MICHAEL COOPERSON

BAGHDAD IN RHETORIC AND NARRATIVE

In his study of the Maqiimiit illustrations, Oleg Grabar tation from the Travels of Ibn Jubayr, who visited the city notes that art historians working with literary sources in 1184: "This ancient city, though it still serves as the "lack adequate studies that separate traditional cliches Abbasid capital, has lost much of its distinctive character from novelties and provide a sense of contemporary con­ and retains only its famous name. Compared to what it cerns. ,,1 Nevertheless, art-historical studies such as Gra­ once was - before it fell victim to recurrent misfortunes bar's have done more than their share in trying to bridge and repeated calamities - the city resembles a vanished the gap between the material and the literary in classical encampment or a passing phantom."" Islamic studies. Reciprocal contributions by literary Ibn Jubayr's description employs the qaszda tropes scholars are now in order. This study attempts to make used to invoke the vanished encampment of the such a contribution by examining literary responses to beloved. As cited by Ibn Battuta, it signals a shift to the the most conspicuous item of material culture, the city, trope of elegy. Yet the presence of the citation, however based on the extensive evidence for one city, Baghdad, effectively it might have expressed Ibn Battuta's reaction "la plus exemplaire, la plus symbolique de toutes les to what he saw, produces an ironic effect in this context. villes que [I'Islam] fonda. ,,2 The first part of the inquiry IbnJubayr saw the city before the Mongol assault ofl258, analyzes the responses of residents of and visitors to the in which the caliph was executed, the city pillaged, and city throughout its 1,200-year history, and argues that the population massacred. His account makes Baghdad these responses employ a recurrent set ofliterary tropes appear reduced to nonentity in his own time, even that relate both to the material reality of the city and to though worse was still to come. Nevertheless, the rheto­ each other. The second part proposes that certain phe­ rical force of the description recommended it to the nomena of urban life account for specific features of nar­ attention ofIbn Battuta, who obviously thought it valid a rative literature. This part draws primarily on classical century and a halflater. Yet the same irony applies to Ibn Baghdadi literature (i.e., works dating from the eighth Battuta's own account: seventy-five years after his visit, to the thirteenth century) but includes discussion of ur­ Baghdad was again besieged, this time by Timur, who ban phenomena that doubtless held true for other cities treated the population even more brutally than had as well. In proposing relations between urban phenom­ Hulegu.6 Visitors thereafter could probably apply Ibn ena and literary representation, this inquiry seeks to Jubayr's account with even more justice than had Ibn move beyond the philologist's habit of facile reference to Battuta. a vaguely defined "urban literature" and show that, with Having adopted the elegiac mode, Ibn Battuta com­ a new frame of reference, specific connections between pounds the irony by citing a poem by Abu Tammam, who the material and the literary may usefully be made.3 declares that "the death-announcer has risen to mourn The account of Ibn Battuta, who visited Baghdad in Baghdad" and compares the city to "an old woman 1326, contains a representative sample of the responses whose youth has deserted her, and whose beauty has van­ available to any literate observer of the city.4 Only a trav­ ished." Abu Tammam died around 845, and so saw Bagh­ eler ignorant of the Arabic literary tradition could place dad in its early years. His poem refers to the widespread Baghdad on equal footing with the other towns on his devastation caused by the siege of 813, in which al­ itinerary, and Ibn Battuta, cultured visitor that he was, Ma:>mun's forces bombarded the city with catapults and introduces the city by calling it "the City of Peace, the razed many walls and buildings. If a poet could mourn capital of Islam, of noble rank and conspicuous virtue, the city within fifty years of its founding, exactly when the resting place of the caliphs, and the home of schol­ was the golden age the travelers refer to? Ibn Battuta ac­ ars." His listing of familiar attributes establishes both the knowledges the irony and resolves it by quoting a claim city's historical credentials and his own literary ones, a that the poem seems to anticipate the eventual fate of qualification he confirms by moving immediately to a ci- Baghdad.7 That is, the poet thought things were bad, but 100 MICHAEL COOPERSON

they later became worse; which implies in turn that (1) tuality of his description stands at odds with the senti­ the eighth or ninth century was in fact a golden age, al­ mentalized effusions that precede it: he is particularly though he did not realize it; and (2) his elegies, however taken, for example, with the tar used to coat the walls of misconceived, have proven thoroughly appropriate in the bathhouses. Moreover, a good deal of his description later times and may be properly cited without fear of undermines his references to the city's vanished glory. anachronism. In adducing this remark, Ibn Battuta justi­ The markets of the west side are thriving, he notes, and fies in retrospect his citation of Ibn Jubayr, and justifies the classes at the Mustansiriya make an impressive sight. in prospect the series of citations that are to follow. Ibn Battuta's description of Baghdad provides a con­ Before he comes to these citations, however, Ibn Bat­ cise compilation of the most common literary responses tuta once again evinces an awareness of the burden of to the city. Arabic authors before and after him used a tradition upon the literate visitor to Baghdad: "People fairly stable set of topoi in their representations of Bagh­ have composed odes in her praise and recounted her dad, although - as the case of Ibn Battuta shows - this beauties expansively; and finding the space for such dis­ stability by no means precluded a complex and nuanced course extensive, have spoken well, and at length." Ibn response to historical circumstance and to the disjunc­ Battuta may be trying to excuse the continuing deferral tion between image and reality (a disjunction which of his own eyewitness account, or to justiry the citation of itself became something of a topos). Among the re­ numerous poetical descriptions of a city that no longer sponses worth considering in more detail are the repre­ deserves them. His remark may also suggest an aware­ sentation of Baghdad as the center of the world, as the ness that many have found the rhetoric about Baghdad object of desire, as the cause of disappointment, and as a more diverting than the actual metropolis. It certainly metropolis of vanished glory. does suggest that educated Muslims grew up hearing a The trope of centrality embraces various motifs, great deal about Baghdad, whether or not they ever saw including the mythologies, retrospective or otherwise, of it. the founding of the city by al-Mansur; the dynastic and Ibn Battuta, born in Tangiers in the far west of the millenarian significance of the city as capital of the Abba­ Islamic world, cites three Baghdad poems he says his fa­ sid dynasty;8 and its undisputed predominance as the ther "recited for me more than once." These and the center of learning in the Arabic-speaking world. The other poems he cites praise the city's natural beauty, recurrent listings of the town's virtues typically mention encompassing both setting and citizens, and express its geographic centrality (athwart the fourth of the seven their homesickness for it. A woman describes her fellow climes), healthful climate, cosmopolitan trade, bustling Baghdadis as "gazelles with enchantment in their eyes" markets, and numerous mosques and bathhouses. This who "flaunt themselves in luxury, as if courtly love (al­ reputation for perfection reached even beyond Islam to hawri al-Cudhri) had been modeled on their comport­ such distant non-literates as the early Mongol princes. ment." Another poet describes how his camels catch the According to an anecdote of Rashid aI-Din, Ogodei built scent of Baghdad on the breeze and remember the his own city of Karakorum (in 1235) in imitation of, or in flowering gardens of al-Karkh (southwest Baghdad). In competition with, the Abbasid capital, which had been nearly every case, the poet lavishes his or her praises described to him as "the best city on earth."g from a distance. Just as temporal distance makes the past Biographers also proclaimed the city's political, intel­ a golden age, spatial distance makes Baghdad the object lectual, and spiritual centrality, boasting of the "caliphs, oflonging and desire. descendants of the Prophet, dignitaries, judges, jurispru­ Yet the poets also suggest that actually living there dents, Hadith-scholars, QurJanic readers, ascetics, pie­ could prove frustrating. "Baghdad is a limitless abode for tists, litterateurs, poets" and others who lived and studied the wealthy, but a poor and wretched dwelling for the in the city.1O Indeed, Baghdadi scholars were so numerous vagabond./ / I have walked homeless in her alleys of an and so eminent that reference to them could continue to evening, like a QurJan left in the house of a heretic." support the "center-of-the-world" thesis even when the This and similar lines express a certain resentment at the material prosperity and political importance of the city city's failure to live up to expectations. Another poet had receded. For example, IbnJubayr, who describes the writes: "[Baghdad] was like a friend whose nearness I city as a shadow of its old self, devotes a third of his chap­ longed for, but whose character made her distant and ter on Baghdad to an enthusiastic description of three perverse." One imagines that Ibn Battuta felt a similar sermons by Abu al-Faraj cAbd al-Rahman Ibn allawzi disappointment, or at least that his readers did. The fac- (d. 1200, and himself apparently the author of a