʾān, then on to prophetic traditions, verses of his own or other poets, and to mystical ideas and interpretations. Some scholars have complained that al-Nābulusī’s readings are “farfetched,” and not supported by the poetic texts.98 This is certainly true regarding his emphasis on the divine command in his al-Jīmīyah commentary since the word amr (“command”) does not occur in the poem. Nevertheless, some of al-Nābulusī’s more general mystical interpretations are plausible as he read the al-Jīmīyah in light of other verse by Ibn al-Fāriḍ. There, especially in theal-Tā ʾīyah al-Kubrā, a number of mystical ideas, themes and references are to be found, sometimes quite prominently, including the lover as mystic aspirant seeking annihilation in the divine beloved, the theme of the martyr of love, the battle between the lover’s spirit (rūḥ) and concupiscent soul (nafs), reference to Badr, the “Divine Saying of Willing Devotions,” and mention of the pre-eternal covenant in Qurʾān 7:171.99 Of course, as is well known, al-Nābulusī usually read both Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s verse and the Qurʾān in terms of his spiritual master Ibn al-ʿArabī. Yet, this may not be such a forced reading as some have sup- posed. I do not mean to imply that Ibn al-Fāriḍ was a follower of Ibn

96 Cf. al-Nābulusī’s commentary on Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s al-Khamrīyah, in which he focuses on master-disciple relations and notions of the “perfect man,” topics never mentioned in his commentary on the al-Jīmīyah, see Kamada, “Al-Nābulusī ’s Commentary,” 24, 27, 30–31. 97 Th. Emil Homerin, The Wine of Love and Life: Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s al-Khamrīyah and al-Qaysarī’ṣ Quest for Meaning (Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2005). 98 E.g., Kamada, “Al-Nābulusī’s Commentary,” 28, 37–38; Nicholson, Studies, 184. 99 See Th. Homerin,ʿ Umar Ibn al-Fāriḍ: Sufi Verse, Saintly Life (New York Paulist Press, 2001), and my “Mystical Improvisations: Ibn al-Fāriḍ Plays al-Mutanabbī,” in Ghazal as World Literature I, eds. Thomas Bauer and Angelika Neuwirth (Beirut: Ergon Verlog Wurzburg, 2005), 107–30. on the battleground 199 al-ʿArabī, or even knew of him and his teachings. Further, I do not think that Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poems support al-Nābulusī’s elaborate interpretations. But, rather, in terms of reader-response criticism, for al-Nābulusī, and many other Muslims beginning as early as the 8th/14th century, an “Akbarian” reading was a legitimate undertaking. Ibn al-ʿArabī’s writings, if controversial at times, were the focus of intensive study and a number of commentaries, including those of al-Nābulusī, and Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ideas were wide-spread, influential, and generally accepted by Ottoman religious authorities.100 Furthermore, by the 12th/18th century, it was widely believed that Ibn al-Fāriḍ and Ibn al-ʿArabī had discussed mysticism on several occasions and even studied ḥadīth together.101 In the Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ al-Nābulusī stated: The shaykh Aḥmad al-Maqqarī [d. 1041/1631], God have mercy upon him, mentioned in his book Nafḥ al-Ṭīb min Ghusṇ al-Andulus al-Ratīḅ in his biography of the greatest shaykh, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī, may God sanctify his spirit, saying: “Al-Maqrīzī related in his biography of ʿUmar Ibn al-Fāriḍ, may God sanctify his spirit, that the shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī wrote to the master ʿUmar asking his permission to write a commentary on the al-Taʾīyah. But [the master ʿUmar] said: ‘Your book entitled the al-Futūḥāt is a commentary on it.’”102 This is what the master ʿUmar, may God sanctify his spirit, said making it clear that he had borrowed in his al-Taʾīyah from the Futūḥāt of the shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn, and that [the master ʿUmar’s] grace were from the overflow of the grace of [shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn]. Supporting that is what was mentioned by our shaykh, the learned and great scholar of ḥadīth, al-Najm al-Ghazzī, may God most high have mercy on him, in his history al-Kawākib al-Sāʾirah f ī Aʿyān al-Miʾah al-ʿĀshirah in the biography of Zakariyā [al-Ansārị̄ (d. 925/1519)]. Al-Najm al-Ghazzī said: “I heard one of our brothers state that it was related that the shaykh Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī, may God sanctify his heart secret, was shown the words of the master ʿUmar Ibn al-Fāriḍ, may God sanctify his spirit, and so he said: ‘These are my words though he presented them in a different form.’ Ibn al-ʿArabī used to say: ‘[His words] flow from my words.’”103

100 Von Schlegell, “Sufism in the Ottoman Arab World,” 218–57, and see Culler, “Literary Competence,” 112–15. 101 See Homerin, From Arab Poet, 76, 124n. 2. 102 Ah maḍ al-Maqqarī, Nafḥ al-Ṭīb min Ghusṇ al-Andulus al-Ratīḅ , ed. Iḥsān Abbās (Beirut: Dār al-Sādir.̣ 1968), 2:166. 103 Al-Nābulusī, Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ f ī Sharḥ Dīwān Ibn al-Fāriḍ, Ibrāhīm edition, 1:132–33. Also see Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī, al-Kawākib al-Sāʾirah f ī Aʿyān al-Miʾah al-ʿĀshirah, ed. Jibrāʾīl Jabbūr (Beirut: American University Press, 1945), 1:204, and Homerin, From Arab Poet, 69–73, 121n. 67. 200 th. emil homerin

In such a context, al-Nābulusī’s reading of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s verse in light of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s thought makes sense. Reviewing al-Nābulusī’s commentary on Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Wine Ode, Shigeru Kamada states that “His interpretation frequently makes its own way regardless of the poet’s wording.”104 This is similarly true for most of his commentary on the al-Jīmīyah, particularly regarding the divine command. Yet, this is also indicative of al-Nābulusī’s strong reading, which, as Harold Bloom asserts, must “insist on itself . . . According to a strong reading, it and the text are one.”105 In a sense, this is literally true in manuscripts of the Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ as individual verses of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poems, though usually written in a different color ink, are swallowed by al-Nābulusī’s extensive commentary. Moreover, al-Nābulusī may have closely identified with Ibn al-Fāriḍ as he did with Ibn al-ʿArabī.106 In his introduction to the Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ, he noted that his commentary was partially the product of “divine inspiration” (al-fatḥ al-rabbānī) perhaps similar to that which he believed the poet had received. Further, al-Nābulusī did not hesitate to frequently cite his own verse throughout his commentary, and, regarding verse seven of the al-Jīmīyah, he related his own weakened mystical state similar to one he ascribed to Ibn al-Fāriḍ. But Bloom also asserts that a strong reading must be a misreading, a misprision, and there is no better example in al-Nābulusī’s commentary on the al-Jīmīyah than his misreading of Qurʾān 17:85: {They ask you about the spirit. Say: “The spirit is from the command of your Lord!’} as referring, not to the spirit of revelation, as is clear from the larger Qurʾānic context, but to the divine spirit within the human being. This misreading is then pivotal to al-Nābulusī’s subsequent interpretation and mystical theology regarding the Divine Beloved’s self-revelation to the mystic in loving union and the return of the mystic’s spirit to the divine command. Yet, as is sometimes the case, a strong reading may lead one astray. Throughout his commentary on the al-Jīmīyah, al-Nābulusī consistently interprets the beloved to be True Being, that is, God. That the female beloved of many of Ibn al-Fāriḍ poems represents God is certainly plausible given his frequent Qurʾānic references and use of Sufi terminology in his verse, though in a few instances, his beloved is male,

104 Kamada, “Al-Nābulusī’s Commentary,” 37–38. 105 Bloom, Kabbalah, 125. 106 Von Schlegell, “Sufism in the Ottoman Arab World,” 248–57. on the battleground 201 as in the al-Jīmīyah and appears to be the prophet Muḥammad or his prophetic light.107 But al-Nābulusī is oblivious to this last possibility when reading verses thirty-seven and thirty-eight: [37] Farewell to riders traveling by night in a light dawning from you as you go on their trek with them. [38] Let these riders do as they will for they are Badr’s men and shall not fear sin. While al-Nābulusī referred to the Quʾrān’s mention of Muḥammad’s Night Journey (17:1) in his gloss of the verb sarā (“to travel at night”), he says nothing more about it. Instead, he interprets various images in these verses in terms of God’s illumination and grace to His elect gnostics. Yet, “Badr’s men” is the most obvious clue to the beloved’s identity, as they rode into battle with the prophet Muhammad.̣ Further, “traveling by night” is a probable reference to Muḥammad’s Night Journey and Heavenly Ascension, so central to Islamic mysticism and mythology.108 Earlier, in verse fifteen, Ibn al-Fāriḍ said: [15] He is a veiled one, but were he to pass in a darkness black as his forelock, his blazing face would need no lamp. Reading this verse together with thirty-seven and thirty eight, we find that Ibn al-Fāriḍ has rendered in verse the iconic image found in the many paintings of the prophet Muḥammad mounted on his mythical steed, his face veiled, head wreathed in a blazing fire as he ascends to heaven to meet his Lord.109

107 See Homerin, From Arab Poet, 4–14. 108 Arberry also identified the beloved of this poem as the prophet Muḥammad; see Mystical Poems, 31, 33n. 36–38, though he follows al-Nābulusī in his interpretation of v. 15 as “the Divine Presence is shrouded in the darkness of the phenomenal world, yet the radiance of His Beauty shines forth and manifests Him to all who have eyes to see;” Mystical Poems, 32n. 15. 109 Regarding the myths and stories associated with this event see Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 159–75. Also see Thomas W. Arnold, Painting in Islam (New York: Dover Press, 1965), 117–22. ill. LVIII, and Christine Jacqueline Gruber, “The Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension (Miʾraj) in Islamic Painting and Literature: Evidence from Cairo Collections,” Bulletin of the American Research Center in Egypt, no. 185 (Summer, 2004): 24–31. 202 th. emil homerin

Reading and Listening

In his evaluation of mystical commentaries of Arabic poetry, including al-Nābulusī’s Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ, Jaroslav Stetkevych writes: What the understanding of purportedly mystical poetry through hermetic commentary achieves is a theology of mysticism, an abstract scheme for extrapoetic ideas. The mysticism which is experience, which also ought to be poetic experience, escapes this conceptualization entirely.110 Moreover, he suggests that the Sufi commentators’ search for meaning and truth in poetry may have stemmed, in part, from a distrust of poetic form itself, based on Platonic notions of poetry as mendacious, as a lie.111 As critic Jane P. Tompkin has noted: Plato’s expulsion of poets from the ideal state unites the two features of the classical attitude toward literature that distinguish it most markedly from our own: the identification of language with power and the assimilation of the aesthetic to the political realm in Greek life.112 Indeed, Plato’s misgivings are echoed in the Qurʾān and Muḥammad’s ambiguous positions on poets, which rendered poetry, particularly invective poetry, morally suspect.113 The Qurʾān denounced the pre- Islamic shāʿir, or poet, with his ancient shamanistic associations of possession, spells, and curses, and the Qurʾān distinguishes this “false” speech from the inimitable truth of God’s revelation to Muḥammad. In chapter twenty-six of the Qurʾān entitled al-Shuʿarāʾ (“The Poets”), the proof of Muḥammad’s prophethood is said to be the Qurʾān itself (vv. 1–8). To bolster Muḥammad’s claim to prophecy, the chapter continues with narratives of seven earlier prophets who received signs validating their religious missions (vv. 9–191). The final verses of this chapter (vv. 192–227) again take up the opening theme by contrasting Muḥammad,

110 Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 94. 111 Ibid., 96–98. 112 Jane P. Tompkins, “The Reader in History: The Changing Shape of Literary Response,” in Reader-Response Criticism, 204. 113 See S. A. Bonebakker, “Religious Prejudice against Poetry in Early Islam,” Medievalia et Humanistica 7(1976): 77–99, and James E. Montgomery, “Sundry Observations on the Fate of Poetry in the Early Islamic Period,” in Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Language and Literature, ed. J. R. Smart (Curzon Press, 1996), 49–60. on the battleground 203 upon whose heart the Spirit of Revelation descended with the Qurʾān, to those upon whom descend the demons (shayātīn):114 Shall I tell you upon whom the demons do come down? They come down upon every culpable liar (affāk athīm), who (all) give ear, while most of them speak falsely. And the poets! Attending them (are) those who lead astray (al-gāwūn, i.e., “the demons”). Have you not seen them wandering distraught in every valley? And they say what they do not do. Save those who believe and do good works and remember God often, and take revenge after they have been oppressed, and those who oppress will know what fate will overturn them! These verses draw a clear distinction between the prophet with his divine revelation, and the ancient shāʿir with his satanic inspiration. While prophets are guided by God, wicked and impious poets have left the straight path of righteousness to wander aimlessly in falsehood. However, this passage does not prohibit poetry per se, nor does it denounce all poets. The final verse clearly allows the composition of verse by those poets who are obedient to God and remember Him often, perhaps seeking a new source of inspiration.115 Moreover, although the Qurʾān expresses strong reservations regarding a certain type of poet, Muḥammad’s own patronage of Muslim poets, most notably Ḥassān ibn Thābit (d. 54/674), underscores the continued importance of poetry to the Muslim community. Still, suspicion lingered among some religious scholars, and for many pre-modern Muslim critics of poetry, the effects of poetry on human behavior often mattered most. In particular, some critics denounced the public recitation of love poetry and mystical verse, including that of Ibn al-Fāriḍ, for leading the ignorant astray

114 See Bonebakker, “Religious Prejudice;” Montgomery, “Sundry Observations;” Irfan Shahid, “A Contribution to Koranic Exgesis,” in Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of Hamilton A. R. Gibb, ed., George Makdisi (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965), 575–578; Michael J. Zwettler, The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry (Columbus, OH: The University of Ohio Press, 1978), 56–158; his “A Mantic Manifesto: The Sūra of the Poets and the Qurʾānic Foundation of Prophetic Authority,” in Poetry and Prophecy. The Beginning of a Literary Tradition, ed. J. L. Kugel (Ithaca, 1990), 75–119, 205–13, and Richard C. Martin, “Structural Analysis and the Qurʾān: Newer Approaches to the Study of Islamic Texts,” in Studies in Qurʾan and Tafsir, a special issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion 47 (December, 1979): 665–83, ed. Alford T. Welch. I follow Zwettler’s translation from Oral Tradition with the addition of v. 227. 115 Shahid, “Contribution,” 563–575, and his “Another Contribution to Koranic Exegesis The Sura of the Poets (XXVI),” Journal of Arabic Literature 14 (1983): 6–18. 204 th. emil homerin into unseemly behavior and heresy.116 Yet, at the outset of his Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ, al-Nābulusī asserted: This is not poetry (shiʿr) nor is it spoken by a poet (shāʿir) to be taken literally and interpreted in erotic terms as heedless minds do. Just as was said by the greatest shaykh, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī, may God sanctify his spirit and illuminate his grave: Our words are not poetry (shiʿr) and not from a poet (shāʿir) but from an heir to the chosen Prophet. God caused him to speak them, as He caused to speak the people of religion and the chosen elite! For al-Nābulusī, Ibn al-ʿArabī, and other Sufis, mystical verse was not poetry in the Platonic sense of a “shadow of truth,” or a “beautiful lie.” Rather, they took a Neoplatonic view of verse as holding sacred truths retrieved by divinely inspired mystics who had transcended the ordinary world of reason and appearance.117 Similar to earlier commentators on Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s verse, al-Nābulusī believed that the poet did not compose his mystical verse in the manner of worldly poets, who struggled to find the right thoughts, words, and images for their poems. Rather, Ibn al-Fāriḍ would fall into a deep trance during which God would inspire him with the verses for his odes. Generalizing from Ibn al-Fāriḍ to other mystics, al-Nābulusī wrote: As for the poems of the gnostics of God, they are, in appearance, poetry in the manner of the words of poets, but at the same time they are a divine inspiration (ilhām rabbānī), a merciful utterance, a spiritual opening ( fatḥ rūḥānī), and an emanation of grace!118 Al-Nābulusī’s task, then, in the Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ was not so much the interpretation of poems as it was the exegesis of divinely inspired texts. Regarding Sufi poetic commentaries, Jaroslav Stetkevych concludes: The interpretation based on an imposition of word-for-word mystical equivalences is fallacious when applied to poetry such as Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s.

116 Bonebakker, “Religious Prejudice;” Waugh, Munshidīn, 18–23; Th. Emil Homerin, “Preaching Poetry: The Forgotten Verse of Ibn al-Shāhrazurī,”Arabica 38 (1991): 87–101; my From Arab Poet, 57–60, and Tompkins, “Reader in History,” 206–208. 117 See “Platonism and Poetry,” in Alex Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan, et al., eds. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (New York: MJF Books, 1993), 912–914. Also see John Christoph Bürgel, The Feather of Simurgh: The “Licit Magic” of the Arts in Islam (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 53–88. 118 Al-Nābulusī, Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ, Ibrāhīm ed, 1:63–64, and Homerin, From Arab Poet, 24–28, 38–39, 76. on the battleground 205

Whatever symbolic effectiveness of meaning survives this process does so only insofar as it draws upon the central symbolic archetypes which underlie all Arabic poetry. Mystic equivalencies as the sole substitute for the poem’s meaning produce not only a nonpoetic but also a nonsymbolic paraphrase. All symbolic energy still dwells in the poem, and mysticism as experience needs that energy, because without it it turns into mere theology of mysticism, a scheme imposed from the outside.119 The Daḥdāḥ abridged edition of the Kashf al-Sirr al-Ghāmiḍ generally presents al-Nābulusī’s commentary as such a scheme of mystical equivalences. However, as I have tried to show, al-Nābulusī does not reduce the poem to a pre-determined set of mystical substitutions. Instead, much of his reading is a response to words, metaphors, and motifs found in the poem itself. His commentaries on the poems are his strong readings to find meaning and, as such, he appears rather modern in light of reader-response theory: When the literary work is conceived as an object of interpretation, response will be understood as a way of arriving at meaning, and not as a form of political and moral behavior. The distinction between response conceived as meaning, and response conceived as action or behavior, separates the current conception of literary response not only from the classical one but from the way responses to literature have been understood by most critics before the twentieth century.120 Nevertheless, Jaroslav Stetkevych is right that, in the end, we are left largely with traces of a mystical theology which was probably the aim of al-Nābulusī’s Akbarian reading of Ibn al-Fāriḍ. As for the symbolic energy needed for the poetic and mystical experience, that is not to be found in these or, perhaps, in any commentaries. Interpretation requires an active reading, an assertive intellectual quest to find or impose meaning on a text as object. By contrast, mystical experience seeks to reduce such a dualism, and therefore requires not an assertive and intellectual act, but a receptive and emotive one; reading may not be required, but listening is.121 As we saw in al-Nābulusī’s earlier encounter with the

119 Stetkevych, Zephyrs, 101. 120 Tompkins, “Reader in History,” 206. The same evaluation may apply to al-Qaysarị̄ as well as to other mystical commentators on Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s verse. 121 Regarding receptivity and mystical experience see Arthur J. Deikmman, “Bimodal Consciousness and the Mystic Experience,” in Richard Woods, ed., Understanding Mysticism (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1980), 261–69. For classical notions of the sublime, see Tompkins, “Reader in History,” 227n. 5. 206 th. emil homerin al-Jīmīyah at Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s shrine, when he and his Sufi brothers sought to pass away in the sublime, that energy and overpowering spiritual force, they gathered together and participated in the mystical audition (samāʿ) of the poem recited from memory.122 Similarly, Tāj al-Asfia, a contemporary Egyptian chanter, has observed: People are grateful when I sing, because the song itself has a power to make souls feel uplifted and happy in the dhikr. When I am singing, I choose the best odes from the best writers like Ibn al-Fāriḍ. They have power, just like the shaykh’s power. Each poem has the power of the shaykh in it. Besides, angels and the shaykhs can give you power to do things and songs—we call it ilhām [“inspiration”]. Sometimes I feel they are taking over the singing for me.123 Here, we find that different aims require different modes of approach, resulting in different responses to the poem. As critic David Bleich has noted about Elizabethan drama: . . .[T]he literature mattered because people heard it in collective scenes. It was easily folded into the language of everyday life: because it was heard by many, it could be repeated by anyone, and in the process of memory and repetition, it could teach through language while never forgetting the linguistic transmission of the experiences.124 Thus the public and collective recitation of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s odes may activate the symbolic, energizing archetypes embedded in his verse, as its spoken words, cadence, and rhythm conjure the lost beloved, recalling his memory and, for a moment, recover his presence.125 Indeed, there at Shaykh ʿUmar’s shrine, in the presence of his poem, al-Nābulusī and his companions “nearly melted away.”

122 For Islamic mystical practice of recitation (dhikr), audition (samāʿ), and Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s verse, see Waugh, Munshidīn, 104–25, 192–204, and Homerin, ʿUmar Ibn al-Fāriḍ, 30–34. 123 Waugh, Munshidīn, 72. 124 David Bleich, “What Literature is ‘Ours’?” in Reading Sites: Social Difference and Reader Response, P. P. Schweickart and E. A. Flynn, eds. (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2004), 290–91. Also see his “Epistemological Assumptions in the Study of Response,” in Reader-Response Criticism, 134–63, esp. 144, 154, regarding readers’ responses changing in different contexts. 125 Cf. Waugh, Munshidīn, 19, 22–23, 99–100, 105–16, 152–53, 193, 196–99. RETURN TO THE FLASH ROCK PLAIN OF THAHMAD: TWO NASĪBS BY IBN ALʿARABĪ

Michael Sells

ﻟِﺨَﻮةلَ أﻃْﻼلٌ ﺑِﱪُﻗﺔِ هثَﻤَﺪِ * ﺗَﻠﻮحُ َﻛَﺒﺎﰶ اﻟﻮَﴌِْ ﰲ ﻇﺎﻫِﺮِ ِاﻟﻴَﺪِ ًوُﻗﻮﻓﺎ ﲠﺎ ﲱَْﱯ َّﻋﲇ ﻣَﻄِﳱَُّﻢْ * ﯾَﻘﻮﻟﻮنَ ﻻ ﲥَْكلِْ أﳻً و ّﲡََدلِ The ruins Khawlah left on the mottled rockplains of Thahmad appear and fade, like the trace of a tattoo on the back of a hand.

There my friends halted tall camels over me, saying: don’t lose yourself in grief man: endure! So begins the Muʿallaqah of Ṭarafah.1 It includes a short but intensely lyrical nasīb of eleven verses, beginning with the poet-lover persona halting at the burqah of Thahmad. Burqah is one of those early Arabic words evoking the intense contrast between white and black. The lexicons tell us it refers to a flatland strewn with small rocks or pebbles of contrasting colors (or non-colors, depending how we view white and black). There, the poem begins, are the ruins of the abandoned campsite of Khawlah, ruins that “appear,” talūḥu, in the strong sense of the English term apparition. In the classical Qasīdah,̣ the word can conjure a striking, even eerie physical appearance while at the same time raising questions about its ontological status as real or unreal and its temporal status as past or present.2

1 TheDīwān of Ṭarafa ibn al-ʿAbd (Beirut: Dār Sādir,̣ 1979), 19. Translation from M. Sells, “The Muʿallaqa of Ṭarafa, Introduction and Translation,” Journal of Arabic Literature XVII (1986): 21–33. 2 My perspective here as throughout my writings on Arabic poetry and related topics has been informed by two key works of Jaroslav Stetkevych on the classical and medieval nasīb: The Zephyrs of Najd: the Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasīb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) and “Toward an Arabic Elegiac Lexicon: The Seven Words of the Nasīb” in Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, ed.Reorientations / Arabic and Persian Poetry (Blomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994): 58–129. 208 michael sells

Some six centuries after legend tells us that ̣arafah’sT Qasīdaḥ was embroidered in gold on black cloth and draped over the walls of the Kaʿbah, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī, the Murcian-born Sufi master, arrived in Mecca. There he composed a collection of 61 self-standing nasībs known as Turjumān al-Ashwāq: the interpreter, translator, guide or biographer of longings or desires.3 Ibn al-ʿArabī had been educated in the urban and urbane centers of al-Andalus, at Granada, Seville, and Cordoba. But by the time he arrived in Mecca, he had abandoned the courtly life, become a wandering Sufi, and cast his sights toward the Arab, Anatolian, and Persian East. He also cast his poetic glance back in time to the world of early Bedouin stations and meadows, setting aside the images of the palace and cultivated gardens that inhabited the courtly love lyric of Andalus. Here I would like to offer translations and brief commentaries on two poems from the Turjumān, poems 26 and 22.

It has also been informed by his other published writings, his translations, his public talks, and my experiences as a student in his courses at the University of Chicago from 1979 to 1982. 3 See Reynold Nicholson, The Tarjumán al-Ashwáq: a Collection of Mystical Odes by Muhyiddīn Ibn al-ʿArabī (London: Royal Asiatic Society, Oriental Translation Series, New Series xx, reprinted in 1981 by the Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, Illinois). For a complete French translation of the poems and Ibn al-ʿArabī’s commentary on them, see L’Interprète des Désires, Turjumān al-Ashwāq, Traduit de l’arabe, présenté et annoté par Maurice Gloton (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997). For translations in Spanish, see Vincente Cantorino, Casidas de amor profano y místico: Ibn Zaydun e Ibn ʿArabi (Mexico City: Porrua, 1988), and more recently, Ibn Arabi, El Intérprete de los Deseos (Tarŷumān al-Ašwāq), traducción y comentario y notas Carlos Varona Narvión (Murcia, Spain: Editora Regional de Murcia, Colección Ibn Arabi, 2002). For a discussion of the poetry and translations of twenty-four of the poems, see Michael Sells, Stations of Desire: Love Elegies from Ibn al-ʿArabī and New Poems (Jerusalem: Ibis Editions, 2001). For the Arabic text of the commentary, see Ibn al-ʿArabī, Dhakhāʾir al-Aʿlāq: Sharḥ. Turjumān al-Ashwāq (Cairo, 1968), ed. Muḥammad Abd al-Raḥmān al-Kurdī, which includes the full commentary with the text of poems interspliced into the greater work; and Ibn al-ʿArabī, Turjumān al-Ashwāq (Beirut: Dār Sādir,̣ 1966) which presents the text of the poems with Ibn al-ʿArabī’s commentary placed as footnotes. The vocalization of title of the work has engendered disagreement. Nicholson used the vocalization turjumān, while Gloton prefers tarjumān. The Dār ādirṢ text leaves the word unvocalized. The Library of Congress transliterates the Dār Sādiṛ text as turjumān and I have followed it in referring to that edition. Lane lists three vocalizations in Arabic usage, tarjumān, turjumān, and tarjamān, with a preference toward the former. Edward William Lane: An Arabic-English Lexicon in Eight Parts (Librairie du Liban, 1980) 1: 303. Deladrière writes that for the title of Ibn al-ʿArabi’s work “turjumān is linguistically more appropriate than tarjumān.” Roger Deladrière, “The Dīwān of Ibn-ʿArabi,” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society, XV (1995): 50–57, http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/articles/diwan_1.html, translated from the French by Alan Boorman. return to the flash rock plain of thahmad 209

Poem 26

ْ ْ َ َ ْ َ َ َ ْ ﺑِﭑﻟ ِﺠ ْﺰ ِع ﺑَ ْ َﲔ ٱﻷْﺑ َﺮﻗ ْ ِﲔ ٱﻟ َﻤ ْﻮ ِﻋ ُﺪ * ﻓﺄﻧِِ ْﺦ َرﰷﺋَِﺒﻨﺎ ﻓٰﻬﺬا ٱﻟ َﻤ ْﻮ ِر ُد ﻻ ﺗَ ْﻄُﻠ َ َّﱭ و ﻻ ُﺗﻨﺎدي ﺑَ ْﻌ َﺪﻩُ * اي ِابر ٌق اي ِﺣﺎﺟ ٌﺮ اي َ ْهث َﻤ ُﺪ َ َ ْوٱﻟ َﻌ ْﺐ ﻛﲈ ﻟَ ِ َﻌﺒ ْﺖ َأواﻧِ ُﺲ ُ َّﳖ ٌﺪ * و ْٱرﺗَ ْﻊ ﻛﲈ َرﺗَ َﻌ ْﺖ ِﻇ ٌﺒﺎء ُ َّﴍ ُد ﰲ َر ْو ٍﺿﺔ َﻏ َّﲎ و َﺻﺎح ُذ ُابﲠﺎ * َﻓ َﺄﺟﺎﺑَ ُﻪ َﻃ َﺮ ًاب ُﻫ َﻨﺎك ُﻣ َﻐ ِّﺮ ُد َر َّﻗ ْﺖ َﺣ ِﻮاﺷﳱﺎ و َر َّق ﻧَ ِﺴ ُﳰﻬﺎ * ْﻓﭑﻟ َﻐ ْ ُﲓ َﯾ ْ ُﱪ ُق و ْٱﻟ َﻐ ُﲈﻣﺔ َﺗ ْﺮ َﻋ ُﺪ ْ ُ َ ْ وٱﻟ َﻮ ْد ُق َﯾ ْ ِﲋل ِﻣ ْﻦ ِﺧ ِﻼل َﲮﺎﺑِ ِﻪ * ﻛ ُﺪ ُﻣ ِﻮع َﺻ ٍّﺐ ﻟِﻠ ِﻔ ِﺮاق ﺗَ َﺒ َّﺪ ُد ْ َوٱﴍ ْب ُﺳ َﻼﻓﺔ َ ْﲬ ِﺮﻫﺎ ِ ُﲞ ِﲈرﻫﺎ * و ْٱﻃ َﺮ ْب ﻋﲆ َﻏ ِﺮ ٍد ُﻫ ِ َﻨﺎكل ُﯾْﻨ ِﺸ ُﺪ ُوﺳ ٍﻼﻓﺔ ﰲ َﻋ ْﻬ ِﺪ َآد َم ْأﺧ َ َﱪ ْت * ﻋﻦ َﺟ َّﻨ ِﺔ ْٱﻟ َﻤ ْﺄ َوى َﺣ ِﺪ ًﯾﺜﺎ ُﻳ ْﺴ َﻨ ُﺪ ِإ َّن ْٱﻟ ِﺤ َﺴﺎن ﺛَ َﻔْﻠ َﳯﺎ ِﻣ ْﻦ ِر ِﯾﻘﻬﺎ * ْﻛﭑﻟ ِﻤ ْﺴ ِﻚ َﺟﺎد ِﲠﺎ َﻋ َﻠ ْﻴﻨﺎ ْٱﻟ ُﺨ َّﺮ ُد

Drink Deeply

At the rock plains, near the bend of the trail is the place of meeting. Kneel your camels. Its waters are home.

Don’t call out for Lightning! Tháhmad! Hájir! hankering after.

Revel like maidens, breast curves alluring or gazelles that slow to graze and wander,

While the fly hums softly in the meadow and a songbird trills a reply. Velvet is the fringe of the garden, tender the spring breeze, the cloud, lit from within by lightning, thunder rumbles the dark sky.

Rains burst like tears of a lover torn asunder from the one he loves.

Drink this ancient wine, drink deeply— Let the spell of its song take you— 210 michael sells

Wine of the age of Adam! bearing word, assured hadith, down the generations, from the garden of sanctuary:

this wine, sweet as a rush of musk wine tasted on the lips’ elixir kiss, of signoras, given me freely by signorinas. The first two verses of this nasīb play closely upon the opening two verses of Ṭarafah. Although in a different meter (kāmil as opposed to tawīḷ ), Ibn al-ʿArabī’s poem is in the same rhyme as that of Ṭarafah, begins with the same station of Thahmad, evokes the burqah (in the form of the dual, al-abraqayn), and offers a challenge to the poet-lover who would lose himself in grief over what has been lost.4 Topography and station names indicating the contrast of black and white, the flash of lightning, or the flash of rock glinting in the sunlight appear throughout the Turjumān; one of the more common stations of the beloved is that of Laʿlaʿ, “Stoneflash,” which links the flash of stone to the flash of lightning.5 In the case of “Drink Deeply,” when the ruins appear amids on the white-black, rock-strewn plain, it is not the riding companions (who can be presented in the dual or the plural) who chide the poet, but a solitary voice that seems to be that of the poet-persona himself. The persona is split between the one who mourns and the one who tells him to snap out of his grief. Ṭarafah and Ibn al-ʿArabī both evoke a gazelle fawn grazing the meadow, and both employ the image in relation to play. Ṭarafah, in the Jāhilī poetic mode of indirection, provides a chain of similes: “She cleaves the rippled waves/bow breast submerged/ like the hand of a child at play/scooping through the soft soil.” Ibn al-ʿArabī employs the more direct imperative voice. The poet as advisor commands the poet as mourner to abandon the ritualized mourning

4 The allusions to the first verses of̣arafah’s T Muʿallaqah would seem apparent at any rate. In this case, we have an unusual, added testimony. In his own commentary on the Turjumān, a commentary that for the most part neglects issues of Arabic poetic tradition in favor of a hermeneutics of mystical psychology and mystical cosmology, Ibn al-ʿArabī quotes the first half-verse of the ̣Tarafah’s famous nasīb while commenting on poem 26. See Turjumān, Dār Sādir,̣ 112. 5 See poem #19, vv. 3–4: Nicholson, Tarjumān, 23; Turjumān, Dār Sādir,̣ 76. return to the flash rock plain of thahmad 211 litany of the stations of the beloved in favor of playing like maidens who meander in turn as carefree as gazelles. The second part of “Drink Deeply” diverges from ̣arafah’sT Muʿallaqah into the language of hadith transmission, a language that appears at key moments throughout the Turjumān. The chain of hadith recurs as a key to twin vectors of love within Ibn al-ʿArabī’s nasībs, horizontal and vertical. In the horizontal relation, the poet stands as the nasīb lover, who like Ibn al-ʿArabī’s poetic role model Ghaylān ibn ʿUqbah (Dhū al-Rummah), tries to retrieve the beloved in both space and time, caught in a perpetual journey that turns back circularly toward the beloved, following after her stations. In the Turjumān, the poet also asks the camel guides, the East wind, or the people he meets along the way to bring him word of the beloved, much as Majnūn Laylā did in the Arabic verses attributed to him. The psychological intensity of the quest at times seems to split the poet into two—not only between advisor and mourner, but also between tracker and the one being tracked; “it might have been my inner self that was leading her camels” he explains in one poem as he laments her perpetual journey away from him. Ibn al-ʿArabī alludes to the language of hadith and the more vertical vector in his preface to Turjumān al-Ashwāq. He also relates that while he was living in Mecca in 598, he wished to study in person with a scholar by the name of Fakhr al-Nisāʾ bint Rustam al-Isbahānī whom, he tells us, was known as Shaykhat al-Ḥ ijāz. Fakhr al-Nisāʾ informed Ibn al-ʿArabī that she was retired, occupied with preparations for death, and that she could not serve as his teacher. She did however agree to allow him to gain an ijāzah from her brother in the study of the hadith traditions she related. Ibn al-ʿArabī tells us that he wrote back to Fakhr al-Nisāʾ with a verse of poetry expressing the union of her condition and his in the act of riwāyah: ḥālī wa ḥāluki fi r-riwāyati wāḥidun. My state and yours in the riwāya are one. The poems of the Turjumān al-Ashwāq include a rich language of union and separation, with union expressed both in the standard poetic vocabulary of wasḷ as well as a form of tawḥīd. The account of Fakhr an-Nisāʾ offers more than autobiographical interest for the volume of poems to which it was attached. Indeed, the language of hadith study stands out within the poetry as both a message and a vehicle within the love lyrics of the Turjumān al-Ashwāq, including “Drink Deeply.” Before examining the hadith that comprises the ending of poem 26, however, it may be useful to halt a moment at another poem from the Turjumān steeped in the language of hadith, 212 michael sells poem 14, which I have titled “Hadith of Love.” “The Hadith of Love” begins with the lightning flash that launches many of the poems in the collection, tying them back to the elegiac meanings of lightning in the early Islamic and Jahili periods. It then moves on to an extended isnād, each figure of which stands forth within the various conditions of love, and finally offers thematn , or statement, which in the translation below I have italicized. Unlike standard hadiths, however, the poetic hadith of love involves a two-way communication, at least in the Turjumān, as Ibn al-ʿArabī ends the poem by sending a message, back through the chain of authorities, to the original speaker. He saw the lightning flash and yearned toward the East. If it had flashed in the West, west he would have turned.

I burn for the lightning and its flash, not for this or that some piece of ground.

The East Wind told me a tradition about them, from the wreck of my heart, from ecstasy, sorrow, my disarray,

From drunkenness, reason, longing, the wound of love, from tears, my eyelids, the fire, my heart.

He whom you desire is between your ribs, turned side to side in the heat of your sigh

I told them to tell him he’s the one who kindled the fire blazing in my heart.

It is extinguished only in our coming together. If return to the flash rock plain of thahmad 213

it burns out of control, who can be blamed for loving?6 Ibn al-ʿArabī dedicated his collection of poems to Nizām,̣ the niece of Fakhr al-Nisāʾ. In his preface, after he depicts his meeting with Fakhr al-Nisāʾ and her brother Abu Shūjāʿ, he offers a homage to Nizāṃ in rhymed prose. In the poetry collection itself, many poems evoke Nizāṃ by playing upon the word as a common noun meaning proportion, arrangement, and beauty, and as personal noun. The closest approxima- tion in English to such a proper/common noun is the somewhat archaic name Harmony. Yet other beloveds and other inspirations inhabit the preface and the poems as well, including a mysterious young woman from among the Rūm (Anatolians), the “lady of the nadwā” in the court of Baghdad, and numerous beloveds who are unnamed, married women, and virgin maidens, all of whom may or may not be the same, at least as we can gather from the poems themselves.7 In the case of overt references to Nizam,̣ Ibn al-ʿArabī stresses her Persian origin, an origin he contrasts with his own Arabic lineage (which he traces through his father back to Yemen at the time of the Prophet). The Turjumān thus creates an erotics of cultural difference based upon the impossibility of East meeting West, ʿarab meeting ʿajam—or what is presented as the poetically, even metaphysical improbability of a Yemeni like Ibn al-ʿArabī (descended on his father’s side from Ḥ ātim al-Ṭāʾī) would ever find union with a daughter of Isfahan, in Persian Iraq.8

6 M. Sells, Stations, 108–109. Nicholson, Tarjumān, 20–21; Turjumān, Dār Sādir,̣ 54–56. 7 In the preface, Ibn al-ʿArabī relates that he composed his first poem while circum- ambulating the Kaʿbah. He had drifted away from the inner circles to avoid disturbing others with his recitation. As he was reciting, he felt a cool hand on his back. When he turned around he discovered a young woman who explained that she had problems with the verses he was reciting, and then criticized each verse in turn. When she reached the final verse (“the lords of love in love are ensnared and bewildered”), she unloosed her harshest critique, exclaiming that the true lover is so completely obliterated by love, so blown apart, that he has no self with which to be bewildered. Ibn al-ʿArabī writes that he dedicated the rest of the work (and it is not clear if he means the rest of the poems or his commentary on them) to addressing the criticisms raised. When he asked the young woman her name, she responded that he can simply call her qurrat al-ʿayn, the “cooling of the eye,” an untranslatable expression that brings across the experience of joy or sorrow in which the eye, as I understand it, becomes moist from emotion. 8 Nicholson, Tarjumān, 24–25; Turjumān, Dār Sādir,̣ 78–86. I have offered a discussion of this poem and full translation of it in M. Sells, “‘You’d Have Seen What Melts the Mind’: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Poem #20 from the Turjumān al-Ashwāq,” in Jonathan P. Decter and Michael Rand, eds., Studies in Arabic and Hebrew Letters in Honor of Raymond P. Scheindlin (Gorgias Press, 2007). 214 michael sells

Sing my loss with verse of Qays and Láyla Máyya and her madman lover poet Ghaylán.

Long my longing for a girl well-composed, Harmony in prose, verse, sermon and explanation,

For the daughter of kings, of Persian shahs, of the city of cities, Isfahán,

For a daughter of Iraq, my master’s child, and I, a son of Yemen, her contrary.

Did you know, gentlemen, have you heard that two contraries could ever join?

Had you only seen us in Ráma! exchanging, without hands, chalices of passion,

As love sang, without tongue, a rapture song of love between us.

You’d have seen what melts reason, Iraq and Yemen intertwined. Whatever literal beloveds Ibn al-ʿArabī may have encountered, the poems evoke always more than autobiography even as they subvert arguments over the earthly or heavenly nature of such beloveds. Like the ghazals of Hafez, the poems of the Turjumān collapse, invert, and otherwise wreak havoc upon defined categories.Shawq , the poems suggest, may be the closest the human being has of an experience of the infinite, an experience of something that exceeds all delimited categories—before and after, real and unreal, present and absent, here below and there above, sacred and profane. The vectors of longing extend not only vertically and horizontally, but they also seem to change constantly their angles and emphasis. Such suppleness manifests itself through throughout the Turjumān as variations in the form, address, location, apparition, tone, gender, and voice of the beloved(s), and in forms, tones, and stances of the poet-persona(s). In “Drink Deeply,” the language of hadith brings the poet into contact with a vertical dimension through a chain of authorities stretching directly back to the time of Adam and to the transcendent world of the garden of paradise. The hadith is at one time both word and wine, and as wine it is nearly as ancient as the famous vintage of Ibn return to the flash rock plain of thahmad 215 al-ʿArabī’s contemporary Ibn al-Fāriḍ that existed before the creation of the vine.9 In “Drink Deeply,” that wine brings word of the beloved must as the word of the beloved constitutes the wine. The word is passed on the lips of the beloved(s), even as it bears word (akhbarat) from the garden of sanctuary (jannat al-maʾwā, Q: 53:15): the garden associated with the coming down of prophetic revelation upon the Prophet Muḥammad and, in the hadith literature, with the heavenly garden at the foot of the divine throne to which Muhammaḍ ascends in his Miʿrāj. The word of this garden is borne to the poet, lover, and perhaps the ideal reader in the form of a hadith with a proper chain of transmission (ḥadīthan yusnadu). The chain of transmission (which appears in the poem to be also a chain of kisses) does not appear to end, as it did in the “Hadith of Love” with a substantive message or matn. Or, if it does, the matn has become one with the isnād and the message has become one with its medium. Dualities (in this case of married and single, master and student, message and medium, transmitter and the one receiving the transmission, beloved and the station of the beloved) are both evoked and collapsed: Drink this ancient wine, drink deeply— Let the spell of its song take you—

Wine of the age of Adam! bearing word, down the generations, from the garden of sanctuary:

this wine, sweet as a rush of musk wine tasted on the lips’ elixir kiss, of signoras, and given me freely by signorinas.

9 See Emil Homerin, ʿUmar Ibn Al-Fāriḍ: Sufi Verse, Saintly Life (Mahwa, NJ: Classics of Western Spirituality, 2001). 216 michael sells

Poem 22

In poem 22, Ibn al-ʿArabī again evokes the burqah of Thahmad that appears at the opening of Ṭarafah’s Muʿallaqah. The poem proceeds to conjure the fatal beauty of the beloved, one of the central motifs of the collection, the language and imagery of which Ibn al-ʿArabī fashions in the style of the ghazal-master ʿUmar ibn abī Rabīʿah, even as he creates his own distinctive poetics of fatal beauty. As with “Drink Deeply,” Ibn al-ʿArabī evokes a play between dark and light, lightning and night, that begins with a reference to the burqah and moves into descriptive flashes of darkness, clouds, and lightning. The poem then introduces yet another word based upon the play of black on white: aḥwar, the word that evokes the contrast between the darkness of the eyes and the white around it. I use the term “blacksilver” to translate this nearly untranslatable word. In the plural form, the word appears in Sūrat al-Raḥmān, a core subtext for the later poems of love and mysticism. “Blacksilver” reflects the constant oscillation that marks the poetry of the Turjumān. The poem oscillates continually between death in separation and rebirth in union (recollected, regained, imagined, evoked). The ruins or stations of the beloved are barren on moment, or erotically abundant the next. The clouds exhibit the violence of the thunderclap or the delicacy of a silken fringe. The beloved extends a hand as gentle as undyed silk one moment, and the next moment sends forth a glance that is a spear as hard as the legendary Indian steel. She manifests herself with alluring beauty or with strike-you-dead Medusa-like terror. Blacksilver

Rein your camels in and turn toward the mottled rock plain of Thahmad where the willow stalk is moist and meadows are laced with dew,

Where lightenings unfold for you their gleaming, where the clouds are early coming and by evening are gone.

Lift your voice at the break of dawn calling out each radiant, lissome, virgin beauty, return to the flash rock plain of thahmad 217

Her glance, blacksilver flash, fatal, the bend of her neck tender as she turns.

When she loves she takes after the dazed-of-heart lover of beautiful women, laying him low with a lance and spear of crucible-fired Indian steel.

She extends a hand as soft as undyed silk anointed in oils of ambergris and cut musk.

She turns you a gaze like that of a gazelle fawn wandering, eyes black antinomy,

A collyrium of coquetrie and mortal spells across her eyelids, her necklace blazing never-known, inordinate beauty. Slender she! the love I love not loving, not true to the vow she swore.

She lets down her hair, black snake, to transfix with dread the one who follows.

It’s not, by God, my death shade I fear, but to die not seeing her in the after.10

ُ ْﰩ َّﺑﭑﻟﺮﰷﺋِ ِﺐ َ ْﳓ َﻮ ُﺑ ْﺮ َﻗ ِﺔ َ ْهث َﻤ ِﺪ * َﺣْﻴ ُﺚ ْٱﻟ َﻘ ُﻀﻴﺐ َّٱﻟﺮ ْﻃ ُﺐ َو َّٱﻟﺮ ْو ُض َّٱﻟﻨ ِﺪي َﺣ ُﻴﺚ ُ ُٱﻟﱪ ُوق ِﲠﺎ ُﺗ َﺮﯾﻚ َو َﻣﻴﻀﻬﺎ * َﺣْﻴ ُﺚ َّٱﻟﺴ ُﺤﺎب ِﲠﺎ َﻳ ُﺮوح َو َﯾ ْﻐ َﺘ ِﺪي ْوٱر َﻓ ْﻊ ُﺻ َﻮْﯾ َﺘ َﻚ ُّﺑﭑﻟﺴ َﺤ ْ ِﲑ ُﻣ ِﻨﺎد ًاي * ﺑِ ْﭑﻟ ِﺒ ِﻴﺾ َو ْٱﻟ ِﻐ ِﻴﺪ ْٱﻟ ِﺤ ِﺴﺎن ْٱﻟ ُﺨ َّﺮ ِد

10 Nicholson, Tarjumān, 25. In verse 5 of poem 22, Dār Sādiṛ gives tuqsidụ (she slays or lays low) for taqsidụ , offering a more immediate closure on the lover’s fate. Turjumān, Dār Sādir,̣ 91. I wish to thank Lauren Osborne, Issa Boulos and Hilmi Okur for their help in editing this article. 218 michael sells ِّ َ ِّ َ ِﻣﻦ ُﰻ ِﻓﺎﺗ ٍﻜﺔ ﺑِ َﻄ ْﺮ ٍف أ ْﺣ َﻮ ٍر * ِﻣﻦ ُﰻ اثﻧِ ٍﻴﺔ ِﲜ ٍﻴﺪ أ ْﻏ َﻴ ِﺪ ُ َّ َ ْﲥ َﻮى َﻓ َﺘ ْﻘ ِﺼ ُﺪ ﰻ َﻗْﻠ ٍﺐ ﻫﺎﰂ * َ ْﳞ َﻮى ْٱﻟ ِﺤ َﺴﺎن ﺑِ ِﺮاﺷ ٍﻖ َو ُﻣ َﻬ َّﻨ ِﺪ ُ ِّ ٍ ْ ْ ْ ﺗَ ْﻌﻄﻮ ﺑِ َﺮ ْﺧ ٍﺺ ﻛﭑدل َﻣ ْﻘ ِﺲ ُﻣ َﻨ َّﻌ ٍﻢ * ﺑِﭑﻟ َّﻨ ِّﺪ َو ٱﻟ ِﻤ ْﺴ ِﻚ ٱﻟ َﻔ ِﺘﻴﻖ ُﻣ َﻘ ْﺮ َﻣ ِﺪ َﺗ ْﺮُﻧﻮ ِإذا ﻟَ َﺤ َﻈ ْﺖ ﺑِ ُﻤ ْﻘ َ ِةل ِﺷﺎد ٍن * ُﯾ ْﻌ َﺰى ﻟِ ُﻤ ْﻘ َﻠ ِﳤﺎ َﺳ ُﻮاد ِٱﻹْﺛ ِﻤ ِﺪ َ ﺑِ ْﭑﻟ ُﻐ ْﻨﺞ َو ِّٱﻟﺴ ْﺤ ِﺮ ْٱﻟ َﻘُﺘ ِﻮل ُﻣﻜ َّﺤ ٍﻞ * ﺑِ ِّﭑﻟﺘ ِﻴﻪ َو ْٱﻟ ُﺤ ْﺴ ِﻦ ْٱﻟ َﺒﺪﯾﻊ ُﻣ َﻘ َّ ِدل ِ َ ِ َﻫ ْﻴ ُﻔﺎء ﻻ َ ْﲥ َﻮى َّٱذلي أ ْﻫ َﻮى َوﻻ * ﺗَ ِﻒ ﻟِ َّذلي َو َﻋ َﺪ ْت ﺑِ ِﺼ ْﺪ ِق ْٱﻟ َﻤ ْﻮ ِﻋ ِﺪ َ َﲮ َﺒ ْﺖ َﻏ ِﺪ َﻳﺮ َﲥﺎ ُﴭ ًﺎﻋﺎ َأ ْﺳ ًﻮدا * ﻟُِﺘ ِﺨ َﻴﻒ َﻣ ْﻦ َﯾ ْﻘ ُﻔﻮ ﺑِ َﺬاك َٱﻷ ْﺳ َﻮ ِد َو ِٱ ﻣﺎ ِﺧ ْﻔ ُﺖ ْٱﻟ َﻤ ُﻨ َﻮن َو ِإﻧَّﲈ * َﺧ ْﻮﰲ َأ ُﻣﻮت َﻓﻼ َأراﻫﺎ ﰲ َﻏ ِﺪ POETRY AND ARCHITECTURE: A DOUBLE IMITATION IN THE SĪNIYYAH OF AḤ MAD SHAWQĪ1

Akiko M. Sumi

Ah ̣mad Shawqī’s (1868–1932) Sīniyyah poem, entitled “The Journey to al-Andalus,” is well-known as a muʿāraḍah of the Sīniyyah by an eminent ʿAbbāsid poet, al-Buḥturī (821–897 C.E.).2 Mu ʿāraḍah is generally understood as literary “imitation,” “emulation,” or “contrafaction” in the classical Arabic literary tradition.3 It is a poem or a poetic tradition imitating a classical model by the use of the same meter and rhyme (and often of the similar thematic content),4

1 An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America at Washington D.C. on November 20, 2005. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych for her valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this essay. Also, I would like to acknowledge the generous institutional support of Kyoto Notre Dame University that provided a research grant for this project for the 2005–2006 academic year. My thanks go as well to Professor Mabrūk al-Mannāʿī who helped me understand Shawqī’s Sīniyyah poem. 2 Aḥmad Shawqī’s Sīniyyah “Al-Riḥlah ilā al-Andalus” is found in Aḥmad Shawqī, Al-Shawqiyyāt, 4 vols. (Cairo: Matbạ ʿat al-Istiqāmah bi-al-Qāhirah, 1964), 2:43–51. Al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah is included in al-Buḥturī al-Ṭāʾī, Abū ʿUbādah al-Walīd Ibn ʿUbayd, Dīwān, 5 vols., ed. Ḥasan Kāmil al-Sīrafị̄ (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1963–1978), 2:1152–1162. 3 Muʿāraḍah’s literal meaning is “opposition.” “Contrafaction” is a recent term used by some scholars for a translation of muʿāraḍah. This term is closer to its literal meaning “opposition.” See Muhsin J. al-Musawi, “Dedications as Poetic Intersections,” Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 31, no. 1 (2000): 6; Suzanne P. Stetkevych, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), pp. 249, 255; S. P. Stetkevych, “From Text to Talisman: Al-Būsīrī’ṣ Qasīdaṭ al-Burdah (Mantle Ode) and the Supplicatory Ode,” Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 37, no. 2 (2006): 145. 4 There are various views on technical conditions to be a muʿāraḍah. However, the three elements, meter, rhyme, and theme are a general target of discussion. See for the definition of muʿāraḍah, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ismāʿīl al-Samāʿīl, Al-Muʿāraḍāt al-Shiʿriyyah: Dirāsāt Tārīkhiyyah Naqdiyyah (Jiddah: Al-Nādī al-Adabī al-Thaqāfī bi-Jiddah, 1994), pp. 13–20. Al-Samāʿīl calls a poem that agrees in those three elements an explicit (sarīḥ ̣ah) muʿāraḍah, while a poem that does not agree in one of the three elements an implicit (ḍimniyyah) muʿāraḍah. Some scholars consider only agreement of rhyme necessary; others say it must agree in meter and rhyme. According to al-Samāʿīl, for instance, Ibrāhīm ʿAwaḍayn conditions a muʿāraḍah by rhyme; Muḥammad al-Hādī al-Ṭarābulusī conditions it by meter and rhyme. See al-Samāʿīl, pp. 14–17. 220 akiko m. sumi while trying to exceed the model.5 As a muʿāraḍah of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, Shawqī uses the identical meter khafīf, rhyme sīn, and similar thematic substance—a journey to old palaces. This study explores the Sīniyyah of Aḥmad Shawqī in relation to that of al-Buḥturī, focusing on the meaning of architecture. For al-Buḥturī, the Sīniyyah includes the description of the Īwān Kisrā (the Palace of the Sāsānian Kings), while Shawqī describes such Andalusian architectural objects as the Great Mosque of Cordova and the Alhambra palace. These two Sīniyyahs show a common aspect; both describe architecture, yearning for a lost past.6 Al-Buḥturī praises bygone Sāsānian glory through the description of the Īwān Kisrā, and Shawqī evokes the past Andalusian splendor through the description of the Andalusian architectural objects.7 In this paper, I plan to examine the relationship between poem and architecture by incorporating modern theories on architecture in relation to poetry.8 As theoretical tools, I use some of the literary critical works on the Sīniyyah of Shawqī and the subject of muʿāraḍah, as well as some works on literature and architecture, particularly Philippe Hamon’s book.9 Aḥmad Shawqī’s Sīniyyah can be seen as a double imitation of poem and architecture.10 Here I use “imitation” both as a translation

5 Mu ʿāraḍah is regarded also as an act of homage for its model. The influence of the antecedent poem on the modern poem is often recognized not merely by meter, rhyme, or topic, but also in the overall language of the modern poem. See S. Somekh, “The Neo-classical Arabic Poets,” ed. M. M. Badawi, in Modern Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 57–59. 6 Al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah consists of 56 lines, whereas Aḥmad Shawqī’s Sīniyyah consists of 110 lines. 7 The Sīniyyah of Aḥmad Shawqī has been extensively studied. For example, Antoine Boudot-Lamotte, Aḥmad Šawqī: L’homme et l’œuvre (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1977); Maḥmūd ʿAlī Makkī, “Al-Andalus fī Shiʿr Shawqī wa-Nathrih,” Fusūl:̣ Shawqī wa Ḥ āfiz,̣ vol. 3, no. 1 (1982): 200–235; Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Aḥmad Shawqī wa-ʿIyār al-Shiʿr al-ʿArabī al-Kilāsīkī,” Fusūḷ , vol. 7, no. 1, 2 (1986–1987): 12–29; Yaseen Noorani, “The Lost Garden of al-Andalus: Islamic Spain and the Poetic Inversion of Colonialism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 31 (1999): 237–254. 8 There is a work on connections between the literary and visual aspects of Taifa (Ṭāʾifah) aesthetics including architecture: Cynthia Robinson, In Praise of Song: The Making of Courtly Culture in al-Andalus and Provence, 1005–1134 A.D. (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 9 Philippe Hamon, Expositions: Literature and Architecture in Nineteenth-Century France, trans. Katia Sainson-Frank and Lisa Maguire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 10 Some of my arguments in this essay are based on two earlier studies of mine: Akiko Motoyoshi, “Reality and Reverie: Wine and Ekphrasis in the ʿAbbāsid Poetry of Abū Nuwās and al-Buḥturī,” Annals of the Japan Association for Middle East Studies, poetry and architecture 221 of muʿāraḍah and as a literary term. Imitation as a literary term can have two meanings in modern understanding. One is “copying or adaptation of artistic or literary modes,” which can also be considered a translation of muʿāraḍah, and the other is “representation of external reality.”11 On the one hand, Shawqī’s work is the literary imitation of a neo-classical poet imitating a classical poet. It is also a description/ imitation of the external reality of Andalusian architecture. In his poem, Shawqī’s yearning for the work of al-Buḥturī seems parallel to his longing for al-Andalus and its architecture. Therefore, the act of a double “imitation” by Shawqī forms the “revival” of al-Buḥturī’s work and the Andalusian monuments. The act attempts to reconstruct a lost past, one through the verbal imitation/emulation of a verbal art work/monument, the other through the verbal description of plastic/ architectural monuments. I investigate how the verbal representation of architecture functions in Shawqī’s Sīniyyah, searching for an intersection between poem and building as well as for that between Shawqī’s Sīniyyah and al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah in the framework of the muʿāraḍah. These two intersections are examined by scrutinizing Shawqī’s treatment of architectural motifs through his preface to the poem, Shawqī’s borrowings from al-Buḥturī’s, and the poem itself, based on the theoretical exploration of the significance of architecture in poetry.

Shawqī’s Preface to His Sīniyyah: Poetry and Architecture

Aḥmad Shawqī’s preface to his Sīniyyah “The Journey to al-Andalus” in the form of rhymed prose, sajʿ, explains that the poem was based

vol. 14 (1999): 85–120, which was later revised as Akiko Motoyoshi Sumi, Chapter 3, “Reality and Reverie: Wine and Ekphrasis in the ʿAbbāsid Poetry of Abū Nuwās and al-Buḥturī,” in Description in Classical Arabic Poetry: Wasf,̣ Ekphrasis, and Interarts Theory (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 92–121; Akiko Motoyoshi, “Poetry and Portraiture: A Double Portrait in An Arabic Panegyric by Ibn Zamrak,” Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 30, no. 3 (1999): 199–239, which later appeared as Sumi, Chapter 5, “Poetry and Portraiture: A Double Portrait in a Panegyric by Ibn Zamrak,” in Description, 2004, pp. 155–193. The former explores al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah in comparison with a poem by Abū Nuwās, and the latter deals with the description of the Alhambra palace in a panegyric by Ibn Zamrak, the Andalusian poet. 11 Gerald Else and Helen Elam, “Imitation,” ed. Alex Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan, The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 577. 222 akiko m. sumi on his experience of a trip to al-Andalus in late 1918 or early 1919, while he was in exile in Barcelona, Spain.12 The preface also mentions the occasion of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, indicating that Shawqī’s intention to imitate al-Buḥturī. Two aspects observed in the preface deserve highlighting. First, for Shawqī the act of composing a poem is analogous to constructing a building. This relates directly to al-Buḥturī’s poetic works on architecture. Shawqī uses several terms and expressions that are generally used for architecture. Second, Shawqī tries to prove the eloquence of al-Buḥturī in contrast to the actual building of the Īwān Kisrā. By implying the rivalry between poetic creation and architectural construction, he conveys the superiority of the poetic Īwān Kisrā in beauty over the physical Īwān Kisrā. I quote below a portion of the preface that is relevant to my argument. The quotation is preceded by remarks on the ending of the First World War during his exile to Barcelona, and of his journey to Toledo, Seville, Cordova, and Granada. . . . Al-Buḥturī, may God have mercy upon him, was my companion on this journey and my night escort in this wandering. Circumstances come according to men’s measure, so every man has his circumstance. Indeed he [al-Buḥturī] is the most eloquent person who adorned the ruins, addressed the stones, spread the message, gathered moral advices, and mourned the great nations and the inexperienced, foolish kings. He felt compassion for the Jaʿfarī [palace], which was denuded of its ornaments and was forsaken after al-Mutawakkil to decay, when the assembly departed from it.13 Then he [al-Buḥturī] raised its foundation (rafaʿa qawāʿidahu) with its history, erected its pillars (banā ruknahu) with its records, and fixed its contours with its thoughts, until it was restored like the eternal palaces (qusūṛ ), which were filled with mental vision, although they were devoid of eyesight.14 After that, he safeguarded the Īwān for Kisrā when it disappeared from the earth into his dīwān (collection of poems) in his

12 From 1892 to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Shawqī was a court poet at the Court of the Khedive ʿAbbās of Egypt. At the time Egypt was under the rule of Great Britain. With the deposing of the Khedive ʿAbbās and his hostility towards British policy on Egypt, Shawqī was sent into exile in Barcelona, Spain for the years 1914–1919. See Makkī, p. 220. 13 According to al-Sīrafī,̣ the Jaʿfarī palace was built by al-Mutawakkil in 245 A.H. See al-Buḥturī, Dīwān, ed. al-Sīrafī,̣ 2:1039. 14 With this sentence Shawqī implies that al-Buḥturī composes a panegyric for al- Mutawakkil with the description of the Jaʿfarī palace. The poem is found in al-Buḥturī, Dīwān, ed. al-Sīrafī,̣ 2:1039–1042. poetry and architecture 223

famous Sīniyyah, which describes it. It is no less than the Īwān, which had stood compact and firm under Kisrā’s regime. The Sīniyyah shows you the beauty of constructing (qiyām ʿalā) a poem on the ruins (al-āthār), and how the abodes (diyār) become restored in his verses (buyūtihi) after they have been effaced. The author of Al-Fatḥ al-Qussī fī al-Fatḥ al-Quds (Qussian Eloquence on the Conquest of Jerusalem)15 said among other things, “Look at the Īwān Kisrā and its description by al-Buḥturī in his Sīniyyah. You will find that the pinnacle of the Īwān had fallen down and its balconies had been covered with dust, while the Sīniyyah of al-Buḥturī immortalized Kisrā in his dīwān multiplying the person who had lived in the Īwān.” This is the Sīniyyah, in which he begins: I guarded myself from things that defile myself. I held myself aloof from the gift of every coward.16 [1] It has been unanimously agreed upon that the most original, matchless among its verses is: The Fates are standing, While Anūshirwān urges on the ranks beneath his banner,17 [2] Whenever I stood at a stone or walked around the ruins, I thought of the verses [of al-Buḥturī]. And I was comforted from the lessons of the ruins by their beauty. I recited to myself: The Īwān Kisrā admonished al-Buḥturī, And the palaces of ʿAbd Shams [the Umayyad palaces] cured me.18

15 The book is on the history of the conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin and renowned for the complication of style and vocabulary. The author ʿImād al-Dīn al-Isfahānị̄ (1125–1201) is a famous stylist and historian. See H. Masse, “ʿImād al-Dīn,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, CD-ROM ed. 16 This is the opening line of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah. See the Appendix for the Arabic text. For the Arabic text of all the other poetic texts in this study, see also the Appendix. The translation is mine with close reference to A. J. Arberry’s translation. A. J. Arberry, Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1965), pp. 72–80. For the translation of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, see Sumi, Description, pp. 101–108 . 17 Line 23 of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, al-Buḥturī, Dīwān, ed. al-Sīrafī,̣ 2:1156 . 18 Line 48 of Shawqī’s Sīniyyah, Al-Shawqiyyāt, 2:47. The translation is mine. All translations of the Arabic odes and prose in this study are my own, unless otherwise indicated. 224 akiko m. sumi

Then I began to compose the ode in the same rhyme and meter until I organized this finely woven rhyme and ended by taming these intractable words. I will show it to the readers, hoping that they will see it with satisfied eyes and will drag the train of disregard over its defects. This is the ode:19 (The ode begins.) Shawqī says here after the falling of the Jaʿfarī palace into ruin, al-Buḥturī tried to rebuild it verbally in his poem by “raising its foundation” (rafaʿa qawāʿidahu) and “erecting its pillars” (banā ruknahu). Shawqī further says that al-Buḥturī “constructs” (qiyām ʿalā) a poem on the “ruins” (al-āthār) by demonstrating how the “abodes” (diyār) become restored in his “verses” (buyūtihi).20 The next aspect is Shawqī’s praise of his master for his eloquence. Al-Buḥturī was so eloquent that he could rebuild with his pen the worn-out Jaʿfarī palace which had been erected by the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mutawakkil (822–861 C.E.), who had been a mamdūḥ (patron) to al-Buḥturī. By creating the ode, the ʿAbbāsid poet aims to build an eternal palace in the reader’s mind’s eye.21 Shawqī then attempts to demonstrate that al-Buḥturī’s poem “The Īwān Kisrā” surpasses in beauty the real Īwān Kisrā by comparing the two Īwān Kisrās. He finds a competitive relationship between the two works of art: one is an architectural art (the building itself ), and the other is a poetic art imitating the architectural art (al-Buḥturī’s poem “The Īwān Kisrā”). Shawqī considers that al-Buḥturī succeeded in rebuilding the Īwān Kisrā in his dīwān. In other words, the ʿAbbāsid poet revives the magnificent palace which was effaced from the memory of the people. In the context of the muʿāraḍah, the elaborate analysis of al-Buḥturī’s ode implies Shawqī’s goal of rebuilding the splendid Andalusian monuments through/in his verses, as he, too, tries to immortalize them in

19 For the Arabic text of the preface, see Al-Shawqiyyāt, 2:43–44. 20 An Andalusian court poet of the Nasriḍ era, Ibn Zamrak (1333–93?) also uses a term of architecture for the expression of poetic creation in his panegyric on the description of the Alhambra palace: Say to him whose poetry is built on beauty, “May you ever build well upon it.” This is line 30 of Ibn Zamrak’s ode on the description of the Alhambra palace. The translation is by Sumi and Suzanne P. Stetkevych. For the translation of the entire ode, see Sumi, Description, pp. 161–180. I discuss Ibn Zamrak’s use of the word banā for his composition of an ode in my book. See Sumi, Description, p. 183. The Arabic text of the ode is found in al-Maqqarī, Nafḥ al-Ṭīb, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥ amīd, 10:50. 21 According to al-Sīrafī,̣ al-Buḥturī actually visited the Īwān Kisrā before his composition of the poem. See al-Buḥturī, Dīwān, ed. al-Sīrafī,̣ 2:1152. poetry and architecture 225 his dīwān. The construction of his own Sīniyyah may be a challenge for the neo-classical poet, owing to two aspects. One is that his Sīniyyah must vie with the Īwān Kisrā that was reconstructed by the pen of al-Buḥturī, and the other is that it must vie with the real architectural monuments in al-Andalus. This suggests that his act holds two meanings, a competition between the neo-classical poet’s poetic creation and the ʿAbbāsid poet’s poetic creation and a competition between architectural monuments and poetic creation.22 Having examined Shawqi’s preface, now the poem itself can be presented.23 1. The succession of days and nights obliterates memory; Remind me of youth and the days of intimacy. 2. Describe to me a moment of youth, Which was formed of imagination and madness.24 3. It blew away like the playful east wind, And passed like a sweet doze or a snatched pleasure. 4. Ask Egypt if my heart has been consoled from her, Or if healing time has treated its wound. 5. Whenever the nights pass over it, it becomes more tender, Though nights are known to be severe. 6. [My heart] almost flies, when the steamships, in the first part of the night, Ring out and their [whistles] howl after the sounding [of their bells]. 7. [Like] a monk whose heart is on the look-out for ships, Whenever it is stirred it spreads the news by tolling a bell.

22 This relationship between building and poetry can be also observed in some shared terminology between building and poetry in the classical Arabic poetic tradition. For instance, the word bayt is known to mean both a tent/house and a verse. 23 Aḥmad Shawqī, Al-Shawqiyyāt, 2:44–51. 24 Mass , translated as “madness,” can also mean “touching.” 226 akiko m. sumi

8. O a daughter of the sea, your father is not stingy. Why is he so eager to hinder [your suitors] and confine [you]? 9. Why are great trees forbidden to the nightingales, While birds of all kinds are permitted? 10. Every people has a right to their home, Except those of vile and disgraceful ways. 11. My breath is a boiler and my heart is a sail; With them travel and anchor in my tears. 12. And direct your face to the lighthouse, And your course to the harbor of Alexandria between Raml and Maks. 13. My homeland! If I were distracted from it by Paradise, My soul even in Paradise would drag me back to it. 14. There hastened my heart to rush to the spring of Salsabīl A thirst for the land of ʿAyn Shams. 15. God is my witness that its form was never absent from my eyelids Even for an hour, and nor from my fingertips. 16. In the morning my thoughts are at the Obelisk where my friends gather, And in the evening they are in al-Sarḥah al-Zakiyyah. 17. As though I saw al-Jazīrah as a thicket Where birds sang with melodious voice. 18. [The Jazīrah] is Queen Bilqīs among the thickets, a lofty edifice made of flood, And [she has] a generous master [Solomon].25

25 Grammar is unclear to me. poetry and architecture 227

19. It’s enough for her that she is a bride for the Nile And the Nile was not enamored of any bride before her. 20. In the evening, she is clad in an embroidered gown Made of cloth from Sanạ ʿāʾ and Qass. 21. The Nile cut off al-Jazīrah, she became shy, and hid herself from the Nile With a bridge between nakedness and clothes. 22. I see that the Nile is like the streambed of al-ʿAqīq along its wadi, Although it is the River Kawthar for him who drinks there. 23. He [The Nile] is the son of the sky’s water with a splendid procession That tires and dazzles the eyes. 24. You see no one, among the riders, who does not praise his beauty And thank him for the favor of a wedding. 25. I see that Jīzah is a mourning woman, bereaved of a child, Who has not yet recovered from mourning for Ramsīs. 26. She increased the creaking of the water wheel for him And the whispering question of the reeds about him. 27. And raised high the palm trees, which braided their hair, And were stripped of all but a collar of branches. 28. As though the pyramids were [the weights] on Pharaoh’s scales [of justice] On a day of ill-omen for tyrants, 29. Or as if they were huge piles of money, Gathered by a thousand collectors of land tax and market tax. 30. They are splendid in the forenoon, but when darkness descends upon their precinct, They become playgrounds for the jinn. 228 akiko m. sumi

31. The Hostage of the Sand [The Sphinx] is flat-nosed, Although he was made by jinn who are not flat-nosed. 32. The true nature of mankind is revealed in it: The body of a beast lion with the face of a man. 33. Time played in its soil in its sands as a child, When the nights were young girls with budding breasts, not old maids. 34. The fate’s hunters are mounted in its [Sphinx’s] eyes For acuity, and its claws, for rapacity. 35. With it fate struck kings: Kisrā, Heraclius, and the French genius [Napoleon]. 36. O my heart, every affair, when you get to the bottom of it, Becomes clear after confusion. 37. The deep sea of worries restrains minds That swim and dive deeper than the whale. 38. They drowned where no one yells [To help] a floating or drowning man, and no voice is heard. 39. A planet may eclipse the sun in the daytime, And at night force the full moon to ill-omened decline. 40. Affairs have their appointed times And when they reach them, they are reversed. 41. Nations, like men, are hostages To the accidents of good luck and misfortune. 42. Nights [that seemed like damsels], wearing bracelets Slapped all the Roman and Persian lords. poetry and architecture 229

43. They aimed the crescent moon like an arrow and unsheathed a dagger, And both pierced every shield. 44. [The Nights] governed Cheops and Dārā for centuries: They erased Wāʾil, and took away ʿAbs. 45. Where is Marwān?— When once there was An Umayyad throne in the east and in the west. 46. Their [Umayyads’] sun languished, Then every wise, sharp-witted mind returned its light to it. 47. Then it disappeared,— for every sun except the sun declines— And was hidden beneath the grave. 48. The Īwān Kisrā admonished al-Buḥturī, And the palaces of ʿAbd Shams [the Umayyad palaces] cured me. 49. Many a night I went forth with the lightning as my noble steed, Many a plain I crossed, with the wind as my she-camel. 50. I join the east with the west through the peninsula [al-Andalus], And I traverse the country, both rough lands and smooth, 51. And the effaced abodes of the caliphs And the obliterated waymark of the petty kings, 52. And hills, like gardens, green on the slopes of olive trees; Black on the slopes of grapevines. 53. My heart thrilled to [the touch of] Cordovan soil, In which my fingers felt the lesson of fate. 54. May God protect what I see in the morning And water with the best of rain on what I find in the evening. 230 akiko m. sumi

55. A village, which now seems unearthly, Once kept the earth from shaking and held it firm. 56. It covered the shores of the ocean And the billows of Rome with its sails and ropes. 57. Fate captured my mind on its soil, So it reached that protected land after going astray. 58. There were revealed to me the palaces And the men of might and rank who dwelt in them. 59. They were never home to kings of vile station Nor did they clothe themselves in filth. 60. As if I reached a house of knowledge, Where every lesson for the mind is found, 61. A house held holy in east and west, To which Muslim jurists and Christian priests made pilgrimage. 62. The Friday prayers are majestic, And [ʿAbd al-Raḥmān] al-Nāsiṛ is the light of the vast army beneath the great banner. 63. He took the crown down from the head of a Don And adorned with it the head on an Emir. 64. A slumber and a phantom of desires, Then my mind awoke from error and whims. 65. Suddenly the abode holds no familiar face; Suddenly there is no sign of the tribe. 66. Many a fragile ancient house lasted, More than a thousand years, its time ever blameless. poetry and architecture 231

67. It was a trace of Muḥammad, And an inheritance that then fell to the most devoted Spirit [Jesus]. 68. Its topmost part reached the stars, And its foundation rose as high as Thahlān and Quds. 69. It is made of marble in which the gaze swims, Then when the distance is too great for it, it becomes fixed. 70. Many a column, as even as Thealifs of the vizier on a sheet of paper. 71. The passage of time has covered its two rows [with dust] Like eyelashes clothed with languidness and sleep. 72. O what columns! How often were they adorned for a learned man, unique of his time! How often were they prepared for the five daily prayers! 73. As though the ceiling in the field of vision Were a brocaded silk sheet. 74. As though the Qurʾānic verses on its two walls Were descending [from Heaven] on stairways of sanctity. 75. A pulpit, beneath Mundhir or Quss, is made of sublimity, And is still clad in it. 76. And the place of the Book: though it is absent, The fragrance of its rose entices you till you approach to touch it. 77. They are the work of al-Dākhil who is blessed in the west, And of his people who are fortunate and proud. * * * 78. Who would imagine a Ḥ amrāʾ covered with the dust of time, 232 akiko m. sumi

Like a wound between recovery and relapse?! 79. Like a flash of lightening, if its light dazzled the eyes, They would still have glimpsed it [Ḥ amrāʾ] from its long-burning firebrand. 80. The citadel of Granada and the abode of Banū al-Aḥmar, One negligent, one alert and sharp. 81. Before it snow covers the peak of Mt. Sierra, So it appeared to wear a head band of white cotton. 82. Its white hair is eternal. Never before have I seen white hair That postpones eternal life and makes one forget it. 83. Disasters ran through in the chambers of Ḥ amrāʾ Like a runner announcing someone’s death in the house of a wedding. 84. They rent the veil of honor and breached the threshold of Nightly entertainment and intimate friends. 85. [There were] courtyards that were emptied of horses And relieved of the guard and the night patrol. 86. And abodes, despite the passing of the nights, still resplendent, That did not find repeated misfortune of an evening. 87. They see no one but visitors for the sake of history, Moving forward with humility and bowing. 88. They made their eyes traverse the freshness of the carved myrtles And the red dye from the wars plant, 89. And cupolas, made of lapis lazuli and gold, Which are like high hills between shade and sun, poetry and architecture 233

90. And inscriptions that guarantee to the meanings And their expressions the most ornate garb. 91. You see the court of lions in the open air, Devoid of gazelles and oryx. 92. Neither al-Thurayyā (Pleiades) nor her handmaids (stars), As lovely as moon-faced maidens, 93. [Made of] marble on which the lions Whose claws are dull and who are soft to touch. 94. They scatter water in the basin Like pearls that leap up to their smooth chests. 95. At the end of the era in the peninsula, [Al-Andalus] remained after the crushing and grinding of time. 96. When you seeing it, you say: [it is like] the banner of an army That perished yesterday either captured or slain. 97. Its keys are the keys of a dominion Whose prodigal heir sold it for too low a price. 98. Its men went out in squadrons, deaf to its defense, And dumb like a funeral procession. 99. In a bier they took to the seas, Which under their ancestors yesterday, were their throne. 100. For every destroyer there is many a builder; For every scatterer a gatherer; for every malefactor a beneficent man. 101. Authority over the people comes from aspiration, 234 akiko m. sumi

Which neither the coward nor the wicked can attain. 102. If faulty of moral character afflicts the edifice of nation, It has a weak foundation. 103. O abodes, I alighted in a shade like Paradise With low-hanging fruit and the sweet water of intimate friends, 104. Whose seasons are all mild: there is neither heat in the month of Nājir Nor bitter cold in the month of Jumādā. 105. On their hills let the eyes not graze on anything But houris of Paradise with deep red lips. 106. My chicks grew feathers in your shade, And my plants grew and flourished on your hills. 107. Among the sons of Egypt, a favor done them is never lost And a good deed is never forgotten. 108. My tongue is forever committed to your praise, To you my devotion is forever pledged. 109. Let these ruins suffice as warnings to them, once again, Against the vicissitudes of fate and effacement. 110. If you fail to consider the past, The face of consolation will be concealed from you. [3] poetry and architecture 235

Shawqī’s Thematic Borrowings from al-Buḥturī

Looking at Shawqī’s poem, it is necessary to point out his thematic borrowings from al-Buḥturī.26 They are seen in a number of places: the speaker’s grief over his past ill luck, the significance of his journey, the speaker’s imagination/illusion by looking at building parts and the breaking of that illusion, the contrast between the present deserted state and the past inhabited state of the buildings, and the speaker’s praise for the great civilization of the buildings which no longer exists and his people’s appreciation of it.27 For example, Shawqī’s major theme is a journey to the ruined buildings of al-Andalus, as that of al-Buḥturī’s is a journey to the ruined palace of al-Madāʾin. Furthermore, the journey to the architectural remains serves as consolation to the speaker who grieves over his misfortune. Al-Buḥturī says: I am consoled for my own bad luck As I grieve for the ruined abode of the Sāsānians.28 [4]

It remained prosperous and happy for a time; Then their abodes became a place for condolence and consolation.29 [5] Shawqī says that the Andalusian buildings heal his sorrow caused by his miserable state as an exile from his homeland Egypt, just as the Īwān Kisrā cures al-Buḥturī:

26 For studies on al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, see Jerome W. Clinton, “TheMadāen Qasida of Xāqāni; Sharvāni, II: Xāqāni and al-Buḥturī,” Edebiyât 2, no. 2 (1977): 191–206; Richard Serrano, “Al-Buḥturī’s Poetics of Persian Abodes,” Journal of Arabic Literature 28, no. 1 (1997): 68–87, which has been reworked in Richard Serrano, “Al-Buḥturī’s Poetics of Persian Abodes,” in his Neither a Borrower: Forging Traditions in French, Chinese and Arabic Poetry (Oxford: Legenda, 2002); Samer M. Ali, “Reinterpreting al-Buḥturī’s Īwān Kisrā Ode: Tears of Affection for the Cycles of History,”Journal of Arabic Literature 37, no. 1 (2006): 46–67. 27 As an example of Shawqī’s borrowings from al-Buḥturī, see my discussion on the aspect of “the breaking of that illusion” on p. 102. Also for “the speaker’s praise for the great civilization of the buildings which no longer exist and his people’s appreciation of it,” see my discussion on p. 117. 28 Line 12 of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, al-Buḥturī, Dīwān, ed. al-Sīrafī,̣ 2:1154. 29 Line 50 of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, al-Buḥturī, Dīwān, ed. al-Sīrafī,̣ 2:1161. 236 akiko m. sumi

Ask Egypt if my heart has been consoled from her, Or if healing time has treated its wound.30

The Īwān Kisrā admonished al-Buḥturī, And the palaces of ʿAbd Shams [the Umayyad palaces] cured me.31 These borrowings suggest that for Shawqī the subject of the Andalusian monuments is a suitable counterpart to al-Buḥturī’s subject, the Īwān Kisrā. Nevertheless, Shawqī has reworked some of al-Buḥturī’s motifs and techniques to fit his own poetic scheme.32 In the first part, al-Buḥturī emphasizes his lament over his misfortune and his grudge towards his past patron, while Shawqī expands his sorrow as an exile into passion for his homeland. Al-Buḥturī’s poem uses a wine motif to strengthen the creation of the imaginative world, but Shawqī’s poem does not resort to this motif but rather concentrates on the architectural motifs for its creation. Moreover, al-Buḥturī praises the abode of the Sāsānians who were not his people, whereas Shawqī eulogizes the remains of the Arabs in Islamic Spain, i.e., whom he identifies as his people. Even so, Shawqī’s thematic scheme relied largely on al-Buḥturī’s work.

Rewriting/Reconstructing of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah

I would like to demonstrate that through the act of the muʿāraḍah or imitation, Shawqī attempts to rewrite al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah with/in his own Sīniyyah, that is, to create a metaphorical reconstruction of al-Buḥturī’s Īwān Kisrā. By paying attention to the analogy between literature and architecture, I explore first the spatial transference of words between the two sīniyyahs, and then Shawqī’s reconstruction of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, focusing on the comparable function between the reused rhyme-words and spolia or the reused earlier building material or ornaments on new monuments.

30 Line 4 of Shawqī’s Sīniyyah. 31 Line 48 of Shawqī’s Sīniyyah. 32 Jaroslav Stetkevych points out that Shawqī’s experience is greater than that of al-Buḥturī; al-Buḥturī’s is a subjective-aesthetic one, while Shawqī’s is a national one. J. Stetkevych, “Aḥmad Shawqī,” p. 21. poetry and architecture 237

Spatial Tranference In connection with buildings, Phillip Hamon argues that a “spatial effect” can be found between literary texts. This “spatial effect” is on a different level from the poet’s treatment of “space” in the description of architectural motifs. From the comparative perspective of the literary text and architecture, Hamon claims: From a strictly textual point of view, space—or “spatial effect,”—is often the product of spacing operations involving transferences, transformations, or quotations. Just as the literary text is generally a rewriting of other texts, a palimpsest, the writer often perceives the city or the house as the visible stratification, or as a “reuse” (the equivalent in the terminology of architecture of the quotation) of other constructions, in other words, as the reabsorption of diachrony into a more or less homogeneous or disparate synchrony. Rewriting founds the building, as it founds the text.33 I call the “spatial effect” that Hamon uses “spatial transference.” “Spatial transference” is an intertextual operation for it occurs between texts just as it happens between buildings. “Spatial transference” is recognizable between al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah and Shawqī’s Sīniyyah. It is most distinctly in Shawqī’s reusing of words,34 especially rhyme-words, from al-Buḥturī.35 In other words, in the context of the muʿāraḍah, Shawqī depends on al-Buḥturī not only in the rhyme sīn but also in the rhyme-words which appear in the end of each line.36 According to Muḥammad al-Hādī al-Ṭarābulusī, Shawqī adopts as many as 45 rhyme-words from al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, which consists of 56 rhyme-words or 56 lines. This means that Shawqī utilizes more than 80% of al-Buḥturī’s rhyme-words.37 Al-Ṭarābulusī asserts that among

33 Hamon, p. 35. 34 According to my observation, “spatial transference” is also seen in Shawqī’s reusing of the anaphora starting with ka-annī arā (“as though I saw . . .”) or ka-anna (“as though . . .”) from al-Buḥturī’s. The anaphora is the use of a word or phrase at the beginning of several consecutive lines of poetry. Al-Ṭarābulusī points out Shawqī’s borrowing of this anaphora from al-Buḥturī. See al-Ṭarābulusī, pp. 247–248. 35 The reuse of a number of rhyme-words from the predecessor’s poem is often seen in muʿāraḍah poems. See G. J. H. van Gelder, “muʿāraḍa,” eds. Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey, Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 1998), 2:534. 36 As for the understanding of the rhyme or al-qāfiyah in the agreement of the muʿāraḍah, al-Samāʿīl argues that the simplest and the best is the agreement of the entire last word of a verse. See al-Samāʿīl, p. 14. 37 Al-T ̣arābulusī, p. 249. Also, al-Tatāwị̄ notes that more than 50% of rhyme- words in Shawqī’s ode are repetitions of al-Buḥturī’s rhyme-words, indicating many example words. See ʿAbd Allāh al-Tatāwị̄ ̣, Al-Turāth wa al-Muʿāraḍah ʿinda Aḥmad 238 akiko m. sumi

Shawqī’s many muʿāraḍahs38 his muʿāraḍah of al-Buḥturī shows the highest ratio of the use of rhyme-words to the poem’s target poem.39 This high ratio among Shawqī’s muʿāraḍahs indicates that Shawqī tries to imitate al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah as much as possible by using so many al-Buḥturī’s rhyme-words. How does Shawqī reuse the rhyme-words from al-Buḥturī? One example is Shawqī’s rhyme-word, al-dirafsī or “banner.” The Friday prayers are majestic, And [ʿAbd al-Raḥmān] al-Nāsiṛ is the light of the vast army beneath the great banner.40 This rhyme-word is taken from al-Buḥturī’s line: The Fates are standing, While Anūshirwān urges on the ranks beneath his banner.41 [2]

Shawqī (Cairo: Dār Gharīb li-l-Ṭibāʿah wa al-Nashr wa al-Tawzīʿ, 1996), p. 96. Some examples of the identical rhyme-words are: jarsī (sound, tone) in Shawqī’s line 17 and al-Buḥturī’s line 25; ḥadsī (aimlessly/uncertainty) in Shawqī’s line 57 and al-Buḥturī’s line 34; al-dirafsī (the banner) in Shawqī’s line 62 and al-Buḥturī’s line 23; qudsī (Mt. Quds) in Shawqī’s line 68 and al-Buḥturī’s line 41; lamsī (touching) in Shawqī’s line 76 and al-Buḥturī’s line 28; ʿursī (wedding) in Shawqī’s line 83 and al-Buḥturī’s line 20; luʿsī (red-lips) in Shawqī’s line 105 and al-Buḥturī’s line 47. 38 Aḥmad Shawqī was famous for his active engagement in the muʿāraḍah. It is reported that Shawqī has more than 40 muʿāraḍāt, which were composed throughout his career. His favorite poets for muʿāraḍah include al-Mutanabbī, al-Buḥturī, al-Maʿarrī, Abū Tammām, Abū Nuwās, Ibn Zaydūn, and al-Ḥ ārith ibn Ḥ illizah. The number of his muʿāraḍah poems varies depending on the definition of themu ʿāraḍah. According to Somekh, Ibrāhīm ʿAwaḍayn recognizes more than 50 muʿāraḍah poems of Shawqī. Somekh, p. 58. Ibrāhīm ʿAwaḍayn, Al-Muʿāraḍāt fī al-Adab al-ʿArabī, Cairo: 1980. Al-Samāʿīl says that Shawqī has 39 muʿāraḍahs which are “explicit” muʿāraḍahs. For al-Samāʿīl, an “explicit” muʿāraḍah executes the agreement of the three elements: meter, rhyme, and topic. Al-Samāʿīl, p. 114. 39 Al-Ṭarābulusī demonstrates the ratio of the use of rhyme-words from the model poem in other muʿāraḍahs by Shawqī. According to him, Shawqī reuses 117 rhyme- words from al-Būsīrī’ṣ Qasīdaṭ al-Burdah (Mantle Ode) out of 163 total rhyme-words in Shawqī’s, which amounts to 72%; Shawqī reuses 42 rhyme-words from Abū Tammām’s ʿAmmūriyah poem out of 71 total rhyme-words in Shawqī’s, which amounts to 59%. See al-Ṭarābulusī, p. 249. 40 Line 62 of Shawqī’s Sīniyyah. 41 Line 23 of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, al-Buḥturī, Dīwān, ed. al-Sīrafī,̣ 2:1156. poetry and architecture 239

This verse of al-Buḥturī is introduced by Shawqī in his preface as the most impressive verse in the poem. It is one of the descriptive verses of the wall painting of the Battle of Antioch. Al-Buḥturī clearly delineates the might and valor of the Sāsānian ruler, Anūshirwān (Khusraw). Making use of this image, Shawqī delineates the Cordovan caliph al-Nāsiṛ who takes the lead in his troops. By using the rhyme-word al-dirafsī that echoes the dignity and strength of the Sāsānian ruler, Shawqī creates the heroic image of al-Nāsir.̣ In this way, Shawqī revives al-Buḥturī’s verse, while showing his own manipulation of the image of the banner. Shawqī also reuses a rhyme-word of al-Buḥturī in the description of the Great Mosque of Cordova, employing the rhyme-word, lamsī or “to touch.” And the place of the Book: though it is absent, The fragrance of its rose entices you till you approach to touch it.42 This lamsī is taken from al-Buḥturī’s line: My curiosity concerning them increases Until I explore and touch them.43 [6] In al-Buḥturī’s, “I” or the speaker is tempted to touch men depicted on the wall painting of the Īwān Kisrā, whereas in Shawqī’s, “you” or the speaker is tempted to touch the scent or the place of the Book. By the rhyme-word lamsī, the concept of “touching” is highlighted. Both times, lams expresses the verisimilitude or palpability of the objects in the poems. Those objects are not really present; the men in al-Buḥturī’s are not alive, but painted, whereas the Book (Qurʾān) in Shawqī’s is evoked by its fragrance, but is no longer present. The poems try to tempt the reader to “touch” the objects. Thus the rhyme-word lamsī creates a point of contact or “touching” between Shawqī’s and al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah.

42 Line 76 of Shawqī’s Sīniyyah. 43 Line 28 of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, al-Buḥturī, Dīwān, ed. al-Sīrafī,̣ 2:1157. 240 akiko m. sumi

These two rhyme-words are merely two of many rhyme-words that Shawqī borrowed from al-Buḥturī.44 This spatial transference between the neo-classical poem and the ʿAbbāsid poem creates intersections between the two texts. The transference can be translated as a sort of dialogue that Shawqī has with al-Buḥturī. The transferred rhyme- word from al-Buḥturī to Shawqī embraces and hides the meaning of al-Buḥturī’s rhyme-word behind Shawqī’s text. This power of the rhyme- word is not insignificant for it may evoke not only the meaning of the word itself but also that of al-Buḥturī’s entire verse, and in turn, that of al-Buḥturī’s entire poem. The rhyme-word thus can exert a condensed power of al-Buḥturī’s ode. The use of so many of the same rhyme-words supports Shawqī’s claim in his preface that al-Buḥturī was accompanying him during his journey; al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah was constantly in Shawqī’s mind, if Shawqī did not carry al-Buḥturī’s dīwān.

Reconstructing of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah: Rhyme-words as Spolia45 From Hamon’s perspective of the literary text and the building, Shawqī’s reuse of the rhyme-words from al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah can be comparable with spolia in architecture. Spolia is originally understood as booty taken in war. The literal meaning of the Latin word is “spoils,” implying “violent removal from a violent source, a rape of the classical past.”46 As a term of art history, spolia was coined around the 16th century by scholars and artists to name ancient Roman marble ornaments used in secondary medieval settings.47 Spolia has also been used to denote the reused building material or ornaments on new monuments. In this context of spolia, the rhyme-words Shawqī reused from al-Buḥturī’s, can be the reused “building” blocks of Shawqī’s muʿāraḍah.48 By examining

44 For more examples of the rhyme-words between the two odes, see al-Samāʿīl, pp. 302–305. 45 I thank Dr. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych for her suggestion of the comparison of borrowed rhyme-words to spolia. 46 Dale Kinney, “Roman Architectural Spolia,” Proceedings of the American Philo- sophical Society, vol. 145, no. 2 (2001): 138. 47 For the definition of spolia, see Kinney, “Roman Architectural Spolia,” p. 138 and G. E. Marindin, “Spolia,” in A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 2 vols., 3rd ed. (London: John Murray, 1901), 2:691–692. 48 In the field of the study of spolia, there is a question if an object is “reused” or just “used.” Dale Kinney, “The Concept of Spolia,” in C. Rudolph ed., A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe (Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2006), p. 248. poetry and architecture 241

Shawqī’s rhyme-words reused from al-Buḥturī in relation to literature and architecture, three concepts are apparent as to the rhyme-words: 1. the foundation of Shawqī’s Sīniyyah focusing on the reused columns, 2. the expression of poetic victory as well as the evidence of booty in the framework of the muʿāraḍah, and 3. an element of revival of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah. First, Shawqī’s rhyme-words play an essential part as the foundation of his muʿāraḍah in the same way as columns play a part as the foundation of a building. Al-Ṭarābulusī mentions that the rhyme-word constitutes the essential base of a poem, fulfilling mainly the condition of rhyming, unlike the other words which fulfill conditions for structure, meaning, and meter. According to him, in many cases a poet chooses a rhyme-word before constructing its verse, and then searches for suitable material and organization for the rest of the verse. Although the position is located in the end of a verse, he claims that the rhyme-word is considered the cornerstone in the verse structure.49 Rhyme-words do not merely have an external function to join different verses in one string, but also have an internal function to form both sound and meaning. Hence, rhyme-words in a qasīdaḥ (classical Arabic ode) can be likened to columns that are the base of a building. In this light, it is intriguing to realize that the columns in the Great Mosque of Cordova, which form one of Shawqī’s poetic motifs in his Sīniyyah, are actually spolia. The mosque, originally built by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I in circa 785 C.E., is a hypostyle hall whose ceilings are supported by parallel rows of equidistant columns. The design was brought by the Umayyads from Damascus to Cordova. Although the mosque was later expanded, the original building had 11 aisles separated by 10 rows of 11 columns each. Those 110 columns are all spolia from Roman or Visigothic buildings.50 Second, the rhyme-words are suggestive of the evidence of expression of poetic victory in the framework of the muʿāraḍah, understood as contrafaction or a poetic battle between two poets. This interpretation is also drawn from the concept of spolia. According to A Dictionary

49 Al-Ṭarābulusī, p. 248. 50 Kinney illustrates the Great Mosque of Cordova as an example of spolia. Kinney, “Roman Architectural Spolia,” p. 149. As a result of the extension, the mosque ended up having about 600 columns. According to Hoag, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I used only Visigothic, Roman, and salvaged columns, while his successor had new columns carved following Roman models. John D. Hoag, Islamic Architecture (New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc. Publishers, 1977), p. 81. 242 akiko m. sumi of Greek and Roman Antiquities, it was the viewing of spoils or spolia, including the bodies of the slain, that completed victory for the conquerors in the Heroic ages.51 This can be accounted for by the fact that the spoils were “the only unquestionable evidence of successful valor.”52 In ancient times, spoils taken in battle were regarded as “the most honorable of all distinctions.”53 Marindin continues to mention that spoils gained by individual prowess were considered the undeniable property of the successful fighter, and were displayed in the most conspicuous place of his house. In this understanding of spolia, the rhyme-words in Shawqī’s Sīniyyah can be metaphorically seen as booty for Shawqī. The booty was plun- dered from al-Buḥturī to demonstrate Shawqī’s valor. Whether Shawqī won the poetic battle or not is not so important here. What is crucial is that the battle is essentially a challenge from Shawqī’s side. On one hand, Shawqī’s attitude is apparently modest before his strong predecessor al-Buḥturī, as seen in Shawqī’s preface to the poem.54 Shawqī’s position is that al-Buḥturī is a paragon of poetry. For that reason, Shawqī challenges al-Buḥturī to a poetic duel. If al-Buḥturī were not a worthy opponent, Shawqī would not have challenged him in the first place. On the other hand, the traditional act of muʿāraḍah itself is performed on the premise that it aims at surpassing a poet’s master by demonstrating his ability.55 Consequently, Shawqī’s intention from the outset was to surpass al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, which suggests his confidence in his poetic knowledge and technique. His solid career and reputation as he composed his Sīniyyah likewise supports this confidence. It cannot be so odd to see metaphorically the rhyme-words in Shawqī’s Sīniyyah as booty to express his poetic victory. Moreover, his use of such a high ratio of the rhyme-words may indicate his will to display them as his booty within his poem. Third, we explore spolia as an element of revival of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah. Spolia seems to have two interpretations: one is practical, and the other is ideological. The practical interpretation is to utilize

51 See Marindin, 2:691. 52 Marindin, 2:691. 53 Marindin, 2:691. 54 The last part of the preface shows Shawqī’s modesty. 55 For an understanding of muʿāraḍah, see Gustave von Grunebaum, “The Concept of Plagiarism in Arabic Theory,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 3 (1944): 242 and Mattitiahu Peled, “On the Concept of Literary Influence in Classical Arabic Criticism,” Israel Oriental Studies 11 (1991): 45. poetry and architecture 243 the available materials and benefit from their existence. Considering the rhyme-words in light of this interpretation, it can be assumed that Shawqī relied on them because using them was practical and convenient. In the ideological interpretation, spolia may be taken as the reviving elements of past glory.56 The rhyme-words in Shawqī’s Sīniyyah can be taken as a reviving/surviving element from al-Buḥturī because they are the unmistakable evidence of the existence of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah by intact repetition and enactment as “verbatim quotation,”57 as Kinney contends in the case of spolia that building with them was the instantia- tion of tradition. Shawqī’s act is the transmission of tradition by displaying the rhyme-words as a firm proof similar to the way that the columns are displayed in the Great Mosque of Cordova.58 Kinney’s intention is that by using spolia “the language of architecture had already been spoken and could only be repeated, never invented.”59 In Roman times, spolia were considered peculiarly sacred and forbidden to be replaced or repaired when they decayed through age.60 Considering this meaning of spolia, it can be assumed that Shawqī reused such rhyme-words to demonstrate his acceptance of the authority of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah. Despite the fact that the rhyme-words can be an element of revival, it is simultaneously necessary to take into account Shawqī’s use of the rhyme-words for producing his own Sīniyyah, not a slavish copying of al-Buḥturī. In fact, for Shawqī, the reappearance of al-Buḥturī’s rhyme-words in his ode can be a double-edged sword. Rhyme-words are entrusted with a pivotal role in a poem both in form and content. If Shawqī is not able to use them to fit his own poetic scheme, they will stand out merely as “al-Buḥturī’s” words. Conversely, if he is capable of using them effectively, they become his own words.61 Declaring his

56 Dale Kinney argues that the spolia in the Great Mosque of Cordova is an example of “discomfiture.” See Kinney, “Roman Architectural Spolia,” p. 150. The investigation of a theory that the columns in the Great Mosque of Cordova can be seen as a reviving element of the Roman or Visigothic glorious era is beyond the scope of this study. 57 Although it is a question if we can call “the reuse of rhyme-words” “quotation,” I would rather cite “verbatim quotation” here, paying attention to its notion of intact transmission of the predecessor’s language. 58 According to Kinney, William MacDonald finds “column displays” as one of the cardinal themes in Roman architecture, and that spoliate columns existed only to be seen. Kinney, “Roman Architectural Spolia,” p. 143. 59 Kinney, “Roman Architectural Spolia,” p. 140. 60 Marindin, 2:691. 61 Paul Losensky says that Harold Bloom’s idea that influences from the earlier poet become anxieties on the later poet, which is illustrated in Bloom’s well-known works, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973) 244 akiko m. sumi challenge to al-Buḥturī, Shawqī chose to create his own Sīniyyah by using al-Buḥturī’s rhyme-words as a foundation. Paraphrasing Hamon, we can say that Shawqī integrates al-Buḥturī’s authorized discourse into his own authorial discourse.62 Shawqī does not only reuse words from al-Buḥturī but also places them in his own context, as is apparent in the rhyme-words. Consequently, through spatial transference, Shawqī rewrites al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, and indirectly reconstructs al-Buḥturī’s Īwān Kisrā.63

The Significance of Architecture in Poetry: Theoretical Examination

To investigate the significance of architecture in Shawqī’s Sīniyyah, I would like to start with the general meaning of architecture and then focus on three effects: the realistic effect, the spatial effect, and the hermeneutical effect. These three effects are chiefly based on the ideas of Philippe Hamon. Shawqī’s Sīniyyah makes use of the general meaning and these effects of architecture for the reconstruction of the lost glory of the Andalusian monuments and the glory of the ʿAbbāsid poem.

The General Meaning of Architecture Nelson Goodman indicates two aspects of architecture in comparison with other works of art. One is that, compared to a musical performance or a painting, an architectural work is spatially and temporally big, even bigger than a human being. Consequently, we cannot comprehend its entire form from a single viewpoint. To grasp it, we must move around

and A Map of Misreading (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975) is generally unsuit- able for the study of influence and imitation in medieval Arabic and Persian literary tradition. See Paul Losensky, Welcoming Fighānī: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the Safavid-Mughal Ghazal (California: Mazda Publishers, 1998), p. 104. 62 Hamon argues that the act of citing “involves removing a fragment from someone else’s authorized discourse in order to integrate it into one’s own authorial discourse.” Hamon, p. 64. 63 Dale Kinney finds the significance of spolia in their fundamental ambiguity, “the simultaneous possibilities of understanding them in terms of their original purpose and context and in terms of the context and purpose of their reuse.” Kinney, “Roman Architectural Spolia,” p. 145. Thus, the rhyme-words create an intersection between the two poems that produces this ambiguity. This ambiguity can also be found in the act of muʿāraḍah itself. poetry and architecture 245 and within the work.64 In fact, it is said that architecture is the only art we can enter into.65 The other aspect is that a building is usually settled in place, thus dissimilar to painting that can be reframed or rehung, or to a musical piece that can be performed at various venues. The architectural work is solidly fixed in a physical and cultural environment that changes slowly in contrast to those of other works of art.66 The physical and cultural environment gives a building a historical purpose according to its place and time. Jan Mukařovský argues that, apart from its practical purpose, a building must have a historical purpose. “Purpose” is defined by him as an element that determines the forms and the organization of a building. In other words, a building’s functionality is “governed not only by an immediate practical consideration but also by a fixed canon (a set of norms)” and “its previous development.” He says, “Architecture in its functionality is predetermined by its immanent history.” Mukařovský further claims that the functional horizon of architecture is created not only by the individual but also by the organization of society to which the client and the architect belong.67 Inasmuch as architecture organizes space with respect to human beings, a building manifests the identity and territoriality of its users and makers.68 Thus the architectural work is invariably connected to human beings and burdened with the historical context based on the physical and cultural environment. Nevertheless, the essential nature of the architecture itself, its abstractness, must not be forgotten. It is the abstractness of architecture that constitutes the foundation of its historical purpose. Hamon argues that an architectural work is abstract for it transcends time and death; it is barely subject to passing time. He emphasizes the near constancy of architecture, quoting John Ruskin’s remark, “the glory of monuments resides in their tranquil contrast to the transitory nature of all things.”69

64 Nelson Goodman, “How Buildings Mean,” ed. Nelson Goodman and Catherine Z. Elgin, Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and Sciences (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1988), pp. 31–34. 65 See Hamon, p. 36. 66 Goodman, pp. 31–34. 67 Jan Mukařovský, “On the Problem of Functions in Architecture,” trans. ed. John Burbank and Peter Steiner, Structure, Sign, and Function: Selected Writings of Jan Mukařovský (New Haven: Yale Univeristy Press, 1978), pp. 241–242. 68 See also Donald Preziosi, Architecture, Language, and Meaning: The Origins of the Built World and Its Semiotic Organization (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1979), pp. 47–48. His discussion relies on Mukařovský. 69 Hamon sees all buildings as monuments. Hamon, p. 49. 246 akiko m. sumi

In order to rediscover the historical purpose of an architectural work in a specific time and place, the visitor needs the explanations of historians, guidebooks, and plaques. Because of this abstractness of architecture, literary texts can offer a certain meaning that corresponds to the specific time of the architectural work. Furthermore, since the architecture can be repeatedly reused, one architectural work can have various meanings according to its circumstances. In light of this general understanding of architecture, the Andalusian architectural works in Shawqī’s Sīniyyah exist as a manifestation of the identity and territoriality of Islamic Spain. Shawqī has chosen the Great Mosque of Cordova and the Alhambra of Granada because he was aware of their historical purpose in expressing the past glory of the Muslims of Spain. Moreover, through their abstractness as nature, the architectural works in Shawqī’s poem reflect the past splendor of Islamic civilization in al-Andalus as well as its decline.

Three Effects: Realistic Effect, Spatial Effect, Hermeneutical Effect Philippe Hamon says that architecture provides a certain realistic effect to a literary work because it gives “a recognizable frame, anchor, or background that creates its verisimilitude.”70 Another view concerning monuments says, because a monument has a real existence, this reality authorizes a literary text by indicating artifacts outside language.71 A monumental building exists “(as artifacts), and so what they mean (as signs in language) must therefore be true.”72 In these terms, Shawqī’s employment of the Andalusian monuments serves to persuade the reader both in their verisimilitude and existence “as artifacts outside language.” Shawqī also exerts the realistic effect in his description of the state of the Andalusian buildings not only in the glorious time of the Hispano- Islamic civilization but also in its demise. He shows the present state in contrast to the past state, particularly the change of the state from “existence” in the past to “absence” in the present. With the fall of the dynasties in Islamic Spain, people and objects, which existed at the

70 Harmon, p. 23. 71 John Elsner, “From the Pyramids to Pausanias and Piglet: monuments, travel and writing,” eds. Simon Goldhill and Robin Osborne, Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 225. 72 Elsner, p. 225. poetry and architecture 247 time of pomp and prosperity, disappeared. He makes use of the buildings to create their verisimilitude by exhibiting their certain realistic moments. The second effect is spatial. Hamon argues, “architecture is to space what narrative is to time.” He continues to say, this “semiotic means of configuration” of time and space “allows us to think the unthinkable (time and space), which allows us to give shape to the amorphous and to impose discontinuity, plot, and direction on the randomness of the real.”73 Architecture also provides the reader or the viewer with a sense of space: width, height, and depth. Additionally, architecture organizes space in relation to human beings.74 What Shawqī shows us is not only the external shape of the buildings but also the state of their owners, residents, and users who occupy the surrounding space, by displaying the distance between the viewer and the objects and that between an object and another object. Lastly, according to Hamon, an architectural object can exhibit the hermeneutical effect in literary texts, possessing strategies for obtaining knowledge or information and for gaining access to truth.75 This effect is substantiated by the fact that architecture “involves as inside (always more or less hidden) that necessarily differentiates itself from an outside (more apparent, exposed and visible).”76 Furthermore, Goodman’s idea on the grand scale of the architectural work, shown above, likewise supports the hermeneutic effect of architecture. Goodman argues, “a building has to be put together from a different assortment of visual and kinesthetic experiences: from views at different distances and angles, from walks through the interior, from climbing stairs and strain- ing necks, from photographs, miniature models, sketches, plans, and from actual use.”77 He continues by saying that such construction of the work is just like an act of interpretation. By composing the poem, Shawqī attempts to interpret the historical meaning of al-Andalus and its monumental buildings.

73 Hamon, p. 35. 74 See Preziosi, p. 48. 75 Hamon, p. 27. 76 Hamon, p. 26. The differentiation between inside and outside, one of the most prominent features of “Islamic architecture,” is its concentration on the inside as opposed to the outside. Our two poetic motifs of architecture, the Great Mosque of Cordova and the Alhambra palace, are no exception. See Ernst J. Grube, “What is Islamic Architecture?” ed. George Mitchell, Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning (Thames and Hudson, 1984), p. 10. 77 Goodman, p. 45. 248 akiko m. sumi

In relation to the hermeneutical effect, Elsner states: “History is construed as the appropriation and interpretation of certain monuments surviving from the past into the present. History is essentially an act of making the past intelligible and meaningful to the present.”78 Considering the elapse of time, Shawqī sees the past for the sake of the present. Furthermore, in the context of the muʿāraḍah, his poem is a response to al-Buḥturī’s poem, a response from the present to the past, just as his imitation of the Andalusian buildings is an act of response to past glories.

Shawqī’s Sīniyyah: General Interpretation and Architectural Motifs

Shawqī’s Sīniyyah will be explored concentrating upon the function of the architectural motifs within the whole poem. It can be divided into the traditional tripartite parts of the qasīdah:̣ nasīb (elegiac prelude), raḥīl (journey), and madīḥ (praise).79

The Nasīb (lines 1–47): Longing for Egypt The nasīb’s main theme is the speaker’s yearning for his homeland, Egypt.80 Evoking the beginning of the traditional qasīdaḥ , the speaker addresses his two companions—the personified “days and nights.” Asking them to halt and to remind him of the past happiness of youth which has rapidly gone by (lines 1–4), he tries to recollect his own memories of youth. His unfulfilled yearning is expressed as a wound to his heart. He wonders if the wound has been healed by the elapse of time. The next motif is the departure of steamships for the harbor of Alexandria in Egypt (lines 6–12). Jaroslav Stetkevych rightly argues that this steamship departure can be equivalent to the zạ ʿn motif of departing women in the qasīdaḥ tradition.81 The first architectural motif in Shawqī’s Sīniyyah is found in line 10. The word dār (home, abode) is

78 Elsner, p. 225. 79 For more details of the three parts, see Sumi, Description, p. 1. 80 This reflects Shawqī’s exile in Barcelona. 81 J. Stetkevych, “Aḥmad Shawqī,” p. 20. Shawqī relies on some traditional elements of classical Arabic poetry. poetry and architecture 249 used as the metaphor of a “nation.” This line shows the speaker’s sorrow that he has been forced from the abode/his wataṇ , even though he believes that Egypt has an obligation to shelter him. The “abode” can mean a legitimate polity that bears political and legal responsibility for the well-being of its people.82 Dār , deriving from the verb dāra/yadūr (to rotate, to move about), means “abode” because we find “the many movements of the people in it.”83 Therefore, when the abode is devoid of people, the emptiness is emphasized. In the classical Arabic poetic tradition, the emptiness of the abode evokes the “lost happiness” in the speaker, for the abode is a trace of the past existence of the speaker’s beloved.84 This concept of the abode inhabited by people appears key to establish an image of the abode as a place of loss, which is further linked to the architectural motifs in Shawqī’s madīḥ. The speaker’s passion for Egypt is expressed in the well-known line 13. The spring of Salsabīl, which appears in the Qurʾān (76:18), is portrayed as a gate to ʿAyn Shams, a suburb of Cairo (line 14). As J. Stetkevych argues that by showing Egyptian scenery through the poet’s memory and imagination, the poem creates a paradisal image.85 Shawqī’s aim is to show that his homeland is as beautiful as Paradise. It is notable that he likens al-Jazīrah, an island in the Nile in Cairo, not only to Bilqīs (the Queen of Sheba) but also to a sarḥ ̣ or “a lofty edifice” (line 18), which appears in the Qurʾānic story of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon (27:15–44). The floor of Solomon’s palace is made of glass or crystal, but the Queen mistook it for water.86 The edifice is a symbol of Solomon’s wisdom in the story. “A generous master” is Solomon himself who was generous with Bilqīs. The poet’s metaphor that al-Jazīrah is a bride for the Nile reminds us of the supplemental story by Muslim commentators, which implies the possibility of the

82 In the previous line the poet alludes to the state of his home country which welcomes foreigners but exiles its own people, as with Shawqī himself. 83 See Ibn Manzūr,̣ Lisān al-ʿArab, 7 vols. (Beirut: Dār Sādir,̣ 1997), d-w-r and Lane, d-w-r. 84 See J. Stetkevych, “Toward an Arabic Elegiac Lexicon: The Seven Words of the Nasīb,” ed. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, Reorientations/Arabic and Persian Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 62. 85 J. Stektevych, “Aḥmad Shawqī,” p. 18. 86 Thaʿlabī quoted in Valérie Gonzalez, “The Aesthetics of the Solomonic Parable in the Qurʾān,” Beauty and Islam: Aesthetics in Islamic Art and Architecture (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), p. 30. 250 akiko m. sumi marriage between the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon.87 The Nile is likened to the River Kawthar (line 22) which appears in Paradise in the Qurʾān (108:1). In the second half of the nasīb (lines 25–47), the poem becomes a meditation on the historical passage of time by portraying al-Jīzah (Giza) as the grave of its civilization. It can be understood as the poet’s reminiscences of Egyptian history. The speaker mourns the death of the prosperous Pharaonic civilization and then expands to later Egyptian history by enumerating historical figures who were involved with Egypt, Kisrā (Khusraw), Heraclius, and Napoleon (line 35). “The Nights” are the expression of time or time-passing in association with misfortunes (lines 42, 44); they govern other historical personages, such as the ancient Egyptian king Cheops (Khūfū), the Persian king Dārā, and ancient Arab tribes Wāʾil and ʿAbs. Once in the central arena of history, they have now vanished (line 44). Why does Shawqī include the second part of the nasīb (lines 25–44), when the first part (lines 1–24) is perhaps sufficient? There seem three possible reasons. First, the Pyramids and the Sphinx, viewed as monumental structures, can be a parallel motif in the nasīb, in terms of “architecture,” to the architectural/monumental motifs of the madīḥ. Second, the Pyramids and the Sphinx are the manifestation of an Egyptian identity. Preziosi argues that a building can manifest the territoriality and identity of its society; that is, the speaker’s (ancestor’s) identity.88 Third, the Pyramid motif, as tombs of the Pharaohs, leads to the atlāḷ motif of ruins in the nasīb. The atlāḷ is often related to the trace of the speaker’s mistress’ abode in the nasīb of the classical Arabic qasīdaḥ . In light of Shawqī’s Sīniyyah, his homeland as the paradisal image also suggests the speaker’s longing for his lost mistress, while his homeland as the grave of Egyptian civilization not only increases the feelings of loss but also expands his personal feelings to collective (Egyptian/Arab) feelings of loss.89 This prolonged nasīb highlights the elegiac mood of the entire ode.

87 See more information on the story, E. Ullendorff, “Bilkīs,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, CD-ROM ed. 88 Preziosi, p. 48. 89 J. Stetkevych points out that Shawqī’s experience is more collective and national (Egyptian and Arab) than al-Buḥturī’s experience that is personal. See J. Stetkevych, “Aḥmad Shawqī,” p. 21. poetry and architecture 251

By mentioning the name of “Marwān” (line 45) the poem turns to al- Andalus. “Marwān” is Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam (r. 684–685), the founder of the branch of the Umayyad dynasty, whose descendents became the Umayyads of al-Andalus.90

The Raḥīl (lines 48–57): To al-Andalus From the outset of the raḥīl (journey) section Shawqī underscores the Īwān Kisrā and the palaces of ʿAbd Shams (the Umayyad Spain) (line 48). This line reveals that the speaker’s wound to his heart (line 4) has not been cured yet after describing his homeland Egypt, but that it will be cured by the Andalusian buildings. He traverses the effaced diyār (abodes, the plural form of dār) of the caliphs (line 51). The Cordovan soil, on which the Umayyad buildings are founded, draws the speaker’s admiration. Although Cordova is now a small village to cut off from the world, it used to enjoy great influence in its region (line 55). His journey leads him to the protected land in Cordova, putting an end to his wandering (line 57).

The Madīḥ (lines 58–110): The Architectural Motifs The Great Mosque of Cordova: Like the raḥīl, the madīḥ (praise) section begins with the appearance of building. The buildings are the palaces of al-Andalus (line 58). Physically demarcating the threshold of the Andalusian Muslim territory, the poem intends to expose the inside that differentiates the outside, seeking a meaning in the architectural work. The palaces were only for noble kings without stain. The speaker feels that he reaches a bayt (house) of knowledge, the Great Mosque of Cordova or the Mezquita91 (line 60). A bayt can be used for a place of worship or mosque, as al-bayt al-ḥarām (the sacred house) signifies the Kaʿbah. Still standing, the mosque as a building creates a realistic effect in the poem by providing architectural, historical proof.92 The mosque was

90 After the Umayyads were overthrown by the ʿAbbāsids in 750, the Marwānid prince ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I restored the Umayyad dynasty in al-Andalus in 756 C.E. See Bosworth, “Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, CD-ROM ed. 91 A “mezquita” means “mosque” in Spanish. 92 Its original founder ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I (r. 756–788), who was proud of his Arab and Qurayshite origin, built the mosque as a kind of counterpart to the Great Umayyad 252 akiko m. sumi

The Great Mosque of Cordova famous as an intellectual center and libraries in the Islamic world west of Egypt.93 To the poet the mosque simultaneously is an edifice to give him lessons, which suggests the hermeneutical effect of the building, and a sanctuary of Islam, that was transformed later into one of Christianity (line 61). Through the historical layers of its use, the mosque shows not only the Muslim development of architecture, but also its appropriation by its conquerors as a Christian sanctuary.94

The Ceremonies of Caliph al-Nāsiṛ at the Mosque: Realistic Effect The poem displays the realistic effect of the mosque by representing imaginative scenes with the use of historical figures and facts (lines

Mosque of Damascus, retaining its eastern Arab character. The mosque, consisting of an open courtyard and a prayer hall, took shape after a long process of expansion and reconstruction. As a result, the mosque has the largest covered area of any recorded medieval mosque. 93 See Robert Hillenbrand, “ ‘The Ornament of the World’: Medieval Córdoba as a Cultural Center,” ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi, The Legacy of Muslim Spain (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 120, 122. 94 See Hillenbrand, p. 132. poetry and architecture 253

62–63). The first scene is a parade of the caliph al-Nāsiṛ for the Friday prayers at the Great Mosque of Cordova.95 The Friday prayers were an important religious ceremony that expressed the Islamic legitimacy of the Umayyad caliphate.96 The poem, thus, shows both the religious and political dignity and the military might of al-Nāsir.̣ The banner above him symbolizes his strong leadership (line 62). The poem continues with another imaginative scene indicating al-Nāsir’ṣ power (line 63). “Don” was a Spanish honorific title for aris- tocrats, corresponding to “prince” in English; “amīr” refers to al-Nāsiṛ himself as amīr of Cordova97 or else means simply he could take crowns from Christian dons and put them on the heads of Muslim amīrs, replace Christian rulers with Muslim ones. This line indicates al-Nāsir’ṣ usurpation of Christian power. Placing the architectural objects as background, the speaker engrosses himself in imagining verisimilar sights based on the historical facts. The speaker does not indulge in the reverie or imagination for long and realizes the reality of the abode in line 64. The line echoes al-Buḥturī’s line 34: Is this a dream that has closed my eyes to doubt, Or desire that has changed my suspicion and uncertainty [to certainty]?98 [7] In the previous line, al-Buḥturī fancies that he is Anūshirwān and his son is Kisrā Aparwāz, Anūshirwān’s son who offers him some wine. Al-Buḥturī makes the speaker return from the world of imagination to

95 Al-Nāsiṛ (al-Nāsiṛ li-dīn allāh “he who fights victoriously for the faith of Allah”) is the laqab or honorific name ofʿ Abd al-Raḥmān III (r. 912–961). During his reign, the state witnessed the zenith of its power and renown. See Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 53. 96 Art historians Barrucand and Bednorz say: “The Friday mosque is the outward manifestation of the dynasty, the monumental self-presentation of a ruler at once both spiritual and temporal, who used the Friday service to maintain direct contact with his people.” Marianne Barrucand and Achim Bednorz, Moorish Architecture in Andalusia (Kšln: Taschen, 1992), p. 40. According to Richard Fletcher, the caliphal palace of Cordova would regularly hold processions and ceremonies; the caliph would personally take the field at the head of his troops from the Great Mosque of Cordova. Fletcher, p. 54. Actually, al-Nāsiṛ is the one who first adopted the title of “caliph” in Islamic Spain. See Fletcher, p. 55. 97 The Umayyads at Cordova had the title “amīr” before they assumed the title of caliph. 98 Al-Buh ̣turī, Dīwān, ed. al-Sīrafī,̣ 2:1158. The last word, ḥadsī (“uncertainty” in the translation) appears in Shawqī’s line 57. 254 akiko m. sumi the world of reality. Just as al-Buḥturī’s speaker doubts what he sees, Shawqī’s speaker suspects what he sees is “a slumber and a phantom of desires.” The speaker is then awakened completely; he realizes that the abode is empty and no one perceives the scenes except him (line 65). I call this awakening of the speaker from imagination “breaking the illusion.”99 By resorting to the effects of “breaking the illusion,” Shawqī produces the world of illusion and then spontaneously breaks it. What Shawqī indicates is the “absence” of the figures and objects in the present mosque. Shawqī, like al-Buḥturī, utilizes the power of architecture to elicit the world of reverie. He then shows the reality of the mosque by using nature of abstractness in the architecture. In this way, the ode creates the realistic moments of the mosque.

The Mosque as a Trace of Muḥammad: Spatial Effect The poem continues to describe the mosque. It can be inferred that “Muḥammad” is the Prophet Muḥammad, and the Spirit is the soul of Jesus (line 67).100 The poet points to the fact that the mosque was handed from the Muslims to the Christians. The poem suggests that although the mosque was transformed into a church, it still embraces the most important religious authenticity, tracing the deepest roots of Islam. With the use of a building, the poem tries to exert a spatial effect. Its highest part attained the stars, and its foundation rose as high as Thahlān and Quds (line 68).101 The ode continues with, “It is made of marble in which the gaze swims” because of its height (line 69). Shawqī stresses the effect of height on the viewer. Makkī sees that “it” refers to the marvellous miḥrāb of the mosque; its splendid decoration dazzles the viewer’s eyes.102 In front of the miḥrāb there is a magnificent cupola or vault above interlacing polylobed arches, showing dizzy heights of complexity.103

99 See Sumi, Description, p. 115. 100 Makkī regards “the Spirit” as Jesus. Makkī, p. 221. According to the commentary of Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī, “Muḥammad” is Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥakam (r. 852–886) whose son is ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nāsir.̣ See al-Abyārī, p. 33. However, if “the Spirit” stands for Jesus, “Muḥammad” should be the Prophet. 101 Thahlān and Quds are the names of mountains in the Arabian Peninsula; Mt. Thahlān is inʿ Āliyah and Mt. Quds is in Najd according to a commentary. See al-Abyārī, p. 33. 102 Makkī, p. 222. 103 See Hillenbrand, p. 133. poetry and architecture 255

The Cupola of the Miḥrab in the Great Mosque of Cordova

The poet likens the columns in the gigantic hypostyle prayer hall to the calligraphic script (alifs) of a vizier. The vizier is of the ʿAbbāsid period, Ibn Muqlah (885/6–940), who was a famous calligrapher (line 70). He was called “a prophet in the art of calligraphy.”104 In the poem the alifs stand for the calligraphic script in general because the letter alif is not only the first in the Arabic alphabet but also the module of every Arabic calligraphic system. For the legibility of a text and the beauty of its line, the proportions of the characters must be in a consistent relationship, which all refer back to the size of alif. More importantly, it was Ibn Muqlah, according to the most probable hypothesis, who laid down the rules of proportion based on the alif.105 Furthermore, Shawqī employs the alifs as a metaphor for the columns; the vertical shapes of alifs are just like those of the columns in the prayer hall. In calligraphy,

104 Abdelkebir Khatibi and Mohammed Sijelmassi, The Splendour of Islamic Callig- raphy (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001), p. 101. 105 See Kāmil al-Bābā, Rūḥ al-Khatṭ ̣ al-ʿArabī (Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm li-l-Malāyīn, 1994), p. 83 and Khatibi and Sijelmassi, pp. 46–47. 256 akiko m. sumi

The Columns in the Great Mosque of Cordova the verticality of alif, with that of lām, stands out along the horizontal flow of ample and varied curves of other characters. The alifs or the calligraphic Arabic script may also signify the flourishing medieval Arabo-Islamic culture in intellectual, religious, and aesthetic dimensions. Although the current Great Mosque embraces Christian architectural elements, such as the chapel in the center of the mosque, which were built after the reconquista of Cordova, the poet emphasizes that the mosque had been once a center of Arabo- Islamic culture on a par with Cairo and Baghdad. Makkī criticizes Shawqī’s simile of the columns to the alifs, saying it inspires nothing, merely describing an aspect of their outward appearance.106 I believe, however, that his simile of the alifs suggests his intention to create a picture of the columns in a proportionate rhythmical pattern of Arabic calligraphy which is considered the most Arab of all the plastic arts of Islam.107 With the alifs as a metaphor for the equidistant columns, the

106 Makkī, p. 222. 107 Titus Burckhardt, Art of Islam: Language and Meaning (Westerham: World of Islam Festival Publishing Company Ltd, 1976), p. 47. poetry and architecture 257 poem produces the spatial effect of architecture. This double intention of construction and writing is also bound up with the poet’s remarks of the analogous relationship between constructing a building and composing a poem in the preface. The metaphor of the alifs continues. On the two lines, the calligraphic script, to which the columns are compared, is written (line 71). Likening the two lines to the eyelashes in lassitude and sleep, this line expresses the stagnation of activities in the mosque. The speaker grieves at the situation in which the religious, political, and aesthetic brilliance has withered (line 72). He then engrosses himself in the world of imagination. He sees the ceiling as a brocaded silk sheet (line 73). “The Qurʾānic verses on its two walls” perhaps refer to the Kūfic inscription in mosaic on the miḥrāb of the mosque. They are seen as if descending from heaven through pure stairs (line 74). The poet’s description of the lines of Qurʾānic calligraphy “descending from heaven” is the visual counterpart of the Islamic tenet of the Qurʾān “descending” (nuzūl al-Qurʾān) from Allāh to the Prophet Muḥammad. Shawqī uses a sublime pulpit, an architectural article, to express the powerful eloquence of the Arab Muslims. He imagines that al-Mundhir ibn Saʿīd al-Ballūtī (886–966) is at the pulpit (line 75). He was the chief qāḍī under the rule of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III. A poet and a man of letters, al-Mundhir was well-known for his eloquence. By mentioning the name of Quss ibn Sāʿidah, Shawqī seeks to ascribe to Andalusian eloquence the genuine oratorical quality of classical Arabs. Quss ibn Sāʿidah al-Iyādī was a semi-legendary figure of Arab antiquity, regarded as the greatest orator of all the tribes in the Jāhiliyyah age.108 The significance of eloquence further suggests Shawqī’s intention that his own rhetorical power enables the rebuilding of the sublime pulpit. No sooner has the poem invited us to imagine the majestic scene of al-Mundhir’s oration in the mosque than it warns us of the absence of the Book (line 76). The Book is the Qurʾān; it may indicate the four leaves of the Qurʾān of ʿUthmān which the Great Mosque contained.109 The lingering fragrance of the Book serves as a metaphor for the continued spiritual or poetical presence of the physically absent Qurʾān.

108 Quss was also known as the poet, sage, and judge, par excellence of the Arabs of his time. It should be noted that the line, with the name of the eminent qāḍī, implies not only eloquence but also justice and authority based on Islamic jurisprudence. 109 Makkī and Hillenbrand point out the existence of the Qurʾān of ʿUthmān in the mosque. See Makkī, p. 222 and Hillenbrand, p. 123. 258 akiko m. sumi

The Alhambra Palace

The poet adroitly employs the effect of synaesthesia, transferring the sense of smell into the sense of touch. The speaker’s approach to the Book also makes the readers perceive the space between them and the object, displaying the spatial effects of the architectural objects, as seen in al-Buḥturī’s description of the wall painting. The last line concerning the Great Mosque states that the marvelous artistic work of the Mezquita is created by al-Dākhil (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I) and his people (line 77).110

The Alhambra The speaker turns himself toward the next site, the Alhambra palace which was founded by the Nasriḍ dynasty of Granada. The sultanate

110 Al-Dākhil “the Immigrant” is the laqab of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I. As the meaning of “al-Dākhil” indicates, being the son of an Umayyad prince, he escaped from the ʿAbbāsids’ chase to Maghreb and entered Spain in 756. Fletcher, p. 28. Shawqī may feel sympathy and praise for the emir who was also in “exile” in Spain. poetry and architecture 259

Ibn Zamrak’s verse (line 103) inscribed on the wall of the Hall of the Two Sisters in the Alhambra was the last Muslim dynasty on the Iberian Peninsula.111 The light, like a flash of lightening, streams into the palace, averting the visitors’ glances from the palace (line 79). This indicates that the current Alhambra attracts a large number of tourists for its marvellous architectural work; the Alhambra is regarded as an aesthetic ideal of beautiful form, called an earthly paradise. Characterized by the decoration carved in stucco, tiles with intricate geometric and floral designs, and Qurʾānic and poetic inscriptions, the palace is a wonder. The speaker is at the citadel of Granada and the house of Banū al-Aḥmar, i.e., the Nasrids.̣ 112 The palace complex has witnessed both

111 Although the foundations of the Alhambra were laid by Muḥammad I (r. 1230– 1272), the founder of the dynasty, the palace itself was built by Yūsuf I (r. 1333–1354) and his successor Muḥammad V (r. 1354–59, 1362–91). Under these latter two rulers Granada witnessed an age of splendor. Though facing internal unrest, Granada enjoyed economic prosperity and maintained good relations both with Castile and Morocco during the 14th century. Nasriḍ rule continued until the loss of Granada to the Christians, when the last Nasriḍ ruler left the Alhambra in 1492. 112 The Nasridṣ was named after its founder Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf ibn Nasṛ ibn al- Aḥmar (r. 1232–1273). 260 akiko m. sumi

The Cupola in the Hall of the Abencerrajes in the Alhambra the neglect and vigilance of its inhabitants (line 80). Behind the edifice, a panoramic spectacle of nature looms. The snowy tops of the Sierra Nevada Mountains are likened to “its white hair,” the old age of the Sierra Nevada. Shawqī highlights the eternity of nature in contrast to the transience of the manmade, even the Alhambra. poetry and architecture 261

I would like to demonstrate that Shawqī’s description/imitation of the Alhambra is chiefly centered on the expression of “absence,” which indicates the disappearance of the glorious court life over time. The description of the Alhambra has come to display the reality of absent glory more emphatically than that of the Great Mosque. Although the ode shows the brilliance of the Alhambra palace through the description of the muqarnas vaults, the wall decoration, and inscriptions, the speaker does not plunge into the imaginative world with praise for the gone-by era. Rather, in the panel of the Alhambra the speaker maintains his perspective as a visitor of the 20th century. By displaying the existing inner parts of the palace, the poem creates a realistic effect and peruses the historical meaning. Entering the Alhambra, the poem reminds the reader of the disastrous effects of the Christian conquests: protected royal women now disgraced, nightly celebrations disrupted, courtyards emptied of horses and guards (lines 83–85). In reality, as the poem suggests, the present palace no longer sees such misfortune but remains resplendently beautiful (line 86). Moreover, the villas are now only for tourists, who come to see the history of the Alhambra with submission and admiration (line 87). This line tells that the palace building performs a hermeneutic function in interpreting its history. The speaker’s touristic eye also gives the reader a feel for the movement of the inner space of the Alhambra, which suggests a spatial effect of architecture. Visitors fix their eyes on the marvelous wall decoration and the cupola. The freshness of myrtles, carved on the walls in the palace, gives the impression that the plants are real (line 88). “The cupolas” in line 89 indicate the muqarnas vaults in the Hall of the Two Sisters and the Hall of the Abencerrajes around the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra.

Ibn Zamrak and Shawqī: Presence versus Absence The poem refers to verses inscribed in the form of calligraphy on the walls of the palace (line 90). They are most likely poetic verses by Ibn Zamrak (1333–1393?), an Andalusian poet and statesman of the Nasriḍ era.113 His verses are carved on the walls in the Hall of the Two

113 In his commentary of Shawqī’s Sīniyyah, al-Ḥūfī states that there are inscribed verses by Ibn Zamrak. See Dīwān Shawqī, 2 vols, ed. with commentary, Aḥmad Muḥammad al-Ḥ ūfī (Cairo: Dār Nahḍat Misṛ lil-Ṭabʿ wa-al-Nashr, 1980), 1:211. 262 akiko m. sumi

The Fountain at the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra poetry and architecture 263

Sisters and the Hall of the Abencerrajes in the palace.114 According to my earlier study on Ibn Zamrak’s panegyric, the poem has exegetic power for understanding the symbolic meaning of each section of the palace.115 In other words, the carved poem becomes a condensation of the prosperity of the Nasriḍ kingdom, splendor and power. It is quite likely that Shawqī knew or read Ibn Zamrak’s ode. According to a number of sources, Shawqī carried the well-known book by al-Maqqarī (1577–1632), Nafḥ al-Ṭīb to Spain in order to familiarize himself with Andalusian history and literature.116 Nafḥ al-Ṭīb, considered a first-rank work for sources of Muslim Spain, includes Ibn Zamrak’s panegyric.117 Further when Shawqī visited the palace, he could have read some inscribed verses of the poem on the wall.118 However, I can find little internal evidence in the text of Shawqī’s Sīniyyah to suggest that it played a formative role. Shawqī’s Sīniyyah does, however, bear a similar expression to Ibn Zamrak’s description of the fountain of the Lions at the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra,

114 The verses are part of a panegyric dedicated for Muḥammad V (r. 1354–59, 1362–91) and contain a description of the Alhambra palace, including its garden. I explore Ibn Zamrak’s panegyric as an “emblematic portrait” of the patron-ruler. See Sumi, Chapter 5 of Description. Lines 60–70, 87–89, 92, 93, 103–105, and 123 of Ibn Zamrak’s panegyric are carved on the wall of the Hall of the Two Sisters, and some parts of 20 lines are also inscribed on the wall of the Hall of the Abencerrajes. These 20 lines are among 24 lines inscribed on the wall. For the Arabic texts and Spanish translation for 24 carved lines, see Emilio García Gómez, Poemas Árabes en los Muros y Fuentes de la Alhambra (Madrid: Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos, 1985), pp. 115–120. I have explored the inscribed text of Ibn Zamrak which describes the Alhambra as a commentary to the building. See Sumi, Description, pp. 181–182. 115 Sumi, Description, p. 184. 116 S āliḥ ̣ al-Ashshah, Andalusiyyāt Shawqī (Damascus: Matbạ ʿat Jāmiʿat Dimashuq, 1959), p. 25. He mentions in his footnote that Shawqī’s son, Ḥ usayn Shawqī wrote to him that Shawqī took a number of books with him to Spain, including al-Maqqarī’s Nafḥ al-Ṭīb. See also Ḥ usayn Mujīb al-Misrī,̣ Al-Andalus bayna Shawqī wa-Iqbāl (Cairo: Dār al-Thaqāfiyyah li-l-Nashr, 1999), p. 76. 117 Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Maqqarī al-Tilimsānī, Nafḥ al-Ṭīb min Ghuṣn al-Andalusī al-Ratīb—wa-Dhikṛ Wazīrih Lisān al-Dīn Ibn Khatīḅ , ed. Muḥammad Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, 10 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1949). 118 In the 18th century part of the Alhambra was abandoned to the poor and the gypsies; however, from the 19th century onwards, the restoration work was begun. See A. Huici-Miranda and H. Terrasse, “Gh̲ arnāt̲ a,”̣ in Encyclopaedia of Islam, CD-ROM ed. Moreover, Goury and Jones’s work records some of the Arabic texts of Ibn Zamrak’s inscribed verses; therefore, it is most likely that when Shawqī went to the Alhambra in 1918 or 1919, the inscribed poems by Ibn Zamrak were there and legible. Jules Goury and Owen Jones, Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra (London: 1842–1845), 1: Plate XV. 264 akiko m. sumi

When she [a jet of water] rises in the air and sinks again, Scattering loose pearls in all directions.119 [8] Shawqī says, describing the fountain at the Court of the Lions: They scatter water in the basin Like pearls that leap up to their smooth chests.120 We also find a likeness between Shawqī’s poem and two of the inscribed verses by Ibn Zamrak on the wall of the Hall of the Two Sisters. Ibn Zamrak says: All night the hand of the Pleiades (al-thurayyā) invokes God’s protection for them [the sultan’s five sons], And at morn the gentlest breezes will arise for them.121 [9]

Were they [stars] to present themselves among its first arrivals, They would vie with the handmaidens (jawārī) to serve your pleasure.122 [10] Shawqī says describing the Alhambra: Neither al-Thurayyā (Pleiades) nor her handmaids (stars), As lovely as moon-faced maidens,123

119 Line 74 of Ibn Zamrak’s ode. The translation is by Sumi and Suzanne P. Stetkevych. For the translation of the entire ode, see Sumi, Description, pp. 161–180. The ode (the meter is tawīḷ , and the rhyme-letter is yāʾ) is found in al-Maqqarī, Nafḥ al-Ṭīb, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥ amīd, 10:49–56. This ode is also found as Ode 105, Ibn Zamrak al-Andalusī, Dīwān Ibn Zamrak al-Andalusī, ed. with notes Muḥammad Tawfīq al-Nayfar (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1997), pp. 519–526, and as Ode 40, James Monroe, Hispano- Arabic Poetry: A Student Anthology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 346–365. The second-half hemistich of Ibn Zamrak’s verse, “Scattering loose pearls in all directions,” is part of the inscribed 12 verses on the edge of the fountain basin at the Court. The size of the letters in the inscribed verses on the basin in Arabic calligraphy, including this very hemistich, is small and hard to read. 120 Line 94 of Shawqī’s Sīniyyah. 121 Line 123 of Ibn Zamrak’s ode, al-Maqqarī, Nafḥ al-Ṭīb, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥ amīd, 10:55. 122 Line 63 of Ibn Zamrak’s ode, al-Maqqarī, Nafḥ al-Ṭīb, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥ amīd, 10:52. 123 Line 92 of Shawqī’s Sīniyyah. poetry and architecture 265

In Shawqī’s verse, al-Thurayyā is the name of a concubine of Sultan Abū al-Ḥ asan (r. 1464–1482), but al-Thurayyā can also be the Pleiades, the name of the stars used by Ibn Zamrak.124 Shawqī’s poem has negated the presence of al-thurayyā and jawārī which were present in Ibn Zamrak’s poem.125 This elimination of two poetic objects in Shawqī’s ode is further related to his poetic scheme of the expression of “absence,” as opposed to that of the present “existence” by Ibn Zamrak.126 By showing “absence,” Shawqī conveys grief and nostalgia for the lost paradise. The Egyptian poet sees the nadir of the palace as a 20th visitor, while the Nasriḍ poet was alive and witnessed the era of the Alhambra’s prosperity. The inscribed poem is a token of absence for Shawqī, but a token of presence for Ibn Zamrak.127 “The court of lions” refers directly to the fountain of the Court of Lions in the palace (line 91). Shawqī’s description of the sculptural lions emphasizes the artificialness of the animals because real lions neither have weak, blunt claws nor smooth, soft skins. He does not try to produce a lifelike image of lions, rather he shows them as lifeless, that is, as sculpture, an artefact. By doing so, he aims at expressing the deadness or silence of the court. As Shawqī’s description indicates, when he visited the palace, the brilliance of Ibn Zamrak’s age no longer existed, nor did the vigor and animation of the court life. Hence, Shawqī’s description is the “representation of external reality” of the Alhambra, an “imitation” of the Alhambra.

124 Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī indicates that the meaning of “al-thurayyā” is the Pleiades in his commentary for the line of Shawqī’s Sīniyyah. Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī, Al-Mawsūʿah al-Shawqiyyah: al-Aʿmāl al-Kāmilah li-Amīr al-Shuʿarāʾ (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1994), 4:36. 125 The two words, al-thurayyā and jawārī, also exist as the inscribed letters in the Alhambra. 126 Ibn Zamrak’s description is full of the building’s brilliance and beauty before his eyes. Ibn Zamrak says: How beautiful your building is, For by the decree of good fortune, it transcends all others! How many joyful comforts for the eyes are found in it, It rekindles the passions of even a sedate man’s soul! The luminous stars would love to be fixed in its vault Rather than traverse the vault of heaven. Lines 60–62 of Ibn Zamrak’s ode, al-Maqqarī, Nafḥ al-Ṭīb, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥ amīd, 10:51–52. 127 Hamon argues that writing has more to do with absence than with presence in relation to architecture. Hamon, p. 49. Shawqī’s reference to the inscribed calligraphy seems to suggest “absence,” which to Mitchell “writing is the medium of absence and artifice.” W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 114. 266 akiko m. sumi

Ibn Zamrak’s verse (line 66) inscribed on the wall of the Hall of the Two Sisters in the Alhambra

The Exit from the Alhambra : Hermeneutical Effect The poem relates not only the last period and fall of the Nasriḍ dynasty (1232–1492), but also the end of Islamic rule in Spain.128 The poem refers to the tragic finale. The last Nasriḍ ruler Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad XII known as Boabdil (r. 1482/1486–92) handed over the keys of the Alhambra to the Christian monarch Don Ferdinand at a public ceremony of the capitulation in 1492.129 People were struck deaf and dumb unable to express their deep pain and sorrow (line 98). Shawqī produces the dramatic exit scene from the Alhambra.

128 By approximately 1250 the greater part of the Iberian peninsula was under the Christian sovereigns of Aragon, Castile, and Portugal. Having survived for two and a half centuries, the Nasriḍ dynasty surrendered to Christian power. 129 According to Harvey, the keys can be a symbolic bunch of keys. L. P. Harvey, Islamic Spain 1250–1500 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 322. Furthermore, it was said that Boabdil left for North Africa after the capitulation. See Harvey, p. 327. poetry and architecture 267

Even if an edifice is destroyed, there is always someone who rebuilds it (line 100). This may suggest that everything is in flux and nothing is permanent. The authority comes only from the zeal and ambition of a brave, noble person (line 101). High moral character constructs the firm foundation of nation-building (line 102). Addressing the abodes of al-Andalus, the speaker professes that, to him, they were like Paradise (lines 103–105). He then expresses his gratitude to Andalusian civilization on behalf of Egypt because Egypt has learned from its history (lines 106–108). The poem concludes that the tulūḷ (ruins) are lessons for Egypt (line 109). Toward the end the poem attests the hermeneutical effect of the architectural motifs of Cordova and Granada. The word tulūḷ also emphasizes that the glory of the Andalusian monuments is something lost. Shawqī’s attitude is similar to his ʿAbbāsid model, the Sīniyyah of al-Buḥturī, which eulogizes a past glory of the Sāsānids that no longer exists. Although Shawqī’s Sīniyyah appears in the end to attain his goal, the madīḥ (praise) of the Andalusian civilization by expressing his people’s gratitude and devotion to the Hispano-Arabs, his concern over loss and absence in the building description betrays the elegiac mode of the nasīb. Thenasīb -like image of Shawqī’s description of the buildings is common to the image of loss in the atlāḷ (ruins) motif of the nasīb in classical Arabic poetry. Hamon says, “The ruin calls for acts of semantic completion.”130 In Shawqī’s poem, the notion of loss in the ruins of the nasīb, portraying the image of Egypt as the lost mistress as well as the grave of its ancient great civilization, leads the poet to fill up the loss in the madīḥ by reconstructing the buildings, just as he had hinted in the preface. In the ending, the speaker states that if you do not ponder the past, you will lose a chance of imitating a model or of being consoled (line 110). The word taʾassī in the phrase, wajhu taʾassī (“the face of a model/consolation”), can mean both imitation and consolation. If we follow al-Buḥturī’s use of taʾassī, we should take it as “consolation.” Al-Buḥturī says: It remained prosperous and happy for a time; Then their abodes became a place for condolence and consolation.131 [5]

130 Hamon, p. 58. 131 Line 50 of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, al-Buḥturī, Dīwān, ed. al-Sīrafī,̣ 2:1161. 268 akiko m. sumi

However, in the context of Shawqī’s muʿāraḍah of al-Buḥturī, we can take it also as “imitation” of al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah. The poet is consoled by the act of imitation. Moreover, pondering the past here does not only mean considering the Andalusian monuments but also considering the medieval poetic masterpiece of al-Buḥturī. For Shawqī, as a neo-classical poet, “imitation” is “consolation.”

Conclusion

Shawqī’s description of the Andalusian monuments, the Great Mosque of Cordova and the Alhambra is the representation of external reality, showing the faded past glory. With his Sīniyyah, Shawqī rewrites al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah, and indirectly reconstructs al-Buḥturī’s Īwān Kisrā. Simultaneously, Shawqī’s borrowings from al-Buḥturī both in form and content allow him to revive al-Buḥturī’s Sīniyyah. What he reconstructs is the past glory of the architecture. This is exactly the aim of al-Buḥturī: an expression of pathos and nostalgia for lost greatness. Shawqī was well aware of an analogy between poetry and architecture as well as the effects of architecture on poetry. Acknowledging the significance of architectural motifs in al-Buḥturī’s poem, Shawqī succeeds in reworking his master’s themes and techniques into his own in the tradition of muʿāraḍah, so that he reconstructs as well the past glory of ʿAbbāsid poetry.

Appendix of Arabic Texts [1] ﻗﺎل ُاﻟﺒ ْﺤ ُﱰي ْ ُ ْ َ ِّ ْ ّ ُ ِّ ُﺻﻨﺖ ﻧَﻔ ِﴘ َّﲻﺎ ُﯾ َﺪﻧ ُﺲ ﻧَﻔ ِﴘ َو َﺗ َﺮﻓﻌﺖ ﻋﻦ َﺟ َﺪا ﰻ ِﺟْﺒ ِﺲ [2] ﻗﺎل اﻟﺒُﺤْﱰُي وٱﳌَ َﻨ َﺎاي َﻣ َﻮاﺛ ٌﻞ، و( ُأﻧ ْﻮﴍ وان) ُﻳ ْﺰيج ُّاﻟﺼ َﻔﻮف َ ْﲢ َﺖ ِّادل َر ْﻓﺲ ِ َ ِ ِ ِ [3] ﻗﺎل أ ْ َﲪ ُﺪ َﺷ ْﻮ ِﰶ ١ ُاﺧﺘﻼف َّاﻟﻨـﻬﺎر واﻟﻠﻴﻞ ُﯾﻨﴘ اذﻛﺮا ﱄ ّاﻟﺼﺒﺎ وأايم أﻧﴘ ٢ ِوﺻﻔﺎ ﱄ ُﻣ ًﻼوة ﻣﻦ ٍﺷـﺒﺎب ُﺻ ِّﻮرت ﻣﻦ ﺗﺼﻮرات َو َﻣ ِّﺲ ٣ ْﻋﺼﻔﺖ َّﰷﻟﺼﺒﺎ اﻟﻠﻌﻮب َّوﻣﺮت ِﺳ ًﻨﺔ ُﺣ ًﻠﻮة وذلة َﺧْﻠ ِﺲ ٤ وﺳﻼ َﻣﴫ ﻫﻞ ﺳﻼ ُاﻟﻘﻠﺐ ﻋﳯﺎ أو َأﺳﺎ ُﺟ ْﺮ َﺣﻪ اﻟﺰﻣﺎن اﳌﺆﳼ ٥ ﳇﲈ ﻣﺮت اﻟﻠﻴﺎﱄ ﻋﻠﻴﻪ َّرق ُواﻟﻌﻬﺪ ﰲ اﻟﻠﻴﺎﱄ ُﺗ ِّﻘﴘ poetry and architecture 269

٦ ُﻣ َﺴـﺘﻄﺎر إذا ِاﻟﺒﻮاﺧﺮ َرﻧَّ ْﺖ َأول ِاﻟﻠﻴﻞ أو ْﻋﻮت ﺑَ ْﻌ َﺪ َﺟ ْﺮس ٧ ٌراﻫﺐ ﰲ اﻟﻀﻠﻮع ﻟﻠﺴﻔﻦ َﻓ ْﻄﻦ ﳇﲈ ُﺛﺮن َﺷﺎﻋﻬﻦ َﺑﻨﻖ َ َ َ ٌ َ ً ٨ اي ٱﺑﻨﺔ ّاﻟﲓ َﻣﺎ أُﺑ ِﻮك ﲞﻴﻞ ﻣﺎ هل ﻣﻮﻟﻌﺎ ٍﲟﻨﻊ وﺣﺒﺲ ٩ ٌأﺣﺮام ﻋﲆ ﺑﻼﺑهل َادل ْو ُح ٌﺣﻼل ﻟﻠﻄﲑ ﻣﻦ ﰻ ِﺟﻨﺲ ُّ َ َ ١٠ ﰻ دار أﺣﻖ ابﻷﻫﻞ ِإ َّﻻ ﰲ ٍﺧﺒﻴﺚ ﻣﻦ اﳌﺬاﻫﺐ ِر ْﺟﺲ ١١ ﻧﻔﴘ ِﻣ ْﺮ َﺟ ٌﻞ وﻗﻠﱯ ِﴍ ٌاع ﲠﲈ ﰲ ادلﻣﻮع ﺳﲑي وأرﳼ ١٢ واﺟﻌﲇ َوهجﻚ ( َاﻟﻔﻨﺎر) وﳎﺮا ِك َﯾﺪ (اﻟﺜﻐﺮ) ﺑﲔ (رﻣﻞ) و(ﻣﻜﺲ) ١٣ وﻃﲏ ﻟﻮ ُﺷ ِﻐْﻠ ُﺖ ابﳋدل ﻋﻨﻪ انزﻋﺘﲏ إﻟﻴﻪ ﰲ اﳋدل ﻧﻔﴘ ١٤ وﻫﻔﺎ ابﻟﻔﺆاد ﰲ ٍﺳﻠﺴﺒﻴﻞ ﻇﻤﺄ ﻟﻠﺴﻮاد ﻣﻦ (ﻋﲔ ﴰﺲ) ١٥ َﺷﻬﺪ ﷲ ﱂ َﯾ ِﻐﺐ ﻋﻦ ﺟﻔﻮﱐ ﴯﺼﻪ ًﺳﺎﻋﺔ وﱂ َ ْﳜ ُﻞ ِﺣ ّﴘ ١٦ ُﯾﺼﺒﺢ ُاﻟﻔﻜﺮ و(اﳌﺴةل) اند ﯾﻪ و( َّابﻟﴪﺣﺔ َّاﻟﺰﻛﻴﺔ) ُﯾﻤﴘ ١٧ وﻛﺄﱐ أرى َاﳉﺰﻳﺮة أﻳﲀ ﻧَ َﻐﻤﺖ ﻃﲑﻩ ﺑﺄرﰛ َﺟﺮس ١٨ ﱔ ( ُﺑﻠﻘﻴﺲ) ﰲ اﶆﺎﺋﻞ َْﴏح ﻣﻦ ﻋﺒﺎب وﺻﺎﺣﺐ ُﻏﲑ ﻧِِﻜﺲ ١٩ ﺣﺴـﳢﺎ أن َﺗﻜﻮن ﻟﻠﻨﻴﻞ ِﻋ ًﺮﺳﺎ ﻗﺒﻠﻬﺎ ﱂ ُﳚ َّﻦ ﯾﻮﻣﺎ ﺑﻌﺮس ٢٠ ْﻟﺒﺴﺖ ابﻷﺻﻴﻞ ُﺣ َّ َةل وﳾ ﺑﲔ ﺻﻨﻌﺎء ﰲ اﻟﺜﻴﺎب َوﻗﺲ ٢١ ﻗﺪﻫﺎ ُاﻟﻨﻴﻞ ْﻓﺎﺳـﺘﺤﺖ ْﻓﺘﻮارت ﻣﻨﻪ ِابﳉﴪ ﺑﲔ ُﻋ ْﺮي ُوﻟﺒﺲ ٢٢ وأرى َاﻟﻨﻴﻞ ( ﰷﻟﻌﻘﻴﻖ) ﺑﻮادﯾـ ـﻪ وإن ﰷن َﻛﻮﺛﺮ ُاﳌ ّﺘﺤﴘ ٢٣ ُاﺑﻦ ﻣﺎء اﻟﺴﲈء ذو ْاﳌﻮﻛﺐ اﻟﻔﺨﻢ اذلي ُﳛﴪ َاﻟﻌﻴﻮن ُوﳜﴘ ٢٤ ﻻ ﺗﺮى ﰲ رﰷﺑﻪ ﻏﲑ ُﻣ ْﱹ ﲜﻤﻴﻞ وﺷﺎﻛﺮ َﻓﻀﻞ ﻋﺮس ٢٥ وأرى (اﳉﲒة) اﳊﺰﯾﻨﺔ ﺛَ ْ َﳫﻰ ﱂ ُﺗ ْﻔﻖ ﺑﻌﺪ ﻣﻦ ﻣﻨﺎﺣﺔ (رﻣﴘ) ٢٦ ْاﻛﱶت َﲴﺔ اﻟﺴﻮاﰶ ﻋﻠﻴﻪ َوﺳﺆال اﻟﲑاع ﻋﻨﻪ َﲠ ْﻤﺲ ٢٧ َوﻗﻴﺎم اﻟﻨﺨﻴﻞ ّﺿﻔﺮن ًﺷﻌﺮا وﲡﺮدن ﻏﲑ َﻃﻮق َوﺳْﻠﺲ ٢٨ ّوﻛﺄن اﻷﻫﺮام ُﻣﲒان ﻓﺮﻋﻮ ن ﺑﻴﻮم ﻋﲆ اﳉﺒﺎﺑﺮ ﳓﺲ ٢٩ َأو َﻗﻨﺎﻃﲑﻩ ﺗﺄﻧَﻖ ﻓﳱﺎ أﻟﻒ َﺟﺎب وأﻟﻒ ﺻﺎﺣﺐ ْﻣﻜﺲ ٣٠ ْروﻋﺔ ﰲ اﻟﻀﺤﻰ ِﻣﻼﻋﺐ ّﺟﻦ ﺣﲔ َﯾﻐﴙ ّادلىج ﺣﲈﻫﺎ ُوﯾﻐﴘ ٣١ و( ُرﻫﲔ اﻟﺮﻣﺎل) ُأﻓﻄﺲ ِإ َّﻻ أﻧﻪ ُﺻ ْﻨﻊ َّﺟﻨﺔ ﻏﲑ ُﻓ ْﻄﺲ ٣٢ ّﺗﺘﺠﲆ ُﺣﻘﻴﻘﺔ اﻟﻨﺎس ﻓﻴﻪ َﺳ ُﺒﻊ َاﳋْﻠﻖ ﰲ أﺳﺎرﻳﺮ إﻧﴘ ٣٣ ِﻟﻌ َﺐ ُادلﻫﺮ ﰲ ﺛﺮاﻩ ﺻﺒﻴﺎ واﻟﻠﻴﺎﱄ ﻛﻮاﻋﺒﺎ ﻏﲑ ُﻋْﻨﺲ ٣٤ ِرﻛ ْﺒﺖ ُﺻ ُﻴﺪ اﳌﻘﺎدﻳﺮ ﻋﻴﻨﻴﻪ َﻟﻨ ْﻘﺪ ِوﻣ ْﺨﻠﺒﻴﻪ َﻟﻔ ْﺮس ٣٥ ﻓﺄﺻﺎﺑﺖ ﺑﻪ َاﳌﲈكل ( ﻛﴪى) ( ِوﻫ َﺮ ْﻗﻼ)(واﻟﻌﺒﻘﺮي اﻟﻔﺮﻧﴘ) ٣٦ اي ﻓﺆادي ِّﻟﲁ أﻣﺮ ﻗﺮار ﻓﻴﻪ ﯾﺒﺪو وﯾﻨﺠﲇ ﺑﻌﺪ ُﻟْﺒﺲ ٣٧ َﻋ َﻘ ْﻠﺖ ُﻟ َّﺠﺔ اﻷﻣﻮر ﻋﻘﻮﻻ ﰷﻟﺖ َاﳊﻮت َﻃﻮل ﺳـﺒﺢ ّوﻏﺲ ٣٨ َﻏﺮ ْﻗﺖ ﺣﻴﺚ ﻻ ُﯾ َﺼﺎح ﺑﻄﺎف أو ﻏﺮﯾﻖ وﻻ ُﯾﺼﺎخ ﻟﺤ ِّﺲ ِ ِِْ ٣٩ ﻓكل َﻳ ِﻜﺴﻒ َاﻟﺸﻤﻮس َ َﳖ ًﺎرا ُوﻳﺴﻮم َاﻟﺒﺪور َﻟﻴةل َوﻛﺲ 270 akiko m. sumi

٤٠ ُوﻣﻮاﻗﻴﺖ ﻟﻸﻣﻮر إذا ﻣﺎ ﺑَ ْﻠﻐﳤﺎ ُاﻷﻣﻮر ْﺻﺎرت ﻟِﻌﻜﺲ ٤١ دول ﰷﻟﺮﺟﺎل ﻣﺮﲥﻨﺎت ﺑﻘﻴﺎم ﻣﻦ اﳉﺪود وﺗَ ْﻌﺲ ٤٢ وﻟﻴﺎل ﻣﻦ ﰻ ِذات ِﺳﻮار َﻟﻄﻤﺖ َّﰻ ِّرب (روم) ( ُوﻓ ْﺮس) ٤٣ ّﺳﺪدت ابﻟﻬﻼل ًﻗﻮﺳﺎ ْوﺳﻠﺖ ًﺧﻨﺠﺮا ﯾﻨﻔﺬان ﻣﻦ ﰻ ُﺗﺮس ٤٤ ﺣﳬﺖ ﰲ اﻟﻘﺮون (ﺧﻮﻓﻮ) و(دارا) وﻋﻔﺖ (واﺋﻼ) وأﻟﻮت ( َﺑﻌﺒﺲ) ٤٥ أﻳﻦ ( ُﻣﺮوان) ﰲ اﳌﺸﺎرق ﻋﺮش أﻣﻮي وﰲ اﳌﻐﺎرب ﻛﺮﳼ ٤٦ َﺳ ِﻘ ْﻤﺖ ﴰﺴﻬﻢ َّﻓﺮد ﻋﻠﳱﺎ َﻧﻮرﻫﺎ ُّﰻ اثﻗﺐ اﻟﺮأي ﻧَ ْﻄﺲ ٤٧ ﰒ ْﻏﺎﺑﺖ وﰻ ﴰﺲ ﺳﻮى ﻫﺎﺗﻴـ ـﻚ ﺗَْﺒ َﲆ وﺗَﻨﻄﻮي ﲢﺖ رﻣﺲ ٤٨ وﻋﻆ (اﻟﺒﺤﱰي) ُإﯾﻮان ( ﻛﴪى) ﺷﻔﺘﲏ ُاﻟﻘﺼﻮر ﻣﻦ (ﻋﺒﺪ ﴰﺲ) ٤٩ ُرب ﻟﻴﻞ ُﴎﯾﺖ ُواﻟﱪق ِﻃﺮﰲ وﺑِﺴﺎط ُﻃﻮﯾﺖ ُواﻟﺮﱖ َﻋْﻨﴘ ٥٠ ْأﻧ ِﻈﻢ َاﻟﴩق ﰲ (اﳉﺰﻳﺮة) ابﻟﻐﺮ ب وأﻃﻮي َاﻟﺒﻼد َﺣ ْﺰ ًان َدلﻫﺲ ٥١ ﰲ داير ﻣﻦ َاﳋﻼﺋﻒ َدرس وﻣﻨﺎر ﻣﻦ اﻟﻄﻮاﺋﻒ ﻃﻤﺲ ٥٢ ورﰉ ﰷﳉﻨﺎن ﰲ ِﻛﻨﻒ اﻟﺰﯾﺘﻮ ن ﺧﴬ وﰲ ذرا اﻟﻜﺮم ُﻃْﻠﺲ ٥٣ ﱂ َﻳ ُﺮ ْﻋﲏ ﺳﻮى ﺛَﺮى ُﻗ ّﺮﻃﱯ ْﳌﺴﺖ ﻓﻴﻪ ِﻋ ْﱪ َة ادلﻫﺮ َﲬﴘ ٥٤ اي وﰵ ُﷲ ﻣﺎ ّأﺻﺒﺢ ﻣﻨﻪ َوﺳ َﻘﻰ َﺻ َﻔﻮة اﳊﻴﺎ ﻣﺎ ّأﻣﴘ ٥٥ ﻗﺮﯾﺔ ﻻ ُﺗ ّﻌﺪ ﰲ اﻷرض ﰷﻧﺖ ُﺗﻤﺴﻚ َاﻷرض أن ﲤَ َﻴﺪ ُوﺗ ْﺮﳼ َ َّ ُ َ ْ ٥٦ َﻏ ِﺸ ْﻴﺖ ﺳﺎﺣﻞ اﶈﻴﻂ وﻏﻄ ْﺖ ﻟ َّﺠﺔ ِاﻟﺮوم ﻣﻦ ﴍاع َوﻗﻠ ِﺲ ٥٧ ِرﻛﺐ ُادلﻫﺮ ﺧﺎﻃﺮي ﰲ ﺛﺮاﻫﺎ ﻓﺄﰏ ذكل ِاﳊ َﻤﻰ ﺑﻌﺪ َﺣ ْﺪس ٥٨ َّﻓﺘﺠﻠ ْﺖ َﱄ ُاﻟﻘﺼﻮر وﻣﻦ ﻓﳱﺎ ﻣﻦ ِّاﻟﻌﺰ ﰲ َﻣﻨﺎزل ُﻗ ْﻌﺲ ٥٩ ﻣﺎ َﺿ ْﻔﺖ ﻗﻂ ﰲ ِاﳌﻠﻮك ﻋﲆ ﻧﺬ ل اﳌﻌﺎﱄ وﻻ ّﺗﺮدت َﺑﻨ ْﺠﺲ ُ ٦٠ وﻛﺄﱐ ﺑﻠﻐﺖ ِﻟﻠﻌﲅ ﺑﻴﺘﺎ ﻓﻴﻪ ﻣﺎل اﻟﻌﻘﻮل ﻣﻦ ﰻ َدرس ٦١ ُﻗ ُﺪﺳﺎ ﰲ اﻟﺒﻼد ًﴍﻗﺎ ًوﻏﺮاب َﺣ َّﺠ ُﻪ اﻟﻘﻮم ﻣﻦ ﻓﻘﻴﻪ َوﻗ ّﺲ ٦٢ وﻋﲆ ِاﶺﻌﺔ اﳉﻼةل و(اﻟﻨﺎ ُﴏ) ُﻧﻮر اﶆﻴﺲ ﲢﺖ ّادل َرﻓﺲ ٦٣ ًﯾ ْﲋل َاﻟﺘﺎج ﻋﻦ ِﻣﻔﺎرق (دون) ُوﳛﲇ ﺑﻪ َﺟﺒﲔ (اﻟﱪﻧﺲ) ٦٤ ِﺳ َﻨﺔ ﻣﻦ ﻛﺮى ُوﻃﻴﻒ أﻣـﺎن وﲱﺎ ُاﻟﻘﻠﺐ ﻣﻦ ﺿﻼل َ ْوﳗﺲ ٦٥ وإذا ُادلار ﻣﺎ ﲠﺎ ﻣﻦ أﻧﻴﺲ وإذا ُاﻟﻘﻮم ﻣﺎ ﳍﻢ ﻣﻦ ُﻣ ِﺤﺲ ٦٦ ورﻗﻴﻖ ﻣﻦ اﻟﺒﻴﻮت ﻋﺘﻴﻖ ﺟﺎوز َاﻷﻟﻒ َﻏﲑ ﻣﺬﻣﻮم َﺣ ْﺮس ٦٧ أﺛﺮ ﻣﻦ (ﶊﺪ) ُوﺗﺮاث ﺻﺎر (ﻟﻠﺮوح) ذي اﻟﻮﻻء اﻷﻣﺲ ٦٨ ﺑَ َﻠﻎ َّاﻟﻨ َﺠﻢ ِذروة وﺗﻨﺎﱓ ﺑﲔ (هثﻼن) ﰲ اﻷﺳﺎس و( ُﻗﺪس) ٦٩ َﻣﺮﻣﺮ َﺗﺴـﺒ ُﺢ اﻟﻨﻮاﻇﺮ ﻓﻴﻪ وﯾﻄﻮل اﳌﺪى ﻋﻠﳱﺎ ُ ْﻓﱰﳼ ٧٠ َوﺳﻮار ﻛﺄﳖﺎ ﰲ اﺳـﺘﻮاء أﻟِﻔﺎت اﻟﻮزﻳﺮ ﰲ َﻋﺮض ِﻃﺮس ٧١ َﻓ ْ َﱰ ُة ادلﻫﺮ ﻗﺪ ﻛﺴﺖ ﺳﻄﺮﳞﺎ ﻣﺎ اﻛﺘﴗ ُاﻟﻬﺪب ﻣﻦ ﻓﺘﻮر وﻧﻌﺲ ٧٢ وﳛﻬﺎ ﰼ ﺗﺰﯾَّﻨﺖ ﻟﻌﻠﲓ واﺣﺪ ادلﻫﺮ واﺳـﺘﻌﺪت ﶆﺲ ٧٣ وﻛﺄن َاﻟﺮﻓﻴﻒ ﰲ ﻣﴪح اﻟﻌﻴـ ِـﻦ ﻣﻼء َﻣﺪﻧَّﺮات ِّادل َﻣﻘﺲ poetry and architecture 271 ٧٤ وﻛﺄن اﻵايت ﰲ ﺟﺎﻧﺒﻴﻪ ﯾﺘﲋﻟﻦ ﰲ ﻣﻌﺎرج ﻗﺪس ٧٥ ِﻣﻨﱪ ﲢﺖ ( ُﻣﻨﺬر) ﻣﻦ ﺟﻼل ﱂ ﻳﺰل ﻳﻜﺘﺴـﻴﻪ أو َﲢﺖ ( ُﻗ ّﺲ ) ٧٦ ُوﻣﲀن اﻟﻜﺘﺎب ُﯾﻐﺮﯾﻚ َّراي ْوردﻩ ًﻏﺎﺋﺒﺎ ، ﻓﺘﺪﻧﻮ ﻟَِﻠ ْﻤﺲ ٧٧ ﺻﻨﻌﺔ (ادلاﺧﻞ) اﳌﺒﺎرك ﰲ اﻟﻐﺮ ب وآل هل َﻣﻴﺎﻣﲔ ُ ْﴰﺲ * * * ٧٨ َﻣ ْﻦ (ﶵﺮاء) ُﺟ َﻠﻠﺖ ﺑﻐﺒﺎر اﻟـ ـﺪﻫﺮ ُﰷﳉﺮح ﺑﲔ ُﺑ ٍﺮء ُوﻧﻜﺲ ٧٩ َﻛﺴﻨﺎ اﻟﱪق ﻟﻮ ﳏﺎ اﻟﻀﻮء ًﳊﻈﺎ ﶈﳤﺎ ُاﻟﻌﻴﻮن ﻣﻦ ﻃﻮل َﻗْﺒﺲ ٨٠ ِﺣﺼﻦ (ﻏﺮانﻃﺔ) ُودار ﺑﲏ (اﻷﺣـ ـﻤﺮ) ﻣﻦ ﻏﺎﻓﻞ وﯾﻘﻈﺎن ﻧَ ْﺪس ٨١ ﺟﻠﻞ ُاﻟﺜﻠﺞ دوﳖﺎ َرأس ( ِﺷﲑى ) ﻓﺒﺪا ﻣﻨﻪ ﰲ َﻋـﺼﺎﺋﺐ ﺑِﺮس ٨٢ ﴎﻣﺪ ﺷﻴﺒﻪ وﱂ أر ﺷﻴﺒﺎ ﻗﺒهل ﻳﺮﺟﺊ اﻟﺒﻘﺎء وﯾﻨﴘ ٨٣ ﻣﺸﺖ اﳊﺎداثت ﰲ َﻏﺮف (اﶵـ ـﺮاء) َﻣ ْ َﴚ ِّاﻟﻨﻌﻲ ﰲ دار ﻋﺮس ٨٤ ﻫﺘﻜﺖ َّﻋﺰ َة ِاﳊﺠﺎب َّوﻓﻀﺖ ُﺳ ّﺪ َة اﻟﺒﺎب ﻣﻦ ﲰﲑ وأﻧﺲ ٨٥ َﻋ َﺮﺻﺎت ّﲣﻠﺖ اﳋﻴﻞ ﻋﳯﺎ واﺳﱰاﺣﺖ ﻣﻦ اﺣﱰاس َوﻋ ّﺲ ٨٦ َوﻣﻐﺎن ﻋﲆ اﻟﻠﻴﺎﱄ ِوﺿﺎء ﱂ ﲡﺪ َﻟﻠﻌ ِّﴚ َﺗ َﻜﺮار َﻣ ّﺲ ٨٧ ﻻ ﺗﺮى َﻏﲑ واﻓﺪﻳﻦ ﻋﲆ اﻟﺘﺎ رﱗ ِﺳﺎﻋ َﲔ ﰲ ﺧﺸﻮع وﻧـﻜﺲ ٨٨ ّﻧﻘﻠﻮا َاﻟﻄﺮف ﰲ َﻧﻀﺎر ِة آس ﻣﻦ ﻧﻘﻮش وﰲ ﻋﺼﺎرة َورس ٨٩ ِوﻗﺒﺎب ﻣﻦ َﻻز َورد وﺗِﱪ ُّﰷﻟﺮﰉ اﻟﺸﻢ ﺑﲔ ﻇﻞ وﴰﺲ ٩٠ وﺧﻄﻮط ﺗﻜﻔﻠﺖ ﻟﻠﻤﻌﺎﱐ وﻷﻟﻔﺎﻇﻬﺎ ﺑﺄزﻳﻦ ْﻟﺒﺲ ٩١ وﺗﺮى َﳎﻠﺲ اﻟﺴـﺒﺎع ﺧﻼ ًء ﻣﻘﻔﺮ ِاﻟﻘﺎع ﻣﻦ ﻇﺒﺎء وﺧﻨﺲ ٩٢ ﻻ ( ُّاﻟﱶ َّاي) وﻻ ﺟﻮاري اﻟﱶاي َﯾﺘﲋﻟﻦ ﻓﻴﻪ َأﳃﺎر ْإﻧﺲ ٩٣ ﻣﺮﻣﺮ ﻗﺎﻣﺖ ُاﻷﺳﻮد ﻋﻠﻴﻪ َ َّﳇ َﺔ ُاﻟﻈﻔﺮ ﻟَ ّﻴﻨﺎت اﳌَ َﺠ ّﺲ ٩٥ ﺗﻨﱶ َاﳌﺎء ﰲ اﳊﻴﺎض ًَ ﺟﲈان َﯾ ّﺘﲋى ﻋﲆ َﺗﺮاﺋﺐ ُﻣﻠﺲ ٩٥ َآﺧﺮ ِاﻟﻌﻬﺪ ابﳉﺰﻳﺮة ﰷﻧﺖ ﺑﻌﺪ َﻋﺮك ﻣﻦ اﻟﺰﻣﺎن َوﴐس ٩٦ ﻓﱰاﻫﺎ، ﺗﻘﻮل : راﯾﺔ ﺟﻴﺶ َابد ابﻷﻣﺲ ﺑﲔ أﴎ َوﺣـﺲ ٩٧ ُوﻣﻔﺎﺗﻴﺤﻬﺎ ﻣﻘﺎﻟﻴﺪ ُﻣكل ابﻋﻬﺎ اﻟﻮارث ُاﳌﻀﻴﻊ ﺑﺒﺨﺲ ٩٨ ﺧﺮج اﻟﻘﻮم ﰲ َﻛﺘﺎﺋﺐ ُﰡ ﻋﻦ ﺣﻔﺎظ ﳈﻮﻛﺐ ِادلﻓﻦ ُﺧﺮس ٩٩ ِرﻛﺒﻮا ابﻟﺒﺤﺎر ًﻧﻌﺸﺎ وﰷﻧﺖ ﲢﺖ آابﲛﻢ ﱔ اﻟﻌﺮش أﻣﺲ ١٠٠ رب ابن ﻟﻬﺎدم َوﲨﻮع ِﳌﺸﺖ وﳏﺴﻦ ُﳌ ِﺨ ّﺲ ١٠١ إﻣﺮة ِاﻟﻨﺎس ِ َّﳘﺔ ﻻ ﺗﺄﰏ ﳉﺒﺎن وﻻ َّﺗﺴـﲎ ِﳉﺒﺲ ١٠٢ وإذا ﻣﺎ أﺻﺎب ﺑﻨﻴﺎن ﻗﻮم ْ ُوﱔ ُﺧْﻠﻖ ﻓﺈﻧﻪ ُوﱔ ّأس ١٠٣ اي ًدايرا ُﻧﺰﻟﺖ ُﰷﳋدل ِﻇﻼ َوﺟﲎ ًداﻧﻴﺎ َوﺳﻠﺴﺎل أﻧﺲ ١٠٤ ِﳏﺴ ِﻨﺎت اﻟﻔﺼﻮل ﻻ انﺟﺮ ﻓﻴـ ﻫﺎ ﺑﻘﻴﻆ وﻻ ُﺟﲈدى ﺑِ َﻘﺮس ١٠٥ ﻻ َﲢ ّﺶ اﻟﻌﻴﻮن ﻓﻮق ُرابﻩ ﻏﲑ ﺣﻮر ُﺣﻮ اﳌﺮاﺷﻒ ُﻟ ْﻌﺲ ُ ِ ّ ١٠٦ ﻛ ِﺴ َﻴﺖ أﻓﺮيخ ﺑﻈكل ًرﻳﺸﺎ َاو َراب ﰲ رابك واﺷـﺘﺪ ﻏﺮﳼ ١٠٧ ﱒ ﺑﻨﻮ ﻣﴫ ﻻ ُاﶺﻴﻞ دلﳞﻢ ُﲟﻀﺎع وﻻ ُاﻟﺼﻨﻴﻊ ﲟَﻨﴘ 272 akiko m. sumi ١٠٨ ﻣﻦ ﻟﺴﺎن ﻋﲆ ﺛﻨﺎﺋﻚ ْوﻗﻒ َوﺟﻨﺎن ﻋﲆ وﻻﺋﻚ َﺣْﺒﺲ ١٠٩ ﺣﺴـﳢﻢ ﻫﺬﻩ ُاﻟﻄﻠﻮل ِﻋﻈﺎت ﻣﻦ ﺟﺪﯾﺪ ﻋﲆ ادلﻫﻮر َود ْرس ١١٠ وإذا ﻓﺎﺗﻚ اﻟﺘﻔﺎت إﱃ اﳌﺎ ﴈ ﻓﻘﺪ ﻏﺎب ﻋﻨﻚ وﺟﻪ اﻟﺘﺄﳼ [4] ﻗﺎل ُاﻟﺒ ْﺤ ُﱰي ُ أﺗَ َّﺴﲆ ﻋﻦ ٱﳊ ُﻈ ِﻮظ، َو َآﳻ ﻟَ َﻤ َﺤ ٍّﻞ ﻣﻦ ( ِآل َﺳ َﺎﺳ َﺎن) َد ْر ِس [5] ﻗﺎل ُاﻟﺒ ْﺤ ُﱰي َ ﲻﺮت ُّ ُﻟﻠﴪ ِور َد ْﻫ ًﺮا، َﻓﺼ ْ ﺎرت َّﻟﻠﺘ َﻌ ِّﺰي ِر َاب ُﻋ ُﻬ ْﻢ َو َّاﻟﺘﺄ ِّﳼ [6] ﻗﺎل ُاﻟﺒ ْﺤ ُﱰي َ َﯾ ْﻐ َﺘ ِﲇ ِﻓ ِﳱﻢ ْٱرﺗِ َﻴﺎﰊ َﺣ َّﱴ ﺗَ َﺘ َّﻘﺮ ُ ُاﱒ َﯾ َﺪ َاي ﺑِﻠ ْﻤ ِﺲ [7] ﻗﺎل ُاﻟﺒ ْﺤ ُﱰي ُ ٌ ْ َ ِّ َ َ ُﺣﲅ ُﻣﻄ ِﺒ ٌﻖ َﻋﲆ َّاﻟﺸﻚ َﻋ ِﻴﲏ أ ْم َأﻣ ٍﺎن َﻏ َّ ْﲑ َن ﻇ ِّﲏ َو َﺣ ْﺪ ِﳼ؟! [8] ﻗﺎل اﺑﻦ َز ْﻣ َﺮك إذا ﻣﺎ ﻋﻠﺖ ﰲ ِّاﳉﻮ ﰒ ﲢﺪرت ﲢﲇ َﲟﺮﻓ ِّﺾ ُاﳉ َﻤﺎن اﻟﻨﻮاﺣﻴﺎ [9] ﻗﺎل اﺑﻦ َز ْﻣ َﺮك ﺗَ ِﺒ ُﻴﺖ ﳍﻢ ﻛﻒ اﻟﱶاي ﻣﻌﻴﺬة وﯾﺼﺒﺢ ﻣﻌﺘﻞ اﻟﻨﺴـﲓ رواﻗﻴﺎ [10] ﻗﺎل اﺑﻦ َز ْﻣ َﺮك وﻟﻮ ﻣﺜﻠﺖ ﰲ ﺳﺎﺑﻘﻴﻪ ﻟﺴﺎﺑﻘﺖ إﱃ ﺧﺪﻣﺔ ﺗﺮﺿﻴﻚ ﻣﳯﺎ اﳉﻮارﻳـﺎ METAPOETRY BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: ʿABD ALWAHHĀB ALBAYĀTĪ AND THE WESTERN COMPOSERS OF METAPOETRYA STUDY IN ANALOGIES

Aida O. Azouqa

Modern Western poetry, like the literature of its times, was highly iconoclastic. In their attempts to achieve originality, modern poets on both sides of the Atlantic carried out bold experimentations with form and subject matter that led to the rise of important literary developments and a set of corresponding poetics. Among their boldest innovations was the advent of what come to be known as metapoetry. Metapoetry is a term that refers to those poems that make poetry and literary criticism the subject of a poem. During the seventies of the twentieth century, the suffix “meta” was attached to those texts in poetry and in fiction that make literature itself the subject matter of literary texts. Accordingly, metapoetry involves a redefinition of the boundaries of literature: for the first time in the history of literature, poets in the Western hemisphere destroyed the barriers that traditionally separated poetry (and fiction) from criticism, as modern poets turned their poetry into platforms for the investigation of a variety of critical issues, thus laying down the foundations of a new sub-genre of poetry that is now known as metapoetry. Modern Western composers of metapoetry invariably deal with common issues. Among their distinct themes are the anxiety over poetic creativity, their concern for achieving immortality through art, the alienation of the poet in an age of crass materialism, and the role of a poet as vates, that is, as a visionary, and above all, the belief in the power of the imagination in transforming reality and of imposing order on what they perceive it to be a chaotic world. Interestingly enough, they also adhered to a variety of similar poetic modes of expression to obscure their concerns. One group resorted to dance imagery, based on ritualistic dancing, as their mode of expression. Among the poets who belong to this group are W. B. Yeats (1865–1939), William Carlos Williams (1883–1963), T. S. Eliot (1883–1963), and Theodore Roethke (1908–1963). A second group of poets relied on Ancient and Classical 274 aida o. azouqa fertility myths, as well as on the myth of Orpheus, that revolve around the motif of the descent into the Underworld. The descent forms an appropriate pattern for expressing metapoetical concerns because the Underworld in those narratives represents the realm of the intellect, that is, of the imagination. Likewise, modern poets resorted to the Orphic myth because Orpheus stands for the archetypal poet. The poets of this group include the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941). A third group of poets, represented by the American poet Wallace Stevens (1879–1957), used a totally different approach to abstract their metapoetic concerns. Stevens neither used dance imagery nor, with the exception of a few poems, did he use mythology.1 Instead, Stevens abstracted his poetics and poetical themes through the evocation of nature, and more importantly by alluding to the work of Avant-Garde artists in general, and to Pablo Picasso’s (1881–1973) painting “The Old Blind Guitarist” (1903), in particular. Stevens’s allusions to Picasso aim at acknowledging his influence on his poetics, while they also function as a means for stating his own uniqueness as a poet. Even though metapoetry began to flourish in the West during the second decade of the twentieth century, it made its advent in the Arab world much later. This took place at the hands of the Iraqi poetʿ Abd al-Wahhāb al- Bayātī (1926–1999). As known, al-Bayātī is renowned for his bold poetic experimentations that yielded a defamiliarized poetic language that corresponds with the poetic language of the high modernism in the West. His innovations were so influential that some critics believe that he changed the course of Arabic poetry. In this respect, Bassām Frangieh maintains “Even among the pioneers of contemporary Arabic poetry, al-Bayātī is an innovator, for his work departs from Classical Arabic poetry in substance as well as in structure.”2 Likewise, Iḥsān ʿAbbās states “al-Bayātī worked on diverting the course of the water [of Arabic poetry] to nurture new seedlings.”3 Like his Western peers,

1 On Stevens’s use of Classical mythology, see: Evans Lansing Smith, “The Lyrical Nekyia: Metaphors of Poesis in Wallace Stevens,” Journal of Modern Literature XX1, 3 (Winter 1997): pp. 201–08; hereafter referred to as Smith. 2 Bassām K. Frangieh, trans., “Introduction” to ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī: Love, Death, and Exile: Poems Translated from Arabic (Washington D.C.: Georgetown UP, 1990; p. 1; hereafter referred to as Frangieh. 3 Iḥsān ʿAbbās, Ittijāhāt al-Shiʿr al-ʿArabī al-Muʿāsiṛ (Kuwait: Al-Majlis al-Watanị̄ lil-Thaqāfah wa al-Funūn wa al-Ādāb, 1978), p. 56; quoted and translated by Frangieh, p. 1. metapoetry between east and west 275 he relied heavily on Ancient and Classical myths to become the Arab mythmaker par excellence.4 Accordingly, for a poet intent on change, it is neither surprising that metapeotic concerns should became a prominent element of al-Bayātī’s oeuvre, nor that al-Bayātī, and to the best of my knowledge, should become the pioneer of metapoetry in the Arab world.5 His work also manifests that he used metapoetical strategies similar to those in the works of the Western composers of metapoetry. Such analogies may be attributed to al-Bayātī’s acknowledgement of his extensive reading of the works of such prominent poets as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nazim Hikmat, Paul Elouard, Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Eliot, W. H. Auden, and numerous others.6 He also admits that he had looked for inspiration in world literature.7 Even though the study cannot establish a direct Western influence on al-Bayātī, yet the impact of reading in world literature manifests itself in his use of similar metapoetical modes of expression of dance imagery and of myths. Within al-Bayātī’s oeuvre, there is a complete cycle of poems known as the ʿĀʾisha poems. These are based on Mesopotamian and Classical fertility myths of descent to the Underworld in which ʿĀʾisha functions as Ishtār, the Babylonian and Sumerian goddess of spring and of love, while the speaker in the poem assumes the role of Tammūz, Ishtār’s lover. In some of his poems, al-Bayātī blends the myth of Ishtār with the Orphic myth in which Orpheus (who descends to Hades to redeem his beloved Eurydice from the claws of death) to achieve his metapoetical concerns. Furthermore, like Tsvetaeva, who had composed numerous apostrophic addressed to fellow poets, al-Bayātī composed several poems addressed to such poets as Eliot, Mayakovski, Hikmat, and Raphael Alberti among others;8 however,

4 On the subject of al- Bayātī as a mythmaker, see my following article: Aida O. Azouqa, “Al-Bayātī and W. B. Yeats as Mythmakers: A Comparative Study,” Journal of Arabic Literature, Vol. XXX, No. 3 (1999): pp. 258–90. 5 On other modern Arab composers of metapoetry, see: Yair Huri, “The Queen Who Serves the Slaves: From Politics to Metapoetics in the Poetry of Qāsim Ḥ addād,” Journal of Arabic Literature, Vol. 34, No. 3 (2003): pp. 252–79. 6 ʿ Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī, Tajribatī al-Shiʿriyyah [My Poetic Experience] (Beirut: Al-Muʾassasah al-ʿArabiyyah lil-Dirāsāt wa al-Nashr, 1993), pp. 20–21; hereafter referred to as al-Bayātī, Poetic Experience. See also Muhsin al-Musawi, Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 64–66, 219–20, 223–232. 7 Al-Bayātī, Poetic Experience, p. 38. 8 See the relevant poems in: ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī, Dīwān ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī, 3 Vols. (Beirut: Dār al-ʿAwdah, 1990); some of the relevant poems are “To T. S. Eliot,” “To Vladimir Mayakovski,” and “Elegy to Nazim Hikmat,” in: Vol. I: 276 aida o. azouqa the study refrains from discussing them because Muhsin J. al-Musawi has already covered the subject of dedicatory poems in Arabic poetry, since medieval times, with a special emphasis on al-Bayātī’s poems.9 More importantly, al-Bayātī’s apostrophic poems also include one addressed to Picasso.10 Like Stevens, who registers Picasso’s impact on his work by basing his poem “The Man with the Blue Guitar” (1937)11 on Picasso’s painting “The Blind Old Guitarist,” al-Bayātī also assigns Picasso center stage in his poem “Al-Kābūs” (1971) [The Nightmare, 1971].12 As in Picasso’s painting, the central figure in the poem is a Spanish guitarist, and al-Bayātī invokes Picasso in the text, as Stevens does, to explore a variety of issues pertaining to poetic creativity and the impact of poetry on the masses. Given the analogies between al-Bayātī’s metapoetical poems and the works of the modern Western poets (in subject matter and mediums of expression), this study aims at examining al-Bayātī as a composer of metapoetry by comparing his work with the works of Yeats, Tsvetaeva, and Stevens. The comparison facilitates clarifying the strategies that he used to transform his metapoetical concerns into poetic language of pure art. In addition, it reveals al-Bayātī’s contribution to his national literature through incorporating Western elements into Arabic poetry that enabled him to add a new genre to that tradition. The investigation could also lead to a deeper appreciation of al-Bayātī as a poet who took great measures to innovate and perfect his art. To achieve its purposes, the study intends to examine the following issues. First, there is a need for a brief digression into the characteristics and the poetics of modern Western poetry. Without such a digression, it becomes difficult to discuss the poets under study in isolation from

pp. 373–74; 417–18; 482; also “To Rephael Alberti,” in Vol. II: pp. 368–71; hereafter referred to as al-Bayātī, Dīwān. 9 On the subject of dedicatory poetry in the Arabic tradition since the Middle Ages, see: Muhsin J. al-Musawi, “Dedications as Poetic Intersections,” Journal of Arabic Literature, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2000): pp. 1–37. 10 Al- Bayātī, Dīwān, Vol. I: pp. 468–69. 11 Wallace Stevens, “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” in idem:Collected Poetry and Prose (New York: The Library of America, 1997), pp. 135–51; hereafter referred to as Stevens, Collected Poetry. 12 ʿ Abd al-Wāhhāb al-Bayātī, “Al-Kābūs” [The Nightmare] in: Al-Bayātī,Dīwān , Vol. I: pp. 276–9; translated by M. M. Badawi in: A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975), p. 215; hereafter referred to its English translation as Badawi. metapoetry between east and west 277 the tradition that they had created. For this reason, the study makes the digression to understand the critical issues that they raise in their metapoetical texts. Secondly, the study examines the reasons that prompted poets to use dance imagery as well as the use of specific Ancient and Classical myths as means for expressing their metapoetic concerns. This is because composers of metapoetry abstracted their concerns when they “discussed poetry enthusiastically but [they] assiduously avoided analyz- ing their own individual works.”13 For this reason, an investigation of the significance of their modes of expression sheds light on their poetic techniques and on their implications in the respective texts. Thirdly, since the study is one of analogies that aims at a better understanding of al-Bayātī as a composer of metapoetry it divides al-Bayātī’s poems into three groups that clarify how his texts correspond with Western ones. In the first group, the study compares Yeats’s companion poems “Sailing to Byzantium” (1927) and “Byzantium” (1930)14 with al-Bayātī’s “Al-Simfūniyyah al-Ghajariyyah” [The Gypsy Symphony, 1974]15 to illustrate the way both poets use dance imagery for metapoetical purposes. Next, the study examines Tsvetaeva’s “Poems for Blok”16 for comparison with al-Bayātī’s “Marthiyyah ilā ʿĀʾishah” [Elegy to ʿĀʾisha, 1971],17 and “Majnūn ʿĀʾishah” [ʿĀʾisha’s Mad Lover, 1971],18 as manifestations of how Tsvetaeva, and al-Bayātī relied on myths to explore metapoetical concerns. Finally, the study examines Stevens’ “The Man with the Blue Guitar” for comparison with al-Bayātī’s “The Nightmare” to clarify how the mutual allusions of both poets to Picasso function in

13 Audrey T. Rodgers, The Universal Drum: Dance Imagery in the Poetry of Eliot, Crane, Roethke, and Williams (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State UP, 1979), p. 3; hereafter referred to as Rodgers. 14 W. B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium” and “Byzantium,” in idem: Collected Poems (New York: Macmillan, & Co., 1965), pp. 216–17; 280–81; hereafter referred to as Yeats. 15 ʿ Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī, “Al-Simfūniyyah al-Ghajariyyah” [The Gypsy Symphony], Dīwān: Vol. II: pp. 344–7; translated by Franjiyyah, pp. 150–7; hereafter referred to its English translation as Frangieh. 16 Marina Tsvetaeva, Selected Poems, trans. and introd. Elaine Feinstein (Manchester: Carcanet, 1999); hereafter referred to as Tsvetaeva. 17 ʿ Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī, “Marthiyyah ilā ʿĀʾisha.” [Elegy for ʿĀʾisha], Dīwān: Vol. II: pp. 135–38; trans. Sargon Boulus and Christopher Middleton in: Modern Arabic Poetry: An Anthology, ed. Salma Khadra Jayyūsi (New York: Columbia UP, 1987), pp. 176–78; hereafter referred to its English translation as Boulos, Anthology. 18 ʿ Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī, “Majnūn ʿĀʾisha” [ʿĀʾisha’s Mad Lover], in al-Bayātī, Dīwān, Vol. II: pp. 257–2; trans. Frangieh, pp. 82–95; hereafter referred to its English translation as Frangieh. 278 aida o. azouqa the context of their respective metapoetical concerns. For the purposes of clarification, the study examines the poems of the Western poets, Yeats, Tsvetaeva, and Stevens, before moving to examine al-Bayātī’s mentioned poems. Modern Western poets sought for originality by denouncing the existing poetic schools on the grounds that they were too subjective and divorced from the praxis that troubled the intellectuals of the age. Whether in the United States, Russia, or the rest of Europe, the political climate was ripe with dangers and it foretold the approach of an impending disaster. Western poets could not remain passive observers of the events of the First World War, or the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 that led to a civil war in Russia, nor of the Spanish Civil War that took place in the aftermath of the First World War.19 The socio-political climate of their age forced them to seek new mediums of expression that would enable them to speak the language of their times. To overturn the vague subjectivism of their immediate predecessors, poets on both sides of the Atlantic sought innovation in the Avant-Garde schools of painting, and in the works the masters of world literature in search of appropriate mediums of expression. Ultimately, the search led to the development of the four major modern schools of poetry, namely Symbolism, Imagism, Futurism, and Acmeism. Modernist poetic schools acquired their names from their reliance on symbols and images as mediums for expressing reality because their endeavors to change poetry made the symbol and the image the nucleus of almost every modern poem. The result was a highly metaphoric poetry that relies on concrete images for the depiction of daily experiences instead of dealing with abstract notions.20 This was the case with the Symbolist poets like Alexander Blok (1880–1922) in Russia, Williams in the United States, and Yeats in Britain. Ezra Pound (1885–1972) and Eliot led the Imagists, while Osip Mandelstam (1892–1938), and Mayakovski (1893–1930) respectively led the Russian Acmeists and the Futurists; there were also a number of influential poets like Stevens and Tsvetaeva who did not belong to a particular school of poetry. In the case of the Imagists, for example, Eliot derived his imagism from John Donne (1572–1631) and his school of Metaphysical poetry. Eliot admired the

19 Clare Cavanagh, Osip Mandelstam and the Modern Creation of Tradition (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1995), p. 10; hereafter referred to as Cavanagh. 20 Rodgers, p. 19. metapoetry between east and west 279 conceits of the Metaphysical poets as efficient controlling devices that enabled him to avoid the subjectivism of his predecessors. The modernist return to their cultural roots also involved the revival of myths and rituals. This became possible with the increasing interest of anthropologist like Sir James Frazer in the analysis of Ancient and Classical mythologies. Modern poets gave their texts mythical frames through allusions to myths and, quite often, by making a myth the title of their texts, where Eliot’s poem the Waste Land (1922) is a case in point.21 Eliot’s incorporation of the myth of the Fisher King in the text of the poem functions as a metaphor for what he deems it to be the spiritual bankruptcy that led to the First World War. Accordingly, the modern use of myth allows the poet to connect the present to a mythical counterpart while the poet maintains aesthetic distance. At the same time, the mythical frame provides the modern poem with universality through connecting the present to a mythical counterpart. In addition to seeking for innovation in world literature and mythology, modern poets were highly inspired by the Avant-Garde movements in the plastic arts. The term Avant-Garde in this context designates the new kind of painting that developed at the turn of the twentieth century. Paul Cézanne’s post-Impressionism gave way to more radical art movements such as the Cubism of Picasso and Georges Braques. Their work coincided with the advent of Surrealism, Futurism, Dadism Expressionism and Vorticism. Historians of literature have established a connection between those art schools and the modern experimentation in poetic form and language.22 For this reason, it is necessary to digress briefly into the nature of Avant-Garde painting as a means for understanding their poetics and the ontological outlook on life that accompanied their innovations as it sheds particular light on the poetry of Stevens and al-Bayātī. Avant-Garde art is essentially fragmentary, non-representational and self-reflexive. The underlying precept of such a form signals a departure

21 T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, in idem: Selected Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1973), pp. 51–74; hereafter referred to as Eliot. In the context of the myth, the Fisher King represents moral degeneration; he ravishes Philomel, his sister-in-law, and then cuts off her tongue to prevent her from revealing his crime. Philomel is transformed in to a nightingale. Her disappearance invokes the anger of the gods who turn the Kingdom into a barren wasteland. 22 On the relation between modern poetry and Avant-Garde painting see: F. O. Schwartz, The Matrix of Modernism: Pound, Eliot, & Early 20th-Century Thought (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1985), pp. 50–101; hereafter referred to as Schwartz. 280 aida o. azouqa from the mimesis of traditional paintings that supposedly hold a mirror to life. Painters of the Avant-Garde challenged the tradition because they believed in the impossibility of representing reality. Accordingly, the fragmentation of their paintings is a self-reflexive mode of expression that draws attention to their forms to function as a metaphor for the artists’ notion of the chaos that pervades the modern world. In this respect, Peter Bürger clarifies that Avant-Garde art is allegorical; he asserts that the “activity of the allegorist is essentially an expression of melancholy . . . Allegory, whose essence is fragment, represents history as decline . . . [because] in allegory the observer is confronted with the (death mask) of history as a petrified primordial landscape.”23 Like Avant-Garde art, modern poetry is highly fragmentary. It relies on a series of images that seem to be unconnected, yet, like modern paintings; they cohere in the mind of the readers. The form reflects the flattened, abstracted geometric shapes of Cubist paintings. It is a form that lacks both perspective and simultaneity because it breaks down the unity of traditional compositions. For modern poets, the fragmented form of their poems, inspired by Cubism, functions as a metaphor for the content of their poems, and, by implication, for the crisis of the modern world. Under Picasso’s influence, modern poetry became one “in which the representational content was categorically inseparable from and /or, identical with their formal and verbal structures.”24 Their poems challenge naturalism or illusionism. Like the Cubists who used fragmented images, modern poets used poetic images as their mediums of expression. Images enabled them to reflect the crisis of the modern world and avoid direct expression. By the year 1913, the convention of personal utterance had lost its grip on the Avant-Garde centered in New York City [and elsewhere]. A poem was an image, a metaphor, and an impersonal construction.25 The rejection of mimesis in Avant-Garde art and in modern poetry manifests deep contemporary ontological convictions about life. They are convictions rooted in the philosophy of the age that rejected Platonic

23 Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw, forward Jochen Schulte-Sasse (Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1987), p. 69; hereafter referred to as Bürger. 24 Mark Currie, ed., “Introduction” to Metafiction (London and New York: Longman, 1995), p. 7; hereafter referred to as Currie. 25 David Perkins, A History of Modern Poetry: Modernism and After (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1987), p. 280; hereafter referred to as Perkins. metapoetry between east and west 281 absolutism. The emerging philosophical notions that questioned the nature of human knowledge influenced artists and poets. This kind of skepticism developed under the influence of two leading philosophers, William James (1842–1910) and Henri Louis Bergson (1859–1941). James devised a “philosophy of immediate experience” that advocates a multiplicity of truths instead of an absolute one. Being guided by the discoveries in science, that led to doubting the absolutism of scientific facts, James’s position was anti-absolutist and anti-transcendentalist. James asserted that “truth” is always generated by context rather than existing paradigmatically, and that the search for truth was an expression of human need rather than an achieved goal. In James’s view, most human knowledge is based on interaction, usually unnoticed, of a desiring mind and external reality: the world we discover is the world for which we were looking, and to that degree, “created.”26 This denotes that “truth” is identified with one’s state of consciousness at a given time, independent of reality. Painters of the Avant-Garde and modern poets abstracted their works under the influence of James’s concept of the immediate experience. Likewise, James’s perception of sensory flux had significant implications for artistic creativity. In his Collected Essays, James pays tribute to poets whose innovations becomes an escape from bitter reality. He maintains that the “poet’s words . . . are helps of the most genuine sort, giving to all of hereafter the freedom of the trials they made. Though they create nothing [since James believes that human consciousness cannot depict the “truth” of reality], yet for their making and fixing functions of theirs we bless their names and keep them on our lips.”27 On another occasion, James refers to the artist’s power to frame abstract concepts as “one of the sublimest [endeavors] of our human prerogatives.”28 Accordingly, it becomes clear that modernism in poetry was the result of a particular outlook on life. Poets knew about the current anti-absolutist philosophies, but it was through art that they learned how to express

26 Tony Sharpe, Wallace Stevens: A Literary Life (New York and London: Macmillan Press, 2000), p. 28; hereafter referred to as Sharpe. 27 William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism and A Pluralistic Universe, ed. and introd. Ralph Barton Perry (New York: Longmans and Green, 1942), p. 219; hereafter referred to as James, Essays. 28 Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, “The Rebels, the Committed and Others: Transitions in Arabic Poetry Today,” in: Critical Perspectives on Modern Arabic Literature, ed. Issa J. Boulata (Boulder, Colorado: A Three Continents Book, 1980), p. 195; hereafter referred to as Jabra, “Rebels.” 282 aida o. azouqa themselves. Picasso’s fragmented paintings inspired poets to make the succession of seemingly unrelated symbols and the images the focal points of their respective poems. The bold experimentations of modern poets in the Western hemisphere made their advent in the Arab World in the 1950s under the pressure of the existing socio-political problems of the age. Following the Palestine disaster of 1948, Arab poets decided it was high time to change Arabic poetry in a way that meets the demands of the age. Jabra Ibrahim Jabra realizes that literary “Rebellion is based on a moral and philosophical attitude adopted by an individual who finally aspires to affect change in the lives of men as individuals.”29 The rebellion of Arab poets against the tradition of their immediate predecessors aimed “at a change in sensibility, in fundamental attitudes and ways of thinking consonant with man’s freedom and dignity and the all-important right to say No.”30 Jabra clarifies that it was no accident that the great change in Arabic poetry commenced, more or less, with the Palestine disaster.31 He adds that in the decade that followed from 1948 to 1958, what happened to Arabic writing was cataclysmic. Suddenly, with the shock and the bitterness of the new political reality, young people all over the Arab World not only saw things in a new light, but had to express them in a new way, more immediate and less form ridden, through taking Western innovations in their stride in a struggle for a freer imagination.32 Jabra clarifies that “Influences from East and West, from Mayakovski to Eliot, ravished the minds of the young who abandoned themselves to contemporary fads and fashions without shame in an attempt to cope with their experience.”33 Their poetry was history-conscious, humanity- conscious, and above all, freedom conscious.34 Like the Western modernists who looked for innovations in their poetic traditions, Arab poets also looked for inspiration in world literature and for the same reasons. Modern Arab poets were dissatisfied with the subjectivism and the formalism of their predecessors. Eventually, the break with the past came at the hands of three Iraqi poets, Nāzik

29 Jabra, “Rebels,” p. 195. 30 Ibid., p. 193. 31 Jabra, “Rebels,” p. 193. 32 Ibid., p. 193. 33 Ibid., p. 193. 34 Ibid., p. 193. metapoetry between east and west 283 al-Malāʾikah (1923–2007), Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb (1926–1964), and al-Bayātī. Under the influence of Eliot’s poetry and poetics, especially his free verse, his metaphoric mode of representation, and his mythical method in The Waste Land,35 al-Malaʾikah, al-Sayyāb, and al-Bayātī, who became known as the New Poets, “led Arabic poetry beyond the constraints of Classical Arabic forms.”36 Their innovations enabled them to transcend “the traditional rhyme schemes and conventional metric patterns which had prevailed for more than fifteen centuries.”37 Like their Western peers, the New Poets were as fascinated by the art movements of the last fifty years of the twentieth century.38 Jabra clarifies that “Apart from the development of the cinema and film montage—which undoubtedly influenced [Arab] writing a great deal, we have Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism. Expressionism, Surrealism, abstract art: Picasso, Kandinsky, Braque [in addition to intellectuals] like Stravinsky, Freud, Jung, Breton, Apollinaire, T. E. Hulme, Mayakovski, Kafka, James Joyce . . . to name only a few [enabled the New poets to change the course of Arabic poetry.]”39 The upshot of all this had been the discovery of dynamic form. The old concept, that art forms are immutable and implicitly sacred, having been given their final perfection, was relaxing its hold.40 Form had to reflect the inner workings of the subject matter and every work of art has to carry its rules and justifications within itself.41 For the New Poets, the adoption of the fragmentary form of Avant-Garde art, as it manifests itself in Eliot’s poetry, became an appropriate medium for the expression of the prevailing socio-political problems in the Arab World. The adoption of the form reflects the New Poet’s understanding of the allegorical nature of Avant-Garde art and of modern poetry as a self-reflexive form that depicts “history as decline.”42 As far as the New Poet’s utilization of myth is concerned, Jabra explains that “Mythology was discovered and exploited: Greek, Arab,

35 On Eliot’s influence on modern Arabic poetry, see: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, “Modern Arabic Literature and The West,” in: Critical Perspectives on Modern Arabic Literature, ed. Issa J. Boulata (Boulder, Colorado: A Three Continents Book, 1980), pp. 7–22; hereafter referred to as Jabra, “West.” 36 Frangieh, p. 1. 37 Ibid., p. 1. 38 Jabra, “Rebels,” p. 193. 39 Jabra, “West,” p. 12. 40 Jabra, “Rebels,” p. 193; the emphasis is mine. 41 Ibid., p. 196. 42 Bürger, p. 69. 284 aida o. azouqa

Babylonian: Christian and Moslem alike. Gilgamesh and Icarus and Sinbad, Tammūz and Ishtār and Sisyphus, [sic] all became urgent and unavoidable allusions.”43 A myth was in the making, a myth of death and resurrection, in which the nation’s tragedy and hope could find expression.44 The preceding exposition regarding the development of modern poetry reveals that modern poets broke away from the tradition of their predecessors, whether in the West or in the Arab World, by creating a highly metaphoric poetry that relies heavily on images or symbols. Modern poets overturned the subjectivism of their immediate predecessors by substituting concrete images for abstract notions as mediums for expressing daily experiences. In this respect, dance imagery forms an integral aspect of modern poetry. Where the use of dance imagery in metapoetical texts is concerned, dance historians attribute the inception of modernism in both ballet and dance; however, Audrey T. Rodgers attributes its origins to the modern interest in myth and rituals.45 Rodgers insists that modern poets would not have created their dance imagery in the absence of the interest in mythology.46 Modern poets like Yeats, Eliot, Williams, and Roethke used old myths and tapped new ones and came up with dance images to communicate metapoetical concerns.47 Within the context of their respective poems, the dance functions as an image for poetry, the poet is the dancer himself, while dancing represents the role of poetry in creating order and harmony in an otherwise chaotic universe. This denotes that “dance, as an image of poetry, offered one perspective by which the imagination reshaped reality.”48 Both “the dancer and the poet share the impulse to impose order, upon what they perceive to be a universal chaos, through the effect of the beauty of their creation.”49 Poets also used dance as a means for conveying their attempts to transcend themselves through their art.50 Those of them, who watched the achievements of dancers being cheered by enthusiastic audiences, found in the performances incentives to poets searching for

43 Jabra, “Rebels,” p. 193. 44 Ibid., p. 193. 45 Rodgers, p. 12. 46 Ibid., p. 12. 47 Ibid., p. 19. 48 Rodgers, p. 2. 49 Ibid., p. 2. 50 Ibid., p. 1. metapoetry between east and west 285 a confirmation of their creative efforts,51 through the creation of images of beauty and honesty, and-above-all in their zeal to bring their art to people.52 Accordingly, it is not surprising that those poets would seize upon the image of dynamic motion, the dance, at once patterned by time and space but transcending both, as a fitting metaphor for the experience of poetry.53 Ultimately, since dancing requires precision, the control of the dance reflects the poet’s struggle to overcome his earthly desires in order to dedicate his life to his art. This concept has its origin in ritualistic and Sufi dancing where the dancers aim at overcoming their corporeal desires. For the modern poet, such dancing represents discarding the old self by becoming a soul purged of its earthly desires, worthy of entering the realm of creativity. Next to dance imagery, composers of metpoetry relied on Ancient and Classical myths of descent into the Underworld. The mythological element of death and resurrection appears in the oral epics of both cultures. The descent of Odysseus to Hades in “The Book of the Dead” in Homer’s epic The Odyssey54 has its counterpart in the descent of Gilgamesh in the Assyrian epic Gilgamesh.55 Modern poets on both sides of the Atlantic and the Arab World used those epic elements as well as other myths of descent in Ancient and Classical mythology, especially the myth of Orpheus who descends to Hades to redeem Eurydice; Arab poets also used the Babylonian and Sumerian counterpart of the Orphic myth in the myth of Ishtār and her lover Tammūz who descends to the Underworld to rescue her from death. Modern composers of metapoetry used the myths of descent into the Underworld because they understood their implications for literature.56

51 Ibid., pp. 6–7. 52 Ibid., pp. 8–9. 53 Ibid., pp. 20–1; the emphasis is mine. 54 Homer, The Odyssey, trans. C. H. Rieu (London: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 159–78; hereafter referred to as Homer. 55 TheEpic Gilgamesh, trans. Thom Kapheim, introd. Robert D. Biggs, verse rendi- tion, Danny P. Jackson (Wauconda, Illinois: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1992); hereafter referred to as Gilgamesh. 56 According to Evans Lansing Smith, Homer uses the term nekyia, that is the descent into the Underworld, as an equivalent to poetry. Odysseus’s descent into Hades functions as a metaphor for poetic creativity and the poet’s anxieties over achieving inspiration. In this respect, the world of Hades represents the realm of poetry (the imagination) and the encounter with death in Hades stands for the poet’s departure from the world of reality to the realm of the imagination. The descent itself was traditionally associated with the acquisition of wisdom. Within Homer’s iconography of the nekyia, the descent denotes the poet’s acquisition of inspiration that grants him immortality through art, represented by the return to the world of the living; Smith, p. 208. 286 aida o. azouqa

Carol Zaleski refers to narratives modeled on the Homeric nekyia as “near-death narratives,” for the Homer’s iconography of the nekyia, with its dangerous events, represents the difficulties of poetic creativity and of inspirational impasse.57 Accordingly, the iconography of the Homeric nekyia and its counterpart in Ancient myths function as self-reflexive metaphors for “the processes of poetic creativity by which poems are produced and read;”58 they enabled modern poets to convey an abstract notion in the concrete image of the descent because “the descent into the Underworld indicates those fundamental patterns of the human imagination catalyzed by the nekyia . . .”59 Like the myths of descent to the Underworld, the myth of Orpheus was essential for the composition of modern metapoetical texts because it is mainly concerned with the issue of the poet’s dedication to his art: Orpheus’s return from Hades empty-handed, after failing to rescue his Eurydice, has significant implications for literature. On the one hand, Orpheus faces a death-in-life without Eurydice. On the other hand, had Orpheus succeeded in rescuing Eurydice, he might have forfeited his art through his attachment to his lady. Like the poet who dances to purge his soul from earthly desires, Orpheus’s loss grants him the opportunity to dedicate his life to his art and achieve immortality. For this reason, the Orphic myth indicates that Orpheus is the archetypal poet, whereas the myth itself represents “poetry thinking about itself.”60 Given the attributes of myths and rituals as for literary creativity, Rodgers’s observation that modern poetry would have developed differently in the absence of the current anthropological studies of mythology cannot be contested here.61 Anthropology enabled modern poets to understand the implications of the various myths for poetry. In this respect, Yeats was among the leading poets of his age to grasp the significance of dance imagery in the context of metapoetry, where his companion poems “Sailing to Byzantium” and “Byzantium” are cases

57 Carol Zaleski, Other World Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987), p. 192; hereafter referred to as Zaleski. 58 Smith, p. 208. 59 Ibid., p. 208. 60 Orpheus dies at the hands of the Maenads who decapitate his head, yet his head continues to sing. The singing head of Orpheus make “the mythical assertion that the work of a good artist survives him.” Olga Peters Hasty, Tsvetaeva’s Orphic Journeys in the Worlds of the Word (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern UP, 1996), pp. xiv; 13; hereafter referred to as Hasty. 61 Rodgers, p. 12. metapoetry between east and west 287 in point. For this reason, the study now turns to examine Yeats’s use of dance imagery in the context of his metapoetical concerns for the purpose of comparison with al-Bayātī’s use of dance imagery. Yeats’s Byzantium poems have strong affinities with the Orphic myth; they deal with the sacrifices that a poet has to endure to be able to dedicate his life to his art to attain immortality. By implication, the poems also reveal Yeats’s anxieties over gaining inspiration and his status as a poet. To achieve his purposes, Yeats weaves his metapoetical themes into the fabric of an imaginary journey to Byzantium, that is Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The journey is a variation on the Homeric nekyia because the speaker in the poem, who is the poetic mask of Yeats, does not descend to the Underworld. Instead, he heads to Byzantium. Yeats substitutes Byzantium for Hades to function as the realm of the intellect as Byzantium was celebrated for its great artists, scientists and philosophers. In “Sailing to Byzantium” Yeats clarifies the reasons that prompt the old poet, who is the speaker of the poem, to embark on a journey to Byzantium. The speaker scorns the young and the animal kingdom for wasting their time in the pursuit of sensuality. He understands the consequences of giving in to sensuality, for no one can succeed as a poet unless he controls his desires. He decides to sail to Byzantium to meet the sages of Byzantium, in the hope that they would admit him into their realm where he would dedicate his life to his art and learn how to create everlasting works of art that would immortalize him. Upon arriving in Byzantium, the speaker is astonished that the sages who meet him have ethereal forms, yet he realizes that their ethereal forms represent the purgation of their souls from desires. The sages themselves must be convinced that the speaker is purged from corporeal desires before they allow him to enter their realm. For this reason, they impose on him a process of initiation. The speaker’s initiation involves passing though flames in the Emperor’s Hall before performing the dance with the sages of Byzantium. Yeats uses fire as a paradoxical symbol of destructive passions and as a force that purges the soul from its desires. If the speaker succeeds in perfecting the initiation rites, the sages will admit him to their realm, the final goal of the speaker’s journey. Accordingly, after passing through a fire in the Emperor’s Hall, the sages accompany him in performing a dance of initiation. It is meant to be a ritualistic dance of purgation that cleanses his soul from the residues of passion. The success of his mission depends on whether or not his performance in the dance satisfies the sages. In the poem, the speaker describes the initiation rites by saying: 288 aida o. azouqa

At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, No storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame, Where blood-begotten spirits come And all complexities of fury leave, Dying into a dance, An agony of trance An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.62 The speaker “dies” during the dance because the dance in “Byzantium” functions as a metaphor of transcendence through the control of desires, a process that involves acquiring a new self after the “death” of the old one; in other words, it is an image of discarding the old self that is a kind of death.63 Without such a “death,” a poet cannot exercise the kind of self-control needed for gaining inspiration. Accordingly, the dance expresses a mystical or spiritual aspect of poetry that allows the poet to transcend himself, his time, and place. This is reminiscent of what happens in Sufi dancing. The image of the whirling Sufi dancers “fits the purposes of poets because dancing kills the ego, and once the ego has been killed, there is no further obstacle to prevent one from joining with God.”64 Dancing is also “a symbol for the reconciliation of antithetical experiences and polarities that Yeats’s cotemporaries expressed through images of dancing.”65 This is because Yeats was not alone to understand the implications of dance imagery. Other modern poets realized that “dancing reflects the threshold of experience; it is a dance of death and of the purgation of spirit, the purgatorial nature of the dance appears to become the correlative for a religious experience as well as psychic one.”66 Like Yeats, the issue of transcendence is central to the poetry of Tsvetaeva. Within Tsvetaeva’s oeuvre, there exist group apostrophic poems addressed to such poets as Blok, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, and others. Tsvetaeva’s apostrophic poems are significant to this study on metapoetry because they reflect a deep personal preoccupation with her self-image as a poet, so much so that it becomes one of the most

62 Yeats, p. 281. 63 Rodgers, p. 48. 64 Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco (New York: Bantam, 1961), pp. 143–44; qtd. in Rodgers, p. 5. 65 Rodgers, p. 48. 66 Ibid., p. 22. metapoetry between east and west 289 prominent themes of her work.67 However, Tsvetaeva differs from Yeats in that she explores the metapoetical issues through relying on the attributes of the Orphic myth. Because she had read vastly into the Russian and the European cultural heritage, Tsvetaeva understood the implications of the Orphic myth for poetry. She weaved the myth into the fabric of her apostrophic to maintain aesthetic distance, and to register her inspirational impasse and her status as a poet.68 In general, Tsvetaeva’s apostrophic poems read as romantic love poems in which the female speaker expresses her adoration to the male poet addressed in the poem. However, the poems are not romantic love poems. Even though they express Tsvetaeva’s indebtedness to the poets in question, she mainly composed them as a means for asserting her individuality as an artist with a distinct poetic voice. For this reason, Tsvetaeva evokes them in her poems so as to use their poetics as a litmus test for the reliability and the viability of her own poetic inclinations because Tsvetaeva believed that only a poet is qualified enough to judge another poet.69 These issues manifest themselves in Tsvetaeva’s cycle of “Poems for Block” in which the poet uses the Orphic myth to express her metapoetical concerns. In “Poems for Blok,” Tsvetaeva makes an imaginary journey to the realm of the dead to meet Blok. It is a journey that carries the implications of the descent in Classical mythology in general and in Homer in particular. In the poems, Blok, is a prototype of Orpheus, but unlike the myth, he is already dead, while Tsvetaeva, the Eurydice of the poem, resides in the world of the in-between, and she is the one who descends to the realm of the deceased to meet her Orpheus. In fact, Tsvetaeva’s ingenuity as a poet is reflected in her reversal of the gender role of the Orphic myth. The inversion of the myth in the context of “Poems for Block” functions as a metaphor for her individuality as a poet with a distinct poetic voice,70 where the “Second Poem” (1916)71 in the cycle of “Poems for Blok” is a case in point. In the poem, Tsvetaeva addresses Blok by saying:

67 Antonia F. Gove, “The Feminine Stereotype and Beyond: Role Conflict and Resolution in the Poetics of Marina Tsvetaeva,” Slavic Review, 36 (1977): p. 252; hereafter referred to as Gove. 68 Alyssa W. Dinega, A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind of Marina Tsvetaeva (Madison: University of Wisconsin P, 2001), p. 37; hereafter referred to as Dinega. 69 Jane A. Taubman, A Life Through Poetry: Marina Tsvetaeva’s Lyric Diary (New York: Slavica Publishers, 1988), p. 37; hereafter referred to as Taubman. 70 Hasty, p. 7. 71 Tsvetaeva, pp. 28–9. 290 aida o. azouqa

Tender-spectre blameless as a knight, who has called you into my adolescent life?

In blue dark, gray and priestly, you stand here, dressed in snow ———————— with light blue eyes his magic has bound me, the snowy singer: ———————— — I go, towards the door Behind, which is: death He sings to me behind the blue windows. He sings to me as jeweled bells.72 In the poem, Blok is “a spectre,” a ghostly shadow associated with bright images of whiteness and light. This indicates that Blok is alive in death, immortalized by his art. In the context of the iconography of the Homeric nekyia, Blok is the helpful spirit whose encounter with Tsvetaeva in the Underworld is beneficial to her as a poet, especially since Tsvetaeva associates him with bright images of whiteness and light. In this respect, Blok resembles the helpful shadows of Hades who enlighten Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey about his future and the dangers that lie ahead. Indeed, Tsvetaeva acknowledges her indebtedness to Blok as the one who had inspired her when she was aspiring to become a poet, for Tsvetaeva addresses Blok by saying: “who / has called you into/ my adolescent life?”73 On the other hand, Tsvetaeva’s poem also suggests that, despite her deep appreciation for Blok, she does not intend to follow him blindly as a poet, for Tsvetaeva says: “I go, towards the door/ behind which is: death.”74 Within the context of the poem, Blok’s death indicates that his power over her is a thing of the past, whereby her return to the world of the living symbolizes the acquisition of her own distinct voice as a poet.

72 Ibid., pp. 28–9. 73 Ibid., p. 28. 74 Ibid., p. 29. metapoetry between east and west 291

As seen, both Yeats and Tsvetaeva rely on rituals and myths in explor- ing their metapoetical concerns, but this was not the case with Stevens. Even though Stevens was a contemporary of Yeats and Tsvetaeva, he hardly ever relied on mythology to explore his metapoetical concerns. Stevens, had commenced his career as a belated romantic poet, but the publication of Harmonium in 1923 had significant implications for Stevens’ originality as a poet. It reveals that he had departed from Romantic subjectivism to the composition of a highly oblique and imagistic poetry that largely deals with metapoetical issues. At the same time, the poems of Harmonium embody textual evidence that Stevens’s poetry and poetics, and even his ontological outlook on life were highly influenced by the Avant-Garde movements in art, especially Picasso’s Cubism. For this reason, understanding Stevens’s metapoetical concerns requires a clarification of the connection between his poetry and the Avant-Garde movements in art in terms of their techniques and their representation of reality. Stevens’s interest in the Avant-Garde painting originated in having embraced their outlook on life. As a student at Harvard, Stevens became involved in the philosophical debates on the current philosophical views of James, George Santayana and Bergson. Like James and Santayana, Stevens was anti-absolutist and anti-transcendentalist, and believed that “truth” was always generated by context. He also believed that experience is flux and “he rejected, like James, the notion of arriving at truth through reason.”75 For Stevens, truth is identified with one’s experience, and with one’s state of consciousness at a given time. He believed that no one sees quite the same as anyone else and that there are as many realities as the observers, a notion that has its counterpart in the works of James and Santayana.76 This explains why Stevens says, “Things seen are things as seen.”77 At the same time, Stevens repeatedly explained the influence of Santayana and Bergson regarding the way

75 Marie Borroff, ed., “Wallace Stevens: The World and the Poet,” in:Wallace Stevens: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 2–3; hereafter referred to as Borroff, Critical Essays. 76 On the issue of sensory flux in Stevens’s work, see: Sister M. Bernetta Quinn in: Borroff, Critical Essays, pp. 54–5; hereafter referred to as Borroff, Critical Essays. 77 Frank Kermode, Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous, ed. and introd. Samuel French Morse (New York: Knopf, 1957), p. 162; hereafter referred to as Stevens, Opus Posthumous. 292 aida o. azouqa the imagination transforms reality into works of art,78 as reflected in Stevens’s essay “Imagination as Value” (1948).79 Stevens’s rejection of the possibility of mimesis in art led to his own formulations regarding the “truth” of art. In the absence of absolute truths in a chaotic universe, Stevens put his faith in the power of the imagination as the medium that gives one meaning and direction in life, so that the “coarseness and ennui” of actual life are “transformed,” “metamorphosed,” “placed” in the “imagination,” where they can be contemplated with happy interest.80 In his essay, “The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words,” (1941)81 Stevens explains how the poet transforms reality to create beautiful works of art that enable one to escape his reality by saying: The poet is able to abstract himself and also to abstract reality, which he does by placing it in his imagination. . . . Reality is things as they are. The imagination gives to everything that it touches a peculiarity and it seems to me that the peculiarity of the imagination is nobility.82 The passage reflects a dominant theme in Stevens’s prose works and his poetry. He constantly repeats the fact that the imagination creates “Supreme Fictions” that enable us to transcend reality: Stevens believed that “The poet serves the world out of poetry and gives to life the supreme fictions without which we should be unable to conceive it.”83 He adds that “poetry satisfies our desire for resemblance, but more than that, by the activity of the imagination, it intensifies reality, it enhances it.”84 Stevens’s comments on the relation between reality and the imagination affirm that he was more interested in the content of the poetics of the Avant-Garde art rather than its form, as the Imagists were.85 The

78 On the influence of George Santayana and Henri Bergson on Stevens, see: Frank Kermode, Wallace Stevens (Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1967), p. 80; hereafter referred to as Kermode. 79 Stevens, “Imagination as Value,” in: Stevens, Collected Poems, pp. 724–39. 80 Perkins, p. 280. 81 Wallace Stevens, “The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words,” in idem:The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (London, Boston: Faber and Faber, 1984), pp. 1–36; hereafter referred to as Stevens, Necessary Angel. 82 Stevens, Necessary Angel, pp. 22–23; 25; 33. 83 Quinn, Critical Essays, p. 62. 84 Stevens, Necessary Angel, p. vii. 85 Bonnie Costello, “Effects of Analogy: Wallace Stevens and Painting,” in:Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism, ed. Albert Gelpi (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UP, 1987), p. 66; hereafter referred to as Gelpi, Poetics. metapoetry between east and west 293 scholarship on Stevens’s work attests to the fact that his poetry is paint- erly in that Stevens adopted the fundamental principles of the Modernist revolution established by the visual arts.86 Stevens was interested in the way the Avant-Garde artists metamorphosed reality with the help of the imagination. He was convinced that the revolution in modern painting was deliberate because the deformity or formlessness of modern life required a “de-creation” as a condition for creation, reduction as a prerequisite for invention,87 with the help of the imagination. For this reason, Stevens maintains, “Modern reality is the reality of de-creation in which our revelations are not the revelations of belief, but the pre- cious portents of our powers.”88 Stevens’s comments on the “de-creation of reality” with the power of the imagination reveals that his relationship to painting is a figurative and a conceptual one. He is less interested in the practice of painting than in its theory.89 Apart from his interest in the ruling principle of detachment that governs modern art, what also drew Stevens to the theory of painting most of all was its struggle to define the essence of its medium and its special relation to reality.90 His remark that poetry is a process of “de-creation of reality” shows that he was interested in the Avant-Garde technique of representation in general, and that of Picasso in particular. In fact, Stevens’s notion of the “de-creation of reality” itself has its origins in Picasso’s comments on the nature of Cubism in art. The evidence lies in an essay published in Cahiers d’Art (1935) in which Picasso says: Formerly paintings evolved toward their final form by progression. Each day brought something new. A painting was a sum of additions. But for me, a painting is a hoard of destructions [une somme de destructions]. I make a painting, and then I destroy it.91 Picasso’s technique of the “destruction” or the “de-creation” of reality manifests itself in Stevens work in the way Stevens resorts to multiple

86 Charles Altieri, “Why Stevens Must Be Abstract, or What a Poet Can Learn from Painting,” in: Gelpi, Poetics, p. 87. 87 Albert Gelpi, “Stevens and Williams: The Epistemology of Modernism,” in: Gelpi, Poetics, p. 6. 88 Stevens, Necessary Angel, p. 173. 89 Costello, in: Gelpi, Poetics, p. 66. 90 Ibid., p. 66. 91 See the quotation from Picasso’s essay in: A. Walton Litz, Introspective Voyager: The Poetic Development of Wallace Stevens (New York: Oxford UP, 1972), p. 238; hereafter referred to as Litz. 294 aida o. azouqa analogies and sequences of images. His most characteristic habit in Harmonium and elsewhere is to pile up analogues which function as artistic equivalents to his epistemological outlook on reality92 It is a technique that reflects his belief in the multiplicity of “truths” or perceptions, asserting his view that there are “No absolute facts; rather . . . absolute facts include every thing that our imagination includes. This is our intimidating thesis.”93 As such, Stevens’s mode of representation reflects the way “Reality in Harmonium, as throughout Stevens, is that which the imagination in different ways at different times and different places must content with, compound with . . . for the revelations of the mind to reality is always changing.”94 In this way, the abstract is transformed into concrete images that simultaneously reflect Stevens’s epistemological outlook on life as well as the chaos, in Stevens’s view, that pervades the modern world. His technique affirms that Stevens had modern painting in mind when he set out to write his modern poetry.95 Like modern art, Stevens’s poetry turns the abstract into concrete images and “abstract art is concrete because it draws attention to its physical surface.”96 As in modern painting, especially in the work of the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, the intensification of images in Mondrian’s painting suggests the denial of “absolute truth.”97 Stevens intensifies his images to reflect his perpetual insistence on the impossibility of closure or reassuring certainty.98 Stevens’s outlook on life and art manifest themselves in his poem “The Man with the Blue Guitar.” It is generally assumed that the poem was inspired by Picasso’s painting “The Old Blind Guitarist” which was exhibited in Stevens’s hometown of Hartford in 1934. In Stevens’s poem, the man with the blue guitar sits in the cross-legged posture of Picasso’s old guitarist. While there is little impact of that particular painting on Stevens’s poem, the influence of contemporary art movements and of

92 Susan B. Weston, Wallace Stevens: An Introduction to the Poetry (New York: Columbia UP, 1977), p. 18; hereafter referred to as Weston. 93 Stevens, Necessary Angel, p. 61. 94 Kermode, p. 38. 95 On the impact of modern painting on Stevens, see Altieri, in Gelpi, Poetics, pp. 86–118; also see Weston, pp. 14–5 on the impact of Piet Mondrian on Stevens’s poetry. 96 Altieri, in Gelpi, Poetics, pp. 106–07. 97 Guy Rotella, Reading and Writing Nature: The Poetry of Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and Elizabeth Bishop (Boston: Northeastern UP, 1991), p. 105; hereafter referred to as Rotella. 98 Rotella, p. 105. metapoetry between east and west 295

Picasso in particular is reflected in the poem’s fragmentary form. Taking his cue from Picasso’s comment on the fragmented forms of his Cubist paintings as a manifestation of the artist’s outlook on reality, Stevens says in “The Man with the Blue Guitar:” Is this picture of Picasso, this “hoard Of destructions,” a picture of ourselves, Now an image of our society? Do I sit deformed, a naked egg, Catching at Goodbye, harvest moon, Without seeking the harvest or the moon? Things as they are have been destroyed Have I? Am I a man that is dead?99 The verses reveal that the Cubists’ sense of contemporary disorder and destruction enters the poem through Picasso’s own comment on his art,100 and they are important in the context of Stevens’s notions on the relationship between reality and poetic imagination. When Stevens says in the poem “Things as they are have been destroyed,”101 he merely expresses a personal conviction of the disparity between “The incessant conjunction between things as they are and things as imagined.”102 Accordingly, the poem is a metapoetical text because it revolves around the way the imagination recreates reality. The poet himself affirms the metapoetical nature of “The Man with the Blue Guitar” because the speaker in the poem says, “Poetry is the subject of the poem.”103 For this reason, Stevens opens the poem by saying: The man bent over his guitar, A shearsman of sorts. The day was green. They said, “You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are.” The man replied. “Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar.”104

99 Stevens, Collected Poems, pp. 141–2. 100 Litz, p. 238. 101 Stevens, Collected Poems, p. 142. 102 Stevens, Opus Posthumous, p. 161. 103 Stevens, Collected Poems, p. 144. 104 Ibid., p. 135. 296 aida o. azouqa

Within the context of the poem, blue which represents the imagination, seems to be an allusion to Picasso’s blue period, during which he painted “The Old Blind Guitarist,” whereas green is Stevens’s symbol for reality. Stevens differentiates between reality and the imagination through associating the first with green and the imagination with blue. In Picasso’s work, blue is the color of melancholy and in Stevens’s poem, it asserts Picasso’s influence on Stevens’s art and stands for the way the imagination transforms reality. Stevens’s guitarist, a representative of artists and poets, responds to the protests of his audience against his music by affirming that “Things as they are / Are changed upon the blue guitar.”105 Even though Stevens insists that the imagination recreates reality, he never believed in detaching poetry from reality. He expressed his view repeatedly by saying that “In poetry . . . the imagination must not detach itself from reality.”106 He reiterates the notion in the poem by saying “things are as I think they are / And say they are on the blue guitar.”107 In addition to the issue of the relationship between reality and the imagination, Stevens’s poem also deals with the role of poetry in enabling society to transcend itself. The poem is an expression of Stevens’s view that a poet’s supreme fictions enable us to see the world anew, to invent new myths for the age108 for he maintains that “the poet’s role is to help people to live their lives; he gives to life the supreme fictions without which we are unable to conceive of it.”109 In “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” the real world is a “banal suburb,”110 where man’s senses have been blunted and he is so unaware of his reality that “things as they are have been destroyed.”111 It is a harsh world where “The earth is not the earth but a stone . . . / An oppressor that grudges their death, / And it grudges the living that they live.”112

105 Ibid., p. 135. 106 Stevens, Opus Posthumous, p. 161. 107 Stevens, Collected Poems, p. 148. 108 Axel Nissen, “Perpetuum Mobile: Reading Wallace Steven’s ‘The Man with the Blue Guitar,’ ” English Studies 3 (2000): p. 218; hereafter referred to as Nissen. 109 Stevens, Necessary Angel, p. vii. 110 Stevens, Collected Poems, p. 149. 111 Ibid., p. 142. 112 Ibid., p. 143. metapoetry between east and west 297

Unlike the masses, the old guitarist in Stevens’s poem is the only one who is aware of their ordeal. He attributes their dullness to the lack of passion and imagination. The guitarist takes it upon himself the task of rekindling their spirits with his art;113 otherwise his guitar is a hollow and a worthless instrument.114 To achieve his objective, the guitarist must abandon conventionality because it leads to solipsism,115 as opposed to novelty116 because novelty is capable of rekindling the spirits of the masses. Stevens’s poem reflects the importance of art in society. He believes that in a world devoid of faith and convictions, the path to salvation resides in art. In his essay “The Relations between Poetry and Painting,” (1951)117 Stevens had maintained that “in an age in which disbelief is profoundly prevalent . . . poetry and . . . painting . . . are . . . a compensation for what has been lost.”118 In spite of Stevens’s enthusiasm for the social role of poetry, he realizes that it cannot entirely change our lives. Poetry can rekindle our spirits and help us to escape reality momentarily. This is reflected in the following verses from “The Man with the Blue Guitar” where the speaker says: A tune beyond us as we are, Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar; Ourselves in the tune as if in space, Yet nothing changed, except the place Of things as they are and only the place As you play them, on the blue guitar, Placed, so, beyond the compass of change, Perceived in a final atmosphere; For a moment final, in the way The thinking of art seems final when The thinking of god is smoky dew. The tune is space. The blue guitar

113 Ibid., pp. 149–50. 114 Kermode, p. 69. 115 Stevens, Collected Poems, p. 140. 116 Ibid., p. 150. 117 Stevens, Necessary Angel, pp. 157–76. 118 Stevens, Collected Poems, pp. 170–1. 298 aida o. azouqa

Becomes the place of things as they are, A composing of senses of the guitar.119 The verses suggest that music, like poetry, is a source of joy. The buzzing of life’s diversity becomes the buzzing of the blue guitar. For a moment at least, the imagination can seize upon reality and give it a place “in space,” beyond time’s “compass of change.” It is a notion that reflects Stevens’s conviction that the fundamental principle about the imagination is that “it does not create except as it transforms.”120 The investigation of the works of Yeats, Tsvetaeva, and Stevens reveals the extent of their indebtedness to the current interest in mythology and the Avant-Garde theories in the plastic arts in the composition of their metapoetical texts. In moving to the Arab World, one discovers that the same factors that had influenced the Western composers of metapoetry also affected the poetry of al-Bayātī, owing to the interest of modern Arab poets in mythology and the Avant-Garde movements in painting.121 At the same time, one may attribute the analogies between al-Bayātī’s metapoetical texts and the texts of his Western peers, in terms of their subject matter and their poetic techniques, to al-Bayātī’s intensive reading in world literature. An examination of some of his metapoetical texts reveals many analogies with Western poets in a way that enables us to gain a better understanding of his art as a poet. The first analogy in al-Bayātī’s work with the work of the Western poets manifests itself in his use of dance imagery. Dancing as an expression of metapoetical concerns takes center-stage in al-Bayātī’s poem “The Gypsy Symphony.” Set in Granada in Spain, the poem depicts two gypsies, a singer and a dancer, who dances to a melody played on a guitar. The performance takes place at night, somewhere near the Palace of Alhambra. Within the context of the poem, Alhambra Palace represents the timelessness of artistic creativity. The Palace has withstood time and it is still as beautiful and as appealing as when it was first built. Like the dancer in modern Western metapoetry, the singer and the dancer in “The Gypsy Symphony” represent the rebellious and visionary poet who dances “to lose” his old self in the dance and emerge with a new one

119 Stevens, Collected Poems, p. 137. 120 Wallace Stevens, Letters of Wallace Stevens, ed. Holly Stevens (New York: Knopf, 1966), p. 364; hereafter referred to as Stevens, Letters. 121 See notes 38–42 above. metapoetry between east and west 299 that enables him to transcend himself, his time and his place through his art. Like Stevens’s guitarist, he too is a visionary poet who calls upon his readers to abandon their complacency so that they, too, can transcend themselves. In the verses that follow, the speaker describes how the singer and the dancer join in a frenzy dance while they call upon their viewers to ‘wake up’ and take control of their destiny: The gypsy cried: Wake up you pillars / temples / arches O prisms of light in the poem of the future / The prophecy / the voyage! The virgin stretched her hand towards his and clasped it They danced together and became a flame The rose blazed in her hair The gypsy cried: Burn, you beautiful little one! She tilted her head, their eyes and lips met This is the time of death on spring’s pillow. He tilted his head, she held him close to her as he cried, Exorcising the ghosts with his singing.122 As a metapoetical text, al-Bayātī’s poem brings to mind Yeat’s image of ritualistic dancing in “Byzantium.” Like Yeats, al-Bayātī uses dancing to stand for the way a poet has to give up his old self and acquire a new one if he is to succeed as an artist. As they join in the dance, both the singer and the dancer succeed in overcoming their corporeal desires, since “they danced together and became a flame.” Turning into a flame of fire, or being touched by fire flames as in Yeats’s poem, signifies that the dancers are now “ghosts” purged, that is exorcised, of their desires. The second metapoetical theme in al-Bayātī’s “The Gypsy Symphony” concerns the social role of the poet as vates that is as a visionary poet, in reviving the spirit of the nation through his visionary poetry. This is reflected in al-Bayātī’s expression of “the poem of the future.” The singer calls upon his tribe to “Wake up” and takes control of their destiny, by shaking of the shackles of oppression. However, the singer does not foresee any hope in the near future. He consults a fortune-teller in an attempt to foresee the future of his people. To his disappointment, the fortune-teller gives him no hope for a better future; instead, she advises him to emigrate by saying that

122 Frangieh, p. 153. 300 aida o. azouqa

There are magnificent cities out there, Beyond the river So, depart Here, the lines in your palm are mute. She [the fortune-teller] began to cry.123 The gypsy singer’s plight is the plight of the gypsies ever since they arrived in Spain in 1417. The gypsies were persecuted because of racial and cultural differences with the Europeans. As such, the gypsies in al-Bayātī’s poem represent the oppressed nations in general and the Arabs in particular. At the same time, the gypsy singer is al-Bayātī’s poetic mask. Like the gypsy singer who calls upon his tribe to take control of their destiny, al-Bayātī uses the Alhambra Palace as a reminder of the Arab glories of the past. It is true that in the context of the poem the Palace stands for the immortality of art, yet the poet also invokes it to function as a source of inspiration for the Arabs to take control of their destiny. For the time being, al-Bayātī, like the gypsy singer in the poem is disillusioned because he does not foresee hope in the near future. The fortune-teller’s advice to the gypsy artist confirms his fears, and his disillusionment is reflected in the fact that “Alhambra was drowning as usual in silence,”124 signifying that the Arab nation is dormant and oblivious of the glories of its past. Next to dancing, another analogy between al-Bayātī and the Western composers of metapoetry manifests itself in the use of Ancient and Classical mythology of descent to the Underworld. Al-Bayātī maintains that he was well aware of the essential patterns of similarities among fertility myths,125 which suggests that he knew how to use them in the contexts of metapoetical texts. In this respect, Moreh explains that al-Bayātī relied on fertility myths because their fundamental patterns (of the death and the rebirth of pagan deities) render them flexible enough to absorb al-Bayātī’s recurrent themes of love, death, resurrection, and revolution.126 Moreh adds that al-Bayātī invariably expands the scope of the fertility myths by blending them with additional fictions of his own creation,127 where al-Bayātī’s cycle of the ʿĀʾisha poems is a case in point.

123 Frangieh, p. 157. 124 Ibid., p. 155. 125 Al-Bayātī, Poetic Experience, p. 34. 126 S. Moreh, Modern Arabic Poetry 1800–1970: The Development of Its form and Themes under the Influence of Western Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), p. 251; hereafter referred to as Moreh. 127 Moreh, p. 251. metapoetry between east and west 301

The figure ofʿ Āʾisha recurs throughout al-Bayātī’s poems and she assumes a fresh identity in each poem to become the lens through which the poet sees himself and the world.128 Her roles range from being the beloved of the male personas of the poems to assuming the identity of the Babylonian fertility goddess, Ishtār, and, in the context of his metapoetical poems, ʿĀʾisha represents poetic inspiration as is the case in al-Bayātī’s poem “ʿĀʾisha’s Mad Lover.” Al-Bayātī’s “ʿĀʾisha’s Mad Lover” deals with three metapoetical issues: anxiety over poetic inspiration, the social role of poetry,129 and the persecution of poets that results in the self-exile of the poets.130 The significance of inspirational impasse in al-Bayātī’s poetry reflects a source of constant anxiety on the personal level, for he describes it by saying that “it is the poet’s destiny to approach the cities of love (inspiration, revelation) only to see them disappear and to reappear after his [the poet’s] departure.”131 As for the question of exile, the poet had spent years in self-exile to avoid persecution, which explains why the trauma of exile recurs in his poetry. As a metapoetical poem that relies on fertility myths, al-Bayātī’s “ʿĀʾisha’s Mad Lover” portrays a mythical never-never-land of the poet’s own creation. In the context of the poem, ʿĀʾisha assumes the role of Ishtār or Eurydice, or a combination of both, and her dwelling place in the mythical orchard represents, as al-Bayātī puts it, “the republic [meaning the realm] of poetry, something along the lives of Plato’s fictitious Republic.”132 In other words, the orchard is the counterpart of Hades in Homer’s work and of Byzantium in Yeats’s poems. In “ʿĀʾisha’s Mad Lover,” the speaker, ʿĀʾisha’s lover, has the attributes of Tammūz and Orpheus; the poem revolves around the lover’s descent to the Underworld to rescue ʿĀʾisha from death. In the opening

128 Frangieh, pp. 7–8. 129 See Muhsin al-Musawi, “Al-Bayātī’s Poetics of Exile,” Journal of Arabic literarure , XXXII, no. 2, 2001, pp. 212–238. 130 The issue of the persecution of poets for political reasons is a constant theme in al-Bayātī’s poetry. See, for example, his poem “Elegy for Nazim Hikmat” in: al-Bayātī, Dīwān, Vol. I: p. 482. Al-Bayātī laments the suffering of Hikmat during his impris- onment for political reasons. The some sentiments are expressed in al-Bayātī’s poem to the Spanish poet Raphael Alberti during the Franco regime, for Alberti fled Spain because he feared for his life. See the poem “To Raphael Alberti,” in: al-Bayātī, Dīwān, Vol. II: pp. 368–71. 131 Al-Bayātī, Poetic Experience, p. 119; the translation is mine. 132 ʿ Abd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī, Kuntu Ashkū ilā l-Ḥ ajar [I Complained to the Stone] (Beirut: Al-Muʾassasah al-ʿArabiyyah lil-Dirasāt wa l-Nashr, 1993), p. 70; hereafter, referred to as al-Bayātī, I Complained. 302 aida o. azouqa of the poem, the mad lover is kept awake at night by the singing of a nightingale. Since the nightingale symbolizes poets and their singing stands for poetry, the scene indicates that the mad lover’s insomnia results from his agonies over achieving poetic inspiration, symbol- ized by his yearning to be reunited with ʿĀʾisha. The singing of the nightingale revives the lover’s soul and he succeeds in releasing ʿĀʾisha from the “Deep . . . enchanted darkness”133 of the Underworld. ʿĀʾisha’s ascent to earth brings the bloom of spring and the mad lover is happy with reunion; he stands at the gate of ʿĀʾisha’s orchard “Praying for its flowering branch, / For the light which comes from inside, / For the colors / Carrying my [the lover’s] vows to the capital of the empire.”134 The mad lover’s descent to the Underworld is successful because he overcomes his inspirational impasse; this is suggested by the bloom of spring and the bright images of color (that is poetry) and the of “the light which comes from inside.”135 The light signifies the creative power of the imagination. The mad poet feels that he has transcended himself. Standing at the gate of ʿĀʾisha’s orchard, he acquires fresh ideas for his next poems, and, which he hopes would spread to reach “the capital of the empire.” At the same time, the positive impact of the nightingale on the mad lover seems to suggest that al-Bayātī is grateful to poets who inspire him because the nightingale symbolizes poets. Like Tsvetaeva’s metapoems, al-Bayātī’s “ ʿĀʾisha’s Mad Lover” embodies the iconography of the Homeric nekyia. It is a “near-death narrative” because the mad lover embarks on a difficult journey to the realm of poetry to redeem ʿĀʾisha, the symbol of poetic inspiration. The poem suggests that the lover prefers to die rather than lose ʿĀʾisha per- manently because al-Bayātī himself believed that “art defeats death and time and it also guarantees the artist his immortality.”136 Accordingly, the poem reiterates the fact that al-Bayātī preferred “to die in life rather than die in death, because the other one is not death.”137 Elsewhere, al-Bayātī reiterates the same notion by saying that “we [poets] die in life, and when that happens, artistic creativity becomes the means for defeating death.”138

133 Frangieh, p. 83. 134 Ibid., p. 83. 135 Ibid., p. 83. 136 Al-Bayātī, I Complained, p. 12. 137 Al-Bayātī, Poetic Experience, p. 100. 138 Ibid., pp. 11; 39; 42. metapoetry between east and west 303

The second metapoetical theme in “ʿ Āʾisha Mad Lover” pertains to the social role of poetry in inspiring the nation. In the poem, the mad poet says that ʿĀʾisha’s return has inspired him and he wants to roam the land “Carrying my [his] views to the capital of the empire / And the stone of wisdom and legend / . . . so I [the mad lover] . . . cross the desert / walking behind my camel, dawn preceding to Bukhara.”139 Contrary to his expectations, the mad poet is dismayed to realize that in a mundane world of spiritual aridity and moral degeneration, suggested by the mythical implications of the arid landscape in the opening the poem,140 no one appreciates his art. Instead, he is persecuted and forced into self-exile of continuous wandering, for he says: “I return, carrying my vows to Damascus / Pursued, starved for love . . .”141 The poem suggests that because of the lack of appreciation for art in the land of oppression, ʿĀʾisha, who stands for poetry and poetic creativity, disappears once again in the darkness of the Underworld, leaving her lover to suffer the consequences. Like Philomel in the myth of the Fisher King, she is the victim of injustice. In his lonely existence, the mad lover offers a sacrifice by slaughtering his “camel at the gate of [ʿĀʾisha’s] orchard,”142 in the hope that ʿĀʾisha would return to him, but with no avail. The prevailing spiritual aridity causes her departure, but in retribution, a curse is laid on the land for the “cities [are] stricken by plague.” Even though the mad lover cannot findʿ Āʾisha, he neither gives up the search, nor does he become disillusioned; he stays loyal to the cause of enlightenment because al-Bayātī believed that art and love lead to salvation in an otherwise chaotic world. For this reason, the mad lover declares that “ In the times of anarchy and in the era of terror / I [the mad poet] lit the flame of love.”143 For the time being, darkness (a symbol of tyranny and moral degeneration) envelops the land because the nocturnal opening of the poem does not change into daylight. The

139 Frangieh, p. 87. 140 The opening of “ʿĀʾisha’s Mad Lover” makes an allusion to the mythical Wasteland of the Fisher King to draw an analogy between the spiritual aridity in “ ʿĀʾisha’s Mad Lover” and a mythical counterpart by invoking an arid landscape filled at night with the singing of a nightingale. Hence, al-Bayātī opens the poem by “ ʿĀʾisha’s Mad Lover” by invoking an arid landscape that represents moral degeneration and spiritual aridity. 141 Frangieh, p. 83. 142 Ibid., p. 85. 143 Ibid., p. 87. 304 aida o. azouqa land turns into a vast desert where “the terrified gazelles were searching / For books in the snare of death.”144 Al-Bayātī’s comparison of ʿĀʾisha to a gazelle suggests the hunt and the torture she faces as if she were a gazelle;145 by analogy, the poet is also a gazelle, and his only crime is that he wants to bring love and enlightenment to his people through his art, but he is hounded and forced to lead a nomadic existence. Al-Bayātī’s use of the gazelle as a source of enlightenment has its origins in Ibn ʿArabī’s poetry, and the poem shows how al-Bayātī drew on Arabic poetry, the way he drew on Western literature, to compose many of his poems. Ibn ʿArabī’s uses the gazelle as a symbol for God’s secrets and light and acts as intermediary for revelation. The mad lover’s oppressors fail to recognize the secrets and truths, which the gazelle bears. The mad poet is the only one who searches for ʿĀʾisha because he knows her true value.146 Like the Arab poet Qays ibn al-Mulawwaḥ, who is known as Majnūn Layla [Layla’s mad lover], our poet is condemned to turn mad looking for ʿĀʾisha because he cannot live without her. Accordingly, in a land where art is not appreciated, it surprises no one that “The fascists burned / My [the mad poet’s] letters and my [his] books.”147 Like “ʿĀʾisha’s Mad Lover,” al-Bayātī’s “Elegy for ʿĀʾisha” deals with his recurrent themes of inspirational impasse, and of the severe restrictions laid upon the freedom of speech in the Arab World through the persecution of poets and intellectuals. At the same time, the poem rebukes the intellectuals for neglecting their responsibilities towards the nation. To convey the first theme, he draws on the attributes of the Orphic myth and of pastoral poetry, while he deals with the second theme through a combination of the fertility myth of Ishtār and Tammūz with the Orphic one. In the context of the poem, ʿĀʾisha is both Eurydice and Ishtār, while the speaker is at once Tammūz and Orpheus. The poem opens by making an allusion to pastoral poetry through the invocation of a shepherd; it also makes allusions to Orpheus and to Galen (c. 130–200 A.D.), the celebrated Greek physician and man-of- letters. As known, shepherds in Classical pastoral poetry symbolize the poets, while Orpheus is the archetypal poet; altogether, the three figures

144 Ibid., p. 10. 145 Ibid., p. 89. 146 Frangieh, p. 89. 147 Boulos, Anthology, p. 176. metapoetry between east and west 305 in the poem’s opening represent poets and intellectuals and al-Bayātī invokes them to function as representatives of those who suffer because they pursue the truth. Thus the speaker opens it by saying: Like Galen even him The shepherd waiting dies Orpheus swallows the sun disk,148 The above verses indicate that Galen, the shepherd, and Orpheus have one thing in common: all three are victimized because of their pursuit of wisdom and the perfection of their art; this is reflected by the image of the shepherd’s death in life and the way Orpheus is forced to swal- low the sun disk. Al-Bayātī’s theme of inspirational impasse in “Elegy for ʿĀʾisha” manifests itself in the speaker’s suffering ever since the death of ʿĀʾisha, who, in the context of the theme, represents inspiration. The poem suggests that forces beyond the speaker’s control prevent him from descending to the Underworld to meet her. For the time being, he can only see her in a vision, and her absence has caused draught and fires, both of which represent the difficulties of poetic inspiration. As such, instead of rain falling upon the land, “Thunder clapped / the earth replied/ with a cloud of fire.”149 Al-Bayātī’s “Elegy for ʿĀʾisha” is a variation on the iconography of the Homeric nekyia. Instead of descending to the realm of the dead, the speaker sees ʿĀʾisha only in a vision. It illustrates how a poet dies in life when inspiration escapes him for he says: “After this vision sick I die / My queen like you / Bedded on stone and flame.”150 So long as ʿĀʾisha lies dead under stones and earth, he feels dead-in-life without her inspiration, and he describes his agonies by saying: “O thin sustenance / Each night to die / Sober and drunk I go / Through houses of the dead / In Babylon ruins / Along the river shore / Alone . . . .” Al-Bayātī’s “Elegy for ʿĀʾisha” on the one hand laments the disappearance of inspiration, and on the other, it also suggests that oppression contributes to the blocking of inspiration. The central dilemma in the poem revolves around the way inspiration has evaded the speaker because the tyrants have committed ʿĀʾisha to stay underground. Nature

148 Ibid., p. 177. 149 Boulos, Anthology, p. 178. 150 Ibid., p. 178 . 306 aida o. azouqa mourns her by withholding rain and preventing the return of spring. For this reason, the speaker in the poem eulogizes ʿĀʾisha by saying, “Let the Euphrates mourn for her/ Let all the poems mourn.” In tyran- nical times, al-Bayātī seems to say, mass produced second-rate books replace genuine creativity. For this reason, the popularization of culture, that had worried Stevens, was also a source of agony to al-Bayātī. The speaker of the poem describes such a degeneration in public taste by stating that the public prefers reading “A worn book read by lovers / A book sold by scribes.”151 Unlike the cycle of the ʿĀʾisha poems, al-Bayātī’s poem “The Night- mare” is a departure from the cycle in style and subject matter. The poem marks a new phase in al-Bayātī’s composition of metapoetical texts. Myth disappears from “The Nightmare,” and so do the themes of poetic inspiration and the persecution of poets. As such, the poem’s novelty pertains to its affinities with the issues that Stevens deals with in “The Man with the Blue Guitar.” Like Stevens, al-Bayātī’s poem reveals that he believed that art in general, and poetry in particular, transform reality into something sublime, through the power of the imagination, without divorcing art from reality. In this respect, al-Bayātī’s “The Nightmare” resembles Stevens’s “The Man with the Blue Guitar” because both poets invoke Picasso’s painting “The Old Blind Guitarist” to function as a metaphor for the central theme of their respective poems. There is no indication that al-Bayātī had read Stevens’s poem, “The Man with the Blue Guitar.” Nevertheless, like “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” his poem “The Nightmare” is about a guitarist who pours his soul into his music to please his audience. In the context of “The Nightmare,” the guitarist stands for the artist who, like Picasso, transforms reality into something sublime through the power of his imagination. The speaker of the poem describes the guitarist by saying: At the gate of Hell stood Picasso, and the guitar player from Madrid Raised the curtain for the ravished theatre queens, Restored to the clown his virginity, Hid weapons and seeds in the earth until another resurrection. He died in a cafe in exile, his eyes towards his distant land, Gazing through clouds of smoke and the newspaper, His hand tracing in the air A mysterious sign pointing to the weapons and seeds.

151 Ibid., p. 179. metapoetry between east and west 307

The guitar player from Madrid dies In order that he may be born again, Under the suns of other cities and in different masks, And search for the kingdom of rhythm and color, And for its essence which activates a poem, Live through the revolutions of the age of Faith and Rebirth, Waiting fighting, migrating with the seasons, Returning to mother earth with those wearing a crown of torturing light, The dissenters and the builders of creative cities In the bottom of the sea of rhythm and color.152 Like Stevens’s old guitarist who changes reality on his blue guitar, al-Bayātī’s Spanish guitarist possesses magical powers that enable him to charm his audience. Al-Bayātī indicates that art can take us to never- never-lands where we can dream and escape our reality, which is what Stevens also believes art can do. In his poem “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” the speaker comments on this way as it enables us to escape realities by saying: A tune beyond us as we are, Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar; Ourselves in tune as if in space, Yet nothing changed except the place— Of things as they are and only the place As you play them on the blue guitar. Placed, so, beyond the compass of change, Perceived in a final atmosphere;153 The second metapoetical issue that al-Bayātī examines in “The Nightmare” concerns artistic innovation. As a new kind of metapoetry, al-Bayātī’s “The Nightmare” emphasizes experimentation in poetry. The invocation of Picasso in the first line of the poem denotes that al-Bayātī wants to break away from the existing poetic tradition of romantic love to explore new subjects and modes of expression, the way Picasso had changed art. Al-Bayātī regards conventionality a “nightmare” from while he hopes to awaken. Accordingly, al-Bayātī opens the poem by saying: “I returned to “Picasso’s” Hell and the night of time steeped in

152 Badawi, p. 215. 153 Stevens, Collected Poems, p. 137. 308 aida o. azouqa love poems . . . / searching for the kingdom of rhythm and color.”154 The Spanish guitarist believes that his pursuit of innovation has turned his art into “seeds in the earth” whose fruits will nourish future artist. It has become a source of inspiration to “the dissenters and the builders of creative cities.”155 At the same time, even though the Spanish guitarist in al-Bayātī’s poem dies destitute, “in a café in exile his eyes towards his distant land,” his innovations and his genius will immortalize him; he will live in death for al-Bayātī says: “The guitar player from Madrid dies / In order that he may born again, / under the sun of other cities and in different masks.”156 To conclude, it has become obvious that al-Bayātī was an innovator because he succeeded, as the Western poets had done, in destroying the barriers that had separated Arabic poetry from literary criticism. To achieve his purposes, al-Bayātī relied on the Western modes of expression to convey his metapoetical concerns. He fully understood the implications of myths and dance imagery for literature. He was equally well aware of the intricate relation between modern poetry and the poetics of the Avante-Garde art, especially where the question of mimesis in art is concerned. For this reason, al-Bayātī was among the first few poets in the Arab World to fragment the forms of his poems, and to use fragmentation as a metaphor for what he deems it to be the chaos that pervades the Arab World. Nevertheless, al-Bayātī was not a mere imitator. Whenever he used the Western modes of expression, in the form of myths or of dance imagery, al-Bayātī always succeeded in blending the Western elements with the Arabic tradition, either by substituting the foreign elements for Eastern counterparts, or simply by blending those foreign elements with Eastern ones in myths of his own creation, as is the case with many of his ʿĀʾisha poems. He also grasped the essence of Picasso’s innovations, which explains why Picasso is the focal point of his poem “The Nightmare.” The result is a collection of metapoetical poems interesting in their own right, but they were not divorced from the quotidian problems of the Arab World. In other words, al-Bayātī remained an Arab poet in spirit despite his innovations. He also paved the way for future poets in the region not to refrain from attempting to test new modes of expression for fear

154 Al-Bayātī, Dīwān, Vol. I: p. 276; the translation is mine. 155 Badawi, p. 215. 156 Ibid., p. 215. metapoetry between east and west 309 of cutting themselves from their national tradition. For this reason, al-Bayātī is a pioneer who made significant contributions to Arabic poetry by departing from the tradition both “in substance as well as in structure.”157 On the other hand, owing to the limited scope of the study, many of al-Bayātī’s metapoetical poems were regrettably left out, of which his apostrophic poems, addressed to poets and other intellectuals, are a case in point. Perhaps other scholars may later be interested in investigating them.

157 Frangieh, p. 1.

“IN A LANGUAGE THAT WAS NOT HIS OWN”: ON AḤ̣LĀM MUSTAGHĀNAMĪ’S DHĀKIRAT AL-JASAD AND ITS FRENCH TRANSLATION MÉMOIRES DE LA CHAIR

Elizabeth M. Holt

When Aḥlām Mustaghānamī won the prestigious Najīb Maḥfūẓ Medal for Literature in 1998 from the American University in Cairo for her first novel Dhākirat al-jasad, she enthusiastically welcomed the prize. In her acceptance speech, Mustaghānamī underscored the “moral support” such a prize provides to her fellow “Algerian writers writing in Arabic who confront unarmed the onslaughts of Francophony.”1 Mustaghānamī stages this conflict between the Arabic writer and the Algerian legacy of francophonie throughout Dhākirat al-jasad. The novel relies on an Arabic readership that is able to parse the novel’s investment in and intertextuality with the Arabic literary tradition. Not only is much of this obscured in any translation, but due to the historical endurance of the Francophone Algerian literary tradition, the translation of this novel into French as Mémoires de la chair significantly mutes the linguistic drama being staged. First published in 1993, Dhākirat al-jasad has become one of the best-selling Arabic novels, with over 130,000 copies sold, selling out multiple printings each year since its appearance.2 It is the first novel in a trilogy, followed by Fawḍā al-ḥawāss (Chaos of the Senses, 1997) and Mustaghānamī’s most recent novel, ʿĀbir sarīr (Passer by a Bed, 2002). Mustaghānamī is also the author of two volumes of Arabic poetry, ʿAlā marfaʾ al-ayyām (Upon the Harbor of Days, 1973) and al-Kitāba fi laḥzaṭ ʿurī (Writing at the Moment of Nakedness, 1976), and a volume of literary criticism written in French, Algérie: Femmes & écritures (Algeria: Women & Writings, 1985).

1 Ahlam Mosteghanemi, “‘To Colleagues of the Pen,’” Al-Ahram Weekly On-line no. 409 (24–30 December 1998). 2 Kim Jensen, “A Literature Born from Wounds,” Al-Jadid: A Review of Arab Culture and Arts 8, no. 39 (Spring 2002); “Author Profile: Ahlam Mosteghenami,”Magharebia: The News and Views of the Maghreb (13 January 2005). 312 elizabeth m. holt

Dhākirat al-jasad became the center of much attention in Arabic literary and cultural circles. As the novel is written in the first person from the perspective of its male protagonist Khālid and is the first to be written in Arabic by an Algerian woman, a debate ensued in the Arab press as to whether Mustaghānamī in fact wrote the novel. Some suggested that the book was the work of either the Syrian poet Nizār Qabbānī or the Iraqi poet Saʿdī Yūsuf, while the literary critic Rajāʾ al-Naqqāsh argues in his book-length study that the novel is based off the Syrian novelist Ḥaydar Ḥaydar’s Walīma li-aʿshāb al-baḥr [Banquet for Seaweed], published in 1983.3 Critics writing in English approach the question of authorship somewhat differently. Ellen McLarney considers the accusation that a man wrote the novel to be “the worst ignominy that can befall a woman writer.” She takes the accusation as a jumping-off point for her argument that “Dhākirat al-jasad is hardly a blueprint for women’s writing . . . instead, it is a criticism of the masculine perspective, an exposure of its weaknesses, inefficacy, and impotence,” a theme McLarney notes Mustaghānamī addresses in her critical work.4 Muhsin al-Musawi treats the masculine perspective in the novel from another angle, arguing that “there is an intimate suggestion that the male protagonist is given this narrative space to bypass moral strictures which a woman writer cannot escape in her own voice.”5 Elsewhere in this seminal study of postcolonial Arabic fiction al-Musawi addresses himself to the national context of the novel and its concern with “the Francophone legacy from which no postcolonial writer in North Africa claims absolute freedom.”6 Aida A. Bamia likewise directs our attention to the significance of Mustaghānamī’s decision to write in Arabic in the Algerian national context, reminding us of the “heated polemics on the linguistic choices of the writers in the early years of [Algerian] independence.”7 In this essay, I take up Dhākirat al-jasad ’s investment in overcoming the Francophone Algerian legacy through writing in

3 Rajā ʾ al-Naqqāsh, Qisṣ aṭ riwāyatayn: Dirāsa naqdiyya wa-fikriyya li-riwāyat Dhākirat al-jasad wa-riwāyat Walīma li-aʿshāb al-baḥr (Cairo: Dār al-hilāl, 2001). 4 Ellen McLarney, “Unlocking the Female in Aḥlām Mustaghānamī,” Journal of Arabic Literature 33, no. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 24, 43. 5 Muhsin al-Musawi, The Post-colonial Arabic Novel: Debating Ambivalence (Leiden, NLD: Brill, 2003), p. 238. 6 Ibid., p. 235. 7 Aida A. Bamia, “Dhākirat al-Jasad (The Body’s Memory): A New Outlook on Old Themes,” Research in African Literatures 28 (Fall 1997), p. 87. “in a language that was not his own” 313

Arabic, and ask what happens to the legibility of this linguistic drama when the novel enters the world of francophonie through translation. Mustaghānamī directs the reader to the politics of writing in Arabic rather than French before the first chapter of Dhākirat al-jasad even begins. On the dedication page, Mustaghānamī addresses her project to the memory of her father, himself an important figure in the Algerian fight for independence, and to Mālik ̣Haddād, an Algerian author who Mustaghānamī identifies as a “martyr of the Arabic language,” who abandoned writing in French only to never write again, for he “swore after Algeria’s independence not to write in a language that was not his own.”8 What is at stake in Mustaghānamī’s choice to write in Arabic is brought further into relief in a piece in Egypt’s Al-Ahram Weekly, when Ferial Ghazoul quotes the Egyptian critic ʿAlī al-Rāʿī as saying, “Aḥlām Mustaghānamī is a writer who has banished the linguistic exile to which French colonialism pushed Algerian intellectuals.”9 In 2002, Algeria’s first President Ahmed Ben Bella described Mustaghānamī as “an Algerian sun illuminating Arabic literature. With her [creative] production she has raised Algerian literature to a stature worthy of the history of our struggle. We take pride in her Arabic pen, our pride as Algerians in our Arabness.”10 Mustaghānamī’s decision to write for an Arabic-reading audience is here read as crystallizing a sense of Algerian national coherence. As Ben Bella’s statement suggests, Algeria’s history of polylingualism is the topic of much national debate, regarding not only the status of French and written Arabic, but also that of colloquial Algerian Arabic, as well as regional languages such as Kabyle or Tamazight, and Touareg.11

8 Ah ̣lām Mustaghānamī, Dhākirat al-jasad (Beirut: Dār al-ādāb, 1993), p. 5. “shahīd al-lugha al-ʿarabiyya”; “aqsama baʿda istiqlāl al-jazāʾir alla yaktub bi-lugha laysat lughatahu.” All translations from Arabic and French are my own unless otherwise specified. 9 Ferial Ghazoul, “Memory and Desire,” Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, no. 409 (24–30 December 1998). 10 Cited on Mustaghānamī’s Arabic website, www.mosteghanemi.net. Also in short- ened form in French translation in “Le grand art de Ahlem Mosteghanemi,” La Presse/ All Africa (6 June 2005). 11 For a detailed description of Algeria’s linguistic multiplicity, see Reda Bensmaïa, “La littérature algérienne face à la langue: le théâtre de Kateb Yacine,” Itinéraires et contacts de cultures 4–5 (Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan, 1984) 59–82. For an analysis of Algerian linguisitic debates at the end of the twentieth century, see Anne-Emmanuelle Berger, ed., Algeria in Others’ Languages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). For a consideration of the Arabic novel in Algeria from 1972–88, see Debbie Cox, Politics, Language, and Gender in the Algerian Arabic Novel (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002). 314 elizabeth m. holt

Following the achievement of independence from French colonialism in 1962, Algeria pursued an active policy of Arabization, a difficult project in a linguistically diverse country in which French colonial educational policies had wrought staggeringly high illiteracy rates and left behind an intelligentsia whose language of scholarship was overwhelmingly French. In the fifties and early sixties, Algerian writers and intellectuals who were educated in Arabic had been students of the religious schools run by the ʿulamāʾ in Algeria, or had received university diplomas outside Algeria, in Tunis, Cairo, Damascus or Baghdad.12 Mustaghānamī’s French-language study of the role and symbol of women in Algerian literature, written as part of her doctoral studies at the Sorbonne and entitled Algérie: Femmes & écritures, identifies this generation of Arabic writers writing in Algeria as, “paradoxically . . . opt[ing] for a rather rigid conformity as much at the literary level as at the social and political.”13 Mustaghānamī finds the conformity and conservativism of this group of writers all the more surprising given that they intervened at a moment in which Arabization was keeping score and at a moment when the youth were following with particular attention the [Arabic] literary evolution [that was taking place] in the countries of the Mashreq. In all probability, it was in literature itself where the problem resided, and not with its public.14 In Mustaghānamī’s estimation, it was not until the 1970s with the advent of writers such as ʿAbd al-Ḥ amīd b. Hadūqa and al-Ṭāhir Watṭ āṛ that Arabic literature produced in Algeria began to contest the conformity and conservatism of the previous generation’s Arabic- language writing. During the 1950s and 1960s, it was Algerian literature written in French, such as Kateb Yacine’s seminal Nedjma15 (1956) and Rachid Boudjedra (Rashīd Abū Jadra)’s La répudiation 16 (1969), that Mustaghānamī identifies as contesting the social, political and literary order in Algeria.17 Indeed, a character named Kateb Yacine appears in the pages of Dhākirat al-jasad as Khālid’s prisonmate during the struggle for Algerian independence, and the two meet again years later

12 Ahlem Mosteghanemi, Algérie: Femmes & écritures (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1985), pp. 40–1. 13 Ibid., pp. 40–1. 14 Ibid., pp. 41–2. 15 Kateb Yacine, Nedjma (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1956). 16 Rachid Boudjedra, La répudiation (Paris: Denoël, 1969). 17 Mosteghanemi 1985, p. 43. “in a language that was not his own” 315 in Tunis. Khālid cites their shared time in prison as the moment when Kateb Yacine first conceived of writing Nedjma, during what Dhākirat al-jasad describes as “the labor pains of bitterness and disappointment and great nationalist dreams.”18 Both Kateb Yacine and Rachid Boudjedra (Rashīd Abū Jadra) would go on, like Mālik Ḥ addād, to renounce writing literature in French. Kateb Yacine turned to a Brechtian-style ephemeral traveling theatre combining colloquial Algerian Arabic, Kabyle/Tamazight (his mater- nal language), and French in fluid scripts open to improvisation and change over the course of a tour. This polylingual theater was, for Kateb Yacine, an answer to the question of how, as Reda Bensmaïa rhetorically put it, “to live in several languages and only write in one?”19 Previous to his decision to move away from writing novels and into popular theater, however, Kateb Yacine had been an enormously influential French-language Algerian writer, best known for his novel Nedjma. Kateb Yacine’s writing during this period worked not only on the French historical and cultural record, but on the French language as well. As Jacques Alessandra observes, in Kateb Yacine’s interventions into French literature, “the French language is pulverized, atomized, laid bare, relieved of its conventional poise.”20 Boudjedra (Abū Jadra), for his part, left behind French as his language of literary expression in 1981 in order to take up writing in Arabic, though he has since returned to writing in French. His 1981 move from French to Arabic was prefigured by the sort of work his earlier writing in French did on the French language. In his first novelLa répudiation, which was banned in Algeria because of its social critique, Boudjedra (Abū Jadra)’s use of grammar, particularly his occasional placement of the verb first in a phrase, as well as his longer sentence style, evoke an affinity with the Arabic language and its literature, as does the novel’s intertextuality with texts such as A Thousand and One Nights as well as authors such as al-Tawḥīdī, Ibn Batṭ ūta,̣ and Ibn al-ʿArabī.21 In an interview with H. A. Bouraoui in Présence Francophone in 1979,

18 Mustaghānamī 1993, p. 325 “makhāḍ al-marāra wa-l-khayba wa-l-aḥlām al- wataniyyạ al-kubrā.” 19 See Bensmaïa, p. 64. 20 Jacques Alessandra, “Pourquoi Kateb Yacine a-t-il abandonné l’écriture française?,” Présence Francophone no. 24 (1982), p. 6. 21 Roger Allen, “Translation Translated: Rashīd Abū Jadrah’s Maʿrakat al-zuqāq,” Oriente Moderno 2–3 (1997), p. 166. 316 elizabeth m. holt

Boudjedra (Abū Jadra) is asked: “You have added a few words in Arabic into the body of the text . . . why this inclusion [of Arabic] in a novel written in French?”22 Boudjedra (Abū Jadra)’s response tellingly replaces Bouraoui’s “inclusion” with “intrusion”: the . . . question deals with the intrusion of Arabic. For me, it is a symbolic formulation. We try to write French in a certain way; the French that we write is not, I believe, that which a French writer would write. It is for that [reason] that we attempt to rid ourselves of the classical yoke, of conventionalism, to do those things that are particular to us. But at the same time, I use Arabic as a symbolic, because I believe that one day we will simply write in our mother tongue, without, because of that, losing French as a language for external use.23 When Boudjedra (Abū Jadra) did switch over to writing in Arabic, it would be French that did the intruding, with French text appearing in the middle of an Arabic paragraph and sometimes in the middle of an Arabic sentence in novels such as his 1986 Maʿrakat al-zuqāq,24 achieving a jarring orthographic effect that can be read as a commentary on Algeria’s linguistic history. Boudjedra (Abū Jadra) never left French behind, however. Even before returning to writing in French, as Roger Allen notes, Abū Jadra (Boudjedra)’s move to write in Arabic was concomitant with his participation in the translation of these Arabic-language novels into French.25 Allen observes that the French rendering of Maʿrakat al-zuqāq as La prise de Gibraltar “is termed a translation by Antoine Moussali ‘in collaboration with the author.’”26 Allen further points out that the novel itself, both in its Arabic and French versions, stages multiple acts of translation. Using the text’s investment in translation as a point of departure, Allen explores how these two versions read against nineteenth- and twentieth-century Algerian history bring into “focus . . . the post-colonial condition and its placement in two different linguistic and cultural contexts.”27 Pascale Casanova, in The World Republic of Letters, discusses Boudjedra’s (Abū Jadra) position between French and Arabic,

22 H. A. Bouraoui, “Entretien avec Rachid Boudjedra,” Présence Francophone no. 19 (1979), p. 164. 23 Ibid., pp. 164–65. 24 Rashīd Abū Jadra, Maʿrakat al-zuqāq (Algiers: al-Muʾassasa al-wataniyyạ li-l- kitāb, 1986). 25 Allen, p. 165. 26 Ibid . 27 Ibid., p. 172. “in a language that was not his own” 317 noting that he is “a diagraphic author, since he operates continually between two languages, subject to the tension of translation, itself an essential element of his work.”28 The fraught role of language(s) in the Algerian national context probed in works by Algerian authors such as Mālik Ḥ addād, Kateb Yacine, Rachid Boudjedra (Rashīd Abū Jadra), and more recently Aḥlām Mustaghānamī, resonates with Benedict Anderson’s argument about national languages in his influential work Imagined Communities. Anderson points to the central role of print language(s) in consoli- dating the imagined community of the nation. He directs readers to the significance of “two forms of imagining which first flowered in Europe in the eighteenth century: the novel and the newspaper. For these forms provided the technical means for ‘re-presenting’ the kind of imagined community that is the nation.”29 Both the novel and the newspaper interpellate a public reading the same language and familiar with the same geography, surfacing the simultaneity of these common experiences. Indeed, Anderson describes the novel, with the multiple itineraries of its multiple characters echoing those of its many readers, as a “complex gloss upon the word ‘meanwhile,’”30 fostered by the existence of “monoglot mass reading publics.”31 As Anderson notes, many anticolonial and postcolonial nationalist leaders would come to consider language as one more in a list of “emblems of nation-ness, like flags, costumes, folk-dances, and the rest.”32 The novel or newspaper in form helped enable the imagining of the national community: “there is a special kind of contemporaneous community which language alone suggests . . . The image: unisonance.”33 Writing in Arabic marks a break with French colonialism that for all their pulverizing of the French language, French-language writings such as Kateb Yacine’s or Rachid Boudjedra (Abū Jadra)’s could not enact on an emblematic level. Arabic serves to connect Algeria as a nation with an Arab past, present and future. Dhākirat al-jasad does

28 Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 267. 29 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1983), pp. 24–5. 30 Ibid., p. 25. 31 Ibid., p. 43. 32 Ibid., p. 133. 33 Ibid., p. 145. 318 elizabeth m. holt manifest Algeria’s entanglement with a history of Western and particularly French cultural production through reference to European and American authors, and the inclusion of an occasional line of French. Yet because it is written almost entirely in Arabic, the novel’s “contemporaneous community” is clear from the outset. Claims that the novel was written by other poets of the Arabic language such as the Syrian poet Nizār Qabbānī or the Iraqi poet Saʿdī Yūsuf serve only to confirm the novel’s linguistic and national orientations as being rooted in an Arab and Arabophone cultural context. There are moments in the text where the novel intertextually weaves itself into an Arabic literary tradition, as when the protagonist Khālid invites Aḥlām/ Ḥayāt out onto his “balcony” (shurfa).34 The word repeats twice more in the space of the next four lines, and then the novel briefly moves to the “tears” (dumūʿ) of the city, before repeating the word “rain” (mataṛ ) six times over the course of nine lines.35 Khālid then speaks of Ḥ ayāt/Aḥlām’s “eyes” (ʿaynāyki).36 An avid reader of modern Arabic poetry may be reminded of Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb’s famous poem “Unshūdat al-matar,”̣ and indeed Khālid recites the first two lines of the poem on the next page.37 The novel’s foreshadowing of this poem’s appearance through the repetition of a word like mataṛ , which itself repeats over and over in the lines of the poem, interpellates and relies on an Arabic readership. Hilary Kilpatrick’s recent treatment of the atlāḷ motif in Dhākirat al-jasad further locates the novel as being in conversation with not only the contemporary Arabic literary heritage but also the classical and even pre-Islamic.38 Mustaghānamī’s decision to include Algerian colloquial in the text while simultaneously making it accessible to Arabic readers unfamiliar with Algerian colloquial further elaborates the novel’s concentric linguistic bearings. In his classic of anticolonial French-language literature Portrait du Colonisé précédé du Portrait du Colonisateur, translated into English as The Colonizer and the Colonized, the Tunisian author Albert Memmi points out that the style of “colonial bilingualism” experienced in

34 Mustaghānamī 1993, p. 159. 35 Ibid., p. 160. 36 Ibid . 37 Ibid., p. 161. 38 Hilary Kilpatrick, “Literary Creativity and the Cultural Heritage: Theat lāḷ in Modern Arabic Fiction,” Tradition, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Arabic Literature: Essays in Honor of Professor Issa J. Boullata, Kamal Abdel-Malek and Wael Hallaq, eds. (Boston: Brill, 2000): pp. 39–43. “in a language that was not his own” 319 places such as the Maghreb “is neither a purely bilingual situation in which an indigenous tongue coexists with a purist’s language (both belonging to the same world of feeling), nor a simple polyglot richness benefiting from an extra but relatively neuter alphabet; it is a linguistic drama.”39 Memmi goes on to identify the “colonized artist” as “slightly ahead of the development of the collective consciousness in which he participates and which he hastens by participating in it. And the most urgent claim of a group about to revive is certainly the liberation and restoration of its language.”40 Dhākirat al-jasad ’s participation in the Algerian linguistic drama through the “liberation and restoration” of the Arabic language in the Algerian literary scene is signaled from the novel’s dedication page, as the novel identifies with a younger, Arabic-educated generation sympathizing with the linguistic politics that led Mālik Ḥ addād to die a martyr for the Arabic language. The novel, as Memmi’s analysis of colonial linguistic dynamics helps to surface, is part of a linguistic drama in which the language of writing is anything but neutral. Arabic becomes an actor in this drama, taking as its adversary not only the French language, but the very idea that Algeria’s linguistic experience of French colonialism was anything like “a simple polyglot richness.” It stands as a striking commentary on this linguistic drama that in the major French press reviews of the French translations of Mustaghānamī’s novels, Mémoires de la chair 41 (2002) and Le chaos des senses42 (2006), and in French mainstream press articles mentioning her work that have come out since 2002, there is a remarkable degree of silence on the language in which these novels were originally written.43 It is mentioned in only two of these reviews that the novels are

39 Albert Memmi, Portrait du Colonisé précédé du Portrait du Colonisateur (Paris: Éditions Buchet/Chastel, Corrêa, 1957). All quotes from the English translation: Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, trans. Howard Greenfield (Boston: The Orion Press, 1965), pp. 107–8. 40 Ibid., p. 110. 41 Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Mémoires de la chair, trans. Mohamed Mokeddem (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 2002). 42 Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Le chaos des senses, trans. France Meyer (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 2006). 43 See “Publié et édité par la librairie Bibliopolis: livre lecture, le magazine du bibliophile sur les étals,” La Tribune (9 February 2005); Isabelle Nataf, “‘Vol de nuit’ se pose à Alger,” Le Figaro (4 March 2003); “Beyrouth, vitrine de l’édition française,” Le Monde des Livres (15 November 2002); Duquesne Jacques, “Si je t’oublie Constantine,” L’Express (31 October 2002); “Le Monde des Livres—Actualités de l’édition française— 320 elizabeth m. holt translations, despite the different Albin Michel editions ofMémoires de la chair and Le chaos des senses prominently including on their covers and title pages that the novels are part of a series called “Les Grandes Traductions” (Great Translations). Rather, Mustaghānamī is frequently identified only by her nationality,44 a common practice in the French press. Valérie Lotodé notes in a recent issue of Présence Francophone: “the literary critic . . . the press and the media generally circumscribe French-language authors into their precise geographical and cultural areas.”45 Lotodé explores how the French reception of Kateb Yacine and Rachid Boudjedra (Abū Jadra) construct them as “authentic Algerian” authors. Central to identifying an author as “authentically Algerian,” according to Lotodé, is a symbolic vocabulary that figures the woman and particularly the mother as representative of Algeria. While Mustaghānamī’s novel Dhākirat al-jasad arguably works to undermine the efficacy or relevance of this symbolic figuring of the Algerian woman, the novel’s engagement with this trope nevertheless makes the French translation appear as part of a recognizable and Francophone Algerian literary tradition. The novel’s setting in both Paris and Constantine may solidify this affinity, for, as Lotodé explores in her article, part of being an “authentically Algerian” author means taking Algeria as a setting and context for writing. That Mustaghānamī can be read by a French audience as “authentically Algerian” without reference to language further underscores the French press’s relative disregard for the participation of Mustaghānamī’s recent novels in a linguistic drama that is so press- ingly part of Algerian decolonization.

Dominique Mainard, lauréate du prix roman Fnac,” Le Monde des Livres (6 September 2002); “Ahlam Mosteghanemi. Mémoires de la chair,” Libération Livres (22 August 2002). Interestingly, there was an article in the French Communist paper L’Humanité the year before the publication of Mémoires de la chair that mentions Mustaghānamī as one of a number of “auteurs arabes” whose work the Avicenne bookstore is increasingly adding to its collection. French, like Arabic, does not distinguish as English does between Arab and Arabic, and so a certain ambiguity remains. Here too Mustaghānamī is identified as Algerian. However, the article is also concerned with practicalities of translation. See Sadek Aïssat, “Un Océan perdu: La littérature arabe vue par Hachim Mouawiyeh, directeur de la librairie Avicenne à Paris, l’une des plus importantes d’Europe,” L’Humanité (29 November 2001). 44 See “Publié et édité par la librairie Bibliopolis: livre lecture, le magazine du bibliophile sur les étals,” La Tribune (9 February 2005); “Beyrouth, vitrine de l’édition française,” Le Monde des Livres (15 November 2002); Duquesne Jacques, “Si je t’oublie Constantine,” L’Express (31 October 2002). 45 Valérie Lotodé, “Le rôle de la critique dans la réception de l’oeuvre romanesque de Rachid Boudjedra,” Présence Francophone no. 61 (2003), p. 131. “in a language that was not his own” 321

The French press’s disregard for the novel’s original language echoes the French translation’s treatment of the portion of the Arabic dedication page addressed to Mālik Ḥ addād. It reads: A Malek Haddad L’enfant de Constantine qui fit le serment après l’indépendence de ne pas écrire dans une langue qui n’était pas la sienne . . . il est mort de son silence (To Mālik Ḥ addād The child of Constantine who took the oath after independence to not write in a language that was not his own . . . he died of his silence) The French omits that it is after the independence of Algeria that Ḥ addād took this oath to never write again in a language not his own, thereby obscuring the imperial, national and historical contexts in which this work is to be situated. The French translation goes still further, however, omitting entirely the portion of the dedication regarding Ḥ addād becoming a “martyr of the Arabic language,” the first writer to decide to die silent and longing for Arabic. The only reference to Arabic in the French translation of the dedication comes in the portion addressed to Mustaghānamī’s late father, when Mustaghānamī wills that her father might find someone “there” who can read in Arabic so that they might read his novel to him. Any worldly references to the painful linguistic history of Algeria in which the Arabic of Dhākirat al-jasad is so invested are thus effaced from the framing dedication page of the French translation. With the linguistic specifics of Mālik ̣ addād’sH decision to abandon writing “in a language that was not his own” thus obscured from the dedication page, the burden of decrypting the linguistic drama being staged with the inclusion of several lines of Ḥaddād’s writing in the body of the French translation thus falls upon the reader and her knowledge of Ḥ addād’s career. In the Arabic original, however, the reader knows from the dedication page that Ḥ addād never wrote in Arabic, and that his martyrdom to Arabic has something to do with the independence of Algeria. When lines of Ḥ addād’s writing appear in the Arabic text in Arabic, Mustaghānamī is legibly enacting a sort of postmortem linguistic liberation for Ḥaddād’s words before the novel’s Arabic readership. She is also marking that while her father and many in his generation of Algerians were illiterate, and while Ḥ addād could only write in French 322 elizabeth m. holt or stay silent despite his longing to write in Arabic, Mustaghānamī is part of a generation that can redress some of the linguistic sacrifices imposed on her forebears. Unlike a novelist such as Rashīd Abū Jadra (Boudjedra) who, as Allen and Casanova point out, is deeply invested in moving back and forth between Arabic and French, Mustaghānamī, in writing Dhākirat al-jasad, enacts a literary break with this sort of linguistic métissage through the novel’s focus on writing and living in Arabic. The decision by the protagonist Khālid to move from France back to Algeria at the end of the novel plays out in a geographical register this literary-linguistic shift. Unlike Abū Jadra (Boudjedra) who announces his central role in the translation of his works between Arabic and French, Mustaghānamī is nowhere noted as participating in the French translation of her novel as Mémoires de la chair. Mustaghānamī privileges Arabic in Dhākirat al-jasad, yet like Abū Jadra in his Arabic writings she includes the occasional intrusion of French. As Casanova notes of “authors on the periphery [of the world republic of letters]”: The strategies of such authors . . . can therefore be described as sorts of very complex equations, containing two, three, or four unknowns, that take into account simultaneously the literariness of their own language, their political situation, their degree of involvement in a national struggle, their determination to achieve recognition in the literary centers, the ethnocentrism and blindness of these same centers, and the necessity of making them aware of the difference of authors on the periphery.46 Dhākirat al-jasad’s literary-linguistic focus on Arabic and the Algerian national condition works out a considerably different equation than Abū Jadra (Boudjedra)’s works, with significant implications for the novel’s translation, particularly into French, the other major literary language in the Algerian linguistic drama. For instance, the intrusion of French in the pages of the Arabic original of Dhākirat al-jasad is lost in the French translation, for it is impossible for the French translation to mark the orthographic alterity of these French lines in the original Arabic text. The novel’s discussion of both French and Arabic literary and cultural references and experiences, once in French translation, serves to further occlude the intrusive status of actual lines of French in the Arabic original. In the Arabic original, Khālid, the novel’s first-person

46 Casanova, p. 259. “in a language that was not his own” 323 narrator, recounts his first meeting after many years with ̣Ahlām/Ḥayāt, to whom much of the novel is addressed. They are at the opening of Khālid’s painting exhibit, and before speaking to Ḥ ayāt/Aḥlām, Khālid thinks to himself in Arabic, “Is it reasonable after twenty years to greet you and ask you in a neutral French.”47 The French translation of this portion reads: “What madness! To see you again twenty years later, to greet you in French.”48 While both passages register that the next line of the novel is to be understood as ‘being said’ in French, the Arabic does so in Arabic, while the French does so in French. The orthographic shift that occurs next in the Arabic is thus lost in the French. In the Arabic text, Khālid asks in French written in French: “And how are you, Miss?”49 The next line in the Arabic text reads, in Arabic: “And you responded to me with the same linguistic distance,” followed by Aḥlām/Ḥ ayāt’s response in French written in French: “Fine, thank you.”50 What Mémoires de la chair cannot translate is precisely this linguistic distance, for it is orthographically, historically, dramatically not the same. The French translation can only point its readers to a vague linguistic distance that its readers must imagine. The Arabic original, on the other hand, orthographically shows the distance, and it is one that can be apprehended by Arabic readers whether or not they speak French: the very jarringness of two Algerians speaking in French in the middle of an Arabic novel marks the distance. When Khālid discovers that Ḥ ayāt/Aḥlām writes stories and novels in Arabic, she explains to him that, “it was possible for me to write in French, but Arabic is the language of my heart.”51 Here, the reader of the French translation is asked to imagine a linguistic situation that is contrary to what the French translation is able to perform. The decision that Aḥlām/Ḥ ayāt and Khālid only speak in Arabic from this disclosure forward reads in the Arabic original as a resolution of a linguistic tension in the text, a tension represented to the Arabic reader both by the intrusion of lines of French into the text, as well as by the coun- terfactual reading that the Arabic demanded when the majority of this

47 Mustaghānamī 1993, p. 66 “A-yaʿqil baʿda ʿashrīn sanna an usāfaḥ ̣aki wa asʾalaki bi-lugha faransiyya muḥāyida.” 48 Mosteghanemi (trans.) 2002, p. 55 “De la folie! Te revoir vingt ans après, te saluer en français.” 49 Mustaghānamī 1993, p. 66 “Mais comment allez vous mademoiselle?” 50 Ibid. “fataruddīna ʿalayya bi-nafs al-masāfa al-lughawiyya”; “Bien . . . je vous remercie.” 51 Mustaghānamī 1993, p. 91 “kāna yumkin an aktuba bi-l-faransiyya, wa lakin al-ʿarabiyya hiya lughat qalbī” . 324 elizabeth m. holt conversation ‘in French’ appeared in the text in Arabic. From this point forward in the Arabic, speaking in French (or ‘in French’) becomes a sort of betrayal of a linguistic contract or a measure of distance from the contemporary situation of the majority of Algerians. For the French reader, however, the decision to speak only in Arabic, as well as Ḥ ayāt/ Aḥlām’s pronouncement that “Arabic is the language of my heart,” are rendered equivocal merely by appearing in French translation. The passages of the novel containing colloquial Algerian Arabic likewise indicate that the linguistic distances being measured in the Arabic original do not translate into the French. While short conversa- tions take place in the Arabic in Algerian dialect, the French translation only contains the occasional, italicized transliteration of a word or two, such as “Wachek?” or “Aïchac.”52 Lost then is not only the intimacy colloquial Arabic carries in the text, but also the distance between colloquial and standard, written Arabic, itself a major issue in Algerian (and other Arab) linguistic debates. Many novels written in French engaging Algerian issues include the occasional word or phrase of transliterated colloquial Arabic. The difference being represented in the Arabic text between Arabic registers becomes in the French text at most a sign that the novel is “authentically Algerian.” The untranslatability of colloquial Arabic problematizes Richard Jacquemond’s compelling suggestion-as-question: How can the translator avoid the complementary temptations of exoticiz- ing and naturalizing the Arabic text, while he is pressed to do so by the publisher? Should he recycle the narrative strategies of Arab-Francophone writers as a means to assert and preserve the Arabic text’s difference?53 As seen above, recycling the narrative strategies used by Arab-Fran- cophone authors writing in French, in the translation of Arabic into French, serves only to register that the novel is, in this case, “authentically Algerian.” Such a translation into French would further require that the translator impose something like the “atomizing, pulverizing” style of Kateb Yacine or Rachid Boudjedra (Rashīd Abū Jadra)’s French writing onto the novel in order to mark its “difference,” but this difference would be that between mainstream French and French

52 Mosteghanemi (trans.) 2002, pp. 55, 73. 53 Richard Jacquemond, “Translation and Cultural Hegemony: The Case of French- Arabic Translation,” Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology, Lawrence Venuti, ed. (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 154. “in a language that was not his own” 325 from a decolonizing Algerian perspective. It would not measure the linguistic distance between Arabic and French from a decolonizing Algerian perspective. The contexts cannot be made commensurate; the distances being measured are not the same. An opportunity to preserve some of the “Arabic text’s difference” is lost when the French translation of Dhākirat al-jasad deletes a portion of the text that spells out in Arabic letters the name that Khālid carried to the novel’s female addressee in Tunisia from her father clandestinely fighting in the Algerian resistance. As a newborn in her father’s absence, her mother named her Ḥ ayāt, a name that means life. Khālid delivered the name her father wished her to have—Aḥlām, a name that means dreams or utopia as well as insights—which he then registered as her official name. This name is never explicitly stated in the Arabic, but rather is spelled out. In lieu of translating this portion of the Arabic, the French moves down a few lines the translated phrase, “I cling to the letters of your name.”54 Because the French does not translate the passage that comes next in the Arabic, the French reader understands this comment as referring to the mother-given name Ḥ ayāt, the only name given for the novel’s female addressee in the French translation. Indeed, the female addressee’s father-given name is only alluded to in the French translation as that which the protagonist does not say, as when Khālid muses over what name to use when he speaks of her: Et quand je te nomme, de quel nom dois-je user? Celui décidé par ton père et que j’ai moi-même fait inscrire à l’état civil à sa place ou bien le premier, celui que tu avais porté six mois? Hayat! La vie! . . . C’est le nom sous lequel je t’ai connue, que je suis seul à connaître, qui ne court sur aucune langue, n’est mentionné par aucun livre, ni revue, ni registre officiel . . . Ce nom que j’ai moi-même étouffé un jour en te donnant de la légalité d’un autre.55 (And when I name you, what name should I use? The one decided on by your father and that I myself entered in the civil registry in his place, or the first, the one that you carried for six months? ̣ H ayāt! Life! . . . It is the name under which I met you, and that I alone know, that never rolled off a single tongue, is not mentioned in any book, magazine or official register. That name that I myself snuffed out one day in giving you the legality of another.)

54 Mosteghanemi (trans.) 2002, p. 33 “je m’accrochai aux lettres de ton nom.” 55 Ibid., p. 36. 326 elizabeth m. holt

Missing in the French translation is the national-linguistic context in which the Arabic original locates this act of naming that snuffed out the name Ḥ ayāt. The Arabic passage that is not translated into French deconstructs the father-given name Aḥlām into Arabic letters and sounds which it then connects up with Arabic words. What makes this passage in the novel, and the similar ones that follow, so difficult to translate is precisely Mustaghānamī’s investment in writing literature in Arabic. Here she embroiders Arabic letters and sounds into the fabric of the narrative, such that the letters and sounds of the name Aḥlām are intertwined with the Algerian war for independence: ﺑﲔ أﻟﻒ اﻷﱂ وﻣﲓ اﳌﺘﻌﺔ ﰷن اﲰﻚ . ﺗﺸﻄﺮﻩ ﺣﺎء اﳊﺮﻗﺔ .. وﻻم اﻟﺘﺤﺬﻳﺮ. ﻓﻜﻴﻒ ﱂ أﺣﺬر اﲰﻚ اذلي ودل وﺳﻂ اﳊﺮاﺋﻖ اﻷوﱃ، ﺷﻌةل ﺻﻐﲑة ﰲ ﺗكل اﳊﺮب. ﻛﻴﻒ ﱂ أﺣﺬر ًاﺳﲈ ﳛﻤﻞ ﺿﺪّﻩ وﯾﺒﺪأ ﺑـ“أح“ اﻷﱂ واﻟذلّة ﻣﻌﺎً. ﻛﻴﻒ ﱂ أﺣﺬر ﻫﺬا الاﰟ اﳌﻔﺮد- اﶺﻊ ﰷﰟ ﻫﺬا اﻟﻮﻃﻦ، وأدرك ﻣﻨﺬ اﻟﺒﺪء ّأن اﶺﻊ ﺧﻠﻖ ًداﲚﺎ ﻟﻴﻘﺘﺴﻢ!56 (Between the alif of alam (pain) and the mīm of mutʿa (pleasure) was your name. The ḥaʾ of ḥurqa (burning; also agony) bisects it [your name] . . . as does the lām of caution. For how can I not be cautious of your name that was born amidst the first fires (ḥarāʾiq), a small flame in this war. How can I not be cautious of a name that carries its opposite and begins with the “aḥ” of pain (alam) and delight together. How can I not be cautious of this solitary name—plural like the name of this nation (wataṇ ), when I realized from the beginning that the plural is always created in order to be divided.) This passage in the Arabic engages not only Arabic letters, sounds, words and grammar, but also links them up with Algeria’s national war of liberation. The caution with which the protagonist meets Aḥlām’s name is here connected to the fires of war, while the fact that the name is a broken plural in Arabic is likened to the Arabic name of the nation in question: al-Jazāʾir. Deciphering this passage of the novel when rendered into the sort of translation I have attempted above requires that its reader have some familiarity with Arabic grammar in order to access, for instance, the grammatical connection being made between the name Aḥlām and the name of the nation, al-Jazāʾir. Had this passage been included in the French translation, it might have afforded its

56 Mustaghānamī 1993, p. 37. “in a language that was not his own” 327 readers the possibility of accessing just the sort of difference Jacquemond calls upon translators to preserve. However, this omission stands as a poignant commentary on the failure to carry the linguistic investitures of Dhākirat al-jasad into French. Later in the text, Aḥlām/Ḥ ayāt recounts to Khālid that on the day Algeria gained its independence, she found her grandmother crying, and asked her why. She explains to Ḥ ayāt/Aḥlām that, in the past, she had looked forward to independence as the day when her son would be reunited with her, but that now she awaits nothing, for Aḥlām/ Ḥ ayāt’s father died in the struggle for Algerian independence and would never be coming home. As Mustaghānamī writes: “the day my father died, my grandmother did not ululate as in the imaginary stories of the Revolution that I read later. She stood in the middle of the house, gasping with tears, shaking, her head uncovered, repeating with primal sadness.”57 The passage is followed by the grandmother’s cries. On the next page, Ḥ ayāt/Aḥlām continues telling Khālid about her mother, grandmother and father, and Khālid asks: “Where do you know all these stories from?”58 Aḥlām/Ḥ ayāt responds: ‘From her [her grandmother] . . . and from my mother too,” then continues to tell stories of local saints and names.59 Stories transmitted orally from one generation of Algerian women to the next here move from Ḥ ayāt/ Aḥlām to Khālid, represented to an Arabic readership in modern standard Arabic. Though there is a register shift between the colloquial in which such a story would likely be recounted, and the standard Arabic shared by an audience of Arabic readers, the Arabic does not identify this moment in the novel as one particularly fraught within Algeria’s national linguistic history. The French translation of this passage translates it mostly literally, changing only the grandmother’s cries, such that this chain of Arabic storytelling seems to slide smoothly into French. The ease with which this passage of the novel can be translated from Arabic to French com- plicates Jacquemond’s question-suggestion as to whether translators of Arabic to French might recycle strategies of Arab-Francophone writers. Assia Djebar’s literary corpus, and in particular, her novel L’Amour,

57 Ibid., p. 107 “yawm māta abī lam tazgharad jiddati kamā fī qisaṣ ̣ al-thawra al-khayāliyya allati qaraʾtuha fīmā baʿd. Waqafat fī wust ̣ al-dār wa-hiya tushhiq bi-l- bukāʾ wa tantafiḍ ʿāriyyat al-raʾs muraddida bi-ḥuzn bidāʾī.” 58 Ibid., p. 109 “min ayna taʿrifīna kull hādhahi-l-qisaṣ ?”̣ 59 Ibid. “minhā, hiya . . . wa-min ummī ayḍan.” 328 elizabeth m. holt la fantasia (1985), addresses itself to the question of writing Algerian women’s oral stories in a novel written in French, the only language in which Djebar is able to write. Indeed, she herself gave up writing in French upon Algeria’s independence in 1962, not publishing a fictional work again until 1980, when her collection of short stories entitled Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement came out. In the interim, critic Magda al-Nowaihi writes, “she apparently was attempting to move to writing in Arabic and failing to do so.”60 L’Amour, la fantasia came out five years later in 1985. Throughout this autobiographical novel-cum- history, Djebar palimpsestically relies on the written accounts of the French colonizers and their entourage, and oral stories from Algerians to weave together a story of the French-Algerian wars. Writing in French, Djebar centrally stages in the novel the uneasy linguistic position she occupies. At one point she writes: Après plus d’un siècle d’occupation française—qui finit, il y a peu, par un écharnement—, un territoire de langue subsiste entre deux peuples, entre deux mémoires; la langue française, corps et voix, s’installe en moi comme un orgueilleux préside, tandis que la langue maternelle, toute en oralité, en hardes dépenaillées, résiste et attaque, entre deux essoufflements.61 (After more than a century of French occupation—that ended, not long ago, with a flaying—a linguistic territory subsists between two peoples, between two memories; the French language, body and voice, has established itself in me like a proud one presiding, while the mother tongue, all orality, in tattered rags, resists and attacks, between two gasps.) Earlier in the novel, there is a moment when Djebar recounts, in “the mother tongue,” a story of two prostitutes, Fatma and Meriem, about whom she read in a book written in French by Fromentin. Gayatri Spivak writes that in this scene, “the tale shared in the mother tongue is forever present (in every act of reading) and forever absent, for it is in the mother tongue.”62 This forever-present/forever-absent mother tongue is figured by Djebar as continually haunting her writing in L’Amour, la fantasia, a result of the linguistic territory of the French occupation of Algeria, divided for her between the proud French lan-

60 Magda al-Nowaihi, “Resisting Silence in Arab Women’s Autobiographies,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33 (2001), p. 488. 61 Assia Djebar, L’Amour, la fantasia (Paris: Jean-Claude Lattès, 1985), p. 299. 62 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Acting Bits/Identity Talk,” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 4, Identities (Summer, 1992), p. 771. “in a language that was not his own” 329 guage and “the mother tongue, all orality, in tattered rags, [that] resists and attacks, between two gasps.” In an article engaging a number of North African Francophone texts, Samia Mehrez comments on Djebar’s staging of this linguistic drama, and the effect such tensions inL’Amour, la fantasia have on the feasibility of its translation. Mehrez writes: Any translation of this text into yet another language is bound to dis- solve and mask these crucial confrontations . . . As Djebar transcribes and translates, she creates a text that is at once a resister and liberator whose existence in French is undoubtedly the prime reason for its power and importance.63 L’Amour, la fantasia, like Dhākirat al-jasad, is deeply marked by the language in which it is written, for Djebar is writing in a French that cannot but confront the tensions in the relationship between French and Arabic in her own life as in the history of Algeria’s colonization. The discordance being measured in L’Amour, la fantasia is being measured from the perspective of a decolonizing Algerian French that, like Mustaghānamī’s Arabic, is part of a national linguistic struggle. It is this register of linguistic confrontation and tension that is missing in the facile French translation of the passage of Dhākirat al-jasad in which Ḥ ayāt/Aḥlām recounts to Khālid stories her mother and grandmother have told her. It is precisely the issue of staging the Algerian national linguistic drama that confounds the novel’s French translation as Mémoires de la chair. This translation ofDhākirat al-jasad seems able only to omit, elide, stay silent on, or render unintelligible the original novel’s investment in the politics of writing in Arabic in an Algerian context. The French translation and its reception by the French press tend to replace this linguistic drama with an appeal to Mustaghānamī’s ‘Algerian-ness.’ The result is that the novel in French translation can neither be apprehended by its French readership as atomizing, pulverizing or haunting the linguistic history of the French language in an Algerian context, nor can it be manifestly legible as part of the larger Arabic literary tradition to which it claims allegiance.

63 Samia Mehrez, “Translation and the Postcolonial Experience: the Francophone North African Text,” Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology, Lawrence Venuti, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 127.

CURRICULUM VITAE: JAROSLAV STETKEVYCH

Jaroslav Stetkevych, the Professor Emeritus of Arabic Literature at the University of Chicago, was born in Ukraine on 25 April 1929. After attending secondary schools in Ukraine and Germany (German Gymnasium Munich), he studied at the University of Madrid where he received his degree licenciatura with “Premio Extraordinario”. He commenced his PhD research at Cairo University (1957–58), but soon transferred to Harvard University, where he obtained his doctorate in Arabic Literature in 1962. In the course of his distinguished career he was awarded various fellowships and grants, including the Rockefeller Fellowship (1959–62) and the National Endowment for the Humanities Research Grant (1986). He held several teaching positions at the University of Chicago, becoming a full professor there in 1977. After his retirement in 1996 he was distinguished visiting professor at the American University in Cairo in 2001.

Jaroslav Stetkevych is the author of many books and articles, which are listed below.

Publications

Books The Modern Arabic Literary Language: Lexical and Stylistic Developments. The University of Chicago Press, 1970. pp. xxi + 135. 2d ed. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2006. A partial translation into Arabic appeared in the Jordanian journal Al-Mahd (1985); a full translation appeared in Cairo: Dār al-ʿUlūm Press, 1986.

The Zephyrs of Najd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasīb. The University of Chicago Press, 1993. pp. xii + 326. Chapter 5, part 2, “Spaces of Delight: Perceived, Lost, Remembered” (pp. 180–201, 291–97), transl. into Arabic by Prof. Muḥammad Birayrī, Fusūḷ , 1995. Full Arabic translation: Prof. Ḥasan al-Bannā ʿIzz al-Dīn, transl., intro. & notes. Ṣabā Najd: Shiʿriyyat al-Ḥ anīn fī al-Nasīb al-ʿArabī al-Kilāsīkī (Riyāḍ: Markaz al-Malik Faysaḷ li al-Buḥūth wa al-Dirāsāt al-Islāmiyyah, 1425/2004).

Muḥammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arabian Myth. Indiana University Press, 1996. p. 169. (Choice Academic Book of the Year). Arabic transl.: Saʿīd al-Ghānimī, transl. & notes. Al-ʿArab wa al-Ghusṇ al-Dhahabī: Iʿādat Binā’ al-Ustūraḥ al-ʿArabiyyah. Beirut: Al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 2005. p. 253.

Arabic Poetry and Orientalism. English and Arabic text. Ed., Walid Khazendar, transl. into Arabic by Walid al-Halis. Oxford: St. John’s College Research Centre 2004, p. 120.

Articles & Chapters in Books “Reflexiones sobre el teatro árabe moderno,” Revista del Instituto de Estudios Islámicos en Madrid, 6 (1958/1960), pp. 109–120. 332 curriculum vitae: jaroslav stetkevych

“Problemas y aspectos de la moderna prosa árabe,” Revista del Instituto de Estudios Islámicos en Madrid, 11–12 (1963/1964), pp. 181–208.

“Some Observations on Arabic Poetry,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 26 (1967), pp. 1–12.

“Arabism and Arabic Literature: Self-View of a Profession,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 27 (1969), pp. 145–56.

“The Confluence of Arabic and Hebrew Literature,”Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 32, Nos. 1 and 2 (January–April, 1973), pp. 216–22.

“The Arabic Lyrical Phenomenon in Context,”Journal of Arabic Literature, 6 (1975), pp. 57–77.

“Classical Arabic on Stage,” Studies in Modern Arabic Literature, ed. R. C. Ostle (London, 1975), pp. 152–66.

“Arabic Poetry and Assorted Poetics,” Islamic Studies: A Tradition and its Problems, Seventh Giorgio Levi Della Vida Biennial Conference, 1979. ed. M. H. Kerr (Los Angeles: Undena, 1980), pp. 103–123.

“The Arabic Qasīdah:̣ From Form and Content to Mood and Meaning,” Omeljan Pritsak Festschrift, ed. Ihor Ševčenko (Harvard Ukrainian Studies), 1979/80, Vol. 2, pp. 774–85.

“Mā baʿda al-qirāʿah al-ūlā: al-ḥadāthah fī shiʿr Aḥ̣mad ʿAbd al-Muʿtị̄ Ḥ ijāzī” (Beyond the First Reading: Modernity in the Poetry of Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Muʿtị̄ Ḥ ijāzī), Fusūḷ , 4, Nr. 4 (July–September, 1984), pp. 78–96.

“Encounter with the East: The Orientalist Poetry of Ahatanhel Krymskyj,” Harvard Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 8: ¾ (1985), pp. 321–350. A separate edition of the essay was published by Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1986.

“Name and Epithet: The Philology and Semiotics of Animal Nomenclature in Early Arabic Poetry,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 45, Nr. 2 (1986), pp. 89–124.

“Ibn Qutaybah wa mā baʿdah: al-qasīdaḥ al-ʿarabiyyah al-kilāsīkiyyah,” Fusūḷ , 6, Nr. 2 (1986), pp. 71–78.

“Sīniyyat Aḥmad Shawqī wa ʿiyār al-shiʿr al-ʿarabī al-kilāsīkī” (The Sīniyyah of Aḥmad Shawqī and the Canon of Klassical Arabic Poetry), Fusūḷ , 7, Nos. 1/2 (October 1986/ March 1987), pp. 12–29.

Spaces of Delight: A Symbolic Topoanalysis of the Classical Arabic Nasūb,” in Critical Pilgrimages: Studies in the Arabic Literary Tradition, ed. Fedwa Malti-Douglas (Literature East and West, 25 [1989]), pp. 5–28.

“Arabic Hermeneutical Terminology: Paradox and the Production of Meaning,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 48, Nr. 2 (April 1989), pp. 81–96.

“Toward an Arabic Elegiac Lexicon: The Seven Words of the Nasīb,” pp. 58–129, in Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, ed., Reorientations/Arabic and Persian Poetry. Indiana University Press, 1994. curriculum vitae: jaroslav stetkevych 333

“The Thamūd in Myth and Poetry” (in Ukrainian), Journal of the Ukrainian Academy, Kyïv 1995.

“The Hunt in the Arabic Qasīdaḥ : The Antecedents of the Ṭardiyyah.” In J. R. Smart, ed., Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Language and Literature. (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1996), pp. 108–118.

“Qasīdatāṇ Ṭardiyyatān li ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī wa Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Muʿtị̄ Ḥ ijāzī: ʿIndamā Yakūnu -l-ʿUnwān ʿIb’an wa Mas’ūliyyatan,” (Two Hunt Poems by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī and Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Muʿtị̄ Ḥ ijāzī: When the Title is a Burden and a Responsibility), in Al Naqd al-Adabī fī Munʿataf̣ al-Qarn: Madākhil li- Taḥlīl al-Nasṣ ̣ al-Adabī, etc./ Literary Criticism at the Turn of the Century, Papers Presented to the First International Conference on Literary Criticism (Cairo, October, 1997). Ed. Ezz Eldin Ismail. Cairo, 1999.

“The Hunt in Classical Arabic Poetry: From Mukhaḍram Qaṣīdah to Umayyad Ṭardiyyah,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 30, No. 2 (1999), pp. 108–127.

“Sacrifice and Redemption in Early Islamic Poetry: Al-Ḥ utay’ah’ṣ ‘Wretched Hunter’,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 31, No. 2 (2000), pp. 89–120.

“In Search of the Unicorn: The Onager and the Oryx in the Arabic Ode,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 33, No. 2 (2002), pp. 79–130.

“Min al-Wasf̣ al-Taqlīdī ilā al-Wasf̣̣ al-Ḥadīth,” in ʿIzz al-Dīn Ismāʿīl, ed., Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Literary Criticism. Cairo, n.p., 2006.

“A Qasīdaḥ by Ibn Muqbil: The Deeper Reaches of Lyricism and Experience in a Mukhaḍram Poem. An Essay in Three Steps,”Journal of Arabic Literature, 37, No. 3, (2006), pp. 303–354.

Presentations, Conference Papers and Professional Activities (since 1980) Co-organizer of “Town and Country in Modern Arabic Literature,” an international symposium sponsored by the American Universities Field Staff, Rome, October, 1980.

American Representative for “Egypt Today,” a touring symposium of leading Egyptian cultural figures sponsored by the Middle East Institute. I lectured and participated in panel discussions on contemporary Arabic poetry and plastic arts. Washington D.C., Houston, Austin and Los Angeles, March-April, 1981.

“The Palm Fronds of Ahatanhel Krymskyj,” Annual Krawciw Lecture at Harvard Center for Ukrainian Studies. Cambridge, MA, May, 1983.

“The Vision of Paradise in Classical Arabic Literature: Legend, Irony and Qurʾānic Paraphrase,” American Research Center in Egypt Annual Conference, Ann Arbor, MI, April, 1983.

“The Poetry of Aḥmad Shawqī,” Two public lectures, September and December, 1983, Yarmouk University, Jordan.

“The She-Camel and the Camel Stallion in the Classical Arabic Qasīdaḥ : Their Image and Meaning,” the Middle East Studies Association, Chicago, November, 1983. 334 curriculum vitae: jaroslav stetkevych

Participant in the Symposium on Modernity and Creativity in Modern Arabic Literature, sponsored by the General Egyptian Book Organization. Opening address on behalf of the non-Arab delegations, chaired a session, presented a research paper on the poetry of Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Muʿtị̄ Ḥijāzī. Cairo and Alexandria, March–April, 1984.

“From Archaic Tears to Spiritual Pilgrimages: Classical Qasīdaḥ -Elements in the ʿAyniyyah of Ibn al-Fāriḍ,” Middle East Studies Association, San Francisco, November, 1984.

“Name and Epithet: Animal Nomenclature in Early Arabic Poetry,” American Oriental Society, Ann Arbor, MI, April, 1985.

“The Elegiac Landscape in the Late Classical Arabic Qasīdaḥ ,” American Research Center in Egypt, New York, April, 1985.

Invited participant in the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 10th in the Annual Mirbad Poetry Symposia, Baghdad, Iraq, November–December, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1989.

“Imitating the Inimitable: Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān and Arabic Literary Hermeneutics,” University of Pennsylvania Symposium on Hermeneutics in non-Western Literatures, February, 1986.

“Beyond Ibn Qutaybah: The Epistolary Structure in the Classical Arabic Qasīdaḥ ,” American Oriental Society, March, 1986.

“Evocations of Arcadia: Idyll and Pastorale in Classical Arabic Poetry,” Indiana University, Bloomington, September, 1986.

“The Tragedy of al-Ḥ allāj by Salāḥ ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr,” lecture in Arabic, the Arabic Circle, The University of Chicago, October, 1986.

“Ut musica poesis: The Qasīdaḥ as Sonata-Form,” American Oriental Society, Los Angeles, CA, March, 1987.

“The Poets as Pastors of the Stars: A Pastoral Motif in Classical Arabic Poetry,” American Research Center in Egypt, Memphis, TN, April, 1987.

“Ruinous Perfection in the Courtly Nasīb: Abū al-ʿAtāhiyah’s ‘Where is the fleeting while we spent / Between Khawarnaq ans Sadīr’,” Middle East Studies Association, Baltimore, November, 1987.

“Najd and Arcadia: The Topology of Nostalgia,” American Oriental Society, Chicago, March, 1988.

“Free Verse in Practice: Rhyme and Meter in the Poetry of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī,” American Research Center in Egypt, Chicago, April, 1988.

“More on the Pastoral in Classical Arabic Poetry,” American Oriental Society, New Orleans, March, 1989.

“Seven Words of the Nasīb: Toward an Elegiac Lexicon,” American Oriental Society, Atlanta, GA, March, 1990. curriculum vitae: jaroslav stetkevych 335

“The Hearthstones (athāfī) in the Arabic Nasīb: Another Contribution to the Elegiac Lexicon,” American Oriental Society, Berkeley, CA, March, 1991.

Selection Committee Member and Panelist for Rockefeller Foundation Institute on Religion and Literature in the Modern Middle East, The University of Texas at Austin, spring 1991 and spring 1992.

“Al-Su’āl (the question): Another Contribution to the Arabic Elegiac Lexicon,” American Oriental Society, Cambridge, MA, March, 1992.

“The Pastor of the Stars: An Arabic Contribution to the Pastoral Genre,” American Research Center in Egypt Seminar, Cairo, Egypt, May, 1993.

“The Thamūd Myth in Poetry,” American Oriental Society, Madison, WI, March, 1994.

“The Hunt in Arabic Poetry: From the Umayyads to the Moderns,” 2nd Shaban Memorial Conference, Exeter University, Exeter, England, October, 1994.

Guest on Mara Tapp Show, WBEZ, Chicago, NPR-Affiliate, on Classical Arabic poetry. Aired February, 1997; and April, 1998.

“The Reception of Arabic Literature in the West,” Graduate Faculty Seminar of the Dept. of English and Comparative Literature, University of Jordan, Amman, March, 1997.

Discussant on “Arabic Literature and the West,” on “Challenges,” Jordanian TV, hosted by Dr. Aḥmad Majdūbah, May, 1997.

“Al-Ḥ utay’ah’ṣ ‘Wretched Hunter’: Sacrifice and Redemption,” The First Ahatanhel Krimsky Memorial Conference, Kyïv and Zvenyhorodka, Ukraine, May, 1997.

“Qasīdatāṇ Ṭardiyyatān li ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī wa Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Muʿtị̄ Ḥ ijāzī: ʿIndamā Yakūnu -l-ʿUnwān ʿIb’an wa Mas’ūliyyatan,” (Two Hunt Poems by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī and Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Muʿtị̄ Ḥ ijāzī: When the Title is a Burden and a Responsibility), Literary Criticism at the Turn of the Century, First International Conference on Literary Criticism, Cairo, October, 1997.

“The Hunt in Classical Arabic Poetry: From Qasīdaḥ to Ṭardiyyah,” Middle East Studies Association, Chicago, IL, November, 1998.

Presentation on Arab-Islamic Myth. Comparative Religion Program Faculty Seminar on Canons and Canonicity, University of Washington, Seattle, spring 1999.

“The Pitfalls of Reading Classical Arabic Poetry” (in Arabic), Ecole Normale Supérieure, Tunis, July 3, 1999 and University of Tunis I, Manouba, July 12, 1999.

“The Discreet Pleasures of the Courtly Hunt: TheT ̣ardiyyah in the ʿAbbāsid Period,” Middle East Studies Association, Washington, DC, November, 1999.

“Ḥātim al-Ṭā’ī: Poetic and Social Structures of Bedouin Generosity,” American Oriental Society, Portland, OR, March, 2000.

Guest on Farouq Shusha Program on Cairo television, March, 2001. 336 curriculum vitae: jaroslav stetkevych

“The Essential Journey,” American Comparative Literature Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, April, 2002.

“The Qasida: The Disintegration and Generation of Genres,” Middle East Studies Association, Washington, D.C., Nov., 2002.

“Min al-Wasf̣ al-Taqlīdī ilā al-Wasf̣ al-Ḥ adīth,” Third International Conference on Literary Criticism, Cairo, Egypt, 10–14 Dec., 2003.

“Shiʿriyyat al-Ḥanīn fī al-Nasīb al-ʿArabī al-Kilāsīkī,” King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 10, 2004.

“Ibn Muqbil: Structural Inversion and the Politics of Nostalgia in an Early Islamic Qasida,” Middle East Studies Association, Washington, D.C., Nov., 2005.

“The Classical Greek Funeral Oration and the Arabic Dirge/Elegy: Between City/Polity and Orator/Poet,” Fourth International Conference on Literary Criticism, Cairo, Egypt, Nov. 1–5, 2006. INDEX

ʿAbbās, Iḥsān: on al-Bayātī, 274 al-Daylamī, Mihyār: 79 ʿAbbāsids: 25–26; 54–80; society, 86–90; Djebar, Assia: 327–329 glory in poetry, 222–272 ʿAbd al-Nāsir,̣ Jamāl: 3 Eliot, T. S.: in Arabic poetry, 273–310; Abū al-ʿAynāʾ: 102 The Waste Land, 279 Abū Nuwās: 113–114 Elouard, Paul: and al-Bayātī, 275 Alf laylah wa-laylah: 7, 34–50 Alhambra: palace, 220; the Nasrids, al-Farghānī: and Ibn al-Fāriḍ, 143 258–270 Fatimids: the period, 20; its literature, Amīn, Aḥmad: 6 20–21; 55 al-ʿĀmirī, Abū al-Ḥasan: on jurists, 24 Andalus: in Shawqī’s poetry, 219–272; in al-Ghītānī,̣ Jamāl: use of history, 10 al-Bayātī’s poetry, 298–300 Gilgamesh: 285 Arabic novel: 2–3; turning point, 6–7; Granada: 222; 258–270; in al-Bayātī’s return to history, 9–11; and narrative poetry, 298–299 theory, 46–50 al-Asmạ ʿī: on narrative, 31; narrative Ḥabībī, Emīl: 14 as lucrative business, 32; curator of Ḥaddād, Mālik: 313, 315, 319, 321 pagan poetry, 86–87 al-Ḥakīm, Tawfīq: 14 Auden, W. H.: and al-Bayātī, 275 al-Ḥarīrī, Abū al-Q̣āsim: 14 Ayyubids: 20; the period and its culture, al-Hāshimī, Abū Sāliḥ ̣: 23–24 20–21 Ḥaydar, Ḥ aydar: Banquet, 312 al-Azdī, Abū al-Mutahhar:̣ his Ḥikāyat, Haykal, Muḥammad Ḥ usayn: Zaynab, 8; 23–24; and narrative theory, 45–47 status of first novel, 11 Ḥimmīsh, Ben Sālim: use of history, 10 Badr: the battle, 71–72 Homer: The Odyssey, 285 Bakr, Salwā: use of history, 10 Ḥusayn, Ṭāhā: and Orientalism, viii; al-Bayātī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb: 273–310; impact of French culture, 5–7 and poetry, 274; and painting, al-Ḥusayn: imam, 54–84 274–277; use of myth, 275–277; ibn al-ʿArabī, 304 Ibn Abī Ṭālib, ʿAlī: 57, 72, 186 al-Bayhaqī, Ibrāhīm: on books, 29 Ibn al Muqaffa‘: and story telling, 45 Ben Bella, Ahmed: 313 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn: 144; Bergson, Henri Louis: 281 Turjumān, 151–152; Futūḥāt, Bin Hadūqa, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd: 314 151–152; on God’s presence, 163–164; Boabdil (Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad): works on, 193–194; his grace, 266–267 199–200; on poetry, 204; nasīb, Boudjedra, Rachid (Rashīd Abū Jadra): 207–218; Andalus, 208; in al-Bayātī’s 314–317, 322 poetry, 304 al-Buḥturī, al-Walīd ibn ʿUbayd Allāh Ibn al-Fāriḍ: 143, 146–147; al-Nābulusī’s Abū ʿAbādah: 90; 93–94; Sīniyyah, commentary 150–151; explication, 219–272; praise of al-Mutawakkil, 153–206 224–270 Ibn al-Jawzī: on narrative, 33 Ibn ʿAmmār, Mansūr:̣ as storyteller, 33 Cordova: Great Mosque, 220, 222, Ibn Barmak, Khālid: 101 239–244; in poetry, 250; and the Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad: 88, n.8 Qurʾān of ʿUthmān, 257 Ibn Hārūn, Sahl: and story telling, 45 338 index

Ibn Khaldūn: 5; Ḥusayn’s critique, 5–6 Mayakovsky, Vladimir: and al-Bayātī, Ibn Khāqān, Yaḥyā: 87; humiliated, 275 87–88 al-Misʿadī, Maḥmūd: 7 Ibn Nūḥ, Muḥammad: 88, n.8 Mosque of Córdoba: 111, 135 Ibn Qutayba, Abū Muḥammad: concept Muḥammad: the prophet, xii–xiii; in of the qasīda,̣ xii; on book production, Stetkevych’s discussion, xii–xiv; and 25–26; on egalitarian principles, 26; the golden bough, xii–xiv; as culture theory for narrative compilations, hero, xiii; as founder&law giver, xiii; 26–27; justifying book production, in Raḍī’s poetry, 53–84; spiritual 29–30; on transmission, 30–31; feast presence, 146–147 analogy, 49–50 al-Muḥāsibī, al-Ḥ ārith: reporting Ibn Quzmān: vii; zajal, 111–142 narratives, 34 Ibn Sabʿīn: 144 Munīf, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān: 1; desert in his Ibn Thābit, ̣assān:H 203 novels, 9; use of history, 10 Ibn Ṭufayl: Ḥ ayy Ibn Yaqzāṇ , 31; and al-Muqaddasī, Shams al-Dīn: the allegorical narrative, 45 geographer, 40; on sources of Ibn ʿUtbah, Hind: 72 narrative, 40 Ibn Zuhayr, Kaʿb: post conversion, 106 Mustaghānamī, Aḥlām: Memory, Ibrāhīm, Suṇ ʿAllāh: use of journalism, 311–330; other novels, 311 11 Muʿtaḍid: the caliph, 37; care for people, Idrīs, Yūsuf: 1; use of transgenres, 11 37 al-Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib: 98–99 Jabrā, Ibrāhīm Jabrā: 1 al-Mutawakkil: caliph, 87–88; father of al-Jāḥiz,̣ ʿAmr Ibn Baḥr: his Bukhalāʾ, al-Muʿtazz, 87; asking Abū al-ʿAynāʾ, 23; his misers, 24; Ibn al Taw’am, 102; in al-Buḥturī’s poetry, 219–272; 24–25; narrative art, 24–26; narrative in Shawqī’s poetry, 219–272 and desire, 31; anecdotes on al-Mu‘tazz: caliph, 87 storytellers as reprobates, 33; his al-Muwayliḥī, Muḥammad: 1; objections to storytelling, 34–35; transgenres in, 11; and maqāmah, popular lore, 35–36; the base for 14–15 narrative, 40–50; emulation, 44–45 Jallūn, ʿAbd al-Majīd: 13 al-Nābulusī, ʿAbd al-Ghanī: 7, 143–206 James, William: 281 al-Nadīm, Abū al-Faraj̣: Fihrist, 26; on Jones, Sir William: discontents, x popular narratives, 30; recording al Jubrān, Jubrān Khalīl: and transgenres, Jahshiyārī, 44 11 nahḍah: influence of Orientalism, viii; as movement, 5–8; Moroccan itinerary, Kanafānī, Ghassān: depiction of desert, 13 9 al-Kūnī, Ibrāhīm: 8; desert life, 9; Orientalism: its regime of truth, viii; antecedents, 9 Stetkevych’s critique, ix

Lorca, Federico García: and al-Bayātī, Picasso, Pablo: in poetry, 274, 283 275, 283 al-Qādir: caliph, 55–56 Maḥfūz,̣ Najīb: 1; Trilogy, 8; Nobel qasīda:̣ discussed, xi; anthropology and, Prize, 8; use of genres, 11; 311 xi–xii; and change, 60–62; its place, Makkī, Abū al-Ṭālib: 34 90–92; types, 92–106; and other al-Malāʾikah, Nāzik: 282–283 poetic forms, 113–115; travesty of, al-Mantiqī,̣ Abū Sulaymān: advice to 135; and ibn al-ʿArabī, 207–218; and rulers, 37 architecture, 247–249 al-Maqqarī, Aḥmad: Nafḥ al-Ṭīb, 199; al-Qayrawānī, al-Husrī:̣ 25, n.22; on biography of ibn al-Fāriḍ, 199–200 narrative, 32; on art and rules, 36; al-Marrākushī, Muḥammad: his travel sources of narrative, 40–41; principles record, 13 of narrative, 41–42, 50; the compiler index 339

as master narrator, 42–43; theoretical al-Tanūkhī, Abū ʿAlī: commitment to bases, 47–49 narrative, 31; on narrative collections, al-Qummī, Muḥammad: patron, 93–94 38–39; and vagrancy, 40; principles of narrative, 40–50 al-Raḍī, al-Sharīf: vii, 53–84 Ṭarafah: Muʿallaqah, 207–218 al-Rāḍī: the caliph, 18; his readings, al-Tawfīq, Aḥmad: use of history, 10 17–18 al-Tawḥīdī, Abū Ḥ ayyān: 26, his nights, al-Rashīd, Hārūn: the affluence of 26–27; on Sufi production, 27–28; Baghdad, 95 negotiating acceptance for women, Rhetorical turn: vii 35; on popular lore, 36; defending rithāʾ: concept and deviation, 53–57; common people, 36–38; narrative collapse of genres, 58–61 principles, 40–50; emulating al-Jāḥiz,̣ Roethke, Theodore: in Arabic poetry, 44–45 273–310 Taymūr, ʿĀʾishah Ismāʿīl: 12; as pioneering woman writer, 12; her al-Sābị ʾ, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm: 56 nephews, 12 al-Sādiq,̣ Ja‘far: imam, 27, n.26 Thousand and One Nights: 17–18; Said, Edward: Orientalism, viii; production and markets, 17–20; paradigm shift, viii; critique, viv; the emergence of Sindabad-like article on Stetkevych, ix persons, 19; Buḷāq edition, 20; and Sāliḥ, al-Ṭayyib: 4 use of nights, 27; and al-Jahshiỵārī, Sāmarrā: as capital, 92–93 28; accumulation, 45; dreams and al-Sayyāb, Badr Shākir: 283 narrative, 50 al-Shābushtī, Abū al-Ḥasan: Diyārāt, al-Tūnisī, Bayram: 14 87–88 al-Ṭūsī, Abū Ḥ āmid: note on preachers Shaghab: the caliph al-Muqtadir’s as actors, 35 mother, 17–18 Shawqī, Aḥmad: 219–272; Andalusian Uḥud: the battle, 72 glory, 219–272; exile, 235–236 al-ʿUjaylī, ʿAbd al-Salām: 14 al-Shayzarī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān: 20; his Umayyads: 23 book on markets, 20–21 al-Shidyāq, A. F.: and narrative, 11; and Visigoths: 111–112 maqāmah, 14 Shīʿīs: disparaged, 20–21; and the twelfth Watṭ ār,̣ Ṭāhir: 314 century official discourse, 21 Williams, William Carlos: in al-Shirbīnī: 7 comparison to Arab poets, 273–310 al-Sūlī,̣ Abū Bakr: as tutor to Muqtadir’s son, 17–18 Yacine, Kateb (Kateb Yacine): 314–315, al-Suyūtī: commentary on Ibn al-Fāriḍ, 324–325 143, 144 al-Yaʿqūbī: 102 al-Yāzijī, Nāsīf:̣ maqāmah genre, 14 al-Tabbān, Shaykh: storyteller, 37 Yeats, W. B.: compared, 273–310 al-Ṭahtāwī,̣ Rifāʿah: 5 Yūsuf, Saʿdī: 312