Description in Classical Arabic Poetry: Wasf, Ekphrasis, and Interarts Theory (Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures) (Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures)

DESCRIPTION IN CLASSICAL ARABIC POETRY: WASF, EKPHRASIS, AND INTERARTS THEORY AKIKO MOTOYOSHI SUMI BRILL BSMEL-25-mo...

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DESCRIPTION IN CLASSICAL ARABIC POETRY: WASF, EKPHRASIS, AND INTERARTS THEORY

AKIKO MOTOYOSHI SUMI

BRILL

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DESCRIPTION IN CLASSICAL ARABIC POETRY

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BRILL STUDIES IN MIDDLE EASTERN LITERATURES SUPPLEMENTS TO THE JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE The series Studies in Arabic Literature has now expanded its purview to include other literatures (Persian, Turkish, etc.) of the Islamic Middle East. While preserving the same format as SAL, the title of the expanded series will be Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures (BSMEL). As in the past, the series aims to publish literary critical and historical studies on a broad range of literary materials: classical and modern, written and oral, poetry and prose. It will also publish scholarly translations of major literary works. Studies that seek to integrate Middle Eastern literatures into the broader discourses of the humanities and the social sciences will take their place alongside works of a more technical and specialized nature. EDITED BY

Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych VOLUME XXV

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DESCRIPTION IN CLASSICAL ARABIC POETRY WA‘F, EKPHRASIS, AND INTERARTS THEORY

BY

AKIKO MOTOYOSHI SUMI

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2004

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This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sumi, Akiko Motoyoshi. Description in classical Arabic poetry : waßf, ekphrasis, and interarts theory / by Akiko Motoyoshi Sumi. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 90-04-12922-7 (alk. paper) 1. Arabic poetry—History and criticism. 2. Ekphrasis. I. Title. PJ7541.S84 2003 892.7’1009—dc22 2003057806

ISSN 0169-9903 ISBN 90 04 12922 7 © Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

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To the memory of my mother Tomoko Motoyoshi

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CONTENTS

Preface ........................................................................................ ix Acknowledgments ........................................................................ xv A Note on Translation and Transliteration ............................ xvii Introduction ................................................................................ 1 Chapter One Contest as Ceremony: A Pre-Islamic Poetic Contest in Horse Description of Imru" al-Qays vs. 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l ...................................................................................... 19 Chapter Two Remedy and Resolution: Bees and Honey-Gathering in Two Hudhalì Odes ................................................................ 61 Chapter Three Reality and Reverie: Wine and Ekphrasis in the 'Abbàsid Poetry of Abù Nuwàs and al-Bu˙turì .................................. 92 Chapter Four Sensibility and Synaesthesia: Ibn al-Rùmì’s Singing Slave-Girl ................................................................................ 122 Chapter Five Poetry and Portraiture: A Double Portrait in a Panegyric by Ibn Zamrak ...................................................................... 155 Conclusion .................................................................................. 194 Appendix of Arabic Texts ........................................................ 199 Works Cited ................................................................................ 235 Index ............................................................................................ 243

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PREFACE At present, we scarcely ﬁnd secondary literature on the subject of classical Arabic poetry or the qaßìdah studied from the perspective of modern Western literary theories and interartistic perspectives. This book demonstrates that those contemporary theories are useful for discovering and reconstructing a possible original meaning of the qaßìdah. This study was submitted in its original version as a doctoral dissertation to the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Indiana University (October 2001); the study has now been reassessed and revised. The subject of the study is waßf or “description” as one of the salient characteristics of the qaßìdah tradition. We ﬁnd something similar to waßf in the Western tradition under the name of ekphrasis. Originally interpreted in the Western rhetorical tradition as “clear and distinct description” of any object, ekphrasis in its modern understanding bears a more limited sense, “verbal representation of non-verbal texts.” In this modern conception, ekphrasis is concerned with the transdisciplinary ﬁeld of intermedial and interarts studies. This study aims at reexamining the functions and signiﬁcance of waßf in a selected group of Arabic qaßìdahs. My goal is to reveal unrecognized aesthetic dimensions in the qaßìdah genre in a way that is consistent with Western critical discourse. I employ various theories of culture and anthropology, of art history, and of interarts studies, including the concept of ekphrasis, which refers to the representation in verbal art of the other arts: painting, singing performance, and architecture. The qaßìdah must be analyzed within its conventional framework in light of its thematic unity and “frame of reference” (a set of standards, beliefs, or assumptions governing perceptual or logical evaluation or social behavior).1 One aspect of classical Arabic poetry’s conventionality, reﬂected in every ode in this study, is its bipartite

1 The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. “frame of reference.” For its further meaning, see pp. 124–25 in Chap. 4.

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or tripartite structure—nasìb (elegiac prelude), ra˙ìl (the poet’s journey through the desert and his mount, the she-camel), and fakhr (the poet’s praise or boast of himself and his tribe) or madì˙ (court panegyric in which the praise of the ruler substitutes for fakhr)—with polythematic formation. I investigate not only how waßf functions in each section, but also how it furthers or echoes a larger aim of the entire poem, e.g., boasting or panegyric, both structurally and thematically. I do not analyze descriptive sections solely as individual parts, but in relation to the whole thematic structure of the qaßìdah. With regard to the “frame of reference,” I attempt to re-construct the meaning that the qaßìdah held for its audiences and the eﬀect it had on them, because the original audience would receive much more than what is in the text. It is this view that allows me to interpret descriptive passages in an ode as fully integrated into the panegyric function of the entire ode and show the complex interaction of aesthetic, ideological, political, and self-(pre)serving motivations that were apparently clear to the original audiences but have been lost to later critics and scholars. Hence, I believe that in terms of methodology, a combination of the consideration of the conventional characteristics of classical Arabic poetry and modern Western theories serves to clarify the nature of the genre. Above all, modern Western interarts theories have not been applied extensively to the qaßìdah before. The concept of contest likewise plays a pivotal part in the qaßìdah genre, for it is an essential incentive for the poet’s enterprise of waßf. To provide a broader picture of waßf and various facets of the verbal description of other types of art, instead of focusing on one poet and his works, I have selected eight odes characterized by representative descriptive motifs from diﬀerent periods: two odes with the motif of a horse from the pre-Islamic era (the sixth century C.E.), two odes with a motif of bees and honey-gathering from the Jàhilì (pre-Islamic) and Mukha∂ram (straddling the pre-Islamic and Islamic age) eras, two odes with a motif of visual arts (a design on a wine goblet and a wall painting), another on the theme of a singing performance from the 'Abbàsid era (the eighth and ninth centuries C.E.), and one ode with an architectural motif from the Andalusian era (the fourteenth century C.E.). While descriptions in Chapters One and Two are investigated in association with the poems’ cultural and literary milieu, relying on their related anecdotes (akhbàr) and the ancient symbolism of the poetic objects, the last three chapters attempt

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to examine descriptions from the perspective of the transdisciplinary area of interarts studies. Technically speaking, my approach in each chapter except for the Introduction is the detailed discussion of one or two poems for the purpose of creating a new reading of the odes. I do not, however, elaborate every line or phrase. Rather, I focus on sections which are crucial for my argument. Moreover, I use the word “poet” to refer to the maker of a poem, while employing the word “persona” or the poet’s name in quotation marks to indicate the speaker in the poem. The Introduction oﬀers the theoretical background for both waßf and ekphrasis, showing how the two concepts were treated and understood in their own literary traditions and the commensurable aspects of these two concepts. I demonstrate where the Arabic materials under examination in the following ﬁve case-studies are situated in light of the understanding of ekphrasis. The subject of the ﬁrst chapter is the description of a horse by Imru" al-Qays (d. circa 550 C.E.) and 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l (active in the mid-sixth century) in the pre-Islamic era in the context of a poetic contest (mu'àra∂ah) narrated in an accompanying khabar (anecdote). I demonstrate the concept of tribal reaggregation and sexuality in the horse description within a social and cultural paradigm. In the second chapter, I analyze the description of bees and honeycollecting by two Hudhalì poets, Sà'idah ibn Ju"ayyah (date of death unknown) from the Jàhilì (pre-Islamic) period and his ràwì (transmitter) Khuwaylid ibn Khàlid known as Abù Dhu"ayb al-Hudhalì (d. 649? C.E.) who lived through the Mukha∂ram era. Using an anthropological approach, I investigate the symbolic meanings of the bee, honey, and honey-gathering, relying on The Sacred Bee by Hilda M. Ransome.2 The bees and honey-gathering are symbols of healing and ordeal and at the same time form a metaphor for the lost meadow. For the 'Abbàsid period, I deal in Chapter Three with the description of a wine cup and a painting by the 'Abbàsid poets Abù Nuwàs (c. 747/762–815) and al-Bu˙turì (821–97). In approaching the description of the works of visual art, I make use of the studies of ekphrasis

2 Hilda M. Ransome, The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1937).

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by Andrew Sprague Becker.3 In the two poems on visual art works, the waßf functions as madì˙ without an explicit expression of the words of praise. Chapter Four deals with the description of a singing slave-girl by Ibn al-Rùmì (836–96). I examine the mutual relations between poetry and musical performance in light of the contemporary account of singing slave-girls by al-Jà˙iΩ (776–869).4 I use the concept of the “gestural” in Lawrence Kramer’s book, Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After.5 The poem fully expresses emotion and aﬀections, and the image of the songstress’s body is revealed through all the senses. The last topic is the description of the Alhambra Palace by the Andalusian court poet Ibn Zamrak (1333–93?). In this chapter I utilize Richard Brilliant’s theories of portraiture in visual arts.6 The ode is shown to oﬀer an emblematic portrait of the ruler, because he is rendered by means of an ekphrastic representation of the famous palace he (re)constructed. Also, the poem serves as a double portrait of the patron-ruler and the poet. The qaßìdah was negatively judged by many traditional Orientalists who failed to engage it as poetry; they viewed the qaßìdah as merely descriptive, purely objective, and devoid of individual feelings. Objecting to this criticism, I claim that description in traditional Arabic poetry does not only attempt to express pictorial, mimetic images of objects, but also to form a larger conceptual metaphor in an emblematic, psychological, spiritual, metonymical, or symbolic manner. Waßf thus has a much more important role than merely describing objects. My work is related to the school of Jaroslav Stetkevych and Suzanne Stetkevych, what may be called the “Chicago school” in the ﬁeld of the classical Arabic poetic tradition. Their work has demonstrated a break with the views of the traditional Orientalists by attempting to give a positive picture of the qaßìdah to its reader. Along with other

3 Andrew Sprague Becker, The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littleﬁeld Publishers, 1995). 4 al-Jà˙iΩ 'Amr ibn Ba˙r, “Kitàb al-Qiyàn,” Rasà"il al-Jà˙iΩ, ed. with commentary, 'Abd Muhannà, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dàr al-Óadàthah, 1987–88). 5 Lawrence Kramer, Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 6 Richard Brilliant, Portraiture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).

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new Orientalist scholars such as James T. Monroe, Michael Zwettler, and Michael Sells, the ﬁeld remains open to further exploration from diﬀerent angles, particularly with regard to interdisciplinary and literary critical methods. My study is intended to strengthen the qaßìdah’s modern reappraisal in terms of its aesthetic and experiential value. Hence, I aim to further develop and evolve new points of view in the discipline of the qaßìdah tradition on the basis of this new Orientalist scholarly approach. Throughout my study, such new and innovative work on the interpretation of classical Arabic poetic traditions serves to establish the essential foundation on which I build. It need scarcely be said that the canonical and commentary works of Arab littérateurs provide useful and informative sources in developing this debate on a new approach, perhaps leading to a consensus of opinion in the future. In accordance with the goal of this study, I attempt to show how the theories of ekphrasis and interarts studies in general are related to waßf and how they serve to enlighten the analysis of my Arabic materials. I have no intention of claiming that my understanding and interpretations in this study are absolute or complete. It is hoped that the approach I have used, and the results I have achieved to date, will contribute to the advance of our understanding of the waßf in the Arabic panegyrical qaßìdah and that innovative and untried methods will provide us with new and wider perspectives on the Arabic poetic tradition.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many to whom I owe my thanks. During my study of Arabic and the Arab world over the years I received warm support and assistance from numerous ﬁne friends and teachers. Special mention should go to Kay Wada, Hiromi and Miyoko Oda, David Fletcher and Hui-hua Chang, Professors Osamu Ikeda and Yoshiyuki Takashina of Osaka University of Foreign Studies, Japan, Professor Ernest McCarus of the University of Michigan, Professor Sumie Jones of Indiana University, Professor Kuniaki Mukai of Keio University, Japan, and Professor Jun’ichi Oda of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. But to the committee members of my doctoral dissertation at Indiana University, on which this book is originally based, I owe a most unrepayable debt. My academic advisor, Professor Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych introduced me to classical Arabic poetry and spent much time helping me in translating Arabic poems; without her tremendous assistance and warmhearted encouragement, I could never have ﬁnished this study. Professor Claus Clüver taught me much about the theories of ekphrasis and interarts, and patiently guided me with close, careful, and critical reading. Professor Paul Losensky oﬀered me valuable thoughts and suggestions with wit and humor. And Professor Consuelo Lopez-Morillas gave me helpful, critical comments and ideas. To Professor Jaroslav Stetkevych of the University of Chicago, who read most chapters in the various stages of this book, I am deeply indebted for his expertise and insightful analysis. I would also like to thank all who read and commented on the manuscript. I also received support from Dr. As'ad Khairallah at the American University of Beirut and Dr. Rachid El Daif at the Lebanese University, who graciously oﬀered their vast knowledge and generosity. I thank Ambassadors Matsushiro Horiguchi and Naoto Amaki, and my former colleagues at the Embassy of Japan in Beirut for their assistance and understanding during my service as cultural attaché. I also wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Eiichi Kajita, President of Kyoto Notre Dame University, Japan and my present colleagues at the university, for the kind environment that they provided, which helped me

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to ﬁnish this book. Thanks go to Dr. Ruth I. Meserve for her careful, thorough proofreading of the entire manuscript and Trudy Kamperveen and Tanja Cowall of Brill Academic Publishers for their kindness and patience. I thank my parents and siblings for their constant aid during my long term of study abroad. Finally, my special gratitude goes to my husband Katsunori Sumi who constantly supported me with aﬀection and understanding. I would like to express my appreciation as well to the editors and publishers for their permission to reprint previously published articles that, in revised form, are part of the present book. My paper in Japanese, “Shôchôteki hyôgen to shite no waßf: Ekphrasis ni terashiawaseta rironteki kôsatsu (Waßf as Symbolic Expression: Theoretical Examination in Comparison with Ekphrasis),” Kansai Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 2 (2002), pp. 53–69, partly forms the basis for the Introduction. My essay in Arabic, “Al-Mubàràh ˇaqsan I˙tifàliyyan: Mubàràh Shi'riyyah Jàhiliyyah fì Waßf al-Khayl bayna Imri" al-Qays wa 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l (Contest as Ceremony: A Pre-Islamic Poetic Contest in Horse Description of Imru" al-Qays vs. 'Alqamah al(Fa˙l),” Al-Ab˙àth 50–51 (2002–2003), pp. 95–144, is placed with some revision as Chapter 1. My article, “Remedy and Resolution: Bees and Honey-Collecting in Two Hudhalì Odes,” Journal of Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures 6, no. 2 (2003), pp. 131–57, with some revision appears as Chapter 2. In revised form “Reality and Reverie: Wine and Ekphrasis in the 'Abbàsid Poetry of Abù Nuwàs and alBu˙turì,” Annals of Japan Association for Middle East Studies 14 (1999), pp. 85–120, appear as Chapter 3. My essay, “Sensibility and Synaesthesia: Ibn al-Rùmì’s Singing Slave-Girl,” Journal of Arabic Literature 32, no. 1 (2001), pp. 1–29, is placed with some revision as Chapter 4. My article “Poetry and Portraiture: A Double Portrait in an Arabic Panegyric by Ibn Zamrak,” Journal of Arabic Literature 30, no. 3 (1999), pp. 199–239, with slight revision, forms the last chapter.

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A NOTE ON TRANSLATION AND TRANSLITERATION

All translations of the Arabic odes and anecdotes in the text are my own, unless otherwise indicated. I have aimed to provide at least adequate and readable English versions of the literal meaning of the originals. Moreover, the original Arabic texts of the odes are provided as an Appendix. For the transliteration of Arabic names, terms, and bibliographical citations I have followed the Library of Congress system with slight modiﬁcation.

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INTRODUCTION*

The classical Arabic ode, the qaßìdah, is a polythematic and monorhymed poetic form, generally ranging in length from ﬁfteen to eighty lines. The qaßìdah genre ﬂourished from the outset of its history approximately in the late ﬁfth century C.E. during the pre-Islamic age (the Jàhiliyyah or “Age of Ignorance”) to its decline at the beginning of the twentieth century, carrying with it a long continuity of cultural heritage. Traditionally, the qaßìdah consists of three sections, the nasìb, the ra˙ìl, and the fakhr or the madì˙.1 The nasìb, the opening section, deals with elegiac motifs such as the ruined abodes and deals with amatory themes such as unrequited love. The second part, the ra˙ìl, contains the poetic persona’s travel scene through the desert and his mount, the she-camel. The concluding fakhr presents the poet’s praise or boast of himself and his tribe, and the madì˙ (eulogy) oﬀers praise.2 Stylized and regulated in both content and form, traditional Arabic poetry is substantially conventional and formalistic and is based on intertextuality and interreferentiality.3 Thus the genre expects the reader to be familiar with its formal and thematic traditions. Its form, ﬁxed and complex both in structure and theme, can be perceived only by the educated, knowledgeable reader.4

* An earlier version of parts of this section appeared in Japanese as Akiko Motoyoshi Sumi, “Shôchôteki hyôgen to shite no waßf: Ekphrasis ni terashiawaseta rironteki kôsatsu (Waßf as Symbolic Expression: Theoretical Examination in Comparison with Ekphrasis),” Kansai Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 2 (2002): 53–69. 1 Although the Arabic qaßìdah is conventionally made up of the three parts, the two-part nasìb-madì˙ form increasingly dominates the 'Abbàsid (750–1258) and post'Abbàsid qaßìdah, and through the centuries the Arabic poetic tradition abounds in variant form. 2 Fakhr or madì˙ can be replaced by hijà" (invective). Madì˙ is a court panegyric in which the praise of the ruler takes the place of fakhr. Fakhr predominates in preIslamic poetry, while madì˙ is the dominant genre in the qaßìdah of the Islamic age. 3 For an overview of the qaßìdah genre, see Roger Allen, “Poetry,” chap. 4 of The Arabic Literary Heritage: The Development of Its Genres and Criticism (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 4 The Eastern tradition shows some similarities with the classical Western literary tradition in terms of prosody and tropes. However, the Arabic genre expects the reader to know more rigorous thematic and structural factors in terms of what comes next. The genre has a fully developed order. Traditional Orientalists were uneasy with the qaßìdah because it involved a concept of originality and creativity

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Partly because of its conventionality and formalism, the qaßìdah has been misunderstood and judged negatively in the past by many traditional Orientalists. They failed to engage the qaßìdah as poetry; as a result, they focused mostly on its value as an anthropological and historical artefact. Their negative evaluation is represented by the “barbarism hypothesis” of Ignaz Goldziher, the “atomism hypothesis” of R. A. Nicholson, and the “objective description hypothesis” of Gustav von Grunebaum.5 Over the past twenty years, however, a new movement of modern Western scholars has emerged that has reassessed the value of the qaßìdah from various perspectives; representative studies include those of the Chicago school formed by Jaroslav Stetkevych, the oral-performative studies of early Arabic poetry by such scholars as James Monroe and Michael Zwettler, and the works of Suzanne Stetkevych.6 These modern Orientalists have attempted to demonstrate the artistic integrity of the qaßìdah. I believe that my major contribution to the scholarly study of the qaßìdah is to strengthen this sense of its artistic integrity. Though the modern Orientalists have rated the qaßìdah tradition highly, superseding the supposedly “artiﬁcial mechanism” of previous generations of Orientalists, “descriptiveness” itself has not been studied in a serious, extensive manner from the viewpoints of literary theory, except that was diﬀerent from their own, which was based on eighteenth-century Western ideas. The qaßìdah relies on a whole set of intertextualities which contains repetitions and variations; variation is allowed but strictly controlled. The qaßìdah poet reworks older conventional motifs—he does not or should not create entirely new matter. 5 On the negative reception to the qaßìdah in the West, Jaroslav Stetkevych has an insightful study, “Arabic Poetry and Assorted Poetics,” in Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, ed. Malcolm H. Kerr (Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1980), 103–23. In his article, he points out that there was a favorable response before traditional Orientalists’ criticism, such as by Goethe. For the two quotations on the following page illustrating the negative reception of the qaßìdah by traditional Orientalists, I have relied on Michael Sells, “The Qaßìda and the West: Self-Reﬂective Stereotype and Critical Encounter,” Al-'Arabiyya 20 (1987): 307–57. 6 Some representative works are: Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasìb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), and Suzanne Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). For oral-performative studies of early Arabic poetry, see James Monroe, “Oral Composition in Pre-Islamic Poetry,” Journal of Arabic Literature 3 (1972): 1–53, and Michael Zwettler, The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry: Character and Implications (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1978). About their further contributions, see Sells, “Qaßìda,” 331–46. Also, Stefan Sperl has a ﬁne study, demonstrating thematic unity and coherence in the qaßìdah, “Islamic Kingship and Arabic Panegyric Poetry in the Early Ninth Century,” Journal of Arabic Literature 8 (1977): 20–35.

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by Michael Sells in his “Guises of the Ghùl: Dissembling Simile and Semantic Overﬂow in the Classical Arabic Nasìb.”7 To further this reevaluation of the qaßìdah as poetry, I have chosen waßf or “description” as my topic of study, because, albeit other perceptions of the qaßìdah, such as the atomism and barbarism hypotheses, also contributed to devaluing the Arabic poetic tradition, its “descriptiveness” played a prominent role in the traditional Orientalists’ disparagement of the poetry.8 Their consideration of the qaßìdah as secondrate poetry was based largely on what they censured as its highly descriptive and repetitive qualities. Many traditional Orientalists made negative judgment part of their deﬁnition of the qaßìdah. F. Krenkow introduced the ˚aßìda (qaßìdah) in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition, published in 1927, by claiming: An Arabic (or Persian, etc.) ˚aßìda is a very artiﬁcial composition; the same rhyme has to run through the whole of the verses, however long the poem may be. In addition the composition is bound by a meter which the poet has to guard most scrupulously through the whole course of the poem. The result is that we cannot expect much beautiful poetry; the description of the desert and its animals and terrors may have a certain charm at ﬁrst, but when the same descriptions recur in endless poems expressed in the same manner, only with diﬀerent words, the monotony becomes nauseous.9

Description also played a major role in A. S. Tritton’s negative deﬁnition of shi'r (poetry) in 1934: Arab poetry is essentially atomic; a string of isolated statements which might be accumulated but could not be combined. Sustained narrative and speculation are both alien to it. It is descriptive but the description is a thumbnail sketch; it is thoughtful but the result is aphoristic. The poet looks on the world through a microscope. Minute peculiarities of places and animals catch his attention and make his poetry versiﬁed geology and anatomy; untranslatable and dull. Forceful speech is his aim and the result is—to Western minds—often grotesque or even repulsive.10 7

Michael Sells, “Guises of the Ghùl: Dissembling Simile and Semantic Overﬂow in the Classical Arabic Nasìb,” in Reorientations/Arabic and Persian Poetry, ed. Suzanne Stetkevych (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), 130–64. 8 For the atomism hypothesis of R. A. Nicholson and the barbarism hypothesis of Ignaz Goldziher as ways of devaluing the qaßìdah, see Sells, “Qaßìda.” 9 F. Krenkow, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1st ed., s.v. “˚aßìda,” ed. M. Th. Houtsma, et al., 9 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1927). 10 A. S. Tritton, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1st ed., s.v. “shi'r.”

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Finally, Gustav von Grunebaum argued in 1945 that description in Arabic poetry is essentially detached, objective, and superﬁcial: The poet is wholly dedicated to the task of adequately describing his theme down to its most intimate and, at the same time, most typical peculiarities. There is no doubt that here the Arabs contributed a number of masterpieces to descriptive art. . . . Whatever the subject, it is presented for its inherent interest, never for any emotion it may have touched oﬀ in the observer or listener. . . . Whatever his subject, he will reproduce it as it is, or perhaps rather as tradition has taught him to see it, refraining carefully from personalized comment or from putting his feelings unduly to the fore. If we disregard the perfection of form and language, the beauty of his presentation derives entirely from the ﬁdelity of his observation, not from his reaction to the impressions that actually inspired his song. . . . The poet’s organ of perception is the eye.11

These Orientalists looked at the qaßìdah poet’s description on the surface and claimed that it was absolutely objective, mimetic, and realistic, suggesting a lack of creativity and originality, as a result of the Arab poet’s blind obedience to literary convention. They viewed the genre as mechanistic and artiﬁcial, paratactic, atomistic, and devoid of individual expressions of emotion. Their negative attitude is directed not only toward descriptiveness, but also toward the whole set of conventional characteristics of classical Arabic poetry. These Orientalists also failed to ﬁnd the correlation between thematic sections and underestimated the aesthetic, literary qualities of the qaßìdah genre.12 It is true that the Arabic qaßìdah has many descriptive verses, particularly when one sees only the isolated descriptive passages. However, the metaphorical intent of the descriptive passages comes to light when they are seen in the structural and thematic context of the entire qaßìdah. By ignoring the context of the entire work, the reader may be misled by arguments that appear to conﬁrm the traditional Orientalists’ idea that the qaßìdah is merely descriptive, assessing this genre in a narrow—and negative—manner. It is my proposal that we need to broaden the way in which we interpret the qaßìdah. Description is called waßf in the Arabic literary tradition and is characterized by the minute, thorough description of certain objects.

11 Gustav E. von Grunebaum, “The Response to Nature in Arabic Poetry,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 4 (1945): 139–40. 12 See Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Arabic Poetry,” 116–17.

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It is a key element in the qaßìdah genre, as it is an inevitable and indispensable means for expression in most literatures. The wellknown medieval Arab literary critic Ibn Rashìq al-Qayrawànì (d. circa 1065 C.E.) states, “All poetry, except for small portions, is attributable to the category of waßf, and it is not possible to limit nor thoroughly examine it,”13 because of its comprehensive, overwhelming permeation of poetry. The poets followed in their predecessors’ footsteps in preserving this mimetic feature, because they perceived and appreciated the important and valuable functions of waßf. Similar to the traditional Orientalists, classical Arabic scholars, who focused largely on rhetorical and philological matters, seldom thoroughly explored the theoretical dimensions of waßf. They used it merely for categorization in a dìwàn (poetry collection) like other terms, such as nasìb, ra˙ìl, or ghazal (amatory lyric). The 'Umdah of Ibn Rashìq on the art of poetry, one of the well-known critical works of medieval Arabic literature, has a section on waßf, a major part of which is devoted to listing the names of poets who are adept in waßf and their celebrated descriptive passages.14 Pursuing that tradition, modern scholarly books on poetry often include in the table of contents a chapter on “waßf,” in which the authors introduce representative descriptive passages, followed by their statement of how skillful and beautiful the poet’s waßf is. In a way, waßf functioned as a criterion for the evaluation of poetry. This function is supported by the etymological concept of waßf ; apart from its meaning of “description,” waßf also means “characterization,” “quality,” “attribute,” “distinguishing mark,” “adjective.” The form I verb of waßf is waßafa, which means not only “to describe; to characterize,” but also “to praise, laud, extol.” A poet sometimes undertakes waßf in order to praise the object of description. Moreover, a derivative noun of waßf, ßifah, which means “a quality, an attribute, a property, and a description,” has two synonyms: ßinf and ˙àl.15 Íinf 13 Ibn Rashìq al-Qayrawànì, Al-'Umdah fì Ma˙àsin al-Shi'r wa Àdàbih wa Naqdih, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Cairo: Al-Maktabah al-Tijàrìyyah al-Kubrà, 1955), 2: 294. The translation is mine. The Arabic text corresponding to the ﬁrst half of the quote is “al-shi'r illà aqalluh ràji'un ilà bàbi-l-waßf.” 14 Modern scholars also have a number of works on the topic of waßf, e.g., Iliyyà al-Óàwì, Fann al-Waßf wa Ta†awwuruh fì al-Shi'r al-'Arabì, 3rd ed. (Beirut: Dàr alKitàb al-Lubnànì, 1980), and Alma Giese, Wasf bei Kushàjim (Berlin: K. Schwarz, 1981). 15 Edward William Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society Trust, 1984), w-ß-f.

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means “a sort, species, constituent,” while ˙àl means “state, condition, case.”16 Thus, waßf, whose core meaning is description, contains a secondary meaning of showing the states or attributes of an object that can be an index for categorization or basis for evaluation. Na't, translated as “an epithet or that whereby a person or thing is described,” etc., is likewise often regarded as a synonym of waßf.17

Waßf and Ekphrasis In order to get a clear overview of waßf and grasp its operation, the criticism of ekphrasis and the perspectives of interarts theory will be helpful, inasmuch as ekphrasis can be considered a Western counterpart of waßf. The term can be employed in two ways: ﬁrst in its original meaning and second in its modern sense. Originally, as a term in Classical rhetoric, ekphrasis is understood as “clear and distinct description” of any object, standing almost as ﬁrm and long in the traditions of Occidental civilization as waßf does in the Arabic. The term in the title of this book intends this broader meaning of ekphrasis. But the last three chapters deal with poetic descriptions of works of art or artistic performance, and here the term also applies to its current, narrower usage in the transdisciplinary ﬁeld of intermedial and interarts studies which is concerned with the relations among music, architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, and other arts and media. In this modern understanding, ekphrasis is “the verbal representation of non-verbal texts.” The term “text” is here used to refer to a complex sign in any culturally produced semiotic system. The objects of description in the Arabic poems studied in Chapters One and Two, the horse and the bee and honey-gathering, are natural objects and therefore not “texts” according to the narrower understanding of ekphrasis in interarts studies, while they would be acceptable subjects for rhetorical ekphrasis. The objects of poetic description in the last three chapters—the design on a wine cup, the wall painting (Chapter Three), the performance of a song (Chapter Four), and the palace (Chapter Five)—are all man-made objects that can be read as “texts.” If one ﬁnds these “verbal representations of

16 17

Lane, ß-n-f and ˙-w-l. Lane, n-'-t.

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non-verbal texts” to be “clear and distinct,” one could also think of them as satisfying the expectations of classical ekphrasis. Let me ﬁrst clarify the origin of ekphrasis in the Western rhetorical tradition. Etymologically, “ekphrasis” is derived from the Greek verb “ekphratzein,” according to Fritz Graf, one of the authorities on the historical study of ekphrasis. The word is derived from “phratzein,” “to show in speech,” “to make clear,” while the preﬁx “ek” suggests that the activity in question reaches its intended goal. Hence, Graf draws out as its intended meaning “the (verbal) activity of clarifying something completely without a remainder.” Ekphrasis as a term originally comes from the ﬁeld of rhetoric in Antiquity, translated simply as “description,” as rhetorical exercise as well as descriptive passage, as shown by its Latin equivalent “descriptio.” In Greek rhetorical handbooks, ekphrasis would be deﬁned as “a descriptive text which places the matter communicated clearly and distinctly before our eyes.”18 Understanding ekphrasis as a long-standing rhetorical practice may serve to elucidate waßf, which also had a function as a rhetorical exercise in classical Arabic poetics. Bernhard Scholz states that as late as the middle of the sixteenth century, ekphrasis was considered as “a procedure for describing any object whatever.” He goes on to say that what was important was not what we describe but how we describe it.19 As a rhetorical technique ekphrasis aims at precise description, regardless of its object. It is designed to enable speeches to be persuasive, resorting to verbal force in producing an image before the listener’s mental eye.20 The aim of ekphrasis is to achieve enargeia, “pictorial vividness,” the Greek term that Jean H. Hagstrum, noted for his celebrated book The Sister Arts, attributes to Plutarch’s comment on Thucydides.21

18 See two articles in Pictures into Words: Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches to Ekphrasis, ed. Valerie Robillard and Els Jongeneel (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1998): Bernhard F. Scholz, “ ‘Sub Oculos Subiectio’: Quintilian on Ekphrasis and Enargeia,” 73–99 and Claus Clüver, “Quotation, Enargeia, and the Function of Ekphrasis,” 35–52. All the quotations in this paragraph are from Fritz Graf, “Ekphrasis: Die Entstehung der Gattung in der Antike,” in Beschreibungskunst—Kunstbeschreibung: Ekphrasis von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. G. Boehm and H. Pfotenhauer (München: Wilhelm Fink, 1995), 143–55, as translated by Scholz (76) or Clüver (36–37). 19 Scholz, 83. 20 Ibid., 77. 21 Jean H. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English

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Enargeia attempts to represent verbally the object before the hearer’s/ reader’s eye, transforming the listener to spectator. As for the concept of waßf in the Arabic tradition, Ibn Rashìq likewise claims that the best waßf is a description that represents its object in such a way that the listener almost envisions it with his/her own eyes. Ibn Rashìq further says that some of his contemporary littérateurs (al-muta"akhkhirùn) argue that the most eloquent waßf is a transformation of hearing (sam' ) into seeing/vision (baßar). According to him, the origin of waßf is “revealing” (kashf ) and “showing” (iΩhàr), as seen in the statement, “The attire described (wußifat) the body underneath it.” Ibn al-Rùmì says, When her gowns reveal what is above the edge of her veils, her slips repel the glance.22

However, the procedure of enargeia aids in the formation of a mental picture to a degree which Ibn Rashìq does not develop in his account of waßf. Nicolaos of Myra (the ﬁfth century C.E.) describes enargeia as follows: Enargeia is the distinctive feature of ekphrasis since it is this characteristic which most clearly distinguishes ekphrastic writing from mere reporting; the latter namely contains only bare representation of the object while the former tries to turn readers into spectators.23

Quintilian (35–97), the inﬂuential Roman rhetorician whose theories Scholz has analyzed, had oﬀered an earlier distinction between “vivid illustration” (enargeia/evidentia), or, as some would call it, “representation” (repraesentatio), and “mere clearness” ( perspicuitas) stating, “ ‘mere clearness’ merely lets itself be seen, whereas ‘vivid illustration’ thrusts itself upon our notice.” He went on to say that “vivid illustration” should display “facts . . . in their living truth to the eyes of the mind.” Quintilian argued that oratorical speech must not only visualize exactly the object of the speech through the audience’s ear, but also stimulate the mind of the audience’s eye.24

Poetry from Dryden to Gray (1958; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 11. 22 Ibn Rashìq, 2: 295. In this poem the word “reveal” corresponds to wußifat (the passive voice of waßafat) in Arabic. See the Appendix for the Arabic text. 23 Quoted by Scholz, 77. 24 For Quintilian’s idea in this paragraph, I rely on Scholz, 78. According to Scholz, Quintilian shows in the procedure of achieving enargeia, a shift from the

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In connection with our Arabic subjects, one of the signiﬁcant aspects of ekphrasis as understood by modern semiotics is the cultural presuppositions that, as Scholz points out, “assume a community of interpretation with a shared life-world and a set of cultural codes.”25 Modern criticism has come to realize that in the qaßìdah tradition as in any other poetic tradition, for the reader/listener to understand and appreciate a text it is indispensable to be cognizant of the generic conventions and of intertextual and interreferential codes behind it, and that it is as important to be familiar with what Scholz calls the “life-world” represented in the poem, including its values and customs. Scholz, who makes no reference to Arabic poetry, continues: . . . we also have to acknowledge that it is not the presence of certain enargeia-signals in the text which turns us from readers into spectators, certain textual elements to which the reader has to pay attention in order to undergo that transformation, but the experience of undergoing that metamorphosis which allows us to say that the text in question possesses enargeia and hence deserves to be called ‘ekphrastic.’26

For the reader to be able to undergo the experience of that metamorphosis, he must have access to the cultural lexicon on which the author drew in creating the text. Especially in such a long-established poetic tradition as that of the qaßìdah, poets and listeners share a whole range of expectations, including the ways in which objects will be experienced and described. Therefore, mere suggestions may sometimes suﬃce, because the listeners will ﬁll in the gaps and experience a description as “clear and distinct” and possessing enargeia where to the non-initiate it may have no such qualities. There are, as Scholz points out, no neutral “enargeia-signals”; they are always predicated on shared cultural codes. On the other hand, Aristotle, in his discussion of mimesis in his Poetics, used not the word enargeia, but the word energeia. Hagstrum formulates an illustration of the diﬀerence between the two nearhomonyms: Enargeia implies the achievement in verbal discourse of a natural quality or of a pictorial quality that is highly natural. Energeia refers to the actualization of potency, the realization of capacity or capability, the “outer” ear to the inner eye, which is parallel to the shift from “mere” narration to a speciﬁc type of description, 78. 25 Scholz, 79. 26 Ibid.

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 achievement in art and rhetoric of the dynamic and purposive life of nature. Poetry possesses energeia when it has achieved its ﬁnal form and produces its proper pleasure, when it has achieved its own independent being quite apart from its analogies with nature or another art, and when it operates as an autonomous form with an eﬀectual working power of its own. But Plutarch, Horace, and the later Hellenistic and Roman critics found poetry eﬀective when it achieved verisimilitude—when it resembled nature or a pictorial representation of nature. For Plutarchian enargeia, the analogy with painting is important; for Aristotelian energeia, it is not.27

Principles of mimetic verisimilitude indeed dominated later Greek, Hellenistic and Roman painting and sculpture, and ekphrastic enargeia seems to have shared these principles. They were not in force during the European Middle Ages, but returned with the Renaissance, when there also arose a new discourse about the rivalry of the representational powers of poetry and painting. The ideal of mimetic verisimilitude has retained a strong hold in the tradition of Western visual representation and was prominent in the realisms of the nineteenth century, both in literature and the visual arts, which provided the cultural codes of traditional Orientalists. It might be interesting to inquire to what extent their criteria for assessing the qaßìdah were formed by such expectations. It is my thesis that, while waßf has some functions similar to those of ekphrastic descriptions striving for verisimilitude, it also has more profound and complicated functions which allow it to create a uniﬁed imagery in a diﬀerent way. Though each waßf stands independently in a qaßìdah, it is closely linked, both in form and content, to other motifs of the qaßìdah within the entire poetic scheme. Mimesis is a form of representation. According to Charles Sanders Peirce, “a representation is an object which stands for another so that an experience of the former aﬀords us a knowledge of the latter.”28 W. J. T. Mitchell, who bases his article on “Representation” in part on Peirce’s semiotic, emphasizes that it is crucial to take into account “the relationship between the representational material and that which it represents,” and points out that “mimesis and imitation are iconic forms of representation that transcend the diﬀerences

27

Hagstrum, 12. Charles Sanders Peirce, “On Representations,” Writings of Charles S. Peirce, 6 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1857–90), 3: 62. 28

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between media: I can imitate—i.e., mimic or produce a resemblance of—a sound, speech act, gesture, or facial expression and, thus, iconically reproduce it; icons are not just pictures.”29 In other words, mimetic representation is not limited to pictorial means. But words can only mimic, or made to resemble, sounds or speech acts. Except for such rare instances, the relationship between verbal signs and what they represent is conventional and arbitrary (Peirce calls it “symbolic”). Verbal representations are therefore hardly ever iconic. Nevertheless, there are many procedures by which descriptions can induce listeners or readers to create a mental “image” of the object described—whether such object is perceived in the phenomenal world by our eyes or any of our other senses. Such procedures may involve use of similes and similar tropes without disturbing the eﬀect of verisimilitude. But descriptions may also have allegorical, metaphorical, or symbolic meanings deeply rooted in a culture’s world view and value system, and similes can be not only conventional, but also charged with cultural signiﬁcance. That is frequently the case with the verbal representation of certain objects (waßf ) in the qaßìdah. We will examine how the qaßìdah poet oﬀers his representational material and how it is related to what it represents.

Ekphrasis in Its Interarts Implication and Waßf All of my subjects, particularly those in the ﬁrst two chapters, are related to the broader, rhetorical deﬁnition of ekphrasis outlined above. However, my Arabic materials in Chapters Three, Four, and Five can also be classiﬁed as ekphrastic in the narrower, modern understanding—“verbal representation of non-verbal texts”—in connection with the relationships between the arts. The practice of mimetic representation that was reintroduced into the visual arts during the Renaissance led to a poetic practice of writing poems on paintings or sculptures. There also arose a type of poetry describing objects, such as landscapes, that were the objects of new pictorial genres. Hagstrum’s book The Sister Arts (1958) dealt

29 W. J. T. Mitchell, “Representation,” Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 14.

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with “the tradition of literary pictorialism” in eighteenth-century English poetry, which he placed in the tradition of ekphrasis as well as of a critical discourse based on a misunderstanding of Horace’s phrase “ut pictura poesis” (understood to mean “as is painting so is poetry”). Leo Spitzer had used the term ekphrasis in 1955 in an essay on John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,”30 a much quoted example of poetry evoking a work of visual art. Since then, the term has been used in Western interarts studies, and over the last decades, ekphrasis as a topic has inspired a scholarly discussion that has not resulted in a consensus. Spitzer had deﬁned ekphrasis loosely as “the poetic description of a pictorial or sculptural work of art,”31 which served his own purposes as well as much of the critical work done at the time, which was mainly concerned with the relationship between verbal art and visual art. Murray Krieger, who developed the impulse received from Spitzer much later into a book-length study, Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign (1992), recognized the existence of what he called a “classic genre,” namely “the imitation in literature of a work of plastic art,” but broadened the discourse on “the ekphrastic dimension in literature”32 to the point that, in the view of James Heﬀernan and others, the term no longer applied to any speciﬁc set of literary texts. In his own study of ekphrasis Heﬀernan deﬁned it as “the verbal representation of visual representation.”33 While this deﬁnition is broader than Spitzer’s and also than Krieger’s usage in that it also covers verbal representations that are not literary, and visual ones that are not “art,” it restricts the visual texts to representational works and thereby intentionally excludes architecture, among other kinds. The subjects of chapter three, the descriptions of a design on a wine cup and a wall painting by two 'Abbàsid poets, Abù Nuwàs

30 Leo Spitzer, “The ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,’ or Content vs. Metagrammar,” in Essays on English and American Literature, ed. Anna Hatcher (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), 67–97. 31 Ibid., 72. 32 Murray Krieger, Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 265–66. 33 James A. W. Heﬀernan, Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 3. Heﬀernan also states, “Where Krieger deﬁnes ekphrasis as an impulse toward illusionistic word-painting, I treat it as a kind of poetry that deliberately foregrounds the diﬀerence between verbal and visual representation—and in so doing forestalls or at the very least complicates any illusionistic eﬀect,” 3 n. 191.

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and al-Bu˙turì, accord with both Spitzer’s and Heﬀernan’s deﬁnitions. But qaßìdahs describing paintings or other sorts of visual art are relatively rare, simply because of the scarcity of pictorial representations in the Arabo-Islamic tradition. The concept of an Islamic prohibition of idolatry or visual/pictorial representation is widely accepted. This ban is not due to explicit verses in the Qur"àn but to the Óadìth, Prophetic sayings and acts.34 For this reason, qaßìdahs containing ekphrastic descriptions as deﬁned by Spitzer and Heﬀernan, if found, are often about non-Arabic motifs, such as the Sàsànian (Persian)related motifs in the poems of Abù Nuwàs and al-Bu˙turì, or by poets who are of foreign descent. In the Arabo-Islamic poetic tradition, therefore, there hardly exists the concept of the paragone (contest) between poetry and painting, or an equivalent to the Western discourse on ut pictura poesis.35 I shall have more to say on this subject in the third chapter. It is interesting, however, to reﬂect on how the prohibition of pictorial representation may have aﬀected the qaßìdah genre. The qaßìdat al-mad˙ (panegyric), a sub-genre of the genre, ﬂourished especially in the medieval Arabo-Islamic dynasties, partly because the sovereign was unable to resort to visual portraiture as a means to spread his glorious image as the leader of the legitimized Islamic polity. Returning to the discussion of ekphrasis in modern Western interarts discourse, Heﬀernan’s restriction of the term to verbal representations of representational visual texts appeared arbitrary in view of the many poems and even more numerous prose descriptions of nonrepresentational art (and non-art), including architecture, which serve the same function and use the same forms and techniques as texts covered by his deﬁnition. Moreover, there are verbal representations of music and musical performance, of dance, and of multimedia texts, likewise with identical or similar functions. Claus Clüver, disputing the deﬁnitions oﬀered by Leo Spitzer and James Heﬀernan, has therefore proposed to deﬁne ekphrasis as “the verbal representation

34 See K. A. C. Creswell, “The Lawfulness of Painting in Early Islam,” Ars Islamica 11–12 (1946): 159–66. 35 Jaroslav Stetkevych claims, “It is only in the instances where the Horatian simile ut pictura poesis shows its semblance that form and content seem to unite more closely under the general intention of mimetic function,” in his article “The Arabic Qaßìdah: From Form and Content to Mood and Meaning,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3/4 (1979–80): 775.

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of real or ﬁctitious texts composed in a non-verbal sign system.”36 While maintaining “verbal representation” (rather than “literary”), Clüver widens the range from “visual art” and “visual representation” to “non-verbal texts,” thus extending the term to cover a broader context of interartistic connections. I choose his deﬁnition because Western critics have constantly pointed out that the term “image” refers to more than the merely visual, pictorial, or concrete; “imagery” includes conceptual, symbolic, abstract images. Moreover, Clüver’s understanding allows us to deal with waßf in this context of “imagery” so far as the phenomenon of waßf appears involved in it. I include the description of a singing performance and of a building in my subjects because they clearly show the mission of waßf, that is, to generate a certain uniﬁed concept exceeding the pictorial, visual, mimetic images of objects. My Arabic materials in the last two chapters ﬁt neither Spitzer’s nor Heﬀernan’s deﬁnition inasmuch as these discount music and architecture.37 However, the interarts perspectives of ekphrasis established by Clüver’s deﬁnition of the term clearly address the verbal representation of a songstress’s musical performance examined in chapter four and of the Alhambra palace analyzed in chapter ﬁve as ekphrastic poetry. Overall, the understanding of ekphrasis in its modern sense allows us to look at waßf within the perspectives of interarts studies that include perceptions beyond the pursuit of mimetic imitation.

Word and “Image” In a poem the bard attempts to create an image with words. In his book on Iconology, W. J. T. Mitchell explores “image as likeness” say36 Claus Clüver, “Ekphrasis Reconsidered: On Verbal Representations of NonVerbal Texts,” in Interart Poetics: Essays on the Interrelations Between the Arts and Media, ed. Ulla-Britta Lagerroth, Hans Lund, and Erik Hedling (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), 19–33, deﬁnition 26. Clüver temporarily revised his deﬁnition to read “verbalization” instead of “verbal representation”; see “Quotation,” 49 and “The Musikgedicht: Notes on an Ekphrastic Genre,” in Word and Music Studies: Deﬁning the Field, ed. Walter Bernhart, Steven Paul Scher, and Werner Wolf (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 187–204, def. 188. He has meanwhile returned to using the more eﬀective “verbal representation.” 37 Spitzer’s deﬁnition is more limited because he speaks only of literary texts and visual art, whereas Heﬀernan includes all kinds of verbal texts and visual representation; however, Heﬀernan’s deﬁnition excludes architecture, which he does not consider as representational.

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ing that it is generally assumed that, though “the literal sense of the word ‘image’ is a graphic, pictorial representation, a concrete, material object,” notions like mental, verbal, or perceptual imagery are not derived from this literal sense. Conversely, however, one can also understand “the literal sense of the word ‘image’ as an absolutely non- or even anti-pictorial meaning,” which originates with the account of man’s creation “in the image and likeness of God.” The original words translated now as “image” (Hebrew tselem, Greek eikon, and Latin imago) are correctly understood, not as referring to any material picture, but to an abstract, general, spiritual “likeness.” As Mitchell formulates it: “image is to be understood not as ‘picture,’ but as ‘likeness,’ a matter of spiritual similarity.”38 By this token, the Arabic concept of ßùrah, usually translated as “image,” has etymologically a similar meaning to the “images” of the above-mentioned foreign cultures: “mental image, a resemblance of any object, formed or conceived by the mind, an idea, a meaning of frequent occurrence in philosophical works,” in addition to a meaning of “a shape,” “a picture,” “an eﬃgy.”39 A derivative verb of ßùrah, ßawwara (form II) means “to form, shape; to paint, draw; to illustrate; to describe, represent,” and its verbal noun is taßwìr, which is understood as representation. On the other hand, tamthìl, a synonym of taßwìr and waßf, is listed as meaning, “representation; exempliﬁcation; likening, comparison; picturing, description,” in an Arabic-English dictionary, and its derivative verb (II) maththala means “to make (something) like something, to compare, liken; to illustrate something with pictures (ßawwara) to the extent as if it were seen.”40 For traditional Orientalists, the function of waßf would have been tamthìl, which is likewise used by Ibn Rashìq for the explanation of waßf: “to see a waßf is how it consists in (qàma bi) itself and represents

38 W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 30–31. 39 Lane’s dictionary deﬁnes the meaning of ßùrah: “an eﬃgy; an image, or a statue; a picture; anything that is formed, fashioned, ﬁgured, or shaped, after the likeness of any of God’s creatures, animate or inanimate: it is said that the maker of an eﬃgy or image will be punished on the day of resurrection, and will be commanded to put life into it; and that the angels will not enter a house in which a ßùrah is present.” Lane, ß-w-r. 40 See Lane, m-th-l and Mu˙ammad ibn Mukarram Ibn ManΩùr, Lisàn al-'Arab, 15 vols. (Beirut: Dàr Íàdir, 1955–56), m-th-l. Tamthìl has a ﬁgurative and metaphorical meaning in the classical Arabic rhetoric, balàghah. Here I do not deal with the concept of tamthìl in terms of balàghah.

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pictorially (maththala) the described/the object (al-mawßùf ) in the heart of the listener.”41 What I argue is that in traditional Arabic poetry abstract, spiritual, or metaphorical concepts can be revealed through mimetic, descriptive devices. As my study will show, what characterizes waßf is a diﬀerent understanding and usage of connotation from that found in rhetorical ekphrasis. Therefore, I must view waßf against the Western concept of ekphrasis as “clear and distinct description” as if it creates a mirror image of objects. I use ekphrasis as a foil against which to set the descriptive process and meaning of waßf because what waßf ultimately aims to achieve is beyond the scope of rhetorical ekphrasis. In his analysis of similes in the classical Arabic nasìb, Michael Sells claims, following Roman Jakobson, that there are “two primary forms of poetic signiﬁcation: the metaphorical, based on relations of similarity, and the metonymic, based upon relationships of contiguity.” He goes on to say that the nasìb’s simile contains “the relationship between apparent object of description (the beloved),” depending on physical likeness, and “the symbolic analogue of the beloved (the lost garden),” depending on symbolic resemblance.42 His idea can be applied not only to a waßf of the nasìb but also to that of a qaßìdah. If the minute descriptions of objects can operate with relations of physical likeness to other objects that represent these objects by their resemblance to them, metaphorical concepts yielded through the descriptions are shown by relations of symbolic or “spiritual” likeness, in Mitchell’s sense. In the qaßìdah, symbolic analogue often operates by the relations of metonymy or synecdoche. Needless to say, the intertextual and interreferential characteristics of the Arabic qaßìdah play an important role allowing objects to symbolize some concept or a certain larger image. This function of symbolic analogue is largely dependent on the readers’ knowledge of the classical Arabic poetic tradition and probably their imaginative processes. In the qaßìdah, hence, there often are two simultaneous operations: one occurs on the level of mimetic, concrete, and physical repre-

41

Ibn Rashìq, 2: 294. Sells, “Ghùl,” 130–31. See also Roman Jakobson, “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances,” in Language: An Enquiry into Its Meaning and Function, ed. Ruth Nanda Anshen (New York: Harper, 1957), 99–100. 42

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sentation, and the other on the level of intangible, abstract, and symbolic representation. Mimetic representation proceeds through relations of resemblance; abstract representation functions through symbolic relations. Mimetic representation is seen, for example, in the comparison of a beloved to a gazelle, while symbolic representation is revealed in such instances as establishing a metonymic relationship between the Alhambra palace and the ruler. In the poetic tradition, mimetic representation and symbolic representation operate simultaneously and complement each other to create an integrated multilayered imagery. In this study, I hope to demonstrate in a way that is consistent with contemporary Western criticism that waßf is not merely mimetic, but operates also metaphorically and metonymically to generate and convey symbolic and emblematic meanings.

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CHAPTER ONE

CONTEST AS CEREMONY: A PRE-ISLAMIC POETIC CONTEST IN HORSE DESCRIPTION OF IMRU" AL-QAYS VS. 'ALQAMAH AL-FAÓL*

The Horse God created the horse from the wind. Many prophets have proclaimed the following: When God wanted to create the horse, He said to the South Wind: “I want to make a creature out of you. Condense.” And the wind condensed. Archangel Gabriel immediately appeared and took a handful of that stuﬀ and presented it to God, Who made a brown bay or burnt chestnut (kumayt—red mixed with black) upon saying: “I call you Horse; I make you Arabian and I give you the chestnut color of the ant; I have hung happiness from the forelock which hangs between your eyes; you shall be the lord of other animals. Men shall follow you wherever you go; you shall be as good for pursuit as for ﬂight; you shall ﬂy without wings; riches shall be on your back and fortune shall come through your mediation.” Then He put on the horse the mark of glory and happiness (ghurrah)—a white mark in the middle of the forehead. Letter of the Emir Abd-el-Kader to General E. Daumas (General E. Daumas, The Horses of the Sahara)1

The chivalrous hunt on horseback is one of the major Arabic poetic motifs, taking place in the fakhr or self-exaltation section within the tripartite structure of the traditional Arabic qaßìdah. The horse is the symbol of speed, prowess, prosperity, glory, happiness, immortality, * An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, Orlando, Florida, November, 2000, and appeared in Arabic as Akiko Motoyoshi Sumi, “Al-Mubàràh ˇaqsan I˙tifàliyyan: Mubàràh Shi'riyyah Jàhiliyya fì Waßf al-Khayl bayna Imri" al-Qays wa 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l,” Al-Ab˙àth 50–51 (2002–2003), pp. 95–144. 1 General E. Daumas, The Horses of the Sahara, trans. Sheila M. Ohlendorf, revised, augmented with commentary, The Emir Abd-el-Kader, 9th ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), 7. Daumas relied on the Emir Abd-el-Kader (1808–83) for the information on the horse because he was a noted Algerian horseman and scholar as well as an illustrious chieftain. There is a similar ˙adìth in 'Alì ibn 'Abd alRa˙màn ibn Hudhayl al-Andalusì, Óilyat al-Fursàn wa Shi'àr al-Shuj'àn, ed. Mu˙ammad 'Abd al-Ghinà Óasan (Cairo: Dàr al-Ma'àrif lil-ˇibà'ah wa al-Nashr, 1951), 27–28.

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fertility, and vital force. It is said that the horse is called khayl in Arabic for its ikhtiyàl (pride, arrogance, haughtiness) in walking, and al-Jà˙iΩ (776–869), the prominent classical Arab littérateur, relates that its natural disposition is likewise zahw (splendor, pride, haughtiness, arrogance, vanity) in walking.2 Imru" al-Qays ibn Óujr and 'Alqamah ibn 'Abadah al-Tamìmì al-Fa˙l, the celebrated Jàhilì (pre-Islamic) poets, bequeathed to us qaßìdahs of the chivalrous hunt in the context of the poetic contest, mu'àra∂ah. Mu'àra∂ah (opposition, contest) indicates literary imitation or emulation in the Arabic poetic tradition.3 A poet composes a work in the same rhyme and meter as those of his target poem, while attempting to outdo that original. The imitation of another poet’s work was considered an act of homage. In imitation and emulation, waßf or description plays an important role, for it oﬀers a basis for comparison in deciding the victor of a contest. The concept of mu'àra∂ah existed already as early as the Jàhiliyyah or the pre-Islamic era. A well-known khabar (anecdote) concerns a poetic contest in the waßf of the horse between the two Jàhilì poets, Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l; 'Alqamah fought and won a verbal duel in describing horses with Imru" al-Qays, judged by Imru" al-Qays’s wife Umm Jundab;4 as a result, Imru" al-Qays divorced her and then 'Alqamah married her, whereupon 'Alqamah was given the honoriﬁc title, “fa˙l”—“stallion” or “master poet.” This chapter aims to explore the waßf of the chivalrous hunt in the two qaßìdahs in association with the khabar, investigating the function and role of the waßf. This horse description is considered ekphrasis in its original meaning, “clear and distinct description” of any object. 2

See al-Andalusì, 28–29. Information about mu'àra∂ah in this paragraph is largely taken from, A. Schippers, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “mu'àra∂a.” According to A. Schippers there are related notions of mu'àra∂ah: naqì∂ah, mufàkharah, and munàfarah. Naqì∂ah is understood as a contradicting poem, ﬂyting; a form of poetic dueling in which tribal or personal invectives are exchanged, usually in pairs, using the same rhyme and meter. Mufàkharah is meant either as a self-praise or a contest for precedence and glory. G. J. H. van Gelder, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “na˚à"i∂.” As a contest, mufàkharah occurred at deﬁnite times after the pilgrimage or at random (especially, at the sùq of 'UkàΩ) generally between groups, tribes and clans and occasionally between families and individuals. Bichr Farès, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “mufàkhara.” There is a book on Persian poetry dealing with mu'àra∂ah: Paul Losensky, Welcoming Fighànì: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the Safavid-Mughal Ghazal (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1998). 4 For the vocalization of the name of Imru" al-Qays’s wife, though some versions of the khabar give “Jundub,” most versions vocalize it as “Jundab.” 3

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As I stated earlier, the Arabic qaßìdah has been criticized by many traditional Orientalists who claim that the qaßìdah is merely pure objective description and that the description bears no meaning other than what is described.5 Objecting to this criticism, I argue that waßf does not merely describe the physical object in question, but moreover conveys abstract, metaphysical concepts through emblem, symbol, and metaphor in the social and cultural context. In the present case, I argue that the two descriptions are intended not to tell us merely about the appearance of the horses, but rather to convey the pre-Islamic tribal notion of virility (murù"ah) that implies strength, aggressive power and violence, and fertility, embodying the ideal image of the persona himself and his tribal community. With the emblem of the horse, our understanding of the poems, both in social and individual domains, is enhanced by the khabar, as it situates the two odes in the narrative context of a poetic contest. Wit and playfulness in the anecdotes serve to explicate the odes in terms of sexuality and masculinity from the standpoint of the female judge Umm Jundab. Despite the wide diﬀusion of this story of the two poets, the problem of the remarkable resemblance between the two poems has not been seriously and critically studied.6 Strictly speaking, the phenomenon is not one of similarities, but rather of identical lines that constitute approximately one-third of each qaßìdah; eighteen verses out of the forty-six-verse qaßìdah by 'Alqamah are the same as those from the ﬁfty-ﬁve-verse qaßìdah by Imru" al-Qays, as I show in a graph on the following page. Their verse sequences are dissimilar, and their contents or motifs are somewhat diﬀerent, but many of the descriptive lines that contain the most important elements for the contest are identical. The overlapping verses are mostly found in the fakhr (boast) or the hunt section. There are three possible sources of this overlap: 1. ta∂mìn—that the second poet quoted or appropriated the original lines in his own poem; 2. the vagaries of oral transmission, through which lines of two very closely associated poems in a passage of identical rhyme, meter and subject, got confused; 3. literary

5

Cf. pp. 2–4 in the Introduction. The German Orientalist Wilhelm Ahlwardt raised the issue in his book Bemerkungen über die Aechtheit der alten Arabischen Gedichte (Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1972), 68–71. 6

ra˙ìl ra˙ìl

nasìb nasìb

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The overlapping verses in the odes of Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l

fakhr

1 • • • • • • 8 9 10 • • • • 15 • • • 19 20 21 • • • • 25 26 27 28 • 30 • 32 • • 35 • • • • • 41 42 43 44 45 • • • • 50 • 52 53 • 55

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nasìb

ra˙ìl

fakhr

'Alqamah al-Fa˙l * Some of the overlapping lines are not exactly identical; for each variant part, see the footnotes of Imru" al-Qays’s poem.

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 • • 13 14 • 16 17 18 19 20 • • • 24 • 26 • 28 • • • 32 • • 35 36 37 38 39 • • 42 43 44 45 46

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manipulation of the texts. Given that we have no means of establishing the original textual authenticity or even authorship of pre-Islamic poems—not to mention the historicity of the (less stable) prose khabar— our argument and discussion take as its basis recensions of the poems considered authentic/authoritative by the classical tradition, in the context of biographical anecdotes that accompany the poems or are associated with the poems in that tradition. There is also the possibility that the khabar about the contest brought the poems into closer proximity, thereby allowing for textual “contamination.” With reference to the concept of contest, I mainly use as theoretical tools Johan Huizinga’s well-known work Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, Walter J. Ong’s Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness, and Ward Parks’s Verbal Dueling in Heroic Narrative.7 First, I analyze three variant versions of the khabar about the horse descriptions in the two qaßìdahs in terms of poetic contest. Then, I examine the ode by Imru" al-Qays, followed by the exploration of the poem by 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l, based on the former’s ode; in both, I focus on the functions and the meaning of the horse descriptions in the fakhr (boast). Imru" al-Qays’s qaßìdah is explored ﬁrst, because he recites before 'Alqamah does in the poetic duel. I do not examine in detail the nasìb and the ra˙ìl sections in the two poems, except as they contribute to the aim of the present exploration.

Two Jàhilì Poets Imru" al-Qays ibn Óujr and 'Alqamah ibn 'Abadah al-Tamìmì alFa˙l are among the most celebrated poets in the pre-Islamic era. Imru" al-Qays, who is said to have died in circa 550 C.E., has been considered the foremost poet of pre-Islamic Arabia. He is the author of one of the Mu'allaqàt (The Suspended Poems), the anthology of seven canonical masterpieces, “Golden Odes,” transmitted through ràwìs (reciters) in the eighth century C.E., to which three other poems

7 Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1962). Walter J. Ong, Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981). Ward Parks, Verbal Dueling in Heroic Narrative (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).

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are sometimes appended.8 It is reported that he was the descendant of the royal house of Kindah, the Arab tribe that spread all over Arabia in the ﬁfth and sixth centuries C.E. from southern Arabia into central and northern Arabia. Imru" al-Qays was born at the court of Óujr to the last king of the Kindah; he was his youngest son, but was expelled more than once from his father’s house because of his passion for poetry, and in particular for erotic verse. Noted for his wayward youth and amorous aﬀairs, during his expulsion from court, he wandered in the desert, hunting, drinking, and composing songs. Then his father was assassinated by the Banù Asad. From this time on he devoted himself to avenging his father. Helped by other tribes, he was able to inﬂict substantial damage on his enemies, but he was not content and continued in his pursuit of revenge. It is said that the poet met with a tragic end; he was killed through wearing a robe permeated with poison which was a present given to him by Justinian, the Byzantine emperor.9 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l was active in the mid-sixth century, and very little is known of his life.10 The Arab critics reckon 'Alqamah one of the fu˙ùl (the plural form of fa˙l) or master poets. His poetry speaks about the battles waged between the Lakhmids and the Ghassànids. It is reported that as the spokesman of his tribe he succeeded in releasing his brother Sha"s and the other Tamìmites who were imprisoned by the Ghassànid king, al-Óàrith b. Jabalah (c. 529–69).11 Of these two poets—Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah, there is no doubt that Imru" al-Qays has been regarded as a more distinguished poet than 'Alqamah who, nevertheless, has been accorded the epithet, al-Fa˙l (the master poet), literally “stallion.”12 8 See H. A. R. Gibb, Arabic Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 22 and Reynold A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (1930; reprint, Richmond: Curzon Press, 1995), 101 n. According to Nicholson, the best edition of the Mu'allaqàt is Sir Charles Lyall’s A Commentary on Ten Ancient Arabic Poems (Calcutta, 1894). It contains the seven Mu'allaqàt by Imru" al-Qays, ˇarafah, 'Amr ibn Kulthùm, Óàrith ibn Óillizah, 'Antarah, Zuhayr, Labìd and three other poems by A'shà, al-Nàbighah, and 'Abìd ibn al-Abraß. For a translation and analysis of the Mu'allaqah of Imru" al-Qays, see Suzanne Stetkevych, Mute, 241–85. 9 Information about Imru" al-Qays in this paragraph is largely taken from S. Boustany, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Imru" al-ays b. Óudjr.” 10 This date is according to Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, vol. 2, Poesie bis ca. 430 H. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), 120–22. 11 Information about 'Alqamah in this paragraph is largely taken from G. E. von Grunebaum, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “'Al˚ama b. 'Abada al-Tamìmì.” 12 Khabar functions as etiological myth, “Why was 'Alqamah called ‘al-Fa˙l’?—

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Waßf as Sexual Metaphor in Khabar In the classical Arabo-Islamic written literary tradition, both khabar and poetry are presented originally as oral transmission. A khabar is a narrative anecdote or episode, generally composed of isnàd (chain of authorities) and matn (the narrative itself ).13 Here let us ﬁrst consider the formation process of the khabar about the contest between Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah in connection with their qaßìdahs. Due to poetry’s memorable oral formulas, its transmission process is more stable, and it should be better preserved and more authentic than akhbàr (plural of khabar).14 On the basis of this hypothesis, we can propose that the khabar may in some cases be derived from the poems. During the long period of the oral transmission of the odes of Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah, the shared rhyme and meter and the prominent horse-description passages may have suggested, within the Arabic poetic and cultural tradition, the scenario of a mu'àra∂ah or poetic contest between the two poets. In other words, I believe that, with the device of the mechanism of contest and play, the khabar shows its desire to explain the resemblance between the two odes. That is, the poetic or technical characteristics of mu'àra∂ah, i.e., having two poems that share the same rhyme and meter, suggests or generates the idea that there actually was a mu'àra∂ah—a poetic contest between the two poets. The khabar concerning the poetic contest reveals to us that people interpreted the two Jàhilì poems in a particular manner. It is clear from the gist of the khabar that they interpreted the ekphrastic description of the horse sexually.15 The sexual prowess that the

because one day. . . .” Others were given the title “al-fa˙l” in the Arabo-Islamic tradition (Imru" al-Qays, etc.), cf. ˇabaqàt Fu˙ùl al-Shu'arà"; for 'Alqamah, it is also an epithet “'Alqamah al-Fa˙l.” 13 Isnàd assumes the form of X told me that he heard Y telling a story which he had heard from Z. 14 For mnemonic features of Arabic poetry, see Monroe, “Oral Composition,” Michael Zwettler, Oral Tradition, and Suzanne Stetkevych, Mute, 81. 15 The interpretation of the khabar as a sexual double-entendre is discussed in Suzanne Stetkevych, “Pre-Islamic Panegyric and the Poetics of Redemption,” Reorientations/Arabic and Persian Poetry, ed. Suzanne Stetkevych (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), 20. See also James E. Montgomery, “'Alqama alFa˙l’s Contest with Imru" al-Qays: What Happens When a Poet Is Umpired by His Wife?” Arabica: Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 44 (1997): 144–49 and Mu˙ammad ibn 'Abd al-Ra˙man al-Hadlaq, “Qißßat Naqd Umm Jundab li-Imri"

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khabar emphasizes is merely one aspect, which is prominent enough to make a joke, but I will argue that what the poetic text tries to convey to us is the concept of murù"ah, mature manhood, manly perfection, or male aggression.16 I will examine three versions of the khabar (anecdote) regarding the poetic duel: two versions from the Mufa∂∂aliyyàt (khabar 1 and 2) and one from Al-Shi'r wa al-Shu'arà" (Book of Poetry and Poets) of Ibn Qutaybah (khabar 3).17 Their plots are very similar, and the verses quoted are almost the same, but they diﬀer as to the reason for Umm Jundab’s judgment in favor of 'Alqamah. Khabar 1 attributes it to Imru" al-Qays’s goading his horse with his legs in his poem. Although khabar 2 gives the same reason as khabar 1, it adds information about Umm Jundab’s dissatisfaction with Imru" al-Qays’s sexual performance; thus it makes explicit the khabar’s double-entendre of horse description as sexual description. Khabar 3 gives the ﬁnal verse of 'Alqamah’s poem as evidence to show how 'Alqamah succeeds in stirring his horse in a civilized manner with a bridle.

Khabar 1 from the Mufa∂∂aliyyàt18 On the authority of al-Rustamì and Imrà" Abì 'Ikrimah al-Îabbì: 'Alqamah was alive in the dawn of the Jàhiliyyah and its traditions. He was a friend of Imru" al-Qays and visited him one day. One of them asked his ['Alqamah’s] companion, “Which of us is a better poet?” One of them said, “I am,” and the other said, “I am.” They reviled each other until Imru" al-Qays said, “Describe your she-camel and horse, and I will describe my she-camel and horse.” 'Alqamah al-Qays wa 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l,” Majallat Jàmi'at al-Malik Sa'ùd, Al-Àdàb 2–1 (1990): 3–35 on the variants of this khabar. 16 B. Farès says that murù"ah is one of the Arabic terms whose meaning is imprecise, being understood as “good nature and observance of Qurànic laws,” “dignity and compassion,” “urbanity,” “ideal manhood.” Murù"ah, according to Farès, contains both the physical qualities of man mar" and his moral qualities by a process of spiritualisation and abstraction. B. Farès, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “murù"a.” 17 Abù al-'Abbàs al-Mufa∂∂al ibn Mu˙ammad al-Îabbì, Dìwàn al-Mufa∂∂alìyàt, commentary by Abù Mu˙ammad al-Qàsim ibn Mu˙ammad ibn Bashshàr al-Anbàrì, 2 vols., Arabic Text, ed. Charles James Lyall (Beirut: Ma†ba'at al-Àbà" al-Yasù'iyyìn, 1921), 2: 763–64. 'Abd Allàh ibn Muslim Ibn Qutaybah, Kitàb al-Shi'r wa al-Shu'arà", 2 vols., ed. with commentary A˙mad Mu˙ammad Shàkir (Cairo: Dàr al-Ma'àrif, 1966), 218–19. 18 All translations of the three khabars are mine.

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answered, “Yes, I will do it, if the judge between you and me is this woman behind you.” The woman was Imru" al-Qays’s wife from ˇayyi". Imru" al-Qays said, O my two friends, pass by Umm Jundab with me and we will fulﬁll the needs of a tormented heart. 'Alqamah said, You departed after she left you with no direction; it was not right of her to shun you. Those nights when we still gave each other sincere advice, nights when [our tribes] were settled at al-Sitàr and Ghurrab. When they ﬁnished reciting their poems, they turned to the wife of Imru" al-Qays. She said, “The stallion of Ibn 'Abadah 'Alqamah is better than yours.” Imru" al-Qays asked her how was it better. She said, “Because you goaded him and kicked him with your legs, while he went straight after the quarry.” He ['Alqamah] said, When we hunt, we do not sneak up on [our game] stealthily, but we call from far: Let’s go! Then, Imru" al-Qays got angry with her and divorced her.

Khabar 2 from the Mufa∂∂aliyyàt On the authority of A˙mad ibn 'Abìd and others of our shaykhs: Imru" al-Qays got married to a woman from ˇayyi", and she hated him. On the wedding night, she detested him and started saying: “O night, become morning! O best of youth, it’s morning! [Get up!]” He looked around and saw it was still night, so he stayed [in bed] till morning. Then 'Alqamah, who was one of the master poets of the Jàhiliyyah and his friend, visited him. They narrated the tradition which was above-mentioned, except that they related as follows: Imru" al-Qays recited, O my two friends, pass by Umm Jundab with me and we will fulﬁll the needs of a tormented heart. He continued till the end of the poem. 'Alqamah said,

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You departed after she left you with no direction; it was not right of her to shun you. Those nights when we still gave each other sincere advice, nights when [our tribes] were settled at al-Sitàr and Ghurrab. When they ﬁnished their poems, they turned to the woman from ˇayyi", Imru" al-Qays’s wife. She said that 'Alqamah’s horse is better than yours. Imru" al-Qays asked her how was it better. She said, “Because you goaded him and kicked him with your legs, while he ['Alqamah] went straight after the quarry.” He ['Alqamah] said, “When we hunt,” (the above-mentioned verse). Then he was mad at her and said, “You hate me. What made you that?” She said, “You are heavy in the chest, light in the hips. You come too fast and you are very slow to get an erection.” When he heard this, he divorced her.

Khabar 3 from Kitàb al-Shi'r wa al-Shu'arà" by Ibn Qutaybah You (Imru" al-Qays) said, To the leg he is ﬁery, to the whip like a ﬂood, when you chide him, he takes oﬀ like an ostrich. 'Alqamah said, He overtook them [the she-camels] and galloped oﬀ, passing quickly like a pouring cloud.19 So, he ['Alqamah] reached his game beast, and he galloped oﬀ by pulling his steed’s bridle. He did not hit it with a whip, nor urge it with his legs, nor goad it. Imru" al-Qays said, “What is more poetic than I in him? After all, you must be in love with him!” Then he divorced her, and 'Alqamah got her. He ['Alqamah] was named “alFa˙l” [lit. “stallion”]. It was said, “There was a man in his tribe called 'Alqamat al-Khaßì [“the eunuch”]. They distinguished them with the name.”

The khabar also puns on the double meaning of a “stallion” and a “master poet” in the epithet fa˙l, the title awarded to the winning poet. Fa˙l also has another meaning: a male animal of any kind.20

19 This is line 45 of the version of al-Sandùbì, 48; Imru" al-Qays, Shar˙ Dìwàn Imri" al-Qays, ed. Óasan al-Sandùbì (Cairo: Ma†ba'at al-Istiqàmah, 1939). 20 According to Lane, fa˙l has the meanings of a male animal of any kind,

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By conferring the title of al-Fa˙l on 'Alqamah, the woman judges him the master both in poetic creation and in sexual prowess. His poetic accomplishment, his description of the horse, serves to show heroic as well as sexual prowess. The horse is a symbol of masculinity, reproduction, and hence, immortality. This symbol is elicited not only through the sexual double-entendre of the khabar, but also through the image of the horse in a generic sense. Ong explains the image of horses in William Faulkner’s comic novella, Spotted Horses, as the symbol of masculinity, both in the subconscious and real-world mechanics.21 The story is, according to Ong, as follows: When each townsman has bought himself one of the horses, by now untied and running loose in a crude corral, the men cannot of course catch their animals (ineﬀectiveness of males in dealing with their own masculinity—the male clown ﬁgure, the limp phallus), and some of the horses break loose. One of them bolts into the home of a Mrs. Armstid, who with magniﬁcent womanly indignation snatches up a washboard and smashes it into the animal’s face—the stupid male, boys-will-be-boys game playing is tearing up her home.22

The inability of the men to control their horses expresses their inability to govern their own masculinity and sexual urges. Likewise, the steed that is broken in and trained to serve in battle and in the hunt represents the native male who curbs his passions and channels his aggression to the service of the tribe.23 As for the khabar, by cursing Imru" al-Qays’s horse description, Umm Jundab intends to disparage his sexual competence, as she clariﬁed in the end of khabar 2. Her viliﬁcation was devastating for Imru" al-Qays. This anecdote is amusing because Imru" al-Qays was well-known as a womanizer even when he was a mere youth. Khabar 3 closes by informing us that there was another man in particularly a stallion or a he-camel, and the verb of form I, fa˙ala iblahu, means, “He sent a male camel among the [she-] camels.” In other words, fa˙l signiﬁes masculinity as opposed to femininity. Fa˙l, therefore, should emphasize “being a male.” Another meaning of fa˙l is “a poet,” or “anyone who, when he vies with a poet, is judged to have excelled him is called a fa˙l.” Therefore, fa˙l itself means being or becoming a male, having won a (poetic) contest, and incorporates with the three meanings, a stallion, masculinity, and a contest. Lane, f-˙-l. 21 See Ong, 62–63. See also The Portable Faulkner, ed. Malcolm Cowley (New York: Viking Press, 1954), 367–439. 22 Quoted by Ong, 63. Emphasis is mine. 23 See Suzanne Stetkevych, Mute, 35–36.

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the tribe named 'Alqamah, in addition to our 'Alqamah, and that the former was called al-Khaßì (the gelded horse/castrated man), while the latter was named al-Fa˙l (the strong, energetic stallion/ virile man). The derivative verb and noun of each word are respectively khaßà (to geld, to castrate, to emasculate), khußyah (testicle), and tafa˙˙ala (to be manly, masculine) and fu˙ùlah (the quality of being a male, masculineness).24 The information of the contrast between al-Fa˙l and al-Khaßì does not draw much attention from the reader, considering its brief appearance at the end. Nevertheless, it signiﬁcantly hints at the khabar’s desire to emphasize that 'Alqamah is al-Fa˙l, whose meaning is in opposition to al-Khaßì and is based on his sexual strength and virility. Hence, for Umm Jundab, the horse description is understood as sexual metaphor, or at least a double-entendre. She measures the quality of the horses in sexual prowess and stamina by identifying them with the poets. Line 39 says, “when you chide him, he takes oﬀ like an ostrich.” This is interpreted metaphorically to mean that Imru" al-Qays comes too fast and is very slow to get an erection in khabar 2. On the other hand, 'Alqamah is fair and goes straight after his game, which means that he is spontaneously active and aggressive. Moreover, 'Alqamah’s horse, in the ﬁnal line of the poem, overtakes the she-camels and gallops oﬀ, passing quickly like a pouring cloud, as seen in khabar 3. Umm Jundab quotes it, for she suggests that 'Alqamah’s steed does not become fatigued even after a good amount of running, while Imru" al-Qays’s gets weary very quickly; that is why he needs to be goaded. Although it would be a mistake to reduce Imru" al-Qays’s and 'Alqamah’s horse descriptions to an amusing sexual double-entendre—which is the gist of the khabar— the khabar does provide a useful critical function by alerting us to the underlying masculine symbolism of the horse description and the emblematic identiﬁcation of the steed with the poet (see further below); with this in mind, we can now turn to the poems themselves.

24

Lane, kh-ß-y and f-˙-l.

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Waßf as Fertility, Speed, and Power in Poems We can only speculate about the causes of the remarkable overlap in the two qaßìdahs of Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l, particularly in the horse description that dominates the fakhr section. Until the oral-formulaism of pre-Islamic poetry was demonstrated by the application of the Parry-Lord theory of oral poetry (by James T. Monroe in 1972), the authenticity of the entire corpus of pre-Islamic qaßìdah had been subject to doubt.25 According to Monroe, in 1925 the authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry was openly questioned by the Egyptian scholar ˇàhà Óusayn and the British Orientalist D. S. Margoliouth.26 They believed that almost all pre-Islamic poems had been forged in the Islamic period. Monroe, however, states that the oral-formulaic evidence proves that pre-Islamic poetry “could not have been forged by literate authors in Islamic times.”27 Another issue related to our two poems may be the problem of saraq/sariqah (theft or plagiarism).28 The nineteenth century German Orientalist Wilhelm Ahlwardt, considering the fact that there are identical lines in the poems, was of the opinion that 'Alqamah plagiarized Imru" al-Qays’s poem because he was unable to produce so excellent a hunt scene.29 However, if we take into consideration that the entire corpus of pre-Islamic poetry is heavily based on intertextuality and interreferentiality and that the concept of plagiarism in the Arabo-Islamic culture is considerably diﬀerent from the modern concept of plagiarism in the West, the discussion of plagiarism with regard to a corpus of orally transmitted pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry may well prove futile. Monroe explains, “An oral poem has no ﬁxed text until

25

Monroe, “Oral Composition,” 39. See Monroe, “Oral Composition,” 1–2. ˇàhà Óusayn, Fì l-Adab al-Jàhilì (Cairo: Dàr al-Ma'àrif, 1958), 63. D. S. Margoliouth, “The Origins of Arabic Poetry,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1925): 417–49. 27 Monroe, “Oral Composition,” 39. Zwettler also has a book on the same subject, Oral Tradition. 28 The concept of inti˙àl can be applied to the case of Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah. Although it is often interpreted as forgery or falsiﬁcation of verses, Zwettler believes that inti˙àl should be understood as “one of false, dubious, or mixed attribution: that is, verses judged to be by one poet were thought to have been wrongly claimed by, or ascribed to, another,” 197. 29 Ahlwardt, 68–71. 26

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it is written down from a composer’s dictation. Before this moment, its ‘text’ circulates from mouth to mouth, never being retold word for word or line for line in exactly the same way.”30 By the time medieval philologists compiled a corpus of the pre-Islamic poetry in the eighth century C.E. in pursuit of the knowledge of its grammatical structure and vocabulary for the interpretation of the Qur"àn, the corpus had already gone through several generations of oral transmission by numerous ràwìs or transmitters.31 Hence, there is no point at present in our trying to determine which of the two poets composed the original horse description; rather we will examine each of the two poems as it stands in the classical tradition and turn our attention to the relationship between the poems and the khabar. The two poems by Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah presently under discussion show the conventional tripartite structure: the nasìb (elegiac prelude), the ra˙ìl (the poet’s journey through the desert and his she-camel), and the fakhr (boasting). The poets similarly recite their sorrow and complaint about their unrequited love in the nasìb, a journey on a she-camel in the ra˙ìl, and the dramatic hunt scene in the fakhr. This tripartite structure can be explained in light of Victor Turner’s application of Van Gennep’s rites of passage. According to Turner, “Van Gennep has shown that all rites of passage or ‘transition’ are marked by three phases: separation, margin (or limen, signifying ‘threshold’ in Latin), and aggregation.” Separation signiﬁes “the detachment of the individual or group either from an earlier ﬁxed point in the social structure, from a set of cultural conditions, or from both.” In the second phase, the marginal or liminal period, “the characteristics of the ritual subject are ambiguous.” Lastly, the third phase signiﬁes “the consummation of the passage.”32 In this light, the separation of the poet from his beloved presented in the nasìb in our two poems symbolizes the poet’s detachment from his 30

Monroe, “Oral Composition,” 8. Zwettler believes that early Arabic poems were transmitted by memory before they were written down, 31. See also Monroe, “Oral Composition,” 40. 32 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 94–95. Furthermore, Mary Douglas’s paradigm of ritual also is applicable to the qaßìdah structure: the tertiary structure metaphorically represents “the three stages of psycho-social development—childhood, adolescence, and adulthood” and “some concept of its narrative embodiment in the heroic quest,” Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 96–97. For these applications, see Suzanne Stetkevych, Mute, 6–8. 31

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society. The journey in the ra˙ìl shows his liminal stage. In the fakhr, aggregation is consummated through the hunt scene.

Ode by Imru" al-Qays33 1.

O my two friends, pass by Umm Jundab with me and we will fulﬁll the needs of a tormented heart.

2.

For surely if you wait for me a while it will be good for me [to visit] Umm Jundab.

3.

Don’t you see that each time I visit her by night I ﬁnd she has a sweet fragrance through she wears no perfume?

4.

The loveliest of all her companions, neither short nor, when you consider her, stout.

5.

O would that I knew how my bond with her fares, and how she treats her bond with one who is absent!

6.

Does Umaymah stay [true] to the love that is between us

33 The meter of this ode is †awìl. Though there are many published versions of this poem, I mainly use a version found in Imru" al-Qays, Dìwàn Imri" al-Qays, ed. Mu˙ammad Abù al-Fa∂l Ibràhìm (Cairo: Dàr al-Ma'àrif bi-Mißr, 1964), 40–55. I have also consulted al-Sandùbì’s edition. See the Appendix for the Arabic text.

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7.

If you are away from her for a while, you won’t meet her again; surely you are experienced in how she behaves.

8.

She said “Whenever I am stingy with you and make excuses, it hurts you, but if I show passion for you, you take me for granted.”34

9.

O my friend, do you see the departing women on their camels following a mountain trail between the two rough lands by Sha'ab'ab’s Spring?

10.

They have covered their howdahs with the An†àkì cloth over the red embroidered cloth, [till they looked] like the dates of palm trees or the date groves of Yathrib.

11.

[May] God [have mercy on] the eyes of him who saw a separation that was more scattered and distant than the separation at al-Mu˙assab.

12.

[They split into] two groups, one crossing the valley of palms, the other cutting across the highland of Kabkab.

13.

So your eyes ﬂowed like the branches of a stream on a ﬂood plain, like the current of a water channel running down over sheetrock.

34 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 9) is not exactly identical with this line: the second word of the ﬁrst hemistich is matà in this line, while in 'Alqamah it is in.

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14.

You are not one to let [have not let] a weakling boast over you or a loser win out over you. (loose translation)

15.

And you have not cut oﬀ the cares of a passionate lover by [mounting] the likes of a [she-camel] that goes out [to pasture] in the morning and returns at evening.35

16.

On a long white one, as if her saddle were on the piebald ﬂanks [of a wild ass], its eyelids not fringed with white.

17.

It sings for dawn in the watches of the night like a [drunken] singer reeling among the boon companions.

18.

A lean young ass of the asses of Mount 'Amàyah, his spittle is full of green herbs whenever he drinks.

19.

In a bend in the wadi where the grass is as tall as the Îàl-trees, through which armies pass, both those with booty and those that return empty-handed.

20.

I would ride forth early when the birds were still in their nests, and rain water was still running in every torrent channel,36

35 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 13) is not exactly identical with this line: the second word of the second hemistich is ghuduwwin in this line, while in 'Alqamah it is bukùrin. We can ﬁnd an additional four lines between lines 15 and 16 in the version of al-Sandùbì. 36 The ﬁrst hemistich is identical with the ﬁrst hemistich of line 53 in Imru" alQays’s Mu'allaqah.

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21.

On a sleek steed, a shackle for wild game, left thin by his pursuit of the herd’s lead runners on every long chase.37

22.

Despite fatigue, he is ebullient, tall, as if his withers, despite leanness and much running, were a large tree on a lookout hill.

23.

[In galloping] he vies with the wild ass who kicks out his legs as his fetlock hair ﬂies; you see he is built like the wood of a cloth rack.

24.

He has the two ﬂanks of an antelope, the (two) legs of an ostrich and the withers of a wild ass standing on a lookout peak.

25.

He steps on hooves solid and hard as if they were the stones of a stream bright green with moss.38

26.

His rump is like a sandhill packed down by rain, and his withers like a howdah’s wide saddle.39

27.

He has an eye like an artisan’s mirror

37 The ﬁrst hemistich is identical with the second hemistich of line 53 in Imru" al-Qays’s Mu'allaqah. 38 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 28) is not entirely identical with this line: the ﬁrst three words of the second hemistich are wa yakh†ù 'alà ßummin ßilàbin in this line, while in 'Alqamah they are wa sumrun yufalliqna Ω-Ωiràba. 39 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 26) with this line is not entirely identical: the ﬁrst two-thirds of this line is kafalun ka-ddi'ßi labbadahu n-nadà ilà ˙àrikin, while in 'Alqamah it is qa†àtun kakardùsi l-ma˙àlah ashrafat ilà sanadin. Imru" al-Qays’s line 32 also overlaps with 'Alqamah’s line 26.

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which she turns around her eye to examine a veil.40 (loose translation) 28.

He has two ears in which you perceive good breeding [pricked up] like the ears of a frightened oryx-doe in the middle of her herd.41

29.

His ear bone is round as if his reins and bridle were on top of smooth stripped palm-trunk.

30.

His tail is black with a ﬂeshy pliant bone, like the date-laden boughs of Sumay˙ah Spring.42

31.

When he runs a double heat and his sides are wet [with sweat] you would say [his breathing sounds like] the rustling of the wind as it passes by a huge tree.

32.

He turns a croup like a large pulley that overlooks a rump like a wide pack-saddle.43

40 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 16) is not exactly identical with this line: the ﬁrst part of the ﬁrst hemistich is wa 'aynun in this line, while in 'Alqamah it is bi'aynin. 41 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 24) is not entirely identical with this line: the second word of the ﬁrst hemistich is udhunàn in this line, while in 'Alqamah it is ˙urratàni. 42 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 17) is not entirely identical with this line: the ﬁrst hemistich is wa as˙amu rayyànu l-'asìbi ka"annahu in this line, while in 'Alqamah it is ka"anna bi-˙àdhayhà"idhà mà tashadhdharat; also the second word of the second hemistich is qinwin in this line, while in 'Alqamah it is 'idhqin. 43 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 26) is not entirely identical with this line: the ﬁrst three words in the ﬁrst hemistich are yudìru qa†àtan ka-l-ma˙àlati in this line, while in 'Alqamah they are qa†àtun kakurdùsi al-ma˙àlati.

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33.

[Impatient] he chews on the tethering post until he seems mad and possessed by a demon that won’t let him go.

34.

One day he pursued a herd of white-coated [oryx] and another day he pursued a wild desert ass with foal.

35.

Then while the white [oryx] cows were grazing in a thicket, walking like maidens in fringed white robes.44

36.

We called out to each other as we fastened his cheek-strap and my friends said, “They have escaped you, so chase them!”

37.

With great diﬃculty we mounted our boy on the curved back with a strong spine.

38.

And he took oﬀ like an evening downpour as [the oryx] emerged from a whirl-wind of dust. [= dust cloud rising in the air.]

39.

To the leg he is ﬁery, to the whip like a ﬂood, when you chide him, he takes oﬀ like an ostrich.

44 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 32) is not entirely identical with this line: the ﬁrst two words of the ﬁrst hemistich are fabaynà ni'àjun in this line, while in 'Alqamah they are ra"aynà shiyàhan.

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He reached [the game/the oryx], without eﬀort and without a second try, whirling like a child’s button on a string.

41.

You see the mice of the low soft ground heading for the dry hard ground from his thundering gallop.45

42.

It drove them out from their holes just as a noisy evening downpour does.46

43.

He struck in succession an oryx bull and cow, an old bull white as a sheet of parchment.47

44.

As the oryx bulls of the sanddune bellowed he kept striking them with a Samharì spear reinforced with a sinew.48

45.

Then one bull fell on its white face prostrate, [while another] protected itself with a horn like the tip of an awl.49

39

45 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 35) is not entirely identical with this line: the second half of the ﬁrst hemistich is fì mustanqa'i l-qà'i là˙iban in this line, while in 'Alqamah it is 'an mustarghabi l-qadri là"i˙an. 46 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 36) is partly diﬀerent from this line: the entire line is khafàhunna min anfàqihinna ka"annamà khafàhunna wadqun min 'ashiyyin mujallibi in this line, while in 'Alqamah it is khafà l-fa'ra min anfàqihi faka"annamà takhallalahu shu"ùbu ghaythin munaqqibi. 47 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 39) is not entirely identical with this line: the second hemistich is wa bayna shabùbin ka-l-qa∂ìmati qarhabi in this line, while in 'Alqamah it is wa taysin shabùbin ka-l-hashìmati qarhabi. 48 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 37) is not entirely identical with this line: the second word of the second hemistich is al-samharì in this line, while in 'Alqamah it is al-na∂ì. 49 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 38) is not entirely identical with this line: the

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46.

And we said to the noble youth, “Dismount and raise the extra clothes over us as a tent.”

47.

Its tentpegs were chain mail; its tentpole a Rudaynì spear with a spear-tip of Qa'∂abi’s make.

48.

Its tentropes were the ropes of hollow-eyed camels of excellent breed; its top a striped Yemeni mantle.

49.

When we entered it we leaned our backs against each streaked Óìran saddle.

50.

As if the eyes of the wild game around our tent and our camel saddles were unbored onyx beads.

51.

We wiped our hands on the manes of our steeds when we rose from meat roasted rare.

52.

We began, in the evening, as if we were [date merchants] from Juwàthà, loading some of the oryx meat in saddle bags and some behind [the saddle].

53.

And the horse, like a roebuck that has grazed on the Rabl plant [of autumn],

ﬁrst word of the ﬁrst hemistich is fa-kàba in this line, while in 'Alqamah it is fa˙àwin, and the ﬁrst word of the second hemistich is bi-madriyatin in this line, while in 'Alqamah it is bi-midràtihi.

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began shaking his head with annoyance from the pouring sweat.50 54.

As if the blood of the lead oryx upon his throat were henna juice dyeing [an old man’s] white hair.51

55.

When you look at him from behind, the gap between his legs is ﬁlled by a full [black] tail reaching a bit above the ground, not tinged with red.

Imru" al-Qays opens his nasìb (ll. 1–15) quite conventionally by addressing the persona’s two companions and informing them that his love with Umm Jundab has ended bitterly (l. 1). This opening reveals the theme of the entire nasìb, “separation” and “barrenness.” We should not take the appearance of the name Umm Jundab to substantiate the historicity of the associated khabar; to the contrary, the nasìb is entirely conventional. There is no indication in the poetic text that Umm Jundab is the persona’s wife; rather she appears as the typical cruel mistress of the nasìb. The middle part, the ra˙ìl, consisting of only four lines (ll. 16–19), likewise pursues the traditional ra˙ìl motif, the description of a journey on a she-camel. In the fakhr (ll. 20–55), the poet attempts to demonstrate manhood—glory, fertility, and prowess—through the ekphrastic description of a chivalrous hunt scene. The ﬁrst line (l. 20), wa qad aghtadì wa †-†ayru fì wukunàtihà, describes the poet’s setting out for the hunt in the very early morning when the birds are still in their nests.52

50 'Alqamah’s overlapping line (l. 44) is not entirely identical with this line: the second word of the ﬁrst hemistich is ka-taysi in this line, while in 'Alqamah it is kashàti. 51 This line is identical with line 63 of Imru" al-Qays’s Mu'allaqah poem except of the last word. 52 Jaroslav Stetkevych states that the phrase is a characteristic, micro-paradigmatic opening motif of “setting out” of the hunt poetry and is proper of the subjective style. “The Hunt in the Arabic Qaßìdah: The Antecedents of the ˇardiyyah,” in Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Language and Literature, ed. J. R. Smart (Sussex: Curzon, 1996), 109. See also his article, “The Hunt in Classical Arabic Poetry:

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This opening phrase, found also in the Mu'allaqah of Imru" al-Qays, is a conventional opening for the chivalrous hunt of the fakhr in the Arabic qaßidah tradition. In fact, 'Alqamah likewise uses the phrase in his poem for the beginning of the fakhr. We can often ﬁnd the association of birds with horses in the Arab tradition. For example, there is a saying of the Arabs: “Horses are birds without wings.”53 'Alì ibn 'Abd al-Ra˙màn ibn Hudhayl al-Andalusì indicates one of the sayings of the Prophet: “God said to the horse, ‘I shall make you ﬂy without wings.’”54 A horse’s parts are sometimes named after birds’ parts: such as nasr (vulture/eagle), the interior of a hoof; hàmah (owl), the top of a head; and 'asfùr (sparrow), a brow-bone, etc.55 The bird is a symbol of speed and loftiness, for it is capable of ﬂying high and swiftly. The horse ought to run as the bird ﬂies. Imru" alQays further combines the imagery of birds and water saying, “I would ride forth early when the birds were still in their nests, and rainwater was still running in every torrent channel” (l. 20). In addition, a Bedouin hero’s steeds are frequently named “rushing waters,” “ﬂood,” “rain,” or “river.” For example, Prophet Mu˙ammad’s favorite horse was named Uskùb (The Torrent) from sakab (swiftly running water).56 Such names may symbolize “insemination.”57 The heavy torrent with the image of “insemination” in Imru" al-Qays’s ode thus insinuates the impression of fertility and reproduction. The horse emerges in the second line of the fakhr section with its epithet, a sleek, swift steed (munjarid) (l. 21). Munjarid originally means “to be stripped.” A shackle for game (qaydi al-awàbidi ) is another epithet for the steed. With regard to the Arabic tradition of epithets, important subjects tend to be indirectly presented by the use of

from Mukha∂ram Qaßìdah to Umayyad ˇardiyyah,” Journal of Arabic Literature 30, no. 2 (1999): 116. 53 Daumas, 187. 54 Al-Andalusì, 27. 55 Al-Andalusì, 63–67. According to al-Andalusì, al-Aßma'ì relates that Harùn Rashìd, who had heard that twenty names of birds were used to depict the parts of the horse, asked him to take his horse by the forelock and describe the horse from poll to hoof. Then al-Aßma'ì recited for him a poem. See also Janet C. E. Watson, Lexicon of Arabic Horse Terminology (London: Kegan Paul International, 1996), 4–11. 56 Daumas, 14. 57 Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Name and Epithet: The Philology and Semiotics of Animal Nomenclature in Early Arabic Poetry,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 45, no. 2 (1986): 104, 112–25.

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epithets rather than denotants. Since the she-camel bears signiﬁcance in the ra˙ìl, being an indispensable vehicle and companion for the poet’s journey, she is rarely explicitly named as nàqah, as we likewise see in the ra˙ìl part of Imru" al-Qays’s poem.58 The horse in the fakhr is no exception. In the earliest Arabic poetry, “there is no aesthetic synthesis—or rather no aesthetic conceptualization condensed into a term—of what the she-camel intimately meant to the poet.”59 I further speculate that the poet may realize the condensed poetic force of a qaßìdah epithet that is capable of expressing the most appropriate state or a quality of its object, ﬁtting the exact poetic timing, without mentioning the name of the object. For the poet, the quality may be more important than the object itself—that is why he has no need to state its name. We can assume, moreover, that qualities that are generally presented by epithets mostly describing physical aspects do not only denote the physical appearance, but also connote the concept behind the appearance, such as fertility, speed, and power. In doing so, the poet relies on the epithet to convey emblematic and symbolic meanings. The persona is the hunter riding on a sleek steed. Despite fatigue, his steed is ebullient (l. 22). His withers (saràt)60 look like a large tree on a lookout hill, though lean and quick. From the high lookout of the tree, which is the highest place in the tribal community, a tribal guard is watching his tribe’s enemies. The implication of this simile is that the horse, due to his great height, has an unobstructed view of the enemies’ approach. The association between the horse’s back and the tree is not so much based on analogies, but rather on symbolic concepts; by means of its height and vigilance, the steed protects the rider/persona. According to al-Andalusì, Ibn Qutaybah (b. 828 C.E.) states that a long, supple neck for a horse is considered most desirable.61 The horse is excited, for he has spotted his game. He competes with a “kicker,” an epithet for a wild ass. The wild

58 Ibid., 100. He ﬁnds that the word nàqah itself is rare in the earliest Arabic poetry. 59 Ibid., 110. He further mentions, “The word nàqah was as yet latent and incubating, waiting to emerge as some unexpressed future meaning that would subsume the often disjointed, functional aesthetic of the countless epithets.” 60 Saràt is the highest part of a horse. See al-Andalusì, 53. 61 Al-Andalusì, 72.

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ass is known for the strength of its legs, particularly its pastern-joints. The horse’s body is like the wood of a cloth rack in its leanness, smoothness, and ﬁrmness. The poet portrays the steed’s body using similes, as if it were a collage, i.e., a collection of best parts from other animals: “the two ﬂanks of an antelope, the (two) legs of an ostrich and the withers of a wild ass standing on a lookout peak” (l. 24). Al-Andalusì claims that Imru" al-Qays in his Mu'allaqah was the ﬁrst poet to compare the horse to those animals. The ideal characteristics for a horse are modeled on what is distinctive in each of these species: the antelope’s slender waist, the ostrich’s short thighs, the wild ass’s wide back.62 They are signs of good breeding. One can imagine these as (mnemonic) “rules of thumb” among horsemen in an oral society. Jaroslav Stetkevych argues that many epithets for animals in the qaßìdah are “idealizing selective perceptions that are strung out sometimes in close semantic interdependence and sometimes paratactically as glimpses of illuminations.” He further claims that “such a presence of a protagonist animal is as powerfully and imaginatively insinuated as it is diﬀused and deconcretized in the sense that would denote a separate palpable individual.”63 Similar remarks concerning the epithets of the horse can be applied as well to Imru" al-Qays’s string of similes. He selects distinctive parts from the other animals and forms them into an idealized image. Though the parts of the horse are individually enumerated, they are to be uniﬁed in an ideal ﬁgure, visualized through the imagination of the audience. Just as the epithets encapsulate the “respective model’s enacted semblance and ‘meaning,’” so too, as I see it, do the similes.64 The epithets, or similes, are “aimed at a constructed ideal image: the type beyond the individual, the archetype beyond the type, and the symbol beyond the archetype.”65 The audience of the oral tradition was educated and cultivated through the intertextuality and interreferentiality of the qaßìdah so that they intuitively grasped the full subject, despite the seemingly scattered, diverse images. When they were listening, they could easily imagine the complete image of the ideal creature. 62 63 64 65

Ibid., 80–81. Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Name,” 118. Ibid., 116–17. Ibid., 118.

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The description of the horse continues. The horse runs on hooves depicted with the epithets ßumm ßilàb, hard and solid (l. 25). The poet says that they were like the stones of a streamlet covered by green moss. Again for him, the outward resemblance between the hooves and the stones is not paramount, but his emphasis is rather on the extreme solidness which is a common physical feature in the two components. The horse’s rump is like a sandhill, and his withers are like a howdah’s wide saddle. The wide saddle of a howdah is a metaphor for the beautiful curve of the withers (the ridge between the shoulder bones) for its elevation and width. His eye is likened to an artisan’s mirror, which is polished and always clear (l. 27). The horse has sharp-pointed ears revealing 'itq (beauty and nobility) or good breeding.66 The term, 'itq, is often used for the excellent quality of the horse. His ears are compared to those of an alarmed (madh'ùrah) oryx-doe whose ears stand up because she is frightened. By the use of the epithet for a fearful oryx-doe and its erect ears, the sharpness of the horse’s ears is intensiﬁed. The back of the ear is round/revolving, which shows his high-breeding, as if his reins and bridle because of his tall neck were on top of a sleek palm trunk (l. 29). The black thick tail is likened to moist date-laden boughs at Sumay˙ah Spring (l. 30), which implies fruitfulness. The similes of the horse we have discussed so far reﬂect two aspects: 1. the noble lineage of the horse and 2. the poet’s considerable poetic knowledge of the horse. The ample signs of the horse’s good-breeding demonstrate the cultivation of the steed by human beings, because he could not possess those excellent attributes if he were not the product of selective breeding and expert care. Indeed, according to Janet C. E. Watson, many pre-Islamic poets, who would improvise poems, were required to display extensive technical knowledge of the horse in their odes to prove themselves to be distinguished poets and often participated in poetic duels.67 Although the description of the horse’s body parts in lines 26–30 appears static, it is actually integrated into a dynamic movement because it occurs during his swift gallop. Those concepts, signiﬁed through the physical depiction, now converge and are uniﬁed into an image of speed and momentum. The steed’s speed and the sound 66 A sharp-pointed ear is a symbol of ˙usn and 'itq (beauty and excellence). See al-Andalusì, 81. 67 Watson, xv.

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of his breathing are compared to a strong, powerful wind that causes even a huge tree to shake (l. 31). This simile reminds us of the image of the horse, “created out of wind.” The comparison to a large pulley shows the strength of the croup’s vertebrae (l. 32). He champs on the tethering post so vehemently that he seems to be possessed by an inescapable demon’s madness. Let us now consider why the poet devotes as many as fourteen lines (20–33) to the physical description of the horse. The poet’s ultimate goal is to show the steed’s inner superiority through the depiction of his physical strength and beauty. One view maintains, “In orally preserved poetry, abstract concepts are expressed as physical attributes of concrete objects.”68 To this view we can add Daumas’s description of the pure-bred horse and the importance of breeding in relation to the horse’s character by quoting the Emir Abd-elKader’s remarks: The Emir Abd-el-Kader takes physical and moral attributes as being inseparable, . . . his moral attributes must correspond to his physical appearance. . . . We should judge the horse more by his character [moral attributes] than by his appearance. By outward indications one can judge the breeding. From character alone you will have conﬁrmation of the extreme care which is taken in breeding and of the vigilance which has been exercised to adamantly prohibit misalliances.69

The Emir further testiﬁes to the excellence of the horse: We have many anecdotes about the qualities of horses. From all of them it may be deduced that next to man the horse is the noblest creature, the most patient, the most useful. . . . Arabs will make every conceivable sacriﬁce to succeed in getting oﬀspring from a stallion or mare when they are convinced that one or the other has given proof of extraordinary speed, notable sobriety, acute intelligence, or aﬀection toward the hand that feeds it, as they are fully persuaded that the qualities of the parents will appear in the progeny. We grant then, that a horse is truly noble when, in addition to having beautiful conformation, he joins courage to ﬁeriness and glows with pride in the midst of gunpowder and dangers.70

It is not coincidental that the Arabic poetic tradition selected the horse as one of the main motifs of the fakhr unit; the horse, as the

68 69 70

Suzanne Stetkevych, Mute, 274. Daumas, 11–20. Ibid.

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Emir argues, is the symbol of excellence and nobility in the poet’s tribal community. In order to build the ideal image of culmination in light of both the qaßìdah structure and of the tribal community, the poet makes use of the steed’s physical beauty and sturdiness, which God granted only to the horse among beasts.71 The horse is chosen to be the lord of beasts by God for its beauty and high value. According to the tradition, God conferred khayr on the horse, joined in its forelock. Khayr is “moral or physical good, anything that is good or ideal, good fortune, prosperity, happiness.”72 Khayr is also used by the Arabs to signify horses. Having illustrated the steed’s dignity in all senses, Imru" al-Qays further utilizes the technique of waßf in order to construct his own image as champion by overlapping himself with the image of the massive, powerful steed.73 For the poet, the horse is not a mere object of poetic waßf. The poem instead presents the symbiotic relationship of poet and horse. Furthermore, according to Daumas, the Emir states, “physical attributes alone do not constitute a perfect horse. It is necessary, because of his intelligence, because of his aﬀection for the man who feeds him, cares for him, and rides him, that man and horse be as one.”74 Moreover, in the hunt, the steed also “keeps the hunter/persona safe from dangers in the chase” and “shares the emotions of sorrow and pleasure of the hunter by ﬁghting.”75 The hunter/persona and the horse are portrayed as united not only in the sphere of body, but also in spirit. The poem now moves on to the dramatic hunt scene. The scene of the hunt and feast is the expression of invigoration and jubilation, according to the phase of plerosis or ﬁlling of Gaster’s seasonal pattern.76 If the loss in the nasìb is presented in the phase of kenosis or emptying, the gain in the fakhr is in that of ﬁlling. Suzanne Stetkevych argues, referring to Imru" al-Qays’s Mu'allaqah poem, “the 71

See Daumas, 7. Lane, kh-y-r. 73 Adnan Haydar ﬁnds the complete identiﬁcation of poet and horse in the end of the fakhr section of the Mu'allaqah of Imru" al-Qays; however, in both that poem and this one, the poet is present with the horse, hence my preference for the term “overlapping.” See Adnan Haydar, “The Mu'allaqa of Imru" al-Qays: It’s Structure and Meaning, I,” Edebiyàt 2, no. 2 (1977): 244. 74 Daumas, 20. 75 Ibid., 12. 76 See Theodor H. Gaster, Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 23. Suzanne Stetkevych, Mute, 277, 258–59. 72

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hunt and feast constitute the sacriﬁce that signals aggregation and the commensal meal that celebrates it.”77 The chivalrous hunt is an expression of virility—generating new life through male aggression. One day the horse chases a herd of white, wild oryx cows and another day wild asses with foals (l. 34). Naqì (pure) is an epithet for white oryxes, and baydànah is an epithet for a wild she-ass in a dangerous desert, which no one wants to draw near. The game emerges, and the hunt panel begins. There wild cows graze in a thicket, going like a procession maidens in white robes (l. 35). Ni'àj (“intensely white” or “women”) is likewise an epithet for wild cows. This use of epithet, by not mentioning the word “the cow,” allows the verse to create a (subliminal) picture of a strong male assaulting a virgin maiden. The hunt is described so as to suggest a sexual act: the steed playing the male role, the oryx cows like virgins. Having shown incredible power and energy, the steed wins his game. During the hunt the steed’s gallop is likened to the downpour of an evening raincloud—the ﬁerce, abundant rain symbolizes again fertility, vigor, and speed. The hunters begin to make a tent for shade with their cloth, mail, and spears in order to have a feast with the slain quarry. The chain mail is used for pegs (i.e., to weight down the corners of the tent) and the spears, from Rudaynah, the name of a woman who was selling them, are for the poles. The spearheads are made by Qa'∂ab who was said to have been a husband of Rudaynah.78 It looks to the persona as if the game’s eyes are like black and white onyx beads that are unbored—an unbored one is pure and beautiful (l. 50).79 If the bull were alive, his eyes would have been only black. But he is dead; they roll back to show both black and white.80 The hunters wipe their hands on their horses’ manes when they stand up from their rare roast meat. This is the ritual marking the end of the feast. The she-camel is loaded with the freshly-killed game,81 like camels laden with bags of dates returning from Juwàthà at evening (l. 52)— Juwàthà is a place where people buy dates and put them in two 77

Suzanne Stetkevych, Mute, 277. See line 47’s shar˙ in Ibràhìm’s edition. 79 See line 50’s shar˙ in Ibràhìm’s edition. 80 Ibid. 81 Hunters used to use horses only for the hunt itself; to go to and return from a hunt, they ride she-camels, which also carry the game, while leading their horses with ropes. 78

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sacks on a beast’s croup on their return. When the horse shakes his head, he smells like a buck feeding on rabl (autumn herbage). The rabl shrubs sprout green leaves at the end of a hot season without rain. Since a buck of the rabl eats both spring-herbage and autumnherbage, he has great energy and power.82 This line suggests fertility and strength through metaphors of the fruitful land and the buck that is grazing on it. Bloodstains on the horse’s chest reveal his triumph in the chase. Suzanne Stetkevych claims that the comparison of the bloodstains to henna upon an old man’s hair (white) presents the intended analogy of “the revitalizing eﬀect of blood shed in the hunt to the rejuvenating eﬀect of henna on hoary locks,” and further associates the subject with “the Islamic use of henna in accordance with the Sunnah of the Prophet a symbolic expression of the immortality conferred by Islam.”83 The association of the bloodshed of the hunt with the blood shed by deﬂowering a virgin also has a place here. The ending line shows that the steed has a thick, long tail that blocks the gap between his hind legs. According to Ibn Qutaybah, the horse’s tail ought to be long and abundant enough to cover the gap,84 but never to reach the ground, which was regarded as a ﬂaw.85 Imru" al-Qays’s horse has a reddish tail that reaches just a bit above the ground.

Ode by 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l 86 1.

You departed after she left you with no direction;

82

See line 53’s shar˙ in Ibràhìm’s edition. Suzanne Stetkevych, Mute, 277. 84 Watson, xiv. 85 A horse’s tail reaching the ground is considered a defect, for a horse may tread on the tail. See Shar˙ al-Mu'allaqàt al-'Ashar wa Akhbàr Shu'arà"ihà, ed. A˙mad ibn al-Amìn al-Shinqì†ì (Beirut: Dàr al-Andalus, 1970), 88 and Abù 'Abd Allàh alÓusayn ibn A˙mad al-Zawzanì, Shar˙ al-Mu'allaqàt al-Sab', ed. Mu˙ammad 'Alì Óamd Allàh (Damascus: Al-Maktabah al-Umawiyyah, 1963), 118. 86 I mainly rely on an edition found in Shar˙ Dìwàn 'Alqamah b. 'Abadah al-Fa˙l, ed. Lu†fì al-Íaqqàl and Wariyyah al-Kha†ìb, with a commentary by Abù al-Óajjàj Yùsuf ibn Sulaymàn ibn 'Ìsà known as al-A'lam al-Shantamarì, with review of Fakhr al-Dìn Qabàwah (Aleppo: Dàr al-Kitàb al-'Arabì, 1969), 79–100. I also consult a version in Shar˙ Dìwàn Imri" al-Qays, ed. Óasan al-Sandùbì (Cairo: Ma†ba'at alIstqàmah, 1939), 42–47. See the Appendix for the Arabic text. 83

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50 it was not right of her to shun you. 2.

Those nights when we still gave each other sincere advice, nights when [our tribes] were settled at al-Sitàr and Ghurrab.

3.

She is slender as if her delicate jewelry were on [the neck of ] a pet gazelle fawn from Íà˙ah.

4.

[She is adorned with] musk-ﬁlled gold beads like locust shells, unbored pearls, and phials of perfume.

5.

When the slanderers spread lies to come between us, the love between us grew truer and stronger.

6.

What use is it to remember her, a woman of the Rabì'ah tribe, who has scattered at Ìr or along the banks of the Wadi Shurbub?

7.

You obeyed the slanderers and the calumniators in breaking up with her, the ties to her had been worn out and were ready to cut.

8.

She made a promise to you, if only she had kept it, but her promise was like the promise of 'Urqùb to his brother in Yathrib.

9.

She said “Whenever I am stingy with you and make excuses, you complain,

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but if I show passion for you, you take me for granted.” 10.

I said to her, “Return to your family, for those with lovely eyes and hennaed ﬁngers don’t excite me.”

11.

So she returned just as a doe with fawn of the brown gazelles of Bìshah, grazing on "Aràk and Óullab trees, returns.

12.

We lived a good life with her for much of our youth, but then, the gossip of the slanderers succeeded [in driving us apart].

13.

And you have not cut oﬀ the cares of a passionate lover by [mounting] the likes of [a she-camel] that goes out [to pasture] in the morning and returns at evening.

14.

On a bulky camel with full ﬂanks, as brisk as you desire, a swift runner, despite fatigue, spritely.

15.

When I hit her ﬂank, she fairly leaps beneath me, and watches me closely from the corner of her eye. (loose translation)

16.

She has an eye like an artisan’s mirror which she turns around her eye to examine a veil.87 (loose translation)

87

Lines 16 and 17 overlap with lines 27 and 30 of Imru" al-Qays’s poem. Imru"

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17.

As if there were on her rump, when she is lively, the date-laden boughs of Sumay˙ah Spring.

18.

She sometimes drives away ﬂies with her tail, and, at others, swings it back and forth, like a messenger of good tidings in a fringed cloak waving his arms.

19.

I would ride forth early when the birds were still in their nests, and rain water was still running in every torrent channel,

20.

On a sleek steed, a shackle for wild game, left thin by his pursuit of the herd’s lead runners on every long chase.

21.

On a supple steed on whose chest is an amulet string that a sorcerer has spit on out of fear of the evil eye.

22.

A dark bay like the color of a red-dyed cloth that you spread out to display for sale the cloak that had been folded in the clothes bag.

23.

Firm like a tightly twisted Andarì leather rope, he is adorned with beauty by a full build, not short.

al-Qays uses these descriptions for a horse, while 'Alqamah employs the same descriptions for a she-camel.

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He has two ears in which you perceive good breeding [pricked up] like the ears of a frightened oryx-doe in the middle of her herd.

25.

He has a large hollow belly beneath his back like a smooth hill that children use for a slide.

26.

He has a high rump like the back of a camel, and broad like a howdah’s wide saddle.

27.

He has legs as sturdy as the necks of male-hyenas, the sinews of his shank bones are sound and with them he pounds every road.

28.

He has dark hard hooves that split projecting rocks, as if they were the stones of a stream, bright green with moss.

29.

When we hunt, we do not sneak up on [our game] stealthily, but we call from far: Let’s go!

30.

[We have] conﬁdence in him; the tribe does not curse him; he is patient despite fatigue; he is not reviled.

31.

When they have exhausted their travel-provisions, his rein and his shanks, when put to use, are the best means to acquire more.

53

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32.

We saw white [oryx] cows were grazing in a thicket, walking like maidens in fringed white robes.

33.

While we were arguing and fastening his cheek-strap, the wild cows came out before us like a row of pierced silver beads.

34.

He followed the tracks of the cows at a hard fast gallop like the abundant rainpour of an evening cloud.

35.

You see the mice of the low soft ground heading for the dry hard ground from his thundering gallop.

36.

It drove them out from their holes just as a noisy evening downpour does.

37.

As the oryx bulls of the sanddune bellowed he kept striking them with a Samharì spear reinforced with a sinew.

38.

Then one bull fell on its white face prostrate, [while another] protected itself with a horn like the tip of an awl.

39.

He struck in succession an oryx bull and cow, a huge old buck like a Hashìmah tree.

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We said, “The hunters have bagged game; dismount and raise the extra clothes over us as a tent.”

41.

[Our] hands kept on reaching out for well-done roast meat to a chest like a perfume-pounding stone.

42.

As if the eyes of the wild game around our tent and our camel saddles were unbored onyx beads.

43.

We began, in the evening, as if we were [date merchants] from Juwàthà, loading some of the oryx meat in saddle bags and some behind [the saddle].

44.

And the horse, like a roebuck that has grazed on the Rabl plant [of autumn], began shaking its head with annoyance from the pouring sweat.

45.

And it began racing with our young she-camel as we led it beside her; it is hard for us to handle, like a snake let loose.

46.

It overtook them [the she-camels] and galloped oﬀ, passing quickly like a pouring cloud.88

55

88 This line is found in line 45 of the edition of al-Sandùbì, 48. I include it in the poem because the line is introduced in the khabar, though it is not in other editions.

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'Alqamah’s poem of 45 lines, which was said to have been a response to Imru" al-Qays’s qaßìdah in the poetic contest, similarly shows the conventional tripartite structure and themes. In the nasìb (ll. 1–13) 'Alqamah presents a lament over the persona’s separation from his beloved and in the ra˙ìl, depicts his journey on a she-camel, sturdy and swift (ll. 14–18), in order to forget his unrequited love. As for the fakhr (ll. 19–45), 'Alqamah like Imru" al-Qays describes the chivalrous hunt. A number of the verses (14 out of 33) in the fakhr are identical to those of Imru" al-Qays, including its ﬁrst two lines (ll. 19–20). Since I have already investigated the overlap lines in the section on Imru" al-Qays, I will only examine the lines that diﬀer. First, in lines 21–23 'Alqamah mentions that the persona’s steed has a broad chest wearing an amulet with a sorcerer’s spell against the evil eye. The horse is kumayt (red mixed with black) or the dark bay that Arab bedouins were always fond of, for they believed that the kumayt color reﬂects the inherent good qualities of a well-bred horse.89 The twisted knot of an Andarì leather rope describes the ﬁrmness of the steed’s parted legs. His balanced proportions increase his beauty. Line 24, expressing the noble breeding detectable in the shape of his ears, is identical with Imru" al-Qays’s line 28. 'Alqamah continues to describe the horse’s huge body and smooth coat (l. 25). The depiction of the steed’s rump in line 26 is almost the same as line 26 of Imru" al-Qays. The steed’s legs are as thick and strong as the necks of male-hyenas. This comparison to another animal is again the expression of the ideal, perfect image of the steed. Ghulbun (thick) is an epithet for his feet. His dark (sumrun) hooves are compared to the stones of a streambed, as we see in Imru" al-Qays’s line 25. Thus, much like Imru" al-Qays, 'Alqamah constructs the beautiful form of the lord of beasts, the horse, through the physical description. The dramatic hunt begins. The hunter signals the chase by calling out to his fellow-riders (l. 29). The tribal members always rely on the steed for the hunt. When they lack food, the steed is the one who satisﬁes the need by overtaking the best game (l. 31). Line 32 is almost identical with Imru" al-Qays’s line 35. 'Alqamah starts to depict the scene of the contest between the hunter/persona and the hunted (l. 33). The row of oryx is likened to silver beads. The

89

See information on the horse’s color in Daumas, 17.

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momentum of the steed’s attack is as vehement as the evening downpour, which symbolizes fertility. The descriptions of the mice in lines 35–36 and the slaying of an oryx cow overlap with Imru" al-Qays’s. Imru" al-Qays devotes six lines (46–51) to the description of building a tent and the feast, while 'Alqamah employs only three lines (40–42) to describe them. 'Alqamah likewise expresses his identity and attachment to his society. In lines 43–44 (overlap) he recounts the hunters’ return to their community with the prey that announces his successful hunt to his tribe, suggesting that “each successful hunt and its following feast serve to reaﬃrm the tribal social structure.”90 In the ending line, the persona’s horse outstrips the she-camel, passing like a pouring rain-cloud, which again serves as a symbol of speed and fertility. 'Alqamah’s poem concludes with the expression of vigor, endurance, and fertility.

Contest as Ceremony Let us conclude by returning once more to the story of the poetic contest between Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah in the akhbàr that provides the traditional Arabic literary context for the two poems. The work of such scholars as Johan Huizinga, Walter J. Ong, and Ward Parks has demonstrated the pervasiveness of the contest, and further, the verbal duel—ﬂyting as poetic contest—particularly in archaic societies. A consideration of the story of the poetic contest between Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah in light of their ﬁndings will help us understand the deeper cultural signiﬁcance of these akhbàr and the poems they relate to. Walter J. Ong claims that contests and adversatives are indispensable in human life.91 The antagonistic and antithetical structure of the community played a signiﬁcant role in the archaic period.92 Bragging and scoﬃng matches bear in their structure the concept of 90

Suzanne Stetkevych, Mute, 277. Ong, 15. 92 See Huizinga, 53. The ancient Arabs had a custom similar to mu'àra∂ah, called mumàjadah, “a public and apparently quite structured ‘vying in glory’” by wagering property including animals, food, and wine. See Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Sacriﬁce and Redemption in Early Islamic Poetry: Al-Óu†ay"ah’s ‘Wretched Hunter,’” Journal of Arabic Literature 31, no. 3 (2000): 101–4. As an analogous custom to mumàjadah, Huizinga introduces potlatch, “a great solemn feast, during which one of two groups, with much pomp and ceremony, makes gifts on a large scale to the other group 91

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play.93 Johan Huizinga explains, “In play there is something ‘at play’ which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to the action.”94 Ong also cites Alvin W. Gouldner’s idea that the ancient Greek way of life was characterized by three elements: “1. the quest for fame through 2. personal action in 3. a contest system or operation setting person against person.”95 This characterization of ancient Greek society can be applied fruitfully to pre-Islamic tribal Arabia and in particular to the poetic contest between Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah. The fakhr or boast is one of the major themes of the pre-Islamic qaßìdah. Thus we can see that the competing poets 1. quest for fame through 2. personal action—that is, composing poetry— in a contest system that sets poet against poet. Even when a fakhr qaßìdah appears to stand by itself, the idea of competition is inherent in the genre, for the goal of fakhr is to establish the superiority of the virtue and might of the persona and his tribe over competing tribes, that is, as a genre, fakhr or boast implies mufàkharah (boasting contest, ﬂyting). Within the sphere of poetry itself, such poems are intrinsically competitive. The verbal dueling process in Homeric epics also helps us understand the contour of the khabar. Ward Parks has formulated the process for Homer: 1. engagement, 2. ﬂyting (a) eris (the heroes contend for kleos or glory), (b) contract, 3. trial of arms, 4. ritual resolution (retrospective speech and symbolic action).96 The same elements can be detected in the khabar: 1. engagement, the khabar brings the two poets to the arena of the poetic contest; 2. ﬂyting (a) the poets contend for glory and (b) consent to compete in the description of horse; 3. they vie by reciting the odes; 4. Umm Jundab’s judgment, the conferring of the title “fa˙l” on and marrying 'Alqamah, which fulﬁll the function of ritual resolution both in terms of retrospective speech and symbolic action. Ong points out that the contest functioned to transmit conceptualized knowledge from one generation to another.97 By taking a form

for the express purpose of showing its superiority,” which was practiced by Indian tribes in British Columbia, 58. 93 See Huizinga, 65. 94 Huizinga, 1. 95 Ong, 21, citing Alvin W. Gouldner, Enter Plato: Classical Greece and the Origins of Social Theory (New York: Basic Books, 1965), 43–55. 96 See Parks, 45. 97 Ong, 29.

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of contest, the khabar and the poems continued to circulate among people because the form itself fascinated the audience, along with the khabar’s wit and play. The mechanism of a contest through the agency of a witness or a judge endows 'Alqamah with the title of Master Poet. Ong explains the etymological origin of “contest” in English as a third person standing between two other persons.98 Because of the existence of a third person (a witness or a judge), we can determine who is a winner and a loser. Before reciting their poems, the two poets make a contract by stating that they will describe their she-camel and horse and that the judge will be Imru" al-Qays’s wife. Making a contract is equivalent to swearing an oath in a ceremonial contest. If the contestants do not observe the rules, the ritual will not be consummated, and the one who did not live up to his words will be disgraced.99 The poetic contest, presented in the khabar, is a ritual that made 'Alqamah a master poet or al-Fa˙l by his victory over Imru" alQays, who had been considered the most distinguished poet of the pre-Islamic era. In other words, Imru" al-Qays’s recognized status enabled 'Alqamah through defeating him to be named a master poet. The mechanism of the dichotomy between “praise and blame” functions eﬀectively in the competition.100 In this system, Imru" al-Qays plays the role of the one disgraced, and his humiliation intensiﬁes the glory of 'Alqamah. The khabar is amusing and playful, but its framework as a contest is grave and serious—the two poets competed for honor and glory (Greek: kleos) not only in poetry, but also in virility. We can argue that the double-entendre of sexual for poetic prowess is not meant to be merely amusing; rather, within pre-Islamic Arabic culture, it tells us, poetic prowess is virility. It thus functions both as a pun on and explanation of the title “al-Fa˙l.” The mu'àra∂ah provides the poets with a milieu for public recognition of their fame. Parks argues, “honor plays a crucial role in the valorization of the heroic individual, it simultaneously binds that individual to his community. Selfhood is not self-determining in the earliest strata of oral epics; the hero must ﬁrst establish himself in the eyes of others.”101 Likewise it appears that honor and glory had to 98 99 100 101

Ibid., 45. Parks, 63. See Parks, 29. Parks, 27.

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be acknowledged by others in pre-Islamic, Arabic tribal society; otherwise the qaßìdah of the fakhr or self-magniﬁcation would not have ﬂourished. The integration of the persona as a mature male into his society, one purpose of the horse description in the fakhr is to establish his courage, honor, loyalty, and generosity before other members of his community. In order to be recognized, 'Alqamah and Imru" al-Qays compete before a judge. In other words, a competitive setting allows the verbal battle to be public, so that the winner will gain kleos (honor, glory, fame).102 This paradigm is also in accord with the symbiotic and integrated picture of the persona and the horse which I discussed above, because the minute horse description metaphorically represents the persona (either of 'Alqamah and Imru" al-Qays) himself in pursuit of kleos through the chivalrous hunt and through poetry. Moreover, the social setting of the contest conﬁrms the poet’s glory, symbolized by the image of excellence and prowess in the horse and embodied in the excellence of his poetry. The formalized contest, set by the khabar, provides 'Alqamah the glory of victory and the foundation of heroic honor.103 By contrast, Imru" al-Qays was unable to prevent his wife from leaving, nor could he maintain the title of fa˙l (“champion”). Accordingly, Imru" alQays is undoubtedly the loser in the mu'àra∂ah. On the other hand, his persona is still the winner of the hunt in his poem, being as successful as 'Alqamah. Poetic creation for Imru" al-Qays is compensatory for the sexual act. The contest adds a metapoetic and metaphoric level—prowess in the hunt equates with sexual prowess, which equates with poetic prowess. Therefore, the physical, mimetic description of the horse can be interpreted as an expression of the concept of murù"ah or virility. Metaphorically, the verbal duel is a physical combat both in its sexual connotation and in terms of the poetic strategy in which each poet aims to embody his persona in the ﬁgure of the horse and the power of his verse. Similarly, the accomplishment in the waßf of the horse expresses the establishment of the self in the context of a tribal society. However, in the end, Imru" alQays could not surpass 'Alqamah. Although Imru" al-Qays presents an ideal picture of himself through the waßf of the horse as an ideal member of the community, 'Alqamah gains the title al-Fa˙l. 102 Parks states, “the public conferral of this excellency, it can be gained or established in a competitive (and thus public) sphere,” 28. 103 See Parks, 30.

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CHAPTER TWO

REMEDY AND RESOLUTION: BEES AND HONEY-GATHERING IN TWO HUDHALÌ ODES*

The presentation of sexual implication in the horse description of the two pre-Islamic poets leads us now to another erotic sphere of the waßf, the description of bees and honey. The period of the materials extends from the pre-Islamic over the dawn of Islam. Continuously, ekphrastic moments of natural objects, bees and a honey-gatherer, i.e., not “texts” in semiotic parlance, are before our eyes. From the outset of human society the origin and nature of the bee have fascinated mankind. For thousands of years honey was one of the few natural sweeteners known. Ancient people viewed the bee that produces the sweet food with reverence and awe. The bee was also regarded as sacred in many ancient literary and cultural traditions. Honey was used as part of a libation along with milk, oil, and wine. Ancient Babylonians, Assyrians, and Greeks used to bury their dead in honey, which has sterilizing power for preserving bodies.1 Bees are symbols of purity, assiduity, rebirth, and spirit, while honey is a symbol of celestial food, eloquence (honeyed words), eroticism, and immortality. Bees and honey are mentioned in the oldest literatures of the world, such as those of ancient Egypt, Sumeria, Babylonia, and Greece. Ancient Arabia is no exception. The Hudhalì tribe of the pre-Islamic era in the Óijàz bequeathed to us some odes describing wild bees, honey, and the honey-gatherer. In this chapter, I explore the functions and symbolism of the waßf of the bee, honey, and its collectors in pre-Islamic Arabic odes. The description can be regarded as ekphrasis in its original sense, * An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, Chicago, Illinois, December, 1998, and appeared as Akiko Motoyoshi Sumi, “Remedy and Resolution: Bees and Honey-Collecting in Two Hudhalì Odes,” Journal of Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures, vol. 6, no. 2 (2003): 131–57. 1 See Hilda M. Ransome, The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1937), 38.

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inasmuch as it is “clear and distinct description.” We also examine how the waßf expresses metonymically a larger image of the lost garden of the nasìb with extended similes and of the dangerous trial of a ra˙ìl-like motif. I investigate the description or waßf in the context of two complete odes in terms of both structure and theme and demonstrate how the two waßfs function diﬀerently. As critical tools, I mainly use Hilda M. Ransome’s book The Sacred Bee and Michael Sells’ article on simile. The Qur"àn and the Óadìth (which relates deeds and utterances of the Prophet and his Companions) are our useful source. The poems I have chosen were composed by the two Hudhalì poets, Sà'idah ibn Ju"ayyah (his death date unknown)2 and Khuwaylid ibn Khàlid known as Abù Dhu"ayb al-Hudhalì (d. 649? C.E.). As for the biographical information on the two poets, while little has come down to us concerning Sà'idah, there is some information on Abù Dhu"ayb. Abù Dhu"ayb was a younger contemporary of the Prophet, that is, a Mukha∂ram poet (i.e., one who spans the preIslamic and Islamic periods), and was a ràwì (transmitter and reciter) of Sà'idah, the pre-Islamic poet. Abù Dhu"ayb is regarded as the foremost poet of his tribe. There is an anecdote that tells us that he travelled to see the Prophet Mu˙ammad, but arrived at Medina the day after his death. Abù Dhu"ayb also migrated to Egypt under 'Umar, and there lost ﬁve sons within one year because of the plague. According to Gustave E. von Grunebaum, one aspect of Abù Dhu"ayb’s poetry is that he is inclined to elaborate the nasìb into a complete ode. He composed a number of elegies, showing “the gentle melancholy of his obsession with the instability of doom”—one of his masterpieces is an elegy on the death of his sons.3 In our poems, both poets use the image of wild honey and its gatherer, showing the ekphrastic description of the bees as well as the process of collection. The poets associate honey with wine, with which it was often mixed to drink. The image of honey is linked

2

We do not know for sure when Sà'idah was alive, except that he was a preIslamic poet and older than his ràwì, Abù Dhu"ayb. 3 G. E. von Grunebaum, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Abù Dhu"ayb al-Hudhalì.” All the information on Abù Dhu"ayb in this paragraph is taken from this source. We can ﬁnd Abù Dhu"ayb’s elegy in al-Mufa∂∂al, Dìwàn al-Mufa∂∂alìyàt, Dìwàn al-Hudhaliyyìn, 3 vols. (Cairo: Al-Dàr al-Qawmiyyah al-ˇibà'ah wa al-Nashr, 1965), and A˙mad Kamàl Zakì, Shi'r al-Hudhaliyyìn fì 'Aßrayn al-Jàhilì wa al-Islàmì (Cairo: Dàr al-Kàtib al-'Arabì lil-ˇibà'ah wa al-Nashr, 1969).

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with eroticism and immortality. The motif of bees and honey was not very popular with other Hudhalì poets—it was exclusive to these two poets in the tribe—nor with other Arab poets.4 The concepts of mu'àra∂ah (literary imitation and contest) are involved in the description of honey-bees and honey collecting. In the mechanism of contest, the younger Hudhalì poet attempted to emulate and outdo the elder Hudhalì poet by using the same theme, bees and honey-gathering. This form of contest is diﬀerent from the case of Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah, who at least according to the khabar, competed in one and the same arena. It can be assumed that Abù Dhu"ayb, who had learned poetry-composition from Sà'idah, not only tried to imitate, but also to outdo his master. In doing so, Abù Dhu"ayb could succeed his master and transmit the literary theme to posterity. Sà'idah’s qaßìdah is bipartite, consisting of the nasìb (elegiac prelude) and the fakhr (boast). By contrast, Abù Dhu"ayb’s presents the nasìb section only, although we do not know if the piece is a fragment of a formally complete qaßìdah or an independent amatory ode in an intentionally truncated form. In both poems the description of the bee and honey-gathering is embedded in the nasìb section, which is the object of my comparative examination. As the images of the bees gathering nectar in both odes are somehow related to the image of the beloved that is the main motif in the nasìb, I also explore the relationships between the images of the beloved and those of the honey-bees. 4 See Grunebaum, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Abù Dhu"ayb al-Hudhalì” and F. Viré, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “na˙l.” There is an anecdote in relation to honey and the Hudhalì tribe, called “Ghàr al-'Asal” (“The Cave of Honey”) about the pre-Islamic poet Ta"abba†a Sharran. The story tells us that Ta"abba†a Sharran plundered the honey in a cave on the territory of the Hudhalì tribe, his enemy, who found him and locked up him in the cave. However, he managed to escape from it through a crack in which he emptied his honey, allowing himself slide to on the honey. The poet boasts of this adventure in nine verses. Abù al-Faraj al-Ißbahànì, Kitàb al-Aghànì, 25 vols., ed. 'Abd al-Sattàr A˙mad Farràj (Beirut: Dàr al-Thaqàfah, 1955–61), 21: 158–59. Another pre-Islamic poet, Shanfarà has a poem mentioning the honey-gatherer (mu'assil). Al-Shanfarà, Làmiyyat al-'Arab, ed. Mu˙ammad Badì' Sharìf (Beirut: Manshùràt Dàr Maktabat al-Óayàt, 1964), 43. E. Bräunlich discusses honey-gathering in the poetry of Sà'idah and Abù Dhu"ayb in his article, “Versuch einer literargeschichtlichen Betrachtungsweise altarabischer Poesien,” Der Islam 24 (1933), 201–69, esp. 222–26. There is also an Arabic article on honey-collecting in the qaßìdahs of Sà'idah and Abù Dhu"ayb: Mu˙ammad b. Sulaymàn al-Sudays, “Waßf Ishtiyàr al-'Asal fì Bi∂'at Nußùß min Shi'r Hudhayl,” Majallat Ma'had al-Makh†ù†àt al-'Arabiyyah 33–1 (1989), 149–68.

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The description of the bee and the honey-collector is clear and distinct, i.e., ekphrastic, oﬀering a visual picture before the hearer’s eyes. The symbols in the ekphrastic description will be revealed through the conventional codes of the Arabic qaßìdah tradition, which the reader/listener recognizes. I argue that the bee and honey-gathering are symbols of remedy and resolution in both poems, that is, the bee and honey together with the wine motif express healing for the two poets. At the same time, honey-collecting is presented as a locus for trial and resolution. The waßf of the bee and honey is also a metaphor for the lost meadow. Moreover, I demonstrate that the stylistic and structural disparities between the two poems reﬂect a contrast in their mood and meaning. The waßf of the bees and honeygathering may perform a ra˙ìl-like function as quest in both odes. Sà'idah’s poem provides an exemplary model of the fakhr both in structure and theme, while Abù Dhu"ayb’s is characterized by the nasìb mood of loss and despondency. The waßf of the bees plays an important role in revealing the two poets’ intentions in their respective poetic enterprises.

Remedy and Quest in the Qaßìdah by Sà'idah ibn Ju"ayyah5 1.

Gha∂ùb has departed and though you still loved her passionately,6 but obstacles came between you and separated you.

2.

Among the things that came between you were the fear of you that the jealous and hateful instilled in her, and those that spied on you.

5 The meter of this ode is kàmil. Dìwàn al-Hudhaliyyìn, 167–91. I also rely on Abù Sa'ìd al-Óasan ibn Óusayn al-Sukkarì, Kitàb Shar˙ Ash'àr al-Hudhaliyyìn, ed. 'Abd alSattàr A˙mad Farràj, rev. Ma˙mùd Mu˙ammad Shàkir, 3 vols. (Cairo: Maktab Dàr al-'Urùbah, 1963), 3: 1097–1121; and Bernhard Lewin, A Vocabulary of the Hu≈ailian Poems (Göteborg: Kungl. Vetenskaps-och Vitterhets-Samhallet, 1978). See the Appendix for the Arabic text. 6 According to Dìwàn al-Hudhaliyyìn, there is a variant of yata˙abbabu: yatajannabu.

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   3.

The black raven has turned white and still your heart does not leave oﬀ the memory of Gha∂ùb, nor can your reproaches be reversed.

4.

As if there appeared to you, the day you met her, a tent-reared fawn7 from the wild herds of Wajrah,

5.

An awkward fawn with languid gaze and dark eyes; its back dark-striped, new to the grazing lands, deep-hued.

6.

On an elevated land, the soft tract of the sand dune, in its round hollows is an Ar†à tree beneath which [the fawn] seeks shelter when it is wet.

7.

It takes refuge beneath it from a shower of rain every evening when the water pours down on the tree.

8.

It follows strips of pasturage in rocky soil and sometimes draws near to warm lands where purslane grows.

9.

Indeed I swear by the forelegs [of she-camels] and every sacriﬁcial beast from whose [slit] throat [blood] ﬂows,

65

7 For the meaning of mutarabbabù (tent-reared), there is a variant of mutarabbab fì n-nabt, mutarabbab fì l-bayt. See the shar˙ of Dìwàn al-Hudhaliyyìn.

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10.

And by their place, when they are shut up in the narrow bushy box canyon of Ma"zim, blocked oﬀ by Mount Akhshab.

11.

The oath of an honest man, —though you don’t know its worth, in the end its truth will be revealed—

12.

That I love her [madly], and [any] man upon whom she’s bestowed her gift desires her.

13.

I forbade you [my heart] to burden yourself with someone far away, [too] distant for you and hard to reach.

14.

Is this lightning from your [abode], as if its ﬂash were a thicket set ablaze by burning kindling?

15.

A night-travelling cloud that spent eight nights in the islands, reaching the open seas, blown by the south wind,

16.

When it reached 'Amq, the cloud’s side resounded with a crash like the roar of an untamed stallion;

17.

When it reached Na'màn, it settled in a heap of clouds like riders knocked to the ground;

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   18.

The lotus tree was uprooted and the huge Ath"ab tree was swept away [by the torrent] ﬂoating between 'Ayn and Nabàt;

19.

Rain fell upon the tamarisk trees from Sa'yà and Óalyah, and [the torrents] of al-Shujùn and 'Ulyab washed down the Dawm palms.

20.

Then I lost sight of it and a distant roving part of it came to settle in the morning in Najd.

21.

She came to us with jet black hair, not too short, nor thinning at the part, nor grey,

22.

Like tufts of soft reeds covered with ﬂowing water with moss spread on its two sides,

23.

And with even front teeth like camomile blossoms, white and gleaming, her side teeth glistening with cool saliva.

24.

[Her mouth is] like choice wine of pressed grapes mixed with aloe, cinnamon, and reddish brown musk.

25.

[Her mouth is] cool as if its saliva, when you taste it after a sleep, when the stars have risen high in the sky were

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26.

The honey of bees on a lofty mountain peak where the vultures live like a group of men wrapped in their coats.8

27.

[Honey] from each steep ridge and bend of the valley from which after rainfall pure water gushes forth.

28.

Among them are pollen gathering bees in the mountain-ridge, and they produce honey [as abundant as] the streams of the bottom of the valley, when they ﬂow.

29.

They revealed streaks of honey as white as linen, with no honey-combs empty or broken,

30.

As if the collected pollen on their hind legs, when they ﬂew up the mountain paths, were kernels of wild cherry,

31.

Until there was preordained for them, when they were slow in returning, a man of endurance in walking, rough-ﬁngered, short.

32.

With him are a water-skin, which he carries wherever he goes, a leather tool-bag, shining wood sticks [for honey-gathering], and a huge leather bag [for the honey].

8 Ta˙abbà (translated here as “wrapped in their coats”) actually means “with a garment or piece of cloth, when sitting, to be like him who is leaning [his back against a wall],” according to Lane, ˙-b-w.

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The poor wretch let down the ropes to it from a precipice too steep for the eagle, as if he were lowering a veil,

34.

As if when he lowered himself to the ridge below their cave he were a ragged cloak ﬂuttering in the wind.

35.

He completed his wild honey collecting and lowered himself as if he were a ragged cloak and continued gently descending the ropes.

36.

He separated the pure [honey] by mixing it with the water of a clear pool ﬁlled by streams from mountain cliﬀs where the Ta"lab tree grows.

37.

[The honey] is mixed with a red wine, its seal broken by a dumb (non-Arabic speaking) boy with short curly hair and bored pearl eardrops.

38.

As if her mouth tasted like this when it was strained, —by God, or even more delicious and sweeter.

39.

So today if we no longer visit her (in the evening) nor long for her (in the morning),

40.

It is because the swollen tribal gatherings from diﬀerent clans cannot withstand the vicissitudes of fate [and the clans disperse].

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41.

[Some men sat] in a tribal council, their bright faces shaded by a thicket of upthrust [spears], straight as bucket-ropes in a well.

42.

Their lineages are close and mighty; men like them protect against injustice and they are dreaded.

43.

If a pasture is protected and forbidden, yet they would pasture there; and even if someone comes to warn them, they do not ﬂee.9

44.

Men of great dignity, each one, when they are attacked, is treated warily, like a tar-smeared scabby camel.

45.

[Each one is] a violent assailant who protects his guest and [each is] eager to ﬁght, when he is assaulted, almost like a rabid dog.

46.

One day when they were thus, there surprised them a group of iron-clad men gathered for a raid.

47.

They were protected by a squadron gleaming [with armor], wearing helmets, numerous, restless, disdaining to be plundered.

9 The word corresponding to “is protected and forbidden” is tu˙ùmiya which is a derivative verb of al-˙imà (consecrated tribal precinct). Al-˙imà is the ancient institution of a forbidden sacred pasture-land in Arabia. See Jaroslav Stetkevych, Zephyrs, 32–33, 81–82, and William Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (New York: Macmillan, 1927), 112, 140–47.

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From every ravine there came [galloping] straight down a swift noble mare or a thick-legged winning steed,

49.

Fleshy with massive curved ribs, his back long like a tightly twisted rope.

50.

His hard hooves hammer the ground as if solid rocks were attached to his fetlocks.

51.

He runs at full speed straining at the bit as if he were the trunk of a palm tree that is stripped for climbing.

52.

Their squadron advanced and what they feared came true through a raid that did not lie, from every mountain ravine.

53.

They were innumerable, uncountable; squadrons that had gathered together swelled [the ranks of ] their army.

54.

And when a scout came from the raiding party and said, “I have seen the [battle]-commotion, so mount your steeds!”

55.

The riders ﬂew on every swift, sleek, milk-fed mare, and a tall dark bay led the way.

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56.

The horsemen were covered with dust rising in ribbons in the air, some of it spreading upwards in spumes, some hanging in thick clouds.

57.

They exchanged sword-blows and pointed at each other the spear-tips that the smiths had forged and mounted,

58.

Of each brown quivering spearshaft, not marred by too short a shaft nor by a weak joint reinforced with a sinew,

59.

An excellent spear of al-Kha††ì’s make, its point was sharpened as thin as a ﬂame: when you raise it, it blazes up,

60.

With a shaft that has been straightened in the spear stretcher, adorned by a trimmed, sharpened spearhead like the inner feather of an eagle.

61.

Delightful to the trembling hand, its shaft quivers in the hand the way a fox quivers as it runs.10

62.

The swords scattered, destroyed their gathered [men] and exposed every henna-dyed woman to be dragged oﬀ and plundered.

10 In this verse, Sà'idah uses the verb 'asala twice for the meaning of “to quiver.” It may suggest a punning connection between the use of this verb and a theme of this poem, 'asal or honey.

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They pursued them, driving oﬀ as booty their vast herds of camels that swayed like rain-emptied clouds driven along by the south-east wind.

The ﬁrst section (ll. 1–12) presents the persona’s love for his mistress and the extended simile comparing her to a gazelle fawn. Following the Arabic qaßìdah convention, Sà'idah opens the nasìb with the persona’s separation from his beloved, Gha∂ùb. The persona, addressing himself as “you,” states that Gha∂ùb, his beloved, has forsaken him due to some obstacles. Gha∂ùb is derived from the verb gha∂iba (to be angry) and can be an epithet for an angry man or woman. This name suggests that she is angry with him. After he declares that he will not leave oﬀ the memory of her, a young gazelle, which is a simile for the beloved, is portrayed (l. 4). The comparison of the beloved to a gazelle is one of the highly conventional motifs in the nasìb. The poet creates the image based on the physical analogy between the beloved and the gazelle by using the epithet for the gazelle fawn 'àqid (bending the neck in lying down) in line 4. The poet describes the beloved very little; instead, he elaborates upon the gazelle—her physical appearance, her actions, and her environment (ll. 4–8). The persona makes an oath to love her by sacriﬁcial she-camels from whose breasts blood ﬂows (ll. 9–12) and confesses that he is madly in love with her (l. 12). The poem moves to the description of a storm cloud ﬂashing with lightning (l. 14). The persona asks if this lightning is from the direction of where his beloved resides—he is trying to locate his beloved’s tribe. In other words, the description of the travelling cloud is still in the context of the image of the beloved. “Sà'idah” loses sight of the clouds in the direction of Najd (l. 20). He recollects the memory of her again—her hair is as black as coal and likened to soft rushes in a stream. He describes her front teeth and their cold saliva. The comparison of the beloved’s saliva to the best wine is one of the established motifs in pre-Islamic poetry. Up to this point, Sà'idah presents a string of similes for the beloved: she is like a gazelle fawn; her hair is like reeds; her saliva is like wine. These similes are based on physical likeness which also connotes abstract likeness, such as vulnerability, softness, and youth. The imagery the poet intends to produce consists of the various sorts of descriptions: the persona’s state of aﬀairs with his beloved, the gazelle, his passion for her, the

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rainstorm, the beloved herself, and the wine. Though appearing digressive and disjunctive, they are connected through certain symbolic relations grounded in the poet’s scheme as well as conventional cultural codes. Taken together they create an image of the lost garden based on “spiritual” likeness. This process continues further with the next motif, the bee and honey. The sweetness and purity of the bee and honey are compared to the beloved’s saliva (ll. 25–26). Sà'idah elaborates on how diligently the bees produce honey. The scene of the bees gathering nectar is ekphrastic because it shows a clear and distinct picture before the audience’s eye. One can visualize the procedure of the bees’ collecting nectar and storing it in the honey-comb. The bees gather nectar and pollen on a lofty peak of a mountain that is close to the sky. The towering peak is inhabited by vultures (l. 26), which indicates that it is a high, dangerous place. In the ridges and precipices, thawàb ﬂows abundantly (l. 27). Thawàb simultaneously suggests three meanings—water, honey, and reward for the good deeds of the bees—though the shar˙ gives us, for the meaning of thawàb, the water gushing forth to a wadi.11 Descending to the bottom of a valley, bees carry nectar and move to a ﬂowering tract of meadows to seek some more. The purity of honey is presented through the description of pure rain water (l. 27). In his book on animals, written in 1371, alDamìrì states that the bee was also known for its cleanliness because it drinks only clean water.12 Every cave of those bees contains plenteous honey, which shows abundance and fertility. The scene of the bees gathering nectar is intimately associated with water—pure rainwater and mountain streams. Through its ekphrastic force, this description of the bees gathering nectar signiﬁes the lost meadow or the Garden of Paradise, not only because of the physical resemblance, but also because of symbolic and metonymic implications. For the symbolic connections, we can turn to the sayings of the Qur"àn and the Óadìth (Prophetic tradition). Like wine, honey symbolizes the rivers of the Garden of Paradise in association with the lost meadow.13 The Qur"àn says,

11

Dìwàn al-Hudhaliyyìn, 177. Mu˙ammad ibn Mùsà al-Damìrì, Kitàb Óayàt al-Óayawàn al-Kubrà, 2 vols. (Cairo: n.p., 1861–62), 2: 467. 13 See Suzanne Stetkevych, “Intoxication and Immortality: Wine and Associated Imagery in al-Ma'arrì’s Garden,” in Critical Pilgrimages: Studies in the Arabic Literary 12

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“There is the similitude of Paradise which the godfearing have been promised: therein are rivers of water unstaling, rivers of milk unchanging in ﬂavour, and rivers of wine—a delight to the drinkers, rivers, too, of honey puriﬁed.”14 Since there is honey in Paradise, it is, therefore, a Muslim belief that bees exist there too. Al-Damìrì introduces one ˙adìth saying that bees, honey-ﬂies, are the only ﬂies that go to heaven, while all the others go to hell.15 Ransome also states that the bee is a symbol of the soul who enters the kingdom of heaven.16 Needless to say, the Garden of Paradise is the abode of immortal life. Michael Sells argues that the description of the beloved with its related similes in the nasìb is “the mythopoetic world of the lost garden or meadow.”17 There is a sùrah named al-Na˙l (The Bee) in the Qur"àn. The two verses regarding the bee are: And thy Lord revealed unto the bees, saying: “Take unto yourselves, of the mountains, houses, and of the trees, and of what they are building. Then eat of all manner of fruit, and follow the ways of your Lord easy to go upon.” Then comes there forth out of their bellies a drink of diverse hues wherein is healing for men. Surely in that is a sign for a people who reﬂect.18

Al-ˇabarì comments that the bee’s instinct is referred to God’s teaching and that God inspires the bee to gather its food from various fruits and ﬂowers and to convert it into honey. He goes on to state that the honeycomb itself, with its hexagonal cells, is geometrically perfect.19 The bee is selected as an exemplar of those that work according to their natural instincts and produce excellent results. Bees were held to be models of industry, order, purity, economy, courage, prudence, and communal cooperation. They are prudent because they drink only clean water and cooperate eﬀectively with one another. Honey-bees are also known for their division of labor as well as their social organization. They form colonies of from

Tradition, Literature East and West 25 (1989), ed. Fedwa Malti-Douglas, 32. See also Sells, “Ghùl,” 131. 14 Qur"àn 47: 16. The Koran Interpreted, trans., Arthur J. Arberry, 2 vols. (1955; reprint, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 2: 221. 15 Al-Damìrì, 2: 470. 16 Ransome, 146. 17 Sells, “Ghùl,” 130. 18 Qur"àn 16: 69–70. Arberry, 1: 293–94. 19 Abù Ja'far Mu˙ammad ibn Jarìr al-ˇabarì, Jàmi' al-Bayàn fì Tafsìr al-Qur"àn, 30 vols., 1st ed. (Cairo: Al-Ma†ba'ah al-Kubrà al-Amìriyyah, 1905–11), 14: 88–89.

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several hundred to 80,000 individuals, organized in a rigid caste system. Aristotle points out that bee society is composed of three kinds: the king bee, the worker bee, and the drone bee.20 Each kind performs its speciﬁc task to create a productive society. Sà'idah delineates the bees in detail, how, where, and in which order they act in the course of their honey-producing and how industriously they work. Through the waßf of the bees, apart from the imagery of the Paradise, Sà'idah intends to convey those concepts, which will be further related to the meaning of the waßf of the honey collecting. Like the description of the bees, the scene of the honey hunter (ll. 31–35) is ekphrastic. His ﬁngers, height, and belongings are portrayed. He is likened to a ragged cloak hanging and swinging in the wind. This simile allows the audience to visualize the honey-gatherer. At the same time, the description is objective and dispassionate, and the speaker describes the honey-collector from a certain objective distance. Moreover, the honey-gatherer is portrayed as conﬁdent, bold, strong, and well-prepared for his task; the poem presents his equipment, his ﬁngers, and his way of walking (ll. 31–32). Despite the steepness of the precipice, he hardly shows any fear or other feelings. He expertly executes his task. Sà'idah portrays the scene of the honey-collecting as if he knew from the beginning that the gatherer would successfully gain the honey. That is why the poet says that the honey-collector’s success was preordained (l. 31). The profound symbolism of honey likewise helps us to interpret the waßf of the bees and honey-gathering. As the above-mentioned Qur"ànic verses show, honey was well-known for its eﬃcacy as a medicine. There is a ˙adìth showing its medical eﬀect: A man went to Mu˙ammad and told him his brother had violent pains in his body, and the Prophet told him to give the sick man honey. He did as he was told, but soon came back to say his brother was no better. Mu˙ammad answered, “Go back and give him more honey, for God speaks the truth, thy brother’s body lies.” When the honey was taken again, the sick man, thanks to the grace of God, recovered immediately.21

20 Aristotle, Historia Animalium, trans. A. L. Peck, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1965–1970), Book V, 4: 21. Aristotle called a chief bee (queen bee) a “king bee” because he believed that it was a male bee. 21 Al-Damìrì, 2: 470. This quotation is from Ransome, 71–72.

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Another ˙adìth indicates the signiﬁcance of honey: “For you [Muslims] there are two remedies: the Qur"àn and honey—Honey is the cure for all maladies, while the Qur"àn is for the heart.”22 Also, honey bears the signiﬁcation of righteousness; the phrase, dhù (having) 'asal (honey), means one who has a righteous, good, proper action ('amal ßàli˙) attributable to him, for which the praise of him is deemed sweet.23 On the other hand, the term “honey” in Arabic, 'asal implies eroticism and fertility because the Arabic phrase ma∂rib 'asalah, which consists of the terms ma∂rib (place, spot) and 'asalah (honey), is a euphemism for “the place of injection of sperm,” or “the source from which one springs,” “ancestry.”24 We may assume that this euphemism is grounded on the form in common between honey and sperm, sticky liquid, and on the association between the delight of intercourse and the taste of honey as Ibn ManΩùr suggests (more below). It may also be associated with bees’ power to pollinate ﬂowers by carrying and spreading pollen among ﬂowers, as they suck nectar from the ﬂowers. Furthermore, one ˙adìth clearly denotes the sexual meaning of 'usaylah, a diminutive of 'asal; The Prophet said to a woman who desired to be divorced from a husband because of his sexual impotency in order that she might return to a former husband, “No, [you must stay with the present husband] until you taste 'usaylatahu (his sperm) and he tastes 'usaylataki (your sperm).”25 Ibn ManΩùr says that in this saying the delight of sexual intercourse is likened to the taste of honey.26 Sà'idah’s description of bees’ gathering nectar and honey-collecting can be associated with an erotic, sexual image, which thus creates a connection with the scene of the kisses of the beloved and the nights the persona spent with her. That is why the poet says that for the persona his beloved’s kiss was like the honey of bees (ll. 25–26). In his discussion of the lost meadow, Michael Sells says the description of a beloved introduces “a dynamic polarity of sexual union and ablution or puriﬁcation.”27 In light of his understanding, 22

Al-Damìrì, 2: 470. See '-s-l in Lisàn al-'Arab and Lane. 24 See Lane, '-s-l. 25 Abù al-Óusayn Muslim ibn al-Óajjàj al-Qushayrì al-Naysàbùrì, Ía˙ì˙ Muslim, 4 vols., 1st ed. (Dàr "I˙yà" al-Kutub al-'Arabiyyah, 1955–56), 2: 1057–58. 26 Lisàn al-'Arab, '-s-l. 27 Sells, “Ghùl,” 131. 23

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in our poem purity and sexuality in the bee and honey are intermingled. Honey implies simultaneously ablutionary water and sexual water. On the other hand, from the distinct sexual signiﬁcation of 'asal in the ˙adìth, the honey collecting suggests the quest for eroticism and immortality. In a deeper meaning, what the honey-gatherer actually pursues is not the honey, but the beloved, the lost meadow, and immortality. By the depiction of the bees and their honey, “Sà'idah” tries to heal himself and to overcome his unrequited love for Gha∂ùb. Although the nasìb changes motifs—his separation from the beloved, a gazelle fawn, rainstorm, wine, and bees and honey—these motifs converge on one theme, the beloved. Throughout the nasìb, from the opening to line 40, the persona recalls the memory of Gha∂ùb and simultaneously attempts to recover from the lovesickness that torments him. Also, based on the symbolic implications of the bee and honey—industry, social organization, and righteousness—the waßf may also function as a restraint to the persona’s ardent passion for Gha∂ùb. These implications generated from the bee and the honey can suggest that through the waßf of them the persona directs himself toward a righteous path. That is, his reason and mind are inspired by viewing the diligent work of the bees and by pursuing the honey. If the description of the bees can be understood as the expression of healing, the scene of the man’s collecting of honey signiﬁes the persona’s resolution to get his beloved oﬀ his mind. In doing so, the persona seeks immortality in the honey. Although the persona is not the collector and is merely an observer of the collector’s action, the persona makes up his mind through the process of viewing the scene. The man appearing in line 31 is ready for the honey-collecting, equipped with a water-skin, a leather vessel, and shining wood sticks. His collecting honey is a perilous task because the honey is located in some caves on a precipice. Actually, there are prehistoric rock paintings (approximately 5000 B.C.E.) in eastern Spain and South Africa, in which primitive people are climbing up a ladder to gather honey in a bees’ nest located in a high location on some precipice.28

28 See the paintings in Eva Crane, The Archaeology of Beekeeping (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983) 19–23. Crane also introduces ancient Egyptian beekeeping practices with some wall-paintings of 2400 B.C.E. and 1450 B.C.E. that depict honey being harvested from hives and packed into containers, thus, some of the earliest recorded beekeeping scenes, 35–39.

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Therefore, honey-gathering must have been a dangerous task. Moreover, if bees return to their hives while the gatherer collects honey, they will attack him with their poisonous stings. Nevertheless, the man lets himself down with the ropes that are his only mainstay. I argue that the description of the bees’ gathering nectar metaphorically conveys the image or vestige of the beloved with reference to the lost meadow or the Garden of Paradise. At the same time, the waßf of the honey-collector suggests the two concepts: 1. healing, restraint, and resolution as a part of the poet’s psychological movement; 2. the quest for immortality in the lost garden. These two concepts exist simultaneously in the text. As we see in the presentation of the lost meadow, we recognize the persona’s psychological and emotional movements through the shift of the various motifs in the nasìb. Sà'idah’s nasìb shows delicate and gradual changes in the persona’s mind through the poetic motifs within the larger framework of the image: the lost garden. When the poem returns to wine (l. 37), we realize that the honey produced by the bees’ nectar-gathering and the man’s honey-collecting is mixed with the choicest wine. The poem goes on to say that the beloved’s kiss is even sweeter than that excellent wine, which Sà'idah has elaborately described (ll. 26–38). Therefore, the ultimate goal for the poet is the world of the lost garden, evoked by the image of the beloved, utilizing the profound symbolism of the bee and honey. On one level, the waßf of the bee and honey-gathering completes the description of the beloved by creating the profound and complicated image of the beloved. At the same time, however, the (dangerous) quest for cure, remedy, and immortality serve to move the persona out of the mood of despondency of the nasìb to the heroic self-assurance of the fakhr (boast) which follows the nasìb. For “Sà'idah,” honey operates as an object of his quest, and once obtained, through the honey’s remedial eﬀects it becomes a groundwork for his next step ( fakhr). In this regard, it performs a structural-functional role similar to that of the more conventional ra˙ìl (desert journey/quest). We have seen the association of honey with eroticism, purity, immortality, the lost meadow, Paradise, etc. While the ekphrasis of the bee and honey oﬀers us the pictorial image of the objects, the ekphrasis in itself is not suﬃcient to explain the metaphoric, metonymic, and symbolic aspect of the bees and honey-collector; rather the listener/reader has to know the cultural codes including the structural

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and thematic signiﬁcance of key images, shared by the poet and the community of the audience. Although all the motifs with their waßfs in the nasìb appear disjointed, they are connected both structurally and thematically. Line 39 marks a transition from the evening to the morning, which parallels a transition from erotic infatuation to social responsibility. A shift from night to morning expresses not merely a change in temporal state, but also changes in ritual or psychological states, with the morning attack as a conventional qaßìdah characteristic, indicating the transition from the ra˙ìl to the fakhr.29 This line of Sà'idah is the turning point for the persona both in his feelings and his poetic form. The beloved’s mouth is sweeter than the honeyed wine, but his aﬀairs with her is in the past. Because of seasonal migration, clans must disperse, and so the relationship with the beloved, however passionate, is also ﬂeeting. Though he is captivated by her astounding beauty and charm, his passion eventually wanes, for tribal responsibilities and heroic pursuits beckon. Line 39 indeed demonstrates the poet’s transition from individual concern to communal contribution. In the nasìb, his interest and concern are exclusively for his departed beloved. He is dreaming and is immersed in the sweet memory about the time he spent with her. By contrast, in the fakhr, the poet boasts of his tribe with the description of the tribal assembly and the battle. Through the praise of his own tribe, he can contribute to his tribe and society. This is a progression in him from individual self-absorption in the nasìb to collective participation in the fakhr. This movement in the qaßìdah demonstrates the persona’s psychological and social transformation. In the nasìb, his recollection, disappointment, dreaming, and resolution are presented. On the other hand, in the fakhr, we witness bravery, conﬁdence, and pride. In lines 39 and 40, Sà'idah explicitly presents the transition from separation to aggregation or from individual to collective concerns. The fakhr section describes an attack of the persona’s tribe, the Banù Hudhayl, on its enemy. It opens with the opponents’ tribal assembly. The poem portrays their arms and excellent steeds, showing how strong and valiant they are. A scout of the adversary tribe

29

See Suzanne Stetkevych, Mute, 228.

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comes back and reports agitation and vigor of the Hudhalì squadron to his men (l. 54). The battle scene between the two tribes with the description of spearshafts and spear-tips continues till the Hudhalì party destroys the other party. The ode ends with the Hudhalì tribe’s victory over its enemies in plundering the enemies’ camel herds and women as booty (ll. 62–63).

Heartrending Love in the Ode by Abù Dhu"ayb30 1.

Did what happened between us tell you of separation from Asmà" the day her riding camels departed?

2.

You scattered the augury birds [to read her fortune], then if misfortune strikes your love for her, she will depart from you.

3.

I circled around her and desired her for years, I feared her husband and was too shy to face her.

4.

Three years passed in this humiliation, while she was in the bloom of youth.

5.

My heart disobeyed me and went to her; certainly I was obedient to its command, but I did not know if seeking her was right.

6.

I said to my heart: I wish you all the best,

30 The meter of this poem is †awìl. Dìwàn al-Hudhaliyyìn, 70–81. I have also consulted al-Sukkarì’s recension, 1: 42–55. See the Appendix for the Arabic text.

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  but your love for her will lead you to an untimely death.31

7.

Not even the wine 32 —that Syrian wine that came exported [as a captive] for which a banner is raised whose eagle guides the generous [to purchase it],

8.

Red wine like the juice of raw meat, neither an acid nor a sour wine whose ﬂame burns its drinkers’ [throats].

9.

[The wine-merchants] travel for a while with the riders and form a pact of protection, and the covenant guarantees their safety.

10.

[The wine-merchants] remained with the horsemen until they could clearly see the [Banù] Thaqìf whose domed tents were pitched on the rough ground of al-Ashàt.

11.

The [Thaqìf ] clan of Àl Mu'attib surrounded [the wine]; both buying the wine and taking it by force were hard for them.

12.

When they saw that the merchants were adamant and that it was not permissible for them to attack them and take it by force,

31 After line 6 an additional line is given in al-Sukkarì’s recension: I swear it must be a jar of musk whose mouth diﬀuses its odor, at the door of Persian perfume merchants. 32 The italic indicates that this line is the beginning of the series of extended similes, ending with an elative form, comparing the beloved’s saliva to the wine and honey. It is connected to lines 26 and 27, saying that her saliva is more tasty than the wine and honey.

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   13.

They paid the high price that [the merchants] demanded, then they seized it, for it was now permissible and easy to swallow.

14.

[Mixed] with the honey of bees which ﬂy to every hidden place, and when the color of the sun turns yellow, it is time for them to return [to their hive].

15.

With the honey that the king bees make: who go in the morning to a high mountain whose peak almost reaches the sky.

16.

The honey-bees diligently gather nectar on the mountain’s crest and descend to the valleys with winding streams.

17.

When they ascend in it their swarm rises like a ﬂight of arrows in a shooting contest, streaming toward the target.

18.

Among them are nectar gatherers that remain on the ﬂower-ﬁlled mountain, sucking with red wings and downy necks.

19.

When the man from the Khàlid clan saw them, like pebbles thrown in the air, the swarm stumbling as it tried to rise,

20.

He made up his mind: he was determined to enter their hive or else another in a land with dust like ﬂour.

83

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21.

[His friends] said to him: “O Óaràm, avoid them!” but he was enticed by the height and the size of the honeycomb.

22.

So he fastened ropes by which his [fate] hangs and was pleased by his skill, as long as the ropes didn’t betray him by breaking.

23.

He let himself down between a rope and a wooden peg on a rock, as smooth as a leather cloth on which even the raven slips.

24.

When he drove them out with the smoke, they were confused,33 and humiliation and sadness came over them.

25.

How sweet is the wine of al-Sha"m and honey; when the wine is pure, aged, and red and the honey is mixed in—

26.

Not even [the wine mixed with honey] in a shining wooden wine bowl freshly carved and hewn

27.

Is sweeter than her mouth when you come [to her] at night, and her robe is wrapped around you.

33 I use a variant of ta˙ayyazat (gathered) (that is found in al-Sukkarì’s recension), ta˙ayyarat (confused). See al-Sukkarì, 6 n. 79.

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   28.

One day she saw me falling down drunk, then I grieved her at [Wadi] Qurràn, for indeed the companions of wine are disheveled.

29.

If she had wronged me, then I would not have blamed her for it nor would my response have caused her grief,

30.

My dog would not have growled at her to keep her people away, even if her dogs had barked at me with blame.

85

This amatory ode presents similar aspects structurally and thematically to the nasìb of Sà'idah, whom Abù Dhu"ayb served as ràwì (reciter). Abù Dhu"ayb begins his ode with the motif of Ωa'n, “departing women,” one of the common motifs of the nasìb. The persona wonders if his beloved, Asmà", will forsake him and scatters birds for augury to know her fortune (l. 2). A bird exposing its left side as it ﬂies by is considered a bad omen.34 Line 3 reveals that Asmà" is married and that he fears her husband. His love is illicit and if discovered would disgrace him and his beloved. The poem continues to present the persona’s past mental distress: his heart disobeys him, but he obeys his heart. He wonders, however, if pursuing this love is right. Then he begins to feel that he probably ought to abandon his ardent passion. The persona is aware that the love is hazardous and will lead to an unexpected or untimely death, al-mawt al-jadìd (l. 6). The next theme is wine (l. 7). The extended similes comparing the beloved’s mouth to wine cover as many as twenty lines (ll. 7–27). The poet tells us how precious and delicious the wine is because it is carried to al-Ashàt by the wine merchants accompanied by some riders who agreed to protect them. Though the Thaqìf clan of Àl Mu'attib try to bargain for a better price, in the end they agree to pay the high price that the merchants demand. The shar˙ (commentary)

34

See Dìwàn al-Hudhaliyyìn, 5 n. 70.

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says that merchants brought the wine from Sha"m (Damascus, Syria) to Sùq 'UkàΩ (the market of 'UkàΩ). Sùq 'UkàΩ took place in Dhù al-Óijjah (the month of the pilgrimage), a sacred month, when war or ﬁghting was forbidden. Because of the sacred month, the clan of Àl Mu'attib cannot take the wine by force.35 The exquisite taste satisﬁes the people of Àl Mu'attib that the wine was worth the dear price that they paid. The wine is then mixed with honey, thereby leading the way to the description of the bees and honey-collector. Abù Dhu"ayb’s description of bees is functionally and structurally similar to that of Sà'idah and, like it, conveys the concepts of immortality and eroticism, and the image of the lost garden. However, Abù Dhu"ayb’s waßf of the honey-collector is more subjective and emotional than that of Sà'idah. While Sà'idah portrays his honey-collector from the viewpoint of an objective observer, Abù Dhu"ayb’s persona seems to identify with the collector. Abù Dhu"ayb speciﬁes that the collector is from the Khàlid clan (l. 19) who, according to the shar˙, were famous for their honey-collecting.36 The bees are described from the point of view of the Khàlidì; for him they are like pebbles thrown in the air. The collector makes up his mind to approach the bee hive and certainly knows that if the rope breaks, he will fall to the earth (l. 20). His clansmen try to dissuade him (l. 21). Despite the danger, the size of the honeycombs entices him (l. 21). He is relieved that he has descended successfully to one rock, because he was afraid that the ropes might fail him. Danger remains though, for the rock he reaches is as slippery as a leather cloth. The Khàlidì, unlike the honey-gatherer in Sà'idah’s poem, uses fumigation to sedate and drive out the bees. In Sà'idah’s poem, the man approaches the honeycombs in the daytime when the bees are away. By contrast, Abù Dhu"ayb’s honey-gatherer goes to the cave when the bees are present, armed with a cultural weapon, smoke.37 Honey is a symbol of female sexuality, that is, the beloved. At the same time, the scene of collecting honey is a locus for resolution.

35

Dìwàn al-Hudhaliyyìn, 74. Dìwàn al-Hudhaliyyìn, 1 n. 78. 37 According to Ransome, one passage is found concerning fumigation in the Talmud. It refers to the medaph which was employed as a vessel for burning cowdung. One commentator explains that people used the medaph to smoke out the bees when gathering honey. See Ransome, 70. 36

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The persona through his “stand-in” the Khàlidì honey-collector truly seeks honey which would cure his broken and devastated heart. In line 24, the poem says, “humiliation and sadness came over them [the bees].” The bees are forced out from their home. The poet personiﬁes the bees by giving them feelings. The persona’s ardent passion for his illicit beloved and his fear of her husband is metaphorically connected to the Khàlidì honey-collector’s craving for honey and fear of both the treacherous precipice and the bees. If the gatherer can risk his life for honey, the persona can also risk his life for his love. In the beginning of the ode he admits that his love is dangerous and that he constantly wavers over whether he should pursue this passion or not. The emphasis on the wine’s value through the elaboration of the protection of the wine and of the negotiation between the wine-merchants and the clansmen conﬁrms the worth of the beloved for him inasmuch as the honeyed wine signiﬁes female sexuality and immortality. The emotional description of honey-collecting reveals how deeply the Khàlidì craves honey. At the same time, we should not overlook the role of the honey-collecting passage in Sà'idah’s poem, where the quest for honey ultimately helps the persona to make the psychological transition from the loss of the beloved to commitment to the tribe. The honeygathering scene thus contains complex and ambivalent dimensions. I suggest that the bees’ “humiliation and sadness” represent the persona’s emotional state, that is, the personiﬁcation of the bees suggests the persona’s identiﬁcation with them (in addition to his identiﬁcation with the honey-collector). Like the bees, he has lost his “honey.” By ending the honey-collecting passage with an expression of loss (rather than, for example, the triumphant happiness of the honey-collector), the poet has set the stage for the anti-heroic, despondent ending of the poem. In other words, although he ﬁrst seems to identify with the collector in his craving for honey, ultimately the persona identiﬁes emotionally with the bees who have been deprived of it. Unlike the section of Sà'idah, where the description of the bees and honey-collecting is regarded as functioning like a ra˙ìl, that is, a transition between the passive despondency of the nasìb and the active virility of the fakhr, Abù Dhu"ayb’s description ultimately concludes with an image of loss and sorrow. Thus if we view the honeycollecting description as a sort of quest, we can say that the persona in Abù Dhu"ayb’s poem has started out identifying with the successful seeker, but in the end identiﬁes with the “losers” (the bees),

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signaling thereby his inability to leave behind his sorrow and passion and to achieve the sense of self-conﬁdence and accomplishment of the fakhr. Honey taken by the Khàlidì is mixed with pure wine (l. 25). Line 26 marks the end of the long extended simile of the beloved that goes back to line 7. It turns out that all the waßfs of the wine, the bees’ gathering nectar, and the honey-collecting are to show the beloved’s beauty to advantage. This technique, common in the Arabic qaßìdah tradition, is called the “elative extended simile” because it uses the structure, “such is ‘more than’ such.” The second half of line 27 reinforces the reading of the waßf of the bee and honey as eroticism, for it clearly denotes that her mouth is even sweeter than the honeyed wine “when you [the persona] come [to her] at night, and her robe is wrapped around you.” The ﬁnal two lines present the poet’s aﬀection and tenderness toward Asmà". He would not have blamed her, even if she had been harsh with him. Neither his dog nor he would have barked at her people to drive them away, even if her dogs or people had barked or slandered him. The persona appears very generous towards her and her people. If he endures the people’s slander of him and thus gives the beloved peace and comfort, he will do it. The last remarks show that he is incapable in the end of recovering from his lovesickness. Since we do not know whether this ode is a fragment (the nasìb part) from a complete tripartite qaßìdah or constitutes the whole ode, it is diﬃcult to interpret the meaning of the ode. Nevertheless, Abù Dhu"ayb’s ode appeals to me as a complete amatory ode rather than a fragment of a qaßìdah. This can be accounted for by the fact that if the honey-collecting can serve as a ra˙ìl-like function, and even right after the nasìb, the poem should move up to the fakhr, having left the memory of the beloved behind. As stated above, von Grunebaum mentions that Abù Dhu"ayb tends to elaborate the nasìb into a complete ode.38 The ode ends full of his passion and sorrow. “Abù Dhu"ayb” may even continue desiring to love her and suﬀering from the lovesickness. This ode expresses the insatiable desire and the heartrending lamentation in “Abù Dhu"ayb.”

38 Grunebaum, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Abù Dhu"ayb al-Hudhalì.” He also mentions that Abù Dhu"ayb was not good at the description of a hunt scene.

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Comparison: Pride or Love Although the themes in the two poems reveal common aspects, we have also found diﬀerences that are based on the two poets’ individual and social stances. The major diﬀerence in structure is that Sà'idah’s ode ends with the ﬁnal boasting section, while Abù Dhu"ayb’s consists of only the nasìb. In terms of motifs, the elder poet’s poem contains the gazelle/oryx cow and the rainstorm scene, but the younger’s does not. Instead, Abù Dhu"ayb’s includes the scene of the wine-merchants and their transactions that eventually elevates the value of the beloved. In both poems, the bees and honey with the wine motif are linked to the imagery of the beloved. Both descriptions of the bee and honey-gathering are ekphrastic. The waßf of the bees plays a role as a metaphor for the lost meadow where the personae are restrained in their passion and healed of their lovesickness by drinking the honeyed-wine, while the men’s honey-collecting presents a locus for trial and resolution. The bee descriptions of both poets are similar; analogous similes and scenery show the bees’ industry. By contrast, the two poets create the waßf of the honey-collecting diﬀerently. Sà'idah’s poem is objectiﬁed, while Abù Dhu"ayb shows subjectivity and deep feelings. Sà'idah places his persona both psychologically and physically remote from the poetic object, the collector. Meanwhile, Abù Dhu"ayb identiﬁes his persona with the gatherer and the bees as if the persona were the one experiencing these trials. I infer that one of the reasons for Sà'idah’s objective depiction is that the poet had known that the persona would overcome the trial—for the poet, the description of the trial is undertaken from the psychological stance of the subsequent fakhr. Abù Dhu"ayb’s more subjective description, by contrast, is undertaken from the psychological stance of the nasìb, providing the desperate situation for his honey-collector and renders it emotionally so that he can show the persona’s fervent zeal for honey/the beloved. Parallel to this contrast of objective and subjective viewpoints, the two waßfs of the same motif, the honey collecting, indicate diﬀerent functions on a deeper and more complicated level. In both poems, the waßf represents simultaneously the quest for sexuality and the beloved and the trial to leave oﬀ the memory of her. However, the ra˙ìl-like function of Sà'idah’s waßf stands as a step to the higher phase, the boasting of his tribe, whereas Abù Dhu"ayb’s description

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works to intensify his quest for the beloved, by reconﬁrming her charm as well as his longing for it. The resolution of Sà'idah’s honeycollector is to forget about his mistress, whereas that of the younger poet’s collector is to pursue his self-destructive love. The description of the bees and honey acts positively on Sà'idah’s persona in terms of its role of curing and restraining the passion, but the same motif operates diﬀerently on Abù Dhu"ayb’s persona—namely, it works more intensely in its function of yearning for immortality. Linked intimately to the themes, the structure of the two poems is dissimilar. In Sà'idah’s work it is not diﬃcult for the reader to understand his poetic scheme, because he elucidates the important transitional points. He declares that the persona still loves his beloved, but determines to leave the memory of his beloved by saying that the evening has gone. In the morning, the persona goes to a tribal battle and boasts of his tribe with the description of the victorious war scene. By contrast, a deep melancholic tone predominates throughout Abù Dhu"ayb’s ode. It is indeed emotional, and the mental state of its persona does not change greatly. He tries to move upward, getting out of the morass of diﬃculties. However, he cannot, or he may not desire to. He rather wants to be immersed in the world of his beloved or the lost meadow for good. In this chapter, we have conﬁrmed again that the physical and mimetic description can convey a larger concept in a metaphorical, symbolic, and metonymic manner. Furthermore, we have witnessed that one and the same theme, the bee and honey-collecting, functions very diﬀerently in the structural and thematic framework of an entire ode, according to the poet’s poetic enterprise. So, the waßf is not merely the minute and accurate description of nature. The waßf is poetically ﬂexible and serviceable, showing its complicated and profound functions. All waßfs in the qaßìdahs are not disjointed nor compartmentalized; rather they are fully integrated, through symbolic and metonymic relations, into the overarching semantic structure of the poem. All the symbolic signiﬁcations of the texts we have examined are elicited from the cultural codes and the life-world of the original audience of the two poems. The ekphrasis of the bee and the honey-gathering becomes meaningful only after the contextualization of the poems in the structural code of the qaßìdah form. Further contextualization provides us another dimension to explain the contrast between the two poems: why does Sà'idah choose pride,

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whereas Abù Dhu"ayb chooses love? Sà'idah’s nasìb is the overture to victory or boasting, whereas Abù Dhu"ayb’s nasìb or the whole ode reveals stagnation which has no destination nor way out. Abù Dhu"ayb is pulled down to unexpected death (l. 6) and never ascends to the end of the ode, or he would rather wish to keep dreaming about Asmà". It can be assumed that this diﬀerence is caused by the two poets’ surroundings; Abù Dhu"ayb lived through the drastic vicissitudes of the Mukha∂ram age in its literary as well as political aspects, whereas Sà'idah enjoyed the ﬁrmly-established values and signiﬁcance of tribalism and the qaßìdah tradition without undergoing the transition following the advent of the Prophet Mu˙ammad and the Qur"àn. In his comparative analysis of the Mu'allaqah of Labìd, another Mukha∂ram poet, and Abù Dhu"ayb’s renowned elegy for his sons,39 Kamal Abu-Deeb points out that Abù Dhu"ayb, who composed his poem after Islam, does not conceive of the tribe or communal system as a force of preservation of life and continuity. Abu-Deeb suggests that the dark vision of reality and the ultimate power of death shown in Abù Dhu"ayb’s ode may have been generated by the loss of the tribe as a physical and symbolic unit which maintained his and his ancestors’ value system.40 Abù Dhu"ayb may not have found a sense of continuity and a system of beliefs in the new Muslim community. Abù Dhu"ayb’s despair, caused by these socio-historical vicissitudes, prevented him from emulating the heroic quest of Sà'idah’s poem, which embodies both physically and conceptually a well-established ideal institution. Nonetheless, Abù Dhu"ayb successfully expresses his heartrending love instead. I will, hence, conclude by suggesting that while the pre-Islamic qaßìdah provides the shared literary idiom for both the pre-Islamic and Mukha∂ram poets, the formal and stylistic diﬀerences suggest that with the changes in concepts of loyalty and leadership that accompanied the coming of Islam the full tribal qaßìdah may have entered a period of crisis.

39

The ode is found in al-Sukkarì, Kitàb Shar˙ Ash'àr al-Hudhaliyyìn, 1: 4–14. Kamal Abu-Deeb, “Toward A Structural Analysis of Pre-Islamic Poetry,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (1975), 178–79. 40

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CHAPTER THREE

REALITY AND REVERIE: WINE AND EKPHRASIS IN THE 'ABBÀSID POETRY OF ABÙ NUWÀS AND AL-BUÓTURÌ*

Having left the waßfs of natural objects––the horse, the bee and honey-gathering––behind, we enter the world of ekphrasis in its modern conception, the verbal representation of non-verbal texts. That is, the domain of ekphrasis in its broader meaning, clear and distinct description of any object, now takes a step forward into the domain of ekphrasis in the sphere of interarts and intermedial studies. Our ﬁrst concern of interartistic relevance lies in the waßfs of visual arts produced under the 'Abbàsid reign of the Islamic era. In the Arabo-Islamic tradition, poetry—“licit magic”—as well as the visual arts and music all express artistic powers that are supposed to be in conﬂict with the Almightiness of God. Only God is to possess all power and might. Nevertheless, poetry, particularly the qaßìdat al-mad˙ (panegyrical ode), was allowed to ﬂourish in the tradition, because it gloriﬁed and exalted the mamdù˙s (patron-rulers) who were legitimized by God, whereas music and painting (considered unlawful in Islam) were actively discouraged.1 Above all, the idea that painting is unlawful in Islam is widely accepted.2 Therefore, it is relatively rare for us to encounter qaßìdahs containing the renditions of paintings or other kinds of visual art, but there are such poems of non-Arabic motifs or by poets who are of non-Arab descent. Due to the fact that both the qaßìdah and the visual portrait serve to legitimize a ruler while preserving the social and cultural values

* An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, Providence, R. I., November 1996, and appeared as Akiko Motoyoshi, “Reality and Reverie: Wine and Ekphrasis in the 'Abbàsid Poetry of Abù Nuwàs and al-Bu˙turì,” Annals of the Japan Association for Middle East Studies 14 (1999): 85–120. 1 See Johann Christoph Bürgel, The Feather of Simurgh: The “Licit Magic” of the Arts in Medieval Islam (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 1–4. 2 See Creswell, 159–66.

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of the monarchy, in the Arabo-Islamic tradition the qaßìdah played a role that corresponds to the function of visual portraiture in Western court culture.3 This function of the qaßìdah was crucial for the ruler to maintain the support of his subjects and to uphold the dignity of legitimate Islamic sovereignty. Additionally, it can be assumed that the aversion to painting in Islam helped the qaßìdah tradition to develop and prosper, because the Arabo-Islamic political institution required some means other than visual portraiture to maintain the perfect image of the rulership, by which a sense of its greatness and authenticity could spread throughout the realm. This means was the qaßìdat al-mad˙. In this chapter, I deal with the qaßìdahs of visual arts, a design on a wine goblet and of a wall painting by the two 'Abbàsid poets Abù Nuwàs and al-Bu˙turì. These two odes are considered excellent qaßìdahs by Arab critics. Their ekphrastic objects were related to Sàsànian (Persian) history, and Abù Nuwàs was of Persian descent. The waßfs of a design on a wine cup and of a wall painting are of man-made objects and “texts” (in a semiotic sense). The description of visual art objects can be classiﬁed under the modern meaning of ekphrasis, “the verbal representation of real or ﬁctitious texts composed in a non-verbal sign system.”4 The waßfs concern particularly the relationship between poetry and painting, which has been studied substantially in the Western literary tradition. For my examination of the ekphrasis in this chapter, I rely on the theoretical approaches to the ekphrasis of the Shield of Achilles in the Homeric Iliad by Andrew Sprague Becker.5 My concern in this chapter is the role of ekphrasis in association with the notion of reality, reverie, and wine. I show that the persona’s

3 See Suzanne Stetkevych, “The Qaßìdah and the Poetics of Ceremony: Three 'Ìd Panegyrics to the Cordoban Caliphate,” in Languages of Power in Islamic Spain, ed. Ross Brann, Occasional Publications of the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Program of Jewish Studies, Cornell University, vol. 3 (Bethesda: CDL Press, 1997), 25. She also maintains that the panegyric qaßìdah in the Arabo-Islamic tradition is comparable to royal portraiture in the European context, 27. 4 This deﬁnition is by Claus Clüver. The description of the wine cup and the wall painting by our Arab poets also ﬁt the understanding of ekphrasis by Spitzer and Heﬀernan, “the verbal representation of the visual art works.” For further discussion on the deﬁnitions of ekphrasis, see pp. 11–14 in the Introduction. 5 Andrew Sprague Becker, The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littleﬁeld Publishers, 1995).

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psychological states shift between reality and reverie as they move into and out of the spheres of visual objects and of intoxication. I analyze the qaßìdah of Abù Nuwàs (747/762–815), “A†làl Óànah” (The Ruins of a Tavern),6 and the qaßìdah of al-Bu˙turì (821–97), “Ìwàn Kisrà” (The Palace of the Sàsànian Sovereigns). I have selected these two qaßìdahs because of their common aspects: the employment of ekphrastic and wine motifs and of the motif of the Sàsànians. I investigate the functions of the waßfs in relation to a structural analysis focusing on the bipartite structure of nasìb-madì˙ or the tripartite organization of qaßìdat al-mad˙: nasìb (elegiac prelude), ra˙ìl (the journey of the poet through the desert and his mount, the she-camel), and madì˙ (panegyric). The classical Arabic commentators and traditional Orientalists may have denied the minute depiction of visual objects in the two qaßìdahs any deeper function than presenting what is described, since they relegated the qaßìdah to “a plane of nonaesthetic, nonexperiential, merely culturally descriptive usefulness.”7 Hideaki Sugita, after his thorough comparative investigation of the depiction of visual works of art in Arabic and Persian poetry (including the two poems I deal with in this chapter), more recently concluded that the Arabic qaßìdah shows “practical realism” for its descriptive quality, in contrast to Persian poetry, which exhibits “fantastic symbolism.”8 Beyond this, I argue in this chapter as well that the waßf plays an important thematic and structural role in a more complicated manner than mere “description.” In the case of these two poets’ qaßìdahs, the waßf or ekphrasis functions as madì˙ for the Sàsànian kings without an explicit expression of praise. The two poets manipulate

6 The term qaßìdah is usually deﬁned according to its length, that is, between ﬁfteen and eighty lines, as stated earlier. In this light, Abù Nuwàs’s ode, consisting of eight lines, is not considered a qaßìdah but rather a khamriyyah (wine poem). Nevertheless, I would view his poem in terms of thematic and structural aspects as a condensed qaßìdah. It neither contains the subtlety of wine poems nor shows a monothematic poetic form as a conventional khamriyyah does. Rather, this poem evokes a fuller, longer qaßìdah by alluding to its tripartite and polythematic form. For Abù Nuwàs’s other khamriyyàt, see Philip F. Kennedy, The Wine Song in Classical Arabic Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 7 Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Arabic Poetry,” 116. 8 Hideaki Sugita, Jibutsu no koe, kaiga no shi (The Voice of Things and the Poetry of Painting) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1993), 247–48, 409–10.

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the ekphrastic force of the description diﬀerently, but both utilize ekphrasis in order to traverse the boundary between the world of reality and the world of reverie. I suggest that Abù Nuwàs’s poem moves in one direction, from reverie to reality, while al-Bu˙turì’s moves in the opposite direction. In both poems, wine serves as a facilitator of this movement, blurring the distinction between the two worlds. When I say reality and reverie, I am characterizing the persona’s state of mind—in reality, the persona sees and thinks of things that truly exist, while in reverie the persona views and thinks of things in his imagination. My approach follows three steps: 1. thematic and structural exploration based on the qaßìdah conventions, 2. theoretical discussion of ekphrasis and psychoanalytical examination, and 3. analysis of the poem’s structural intent in relation to the poets’ socio-political surroundings. I ﬁrst investigate closely each of the two qaßìdahs in light of ekphrasis or waßf as madì˙ within the conventional tripartite structure. I next show how ekphrasis and wine are linked to the notion of reality and reverie in a comparative study of the two 'Abbàsid odes. Finally, I intend to explore how the poetic structure of these two qaßìdahs reﬂects the poets’ political situations.

Ekphrasis as Madì˙ Al-Óasan b. Hàni" al-Óakamì, known as Abù Nuwàs (747/762–815) is one of the most famous poets of the 'Abbàsid era, renowned for his song on wine and pederasty. He was born in al-Ahwàz and died in Baghdad. His father belonged to the army of the last Umayyad, Marwàn II, and his mother was Persian. When he was still young, the poet moved to al-Baßrah and later to al-Kùfah. He received his education from a number of poets and grammarians, and is reported to have spent some time among bedouins to strengthen his linguistic knowledge. He then came to Baghdad for the purpose of obtaining the favor of the caliph with panegyrics. Having been unsuccessful in this attempt, he instead found favor in the Barmakids’ eyes. Because of the decline of the Barmakids, he ﬂed to Egypt where he composed panegyrics on al-Kha†ìb b. 'Abd al-Óamìd. The poet later came back to Baghdad and won the favor of the caliph al-Amìn as his boon companion. During these most glorious years of his life,

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nevertheless, even al-Amìn forbade him wine and imprisoned him for his drinking habit.9 The qaßìdah of Abù Nuwàs, “The Ruins of a Tavern (A†làl Óànah),” though characterized by its terse eight lines which prompted the editor to term it a qi†'ah (short poem or fragment), is widely known and recited. A˙mad 'Abd al-Majìd al-Ghazàlì, in his commentary on Dìwàn Abì Nuwàs, prefaces the poem: “Accompanied by his companions, Abù Nuwàs passed by al-Madà"in, the residence of the Sàsànian Kings, where he found one of their taverns. Nothing remained of it save its ruins.”10

“A†làl Óànah” by Abù Nuwàs11 1.

Many an abode, whose drinking companions forsook it and set out at nightfall, still bears their traces, both recent and old:

2.

A trail where a wine jar was dragged on the ground, and bunches of basil boughs, fresh ones and dry.

3.

I detained my companions there; I renewed my pledge to them. Indeed I am one who detains his companions at [places] such as this.

4.

I did not know who they were [that had dwelt there], except for what the deserted abodes in the east of Sàbà† testiﬁed.12

9 Information on Abù Nuwàs in this paragraph is largely taken from Ewald Wagner, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s. v. “Abù Nuwàs.” 10 Al-Óasan ibn Hànì" Abù Nuwàs, Dìwàn Abì Nuwàs, ed. A˙mad 'Abd al-Majìd al-Ghazàlì (Beirut: Dàr al-Kitàb al-'Arabì, 1966), 37. 11 Ibid. See the Appendix for the Arabic text. 12 Íàbà† is a Persian city near al-Madà"in.

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   5.

We stayed there for one day, another day, a third day, while the next day was the day of departure.13

6.

The wine is passed round among us in a golden wine cup which a Persian has decorated with all sorts of pictures:

7.

On the bottom, inside of the cup, is Kisrà; On its sides, an oryx that horsemen are hunting with bows.

8.

“The wine, [pour it] up to where the collars are buttoned; The water, [pour it] up to their caps!”

97

This poem opens with the description of the ruins of a tavern in Ctesiphon. Ctesiphon was called al-Madà"in, the ancient city of Kisrà. The Arabs usually identiﬁed Kisrà with the Sàsànid rulers because the two Kisràs, Kisrà Anùshirwàn (531–79) and Kisrà Aparwìz (591–628), dominated the late Sàsànid period.14 The Sàsànid was a pre-Islamic Persian dynasty that ruled a large part of western Asia from 224 C.E. until 651 C.E. Lines 1–4 present the nasìb mood, imagining the age of the tavern by recognizing old and recent traces in the a†làl or ruins. The a†làl motif is one of the highly established qaßìdah conventions—the persona usually laments over past, unrequited love on the ruins of his beloved’s abode. In the ﬁrst two lines, the poet speaks about drinking companions from the time when the Sàsànid dynasty ﬂourished, particularly in the sixth century C.E. In

13 Lines 6–7 use the present tense in the Arabic text, and logically and grammatically, line 5 casts the rest of the poem into the past tense. However, the eﬀect of the imperfect in line 6 and 7 gives us a feeling of the past being relived much as the use of historical present does in English. 14 See M. Morony, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Kisrà.”

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depicting the vestiges found in the a†làl of the tavern, the trail of a wine jar and bundles of herbs, he reminisces about the Sàsànians. ˇibàq (antithesis) is found in the ﬁrst two lines—a recent trace and an old trace (l. 1), fresh and dry bundles of basil (l. 2). These antitheses suggest the poet’s intention to reduce the temporal distance between his time and that of the Sàsànians. The old trace and the dry basil present a vestige of the Sàsànians, whereas the recent trace and the fresh basil could have been left by people who had just recently visited. “Abù Nuwàs” recollects, or rather imagines, the Sàsànian pomp that is now past, transporting himself back to the splendor of the Sàsànian Kings and their boon companions. The persona states that he does not know anything about the people who used to reside there, except for what the deserted abodes testify (l. 4). The sole entities that can attest to them are the deserted abodes. The abodes, however, cannot tell much, for they are merely ruins. “Abù Nuwàs” is engrossed in the mood of loss and yearning, which is the main theme of the nasìb.15 The persona and his companions stayed for four days at the Ìwàn Kisrà where the tavern was located and then departed (l. 5), which suggests the ra˙ìl, journey. It should be noted that here, as is increasingly the case in 'Abbàsid poetry, the ra˙ìl is only alluded to in the nasìb-motif of departure. The poet then begins to present a drinking scene and describes a golden wine cup which was made by a Persian. Here an ekphrastic technique is employed. Abù Nuwàs describes ﬁgures of Kisrà or Khusraw and his horsemen’s oryx-hunt incised on a golden goblet. At the end of the qaßìdah, the persona pours wine and water into the goblet. The ﬁgures of Kisrà and his horsemen hunting an oryx can be interpreted as a panegyric to the Sàsànians, for such images of the ruler and the hunt are conventions of the madì˙ of the classical qaßìdah form. Moreover, according to M. Morony, for the Arabs, “Kisrà was a poetic symbol of past glory and fate that overtakes even mighty kings.” The Arabs viewed Kisrà with admiration and awe for his splendor and valor. The great audience hall in Ctesiphon, the Ìwàn Kisrà, was well-known by the Arab people: they spoke of the crown, treasure, dazzling carpet, sword and armor of Kisrà, and golden

15

See Jaroslav Stetkevych, Zephyrs, 2.

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tableware with lavish hospitality.16 Though the description of the wine cup is denotative and brief with merely one line (l. 7), for the reader in the 'Abbàsid time the line is powerful enough to elicit the heroic, splendid image of Kisrà. Scenes of royal hunting are characteristically Sàsànian subjects and motifs engraved on silver plates or other sorts of materials. They are usually rendered with “ribbons attached as symbols to speciﬁc animals, birds, and plants,” or “jeweled bands placed around the necks of animals and birds.”17 By the repetitive use of the motif by Sàsànian artists, the motif of royal hunting was diﬀused and inﬂuenced not only among peoples living in neighboring areas but also those distant from Iran.18 Kisrà thus embodied a symbol of Persian high culture and represented the Persian sovereign in lists of kings of the world.19 Therefore, we can speculate that the terse denotation is capable of stimulating the original readers, the 'Abbàsid Arabs, to imagine the brave picture of the Sàsànian royalty. This employment of Persian elements as poetic objects is to be associated with the Shu'ùbiyyah movement of the eighth and ninth centuries C.E., when a group of authors and scholars claimed equality for non-Arabs with Arabs in Islam and even suggested the superiority of Persian to Arab culture. In fact, most of the Shu'ùbìs were Persians who developed the movement based on a pro-Persian and anti-Arab ideology.20 In his poetry, Abù Nuwàs, whose mother was Persian, would often adopt not only Persian words and motifs, but also refer to the heroes of Persian history.21 Though he is not usually considered a poet of the Shu'ùbiyyah, his employment of the Persian motif in “A†làl Óànah” reﬂects the background of the era in which the Shu'ùbiyyah movement began to dominate the culture of 'Abbàsid society. This context also enables us to read the ekphrasis of Kisrà’s hunting as praise of the Sàsànid rulership. Considered together with the nasìb and ra˙ìl motifs that precede

16

M. Morony, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Kisrà.” Prudence Oliver Harper, The Royal Hunter: Art of the Sasanian Empire (New York: The Asia Society, 1978), 17. Harper shows a number of actual ﬁgures and designs of the hunting scene on various materials in her book. 18 See ibid. 19 M. Morony, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Kisrà.” 20 See S. Enderwitz, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “shu'ùbiyyah.” 21 Ewald Wagner, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Abù Nuwàs.” 17

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the ekphrastic motif, I argue that Abù Nuwàs subtly suggests the conventional tripartite qaßìdah structure by manipulatively setting up the incised motif of the goblet as the madì˙. The description of the golden goblet is situated at the end of the poem after the departure scene. However, the drinking scene seems to have occurred before the departure, and the persona appears to look back on the scene of drinking parties during his stay in the a†làl of the tavern with his boon companions. He places the motif of the golden wine cup near the end of the ode, despite the chronologically inappropriate sequence of the occurrences, thereby achieving a sequence of topics that is consistent with the traditional tripartite structure. In the ﬁnale, an ekphrastic moment is achieved. The poured liquid (wine) halts for a second at the line of the horsemen’s collars, and at that moment merely the faces of the horsemen remain in the goblet. Then the water is added, which covers their caps. This description allows the readers to “see” the object with their inner eyes. That is to say, it is ekphrastic. Moreover, by indicating the liquids’ quantity, the line stresses that the mixture of wine and water should have a lot of wine and only a little water—it is as strong as possible. So the last line suggests the persona’s intent, “Let’s drink and enjoy wine!”

“Ìwàn Kisrà” by al-Bu˙turì 22 The other 'Abbàsid poet, Abù 'Ubàdah al-Walìd b. 'Ubayd al-Bu˙turì (821–97), was born at Manbij into a family belonging to the Bu˙tur, a branch of the ˇayyi". Attracted by al-Bu˙turì’s youthful talent, Abù Tammàm (d. 846), one of the eminent 'Abbàsid poets, encouraged and supported him. After serving several patrons, al-Bu˙turì gained the favor of al-Fat˙ b. Khàqàn, who introduced him to alMutawakkil in approximately 848. In this way he started his brilliant career as court poet. He is said to have been involved in the assassination of al-Mutawakkil and al-Fat˙. In spite of this matter, he

22 Retranslated with close reference to A. J. Arberry’s translation. Arabic text: A. J. Arberry, Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 72–80. See also Abù 'Ubàdah al-Walìd ibn 'Ubayd alBu˙turì al-ˇà"ì, Dìwàn al-Bu˙turì, 5 vols., ed. Óasan Kàmil al-Íìrafì (Cairo: Dàr alMa'àrif, 1963–78), 2: 1152–62. See the Appendix for the Arabic text.

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soon came back with a panegyric of al-Muntaßir, and later composed numerous poems for al-Mu'tazz and other caliphs. The last caliph to whom he dedicated panegyrics was al-Mu'ta∂id. He died in his birthplace after a long illness. In the early days of his career, he wrote poems mostly about his desert wanderings, while, after he became court poet, his main work was the panegyric. The panegyric is embellished with splendid descriptions, in particular, of the palace.23 Now we will examine one of his most famous works, “Ìwàn Kisrà.” 1.

I guarded myself from things that deﬁle me. I held myself aloof from the gift of every coward.

2.

I stood ﬁrm when fate shook me, seeking to bring me ill-luck and overthrow me.

3.

Bare subsistence from the dregs of life is all I have; the days have given me deﬁcient measure.

4.

How diﬀerent is he who goes to water daily for his second drink from him who drinks after three days’ thirsting.

5.

As if capricious fate has come to favor the vilest of the vile.

23 Information on al-Bu˙turì in this paragraph is largely taken from Charles Pellat, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “al-Bu˙turì.”

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6.

In my purchasing Iraq I was duped after my selling al-Sham at a loss.

7.

Do not keep testing me about my experience of this sorrow, so that you deny my calamity.

8.

In the past, you knew me to be a man of quality who disdained lowly things, stubbornly proud.

9.

The remoteness of my cousin disquieted me after his tenderness and kindness.

10.

When I have been treated harshly, you won’t ﬁnd me in the morning where I was the night before.

11.

Cares attended my mount; therefore, I turned my strong she-camel toward the white [palace] of al-Madà"in.

12.

I am consoled for my own bad luck as I grieve for the ruined abode of the Sàsànians.

13.

Continuous misfortunes remind me of them— misfortunes make people remember and forget—

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   14.

When they dwelt in the shadow of a high lofty palace, so dazzling it weakens the eye.

15.

Its gate is closed before the mountain of al-Qabq toward the two uplands of Khilà† and Muks.

16.

Abodes [it has] that were not like the traces of Su'dà [’s encampment] in a wild deserted land.

17.

Heroic deeds [it boasts] which, were it not for my bias [toward the Arabs], the heroic deeds of 'Ans and 'Abs could not surpass.

18.

Fate has removed their age from newness until they have become like worn-out rags,

19.

As if al-Jirmàz were the ediﬁce of a grave because of lack of inhabitants and their forsaking it.

20.

If you had seen it, you would know that the nights had held a funeral in it after a wedding feast.

21.

It informs you of wonders of the people whose clarity was not mixed with any confusion.

103

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104 22.

When you see the picture of Antioch you are in panic between the Byzantine and Persian [armies].

23.

The Fates are standing,24 while Anùshirwàn urges on the ranks beneath his banner,

24.

In green robe over yellow which seems dyed with turmeric,

25.

The battle of ﬁghting men before him, silent, lowering their voices,

26.

Some cautiously advancing with pointed spears, others fearfully protecting themselves with their shields.

27.

The eye describes them as really alive, signalling to one another like the dumb.

28.

My curiosity concerning them increases until I explore and touch them.

29.

Abù al-Ghawth has already given me a drink, generously,

24 “Fates” can be the gods (Mazda, Anahita) that commonly hover above Sàsànian rulers in paintings and rock inscriptions.

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   over the two armies a hasty draught 30.

Of a wine you would say was a star that irradiates the night, or the saliva of a sun.

31.

You see it reviving the happiness and peacefulness of him who sips it.

32.

It is poured into the glass of every heart; and it is the beloved of every soul.

33.

I imagined that Kisrà Abarwìz was oﬀering me [the wine] and that al-Balahbadh was my boon-companion.

34.

Is this a dream that has closed my eyes to doubt, or desire that has changed my suspicion and uncertainty [to certainty]?

35.

As if the great hall of its wonderful artistry were an open space carved out of the cliﬀ of the mountain,

36.

It is so melancholy that to one coming upon it, whether in the morning or evening, it would seem like

37.

A man disquieted by the departure of the company of a beloved,

105

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dear to him, or oppressed by the divorce of a wife. 38.

Time overturned its good fortune, and Jupiter remained there through the night as an inauspicious star.

39.

But it shows endurance, even though the oppressive breast of fate weighs down upon it.

40.

There is no disgrace in that its broad carpet has been taken away and the curtains of white silk have been plundered.

41.

Lofty, it has battlements raised up on the heads of Ra∂wà and Quds.

42.

They are clothed in white; you can see only cotton tunics.

43.

Nobody knows whether it was built by men for jinn who then resided in it or by jinn for men.

44.

But I see it testifying that its builders are among the kings who were not insigniﬁcant,

45.

As though I saw the processions of the warriors

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   when I reached the limit of my perception, 46.

As though the delegations were standing under the sun, tired of standing behind the crowd, waiting,

47.

As though the singing-girls in the midst of the pavilions were singing through dark lips or red,

48.

As though the encounter were the day before yesterday and the hasty parting only yesterday,

49.

As though he who desires to follow them yearns to catch up with them on the morning of the ﬁfth day.

50.

It remained prosperous and happy for a time; then their abodes became a place for condolence and consolation.

51.

The only succor I can oﬀer it is tears deeded to be forever shed out of passion.

52.

That is how I feel, though the abode is not mine by blood kinship. Its race is not my race,

53.

Except for the good deed of her people to my people;

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they have planted the seeds of a lasting bond. 54.

They supported our sovereignty and strengthened its power by brave horsemen under the protection of armor.

55.

They aided us against Aryà†’s troops by the stabbing and piercing of throats.

56.

I ﬁnd myself after that fully in love with the nobles altogether from every race and origin.

In the opening, the ode presents the persona’s lament over his past misfortune, a traditional theme of the nasìb. The misfortune was largely caused by his past patron, Caliph al-Muntaßir (r. 861–62), as we learn in line 9 from the word “my cousin” which refers to the caliph’s ancestral tribe, the Banù 'Adnàn, who are “cousins” to the poet’s ancestral tribe, the Banù Qa˙†àn.25 He blames the caliph for having treated him harshly and for not having oﬀered him even suﬃcient money to live (l. 3). In fact, al-Bu˙turì was deserted by alMuntaßir. The caliph is like one who enjoys his second drink of water every day, while the persona is like one who drinks it only once every fourth day (l. 4), a metaphor from bedouin life that alludes to the caliph’s avarice toward his kinsman. Since generosity is considered one of the crucial elements of nobility in Arabo-Islamic culture, the mentioning of the caliph’s stinginess expresses the persona’s profound resentment of the caliph. He regrets that he came to Baghdad, having left al-Shàm (Damascus) (l. 6). His entreaty to al-Muntaßir not to test him any more underscores his misery. His melancholic lament over his past misfortune shows a parallel with the traditional nasìb theme, weeping over the desolate ruins.

25

Arberry, Arabic Poetry, 74.

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After the nasìb section, ﬁlled as it is with his grief and complaint, the ra˙ìl section—again, in keeping with its diminished 'Abbàsid role—consists in explicit terms of one line only, line 11. It nevertheless functions with great poetic force and concision. The poet carries his grief over to a decayed abode of the House of Sàsàn. Usually, when a panegyric poet departs to his destination, he carries himmah (aspiration) for his mamdù˙ (patron), and not the humùm (cares) that attend the persona’s mount in his ra˙ìl. Although the two words are derived from the same root, hmm, the meanings are quite dissimilar. These cares forewarn the reader that the speaker’s journey may deviate from the conventional teleological ra˙ìl. And indeed, we soon realize that, to assuage the cares that accompany his mount, he turns not toward a mamdù˙, but to the white palace of al-Madà"in, the ruined palace of the Sàsànian king Khusraw. Where the structural connections of the qaßìdah would lead us to expect a madì˙ (panegyric) to a contemporary mamdù˙ (patron), the poet places instead an extended ekphrasis, thus ironically generating hijà" (satire, invective), which I will discuss later. After a brief ra˙ìl, al-Bu˙turì begins to describe the ruins of alMadà"in. Although the a†làl is a nasìb convention, the depiction of the ruins is structurally situated here in the ra˙ìl. In the nasìb, he expresses his sorrow and grief, while in the ra˙ìl he thinks of the age of Sàsànian splendor as evoked by its a†làl. However, the poet appears to desire to present the a†làl motif, in spite of its location in the ra˙ìl, for the sake of his upcoming “madì˙” for the Sàsànian king. In addition, his sorrow for his misfortune caused by his former patron resonates in his grief over the ruined abode of the Sàsànians; both the poet and the Sàsànians were crowned with glory in the past, while their present is sadly desolate. The delineation of the wall painting (ll. 22–27) can be regarded as panegyric for the Sàsànians in light of both theme and structure. That is, what begins as part of a journey through a wasteland (ra˙ìl ) becomes gradually the poet’s goal and the subject of his madì˙ (praise). The wall painting presents the scene of the Battle of Antioch, which occurred in 540 between the Sàsànians and the Byzantines. The nasìb and ra˙ìl precede the ekphrasis of the battle scene. The battle scene, where the valor and might of the Sàsànian ruler, Khusraw or Kisrà Anùshirwàn, are dynamically presented, signiﬁes eulogy for the king, like Abù Nuwàs’s use of ekphrasis, but with a diﬀerent motif.

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In the beginning of the depiction of the wall painting, al-Bu˙turì invites the reader to behold it (l. 22). The commentary of al-Íìrafì informs that al-Bu˙turì visited al-Madà"in and actually saw the wall painting before his composition of the poem in 271 A.H./884–85 C.E. The poet shows how realistic the picture is, to the extent that the reader would be fearful to behold it. Then the poet moves to the description of the pictorial objects—Anùshirwàn, his colored outﬁt, and his enemies. Al-Bu˙turì ﬁrst focuses on the king’s dashing ﬁgure and then on the Byzantine soldiers’ actions. After the ekphrasis, the persona’s son pours wine for him. The persona drinks wine and immerses himself further in the world of reverie. If we consider the description of the painting as the beginning of the madì˙, the rest of the poem should also be the madì˙. However, nasìb elements, such as the wine and a†làl motifs, occur as well, so that the poet achieves an unusual hybrid of the martial and heroic motifs of the madì˙ with the nostalgic and melancholic mood of the nasìb. The speaker fancies that he is Anùshirwàn and his son is Kisrà Aparwìz, Anùshirwàn’s son (l. 33). Then the melancholy of the deserted Ìwàn is presented by personifying it as a man who is compelled to divorce his bride (l. 37). The melancholic tone of the nasìb, in which the persona complains about his previous patron, recurs once more in this “madì˙” section. “Melancholy” in line 36 shows that the speaker has not overcome his sorrow even in the madì˙, after coming through the nasìb and ra˙ìl. Usually, the poet presents boasting, reunion, or something invigorating in the madì˙. Even the power of wine is helpless to stimulate him. This return to the nasìb tone conﬁrms the meaning of humùm (cares), signifying reiteration and aimlessness, as was discussed earlier. The poet still wanders around. The psychological focus of the persona remains on his misfortune and ill luck. In order to forget the sorrow and turn away from it, “al-Bu˙turì” appears to immerse himself in the marvelous and magniﬁcent environment of the Sàsànian era which exists in his world of reverie through his intoxication and the image of the painting. At the same time, by mixing his melancholy with the description of the buildings and their desolate state, the persona identiﬁes his demoralized and solitary situation with the deserted ruins which used to be prosperous (ll. 35–38). Yet al-Bu˙turì gradually deepens the tone of panegyric, although he keeps neither too close nor too far

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away from the tone of eulogy, being constantly involved in nasìb elements. In other words, he goes back and forth repeatedly between the nasìb and the madì˙, and because of the mixture it is very hard to say which prevails. For example, in line 35, the persona celebrates the amazing workmanship of the Ìwàn, and immediately thereafter he mentions his melancholy. The Ìwàn meant, for the 'Abbàsid audience, the marvellous hall on the ground ﬂoor, opening through a high arched entrance, onto a courtyard in Kisrà’s palace, that is, a symbol of the glory of the Sàsànids. Hence, the poem features a vacillation representing the persona’s psychological state. As the speaker’s intoxication heightens, the poem securely approaches true madì˙. The phrase, “when I reached the limit of my perception,” suggests that he sees hallucinations of the ranks of the Sàsànian people, singing girls, and the compartments, as his intoxication attains its peak (ll. 45–47). We can say that the power of the wine helps to take the speaker to madì˙ proper. That is, the persona has recourse to the intoxicating eﬀect of wine to ﬁnd his goal because he is lost. Al-Bu˙turì started his ode with the persona’s complaint over his defeat by his former patron and then aimed at the glory of the Sàsànians instead of that of a new patron. Through the deviation from the traditional qaßìdah, both in form and in theme, he presents an indirect hijà" (satire, invective) against the 'Abbàsid Dynasty,26 for which he is supposed to be a panegyrist. At the same time, he projects his guilt over both his deviation from the poetic tradition and not composing panegyrics for the 'Abbàsid Dynasty. This guilt makes the persona vacillate and wander around without having a goal until he seeks a recourse in wine. Finally, after all the vacillations, wandering about, and hallucinations, “al-Bu˙turì” reaches the rightful madì˙, starting at line 52. The ultimate expression of the proper madì˙ is al-Bu˙turì’s proclamation that “my ode is the Arabic qaßìdah.”27 He displays his individuality

26 See Richard Serrano, “Al-Bu˙turì’s Poetics of Persian Abodes,” Journal of Arabic Literature 28, no. 1 (1997): 68–87. Serrano also argues, “al-Bu˙turì transforms the trope of the abandoned encampment into a vehicle for harsh criticism of the Arab culture of his own day.” He goes on to say, “the traces of the encampment become a reconstructed imperial Persian city which both precedes and nearly precludes the abandoned encampment as a source for an 'Abbàsid poetics,” 69. 27 Gian Biagio Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets, trans. ed. Charles Segal (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

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rather than his traditionality in this ode, which accounts for his great deviation from the traditional form and theme. The presentation of the proper madì˙ in the end is his manifestation of the desire to prove his victory and to certify himself as a poet of the qaßìdah. Nonetheless, eulogizing the past glory of the Sàsànians instead of the currently ruling 'Abbàsids implies the decline of the latter. He does not want to admit his defeat, which triggered the ﬁrst deviation in the ode, nor explicitly acknowledge the decline of the 'Abbàsids. That is why he chose an indirect way to defame them. His persona does not wish to face the severe reality in terms of both his personal (misfortune) and public reality (the decay of the 'Abbàsids). His goal is a past glory that no longer exists. This ode cannot completely escape from the concept of the qaßìdah of the losers that shows structural nonteleology with disjunction and digression.28 The closing line attempts to synthesize contemporary 'Abbàsid decline with past Sàsànian glory by going beyond distinctions of race and chronology to express his admiration of nobility from any age or race.

Reality and Reverie—Condensation and Stimulus of Ekphrasis Both waßfs of the visual motifs of Abù Nuwàs and al-Bu˙turì achieve enargeia, that is, they transform the reader into a viewer. Though Abù Nuwàs’s ekphrasis is composed of brief denotation, it is still forceful enough for the reader to elicit the image of the Sàsànian nobility and bravery through the depiction of the hunting scene in which Kisrà and his horsemen hunt an oryx with bows. The indication of the material of the goblet, gold, helps the reader to visualize

1986), 70. Conte maintains that if a poem exhibits the traditional poetic opening of its cultural tradition, it means that the poetry asserts “This is Poetry.” Although here al-Bu˙turì’s ode does not suggest that “my ode is the Arabic qaßìdah” by using the opening line, it suggests so more by its structure. 28 David Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), part 1, chapt. 4. Analyzing epics of Lucan (65 C.E.), Ercilla, and d’Aubigné, Quint argues that the epics of the defeated are nonteleological and exhibit narrative disjunction and episodic digression, in contrast to the epics of the victors, which are informed by teleology. Although Quint’s study is based on classical Western epics, the qaßìdah is likewise characterized by a coherent thematic-structural development directed at a goal, showing the teleology. I am aware that the Arabic qaßìdah is not narrative, but in terms of its tripartite structure, al-Bu˙turì’s poem shows disjunction and digression.

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the referent. The impact of the image is increased by the presentation of the spatial arrangement of the ﬁgures inside the vessel: On the bottom is Kisrà, and on its sides are horsemen. For the original reader, the single word “Kisrà” embodied the Sàsànian might and glory, as discussed above. The ending line is sophisticated: as the wine is ﬁlled up to the horsemen’s collars and then the water up to their caps. The described ﬁgures gradually vanish, and the world of the persona or reality and the world evoked by the ekphrasis merge and integrate. Al-Bu˙turì’s ekphrasis is more extensive and elaborate than that of Abù Nuwàs. On the occasion that the persona says, “when you see the picture of Antioch,” by mentioning “see,” the speaker already signals to the readers that this message appeals to the eyes, not the ears. Empathy is elicited in the reader when the describer shows his fearful response to the ﬁerce ﬁghting between the Byzantines and Persians, that is, his response to the referent. The indication of colors in Kisrà’s robe, green and yellow, speciﬁcally a yellow color of turmeric, reveals visible features, which increases the quality of enargeia. With the soldiers’ “silence,” the poem reinforces the silence of the painting which is by nature silent. The description of the ﬁgures’ movement and their arms (spears and shields) also emphasizes the depiction (l. 26).29 Line 27 states, “The eye describes them [the ﬁgures] as really alive.” This narrating “eye” stresses the visual quality of the painting: the ﬁgures in the painting are “alive” (l. 27) because they communicate, but since painted ﬁgures cannot talk, they communicate by gesture. The ode reaﬃrms their “dumbness.” Meanwhile, the painting itself oﬀers speech as represented through gesture, a detail of visual representation that makes its verbal representation not only clear and distinct, but also more lively and convincing. Some theories of rhetorical enargeia associate its realization with a state of “illusion” that the describer aims to produce in the reader’s mind. According to Becker, the Greek handbooks of rhetoric also suggest that the two distinct features of ekphrasis, clarity and vividness, are aimed at achieving unmediated access to visible phenomena; the illusion can be generated by a “transparency of language” that leaves a hearer unconscious of the verbal means.30

29 30

See Becker, 33. Ibid., 25, 27.

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Abù Nuwàs’s ekphrasis hardly makes the reader feel the existence of the speaker—he is restrained. In other words, its description is objective and scarcely shows the describer’s response to the object. Becker, using Aelius Theon (a Greek rhetorician, maintained that the absence of explicit interpretation in ekphrasis contributes to achieving the desired transparency of language), claims that in rhetorical ekphrasis, “the describer encourages the audience to accept the illusion and, in so doing, diminishes attention to the medium or language and the mediator’s experience.”31 Although explicit interpretation is almost absent in Abù Nuwàs’s ekphrasis—we sense the description, but not the world described—the description does not seem to create the illusion. This can be in part accounted for by its concision. However, it is possible that a contemporary audience would supply much information that a modern reader does not possess, so that the description may have appeared to them much more complete and thus may possibly have come closer to achieving an illusion. They would have known such visual representations on other goblets, and the compressing power of the waßf with its intertextual implications will have evoked the memory of the glorious Sàsànians. Unlike the description in Abù Nuwàs’s poem, al-Bu˙turì’s depiction of the wall painting is subjective, and the reader can sense the existence of the describer. Nevertheless, his ekphrasis comes closer to creating an illusion for the reader than that of the earlier poem. Contrary to what Aelius Theon argued, other rhetorical handbooks implied that an ekphrasis is not only to be a clear and distinct representation of visible phenomena but should also draw the audience’s attention to the response of the describer, which lies between the audience and the world described.32 It is possible to say that alBu˙turì’s description calls attention to the world depicted and to the manner of visual depiction rather than to the description itself, by presenting the persona’s interpretation of the wall painting. By hearing the describer’s interpretation, the reader may come close to experiencing the illusion of mentally seeing, if not the world depicted, then the depiction itself. Again, it is to be assumed that the audience would supply many details from other accounts or paintings of the event they have seen; but with the explicit description provided

31 32

Ibid., 27. Ibid., 29.

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by the speaker, it can be assumed that al-Bu˙turì’s description relies somewhat less on intertextual references than Abù Nuwàs’s. We become aware of another aspect by a comparison of the two ekphrastic descriptions. Abù Nuwàs’s manipulation of the design produces a diﬀerent eﬀect, in his poem, from al-Bu˙turì’s. That is to say, al-Bu˙turì utilizes the painting motif as the introduction to the imaginative world. In al-Bu˙turì’s poem, the painting constitutes the condensation of reverie because it stimulates one’s imagination and draws one into the magniﬁed imaginative world of the painting. In order to excite the imagination, it is necessary for al-Bu˙turì to describe the painting, because it constitutes the foundation of the world of fancy. The foundation should be real, certain, and manifest. The picture is the condensation of the imaginative poetic which extends towards the reverie of the rest of the poetic discourse. Furthermore, al-Bu˙turì takes advantage of these eﬀects of the pictorial motif and employs it as a medium or pivotal point between the world of reality and the world of reverie. As the readers view the picture through the poetic presentation, they cross the boundary between the two worlds. Thus, al-Bu˙turì’s approach moves from actuality to reverie, whereas Abù Nuwàs’s approach is from reverie to reality. If the visual motif constitutes the overture to the imaginative sphere, the wine motif possesses full-scale power to pull the reader into the heart of that sphere. Just after the pictorial description, al-Bu˙turì introduces the wine motif in line 29. However, the use of “qad ” and the mà∂ì (perfect) in line 29 suggests that the persona started to drink wine before the ekphrastic description. That is, wine and ekphrasis mutually increase the power to induce the state of reverie for him. By drinking wine, the persona becomes engrossed in the imaginative world in which he even hallucinates. Likewise, in Abù Nuwàs’s qaßìdah, wine plays an important role. The persona and his companions pass wine around among themselves, while they become absorbed in reﬂecting on the diﬀerent times that left their traces in the ruins. Becker calls “attention to the medium” a “defamiliarization” that awakens the reader from the illusion. Both Abù Nuwàs and al-Bu˙turì bring the eﬀect of “defamiliarization” or “breaking the illusion” into full play at the end of their ekphrastic descriptions.33 Abù Nuwàs 33

Becker, 85.

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draws the reader back to the world of reality in the end of his poem, with line 8: “The wine, [pour it] up to where the collars are buttoned; The water, [pour it] up to their caps!” In other words, the point of contact between the wine cup and the liquid represents the point of contact between reverie and reality, art and life. As for al-Bu˙turì, he recites, “My curiosity concerning them increases until I explore and touch them” (l. 28). Starting with line 22, the poem invites the reader into the world of visual art, the representation of the Battle of Antioch, through ekphrastic technique. Al-Bu˙turì produces the illusion of visual representation. Despite the poet’s achievement in producing the illusion, he himself informs the reader of the existence of the medium, and so breaks the illusion. He is going to touch the picture, which makes the reader realize that what he is viewing is mere illusion, and not real. That is, alBu˙turì spontaneously breaks the illusion that has intoxicated the reader. Al-Bu˙turì succeeds in turning art into life. Nevertheless, he wants to say that “the lifelike image is still a replica,” thereby foregrounding his poetic technique.34 Becker explicates this phenomenon by saying that “identity between depiction and depicted is not the goal—we are explicitly directed not to forget the mediating presence of art.” He also asserts that, by doing so, “the discourse increases the admiration of the audience for the mimetic capabilities of the work of art.” Both al-Bu˙turì and Abù Nuwàs seek to make the reader realize the strength of their verbal power and the mimetic power of the visual art, because the reader is not aware of the world of illusion until the poets signify it by making the objects in the world of reality appear. Becker’s conclusion of the discussion of defamiliarization is that the “celebration of the process, of what art can do, rather than a need for illusion or a struggle for mimetic primacy, characterizes the mode of mimesis in the Iliad and speciﬁcally the Shield of Achilles.”35 Abù Nuwàs and al-Bu˙turì too, I argue, desire to conﬁrm their verbal, i.e., poetic power. Al-Bu˙turì’s “defamiliarizing eﬀect” or “the eﬀect of breaking the illusion” appears subtle because the poet is still in the world of reverie after line 28, though it has a strong impact in traversing reality and

34 35

Ibid., 84. Ibid., 84–85.

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reverie in the concluding section’s structure. Line 29, which follows the defamiliarizing part, introduces the wine motif. As I said before, although wine appears in line 29 after the ekphrasis, the persona and his son, Abù al-Ghawth, began drinking wine before the ekphrasis, as indicated by the use of the perfect tense (l. 29). I believe that al-Bu˙turì places the wine motif after the ekphrasis, despite the fact that he demonstrates clearly that the two were already drunk when wine ﬁrst appears in the poem, because he still wants the speaker to be in the state of reverie. Like Abù Nuwàs, al-Bu˙turì positions the pictorial motif structurally as the madì˙. Lines 1–10 make up the nasìb, and lines 11–21 can be considered to be the ra˙ìl, followed directly by the ekphrastic description. In brief, al-Bu˙turì rigorously follows the conventional tripartite qaßìdah structure, although after the ekphrasis the poem deviates from the conventional form. The pictorial motif of the Battle of Antioch, representing the valor and bravery of Anùshirwàn and his soldiers, is employed as madì˙, panegyric. This employment of ekphrasis as panegyric likewise explains why al-Bu˙turì places the wine motif after the ekphrasis with the use of perfect tense, despite the seemingly inappropriate sequence of the motifs. Furthermore, line 28 is ambiguous, for we do not know if the poet actually touched the picture or not. The tense of the verb, tataqarrà (to explore) after ˙attà (until) is imperfect, not past. Therefore, the poet is still absorbed in the illusion, helped by the power of wine.

Structural Intent The concept of reality and reverie within the investigation of the tripartite structure of the qaßìdahs is intimately associated with the political intent of the poets, particularly for al-Bu˙turì. The structure of the classical Arabic qaßìdah is generally grounded on the real political situation of the poet. A poet stands in the a†làl recalling his memory of the lost love in the nasìb, endures the diﬃcult journey in the ra˙ìl aiming toward his patron, and ﬁnally reaches his destination in the madì˙ praising his mamdù˙. Generally speaking, this sequence is predicated on the poet’s political relationship to his mamdù˙, while the qaßìdah is the expression of an ideal Islamic polity. If the construction follows the regular, conventional sequence, the poet’s political relationship to his patron should be soundly established. By

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contrast, if we ﬁnd the structure irregular or vacillating, the poet’s relationship to his patron should likewise be unstable. Moreover, according to convention the patron is supposed to be alive in order to be praised in the madì˙; otherwise it is regarded as a rithà" (elegy). In both Abù Nuwàs’s and al-Bu˙turì’s poems, praise for bygone Sàsànian glory takes the structural position that the qaßìdah genre normally reserves for praise of the patron. In al-Bu˙turì’s poem such a substitution amounts to a veiled hijà" or invective against the 'Abbàsids, and in Abù Nuwàs’s too, to a hijà" against the 'Abbàsids. In both qaßìdahs the mood of the madì˙ for the Sàsànians is that of the nasìb—melancholy for the lost past. The Sàsànians were a great people who achieved renown and glory, which, however, is now lost. This presentation is closely linked to the Shu'ùbiyyah movement which ﬂourished especially in the eighth and ninth centuries C.E. In that movement, a group of authors and scholars demanded the equality of non-Arabs with Arabs and promoted their own teachings in the literary ﬁeld.36 Moreover, they celebrated the imperial and civilized Persian cultures over the primitive tribalism of Arabs.37 Hence, the “madì˙” for the bygone Sàsànian—instead of the 'Abbàsid— regime in the poems of Abù Nuwàs, who was of half-Persian descent, and of al-Bu˙turì appears to reﬂect the Shu'ùbiyyah movement. The sentiment of the Shu'ùbiyyah movement was ﬂourishing in the age of these two poets, and admiration for the Persian civilization is clearly expressed in their poems. Al-Bu˙turì’s individual grief caused by his hardship and misfortune, i.e., his maltreatment by al-Muntaßir, constitutes a predominant theme in his ode. In light of David Quint’s contention that the “loser’s epic” shows nonnarratable repetition and a nonteleological and aimless structure,38 we can begin to interpret the deviant structure of al-Bu˙turì’s qaßìdah. The poet here is a “loser,” which leads him to compose the loser’s qaßìdah, exhibiting reiteration and aimlessness. It is not the poet who has failed, however; rather, he implies

36 Ignaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies, ed. S. M. Stern. Trans. C. R. Barber and S. M. Stern., 2 vols. (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1967), 137. 37 See S. Enderwitz, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “shu'ùbiyyah.” 38 Quint, 120. Quint mentions “nonnarratable” in the sense of epic because an epic is a narrative. However, in our case of the Arabic qaßìdah, which is lyrical, it is diﬃcult to say that it is a narrative.

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that the state of political decline among the 'Abbàsids/Arabs forces him to seek a worthy subject for his encomium in the bygone glory of the Sàsànians. The poet’s looking to a lost past, rather than to a heroic present or future, creates the predominant nasìb atmosphere throughout the qaßìdah. Jaroslav Stetkevych points out that a poet utilizes the description of the beloved to “turn memory into reverie” as “a ﬂight from the reality of melancholy into the irreality of reverie” in the nasìb. The poet tends to escape from the mood of the nasìb, the melancholy caused by reality, into the sphere of reverie.39 Then, in the madì˙, the poet has his feet on the ground and comes to reality after the sobering journey of the ra˙ìl. In light of this idea, Abù Nuwàs’s qaßìdah begins with reverie, for the poet himself does not know about the Sàsànian kings and people ﬁrst-hand but only imagines them. Abù Nuwàs’s ode is presented in a fairly straightforward manner according to the poetic convention—from reverie to reality. As for al-Bu˙turì’s ode, it opens with his actual reality, grief and complaint concerning his past patron—his unfortunate political state. His poem diametrically contradicts the regular qaßìdah construction, because it starts with reality and ends with reverie. Although al-Bu˙turì arrives at praise of the Sàsànians in the end, this panegyric is ultimately ironic, for the Sàsànians’ glory existed only in the past. Furthermore, the “lyric ‘I’,” which is “a fallacious and predictable ‘I’“ burdened by the Arabic poetic tradition,40 is not found in alBu˙turì’s nasìb (ﬁrst nasìb). His ode’s nasìb is subjective and personal, and its lyric “I” is not a false, but a real “I.” Continuing, Jaroslav Stetkevych maintains, “the naive conception of reality and the unequivocally simple cognitive optic of the pre-Islamic poet’s public, wipe out the limits between the subjective perception of the poet and the objective ‘collateral’ framework of his public.”41 If 'Abbàsid poetics also follows the Jàhilì tradition, the 'Abbàsid panegyric poems are disposed to maintain the fallacious lyrical “I.” Nevertheless, al-Bu˙turì does not conceal his real “I,” as we can ﬁnd a number of “I”s between lines 1 and 13. By contrast, this real “I” does not seem to

39

Jaroslav Stetkevych, Zephyrs, 21. Jaroslav Stetkevych, “The Arabic Lyrical Phenomenon in Context,” Journal of Arabic Literature 6 (1975): 72–73. He argues that the lyrical “I” in the Arabic qaßìdah tradition does not bare the lyrical “persona.” 41 Ibid., 73–74. 40

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appear in the second half of the nasìb (ll. 14–21). The only “I” is found in line 17, and the entire mood of the nasìb is very conventional and collective rather than personal. As for Abù Nuwàs’s poem, unlike al-Bu˙turì’s, the only “I” we ﬁnd is the collective. The contrast—a real “I” and a fallacious “I”—corresponds to subjective versus social. Each of the topoi of the conventional tripartite form indicates not only individuality and subjectivity, but also the publicness of society, memory, emotion, and feelings, i.e., collective memory. For instance, the traditional nasìb shows description of the ruined abode and lost mistress, which can be taken both as an individual memory and as a public/social memory that evolved in the entire tradition and culture. In Abù Nuwàs’s ode, the antithesis can be seen: the subjectivity of the poet and socialness of his society. The a†làl of Ìwàn Kisrà joins both the memory of the poet as individual, and of the society as public, in recollecting the age of the Sàsànians. Furthermore, when the poet says that there are recent and old traces from them [boon companions] in line 1, he suggests “old traces” as the traces of his ancestors. Here the poet alludes to the traditional nasìb motif, a†làl. He establishes the authenticity of his poem, not only by employing the motif of the ruined abode, but also by mentioning antiquity and novelty. That is to say, he integrates “old” and “new” elements by mentioning the ancient traces and recent traces, and fusing them in his mind when he recollects the memories of the two (l. 3). By this operation, the opposites, “old” and “new,” no longer contradict. The poet succeeds in the assimilation of his innovation to the antiquity of tradition. Moreover, the ekphrasis in the two qaßìdahs constitutes a metaphorical madì˙. A metaphor generally has two diﬀerent kinds of meaning at once: a literal and a ﬁgurative meaning. These two would be deﬁned by Conte as the letter (the literal meaning of the sign) and the sense (the meaning).42 If we regard the ekphrastic motif of “A†làl Óànah” as a metaphor or trope of the classical rhetoric of the madì˙ motif in the Arabic qaßìdah, we can say that the visual motif is the letter, and a concept of the madì˙ is the sense. In short, the two poets’ use of the ekphrastic motif is a type of metaphor. For example, Abù Nuwàs employs the incision of the goblet as a description of

42

Conte, 38.

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the Sàsànians and as an allusion to a panegyric upon them at once.43 The design literally means the ﬁgures of Kisrà and his horsemen who are hunting and does not mean anything other than this. However, in “the sense,” the design presents a panegyric on Kisrà and the pomp of the Sàsànians. “Like metaphor,” Conte says, “allusion permits the substitution of denotation by connotation.”44 Hence, Abù Nuwàs’s employment of allusion allows the transformation of denotation, “the letter,” to connotation, “the sense.” The foregoing analysis has demonstrated that the ekphrastic passages in Abù Nuwàs’s “A†làl Óànah” and al-Bu˙turì’s “Ìwàn Kisrà” function not only to describe the poetic objects, but also indirectly to fulﬁll an encomiastic structural expectation. Moreover, the investigation of the ekphrastic description with the use of Western ekphrasis theories has served to clarify the poets’ manipulations of their poetic materials. In order to apprehend the qaßìdah rightly, a knowledge of the structural and thematic conventions of the classical Arabic poetic tradition is indispensable. Otherwise, we can only grasp “the letter,” not “the sense,” of the cultural tradition of the qaßìdah.

43 44

Ibid., 59. Ibid., 55.

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CHAPTER FOUR

SENSIBILITY AND SYNAESTHESIA: IBN AL-RÙMÌ’S SINGING SLAVE-GIRL*

Another scene of ekphrasis is again from the same period, the 'Abbàsid, but this time of a diﬀerent sort of art, that is, music, enticing us to the sensuous world of a female singer. This chapter deals with the relation between verbal art and musical art. I explore the musical art of gesture and singing in a medieval Arabic qaßìdah or ode from the ninth century C.E., which describes a singing slavegirl. Re-examining why and how the ode has entranced the listener or the reader, I make use of modern Western modes of interarts studies, while not neglecting conventional Arabic literary components and the medieval Arabic social, artistic milieu of singing-girls. As theoretical tools, I use the concept of the “gestural” developed by Lawrence Kramer.1 For social ambience, an essay on singing slavegirls by al-Jà˙iΩ (776–869), one of the most prominent classical Arab littérateurs, will be our source. I also rely on George Sawa’s study of the theory and practice of musical performance in the classical Middle East.2 Waßf (description) occupies a central role in the Arabic qaßìdah tradition and is commonly held to be characteristic of the genre.3

* An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, Washington D.C., November, 1999, and appeared as Akiko Motoyoshi, “Sensibility and Synaesthesia: Ibn alRùmì’s Singing Slave-Girl,” Journal of Arabic Literature 32, no. 1 (2002): 1–29. 1 Lawrence Kramer, Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 2 George Dimitri Sawa, Music Performance Practice in the Early 'Abbàsid Era 132–320 AH/750–932 A.D. (Toronto: Pontiﬁcal Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1989). He deals with historical Middle Eastern musicology and performance practice with reference to court musicians of the early 'Abbàsid era, in combination with the analysis of classical Arabic theoretical works on music by al-Fàràbì (circa 872/3–950), including Kitàb al-Mùsìqà al-Kabìr (Grand Book of Music), Kitàb al-Ìqà'àt (Book of Rhythms), and Kitàb I˙ßà" al-Ìqà'àt (Book for the Basic Comprehension of Rhythms). 3 The poem I will investigate is often introduced as an excellent model of waßf in works on Ibn al-Rùmì and other poetry studies. For instance, in the preface of

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Description is one of the literary strategies used by the poet to reﬂect an aspect of “reality,” either actual or ﬁctional. As discussed in the Introduction, the qaßìdah was evaluated negatively by many traditional Orientalists for what was thought to be its objective descriptiveness; they thought it lacked the expression of emotion, as Gustave von Grunebaum claims. His conception of the objective descriptiveness of Arabic poetry sees the poet’s faithful, minute description as based on mimesis (imitation), which is intended to portray a visual/ pictorial image.4 Rejecting this view, I argue in this chapter that Ibn al-Rùmì (836–96)’s poem presents the singing-girl not only in a visual dimension, but also in auditory, synaesthetic, sensuous, and intuitive dimensions by means of description. By using the singing of the slave-girl Wa˙ìd as his poetic object, the poet, I argue, has succeeded in fully expressing emotion and aﬀections within the performance context of the ode. He produces not the pictorial image of the singing slave-girl, but the image of her body revealed by all the senses. Most intriguing for us is to see how the poet verbally expresses the female slave’s voice and singing. Ibn al-Rùmì challenged himself to represent the beauty of Wa˙ìd and her singing by evoking emotions appealing to the senses, not pictorial images, through the use of synaesthetic and synergical eﬀects. Also implied by the notion of challenge is the idea that his poetic enterprise constitutes a competition between verbal art and musical performance, which will ultimately lead to a rivalry between the beauty of the singing-girl and that of the poet’s pen—his portrait of her. To achieve his goal, Ibn al-Rùmì selects description by indirection as one of his strategic devices; he describes Wa˙ìd’s singing in terms of its eﬀects on the listener as well as on the viewer. The main force of the song seems to lie not only in the aspiration of the singer, but also in its generation of aﬀections in the listener, this being grounded in the concept of †arab5 (“strong emotion of joy or

Dìwàn of Ibn al-Rùmì, the editor A˙mad Óasan Basaj introduces the poem under the categorization of waßf. Dìwàn of Ibn al-Rùmì, ed. with notes, A˙mad Óasan Basaj, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dàr al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyyah, 1994), 1: 12–13. 4 See p. 4 in the Introduction for a quotation of Grunebaum’s idea. 5 ˇarab derives from †arraba, to sing, in Arabic. This argument is predicated on the original meaning of mu†rib, “singer” in Arabic. For further etymological discussion, see p. 147.

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grief ”) in the Arab tradition. In order for a musician to win a reward, transportation of the audience into a state of †arab was considered an indispensable condition, in fact, the most important.6 From this perspective, Ibn al-Rùmì’s strategy, which involves the choice of singing as his poetic object and the expression of the beauty of the singing by means of representing the reactions of the audience, is eﬃcacious. In a way, the device releases the poet from the trammels of the poetic conventions by which the lyricist is doomed to be bound. As I show through a close reading of the text, this technique of using the eﬀects of the song on the audience increases the poet’s power of expression and his ability to summon up aﬀective responses, i.e., emotions. This employment of causality is recognized as a literary trope among Arab critics. What is usually overlooked in this kind of study is that the poem under investigation was not perused on the page, but was intended to be presented to an audience—most likely as a song, either by a singer-musician like Wa˙ìd or by the poet himself. This performance context is examined as far as is possible, for it is vital to approach the poem as it was originally performed or as it was intended for performance, and not merely as a work to be read in a poetry anthology. In this light, when we deal with the qaßìdah or any classical literary genre, it is invariably important to consider what kind of methodology we adopt in order to bridge the gap between the original viewers’ horizons of expectation and those of a present reader.7 The term “horizon of expectation” was proposed by the theorist of reception, Hans Robert Jauss. In his view, a text cannot have an objective meaning, but it can have various objectively describable attributes that are derived from the responses of the general reading public over the course of time.8 The diﬀerence in these concepts of meaning suggests the source of the “otherness” or the unique distance of the text for the contemporary reader.9 Similarly, Nelson Goodman presses us to seek and specify “the frame of reference” of an artistic work, because systems of representation diﬀer according to culture, person, and time. He states, 6

See Sawa, 195. See M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th ed., s.v. “Reception-Theory” (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1993), 272–73. 8 Ibid. 9 For the discussion of horizons of reading, see Hans Robert Jauss, chap. 5 of Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). 7

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For a Fifth-Dynasty Egyptian the straightforward way of representing something is not the same as for an eighteenth-century Japanese; and neither way is the same as for an early twentieth-century Englishman. Each would to some extent have to learn how to read a picture in either of the other styles.10

Hence, recognizing the importance of recovering the original setting of a text in all of its philological, aesthetic, socio-historical, and cultural aspects, I will attempt to re-construct/re-produce the meaning that the qaßìdah held for its audiences and the eﬀect it had on them, for the original audience would receive much more than what is in the text. Our target ode is a well-known work by the 'Abbàsid poet Ibn al-Rùmì. He devotes the entire poem, consisting of ﬁfty-eight lines, to the depiction of the singing slave-girl’s beauty, including her fascinating voice and gestures. The poet’s representation of the singing girl focuses on her performance as well as on the quality of her voice, but not on her music itself.

Poet and Poem The ode I am dealing with is Ode 593 in the Dìwàn Ibn al-Rùmì, entitled “Wa˙ìd, the Singing Slave-Girl of 'Amhamah,” composed by the 'Abbàsid poet Abù al-Óasan 'Alì ibn al-'Abbàs ibn Jurayj, known as Ibn al-Rùmì, born in Baghdad in 836 C.E. and died in 896 C.E. His father, al-'Abbàs, was a Byzantine freedman and a client of 'Ubayd Allàh ibn 'Ìsà b. Ja'far. Al-'Abbàs was perhaps the ﬁrst member of the family to be a Muslim. His mother, Óasanah, was the daughter of 'Abd Allàh al-Sijzì who was of Persian origin. It is said that the poet studied with Mu˙ammad ibn Óabìb, a friend of his father. Although he made his name as a poet at the age of twenty, he was unable to gain the favor of the court till the end of his life because of his ardent Shì'ism and his Mu'tazilism. In spite of his being a Muslim, his Byzantine and Christian origin, and his aggressiveness and arrogance also helped to repel possible patrons. As a result of his long opposition to the party in power, Ibn alRùmì had to seek rich patrons outside the court. According to S. Boustany, Ibn al-Rùmì was a society poet, compared to his 10 Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1976), 37.

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contemporaries, showing his ability to make impromptu rhymes on command as well as his attachment to wit and originality.11

“Wa˙ìd, the Singing Slave-Girl of 'Amhamah” by Ibn al-Rùmì12 1.

O my two friends, Wa˙ìd has enslaved me, till my heart is tormented and broken by love.

2.

She was a tender woman, adorned by the graceful stature of a pliant bough and the neck and eyes of a gazelle.

3.

Her hair was radiant in blackness,13 and her two cheeks, in redness.

4.

Beauty kindled its ﬁre in Wa˙ìd over a cheek unblemished by leanness.

5.

So she is coolness and peace in her cheek,

11 Information on Ibn al-Rùmì in this paragraph is largely taken from S. Boustany, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s. v. “Ibn al-Rùmì.” There is an extensive study on Ibn al-Rùmì’s poetry by Robert McKinney, “The Case of Rhyme v. Reason: Ibn al-Rùmì and His Poetics in Context” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1998). 12 The meter of this ode is khafìf. Though I rely mainly on Fàrùq Aslìm’s edition, I use four published versions of the Arabic text. Ibn al-Rùmì, Ode 593, Diwàn Ibn al-Rùmì, ed. with notes, Fàrùq Aslìm, 6 vols. (Beirut: Dàr al-Jìl, 1998), 2: 576–83. Abù al-Óasan 'Alì ibn al-'Abbàs ibn Jurayj Ibn al-Rùmì, Ode 593, Diwàn Ibn alRùmì, ed. with notes, Óusayn Naßßàr, 6 vols. (Cairo: Ma†ba'at Dàr al-Kutub, 1974), 2: 762–65. Bu†rus al-Bustànì, ed., Muntaqayàt Udabà" al-'Arab fì al-A'ßur al-'Abbàsiyyah (Beirut: Maktabat Íàdir, 1948), 252–55 (This version presents only 33 lines out of 58.). A˙mad al-ˇabbàl, Ibn al-Rùmì, Diràsat Nußùß wa Khaßà"iß 'Àmmah (Tripoli, Lebanon: Dàr al-Shamàl lil-ˇibà'ah wa al-Nashr wa al-Tawzì', 1986), “Al-Waßf wa al-Ghazal: Wa˙ìd al-Mughanniyyah,” 10–19. See the Appendix for the Arabic text. 13 “Zahà” (to be radiant, shine) can also be “to pride oneself in.”

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She has never marred her face, like limpid water, though she has melted hearts as hard as iron.

7.

The passions that her two cheeks have kindled cannot be cooled except by sipping her sweet kisses [lit., saliva].

8.

Such kisses would have extinguished this passion of mine, except for her refusal to let me drink.

9.

Many a man beguiled by her beauty has said: Describe her! I said: that is easy and diﬃcult, all at once.

10.

It’s easy to say that she’s the most beautiful of creatures, without exception, but it is diﬃcult to deﬁne her beauty.

11.

She is the sunshine of a cloudy day; the sun and moon, both draw their luminosity from hers.

12.

When she reveals herself to those who gaze at her some are tormented by her beauty, while others delight in it.

13.

She is a gazelle that dwells in men’s hearts,

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  grazing on them, and she is a singing canary.

14.

She sings so eﬀortlessly, it seems she’s not singing, and she sings beautifully.

15.

You do not see her eyes bulging or her neck-veins bursting from strain.

16.

Because of the calm of her voice, which is unbroken, and its stirring passion, which is unﬂagging,

17.

When she sings, her breath always reaches the end of the phrase; it is long, like the sighs of her lovers.

18.

Her coquetry and ﬂirtation make her voice even more delicate, and passion thins it further, till it almost dies.

19.

So her voice seems to be now dying, now coming to life, delightful whether soft or raised.

20.

In it are embroidery, and jewelry fashioned from the melody, which the poem wears with pride.

21.

Her mouth, and her voice vibrating in it are sweet;

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everything of hers bears witness to this. 22.

Like cool limpid water, her kisses quench thirst, and a song from her lips evokes lost happiness.

23.

Whoever hears her sing asks her to sing again; whoever tastes her kisses asks for more.

24.

From passion for one like her, the forbearing men lose their composure; the righteous are seduced.

25.

She does not shoot at hearts with her love, without hitting her prey wherever she wants.

26.

A lute-string in her hands is like the bow-string of an army in which a sharp arrow is set.

27.

When she draws it, aiming at the drinkers, the people are sure that she will hit her mark.

28.

When she sings, it’s as if Ma'bad and Ibn Surayj were singing, as if Zalzal and 'Aqìd were playing.14

14

According to the shar˙ of Aslìm, Ma'bad and Ibn Surayj were renowned singers

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29.

She is blamed because when she sings, the freeborn become enslaved by her.

30.

With her spells she increases the love for her in their hearts, though their hearts are already too full.

31.

Beautiful women oﬀered themselves to me, but I said: you will not distract me from Wa˙ìd.

32.

The beauty in her eyes is without equal; the love for her in men’s hearts is unique.

33.

Many a sincere advisor, lacking sound judgment, has rebuked me for loving her.

34.

Yet if one of those who rebuke me were to see her, he would be the one to tarry and ask for more.

35.

She has misled the soul that inclines toward her as she despised his life and ensnared him.

in the Umayyad era, whereas Zalzal and 'Aqìd were slave-girls famous for their excellence in playing instruments and producing beautiful rhythm. Sawa records their high-quality performance based on the Kitàb al-Aghànì. The poet’s aim of mentioning their names here seems to be to show that Wa˙ìd’s singing is as excellent as theirs.

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   36.

She bewitched him with her eyes, until for him her blameworthy traits became praiseworthy.

37.

She was created to tempt the hearts of men; in song and beauty she is entirely without rival.

38.

She is a delight that causes grown men to sway and a disaster that turns the hair of newborns white.

39.

Wherever I leave her I ﬁnd a companion in passion for her, wherever she alights, there is a guardian over her.

40.

To my right, to my left, in front of me and behind, how can I get around him?

41.

The devil of her love blocked every access, the devil of her love is refractory.

42.

I wish I knew when someone looks at her a long time, once, and then again,

43.

Does the eye not tire of her, or does it always discover something new?

131

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44.

Nay, more: she is life; however much you looked at it it still provides more marvels for your delight, and beneﬁts.

45.

She is to be gazed at, heard, and relished like sweet water; she’s always ready to provide the entertainment that we love.

46.

No boredom with her ever creeps into the heart, nor does the ﬁrm knot of her enchantment loosen.

47.

Her beauty in the eyes of her beholders is new beauty every time, so there is new love for her in their hearts.

48.

O Wa˙ìd, may God take from you, for my heart, what the avenging victor takes!

49.

Others’ eyes are cooled by a union with you, while my eyes weep because of your rejection.

50. But I divert myself with your sweet promises, even though among them lurks a threat. 51.

I still ﬁnd that one glance from you is lethal to me, while another one makes me immortal.

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   52.

When we meet, one glance from you is a promise of union, while another is intimidating.

53.

You leave healthy men love-sick, shaking and emaciated, though you are as graceful as a swaying bough.

54.

In love, a man is at times weak and defeated, at others, steadfast and strong.

55.

Your unfamiliar love alighted in my heart, and banished my genial sleep.

56.

It amazes me that the stranger abides in my heart, while the familiar one is expelled.

57.

We are weary of the veil that conceals the lovely object of our desire, will it ever be stripped away?

58.

It dwells in the heart, and yet is further than the Pleiades; It is at once both near and far.

133

Social Milieu and Performance Context Since the poet devotes the entire ode to the delineation of Wa˙ìd’s beauty, including her singing, this ode could be termed a ghazal or

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erotic lyric, rather than a qaßìdah, which is polythematic.15 The 'Abbàsid qaßìdah shows, in general, a bipartite structure: nasìb (amatory prelude) and madì˙ (praise). The persona traditionally speaks about the remembrance of his beloved in the ﬁrst section, and presents praise of, and admiration for, his mamdù˙ (patron) in the ﬁnal section. Thematically speaking, the despair over his unrequited love in the nasìb should be consoled and compensated for by the generosity and excellence of the mamdù˙ in the madì˙ (praise). Thus, the qaßìdah genre is highly conventional, regulated by rules and stipulations not only in form, but also in content. Our poem by Ibn alRùmì, in this context, does not observe the traditional form, because it ends with the nasìb, not reaching its presumed goal, the mamdù˙, in the ﬁnale. However, because of its length, which is that of a full qaßìdah as opposed to a short ghazal, we must view the poem in light of the full qaßìdah form, and ask why the poem did not develop toward a terminal subject, madì˙ (more below). “Kitàb al-Qiyàn” (Book of Singing-Girls), by Abù 'Uthmàn 'Amr ibn Ba˙r al-Jà˙iΩ (776–869), one of the great masters of classical Arabic prose, oﬀers us some brilliant insights concerning certain circumstances of singing slave-girls in the 'Abbàsid era.16 In his detailed accounts of them, al-Jà˙iΩ suggests that in those days female singers would actually sing poems in front of guests.17 Moreover, this con15 The term qaßìdah is generally deﬁned according to its length—that is from ﬁfteen to eighty lines. In this broad sense the poem under exploration is a qaßìdah, while in a narrow structural-thematic sense it is a ghazal, an erotic lyric that constitutes an entire (usually short) poem rather than serving as a prelude to further thematic sections. 16 For information about singing-girls, see al-Jà˙iΩ 'Amr ibn Ba˙r, “Kitàb alQiyàn,” Rasà"il al-Jà˙iΩ, ed. with commentary, 'Abd Muhannà, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dàr al-Óadàthah, 1987–88), 94–117, and al-Jà˙iΩ, The Epistle on Singing-Girls of Jà˙iΩ, ed. with translation and commentary, A. F. L. Beeston (Warminster, Wilts, U.K.: Aris & Phillips, 1980), and 'Abd al-Karìm al-'Allàf, Qiyàn Baghdàd fì al-'Aßr al-'Abbàsì wa al-'Uthmànì al-Akhìr (Baghdad: Ma†ba'at Dàr al-Ta∂àmun, 1969). All quotations in the text relating to al-Jà˙iΩ’s book are from Beeston’s translation. 17 Al-Jà˙iΩ relates some episodes proving that poems were sung in pages 104–6 of 'Abd Muhannà’s edition. Relating to this, Owen Wright maintains that the relationship between music and verse in the early Islamic period cannot be conﬁrmed with precision because discussions on the subject do not exist; the study of music is inclined either toward the theoretical or the performer and his environment. Owen Wright, “Music and Verse,” in Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, ed. A. F. L. Beeston et al., The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 433–59. However, Sawa gives a comprehensive study by combining the music theory and practice of musical performance in his book.

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temporary of Ibn al-Rùmì indicates that there was a social institution of qiyàn or singing-girls who had muqayyinùn (merchants of singing slave-girls) as their owner-dealers.18 A. F. L. Beeston thinks of the geisha of Japan as being similar to the Arab institution of qiyàn.19 Wealthy clients would seek out excellent songstresses to entertain their guests at parties and for other purposes. In order to elevate their commercial value, to say nothing of their beauty, the female singers were supposed to be endowed with highly trained performance and social skills, resulting from advanced musical education and association with intellectual culture under the supervision of the muqayyin.20 According to al-Jà˙iΩ, a successful singing-girl had a repertoire of as many as four thousand songs comprising ten thousand verses,21 which, of course, she knew by heart, besides her erudition in the traditional sciences and the Qur"àn. These are the probable social surroundings of Wa˙ìd, the singing girl. It is assumed that this poem was sung in a courtly setting to entertain rulers and their guests. Even if the poem was not sung, we can determine from the Kitàb al-Aghànì (Book of Songs) composed by Abù al-Faraj al-Ißbahànì (897–967),22 and its description of poetry put to music and sung at court, that the poet must have considered this possibility when he composed it. In his book, al-Ißbahànì adds to poems the name of the tonal mode (aßba' ) and rhythmic mode (∂arb) in which they were sung, along with the names of the singers and the composers of the melodies.23 Sawa, investigating the Kitàb al-Aghànì thoroughly, documents numerous instances in which poems were actually sung by jàriyahs (slave-girls) in formal and informal settings of musical majlis, “a place where persons sat together and

18 According to C. Pellat, the ﬁrst female slave-singers among the Arabs appeared as early as the Jàhiliyyah period. See for more details C. Pellat, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “˚ayna.” 19 Beeston, 2. 20 For more information on singing slave-girls’ education, see Pellat, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, s. v. “˚ayna.” 21 Al-Jà˙iΩ, “Kitàb al-Qiyàn,” ed. 'Abd Muhannà, 116. 22 Abù al-Faraj al-Ißbahànì, Kitàb al-Aghànì, ed. Ibràhìm al-Abyàrì, 31 vols. (Cairo: Dàr al-Sha'b, 1969–79). This is one of the most important compilations composed under the 'Abbàsid Caliphate, comprising poetry, poets’ biographical information, and the melody of poems. 23 A notation or tablature of a song cannot be found in Arabic books on music until the time of Íafì al-Îìn 'Abd al-Mu"min (d. 1294). Henry Farmer, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “ghinà".”

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conversed, and by extension, an assembly of people sitting together.”24 Ibn al-Rùmì wrote many nasìbs whose objects were qiyàn (songstresses), for he loved them extraordinarily.25 The poet composed many poems for singers including the male singer Bunàn whom he served for ten years around 873 C.E.26 He would constantly spend time together with young male and female singers who came to perfect their art under the great master, Bunàn. These circumstances helped him to learn the rules and theories of music as well as to cultivate himself as a connoisseur of the singing art.27 The assumption that Ibn al-Rùmì’s own ode is conveyed by singing makes it a frame through which we experience another song and its performance. The very performance of the ode as a song that evokes the eﬀects that Wa˙ìd’s singing has on her audience, who is charmed by her, is likely to aﬀect and move the listeners of the frame song/ poem, perhaps in a manner similar to that evoked in the ode. In this manner, Wa˙ìd’s song is repeatedly framed into another larger setting of representation, accompanied by the multiplied eﬀects of each singer on his/her audience. This process allows the ode to produce a profound and dynamic impact with its calculated literary intention. The idea of a frame song/poem provides a good starting point for reconstructing “the frame of reference” of the ode. First let us speculate concerning what kind of song Wa˙ìd was singing. The poem does not tell us anything about this except for saying “a song from her lips evokes lost happiness” (l. 22). “Lost happiness,” evoking the notion of nostalgia, is generally a theme of the nasìb: the remembrance of the poet’s beloved and his unrequited love for her. 24 Sawa states that the musical majlis was not invented in the 'Abbàsid era, but that it was already common in Umayyad times, during the rule of the Orthodox Caliphs, and in the pre-Islamic Arab kingdoms, 111–12. For more information on majlis, which derives from the verb jalasa “to sit,” see Sawa, 111. 25 Said Boustany, Ibn al-Rùmì, sa vie et son oeuvre (Beirut: Publications de l’Université Libanais, 1967), 304–5. The information on Ibn al-Rùmì in the rest of the paragraph is taken from this source. 26 The poet has a number of madì˙ (praise) poems as well as hijà" (ridiculing) odes for singers, such as Salàmah b. Sa'ìd al-Óàjib, Durayrah, and Ja˙Ωah. Boustany assumes that it was the poet’s passion that urged him to accept the position, in spite of the symbolic salary of two dinars per month, 304. 27 Boustany mentions that Ibn al-Rùmì’s judgment of singing performance described in his poems is presented with poetic and literary expressions rather than the technical terminology of music, 305. These characteristics are likewise seen in the poem under exploration.

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Grief over an unrequited love was one of the common themes in songs of the early 'Abbàsid era.28 If the song performed by Wa˙ìd actually dealt with its persona’s hopeless love for his beloved, who had left him, the structure of the frame-song/poem is of signiﬁcance, for Wa˙ìd’s song also becomes framed in Ibn al-Rùmì’s poem in terms of theme. As for the performance context of Wa˙ìd’s song, it is known that she was a jàriyah (female slave), for the poem is introduced by the following passage: “He [Ibn al-Rùmì] said regarding Wa˙ìd, 'Amhamah’s jàriyah.” 'Amhamah is apparently the slave-girl’s patron, but we have no information about 'Amhamah beyond this. There were two kinds of musical majàlis (plural of majlis) in the 'Abbàsid period, according to Sawa: the formal type, which was held in the presence of a patron, and the informal type, which was held without him.29 We could speculate that the majlis in which Wa˙ìd sang was formal, for the introduction of the poem mentions the patron’s name. The patron would issue orders to musicians, including Wa˙ìd, to come to a place where the patron wanted the majlis to be convened.30 Wa˙ìd is a singer-player, for she herself also plays an 'ùd while singing (l. 26). Sawa states that the audience often included nadìms (boon-companions), ghulàms (young male slaves/servants), khàdims (servants), khaßiyys (eunuchs), and jàriyahs (female slaves).31 Nadìms were highly educated people, having a thorough knowledge of numerous ﬁelds, such as music, literature, and poetry.32 Additionally, a nadìm was expected to be a Ωarìf, that is, he was a gentleman possessed of adab (good behavior), murù"ah (virtue), and Ωarf (reﬁned, elegant manners, wearing ﬁne clothes). The audience of Wa˙ìd portrayed in the poem would be nadìms, with the persona among them. Needless to say, jàriyahs were objects of love as well as of erotic admiration for the audience of those days.

28

See Sawa, 134. See Sawa, 112. 30 See Sawa, 113. He also states that male and female slave musicians were part of the patron’s household in general (115); Wa˙ìd would have lived in 'Amhamah’s house. 31 Sawa, 119. 32 To be a nadìm, Sawa further enumerates as required knowledge: prosody, grammar, history, narration of anecdotes, Qur"àn, Óadìth, jurisprudence, astrology, medicine, and horse-breeding, in addition to being well-versed in all sorts of games and entertainments, such as backgammon, chess, buﬀoonery, and magic, 119. 29

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Poems, either precomposed or improvised, were produced ﬁrst and then set to music by musicians, including singer-composers and poetmusicians.33 Sometimes singers were asked by the audience to sing songs/poems that had previously been set to music. Other times, they were requested to improvise musical settings for precomposed poems. Therefore, in the case of the performance of precomposed poems, the odes were written as poems, but, of course, some poets envisaged their poems being sung; in the case of the improvised performance, the odes were composed for performance. Also, “there was a strong tradition of double improvisations: the composition of an impromptu text, followed immediately by an improvised musical setting for it.”34 Singers were expected to have a large repertoire of poems, which included not only their own compositions but those of others, from the Jàhiliyyah to their own time.35 Presumably, such songs had a great appeal for audiences, as we can conclude from the ode’s description of the listeners and their feelings. Singers could perform the role of messengers between individuals by their performance.36 It is conceivable that Ibn al-Rùmì’s ode served to convey a message to the audience or to a particular person on behalf of a third party.37 Assuming that 'Amhamah and Wa˙ìd were real people and that the patron was in love with his slave-girl,38 the poet might have been asked by 'Amhamah to compose an ode to regain her love and attention, or the poet might have composed it spontaneously for that purpose. If Wa˙ìd was among the audience, she might have been much aﬀected by the song. In more general and less speculative terms we can assume that, while the poem possesses the quality of †arab, the aesthetic power to

33 Sawa lists such musician-poets as Is˙àq al-Mawßilì and 'Ulayyah bint al-Mahdì, or such patrons as the caliphs al-Ma"mùn and al-Mu'tazz, 142. He further says that musicians were male and female slave singers or free singers who could be Arabs, non-Arabs, or of mixed descent, 114. 34 Sawa, 142. 35 See Sawa, 169. 36 See Sawa, 126. 37 Sawa introduces the following anecdote as an example: “'Ulayyah was asked by Umm Ja'far to help her regain the love and attention of Hàrùn al-Rashìd, who had left her for a beautiful new jàriyah. 'Ulayyah composed a song, and taught it to the jàriyahs, who entered and surprised Hàrùn with their performance,” 126–27. 38 It was common for a patron to fall in love with a jàriyah; Sawa indicates an anecdote: “One night, the singer-composer 'Allùyah (d. 850 C.E.) invited the poet Abù al-Asad (d. 835) and a jàriyah whom 'Allùyah loved,” 117.

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move its audience, its eﬀect was increased by the force (†arab) of its performance. Ibn al-Rùmì’s poem is found in Diwàn Ibn al-Rùmì, the collection of his poems; however, his works, including the poem under investigation, were not included in the Kitàb al-Aghànì (Book of Songs). But this does not mean at all that the poem was composed only for reading.39 We have seen that the poet lived in the company of singers and composers, and his Dìwàn contains poems about other musicians.40 It is quite likely that he expected the poem to be set to music and performed, especially as it describes a singer. Songs would be circulated and preserved in an oral-performance tradition: musicians would learn their repertoire by listening to other musicians. Therefore, while the poem has come down to us only as a written text, without a melody, it may well have existed as a song in the repertoire of performers and may even have been known for some time as a song by readers of the poem, just as we know melodies that have been composed for poems found in the collected works of more modern poets.

Strategy: Emotion and Challenge The poem opens with the persona addressing his friend, “O my two friends, Wa˙ìd has enslaved me, till my heart is tormented and broken by love.” The ﬁrst line reveals that he is greatly infatuated with the singing-girl. Also, this opening condenses the theme of the ode: the persona’s passion for his beloved and her beauty. The description of his beloved and his unrequited love constitute the main skeleton

39 Ode 1318 in Naßßàr’s edition has the following introductory remarks: “He [Ibn al-Rùmì] said congratulating al-Mu'tamid upon the Feasts of al-A∂hà (Immolation) and al-Mihrijàn. . . . He [Ibn al-Rùmì] used to compose poems for the singer Bunàn, and the latter incited the former to do so [write a poem for the occasion of the two feasts for the ruler], and he [Bunàn] conveyed it [the poem] [to al-Mu'tamid],” 2444. This episode supports the fact that Ibn al-Rùmì actually would compose for singers. Also, it can be a good example of the role of singers in communicating a message between parties. 40 In Naßßàr’s edition, we can ﬁnd a number of poems about singers and musicians; for instance, the title of Ode 142 is “the praise (mad˙) of Durayrah (the female slave singer-player) and the invective (hijà") of Nuzhah (the female musician),” 179, and there are other odes about the singers Shan†af (e.g., Ode 1499, p. 1932) and Ja˙Ωah (e.g., Ode 739, p. 984).

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of the nasìb in the qaßìdah tradition. In short, this phenomenon shows that the poet is bound by the rules and stipulations of the genredeﬁning convention of Arabic poetry, like any other qaßìdah poet. Ibn al-Rùmì also relies on conventional ﬁgurative techniques and motifs: for instance, in line 2 there appear the comparisons of the beloved to a gazelle and to a pliant branch. The major theme of this qaßìdah—the persona’s infatuation with Wa˙ìd, including the expressive devices of conventional motifs—stands ﬁrmly on literary convention. Because of its conventional quality, the poem, accordingly, does not tell if the poet is truly in love with her or not, because the ﬁctional “I”41 or persona of the poet pervades the poem. Wa˙ìd, in this light, may even be an invention or conceit and be presented as a representative of the beloved and beauty. In the following lines (3–7), intersensory eﬀects are produced by synaesthetic fusion. Erika von Erhardt-Siebold describes the eﬀect of synaesthesia as follows: “Synaesthesia, as correspondences or equivalences of sensations, enables the poet to combine the power of several sense-impressions into one collective impression.”42 The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics states, “synaesthesia suggests not only a greater ‘reﬁnement and complexity of sensuous experience’ but also a ‘harmony or synthesis of all sensations’ and a kind of ‘supersensuous unity.’”43 Erhardt-Siebold further claims that synaesthesia not only causes the sense actually stimulated to respond but also compels other senses to vibrate simultaneously.44 Although synaesthesia is usually understood as “the phenomenon wherein one sense modality is felt, perceived, or described in terms of another,” I use the word “synaesthesia” in this chapter focusing more on its intersensory eﬀects.45 Using this multi-sensory force, Ibn al-Rùmì attempts to elicit sentiment and sensuality from the audience by stimulating as well as fusing their sensory organs. Line 3 states, “Her hair was

41 For the discussion of the lyrical or the fallacious “I” in Arabic poetry, see Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Lyrical Phenomenon,” 57–77. 42 Erika von Erhardt-Siebold, “Harmony of the Senses in English, German, and French Romanticism,” PMLA 47 (1932): 584. For more discussion of literary synaesthesia, see Nicholas Ruddick, “ ‘Synaesthesia’ in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry,” Poetics Today 5, no. 1 (1984): 59–78. 43 T. V. F. Brogan, New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, s.v. “synaesthesia.” 44 Erhardt-Siebold, 580–81. See also Ruddick, 61. 45 See for the deﬁnition of synaesthesia, Brogan, New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, s.v. “synaesthesia.”

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radiant in blackness, and her two cheeks, in redness.”46 Glowing black hair and red cheeks merge the optical sense and the bodily sensation of temperature by stirring up the reader’s/listener’s corporeal sensation; the word “radiant” (zahà) both deepens blackness and redness and heats up her cheeks as well as the listener’s. Color is used here not only to stimulate visual perception, i.e., to evoke mere pictorial description, but also to produce sensuality. Furthermore, it is worth noting that al-Jà˙iΩ, who may have had direct contact with Ibn al-Rùmì,47 indicates some views about the charm of singing-girls in association with the uniﬁcation of senses. They [Singing-girls] provide a man with a combination of pleasures such as nothing else on the face of the earth does. Pleasures all come by means of the senses. . . . But when one comes to consider singinggirls, three of the senses [smelling, gazing, hearing] are involved all together, and [the pleasure of ] the heart makes a fourth. The eye has the sight of a beautiful or [otherwise] attractive girl (since cleverness and beauty are hardly ever simultaneously possessed by a single object of enjoyment and delight); the hearing has from her its meed of that which is attended by no inconvenience, that in which the organ of hearing ﬁnds its sole delight; touching her leads to carnal desire and the longing for sexual intercourse. All these senses are as it were scouts for the heart, and witnesses testifying before it. When the girl raises her voice in song, the gaze is rivetted on her, the hearing is directed attentively to her, and the heart surrenders itself to her sovereignty.48

According to al-Jà˙iΩ’s idea, singing slave-girls are the only entity on the earth supplying a combination of pleasures (ladhdhàt) by means of the senses. Al-Jà˙iΩ says that when a person receives more than one sense at one time—for example, the taste of food and the scent of perfume concurrently—he/she feels disgusted. However, if a combination of sensory perceptions comes with singing-girls, they are transformed into pleasures.49 People can enjoy them by seeing the girls’ beauty, hearing their voice, and tasting their kisses. This view

46 According to the shar˙ by Óusayn Naßßàr, the line is associated with the Qur"ànic verse on Ibràhìm, “O ﬁre, be cool and be peace upon Ibràhìm” (Qur"àn 21: 69). In the Óadìth (Prophetic tradition), Ibràhìm had been burned at the stake by the Assyrian King Nimrud, but was saved by Allàh’s protection. 47 Actually, Boustany suggests that the poet may have been a pupil of this prominent intellectual, 117. McKinney, however, claims that there is no evidence in the sources to support this, 5. 48 Al-Jà˙iΩ, ed. trans. Beeston, 30–31. 49 Ibid., 31.

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shows that the glamour of Wa˙ìd is recognized not only by the optical, but also by the olfactory and auditory organs. For instance, line 45 states, “She is to be gazed at, heard, and relished like sweet water; she’s always ready to provide the entertainment that we love.” Being fully exposed to the synaesthetic impact, the admirer is captivated by her through his whole body. Since appealing to vision is not the sole weapon for Wa˙ìd, Ibn al-Rùmì employs the synaesthetic force in order to express the surging passion of her audience. Wa˙ìd is ambivalent—she is simultaneously hot and cool (ll. 4–5). Although her beauty is like ﬁre, it never stains her face, which is like water, i.e., cool and clear. The power of the ﬁre is so great that it can melt hearts as hard as iron. Clearly here the visual and the tactile descriptions, eliciting the imagery of being ablaze in ﬁre (hot) and smooth in water (cold), serve not merely mimetically to describe the physical attributes, but aﬀectively to evoke emotional states. Her sweet kisses (saliva) are the only thing that can cool down the heat of passion produced by her cheeks (l. 7). At the same time, the poet suggests a comparison of the magic of Wa˙ìd’s cool ﬁre to the divine command to the ﬁre to be “cool and peace” to Ibràhìm.50 The cool saliva of a beloved, which is again one of the classical motifs of the qaßìdah tradition, can extinguish the ﬁres of passion. The contrast between heat (her beauty, ﬁre, the enthusiasm of her admirers) and coolness (her peacefulness, water, her kisses and saliva) is skillfully shown with a string of correlations among these motifs in the ﬁrst part (ll. 1–8). She is unique, as embodied in her tell-tale name Wa˙ìd (unique, matchless, incomparable), and is a distraction for men who are frantically in love with her. One allured by her beauty challenges Ibn al-Rùmì in line 9: “Íifhà!” (Describe her!). With the phrase “Íifhà,” the poet calls the reader’s/listener’s attention to the medium of expression, i.e., his verbal expression, and its power. In other words, the poet tries to emphasize his poetic skill in fascinating the reader/listener. The interlocutor’s imploring the poet to “Describe her” is metapoetic because the poem itself is “the waßf (description) of Wa˙ìd.” With this phrase, he asks himself if he is capable of describing her as he intends. There is an implicit contest between her physical beauty and song and the poet’s verbal work of art. Can he convey with mere words in poetry

50

Qur"àn 21:69. See also Aslìm’s edition, 577.

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what the ﬁve senses convey in the physical world? Can he elicit the same emotional response? By the same token, Ibn al-Rùmì’s operation suggests a competition between the verbal art and the musical vocal art. Through the ekphrastic technique, he challenges himself to outdo another art (singing) with his own art (poetry) by transforming an auditory (or multi-sensory) performance into a verbal text. In fact, the milieu surrounding the qaßìdah tradition has its roots deep in the paradigm of contest. Its most salient feature is in the institution of a poetic majlis—a social and cultural gathering or assembly in the Arab world. The poetic majlis is devoted to poetry recitation and literary discourse, while other majlises are devoted to jurisprudence ( ﬁqh) and scholastic theology (kalàm), not to mention the musical majlis, which is committed to musical performance. The context of the musical majlis consists of a gathering of the audience and musicians, the physical setting of performance, and the occasion and purpose of music-making.51 The greatest incentive for the performer to participate in the majlis is to obtain a reward, either material or in prestige, from the audience, including its patron-host. Even when the context is not in the explicit form of a contest, i.e., the singer or the musician is the only performer in the arena without other contestants, the context of majlis itself contains the concept of competition, for in the end, the audience or the other participants judge the performer by demonstrating their reactions. In the context of our poem, Wa˙ìd sings before the audience, and it is obvious that the judge is the poet, whose index is the reaction of the singer’s audience. On a higher sphere, the poet vies with other poets, both contemporary and past, trying to show that he is the best in describing his own poetic object and in convincing his audience of that fact. The poet responds to “Íifhà!” by saying that the beauty of the singing-girl is indescribable. In reply to the request, the poet does not describe her physical attributes, but answers that describing her is both “easy and diﬃcult” (l. 9). Here again the poet suggests the ambivalence and the mysterious charm of her attributes. He continues to state, “It’s easy to say that she’s the most beautiful of creatures, without exception, but it is diﬃcult to deﬁne her beauty” (l. 10). The poet tries to deﬁne her beauty, yet he asserts that her beauty

51

See Sawa, 111.

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is indescribable and beyond our ability to delineate. He appears to touch upon a crucial point, the limitation of verbal power, while he continues to describe her as if he is challenging that limitation. The line suggests the untranslatability of the slave-girl’s beauty into words. The eﬀect of this conceit is to make the poet’s challenge appear more diﬃcult and hence his accomplishment more valuable. In his essay “Kitàb al-Qiyàn” (The Book of Singing-Girls), al-Jà˙iΩ says, “It [the rhythm (of singing)] is impossible to describe satisfactorily by a verbal deﬁnition, but it can be apprehended intuitively just as much as it can be apprehended by prosodic analysis.”52 Considering al-Jà˙iΩ’s thought, I believe that Ibn al-Rùmì challenges himself to describe singing/rhythm, which is supposed to be indescribable, through a verbal art. By taking up this challenge, the enterprise becomes a contest between the beauty of singing and that of the poet’s words. Raising an essential issue, “the question of description,” Ibn alRùmì gives us a glimpse at his ideas in his expression: “It’s easy to say she’s the most beautiful of creatures, without exception, but it is diﬃcult to deﬁne her beauty” (l. 10). This verse can be understood as merely stating that to say “she is beautiful” is easy, but the problem is how to describe her beauty. The poet implies that when a poet intends to describe something, it is not suﬃcient merely to present adjectives, such as “beautiful.” He searches for a better strategy by way of other literary techniques and devices. That strategy of delineation should convey some aspects of the “truth” of the poetic object and should appeal to the poem’s reader/listener; Ibn al-Rùmì makes use of the reaction of Wa˙ìd’s audience as a device. His ultimate goal is to convince the audience by means of words that he is the best poet among all the qaßìdah poets. One of Ibn al-Rùmì’s techniques is to describe the singing slavegirl by way of her eﬀect on her viewers. Line 12 states, “When she reveals herself to those who gaze at her, some are tormented by her beauty, while others delight in it.” The viewers are wretched because she is too beautiful to reach, unattainable, while at the same time they are ﬁlled with delight by her impeccable beauty. As she is ambivalent, so too are the viewers. Similarly, we ﬁnd another reaction of her listeners/viewers in line 23: “Whoever hears her sing asks

52

Al-Jà˙iΩ, ed. trans. Beeston, 24.

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her to sing again; whoever tastes her kisses asks for more.” Her charm and beauty are represented in the description of her listeners/viewers. Verses 12 and 23 are among many lines portraying the singing-girl’s eﬀect on her audience. Thus, the poet uses the viewers as a medium for his artistic expression. In doing so, the poet does not try to create an objective pictorial image, but rather he attempts to elicit complete emotions by way of her (male) audience. There is another technique of indirection in evidence in Ibn alRùmì’s description of the beloved. If passion or emotion is considered among the poetic elements most highly dependent on the poet’s own experience, the Arabic qaßìdah lyricist somehow must prove that his expressions are sincere, notwithstanding the restraint of the prescribed Arabic lyrical mode on the poet. Ibn al-Rùmì does this by creating a third party on his theatrical stage within the ode: he entrusts his personal feelings to Wa˙ìd’s audience. The audience’s reaction is a mirror of his feelings of infatuation for the singing-girl. Through the presentation of the viewers’ reaction, the poet is capable of escaping from the tyranny of the fallacious “I,” for he is allowed to use “they” for Wa˙ìd’s admirers. At least ostensibly, or even actually, then, the lyricist is able to attest poetic sincerity without any condition. On the side of the singing-girl’s admirers, on the other hand, insofar as al-Jà˙iΩ maintains that the passion of love (in both senses, for singing slave-girls and for the question of love in general) is a malady that is uncontrollable, Wa˙ìd’s hearers’ strong feelings for her are authentic and true.53 Yet I believe that the discourse on poetic sincerity is itself rather unfruitful in regard to classical Arabic poetry, because, as Jaroslav Stetkevych argues, the tradition conforms to the Aristotelian premise of mimesis, which distinguishes between form and content, or means and object, rather than the Platonic premise, which intends the unity of form and content.54 Aristotle argues that a poet is not a copier of reality but a creator, for he/she can envision a deeper and higher order of nature than an ordinary person can.55 The subject of poetic sincerity that was often an object of attack with respect to the qaßìdah genre, thus, does

53

Ibid., 27. Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Arabic Qaßìdah: From Form and Content to Mood and Meaning,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3/4 (1979–80): 775–77. 55 The thoughts of Plato and Aristotle are concisely presented in T. V. F. Brogan, The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, s.v. “representation and mimesis.” 54

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not vitiate the aesthetic quality of the genre. The poem evokes a sense of true infatuation towards Wa˙ìd by Ibn al-Rùmì and all the audience. In the ﬁctional realm, their passion is real and sincere. If a musician’s goal is to drive the audience to a state of †arab (acute emotion of grief, joy, or ecstasy), the theatrical setting of the poem Ibn al-Rùmì prepared is adequate and powerful.56 On the stage, the slave-girl sings before the audience, and the poet is not only one of them, but also an observer of the whole drama. The poet combines the †arab eﬀect of the song and the performance context for the purpose of conveying to us the audience’s aﬀective response. Although the pure description of Wa˙ìd’s singing comprises merely nine out of ﬁfty-eight lines (ll. 14–22 and l. 28), it is important to note that the rest of the poem speaks about the reaction of her audience toward her singing; that is, all the remaining portion is the mirror of Wa˙ìd’s singing, including gesture and voice. In this respect, the poem mentions words like “song” (l. 22) and “singing” (ll. 28–29) to remind us that the audience’s response remains directed at her singing. The audience’s reactions are an index for judging the quality of the performance’s execution, and they contain textual and extra-musical skills, such as facial expressions and gestures. A beautiful face, elegant clothes, coquetry, and the motion of the eyes are among the important elements in appraising a musician’s performance.57 The theatrical setting enables us to analyze the drama in the context of performance, because the performance is based on communication between the singer and the audience. In addition, as the disposition of music is found in the expression of passion, the representation of Wa˙ìd’s beauty through the expression of feelings helps achieve the poet’s goal. The synergistic eﬀects of the power of music, the performance context, and the application of conventional motifs combine to produce a poem that touches and moves the reader’s heart. Kramer suggests that music is the expression of feelings and states that music possesses “the power to embody complex states of mind as they might arise pre-verbally in consciousness.”58 He also refers

56

See for the function of †arab, below, p. 147. Sawa mentions that the reactions are seen in verbal, physical, emotional, imaginational, and economic aspects, 206, 173–74. 58 Kramer, 6. Before the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although the center of theoretical issues on music was constantly changing from as early as the time 57

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to Wallace Stevens’s remarks that “music was a communication of emotion.”59 To reinforce Kramer’s notion, the etymological context of an Arabic term, “to sing,” †arraba, form II of †-r-b, deriving from †arab, signiﬁes the original function of singing. Major dictionaries deﬁne form I †ariba, which is †arraba’s reﬂexive mode, as “to be/become aﬀected with emotion, a lively emotion, excitement, agitation, or unsteadiness, moved with joy or grief, to be delighted, be overjoyed, be transported with joy,” and the verbal noun of form I †arab is translated as “emotion (of joy or sadness), a lively emotion, delight, excitement, agitation, unsteadiness.”60 The form IV active participle of the same root, mu†rib, means “a singer.” ˇarraba has another set of meanings, namely “to delight, to ﬁll with delight, to enrapture, to please, to gratify.” Furthermore, “to sing” †arraba is the causative verb (form II) of †ariba, form I (to be aﬀected with emotion); that is, †arraba can also be understood as “to stir up or arouse emotion” or “to excite someone to joy or sadness.” Etymologically deduced, hence, singing/song in the Arabic perception is the evocation of emotion and feeling. This view also accords with Sawa’s argument as to the signiﬁcance of †arab, which is the ﬁrst and foremost condition to convince the audience of the excellence of the performer. Wa˙ìd’s physical posture is described. “She sings so eﬀortlessly, it seems she’s not singing” (l. 14) is meant to convey that she sings naturally, without artiﬁciality or strain. Line 15 again says, “You don’t see her eyes bulging or her neck-veins bursting from strain.” Wa˙ìd is able to sing beautifully without moving or perspiring. Adequate lung power, self-conﬁdence, and proper posture are among the required conditions to be an excellent singer in the classical majlis.61 The poet thus begins to describe Wa˙ìd’s way of singing by appealing to the sense of sight, while the reader/listener of the poem is capable of imagining her smooth voice despite the fact that the lines (14–15) do not use auditory-related terms. The auditory and

of Plato, aﬀect theories of music, that is, that music ought to arouse speciﬁc emotions in the listeners, remained through the respective discussions of Aristotle, Descartes, Kircher, and Rameau. See John Neubauer, The Emancipation of Music from Language: Departure from Mimesis in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), especially, chap. 3, “Music and the Aﬀects,” 42–59. 59 Ibid., 16. 60 See †-r-b in Lane and Lisàn al-'Arab. 61 See Sawa, 173, 206.

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the optical stimulate and interrelate with each other. It should be emphasized that this ekphrastic description in the sense of visual presentation is intended to express the non-pictorial object, that is, her voice. Ibn al-Rùmì uses gesture and voice, which are closely connected, as the devices of poetic creation to express sensual feelings. While lines 14–15 depict how she sings mainly in the physical domain, they are intimately linked to her voice, which is described in lines 16–22, because the physical posture enables her to produce such a bewitching sound. In order to elucidate the relation of the gesture and the voice, I shall rely on Kramer’s interpretation of the two and their relationship. First, regarding the gestural, Kramer uses it as a key term in understanding a relation between music and poetry in terms of tempo as follows: The term [gestural] reﬂects the idea that music and poetry, more than any of the other arts, deﬁne their formal shape as a function of rhythmically integrated time. A physical gesture—beckoning, waving goodby, embracing—is a complex action so integrated that it is perceived as simple, its duration can deﬁne the virtual present, and in the right context it can assume an enormous weight of implication and emotion. Music and poetry seem to share these qualities, doing over a span of time what a gesture does in a moment. Perhaps, through performance, there is even a direct (but now largely submerged) link between the expressive gestures of music and poetry and physical gestures. Some poems, some compositions, resist and fragment gestural continuity, but it is always there to be resisted or fragmented.62

Kramer further argues as to “voice”: The contrast between gestural and narrative organization can be further sharpened by reference to what Wolfgang Iser calls consistencybuilding. This is a preconscious process by which, according to Iser, the textual segments of a literary work are linked together to ensure the feeling of “good continuation.” . . . Instead of integrating actions into meaningful sequences, gestural consistency-building evokes the quality that is sometimes called “voice”: the feeling of a continuous plane—or several interwoven planes—of intentionality. (It does not matter whether we accept voice as somehow real or regard it as a logocentric illusion; it is the material at hand in either case.) The sense of good continuation that belongs to voice is not left half-conscious but is projected into the work, where it participates in the rise and

62

Kramer, viii.

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fall of tension and manifests itself as a rhythmic/sensuous quality rather than as a conceptual one.63

According to Kramer, the gestural consistency-building creates the “voice” that operates to maintain “good continuation” in poetry or music as opposed to the narrative sequence. The voice embodies a rhythmic/sensuous quality rather than a conceptual one. It is worth mentioning that al-Jà˙iΩ oﬀers some remarks on the rhythm of singing that are similar to Kramer’s view: The rhythm of poetry is of the same category as the rhythm of singing, and the domain of prosody is part of the domain of music: it belongs to the domain of psychology. It is impossible to describe satisfactorily by a verbal deﬁnition, but it can be apprehended intuitively just as much as it can be apprehended by prosodic analysis.64

What al-Jà˙iΩ argues is that rhythm is inherent in the psychological sphere, and music is grasped by intuition (al-˙àjis), not by concept, which can be convincingly (bi-˙add muqni' ) deﬁned by a verbal means. His view also reveals the importance of tempo and prosody. On the basis of Kramer’s theory, I argue that in his description of the songstress Ibn al-Rùmì eﬀectively employs the attributes of the gesture and the voice for the purpose of appealing to the sensual faculty of the reader/hearer. With the presentation of the gesture of her singing, lines 14–15 show how her body is steady without making any special kinetic movement, despite which her singing is splendid and smooth. After this, the poem insinuates “good continuation” in her singing by means of skills, such as breathing, which are based on her steady posture, and the voice suggests its “intentionality,” that is, it is directed to the expression and evocation of emotions. The ode states, “Because of the calm of her voice, which is unbroken, and its stirring of passion, which is unﬂagging” (l. 16). The poet uses the technique of contrast/antithesis (†ibàq) between huduww (tranquility or silence in the night) and shujuww (stirring of passion of joy or grief ). Huduww or quiescence in her voice is a common attribute of her gesture. Despite the fact that her voice bears quiescence, it stirs passion with spirit. Shujuww bears the very conception of †arab (emotion by reason of joy or grief ). The poet also employs the mode 63 64

Ibid., 11. Al-Jà˙iΩ, ed. trans. Beeston, 24.

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of time to present Wa˙ìd’s singing, as Kramer claims. Ibn al-Rùmì says, in line 16, that the girl’s voice stretches without interruption and its passion is resolutely strong and, in line 17, that her voice always reaches the end of the phrase. The length of Wa˙ìd’s voice is closely connected with passion or emotion both in herself and in the listener. The poet compares the length of her breathing to the sighs of the listener with the double use of the tajnìs (paronomasia) in line 17. In the ﬁrst hemistich, nafas (a noun meaning “breath”) is used as the fà'il or subject of madda (a verb meaning “to extend, stretch”), while in the second hemistich madìd is employed as the adjective “extended, stretched” of the anfàs (translated here as “sighs”), the plural of nafas. In combination with these rhetorical techniques, her lovers’ long sighs, which are as long as her breathing, express their infatuation with her and her song. Thus, the sense of a continuous plane of intentionality in Wa˙ìd’s voice, along with the duration which is immanent in her physical gesture, connotes profound implication and emotion. The poet combines gestures with voice in line 18: “Her coquetry and ﬂirtation make her voice even more delicate.” Synaesthetic eﬀects are again utilized. Coquetry and ﬂirtation are ambiguous when categorized in terms of the operative senses, for they are a mixture of vision, touch, and hearing. Nevertheless, her coquettishness increases the quality of her performance. Grammatically speaking, the coquetry (al-dalàl ) and ﬂirtation (al-ghunju) are of her voice, because hu (it) of minhu (of it) refers to “her voice.” In the second hemistich the poet personiﬁes her voice as if it were alive by stating that her voice almost dies. Passion (al-shajà) thins (barà) her voice to the extent that it almost kills it. The word, barà, form I of the verb, means “to sharpen” or “to wear out.” Her song is described as adorned with washy (embroidery) and ˙aly ( jewelry) that consist of naghm (melody) (l. 20), which produces synaesthetic eﬀects. Literary synaesthesia “may be deﬁned as a writer’s use of the ‘metaphor of the senses’ or of expressions and concepts related to it.”65 Jewelry and embroidery are crafts showing a solid pattern, metaphorically associated with melody, which is linear. From embroidery, the reader/listener can picture the image of a colorful, gorgeous

65 Glenn O’Malley, “Literary Synesthesia,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 (1957): 391.

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pattern. On the other hand, jewelry gives an image of glittering, sparkling stones, that is, brilliance. The melody which she produces is composed of the image of jewelry and embroidery. Ibn al-Rùmì attempts to fuse all of these qualities in these two crafts to create a complex picture of Wa˙ìd’s voice in the listener’s/reader’s mind; this is his use of metaphor of the senses, or synaesthesia. Erhardt-Siebold argues, “synaesthesia enables the poet to translate one sense-impression into the terms of another sense.”66 Ibn al-Rùmì makes use of the combination and transfer/translation eﬀects of synaesthesia. Embroidery stimulates the tactile and optical senses, jewelry the optical sense, and melody the auditory sense. The poet makes the reader envisage these images of embroidery and jewelry and combines them with melody into one harmonious impression. In other words, the senses of seeing and touching are transferred into the sense of hearing. Then the poem says that even the lyrics of Wa˙ìd’s song boast of the beauty of her singing (l. 20). This statement is metapoetic, insofar as lyrics praising her singing are described in the poem on her singing. The expression “the melody which the poem wears with pride” appears to stress the excellence of Wa˙ìd’s singing by stating that even the lyrics of the poem she is singing are proud of it. The phrase also suggests that the poem and the song/voice complement each other. We thus have a poem within the poem which even praises the poem. The ode intends to convey its deep, strong emotion to the reader/listener not only by way of one sense but by way of all possible senses. This intention is seen in the poet’s use of the synaesthetic technique of inter-transferring them and synthesizing the sensations for the reader/hearer. Line 21 states that Wa˙ìd’s whole body testiﬁed that her mouth/voice and its vibration were sweet/pleasant. All parts of a body can feel the splendor of her voice. In other words, the poet aims at translating into words what a human being senses, in both body and mind, through Wa˙ìd’s gesture and voice. Furthermore, the singing-girl’s power lies in transforming her audience, which is associated with the function of †arab in music, so that she can shift the spiritual level of the audience. Line 29 states, “She is blamed because when she sings, the freeborn become enslaved by her,” while line 36, “her blameworthy traits became praiseworthy.” Such is her power that even the nature of a human being is transformed by it. 66

Erhardt-Siebold, 584.

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Arts, irrespective of kind, are endowed with an ability to cultivate aesthetically and enrich the sensibility and sentiments. When they are uniﬁed, as music and poetry are synthesized in the poem, the outcome will be inﬁnitely augmented.

Poetics and Metapoetics As a qaßìdah poet, Ibn al-Rùmì naturally makes use of the classical Arabic conventional motifs. “ˇàba fùhan” (her mouth was sweet), for instance, is the expression for the pleasant kiss of the persona’s beloved, often seen in Jàhilì poetry. The beloved’s thirst-quenching cool saliva (l. 22) is likewise one of the conventional motifs of the qaßìdah tradition. A song emitted from the mouth allows the audience to regain lost happiness. This feeling reminds us of the remembrance of the persona’s beloved in the nasìb, the ﬁrst section of the qaßìdah, particularly the a†làl (traces) of her abode where the persona weeps over his past unrequited or irretrievable love. The poet provides Wa˙ìd’s song with the power to restore bygone happiness to the listener and give renewed hope. That is why the listener asks Wa˙ìd to sing and kiss over and over (l. 23)—to portray the euphoria that has existed in the past. She evokes the nostalgia that everyone has in his/her mind. The comparison of the singing-girl to a gazelle (Ωaby), alluding to the qaßìdah tradition, forms a structural framework for the poem. The ﬁrst appearance of the motif is in line 2, mentioning that Wa˙ìd’s neck and eyes are those of a gazelle. The poem further says that “she is a gazelle that dwells in men’s hearts, grazing on them, and she is a singing canary” (l. 13). Wa˙ìd shoots at men’s hearts with her glance (l. 25). The poet adroitly associates the glance with the string of a lute in her hands, which is likened to an arrow in the bow of a soldier (l. 26). (That is, the string of a lute is a metaphor for the arrow.) Moreover, he connects the magic power of the shegazelle’s glance in the Arabic qaßìdah convention to the singing-girl’s bewitching beauty. The topos of the gazelle, snaring the poet with her murderous eyes, endows the beloved with magical and numinous attributes.67 As soon as the persona meets the gazelle/beloved, he is 67 See J. C. Bürgel, “The Lady Gazelle and Her Murderous Glances,” Journal of Arabic Literature 20 (1989): 9.

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bewitched by her stunning beauty. The gazelle metaphor is derived from the animal’s gracefulness and the murderous glances that cause lovesickness and the lover’s death.68 Wa˙ìd demands men’s hearts with her ruqan (the plural of ruqyah) or magical spells (l. 30). Her ruqan demonstrate that her singing has the same force as incantations that enchant the listener. Ibn al-Rùmì recites, “The devil of her love blocked every access, the devil of her love is refractory” (l. 41). All the transformations she causes within her audience, such as from being freeborn to enslaved, from being rational to seduced (l. 24), and from being blameworthy to praiseworthy (l. 36), are indicative of the supernatural force of her song. The poet’s frequent mention of Wa˙ìd’s “glance” towards the end (ll. 51–52) likewise evokes the image of the beloved as a gazelle, which is considered to have murderous eyes which cause the man to be lovesick, sometimes even unto death.69 In terms of structure, the ode demonstrates “arrested development,”70 both psychologically and formally. The ode can be seen as a ghazal, opening with the tashbìb (rhapsody over a beloved woman), for the entire poem recites the poet’s love for Wa˙ìd. The length of the ode, however, consisting of ﬁfty-eight lines, is equivalent to a full qaßìdah. Following the conventional structure, the ode ought to move on to madì˙ (or another of the classical aghrà∂ ) in the last section, in keeping with the traditional bipartite structure consisting of nasìb (elegiac prelude) and madì˙ (the praise of a mamdù˙ or patron). The nasìb mood is prolonged to the end, thus expressing through poetic structure the poet’s inability or unwillingness to move beyond his infatuation for Wa˙ìd. In formal terms, he is unable to go beyond the nasìb. In other words, Ibn al-Rùmì prefers remaining in a state of adolescent passion or a state of aesthetic ecstasy to attaining the stage of maturity that characterizes the madì˙. The closing lines (55–58) appear to operate at both a poetic and metapoetic level. On the poetic level, they convey the persona’s strange and unending passion for Wa˙ìd. The persona’s infatuation has disturbed his usual congenial life and left him insomniac (l. 55).

68

See ibid., 6. Ibid. 70 See Suzanne Stetkevych, chap. 7 of Mute. Stetkevych ﬁnds “arrested development” in Imrù al-Qays’s Mu'allaqah due to its precocious sexuality and prolonged adolescence. 69

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Playing on the antithesis of familiar, or kin, and stranger, the persona expresses his amazement that this “stranger” has settled in his heart, while one close to him (his peace of mind) is banished (l. 56). The persona complains of being veiled or cut oﬀ from his desires, that is, his beloved is unattainable, his love unrequited (l. 57). Finally, he expresses the enigma that his passionate love dwells in his heart, yet, as his beloved is unattainable, it is as distant as the stars of the Pleiades: it is at once both near and far. The poet’s metapoetic intent is ﬁrst signaled by his repetition of the word nasìb (ll. 55 and 56), meaning on the surface level “familiar” or even “kin,” both times in antithetic word-play with gharìb, “strange” or “stranger.” The insistence at the closure of the poem on nasìb, which is also the term for the opening amatory prelude of the classical qaßìdah, alerts us to the poet’s metapoetic concern. For what is formally and structurally “strange” about his poem is precisely that the introductory nasìb themes, chief among them the tashbìb (description of the poet’s beloved), have been extended all the way to the conclusion of a ﬁfty-eight line qaßìdah, without any modulation into the praise of the patron (mamdù˙) or any of the other standard concluding themes (aghrà∂ ). That is, at the (poetic) stage at which the poet should have left the passions of youth, as expressed in the amatory ghazal and tashbìb themes of the nasìb, far behind, he has instead been waylaid, as it were, by a “strange” infatuation. Thus the repeated use of the word nasìb serves as the link between the poetic and metapoetic levels of meaning and allows the poet to express his selfconsciousness regarding the unusual structure of his poem. Harking back to lines 9 and 10 concerning the simultaneous ease and diﬃculty of describing Wa˙ìd, the two closing lines (57 and 58) suggest that the unattainable object of the persona’s desire—that which is both far and near—is the perfect poetic response to the challenge “Íifhà!” (Describe her!); his frustration is not merely erotic or sexual, but artistic. The closing line comprises yet another metapoetic play. As far back as pre-Islamic poetry, the antithesis of near and far was employed as a topos of the madì˙ (praise section) to describe the persona’s feeling of simultaneous attachment to (closeness) and awe for (distance) the mamdù˙. Phrased at it is in the third person masculine, the closing line reads perfectly as a traditional closing line of a madì˙. The bivalency of this line, too, then alerts us to the poet’s sense of the classical form and his ability to play on and with it.

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CHAPTER FIVE

POETRY AND PORTRAITURE: A DOUBLE PORTRAIT IN A PANEGYRIC BY IBN ZAMRAK*

While the lingering reverberations of the singing-girl’s voice echo, we now move on to the waßf of a glorious ediﬁce composed by an Andalusian court poet of the Naßrid era in the fourteenth century C.E. This chapter concerns a third aspect of the ekphrastic mode of interarts, architecture, in association with the concept of portraiture. I examine a particular Arabic panegyric, qaßìdat al-mad˙, in an unconventional way that is consistent with Western critical concerns, while heeding the genre’s traditional topics and features. This study’s key concept is again the concept of ekphrasis, “the verbal representation of real or ﬁctitious texts composed in a non-verbal sign system,” which includes architecture.1 I use the comparative methods of interarts studies to highlight features of a particular ode, including some of the conventions under which it operates that have not yet attracted critical attention. The Arabic panegyric genre potentially contains both a literary portrait of the patron and a poet’s self-portrait in one and the same ode: a double portrait. Portraiture is a representation or description of a human subject, and it can be visual, verbal, or musical. The art historian Richard Brilliant states with regard to visual representation that portraits express an intended relationship between the portrait image and the human original.2 The portraitist plays an intermediary role between the human subject and his image.3 Although

* An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, San Francisco, California, November, 1997, and appeared as Akiko Motoyoshi, “Poetry and Portraiture: A Double Portrait in an Arabic Panegyric by Ibn Zamrak,” Journal of Arabic Literature 30, no. 3 (1999): 199–239. 1 This deﬁnition is by Claus Clüver. 2 Richard Brilliant, Portraiture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 7. According to Brilliant, the “intended relationship” is created by the portraitist. 3 See ibid., 45.

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the professed purpose of the Arabic panegyric is to praise a patron— an Arab poet portrays the praised individual in the madì˙ section (and portrays himself in the nasìb, the ra˙ìl, and the madì˙ sections)4— the qaßìdah has never been investigated as a verbal portrait or as a self-portrait until now. This chapter deals with a panegyrical qaßìdah dedicated to Sultan Mu˙ammad V by Ibn Zamrak (1333–93? C.E.), an Andalusian poet of the Naßrid era, which is explored as a double portrait of the patron-ruler and the poet himself. I view the portrait of the ruler as an “emblematic portrait” (a concept which is explained below), because he is rendered by means of an ekphrastic representation of the famous palace he (re)built, the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. The palace is presented as a “combination of the embodiment and characterization of the whole being,” to apply one of Brilliant’s formulations regarding emblematic portraiture to the representation of the patron by means of his own creation.5 Although there is currently no consensus on deﬁning ekphrasis, I am using Claus Clüver’s deﬁnition quoted above in this chapter, for it clearly covers the verbal representation of the Alhambra as ekphrastic poetry.6 Since the Alhambra is an artistic creation considered as a “text” in semiotic parlance, the description of the palace in the poem’s madì˙ (panegyric) section (ll. 29–146), including its garden and fountain, is an ekphrasis. The ode demonstrates the conventional bipartite structure (the nasìb: ll. 1–28 and the madì˙: 29–146) and uses traditional motifs and tropes, while Ibn Zamrak shows his originality by giving an “emblematic portrait” of the ruler through architectural ekphrasis. The ode has been studied, along with Ibn Zamrak’s other poems, by García Gómez, who approaches it from historical, biographical, and literary perspectives; James T. Monroe has carefully examined

4 Explicit self-portraits by the poet are generally not frequent in the madì˙. However, the 'Abbàsid poet al-Mutanabbì (915–65) often praises himself in the madì˙ section. He also uses the ﬁrst-person “I” in the madì˙, which seldom occurs there. For instance, in his 'ìd-poem, al-Mutanabbì presents a relationship between himself and his patron and boasts of his own poetic power (ll. 34–38). See Suzanne Stetkevych, “'Abbàsid Panegyric.” 5 Richard Brilliant, “Portraits: A Recurrent Genre in World Art,” in Likeness and Beyond: Portraits from Africa and the World, ed. Jean M. Borgatti and Richard Brilliant (New York: The Center for African Art, 1990), 14. 6 I prefer Clüver’s deﬁnition, for it is not limited as to the kind of verbal representation and makes a convincing case for including architecture. For other deﬁnitions of ekphrasis by Spitzer and Heﬀernan, see pp. 11–14 in the Introduction.

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its themes, techniques and styles in detail, including metaphors and clichés, as well as the historical and biographical aspects.7 However, these works do not deal with the function of the ekphrastic description of the Alhambra in light of the whole qaßìdah. The investigation of panegyrical odes as verbal portraits as well as the employment of theories of portraiture derived from the visual arts are new in the study of Arabic qaßìdahs. Also, there has been no interpretation of the ekphrastic description of a building as an emblematic representation of a patron-ruler. This exploration of a qaßìdah as a portrait enables us to introduce both interarts theory and the perspectives of portrait theory to the academic research of classical Arabic poetry. My terms are, therefore, derived from concepts of visual arts based on the studies of Western portraiture. I hope the examination of ekphrasis in this study will enlarge the perspectives of the study of the Arabic qaßìdah, for there are many ekphrastic moments, such as the description of a building, a garden, or a fountain, in the Arabic poetic tradition.8 The qaßìdah played a role corresponding to the function of visual portraits in the Western court culture inasmuch as both the qaßìdah and the visual portrait serve to conﬁrm the ruler’s legitimacy and preserve the social and cultural values represented by the monarchy.9 This function of the qaßìdah is extremely crucial in the Arabo-Islamic tradition as it helps the ruler maintain the support of the public and the dignity of legitimate Islamic sovereignty. Additionally, it can be argued that the aversion to painting or visual representation in Islam helped the qaßìdah tradition to develop and prosper, because the political institution required an equivalent of visual portraiture to maintain the image of the sovereign and spread the claim of his authority and legitimacy throughout the land. The means has been the panegyric qaßìdah. 7 García Gómez. Ibn Zamrak: El poeta de la Alhambra (Madrid: Maestre, 1975). James T. Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry: A Student Anthology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). See also R. Blachère, “Le visir-poète Ibn Zumruk et son oeuvre,” Annales de l’Institut d’Études Orientales 2 (1936): 291–312. 8 'Alì Ibn al-Jahm (d. 863 C.E.) and al-Sarì al-Raﬀà" (d. 976 C.E.) describe fountains and palaces in their full qaßìdahs. In al-Andalus, Ibn Óamdìs (d. 1132 C.E.) has some poems with the depiction of buildings and fountains. Jaroslav Stetkevych investigates some garden poems in chap. 5, “In Search of the Garden,” Zephyrs. For fountain odes, Hideaki Sugita discusses a number of poems describing fountains and animal-shaped fountains in 'Abbàsid and Andalusian poems in his book Jibutsu no Koe, Kaiga no Shi (The Voice of Things and the Poetry of Painting). 9 Suzanne Stetkevych, “Qaßìdah,” 25.

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After introducing the poet and the Alhambra palace, I ﬁrst discuss the poetic text in terms of what it appears to tell us in the framework of the Arabic qaßìdah tradition both in structure and theme. I then move on to the main argument of this study, interpreting the ode as a portrait of Sultan Mu˙ammad V and as a selfportrait of Ibn Zamrak. Because Arabic literary conventions have had a great impact on this ode, without understanding the qaßìdah within that tradition, it would be quite diﬃcult and confusing to interpret this long panegyric.

Ibn Zamrak and the Alhambra The ode was composed by Abù 'Abd Allàh Mu˙ammad b. Yùsuf b. Mu˙ammad b. A˙mad b. Mu˙ammad b. Yùsuf al-Íuray˙ì, known as Ibn Zamrak, an Andalusian poet and statesman of the Naßrid era (1232–1492). Although Ibn Zamrak was of humble origin, he studied with excellent masters in poetry such as Ibn al-Kha†ìb (1313–74), who was a Granadan vizier (before Ibn Zamrak became a private secretary at Mu˙ammad V’s court), philosopher, and historian, as well as a poet.10 In 1362 Abù 'Abd Allàh Mu˙ammad V (r. 1354–59, 1362–91)11 appointed him as his private secretary and a court poet to commemorate recent events. When his master and patron Ibn alKha†ìb was dismissed in 1371, Ibn Zamrak succeeded him as vizier and hired a group of assassins to kill him in prison after his arrest in Fez. Ibn Zamrak continued to hold the vizierate until the death in 1391 of Mu˙ammad V, whose successor, Yùsuf II (r. 1391–92), dismissed Ibn Zamrak and imprisoned him for nearly two years. Later the poet was assassinated on orders of Sultan Mu˙ammad VII (r. 1392–1408) while he was reading the Qur"àn at home, in approximately 1393.12 The political chaos during the Naßrid period, to which Ibn Zamrak was an eye-witness, impelled him to use his artistic skills as a poet and a secretary (kàtib) in order to protect himself. The Naßrid era 10

See Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry, 64. His reign was interrupted by Ismà'ìl II then Mu˙ammad VI. See FernándezPuertas, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Naßrids.” 12 See F. de la Granja, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Ibn Zamrak.” Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry, 64–65. Khayr al-Dìn al-Ziriklì, Al-A'làm, s.v. “Ibn Zamrak.” 11

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witnessed extensive political instability, amply attested by the fact that one-third of its sultans were assassinated. In those vicissitudes, the poet greatly exploited his poetic ability for the purpose of defending and maintaining himself as both a politician and a court poet by praising his patron and himself. Poetry oﬀered the excellent means to exhibit his brilliance and to defend himself. Ibn Zamrak served the Naßrid court as a †àlib (apprentice), a kàtib sirri-hi (personal secretary), a ra"ìs (chief of department), and a vizier through the eras of the sultans Yùsuf I, Mu˙ammad V, Yùsuf II, and Mu˙ammad VII. These four positions belonged to a particular governmental department, the Dìwàn al-Inshà" or the writing oﬃce in charge of handling bureaucratic aﬀairs and oﬃcial correspondence. In addition, the oﬃce had a crucial cultural role in the reconstruction of the Alhambra and contributed to the architectural design and the inscription of Qur"ànic verses and poems on the Alhambra walls. The kàtibs and ra"ìses cooperated with the 'arìfs (architects) and mu'allims (master craftsmen) in the formation of the architecture and its decoration. In other words, as a kàtib and a ra"ìs, Ibn Zamrak took part in creating the art of the Alhambra not only as a poet, but also as a bureaucrat.13 The poet was a kàtib sirri-hi, a ra"ìs, and a vizier under Mu˙ammad V. While the other three ra"ìses in the Naßrid period, including his predecessor and master Ibn al-Kha†ìb, gained the post of dhù al-wizàratayn (double vizier of the pen and the sword), Ibn Zamrak was appointed to be vizier of the pen, but not of the sword.14 Recalling that Ibn Zamrak later carried out the assassination of Ibn al-Kha†ìb, we can assume that the former was perhaps discontent with the fact that he was not made a dhù al-wizàratayn. We must refer to the question of who actually built the Alhambra palace in view of my claim that in the poem the Alhambra is designed to embody the poet’s patron, Mu˙ammad V. According to Andrew Peterson, most of the Alhambra palace complex was built by successive emirs during the fourteenth and ﬁfteenth centuries, even though its oldest part was constructed in the twelfth century.15 The 13 See Antonio Fernández-Puertas, The Alhambra, From the Ninth Century to Yùsuf I (1354), 2 vols. (London: Saqi Books, 1997), 1: 143–45. 14 Ibid., 1: 146. 15 Andrew Peterson, The Dictionary of Islamic Architecture, s.v. “Alhambra,” 15. All the information on the Alhambra in this paragraph is taken from this source. According to Peterson, the Sala de los Reyes consists of a series of rooms opening

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present form of the largest and best known of the palaces, the Palacio de Comares, is the result of Mu˙ammad V’s rebuilding in 1365. The sultan also created the Patio de los Leones which leads to the Sala de los Reyes which was a center for ceremonials. Ibn Zamrak chose to describe the Alhambra not only because his patron owned it, but also because he actually (re)built it.

Poetic Strategy in Light of the Arabic Poetic Tradition First, the structural aspects of the qaßìdah are explored in terms of Arabic qaßìdah conventions. Ibn Zamrak’s ode is distinctive in its concluding praise section. In the panegyric, a poet usually praises his patron by describing his magniﬁcent character—his valor, leadership, generosity, and intelligence—or his military campaigns. However, in addition to praising Mu˙ammad V, Ibn Zamrak devotes many lines to the description of the Alhambra, including its garden (trees and birds) and the sky above it.16 The poet starts the madì˙ in line 29 after the nasìb (ll. 1–28), shifts to the description of the Alhambra in line 60, and goes back to praising the patron himself in line 121. The description of the palace covers sixty out of one hundred fortysix lines, and the description is situated between two sections of praise for the patron (ll. 29–59 and ll. 121–46). Considering its location, the description of the Alhambra should be viewed as a part of the madì˙. Functionally, however, the description may also be seen as a sort of ra˙ìl, a notion which I discuss later. I argue that the ekphrasis of the Alhambra has three functions for the poet: 1. to praise his patron by creating an emblematic portrait of him, 2. to cultivate

onto a larger vaulted area, which in turn opens on to the Patio. Although Ibn Zamrak does not mention the names of the sections of the Alhambra in his poem, we can assume that the Patio characterized by the fountain in its center as well as the Tower of Comares are described in his qaßìdah based on the fact that the description of the materials and forms accord with those of the actual Alhambra. Therefore, it may be assumed that the portions in the Alhambra complex that are depicted in Ibn Zamrak’s ode were largely created by Mu˙ammad V. On the eleventh century Jewish origines of the Alhambra, see Frederick P. Bargebuhr, The Alhambra: A Cycle of Studies on the Eleventh Century in Moorish Spain (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1968). 16 The description of a building as praise is not, however, entirely without antecedents. See, for example, the description of the ruins of Ìwàn Kisrà (the residence of the Sàsànian Kings) in the madì˙ of al-Bu˙turì. See chap. 3.

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himself through showing the brilliance of the patron, and 3. to create a self-portrait that amounts to self-praise.

Ibn Zamrak’s Qaßìdah in Praise of Mu˙ammad V of Granada17 1.

Ask the horizon that is adorned with ﬂowers of stars, for I have entrusted it to tell you how I am.

2.

I made the languid breeze bear my trust, through which my hopes traversed the age of time.

3.

O you who ﬁnd [men’s] souls weak, I have placed burdens on them that make mountains seem light.

4.

How many men’s whispered rumors were taken seriously, while only passion was serious to me, so that my upset heart was thought to be mocking [dying].

5.

Whoever obeys the glances according to the law of love will surely disobey a good advisor as well as a reviler.

17 The meter of this ode is †awìl. The translation is a cooperative eﬀort by myself and Suzanne Stetkevych. There are three published versions of the Arabic text: by al-Nayfar, James T. Monroe, and al-Maqqarì. Unless otherwise noted, we have followed Monroe’s version. Ibn Zamrak al-Andalusì, Ode 105, Dìwàn Ibn Zamrak alAndalusì, ed. with notes, Mu˙ammad Tawfìq al-Nayfar (Beirut: Dàr al-Gharb al-Islàmì, 1997), 519–26. Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry, Ode 40, 346–65. A˙mad ibn Mu˙ammad al-Maqqarì al-Tilimsànì, Naf˙ al-ˇìb min Ghußn al-Andalus al-Ra†ìb—wa Dhikr Wazìrihà Lisàn al-Dìn Ibn al-Kha†ìb, ed. Mu˙ammad Mu˙yì al-Dìn 'Abd al-Óamìd, 10 vols. (Beirut: Dàr al-Kitàb al-'Arabì, 1949), 10: 49–56. See the Appendix for the Arabic text.

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6.

I turned my heart from the dominion of [love’s] rule when it was content with the tyrannous glance as its ruler.

7.

Love is but a glance that stirs up passion and causes maladies no doctor can cure.

8.

How amazing is the eye allowed to roam at will that stirs the heart to consternation.

9.

Is there no precious soul, striving in God’s path, whose dear price love does not cheapen?

10.

How many a pact with youthful passion did I fulﬁll, and how well I paid love-union’s debt!

11.

I was alone with the one I loved, unwatched; but I was never lacking in virtue or modesty.

12.

Many a day I spent with shy skittish gazelles/maids exerting myself in love-union till I was worn out.

13.

I did not sober up from the wine of the glance with which the bright countenance, sunlit, ignites the air.

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   14.

It [His glance] unsheathed a sharp sword of lightning from the sheath of the clouds, its blade polished and pure.

15.

He smiled and moved my eyelids to abundant weeping that ﬁlled my cloak with the pearls of tears.

16.

He reminded me of a mouth at which I wanted to quench my thirst —and no, I swear by 'Udhrite love, I had not forgotten it.

17.

And it continued in the evening with a throbbing like mine as if the lightning of the tribal precinct were heartsick like me.

18.

And one night when the full moon spent the night in my bed and the eyes of the shining stars spent it gazing at me,

19.

I sipped between the sweet [saliva] and ﬂashing [teeth] from the drinking place of a mouth adorned all night with pearls.

20.

I sucked from it the honey of saliva like the best wine and kissed dewdrops from the delightful chamomile.

21.

O coolness of that mouth, you have quenched my burning thirst, and O the heat of my sighs, you have melted my heart!

163

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22.

Many a garden of beauty and youthful freshness, there I saw the branch of a willow tree ready for plucking.

23.

I spent a night watering the rose of the cheek with my tears, till the narcissus of the glance became withered on the morn.

24.

The girls with swaying ﬁgures swayed my heart; so what do I care about those swaying ﬁgures?

25.

May God reward that time of aﬀection by renewing it; it has been a long time since He brought rain on the abode of the gazelles.

26.

Say to the nights which I enjoyed in my youth and which I spent in intimacy, “May you be watered, my nights!”

27.

O my riverbed whose shadows were spread over me as we passed the cup of companionship: may you be ransomed, O my riverbed!

28.

In it the gazelles’ eyes shot [their glances] at me, but in their passion the only target they hit was my heart.18

29.

Had it not been for my seeking the protection of Prince Mu˙ammad,

18 The second hemstich literally means “the only thing they shot at the targets was my heart (qalb).”

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   I would never have been saved from those lethal glances. 30.

Say to him whose poetry is built on beauty, “May you ever build well upon it.”

31.

How many a complaint of love have you allayed and alleviated with praise, since [praise] followed it.

32.

How many a night I passed awake competing with the shining stars in order to praise him by virtue of the pearls of poetry.

33.

And then the column of dawn appeared luminous as his ancestry and on it I raised the ediﬁce of my praise,

34.

For an imàm whose age has beneﬁted from his noble deeds and has dwelt with him in heights above the stars.

35.

He surpassed the full moon in brightness and loftiness and was satisﬁed with no friend but perfection.

36.

He is the sun which has spread its beneﬁcence over the earth and whose light has guided everyone, both near and far.

37.

He is the salt sea whose waves swell with beneﬁcence,

165

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  but he is (abundant) sweet water to every supplicant.

38.

He is abundant rain that pours forth when the clouds withhold their rain, quenching whoever is thirsty with clouds of generous rain.

39.

He has good qualities; if the garden had their beauty, its fresh ﬂowers would never fade.

40.

O son of the proud kings from the family of Khazraj possessing a lineage that is powerful19 and like the dawn exalted.

41.

Are you not the one whose favor petitioners seek till your gifts embarrass the early morning clouds?20

42.

Are you not the one whose assault the tyrants fear till your augustness frightens oﬀ hardship’s assault?

43.

Whose guidance, whenever the shooting stars stray from their goal, they take as their guide under the wings of darkness.

44.

Your resolve is more incisive than your sword in the din of battle, even though the sword’s two edges are polished to be sharp.

19 20

Dhà can mean either “possessing” or “this” (hàdhà). This line follows al-Nayfar’s vocalization.

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45.

For how many a defamer of religion, denying his Lord, did you strike the ﬂint of your anger, setting it ablaze!

46.

Nothing alarmed him except for a sword and a resolve that illuminated the night of dark aﬀairs.

47.

Were it not for you, O Sun of the Caliphate, the path to holy war, which lay concealed, would not have come to light.

48.

Were it not for you, the sky would not have been darkened by battle-dust, in which white spearheads shone like shining stars.

49.

Were it not for you, the branches of the lances would not have drunk a ﬁrst draught, though they were thirsty for the watering place of blood.

50.

The spearhead bore the fruit of a mighty victory and plucked the fruit of conquest, fresh and close at hand.

51.

Whenever your blood-shedding sword goes forth naked, leaving the face of the earth clothed with blood,

52.

God decrees from above the heavens that it slay whoever on earth has rejected Islam.

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53.

How many an inﬁdel stronghold did you attack at dawn with an army that turned the dawn back to darkness.

54.

You ascended to it, while the swords were drawn, and the souls in it had reached the point of ascending.

55.

You conquered its fortiﬁed citadel by force, and in it through the night monotheism rose to announce [its victory].

56.

Its bell was forced into silence that evening, while in the morning its pulpit was adorned by the invocation [of Allah’s name].

57.

[In it were] unimaginable wonders and only through your unique aspiration did we triumph over them.

58.

Thus it was from you that fate acquired every wonder for which kings will compete till the end of time.

59.

It is about you that men relate every marvelous deed that is dictated and inscribed upon the page of Time.

60.

How beautiful your building is, for by the decree of good fortune, it transcends all others!

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   61.

How many joyful comforts for the eyes are found in it, it rekindles the passions of even a sedate man’s soul!

62.

The luminous stars would love to be ﬁxed in its vault rather than traverse the vault of heaven.

63.

Were they to present themselves among its ﬁrst arrivals, they would vie with the handmaidens to serve your pleasure.

64.

It has a portico of surpassing beauty, through which the palace vies in beauty with the vault of heaven.

65.

With how many ﬁne draperies have you adorned it! whose colorful embroidery makes us forget the Yemeni brocades!

66.

And how many arches rise up in its courtyard supported by columns which all night long are adorned with light,

67.

Till you think them the celestial spheres that have revolved in their orbits overshadowing the pillars of dawn that shone dimly through the night.

68.

The columns have produced every rare wonder that proverbs carry oﬀ spreading far and wide.

169

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69.

In the palace there is burnished marble whose luminous sheen has revealed what lay hidden in the darkness.

70.

When the columns are illumined by the sun’s rays, you would think them, despite their huge size, pearls.

71.

In it is a fountain that spurts forth rippling waters, till you imagine, when it pours forth, it is vying with the [water rippling] breeze.

72.

When the hands of the east wind polish its surface, they show us coats of mail that have won us great power.

73.

Prancing/dancing in the fountain, obedient to her rein, she responds to melodies of the singing girls.

74.

When she rises in the air and sinks again, scattering loose pearls in all directions,

75.

Silver melts that has ﬂowed among jewels and has become/appeared like her in beauty, pure white.

76.

A liquid appeared to the eyes like a solid so that I cannot discern which of them is ﬂowing.

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   77.

If you want a perfect simile that so hits the mark that you will be congratulated as a marksman,

78.

Then say that the pool made her back dance as someone playing with a baby makes it dance.

79.

She showed while she she was not save with

80.

She watered the mouth of the ﬂowers in the garden with the sweetness of her cool waters, and began to conduct a streamlet [that ﬂows] forever.

81.

As if she had seen the river of the Milky Way ﬂowing and had undertaken to make the streams ﬂow into it.

82.

The “daughters of the lofty trees” [i.e., saplings planted in the garden] pose gracefully,21 some singly, others following in pairs.

83.

Sucking at the breast of passion they grew and became young [maidens] and kindled love for them in my heart.

84.

From each of them hangs a branch of braided locks,

171

us her generous nature was still small, content abundant beneﬁcence.

21 In al-Maqqarì’s text, there is a variant of mawà"ilan (that is found in Monroe’s text): mawàthilan (standing). We adopt mawàthilan.

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  that is passed around in circles by the breeze’s hands.

85.

In it the branch held high its slender neck, unadorned, then the blossoms formed a necklace on its collarbone.

86.

When its shoots were adorned by pearls of ﬂowers, the wild thyme embellished it with fragrance through the night,

87.

The exchange of two currencies in her for their likes was permitted by the judge to beauty to pay her due.22

88.

If she ﬁlled the palm of the breeze in the bright morning sun with dirhams of light, it would accept them [for silver dirhams].

89.

Then the enclosure of the garden would be ﬁlled around their branches with dinars of sunshine that leave the garden adorned.

90.

The birds visit its branches frequently whenever the hands of the singing girls play their instruments there.

91.

The birds respond to the singing girls in rhyme, so that you would think the birds

22 In al-Maqqarì’s version, the second hemistich is “Mußàrifatu n-naqdayni fìhà bimithlihà, ajàza bi-hà al-naqdayni min-hà kamà hiyà.” Two currencies are dirham (silver) and dinar (gold).

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   by their voices were dictating their songs to them. 92.

We did not know of any other garden more delightful in freshness, more fragrant in all its directions, or more pleasant in the picking of its fruits.

93.

Nor have we seen a palace loftier in its lookouts, more distant in its views, or more capacious in its assembly halls.

94.

Good qualities you selected from perfection itself, and with them you adorned the abodes with beauty.

95.

You inaugurated its construction on a holiday, when you began to spread the felicitations both east and west.

96.

When you called on the people to build it, they responded to your call from as far as the Ghawr.

97.

They directed their steps towards it, drawing near from the most distant lands, and the good fortune from you still brings those distant near to you.

98.

You reminded [men] of Judgment Day in your muniﬁcence and might when, seated in judgment, you dispensed rewards.

99.

There you rewarded everyone according to his due,

173

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  so that he gathered the fruits of whatever his right hand had planted.

100.

[Then you sent them away] on howdahs, with high wooden frames that reminded the heedless of the day of departure [from Mina to Mecca during the Óajj].

101.

In the morning [sun] [the palace] gleams like ﬂaring beacons for the villages, so it is no wonder that you have streams running through it.

102.

And a [tower] rising proudly in the air, unreachable, so lofty it repels and weakens the glance.

103.

Gemini extends to it a ready hand, and the full moon of the heavens draws near to whisper secrets.

104.

It is no wonder that it exceeds the stars in height and goes beyond their furthest limits.

105.

Before your abode [this tower] has risen to perform its service; for whoever serves the highest wins nobility thereby.

106.

The proof of this is that I am standing at your door/court, and that even the blossoms of the stars have envied my position.

107.

The [ﬂowers/stars] suckled the breast of the clouds before this

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   in the precinct of the gardens in which they had grown. 108.

And no sooner did they sprout from the soil of their roots, than they aspired to reach the height of the clouds.

109.

They considered meeting the clouds a feast and festival, so they rose early to delight the morning clouds with the sound of the ﬂute.

110.

So [the ﬂowers/stars] made the joyous lightning laugh among them and all night long [the lightning] oﬀered drink to their pearly cups.

111.

They saw themselves grown so tall that they thought they surpassed their goal, though they had hit it.

112.

The fading [ﬂowers/stars] rushed to [the clouds] as if they were exhausted birds after long ﬂight collapsing in their nest.

113.

They resembled bees when the honey gatherer pokes his stick into their hive, rising in a swarm.

114.

Some head straight for their goal and reach it, while others, unsteady, circle wearily in the air.

115.

It is an invincible fortress that has been elevated to the height [of the stars],

175

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  its highest towers vanishing in the upper air.

116.

It is as if the towers of the Zodiac had fallen to earth and had seen the towers of the palaces you built rising [to the sky].23

117.

You built a soaring tower, gradually descending to be a ﬂattering messenger among [palaces].

118.

The palace has developed in various stages, exciting [the jealousy] of beautiful women with its varied ornaments.

119.

It has anklets on its feet and a sash around its waist, and a crown adorns its highest parts.

120.

The crown is none other than a bird of good omen at its summit, which in the early morning drives back the gray falcon of dawn.

121.

O my lord, pride of kings, in whom the religion of God attains what it desires!

122.

By the decree of good fortune, your sons are ﬁve

23 We use al-Nayfar’s version, “Ka"anna burùja l-ufqi (See 4 n, 525.) ghàrat wa-qad ra"at.” In Monroe’s version, “It is as if the ﬂashes of lightning hit the earth and had revealed the towers of the palaces you built rising [to the sky].”

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and that number grants protection from the evil eye. 123.

All night the hand of the Pleiades invokes God’s protection for them, and at morn the gentlest breezes will arise for them.

124.

Names impressed upon them for felicity’s sake, in which you see might, both implicit and explicit.

125.

You put Abù al-Óajjàj at the head of their list, you through whom conquests were successive.

126.

May you be satisﬁed by Sa'd and by Naßr, followed by Mu˙ammad al-Ar∂à, and you continue to be content.24

127.

In him [Abù al-Óajjàj] you established a Tradition based on Religion [Islam], and restored the eﬀaced trace of the Holy Guidance.

128.

They brought him, his comeliness ﬁlling [the beholders’] eyes, kissing the face of the earth, bright and resplendent.25

129.

O censurer, there was never anyone as bold as he,

24 See al-Nayfar’s edition, 6 n. 525. It says that the patron’s ﬁve sons are Abù al-Óajjàj Yùsuf, Sa'd, Naßr, Mu˙ammad, and 'Alì. 25 We use al-Nayfar’s vocalization, “wajha” as the direct object of “yuqabbil.”

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  and one like you will never shed the blood of ferocious lions.

130.

Greetings came to you from Egypt like precious gifts, whose costly goods the merchants’ hands could not tear open.

131.

An amulet came to you from the land of al-Óijàz completing God’s creation, may it be unceasingly revealed.

132.

The Sultan of ˇaybah called you “the dreadful,” O fragrant one, how ﬁtting the name that he bestowed on you!

133.

He stood, after visiting Mu˙ammad’s tomb, praying there for your exalted dominion.

134.

Your merciful soul, may it be rewarded for its endeavor by a God who gives all eﬀorts full recompense.

135.

For, by God, were it not for the Tradition of the Prophet, by which we recognize him [the patron-ruler] to be both guided and guide,

136.

And an act of forgiveness that was decreed according to Law by news that raised the spears [led to a truce],

137.

[You would have wreaked] a slaughter

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whose horrors would have turned the very spearheads hoary, 138.

In this you deserve praise for a deed that you reckon, then its third in glory has exalted a second.

139.

For it Gemini fastens the knot of its Orion’s Belt, so that it may serve in it to win nobility.

140.

You have been congratulated for it with poetic praise, and by it your existence has come to overﬂow with generosity.

141.

And before you there are jewels from the sea of rhetoric, which are high-esteemed, for they are not sold except at a high price.

142.

I pursued in them the description of every wonder, for I have outdone all those who will come as well as those who have gone before.

143.

O heir to the Anßàr, and not based on remote kinship, the inheritance of majesty makes mountains seem light.

144.

The scripture has brought his praises, divided in parts, he who recites it will chant it invoking [H/his] name.26

26

Qur"ànic and Qur"àn-related diction identiﬁes his poem with the Holy Qur"àn.

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 

145.

Islam has recognized, from what I have conveyed, the noble deeds of the Naßrids and their power.

146.

The peace of God be upon you, so be forever safe, renewing holidays and destroying the foe.

Richard Brilliant’s term “emblematic portrait” helps us to comprehend Ibn Zamrak’s poetic strategy which employs the description of architecture for the purpose of portraying the sultan.27 In the ekphrastic representation of the Alhambra, the poet portrays Mu˙ammad V not in a descriptive or “iconic” mode that demonstrates “a strong likeness shared by the image and its referent,”28 but in an emblematic mode. For Brilliant, “emblematic portraits rely on a nondescriptive, but evocative, symbolism to signify the person in a synecdochic manner.”29 I argue that Ibn Zamrak’s representation of the sovereign is metonymic rather than synecdochic, for it is a case where “one thing is applied to another with which it is closely associated, because of contiguity in common experience.”30 Although the poet praises his patron’s inner attributes, he scarcely describes him physically;31 instead, he depicts the Alhambra as ideal architecture that signiﬁes the glory of Mu˙ammad V. In light of the thematic development in relation to the structure, since the ﬁrst (nasìb) part presents the poetic persona’s unhappy love, the nasìb itself hardly mentions Mu˙ammad V, the object of his

27

Brilliant, “Portraits,” 14. Ibid., 15. Brilliant further says, “Iconic portraits rely heavily on the representation of the recognizable face and body as the primary vehicles of the portrait repertory,” 15. The Arabic qaßìdah usually does not describe the physical features of a mamdù˙ (one praised), but rather presents his inner attributes in the madì˙ section. However, I consider the presentation of a patron’s inner attributes as an “iconic” portrait, because it is based on “a strong likeness shared by the image and its referent.” Also, it is much more “realistic”and descriptive than an “emblematic portrait” which relies on an arbitrary, abstract symbol. 29 Ibid., 14. 30 M. H. Abrams, Glossary, 68–69. 31 The only vague physical description in the ode occurs in line 128: “. . . his [the sultan’s] comeliness ﬁlling [the beholders’] eyes. . . .” 28

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praise. Nevertheless, the relationship between the nasìb and the madì˙ is important for understanding the poet’s entire thematic enterprise. If we view the ode from the perspective of Stefan Sperl’s dialectical paradigm, the contrast between barrenness in the nasìb and fertility in the madì˙ is clearly shown in the panegyric;32 that is, as Monroe states, “the poem progresses from initial despair to ﬁnal consolation found in the glory of the sovereign.”33 In the former the persona is the protagonist, and his unrequited love is rendered in lines 4–28. The nasìb part shows conventional concepts of love and scarcely deviates from the convention. 'Udhrite love, an early Islamic revival of Bedouin lyricism expressing passionate, sentimental, and idolatrous love, is the central theme of the nasìb.34 The poet employs conventional clichés: he is snared by the beloveds’ glances (l. 5) and compares his mistresses to gazelles (l. 12). Yet, Monroe states that Ibn Zamrak employs these well-worn clichés in a very fresh and original way.35 His unhappy love is then overcome by the integration of the persona into the sphere of his patron, Mu˙ammad V, in the madì˙. Starting with line 29, which is the beginning of the madì˙, the persona turns to the sultan, seeking his protection from the deadly glances of the seductresses. The feeling of loss in the nasìb is assuaged by the patron’s generosity. The description of the pool and trees (ll. 78–86) presents the echoes of the nasìb and makes the palace the ultimate compensation for the persona’s lost loves. Ibn Zamrak’s rhetorical strategy is to compare art to nature and to elevate the arts of poetry and architecture by making them superior to nature. Monroe rightly observes that this strategy contrasts with that of the other Andalusian poets, such as Ibn Khafàjah and al-Rußàfì, who admire and poeticize nature.36 In the ﬁrst line, Ibn Zamrak has entrusted the horizon adorned with ﬂowers of stars to convey a message about himself—the persona casts the horizon and the stars as his servant. The stars continue to appear throughout the ode. For instance, line 32 says that when the persona stayed up late

32 Sperl, 25. Sperl’s work on the bipartite nasìb-madì˙ qaßìdah of the 'Abbàsid period shows a coherent thematic development by identifying a dialectical “strophe/ antistrophe” structure and relating this to ancient Near Eastern kingship rituals. 33 Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry, 365. 34 See Jaroslav Stetkevych, Zephyrs, 113. 35 Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry, 65. 36 Ibid.

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eulogizing his sovereign, his pearls of poetry competed with the stars. The shining stars are capable of exalting the ruler of Granada by illuminating him, whereas the poet can glorify him through his art, poetry. The poet not only compares nature to art, but also makes use of nature to magnify his patron. Although humans normally use the stars for guidance, line 43 reverses the order and has erring stars seeking the ruler’s guidance. This concept conveys the message that since you cannot rely on the stars, you must follow the commands of Mu˙ammad V, who is the divinely guided sovereign. The poet returns to this topic in the ekphrastic section, where the wandering stars want to establish themselves in the ruler’s palace (l. 62). This line implies that his abode is a permanent abode and, that signiﬁes the perfect political realm of the Islamic kingdom, in contrast to the unreliable abode of the stars.37 Ibn Zamrak devotes so many lines (60–105) to the description of the Alhambra palace, including its garden, not only to show how magniﬁcent the building is, but also to make it symbolize the Naßrid kingdom and at the same time the ideal heavenly polity where everyone desires to live. The architecture stands as a representation and a portrait of the sovereign as the artist of its perfection. The poet opens his description of the Alhambra by presenting a general visual image of the palace, which is evoked by external, material, and physical qualities, excellence and beauty, while it is simultaneously metaphorical (see ﬁgure 1, between the pages 198 and 199. Lines 61–62 emphasize the internal, spiritual, and metaphysical qualities of solace and comfort. The poet compares the palace with the vault of the sky and shows the superiority of the palace by the fact that the stars will now come to the comfortable palace as guests and even as servants (l. 63). Drawing a parallel between the heavens and the palace (l. 67), Ibn Zamrak expresses a parallel between God and his patron. The elaborately carved capitals of the columns have become proverbial for their rare wonders (see ﬁgure 2, between the pages 198 and 199). The poet projects the imagery of the illuminating light of polished marble (ll. 69–70). The description of the ﬁxed abode as a match for heaven is an original eulogy to create the ideal image of an Islamic polity and its ruler. If the creator of the universe is God, the creator of the reconstructed palace is Mu˙ammad V, who is not merely its owner but 37

See Suzanne Stetkevych, Abù Tammàm, 151.

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also its architect, responsible for its design and decoration. On the metaphorical level, he emerges as the builder of the rightly guided, eternal Islamic polity and thus deserves to be the leader of the realm. The comparison of the ruler of Granada to the Creator of the world constitutes one of the main themes in this panegyric. The poem not only compares them, but even shows them as rivals. Of course, the sovereign cannot declare himself a rival of God, who is matchless, but his power is legitimized by God. Nevertheless, the ode occasionally implies that the sovereign attempts to surpass Him on various levels, as in the allusive comparison of his garden to the Garden of Eden which is discussed below. A parallel is also implicitly drawn between the artistry of the patron and of the poet. Ibn Zamrak introduces this parallel by his use of the verb banà (to build) for composing poetry in line 30. Banà is usually employed for a building. Therefore, the poet suggests that his “construction” of the poem is like the patron’s building of the palace. Both their works are in the sphere of art, i.e., one is a poetic artist, and the other is an architectural artist. The poetic artist uses poetical means to express another art, architecture. Through the use of ekphrasis, he fashions the Alhambra marvelously, by rhetorical devices, to the extent that nobody has ever seen such beauty before. Moreover, it is worth noting that some of the verses of the panegyric (lines 60–70, 87–89, 92–93, 103–5, 123) were actually inscribed on the wall of the Sala de las Dos Hermanas in that palace circa 1350 (see ﬁgure 3, between the pages 198 and 199).38 The inscribed verses are intertwined with the ornamentation of the palace. They demonstrate complex interreferentiality among the visual art (the architecture), the verbalized visual art (the ode), and the visualized verbal art (the inscribed verses). In other words, the architecture was verbalized, and in turn, the verbalized art was returned to the architecture; the ekphrasis of the palace has become a part of ornamentation in the architecture and has been assimilated into the building.

38 Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry, 346–47 and Desmond Stewart and the Editors of the Newsweek Book Division, The Alhambra (New York: Newsweek, 1974), 138–45. According to Stewart, there are three kinds of inscriptions in the Alhambra: verses from the Qur"àn, traditional religious sayings, and verses from Ibn Zamrak’s odes. See Stewart, 140. The inscribed verses should have a cumulative aesthetic eﬀect, for the ekphrasis of the palace or the verbalized architecture has become a part of ornamentation in the architecture and has been assimilated into the building.

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The inscribed verses form the inversion of the verbalization of the visual art, i.e., the visualization of the verbal art. The relation of image and word or the issue of “visual language” including calligraphy requires more theoretical examination and discussion, which is beyond this study.39 Nevertheless, I here would like to touch on the interpretive function of the inscribed verses.40 The inscribed verses should have not only a visual, aesthetic eﬀect but also a verbal, perceptive eﬀect—they may function as a “commentary” to the “text.” If the beholder is able to read and comprehend the verses, the speech on the building possesses exegetic power for understanding the symbolic meaning of each section of the palace and its whole. The description of the Alhambra moves to the garden and fountain and ultimately comes back to the sky with a diﬀerent motif. In his description of the fountain, the poet uses a ﬁgurative technique that is often found in Andalusian poetry, such as Ibn Shuhayd’s (d. 1035).41 The poem moves from architectural features to the description of a jet of water in a fountain as a “dancing girl” (l. 73). The dancing girl or ràqißah is suggestive of a maiden or houri in the Garden of Eden, which is a conventional implication.42 Lines 79 and 80 show the generosity of the fountain as a symbol of fertility,43 because water/rain has been regarded as a blessing in the dry climates of the Arab world. Feminine qualities in the garden are contrasted to masculine qualities in the building. For instance, whereas line 92 stresses delightfulness, freshness, fragrance, and pleasantness as qualities of the garden, line 93 concentrates on military strength, loftiness, and magniﬁcence as qualities of the palace. After the description of the fountain and birds in the garden, the poem reintroduces the motif of the sky in a diﬀerent fashion in lines 103–6. The palace competes with the sky and stars and surpasses the celestial bodies. The stars serve the Alhambra just as the persona 39

See Mitchell, Iconology (esp., chap. 2) for the discussion of word and image. In the future, I hope to work on the subject of the inscribed verses in terms of their mutual and composite eﬀect, consisting of both visual and verbal arts, i.e., as a natural sign and an arbitrary sign, on the beholder and the reader. 41 See Ibn Shuhayd, Risàlat al-Tawàbi' wa al-Zawàbi', ed. Bu†rus al-Bustànì (Beirut: Maktabat Íàdir, 1951). For example, he personiﬁes a wind as a lovely woman in the ﬁrst line of p. 130. 42 Jaroslav Stetkevych ﬁnds the evocation of a maiden from the Garden of Eden in a poem of Ibn al-Rùmì (d. 896), Zephyrs, 173. 43 Sperl says, “Blood and water symbolize the new fertility which the Caliph creates in the land; they overcome the grief of barrenness expressed in the tears,” 30. 40

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serves the ruler and his palace. The persona has a greater eﬀect and merit than the stars; that is why the stars envy the position of the persona who is standing in the marvelous palace (l. 106). Height is an important criterion for nobility to serve the ruler (l. 105); the tower rises exceeding even the stars in height (l. 104). In 107–13 the images of the ﬂowers and the stars are employed ambiguously through the use of the female third-person form (which is used for nonhuman plurals in Arabic) in verb conjugation; the poet plays both in such a way that “they” can be either the ﬂowers or the stars. The ambiguity gives the phrases a poetic eﬀect. In lines 108–9, however, “they” are the ﬂowers which try to ascend to the level of the clouds (l. 108), i.e., their thirst is quenched as shown in line 107, “The [ﬂowers] suckled the breast of the clouds before this in the precinct of the gardens in which they had grown.” The poet skillfully manipulates the conjunction of ﬂowers, clouds, lightning, and stars through the use of space (the earth and the air), as well as the passing of time. He is not merely an observer of the garden on the earth, but also an observer of the garden in the heavens, as if the Alhambra had two gardens. Now the persona is a stargazer, standing in his patron’s court. Then he reintroduces the building, emphasizing the strength and loftiness of the fortress (ll. 115–17), as opposed to the imperfection of the stars and the ﬂowers. This presentation is in keeping with the contemporary view that an attribute of monumental Islamic architecture, including palaces, citadels, and fortiﬁcations, is “the expression of power.”44 Oleg Grabar also argues that the Alhambra as a building complex has three symbolic and ceremonial meanings: as a fortress it signiﬁes power, its waters fertility, and the mosque the faith in Islam and allegiance to God and the ruler.45 Lastly, the long description of the Alhambra ends with the good omen of a bird perched at the summit of the palace (l. 120). Ibn Zamrak does not describe objects as they are; rather, he ennobles and idealizes them. He uses similes likening the water emitted from the jet of the fountain to scattered pearls (l. 74) and rose blossoms to a necklace decorating the top of the branch (l. 85). The 44 Oleg Grabar, “The Architecture of Power: Palaces, Citadels, and Fortiﬁcations,” Architecture of the Islamic World, ed. George Michell (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 65. 45 Oleg Grabar, The Alhambra (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 103–35.

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poet imitates and improves on both nature and architecture, the palace, in his ode. That is to say, both of them are materials for his poetry, because he even idealizes the palace that is already a complete architectural work of art. What we experience is not the palace itself, but the mediated, i.e. verbalized, form ennobled by him. The poet wrote for an audience that was supposed to know the actual Alhambra. Consequently, he did not have to describe it as it was; it was not necessary for him to resort to enargeia, “pictorial vividness,” on the descriptive level.46 The poet needed to surpass that level by appealing to the imagination of the audience and giving them a fresh and creative image of the palace. Jean Hagstrum, writing about eighteenth-century English poetry, argues that pictorial imagery is most eﬃcacious when it is presented metaphorically rather than as purely descriptive or exactly imitative of visual reality.47 Similarly, Ibn Zamrak turned his ekphrastic description of the Alhambra into an expression of the sultan’s might and legitimate rule. The poet’s self-appointed task was to make an audience that is familiar with the palace realize the beauty and brilliance of the Alhambra in a way in which it has never been presented before—the ode should be eﬀective poetry. On the other hand, he gives it a metaphorical signiﬁcance as the ideal polity. And ﬁnally, he uses the ekphrastic representation of the building and its metaphorical interpretation to create an emblematic portrait of the sovereign as part of his praise. In line 124 the poem returns to a more conventional level of literary portraiture depending on “likeness.”48 According to Brilliant, any portrait is fundamentally denotative, for it refers particularly to a human being who has a proper name.49 By mentioning Mu˙ammad V’s sons in lines 126–27, the panegyrist conﬁrms that this ode is dedicated to the father of the blessed sons, that is, to a speciﬁc ruler. By enumerating the sovereign’s excellent deeds and position, the poet demonstrates his legitimate sovereignty which is defended and acknowledged by the religion of Islam (l. 127). Towards the end, the poet

46

For the word, enargeia, “pictorial vividness,” see Hagstrum, 11. According to Hagstrum, the Greek word enargeia “was used to describe the power that verbal visual imagery possessed in setting before the hearer the very object or scene being described,” 11. For further discussion on enargeia, see pp. 7–10 in the Introduction. 47 Hagstrum, xx. 48 I understand that “likeness” is not only based on physical attributes but also on internal ones. 49 Brilliant, Portraiture, 46.

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subtly (con)fuses, at least verbally, the identities of the mamdù˙ (patron) and Allàh and of his own qaßìdah with the Qur"àn. The poem shows its quasi-liturgical, Qur"ànic character by using a Qur"ànic and Qur"àn-related diction: in line 138 al-˙amd laka (praise be unto you, usually of Allàh) and in line 144 al-kitàb (composition), yurattil (to chant), al-dhikr (invocation of Allàh, Mu˙ammad), tàliyà (to recite, usually the Qur"àn). In line 142 a'jaztu elicits the concept of i'jàz alQur"àn, i.e., that the Qur"àn is miraculously and inimitably beautiful. Also, the poem emphasizes the sovereign’s descent from the Anßàr (early Medinan supporters of the Prophet Mu˙ammad) as one of the sources of his legitimacy (l. 143). Thus, the poet implies that his qaßìdah has an eﬀect and importance similar to the Qur"àn and that his mamdù˙ possesses the same power as God. The poet emphasizes that he has composed his panegyric in such a manner that whoever recites it will invoke the name of the patron Mu˙ammad V (rather than the name of God; l. 144).

Qaßìdah and Portraiture The nasìb section of the ode constitutes the beginning of the poet’s self-portrait. Here, it is mostly controlled by the Arabic panegyric convention. The persona fashions himself, creating his self-image as that of a miserable and immature man discarded by his beloved. That image is intimately connected to the conventional thematic relationship between the nasìb and the madì˙, as I have discussed earlier. A persona can hardly be satisﬁed and happy in the nasìb because he must be saved by his patron in the madì˙. Poetic convention also inﬂuences the madì˙. Ibn Zamrak has to portray the sultan as an ideal ruler and his palace as the ideal and eternal Islamic abode for his subject. This tradition, however, also ﬁts the poet’s poetic enterprise through his real experience and ambition. In the madì˙, the panegyrist praises the sovereign and at the same time prides himself on his poetic skills. A poet’s boasting of himself, in addition to praising his ruler, became increasingly conventional after 'Abbàsid poets, such as al-Mutanabbì (915–65), established the theme. Ibn Zamrak’s poem says that the stars, like the ﬂowers, envy the position of the persona who is standing in the marvelous palace (l. 106). He is proud of having been chosen as the court poet of his patron and of the privilege to be in the glorious palace. What was

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amply preﬁgured in lines 30–33 is stated unequivocally in line 140: he has exalted the patron with praises by using the words mad˙ (praise), madì˙ (praise), and amdà˙ (a plural form of mad˙). This metapoetic way of presentation makes the reader aware of his poetic skill and stresses his poetic power. Just as he wrote of his “pearls of poetry” in line 32, he asserts that “jewels from the sea of rhetoric,” i.e., his poem, cannot be sold except at a high price (l. 141), and that he has outdone other poets before him and after with his art (l. 142).50 Although he boasts of his art, he also declares that what enabled him to create the marvelous ode was the wonderful poetic subject, the sultan. The poet’s skillful manner of self-magniﬁcation under the original and main pretext, the eulogy of the sultan, is impressive. Furthermore, as I have discussed earlier, the poet attempts to identify the sultan’s legitimate rule with God’s rule as established by the Qur"àn. Just as the Qur"àn keeps Islam alive, the poet’s words make the Naßrìds come alive. He implies a parallel relationship between God and Mu˙ammad V, and the Qur"àn and his ode.51 The patron acts, while the poet makes him and his name immortal. The panegyric thus functions to interpret the patron’s essence, to represent it by poetic power, and to convey a message to the world that the patron is the consummate Islamic ruler. Without the poet, the ruler’s name and value could never be spread. Ibn Zamrak elevates his own poem and his sovereign at the same time. This strategy is associated with the scheme of his double portrait. The description of the Alhambra also functions to praise the poet himself. Ekphrastic description can be “a form of praise” in epideictic discourse—praise of gods of men.52 Considering that Ibn Zamrak himself was a kàtib and a ra"ìs taking part in creating the architectural art of the Alhambra both as a poet and as a bureaucrat, his depiction

50 The poet uses the verb a'jaza that means “to outdo” or “to speak in an inimitable way.” The concept of i' jàz (the verbal noun of the verb) is inimitability, the wondrous nature of the Qur"àn. He implies that his poem is entering the realm of the religious text. 51 Of course, the poet can never equate his ruler with God or his ode with the Sacred Qur"àn because that would be blasphemy; his manner is skillfully suggestive and allusive. 52 See Stephen G. Nichols, “Ekphrasis, Iconoclasm, and Desire,” Rethinking the Romance of the Rose: Text, Image, Reception, ed. Kevin Brownlee and Sylvia Huot (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 133.

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of the Alhambra amounts to praising not only Mu˙ammad V, but also himself. By depicting the excellence of the Alhambra, he indirectly boasts of his own aesthetic talent in order to raise the esteem and appreciation of the intended audience for his art. Moreover, Ibn Zamrak’s self-praise lays the foundation for his eulogy of his patron. Simon Goldhill has argued about Pindar’s odes that “the poet’s glory—his self-gloriﬁcation—is a constant grounding for the gloriﬁcation of the victor. . . . The self-representation of the poet, then, plays a crucial role in the voices of praise.”53 By self-praise, the poet is able to glorify his patron, while simultaneously his self-esteem is conﬁrmed by his patron’s greatness. In other words, self-praise and the praise of his patron are intimately intertwined and interact positively with each other. Ibn Zamrak’s panegyric is a poem dedicated to the sovereign in a particular context, which makes it an “occasional” work. However, beyond the fact that the poet composed a panegyric for his ruler, the speciﬁc occasion is hardly noticeable and cannot be reconstructed. This “occasionality” is true of every panegyric qaßìdah which is a result of a particular occasion, i.e., the relationship between a poet and his patron. The concept of “occasionality” is used by HansGeorg Gadamer with regard to such art forms as visual portraits and poems dedicated to someone. Occasionality means for him that “meaning and contents are determined by the occasion for which they are intended, so that they contain more than they would without this occasion.”54 Occasionality and convention can have a close relationship in art and literature. The second will have a strong impact on the ﬁrst in literatures such as Arabic and Japanese which are substantially controlled by their traditions and where the occasion requires the use of an established conventional genre. The occasion selected by Ibn Zamrak enabled him to employ the entire scheme of the traditional qaßìdah in order to demonstrate that his ode is a portrait and a qaßìdat al-mad˙ (panegyric). Using the Alhambra to portray his patron who built it did not violate convention and meant 53 Simon Goldhill, The Poet’s Voice: Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 165–66. 54 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd revised ed., trans. revised. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1995), 144. This idea indicates that Gadamer also places visual portraits and poems composed for someone into the same category, which supports my argument that the Arabic panegyric is a verbal portrait.

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to exploit a particular occasion that made the ode eﬀective only for Mu˙ammad V. Neither occasionality nor conventionality should be seen as a negative aspect of the tradition. Conventionality, which governs the occasionality of the qaßìdah genre, could be considered as a demerit in light of aesthetic value; a century ago, an Orientalist like Ignaz Goldziher could claim that the preservation of a conventional motif like Ωa'n (departing women) was a sign of “slavish imitation of the old qaßìdah.”55 I have already indicated that a skillful poet would work variations on conventional motifs; and the use of panegyrical conventions in creating the portrait of a ruler has to be understood in terms of its larger functions and not as a blemish on the poet’s art. When they praise an undeserving monarch with extravagant compliments by following rigorous conventional rules, Arabic panegyrists have been questioned as to their sincerity. This doubt has certainly impeded the appreciation of the Arabic qaßìdah, as Sperl has pointed out.56 I believe that sincerity should not be deﬁned as truthfulness to the ruler as an individual. An Arabic panegyric should still be understood as a portrait even when the original is very far from the poetic image. The question of whether a poet’s patron is truly as wonderful as the poet presents him hardly matters. The portrayal should be seen as the image of a ruler, not as the image of an individual. As Gadamer maintains, “by way of its own pictorial content, a portrait contains a relation to its original. This does not simply mean that the picture is like the original, but rather that it is a picture of the original.”57 The qaßìdah poet does not intend to oﬀer a likeness of his patron, but rather to present “a picture of the original” as a ruler much more than an individual. The qaßìdah was the major literary genre in Arab culture for a long period because it functioned to maintain “the basic values and political ideals” of each age and “to exalt the role of Kingship.”58 Also, the image of a sovereign portrayed in his panegyric can be a model for him; he should attempt and seek to emulate and achieve the perfect image when 55 Goldziher, “Alte und Neue Poesie im Urtheile der arabischen Kritiker,” Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie (Leiden: Buchhandlung und Druckerei vormals E. J. Brill, 1896–99), part 1, 123–24. See also Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Arabic Poetry,” 120–23. 56 Sperl, 34. 57 Gadamer, 145. 58 Sperl, 33.

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he listens to the qaßìdah. I argue that, by evoking the sultan’s ideal image through the awe-inspiring Alhambra, Ibn Zamrak’s qaßìdah functioned in society in this manner; the ﬁrst line after the conclusion of the ekphrastic part reads, “O my lord, pride of kings, in whom the religion of God attains what it desires” (l. 121). It can be assumed that the balance between creativity and convention—and the Arabic qaßìdah tradition required both—was often a dilemma for a qaßìdah poet. The more conventional the poetic genre is, the more rules the poet is required to follow, and the more diﬃcult it is for him to demonstrate his creativity. I believe, however, that the poet can yet display his originality and creativity without devaluing the convention, though usually only distinguished poets are capable of this task. Although the descriptions of a garden, a fountain, ﬂowers, and stars are typical motifs in medieval Arabic poetry, Ibn Zamrak has incorporated those motifs into a larger scheme, the representation of the Alhambra that embodies his patronruler. The presentation of a building is not uncommon;59 however, the employment of its description as a portrait of a ruler is rarely seen.60 It should be noted that another important function of the description of the Alhambra palace is to exalt, ennoble, and purify the persona. It appears to me as if the persona were moving through the palace complex from one room to another and from the tower to

59 Grunebaum says that the motif of buildings was accepted as a legitimate independent poetic theme in the 'Abbàsid period. Grunebaum, “Response to Nature,” 144. Until then, the description of buildings had been seen as merely the developed motif of the a†làl (the deserted encampment) in the nasìb. He further states that in the ninth century C.E., literary modernism in Arabic literature began to be interested in waßf (description/“pictorial” poetry) including the description of buildings. Grunebaum, “Aspects of Arabic Urban Literature mostly in Ninth and Tenth Centuries,” Islamic Studies 8 (1969), 285–87. He lists Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s (d. 908 C.E.) ode describing the Palace of the Pleiades that was erected by the Caliph Mu'ta∂i∂ (892–902), and al-Íanawbarì’s (d. 945 C.E.) poem with the description of the cathedral mosque of Aleppo. 60 Al-Bu˙turì (821–97), the 'Abbàsid poet, composed an ode dedicated to the 'Abbàsid caliph al-Mutawakkil, describing the Ja'farì castle that was built by the caliph. The ode consists of ten lines and only describes the castle. Although it does not show either a traditional bipartite or tripartite form like Ibn Zamrak’s, the entire ode may be considered as waßf (description) or the madì˙ for the building, i.e., for the caliph, rather than a full qaßìdah. However, it might be hard to read it as a portrait because it has no reference to the ruler as an architect. Al-Bu˙turì also has a poem describing the pond of the Ja'farì castle composed for al-Mutawakkil. It consists of sixteen lines and only presents the description of the pond, although there are more varieties of the motifs, such as birds and ﬁsh (cf. Badawì, Al-Bu˙turì).

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the garden, when he describes the Alhambra. Clearly, the ekphrasis is already part of the praise, the madì˙; however, the travel motif is representative of the transitional second part. The ra˙ìl of a panegyric qaßìdah usually presents a poet’s journey on a she-camel whose destination is his patron, and during which he experiences some hardships. Besides its placement as the second section of the madì˙ part, it might be hard to regard the poet’s description of the Alhambra as the ra˙ìl of the poem because the description does not mention any hardships or troubles, but just presents the Alhambra in an admiring fashion. Nevertheless, if we take the function of the ra˙ìl to be the transitional or liminal phase within the poetic transformation, the description may have a similar function to that of the ra˙ìl. It not only has a therapeutic and self-purifying eﬀect on the persona’s heart that has been devastated by his mistresses, but also further cultivates and reﬁnes him through the experience of the aesthetic of might and beauty. The entire poem expresses the growth of the persona. Before the ekphrastic description of the palace, the ode already reaches his patron, Mu˙ammad V, and praises him (l. 29). The persona is already “saved” by the ruler at that point. But the depiction of the marvelous Alhambra and its gracious garden and fountain further gives the persona comfort and self-esteem. He develops himself not through undergoing hardships to reach his patron, but through experiencing a higher aesthetic value by moving through the brilliant palace created by his patron. After the description with its implicit “ra˙ìl” function, the poet once again returns to praise his patron directly in a closing passage that further conﬁrms the legitimate Islamic sovereignty of the sultan. It seems to me that Ibn Zamrak desired to achieve the success of his panegyric by two modes of praising description: “iconic” (through the patron’s attributes) and “emblematic” (through the palace). He places the “emblematic” passage between two “iconic” passages in order to make it appear as part of the praise, connecting rather than separating. Furthermore, the eﬀect of the beautiful architecture is identical to that of poetry for those who are part of that society. When we read a good poem, we are also spiritually reﬁned, enriched, and cultivated. To create a qaßìdat al-mad˙ (panegyric ode) is not merely to create an idealized portrait of the mamdù˙ (the one praised), but also to make an impact on the reader psychologically, just as the viewer of a visual portrait of a ruler is potentially changed and reﬁned through viewing it.

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The use of contemporary Western theories and methods has allowed us to look at Ibn Zamrak’s ode as a double portrait of ruler-patron and poet and at the description of the Alhambra as an emblematic portrait of its builder. Although the ode has apparently never been discussed in these terms, I do not mean to suggest that it has not been understood in this manner before. I would not have made most of my claims had I not believed that they did somehow correspond to the meaning the poem held for Ibn Zamrak’s original audience. Central to my study is the exploration of the functions served by the description of the palace. Such descriptions have often baﬄed critics.

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1. The Alhambra (Chapter Five).

1

2

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chapter two

2. The Columns in the Alhambra (Chapter Five).

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3. Ibn Zamrak’s verse (line 64) inscribed on the wall of Sala de Dos Hermanas in the Alhambra (Chapter Five). 3

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CONCLUSION

My major contention throughout this book has been that description in Arabic poetry not only attempts to express pictorial, mimetic images of objects but also to convey some larger concept in a metaphorical, emblematic, metonymical, psychological, spiritual, or symbolic manner. This examination has shown that the physical description in waßf can be conceptually interpreted through symbolic connections, as shown in the relationship between the Alhambra palace and its owner/builder, Mu˙ammad V in Ibn Zamrak’s encomium, for instance. In this understanding, waßf as a poetic device does not only seek mimetic representation and should not be considered merely “description,” but rather should be interpreted as metaphorical image. We have examined several waßfs in classical Arabic poetry from multifaceted angles both in subject and theory. In the Introduction, I ﬁrst attempted to sketch the problems of the classical Arabic qaßìdah tradition and their background with regard to waßf, as well as its signiﬁcance. Taken mostly at its literal and face value, waßf was often labeled as second-class poetry with erroneous assumptions, such as objectivism or atomism, by many traditional Orientalists who had not examined waßf seriously from a critical literary viewpoint. In pursuit of a new perspective, I found ekphrasis to be useful for elucidating the function and the meanings of waßf, for ekphrasis has been theoretically investigated since the age of Antiquity. Hoping that a reliance on Western theories of ekphrasis in addition to critical studies in other disciplines, such as anthropology and ethnomusicology, would enlighten the interpretation of the waßf, I have introduced the critical background and the notion of ekphrasis, including enargeia, ekphrasis in its interarts implication, representation, and word and “image,” inasmuch as they are helpful for initiating the theoretical examination of waßf. Chapter One dealt with the poetic contest or mu'àra∂ah between Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l, whose poems have the same rhyme and meter. This study is characterized by the use of a khabar that presents a new understanding of the horse description in the

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poems. The khabar, providing for the two qaßìdahs a suitable milieu in the framework of a poetic contest, attempts to explain why the two odes are so alike. With the employment of the concept of “play,” the poetic or technical trait of a contest implies the idea that there actually occurred a mu'àra∂ah. The female judge appears to play the pun of a “stallion” and a “master poet” in the meaning of the fa˙l. The khabar stresses sexual prowess, which is prominent enough to make a joke, but what the tradition tries to convey most is murù"ah, mature manhood, manly perfection or male aggression through the waßf of the horse. Epithets express not only the physical appearance of the target, but also its qualities and metaphorical meanings. This chapter tells us that the physical description can be metaphorically and emblematically understood. Chapter Two aimed to explore the functions and symbolism of waßf of the bee, honey, and its collectors in two Hudhalì odes, one by the pre-Islamic poet Sà'idah ibn Ju"ayyah and the other by the Mukha∂ram poet, Abù Dhu"ayb al-Hudhalì. Based on Arabic poetic conventions and other ancient literary traditions, the bee and honeygathering can form symbols of remedy and resolution in both poems; the bee and honey with the wine motif express healing for the two poets, while the men’s honey-gathering is presented as a locus for trial and quest. The waßf of the bee and honey is also a metaphor for the lost meadow. I have demonstrated that the stylistic and structural disparities between the two poems reﬂect a contrast in their mood and meaning. Those diﬀerences also suggest that the full tribal qaßìdah may have fallen into a period of crisis with changes in terms of allegiance and leadership that accompanied the coming of Islam. The chapter on the two 'Abbàsid poets Abù Nuwàs and al-Bu˙turì conﬁrms that the employment of the theory of ekphrasis is helpful in the exploration of waßf, for the visual motifs of the goblet and the wall painting can be categorized according to a general understanding of ekphrasis, the verbal representation of visual art.1 Since the sister arts (poetry and painting) occupy a central place in the sphere of the study of ekphrasis and interarts, there are many critical theories available. I have claimed that the ekphrasis in the two

1

This interpretation conceptually accords with both the deﬁnitions of Spitzer and Heﬀernan. See pp. 11–14 in the Introduction.

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poems is a metaphor for madì˙ or praise, based on the theme of visual motifs. Both poets use ekphrastic techniques to make the reader traverse the boundary between reverie and reality. In each ode, the poet’s touching the visual objects helps to draw the reader back to the sphere of reality through the eﬀects of “defamilialization.” This study has proved that the structural vicissitudes of the qaßìdahs are intimately related to the poets’ political intent, which turns the madì˙ (encomium) into indirect hijà" (lampoon). In this chapter, it has been demonstrated that the ekphrasis in the two odes functions not only to describe the poetic objects, but also indirectly to fulﬁll an encomiastic structural expectation. In Chapter Four, the waßf of a singing slave-girl in the 'Abbàsid qaßìdah of Ibn al-Rùmì, composed in the ninth century C.E., was explored, treating the relation between verbal art and the musical art of gesture and singing. I have argued that Ibn al-Rùmì’s poem presents the singing-girl not only in a visual dimension, but also in auditory, synaesthetic, sensuous, and intuitive dimensions by means of description. The poet challenged himself to represent the beauty of Wa˙ìd and her singing by evoking emotions appealing to the senses, not by pictorial images, through the use of synaesthetic and synergical eﬀects. Description by indirection is eﬃcacious as a device for the expression of the beauty of the beloved. Ibn al-Rùmì’s poetic enterprise establishes a competition between verbal art and musical performance, which leads to a rivalry between the beauty of the singing-girl and that of the poet’s pen. In the end, the ode operates at both a poetic and metapoetic level, showing the poet’s pursuit of not only erotic/sexual ecstasy, but also artistic ecstasy. The last chapter dealt with a panegyrical qaßìdah dedicated to Sultan Mu˙ammad V by Ibn Zamrak, an Andalusì poet of the Naßrid era in the fourteenth century C.E., which was explored as a double portrait of the patron-ruler and the poet himself. The portrait of the ruler can be viewed as an “emblematic portrait,” because he is rendered by means of an ekphrastic representation of the famous palace he (re)built, the Alhambra in Granada. The investigation of panegyrical odes as verbal portraits, as well as the employ of theories of portraiture derived from the visual arts, are innovative in the study of Arabic qaßìdahs. Also, there has been no interpretation of the ekphrastic description of a building as an emblematic representation of a patron-ruler. This exploration of a qaßìdah as a portrait enables us to introduce both interarts theory and the perspectives of

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portrait theory to the academic research of classical Arabic poetry. The foregoing ﬁve case studies of waßf poems have demonstrated that the function of waßf has an intimate relationship with the political, social, economic, and individual ambiance of each poet, including his psychological and emotional states. These circumstances aﬀect the theme and form of the waßf, particularly the form. The order of the ﬁve types of waßf in this study has been set according to the chronology of their production. The two poems in the opening chapter, dealing with the poetic contest in horse descriptions, convey an exemplary picture of the chivalrous hunt, buttressed by the stability and steadiness of the heroic Jàhiliyyah era. In the second chapter, the complete tripartite qaßìdah form of Sà'idah shows a stable sociocultural situation, while Abù Dhu"ayb’s ode-structure, consisting only of nasìb, suggests the turmoil of the poet’s circumstances and his age (straddling the pre-Islamic and Islamic times), which witnessed drastic changes in values, beliefs, and traditions. The contrast between the odes of al-Bu˙turì and Abù Nuwàs betrays that, though Abù Nuwàs insinuates encomium in his poem, al-Bu˙turì demonstrates a nonteleological contour based on the unrest of his situation, both individually and publicly. Ibn al-Rùmì’s “Wa˙ìd,” remaining a nasìb to the end, does not ascend to a concluding theme; this is a structure that expresses his desire to remain in a state of aesthetic ecstasy on a metapoetic level. The last chapter, by contrast, shapes a magniﬁcent madì˙ by means of the emblematic ekphrasis of the Alhambra palace. Ibn Zamrak, with the composition of this poem, was at the zenith of his political and artistic capacity. Though al-Bu˙turì, in his ode “Ìwàn Kisrà,” shares the same motif, building, with Ibn Zamrak, the two poets’ qaßìdahs display a sharp contrast—Ibn Zamrak’s shows an ideal image of the legitimized polity, whereas al-Bu˙turì’s implies the complexities of a transitional period of the 'Abbàsid dynasty. Since I have examined only two poems of visual arts, two odes of building, and one poem of musical performance, to further elucidate the waßf, in light of the theories of ekphrasis and interarts studies, it is necessary, in the future, to examine more qaßìdahs containing ekphrastic moments. I am also interested in the relation between image and word or the issue of “visual language,” including inscribed verses or calligraphy, as well as the relation between music and poetry, which requires more theoretical exploration and discussion. Moreover, because waßf is a broad subject, being found in most

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of Arabic poetry, there still remains much to be studied; particularly, certain types of waßf, such as, gardens, ﬂowers, and various sorts of architecture. Waßf in diﬀerent subgenres of the qaßìdah, hijà" (lampoon) and rithà" (elegy), would also be intriguing to investigate. Furthermore, the concept of competition, through the mechanism of contest or mu'àra∂ah, constitutes a fundamental foundation and functions powerfully in all the waßfs. By the use of waßf as an artistic weapon, poets attempt to outdo another poet, either their contemporary or predecessor. They also aim to demonstrate their verbal force and to prove artistic accomplishment by fulﬁlling artistic/poetic desire as well as individual and social desire. The beautiful ekphrasis allowed them to gain fame and to immortalize their names as prominent poets. Waßf was a ﬁtting arena for them to challenge themselves in creative and original production. Each poet utilized his own strategy and entrusted waßf with a certain role according to his purpose. The ekphrastic power can be fully exercised, maintained by the characteristics of intertextuality and interreferentiality, on which the classical Arabic poetic tradition ﬁrmly stands. The highly conventional framework of the literary tradition does not hinder the tradition’s growth or innovation; on the contrary, it furthers it. Through my studies, I have also attempted to reproduce or reconstruct the original setting of each qaßìdah, seeking “the frame of reference,” with the help of both modern Western theories and studies of classical Arabic poetic traditions. Hardly exhausted by the innumerable uses of many qaßìdah poets in diﬀerent ages, waßf is endowed with resilience and malleability. The poet makes the best use of the merit of waßf—which is not a dead agent, but actively functional.

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APPENDIX OF ARABIC TEXTS

[1]

[2] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

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INDEX

'Abbàsid, 92, 99–100, 109, 111–12, 118–19, 122, 134, 137; 'Abbàsid poet, 12, 93, 95, 100, 112, 125, 134, 187; 'Abbàsid poetry, 95, 98 Abù Dhu"ayb al-Hudhalì (poet): biographical information, 62; elegy on the death of the sons of, 62 Abù Dhu"ayb al-Hudhalì’s ode, 195, 197; bees and honey-collector, 86–88; departing women (Ωa'n), 85; diﬀerence from Sà'idah’s ode, 63, 89–91; elative extended simile of the beloved, 88; fumigation used by the Khàlidì honey-collector, 86–87; nasìb (elegiac prelude) elements, 85–88; the persona’s identiﬁcation with bees, 87; translated, 81–85; wine, 85–86 Abù Nuwàs (poet), 12, 93; biographical information, 95–96 Abù Nuwàs’s ode, 93–94, 97–100, 195–97; in association with Shu'ùbiyyah movement, 99–100; a†làl, 98; in comparison with al-Bu˙turì’s ode, 113–17; defamiliarization, 115–17; design of Kisrà (Khusraw) and his horsemen on a wine goblet as madì˙ (panegyric), 98–100; political intent of, 117–19; poured wine and water, 100; reality and reverie, 115; theoretical exploration of ekphrasis, 113–14; translated, 96–97 abode, 182, 187. See also a†làl (ruined abode) Alhambra palace, 14, 16, 156–59, 180–89, 191–93, 196; Palacio de Comares, 160; Patio de los Leones, 160; Sala de las Dos Hermanas, 183; Sala de los Reyes, 160 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l (poet), 20–21, 23, 25–31, 58–60; 'Alqamah al-Khaßì and, 28, 30 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l’s ode, 195: fakhr (boast), 56–57; nasìb (elegiac prelude), 56; ra˙ìl ( journey section), 56; translated, 49–55

al-Amìn (caliph), 95–96 al-Andalusian (Muslim Spain) poet, 155–58, 181, 196 anecdotal materials (khabar, akhbàr), 195; about Abù Dhu"ayb and the Prophet Mu˙ammad, 62; as conceptualized knowledge, 58–59; desire of, 30; double entendre of, 26, 29–30; historicity of, 41; isnàd (chain of authorities) and matn (the narrative itself ), 25; the khabar gives 'Alqamah the glory of victory and the foundation of heroic honor, 60; poetic contest in horse description, 20–21, 23, 25; poetic contest between Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l, 26–29; traditional Arabic literary context of, 57; translated texts of three khabars about the poetic contest, 32 animal, 44, 56 architecture, 12, 14, 155, 159, 180, 182–83 'arìf (architect), 159 Aristotle, 9, 76, 145 'asal (honey), 77–78. See also honey a†làl (ruined abode): in Abù Nuwàs’s ode, 97–98, 100; in al-Bu˙turì’s ode, 109–10, 120; in Ibn al-Rùmì’s ode, 152 “A†làl Óànah” (The Ruins of a Tavern). See Abù Nuwàs’s ode audience, 44, 76, 80, 111, 114, 124, 136–39, 142–47, 151–52, 186, 189; imagination of, 44; in musical majlis (session), 137; original audience, 125, 193; reaction of, 145–46 authenticity, 93, 120; of pre-Islamic poems, 23, 31; of ruler, 93; of al-Bu˙turì’s poem, 120 Battle of Antioch, 109, 113, 116 bee, 6, 61, 195; humiliation and sadness of, 87; as models of industry, order, purity, economy, courage, prudence, and communal cooperation, 75; origin and nature

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of, 61; the persona’s identiﬁcation with, 87; as sacred, 61; as symbols of purity, assiduity, rebirth, and spirit, 61; as symbol of soul, 75; sweetness and purity of the bee and honey compared to the beloved’s saliva, 74 beloved: as apparent object of description, 16; cheeks of, 142; description of, 75; glances of, 152, 181; hair of, 73, 140–41; the image of in relation to bees, 63; infatuation with, 139; kiss of as sweeter than wine, 79; kisses of, 141–42, 152; kisses and nights with, 77; as representative of, 140, saliva of, 73 bird: in association with horse, 42; as bad omen, 85; in garden, 184; as good omen, 185 blood, 49, 73 bragging and scoﬃng, 57 Brilliant, Richard, 155–56, 180, 186 al-Bu˙turì (poet), 12, 94; biographical information, 100–101 al-Bu˙turì’s ode, 94, 195–97; in comparison with Abù Nuwàs’s ode, 112–17; defamiliarization, 115–17; description of wall painting as madì˙ (panegyric), 109–10; lyric “I” in, 119–20; between nasìb and madì˙, 111; political intent of, 117–19; ra˙ìl ( journey section), 109; reality and reverie, 115; theoretical exploration of ekphrasis, 113–14; translated, 101–8; nasìb (elegiac prelude), 108–11 building, 16, 157, 183–85, 191, 197 calligraphy, 184, 198 chivalrous hunt, 19–20, 41–42, 56, 60, 197 clear and distinct description, 6, 9, 15, 20, 62, 64 concept, 15–16, 20–21, 23, 26, 43, 45–46, 60, 194 color, 113, 140–41 competition: idea of, 58; between verbal art and musical performance, 123 contest, 20, 23, 57–60, 144; ceremonial contest, 59; etymological origin of, 59; between the hunter and the hunted, 56; narrative context of poetic contest, 21;

pervasiveness of, 57; poetic contest, 21, 25, 57–59, 197; in relation to musical majlis (social gathering), 143; between Sà'idah and Abù Dhu"ayb, 63; between the singing-girl’s physical beauty, song, and the poet’s verbal work of art, 142. See also mu'àra∂ah (opposition, contest) contract, 58–59 Ctesiphon (al-Madà"in), 96–97, 99 cultural codes, 8–10, 74, 79, 90 decoration, 159, 183 defamiliarization, 115–17 departing women motif (Ωa'n), 85, 190 description, 15–16, 20–21; the Alhambra palace, 160, 182, 191; as allegorical, metaphorical, symbolic meanings, 11; bees, honey, and a honey-gatherer, 61–64; diﬀerent functions of description of honey-collecting in Abù Dhu"ayb’s ode and Sà'idah’s, 89–91; ekphrastic description, 12, 41, 188; as element in traditional Orientalists’ negative judgment of the qaßìdah, 3–4; as expression of murù"ah (virility), 60; garden and fountain, 184; horse, 31–32, 45–46, 60, 195; horse’s body parts, 45; iconic and emblematic descriptions, 192; by indirection, 123; Ìwàn Kisrà, 111; journey, 41; mimetic description, 90; minute and thorough description, 4; more than mere description, 94–95; objective description of Abù Nuwàs, 114; objective, dispassionate description of Sà'idah’s honey-collector, 76, 89; as the objective hypothesis, 2, 4, 123; physical description, 56, 90, 194; the question of in Ibn al-Rùmì’s ode, 142–44; subjective description of al-Bu˙turì, 114; subjective, emotional description of Abù Dhu"ayb’s honey-collector, 86, 89; travelling cloud, 73; visual description, 142; wall painting, 109–10; wine goblet, 98–100. See also waßf descriptiveness of the qaßìdah, 2–4, 94 desert, 24, 32, 48 dhù al-wizàratayn (double vizier of the pen and the sword), 159 dìwàn (poetry collection), 5

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 Dìwàn al-Inshà" (writing oﬃce), 159 double-entendre, 26, 29–30 drinking, 24, 98, 100, 117 ekphrasis, 6–11, 14–15, 20, 192, 194–98; the Alhambra, 160, 183; in association with the notion of reality and reverie, 93, 113, 116–17; bees and honey-collecting, 76, 91; bee description as ekphrasis in its original sense, 61; deﬁnition of, 6, 12–13, 155; description of a palace as, 156; ekphrasis of bees oﬀers a visual picture before the hearer’s eyes, 63; ekphrastic force, 74; etymological context of, 6–7; eyes in, 113; as form of praise, 188; illusion of, 113–14; letter and sense of, 120–21; as madì˙ (panegyric), 98–100, 117; modern conception of, 92–93; response of describer, 114; in the Shield of Achilles in the Homeric Iliad, 93, 116; silence in, 113; theoretical discussion on ekphrasis in Abù Nuwàs’s ode and al-Bu˙turì’s, 112–14; transparency of language, 113–14; wine and water in a wine cup as ekphrastic, 100 emblem, 21; emblematic identiﬁcation, 30; emblematic meaning, 17, 43; emblematic mode, 180; emblematic passage, 192; emblematic portrait, 156, 160, 180, 186, 192–93, 196 embroidery, 150–51 emotion, 122–24, 145–51; emotional description, 87; emotional movement, 79; emotional response, 143; emotional state, 87, 142 enargeia (pictorial vividness), 7–9, 112–13, 186, 194 energeia, 9 engagement, 58 epithet, 42–45, 73, 195 eroticism, 63, 77–78, 86 eye, 4, 7–8, 11, 113 fa˙l (stallion or master poet), 20, 24, 28, 58–60 fakhr (boast), 1, 19, 58; in 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l’s ode, 56–57; chivalrous hunt in, 21, 23, 32, 41–42, 47; goal of, 58; honor and glory in, 46; horse as, 60; in Imru" al-Qays’s ode, 41–49; purpose of horse description

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in, 60; mufàkharah (boasting contest, ﬂyting), 58; in Sà'idah’s poem, 80–81; Sà'idah’s poem as an exemplary model of fakhr, 64 fallacious “I,” 119–20, 145 fame, 58–60 feast, 48, 57 fertility, 19, 21, 41–43, 48, 57, 181, 184 ﬂower, 181, 185, 191 ﬂyting, 57–58 fountain, 156–57, 191 frame of reference, 124–25, 136, 198 frame song/poem, 136–37 Gadamer, Georg, 189–90 garden, 156–57, 160, 182, 192 Garden of Eden, 183–84 Garden of Paradise, 74–75, 79 gazelle, 16, 73, 89, 152, 181 generosity, 60, 108, 160, 181, 184 gesture, 10, 146, 148, 150, 196; gestural, 122, 148–49 ghazal (amatory lyric), 5, 133–34, 154 ghulàm (young male slave/servant), 137 ghurrah (a white mark in the middle of the forehead of a horse), 19 glance, 152–53, 181 glory, 19, 41, 60, 99, 111–12, 118, 180, 189; in opposition to humiliation, 59 goblet, 93, 98, 100, 112, 114, 121, 195 God, 14, 19, 42, 47, 75, 92, 182–83, 187–88 Goodman, Nelson, 124 Óadìth (Prophetic sayings and acts), 13, 62, 74–76 Hagstrum, Jean H., 7, 186 hijà" (invective, lampoon), 109, 111, 118, 196, 198 honey: as eroticism and fertility, 77; honeycomb, 75, 86; medical eﬀect of, 76–77; sterilizing power of, 61; symbol of celestial food, eloquence, eroticism, and immortality, 61; sweetness and purity of, 74; thawàb (water, honey, or reward), 74; used as part of libation, 61. See also 'asal honey-gathering, 76, 195; in Abù Dhu"ayb’s ode, 76; danger and risk of, 79, 86–87; fumigation, 86–87;

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prehistoric rock paintings of, 78; in Sà'idah’s ode, 86 honor, 59–60 horizon of expectation, 124 horse, 19–21, 25–26, 28–29, 32, 42–46, 59; excellence of, 46; tail of, 49; huge body and smooth coat of, 56; as lord of beasts, 47; symbiotic relation of poet and, 47. See also description, horse Hudhalì poets, 63. See also Abù Dhu"ayb al-Hudhalì and Sà'idah ibn Ju"ayyah Hudhalì tribe, 61, 81 Huizinga, Johan, 23, 57–58 humùm (cares), 109–10 hunt, 21, 29, 32, 41, 47–49, 56–57, 98, 100 Óusayn, ˇàhà, 31 Ibn Khafàjah (poet), 181 Ibn Kha†ìb (poet), 158–59 Ibn ManΩùr (lexicographer), 77 Ibn Qutaybah, 26, 43, 49 Ibn Rashìq (literary critic), 4–5, 7–8 Ibn al-Rùmì (poet), 141; biographical information, 125–26 Ibn al-Rùmì’s ode, 196–97; the comparison of the singing-girl to a gazelle, 152–53; infatuation with the beloved, 139–40; the poet’s frustration not merely erotic or sexual, but artistic, 154; the poet’s inability to go beyond the nasìb (elegiac prelude), 153; posture of Wa˙ìd’s singing, 147–48; the question of description, 142–44; sensual feelings through gesture and voice, 148–50; social milieu and performance context of, 133–39; synaesthetic eﬀects of embroidery, jewelry, and melody, 150–51; synaesthetic, intersensory eﬀects, 140–42; †arab, the expression of feelings, 146–47; technique of presenting Wa˙ìd’s charm by way of her audience, 144–46; translated, 126–33 Ibn Shuhayd (poet), 184 Ibn Zamrak (poet), 156; biographical information, 158–60 Ibn Zamrak’s ode, 196–97; comparing nature to art, 181; creativity and convention, 191; garden and

fountain, 184; iconic and emblematic descriptions, 192; madì˙ (panegyric), 181–87; metaphorical signiﬁcance of the Alhambra as the ideal polity, 186; nasìb (elegiac prelude), 180–81; occasionality of, 189; parallel between the artistry of patron as architect and of poet, 183; parallel between the heavens and the palace and parallel between God and the poet’s patron, 182–83; the patron’s abode as perfect political realm of Islamic kingdom, 182; the portrait and self-praise of the poet himself, 187–88; ra˙ìl-like function of description of the Alhambra, 192; relationship between nasìb (elegiac prelude) and madì˙ (panegyric), 181, 187; subtle identities of the patron and God, and of the poet’s ode with the Qur"àn, 187–88; translated, 161–80; the use of Qur"àn-related diction, 187 iconic mode, 180, 192 image, 10, 14, 21, 180, 190; of beloved, 63, 73; of ﬂowers and stars, 185; of honey, 62; of horse, 29, 44–47, 60; metaphorical image, 194; mimetic image, 19; pictorial image, 79, 123, 194; self-image, 187; ßùrah, 15–16; visual image, 182; word and, 14–16, 194 imagery, 14; of birds and water, 42; integrated multilayered imagery, 17; of Paradise, 76; pictorial imagery, 186 imitation, 10, 12, 123; as act of homage, 20; emulation and, 20; literary imitation, 20; mimetic imitation, 14 immortality, 19, 29, 63, 75, 78. 86–87, 90 improvisation, 138 Imru" al-Qays (poet), 20–21, 25–28, 30–31, 56–60; biographical information, 23–24; as disgraced and loser, 59–60; as womanizer, 29 Imru" al-Qays’s ode, 195; abstract concepts through physical attributes of concrete objects, 46–47; 'Alqamah’s identical verses in, 56–57; birds and water, 42; bloodstain on the horse’s chest, 49; chivalrous hunt as expression of

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 virility, 48–49; in comparison with 'Alqamah’s poem, 56–57; fakhr (boast), 41–49; feast scene, 48; the horse’s tail, 49; the importance of quality in epithets, 42–43; nasìb (elegiac prelude), 41; poetic creation as compensatory for the sexual act, 60; presentation of glory, fertility, and prowess through the chivalrous hunt scene, 41; ra˙ìl ( journey section), 41; similes of the horse’s parts, 42–45; symbiotic relationship of poet and horse, 47, 60; translated, 33–41 inscription of Qur"ànic verses and poems, 159, 183; as commentary to the architecture, 184 intentionality, 148–50 interarts, 6, 14, 92, 122, 155, 194, 196–97 interreferentiality, 1, 31, 44, 198 intersensory eﬀects, 140 intertextuality, 1, 31, 44, 114–15, 198 'itq (beauty and nobility) of a horse’s sharp-pointed ears, 45 Ìwàn Kisrà (The palace of the Sàsànian kings), 94, 98–101, 120–21, 197 Jàhiliyyah (Age of Ignorance), 1, 20, 26–27, 138, 197 al-Jà˙iΩ (littérateur), 20, 134–35, 141, 149 jàriyah (slave-girl), 13, 135, 137 Jauss, Hans Robert, 124 jewelry, 150–51 joke, 26 Justinian (the Byzantine emperor), 24 kàtib (secretary), 158 kàtib sirri-hi (personal secretary), 159 khabar (singular form of akhbàr). See anecdotal materials khaßà (to geld, to castrate), 30; khaßiyy (eunuch), 137. See also 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l, and 'Alqamah al-Khaßì khayl (horse), 20 khayr (moral, physical good), 47 Kisrà (Sàsànian King Khusraw), 97–100, 109, 111–13 Kitàb al-Aghànì (Book of Songs), 135, 139 Kitàb al-Qiyàn (Book of Singing-Girls), 134, 144

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kleos (honor, glory, fame), 58–60 Kramer, Lawrence, 122, 147–49 kumayt (red mixed with black), 19, 56 legitimacy, 157, 187 letter and sense, 121, 157 life-world, 8, 90 likeness, 14, 180, 186, 190; abstract, general, spiritual likeness, 15–16, 73–74; physical likeness, 16, 73 listener, 4, 7–10, 15, 64, 80, 122–23, 136, 138, 141, 144, 145, 147, 150, 152–53 loss, 64, 87, 181 lost garden, 62, 75, 79, 86 lost meadow, 64, 74–75, 77–79, 89–90 love, 91, 145, 152 loyalty, 60, 91 lyric “I,” 119. See also fallacious “I” madì˙ (panegyric), 1, 160, 196–97; in Abù Nuwàs’s ode, 98–100; in al-Bu˙turì’s ode, 109–11; in Ibn Zamrak’s ode, 181–87 majlis (session), 135–37; in the paradigm of contest, 143 male, 26, 29–30; male animal, 28 manly virtue (murù"ah). See murù"ah masculinity, 21, 29. See also murù"ah master poet, 20, 24, 28 melody, 135, 139, 150–51 metaphor, 21, 64, 151, 186, 196; sexual metaphor, 30; letter and sense of, 120, 157 metapoetic, 60, 142, 152–54, 188 meter, 20–21, 25, 195 metonymy, 16, 180; metonymic relation, 90; metonymic representation, 180 mimesis, 9–10, 123, 145 mistress, 41, 73, 90 Mitchell, W. J. T., 10, 14–15 Mu'allaqàt (The Suspended Poems), 23 Mu'allaqah: of Imru" al-Qays, 42, 44, 47; of Labìd, 91 mu'allim (master craftman), 159 mu'àra∂ah (opposition, contest), 20, 25, 60, 195, 198: involved in description of honey-bees and honey collecting, 63; for public recognition, 59 Mufa∂∂aliyyàt (anthology), 26–27 Mu˙ammad V (sultan), 156, 158–59, 180–81, 186–87, 189–92

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Mu˙ammad VII (sultan), 158–59 Mukha∂ram (which spans the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods), 62, 91 al-Muntaßir (caliph), 101, 108, 118 murù"ah (manly virtue, virility), 26, 60, 195; as the pre-Islamic tribal notion, 21; as prerequisite of nadìm (boon-companion), 137 music, 14, 92, 122, 125, 146, 148–49, 151 music and poetry, 148, 198 al-Mutanabbì (poet), 187 nadìm (boon-companion), 137 nàqah (she-camel), 43 nasìb (elegiac prelude), 1, 16, 23, 32, 41, 47, 62; in 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l’s ode, 56; aspect of Abù Dhu"ayb’s nasìb (elegiac prelude), 62; in al-Bu˙turì’s ode, 108–11; in Ibn Zamrak’s ode, 180–81; as Ibn Zamrak’s self-portrait, 187; in Imru" al-Qays’s ode, 41; metapoetic intent in the word nasìb in Ibn al-Rùmì’s ode, 154; nasìb (elegiac prelude) elements in Ibn al-Rùmì’s ode, 134, 152–53; in Sà'idah’s ode, 73–80; 'Udhrite love, 181 Naßrid, 155–56, 158, 182, 188 nectar, 63, 74 non-verbal text, 6, 11–13 nostalgia, 136, 152 oath, 59, 73 occasionality, 189 Ong, Walter J., 23, 29, 57–59 oral-formulaism, 31 oral transmission, 21, 25, 32 originality, 4, 126, 156, 191 ornamentation, 183 oryx, 45, 48, 56–57, 89, 98 overlapping verses in Imru" al-Qays and 'Alqamah al-Fa˙l, 22 painting, 6, 9–10, 92 panegyric. See madì˙ (panegyric); qaßìdat al-mad˙ (panegyric ode) Paradise, 74–76, 79 paronomasia, 150 Parry-Lord theory, 31 passion, 29, 73, 87, 141, 146, 149–50, 153

patron, 92, 109, 117, 134, 138, 154, 156–57, 187, 191, 193, 196 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 10 performance, 6, 122–24, 136, 138, 146, 150, 197 Persian elements, 94–95, 99, 118, 125. See also Sàsànian motifs physical appearance, 43, 73 picture, 15, 151, 190, 197; as condensation of reverie, 115 plagiarism, 31. See also saraq, sariqah play, 25, 58–59, 195; playfulness, 21, 59 poems: competing with stars, 182; as cultural signiﬁcance of, 57; more authentic than khabar, 25; poem and song/voice complementing each other, 151; sincerity of, 145, 190; as a written text, 139 poetic enterprise, 64, 90, 123, 187 poetic strategy, 60; comparing art to nature, 181, representing reactions of audience, 124 poetry: composition in a contest system, 58; ekphrastic poetry, 156; in pursuit of kleos (fame) through, 60 poetry and painting, 10, 93, 196; paragone (contest) between, 13 poets: poet’s inability to go beyond the nasìb (elegiac prelude), 153; poet’s poetic ability for defending and maintaining himself as politician and court poet, 159; poet’s poetic knowledge of the horse, 45; political intent of, 117; political situations of, 95; symbiotic relationship of horse and poet, 47 portrait, 123, 155, 182, 189, 191; double portrait, 156, 188, 193, 196; emblematic portrait, 156, 160, 180, 186, 192–93, 196; as an intended relationship between portrait image and the human original, 155; self-portrait, 156, 158, 160; in Western court culture, 157 portraiture, 13, 92, 155; theories of, 157 power, 21, 48–49; as concept behind appearance, 43; expression of, 185; poetic power, 60 praise and blame, 59 pre-Islamic age, 1, 23, 62, 187; pre-Islamic poems, 23, 31; pre-Islamic poetry, 31, 73;

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 pre-Islamic poets, 45, 61–62, 195; pre-Islamic qaßìdah (ode), 91 pride, 91, 151 prohibition of painting in Islam, 12, 92 Prophet Mu˙ammad, 42, 49, 76–77, 91 prowess, 19, 29, 41; poetic prowess, 59–60. See also sexual prowess psychological movement, 79; psychological sphere, 149; psychological state, 93, 111 pun, punning, 28, 59 qaßìdah (classical Arabic ode): 21, 23; aesthetic, literary qualities of, 4; animals in, 44; authenticity of pre-Islamic, 31; bipartite structure, 63, 156; in comparison with visual portraits, 157; convention, 73, 98, 134, 140, 152, 181, 187, 189–91; creativity and convention, 191; descriptive passages of, 94; as expression of an ideal Islamic polity, 117; form of, 1; a fragment of, 88; as genre, 1; life-world and cultural codes of, 8–9; losers’ qaßìdah showing nonteleology, 112, 118; occasionality of, 189; in poetic scheme, 10; as portrait, 197; as similar power to the Qur"àn, 187; sincerity of, 145, 190; tripartite structure, 1; waßf of, 16. See also speciﬁc subjects qaßìdat al-mad˙ (panegyric ode), 13, 92, 155, 189, 192; as verbal portrait of ruler, 93 qi†'ah (short poem or fragment), 96 qiyàn (singing-girls), 135–36 quest: for fame, 58; for eroticism and immortality, and the beloved, 78, 87, 91 Quintilian (Roman rhetorician), 8 Qur"àn, 12, 32, 62, 74–77, 91, 135, 158, 187–88 ra˙ìl (the poet’s journey section), 1, 23, 32, 41, 43, 98, 160 ra˙ìl-like motif: in the Alhambra palace description, 160, 192; in the bee and honey-collecting description, 62, 64, 88–89 rain, 42, 184; rain-cloud, 57; rainstorm, 74, 78, 89

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ra"ìs (chief of department), 159, 188 ràqißah (dancing girl), 184 ràwì (reciter, transmitter), 23, 32, 62, 85 reader, 8, 30, 79, 94, 99, 114, 116, 122, 141, 144, 147, 149, 151 reality and reverie, 93, 95, 116–17, 119 remedy, 64, 195 representation, 6, 8, 10, 146, 180, 182, 194; ekphrastic representation of palace, 156; emblematic representation, 157, 196; graphic, pictorial representation, 14; Islamic prohibition of idolatry or visual/pictorial representation, 12, 113–14; mimetic representation, 16, 194; symbolic representation, 16; verbal and visual representation, 12; verbal representation, 13, 92, 195; visual, verbal, or musical representation, 155 resemblance, 10, 15–16, 21, 45, 74 resolution, 64, 78–79, 89, 195 reward, 124, 143 rhyme, 20–21, 25, 195 rhythm, 135, 144, 149 rithà" (elegy), 118, 198 ritual, 58–59 rivers of the Garden of Paradise, 74–75 ruqan (magical spells), 153 al-Rusàfì (poet), 181 Sà'idah ibn Ju"ayyah (poet); biographical information, 62 Sà'idah ibn Ju"ayyah’s ode, 195, 197; bees and honey as healing and restraint, 78; bees gathering nectar signifying the lost meadow, 74–76; bipartite structure, 63; diﬀerence from Abù Dhu"ayb’s ode, 63, 89–91; erotic, sexual image of bees and honey, 76–78; honey-collecting as resolution, 78; fakhr (boast), 80–81; nasìb (elegiac prelude), 63, 73–80; the persona’s separation from his beloved, 73; ra˙ìl-like function of bees and honey description, 79; the sayings of Qur"àn and Hadìth, 74–77; storm cloud scene, 73; a string of similes for the beloved, 73–74; translated, 64–73; transition from evening to morning, 80, 90;

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the ultimate goal is the lost garden, 79 saraq, sariqah (theft, plagiarism), 31 Sàsànian motifs, 12, 94, 96, 98–100, 109–12. See also Persian elements scarcity of pictorial representations in the Arabo-Islamic tradition, 12 sense, 140–41, 151; the auditory and optical, 147–48; auditory, sensuous, intuitive dimensions, 123, 196; optical, olfactory, and auditory organs, 142; sensation, 140; sensibility and sentiments, 152; tactile and optical and auditory, 151; vision, touch, and hearing, 150 sexuality, 21, 87 sexual prowess, 25, 29–30, 60 she-camel, 26, 32, 57; sacriﬁcial she-camel, 73 Al-Shi'r wa al-Shu'arà" (Book of Poetry and Poets), 26, 28 Shu'ùbiyyah movement, 99, 118 similarity, 21; in contrast to contiguity, 16; spiritual similarity, 15 simile, 11, 16, 185; for the beloved, 73–74; elative extended simile, 88; extended similes, 62, 73, 88; in honey-collecting scene, 76; in horse description, 43–46 singing, 122–24, 133, 136–38, 143–46, 152–53; posture of, 147. See also song singing-girl, 111, 122–23, 125, 134–35, 141, 152, 196 sky, 160, 182, 184 song, 14, 24, 135–39, 144–46, 151; as messenger, 138 spear, 48, 81, 113 speed, 19, 43, 45, 48, 57 stallion, 20, 24, 27–28, 30 star, 181, 184–85, 191 stargazer, 185 steed, 29, 44, 46–48, 56, 81; sleek, swift steed (munjarid), 42–43; physical beauty of, 47 strength, 21, 30, 44 ßùrah (image), 15 symbol, 21, 99, 195; beyond the archetype, 44; of masculinity, reproduction, and immortality, 29; of speed, fertility, 57; symbolism of honey and bees, 76, 79; symbolism of waßf, 195 synaesthesia, 123, 140–42, 150–51,

196; transfer/translation eﬀects of, 151 synecdoche, 16, 180 al-ˇabarì (historian), 75 ta∂mìn (textual contamination), 21 †àlib (apprentice), 159 †arab (strong emotion of joy or grief ), 123, 138–39, 151; etymological context of, 146–47 tashbìb (rhapsody over a beloved woman), 153–54 tent, 48, 57 text, 6, 32, 61, 93, 156; original setting of, 125 †ibàq (antithesis), 98, 149 traditional Orientalists, 2–5, 10, 15, 21, 94 transparency of language, 113–14 trial, 64, 89 tribal community, 21, 43, 47 trope, 11, 156 'Udhrite love, 181 Umm Jundab (Imru" al-Qays’s wife), 20, 26, 27, 41, 58 ut pictura poesis, 12–13 verbal art, 123, 143–44; verbal art and visual art, 12; verbal art and musical art, 122 verbal duel, 20, 57, 60; in Homeric epics, 58 verisimilitude, 9–11; mimetic verisimilitude, 10 viewer, 123–24, 144–45 virility (murù"ah), 21, 30, 59 vision, 7, 142, 150 visual art, 13, 92–93, 157, 195; visual art, verbalized visual art, and visualized verbal art, 183 visual language, 184, 198 visual portrait, 92–93, 157 voice, 123, 125, 141, 146–51 Wa˙ìd (the singing slave-girl in Ibn al-Rùmì’s ode), 123, 135–40, 142–47, 150–54, 196 wall painting, 6, 93, 109–10, 195 waßf (description), 194–98; the bee, honey, and its collectors, 61, 74–79, 86–88; as criterion for evaluation of poetry, 5; as ﬂexible and serviceable, 90; in imitation and emulation, 20;

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 important thematic and structural role of, 94–95; as key element of the qaßìdah, 4–5, 122; as madì˙ (panegyric), 95–100; mission of, 14; physical description in, 194; as profound functions, 10; in relation to political, social, economic, and individual ambiance of each poet, 197; striving for verisimilitude, 10; synonym of, 5; taßwìr and tamthìl as synonym of, 15–16; technique of 47. See also description water, 42, 74–75, 78, 98, 100, 108, 113, 184–85

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wild ass, 43–44, 48 wind, 19, 46 wine, 93–94, 100, 117, 195; in association with honey, 62; compared to the beloved’s saliva, 73; rivers of, 75; mixed with honey, 79; precious, delicious wine, 85 wine cup, 6, 93, 100. See also goblet wit, 21, 59, 126 withers (saràt), 43, 45 word, 14, 32, 194 Yùsuf I (sultan), 159 Yùsuf II (sultan), 158–59

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BRILL STUDIES IN MIDDLE EASTERN LITERATURES ( formerly Studies in Arabic Literature) SUPPLEMENTS TO THE JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE ISSN 0169-9903 1. Khouri, M.A. Poetry and the Making of Modern Egypt (1882-1922). 1971. ISBN 90 04 02178 7 2. Somekh, S. The Changing Rhythm. A Study of Naj¬b Ma¥f¢¬’s Novels. 1973. ISBN 90 04 03587 7 3. Semah, D. Four EgyptianLiterary Critics. 1974. ISBN 90 04 03841 8 4. Cantarino, V. Arabic Poetics in the Golden Age. 1975. ISBN 90 04 04206 7 5. Moreh, S. Modern Arabic Poetry, 1800-1970. 1976. ISBN 90 04 04795 6 6. Jayyusi, S.K. Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry. 2 pts. 1977. ISBN 90 04 04920 7 7. Kurpershoek, P.M. The Short Stories of Y¢suf Idrºs. A Modern Egyptian Author. 1981. ISBN 90 04 06283 1 8. Gelder, G.J.H. van. Beyond the Line. Classical Arabic Literary Critics. 1982. ISBN 90 04 06854 6 9. Ajami, M. The Neckveins of Winter. 1984. ISBN 90 04 07016 8 10. Brugman, J. An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature in Egypt. 1984. ISBN 90 04 07172 5 11. Malti-Douglas, F. Structures of Avarice. The Bukhal¸} in Medieval Arabic Literature. 1985. ISBN 90 04 07485 6 12. Abdel-Malek, K. A Study of the Vernacular Poetry of A¥mad Fu}¸d Nigm. 1990. ISBN 90 04 08933 0 13. Stetkevych, S.P. Ab¢ Tamm¸m and the Poetics of the {Abb¸sid Age. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09340 0 14. Hamori, A. The Composition of Mutanabbº’s Panegyrics to Sayf alDawla. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09366 4 15. Pinault, D. Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09530 6 16. al-Nowaihi, M.M. The Poetry of Ibn Khaf¸jah. A Literary Analysis. 1993. ISBN 90 04 09660 4 17. Kurpershoek, P.M. Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central Arabia. 4 volumes. Vol. I. The Poetry of ad-Dind¸n. A Bedouin Bard in Southern Najd. An Edition with Translation and Introduction. 1994. ISBN 90 04 09894 1 Vol. II. The Story of a Desert Knight. The Legend of ³l¹wº¥ al-{A«¸wi

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21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

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and Other {Utaybah Heroes. An Edition with Translation and Introduction. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10102 0 Vol. III. Bedouin Poets of the Dawa- sir Tribe. Between Nomadism and Settlement in Southern Najd. An Edition with Translation and Introduction. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11276 6 Vol. IV. A Saudi Tribal History. Honour and Faith in the Traditions of the Daw¸sir. An Edition with Translation and Introduction. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12582 5 Bounfour, A. De l’enfant au fils. Essai sur la filiation dans les Mille et une nuits. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10166 7 Abdel-Malek, K. Mu¥ammad in the Modern Egyptian Popular Ballad. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10217 5 Sperl, S. and C. Shackle (eds.), Qasida Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa. 2 volumes. ISBN (set) 90 04 10452 6 Vol. I. Classical Traditions and Modern Meanings. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10295 7 Vol. II. Eulogy’s Bounty, Meaning’s Abundance. An Anthology. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10387 2 Frolov, D. Classical Arabic Verse. History and Theory of {Ar¢¥. 2000. ISBN 90 04 10932 3 al-Saraqus«º, Ab¢ l-Þ¸hir Mu¥ammad ibn Y¢suf. Al-Maq¸m¸t AlLuz¢mºyah. Translated, with a Preliminary Study by James T. Monroe. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12331 8 al-Musawi, M.J. The Postcolonial Arabic Novel. Debating Ambivalence. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12586 8 {Ar¸}is al-Maj¸lis fº Qiªaª al-anbiy¸} or “Lives of the Prophets”. As Recounted by Ab¢ Is¥¸q A¥mad ibn Mu¥ammad ibn Ibr¸hºm alTha{labº. Translated and Annotated by William M. Brinner. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12589 2 Motoyoshi Sumi, A. Description in Classical Arabic Poetry. Waªf, Ekphrasis, and Interarts Theory. 2004. ISBN 90 04 12922 7. Yamamoto, K. The Oral Background of Persian Epics. Storytelling and Poetry. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12587 6 Seyed-Gohrab, A.A. Laylº and Majn¢n. Love, Madness and Mystic Longing in Ni¬¸mº’s Epic Romance. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12942 1

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