Ibn Rashīq's Elegy for the City of Qayrawan

Journal of Arabic Literature 48 (2017) 270-297 brill.com/jal “It Eclipsed Cairo and Outshone Baghdad!”: Ibn Rashīq’s Elegy for the City of Qayrawan Nizar F. Hermes University of Virginia [email protected] Abstract Ibn Rashīq’s popularity in the Arab world as one of the most distinguished classical Maghribi poets owes much to what is often called in Arabic school textbooks “Nūniyyat Ibn Rashīq fī rithāʾ al-Qayrawān,” or simply “Nūniyyat Ibn Rashīq.” Ibn Rashīq com- posed his city-elegy, the nūniyyah while living in exile to lament the destruction (kharāb) and desolation (khalā̄ʾ) of Qayrawan in the wake of the Hilālī sacking of the city in 1057 CE. A full English translation of Ibn Rashīq’s printed and standardized nūniyyah follows an introductory essay that enumerates salient linguistic and rhetori- cal features, and offers a manuscript and publication history for the poem. The essay pivots around the lack of elegiac and nostalgic representation of Qayrawan’s once majestic ‘cityscape’ and iconic worldly buildings in the nūniyyah, finding the mnemonic and nostalgic focus of the Maghrib’s most renowned city-elegy to be rather the loss of the city’s fuqahāʾ (Islamic scholars or jurisprudents). Keywords Ibn Rashīq – Qayrawan – nūniyyah – rithāʾ al-mudun – Banū Hilāl – fuqahāʾ – city elegy – translation ن ث � ي � ث ن � ي � ن ن � عرا � ا ��ا �م ن�� ا د و �ه�� ي � عرا � ا ��ر ن� ن��يم��ه�ك� م�ا �ك�ي��ر ي أ ي ن ن ي ي ن ي ث � � � � �� ك� � ا � � � م � � � �� ا د ا � � ك� �ه � ا �ك�� ك�ه�ا �� ا ��ك�� ا ��ه ر و ي أس ن ي � و ي س ن أ � و ن �ص ي ن ي ي ن��لا د �ح��ه�ا ا �ح�ا ن� ن�� ر و��ل�ك ا �ح��ط ��س�ا �ح�� ه�ا ا � يم��ر. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi �0.��63/�570064x-��Downloaded34�349 from Brill.com09/29/2021 10:48:24PM via free access “It Eclipsed Cairo and Outshone Baghdad!” 271 Baghdad is the Iraq of the East, this [Qayrawan] is the Iraq of the West, they may share many things in common. But I am not measuring Baghdad to it [Qayrawan], for a year and a month, one can never compare! It was the Badrīs who drew the outline of this [Qayrawan], a prince drafted the plan of that one! Abū al-Qāsim al-Fizārī (d.956)1 ن ي ن ّ نث ن ن ن �ك�ي�� ي��ا �ي��ر وا � ح�ا �ل�ك ��ك�م�ا ��ر ا ��كن�ي��س �� س��ل�ك�ك ا ��ك�م��و�م�ا ن أ ّ ن ّ ي ث �ي ن � ث �ي �ك��م�� ا �م ا ��كن �لا د ��ر��ا و�عر ن��ا ��ح�ا ا �ل�� هر و��كي��ك ا ��ك�مر�و�م�ا. O Qayrawan! What has become of your state after separation dispersed your thread of beads. You were the mother of the land, in the East and the West, before your colorful ornament was erased by Fate. Ibn Faḍḍāl al-Qayrawānī (d. 1086)2 Before its catastrophic destruction and desolation at the hands of the nomadic tribes of Banū Hilāl in 1057 CE, Qayrawan was hailed by al-Idrīsī (d. 1165) and many others as the unmatched metropolis of the Islamic West (hereafter the Maghrib). In the eyes of its admirers, even Cordoba, then the capital of al-Anda- lus, was not a serious rival, let alone a worthy competitor. For those admirers, if there existed a city that matched theirs, that city was Baghdad alone. As poeti- cally captured in the title and the prefatory sample verses to this article, some of Qayrawan’s most stalwart enthusiasts went so far as to declare, rather haugh- tily, its supremacy over the caliphal capital of the ʿAbbasids. During Qayrawan’s peak years of Aghlabid glory (808-909), the city, which was founded by ʿUqbah ibn Nāfiʿ al-Fihrī (d. 683) in 670 CE, witnessed an unprecedented urbanization and construction boom.3 Concurrently, Qayrawan enjoyed a long period of scholarly renaissance, both religious and worldly. In al-Muʿjib fī talkhīṣ akhbār 1 Cited in Abū Bakr al-Mālikī (d.1061), Kitāb Riyāḍ al-nufūs fī ṭabaqāt ʿulamāʾ al-Qayrawān wa- Ifriqiyyah (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1983), 225. 2 Quoted in al-Dabbāgh, Maʿālim al-īmān fī maʿrifat ahl al-Qayraw ān (Cairo: Maktabat al- Khānjī, 1968), 225. 3 See Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge, University Press, 1987) and M. Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide, 184-296/800-909: histoire politique (Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, 1966). Journal of Arabic Literature 48 (2017) 270-297 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 10:48:24PM via free access 272 Hermes al-Maghrib, ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Marrākushī (d. 1185) sums this up well when he notes that Qayrawan, “from its foundation until it was sacked by the Bedouins was the [power]house of knowledge in the West, the center of its major scholars, and the destination of the seekers of knowledge across it [the West].”4 Both in poetry and prose, pre-Hilālī Qayrawan was movingly eulogized and romantically depicted across a plethora of Maghribi (western) as well as Mashriqi (eastern) sources. Mashriqi al-Muqaddasī (d. 946) had no qualms about singing Qayrawan’s praise and claimed it as unique not only in the Maghrib but also in the entire Dār al-Islām (abode of Islam). In his Aḥsan al- taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm, he praises it as, “the pride of the Arabs, the seat of power, and one of the pillars [of Dār al-Islām]” before proceeding to declare it superior to Nishapur, Damascus and Isfahan.5 In the copious praise for the Aghlabids, and to a lesser degree the Zirids, Qayrawan was nostalgically captured by later Maghribi and Andalusi scholars. Suffice to mention in this regard famed geographers al-Idrīsī and Ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī (d. 1286), histo- rians Ibn ʿIdhārī al-Marrākushī (d. 1295) and Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406), and trav- elers al-ʿAbdarī (d. 1336) and al-Ḥasan al-Wazzān al-Fāsī (d. 1554)—known in the West as Leo Africanus.6 Commenting on its pre-Hilālī urban glory, cultural achievement, and its place in the Islamic West, al-Idrīsī hailed Qayrawan as, “the greatest city in the West, the most populated, the most prosperous and thriving, with the perfect buildings.”7 The effusive comments dramatically turn into elegiac and nostalgic state- ments as soon as al-Idrīsī discusses the sack of Qayrawan by the Banū Hilāl.8 What was once the most majestic metropolis of the Maghrib, al-Idrīsī mourn- fully comments, became nothing but (aṭlālun dārisatun wa-āthārun ṭāmisah) “erased traces and obliterated ruins.”9 Perhaps more suggestively, Andalusian Ibn Yūsuf al-Saraqūsṭī (d. 1143) devoted an entire maqāmahof his al-Maqāmāt 4 Al-Marrākushī, Kitāb al-Muʻjib fī talkhīṣ akhbār al-Maghrib (Leiden: Brill, 1881), (441). See also Abū al-ʿArab al-Qayrawānī (d.945), Ṭabaqāt ʿulamā⁠ʾ Ifrīqiyyah wa-Tūnis (al-Dār al-Tūnisiyyah lil-Nashr, 1968); Abū Bakr al-Mālikī (d.1061);Kitāb Riyāḍ al-nufūs; and Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Muʻaskarī, Nabaʼ al-īwān bi-jamʻ al-dīwān fī dhikr ṣulaḥāʼmadīnat al-Qayraw ān (Markaz al- Dirāsāt al-Islāmiyyah bi-l-Qayrawān, 2012). 5 Al-Muqaddasī, Kitāb Aḥsan al-taqāsīmfī maʻrifat al-aqālīm (Leiden: Brill, 196), 224. 6 Both visited the city and were appalled at what they saw. See M. Talbi, “Kairouan,” in Cities of the Islamic World, ed. C. Edmund Bosworth (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 258-268. 7 Al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqāfah al-Dīniyyah, 1990), 284. 8 See M. Brett, “ ‘Fitnat al-Qayrawan’: a Study of Traditional Arab Historiography”. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis (London, University of London, 1970). 9 Al-Idrīsī, Nuzhat al-mushtāq, 284. Journal of Arabic LiteratureDownloaded from 48 Brill.com09/29/2021 (2017) 270-297 10:48:24PM via free access “It Eclipsed Cairo and Outshone Baghdad!” 273 al-Luzūmiyyah in rhymed prose to mourn the destruction and desolation of Qayrawan. In “al-Maqāmah al-Qayrawānīyyah,” [Maqāmah 29], as translated by James T. Monroe, al-Saraqūsṭī al-Ashtarkūnī has this to say on the tongue of his (anti)hero: ن ي ن ي ن ي ن ن ن ن ّ ن� �حن��ا � ��ا ع�� د ا ي� �� ا �حي� �م ن��ا ��ك�م�� كن�� ا ��ك�يه�� ا �م ��ك�ه �م� ن �ي��ا ك ر ن ي� ن ير و � � رر ن ي ير و � ع ر س ن ن ّ أ ن ن ن ي أ ن ّ ي ي ن �ن نّ ا � � �� ا � و � ص � � ا � � ك � ك ا � ل � � و � � ا � � �ص��ل��ا �ه�ا و�� و��م��ا ا �ل�� و�را �� ا ل�ح��ل��ط �م��ا ر ن ي ن و ري أ� يل أ ي ن ي ي ي �لن ن ي ي ن ن ن ي وا ��ك�هر�� و�� ا ��ك��ول ع��لي��ه�ا ا �را ن� ود �ه�نم�� ن�� و��ك��ه�ا ا ل� �عرا ن� ��ا ع�ا �م�� ي ُ أ � ن ن ن ن ي ن� ن ي ن� � ي ي ا حو�ص�ه�ا وع��ي�ر�ه�ا ور�لر�� حور��ك�ه�ه�ا و��س��ي�ر�ه�ا ��ك�� نح�� ع��ل� ��ل�ك ا ل� �ل ل ّ ي ُ ي ي ي آ ث و ا � ل ر � � س و � م و � � ك � ه � � ا أ � � � � � ل � ك ا ل � � � ا ر و ا � � و � � س و � م .

Load more