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The Ritha' of Ta'abbata Sharran a Study of Blood-Vengeance in Early Arabic Poetry1

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The Ritha' of Ta'abbata Sharran a Study of Blood-Vengeance in Early Arabic Poetry1 Journal of Semitic Studies XXXl/i Spring if 86 THE RITHA' OF TA'ABBATA SHARRAN A STUDY OF BLOOD-VENGEANCE IN EARLY ARABIC POETRY1 SUZANNE PINCKNEY STETKEVYCH INDIANA UNIVERSITY In earlier papers I have proposed the analysis of the tripartite Downloaded from form of the classical Arabic qasidah on the basis of the pattern of the rite of passage as formulated by Arnold Van Gennep,2 and further, the interpretation of the poetry of the Sa'allk (brigand) poets in terms of a 'rite of passage manque', a failed or aborted rite of passage.3 It is my intention in the present study to limit http://jss.oxfordjournals.org/ myself to a more particular poetic genre, as I think it may be called, sc. the poetry that takes as its major theme blood- vengeance (tba'r) and to examine its structure and its distinctive imagery in terms of two parallel, if not indeed identical, ritual patterns: first, the rite of passage as formulated by Van Gennep and elucidated by, among others, Mary Douglas, Victor Turner and Edmund Leach;4 and second, the rite of sacrifice according by guest on August 11, 2015 1 Funding for research on this project was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the American Schools of Oriental Research, 1983-4. I would like to express my gratitude to the American Center for Oriental Research, Amman, Jordan and the Faculty of Arabic Literature of Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan, for the use of their facilities for that year. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of the Middle East Studies Association in San Francisco, November 1984. 2 Suzanne P. Stetkevych, 'Structuralist Interpretations of pre-Islamic Poetry: Critique and New Directions', JNES, XLI1/2 (1983), 85-107; and 'Al-qasldah al-'arabiyyah wa-tuqus al-'ubur: dirasah ft al-naqd al-namudh- ajl', Majallat Majma' a/-Lugbah al-Arabiyyah bi-Dimashq LX (1985), 55-8. J Eadem, "The Su'luk and his Poem: A Paradigm of Passage Manque', JAOS, civ/4 (1984), 661-78; 'Archetype and Attribution in Early Arabic Poetry: al-Shanfara and the Lamiyyat al-Arab', IJMES xvm/4 (1986). 4 Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, tr. Vizedom and Caffee (Chicago, i960) (Les rites depassage, 1909); Douglas, 'Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, 1966), 96-7; Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977), 94-5; Leach, 27 THE RITHA' OF TA'ABBATA SHARRAN to the schema described by Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss in their classic study, Sacrifice, with the stipulation that we keep in mind Mauss's later findings on the forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies as propounded in The Gift} Account will also be taken of the major works, both Orientalist and anthropological, that treat the subjects of blood-vengeance and sacrifice by Otto Procksch, Henri Lammens, W. Robertson Smith, Joseph Chelhod, Rene Girard and Walter Burkert.6 Let us begin with a brief presentation of these ritual formu- lae. For the sake of brevity, I will quote from Leach's summary, which pinpoints the aspects of the rite of passage pattern most appropriate to the discussion at hand: According to Van Gennep ... rituals which result in a change of ritual Downloaded from status of an initiate (and these of course include 'sacrifices' in the sense I have specified above) always have a tripartite structure: (i) 'a rite of separation', in which the initiate is separated from his/her original social role (ritual condition), is followed by (ii) a marginal state in which, temporarily, the initiate is outside society in a 'tabooed' http://jss.oxfordjournals.org/ condition which is ambivalently treated as dangerous-polluting or dangerous-holy. This is followed by (iii) 'a rite of aggregation' in which the initiate is brought back into society in his/her new social role (ritual condition). The logic of the exercise plainly implies that the symbolism involved in (i) should be more or less identical to that of (iii) but presented in reverse. For example if, as frequently happens, (i) the rite of separation includes a symbolic death and burial it is by guest on August 11, 2015 'Against Genres: are Parables Lights set in Candlesticks or Put Under a Bushel?', in idem and D. Alan Aycock, Structuralist Interpretations of Biblical Myth (Cambridge, 1983), 89-112. 5 Hubert and Mauss, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function, tr. W.D. Halls (Chicago, 1981) (Essai sur la nature et lafonction du sacrifice, 1898); Mauss, The Gift: The Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, tr. I. Cunnison (New York, 1967) (Essai sur le don, forme archaique de Fechange, 1925). 6 Procksch, Uber die Blutrache bei den vorislamischen Arabern und Mohammeds Stellung s>u ihr (Leipzig, 1899); Lammens, 'Le caractere religieux du tar ou vendetta chez les Arabes preislamites', BIFAO, xxvi (1926), 83-127; Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (Cambridge, 1885), and Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. First Series. The Fundamental Institutions (London, 1889); Chelhod, Le sacrifice che% les Arabes: recherches sur revolution, la nature et lafonction des rites sacrificiels en Arabie Occidental (Paris, •95 5); Girard, Violence and the Sacred, tr. P. Gregory (Baltimore, 1979) (La violence et le sacre, 1972); Burkert, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Ritual and Myth, tr. P. Bing (Berkeley, 1983) (1972). 28 THE RITHA' OF TA'ABBATA SHARRAN likely that (iii) the rite of aggregation will include a symbolic rebirth from the tomb (which has now become a womb symbol).7 Turning to the specific case of sacrifice, we find that in both formulation and definition, it constitutes a category of the rite of passage. Hubert and Mauss define sacrifice as follows: 'Sacrifice is a religious act which, through the consecration of a victim, modifies the condition of the moral person who accomplishes it or that of certain objects with which he is concerned',8 that is, a ritual which results in a change of ritual status. Their scheme of sacrifice is tripartite, consisting of (i) the rites of entry into the sacrifice; (ii) the sacrifice itself; and (iii) the rites of exit.9 Of particular note here is their remark, 'The rites by which this exit from the sacrifices is effected are the Downloaded from exact counterparts of those we observed at the entry'.10 That is, the chiastic (abba) pattern that Leach noted in the rite of passage in general is likewise discernible in the rites of sacrifice: the transition from the profane to the sacred and from the sacred back to the profane. http://jss.oxfordjournals.org/ The ritual and sacrificial aspects of blood-vengeance had already been suspected by Robertson Smith.11 The fuller study and specific discussion of these aspects was taken up by Lammens, who states explicitly that 'Le tar devenait ... comme une fac.on de sacrifice, d'acte rituel'.12 His conclusion is reaf- firmed by Chelhod in his remark 'Une forme voilee du sacrifice 13 humain nous parait etre le tba'r, ou vengeance du sang'. by guest on August 11, 2015 Moreover, we should like to emphasize here a further point on which Lammens and Chelhod concur, sc. that the taking of blood-vengeance is 'un devoir de piete filiale, une manifestation du culte funeraire ... Et le devoir ... pousse l'Arabe a procurer aux manes du defunt cette derniere satisfaction, a lui donner a boire le sang de son ennemi ... on ne peut s'empecher de voir dans la victime mise a mort pour satisfaire a une vengeance du sang un veritable sacrifice humain du aux manes du disparu'.14 7 Op. cit., 99. 8 Op. cit., 13. 9 Ibid., 20-49. 10 Ibid., 46. 11 Religion of the Semites, 462. 12 Op. cit., 115. u Op. cit., 100-4, 116-20. 14 Ibid., 101, 102, 104. 29 THE RITHA* OF TA'ABBATA SHARRAN In turning to the early Arabic materials concerned with blood-vengeance, both in poetry {ash'ar) and prose {akhbar), I propose to demonstrate first that the taking of blood- vengeance as presented in these materials performs the function of a rite of passage or of sacrifice, that is, the transition of the avenger from one ritual state to another; and second, that the taking of blood-vengeance as portrayed in these materials exhibits the same tripartite form and chiastic progression that characterize or inform the rites of passage and of sacrifice. Further, it will become apparent that the taking of blood- vengeance often constitutes a rite of initiation, sc, the rite of passage that marks the transition from boyhood to manhood.15 The poem to be discussed in the present study is at once the Downloaded from most famous Arabic poem of blood-vengeance and, in terms of provenance, the most problematic: the so-called 'Ritha' of Ta'abbata Sharran'. This premier poem in the premier anthology of Arabic poetry, Abu Tammam's Hamasah, is attributed by Abu Tammam to Ta'abbata Sharran. Among the http://jss.oxfordjournals.org/ diverse opinions on the subject are: that Ta'abbata Sharran wrote it as an elegy for himself when he knew he was about to die; that it was composed as an elegy for him by his nephew; further, that it was composed as an elegy for him by his Su'luk companion al-Shanfara (the claim sometimes made that Ta'ab- bata Sharran was al-Shanfara's maternal uncle would appear to spring from a conflation of these two attributions); and, finally by guest on August 11, 2015 the opinion to which the two major commentators on the Hamasah, al-Marzuql and al-TibrizI, both give credence, that it is the work of the notorious second century Basran transmitter and forger Khalaf al-Ahmar.16 However, given the striking 15 This aspect of the rite of passage is to be dealt with in a forthcoming study.
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