“Epigram”. the Reason for This Lack Is Perhaps, Rather Than the Absence of Epigrams in Arabic Literature, Their Ubiquity

POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED

ARABIC ENCOMIASTIC AND ELEGIAC EPIGRAMS

There is no Arabic word for “epigram”. The reason for this lack is perhaps, rather than the absence of epigrams in Arabic literature, their ubiquity. Not only is there a great abundance of short poems from all periods that may be described as epigrams in the usual meaning of this term, but longer poems are often composed, as it were, of a series of epigrams, be they single lines or short passages. Most Arabic poems are either epigrams or epigrammatic1. Of the traditional modes of Arabic poetry some are especially associated with the epigram: invective and satirical verse, gnomic verse and descriptive, epideictic (or ecphrastic) verse. The vehicle for these modes may be a lengthy poem, it is true; they may combine with other modes in a qaÒida. But the typical poem of hija}, Ìikma, zuhd or waÒf is short and pointed — the two basic characteristics of the epigram. Other modes, notably panegyric and elegiac verse, seem to thrive mainly through longer poems, even after the innovative early {Abbasid period, when a number of “shorter forms” are said to have come into being. In a recent and authoritative survey of the history of Arabic poetry, it is said that shorter genres came into being, besides the panegyric qaÒida and the elegy; these two modes are not included in the shorter forms, as if short poems were never panegyric or elegiac2. Judging by the hand- books and histories of Arabic literature, one would be led to believe that “the encomiastic epigram” is an almost paradoxical term for something non-existent. In the present study I intend to investigate precisely this genre, and its elegiac counterpart. There is certainly no lack of material: from numerous anthologies and diwans one may cull an enormous quantity of pieces of madiÌ or ritha} that answer to the description of the epigram. Here two questions arise: firstly, how do we know if they were conceived and composed as epigrams, rather than being the sur- viving fragments of a larger poem? And secondly, does this matter?

1 This does not necessarily imply a lack of unity or coherence: think, for instance, of Alexander Pope's poetry which is highly epigrammatic but by no means lacking in unity. 2 Renate Jacobi, in the chapter “Abbasidische Dichtung” in Grundriss der Arabischen Philologie, Band II: Literaturwissenschaft, hrsg. von Helmut Gätje, Wiesbaden, 1987, p. 46. 102 G.J. VAN GELDER

Elsewhere3 I have argued at some length that it may be wrong to think of an Arabic poem as something static, of fixed proportions once the poet composed it. It lives on, in different shapes, in quotations through the ages. Favourite passages or even single lines may acquire a life of their own and become poems in their own right. In the following I shall mainly concentrate on those poems that seem to be, as far as can be known, original epigrams; but the other kind will not be wholly excluded. Let us consider, for instance, a passage from the chapter on panegyric in Naqd al-shi{r by Qudama Ibn Ja{far (early 10th century). Having explained the various aspects for which the poet may praise a patron (the four “cardinal virtues” and their various combinations into secondary virtues), he continues4: Then there are poets who summarize (yujmil) the panegyric, which is also a good type, by which one reaches one's goal free from long-windedness and far from prolixity, through brevity. Of this kind are the lines by al- Îu†ay}a: You (?) visit a man who gives his wealth away for the sake of praise: whoever pays the price of glorious deeds will be praised. He sees that stinginess will not preserve one's wealth: and he knows that wealth will not last forever. Gaining much and spending much: when you ask something from him, he rejoices and shakes [from enthusiasm] like an Indian sword. When you come to him, arriving at the light of his fire in the evening, you will find the best fire with the best fire-lighter. In the first lines he presents the various categories of panegyric that were discussed before; then, in the last line he offers a comprehensive description and a summary of the panegyric, by way of brevity.

The four lines could be thought of as an independent epigram, of which the first lines dwell on the patron's generosity, while the last line rounds it off nicely by being capable of a literal interpretation (the Bedouin camp-fire) and a metaphorical one (fire standing for prominent good deeds). Because no name is mentioned it cannot, merely by itself,

3 G.J.H. VAN GELDER, Beyond the line. Classical Arabic literary critics on the coherence and unity of the poem, Leiden, 1982. 4 Qudama Ibn Ja{far, Naqd al-shi{r, ed. S.A. BONEBAKKER, Leiden, 1956, p. 37, quoted (and wrongly attributed to al-Mubarrad) by al-Îatimi, Îilyat al-muÌa∂ara, ed. JA{FAR AL-KATTANI, Baghdad, 1979, i, 340-41 and Ibn Rashiq, {Umda, ed. MUÎAMMAD MUÎYI L-DIN {ABD AL-ÎAMID, Cairo, 1955, ii, 137. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 103 function as praise of a particular person; but that makes it all the more useful and quotable whenever someone has to be praised or when generosity in general is to be extolled. It is not certain whether Qudama or, after him, al-Îatimi (d. 998) and Ibn Rashiq (d. 1065 or 1071) considered these lines as forming a poten- tially independent whole; judging by Qudama's comment, the “summa- rizing” is illustrated not so much by the quotation as a whole as by the last line only. In any case, the four lines were not made separately by the poet, for they are part of a qaÒida of forty-three lines, in praise of Baghi∂ Ibn {Amir Ibn Shammas5. It turns out that the subject of tazuru (which opens Qudama's quotation) is not “you”, which seems to be the more obvious reading to those who do not know the qaÒida, but “the crook- backed (camels)” of the preceding line. We may assume that Qudama was aware of the fact that the lines are part of a larger whole. Qudama gives two more examples, one by al-Shammakh: I have seen {Araba al-Awsi rise towards good deeds, peerless: Whenever a banner is raised for the sake of glory, {Araba takes it in his right hand.

This, though again taken from a longer piece, works well as an epigram. Like the previous example it has a final line that allows of a literal as well as a figurative interpretation. It ensures {Araba's reputation since he is mentioned by name. The two lines are very often quoted, before Qudama and after him6. The last example provided by Qudama, two lines in praise of SharaÌil Ibn Ma{n Ibn Za}ida by Marwan Ibn Abi ÎafÒa, are said to contain “a nice and succinct allusion which contains much praise with concision”: I have seen that the generosity of Ma{n's son makes people talk, so that it forces the speechless to make poetry; And with his justice he has made weapons cheap in our land: an Indian sword does not fetch a dirham7.

5 al-Îu†ay}a, Diwan ed. GOLDZIHER, ZDMG, 46 (1892) 203-205 (= Gesammelte Schriften, iii, 133-35). The quoted lines are nos. 36-39. 6 Tha{lab, Qawa{id al-shi{r ed. RAMADAN {ABD AL-TAWWAB, Cairo, 1966, p. 37 (illus- trating madÌ, “panegyric”, in his list of poetic modes), IBN {ABD RABBIH, al-{Iqd al-farid, Cairo, 1948-53, ii, 288, ABU L-FARAJ AL-I∑FAHANI, al-Aghani, Cairo, 1927-74, ix, 106 (as the lyrics of a song, Òawt), al-Qali, al-Amali, Cairo, 1926, i, 274, and many others. For the qaÒida, see AL-SHAMMAKH, Diwan, Cairo, 1968, 319-41 (29 lines). 7 Qudama, Naqd al-shi{r, pp. 37-38; cf. MARWAN IBN ABI ÎAF∑A, Shi{r, Cairo, 1973, 101 (from Qudama). 104 G.J. VAN GELDER

Here the epigrammatic effect is achieved by means of the balance between the two chief virtues, by the hyperbole in both lines, and by the necessary mental leap — not a very difficult one — between justice that prevails and weapons that are cheap. It is not known whether these two lines were once part of a longer poem. To Qudama this was irrelevant. In the section on elegy Qudama gives similar illustrations: the first three lines of a poem on the death of Fa∂ala Ibn Kalada by Aws Ibn Îajar summarize all the virtues of the deceased; five other lines by the same poet (part of a qaÒida, as Qudama says) “resemble the conciseness of motifs and brevity of diction as found in panegyric”8. Qudama's main preoccupation in these passages is to find poems and fragments that may underpin his system of virtues that are the basis of panegyric and elegy. In his presentation any poetic fragment is a “complete” whole when it comprises all the cardinal virtues; and if this is done succinctly, the result may be called an epigram. Ibn Rashiq follows Qudama in his discussion of “summary” (mujmal) panegyric and elegy9. For the latter, he does not adopt Qudama's examples but provides two others, by Ibn al-Mu{tazz. One describes the funeral of the caliph al-Mu{ta∂id (d. 289/902): They performed for him the necessary rites. Then they set an imam in front of them, with the bier before him, And prayed for him, humbly, as if they were standing in ranks in order to greet him10.

The other is made on the death, in 288/901, of the vizier {Ubayd Allah Ibn Sulayman Ibn Wahb: Now people have become equals: perfection is gone. Time [lit. the days] cried out, Where are the Men? Here lies Abu l-Qasim on his bier: Stand up and see how mountains disappear. You, protector of the realm with your views: after you to the realm are left long nights11.

8 Qudama, Naqd al-shi{r, pp. 53-54. 9 On panegyric, see above, note 4; on elegy, see {Umda, ii, 150, on ritha} mujmal. 10 The version of al-{Umda has been slightly adapted on the basis of that of the Diwan (ed. Lewin, Teil IV, Istanbul, p. 182, ed. Muhammad Badi{ Sharif, Cairo, 1977-78, ii, 375) and AL-ÎU∑RI, Zahr al-adab ed. Zaki Mubarak, repr. Beirut, 1972, p. 827. 11 Slightly adapted on the basis of the Diwan (ed. Lewin, iv, 163, ed. Sharif, ii, 358). POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 105

There are no indications that these two pieces ever formed part of longer poems. Judging from his Diwan Ibn al-Mu{tazz made a number of poems, both longer and shorter ones, on the death of these two persons. Ibn Rashiq selected two poems that depict a funeral scene: the deceased on his bier. Detailed encomium and extended display of grief are replaced by condensation and implication. Qudama and Ibn Rashiq are separated by more than a century. The former was not, in his work on poetics, interested in “modern” poetry (Marwan Ibn Abi ÎafÒa must have been a borderline case to him). He chose poetic fragments which he presented as more or less independent poems, capable of being appreciated by themselves, while he was aware of their being part of longer poems originally. In many ways Ibn Rashiq follows the method of Qudama and other predecessors; but in the passage under discussion, it seems, he consciously chose existing epigrams that were not culled from longer odes. He was able to do so all the more easily because he did not, like Qudama, ignore modern poetry. The epigram is characteristic of the muÌdath poets.

Pre- and early Islamic epigrams Short poems are, however, found in ancient poetry too. Before the qaÒida was developed, the Arabs made short occasional poems, as the critics say, no doubt correctly12. The word qi†{a, literally “piece, fragment”, became the customary term for any shortish poem that was not a properly a qaÒida, which was unfortunate, firstly since it suggests that a qi†{a is always a piece of an originally larger entity, and secondly because it yokes together a term that often — at least in modern studies — refers to a definite structure (qaÒida) and a term that merely denotes the absence of this same structure, as if a qi†{a could not have a structure of its own. The term qi†{a is used for both “a short poem” and “a poem with only one theme”, even though some qi†{as have more than one theme and some long poems have only one13. The idea that the qi†{a is

12 See e.g. Ibn Sallam, ™abaqat fuÌul al-shu{ara} ed. MAÎMUD MUÎAMMAD SHAKIR, Cairo, 1952, p. 23, Ibn Qutayba, al-Shi{r wa-l-shu{ara} ed. AÎMAD MUÎAMMAD SHAKIR, Cairo, 1966-67, p. 104. 13 Ewald WAGNER, Grundzüge der klassischen arabischen Dichtung, Darmstadt, 1987- 88, i, 61. The term qaÒida, too, may be said to have two different meanings, for although it is commonly used for a longer polythematic poem (especially among arabists), in the Arabic tradition it not rarely denotes any poem of some length, including monothematic ones. 106 G.J. VAN GELDER something incomplete is occasionally found with medieval critics or poets. Abu Tammam contrasted qi†{as and poems that are “complete” (timm)14; but far more often qi†{a is the opposite of “longer poem”, as may be seen, for instance, in the chapter on “qi†{as and long poems (al-qi†a{ wa-l-†iwal)” in Ibn Rashiq's {Umda15. The negative connotations of the term qi†{a may be partly responsible for the neglect of the early Arabic shorter poem and epigram in Arabic studies, in which the qaÒida is, understandably but excessively, favoured to the point of ignor- ing the qi†{a16. In the following I shall look at a small number of early anthologies and diwans and discuss the poems that could be called panegyric or elegiac epigrams, taking “epigram” in the sense of a short17 poem that is, oxymoronically, both pointed and well-rounded18. Almost any diwan

14 Diwan Abi Tammam, Cairo, 1976, ii, 350. 15 Ibn Rashiq, {Umda, i, 186-89. 16 See, e.g., Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period (The Cambridge His- tory of Arabic Literature, vol. i), Cambridge, 1983, p. 38 (in a chapter on pre-Islamic poetry:) “The qi†{a as a literary entity may be ignored for the purpose of this chapter … We do not really possess true examples of short pieces originally composed as such, for selection can always be assumed in these cases.” As Alan Jones, quoting this, rightly says, “it is nonsense to deny the existence of the qi†{a as a class” (Early Arabic Poems. I. Marathi and ∑u{luk poems. Ed., transl. and comm. by Alan JONES, Reading, 1992, p. 7). On the qi†{a in general, see M.M. BADAWI, From Primary to Secondary Qasidas: Thoughts on the Development of Classical Arabic Poetry, in JAL 11 (1980) 1-31, an adapted version of which is reprinted as “{Abbasid Poetry and its Antecedents”, ch. 9 in Julia ASHTIANY et al. (eds.), {Abbasid Belles-Lettres, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 146-66; Ewald WAGNER, Grundzüge, i, 61-62. 17 What is short? The article on “epigram” in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (ed. by Alex PREMINGER and T.V.F. BROGAN, Princeton, 1993, p. 375- 77) speaks of “extreme condensation”; “it generally takes the shape of a couplet or qua- train”. But many epigrams by Martial or epigrams from the Greek Anthology are much longer; Fowler speaks of “Herrick's fourteen-line love epigrams” (Alastair FOWLER, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes, Oxford, 1982, p. 138). Here I have limited myself, rather arbitrarily, to poems of fewer than ten lines. 18 I shall not dwell on the original meaning of the word “epigram”, viz. “inscription” on a monument or other object. Epitaphs with Arabic poetry are not uncommon; cf. M.J. KISTER, A Broken Tombstone With an Arabic Inscription, in Israel Exploration Jour- nal 41:1-3 (1991) 163-66 (verses ascribed to Abu l-{Atahiya and al-Khalil Ibn Ahmad, engraved on tombstones from the 4th or 5th century AH). For lines by Abu l-{Atahiya made for his own tombstone, see al-Aghani, iii, 111, al-{Iqd al-farid, iii, 248; for another example, see Ibn KHALLIKAN, Wafayat al-a{yan, Beirut, 1969-72, vi, 420. James A. Bel- lamy, I. Sh. Shifman and Sergio Noja believe to have found a much older example (in fact the oldest Arabic poetry extant); see Bellamy's Arabic verses from the first/second century: the inscription of {En {Avdat, in Journal of Semitic Studies 35:1 (1990) 73-79, Shifman's Novaya nabateyskaya dvuyazychnaya nadpis iz okrestnostey Obody, in Epi- grafika Vostoka 24 (1988) col. 116-17 and Noja's A Further Discussion of the Arabic POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 107 contains such poems. A poem of five lines by {Abid Ibn al-AbraÒ (first half of the 6th century) is, according to its editor and translator Charles Lyall, a fragment: To whom belong the remnants of camps not yet effaced in al-Madhanib? — then the sides of Hibirr, and Wahib — in both they have been swept away; The abodes were they of the Children of Sa{d son of Tha{labah, whom Time has scattered far and wide, Time the destroyer of men. They have perished, as others before them have been brought to their end, by the teeth of wars, and the Dooms that dog the steps of all. How many a clan of our kin have we seen in these camping-grounds, before whose vanguard the bands of hostile scouts turned aside in fear! ***** Betake thyself now to thy business, and leave things too hard alone: thou art troubled about things vain — for all are passing away19.

The poem begins like a true qaÒida, with a question concerning the a†lal, and with tasri{ (internal rhyme) in the first line. But the remnants described are not those of the abode of a beloved girl with whom the poet has had a fleeting affair: they belonged to the poet's own tribe, destroyed by another tribe. After two lines of elegy the fourth line turns to fakhr, boasting. Just as in the “standard” qaÒida (or, more precisely, one of the customary versions of the qaÒida) the poet exhorts himself to abandon thoughts of former love and to apply himself to the present and the future, so does {Abid in the last line, which takes up the idea that was already expressed in lines 2 and 3: “all are passing away”. The sentiment may not be very original, but it makes the poem complete. The asterisks are added by Lyall and seem to indicate that he finds the transition abrupt, or thinks that lines may have been left out. He may have been right; it is easy to imagine that the sad event would have inspired the poet to make one or several long odes (such as his most famous poem, beginning Aqfara min ahlihi Malhubu, which seems to refer to the same events). But as it stands the short poem must be considered complete.

Sentence of the 1st Century A.D. and Its Poetical Form, in R. CONTINI et al. (eds.), Semi- tica: Serta philologica Constantino Tsereteli dicata, Torino, 1993, pp. 183-88. The fragment is unrhymed; I remain unconvinced by Bellamy's attempt to identify them as lines in †awil metre and I should therefore hesitate to speak of “Arabic poetry”. — Not rarely poetry is written on or inside buildings (many examples, for instance, in Abu l-Faraj al- IÒfahani's Adab al-ghuraba}). As for poetry inscribed, engraved or written on objects, see e.g. al-Washsha}, al-Muwashsha, ed. R.E. BRÜNNOW, Leiden, 1886, pp. 162-93. 19 {Abid Ibn al-AbraÒ, Diwan, ed. and transl. by Charles LYALL, Cambridge, 1913, p. 53-54 (Arabic), 44 (translation, quoted here). 108 G.J. VAN GELDER

The Diwan of Imra} al-Qays contains a number of epigrams. The authenticity of some of his more famous poems is notoriously suspect, but the shorter ones look more reliable. One three-liner goes as follows: I loosened my saddle among the Banu Thu{al: noble people are the place for a noble man to stay. There I found the best of all people my neighbour, and the most loyal of them, Abu Îanbal, The nearest of them with good, the farthest of them with evil, and the most generous of them in stingy times20.

This sounds like a well-rounded extemporized epigram. The same clan is praised in another poem, of five lines, beginning “Thu{al! And what is Thu{al then to me? Ah, those beloved people, who live in the mountains!” and ending with “Tell Ma{add, the {Ibad, ™ayyi} and Kinda that I am grateful to Banu Thu{al.”21 This, too, may well have been extemporized. Its beginning and end are nicely marked by identical rhyme-words, the clan's name. It is difficult to imagine further lines coming after the fifth line. That the first line cannot have been preceded by others is proved not so much by the internal rhyme (taÒri{), which may be found in the middle of poems, as by a metrical peculiarity, found in pre- and early Islamic poetry, which deserves some attention. Kharm is the technical term for the elision, compared with the regular form, of the first (short) syllable of a metrical foot, particularly in the metres †awil or mutaqarib. It is discussed in some detail in many works on prosody, where it is repeatedly pointed out that it only occurs in the first hemistich of a line22. However, to my knowledge no ancient prosodist has ever pointed out that kharm is virtually never found except in the first line of poem or fragment. Modern studies are no more helpful in this respect; only Stoetzer remarks that it affects “usually the first line” of a poem23, which suggests that it is occasionally otherwise. So far, however, I have no reason to believe this. That kharm is by no means rare in ancient

20 Diwan, ed. MUÎAMMAD ABU L-FA∆L IBRAHIM, Cairo, 1969, p. 199 = W. AHLWARDT (ed.) The Divans of the six ancient Arabic poets, London, 1870, p. 143 (with a few vari- ants, including wajadtu instead of the metrically irregular fa-wajadtu). 21 Diwan, pp. 197-98 (Ahlwardt p. 142-3). 22 In very exceptional cases kharm is found at the beginning of the second hemistich of a line in the middle of a poem, e.g. Imra} al-Qays, Diwan, 166 (line 37); such irregu- larities do not affect my argument. 23 W.F.G.J. STOETZER, Theory and Practice in Arabic Metrics, Leiden, 1989, p. 57 note 7. – Instead of kharm one finds also the synonymous or nearly synonymous term thalm. In Abbasid poetry kharm is, to my knowledge, never found. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 109 poetry may be illustrated by means of the first, eponymous, chapter of Abu Tammam's Îamasa, in which nearly a quarter (33 out of 134) of all poems in †awil metre show kharm. Without exception it occurs in the first line, confirming the result of unsystematic scanning of other sources. It can therefore be safely concluded that kharm at the beginning of a line cannot occur in the middle of a poem. Furthermore, the findings in the Îamasa strongly suggest that a large proportion of the “fragments” collected by Abu Tammam were in fact complete short poems and not excerpted from longer ones, for it is unlikely that Abu Tammam had such a marked predilection for the opening sections in a chapter that, unlike nasib, has no special connection with the beginning of a qaÒida. What is valid for poems in †awil is naturally valid too for poems in those metres that cannot have kharm: there are likely to be equally many complete epigrams among them. From the early poems that I shall deal with in the following a large proportion will have kharm in the first line: it does not prove that the poem is complete, but at least increases the probability. Likewise, in the chapter on elegy in Abu Tammam's Îamasa there must be many qi†{as originally conceived as epigrams. One with kharm is a three-liner by {Atika Bint Zayd24; another (without kharm) is by Labid and is found nearly unchanged in the Diwan25. Abu Tammam's other anthology of short poems, al-WaÌshiyyat, also offers many possible candidates. One example, three lines from the chapter on generosity and hospitality by al-Jaranfas al-™a'i: I was a mote on the earth, and the earth was its eye. My person was tossed about by region after region. But I have never seen anyone like al-Nahdi, refuge for the needy, where everyone requesting a favour halted his camel, No one less inhibited to part with his wealth for me than he; no one giving more freely what I begged26.

24 Abu Tammam, Îamasa, ed. MUÎAMMAD {ABD AL-MUN{IM KHAFAJI, 2 vols, Cairo, 1955, i, 646. It should be noted that the version of the Aghani (xviii, 60-61) has four lines; the kharm is eliminated by the substitution of another word. 25 Abu Tammam, Îamasa, i, 607, Labid, Diwan (Beirut, 1966), p. 73. The elegy of four lines in the Diwan p. 130 is found unchanged in Abu Tammam's other anthology, al- WaÌshiyyat wa-huwa l-Îamasa l-Òughra, ed. {ABD AL-{AZIZAL-MAYMANI AL-RAJKUTI WA-MAÎMUD MUÎAMMAD SHAKIR, Cairo, 1987, p. 155. Among the six short elegiac poems in Labid's Diwan there is a four-liner with kharm in the first line (p. 193). 26 al-WaÌshiyyat, p. 252. For this rather obscure poet, see al-Amidi, al-Mu}talif wa-l- mukhtalif, ed. F. KRENKOW, repr. Beirut, 1982, p. 74, where his name is given as al-Jaran- fash [thus] b. {Abda b. Imra} al-Qays b. Zayd (…) b. Tayyi}. 110 G.J. VAN GELDER

The first line, with its combination of complaint and boast, takes the place of the introductory part of a qaÒida, in particular the raÌil; the two remaining lines form the madiÌ. The piece as a whole, therefore, could be considered a takhalluÒ, transition from introduction to panegyric, taken from a longer poem. But this poem can only have had a ghostly existence: the first line has kharm and is thus very unlikely to have been preceded by other lines. The fact that there exists, as it were, a non-existent or virtual context is not without importance. Throughout the history of Arabic poetry there are short poems that can only be properly under- stood if one takes such a virtual qaÒida into account; the often-discussed “unity” of Arabic poems is often to be found as much outside the actual text as within it.

Jarir and al-Farazdaq The great Arabic poets are great by virtue of their long poems. Their collected works, however, are never without their share of short poems or fragments. Here are several such poems found in the Diwan of Jarir (d. c. 112/730). Some are unproblematical, e.g. two lines that illustrate the simple style characteristic of many qi†{as: I love, among true men, MuÌarriq and Shayban. Few are those who act; But they strike home when they charge, on the day of battle, and they give whenever asked, and generously27.

The same contrasting themes, the virtues of bravery and benevolence, are found in the following: Maslama! who leads armies towards the enemy like Noah driving the creatures of the Ark: Your hands are two: a hand that makes our enemy drink poison, and another that diffuses the fragrant waters of the clouds28.

Or, apparently an elegiac epigram, on a certain Sawada Ibn Kilab al- Qushayri: Who shall we now make carry our needs when they befall us, after (the demise) of that splendid Sawada Ibn Kilab? The adornment of gatherings and of knights, on whom noble virtues were based29.

27 Jarir, Diwan, ed. NU{MAN MUÎAMMAD AMIN ™AHA, Cairo, 1986, i, 450. 28 Jarir, Diwan, ii, 788; kharm in line 1. 29 Jarir, Diwan, i, 452. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 111

When told of the death of his old rival al-Farazdaq (d. c. 112/730) he made the following epigram: May no woman bear children after al-Farazdaq; may no wife rise up from childbed! He was the favoured visitor [or envoy, representative of his people], the one to sew the rent [i.e. to reconcile people] whenever his people made a false step30.

A blessing combined with praise: Al-Ajza{ (var. al-Ajra{) may be drenched, over the Banu Shubayl, by the abrading [i.e. heavy, scil. rains] of every heavily-moving, rumbling (cloud). I have come to know, in them, noble deeds and prudence, whenever it was asked, “Where are prudent men?”31

There are even shorter examples, consisting of only one line. This poses a little problem, since one of the essential characteristics of Arabic poetry, viz. rhyme, is absent. Yet we know that single lines, or even hemistichs, were very often quoted and collected32. The rhyme is present in absentia even when there never was a rhyme, much as in the case of the “virtual qaÒida” discussed before. Only rarely is a poet required to expand a one-line epigram in order to provide a rhyme, as happened to Abu l-{Udhafir Ward al-{Ammi when a line of panegyric was admired (“The generosity that we have encountered from al-Fa∂l Ibn YaÌya [al-Barmaki] has made all people poets”) but blamed at the same time because it was yatim munfarid, an isolated gem-like line33. Here are a few of Jarir's one-liners, the first of them packing the themes of nasib and madiÌ each into one hemistich:

30 Jarir, Diwan, ii, 831, Naqa}i∂, p. 1046, Ibn Sallam al-JumaÌi, ™abaqat fuÌul al- shu{ara}, ed. MAÎMUD MUÎAMMAD SHAKIR, Cairo, 1952, pp. 356-7, Aghani, viii, 88- 89 (where it is said that subsequently other verses were added to these two, but not by Jarir himself). For another elegiac epigram on al-Farazdaq by Jarir, see Diwan, ii, 976, Naqa}i∂ Jarir wa-l-Farazdaq, ed. A.A. BEVAN, Leiden, 1905-12, p. 1046 (three lines, with the traditional elegiac motif “May no woman bear children any longer, etc.” at the end). 31 Jarir, Diwan, i, 453, with the superscription “He said in praise of the Banu Rifa{a Ibn Zayd Ibn Kulayb”. 32 One thinks, for instance, of the vast anthology al-Durr al-farid by Ibn Aydamur, or Abyat al-istishhad by Ibn Faris. Ibn Sallam (™abaqat, 305 ff., 349 ff. and 425 ff.) cites what he calls abyat muqallada of the three great Umayyad poets; defined as well-known verses that can stand independently and are quoted as common sayings (al-muqallad: al- bayt al-mustaghna bi-nafsihi al-mashhur alladhi yu∂rab bihi l-mathal, ibid. 305). 33 IBN AL-JARRAÎ, al-Waraqa, Cairo, n.d., p. 4. 112 G.J. VAN GELDER

Nights in which there was no friend like Umm ‘Amr, and no house like that of the Banu Masad34! If you look for liberality and generosity, then call for those tall and proud men of the clan of Bakhdaj35! When it is asked, “Who is the best Caliph of all people?” the fingers point towards {Abd al-{Aziz36.

The Diwan of al-Farazdaq, who was praised by al-JaÌiÂ for his “short qaÒidas”37, offers many similar epigrams. The following poem is introduced with the words: “He said in praise of al-Îajjaj, who had travelled from Syria to Wasi† [in Iraq] in seven days”: If birds had had to fly like he travelled, to Wasi† from Iliya} [Jerusalem], they would have been exhausted. He went up with the fast dromedaries from Palestine, after the shadows reached to the sun and [the sun] disappeared. That weekday did not return before he halted the camels in Maysan [the region in which Wasi† lies], their ropes loosened, weary. Like a sparrow-hawk, crouched in the saddle, revealed when the thick darkness is lifted. People know that Ibn Yusuf is frowning when the Mashrafi sword is drawn38.

This little occasional poem (which has kharm in line 1) is cleverly crafted, with two striking comparisons to birds (lines 1 and 4) framing two lines mentioning the camels; moving from the particular (the journey, the placenames in ll. 1-3) to the general (ll. 4-5), with the last line making a statement that sounds as an incontrovertible maxim, in which at last the (quasi-) anonymous “he” is sufficiently identified by

34 Jarir, Diwan, i, 455. 35 Jarir, Diwan, ii, 712. The authorship of this line is uncertain, for it is also found, with a few changes, in a three-line epigram ascribed to al-Farazdaq, Diwan, Beirut: Dar ∑adir, n.d., i, 120. 36 Jarir, Diwan, ii, 715. {Abd al-{Aziz, son of al-Walid, aspired to but never attained the caliphate. In the Naqa}i∂ (p. 351) one more line follows: “They saw him as the one most deserving it. They did no wrong thing if they have hastily pledged their loyalty to him” (cf. the very similar line Diwan, ii, 1095); which sounds as if it was added later, after {Abd al-{Aziz himself had renounced his claims. For a short qaÒida of nine lines, five lines of nasib and four of madiÌ on the same prince, see Diwan, ii, 560; a miniature elegy (6 lines) Diwan, i, 242. 37 al-JaÌiÂ, al-Îayawan, ed. {ABD AL-SALAM MUÎAMMAD HARUN, Cairo, 1965-69, iii, 98. From the quotations from al-Farazdaq that precede this statement, it would appear that “qaÒa}id” does not refer to polythematic odes but simply means “poems”, including epigrams. 38 al-Farazdaq, Diwan, i, 116. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 113 his patronymic, and which explains the reason for the strenuous journey. Al-Îajjaj's gloomy countenance is literally foreshadowed by the length- ening shadows and sinking sun of line 2 and the darkness of line 4. In a poem (also beginning with kharm) on NaÒr Ibn Sayyar we again find the customary dual nature of the hero, harsh to enemies and mild to friends; sun, stars and rain give the epigram a cosmic ring: If you were at the place where the sun goes down, our hearts would still be set [literally, our heads would be depending] on what we hope for from you. Your days are two: an evil day on which the stars … (?), and a day that rains with your gifts39.

The same motif ends a three-line poem on Muhammad Ibn ManÂur al-Asadi: His hands are two: a sword-hand, in whose might one seeks refuge, and a (hand) diffusing gifts that enrich him who is close to him40.

Al-Farazdaq made a number of elegiac epigrams on his relations41, and no less than six or seven short ones on a prominent man of Tamim, Waki{ Ibn Îassan Ibn Abi l-Sud l-Ghudani42. We can only guess why the poet preferred making several short poems to, for instance, one longer elegy. One might be tempted to think that short poems are generally more “occasional” and longer odes more timeless, tending to refer less often to specific events. Al-Farazdaq's poems on Waki{, however, show, if anything, the opposite, for the longest elegy (ten lines, and therefore according to some traditional but arbitrary standards just qual- ifying as a qaÒida) refers to precisely such a particular event: the fact that the Governor of Basra had prohibited public lamenting on Waki{'s death; whereas the short poems can stand alone without background

39 al-Farazdaq, Diwan, ii, 58. I do not understand the words yawmun ma tuwaza nujumuhu. 40 al-Farazdaq, Diwan, ii, 105. 41 On his father: Diwan, i, 38 (three lines), 138 (three lines, with kharm in the first; identical with the poem i, 176), ii, 115 (three lines), 118 (three lines); his brother: i, 87 (five lines), 279 (three lines); his children: i, 410 (three lines; with kharm). 42 Diwan, i, 122 f. (three lines), 312 (two lines), 350 (two lines), 409 (four lines), 410 (three lines), ii, 84 (three lines) and 225 (two lines; this may be another Waki{, for in the superscript he is said to be “min Bani Aswad”; but it is likely to be a corruption of “Ibn Abi Sud”). There is moreover, one “medium-sized” poem of ten lines (i, 202-3). On Waki{, see Tilman SEIDENSTICKER, Die Gedichte des Samardal Ibn Sarik, Wiesbaden, 1983, pp. 3, 8, 80. 114 G.J. VAN GELDER information having to be supplied in a superscript; they are well- rounded compositions that do not look like, and probably never were, fragments.

Bashshar In Umayyad times, then, the panegyric and elegiac epigrams were well-established. The great early {Abbasid innovator Bashshar Ibn Burd (d. 163/783) did not add anything new in this respect. His Diwan contains what seems to be a miniature panegyric qaÒida of eight lines, with a two-line nasib, a transition by means of “Speak no more of Salma …” (Da{ {anka Salma) followed by five lines praising the Caliph al-Mahdi43. All but one of its eight lines, however, are found scattered in another, much longer poem44; the only line not found in the long poem (line 4) is skilfully placed after the takhalluÒ, since yakfika (“[the Caliph] suffices for you …”) suggests that al-Mahdi replaces the beloved. In al-Aghani it is said in connection with the long version that the Caliph rewarded the poet but forbade him to make tashbib45. It seems likely then, but cannot be proved, that the longer poem was made first and the shorter subsequently excerpted, perhaps by Bashshar himself. Many epigram-like fragments quoted in anthologies such as al-Aghani, where they appear in anecdotes or as aÒwat, lyrics of a song, turn out to be taken from longer poems given in the Diwan. If the Diwan itself contains such short poems there is, of course, no guarantee that they represent the original form; but there is, at least, a likelihood especially if the poems themselves suggest it. Here are, for instance, three lines by Bashshar praising the generosity of al-Walid Ibn al-{Abbas, a member of the ruling dynasty: You we have asked, Walid: we asked no less than [from] a hand, generous as the heavens. When it is asked, “Who gives his money when he is praised, and bestows favours?”, the answer is “Walid!” Walid Ibn al-{Abbas, who does not frown (laysa bi-{abis) whenever a near one is needy or someone comes from afar46.

43 Bashshar Ibn Burd, Diwan, ed. MUÎAMMAD AL-™AHIR IBN {ASHUR, Tunis, 1976, i, 280-81. 44 Aghani, iii, 219. 45 Aghani, iii, 219. 46 Diwan, iii, 46, repeated (for no apparent reason and unchanged) iii, 122. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 115

The poem, though not very striking, is effective by its repetition of the name of the patron in each line, the last one making clear, in case of any doubt, which Walid is meant, and rounding off with the figures of paronomasia and antithesis. Bashshar's Diwan does not offer many more examples. As for elegy, mention should be made of a poem of six rajaz lines on the death of a young daughter preserved in al-Aghani, an epigram that strikes a personal note particularly on account of the unusual and rather bitter twist at the end: Ah, daughter of someone who used not to love daughters, You were only five or six [days or years?] When you had already taken a place in my heart, and when You broke my heart, from grief, into pieces. You are better than an idling boy Who is drunk in the morning and stupefied in the evening 47.

Abu Nuwas In the diwans of the great Umayyad and early {Abbasid poets short, non-standard madiÌ poems form a negligible quantity compared with the panegyric set pieces. Abu Nuwas (d. c. 200/814) was an innovator in many ways, and also in this respect. Two-thirds of his panegyric poems, together comprising one-third of all lines of madiÌ in the Diwan, are short pieces from two to ten lines, the great majority having three to seven lines. At least some critics admired him for the compression of such poems. Al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898) is reported to have said: “No modern poet is as skilful as Abu Nuwas: he made love poetry and panegyric poetry in four lines:” One of their singing girls says, on the morning of departure, “My heart is burning; go! Bear it patiently!” Tears choked her. Her tears made a furrow (khadd) on her cheek (khadd) and a carving (naÌr) on her neck (naÌr). “To al-{Abbas?” she asked; “Who else?”, I said. “I shall not go past him or stop short of him. I am afraid, not that his hands will fall short of being generous, but that no thanks can match that48.”

It is impossible to determine whether this compressed nasib+takhalluÒ +madiÌ was originally conceived as quoted; the anecdote is found in the

47 Aghani, iii, 229-30, quoted in Diwan, iv, 35-36. 48 Abu Nuwas, Diwan, vol. i, ed. by Ewald WAGNER, Cairo-Wiesbaden, 1958, p. 10. 116 G.J. VAN GELDER introduction to the Diwan by its redactor, Îamza al-IÒbahani, but the lines themselves are not found in the Diwan proper. It may be that the poet deliberately created the truncated character by means of the referent- less pronoun “their” in the first line. Other examples of compressed qaÒidas are a poem (5 lines) on al-Fa∂l Ibn al-Rabi{, with three lines of nasib49, and another (5 lines), written from prison to {Ubayd al-Khadim, with three lines of “anti-nasib” (“Do not turn aside to the effaced traces …”) and a takhalluÒ (“Do not fear the vicissitudes of Fate on account of me, since between them and myself stands {Ubayd”)50. But many other poems do not have this truncated look. Even more clearly and more often than in the works of predecessors such as Jarir or Bashshar the short poems by Abu Nuwas make the impression of being not merely fragments but independent epigrams with a definite “point”. Thus a certain Ibrahim al-‘Adawi is praised by means of a short debate: Generosity and beauty had an argument about you and began a dispute. The former said, “His right hand is mine, because of his beneficence, generosity and bounty”. The other said, “His face is mine, because of his handsomeness, elegance and perfection”. So they parted, having come to terms: both spoke the truth51. Or, on al-Amin, with personification not, this time, of abstract qualities but heavenly bodies: The sun and the luminous moon swagger with pride when we say, “You two are like the Prince”. But if they are somewhat like him, a great deal of likeness escaped them. For the sun sets in the evening and the full moon wanes in its course, But MuÌammad [al-Amin]'s light is always perfect, never decreasing in its clear path52. Unlike the formal odes these poems are intimate, and can only be made and favourably received if the poet is on intimate terms with his patron. Some forms of humour, therefore, are found that would be out of

49 Diwan (Wagner), i, 249, ed. AÎMAD {ABD AL-MAJIDAL-GHAZALI, Cairo, 1953, p. 460. Although included among the chapter of madiÌ, the poem is not strictly speaking panegyric, being one of the poet's “prison poems”. 50 Diwan (Wagner) i, 256, (Ghazali), 502. 51 Abu Nuwas, Diwan (Wagner), p. 297, (Ghazali), p. 501. See Ewald WAGNER, Abu Nuwas: eine Studie zur arabischen Literatur der frühen {Abbasidenzeit, Wiesbaden, 1965, p. 348-49 (where the last line is translated incorrectly; for the expression {an tara∂in see Koran, ii, 233 and iv, 33). 52 Diwan (Wagner), i, 259-60, (Ghazali), p. 422. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 117 place in a proper qaÒida, as in the following jestful poem which has a true “punch line”: Wherever Muhammad [al-Amin] turns his glance it brings harm of profit. He leads beneficence by its reins and puts on kindness as a coat of mail. When I had to rely on your beneficence you showed me the odd and the even53. Now, with the stick of his beneficence in my hand, I give insolvency a fine beating. Around me is a wall of his generosity that protects me when I fear to be kicked in the behind. If I had any misgivings about Fate I would cuff its ears with my hand54.

Or the following poem on al-Fa∂l Ibn al-Rabi{, which incorporates two motifs for which Abu Nuwas is famous, mocking the convention of the a†lal, and bisexuality: Abodes, mind your own business! I have got other things on my mind. Neither my she-camel (if only you knew!) nor my he-camel have anything to do with you. A spying eye and ear are upon me in my dealings with a boy-like girl, who has relations with homosexuals and girl-lovers; Both kinds aspire to her, in spite of their difference of opinion as to where the place of action is. O Fa∂l, highest aim of all God's creatures, if we coin a proverb on generosity: How many a man and a woman says, praying: “My soul be Abu l-{Abbas' ransom, what a man!” They both ransom you, as far as they are able, with their praises and ask that your term may be postponed55. The connection between the rather risqué introduction and the following three lines of panegyric is obvious: the poet's camel stallion and

53 i.e. “every imaginable thing”; cf. the commentaries on sura 89 vs. 3. 54 Diwan (Wagner), i, 284-85, (Ghazali), p. 415; a poem for MuÌammad Ibn al-Fa∂l Ibn al-Rabi{ or al-Amin. The genitive metaphors (“stick of beneficence”, “wall of generosity”), though not quite ludicrous, resemble the “jestful badi{” discussed by Wolfhart HEINRICHS, Scherzhafter Badi{ bei Abu Nuwas, in E. WAGNER & K. RÖHRBORN (eds.), Kas- kul. Festschrift um 25. Jahrestag der Wiederbegründung des Instituts für Orientalistik an der Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Wiesbaden, 1989, p. 23-37; cf. also Geert Jan VAN GELDER, Some types of ambiguity: a poem by Abu Nuwas on al-Fa∂l al-Raqasi, in Quaderni di Studi Orientali, 10 (1992) 75-91. 55 Diwan (Wagner), i, 184, (Ghazali) 449; translation of lines 1-2 in Wagner, Abu Nuwas, p. 176, of lines 1-4 ibid. p. 244. Wagner does not mention either he- or she-camel in line 1, because the expression used is a very common idiom meaning “it is none of my business”. Here, however, the camels are brought in together with the desert dwelling, reinforce the sexual duality, and thus cannot be left out in translation. 118 G.J. VAN GELDER mare are both less interested in conventional desert scenes than in taking the poet to his beloved, who is desired by both male and female just as men and women, in their various spheres of activity, aspire to the poet's patron. This last poem is found in the section “famous and good panegyric poems” of Îamza's redaction of the Diwan; it is by far the longest56. It contains a mere ten poems with fewer than ten lines (against some thirty such poems in the much shorter third section); all of them, except the one translated above, are serious in tone. The less serious type, so very different from the more traditional panegyrics, was not greatly liked by the critics. The three translated poems preceding the last were put in the third section of the chapter of madiÌ, with poems set apart “because of their unequal style, with excellent art as well as bad qualities”57. Among the bad qualities, in the eyes of the critics, was the very fact that the bad was mixed with the good, low style with elevated style, or an elevated subject treated in low style, jest combined with seriousness. To us, at least, it is obvious that such disparity or unequalness was intented by the poet and is sometimes the whole point of the poem. Loftiness is, in fact, abundant, since the poet is fond of cosmic images in his epigrams on al-Amin, who is the full moon on earth (p. 260), whose house is the whole earth (p. 261), who has God as his companion (ÒaÌib, p. 261), whose reign broadens the earth and increases the light of sun and moon (p. 261), who would almost ward off Fate (p. 263), who rejuvenates the earth (p. 263) and who is incomparable and superior to other created beings (pp. 264-65). Such themes, which at times verge on the blasphemous, may also be found in long and formal odes. It may be that critics such as Îamza could accept such themes in conventional odes but found it slightly improper to lift them out of a ritualized and conventional context into an informal genre. The recurrent comparison

56 Diwan (Wagner) i, 107-204. Hamza's second madih section is formed by “short qaÒidas written in prison and sent to his intercessors” (Diwan (Wagner), i, 239-59); they contain a measure of panegyric but are, first of all, occasional poems with a particular request and most of them fall outside the ordinary range of madÌ. 57 Diwan (Wagner), i, 259-94. The “unequal style” (tafawut) of Abu Nuwas was discussed by {Ali Ibn {Abd al-{Aziz al-Qa∂i al-Jurjani (d. 392/1001), who cites the second half of the third poem (“Wherever MuÌammad …”) among the examples of poor style (ghathatha) (al-Wasa†a bayn al-Mutanabbi wa-khuÒumih, Cairo, n.d., p. 58), following Muhalhil Ibn Yamut Ibn al-Muzarra{ (d. after 334/945), who had called the same lines “poor and in bad taste” (ghathth barid) (Sariqat Abi Nuwas, Cairo, 1957, p. 115). Com- pare the comment in the Diwan (ed. Wagner): “the last three lines are not good; it is as if they are not his”). POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 119 of al-Amin to the full moon may also have been found objectionable, as Wagner said, since it is too blatantly reminiscent of love poetry58. Some poems for al-Amin are clearly occasional, such as the well- known epigrams describing the caliph's animal-shaped pleasure-boats59. In one of them60, made when al-Amin was still heir apparent, the three animals that are mentioned, lion, eagle and dolphin, obviously represent al-Amin's supremacy on earth, in the air and at sea. The poet concludes, almost too emphatically with three near-synonyms, that al-Amin is without peer, but immediately he corrects himself, since al-Amin's father, Harun, who gave the boat as a present, is of course excepted, and addressed as “Best of those who ever were and ever will be”61. This, in turn, is followed by another parenthetical correction: “(except for the pure and blessed Prophet)”. The jolty logic is compounded by a solecism (a nominative case, required by the rhyme, where grammar demands an accusative). The grandiose final line (“Through you62 the World is humbled and Religion glorified”) concludes an epigram that is a good example of how jest and earnest can intermingle effectively. Abu Nuwas made one poem in praise of his daughter, Barra63. As may be expected, it is wholly different in tone, being simple and intimate. One could wonder if such an epigram is to be called “panegyric”, even though strictly speaking it is madÌ. A two-line poem on the death of an unnamed son of his is included among the elegies64. Here, too, the poem is not a “true” specimen of its category: it does not praise the deceased, apart from mentioning him as a possible source of happiness, nor does it dwell on the father's grief. The “point” of the poem is the imagined quarrel between the poet and Death, who has killed his son as if in retaliation65. Similarly, Abu Nuwas' only poem on the death of

58 WAGNER, Abu Nuwas, p. 348. 59 Diwan (Wagner) i, 265-67, cf. Wagner, Abu Nuwas, pp. 147-48. 60 Diwan (Wagner) i, 267, (Ghazali) 413. 61 It is possible, as is suggested by Wagner's translation, that Ya khayra man kana wa-man yakunu is addressed to al-Amin rather than Harun, which would be incompatible with the exception just made (but this might be intentional, of course). 62 Wagner's “In deinen Augen” (Arabic bika) seems to me less likely. 63 Diwan (Wagner) i, 291, Wagner, Abu Nuwas, p. 23. 64 Diwan (Wagner) i, 301, (Ghazali) 579, Wagner, Abu Nuwas, p. 22. 65 The last line is Ka-anni watartu l-mawta bi-bnin afadahu / {ala Ìini Ìanat kabratun wa-mashibu. Instead of afadahu, given in both editions, I propose to read aqadahu (“whom [Death] killed in retaliation”) which fits the context better. Old age and grey hair refer, not to Death as in Wagner's translation, but to the poet, who was no longer young in 190-91/805-7, the time of his journey to Egypt (see Wagner's note). 120 G.J. VAN GELDER

Harun al-Rashid is a two-liner that is as much Ìikma, gnomic verse, as elegy66. Abu Nuwas offers several examples of the difficulties of classifying poems; difficult especially for those redactors, like al-∑uli and Îamza al-IÒbahani, who arranged the Diwan thematically rather than alphabeti- cally. Whether a given polythematic poem belongs to one or the other ghara∂ is usually determined by the theme that is thought to be the dominant one — as a rule it comes last, even though it may not be the longest section of the poem. For instance, four lines in praise of Harun al-Rashid, preceded by nine lines of a†lal and wine poetry, are enough for the poem to be assigned to the chapter of madiÌ67. In a few cases Îamza and al-∑uli must have been in two minds, since the same poem was included in different chapters. Thus a poem of five lines is found, with small variations, in the chapters of hija' and ghazal, since what begins as a love poem turns into a diatribe on qiyan, “singing-girls”68. Abu Nuwas did not invent the panegyric epigram, nor was he the first to mix themes and genres in unexpected ways; but he was the first to practise both things frequently and consciously.

Abu Tammam When Abu Tammam (d. 231/845-6) and al-BuÌturi (d. 284/897), two leading poets of the few generations after Abu Nuwas, are quoted or discussed, it is usually either in connection with their sonorous qaÒidas or short fragments containing a striking image or figure of speech. They are not particularly famous for their short poems and epigrams. Indeed, Ibn Rashiq remarked that “the qi†{as of Abu Tammam, in spite of his sublimity and pre-eminence, fall short of the rank of his qaÒidas69.” Nevertheless, the Diwans of both poets contain their share of such poems. Abu Tammam's madiÌ and ritha} include 37 and 9 poems of fewer than ten lines, respectively. In the poet's remarkable oeuvre they do not stand out as particularly interesting. Their style and diction are often uncharacteristically simple. One poem of eight lines employs an

66 Diwan (Wagner) i, 299, (Ghazali) 582; cf. WAGNER, Abu Nuwas, pp. 56 and 351. 67 Diwan (Wagner) i, 119-20, (Ghazali) 402-3. 68 Diwan (Wagner), ii, 86 and iv (ed. Gregor Schoeler, Wiesbaden, 1982), 120; cf. Diwan (Ghazali) 311 (in the section on ghazal). On this and other poems by Abu Nuwas that are generically confusing or ambiguous, see my “Dubious Genres: on some poems by Abu Nuwas” (to appear). 69 Ibn Rashiq, {Umda, i, 188. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 121 extremely primitive metre (Al-Îasanu bnu Wahbin / ka-l-ghaythi fi nsikabih.// Fi l-sharkhi min Ìijahu / wa-l-sharkhi min shababih …) and is obviously meant to be a piece of light verse70. The last line, Fa-raÌa fi thana}i / wa-ruÌtu fi thiyabih, “Now he is (clothed) in my praises, and I in his clothes”, is based on a visual paronomasia (since in an unpunctuated text thana}i “my praises” could be “misread” as thiyabi “my clothes”). The epigram was made after the poem had received a cloak of honour from his patron, the katib al-Îasan Ibn Wahb; like many other panegyric epigrams it is an occasional poem. Noteworthy are the following two lines for {Abd Allah Ibn ™ahir: In Qumas71 my companions say, while we are worn out by the journey at night and the pace of the long-necked mahri-camels, “Do you intend to lead us to where the sun rises?” “No,” said I, “to where Generosity rises”72.

The point is simple: the weary and impatient travelling companions, on their way eastward, are asking if they have to go to the end of the world; but the poet gives a slight twist to their words and likens the famous general and governor of the eastern province of Khurasan to the sun — his “No!” should metaphorically be interpreted as “Yes!”. The lines could well be a normal takhalluÒ between the raÌil and the madiÌ, and are in fact not rarely quoted as such in works of literary theory73. But the transition is only virtual, there are no other lines, and raÌil and madiÌ have contracted to one line each. A novel use of the epigram as an occasional poem is illustrated by a four-line poem in praise of IsÌaq Ibn Ibrahim al-MuÒ{abi: it served as an

70 Diwan, ed. MUÎAMMAD {ABDUH {AZZAM, Cairo, 1976, i, 108. The metre, according to al-Ma{arri's commentary, is unorthodox (i.e. unKhalilian) and perhaps a form of mun- sariÌ, or rajaz, or sari{). 71 The Arab lexicographers seem, on the whole, to prefer reading Qumas to Qumis; but see EI2 s.v. Ëumis. 72 Diwan ii, 132; cf. AL-∑ULI, Akhbar Abi Tammam, Cairo, 1937, p. 212, al-Aghani, xvi, 395. 73 G.J. VAN GELDER, Two Arabic treatises on stylistics: al-Marghinani's al-MaÌasin fi {l-naÂm wa-}l-nathr, and Ibn AflaÌ's Muqaddima, Istanbul, 1987, p. 14, IBN AL-ATHIR, al-Mathal al-sa}ir, Cairo, 1959-s.d., iii, 122, IBN ABI L-I∑BA{, TaÌrir al-taÌbir, Cairo, 1383, p. 436, etc. As the only illustration of takhalluÒ in al-Kha†ib al-Qazwini}s TalkhiÒ al-MiftaÌ it became the standard example, found in countless commentaries and compendia. See also VAN GELDER, Beyond the line, p. 150. The first line quotes part of a line by Muslim Ibn al- Walid (Diwan, p. 156); IBN WAKI{ (d. 393/1003), al-MunÒif fi naqd al-shi{r, Damascus, 1982, p. 39 finds it a clear and scandalous case of plagiary, but surely Abu Tammam alluded intentionally and openly to Muslim's line, which serves as a “true” transition. 122 G.J. VAN GELDER introduction for a longer poem, a formal ode of 52 lines74. In the short poem, the poet asks for the patron's ear (A{ir shi{ri l-iÒakhata minka), for thereby the status of the following poem will be raised immensely. With a typical inversion Abu Tammam concludes: “I have not praised you in order to glorify my poetry: through you I have praised panegyric poetry (madaÌtu bika l-madiÌa)”. Abu Tammam's short elegies75 are mostly on non-prominent people: someone's wife or son, on his own son, on a jariya (presumably a slave girl) of his, etc. Striking is the motif of the absent beloved, taken from the nasib, at the end of a poem of seven lines, on the death of the wife of a certain MuÌammad Ibn Sahl: I used to wish that she were near, when she was far. Now my remoteness is transported beyond remoteness and nearness. Her dwelling is under the earth, whereas I knew her when she dwelled in my heart76.

It is not what one would expect a poet to say of a deceased wife not his own, but circumstances unknown to us may have permitted the poet to express himself with more than customary familiarity and intimacy. In order to show that some of Abu Tammam's epigrams are not merely occasional trifles, let us consider the shortest of his elegies, on a certain Ja‘far al-™a}i who apparently died in battle: God have mercy on Ja{far! For he was proud and gallant, and he was merciful. Death and Ignominy stood before his eyes; he saw each as a terrible thing. Then ardour made him advance: he killed the enemies and died a noble man77.

The first line mentions the customary two opposite and complemen- tary sides of the hero's character: hardness and softness. The former is emphasized by means of two words, and the latter by appearing as the rhyme and at the same time a paronomasia (or epanadiplosis, radd

74 The epigram in Diwan Abi Tammam, i, 343, the qaÒida (with a different metre and rhyme) iii, 165-75; cf. Ibn al-Rumi's two-liner, put before a qaÒida as a kind of motto, Diwan Ibn al-Rumi, ed. ÎUSAYN NA∑∑AR, Cairo, 1973-81, (vi), 2265, the qaÒida (i), 224- 26, similarly (vi), 2296, the qaÒida (v), 1957-60. 75 On which see Arie SCHIPPERS, Abu Tammam's ‘unofficial' elegies, in Proceedings [of the] 10th Congress [of the] Union Européenne des Arabisants et des Islamisants, Edinburgh, 9-16 September 1980, Edinburgh, 1982, p. 101-6. 76 Diwan, iv, 54. 77 Diwan iv, 138. I have not been able to identify this Ja{far. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 123 al-{ajuz {ala l-Òadr) which gives Ja{far, almost blasphemously, a God- like character, since the words kana (scil. Allahu …) raÌima occur many times in the Koran78. Ja{far's “softness” is also seen in the second line, for he considers Death a “terrible thing” (kha†ban {aÂima) rather than thinking light of it, as some heroes might have done. This all the more stresses his courage depicted in the last line, where Death and Ignominy — as it were the hard and the soft option, respectively — are turned into Death (for himself and the enemies) and Glory. The word karim normally denotes the soft, or friendly, side of the hero (“generous, beneficent”) but in this context, in view of the preceding line, it is clearly the opposite of dhalil, “ignominious”, and stresses the heroic aspect. Decisive is the hero's Ìamiyya, “ardour, fierceness”, which is essentially an unIslamic, pagan quality (cf. Koran 48: 26). Yet the almost divine qualities of the hero are hinted at by the fact that all the adjectives in the rhyme (raÌim, {aÂim, karim) are commonly applied to God. In view of the absence of any concrete details of time, place and identities the poem cannot be called an “occasional” poem. Thus what seems at first sight a rather unremarkable epigram for an obscure person turns out to be a carefully crafted little poem which raises issues that might seem worthy of a great event involving a person of consequence, to be celebrated in a lengthy and magniloquent qaÒida. If Abu Nuwas is the master of (among other things) poetic trifles and of mixtures of high and low, Abu Tammam is the expert on loftiness even on a small scale. al-BuÌturi Ibn Rashiq observed that al-BuÌturi varied the length of his panegyric poems according to the receptive abilities of his audience. Rulers, preoccupied with matters of state, are easily bored with poetry and prone to unjust criticism. “I have seen al-BuÌturi's practice: how his panegyrics for the Caliph consist of few lines, with the main motifs being prominent, whereas he works at his full ability in panegyrics for katibs (“secretaries, civil servants” or the cultural élite), where he achieves what he desires79.”

78 It is of course possible that in line 1 (RaÌima llahu Ja{faran fa-la-qad kana abiyyan shahman wa-kana raÌima) Ja{far is the subject only of the first kana and God of the second; but the ambiguity remains. 79 Ibn Rashiq, {Umda, ii, 128. 124 G.J. VAN GELDER

Al-BuÌturi did in fact compose a number of rather short qaÒidas for al-Mutawakkil80. His panegyrics for caliphs have an average length of 27.5 lines, which is much shorter than those by Abu Tammam (an average of 52 lines). Yet both Abu Tammam and al-BuÌturi made it clear that the length of a poem should ideally be proportionate with the status of its subject; as Abu Tammam said in a qaÒida (of 28 lines) for a certain {Umar Ibn {Abd al-{Aziz al-™a}i: In poetry there may be length (or prolixity, †ul) when qaÒidas collide in a gathering, and in another gathering there may be shortness, explained by al-Tibrizi as referring to people who do not or do deserve poems, respectively81. Al-BuÌturi said in a poem of 26 lines for Isma{il Ibn Bulbul: I have intentionally shortened the distances of panegyric poems (qaÒartu masafati l-mada}iÌi {amidan), even though you, on account of your beneficence, deserve long ones. I have held the rhymes, eager though they were, back from you, while they tugged at their fetters out of passion for you82. By all accounts, then, a panegyric epigram of only a few lines is an anomaly, at least in formal contexts. The epigram is the product and the sign of informality. Even with caliphs, this was possible at times: besides the “short qaÒidas” for al-Mutawakkil al-BuÌturi's Diwan includes two very short poems, of four and five lines, for the same caliph. The first line of the former — in fact for the Caliph and his katib, al-FatÌ Ibn Khaqan — has the characteristics of both a qi†{a (it begins with waw rubba) and a qaÒida (it has taÒri{ or internal rhyme). Three lines describe a pleasure scene: a singer, night, wine, garden. The panegyric, introduced by a simple takhalluÒ or transition, comprises the last line and a half: just as the breeze revives the garden, so does God's agent on earth bestow his favours; the world flourishes through the Caliph and his katib83.

80 See Geert Jan VAN GELDER, Brevity: the long and the short of it in classical Arabic literary theory, in Rudolph PETERS (ed.), Proceedings of the ninth Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants, Amsterdam, 1st to 7th September 1978, Leiden, 1981, p. 78-88 (see p. 79). 81 Diwan Abi Tammam, ii, 190. 82 Diwan al-BuÌturi, ed. KAMIL AL-∑AYRAFI, Cairo, 1972-78, (iii), 1797. The restrained verses are a metaphor for the poet himself, who requests permission to visit his home- land: if he is allowed to go, the rhymes will also be set free. 83 Diwan (i), 360. The second, often-quoted epigram for al-Mutawakkil (Diwan, (ii), 1013-14), is sometimes ascribed to {Ali Ibn al-Jahm, cf. the editor's note. There is, moreover, one epigram for another caliph, al-Mu{tamid (Diwan (ii), 1055). POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 125

Al-BuÌturi's other short panegyric poems84 show a great variety of forms. There are miniature qaÒidas of nine85, eight86 or seven lines87. One poem of four lines, which looks like an isolated transition that invites comparison with Abu Tammam's lines on {Abd Allah Ibn ™ahir, quoted before, seems in fact to have been taken from a longer poem not by al-BuÌturi but by Bakr Ibn al-Na††aÌ (d. after 222/837). It started its life as an epigram, like countless other fragments, in the works of critics and anthologists, who frequently quote the lines as an example of “transition” (khuruj) or “digression” (isti†rad)88. Several short poems by al-BuÌturi consist wholly of madÌ but do not look like fragments, such as the following four lines addressed to Abu Nahshal Ibn Îumayd: Welcome to this prince who is coming! You have come like a raincloud. You have arrived and the dry earth is moistened, the barren garden of the land has become green. God has given you a string of lofty qualities to boast of, so boast, Abu Nahshal! Your recent glory has enabled the Banu Nabhan to dispense with their old glory89.

There is a strong sense of an opening (the apostrophe in line 1, which has internal rhyme) and a conclusion (setting the addressee in the wider context of his clan and connecting past and present). It is, with its conventional image of the cloud and its easy diction, a good example of an occasional poem: forgettable but perfect in its kind. Many of al- BuÌturi's panegyric epigrams have these same qualities. The next epigram uses an obvious but effective pun on the name of the patron, al-FatÌ Ibn Khaqan: God's Help and Victory (al-fatÌ) have come, and daybreak has cleft for us the darkness: The Vizier of the reign, Hope of the empire, whose characteristics are benefaction and forgiveness,

84 There are some 43 of them of less than ten lines, not counting the poems and fragments in the appendices, Diwan (iv) 2495-2666 and (v) 2673-2741. Since the genre to which a qi†{a belongs is not always unambiguous ({itab, “reproach” or istihda}, “begging a present” are often combined with madÌ), an exact number is difficult to give. 85 Diwan (ii), 1219 (on IsÌaq Ibn NuÒayr): nasib ll. 1-4, madÌ ll. 5-9. 86 Diwan (iv), 2438-39 (on {Abd Allah Ibn Dawud): description of clouds l. 1, ta- khalluÒ l. 2, madÌ ll. 3-8. 87 Diwan (i), 802 (on {Isa Ibn Khalid Ibn al-Walid): nasib ll. 1-5, takhalluÒ l. 6, madÌ l. 7; Diwan (iv), 2260-61 (on IsÌaq Ibn Kundajiq): nasib ll. 1-4, madÌ ll. 5-7. 88 Diwan (i), 330; cf. VAN GELDER, Beyond the Line, p. 75. 89 Diwan (iii), 1846. 126 G.J. VAN GELDER

Like a lion, except that he is glorious; like a shower of rain, except that he is kind. To every door that is closed on generosity, its key (miftaÌuhu) is al-FatÌ (lit. “the opening”)90.

The first line quotes sura 110:1 (“When comes God's Help, and Vic- tory …”). The word fatÌ seems to refer to military power and authority, echoed by the lion in line 3; but the Koranic use of fatÌ rather implies a “clearing-up” of a difficult situation91. “Forgiveness” (line 2) is a theme in sura 110 as well as in the opening of sura 48, called surat al-FatÌ. Although al-BuÌturi was a good elegist, there are very few short elegiac poems in his Diwan. A piece of five lines was, apparently, enough for him to serve as an elegy both for Abu Tammam and his rival Di{bil; in passing he stabs at another poet, AÌmad al-Khath{ami al-Iskafi and his kind: My grief has grown, and my distress has been kindled, by the dwelling of Îabib [= Abu Tammam], on the day that Di{bil departed, And by the survival of al-Khath{ami and his kind, who tire their small talents and fall to rock-bottom, People who produce impossible motifs whenever they try to excell, and obscure sayings. Two friends of mine! May the sky never cease to cover you with the promise of rain, with a sky of showering clouds: A grave in al-Ahwaz, a long way for him who brings the tidings of death, and a corpse in Mosul 92.

Its beginning is promising, with a line that has strong links with the theme of nasib, through the motif of “the day of departure” and the words mathwa Îabibin which may of course be interpreted as “the dwelling of a beloved”. The insertion of two lines of invective might have served as a basis for an extended contrast of those second-rate rhymesters with the two deceased masters. However, the poem is cut short with a final blessing, unrelated to the preceding, unless one sees a kind of irony in the contrast between the living poetasters who strike on rocky and barren ground and the dead poets who, hopefully, rest in lush and well-watered soil.

90 Diwan (i), 474. 91 See, for instance, Bell's notes to his translation of 32:28 and 110:1. 92 Diwan (iii) 1790-91; cf. AL-∑ULI, Akhbar Abi Tammam, p. 274-75, ID., Akhbar al- BuÌturi, Damascus, 1958, p. 66, AL-AMIDI, al-Muwazana, Cairo, 1961-65, i, 50-51, IBN KHALLIKAN, Wafayat al-a{yan, Beirut, 1968-72, ii, 270. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 127

Among the few other elegiac epigrams one is even more collective than the poem on the two poets: it mentions four of his relatives, after whose death the poet despairs of Fate. In the fourth and last line he says, “I have inherited their swords — but what is the use of swords without men93?”

Ibn al-Rumi Al-BuÌturi's greatest contemporary, Ibn al-Rumi (d. 283/896) was fond of making long poems. Many of his odes are longer than one hundred lines, some go beyond two or even three hundred. A master of invective verse, traditionally expressed mostly in short poems, Ibn al- Rumi made long as well as short invective poems, most of them “made up of abuse as coarse and disgusting as possible”94. Like a pitbull-terrier he sinks his teeth in any subject that he fancies, to let it go only when he has ended his sport with it, be this subject a poetical motif or a personal enemy. Like Abu Tammam and al-BuÌturi he expressed the idea that important patrons deserve lengthy qaÒidas. “The length of what I say is proportionate with my own worth”, he says at the end of a poem of 102 lines for al-Qasim Ibn {Ubayd Allah Ibn Sulayman Ibn Wahb, “but if the length of what I have said were proportionate with your worth, it would have been long95.” The many qualities of the patron make it easy for the poet to be prolix, he says in a poem of 155 lines for Ibrahim Ibn al-Mu- dabbir, “So I have been prolix, to do justice to your glory. In fact, although I have gone on at some length, I cannot go on too long about you”96. Not wholly surprisingly, in a poet like Ibn al-Rumi, one finds different opin- ions. “They told me, Make a long ode on him! But I said, Enough! … Often I have made short poems for a glorious man and gained a copious gift from his bounty97.” A long poem is like a substantial bribe: When one has grave doubts about a person to whom one appeals for help, one makes a long qaÒida in praise of him: When, in the olden days, someone wanted to draw water from a deep well, he used a long rope98.

93 Diwan (iii), 1848. 94 Rhuvon GUEST, Life and works of Ibn er Rûmî {Ali Ibn el {Abbâs, Abû el Hasan, a Baghdad poet of the 9th century of the Christian era. His life and poetry, London, 1944, p. 55. 95 Diwan, ed. ÎUSAYN NA∑∑AR, Cairo, 1973-81, (v), 1917. 96 Diwan (v), 1976; cf. also (iii), 945. 97 Diwan (iii), 1002, in a poem (98 lines) for IsÌaq Ibn Ibrahim Ibn Yazid al-katib. 98 Diwan (ii), 516. 128 G.J. VAN GELDER

The word used for “rope”, risha}, refers clearly to rashwa, “bribe”, with which it is etymologically connected. The same point is made in another epigram: Everyone who praises a man in order to obtain his favours and therefore makes a long poem for him means in fact to make invective poetry on him. If he did not, when drawing water, suppose his well to be deep he would not have used a long rope (risha}). Others perhaps; but I will not make long panegyric poems except to complete the praise of those I have eulogized, For I consider it wrong to make a short praise poem deliberately and then to be angry when I am given little99. And once more, in an epigram of four lines for {Ali Ibn YaÌya Ibn al- Munajjim he says, If a man is a firm ground where wealth may come and settle, then you [on the contrary] are the place where it flows. They said, Why not make a long poem in praise of him? I answered them, wronging nobody in the slightest, By your father's life! Ibn YaÌya is too close a source [for me] to be prolix. If I approached, in him, a very deep well, then I would employ a long rope to reach the water100. Apparently some patrons did not have the patience to listen to Ibn al- Rumi's lengthy odes and were not afraid to tell him. In a relatively short qaÒida (32 lines) for {Isa Ibn Shaykh he says, I wanted to be prolix about you; but your far-flung designs said to me, Take it easy! And I realized that a small amount of praise suffices when a man is sound in branch and root101. Ibn al-Rumi's enormous Diwan contains hundreds of epigrams. The majority of these are invective. Of the remaining ones there are many that have a panegyrical element, but only a minority — a few dozen or

99 Diwan (i), 111, lines 1-2 also in Ibn Rashiq, {Umda, i, 189 and Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat, iii, 359. See on the motif also AL-{ABBASI, Ma{ahid al-tanÒiÒ, Cairo, 1304, i, 39. 100 Diwan (v), 1894-95. Ibn al-Rumi used the motif of the poem as a long or a short well-rope also in an epigram (Diwan (i), 145) in which he apologizes to ∑a{id Ibn Makhlad for the length of a qaÒida — doubtless the poem of 282 lines, Diwan (ii) 584- 603, in the last line (l. 155) of an ode for Ibn al-Mudabbir, (v), 1976, and in a poem for Ibn Marimma, (v), 2005. 101 Diwan (v), 1953; the first line and the first half of the second also in a poem for al-Akhfash, (v), 1922. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 129 so — may be described as pure panegyric. Very often his short poems make a more specific point: a complaint, reproach, request, a veiled threat, remarks on the effect (or lack of effect) of his previous poems — all these may be combined with panegyric motifs. Besides these we find numerous true “occasional” poems, often congratulatory, on the recovery from an illness or for a feast day. Ibn al-Rumi made several very short poems for caliph al-Mu{ta∂id on the occasion of the end of Ramadan, {id al-fi†r, or other feasts102. Almost all of them have four lines (a favourite length for epigrams of various kinds103) and have internal rhyme in the first line. An example of another “occasional” poem is one of six lines for al-Mu‘ta∂id, apparently made after a plot was thwarted; the Caliph was assisted, and the plotters overturned, by God who is himself the best plotter (cf. Koran 3: 54)104. There can be few poets that are as obsessed with their own poetry, or poetry in general, as Ibn al-Rumi. The preceding quotations are merely an insignificant portion of his countless verses that explicitly deal with poetry. The gist of many of his satirical or reproaching epigrams is that his earlier panegyric poetry has, apparently, not worked. In panegyrical epigrams praise is often expressed through reasonings involving the role of poetry, as in an epigram for Isma‘il Ibn Bulbul: When I saw that poetry had become sluggish I aroused it by means of a splendid and pure man; I did not praise him because of any gap that I spotted in his glory and that I had to fill up with a panegyric poem105.

From a poem of eight lines for an unnamed patron: I am forbidden to praise you by the fact that you deserve what praise poems are unable to do; My praise is (nevertheless) driven to you by the fact that your response to praise poems consists of kind gifts106.

102 Diwan (ii), 668 (5 lines, with taÒri{ in the first), 669 (4 lines, with taÒri{), 675 (4 lines, with taÒri{), (iii), 968-69 (4 lines, with taÒri{), 969 (4 lines, with taÒri{), 1183 (two poems of 4 lines, with taÒri{), (iv), 1584 (4 lines, no taÒri{), (v), 1920 (5 lines, with taÒri{), (vi), 2245 (4 lines, no taÒri{), 2245-46 (4 lines, with taÒri{), 2254 (4 lines, with taÒri{), 2458 (4 lines, with taÒri{), 2460 (4 lines, no taÒri{). 103 The most extreme example of this predilection for quatrains is the diwan of Khalid Ibn Yazid al-katib, edited in Albert ARAZI, Amour divin et amour profane dans l'Islam médiéval à travers le Diwan de Khalid Al-Katib, Paris, 1990. 104 Diwan (iii), 980. 105 Diwan (ii), 516. 106 Diwan (ii), 541. 130 G.J. VAN GELDER

On Ibrahim Ibn al-Mudabbir: I see that you do not enjoy the taste of anything as much as the taste of giving: The requests for favours that I send to you are dearer to you than hand- some praise. So why should I burden my mind with heavy toil, when I make my carefully crafted madiÌ? — But I return one kind habit ({urf) for another, even though I do not have to repay107.

An apparent accusation of plagiary is turned by Ibn al-Rumi into an occasion for a panegyric epigram on Abu Sahl Ibn Nawbakht: If I have stolen other poets' poetry, then it is the requital for their theft of glory: They have stolen your glory, which had been stored before you were laid in the cradle, And clothed with it people who were not worthy of it, people of middling glory or scoundrels. I have only restored your right and do not have to apologize to any free- born man or slave108.

Especially the shorter madiÌ poems strongly suggest that their primary function is not to praise the patron (who, it is hoped, will reward the poet) but to secure this reward (which, of course, requires some praise). In longer poems the poet's blatant greed is less conspicuous. If the reward is slow in coming, praise may be mixed with reproach, as in a six-line poem for the ™ahirids: Sons of that high mountain of lofty qualities, ™ahir! People in which I trust, and in whom (caliph) al-Mu{tamid trusts: You are the lordly people of whom Hope promises great things. If I have done well in my praise of you, then a well-doer deserves to be supported. Or, if my efforts have fallen short of what you deserve, then reward me for my efforts. Or else return my praise, under cover, and give no cause for gloating to the eyes [of my rivals] that burn in my direction; It is a hunter's falcon that I have released: send it safely back if it has not caught anything109.

107 Diwan (i), 106, reading kuntu in line 4 instead of kunta. The same poem but with different rhyme-words reappears in the Diwan (ii), 562, where the last two lines are: “Why should I make fine poetry when I betake myself to your door to request a favour? — But I only meet one kind habit with another; someone who repays (a favour) cannot be blamed.” 108 Diwan (ii), 615. 109 Diwan (ii), 746. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 131

Thus the epigrams may form a kind of running commentary on the business of being a professional poet. Even when a reward has in fact been given the poet may mention it in an epigram of praise and gratitude: I asked you to make me dispense with [i.e. to make me independent from] all people: and you have made me dispense with them and yourself together. So now you will only find me greeting you and divulging your praises. I am forbidden to seek another favour: I have become a Spring myself. (…)110 Ibn al-Rumi is fond of fanciful connections and explanations. In a four-line epigram for the Nawbakht family he explains that their knowledge of the stars is not the result of computation but of observation at close quarters: they have reached the sky by their lofty and noble deeds111. There are some simple poems with the familiar compare-and- contrast technique, as in the following: Rain-showers tried to resemble you, but fell short, (even) after they had revived the land, So I said, You are mistaken: everyone who tries falls short of Abu {Ali's generosity, Because his generosity comes every day and yours for only a number of days; You rain on one piece of land after another while his hands stretch over the whole country112. A more interesting variation also rejects the conventional equation of patron and raincloud: I have seen that you give money like someone who donates where other men give money like someone who is buying something. (…) You have not been created with a natural disposition for generosity so that you must needs be found generous, with a predestined generosity, But you consider a good deed a good deed for its own sake, so you generously spend with a voluntary generosity. Some people give like a merchant, others like a raincloud, forced (by its nature); But you are between the two, in the middle (may the splendid central stones of every jewel113 always be yours!).

110 Diwan (iv) 1542, four lines for an unnamed patron. The third line puns on the words muÌarram (“forbidden; the month of MuÌarram”) and rabi{ (“spring, spring- herbage; the two months called Rabi{ I and II”). 111 Diwan (i), 149. 112 Diwan (ii), 792-93; the identity of Abu {Ali is uncertain. 113 Or, “the happy medium of every essence or substance”. 132 G.J. VAN GELDER

Receive then this praise, for which people have failed to qualify for a long time, group after group. People may have guarded it from those who did not deserve it, but it is not kept away from you, Ibn al-Mudabbir114!

Just as the recipient of this poem may have raised his eyebrows momentarily at being called “not naturally disposed towards generosity”, so may the following epigram have surprised the addressees on account of the unusual comparison, which also struck the medieval critics: All the characteristics that you [pl.] possess are your good qualities; your noble characters and your appearances resemble one another. You are like a lemon tree: it carries good fruit, blossom, fragrant wood and leaves115.

It seems that the utrujj had more favourable connotations than our “lemon”116. Striking, too, and probably partly in jest, is the hyperbole in the following epigram that seems to leave the ™ahirid family all but handless: Banu ™ahir! You are pure, good, virtuous in your branches and roots. Your protégé is inviolable, your honours sacrosanct; only, you have nothing left to spend: Spending generously has nearly worn away the palms of your hands, and kisses [of grateful receivers] nearly made the backs [of the hands] disappear117.

A technique discussed under various names by the specialists in badi{ is the elaboration or explanation of an image in one line by means of a following line. Often found in longer poems, it may effectively give shape to a two-line epigram, as in the following, on the ™ahirids:

114 Diwan (iii) 1118, eight lines for Ibrahim Ibn al-Mudabbir. The poem is also found, with considerable changes, on pp. 995-96, without mention of a patron. 115 Diwan (iv) 1651; cf. Ibn Abi {Awn, al-Tashbihat, ed. M. {ABDUL MU{ID KHAN. London, 1950, p. 321, al-Raghib al-IÒfahani, MuÌa∂arat al-udaba}, Bulaq, 1287, i, 175, al-ÎuÒri, Zahr al-adab, ed. ZAKI MUBARAK, repr. Beirut, 1972, p. 1082, al-Tha{alibi, al- Tamthil wa-l-muÌa∂ara, ed. {ABD AL-FATTAÎ MUÎAMMAD AL-ÎULW, n. pl., 1983, p. 267, al-Tha{alibi, Thimar al-qulub, ed. MUÎAMMAD ABU L-FA∆L IBRAHIM, Cairo, 1985, p. 591 (“The first to compare a mamduÌ to it [scil. a lemon tree] was Ibn al-Rumi”). 116 See for instance the Ìadith ascribed to the Prophet: “A believer who recites the Koran is like an utrujja, which smells good and tastes good”, e.g. al-Bukhari's ∑aÌiÌ, towards the end of K. al-tafsir, often quoted, as by al-Abi, Nathr al-durr, Cairo, [1980]- 1991, i, 243, AL-SUYU™I, Îusn al-muÌa∂ara, Cairo, AH 1387, ii, 436 (with more poems on the utrujj). 117 Diwan (v), 2013. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 133

Your views, your faces and your swords are stars in the accidents of Time whenever they are dark: They serve as signposts on the Right Path and lamps (maÒabiÌ) that brighten the darkness; the other things are shooting stars (rujum)118. The lines refer to a Koranic passage: “And we adorned the nearer heaven with lights (maÒabiÌ), and have made them projectiles (rujum, i.e. shooting stars) for the satans”119. “Views” in the first line corre- sponds with the “Right Path” (al-huda), “lamps” refers, first of all, to the radiant “faces” of the addressees, and the “swords” are the shooting stars with which the satanic opponents are pelted. The ™ahirids are given a place between Heaven and Earth, in al-sama} al-dunya, the Lower Heaven. A complaint on Time, a common theme, opens a poem which is quickly turned into praise of Isma{il Ibn Bulbul by Time itself. The diction is easy, the tone and the metre (mutaqarib) light, but the point of the epigram is lofty enough: the patron, almost like a Christian Messiah, redeems all mankind and clears Time (Fate, and often God in disguise) of men's sins: I complained about the Time, but Time, that tough opponent, answered, “It is your fault, not mine, that you complain, by praising the base and neglecting the noble: Turn to Abu l-∑aqr, who clears me of the sins of the base! With his favours I am forgiven their baseness, and the tongue of blame is sheathed from me. May God never leave me without someone like him, to be my excuse with mankind120. A little story is told in the following poem: {Ali [Ibn YaÌya al-Munajjim] said to me once, having given me a present (he is high-minded in his concerns, like his name)121: “I find that a man's surplus wealth is a disease to his honour, just as surplus food is a disease to his body. There is nothing for surplus wealth like spending it; there is nothing for a diseased honour like bleeding it.”

118 Diwan (vi), 2345, quoted as an example of tatmim by IBN AL-ZAMLAKANI, al-Tibyan fi {ilm al-bayan, Baghdad, 1964, p. 187; as an example of tafsir in IBN ÎIJJA AL-ÎAMAWI, Khizanat al-adab, Cairo, 1291 AH, p. 498. According to Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat, iii, 359, Ibn al-Rumi said that he was the first to use the motif. 119 Sura 67 vs. 5, Bell's translation. 120 Diwan (vi), 2259, reading as the last word anam instead of the edition's atham, which is meaningless, or atham, which does not scan. 121 {Ali, of course, means “high”. 134 G.J. VAN GELDER

— So I went away with his two gifts, and still enjoy two different gifts: his generosity and his wisdom122.

A report of a wise saying like this is usually found in prose. If {Ali Ibn YaÌya did in fact speak in this vein, it must have been Ibn al-Rumi who put it into verse, and made it into a poetic anecdote and a panegyric epigram that, for once, cannot be imagined as forming part of a longer poem. Unlike Abu Tammam and al-BuÌturi, Ibn al-Rumi felt no strong urge to make polythematic qaÒidas of the old bedouin type, with nasib and raÌil. Occasionally he plays with these conventions or subverts them123, but there is little trace of it in the epigrams. All that is found is a seven- line poem for an unknown patron which opens with the travel theme, or rather with a brief mention of it: I shall travel, Asma}, away from the abode of people where favours are given in the manner of someone who withholds them: One is generous because one imposes it upon oneself, wary of lampoons, reluctantly, unwillingly, To a prince whose wealth is not possessed by stinginess (…)124

Most of Ibn al-Rumi's few elegiac epigrams concern his close relatives: his wife125, his brother126, his young son127 or his aunt128. As is not unusual in such poems, they do not contain any praise for the deceased but concentrate on the grief of the poet. Wanting to live on after the loss of a companion is a kind of betrayal129; Time will heal the pain, not because grief will be forgotten but because it brings nearer the reunion130; after the death of his mother's sister the poet feels like the chick of a sand grouse that has lost a wing131. One poem on his son

122 Diwan (vi), 2296. 123 See, e.g. my “The terrified traveller: Ibn al-Rumi's anti-raÌil”, forthcoming in Journal of Arabic Literature. 124 Diwan (iv), 1538. 125 Diwan (i), 79-80 (5 ll.), (iii) 1138 (2 ll.), (v), 2130 (5 ll.). For a very long elegy on his mother (205 ll.) with animal episodes in the manner of Abu Dhu}ayb's famous poem, see (vi), 2299-2312; cf. the version in Diwan Abi Nuwas (Wagner) i, 327-35, (Ghazali) 587-95. 126 Diwan (i), 160 (2 ll.). 127 Diwan (i), 244 (4 ll.), 348 (2 ll.), (iii), 1004 (2 ll). 128 Diwan (ii), 540 (4 ll.). 129 Diwan (i), 80. 130 Diwan (i), 160. 131 Diwan (ii), 540. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 135 begins like an old qaÒida, complete with internal rhyme and with the motif of sleeplessness and watching the stars, introducing the poet in the third person (“Cares, coming at night, have denied slumber to him …”) and switching to an apostrophe to “my eyes” in the next line132.

Ibn al-Mu{tazz In his book on “modern” poets, ™abaqat al-shu{ara}, Ibn al-Mu{tazz gives many, often extensive, quotations of poetry. Rather more often than most other critics and anthologists he points out that the poem from which a quotation is taken is in fact much longer. Although he himself made many panegyric poems of average length as well as a few long ones (and at least one poem that might be considered too long133, he is first of all a master of the epigram. The great majority of his short poems are descriptive and deal with love, wine, nature and hunting, but praise and elegy are well represented. It has been said that “he invented the short laudatory poem”134; in this study I intended to show that this assertion is not correct. That the panegyric epigrams of Ibn al-Mu{tazz differ considerably from those of his older contemporaries al-BuÌturi and Ibn al-Rumi is a direct result of his different background: as an {Abbasid prince he did not have to beg. He praised caliphs and powerful viziers but although he may not have possessed much power himself, at least he belonged to the ruling class. He received favours and he shows his gratitude in poems, but unlike Ibn al-Rumi he is not obsessed with asking and receiving gifts; nor is he obsessively preoccupied with his own poetry like Ibn al-Rumi. Instead of a plea for money, the conclusion of a laudatory epigram by Ibn al-Mu{tazz may be convivial (“Drink wine mixed with

132 Diwan (i), 244. 133 His “historical urjuza” for his cousin, the Caliph al-Mu{tadid. 134 Arie SCHIPPERS, Arabic tradition and Hebrew innovation: Arabic themes in Hebrew Andalusian Poetry, Amsterdam, 1988, p. 84. Schippers refers to Gregor SCHOELER, Die Einteilung der Dichtung bei den Arabern, ZDMG 123 (1973), p. 46: “Die Lob- un Glück- wunschgedichte sind zu einem grossen Teil sehr kurz; einige bestehen sogar aus wenigen Zeilen. Ibn al-Mu{tazz hat also eine “moderne” Form für den madiÌ gefunden.” It is true that Schoeler seems to say that Ibn al-Mu{tazz actually invented the genre, but he may have meant merely that the poet expressed his panegyrics often in form that existed already; cf. his statement in Julia Ashtiany et al. (eds.), {Abbasid Belles-Lettres, Cam- bridge, 1990, p. 276: “It is sometimes claimed that it was an achievement of the moderns to have introduced new genres into Arabic poetry; they started a process, so it is said, which can be described as the splitting up of the old Arabic qaÒidah (…) However, this is true neither of Bashshar nor of other early moderns”. 136 G.J. VAN GELDER water from your brothers and listen to lute and flute”)135 or a blessing. His often highly original imagery, expressed especially by means of his countless comparisons for which he is famous, is largely absent from the panegyric epigrams, which are, on the whole, not especially remarkable and far less interesting than those of Ibn al-Rumi. Only one is in the style characteristic of his descriptive poetry, an epigram in praise of al-Muktafi and describing his coat of mail. It is introduced with waw rubba: A knight sheathed in a covering that cuts the sword when it comes down (to drink, warad): It is as if water has flowed on it, until it disappeared into it and con- gealed. In his hand is a sharp sword; when he brandishes it you think that it trem- bles out of fear for him.

Not altogether surprisingly the poem appears twice in the Diwan, in the chapters of descriptive poems and panegyric poems136. As for his elegiac epigrams, two aspects are striking: their relative abundance (53 poems of less than ten lines) and their shortness (the average length of these poems is three lines). Ibn al-Mu{tazz often made several such poems (in addition to longer odes) for the same person: at least twelve for the vizier {Ubayd Allah Ibn Sulayman Ibn Wahb, six or more for al-Mutawakkil137, four for al-Muwaffaq. Repetition, for al-Khansa} a means to keep her grief alive and acute, must for others have had a thera- peutic function. One of the epigrams said to be ritha} for the said vizier expresses this idea and may be called elegiac only in a loose sense: Tears have dried up after Ibn Wahb's death. One may lie quietly and sleep well again. Grief wears off, day by day, and vanishes, like a new story (al-Ìadith) wears off when repeated138.

Like the panegyric epigrams, most of the elegiac epigrams are not remarkable for their originality or striking imagery, but some interesting features may be found. Noteworthy is a four-line poem for Abu l-Îusayn

135 Diwan ed. MUÎAMMAD BADI{ SHARIF, Cairo, 1977-78, i, 448. 136 Diwan (Sharif) i, 472 and ii, 174; (Lewin) iv, 82-3; cf. {Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani, Asrar al-balagha, ed. H. RITTER, Istanbul, 1954, p. 266, ID., Die Geheimnisse der Wort- kunst des {Abdalqahir al-Curcani, aus dem Arab. übers. von Hellmut Ritter, Wiesbaden, 1959, p. 311. According to al-Jurjani the poem was made for al-Muwaffaq. 137 The MuÌammad mentioned in two poems without headnote (Diwan (Sharif) ii, 329, 336) may be al-Mutawakkil, who is called MuÌammad elsewhere, e.g. ii, 354, 357. 138 Diwan (Sharif) ii, 336, (Lewin) iv, 140. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 137

Ibn Thawaba that seems to stop in mid-sentence, leaving the praise unspoken: “How many a friend has let me down, upon which I said, ‘(No,) but Abu l-Îusayn …!'”139 A few times Ibn al-Mu‘tazz turns conventional motifs upside down, as when he says that he will certainly not pray for rain to fall on the grave of the deceased, {Ubayd Allah Ibn Sulayman, since the latter's hands will flood it with their nada (“dew/generosity”)140. The same motif is found in another poem on the same man, where also the idea is worked out that one has not truly died as long as one's virtues are remembered: Not you have died, but he who leaves no memories of glory and noble qualities. I will not pray for rain to water your grave: how could it be thirsty when it hides a sea141! It is you, rather than we, who should be consoled, since now that you have gone all people have died142. The obvious paradoxes (how could the deceased be remembered if all people have died? Has the poet himself died too?) are of course intentional. More touching is the poem on the death of his daughter; it begins with waw rubba, like an ecphrastic epigram: A beloved seedling I have hidden in the earth; my eyes have watered it with streams and drops. Then, as fruit, it bore sorrow and grief that will not perish for my heart, to be plucked by the hands of my thoughts. O branch of my soul, its only one! You have fallen and now you have made my stem [{udi, i.e. my physical and mental power] single so that anyone could break it. O Time, did you have to do this? My whole life's fate was revolving around someone like her143. This poem also begins with a kind of paradox: planting a seedling in the earth could at first be taken to be a metaphor for raising a child; but although the seedling is indeed a metaphor, hiding in the earth is meant all too literally. The arboreal imagery is sustained for three lines, then broken off for a final apostrophe.

139 Diwan (Sharif) ii, 371, (Lewin) iv, 177. 140 Diwan (Sharif) ii, 376, (Lewin) iv, 174. 141 The word baÌr, commonly used for a magnanimous man, is normally translated as “sea”, but in Arabic it is a “sea” not necessarily salty and undrinkable. 142 Diwan (Sharif) ii, 343, (Lewin) iv, 148. 143 Diwan (Sharif) ii, 343-44, (Lewin) iv, 148, reading li-kasiri with Sharif instead of li-kashiri in Lewin. 138 G.J. VAN GELDER

Near the beginning of this article it was said that two elegiac epigrams of Ibn al-Mu{tazz, each a kind of Momentaufname144, were singled out by Ibn Rashiq as examples of concise elegies that “sum up”, ritha} mujmal; a kind that, like its panegyric counterpart, could turn out beautiful and charming (yaqa{u mawqi{an Ìasanan la†ifan)145. It is one of the few passages on the epigram in the many works of critics, theorists and anthologists of poetry, while these same works abound with epigrammatic quotations. Their authors and compilers did not greatly care whether or not such a quotation was originally composed as a self- contained poem, and if they knew they rarely told us. It is therefore that in this study I have relied mainly on diwans of a number of the most esteemed poems. There is no compelling reason why this survey should end with Ibn al-Mu{tazz, if it were not long enough already; but in all likelihood such a continuation would not reveal many new developments. Brevity, the essential characteristic of the epigram, was often equated with eloquence by the Arabs146. On the other hand, “eloquence” is not at all far from concepts such as “prolixity” or even “loquacity”, as any thesaurus, Arabic or English, will show147. Here lies an obvious field for conflicting forces. To show one's mastery of the verbal art by minimizing one's words verges on the self-defeating. But it was realized that conciseness could be very effective in some situations, especially informal, e.g. in polite conversation or disputes ({inda l-muÌa∂arat wa-l- munaza{at) as against formal occasions (al-mawaqif al-mashhurat) for which long poems are more suitable148. Often it is said that short poems are more easily memorized and therefore more often recited. On the other hand, as Thomas Bauer has pointed out149, many a passage of

144 The term “poetische Momentaufnahme” was used by Gustave E. von Grunebaum, speaking of the rise in early Abbasid times of poems mostly of two to seven lines made to record a brief glimpse or the impression of a moment (“Die Naturauffassung der arabische Dichtung”, in his Kritik und Dichtkunst. Studien zur arabischen Literatur- geschichte, Wiesbaden, 1955, p. 45). 145 See above, notes 9-11. 146 See VAN GELDER, Brevity, p. 80. 147 ABU HILALAL-{ASKARI, al-Furuq al-lughawiyya, Cairo, 1353, p. 28, says, distin- guishing between i†nab and is}hab (meaningful and pointless prolixity, respectively), “I†nab is eloquence (balagha), is}hab is cacology ({iyy)”. Much was written by the theoreticians and critics on the various forms of prolixity (ta†wil, i†ala, i†nab, is}hab, ghazara), concision or brevity (ijaz, ikhtiÒar, iqtiÒar, Ìadhf, iqti∂ab) and the intermediate mode (musawat). I hope to study this in further detail, as a follow-up to my brief survey (VAN GELDER, Brevity). 148 Ibn Rashiq, {Umda, i, 186 and cf. VAN GELDER, Brevity, p. 81-82. 149 Altarabische Dichtkunst. Eine Untersuchung ihrer Struktur und Entwicklung am Beispiel der Onagerepisode, Wiesbaden, 1992, i, 266-68. POINTED AND WELL-ROUNDED 139 praise or blame might have been forgotten were it not for the fact that it formed part of a longer qaÒida that was admired and memorized first of all because of its desert and animal descriptions or its nasib. In short, a master poet is only he who is good at making both qi†a{ and †iwal. Al-JaÌiÂ observed that if one could make good long poems it did not necessarily follow, as the poet al-Kumayt had claimed, that one was also good at making short ones150. Ibn Rashiq admits that this is true but adds that whereas a poet of short poems is rarely capable of producing good long poems, a poet of long poems is usually able to cull a good qi†{a from a qaÒida151. Although I have tried to show that the epigram — not merely the invective or gnomic kind but also the modes usually associated with the qaÒida — has a long history, it is true that it came into its own especially in the early {Abbasid era. The rise of the manneristic style and the concomitant popularity of the literary conceit (concetto), although per- fectly compatible with the qaÒida form, encouraged concision and the cultivation of the epigram. In the studies on mannerism and the conceit in Arabic literature152 the panegyric or elegiac epigram is never mentioned; understandably in view of the greater importance of other modes153. Not every {Abbasid panegyric or elegiac epigram discussed in this article is manneristic; many lack a conceit or point. But the growing popularity of the genre in {Abbasid times is naturally related to the epigram's success in other modes: an example of generic modulation, a process described by Alastair Fowler154. But other considerations apart from purely literary ones surely played a part: the economics of supply and demand. The market of panegyrics must at times have been flooded

150 al-JaÌiÂ, Îayawan, iii, 98. 151 Ibn Rashiq, {Umda, i, 188. 152 cf. Benedikt REINERT, Der Concetto-Stil in den islamischen Literaturen, in Wolfhart HEINRICHS (Hrsg.), Orientalisches Mittelalter (Neues Handbuch der Literatur- wissenschaft, Bd. 5), Wiesbaden, 1990, p. 366-408. On mannerism, see Wolfhart HEIN- RICHS, ‘Manierismus' in der arabischen Literatur, in R. GRAMLICH (Hrsg.), Islamwissen- schaftliche Abhandlungen Fritz Meier zum 60. Geburtstag, Wiesbaden, 1974, p. 118-28, and Stefan SPERL, Mannerism in Arabic poetry. A structural analysis of selected texts (3rd AH/9th century AD – 5th century AH/11th century AD), Cambridge, 1989. 153 The manneristic ecphrastic epigram, exemplified by al-Ma}muni (second half of 10th century AD) was studied by J. Christoph BÜRGEL, Die ekphrastischen Epigramme des Abu Talib al-Ma}muni. Literaturkundliche Studie über einen arabischen Conceptisten, in Nachrichten der Akad. der Wissensch. in Göttingen, I. Philol.-hist. Kl., Jhrg. 1965, Nr. 14, p. 217-322. 154 Kinds of Literature. An introduction to the theory of genres and modes, Oxford, 1982; cf. p. 195-202: “Epigrammatic Modulations”. 140 G.J. VAN GELDER with lengthy odes by numerous aspiring as well as established poets flocking to the court and other centres of patronage. For some high- placed persons long poems were made in such numbers that it is easy to imagine that sometimes they felt they had had their fill and preferred short ones for a change. Ibn Qutayba tells of NaÒr Ibn Sayyar, who rejected a poem introduced by a hundred lines of nasib followed by a short madiÌ155; {Umar Ibn al-{Ala} rewarded Abu l-{Atahiya more richly than his rivals because “he praised me and made the amatory introduction short (madaÌani fa-qaÒÒara l-tashbib)”156. Al-Ma}mun did not mind tashbib or description but once the panegyric section was reached he listened to only two or three more lines157. On one occasion Harun al-Rashid invites the poets thronging at his door, saying, “Whoever can praise us in religious and worldly matters (bi-l-din wa-l-dunya) in few words, let him enter!”. {Umar Ibn Salama, known as Ibn Abi l-Si{la} is allowed in, then recites four lines for which he is richly rewarded; in it, Harun is said to be a shower of rain, the sun, the full moon, the World and Religion, all in one158. It is, in fact, not the poem that the poet intended to recite, for the Caliph prefers to hear one that he knows already: undemanding, familiar, and short. Some epigrams are chal- lenges to the sharp-witted; others, no less popular, are a relaxation for the weary.

Faculteit der Letteren G.J. VAN GELDER Rijksuniversiteit Groningen P.B. 716 NL-9700 AS Groningen The Netherlands

155 Ibn Qutayba, al-Shi{r wal-shu{ara}, ed. AÎMAD MUÎAMMAD SHAKIR, Cairo, 1967, p. 76, al-ÎuÒri, Jam{ al-jawahir, ed. {ALI MUÎAMMAD AL-BAJAWI, repr. Beirut, 1987, p. 238, Ibn Rashiq, {Umda, ii, 123. It is possible that NaÒr objected to the lack of proportion between nasib and madiÌ rather than the length of the poem. 156 al-IÒfahani, Aghani, iv, 38, AL-QALI, al-Amali, Cairo, 1926, i, 243, Ibn Rashiq, al- {Umda, ii, 133, Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat, i, 220-21. 157 al-IÒfahani, Aghani, xx, 259. 158 Ibn al-Mu{tazz, ™abaqat al-shu{ara}, ed. AÎMAD FARRAJ, Cairo, 1968, p. 150-51; cf. al-ÎuÒri, Jam{ al-jawahir, p. 259. The lines are quoted in a different anecdote and attributed to Yusuf Ibn al-Îajjaj al-∑ayqal in al-IÒfahani, Aghani, xxiii, 218-19.