Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam
Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam is an introduction to classical Islamic thought which explores its human and imaginative aspects across a broad intellectual spectrum. When medieval Muslims wrote about their world, its history, culture and its primary social actors – men and women, ordinary and extraordinary – how did they describe them? How did they recognize pattern and meaning in human affairs and show their readers the difference between appearance and reality? The book’s six contributors, specialists in different areas of classical Islamic thought, discuss these questions and provide an in-depth analysis through the use of case studies which include: ● ● ● ●
Theoretical writings Historiography Reminiscence Fiction and symbolic representation.
This volume provides a reader’s guide to the use of types of Arabic sources which are typically treated as separate specializations by modern scholarship, but which medieval Islamic culture regarded as a continuum. Medieval Muslim world views could be sharply at variance, yet competing ideologies used common proof texts and keywords to promote their message, creating a shared literary pool. Modern readers often mistake such shared topics for a shared discourse and approach them through modern conceptualizations of social, sexual and intellectual hierarchy. Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam compares the sources with recent interpretations and questions misidentified teleologies and problematic categorizations. It proposes a substantial shift of perspective, making it essential reading for those with interests in Middle Eastern literatures, history and Islam. Julia Bray studied Arabic and Persian at Oxford, teaches at Paris 8 – Saint Denis, and previously taught at Manchester, Edinburgh and St Andrews universities. As Julia Ashtiany, she edited a volume of the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, and has published on Arabic language and medieval Arabic literature.
Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures Editors James E. Montgomery University of Cambridge
Roger Allen University of Pennsylvania
Philip F. Kennedy New York University
Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures is a monograph series devoted to aspects of the literatures of the Near and Middle East and North Africa, both modern and pre-modern. It is hoped that the provision of such a forum will lead to a greater emphasis on the comparative study of the literatures of this area, although studies devoted to one literary or linguistic region are warmly encouraged. It is the editors’ objective to foster the comparative and multi-disciplinary investigation of the written and oral literary products of this area. 1. Sheherazade Through the Looking Glass Eva Sallis 2. The Palestinian Novel Ibrahim Taha 3. Of Dishes and Discourse Geert Jan van Gelder 4. Medieval Arabic Praise Poetry Beatrice Gruendler
8. Religious Perspectives in Modern Muslim and Jewish Literatures Edited by Glenda Abramson and Hilary Kilpatrick 9. Arabic Poetry Trajectories of modernity and tradition Muhsin J. al-Musawi
5. Making the Great Book of Songs Hilary Kilpatrick
10. Medieval Andalusian Courtly Culture in the Mediterranean Three ladies and a lover Cynthia Robinson
6. The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, 1880–1985 Samah Selim
11. Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam Muslim horizons Edited by Julia Bray
7. Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur and Arabic Writerly Culture A ninth-century bookman in Baghdad Shawkat M. Toorawa
Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam Muslim horizons Edited by Julia Bray
First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2006 Julia Bray, selection and editorial matter; the contributors, their own chapters
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN10: 0–415–38568–7 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–203–08809–3 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–38568–8 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–08809–8 (ebk)
Contents
Notes on contributors Introduction Acknowledgements Note on conventions
vii ix xii xiii
PART I
Fact and fiction
1
1
3
Ibn Zunbul and the romance of history RO B E RT I RW I N
2
History, fiction and authorship in the first centuries of Islam
16
RO B E RT G. H OY L A N D
3
Writing medieval women: representations and misrepresentations
47
J U L I E S C OT T M E I S A M I
PART II
Appearance and truth
89
4
91
Al-Jhåi©’s Kithb al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn JA M E S E . M O N TG O M E RY
5
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests: reflections on Abdelfattah Kilito’s Les Séances P H I L I P F. K E N N E DY
153
vi Contents 6
The physical world and the writer’s eye: al-Tanukhj and medicine
215
J U L I A B R AY
Index
251
Notes on contributors
Julia Bray has taught Arabic at the universities of Manchester, Edinburgh and St Andrews, where she was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Arabic and Middle East Studies; she is now Professor of Arabic literature at the University of Paris 8 – Saint Denis. In addition to articles on medieval Arabic literature, she has published The Archives of the British Political Agency, Kuwait, 1904–1949 (London: India Office Library and Records, 1982), Media Arabic (Edinburgh University Press, 1993 and reprints), was executive editor of The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: ‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres (1990) and is an associate editor of Medieval Islamic Civilisation: An Encyclopedia, edited by Josef Meri (Routledge, 2006). Robert G. Hoyland is a historian and archaeologist, and has recently been appointed Reader in Arabic at the University of St Andrews. As well as articles on early Islamic history and epigraphy, he has published Seeing Islam As Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1997) and Arabic and The Arabs: From The Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam (London and New York: Routledge, 2001) and co-edited with Philip F. Kennedy, Islamic Reflections Arabic Musings. Studies in Honour of Alan Jones (Oxford: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2004). Robert Irwin was formerly a Lecturer in the Department of Medieval History at the University of St Andrews. He is currently Senior Research Associate in the History Department of SOAS, London University, and Middle Eastern editor at the Times Literary Supplememt. He is the author of six novels as well as of The Middle East in The Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate 1250–1382 (1986), The Arabian Nights: A Companion (1994), Islamic Art (1997), Night and Horses and the Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature (1999) and The Alhambra (2004). He is currently editing a volume of The New Cambridge History of Islam: Islamic Culture and Societies to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Philip F. Kennedy is Professor of Arabic at New York University, and has published numerous articles on medieval Arabic literature besides The Winesong in Classical Arabic Poetry: Abu Nuwhs and The Literary Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). He is co-editor, with Robert G. Hoyland, of Islamic Reflections
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Notes on contributors
Arabic Musings. Studies in Honour of Alan Jones (Oxford: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2004). His monograph Islamic Recognitions: Anagnorisis in The Arabic Narrative Tradition is forthcoming with Routlege. Julie Scott Meisami was University Lecturer in Persian at the University of Oxford, and co-edited, with Paul Starkey, the Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature (Routledge, 1998). She has published widely on both Arabic and Persian literature; her books include Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton University Press, 1987), Persian Historiography to The End of the Twelfth Century (Edinburgh University Press, 1999), which won the Kuwait–Britain Friendship Prize, and Structure and Meaning in Medieval Arabic and Persian Poetry: Orient Pearls (Routledge Curzon, 2003). James E. Montgomery has taught at Glasgow and Oslo universities, and is Reader in Classical Arabic at the University of Cambridge. His The Vagaries of The Qaßjda: The Tradition and Practice of Early Arabic Poetry (Oxford: Gibb Memorial Trust, 1997) won the Kuwait–Britain Friendship Prize. After serving on the board of the Journal of Arabic Literature, he co-founded Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures, and is a Co-Director of the School of ‘Abbasid studies, whose most recent volume of Proceedings he edited (Leuven: Peeters, 2004). He has published widely on medieval Arabic literature and thought.
Introduction
When medieval Muslims looked at their world, what did they see? When they considered their society, their history, their culture, how did they describe them? How did they recognize pattern and meaning, and how did they show their readers the difference between appearance and underlying truth? The essays in this collection are an attempt to understand some of the ways in which Muslim writers of the medieval period – here taken loosely to mean the eighth to sixteenth centuries AD – described their world, and what they thought it meant. We start with historical description, and with Robert Irwin’s chapter on the sixteenth-century Egyptian, Ibn Zunbul, who wrote an account of the passing of one great political order, the Mamluk state, which had lasted for two and a half centuries, and the rise of a new imperial power, that of the Ottomans. Ibn Zunbul’s sympathies are with the losers, and he depicts the Mamluks as doomed heroes engaged, in Irwin’s words, in ‘a struggle against history’. Pathos on a much smaller, more personal scale is touched on towards the end of the second essay, by Robert G. Hoyland. A tenth-century writer – possibly identical with the author of the Great Book of Songs, more probably a minor and unknown man of letters – compiled a Book of Strangers, a series of miniature laments at parting, exile, those turning points that occur randomly in the lives of ordinary individuals, at no particular historical juncture, and place the happy past forever beyond reach. Here are experiences that everyone can recognize and that cut across time and cultures in the same way as Ibn Zunbul’s picture of the passing of Mamluk chivalry. Yet generally the world view that we are dealing with here is less immediately accessible, and when it appears self-explanatory, appearances are often deceptive. Thus women figure largely, in many medieval Muslim writings, in a variety of roles; and such writings can be, and are, used to provide fuel for debate on pressing contemporary issues. But, as Julie Scott Meisami shows, in the third, pivotal chapter, if we wish to read the past fruitfully, we must read what it says about itself with care. The three essays in the first half of this collection are grouped under the heading ‘Fact and fiction’. Irwin (himself both a novelist and historian) opens a debate on truth and history which hinges on the question of how we make sense of what we read, how to identify dramatic as against literal truth. Hoyland follows
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Introduction
with an analysis of the motivations and, no less importantly, the techniques of the founding fathers of Islamic historiography. Without dwelling on the details of the modern controversies which surround the accuracy of the foundation myths of Muslim culture, particularly with regard to the life of the Prophet, he opens up a balanced perspective on the ways in which historical narratives were composed, how and why an essential story was told. The emphasis here is on learning to recognize modes of composition, rather than on trying to retrieve and organize facts without regard to their literary context and collocation. Meisami’s contribution moves the discussion of readerly competence forward again, as she confronts the problems that naive readings of sophisticated sources may lead to when vital beliefs about human rights and values are at stake. At issue here is the the modern reader’s honesty and sense of responsibility. Meisami shows how received ideas – in this case, presuppositions that systemic misogyny and male exclusiveness will be found in all Muslim discourse – tend to fashion their own grand narratives from unrelated sources and to ignore what those sources may actually be saying on their own account. Not that medieval writers necessarily have easy or congenial messages to deliver; and this leads us into the second half of the collection, ‘Appearance and truth’, where we move again to studies of individual authors: al-Jhåi© in James E. Montgomery’s article, al-Hamadhhnj in Philip F. Kennedy’s and al-Tanukhj in my own. ‘If,’ says Montgomery, ‘. . . we accept . . . that literature should not be divorced from thought in the ninth century’ – that is, the third Islamic century, the period when, as he argues, the Arabic language, the medium of all the ‘representations’ discussed here, came to be conceived of as inherently sacred – ‘then it follows that thought should not be divorced from literature’, and indeed that the spectrum if not the very business of literature in this period has to be rethought. Jhåi©, because his works are famously witty and wide-ranging, has tended to be viewed as a formidable but superficial intelligence without a sustained focus, and indeed, because of the patronage he received from political figures, as a pen for hire: a belles-lettrist, an occasional propagandist for the ‘Abbasid regime, but not a true thinker. Montgomery argues instead for the coherence of his ideas on language and communication and their function in sustaining a rightly guided community, and for their serious engagement with the theological issues of his day. The Jhåi© who emerges from this analysis is a theoretician of performative ethics who is by no means inclined to pamper his readers. Chapter 6 in this part, my own on Tanukhj, argues for recognition of the ideas which animate, indeed instigate, literary representations of the visible world of people, things and nature. Like Jhåi©, when he is telling stories, and like Hamadhhnj, but to a greater degree than either, Tanukhj has long been regarded as affording a window into medieval social reality; but if the ability to see ‘realistically’ and describe accurately were conditioned by external objects, then naturalistic representation, whether in words or pictures, would be the dominant mode in all cultures – and, very obviously, most of the writing discussed here is not naturalistic. In Tanukhj’s case, a very specific conjunction of circumstances and ideas produced the phenomenon.
Introduction xi The conjuncture of ideas, the ways in which they interact with each other in the work of a given writer and the need for modern readers to be equipped to recognize them, is the leading theme of the last three chapters; and in the penultimate chapter in the collection, Kennedy takes the theme to its logical conclusion by examining what happens when a modern writer and critic treats Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht and their thought-world as a living tradition, one that can make the modern reader see the world, or the act of imagining it, more creatively – which is the normal way in which we read literature outside academic circles. He engages simultaneously in an (appreciative) critique of Abdelfattah Kilito’s Les Séances and other modern interpretations of the Maqhmht and in a detailed reading of the Maqhmht themselves which pays close attention to the nexus of ideas, literary and other, which Hamadhhnj ties together in them. The fact of their deliberate ‘textual promiscuity’, which is a heightened version of a wider phenomenon in the culture, prompts questions about medieval authorship which are relevant to most of the chapters, and reflections on how medieval writers’ imaginations worked which are directly or indirectly applicable to all of them. I have used the word ‘how’ repeatedly in this Introduction. In the meetings where we first broached the topics of these chapters, and those where we subsequently pushed our questions further, our aim was always to try and understand better how medieval authors wrote, the better to understand what they were doing and why. In fact, the prospect of conclusively grasping the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ has not necessarily come any closer, for the ‘how’ has continued to open up fresh horizons. And this, after all, is what reading is about – reading, that is, as a means of learning to think and imagine better. In publishing these chapters, we hope that we are helping to give other readers, including – indeed, especially – those who are interested in medieval Islamic thought, but who are obliged to read the source texts in translation, the means to indulge their curiosity both critically and with pleasure and to pick their way through the scholarly literature which we have cited without feeling excluded by its technicalities. A last word about the coverage of this volume and specifically about the words ‘Muslim’, ‘Islam’ and ‘medieval’ used in the title. All the main authors discussed, except for Ibn Zunbul, lived during the period when Arabic was the written language of Islamic culture, that is to say the eighth to tenth centuries AD, often referred to as ‘the formative period of Islamic thought’. New Persian had only just begun to emerge as a literary language at the end of this period, and Turkish had not yet done so. Hence our authors are all writers of Arabic – though not necessarily Arabs. As for ‘medieval’, with Ibn Zunbul and the Ottoman conquest of Egypt, we have clearly arrived at the end of an epoch. Whether it should be called medieval is debated by those who object to the application of European periodization to other cultures, but no other convenient term or circumlocution has yet been suggested. Finally, ‘Islam’ too is convenient shorthand, not for a timeless, consensual entity, as we hope the following chapters will make clear, but for culture, thought and beliefs consciously and competitively in the making. Julia Bray
Acknowledgements
We are indebted to the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford, and to St John’s College, Oxford, for making our first meetings possible and to New York University for supporting subsequent meetings. Individual contributors have also received support from the Institut Français d’Études Arabes à Damas (Chapter 2) and the Honeyman Trust, St Andrews (Chapter 6), which we gratefully acknowledge. I should like to express my special thanks to the Fellows and staff of St John’s College, Oxford, for their hospitality during the editing of this volume in the summer of 2003.
Note on conventions
Transliteration Throughout, we note emphatic consonants, for example, ƒ (as English ‘tar’), ß (as English ‘sardine’) and long vowels, for example, u (as English ‘food’). The signs ’ and ‘ represent a light and a heavy glottal stop respectively. Otherwise, we have not aimed at rendering the sound of Arabic in full, except in a few passages where the Qur’hn, poetry or rhymed prose are quoted to illustrate literary effects. Such passages are always translated as well as transliterated. For personal names and the titles of works, we follow the usage of the reference works that are most often cited in the footnotes: The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, edited by H. A. R. Gibb et al. (Leiden 1960–2002) and the Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, edited by Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey (London and New York 1998): i.e. names are given in the form ‘Abd Allhh, Abu al-Faraj (rather than ‘Abdallhh, Abu ’l-Faraj), and titles of works in the form al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn (rather than al-Bayhn wa ’l-Tabyjn or al-Bayhn wa-t-Tabyjn). But where we cite authors who have followed other systems, we reproduce their spelling. Place names are not transliterated if they have common English forms, for example, Baghdad, Basra, nor are the names of dynasties, for example, ‘Abbasid, not ‘Abbhsid. In each chapter, names which take the article al- are given with the article at first mention; the article is dropped thereafter (e.g. al-Jhåi©; then: Jhåi©). Arabic names often take the form of a miniature genealogy and include the component ibn, ‘son of ’, often abbreviated as b.; we write it in full. When written with a capital ‘I’, it forms part of a quasi-‘surname’, for example Ibn Wahb, Ibn Åanbal. The component Abu, ‘father of ’, which is part of given names such as Abu Bakr and Abu al-Faraj, and of the ‘polite form of address’ or kunya, becomes Abj in the genitive, in sequences such as Ibn Abj Ïhhir Ïayfur. The feminine counterpart of Abu is Umm, ‘mother of ’, for example Umm Ja‘far, Umm al-Sharjf.
Dates Hijrj dates are given first (calculated from AD 622, the year of the Prophet’s emigration, hijra, from Mecca to Medina), followed by the corresponding AD date,
xiv
Note on conventions
for example, 1/622. As the Hijrj calendar is lunar years often do not fully coincide in the two systems and will occasionally be given in the form ‘X died in the year 79/698–9’. Authors’ dates and regnal dates are given in each chapter on their first occurrence (and as often as seems helpful thereafter).
Technical terms Rather than referring the reader to a glossary, we have explained technical terms on their first occurrence in each chapter (and as often as seems helpful thereafter), because their meaning often varies according to context. Arabic terms are usually italicized. Titles such as Chief Qh∂j, and common words such as Íufj (a Muslim mystic), Åadjth (the corpus of traditions about the Prophet’s sayings and example, or the science of Tradition), Sunna (the Prophet’s example) and Imhm (the legitimate leader of the Muslim community) are not italicized, but we italicize qh∂j (a state-appointed religious judge), åadjth used to designate a tradition or narrative belonging to the Åadjth corpus, or simply a narrative, sunna (orthodox conduct) and imhm (prayer leader).
Bibliographies and references Each chapter has its own Bibliography of works cited; where possible, these include English or other translations of the main works discussed. Footnote references are keyed into the individual Bibliographies. For modern works and translations, these take the form ‘Kilito (1983)’ or ‘trans. Margoliouth (1921)’ followed by page number. Works by pre-modern authors are referred to by short title in the form ‘Jhåi©, Bayhn’.
Part I
Fact and fiction
1
Ibn Zunbul and the romance of history Robert Irwin
Sir Lewis Namier, the prosopographic historian of Hanoverian Britain, once observed that ‘historians imagine the past and remember the future’.1 By this he meant that our own version of history – Whig, Marxist, or whatever it may be – will constantly be rewritten in the light of what direction we perceive our culture and society to be taking. Although Namier intended his aphorism to apply to all historians in all periods, there can be few if any historians to whom it more closely applies than Shaykh Aåmad ibn ‘Alj ibn Zunbul al-Rammhl al-Maåallj al-Shhfi‘j, a man who wrote about the past, but who earned a living by foretelling the future. A case can be made for considering Ibn Zunbul as the Arab world’s first true historical novelist. The European historical novel is conventionally thought to have begun with the romances of Sir Walter Scott, while Jurjj Zaydhn’s al-Mamluk al-Sharjd (‘The Fleeing Mamluk’), written under the influence of Sir Walter Scott and published in 1891, is generally held to be the first example of an historical novel written in Arabic. Nevertheless the production of historical novels in the Arab world has been pushed back centuries earlier by at least one scholar. In his History of Muslim Historiography Franz Rosenthal discussed such works as the popular epics Sjrat ‘Antar and Sjrat Banj Hilhl as if they were historical novels. He quoted the autobiography of a twelfth-century figure, al-Samaw’hl ibn Yaåyh al-Maghribj, on how as a youth he had read the ‘big novels, such as the stories of ‘Antar, Dû l-Himma and al-Baƒƒâl,2 the story of Alexander Dû l-Qarnayn,3 of al-‘Anqâ’ (the Phoenix), and Ïaraf b. Lûdân, and others’. Al-Samaw’hl moved on from such light and fanciful material to reading history in Arabic and, in the end, his reading persuaded him to convert from Judaism to Islam.4 However, it is questionable whether the fantastic sagas read by al-Samaw’hl, or similar later works such as the Sjrat al-˝hhir Baybars and the pseudo-religious romances of al-Bakrj, should really be counted as historical novels.5 There may be history, or at least what pretends to be history, in all of such works, yet they fail to meet the criteria set out some decades ago by Georg Lukacs. In The Historical Novel (1937), he argued that, in genuine historical novels, the books’ protagonists take part in historical events and are changed by them. Moreover, in reading such fictions, one comes to a better understanding of the past and the processes of historical change. It is very doubtful whether those fantastic sagas composed in
4
Robert Irwin
the Arab world in the medieval period do conform to Lukacs’s criteria. However, it will be argued in what follows that Ibn Zunbul’s narrative of the downfall of the Mamluk Sultanate at the hands of the Ottomans does at least come close to satisfying a discriminating judge of historical novels.6 Judging by the number of manuscripts of his Infißhl which have survived, Ibn Zunbul used to be a popular author.7 However, few people seem to read him nowadays. He does not even have an entry in the new (second) edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam or the Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature. Ibn Zunbul’s current neglect may be the result of a category error. Western scholars have tended to treat his narrative masterpiece as a work of history rather than of historical fiction. According to David Ayalon in Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom: A Challenge to a Medieval Society (1956), the ‘evidence gathered from Ibn Zunbul’s work shows beyond any shadow of a doubt that by far the most important cause of the Mamluk defeat was the Ottoman use of firearms’.8 In general, the arguments advanced in Ayalon’s monograph rely heavily on citations from Ibn Zunbul. More recently, Benjamin Lellouch has written of Ibn Zunbul as being in the employ of the penultimate Mamluk Sultan Qhnßawh al-Ghawrj, and as a historian who was an eyewitness of the Mamluk defeats in 1516–17 and of the consequent Ottoman occupation of Egypt.9 As we shall see, there are many reasons for doubting Ibn Zunbul’s reliability as a historian, and there are strong grounds for doubting that he was ever in the service of Qhnßawh al-Ghawrj (r. 1501–16). Relying on a passage early on in the chronicle (if indeed the text in question should be termed a ‘chronicle’), Lellouch has deduced that Ibn Zunbul was the Sultan’s geomancer. However, Ibn Zunbul does not actually identify himself as being that geomancer.10 The pattern of Ibn Zunbul’s real life can be deduced only from occasional references in his own works. As we shall see, the Infißhl ’s narrative runs up to 1559. In his Qhnun, a treatise on geography and astronomy, Ibn Zunbul refers to a dream which prefigured the assassination of the Ottoman governor of Egypt, Maåmud Pasha (which took place in 1567).11 In his cosmography, the Tuåfa, he not only refers to himself as having been in Abukir in 1544, but he also makes mention of a conversation that he had with a Spaniard in AH 981/AD 1573–4.12 It follows that he would have had to have been improbably long-lived to have served Qhnßawh al-Ghawrj in any capacity. I have not been able to determine when Ibn Zunbul was born, but it seems probable that he was born in Maåalla in the Delta c.1500. Maåalla’s many excellences are duly celebrated in Ibn Zunbul’s Tuåfa.13 He could well have witnessed the entry of the Ottoman Sultan Selim I (‘the Grim’) into Cairo in 1517, for his account of this is vivid, detailed and realistic.14 He claims to have been an eyewitness of the arrival of the defeated rebel Pasha Aåmad al-Khh’in (Aåmad ‘the Traitor’) in Maåalla in 1524.15 Much of his subsequent life seems to have been spent in the employ of Maåmud Pasha, whom he served as a dream interpreter and, presumably, geomancer (whence his title of ‘al-Rammhl’).16 However, he probably earned extra money by writing books.
Ibn Zunbul and the romance of history 5 Ibn Zunbul wrote several treatises on geomancy, most notably Kithb al-Maqhlht f j Åall al-Mushkilht f j ‘Ilm al-Raml (‘Treatise on the Solution of Problems in the Science of Geomancy’), a highly sophisticated work in which, incidentally, Ibn Zunbul reveals a strong interest in mnemonics ( fann taqwiyat al-åhfi©a).17 His treatise on cosmography, Tuåfat al-Muluk wa al-Raghh’ib li mh fj al-Barr wa al-Baår min al-‘Ajh’ib wa al-Gharh’ib (‘Gift of Kings and Object of Desires for what is on Land and Sea of the Marvellous and Strange’) is a compendium of marvels indeed, dealing with buried treasures, talismanic statues, monsters, bogus Pharaonic lore and cosmic speculations. His al-Qhnun wa al-Dunyh (‘Law and the World’) is devoted to astronomy and geography and quotes heavily from apocryphal prophecies of Daniel.18 He also wrote several works which have not survived, including a treatise on the zh’irja (a fortune-telling device whose use the great philosopher-historian Ibn Khaldun (d. 808/1406) had once studied intensively),19 and another treatise on the Mahdj, the leader who will come to guide the faithful at the End of Time, and eschatological malhåim prophecies. The sixteenthcentury Near East was more than usually preoccupied with apocalyptic prophecy. The wars between great empires and the successive falls of the Kingdom of Granada, the Aqqoyunlu empire20 and the Mamluk Sultanate were part of the background to the production of handbooks of prophecy attributed to the mystic Ibn al-‘Arabj (560–638/1165–1241) and others.21 Ibn Zunbul’s historical novel exists in several versions, including two variant printed editions, and it can be considered as constituting a family of closely related versions rather than a single text. The numerous surviving manuscripts bear various titles, but in the Tuåfa Ibn Zunbul himself referred to his historical work as Kithb Infißhl Dawlat al-Awhn wa Ittißhl Dawlat Banj ‘Uthmhn (‘The Departure of the Temporal Dynasty and the Coming of the Ottomans’).22 Ibn Zunbul’s combination of the profession of novelist and occultist is not quite unique. In Mamluk Egypt a member of the low-life Fa’alhtj clan doubled as a seller of astrological prognostications and a street-corner storyteller.23 In the West in modern times novelists like Bulwer Lytton and Gustav Meyrink dabbled in occultism, while occultists such as Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune also turned their hands to writing novels.24 The Infißhl begins with the advance of the penultimate Mamluk Sultan Qhnßawh al-Ghawrj out of Egypt to encounter defeat at the hand of Selim on the battlefield of Marj Dhbiq. However, there are numerous flashbacks in the narrative. One of the most interesting of these is the – surely apocryphal – story of a Maghribi – a Muslim from North Africa – who arrived with a gun at the court of Qhnßawh al-Ghawrj and argued before the Sultan that the Mamluks would be doomed unless they adopted the weapon. But the Sultan allegedly rejected the monstrous device as Christian and declared that he would continue to follow the sunna (or custom) of the Prophet.25 Ibn Zunbul goes on to tell the story of Selim’s occupation of Syria and his invasion of Egypt, the Battle of Raydhniyya, the hunting down of the last Mamluk Sultan, Ïumhnbhy, in 1517, and the history of the early Ottoman Pashas of Egypt. Different manuscripts of the Infißhl end at
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different points. The modern editor ‘Hmir’s text ends with the governorship of ‘Alj Pasha al-Ïawhshj (‘the eunuch’), who arrived in Egypt in 1559.26 Ibn Zunbul’s novel is dedicated to the melancholy themes of the passing of chivalry and the doom of dynasties. The author’s emotional sympathies clearly lie with the doomed Mamluk chivalry. However, he also stresses the justice of the Ottoman cause and Selim’s strong piety. To borrow and paraphrase from Sellar and Yeatman’s 1066 and All That (on Cavaliers and Roundheads), the Mamluks were ‘wrong but romantic’, while the Ottomans were ‘right but repulsive’. The Infißhl possesses a strong cast of individually drawn characters. The saintly and chivalrous Ïumhnbhy is the hero. The real villains are not so much the Ottomans, but rather those Mamluks, such as Khayrbak and Jhnbirdj al-Ghazhlj, who collaborated with them. Aåmad, the traitor Pasha who in 1523 sought to rally disaffected Mamluks against the Ottomans, is another villain in Ibn Zunbul’s book. Betrayal of trust is the ultimate sin. The Ottoman Sultan Selim is portrayed as grim and mean-minded, yet he respects his Mamluk adversaries and he possesses skill in firhsa (divination on the basis of physiognomy) which allows him to descry what is truly in men’s souls.27 Compared with conventional historians of the Mamluk period, Ibn Zunbul shows an unusual interest in the motivations of the protagonists, and he goes to great pains to make those motivations clear, often resorting to invented dialogue to do so. The fact that the narrative makes frequent use of dialogue suggests that Ibn Zunbul composed his work with oral delivery in mind. The dialogue is vigorous, even (as we shall see) occasionally obscene. The encounters between protagonists are often agonistic and boastful. The frequent recapitulations of the story so far and the care in signalling scene changes suggest that the Infißhl was designed to be performed in public rather than read in private. (In much the same way, in the nineteenth century, Dickens designed his novels to be read aloud.) The Infißhl also shares many of its stock themes – the council, the gathering of the army, the challenge, and the despoiling of the vanquished – with the Iliad,28 and of course with heroic accounts of the early Islamic conquests.29 Granted all this, why, nevertheless, should the Infißhl be described as a ‘novel’ rather than as inaccurate history – or, to be less pejorative, literary history? The literarization of history writing is, after all, a striking and well-studied aspect of the Mamluk period. In a series of seminal studies, Ulrich Haarmann has pointed to a number of literary features in the chronicles of Ibn al-Dawhdhrj and others, including the insertion of anecdotes, resort to direct speech, the inclusion of ‘ajh’ib (marvels and marvellous happenings) and, more specifically, the use of occult materials and Turkish legends, as well as borrowings from Volksroman and the employment of dialect and popular idioms.30 Qirƒhy al-‘Izzj al-Khhzindhrj, a thirteenth-century chronicler, inserted wholly fictitious episodes in what is otherwise an averagely dull chronicle. His inventions included battles, embassies and descriptions of foreign lands. There appears to be no obvious motive for his fabrications.31 Ibn Íaßrh, the author of a fourteenth-century local chronicle of Damascus, glossed his narrative of warfare and local politics with fables and proverbs.32 In an earlier period and at a more sophisticated level, al-Mas‘udj’s
Ibn Zunbul and the romance of history 7 (d. 345/956) Muruj al-Dhahab (‘The Meadows of Gold’) can be read for pleasure as well as instruction, for it is both a chronicle and a work of adab.33 The Infißhl, however, is unusual in its readiness to sacrifice factual accuracy to narrative drive. ‘Yes, O dear yes – the novel tells a story.’34 The Infißhl conforms to many of E. M. Forster’s prescriptions for the novel in its passion, its romanticism, its interest in character and dialogue, its taste for showing rather than telling, its use of dramatic incident and its ability to paint verbal pictures. (This last is most notable in Ibn Zunbul’s account of Selim’s entry into Cairo.) Forster himself experienced some difficulty in separating fiction from history, but he declared: It is the function of the novelist to reveal the hidden life at its source: to tell us more about Queen Victoria than could be known; and thus to produce a character who is not the Queen Victoria of history.35 Ibn Zunbul treats Selim and Selim’s officers and opponents in just this manner. He reads their minds (very much as an expert in firhsa might) and he demonstrates how their characters shaped their thoughts and how their thoughts and decisions had consequences in history. Occultism features in both the incidental props of the novel and in its broad themes. It was Ibn Zunbul’s déformation professionnelle. Early on in the story, Qhnßawh learned that he would meet his downfall at the hands of a man whose name began with the letter sjn.36 Qhnßawh took this prophecy to refer to the powerful amjr, Sjbhy, the Mamluk governor of Syria, and did not take heed of the fact that Selim’s name also began with a sjn. (This ancient storytelling motif also appears in Shakespeare’s Richard III, where Edward IV, warned of a man whose name began with G, directed his fears towards George of Clarence rather than Richard of Gloucester.) The point of this story-motif (in both Arabic chronicle and Tudor play) is that it is to a degree a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ibn Zunbul’s narrative implies that Qhnßawh’s downfall was in part due to his unreasonable distrust of the loyal Sjbhy. In his chronicle Badh’i‘ al-Zuhur, Ibn Iyhs, who was born about half a century before Ibn Zunbul in 852/1448, had previously made use of this same story-motif but applied it to a slightly earlier period. According to Ibn Iyhs, soothsayers had told al-‘Hdil Ïumhnbhy (Ïumhnbhy I, r. 906/1501) that he would be overthrown by someone whose name began with qhf. Ïumhnbhy decided that this pointed to the amjr Qaßrawh, yet in the event he was overthrown by Qhnßawh al-Ghawrj.37 The ironical deployment of prophecy in history goes back at least to Herodotus’s History, in which misreadings of the ambiguities of the Delphic Oracle lead many to their doom. The ‘he-who-seeks-to-avoid-his-fate-sealshis-fate’ motif could also be called the ‘appointment-in-Samarra’ motif, from the appearance of this theme in Arabic folklore and in the John O’Hara novel of that title.38 As has been noted earlier, Selim features in the story as a man with occult skills. He can read men’s minds through his ability at firhsa, and thus he detects the deceits of Qhnßawh al-Ghawrj, as well as detecting the intrinsic nobility of Ïumhnbhy. (The power of firhsa is a leading feature in the stories of ‘The King
8 Robert Irwin Who Kenned the Quintessence of Things’ and ‘The Three Sons of the King of the Yemen’ in the Thousand and One Nights.)39 Selim can also understand the real and hidden meanings of the letters of the alphabet. The Infißhl presents sixteenthcentury Egypt as a magical land. Khayrbak, the Mamluk turncoat in attendance on Selim, urges his new master on by encouraging references to prophecies (malhåim) and signs (rumuz).40 The rebel Mamluk amjr Aynhl possesses a skullcap of invisibility (‘araqiyya masruda). Its possession does him no good.41 (In many stories invisibility and ill-fate are closely linked as, for example, in Wagner’s Ring cycle, H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.)42 More broadly, the practice of adumbration, of foreshadowing the end early on in the narrative, goes back to Homer. A narrative in which fate and foreknowledge play a large part is also likely to carry a freight of dramatic irony – as when, for example, former comrades-in-arms fall to fighting each other. For example, the amjr Jhnbirdj, disguised as an Arab, enagages the Sultan Ïumhnbhy in single combat without recognizing him (like Sohrab and Rustam or Lancelot and Galahad).43 Ibn Zunbul’s audience were privileged to know more than the heroes and victims in his story. Unlike the fictional protagonists, the audience of the story knows how it will end – with the doom of the Mamluks.44 After Ïumhnbhy surrenders to Selim’s forces, Selim wonders what sorcery could have induced the Mamluk Sultan to surrender so easily. Nevertheless it is clear that the dreams of Ïumhnbhy, which led him to perceive the hopelessness of his case, were not the product of sorcery but came from God. The Mamluk Sultanate was doomed not by witchcraft but by divine decree. The occultist may divine the future, but he cannot change it. Ibn Zunbul’s Mamluk heroes inhabit a universe of fated doom, and those who, like Khayrbak, can read the signs, know what their end will be. (After death, Khayrbak can still be heard screaming in his tomb.)45 The instant of Jhnbirdj al-Ghazhlj’s end was psychically intuited by a man in Cairo.46 Dreams instruct Ïumhnbhy about his tragic but noble end. Before entering the ill-fated whdj where he is to be defeated, he dreams first of a destructive deluge, then of being attacked by five black dogs.47 A little later, the Prophet appears in a dream to tell him that his cause is lost and his dynasty is doomed.48 Ïumhnbhy thereupon casts his sword into the waters (shades of one of the most famous episodes in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, in which Sir Bedivere is instructed by King Arthur to cast Excalibur into the waters; shades too of Roland’s decision in the Chanson de Roland to destroy his sword, Durandal, lest it be used by his enemies). Ïumhnbhy is not just a warrior, but also a poet and a Íufj (mystic) ‘who has renounced this world’ (‘faqjr min al-dunyh’),49 and the description of his hanging is somewhat reminiscent of accounts of the gibbeting, in the fourth/tenth century, of the Íufj al-Åallhj.50 On the surface Ïumhnbhy and the other Mamluk amjrs engage in a struggle against the Ottomans with their new military technology. At a more profound level they battle against fate and destiny (al-qa∂h’ wa al-qadar). The doom of the Mamluks is like that of Abraha and the People of the Elephant in the Qur’hn.51 The size of an army cannot determine victory. Only a geomancer can foresee which side will win.
Ibn Zunbul and the romance of history 9 Flashback and hindsight are the counterparts of prophecy and prolepsis. Ibn Zunbul moves backwards and forwards in time but never strays too far from the main narrative. His strong grip on the line of the plot leads him (unlike the chronicler Ibn Iyhs) to ignore historically important subjects such as the appearance of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean52 or the deportation of prominent civilians from Egypt after the Ottoman conquest. Despite his superficially cavalier way with chronological sequence, we do not find in Ibn Zunbul the mindless, pellmell accumulation of faits divers that we find in Ibn Iyhs. Every event in the Infißhl has a cause and a consequence – and often occult causes and consequences as well as overt ones. Dialogue (surely invented) is regularly deployed to make clear the alleged motives of the dramatis personae. Dialogue and eloquent monologues are used to set out complex political issues and suggest the possibility of alternative strategies. On the eve of the battle at Gaza, Ïumhnbhy pauses to compose a ninety-four line qaßjda (ode in classical Arabic) on the decline of Mamluk fortunes. This his amjrs dutifully inscribe on one of the Pyramids.53 (Centuries later, Ïumhnbhy’s alleged venture into literature had the rare distinction of being translated into Swedish as ‘Tumanbay’s Svane-Sång In Hugged på en Egyptik Pyramid’.)54 Ibn Zunbul’s use of dialogue is plain and vigorous, as when Kurtbhy tells his Ottoman captors where they can put his head once it has been cut off.55 Such scenes make one realize how primly and properly Mamluk conflicts seem to have been conducted in the pages of Ibn Taghrj Birdj or Ibn Iyhs, where never a swearword passes between the contending parties. The use of insulting oaths in Islamic warfare and politics deserves more attention than it has hitherto received. A significant part of the Infißhl consists of protagonists abusing one another, or arguing with one another, or engaging in boasting contests. The agonistic structuring of such encounters indicates that, although in one sense the Infißhl is a thoroughly literary work, in another sense it is not so literary at all, since it is the product of a culture which was only partially literate. Ibn Zunbul’s narrative, in so far as it draws on anything other than fantasy, draws on memory and oral testimony rather than on documents. As suggested earlier, it was written not to be read in private but to be recited in public. The book’s audience was mostly illiterate and accustomed to oral modes of transmission. The Infißhl’s scenes of debate and boasting would have lent themselves perfectly to acting out by a professional storyteller (åakawhtj). The battle scenes are no less agonistic and artificial than the dialogues, for single combat between the protagonists features implausibly frequently and prominently in battles. Conflict is presented as personal and concrete in both speech and action. So the abstract theme of the end of chivalry is turned into a play in which the arguments are distributed among the various parts and (I would suggest) all the parts were performed by a single actor, the åakawhtj. Ibn Zunbul makes artful use of an alternating perspective which switches regularly from the Ottoman camp to that of the Mamluks and back again, the audience being alerted to such shifts by the use of the phrase qhla al-rhwj, ‘the narrator said’. The narrative focuses fairly closely on three protagonists: Ïumhnbhy,
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the epitome of valour (shajh‘a) and chivalry ( furusiyya), Khayrbak, the envious and malicious traitor, and Selim, the dour and bloodthirsty but astute ruler, who cannot help but acknowledge the merits of his Mamluk antagonists. Although occult themes pervade the Infißhl, they do not dominate it, and the book’s central theme is the dramatic debate about the contraposed legitimacies of the Mamluks and the Ottomans. In the popular sjras such as the Sjrat al-˝hhir Baybars, the villains were unproblematically Christians, Magians or Jews. Ibn Zunbul, however, is telling the story of a war between two Sunnj Muslim regimes. In the course of the Infißhl it is argued that Selim’s assumption of rule over Syria is legitimate because he is a sultan and the son of a sultan and his dynasty can trace its lineage all the way back to Noah. Selim only wanted to protect the Holy Places and wage Holy War ( jihhd) against infidels and heretics, and feels that it is his duty and destiny to become the protector of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The Mamluks, by contrast, were ex-slaves and ex-Christians who made a regular practice of deposing and killing their sultans; Qhnßawh was an oppressive Sultan; moreover, he sought to obstruct Selim’s war against the heretical Qizilbhsh Turcomans.56 Selim has secured a legal opinion in due form ( fatwh) to underwrite the legitimacy of his war against the Mamluks. On the other hand, various characters in the Infißhl argue the opposite case. The Ottoman aggression is wrong and the Mamluks were right to resist it, for the Qur’hn sanctions self-defence. The Mamluks are fighting to protect their wives and children. Muslim may not attack Muslim. It is not true that the Mamluk Sultanate was a despotism tempered by assassination, as the Ottomans seem to be insinuating. Mamluks became sultans through merit. Qhytbhy had reigned for thirty years (1468–96). The Ottomans employed both infidel soldiers and infidel technology, whereas the Circassian Mamluks fought according to the practice (sunna) of the holy warriors ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib and ‘Umar, Companions and successors of the Prophet. God bestowed chivalry ( furusiyya) and valour (shajh‘a) on the Circassians, and this was their proud boast ( fakhr).57 The Ottoman use of firearms and the evil doings of traitors both played a part in the downfall of the heroic Mamluks.58 In Ibn Zunbul’s narrative, the good men are betrayed by traitors, and the traitors – Khayrbak, Jhnbirdj and Aåmad al-Khh’ in – are themselves in turn betrayed by traitors. Yet it must be stressed that both these themes are subordinated to that of the omnipotent role of Fate. The Mamluks of the Infißhl inhabit a doomed world, not so very dissimilar to the doomed worlds of the medieval feudatories or the eighteenth-century Jacobites as portrayed in the novels of Scott. (Fruitful comparisons could also be made with the doomed Cossacks of Gogol’s Taras Bulba or with the traditional aristocracy at the time of the Risorgimento in Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo, with its mockingly deceitful refrain ‘Things must change in order that they may remain the same’.) Ibn Zunbul’s narrative is pervaded by nostalgia. At one point the author digresses to list the various streets in Cairo in which the Mamluk amjrs had their residences.59 It is an enterprise which is curiously reminiscent of the Tudor antiquarian John Stowe’s attempt to reconstruct the topography of medieval London (in The Survey of London, published in 1598). Yet though Ibn Zunbul and his audience may have
Ibn Zunbul and the romance of history 11 lamented the fall of the Mamluks, the Mamluk regime was irreversibly doomed, as all regimes ultimately are. The Infißhl presents a portrait of a society in the process of inevitable change and a caste of warriors engaged in a struggle against history.60 It is possible that here Ibn Zunbul, in his tale of the doom of the Mamluks, intended a message for the Ottomans, and that it was one to which the Ottomans were receptive. The story was twice translated into Turkish (by Suheili and Yusuf Milevi), and it was also one of the earliest books to be printed in Ottoman Turkey.61 As early as the mid-sixteenth century, some Turkish thinkers were already brooding on the possible decline of their empire and, a little later, Ottoman historians would turn to study Ibn Khaldun’s theories about the cyclical rise and inevitable collapse of dynasties.62 Implicit in the very notion of a dawla (‘dynasty’, ‘alternation’, ‘turn of fortune’) is the idea that regimes revolve and undergo ‘revolutions’. The Turks interested themselves in malhåim, apocalyptic prophecies attributed to Ibn al-‘Arabj and others, which pretended to predict first the triumph of the Ottomans, then the coming of the Mahdj. Perhaps there were some in Ottoman Turkey who, having opened Ibn Zunbul’s novel, read its account of past events in the light of their fears about the future. Bearing all this in mind, it might be correct to read the Infißhl as a narrative which not only relates the downfall of the Mamluks but also tacitly prophesies the future downfall of the Ottomans and looks forward to the End of Time.
Notes 1 2 3 4 5
6
7 8 9 10
Namier (1942), p. 70. See Chapter 2, pp. 17–18, 34. The Arabic Alexander romance. Rosenthal (1968), pp. 46–7. Al-Bakrj, a shadowy author, may have lived in the late thirteenth century AD. The historical Baybars (r. 658–76/1260–77) defeated the Crusade of Saint Louis, then the Mongols, and was proclaimed Mamluk Sultan. His legend gave rise to a sjra cycle in numerous episodes of which there is an ongoing French translation (under the general title Roman de Baïbars); see Bohas and Guillaume (1985). Hitherto only H. Jansky has appreciated Ibn Zunbul at his true worth. Having noted the popularity of Ibn Zunbul’s work in the Middle East, he went on to praise it for the richness of its contents and its warmth of speech. He described it as a masterpiece of Arabic storytelling, an epic (‘ein Heldenepos’) and the rare sort of book that one cannot put down; Jansky (1929), p. 30. Brockelmann, GAL, II, p. 298; S, II, p. 409. Ayalon (1956), p. 100; see also ibid., pp. 86–97 and CHistIslam, p. 229. Lellouch (1994), pp. 144–55. Ibn Zunbul, [Infißhl] Hkhirat al-Mamhljk (ed. ‘Hmir, Cairo, 1962), p. 16. In the passage in question, Ibn Zunbul merely identifies himself as the transmitter (nhqil) of the story about a geomancer’s prophecy. Where possible, I will refer to ‘Hmir’s printed text of the Infißhl in what follows. There is also a lithograph version of Ibn Zunbul’s narrative, Kithb Ta’rjkh al-Sulƒhn Saljm Khhn ibn al-Sulƒhn Bhyazjd Khhn ma‘a Qhnßawh al-Ghawrj Sulƒhn Mißr wa A‘mhlihh, but this is shorter than ‘Hmir’s printed text. The latter is chiefly based on a Cairo MS, Taymur 376, with amplifications and corrections from two other MSS.
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11 Ahlwardt (1897), V, pp. 285–7. Ahlwardt claims that Ibn Zunbul died in 980/1572, but it is not clear what the evidence for this is. Haarmann (1970), p. 165 places Ibn Zunbul’s death some time after 1553. 12 Ibn Zunbul, Tuåfat al-Muluk, ff. 118a, 191a; Fagnan (1924), p. 136; Irwin (1999) (a), p. 308. 13 Ibn Zunbul, Tuåfat al-Muluk, ff. 123a–b. 14 Ibn Zunbul, [Infißhl] Hkhirat al-Mamhljk, pp. 110–11. 15 Ibn Zunbul, [Infißhl] British Library MS Or.3031 (no title), f. 31b. On Aåmad Pasha, see CHistEgypt, I, pp. 514–15. 16 Ahlwardt (1897), V, pp. 285–7. 17 On the occult works of Ibn Zunbul, see Fahd (1987), p. 203, Klein-Franke (1973), pp. 26–35, Skinner (1980), pp. 19–22, 38–51, 242–3. 18 Ahlwardt (1897), V, pp. 285–7. 19 Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, trans. Rosenthal (1967), III, pp. 182–214; see also Renaud (1943). 20 See CHistEgypt, I, pp. 466, 522. 21 On prophetic literature, see Massignon (1963), Fodor (1974), Abel (1977), (1958) and (1954), and Langner (1983), pp. 91–5. 22 Ibn Zunbul, Tuåfat al-Muluk, f. 73a. 23 Irwin (1994), pp. 108–9; on the Fa’alhtjs and popular life under the Mamluks, see Lapidus (1984), p. 181. 24 For more examples, see Ashley (1997). A recent example of the genre is my own novel, Satan Wants Me (1999). 25 Ibn Zunbul, [Infißhl] Hkhirat al-Mamhljk, pp. 58–9, trans. Irwin (1999) (a), p. 446. 26 Ibid., p. 171. 27 Ibid., pp. 20, 24, 133. 28 On the persistence of oral features in literature, see Ong (1989). 29 See Chapter 2, pp. 18, 33–5. 30 See Haarmann (1970), (1971) and (1974). 31 Irwin (1989), pp. 237–40. 32 Brinner (1963). 33 See Al-Azmeh (1998) (b). 34 Forster (1976), p. 40. 35 Ibid., pp. 55–6. 36 Ibn Zunbul, [Infißhl] Hkhirat al-Mamhljk, p. 15. 37 Wiet (1955–60), I, p. 3. 38 On the literary use of self-fulfilling prophecy, see Haarmann (1979), Irwin (1994) and Bell and Langford (1997). 39 Irwin (1994), p. 192. 40 Ibn Zunbul, [Infißhl] Hkhirat al-Mamhljk, p. 71. 41 Ibn Zunbul, [Infißhl] British Library MS Or.3031, f. 27b. This detail is not found in the printed version. 42 Clute and Grant (1997). For invisibility as a theme in the Thousand and One Nights, see Elisséeff (1949), pp. 132–3. 43 Ibn Zunbul, [Infißhl] Hkhirat al-Mamhljk, pp. 116–18. 44 On the use of adumbration in fiction, see Hutchinson (1983), p. 165. 45 Ibn Zunbul, [Infißhl] Hkhirat al-Mamhljk, p. 165. 46 Ibid., p. 163. 47 Ibid., p. 123. 48 Ibid., p. 128. 49 Cf. CHistEgypt, I, pp. 406, 498. 50 See Cooper (1998). 51 Qur’hn 105: 1–5. 52 CHistEgypt, I, pp. 466–7.
Ibn Zunbul and the romance of history 13 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62
Ibn Zunbul, [Infißhl] Hkhirat al-Mamhljk, pp. 77–81. Norberg (1822), pp. 230–8. Ibn Zunbul, [Infißhl] Hkhirat al-Mamhljk, p. 62. See CHistEgypt, I, p. 495. See especially Ibn Zunbul, [Infißhl] Hkhirat al-Mamhljk, pp. 70, 135–9, trans. Irwin (1999) (a), pp. 444–6. On the perils in using Ibn Zunbul as a source on firearms, see Irwin (2004). Ibn Zunbul, [Infißhl] Hkhirat al-Mamhljk, pp. 36–9. For a translation of the passage in which Kurtbhy tells Selim that the Ottomans defeated the Mamluks not because they were better soldiers but because the Mamluks were doomed by Fate, see Irwin (1999) (a), p. 445. Jansky (1929), pp. 32–3, Rieu (1988), pp. 59–60, Babinger (1927), pp. 56–8, 162, 371–4. Lewis (1962). See also Lewis (1986), pp. 527–30 and Al-Azmeh (1998) (a).
Bibliography of works cited in this chapter Abel, Armand (1954), ‘Changements politiques et littérature eschatologique’, Studia Islamica 2, pp. 22–43. ——(1958), ‘Un åadit sur la prise de Rome dans la tradition eschatologique de l’Islam’, Arabica 5, pp. 1–14. ——(1977), ‘La place des sciences occultes dans la décadence’, in Brunschvig and von Grunebaum (eds) (1977), pp. 291–311. Ahlwardt, W. (1897), Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin: Verzeichnis der arabischen Handschriften, Berlin. Al-Azmeh, A. (1998) (a), ‘Ibn Khaldun’, EncArLit, I, pp. 343–4. ——(1998) (b), ‘al-Mas‘udj’, EncArLit, II, pp. 514–15. Arbel, B., B. Hamilton and D. Jacoby (eds) (1989), Latins and Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1204, London. Ashley, Mike (1997), ‘Occult Fantasy’, in Clute and Grant (eds) (1997), pp. 702–3. Ayalon, David (1956), Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom: A Challenge to a Mediaeval Society, London. Babinger, F. (1927), Die Geschichtsschreiber der Osmanen und ihre Werke, Leipzig. Bell, Chris and David Langford (1997), ‘Prophecy’, in Clute and Grant (eds) (1997), pp. 789–90. Bohas, Georges and Patrick Guillaume, trans. (1985), Les Enfances de Baïbars, Paris. Brinner, William M., ed. and trans. (1963), The Chronicle of Damascus 1389–1397 by Muåammad ibn Muåammad ibn Íaßrh, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Brockelmann, C. (1943–9), Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur ( GAL, I–II) Leiden, and (1937–42), Supplementbanden ( S, I–III), Leiden. Brunschvig, R. and G. E. von Grunebaum (eds) (1977), Classicisme et déclin culturel dans l’histoire de l’Islam (Actes du Symposium International d’Histoire de la Civilisation musulmane, Bordeaux, 1956), Paris. The Cambridge History of Egypt, volume I, Petry, Carl F. (ed.), Islamic Egypt, 640–1517, Cambridge 1998 ( CHistEgypt, I). The Cambridge History of Islam, Holt, P. M., Ann K. S. Lambton and Bernard Lewis (eds) Cambridge 1970 ( CHistIslam). Clute, John and John Grant (eds) (1997), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, London. Cooper, J. (1998), ‘al-Åallhj’, EncArLit, I, pp. 266–7. Elisséeff, Nikita (1949), Thèmes et motifs des Mille et Une Nuits: Essai de classification, Beirut.
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Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, Meisami, Julie Scott and Paul Starkey (eds), London and New York. ( EncArLit). Fagnan, E. (1924), Extraits inédits relatifs au Maghreb. Géographie et histoire, Algiers. Fahd, Toufic (1987), La Divination arabe, Paris. Fodor, A. (1974), ‘Malhamat Daniyal’, in Káldy-Nagy (ed.) (1974), pp. 85–160. Forster, E. M. (1976), Aspects of the Novel, Harmondsworth. (First published London, 1927.) Haarmann, Ulrich (1970), Quellenstudien zur frühen Mamlukenzeit, Freiburg im Breisgau. ——(1971), ‘Auflösung und Bewahrung der klassischen Formen arabischer Geschichtsschreibung in der Zeit der Mamluken’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 121, pp. 46–60. ——(1974), ‘Altun Han und Cingiz Han bei den ägyptischen Mamluken’, Der Islam 51, pp. 1–36. ——(1979), ‘Der Schatz im Haupt der Gotzen’, in Haarmann and Bachmann (eds), Die Islamische Welt zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit, Beirut, pp. 198–229. Hutchinson, Peter (1983), Games Authors Play, London. Ibn Iyhs: see Wiet, trans. (1955–60). Ibn Khaldun: see Rosenthal, trans. (1967). Ibn Íaßrh: see Brinner ed. and trans. (1963). Ibn Zunbul, Aåmad ibn ‘Alj, [Kithb Infißhl Dawlat al-Awhn wa Ittißhl Dawlat Banj ‘Uthmhn], cited in the following three texts: Hkhirat al-Mamhljk: Whqi‘at al-Sulƒhn al-Ghawrj ma‘a Saljm al-‘Uthmhnj, A. T. al-‘Hmir (ed.), Cairo 1962; Kithb Ta’rjkh al-Sulƒhn Saljm Khhn ibn al-Sulƒhn Bhyazjd Khhn ma‘a Qhnßawh al-Ghawrj Sulƒhn Mißr wa A‘mhlihh (lithograph, no place of publication, 1861); and British Library MS Or.3031 (no title). Ibn Zunbul, Aåmad ibn ‘Alj, Tuåfat al-Muluk wa al-Raghh’ib li mh fj al-Barr wa al-Baår min al-‘Ajh’ ib wa al-Gharh’ib, Oxford Bodleian MS Cat. Uri no. 892. Irwin, Robert (1989), ‘The Image of the Byzantine and Frank in Arab Popular Literature of the Late Middle Ages’, in Arbel, Hamilton and Jacoby (eds) (1989), pp. 237–40. ——(1994), The Arabian Nights: A Companion, Harmondsworth. ——(1999) (a), Night and Horses and the Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature, Harmondsworth. ——(1999) (b), Satan Wants Me, Sawtry, Cambs. ——(2004), ‘Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Sultanate Reconsidered’, in Winter and Levanoni (eds) (2004), chapter 6, pp. 117–39. Jansky, H. (1929), ‘Die Chronik des Ibn Ïulun als Geschichte über den Feldzug Sultan Selims I gegen die Mamluken’, Der Islam 18, pp. 24–33. Káldy-Nagy, Gy. (ed.) (1974), The Muslim East: Studies in Honour of Julius Germanus, Budapest. Klein-Franke, Felix (1973), ‘The Geomancy of Aåmad B. ‘Alj Zunbul: A Study of the Arabic Corpus Hermeticum’, Ambix 20, pp. 26–35. Langner, Barbara (1983), Untersuchungen zur historischen Volkskunde Ägyptens nach mamlukischen Quellen, Berlin. Lapidus, Ira M. (1984), Muslim cities in the Later Middle Ages, student edition, Cambridge, 1984. Lellouch, Benjamin (1994), ‘Ibn Zunbul, Un Égyptien Face à l’Universalisme Ottoman (Seizième Siècle)’, Studia Islamica 89, pp. 144–55. Lewis, Bernard (1962), ‘Ottoman Observers of Ottoman Decline,’ Islamic Studies (Karachi) 1, pp. 71–87. (Reprinted in Bernard Lewis, Islam in History: Ideas, Men and Events in the Middle East, London 1973, pp. 199–216.) —— (1986) ‘Ibn Khaldun in Turkey’, in Sharon (ed.) (1986), pp. 527–30.
Ibn Zunbul and the romance of history 15 Lukacs, George (1962), trans. Hannah and Stanley Mitchell, The Historical Novel, London. (First published in German, Moscow 1937.) Massignon, Louis (1963), ‘Textes prémonitoires et commentaires mystiques relatifs à la prise de Constantinople par les Turcs en 1453 ( 853 Heg.) in Opera Minora, Moubarac (ed.), Beirut, pp. 547–51. Namier, Lewis (1942), Conflicts: Studies in Contemporary History, London. Norberg, Matthias (1822), Turkiska rikets annaler, Christianstad. Ong, Walter J. (1989), Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, London. Renaud, H. P. (1943), ‘Divination et histoire nord-africaine au temps d’Ibn Khaldoun’, Hespéris 30, pp. 213–22. Rieu, C. (1988), Catalogue of Turkish Manuscripts in the British Museum, London. Rosenthal, Franz, trans. (1967), Ibn Khaldun. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, 2nd edition, London. —— (1968), History of Muslim Historiography, 2nd edition, Leiden. Sellar, W. C. and R. J. Yeatman (1930), 1066 and All That, London. Sharon, M. (ed.) (1986), Studies in Islamic History and Civilization in Honour of Professor David Ayalon, Leiden. Skinner, Stephen (1980), Terrestrial Astrology: Divination by Geomancy, London. Wiet, Gaston, trans. (1955–60), Journal d’un bourgeois du Caire: Chronique d’Ibn Iyhs, Paris. Winter, Michael and Amalia Levanoni (eds) (2004), The Mamluks in Egyptian and Syrian Politics and Society, Leiden and Boston.
2
History, fiction and authorship in the first centuries of Islam Robert G. Hoyland
Fiction is the basis of society, the bond of commercial prosperity, the channel of communication between nation and nation, and not infrequently the interpreter between a man and his own conscience. William Carleton, ‘An Essay on Irish Swearing’, in. D. J. O’Donoghue (ed.), Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (London, 1896) And when I look at a history book and think of the imaginative effort it has taken to squeeze this oozing world between two boards and typeset, I am astonished. Perhaps the event has an unassailable truth. God saw it. God knows. But I am not God. Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the Only Fruit (London, 1985)
Introduction It is said that at a gathering of scholars and reciters of poetry in the caliphal palace, the ‘Abbasid ruler al-Mahdj (r. 158–69/775–85) enquired of two of the most renowned there present, al-Mufa∂∂al al-Îabbj and Åammhd al-Rhwiya, why the pre-Islamic poet Zuhayr ibn Abj Sulmh opened one of his compositions apparently in the middle of the topic. Mufa∂∂al replied: ‘No information on this has been conveyed to me’, whereas Åammhd rejoined: ‘Zuhayr did not speak thus, but rather thus’, and promptly quoted three lines as if they were the supposedly missing opening of the poem. Under pressure from the caliph, however, Åammhd admitted that he had concocted these lines himself. Accordingly Mahdj bestowed upon Åammhd 20,000 dirhams (silver coins) ‘on account of the excellence of his verses’, and upon Mufa∂∂al 50,000, ‘as a reward for the accuracy of his transmission’.1 At issue in this seemingly ingenuous anecdote are two points. First, it illustrates the transition from a living historical tradition which may be continuously emended and updated to one which must be preserved intact and untampered with; and second, it raises the question of who is qualified to pass on this latter tradition. Åammhd stands for the reciter who retains for himself the freedom to revise, refine and restructure poems and narratives as befits the occasion. But this mode of transmission, which had made him a favourite among the Umayyad
History, fiction and authorship 17 rulers (41–132/661–750), is found wanting by their successors, the ‘Abbasids (132–656/750–1258). The past had, by their day, come to acquire legitimating and normative value. A line of ancient poetry might elucidate a Qur’anic verse and so help us to know what God wants us to do in the here and now; a saying (åadjth) of the Prophet Muåammad might provide a model for present action; and a deed of one of Muåammad’s Companions might be of relevance in determining the current government’s right to rule. In such a situation, reliability and trustworthiness in the transmission of historical material, whether poetry or prose, was essential, and scholars busied themselves with putting in place mechanisms to ensure that accuracy was observed. Hence it was to the scholars – represented in the above tale by Mufa∂∂al, for whom the original text is a cultural artefact that cannot be manipulated – that the task of preserving knowledge about the past was entrusted, while those who practised adaptation and revision of the Muslim heritage were relegated to second place, as Åammhd is earlier, or even dismissed as forgers and corrupters.2 This helps to explain the self-professed preference of medieval Arabic literature for fact over fiction, or for ‘truthfulness’ (ßidq) over ‘lying’ (kadhib), as Muslim literary critics would express it. In the case of poetry, it was generally accepted, though not without some dispute, that imaginative invention (takhyjl ) was permissible. For prose, however, such invention was at best frowned upon and most often condemned, and almost any prose text will be decked out with a variety of devices to prove that it is factual or ‘true’, that it was not contrived by an author but conveys what actually happened in reality.3 In practice, of course, fiction in the sense of imaginative invention does occur in early Arabic prose writing, not least in the field of history. This is most clearly to be witnessed in the productions of public storytellers, whether the short narratives familiar to us from the Thousand and One Nights or the full-scale popular epics and romances which have been touched on in Chapter 14 and will be referred to again later in this one. ‘Such stories’, one critic of the period observed, contain wonders and bizarre events which are arranged in a way that pleases the people who are assembled together. They enjoy engaging in such storytelling and spend their time together passing these tales around. These stories, or rather most of them, have absolutely no basis at all (lh aßla lahu).5 Such fanciful tales told for amusement (khurhfht or asmhr) were disdained by most scholars,6 who saw merit only in a ‘true’, historical report, termed åadjth or khabar. One is initially tempted, therefore, to equate the former genre with ‘fiction’ and the latter with ‘history’; but studies in Western literature have demonstrated that fiction and history are less easily distinguished than had generally been thought. Both place events, actual or putative, in a meaningful sequence, and give them a narrative structure that orders and emphasizes narrative details in the interests of a larger conceptual unity. As Hayden White has observed, the ‘techniques or strategies that they (historians and fiction writers) use in the composition of their discourses can be shown to be substantially the same, however
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different they may appear on a purely surface, or dictional, level of their texts’.7 The presumed reference of historical writing to actual events, and the ways in which historical writing verifies these references, have been the dominant criteria for separating fiction from history. Yet fictional works often allude to actual events and may make use of documents to back up their pretensions, and history has frequently resorted to invention or to reporting the merely plausible, since if it were to embrace only the substantially verifiable, it would be unable to place its assertions within a context that would make them meaningful. In short, the two forms have continually had recourse to each other’s techniques, and so have more in common than is usually assumed. If it is debatable whether modern historiography can be strictly separated from fiction, in the case of early Islam it is even more problematic, for when Muslim scholars came to reconstruct the history of their community, they were forced to draw heavily upon the narratives of storytellers. In the Ta’rjkh (‘History’) of the famed Andalusian jurist ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Åabjb (d. 238/853), for instance, we find numerous legendary stories about Mush ibn Nußayr, the Muslim conqueror of Spain: that he laid siege to a fortress of copper and discovered sealed vessels containing sprites imprisoned there by Solomon; that he ordered his general to alight at a red hill where stood a statue of a bull which had to be shattered, and command of the vanguard to be given to a tall fair man with a squint and withered hands, and so on.8 Islamicists do, nevertheless, usually differentiate sharply between fact and fiction. The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, for example, devotes two volumes (1990) to the ‘Abbasid period: one to ‘BellesLettres’, chiefly poetry, and one to ‘Religion, learning and science’; and it is to the latter that history is assigned. Volume II of the encyclopaedic Grundriss der arabischen Philologie (1987) makes the same distinction, with ‘Bildungs-und Unterhaltungsliteratur’ – edifying and entertaining literature – in chapter 5, historical and religious writing in chapters 6 and 7. The problem with this approach – that it implies that it is inappropriate to apply techniques of literary analysis to a large proportion of Arabic prose – is remarked upon by Stefan Leder and Hilary Kilpatrick in their recent survey of ‘Classical Arabic Prose Literature’ (1992). Yet they too all but equate prose with facticity: ‘Authors’ original works (they say) fall into two categories, fictional and non-fictional’, the former being ‘a very small but fascinating group [which] date from the 4th/10th century or later’, and apparently comprise only five items, all bar one in rhymed prose (saj‘ ).9 It seems to me preferable to regard history and fiction as lying on the same continuum – an approach explored more recently by Leder and his collaborators in Story-telling in the framework of non-fictional Arabic literature (1998) – with scholarly compilations situated at one end and legendary sagas at the other, all to some degree possessing factual references and semblances of verification, but all to some extent animated by the imagination. This is not to say that Muslim historians knowingly fabricated material, or used fabricated materials – on the contrary, most of the writers we shall consider here would have been convinced of the truth of what they wrote – but rather that history requires the mediations of fiction in its treatments of the past.
History, fiction and authorship 19 Such ideas have come late to our field. Until recently, the principal vehicle of academic exchange in the field of Arabic literature, the Journal of Arabic Literature, has never dedicated space to a consideration of whether historical prose should come within its purview, or to a discussion of the nature and role of fiction in medieval Arabic literature, nor even to what is meant by ‘literature’ in the Islamic context (not a gratuitous question, since there is no corresponding word in medieval Arabic). Islamicists have in general thought of Muslim historians as impartial compilers rather than creative authors: ‘The overall objectivity of Arabic historiography is remarkable . . . the historian merely furnished the material’, observed Gustave von Grunebaum in 1946;10 while in 1980, Patricia Crone could still say, of the earliest Arabic historians: ‘The works of the first compilers . . . are . . . mere piles of disparate traditions reflecting no one personality, school, time or place.’11 In addition, modern historians have been obsessed with the question of authenticity, of which accounts are true and which false, as though fact and fiction are like wheat and chaff that must be winnowed. This has begun to change as our subject is slowly permeated by the researches of Paul Ricœur, Roland Barthes, Hayden White and others, on the boundaries of history and fiction and the nature of narrativity. The result is that attention is now being paid to the manner of transmission of an account as well as to its facticity, to how an account has been put together as well as to what is says. In what follows, I shall outline the directions in which some recent studies are tending.
The background of Arabic historiography To say that one cannot easily draw a line between history and fiction is certainly not to say that they are the same thing. In particular, the intentions of the writer and the reception by the audience will often differ in each case. This is important to bear in mind for the purposes of this discussion, for narratives which we may classify as fictional according to our own analytical standards may not have been perceived as such in their original context. Before discussing some of the basic techniques of writing used by Arabic historiographers, I shall therefore begin by saying a few words about the different approaches of those involved in the production of early Islamic history. The raw material for Islamic history is the individual report, the narration of a single saying or deed or event, usually very pithy in nature. In a general way such reports would have circulated from the beginning of Islam. Once, however, the sayings and deeds of the early heroes of Islam came to acquire normative value, that is, to be regarded as a model for present behaviour and policy – presumably shortly after the lives of these heroes had begun to recede from living memory – they became an object of collection and study. As this activity became more systematic, different disciplines developed but all drew upon the same body of material. Thus one and the same report could appear in a number of different contexts. The speech of the first caliph Abu Bakr to the armies departing for Syria in 13/634 is, for example, cited by historians of the Muslim conquests, by lawyers wanting to codify the conduct of war, by philologists interested in early oratory and so on.12
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The most common words for such a report are åadjth and khabar which, though substantially overlapping in meaning and usage, are not synonymous. The latter is broader in scope, and indeed often, in its plural form (akhbhr), signified historical reports in general, whereas the former became more closely tied to the deeds and dicta of religiously authoritative figures, and in particular the Prophet Muåammad. Consequently, a scholar of åadjth (a muåaddith) and a scholar of akhbhr (an akhbhrj), though they might use each other’s source material, had different aims and methods. The science of åadjth, concerned as it was with determining the value of reports as legal precedent, was a serious business and entailed providing a list (isnhd ) of those who had passed on the report in question from the first person to the last. By contrast, akhbhr, studied more for their legitimating and edifying qualities than their normative import, would often be introduced with a simple ‘they said’ or ‘it is said’. Though disapproved of by muåaddiths, this practice was tolerated in certain circumstances, as is suggested by the statement of one of the most famous of their number, Aåmad ibn Åanbal (d. 241/855): As regards traditions from the Messenger of God on what is allowed and what is forbidden, on what is laid down and what is decreed, we are tough (tashaddadnh) on the isnhd; but for traditions from the Prophet on the virtues of certain actions and on what does not prescribe or proscribe, we go easy (tashhalnh) on the isnhd .13 What was not forgiven by most muåaddiths, however, was ‘the production of one single text with an orderly narrative (‘alh siyhqa whåida) from a group of people often in disagreement’, the complaint levelled by Ibn Åanbal against the best known writer on the Prophet’s military campaigns (maghhzj), Muåammad ibn ‘Umar al-Whqidj (d. 207/823).14 Here is the nub of the matter: akhbhrjs were creating orderly narratives. To do so meant imparting a structure to a set of originally distinct accounts. More particularly, it meant using one’s powers of reasoning, which was anathema to the muåaddiths. Their stance was basically anti-intellectualist. In their view, in transmitting, one should efface one’s own self and not let one’s own ideas and thoughts intrude, but simply be a medium for a report to pass from one person to another. Only in this way could the continuity of the teachings and practices of the Prophet Muåammad among the Muslim community be preserved. Thus when the famous jurist and Qur’hn commentator Muåammad ibn Jarjr al-Ïabarj (d. 310/923) tried his hand at history writing, he emphasized from the outset of his work that he had relied solely upon the reports transmitted to me which I cite therein and upon the traditions which I ascribe to their narrators therein, to the exclusion of what may be apprehended by rational argument or deduced by the human mind.15 So when, as very commonly occurred, a muåaddith accused an akhbhrj of ‘lying’ (kadhib), the accusation had less to do with the facticity of individual reports
History, fiction and authorship 21 than with the method of their transmission. Consider, for example, the following åadjth: The Prophet of God said: There was among your forebears a man who killed ninety-nine men, and then he enquired after the most learned person in the land and was directed to a monk. So he went to him and said that he had killed ninety-nine men, and asked whether there was in that case any chance of repentance for him. The monk replied, No; and so the man killed him too and thus made it a round hundred. Then he again enquired after the most learned person in the land and was directed to a scholar. He said that he had killed a hundred men, and asked if there was in that case any chance of repentance for him. The scholar said, Yes, for who should come between him and repentance? ‘Go to such and such a land, for in it are a people who worship God; worship God with them and do not return to your own land, since it is an evil land.’ He therefore set off, but when he had got halfway, death came to him. The angels of mercy and the angels of retribution then argued over him; the former said he had come as a penitent turning his heart towards God, whereas the latter said that he had never done a good deed. An angel in the image of a human then came to them, and they appointed him judge between them; and he said: ‘Measure the distance between the two lands, and whichever he is nearer to, he belongs to that one.’ They measured, and found him to be nearer to the land he was heading for, and so the angels of mercy took possession of him. To us, this is obviously fictional; yet it appears in one of the two canonical collections of åadjth, that of Muslim ibn al-Åajjhj (d. 261/875), as well as in that of the highly critical Ibn Åanbal.16 This is because the chains of transmission from the Prophet are faultless and the transmitters highly acclaimed; for in the science of åadjth, confirmation of authenticity was to be had not so much by analysing the text as by knowledge of the men who had transmitted it. As the great jurist Muåammad ibn Idrjs al-Shhfi‘j (d. 204/820) said: ‘The truth or falsity of most åadjth cannot be inferred except through the truth or falsity of the narrator, with the exception of a few special instances.’17 A muåaddith’s appraisal of a åadjth as true or false centred, therefore, on such questions as whether the narrator (in this case the Prophet) was genuinely responsible for the text or not, and whether it had then been accurately conveyed to the present generation. To this end much effort was expended on categorizing åadjths as poorly or soundly transmitted (saqjm or ßaåjå) and muåaddiths as weak or trustworthy (∂a‘jf or thiqa); and the accusation of dishonesty and deception (tadljs) was levelled not at fabricators of reports, but at those who dealt in defective isnhds. An akhbhrj maintained the same emphasis on transmitted and consensual knowledge, but would be more willing to manipulate the text of reports. Whereas a muåaddith would, or at least should, simply present all the different versions of a report integrally and separately without any interference, an akhbhrj would be
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more likely to try and combine them, harmonize them, expand, abridge, paraphrase or interpret them, usually with an eye to the greater picture that he wished to paint, or with a view to the particular position that he sought to advocate. He would, however, deny being engaged in any such literary activity and prefer, like the muåaddith, to hide himself from the reader’s perception, so enhancing the impression that his text was merely an objective representation of events. This he achieved by the use of an isnhd (even if it consisted of no more than ‘they said’), which allowed him to disown the text, and by narrative techniques, particularly the use of direct speech, which left the characters to explain their intentions for themselves and so obviated the need for any external comment or interpretation. An akhbhrj would also cast his net wider when fishing for source material, potentially taking in Biblical narratives, the pre-Islamic history of ancient Yemen, tribal lore, genealogy, poetry and so on. This inevitably entailed a degree of laxity vis-à-vis sources, and one will often find quoted ‘a trustworthy informant’, ‘an old man in Mecca some forty years ago’, ‘some scholars’, ‘one of my companions’ and the like.18 For the akhbhrj, then, the category of ‘true’ was more elastic than would be allowed by a muåaddith as regards both content and form; but the focus was still very much religiously orientated on what was, as one might say, ‘true to Islam’. Muåaddiths and akhbhrjs were thus very close in outlook even if their methods and aims diverged. Very different, however, was the adjb, the gentleman scholar, who might also apply himself to history writing. Whereas the two former generally concentrated on ‘ilm, religious knowledge, the latter pursued adab, a well-rounded education that embraced personal experience, ratiocination and foreign, non-Arab wisdom, and regarded Islam intellectually as the beginning rather than as the end of all truth. ‘He who wishes to become a religious scholar (‘hlim)’, it was often said, ‘let him devote himself to one subject; but he who wishes to become a gentleman scholar (adjb), let him seek breadth in learning’. The adjb would use much the same material as religious scholars when writing history, though also taking note of non-Islamic learning; but he would have a contempt for the uncritical approach (taqljd ) of the ‘ulamh ’ (religious scholars; sing. ‘hlim). ‘Do not repeat what fools say: “I only report what I heard” ’, advised Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ (early second/eighth century), chief secretary of the caliph al-Manßur, ‘For most of what you hear is false, and most reporters are fools.’ Rather, a certain degree of critical investigation (baåth) was necessary, as is explained by the polymath al-Jhåi© (d. 255/868): The correct procedure which God commanded, made desirable and urged us to embrace, is that we should reject two kinds of reports: those that are contradictory and implausible, and those that are impossible in nature and beyond the capacity of created beings. If a report belongs to neither of these two kinds and is subject to being judged possible, one proceeds by seeking confirmation. For an adjb, therefore, the opposition between what is true and what is false centred upon what was in accordance with, or contrary to, reason (‘aql ) and personal experience (tajriba).19
History, fiction and authorship 23 An adjb would also be more interested than a muåaddith or an akhbhrj in the entertainment and edification value of a report; and the question of whether or not it was true would be less relevant than whether or not it was true to life. For this, rigorous standards of transmission would be beside the point. Thus the Andalusi Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih (d. 328/940), in the introduction to his huge compendium of akhbhr, al-‘Iqd al-Farjd (‘The Unique Necklace’), felt justified in declaring that he would delete ‘the isnhds from most reports, my purpose being to achieve lightness of touch and conciseness and to avoid being ponderous; for these are entertaining stories, pieces of wisdom and anecdotes, which do not benefit from any isnhd being attached to them’. Finally, unlike his more religious-minded colleagues, an adjb would not absent himself from the narrative, pretending to play no part in its formation. Rather, in accord with his more humanist bent, he would display something of his persona, spell out his programme and purpose in writing, or include some mention of first-hand experiences. This, for instance, is how Åamza al-Ißfahhnj (d. c.350/960) commences his historical opus, Ta’rjkh Sinj Muluk al-Ar∂ wa al-Anbiyh’ (‘Chronology of the Kings of the Earth and the Prophets’): This is a work in which I have included the histories of the years of the kings of the earth and its prophets . . . . Before detailing these histories, I begin with an introduction from which may be inferred the changes in the modes of historical dating and the corruption and confusion therein. In it I also discuss the territorial extension of great nations on the earth’s surface and where the small nations fit in between, from which may be seen how some were able to gain mastery over others and how the power of some was absorbed into the power of others, so that their events became the cause for the confusion of historical dates. And Abk ‘Alj al-Muåassin al-Tanukhj (d. 384/994) says of his collection of historical reports, Nishwhr al-Muåh∂ara, known, in D. S. Margoliouth’s English translation, as ‘The Table-Talk of a Mesopotamian Judge’, that ‘The reason which led me to write them down is that I used in former days to consort with venerable and virtuous scholars and literati who had come to know about religions . . . kingdoms . . . kings . . . state secretaries and viziers’; and he expresses the hope that: the wise and rational man, the clever and educated man, when he hears and digests these tales, can benefit therefrom . . . so that he may dispense with direct experience or learning their like from the mouths of men, and become well versed in the ways of this world and the next, fully acquainted with the consequences of virtues and vice.20 Finally we come to the qhßß, usually translated as ‘storyteller’. According to the eminent religious authority Ibn al-Jawzj (d. 597/1201), his business was qaßaß, that is, ‘relating narratives (akhbhr) of peoples of the past [wherein] there is a lesson to be gained which gives warning, an admonition which rebukes and an example of the right to be emulated’, tadhkjr, ‘informing mankind of the blessing God has
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bestowed upon them, urging them to render thanks to Him and warning them lest they disobey Him’, and wa‘©, the ‘instilling of fear that softens the heart’. We should therefore bear in mind that the term qhßß conveys the notion of ‘religious preacher’ as well as ‘storyteller’, especially as Ibn al-Jawzj goes on to say that the qhßß was considered responsible for instructing the masses in the basic tenets and beliefs of Islam.21 The qhßß might belong to the ranks of the scholars, like Ibn al-Jawzj himself, who regularly attracted crowds of thousands when he spoke in public, but was also a brilliant polymath who wrote widely on all aspects of Arabic learning. He might be a political figure, for example, ‘Abd al-‘Azjz ibn Åhtim ibn Nu‘mhn al-Bhhilj, who was governor of Armenia for al-Waljd I (r. 86–96/705–15), was also known as ‘a teller of stories and proverbs’.22 But more commonly the qhßß would be an ascetic of one type or another, whose interest would lie in enjoining pious conduct (wara‘ ). The qhßß often fell foul of the authorities, for he did not always keep to the edifying pursuits expected of him, but became involved in propaganda, championing and damning various religious and political positions, and in straightforward entertainment, recounting historical epics, love stories, fables and the like. Opposition to the qhßß came chiefly from two quarters: the government, wary of free agents who could condemn as well as promote its actions, and scholars, who disliked the more amateurish of them trespassing on their field. The attitude of the jurist Mhlik ibn Anas (d. 179/796) may be taken as typical: I have met by these pillars [of the mosque in Medina] many of those who say ‘The Messenger of Allhh, may Allhh bless him and grant him peace, said . . .’, but have never taken anything from them, even though if one of them were to be entrusted with a treasury he would fulfil that trust. This is because they are not people of this business . . . . They are preoccupied with fear of Allhh and asceticism, whereas this business, teaching åadjth and giving legal decisions, needs men who have awareness of Allhh, scrupulousness, steadfastness, exactitude, knowledge and understanding . . . . As for those who do not have this exactitude and understanding, no benefit can be derived from them, nor are they a conclusive proof, nor should knowledge be taken from them.23 What made both rulers and scholars particularly nervous was the very broad reach of the qhßß, who was for that reason a very significant feature of Islamic society.24 Finally, before moving on to the discussion proper of historiography, it is worth drawing attention to a few caveats. The first is that history was not recognized as an independent discipline in the period considered here, and indeed occupied a somewhat ambiguous position in Islamic society in general. It was often spurned by practitioners of the law or the rational sciences, and at best served as an auxiliary subject. Yet though history, save for the biography of the Prophet, never formed part of Muslim higher education, it was a feature of everyone’s elementary education. A fourth/tenth-century philosophical compendium informs us that
History, fiction and authorship 25 children in school learned the Qur’hn, history (akhbhr), poetry, grammar and lexicography; every ambitious man was recommended to ‘read historical works, study biographies and the experiences of the nations’, and for statesmen, history was the main source of political inspiration: ‘the knowledge of genealogy and history belongs to the sciences of kings and important persons.’25 A second, related point is that there were few professional historians in this period. Most of the writers we will consider were government officials (secretaries, judges, etc.), religious scholars who earned money by giving legal opinions or by teaching, or they were men of independent means, or else were maintained by patrons. History was, therefore, composed by people either of their own volition or by official commission, but seldom as part of their everyday duties. Consequently – and this is the third caveat – the approaches to transmission outlined earlier were not formally imposed or instilled, but rather were arrived at by constant interaction and debate among scholars and by following the example of respected practitioners, and were therefore, to a considerable degree, fluid and malleable.26 These three caveats combine to make a fourth, namely that Muslim historical writing is very varied and often idiosyncratic. In his ‘History’ (Ta’ rjkh), Aåmad ibn Abj Ya‘qub al-Ya‘qubj (d. 284/897) details the contribution of numerous ancient nations to world culture before finally arriving at Islam, and displays a marked fondness for astrology. Aåmad ibn Yaåyh al-Balhdhurj (d. 279/892) organizes his history of the Islamic conquests, ‘Conquests of the Countries’ (Futuå al-Buldhn), geographically, and pays much attention to fiscal and administrative matters. The ‘Experiences of the Nations’ (Tajhrib al-Umam) of Abu ‘Alj Aåmad Miskawayh (d. 420/1030) orders events annalistically and according to their worth as examples of effective and successful leadership, his target audience being ‘viziers, army commanders, governors of cities and leaders of the high and low’.27 The ‘History’ of Åamza al-Ißfahhnj, referred to earlier, is much concerned with chronology and seeks to correlate the different systems used by various nations. As a final illustration of the diversity of historical writing, in his Kithb al-Awh’il (‘The Book of Firsts’), Abu Hilhl al-‘Askarj (d. c.400/1010), treats the origins of things, arranging in rough chronological order reports on the first occurrence or execution of a particular feat, custom or science, according to a long-established genre.28
Elements of fiction in Arabic history writing The term emplotment signifies the placing of events in a meaningful configuration; and I shall begin my discussion of Arabic history writing by looking at two of the most basic ways in which it makes use of emplotment, namely by applying a causal framework (such as causal linkages, chronological ordering or teleological explication) to historical reports, and by the deployment of certain narrative strategies (characterization, plot, rhetorical devices, dramatic visualization, etc.). I shall examine emplotment first as an interpretative device, then as a narrative
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procedure, making a rough distinction between localized and larger-scale uses of the technique. (a) Emplotment and interpretative structure Micro procedures An important feature of Islamic learning was the ‘journey in quest of knowledge’ (riåla f j ƒalab al-‘ilm), whether to intellectual centres of the Muslim world to listen to learned teachers or to the abodes of Arab tribes to imbibe their lore and language.29 Thus the philologist ‘Abd al-Malik al-Aßma‘j (d. 213/828) informs us in the introduction to his ‘History of the Arabs before Islam’ (Ta’rjkh al-‘Arab qabla alIslhm) that he ‘travelled widely among the tribes, seeking out the transmitters of reports and keepers of ancient histories until I extracted all the stories of the genealogists and learned the tales related by old men regarding their ancestry’.30 Having assembled his material, the next task for the scholar was to ‘make sense’ of it. Consider the comment of Ibn Shihhb al-Zuhrj (d. 124/742): I was informed by Sa‘jd ibn al-Musayyab, ‘Urwa ibn al-Zubayr, ‘Alqama ibn Waqqhs and ‘Ubayd Allhh ibn ‘Abd Allhh ibn ‘Utba ibn Mas‘ud about the report of ‘H’isha, wife of the Prophet, when the slanderers said what they said about her and God then declared her innocent. All of them related to me part of this report, some of them being more mindful of it than others and more sound in preserving a record of it. I myself took care to preserve from each informant the report he related to me, with some parts of their report confirming other parts. This is what they related . . . Following this, Zuhrj proceeds to give a single, seamless narrative constructed from the individual accounts of his informants.31 In very similar words, Whqidj tells us how he put together his account of the Battle of Åunayn (8/630), where the Prophet, newly reconciled with the Meccans, defeated a large body of pagans, from numerous testimonies: ‘each [of my informants] related part of the story, some knowing more than others about it, and I combined ( jama‘tu) all of what they told me about it’.32 An adjb would proceed on the same basis. For his portrayal of the lovers ‘Urwa ibn Åizhm and ‘Afrh’, Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj (d. c.363/972) lists a number of informants, then states: ‘I brought together their narratives, then combined them ( jama‘tuhh).’33 Thus the scholar would evaluate his material, shape it, give it coherence and meaning, make it ‘an orderly narrative’, in the (pejorative) words of Aåmad ibn Åanbal quoted earlier.34 This activity operated at all levels of narration. A good example at the level of the individual incident is offered by the accounts of the delegation of the tribe of Tamjm to the Prophet, which have been analysed by Ella Landau-Tasseron. Whqidj affirms that the delegation came to negotiate the release of prisoners who had been taken captive previously by an agent of the Prophet, whereas, half a century earlier, Ibn Isåhq (d. 151/761) states that this was just one of the many
History, fiction and authorship 27 tribal delegations of the year 9 AH which came to contend with Muåammad in boasting contests between the poets of each side, after the usual pre-Islamic custom. One might at first assume that there is a true and a false version, but a closer look suggests otherwise. Ibn Isåhq reports an earlier incident involving Tamjm, in which a number of members of a Tamjmite clan are captured and brought to Mecca by a Muslim raiding party. Ten leaders of Tamjm then come before Muåammad to negotiate their release. This would seem to have nothing to do with the later delegation of the year 9, although both were attended by an oratorical exchange on the part of the poets. There were, then, two distinct delegations of Tamjm despatched at different times and for different reasons, and Whqidj, in trying to order his material, conflated the two accounts, in the process ‘creating’ a new one.35 Another example at this level, though in a different vein, is given by Daniel Beaumont with regard to conversion stories. These, he says, are usually recounted in a very programmatic fashion: Islam is presented to a person (‘ara∂a ‘alayhi al-islhma/al-amra), the Qur’hn is recited (qara’a), and the person invariably believes and accepts (hmana wa sa∂∂aqa). These same four verbs, Beaumont maintains, are found in one tradition after another to describe the entire process of conversion: presentation and recitation by the proselytizer, belief and acceptance on the part of the convert. Beaumont’s explanation of this is that scholars were working with large numbers of disparate accounts and needed some way of making them more manageable. The deployment of certain key words served to summarize and harmonize, to ‘boil down’ what were originally very different narratives. These particular verbs were chosen because they were thought to be consonant with the larger meaning of the events: ‘the verbs may, first of all, reflect theology, and secondarily perhaps the event’.36 The interpretative process may also be discerned at an intermediate level. The biography (Sjra) of the Prophet by Muåammad Ibn Isåhq provides an interesting case, for interspersed among the transmitted items of information are numerous personal comments and reflections. Sometimes the latter serve to bind together a group of distinct åadjths by developing a common theme. Thus Ibn Isåhq opens his account of Muåammad’s first reception of the Qur’hn with the following musing: When the time came for revelation to descend upon the Prophet of God, he was already a believer in God and in what was to be revealed to him. He was, moreover, fully prepared to act accordingly and to suffer for his faith what God had imposed upon him: both the pleasure and the displeasure of mankind. Prophecy imposes heavy burdens and responsibilities that can be shouldered only by prophets of authority and courage, with the aid and blessing of God. This is because of what prophets meet with from people and what divinely ordained events may befall them. At other times, åadjths are used as evidence in support of the author’s reflections. Thus Ibn Isåhq appends to the given passage the report transmitted by Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. c.110/728) that ‘Jonah was a pious servant of God,
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but he was an impatient man. When the burdens of prophecy – and prophecy is burdensome – were imposed upon him, he cracked under the heavy strain. Jonah threw off this burden and fled.’ Ibn Isåhq strikes us as unusual among religious scholars for the degree to which he lets his own thoughts and ideas intrude into the narrative, but he was very likely typical of those who wrote before the science of åadjth had attained maturity and begun to assert itself, just as the use of personal opinion (ra’y) was widespread among jurists before muåaddiths pressured them to reduce the role of speculative reasoning.37 Macro procedures Finally, the interpretative process may be brought into play on the macro-level, endowing a whole œuvre with a measure of coherence and unity. In performing this task, the Muslim historian had at his disposal a number of different models and would be aided by a variety of guiding principles. Of prime importance as a model was the Qur’hn. For example, when Ïabarj begins his exposition of rulers of past kingdoms, he writes: Let us now turn to the mention of the first to be given dominion and blessings by God who then were ungrateful, denied and rebelled against God and waxed proud; and then God withdrew his blessing, shamed him and brought him low.38 This is clearly inspired by the Qur’anic cyclical vision of history whereby a people is shown favour by God, but subsequently turns its back on Him and so suffers extinction. And indeed the same words and concepts are present: the conferring of bounty (an‘ama ‘alh), the display of ingratitude (kafara) and insolence (‘aßh, istakbara) incurring requital and ignominy (akhzh, adhalla).39 Another essential model of coherence was afforded by the literary forms current among the peoples conquered by the Arabs. Ibn Isåhq’s biography of Muåammad, for example, owes much to ancient Near Eastern hagiographical ideas, translating to an Arabian setting such traditional themes as annunciation, revelation, persecution and exodus.40 Third, the pre-Islamic Arabian past could provide models, an obvious example being genealogy, whereby a whole text could be ordered in terms of the family trees of the persons included and history expressed in the form of lineage.41 The guiding principles which would direct an author in coordinating and correlating a large body of material were his various convictions and assumptions, political and religious. An example of such a guiding principle has been given recently by Fred Donner, who argues that Muslim universal chronicles all exhibit the same concern to establish the legitimacy of Muåammad’s prophethood, of his community (umma) and of the hegemony of Islam, and that this resulted in a connected ‘salvation history’ of which all versions tended to follow much the same format. This would typically be setting the stage for Muåammad and Islam (Muåammad’s umma is presented as the prophetic heir to Biblical tradition
History, fiction and authorship 29 and the temporal heir to Persia and the other kingdoms, while the pre-Islamic Arab ‘dark ages’ – Jhhiliyya – are set in contrast to the impending enlightenment of Islam); narrating the life of Muåammad, the revelation of the Qur’hn and birth of the Muslim community, which are identified as the turning point in history between Creation and the Day of Judgement; the Islamic conquests are then shown as a reflection of God’s preference for Islam and those who accept it; the Muslim civil wars provide an exemplar of the struggle of the pious against tyranny and the eventual triumph of consensus; and the caliphate symbolizes the community’s continuity, which stretches back to the Prophet.42 This format is found not only in the world histories of religious scholars but also in those of adjbs. Though the latter would, typically, display much more curiosity about the cultures of pre-Islamic peoples, they too view the mission of Muåammad as opening a new age in which the development of the Muslim community is the only important theme, and in which non-Muslim peoples, insofar as they feature at all, are no longer treated as having an autonomous history of their own. As Tarif Khalidi observes of the adjb ‘Alj ibn al-Åusayn al-Mas‘udj (d. 345/956), a disparity becomes immediately apparent between the cultural account of earlier nations and the political character of his Islamic history, which is dynastic/ annalistic in form. This disparity . . . was not peculiar to Mas‘udj’s histories but is also found in Ya‘qubj and Maqdisj, both of whom were approximate contemporaries of Mas‘udj and wrote histories with a similar structure.43 Another frequently encountered guiding principle is the freedom from error of all the Prophet’s Companions. Thus the author of a work on the ‘Conquest of Syria’ (Futuå al-Shhm) wrongly ascribed to Whqidj informs us that he writes to make clear the virtues of the Companions of God’s Messenger and their exertions in war so as thereby to convince the backsliders who deviate from custom and duty; for were it not for the Companions, together with God’s will, the Muslims would not possess the land, nor would knowledge of this religion have spread.44 The latter point is crucial: the Companions were responsible for passing on Muåammad’s teaching to the next generation of Muslims, and it is obvious why experts in religious matters would wish to exalt them. The problem with this, however, is that the Companions were involved on both sides of a civil war over the succession to the caliphate (35–40/656–61). To exculpate all parties to a dispute is at best an uphill task. In his book on this civil war, Kithb al-Jamal wa Masjr ‘H’isha wa ‘Alj (‘The Battle of the Camel, and the Conduct of ‘H’isha and ‘Alj’) Sayf ibn ‘Umar al-Tamjmj (d. 180/796) strives to portray the Companions as the innocent victims of the Saba’iyya, allegedly the followers of a Jewish convert to Islam named ‘Abd Allhh ibn Saba’, who are accordingly cast in the role of cynical troublemakers. Whereas other historians show the government of the caliph ‘Uthmhn (23–35/644–56) as nepotistic and contrary to Islam, Sayf ibn
30 Robert G. Hoyland ‘Umar sets out to demonstrate that this image is false and to reveal the part played by the Saba’iyya in creating it. In the same way, he claims that the Battle of the Camel (36/656), in which the Companions ‘H’isha, Ïalåa, al-Zubayr, ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib and others fought on opposite sides, was instigated by the same Saba’iyya, whereas the Companions’ intent had rather been to seek reconciliation.45 And of course not just the early, crucial decades of Islamic history but also later periods threw up problematic issues.46 (b) Emplotment and narrative structure An anecdote is told about the ‘Abbasid caliph Manßur and Abu Dulhma, _a poet notorious for his wit and practical jokes. The caliph’s wife Åammhda bint ‘Ish has just died, and an assembly is standing at her grave awaiting her burial. Manßur asks Abu Dulhma what has been prepared for this occasion (makhn), expecting him to have composed some appropriate verses. The poet, however, chooses to misunderstand the question, saying that for this (burial) place (makhn) Åammhda has been prepared, whereupon Manßur bursts out laughing.47 The event may or may not have happened (though it is to be noted that the motif of hilarity at the graveside occurs elsewhere in Arabic literature). Here, however, we are more interested in the way in which the tale is recounted so as to heighten the humour of the incident, and also in how the various transmitters add their own dimension to the piece. The crux of the story is of course the incongruity between mourning and mirth. This is brought out in the narrative by intensifying the initial mood of pathos with the observation that ‘Manßur was grieved and broken-hearted (muta’allim wa ka’ib)’, then counterpointing this at the end with the antonymic and very graphic statement that ‘he fell about laughing (∂aåika åatth istalqh)’.48 In certain versions, an element of shame is added, as Manßur realizes that his conduct – laughing in public at such an inopportune moment – has caused him loss of dignity, and it is said that he ‘hid his face’, or castigated Abu Dulhma with the words: ‘Woe upon you; you have disgraced me in front of everyone.’ In short, in this and numerous other such ‘historical’ narratives, we can detect a degree of creative freedom, some elements of fiction and the presence of an author. No one has done more in recent years to analyse this phenomenon than Stefan Leder, and we will now look at one of his examples. For reasons that remain unclear, Khhlid al-Qasrj, governor of Iraq and the eastern provinces under the caliph Hishhm for more than a decade (from 724 to 737), was dismissed in the year 120/737 and eventually tortured to death under his successor, Yusuf ibn ‘Umar al-Thaqafj.49 An ‘Account of the Killing of Khhlid al-Qasrj’ was composed by the akhbhrj al-Haytham ibn ‘Adj (d. 207/822), and survives in fragments excerpted by later writers. Two episodes present Khhlid in conversation first with ‘Uryhn ibn Haytham and then with Bilhl ibn Abj Burda, two of his close subordinates. The essential plot in both consists in the subordinates’ vain attempt to warn Khhlid of the ‘evil intentions’ of the caliph’s tribe of Quraysh. Both conclude with a prediction. ‘Uryhn remarks: ‘It is as if he were already dismissed,
History, fiction and authorship 31 everything taken from him, and accused of what he did not do, and having nothing at his disposal – and so it came to pass’; and Bilhl says: ‘It is as if with this man (Khhlid’s successor) there were sent a man unkind, of odious character, deficient in piety and shame, who set upon him with malice and vindictiveness – and so it came to pass.’ Both episodes depict the historical situation in very general terms, the operative factors in it being the envy of Quraysh and the caliph’s power to dispose. The main focus is rather on the character of Khhlid, stubborn and proud, maintaining until the end: ‘Never shall I give in out of meekness/compulsion.’ Haytham, like a good akhbhrj, remains withdrawn from the narrative, so lending it an aura of obejectivity. He provides isnhds which go back to ‘Uryhn and Bilhl, and presents these two as telling their own story in their own words, he himself being no more than a recorder. It is nevertheless clear that there is a single narrator who, though apparently distant from the world of the characters, is very much in charge. The concluding prediction, for example, is retrospective, and so can only be the work of someone acquainted with the outcome, and its function is evidently to connect the present incident to future events. It also contains an interpretation of the dialogue, drawing our attention to the meaning and consequences of Khhlid’s attitude. For when coupled with the comment, which appears in both episodes, that Khhlid owed all his present wealth and high rank to the caliph, it is hinted that, by his refusal to comply, Khhlid is at least partly responsible for his own fall from grace. Haytham’s account was taken up and reworked by subsequent transmitters. That these ‘transmitters’ did indeed actively rework it is immediately evident from a comparison of the versions of Ïabarj (d. 314/923) and Balhdhurj (d. 279/892). The latter’s is much shorter; the abridgement clearly plays a part in this, but it cannot be the whole explanation. In the ‘Uryhn episode, for example, the dialogue is very simple in Balhdhurj’s version. ‘Uryhn openly speaks his mind, and Khhlid interjects only twice: once to say that he does not suspect ‘Uryhn of malice, nor anticipate any danger, and a second time to aver that he will never humiliate himself by making concessions. In Ïabarj’s rendering, however, the format is much more complex. The two men are made to have much more of a conversation, with Khhlid responding five times to the advice proffered by ‘Uryhn. It thus seems impossible that Balhdhurj’s concise report could be the result of straightforward editing. The process of anonymous transformation in the course of transmission, which is what we appear to have here, is called by Leder ‘unavowed authorship’, because ‘the ascription to an early authority is maintained while no hints as to the author of the adaptation are given’.50 One of the most obvious manifestations of storytelling is the proliferation of variant versions of an incident, for its practitioners usually operate with a limited number of stock motifs and plots which they combine in different ways for different performances. Since a good muåaddith would not like to exclude one version in favour of another, we very often find recorded numerous retellings of a particular event. And indeed the more one reads through the Islamic historical tradition, the more one discerns traces of a long narrative process.
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The most noticeable products of this process are, on the one hand, the recurrence of motifs both across the whole body of the storytelling tradition51 and in multiple variant versions of a single åadjth or khabar, and, on the other, characterization. Recognizable personal traits come to be attached to certain historical figures: thus ‘Umar ibn al-Khaƒƒhb, close companion of the Prophet and subsequently caliph, is fiercely loyal and honest, but liable to rush in where angels fear to tread; the famous early Muslim general Khhlid ibn al-Waljd is a tough, no-nonsense sort of guy who shoots first and asks questions later, etc. An example of the former phenomenon is afforded by the plethora of reports recounting the killing of Abu Rhfi‘ by a party of men dispatched by the Prophet. This bare outline is all that is agreed upon by the accounts, which otherwise differ so greatly from each other as almost to constitute separate stories. Yet there is the presence of common ingredients in all, or most, of the versions, in which, however, they play different roles and are introduced in a different order: keys to a gate; Abu Rhfi‘ in a dark upper room; his pallor; he is not killed at the first attempt; someone has poor sight; someone hurts their leg in a fall; there is a wait for confirmation of Abu Rhfi‘’s death. Behind all this there must obviously lie a prototype, or reality, or both. More importantly, though, the versions reflect the activity of storytelling, whereby each retelling leads to the production of a new story, but with the key constituents intact, albeit recast.52
Originality The trait most commonly associated with modern fiction is originality, the concept that the writer, although he or she may borrow some elements, does not draw wholly upon pre-existing documents or upon the testimony of others, and is responsible for the principal ideas animating the work. It is a salient characteristic of medieval Arabic prose writings, however, that they seem to consist of almost nothing but citations of earlier texts and eyewitness reports, and it is for this reason that modern scholars speak of compilers and anthologies rather than of authors and fiction. This is not to say that the texts in question are not astonishingly varied. There may be assembled in them information on aspects of human behaviour (virtues and vices; passions, such as avarice and love) and types (sages and fools), literary forms (orations, figures of speech, proverbs, poems), professions (secretaries, scholars, poets, physicians, singing girls), events (conquests, battles, assassinations), which may be arranged geographically, chronologically, by generations, social status or type, and so on. And of course the compiler would, as noted earlier, engage to a greater or lesser extent in shaping the accounts he had gathered. But this still does not accord with the standard definition of a fictional work: that the author should have devised the narrative himself, and not simply have selected, organized and edited the narratives of others. Yet many compilations that are ostensibly purely derivative are in fact a great deal more original than they might appear at first sight. Three examples are given in the following sections.
History, fiction and authorship 33 (a) Al-Azdj’s ‘Conquest of Syria’ and other epic narratives Haytham ibn ‘Adj’s account of Khhlid al-Qasrj’s downfall would seem to have been a fairly extended piece of narrative for, as shown earlier, elements of the plot and characterization can still be seen in the dissected remains left to us by its transmitters.53 The question then arises whether this sort of account was exceptional or common, and, if common, whether any examples have survived intact. A good candidate is the ‘Conquest of Syria’ by, or attributed to, a certain Muåammad ibn ‘Abd Allhh al-Azdj (active c.190/805). On first encountering this work, one is immediately struck by how readable it is, especially if one is used to ploughing through Ïabarj and Balhdhurj. This is in part because it is less broken up by isnhds and because variant versions of reports are rarely cited.54 But it is much more because the author has taken great care in shaping his narrative. The overall theme is clear: the Muslims’ victory in Syria was an expression of God’s will, His reward to them for accepting Islam, and the Byzantines’ defeat was likewise a part of the divine plan, a punishment for compromising God’s oneness through their belief in the Trinity and for their unjust rule. This theme continually manifests itself in the profusion of exchanges, epistolary and oratorical, between Muslim and Byzantine agents. Woven into the narrative is another thread, that of the Muslims’ military prowess and heroic exertions. The characterization rather cleverly mirrors and furthers the plot, for the two main characters, Abu ‘Ubayda ibn al-Jarrhå and Khhlid ibn al-Waljd, embody spiritual and military virtue respectively. The former is the wise and level-headed leader, the keen decision-maker and perceptive arbiter upon whom success depends, a pious man entirely committed to God’s cause and caring nothing for the ephemeral distractions of the world. Khhlid, on the other hand, is the fearless and hot-tempered warrior of long campaign experience, the soldier who has little patience for negotiations over matters he knows will have to be settled by force. His spiritual integrity is not in question, but his military contribution is to the fore. There is also much drama present in this text, created by the inclusion of numerous impassioned speeches, hurried exchanges of letters, charged interviews between Muslim and Byzantine leaders, near defeats and hand-to-hand combats.55 There are occasional contradictions and inconsistencies – the penalty for adultery is mentioned once as flogging and elsewhere as stoning; the drinking of wine is portrayed as a Byzantine vice and also as a pleasure that will be lost to the Muslims if they should be vanquished; and there is sometimes confusion over which Muslim general is in command where – but the tight maintenance of thematic unity, strong characterization, absence of digressions and attention to dramatic effect, all indicate that we are dealing with a single author who is fully in charge of his narrative.56 Certainly there are many portions of the work that conform to the scholarly accounts of the Islamic conquests; yet it has an unabashedly epic style. Though precise, topographic and historical details are often given, it is the drama, the courage, the rhetoric that is the thing. One is tempted, therefore, to place this text on the fiction side of the continuum, to see it more as historicized fiction than as
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fictionalized history. Alongside it one might range a number of other works. Very close in content and style is the previously mentioned ‘Conquest of Syria’ (Futuå al-Shhm) falsely attributed to Whqidj, though it is even more patently fictionalized history. It has been studied by Rudi Paret, who says of it: The bravery and prowess of the Muslims have reached fantastic proportions . . . . They are always in the minority, but console themselves with the oft-cited Qur’anic saying, ‘How many a small band has achieved victory with God’s leave over a large band’ (Qur’hn 2:249). . . . The Arabs practise no betrayal and never lie . . . have good relations amongst themselves, are filled with a sense of justice, are absolute paragons of virtue. Above all, however, they are pious and firmly committed to the hereafter, whereas among their Christian opponents it is just the reverse . . . . It is a simple black-and-white picture. Everything advantageous is attributed to [the Muslim] side, everything detrimental to their antagonists. And everywhere a basic theological-apologetic mood prevails.57 An example from a slightly later period is the ‘Battle of Íiffjn’ (Waq‘at Íiffjn) by Naßr ibn Muzhhim al-Minqarj (d. 221/827). Again, isnhds are unintrusive, speeches and letters are frequent and fervent, characterization is vivid, emotion and drama are high on the agenda, and a single overall theme – here, the just but vain fight of the fourth caliph, ‘Alj, against the wicked machinations of the future caliph Mu‘hwiya and his henchman ‘Amr ibn al-‘Hß – permeates and directs the narrative. As a final instance we might take the history of the adjb Abu Åanjfa al-Djnawarj (d. 282/895) called ‘The Long Narratives’ (al-Akhbhr al-Ïiwhl ) which, in language elevated in style and light on isnhds, blends the drama of wars with wisdom, dialogue, speeches, letters and arguments, and links the long and distinguished past of Persia with the present rule of the Muslim Arab state. Similar in style but less dependent upon, or even wholly independent of, the scholarly tradition are such heroic cycles as Sjrat Dhht al-Himma, Ghazwat al-Arqhƒ and al-Badr Nhr, which treat the tribal feuds and holy wars of the Umayyad and ‘Abbasid caliphates. Though most of these epic sjras advance claims of facticity, they fly free of such restraints, ranging through time and space on the edge of a world of fantasy. In the frontier epic Sjrat Dhht al-Himma, the great-great-grandfather of the heroine is introduced as living in the time of the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (r. 65–86/ 685–705); he dies while her grandfather is on an expedition to Constantinople. Dhht al-Himma herself is unmarried when the first ‘Abbasid caliph al-Saffhå (r. 132–6/ 750–4) ascends the throne, and she is still a formidable fighter at the start of the rule of al-Whthiq (r. 227–32/841–6). Her son ‘Abd al-Wahhhb, who dies during Whthiq’s reign, was born during the reign of al-Mahdj (158–69/775–85), and it is then that the third major character of the cycle, al-Baƒƒhl, embarks upon a career that extends beyond the death of Whthiq, who has by implication been accorded more than twenty years of rule. Though the action centres on the Syrian-Byzantine frontier, locations as far afield as India, Spain, Ethiopia and Yemen are mentioned, and some are too remote to require specification.58 When dealing with the ‘legendary’ accounts of Muåammad’s campaigns, Rudi Paret distinguished between those with a historical basis and those with none bar
History, fiction and authorship 35 the inclusion of historical persons and places. He emphasized, however, that the general character of both types of narrative was similar. Both have an ‘ahistorical stamp’: both opt for an idealizing style of presentation (goodies are wholly good and baddies wholly bad; early Islam was a Golden Age), and both propagandize on behalf of the rightness of Islam and the righteousness of its first adherents.59 It is very noticeable that the amount of modern scholarship devoted to a text purporting to depict the past will be proportionate to the degree to which it appears anchored in historical reality, so strongly does the ‘fetishism for facts’ linger on amongst us. If Paret is right, this is not a sound criterion for selection rather, we should start to concentrate more on the manner and style of delivery, the apparent aim of the text and the nature of its intended audience. (b) Al-Jhåi©’s ‘Book of Misers’ In the introduction to the work (Kithb al-Bukhalh’ ), the author, Abu ‘Uthmhn ‘Amr ibn Baår al-Jhåi© (c.160–255/776–868 or 9) tells us that he wrote it in response to being entreated to discourse upon ‘humorous anecdotes of misers and the argumentation of stingy people’,60 and this he accomplishes magnificently, parading before us a galaxy of curious and comic avaricious figures, their character and actions described in a manner both astute and amusing. A recent translator states that his own interest in the work lay in ‘the picture it gives of life in traditional Arab society’.61 And certainly one can enjoy the ‘Misers’ simply for its lively portrayal of characters and customs and its polished narration of witty tales and amusing stratagems. Yet it is evidently much more than that. Very commonly it is explained as an attack upon a newly arisen monied class in Iraq, or else as a disparagement of non-Arabs, whose concern with wealth contrasts unfavourably with the Arab virtues of generosity and hospitality. The work seems, however, too diffuse and light-hearted for such an interpretation. More plausible is Daniel Beaumont’s thesis that the ‘Misers’ is a work of satire and parody with miserliness (bukhl ) simply the means by which this is achieved, not the subject itself. Thus the account of misers trading examples of thrifty behaviour in the mosque is intended as a satire upon muåaddiths exchanging examples of Prophetic behaviour, so mocking the idea of taqljd, the use of example as a model for one’s own conduct. The presence of parody is suggested by the mosque setting and by the words of the first shaykh, so typical of a religious scholar: ‘I am not aware of any (holy) book forbidding it or custom (sunna) prohibiting it.’62 And the tale of al-Kindj63 aims to satirize philosophers and their (mis)use of argumentation as in al-Kindj’s letter to a tenant, justifying charging him a higher rent for having guests to stay, which is a parody of a philosophical treatise, for the ways in which people cause wear and tear on a house are minutely categorized, and arguments are given in the terse and abstract style characteristic of philosophers: When feet increase, walking increases . . . then the clay flakes off and the plaster crumbles and the steps crack . . . . And when the enterings and exitings and openings and closings and lockings and unlockings increase, then the doors split and their fixtures break.
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As a final illustration we might take the shaykh of Khurhshn behind whose lengthy arguments in favour of a glass lamp over a stoneware or ceramic one would seem to lie a jibe at Íufj adepts and their fondness for esoteric exegesis: ‘When the beams of the flame fall upon the material of the glass, lamp and flame become one (he says), each of the two giving all the light back to its owner’, an idea evocative of the Íufj concept of mystical union with the Godhead, which is at the same time comic because of its suggestion that no light is wasted. The shaykh clinches his point with a citation of the Sura of Light from the Qur’hn, a chapter beloved of Muslim mystics, interpreting the words ‘the lamp is in a glass’ (Qur’hn 24:35) as a sanctification of his own choice, and the words ‘light upon light’ as a reference to the oil in the glass, ‘luminosity upon luminosity redoubling’.64 Jhåi©’s ‘Misers’ may be compared, and contrasted, with al-Khaƒjb al-Baghdhdj’s (d. 463/1071) ‘Misers’65 and Ibn al-Jawzj’s Akhbhr al-Åamqh’ wa al-Mughaffaljn (‘Fools and Ignoramuses’), which lie at the compilation rather than the composition end of the spectrum. Their material is drawn from the testimony of others, which has been edited and organized with the compilers’ own views and comments interpolated here and there; but, though they may contain many fictional elements, they cannot be said to be works of fiction. Jhåi© makes extensive use of the isnhd, so giving the impression that he too is mostly drawing upon other sources. Once the presence of parody is recognized, however, it becomes clear that Jhåi© has contrived his own material. It is then no longer necessary to ponder – as some modern scholars have done – the exact identity of the circle of misers who frequent the mosque in order to share stories of parsimonious conduct, for they are conjured up by Jhåi© to serve as a parodized image of muåaddiths pooling recipes for pious conduct. As Beaumont notes: ‘Parody is necessarily fictive, since it has as its basis the transformation of some anterior text by the comic text.’ Moreover, from comments such as that of Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889) that Jhåi© was ‘one of the greatest liars in the community . . . and one of the greatest promoters of falsehood’ we can assume that the fictional character of a number of Jhåi©’s works was recognized by his contemporaries.66 (c) Pseudo-Ißfahhnj’s ‘Book of Strangers’ The subject matter of Kithb al-Ghurabh’, which has been attributed to Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj (d. c.363/972), author of the monumental literary history, the ‘Great Book of Songs’ (Kithb al-Aghhnj), but which is probably by an unknown, slightly later author, is stated clearly at the outset: I have gathered in this book what I have heard or seen for myself, or learnt in other ways, about those who composed poetry when they found themselves strangers, who gave expression to the grief they felt and who revealed their complaints of love to every person driven from his home and far removed from his friends by writing of their sufferings on walls and disclosing their secrets in every tavern and garden.67
History, fiction and authorship 37 His ‘strangers’ are those absent from home and loved ones, often constrained to be so by fate and circumstance. Their common situation creates a bond, and these strangers are apt to share their feelings by committing them to verse and inscribing them on whatever material is to hand, chiefly stones and walls. The theme of these graffiti is the pain of separation and the transience of pleasure and fortune. There is therefore a tone of melancholy and nostalgia, occasionally of misery and despair. Yet the book is saved from being sombre reading by the streak of irreverence that runs through it. For though these exiles know that it is ‘contentment that is wealth’ (graffito no.7), and that one should ‘leave the world to one’s enemies’ (no.30), they are nevertheless aware that ‘the lapses of strangers are forgivable . . . because they are far from their homes’ (no.62), and that ‘one will not experience anything sweeter or more delightful than behaving badly’ (no.58). They thus frequently transgress convention, engaging in love affairs and drinking bouts with an abandon that comes from feeling free of society’s fetters. The book contains seventy-six episodes; all bar one contain a graffito, and most are introduced by a story about the inscriber and the situation that impelled him to inscribe it. The question arises whether one should consider this text an anthology, as one scholar has called it, or one man’s creation, a ‘work of fiction’, in the words of another.68 To put it differently, did pseudo-Ißfahhnj merely collect and edit these stories with their accompanying graffiti, or did he have a hand in their composition? Was he a compiler or an author? Here again, one should not be influenced by the frequent appearance of isnhds, since they are as often as not used merely for realistic effect. On the other hand, the likely fictionality of some of the episodes should not mislead, for pseudo-Ißfahhnj could have transcribed fictitious accounts from his informants in good faith. As regards content, it should be noted that pseudo-Ißfahhnj draws not only upon the hearsay of others, but also upon his own experiences. In the introduction, he makes it clear that he himself is or has been in the position of a stranger: The conflict in my heart and the anguish in my breast cause me to behave in this fashion . . . my situation calls for imitation of them [the ‘Strangers’ of his title] and the injustice of Time leads me to adorn myself with their badge. He himself plays a part in fourteen of the book’s seventy-six episodes, and in four cases is himself responsible for the graffito: a beautiful girl in a monastery near Baghdad and a poem written about her arouse in him ‘old sadness and grief ’ (no.13); at an inn in Basra, he scribbles verses on a wall bemoaning that ‘Time has reduced me to a state in which I cannot offer hospitality to guests’ (no.15); while ‘on some business’ in Bh Jisra, a siege obliges him to stay, and he complains in verse on the wall of the mosque that ‘my soul is anxious and weary, my eye tearful from lengthy weeping’ (no.55); and once, in his youth, he penned a poem for his male lover ‘on the wall we used to lean against’, and was severely reproached by his partner for risking their exposure (no.64). Though no exact details of his plight, business interests or love life are given, the author is nevertheless, by medieval standards, remarkably revealing of his feelings and of himself (the
38 Robert G. Hoyland trawling of one’s own self and experiences for inspiration is of course a major characteristic of modern fiction).69 Moving on to form, one notices that there are a number of ingredients which serve to knit the episodes together and which might more plausibly be the result of the deliberate design of an author than of the chance findings of a compiler. A good example is the destructive element of Time (al-zaman, al-dahr, al-ayyhm), which dogs these ‘strangers’ mercilessly and runs like a refrain through the whole work. The author speaks at the outset of ‘the injustice of Time’ with regard to his own situation, and later bewails that ‘Time has reduced me to a state in which I cannot offer hospitality to guests’ (see above), a condition he shares with other strangers such as ‘the calamities of Time (says one) have driven me from place to place’ (no.8); another describes himself as ‘chased by Time from every country’ (no.10), and there are numerous other ‘autobiographical’ references to Time, as well as generalizations. Thus of man it is noted that ‘Time will hurt him so much’ (no.2), and as against the transience of man’s achievements, it is accepted that only ‘the kingship of the Lord of the Throne will endure forever’ (no.34), ‘nothing endures against Time except God’ (no.52), ‘the reverses of Fate will destroy [earthly delights]’ (no.3), ‘buildings were erected for Time to destroy’ (no.26); and ‘if anything could survive the calamities of Time, his [the Buyid prince Mu‘izz al-Dawla’s] kingship of all things would survive,70 but everything is destined to change and reach an end’ (no.67). What are the probable purpose of the book, and the effect it has upon the reader or listener? Most obviously, the ‘Book of Strangers’ does not adopt an academic format: there is no attempt to explore a thesis, nor to expatiate on the pros and cons of the subject, nor to amass proof-texts from the Qur’hn, the sayings of the Prophet, poetry and wisdom literature. Rather, the work focuses on the emotions, on the pangs felt by those away from home for their nearest and dearest. A visitor to the lighthouse of Alexandria bemoans that ‘misfortunes have separated me from those that I love’ (no.8); another stranger laments that he is ‘far removed from home, forever distanced from the loved ones who do not know my plight’ (no.7). ‘My heart is still with you and dwells among you,’ writes a Damascene in the remote Iraqi village of Darzjjhn (no.40), and a Baghdadi languishing in Nishapur writes: ‘I wish I knew what has happened to my family and children since I left, and to my beloved friend who wept when I bade him farewell’ (no.44). Pseudo-Ißfahhnj paints a background of the physical sufferings of strangers – ‘my body is wretched with discomfort’ (no.51); ‘I walked barefoot to this place until my feet were bleeding’ (no.59) – and of the perils which attend frequent travel – shipwreck (nos.18, 69, 71), brigandage (nos.38, 42, 55), and the like. Evidently, then, he seeks to call forth an emotional response, and to offer a testimony, to the misery of strangers, which he himself has experienced and with which he empathizes. It was perhaps with a view to consoling himself that he decided to set the experiences down in writing. The effect upon the reader is, if not strongly moving, at least touching, and often amusing. It would seem preferable, then, to regard pseudo-Ißfahhnj as an author rather than as a compiler. Very possibly he drew upon materials collected during his
History, fiction and authorship 39 wanderings, but recast them with a free hand. His originality lies in having brought together, and connected with an autobiographical thread, two very common literary topoi – the happening upon an inscription of relevance to one’s own situation, and the theme of nostalgia and homesickness71 – that would seem never to have been connected before.
Conclusion For presenting Robinson Crusoe (1704) as ‘a just History of Fact’, Daniel Defoe was criticized by many for deceiving people, and was even branded by some, most famously Charles Gildon, as a liar. In the preface to Serious Reflections on Robinson Crusoe (1720), Defoe rejected the claims of the ‘ill-tempered Part of the World . . . that . . . the Story is feign’d’, and countered that ‘the Story, though Allegorical, is also Historical’. Note that he does not simply insist that his composition was ‘true’, but rather that it contained ‘Matters of real History’ even as he admitted that it was a ‘Fable’.72 Other writers of eighteenth-century fiction show a similar reluctance to have their fictions definitively separated from history. They did not seem to conceive of their work, as we would now, as a genre fully distinct from that of history; and indeed their ‘novels’ often simulated forms of history writing – biography (Fielding’s Tom Jones), autobiography (Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe), family history (Richardson’s Clarissa and Sterne’s Tristram Shandy) – and imitated its techniques, notably the description of actual events, such as the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 in Tom Jones and the war of the Spanish Succession in Tristram Shandy, and the deployment of documents and eyewitness testimony. It seems to me that, like Defoe’s critics, we may be unjustified in drawing too rigid a line between ‘Fables and Legends’ (the heading of a chapter in the ‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres volume of the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature) and ‘History’ (the title of a chapter in the Religion, learning and science volume). As Defoe said of one of his own ‘Fables’: when I go about a Work in which I must tell a great many Stories, which may in their own nature seem incredible and in which I must expect a great part of Mankind will question the Sincerity of the Relator, I do not do it without a particular sense upon me of the proper Duty of a Historian. (The Storm, 1704) The Muslim author of a Conquest epic or a Yemeni saga, even if not quite expressing himself thus, would also most likely have felt that the probabilistic truths of his own work added an essential dimension to the understanding of his community’s history, even if not so verifiably referential as those set down by a Ïabarj or a Balhdhurj. Moreover, ‘serious’ histories are too much permeated by legendary and supernatural material to permit such a rigorous division. It also appears to me that we have been too hasty in damning many Muslim historians as mere compilers. Such a label has the unfortunate consequence that individual works are not evaluated as a unity but simply ransacked for factual needles in
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the narrative haystack. Yet some creative effort is always involved in compilation, as anyone will know who has attempted to collate a large body of heterogeneous information, and as Hilary Kilpatrick has now demonstrated extensively in the case of Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj’s ‘Great Book of Songs’.73 Transmission and authorship should also therefore, like history and fiction, be viewed as lying on a continuum, with slavish copyists at one extreme and surrealist poets at the other, but very few being outright plagiarists or totally original. Many an Islamicist would still object that writers like Ïabarj and Balhdhurj are simply copying earlier sources and themselves had no hand in the creation of the texts that they pass on, as is evident from the internally contradictory nature of many of these texts and their lack of any overall ideological consistency. All this is true, and for that reason such writers should be situated at the transmission end of the spectrum; but this does not mean that they contributed nothing. The world history of Ibn Kathjr, for example, which dates from the 770s/1370s, is for the most part a faithful rendering of earlier accounts; yet he still makes his own stance very clear. He expands the section on the Life of Muåammad to almost a quarter of the whole text (it occupies less than a twentieth of the world history of Ibn al-Athjr, d. 630/1233), and he appends a special part devoted to the trials and tribulations attending the last days of the world which is of markedly admonitory tone. Though apparently citing conflicting traditions impartially, he lets his own view be known with a laconic ‘this is very unusual’, or by noting that this report is unique and that widespread, or by pointing to the opinion of the Qur’hn or of earlier authorities on the matter. In short, his own personality peeps through the façade of self-effacement, and his cultural milieu is easily discerned74 (he wrote at a time when åadjth-based history was gaining ascendancy over the more adab-based). Most of the issues outlined earlier had their origin in the study of early Islamic history and in debates about the reliability of the Arabic sources. These debates have begun to influence Arabic literary historians, though not all are convinced that ‘historical’ texts fall within their domain, while many historians remain obsessed with ascertaining how the past intrinsically was, rather than how it was represented. Traditionally and stereotypically, this has been the state of affairs, and both historians and literary historians have largely ignored the perspectives that might be afforded by theory drawn from other fields. Nevertheless, the barriers are beginning to be broken down: witness the influence of such works as Wolfgang Iser’s Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre (1991, English translation 1993), and the recent appearance of volumes such as those edited by Stefan Leder (Story-telling in the framework of nonfictional Arabic literature, 1998), Harald Motzki (The Biography of Muåammad: The Issue of The Sources, 1999), and Philip F. Kennedy (On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Literature, 2005), Tayeb El-Hibri’s Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Hhrun al-Rashjd and the narrative of the ‘Abbhsid caliphate (1999) and Michael Cooperson’s Classical Arabic Biography: the heirs of the prophets in the age of al-Ma’mun (2000).
Acknowledgements This article was written in autumn 1998 at the Institut Français des Études Arabes à Damas (IFEAD), and at the home of the French cultural attaché, Professor
History, fiction and authorship 41 Alexis Tadie. I am extremely grateful to both for their kindness and hospitality, and for the freedom to use their wonderful libraries. References have been updated to take account of subsequent publications.
Notes 1 Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj, Aghhnj, VI, pp. 89–91. In the Aghhnj, Åammhd adds only two lines, but in Zuhayr’s Djwhn, Ahlwardt (1870), p. 81, he adds three. 2 For discussion of this anecdote and of the general point, see Stetkevych (1991), pp. 241–56, Jones (1992), pp. 21–5 and Drory (1996), pp. 33–49. 3 For this point, and some exceptions to it, see Drory (1994) and Bonebakker (1992) (a) and (b). For the corresponding debate in poetry, see Ajami (1988). 4 See Chapter 1, p. 3. 5 Drory (1994), p. 156, citing the medieval anthologist al-Mu‘hfh ibn Zakarjyh al-Nahrawhnj (d. 390/1000). 6 Modern scholarship has followed medieval scholarship in this, see Ghazi (1957), who observed that most general accounts of Arabic literature pay little attention to imaginative writing, and Chraïbi (1998), who remarks that though the Thousand and One Nights have attracted much attention, they are only ‘the tip of an iceberg’. 7 White (1978), p. 121. For this paragraph, I have relied particularly upon Zimmermann (1996), chapter 1. 8 ‘Abd al-Malik Ibn Åabjb, Ta’rjkh, pp. 145,144, 136–7. 9 Leder and Kilpatrick (1992), pp. 2, 16. 10 Von Grunebaum (1946), pp. 281, 283. 11 Crone (1980), p. 10. In justice to Crone, she was reacting to a theory proposed by Julius Wellhausen, who rightly felt that the ‘mere compilers’ view was wrong, but incorrectly argued that the early historians were representatives of a unified historical outlook. 12 For references, see Hoyland (1991), pp. 221–2. 13 Lecker (1995), p. 23, note 39, where Ibn Åanbal’s words are quoted from al-Khaƒjb al-Baghdhdj (d. 463/1071). 14 Lecker (1995), p. 21, again quoting al-Khaƒjb al-Baghdhdj. 15 Ïabarj, Ta’rjkh, I, p. 6. 16 Muslim, Íaåjå, II, p. 328 (under tawba); Aåmad ibn Åanbal, Musnad, III, p. 72. 17 Shhfi‘j, Rishla, p. 399 , trans. Khadduri (1961), pp. 251–2. 18 These examples can all be found in Ibn Isåhq’s (c.85–151/704–67) Life of Muåammad, trans. Guillaume (1955). 19 The above quotations are taken from Khalidi (1994), pp. 95, 100, 106–7. 20 These quotations are again from Khalidi (1994), pp. 100, 113–14. 21 Ibn al-Jawzj, Kithb al-Qußßhß, ed. and trans. Swartz (1971), paragraphs 3–6. Ïabarj, Ta’rjkh, II, p. 950, gives an example of a qhßß engaging in pure sermonizing. 22 Lewond, History of Armenia, chapter 10. 23 Cited by Dutton (1999), pp. 17–18. 24 See Athamina (1992), and the literature cited in note 1 thereof. 25 Cited by Rosenthal (1952), pp. 41, 43–4. 26 See Robinson (2003). Scholarship became increasingly professionalized and institutions did develop in the third/ninth century, but since history was not a subject of higher education, it remained relatively free from control. 27 Cited by Khalidi (1994), p. 174. 28 How he developed the genre is described by Khalidi (1994), p. 174. 29 A recent survey is Touati (2000). 30 Aßma‘j, Ta’rjkh al-‘Arab, p. 3. 31 Bukhhrj, Íaåjå, II, p. 153.
42 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72
Robert G. Hoyland Whqidj, Maghhzj, p. 885. Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj, Aghhnj, XXIV, p. 145; see also Kilpatrick (2003), chapter 5. Aåmad ibn Åanbal, Musnad, VI, p. 194. References for this paragraph and further discussion are in Landau-Tasseron (1986). References for this paragraph and further discussion are in Beaumont (1996). References for the above passages and further discussion are in Khalidi (1994), pp. 34–9. Ïabarj, Ta’rjkh, I, p. 78. For these terms, see Kasis (1983); on the influence of the Qur’anic vision of history, see Humphreys (1989). See Wansbrough (1978) and Rubin (1995). Another transposed literary format is that of annalistic history, see Hoyland (1991). See Khalidi (1994), pp. 49–61. See Donner (1998), Part II. Khalidi (1975), p. 114. Pseudo-Waqidj, Futuå, p. 112. See Crone (1996). See, for example, El-Hibri (1995). References for this anecdote and further discussion are in Fähndrich (1977). On this topos, see Müller (1993). See Hawting (1986), pp. 81–3. References and further discussion are in Leder (1990). The final quotation is from Leder (1992), p. 284. See also Leder (1988). See Noth (1994). References and further discussion are in Mattock (1986). From the differing lengths of extracts quoted from early akhbhrjs by later compilers, we may infer that many of their accounts were originally longer than those now preserved for us, see Donner (1998), pp. 268–9. On Azdj’s sources, see Mourad (2000). Compare similar features in Ibn Zunbul’s Infißhl, see Chapter 1, pp. 6–9 above. References for this passage and further discussion are in Conrad (1987). Paret (1970), pp. 742–3. See Canard (1965) and Lyons (1995), I, passim, II, pp. 151–238, III, pp. 301–504. Paret (1930), pp. 151–2. Chraïbi (1998) classifies Arabic narrative literature in general on the basis of language and register (‘savante/écrite; moyenne; populaire/orale’) rather than content. Jhåi©, Bukhalh’, I, p. 17, trans. Serjeant (1997), p. 1. Serjeant (1997), p. xxvi. Jhåi©, Bukhalh’, I, p. 63, trans. Serjeant (1997), p. 25. Jhåi©, Bukhalh’, I, pp. 143–70, trans. Serjeant (1997), pp. 67–78. Jhåi©, Bukhalh’, I, pp. 50–3; further discussion is in Beaumont (1994). See Malti-Douglas (1985). For references to Ibn Qutayba’s estimate of Jhåi©, see Chapter 4, note 156. Translations are taken from Crone and Moreh (2000), where full commentary is to be found. Crone and Moreh argue that the attribution to Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj is false, ibid., chapter 4. On the authorship of the work see also Kilpatrick (2004). Kilpatrick (1980); Rosenthal (1997), p. 65. On medieval Arabic autobiographical writing, see Reynolds (ed.) (2001). He reigned in Baghdad 334–56/945–67. See three studies of the theme, by Wadad al-Qadi, Kathrin Müller and Suzanne Enderwitz, in Part I of Neuwirth et al. (eds) (1999). For references and further discussion, see Mayer (1997), chapter 1.
History, fiction and authorship 43 73 Kilpatrick (2003). 74 Noted in Hoyland (1999). The same point is made for Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj by Kilpatrick (1997).
Bibliography of works cited in this chapter ‘Abd al-Malik Ibn Åabjb, Ta’rjkh, Jorge Aguadé (ed.), Madrid, 1991. Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj, Kithb al-Aghhnj, Cairo, 1927–74. (pseudo-) Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj, Kithb al-Ghurabh’: see Crone and Moreh, trans. (2000). Ahlwardt, W. (ed.) (1870), The Divans of The Six Ancient Arabian Poets, London. Aåmad ibn Åanbal, al-Musnad, Beirut, 1969. Ajami, Mansour (1988), The Alchemy of Glory, Washington, DC, 1988. al-Aßma‘j, ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Qurayb, Ta’rjkh al-‘Arab qabla al-Islhm, Baghdad, 1959. Athamina, Khalil (1992), ‘Al-Qaßaß: Its Emergence, Religious Origin and Its Socio-political impact on early Muslim society’, Studia Islamica 76, pp. 53–74. Bakhjt, M. A. (ed.) (1987), The Fourth International Conference on The History of Bilhd al-Shhm, second symposium, Amman. Beaumont, Daniel (1994), ‘Parodying and Lying in al-Bukhala’, Studia Islamica 79, pp. 27–49. —— (1996), ‘Hard-Boiled: Narrative Discourse in Early Muslim Traditions’, Studia Islamica 83, pp. 5–31. Bonebakker, S. A. (1992) (a), ‘Medieval Views on Fantastic Stories’, Quaderni di Studi Arabi 10, pp. 21–43. —— (1992) (b), ‘Nihil obstat in Storytelling’, Mededelingen van de Afdeling Letturkunde (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie von Wetenschappen) 55.8, pp. 289–307. (Reprinted in Hovannisian and Sabagh (eds) (1997), pp. 56–77.) al-Bukhhrj, Muåammad ibn Ismh’jl, al-Jhmi‘ al-Íaåjå, L. Krehl (ed.), Leiden, 1862–1908. The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: ‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres, Julia Ashtiany et al. (eds), Cambridge 1990. The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Religion, learning and science in the ‘Abbasid period, M. J. L. Young (ed.), Cambridge 1990. Canard, M. (1965), ‘Dhu al-Himma/Dhht al-Himma’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, II, pp. 233–9. Chraïbi, Aboubakr (1998), ‘Classification des traditions narratives arabes par “conte-type” ’, Bulletin d’Études Orientales 50, pp. 29–59. Conrad, Lawrence I. (1987), ‘Al-Azdj’s History of the Arab Conquest in Bilhd al-Shhm: Some Historiographical Observations’, in Bakhjt (ed.) (1987), pp. 28–62. Conrad, Lawrence I. and Averil Cameron (eds) (1992), The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, Princeton. Cooperson, Michael (2000), Classical Arabic Biography: the heirs of the prophets in the age of al-Ma’mun, Cambridge. Crone, Patricia (1980), Slaves on Horses, Cambridge. —— (1996), review of Sayf ibn ‘Umar al-Tamjmj, Qasim al-Samarrai (ed.), Kithb al-Ridda wa al-Futuå and Kithb al-Jamal wa Masjr ‘H’isha wa ‘Alj , Leiden 1995, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 6, series 3, pp. 237–40. Crone, Patricia and Shmuel Moreh, trans. (2000), The Book of Strangers. Medieval Arabic Graffiti on the Theme of Nostalgia, Princeton. al-Djnawhrj, Abu Åanjfa Aåmad ibn Dh’ud, al-Akhbhr al-Ïiwhl, V. Guirgass and I. Kratchkovskii (eds), Leiden 1888–1912. Donner, Fred (1998), Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing, Princeton.
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Drory, Rina (1994), ‘Three Attempts to Legitimize Fiction in Classical Arabic Literature’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 18, pp. 146–64. —— (1996), ‘The Abbasid construction of the Jahiliyya: cultural authority in the making’, Studia Islamica 83, pp. 33–49. Dutton, Yasin (1999), The Origins of Islamic Law, Richmond. El-Hibri, Tayeb (1995), ‘The Regicide of The Caliph al-Amjn and the Challenge of Representation in Medieval Islamic Historiography’, Arabica 42, pp. 334–64. —— (1999), Reinterpreting Islamic historiography: Hhrun al-Rashjd and the narrative of the ‘Abbhsid caliphate, Cambridge. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, H. A. R. Gibb et al. (eds), Leiden 1960–2002 ( Encyclopaedia of Islam). Fähndrich, Hartmut (1977), ‘Compromising the Caliph: Analysis of several versions of an anecdote about Abu Dulhma and al-Manßur’, Journal of Arabic Literature 8, pp. 36–47. Ghazi, M. F. (1957), ‘La littérature d’imagination en arabe du II/VII au V/XI siècles’, Arabica 4, pp. 164–78. Grundriss der arabischen Philologie II. Literatur, Helmut Gätje (ed.), Wiesbaden 1987. Grunebaum, G. E. von (1946), Medieval Islam, Chicago. Guillaume, A., trans. (1955), The Life of Muhammad. A translation of Ibn Isåhq’s Sjrat Rasul Allhh, Oxford. Hawting, G. R. (1986), The First Dynasty of Islam. The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661–750, London. Hovannisian, R. G. and G. Sabagh (eds) (1997), The Thousand and One Nights in Arabic Literature and Society, Cambridge. Hoyland, Robert G. (1991), ‘Greek, Syriac and Arabic Historiography’, Aram 3. —— (1999), review of Ibn Kathjr, al-Sjra al-Nabawiyya, trans. Trevor Le Gassick, The Life of The Prophet Muhammad, Reading, 1998, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, pp. 145–6. Hoyland, Robert G. and Philip F. Kennedy (eds) (2004), Islamic Reflections, Arabic Musings. Studies in honour of Alan Jones, Oxford. Humphreys, R. Stephen (1989), ‘Qur’anic Myth and Narrative Structure in Early Islamic Historiography’, in Humphreys, R. S. and F. M. Clover (eds), Tradition and Innovation in Late Antiquity, Madison, pp. 271–90. Ibn Isåhq, Muåammad: see Guillaume, trans. (1955). Ibn al-Jawzj, Abu al-Faraj ‘Abd al-Raåmhn ibn ‘Alj: see Swartz, ed. and trans. (1971). Ibn Kathjr: see Hoyland (1999). Iser, Wolfgang (1993), trans. David Henry Wilson and Wolfgang Iser, The Fictive and The Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology, Baltimore. (First published Frankfurt, 1991.) al-Jhåi©, Kithb al-Bukhalh, A. al-‘Awhmirj and ‘A. al-Jhrim (eds), Beirut 1991, trans. Serjeant (1997). Jones, Alan (1992), Early Arabic Poems I, Oxford. Kasis, Hanna E. (1983), A Concordance of the Qur’an, Berkeley. Kennedy, Philip F. (ed.) (2005), On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Literature, Wiesbaden. Khadduri, Majid, trans. (1961), Al-Shhfi‘j’s Rishla. Treatise of the Foundations of Islamic Jurisprudence, Baltimore. Khalidi, Tarif (1975), The Histories of Mas‘udi, Albany. —— (1994), Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period, Cambridge. Kilpatrick, Hilary (1980), ‘A Tenth-Century Anthology of Exile and Homesickness’, Azure 5. —— (1997), ‘Abu l-Farax’s Profiles of Poets: a 4th/10th century essay at the history and sociology of Arabic literature’, Arabica 44, pp. 94–128.
History, fiction and authorship 45 —— (2003), Making The Great Book of Songs. Compilation and the author’s craft in Abu l-Faraj al-Ißbahhnj’s Kithb al-Aghhnj, London and New York. —— (2004), ‘On the difficulty of knowing mediaeval Arab authors. The case of Abu l-Faraj and pseudo-Ißfahhnj’, in Hoyland and Kennedy (eds) (2004), pp. 230–42. Landau-Tasseron, Ella (1986), ‘Process of Redaction: the case of the Tamjmite delegation to the Prophet Muåammad’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49, pp. 253–70. Lecker, Michael (1995), ‘Whqidj’s Account on the Status of the Jews of Medina: a study of a combined report’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 54, pp. 15–32. Leder, Stefan (1988), ‘Authorship and Transmission in Unauthored Literature’, Oriens 31, pp. 67–81. —— (1990), ‘Features of the Novel in Early Historiography: the downfall of Khhlid al-Qasrj’, Oriens 32, pp. 72–96. —— (1992), ‘The Literary Use of the Khabar : a basic form of historical writing’, in Conrad and Cameron (eds) (1992), pp. 277–315. —— (ed.) (1998), Story-telling in the framework of non-fictional Arabic literature, Wiesbaden. Leder, Stefan and Hilary Kilpatrick (1992), ‘Classical Arabic Prose Literature: a researchers’ sketch map’, Journal of Arabic Literature 23, pp. 2–26. Lewond, History of Armenia, trans. Z. Arzoumanian, Philadelphia, 1982. Lyons, M. C. (1995), The Arabian Epic, Cambridge. Malti-Douglas, Fedwa (1985), Structures of Avarice. The Bukhalh’ in Medieval Arabic Literature, Leiden. Margoliouth, D. S., trans. (1922), The Table-Talk of a Mesopotamian Judge, Part I, London. —— trans. (1929–32), ‘The Table-Talk of a Mesopotamian Judge’, Parts VIII and II, Islamic Culture 3–6. Mattock, John (1986), ‘History and Fiction’, Occasional Papers of the School of Abbasid Studies 1, pp. 80–97. Mayer, Robert (1997), History and the Early English Novel: matters of fact from Bacon to Defoe, Cambridge. al-Minqarj, Naßr ibn Muzhåim, Waq‘at Íiffjn, ‘Abd al-Salhm Muåammad Hhrun (ed.), Cairo 1382/1962. Motzki, Harald (ed.) (1999), The Biography of Muåammad: the issue of the sources, Leiden, Boston, and Cologne. Mourad, Suleiman A. (2000), ‘On Early Islamic Historiography: Abu Ismh‘jl al-Azdj and His Futuå al-shhm (Conquest of Syria)’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 120, pp. 577–93. Müller, Kathrin (1993), ‘Und der Kalif lachte, bis er auf den Rücken fiel’. Ein Beitrag zur Phraseologie und Stilkunde des klassischen Arabisch, Munich. Muslim ibn al-Åajjhj, al-Jhmi‘ al-Íaåjå, Bulaq 1873. Neuwirth, Angelika, Birgit Embaló, Sebastian Günther and Maher Jarrar (eds) (1999), Myths, Historical Archetypes and Symbolic Figures in Arabic Literature. Towards a New Hermeneutic Approach, Proceedings of the International Symposium in Beirut, 25–30 June 1996, Beirut. Noth, Albrecht, in collaboration with Lawrence I. Conrad, trans. Michael Bonner (1994), The early Arabic historical tradition: a source-critical study, Princeton. Paret, Rudi (1930), Die legendäre Maghhzj-Literatur: arabische Dichtungen über die muslimischen Kriegzüge zu Mohammeds Zeit, Tübingen. —— (1970), ‘Die legendäre Futuå-Literatur, ein arabisches Volksepos?’ La poesia epica e la sua formazione, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Atti 139, pp. 735–49.
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Reynolds, D. F. (ed.), and contributors (2001), Interpreting the Self. Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition, Berkeley. Robinson, Chase F. (2003), Islamic Historiography, Cambridge. Rosenthal, Franz (1952), A History of Muslim Historiography, Leiden. —— (1997), ‘The Stranger in Medieval Islam’, Arabica 44, pp. 35–75. Rubin, Uri (1995), The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muåammad as viewed by the early Muslims, Princeton. Sayf ibn ‘Umar al-Tamjmj, Kithb al-Ridda wa al-Futuå and Kithb al-Jamal wa Masjr ‘H’isha wa ‘Alj, Qasim al-Samarrai (ed.), Leiden, 1995. Serjeant, R. B., trans. (1997), Abu ‘Uthmhn ibn Baår al-Jhåi©. The Book of Misers. A translation of al-Bukhalh, Reading. al-Shhfi‘j, Muåammad ibn Idrjs, al-Rishla, M. M. Shhkir (ed.) (Cairo, 1940), trans. Khadduri (1961). Stetkevych, Suzanne Pinckney (1991), Abu Tammhm and the Poetics of the ‘Abbhsid Age, Leiden. Swartz, M. L., ed. and trans. (1971), Ibn al-Jawzj’s Kithb al-Qußßhß wa al-Mudhakkirjn, Including a Critical Edition, Annotated Translation and Introduction, Beirut. al-Ïabarj, Muåammad ibn Jarjr, Ta’rjkh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, M. J. de Goeje et al. (eds) (Leiden, 1879–1901), trans. under the general editorship of Ehsan Yar-Shater, The History of al-Ïabarj, Albany, 1987–99. al-Tanukhj, Nishwhr al-Muåh∂ara, ‘Abbud al-Shhljj (ed.), Beirut, 1971–3, trans. Margoliouth (1922) and (1929–32). Touati, Houari (2000), Islam et voyage au Moyen Âge, Paris. Wansbrough, John (1978), The Sectarian Milieu, Oxford. al-Whqidj, Muåammad ibn ‘Umar, al-Maghhzj, Marsden Jones (ed.), Oxford, 1966. pseudo-Whqidj, Futuå al-Shhm, Cairo, 1892. White, Hayden (1978), Tropics of Discourse. Essays in Cultural Criticism, Baltimore. Zimmermann, Everett (1996), The Boundaries of Fiction: history and the eighteenth-century British novel, Ithaca. Zuhayr ibn Abj Sulmh: see Ahlwardt (1870).
3
Writing medieval women Representations and misrepresentations Julie Scott Meisami
The act of cultural observation and understanding is like drawing back a veil in order to grasp the meaning of cues and symbols of other cultures, rather than imposing meaning upon such symbols from behind the seclusion of one’s own cultural veil.1
Introduction Our access to the medieval Islamic past – to its cultures, to its ‘cues and symbols’ – is both dependent upon, and conditioned by, its texts. We read these texts in order to gain insight both into the literary tradition (or traditions) which they represent and into broader historical and cultural issues. Among such issues is that of medieval attitudes towards women, in the study of which we must have obviously recourse to treatments of women in medieval texts. But to what extent can – or should – textual representations be used as the basis for general assumptions about the status of women in medieval Islamic societies? This question is a crucial one, since many feminist critics, largely in response to modern political discourses in which the status of women has taken on a central and symbolic role, invoke medieval texts to account for contemporary attitudes. Some twenty-five years ago Nikki Keddie lamented that ‘almost no serious scholarly historical work’ had been done in the area of Middle Eastern women’s history.2 She included, amongst materials which might be used to this end, ‘traditional sources’ such as ‘chronicles, geographies, travelers’ accounts, legal and theological writings’, ‘prose, poetry, and the arts’, ‘folktales and oral tradition’, and ‘written records about slave girls and upper class women’.3 Keddie further argued that a major problem hindering such study ‘has been a philosophically idealist bias – represented . . . by an assumption that the Qur’hn, the Traditions of the Prophet, and the writings of theologians and jurists were the main determinants of women’s position’, and that ‘both Western orientalists and Muslims’ have taken ‘religious and judicial books . . . to represent reality’.4 While studies of Muslim women, both medieval and modern, have increased since Keddie wrote these words, many are still marked both by this idealist bias and by an essentialist attitude towards ‘Islam’ reflected in the privileging of religious texts. This chapter will focus on three recent books which have drawn
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upon medieval texts to generalize about Islamic attitudes towards women: Leila Ahmed’s Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (1992), Fedwa Malti-Douglas’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing (1991), and Denise Spellberg’s Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of ‘A’isha bint Abi Bakr (1994). All three authors argue that the roots of problems faced by modern Muslim women, especially in the Arab Middle East, lie in the medieval past. My discussion of these works will be twofold: first, to outline their arguments and conclusions, noting briefly some of the textual evidence adduced in support of both; and second, to examine in closer detail some key issues raised by these works and by the manner in which they utilize medieval texts.
Reading misogyny: three examples In Women and Gender in Islam Leila Ahmed (who is the least text-orientated of our authors) argues that it was during the first three or four Islamic centuries, in which ‘state-supported orthodox Islam [sic] first developed’, that ‘the dominant, prescriptive terms of the core religious discourses (including attitudes towards women) were founded and institutionally elaborated’.5 Ahmed posits a basic tension between the Qur’hn’s ‘egalitarian’ message of the equality of all believers and ‘the hierarchical relation between the sexes encoded into the marriage structure instituted by Islam’.6 In the ensuing ‘debate as to which voice to hear and what kind of faith and what kind of society Muhammad meant to institute’, it was the hierarchical vision which won out: The [interpretative] decision to regard androcentric positions on marriage as intended to be binding for all time . . . [reflected] the interests and perspectives of those in power during the age that transposed and interpreted the Islamic message into the textual edifice of Islam.7 The architects of this ‘textual edifice’ were the (male) writers of the early ‘Abbasid period; for whereas the early Islamic community had been more open-minded towards women’s participation in public life (e.g. in warfare) as well as with respect to marriage, in this period the conditions were created under which ‘Islam lent itself to being interpreted as endorsing and giving religious sanction to a deeply negative and debased conception of women’. These conditions included the acquisition of wealth, and of slaves, during the conquests; assimilation between Persians and Arabs through mixed marriages, and the borrowing of Persian customs; religiously sanctioned polygamy; and, in particular, the practice of concubinage, ‘the sale of women for sexual use’, which ‘must have eroded the humanity from the idea of women from everyone in society, women as well as men’.8 As a result, In Abbasid society women were conspicuous for their absence from all arenas of the community’s central affairs. In the records relating to this period they are not to be found, as they were in the previous era, either on battlefield or in mosques, nor are they described as participants in or key contributors to the cultural life and productions of their society.9
Writing medieval women 49 Seeking ‘to identify the ideology of gender in [the ‘Abbasid] age and the assumptions about women and the relations between the sexes silently informing the texts and interpretations of Islam articulated then’, Ahmed proposes to focus on the ‘mores of the dominant classes of urban Abbasid society’ rather than on ‘the exploration and reconstruction of the social realities of women’s lives’, since ‘Abbasid social mores ‘were a key influence on the ideology of gender.’ As Ahmed herself admits, neither enterprise is one ‘for which the traditional materials of history readily offer evidence’.10 But the link between ‘Abbasid social mores (in a broad sense, and not only as relating to women) and the textual articulation of an ‘ideology of gender’ (if such indeed existed) remains obscure, as there is no attempt to tease out the relationship between the two and it is never made clear how the social practices of élites determined the position of religious scholars on issues pertaining to the life of the Muslim community at large. Ahmed asserts that it was in ‘Abbasid Baghdad that ‘to the various prejudices against women and the mores degrading women that were part of [traditions] indigenous to the area before Islam, Islamic institutions brought endorsement and license’ (the institution of the harem is singled out for special opprobrium).11 Leaving Baghdad, she moves forward in time to Mamluk Cairo, passing over some five centuries and half a continent that witnessed crucial political, religious, social and cultural developments. Much of her discussion of the Mamluk period is based on the Kithb al-Madkhal by the eighth/fourteenth-century Mhlikj jurist Ibn al-Åhjj al-‘Abdarj (virtually the only primary source quoted extensively).12 Ahmed mentions the many activities in which Cairene women engaged only to dismiss them, focusing instead on Ibn al-Åhjj’s criticisms of Íufj shaykhas and of women who went out into the public markets, visited shrines and cemeteries and took part in feasts celebrating births and marriages, in religious festivals and funerals.13 Ahmed’s limited and selective use of primary sources is exemplified by this overuse of one conservative Mhlikj jurist, a work which is, in its entirety, a polemic against the sinful innovations (bida‘ ) of his own age,14 to draw conclusions about all of Mamluk society. She relies heavily on secondary works, and avoids texts that might present other images of women and thus weaken the foundations of the ‘textual edifice’ that she herself wishes to construct. Her narrow focus on ‘Abbasid Baghdad and Mamluk Cairo implies that those centres are representative of the whole of medieval Islamdom;15 and she, like the other authors discussed here, is obsessed with the notion of the dominance of the ‘male scriptor’, an issue to which I shall return in the second section of this discussion. While in Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word Fedwa Malti-Douglas (the most text-centred of our authors) ranges over a wide variety of literary texts, her argument is that all types of writing are ‘essential players in the gender game and in the propagation of cultural ideas and values’ that is ‘Arabo-Islamic discourse’.16 In this discourse, she argues, ‘For woman, the word remains anchored in the body.’ Malti-Douglas limits her study to prose works, on the grounds that ‘prose by its nature permits a clearer representation, a more elaborate reformulation and restructuring of the world. Mimesis is tied to its essence’ (emphasis added). Dismissing questions of genre, audience expectations, authorial intent or canonical status as irrelevant, she asserts that all of the heterogeneous texts she examines reflect a ‘civilizational
50 Julie Scott Meisami reality’ (or, alternatively, an ‘ideal society’), whose parameters are determined by the ‘religious values and ideals’ of Islam.17 The texts discussed by Malti-Douglas include the Thousand and One Nights; a sample of adab works; Ibn al-Baƒanunj’s (d. 899/1494) Makhyid al-Niswhn (‘Women’s Trickery’), termed ‘sacred history’;18 Ibn Ïufayl’s Åayy ibn Yaq©hn19 and several other allegorical narratives; and a number of ‘ajh’ib tales (accounts of natural wonders and marvels). All these texts are said to represent the ‘mainstream’ of ‘Arabo-Islamic discourse’. Other types of writing, which to the uninitiated might appear more mainstream, are excluded – history and Åadjth (except for an occasional reference or quotation); hagiography and biography (especially of women); popular literature (except for the Nights), and poetry both because it is ‘highly conventional’ (as if prose were not) and because it is occasionally written by women. For a further justification for limiting the study to prose is that ‘the world of prose was effectively closed to women’; medieval Arabic prose is the domain of the ‘male scriptor’.20 This raises the issue of ‘narrative control’: how can men presume to speak for women? How can women control their own narratives? I shall return to this issue in the following section. Malti-Douglas argues that ‘homosocial desire’ dominates ‘Arabo-Islamic discourse’ to the point where the ideal world is a world without women. The tension between the demands of homosociality and those of heterosexuality can admit of only one solution: the avoidance, or rejection, of women. This is demonstrated, for example, by those prefaces to prose texts in which their authors state that they wrote in response to the request of a ‘brother’ (and are thus expressive of ‘homosocial desire’ and male bonding); by the conflict generated in the frame story of the Nights by King Shahriyhr’s longing to see his brother Shhhzamhn; and, in Ibn Ïufayl’s Åayy ibn Yaq©hn, by the rejection of human society by the ‘homosocial male couple’, Åayy and Hshl. The two accounts that are given of Åayy’s birth ‘reflect . . . barely concealed anxiety/hostility to the idea of motherhood’; the first also reveals the problem of ‘brother-sister sexual attraction’, seen as ‘ubiquitous in the Arabic tradition’. The ‘net result’ of both is ‘to dispense with the female of the species, to preclude her further appearance in the text’.21 MaltiDouglas insists that allegorical narratives such as Åayy – which she includes among ‘classical Arabic fictional texts’; whether it should be read as fiction is too complex an issue to explore here, though I would argue that it should not – and others in which males or male couples are threatened by females, ‘are not marginal but rather central narratives for the Islamic mystical and philosophical worldview’ and represent what ‘Islamic society’ favours: a world without women.22 Although adab anecdotes would seem to be ‘gender-neutral’, as they involve both males and females, stories about women are ‘discourse-controlled’ by male narrators.23 In adab works, women – aligned with other ‘marginal character types, like the insane or beggars’, at the bottom of a ‘male-conceived’ social and literary hierarchy – become ‘a socially marginal entity’, representing ‘physicality in its most rudimentary form’. Moreover, whereas women’s marginality is ‘exclusively social’, that of male marginal types is ‘first of all statistical’.24 While Malti-Douglas
Writing medieval women 51 asserts that each anecdote should be viewed ‘as an independent literary unit’, her focus is on those units which ‘revolve around female sexuality and women’s bodies’. The majority of these deal with women’s ruses, with their witty repartees (as well as some male put-downs), and with woman’s body and the dangers it supposedly represents. To exemplify the male preoccupation with the dangers of female sexuality, Malti-Douglas selects one personage who stands out among the ‘predominantly nameless female protagonists’ of adab anecdotes and ‘embodies in her essence the female adab type’. This is the famous Åubbh of Medina, supposed to have lived in the first/seventh century, whose ‘literary existence is a witness that women, defined by their gender, are an adab social category’.25 As a purveyor of sexual knowledge, Åubbh is a source of dangerous wisdom. (‘After all, procreation does not demand an intricate knowledge of sexual techniques’.) She represents an ‘uncontrollable sexuality that expresses itself not only through actions but through words’. Åubbh’s presence, ‘with her overtly (and overly) sexual nature, as a character in the adab literature brings this type of text close to the medieval Arabic sexual and erotic manuals’ in which ‘the woman is without doubt primarily a physico-sexual entity governed by her body’.26 (Malti-Douglas does not explore these latter texts.) The obsession with female sexuality is found also in the genre of ‘ajh’ib, accounts of mirabilia found in geographical and other works. Malti-Douglas cites, for example, Ibn al-Wardj’s (ninth/fifteenth-century) tale of the suggestively named island of Unbuba – a word with vegetable connotations – in the island complex of Waqwhq, which boasts trees that bear ‘fruit like [beautiful] women . . . [who] hang by their hair. They come out of cases like big swords and when they feel the wind and sun, they yell, “Whq Whq” until their hair tears apart.’ Out of other trees come other women, larger than the first, ‘with longer hair and more perfect qualities’. A man who cuts off one of these women (by her hair) can have intercourse with her, and will find ‘great pleasure . . . not to be found in normal women’ – after which she dies, a ‘self-destructing female’, the ‘ultimate disposable woman’:27 Woman’s hair (that should not be uncovered) and woman’s voice (that should not be heard) come together under the heading of ‘awra, a notion embodying shame and imperfection, whose perimeters encompass the entirety of woman’s body.28 The hair, a point of erotic fascination in a society where modesty entails head covering, becomes the link between the human and the vegetal.29 Sailors who land on the Island of Women described in the anonymous ‘Ajh’ib al-Hind (‘The Wonders of India’) are exploited sexually until they die of exhaustion. On the Armiyhnus Island for Men and the Armiyhnus Island for Women, the sexes are divided: they meet once a year, in spring, for sexual intercourse, then return to their separate existences. In al-Qazwjnj’s (d. 682/1283) City of Women, the women warriors, uncontrolled by men, keep male slaves for
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their pleasure; male offspring are killed at birth.30 Such tales are read as projections of male fears and fantasies: ‘The eloquent strangeness of these female societies . . . resides at once in their sexuality and in their danger; the only island where the man can be assured of safety is al-Waqwâq, where it is the women-fruit who die.’31 Malti-Douglas devotes considerable attention to the ‘misogyny’ inscribed in the Arabic language itself, rooted, to all intents and purposes, in that quintessentially misogynist text, the Qur’hn – prior to which everything seems to be a blank, since the only earlier literature to survive is poetry. Among the Qur’anic words and phrases singled out for attention is kayd, which appears in the phrase inna kayda-kunna ‘a©jm, ‘Indeed your guile is great’, addressed by the Egyptian ruler to his wife in Surat Yusuf, the Sura of Joseph (Qur’hn 12:29) – in which Sura, we are told, lie the ‘literary roots’ of ‘the misogynist vision in Islam (and subsequently in the medieval Arabic literary subconscious)’.32 This is demonstrated, for example, by Ibn al-Baƒanunj’s use of the phrase ‘Indeed their guile is great’ as an organizing refrain (‘a semimagical formula’) in his Makhyid al-Niswhn. A passage in the Åayy ibn Yaq©hn of Ibn Sjnh (Avicenna, d. 428/1037), in which the male ruler of one kingdom is said to be ‘seduced’ ( futina bi ) by the female ruler of another, provokes a discussion of the word fitna, ‘that key concept which holds pride of place alongside (if not above) kayd in defining the dangers that woman, and specifically woman’s body, evokes in the medieval Arabic-Islamic mental universe’.33 I shall return to the issue of language in the second part of this chapter; here however we might recall J.-C. Vadet’s observation that the word fitna ‘is, in the religious language of the Muslims, one of the most ancient, most constant, and most susceptible of amazing variation’.34 Malti-Douglas concludes: The dream of a world without sex is tied in the Islamic mental universe to that of a world without women . . . . An Islamic misogynist worldview implies the absence of the female, preferably a total absence. There is concomitantly no obsession with virginity.35 The dream of a virgin mother, so central to Christian misogyny, is alien to its Islamic counterpart . . . . Where European Christian civilization has celebrated virginity and emphasized purity, Islam has opted for seclusion. On the level of social practice as on that of mentalités, homosociality takes precedence over heterosexuality.36 Given the emphasis in Islamic writings, from Qur’hn to Åadjth to fiqh to adab to epic and romance, on the importance of marriage (love poetry is, generically, something of an exception), and the almost universal condemnation of celibacy on religious, ethical and medical grounds, this conclusion comes (to say the least) as something of a surprise. One prose genre avoided by Malti-Douglas is history, which might, at least in theory, appear to provide a more ‘realistic’ or ‘mimetic’ depiction of women than, say, allegorical narratives or ‘ajh’ib tales. In Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past, Denise Spellberg devotes an entire chapter (‘Gender and the Politics of
Writing medieval women 53 Succession’) to the textual development of the ‘historical persona’ of ‘H’isha, the Prophet’s youngest and favourite wife. The daughter of Abu Bakr, who became the first caliph after the Prophet’s death, she survived both of them, and in the quarrels that arose over the leadership of the Muslims, she sided actively against ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib, the Prophet’s cousin and husband of his daughter Fhƒima. Spellberg discusses the representation of ‘H’isha in the context of succession politics and of ‘the issue of female involvement in government’ raised by ‘H’isha’s involvement in the first civil war in 35/656. It is on this chapter that I shall focus here.37 Spellberg argues that, for Sunnj and Shj‘j writers alike, ‘the remembrance of ‘H’isha charged Islamic historiography with crucial lessons for all Muslims about politics, gender, and the representation of the past as presented exclusively by men’ (emphasis added). Thus, while ‘H’isha’s legacy . . . included practical definitional precedents for the lives of Sunni Muslim women as represented in Islamic law and ritual practice . . . we have no accounts authored by medieval Muslim women that attest to their response to ‘H’isha as her legacy was presented to them for emulation or rejection.38 This produces something of a double bind; for if, as Spellberg quite reasonably observes, ‘we cannot deduce from the male debate about ‘A’isha the experience of real Muslim women’s lives, or surmise positions they might have articulated without documentation’, neither would it be judicious . . . to cease analysis of the premodern historical record because there were no female contributions to this written corpus. However, we can attempt to understand the particular historical context in which male imagination worked on multiple definitional levels . . . to shape ‘A’isha’s viability as a point of reference for shared Muslim communal concerns and qualified self-definition.39 A central issue for later historians writing on what became known retrospectively as the ‘first fitna’40 (and who were perhaps less concerned with ‘H’isha as a role model than with other, political issues) was ‘H’isha’s involvement in this first civil war, which began with a call for vengeance for the third caliph, ‘Uthmhn, murdered in 35/656, and with opposition to his being succeeded by ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib. Her involvement ‘provoked Shj‘j scorn and censure’, while ‘Sunnj authors had the more difficult task of defending ‘A’isha.’ For while her status as the Prophet’s wife and the daughter of Abu Bakr ‘made possible [her] part in the affairs of the Islamic community, it did not sanction such a role’.41 While Spellberg expresses qualified disagreement with the view, attributed to Nabia Abbott, that ‘ ‘A’isha’s defeat at the Battle of the Camel effectively excluded all Muslim women from participating in Islamic political life’,42 she argues nevertheless that it provided an ‘object lesson’ which ‘would be utilized consistently by male
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authors of the medieval communal record to prove their retrospective rule: all women, by definition of their gender, were a threat to the political order’.43 All of the ‘earliest written responses to ‘A’isha’s role in the first fitna’ demonstrate how her ‘political legacy was transformed into a convenient component of the medieval cultural construct which defined all women as threats to the maintenance of Islamic political order’.44 We may question the assumption that there existed a single ‘medieval communal record’ (or even two such records, one Sunnj, one Shj‘j); for both history and Åadjth, the two genres to which Spellberg has greatest recourse, demonstrate a marked lack of unity on every subject, and the first fitna is no exception. The contention that the ‘shared assumption’ of the sources is that if ‘H’isha had remained in her house, as directed by the Qur’hn, ‘the carnage of the Battle of the Camel would not have occurred’, oversimplifies the complexity of the sources.45 Compare, for example, Spellberg’s interpretation: ‘Ibn Sa‘d . . . concludes his biography of ‘A’isha with a citation of [the Qur’anic injunction to women to stay at home (33:33)] which reveals that she understood [its] application too late. It is reported that when she recited [the verse], she wept until she wet her veil46 with Ibn Sa‘d’s own words: [‘Umhra ibn ‘Umayr said:] Someone who had heard ‘H’isha told me . . . that when she read this verse, ‘Stay in your houses [and no not exhibit yourselves as did the women of the Jhhiliyya47]’ she wept until her kerchief was moistened.’48 No context for the account is given by Ibn Sa’d, and it is left to the reader to make his or her own interpretation, which may not be identical with Spellberg’s.49 The first civil war was a traumatic event in the life of the early Muslim community; its repercussions were to echo throughout the pre-modern period and extend into the modern. It is thus scarcely surprising to find ‘H’isha described in a Shj‘j ta‘ziya (a play re-enacting the martyrdom of ‘Hlj’s sons) ‘as a “mischievous,” “worthless,” and “ambitious” woman’. For Spellberg, this summons up ‘the nexus of gender and power . . . to confirm ‘H’isha’s illegitimate and destructive political presence in the Islamic community’.50 She goes on to cite the reported condemnation of ‘H’isha by another of the Prophet’s wives, Umm Salama (a partisan of ‘Hlj) prior to the Battle of the Camel. In the (Shj‘j) al-Ya’qubj’s (d. 284/894) account, Umm Salama reminded ‘H’isha in a censorious way that ‘the support of the religion does not depend upon the exertions of women.’ According to al-Ïabarj (d. 314/923), she added that ‘she too would march [against ‘Hlj’s opponents] if Allah had not forbidden the wives of the Prophet such actions in the Qur’an’, and sent her son instead.51 Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih (d. 328/940) included in his al-‘Iqd al-Farjd an alleged exchange of letters between the two women on the same issue.
Writing medieval women 55 I will return to these accounts in the second part of my discussion. On the basis of these and other texts52 Spellberg concludes that ‘H’isha’s participation in the battle ‘has a negative universal application for all women’ and that ‘as the defeated political activist, ‘A’isha is scripted to defend an untenable legacy as a woman already defined by the errors of female transgression.’53 On the strength of yet another text – al-Mas‘udj’s (d. 345/956) account of Zubayda, the widow of Hhrun al-Rashjd, who ‘refused to follow ‘A’isha’s example and seek vengeance’ for her murdered son, the caliph al-Amjn, after his defeat by his half-brother al-Ma’mun – Spellberg argues that ‘H’isha is implicitly equated with the human embodiment of fitna, a term which constitutes ‘a direct reference to male assumptions about the dangers of female sexuality’, even though, in the sources, she is ‘never defined directly as a female linked to fitna’. Nonetheless (and here Spellberg cites various åadjths, to be examined later, in which the Prophet is said to have ‘described women as synonymous with the greatest fitna confronting the community after his death’), she ‘implicitly participates in the connotations of the term as applied to all women in the third/ninth century sources by virtue of her gender’.54 While Åadjth and history may draw upon the same sources, they should not be confused: the motives and goals of the muåaddithun and those of the historians were not identical.55 Spellberg quotes yet another tradition in which the Prophet warned that a people ruled by a woman would not prosper. In al-Bukhhrj’s (d. 256/870) Íaåjå, the source of this åadjth states that he himself later ‘understood these words not as a reflection about the specific woman who ruled Iran, but as the truth about the battle of the Camel’.56 The åadjth runs as follows: [Abu Bakra stated:] At the time of the Battle of the Camel, when I had almost joined the Companions of the Camel [which carried ‘H’isha] to fight with them, God benefited me with a saying I had heard from the Prophet: when the Prophet learned that the Persians had appointed Kisrh’s daughter as their ruler, he said: ‘A people who appoint a woman over their affairs will not prosper.’57 Spellberg comments: A woman named Burandukht did in fact rule pre-Islamic Iran during the years 629–630, but we know little of her short reign for good or ill, except that she ruled long enough to be immortalized with a remarkably intricate hairstyle on coins.58 The Prophet had been twice right in ‘predicting’ disaster for those men ruled by women. The Sasanian empire would be conquered by invading Arab armies shortly after his death . . . and ‘A’isha would be remembered for her prominent presence in the disastrous Battle of the Camel.59 Two of Khusraw II Parvjz’s daughters ruled during the unstable period between his death and the accession of the last Sasanian monarch, Yazdigird III: Burhn, and the less well known Hzarmjdukht. Ïabarj refers to Burhn as a just
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ruler,60 as do Ibn al-Athjr (d. 630/1233) and the fifth/eleventh-century Persian historian Gardjzj;61 none comments on her gender. At the time of the Arab conquest, Iran was ruled by Yazdigird; but this restoration of male rule did not prevent what Muslim writers uniformly saw as the inevitable triumph of Islam. The åadjth cited above, which appears in the chapter on the Prophet’s campaigns (maghhzj), is preceded by another concerning the Prophet’s letter to the Sasanian ruler Khusraw II Parvjz; it thus belongs to those traditions which predict the Muslims’ victory over the Persians.62 Spellberg, who is the only one of our authors to venture beyond the realm of Arabic texts, discusses at some length the chapter ‘On the Subject of Those Who Wear the Veil’ in the Persian mirror for princes, Siyar al-Muluk, by the Saljuq vizier Ni©hm al-Mulk (d. 485/1092). Arguing that this chapter ‘may be read as a succinct treatise on medieval Islamic conceptions of gender and politics’, she postulates that Ni©hm al-Mulk also links women with fitna, with ‘its specifically feminine implications of uncontrolled sexuality’, when he states: ‘Their [women’s] commands are mostly the opposite of what is right. In all the ages when the king’s wife has dominated the king, nothing but infamy, evil, chaos [fitna], and corruption has resulted’.63 Hubert Darke’s translation reads: Naturally their commands are mostly the opposite of what is right, and mischief ensues; the king’s dignity suffers and the people are afflicted with trouble; disorder affects the state and the religion; men’s wealth is dissipated and the ruling class is put to vexation. In all ages nothing but disgrace, infamy, discord [fitna] and corruption have resulted when kings have been dominated by their wives.64 Quite what this has to do with sexuality, rather than with politics and the dangers of civil strife, is unclear. Ni©hm al-Mulk complains that women base their orders on what those in their employ, ‘such as chamberlains and servants’, tell them. This, like his criticisms of other contemporary practices and his virulent attacks on heresy, reflects the specific circumstances of his own situation.65 Spellberg admits that the vizier’s ‘anxiety about the influence of women in matters of succession was not purely theoretical’, but stemmed from his conflict with the sultan Malikshhh’s wife Turkhn Khhtun66 over Malikshhh’s succession, a conflict which, according to the historians, resulted in Ni©hm al-Mulk’s murder, and in which Turkhn Khhtun was (temporarily) successful.67 Nevertheless, she argues that Ni©hm al-Mulk’s choice of negative examples – Eve, Zulaykhh (the name popularly given to the would-be seductress of Joseph in Sura 12 of the Qur’hn), the Kayhnid queen Sudhba, and in particular ‘H’isha (mentioned briefly in connection with the succession to the Prophet)68 – ‘fit the frame of a prevalent medieval Islamic model of women as dangerous and destructive to political order’.69 They do indeed fit the frame of Ni©hm al-Mulk’s political polemic in this chapter; but elsewhere in his work we find little evidence that he held a negative view of women in general. In the book’s second section, in which this chapter occurs, we
Writing medieval women 57 read, for example, of how Zubayda admonished Hhrun al-Rashjd not to take liberties with the monies in the bayt al-mhl (public treasury), and how she herself outdid the caliph in pious works at her own personal expense; of the poor woman who cursed the second caliph, ‘Umar ibn al-Khaƒƒhb, renowned for his righteousness, for not attending to the needs of the distressed;70 and of the Turkish woman who used to frequent the åaram of the ruler Maåmud of Ghazna (388–421/998–1030) and who is said to have obtained for him an additional title from the caliph.71 Despite the fact that she has not addressed herself, in the main, to historical treatments of ‘H’isha, but rather to åadjths and to Ni©hm al-Mulk’s anecdotes, Spellberg concludes: The perception of ‘A’isha in the politics of Islamic succession . . . reflects the Sunni concept of her as a flawed ideal. ‘H’isha’s multivalent historical persona inspired praise and blame, defense and censure . . . [and] became a central, contested part of the representation of the past. [Sunnjs and Shj‘js alike] agreed fundamentally about her potential as a negative political example for all women.72 [. . .] In this didactic, retrospective process of writing history, the revealing application of the terms fitna and kayd to all women signalled that the wife of the Prophet could be conveniently and consistently promoted by male authorities . . . as a particularly powerful example of what they chose to define as a general phenomenon. Whether or not the fate of modern Muslim women in politics hangs on the continuing negative construction of ‘A’isha as a model, her centrality in the currents debate remains73 [emphases added]. For Spellberg, ‘H’isha’s example precludes the participation of all Muslim women, in all places and at all times, in political activity. For Malti-Douglas, ‘Arabo-Islamic’ discourse envisages an ideal world as a world without women. For Ahmed, the ‘textual edifice’ constructed by male writers of the ‘Abbasid period and elaborated by the likes of Ibn al-Åhjj enshrines within itself the degradation of Muslim women. For all three, women are silent, invisible, ghostly guests at the Islamic banquet. But is this the image presented by the texts themselves, or is it superimposed upon them by these writers? Is ‘Arabo-Islamic’ discourse a sort of automatic writing, predetermined by the religious parameters of ‘Islam’, whether or not those parameters derived from ‘Abbasid social mores, fear of female sexuality or a more generalized misogynistic vision? Let us look more closely at some of the key issues raised by all three books.
Re-readings In her discussion of the ‘Abbasids, Ahmed writes: The men creating the texts of the Abbasid age . . . grew up experiencing and internalizing the society’s assumptions about gender and about women and the structures of power governing the relations between the sexes, assumptions
58 Julie Scott Meisami and structures that were encoded into and manifested in the ordinary transactions of daily life. Such assumptions and practices in turn became inscribed in the texts the men wrote, in the form of prescriptive utterances about the nature and meaning of gender, or silently informed their texts simply as assumptions about the significance of women and gender. (Women were not, in this age, creators of texts in the way that they were in the first Islamic age, when they were among the authors of verbal texts, later written down by men.)74 It is self-evident that the members of a society – both male and female – absorb and internalize its cultural assumptions. But since human societies are dynamic, these assumptions are neither uniform nor unchanging; and not every individual accepts the same assumptions. Since this is not a sociological essay I will not discuss this issue here; nor will I deal at any length with the common misconception (seen in all three books) of an ‘orthodox’ Sunnj majority versus ‘heterodox’ or ‘dissenting’ minorities. Especially in the early centuries of Islam, choices were abundant; and it is as well to recall that not only do the four major Sunnj legal schools fail to agree on many points, but that in the fourth/tenth century in particular various Shj‘j tendencies flourished in many areas. Instead I will focus on the issue of the ‘male scriptor’, central to all three books, which leads to several interrelated themes: the connection between writing and power (both assumed to be exclusively male prerogatives); the exclusion of women from ‘public office’; and their relegation, in the area of literary creation, to the domain of orality, if not of silence, by those who wield power because they write.75 While women may ‘create texts’, through storytelling, the transmission of åadjths, the relation of historical accounts, they do not write them down. Let us examine these assumptions. First, women could and did write (although feminist critics frequently, and without much foundation, postulate their restricted access to education and to literacy).76 Spellberg’s observation (with specific reference to Åadjth compilations) that ‘there is, to date, no evidence of female Muslim scriptors in the medieval period’77 is both inaccurate and irrelevant: in the case of Åadjth especially, oral transmission was all-important even after the completion of the major compilations such as Bukhhrj’s Íaåjå, and men and women alike both heard and transmitted åadjths. That women also functioned as scribes and calligraphers is attested by such authorities as al-Jhåi© (d. 255/868–9), alÍafadj (d. 764/1363) and al-Suyuƒj (d. 911/1505), among others; and some were especially famed as copyists of the Qur’hn.78 As Mohammad Fadel points out, ‘In the domain of narration . . . all humans, free and slave, male and female, are equal.’79 Moreover, male authors (that is, creators or compilers) of texts were not necessarily their scriptors; the copying of books for publication was the task of professionals.80 In short, the figure of the ‘male scriptor’ – one exclusively privileged, on the basis of gender alone, with the ability to write, and hence with power – is a feminist construct, a myth. Malti-Douglas raises the issue of ‘narrative control’ in texts written or authored by males. For example, although Shahrazhd tells her stories (though not her own
Writing medieval women 59 story), it is only because they have been written down – and thus validated – by, or on the order of, men that they survive.81 (Shahriyhr does not, of course, write down the stories himself, but entrusts the task to a professional ‘scriptor’.)82 And if the fact that adab anecdotes about women are narrated by males ‘is the literary equivalent of having a woman speak from behind a curtain’, how then can they show us ‘how the woman, through her body, seeks to reverse narrative control’?83 Spellberg’s insistence that ‘H’isha’s ‘story’ is not ‘hers’, but that of the ‘select group of medieval Muslim men who shaped the memory and meaning of her life for their fellow believers’ also relates to this issue.84 ‘Narrative control’ is a function of narrative. Shahrazhd exists within a narrative; her ‘control’ of that narrative relates to the dynamics of the narrative itself. The women of adab anecdotes, whether historical or invented, exist within the micro-narratives of those anecdotes; although they may have broader typological functions (Zubayda, for example, as a model of pious charity – a function based on historical actuality),85 these functions are not uniformly evoked. That women’s wit and eloquence are so often celebrated (and in contexts far broader than those which have to do specifically with women, or ‘woman’) should make us pause for thought. Were we to accept that male authors are incapable of presenting women both honestly and sympathetically, we would have to throw out most of the world’s literature, ancient and modern, simply because it was written, or written down, by men. The association of writing with power is commonplace – rule is executed by the ‘men of the pen’ as well as by the ‘men of the sword’ – as is the frequent metaphorical comparison of pen to phallus or sword.86 But the metaphorical linkage of power and virility/fertility should not be pushed too far; nor should sexuality be confused with gender identity or gender role. For not only women, but also men outside the immediate circles of governing élites (as well as those ‘marginalized’ for various other reasons) were excluded from the official exercise of power. Everett Rowson, arguing that sexual behaviour is a private matter while gender role pertains to the public sphere, observes: In a society where public power was a monopoly of those marked for gender as (adult) men, those not so marked were, as such, no threat, nor was their gender identity a focus of great concern . . . . Women were excluded by anatomy from being sexually dominant, and thus their sexual behavior was irrelevant to questions of gender. Their conformity to an expected gender role, on the other hand, was not guaranteed; if they attempted to adopt masculine attributes – which in itself implied entry into the public world, at least potentially – men would react ambivalently . . . [and] would be unlikely to welcome a challenge from a realm where their own dominance could normally be taken as given, and which was in addition such an intense focus for their own honor.87 Gender and gender roles are social constructs, and subject to change over time, both in actuality and in textual representations. Arguments based on the
60 Julie Scott Meisami assumption that gender is a constant in any given society, culture or religion, and that it is uniformly so treated by writers, are therefore untenable.88 Thus when Spellberg argues that the ‘construction of ‘A’isha’s meaning . . . confirmed gender categories of both male and female, masculine and feminine’, she confuses sexuality with gender role. Muslim writers did not need to ‘reconfirm’ that gender categories were ‘inherently dual’, that humanity was divided into male and female: this was a given, and these categories (unlike, say, the distinction between Creator and created) were not opposed but complementary. Nor did they produce ‘intricate definitions of . . . male and female, masculine and feminine’ – except, perhaps, as Paula Sanders entertainingly points out, in the case of hermaphrodites: an ungendered individual could not be incorporated into a legal, social and religious structure in which male and female were mutually exclusive categories. The presence of one ungendered person . . . could compel an entire [familial and household] network to hold in abeyance questions of marriage, inheritance, and relations to one another . . . the ungendered person was not only unsocialized, but could desocialize everyone else by compelling them to suspend the normal formation of social and familial ties . . . . What was at stake for medieval Muslims in gendering one ungendered body was, by implication, gendering the most important body: the social body.89 While gender roles might be an issue, and while the definition of one’s biological identity was a crucial prerequisite for socialization, an individual’s ‘sexuality’ was not an object of concern. In this context, the ‘homosocial desire’ considered so problematic by Malti-Douglas has less to do with the fear of the dangerous female than with male dominance of public life.90 And what all the various ‘marginal’ types in adab works have in common is their exclusion from the power structure. The top of the adab social hierarchy (like that of society) is occupied by adult, power-wielding males, the lower levels by the excluded, among them the infirm, the insane, the immature and women. This is reflected by the fact that most adab encyclopedias begin with sections on rulers, viziers, prophets and so on, followed by miscellaneous chapters with no particular ranking (although women sometimes come last).91 The confusion between sexuality and gender role is also implicated in our authors’ palpable unease with texts that exhibit an openness towards sexual matters, and in their tendency to devalue heterosexual relationships unless these take place within monogamous marriage and are subject to conditions of political, social and legal equality. It is assumed that women were merely sexual objects, wives or concubines at the disposal of the men who owned them. Ahmed argues that in ‘Abbasid times a ‘fusion, at the social and experiential level, between the notions “object,” “slave,” and “woman” . . . contributed its own specific and unique blend of objectification and degradation to the idea of woman in the ethos of the day’.92 Spellberg attributes strictures against women’s involvement in politics to fear of female sexuality. In her discussion of adab, Malti-Douglas selects one personage said to exemplify this fear: Åubbh, who dispensed sexual
Writing medieval women 61 knowledge to the young girls (and, through her son, to the young men) of Medina. Åubbh’s ‘uncontrollable sexuality’ is seen in an anecdote in which, after her third daughter explained her favorite way of being possessed by her husband, Hubbâ replied: ‘Be quiet immediately. Your mother is urinating from desire.’ She [Åubbh] hesitates neither at a sort of bestiality nor at aggression against the male body.93 But the anecdote belongs to the genre of mujun,94 and is humorous rather than pejorative. It is Malti-Douglas’s translation of tabulu as ‘urinating’ (here, it means female ejaculation) which transforms Åubbh’s statement into an ‘act of aggression’ rather than an acknowledgement of arousal.95 Moreover, her reconstruction of Åubbh’s ‘character’ on the basis of a number of diverse sources is a highly dubious enterprise96 (as is also Spellberg’s reconstruction of ‘H’isha’s ‘persona’). Spellberg has little to say about sexuality except for some comments in her chapter on the åadjth al-ifk, the ‘affair of the slander’, in which ‘H’isha was accused of adultery and finally exculpated by a Qur’hnic revelation.97 In Ibn Hishhm’s (d. 218/833) Sjra (life of the Prophet), ‘H’isha herself narrates this account; but although she thus ‘appears to testify to her innocence on her own behalf ’ the narrative itself ‘is clearly a carefully structured retrospective version of events.’ That ‘H’isha’s ‘own words alone could not exonerate her from the charge of adultery’ was to have sweeping consequences, for divine intervention in her case did not protect other Muslim women from the unsupported charge of adultery . . . . Death remained the customary rather than the Islamic penalty for a woman whose male family members believed her guilty of bringing them dishonor through adultery. Even into the modern period, local family justice often prevailed98 [emphasis added]. The legal penalties for zinh’ (intercourse between a man and a woman who is not his wife or concubine, to which other heterosexual or homosexual acts may also be analogized) are identical for both parties, and the requirement of eyewitness testimony by four male witnesses is stringent;99 false accusations of zinh’ are among the five punishable åadd offences (offences for which penalties are laid down in the Qur’hn), and the account of ‘H’isha’s predicament clearly stands as a warning against slander. On the other hand, though the eyewitness requirement may have meant that ‘summary justice, although contrary to the law, was most often dealt by concerned third parties’,100 literary treatments of such unsanctioned relationships abound. Let us now return to Ahmed’s assertion that, in the records relating to the ‘Abbasid period, women are not ‘described as participants in or key contributors to the cultural life and productions of their society’.101 The ubiquitous presence of women in adab works as well as in histories not only of the ‘Abbasid but of later periods, not merely as anecdotal protagonists but as producers and patrons of culture, testifies to the falsity of this statement (as also, in the domain of learning, their
62 Julie Scott Meisami prominent role in the transmission of Åadjth). Women were prominent organizers and patrons of majhlis (‘salons’), gatherings for the performance of music and poetry and the discussion of literary and other topics; they were also important patrons of buildings, both private and, especially, public (madrasas, where law was studied, ribhƒs for Íufjs), and of other charitable works.102 That cultural life revolved to a large extent around women is demonstrated by many accounts in the Kithb al-Aghhnj (‘Book of Songs’) of Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj (d. c.363/972) and in other works, particularly those devoted specifically to women in which they are not ‘marginalized’ but central. Hilary Kilpatrick’s study of four such works from the late ‘Abbasid and Mamluk periods reveals both their diversity and their generally positive treatment of women. Al-Åadh’iq al-Ghannh’ fj Akhbhr al-Nish’ (‘The Lush Gardens of Anecdotes about Women’) by ‘Alj ibn Muåammad al-Ma‘hfirj (d. 605/1208) deals with women who are not merely pious, but independent, cultured and eloquent. The volume from Ibn al-Sh‘j’s (d. 674/1276) history of Damascus, Ta‘rjkh Madjnat Dimashq, titled Nish’ al-Khulafh’ (‘The Womenfolk of the Caliphs’), presents a varied, mainly favourable picture of royal wives and concubines, many of whom wielded substantial political influence. Al-Suyuƒj‘s (d. 911/1505) al-Musta©raf min Akhbhr al-Jawhrj, on slave girls, depicts such women as highly cultured and politically influential. Pseudo-Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Akhbhr al-Nish’ (‘Anecdotes of Women’) is thematically organized around various qualities, positive and negative, of women (as well as of some men), with a predilection for romantic stories of love, jealousy and treachery.103 Kilpatrick’s conclusions provide a salutary corrective to Malti-Douglas’s approach to adab. She notes that although all four books are compilations of material used in earlier literary works . . . they are anything but identical. The differences between them suggest that the designation ‘compilation’ is no more, and no less, useful in the context of Arabic adab literature than the term ‘novel’ is in the context of modern literatures. While all four share a common subject, they do not share a common approach, much less a common attitude towards women and ‘owe their individuality largely to their authors’ ideological orientation’, which affects both the work’s form and its content, and which must be placed in its historical and cultural context. The author’s attitude towards his sources is crucial: does he ‘seek to reproduce them accurately . . . or does he feel at liberty to adapt and combine them, modify their style or rewrite parts of them?’ The study of the latter, ‘libertarian’ tendency promises to ‘throw light on the survival of the literary heritage as a living tradition’.104 The works themselves are valuable as sources for the study both of literary treatments of women and of social and cultural history. It might be argued that, while women, may have been both patrons and producers of culture, they remained secluded in their own households and exerted little or no influence outside their own domestic space. Ahmed’s categorical
Writing medieval women 63 statement that women were excluded from participation in politics reflects the modern assumption that politics involves the public sphere only; but in the medieval Islamic world, politics must be seen as a continuum between public and private (as Ni©hm al-Mulk’s animadversions make clear). Spellberg’s argument is more specific: that ‘H’isha provides a negative example of the dangers of women’s political influence which is invoked repeatedly by male authors and applied by them to all women. Much of this argument hinges on Umm Salama’s alleged rebuke of ‘H’isha before the Battle of the Camel. We noted earlier certain discrepancies in Spellberg’s reading of several accounts concerning this incident; let us now take a closer look at these accounts. The issue at stake is the decision, by ‘H’isha, Ïalåa and al-Zubayr, to seek vengeance for the murder of ‘Uthmhn, and to demand that his successor, ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib, deliver up his killers. (We will not be concerned here – and neither is Spellberg – with the many conflicting accusations and counter-accusations between the parties involved.) According to Ya‘qubj, after Umm Salama’s rebuke ‘H’isha determined to stay in Mecca (where she had gone on pilgrimage before ‘Uthmhn’s murder), but was persuaded by Ïalåa and al-Zubayr to march to Basra.105 In Ïabarj’s account, Umm Salama’s words are addressed not to ‘H’isha but to ‘Alj. When the latter, in Medina, received a letter from Umm al-Fa∂l in Mecca with news of the rising against him,106 his supporters declared their determination to resist. Umm Salama then got up and said: ‘Commander of the Faithful! But for the fact that I would be disobeying Allhh and that you wouldn’t accept it from me, I would come out with you. But here is my son ‘Umar . . .’107 [emphasis added]. The Prophet’s other wives had agreed to march with ‘H’isha against ‘Alj in Medina, but changed their minds when she determined to go to Basra. Åafßa still wished to accompany her, but when her brother ‘Abd Allhh asked her to stay, she wrote to ‘H’isha saying: ‘ ‘Abdallhh has prevented me from coming out.’108 In the exchange of letters between the two women which appears in Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih’s al-‘Iqd al-Farjd, Umm Salama condemns ‘H’isha for leaving her house, and states: ‘If the Prophet knew that women were permitted to engage in battle, then he would have authorized you.’ Observing that ‘the supports of the faith do not rest upon women,’ she adds: ‘You know that he [the Prophet] has prohibited you from taking a prominent place in the land.’ In her brief response, ‘H’isha rejects Umm Salama’s advice. Spellberg says: ‘It would be naive to take this exchange as a confirmed piece of historical altercation’; it is, rather, ‘a contrived version of an earlier, less detailed argument. Moreover, with time, accretions have added the significant factor of the Prophet’s express disapproval’.109 Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih (who died in 328/940, seven years after Ïabarj) relied heavily on al-Madh’inj (d. 288/842–3), who was used extensively by many later historians. But as each of these accounts both omits and adds specific, and different, details, the theory of ‘accretions’ is not really tenable. Moreover, the first two accounts contradict each other: Ya‘qubj places Umm Salama in Mecca, with ‘H’ isha; Ïabarj
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places her in Medina, with ‘Alj. It was perhaps to solve this problem,110 which Spellberg does not remark upon, that Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih invented the exchange of letters, which occupies quite a minor place in his account. One might imagine that the discrepancies in such accounts reveal their authors’ partisan biases rather than any generalized assumptions about women’s involvement in politics (which, in ‘H’isha’s case, did not cease after her defeat).111 Thus in all accounts (but especially Ïabarj’s), criticisms of ‘H’isha are voiced by supporters of ‘Alj. Ïalåa and al-Zubayr come in for even greater censure, and are generally viewed as having persuaded ‘H’isha to march on Basra. In one episode, her party halts at the oasis of al-Åaw’ab, whose howling dogs are seen by her as fulfilling a prediction of the Prophet’s; she wishes to turn back, but is told (by different persons in different accounts) that the place is not in fact al-Åaw’ab.112 The accounts vary considerably: Mas‘udj, for example, comments that ‘this was the first false testimony given in Islam’.113 Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) stresses that none of the parties concerned went forth with the intention to do battle.114 Nor should we be unmindful of the personal animosities which the sources portray as existing between Umm Salama and ‘H’isha and between ‘H’isha and ‘Alj, animosities which were reflected in factional groupings in the early Muslim community.115 Yet on the basis of such ‘evidence’, Spellberg argues that, whether Sunnj or Shj‘j, medieval writers’ treatments of ‘H’isha indicate ‘a larger point of consensus concerning appropriate behavior’.116 If this ‘larger point of consensus’ did indeed exist, we would expect to find it expressed in treatments of other women as well. In fact, we do not: most historians treat women in the same way as they do men. If the outcome of a woman’s actions was positive, the woman might be praised for her wisdom, perspicacity, determination and so on; if it was negative, the old saw about women’s malign influence might be trotted out, as if by rote; more often, the woman’s actions were reported without comment. This of course oversimplifies matters by obscuring differences between individual writers; but limitations of space preclude a more detailed discussion. By way of example, we might compare Miskawayh’s (d. 421/1030) highly favourable account of the role played by one Åusn of Shiraz in bringing about the deposition of the caliph al-Muttaqj and the accession of al-Mustakfj in 333/944117 – Åusn was later made al-Mustakfj’s stewardess (qahramhna) – with al-Rudhrhwarj’s (d. 488/1095) criticism of the Buyid ruler Íamßhm al-Dawla’s mother, who prevailed upon her son to divide the vizierate between her favourite, Ibn Barmuya, and ‘Abd al-‘Azjz ibn Yusuf, in 375/985, with disastrous consequences. Al-Rudhrhwarj comments: Indeed when women interfere in politics, an unhealthy state of affairs results, disintegration begins and success departs. When they control affairs, the consequences are disastrous; the edifice is ruined. When they have a voice in the council, wrong measures are adopted. Destruction hastens upon the state as fast as a torrent descending.118 The discrepancy between the two authors (Rudhrhwarj’s history is a continuation of Miskawayh’s) reflects not the existence of a consensus but the absence of one,
Writing medieval women 65 as it does also the very notable differences in temperament and in purpose between Miskawayh and Rudhrhwarj.119 This leads us to a major problem with all three books: the selection and use, or misuse, of texts. With the partial exception of Malti-Douglas, none of our authors actually engages with the texts she cites, which are in general not read, but merely sifted to provide evidence for a narrative plotted in advance: the narrative of Islamic misogyny. Ahmed in particular relies heavily, and largely uncritically, on secondary works, many of them classics of Orientalist scholarship, such as Nabia Abbott’s study of ‘H’isha (1942) and her Two Queens of Baghdad (1946). The primary sources cited in Ahmed’s reconstruction of the early centuries of Islam consist chiefly of Åadjth collections (among which Bukhhrj’s Íaåjå takes pride of place) and biographies of the Prophet or his Companions; but the tendency to quote from secondary rather than primary sources is marked. Much important material is ignored, much is quoted out of context, and literary sources, including history, are scarcely used. For Mamluk Cairo, Ibn al-Åhjj’s, Madkhal is the only primary source quoted extensively. As Huda Lutfi has observed, the Madkhal’s true importance lies in the fact that ‘it allows us to explore the discrepancy between theoretical and actual restrictions on women’ and furnishes us with ‘details concerning the lives of ordinary and obscure people . . . which are systematically ignored in the historical literature’.120 Jonathan Berkey comments that such works as Ibn al-Åhjj’s when used in conjunction with other sources . . . paint a picture of radical upheaval in the real, as opposed to the imagined, experience of Islam by those who called themselves ‘Muslim’. More importantly, in the tension between those who condemned innovations and the society which allegedly perpetrated them, we can detect the outlines of a truly creative process of the cultural construction of Islam, a category which in fact was always dynamic, never static.121 Ahmed’s privileging of religious texts (the ‘idealist bias’) presents a skewed picture of both textual and real worlds, reading both as if they were static rather than dynamic. Equally skewed is the textual world constructed by Malti-Douglas’s representatives of ‘Arabo-Islamic discourse’. While her range is far broader than Ahmed’s, and while she focuses on literary works, many of these, notably Åayy ibn Yaq©hn and other allegorical narratives, can scarcely be considered either representative or authoritative, and the centrality of such narratives – whose ‘antifemale nature . . . marks a central current of Sufism’, and whose narrators ‘without exception, describe the female principle as negative and something that must be escaped’122 – is open to question. Such allegories – not all of which are Íufj – probably had limited circulation, confined to circles connected with their authors. Despite its popularity in modern times both in the Arab world and in the West, it is doubtful that Ibn Ïufayl’s Åayy was widely circulated in his own time. The possible danger is indicated by the observations of Ibn Sa‘jd al-Andalusj (d. 685/1266) on the hostility of the Almohad regime under which Ibn Ïufayl lived towards Andalusian and Maghribi scholars, especially philosophers; even in his
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own time. He writes, ‘In Spain philosophy is an abhorred field of inquiry that cannot be pursued openly by its adherents, who, for the same reason, must keep their works hidden.’123 At the other end of the Islamic world, Peter Heath has suggested that while Ibn Sjnh (who died, according to his biographer, from a colic brought on by the ‘vigorous exercise’ of the sexual faculty)124 might have written his philosophical allegories for an audience ‘composed solely of his most advanced students’; it is more likely that he wrote them for himself.125 Moreover, Malti-Douglas’s tendency to read such narratives mimetically, coupled (paradoxically) with an attempt to uncover their ‘unconscious’ signification,126 ignores their allegorical intent, which arguably had little or nothing to do with women, or ‘woman’. Malti-Douglas’s engagement with her texts consists largely in reading into, not out of them. Thus, for example, while arguing that although ‘the [repetitious] nature of [adab texts] might make the reader expect the only result of their analysis to be the delimitation of an unchanging and static Islamic essence,’ they in fact represent a living tradition in which ‘later authors dialectically interacted with earlier ones, as we ourselves shall be doing’127 (emphasis added). Yet by treating all the texts as examples of ‘gender politics’, she arrives precisely at an essentialist construction of Islam and of ‘Arabo-Islamic discourse’. As for the undoubtedly popular ‘ajh’ib tales, one might suggest that these are precisely what their name implies: accounts of marvels which testify to the unlimited wonders of God’s creation. The world of ‘ajh’ib is also that of the imagination, even if its marvellous geography is presented as veridical;128 and such accounts may be seen as demonstrating ‘the open-mindedness of imagination, of mental structures in the Arabo-Islamic Middle Ages’.129 Many women, both real and imaginary, are absent from Malti-Douglas’s textual world: the heroines of the popular sjras,130 who are as able combatants as the men;131 the legendary saints of mysticism, such as Rhbi‘a (who rates a footnote on p. 109) or the women who taught and inspired Ibn ‘Arabj;132 and the ‘forgotten queens of Islam’, to borrow the title of Fatima Mernissi’s book. 133 And where are the shrews and scolds of satire, the sorceresses who weave their spells in the Nights and the sjras, and the man-eating ghul of Arabian legend? All these and more still await serious, and comparative, study. Spellberg, like Ahmed, tends to privilege religious texts, although she also has recourse to literary works and to historians. But in general she too merely sifts the texts for evidence to prove her point – that ‘H’isha provided a negative role model for all women – and not even the contradictory nature of both Åadjth materials and historical accounts can swerve her from her course. Her use of Åadjth is problematic, not least because she seems unaware of recent, and not so recent, studies concerned with questions of authenticity. For example, on the basis of two ‘anti-female’ traditions which state that women are the greatest fitna and the majority of the inhabitants of Hell, Spellberg concludes that as defined in third/ninth century hadith, women are implicitly perceived as flawed and prone to err. The same sources also imply that the cause of female overrepresentation in the fire is their characteristic lack of ‘aql, or reason . . . These early, powerful definitions of the feminine as dangerous, sinful and
Writing medieval women 67 irrational set the stage for projections about the outcome of any potential female involvement in politics. Since all women were similarly flawed, the consequences of female rule are depicted as demonstrably dire. Such is the framework articulated in early traditions which cite ‘A’isha’s political legacy as mere confirmation of this misogynist argument.134 But the purpose of åadjth collections is not to define but to compile. ‘The integrity of [such individual compilations] did not become a principle of religious doctrine . . . a åadjth remained for all practical purposes a discrete unit divorced from any contiguous contextual matrix made up of other åadjths’.135 The overwhelming majority of åadjths on fitna have nothing to do with women; most are political and/or eschatological, and wealth is far more often termed the greatest fitna (trial, temptation) than are women.136 G. J. Juynboll – not cited by Spellberg – has concluded that both of the åadjths that women are the greatest fitna and the majority of the inhabitants of Hell – were forged by the Basran ascetic Sulaymhn ibn Ïarkhhn al-Taymj (d. 143/760).137 The various versions of the second åadjth ‘have one striking feature in common: they are all quoted in connection with the consideration that women in Islam are certainly not exempt from the duty of practising charity’. They also share a common textual feature: ‘women are addressed with the imperative taßaddaqna, “practice charity!” ’ followed, in most instances, ‘by the warning statement: “For I saw (in my dream) that you will constitute the largest category in Hell.” ’ The one major exception to this rule gives the story a twist diametrically opposed to this threat: after the order ‘practice charity’ had been given, the women hastened to comply, throwing down their earrings, ornaments and other jewelry onto a piece of cloth spread out on the ground for that purpose, in doing so being more generous than anybody else [author’s emphasis]. In Juynboll’s view, this version ‘constitutes . . . a frontal counterattack: it seems to be meant as an antidote against all the women-demeaning sayings current in those days.138 He concludes: Tradition collectors in early Islam may be visualized as always presenting virtually everything they had amassed on a certain legal or moral issue, provided the isnhds – either genuine accounts of a tradition’s transmission through history, or more or less ‘doctored’ – met their personal standards. If the situation as I depict it here is rejected, the legitimate question of why they did not get rid of the many contradictions with which their collections abound remains unanswered. It is difficult to define their position on certain issues. On the whole one gains the impression that they just gathered as much material as they could find rather than that they tried to achieve some sort of juridical, moral and ethical consistency, by weeding out that material that was in open conflict with some other material.139
68 Julie Scott Meisami Spellberg’s use of historical sources is no less uncritical than her use of Åadjth. In addition to the tendency to make blanket statements in the face of differing, and often conflicting, accounts, there is a marked absence of comparison and a complete disregard for context. Spellberg does, indeed, draw one comparison to support her argument that because of ‘H’isha’s example all women were excluded from politics: Zubayda, who after the murder of her son, the caliph al-Amjn, refused ‘to follow ‘A’isha’s example and seek vengeance on the battlefield . . . . Her rejection of ‘A’isha’s political legacy is a near paraphrase of Umm Salama’s speeches’ as she asks: ‘What do women from among the believers have to do with seeking vengeance and taking the field against warriors.’ She then ‘withdrew and went into deep mourning’.140 A closer look at this account reveals that this is not quite what Mas‘udj says. When Muåammad [al-Amjn] was killed, one of Zubayda’s eunuchs went to her and said: ‘What keeps you seated here, when the caliph has been killed?’ – ‘Woe to you! What should I do?’ – ‘Go out, and demand vengeance for (the shedding of ) his blood, as did ‘H’isha for the blood of ‘Uthmhn.’ – ‘Away, you bastard! What do women have to do with demanding revenge and joining battle with warriors?’ Then she commanded her robes of mourning (be brought), put on a rough hair-shirt, called for writing equipment and paper and wrote to al-Ma’mun: To the best Imhm who has risen from the noblest stock, the most virtuous of those who have ascended the minbar . . . When al-Ma’mun read her verses, he wept; then he said: ‘O God, I say, as did the caliph ‘Alj when informed of ‘Uthmhn’s murder: “By God, I did not kill him, nor did I order or approve (his murder)” . . .’141 If Zubayda is paralleled with ‘H’isha, so is Ma’mun with ‘Alj; the point of the account is not Zubayda’s rejection of (or ‘exclusion from’) politics, but her recognition of Ma’mun’s claim to the caliphate, as is declared in her poem,142 and her refusal to prolong the devastating civil war (also termed the fourth fitna). Hers is not a gender-based but a moral decision. Moreover, in Mas‘udj’s account of Amjn’s reign the caliph is presented in negative terms from the outset (in Zubayda’s prophetic dreams at the times of conception, giving birth and caring for the infant),143 while Zubayda is treated positively. Readers of the above account would, moreover, not have missed the ironic resonances between it and an earlier one, which states that when the caliph was besieged by Ma’mun’s troops ‘Umm Ja‘far [Zubayda] entered his presence weeping, and he said to her: “Be silent! Crowns are not made firm by women’s weeping and wailing, and the caliphate’s governance cannot be contained in the breasts of those who suckle infants! Begone!” ’144 Against the background of Amjn’s earlier remarks, and after many descriptions of his weakness and ineptitude, the damage inflicted on Baghdad during the siege, and the caliph’s murder, in thus concluding the story of Zubayda the irony in her rejoinder to the eunuch is palpable.
Writing medieval women 69 In at least two other accounts, Mas‘udj invokes the same ‘principle’ – that ‘women should not interfere in politics’ – to similar effect. One concerns al-Khayzurhn, who was first the concubine, then the wife of the caliph al-Mahdj (158–69/775–85), and mother of the caliphs al-Hhdj and Hhrun al-Rashjd. One day she was seated in her palace, in the company of the caliph’s concubines and some noble Hashimite women (members of the ‘Abbasid family), amongst whom was Zaynab bint Sulaymhn ibn ‘Alj, whose father was the grandson of the Prophet’s uncle al-‘Abbhs. (She thus ranked very high among ‘Abbasid ladies; Mahdj called her ‘the doyenne of our house’.) Khayzurhn had been instructed by Mahdj to frequent Zaynab and to emulate her manners and morals. A eunuch entered and announced that a beautiful woman dressed in rags, who would not give her name to any but Khayzurhn, sought admission. Given leave to enter, the woman proved to be Muzna, widow of the last Umayyad caliph, Marwhn II (127–32/744–50). Now destitute, she had come to place herself under Khayzurhn’s protection. Khayzurhn wept; but Zaynab looked at Muzna and said: May God never relieve your misery, Muzna! Do you remember (the day) I came into your presence at Åarrhn . . . [and] asked you for the body of the Imhm Ibrahjm? You refused me and ordered that I be turned out, saying: ‘It is not for women to meddle in the business of men!’ Now the Imhm Ibrhhjm ibn Muåammad ibn ‘Alj had been the head of the ‘Abbasid family, Muzna’s second cousin – and Zaynab’s husband’s father. He had given the order for the rising that would eventually overthrow Marwhn, who imprisoned him in Åarrhn, where he died in 132/749. Marwhn, more generous than Muzna, returned Ibrhhjm’s body to Zaynab. Muzna replied: By God, I do not think I have been reduced to this state you see me in save for the sake of that action of mine. But it is as though you approved it, and have incited this noble lady [Khayzurhn] to do the same. You should rather encourage her to do good and forsake requiting (evil) with evil, so as to preserve her happiness and strengthen her piety.145 Moved by these words, Khayzurhn secretly took Muzna under her wing, an act which earned her Mahdj’s unqualified approval, while Zaynab was sharply criticized for her ungenerous conduct. The point of this story, as of the preceding one, is not that women should not interfere in men’s affairs, but that women face the same moral choices as do men. Zaynab’s appeal to the ‘principle’ of non-interference is shown for what it was: an abjuration of moral responsibility. As such, it calls the principle itself into question.146 Another example given by Mas‘udj deals with more recent history. In 286/899 the caliph al-Mu‘ta∂id laid siege to Hmid, where the rebel Muåammad ibn Aåmad ibn ‘Ish ibn al-Shaykh ‘Abd al-Razzhq had taken refuge. The caliph sent
70 Julie Scott Meisami Shu‘la ibn Shihhb al-Yashkurj to him to argue the unjustness of his revolt; afterwards, Ibn Shihhb was received by the rebel’s aunt, Umm al-Sharjf, who asked him: ‘How did you leave the caliph?’ Ibn Shihhb praised the caliph’s nobility, justice and support of correct belief; Umm al-Sharjf agreed with these praises and added her own, then asked: ‘And how did you find our friend?’ (meaning her nephew). Ibn Shihhb replied that he had found a young man, prideful, governed by fools whose bad advice would bring about his ruin. Umm al-Sharjf, in an attempt to undo the harm caused by these ‘advisors’, then wrote her nephew a letter urging him to make his peace with the caliph. Ibn Shihhb continues: I took the letter and delivered it to Muåammad ibn Aåmad. When he had read it he threw it back at me and said: ‘O Yashkurj, states are not governed by the opinions of women, nor are kingdoms guided by their intellects! Go back to your master!’ Ibn Shihhb did so, and showed Umm al-Sharjf ’s letter to the caliph, who greatly approved its wisdom and eloquence. In the end, when Mu‘ta∂id finally took Hmid, it was thanks to Umm al-Sharjf ’s intercession and the respect in which she was held by the caliph that he was moved to pardon many of the rebels – including the nephew – ‘whose crimes [says Ibn Shihhb] were great and who were deserving of punishment’.147 These examples illustrate the problems arising from a simplistic reading of historical, or any other, texts. First, we may note that all three episodes are highly literary: tightly constructed and dramatically presented, with a vivid use of direct discourse and, in the episodes relating to Zubayda and Umm al-Sharjf, of poetry. As Stefan Leder has shown, such literary techniques are typical of the narrative structure of the khabar or ‘report’, the basic textual unit in medieval Arabic prose.148 Of direct discourse in the khabar Leder states: ‘the intentions of the characters tend to be expressed in their own words. The narrator neither explains nor interferes, and thus does not indicate that he is the omniscient creator of the narrative.’149 I would not, however, completely agree with his view that this ‘concealment of authorship’ was meant to contribute ‘to the process of forming a consensus on accepted tradition’, nor that ‘The absence of an author marks the absence of individual perception and reasoning as the focus of literary communication.’150 In a sophisticated writer like Mas‘udj – and, I would argue, also in a seemingly omnivorous one like Ïabarj – the absence of authorial comment may be seen as a deliberate invitation to interpretation, while authorial selectivity may subtly guide that interpretation. Second, the dramatic high point in the three episodes revolves around a woman’s ‘political’ action; but what is at stake is not whether or not women should ‘participate in politics’ (it is clearly taken for granted that they do and will), but rather the political and moral responsibilities of all individuals in positions of influence and power. Note, further, that all three accounts take place against the background of civil strife within the Muslim community. This, surely, is the greatest fitna. The assumption underlying such readings as Spellberg’s is that the texts are transparent, that they lack complexity or ambiguity, that they may legitimately
Writing medieval women 71 be decontextualized, and that their primary subject is women. The issue of transparency also arises with respect to more precise matters of language; for while our authors are not close (or discriminating) readers of texts, a preoccupation with language marks both Malti-Douglas’s book and, to a lesser extent, Spellberg’s. Malti-Douglas deals at length with the ‘misogynist attitude . . . exemplified by the word kayd’ whose ‘semantic field . . . links the unclean female body to the notions of deception, or of stratagem conceived negatively’. The Qur’anic phrase inna kaydakunna ‘a©jm, ‘Indeed your guile is great’, with its use of the feminine plural (quoted by the two brothers in the Nights when they discover thay have been tricked by the lady in the glass box), ‘transposes the seductive act of a single woman [the Egyptian ruler’s wife] and exploits it to pass judgement on the totality of womankind’.151 Arabic semantic fields are somewhat akin to minefields, and this one is no exception. For while kayd in the sense of ‘menstruation’ is indeed used only for women,152 it also means, more generally and less genderedly, ‘vomit’. Further, it occurs elsewhere in the same Sura, in its sense of ‘plot’, ‘trick’, predicated of God, for example, Qur’hn 12:76, kadhhlika kidnh li-Yusuf, ‘Thus did We devise a plan for Joseph’. Thus the Sura itself testifies to the varied senses of the root /kyd/.153 But for Malti-Douglas the Joseph story subsumes ‘all of woman’s incorrect or aggressive behavior’. ‘Henceforward, the formula “Indeed your guile is great,” and its variations . . . will suffice to encode what is perceived as the negative and pervasive aspects of woman’s sexuality.’ Such is the interpretation placed on Ibn al-Baƒanunj’s use of the phrase as an organizing refrain in his Makhyid al-Niswhn, often preceded by the formula na‘udhu billhh, ‘We seek protection from God.’ With the latter phrase, through his use of the first person plural (for which there is no ‘grammatical necessity’), Ibn al-Baƒanunj is ‘able to englobe other speakers, who would naturally be of male gender since it is from the guile of the female gender that the deity’s protection is sought’.154 That the expression is formulaic, and is used by both male and female speakers in actual speech, is not noted; nor is the possibility considered that Ibn al-Baƒanunj’s juxtaposition of stories and ‘warnings’ might serve to call into question the whole notion of ‘women’s wiles’. As regards Surat Yusuf in particular, we should note the contrast between exegetical treatments which emphasize ‘[Zulaykhh’s] nature as a symbol of the sexually aggressive, destabilizing, and dangerous nature of women as a whole’ and other treatments in popular storytelling, romances and so on.155 It is probably in the latter context that we should read Ibn al-Baƒanunj’s treatment of the Joseph story. We are obliged to take Malti-Douglas’s summary of his Makhyid al-Niswhn on trust, as the Cairo manuscript remains unpublished. Nevertheless, we may question her reading of his account of Zulaykhh’s reunion with Joseph, which Joseph concludes with a replay of the Qur’anic seduction scene. On their wedding night, Zulaykhh rejects Joseph’s advances. He grabs her shirt; she pulls away, and her shirt is torn. The angel Gabriel appears and tells Joseph, ‘A tearing of a shirt for a tearing of a shirt and an escape for an escape.’ Reconciliation can only come about through the exorcism of Zulaykha’s original sin.156
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One might ask whether it is not Zulaykhh’s lust, but Joseph’s self-righteous pride that must be exorcized? According to Ïabarj, Joseph’s imprisonment [after the Egyptian women, amazed at his beauty, cut themselves with knives] was a period of atonement. It was also a necessary societal measure, since the beautiful Joseph had become a fitna (‘source of social chaos’), and such must be confined and concealed in order to protect the smooth workings of society.157 But the most loaded word of all is fitna. Malti-Douglas launches her discussion of this word with a passage from the Åayy ibn Yaq©hn of Ibn Sjnh, which tells of a ‘beautiful female ruler who governs a carefree people. Her role is apparently benign. But [she] also appears as the seductress of the ruler of a kingdom whose inhabitants like to kill and mutilate’ (that this might have been a good thing is evidently not an option). She continues: ‘Futina bi, to be seduced by, is in the passive. The woman is the source of the action, the man its object.’ The same root ‘gives us fitna, that key concept which holds pride of place alongside (if not above) kayd in defining the dangers that woman, and specifically woman’s body, evokes in the medieval Arabic-Islamic mental universe’.158 But in Ibn Sjnh’s allegory, the ‘beautiful female ruler’ is the planet Venus, the male ruler Mars, and their ‘kingdoms’ their respective spheres. When Mars is ‘charmed’ by Venus (qad futina . . . bi al-malika al-åusnh),159 that is, when they are in conjunction, planetary harmony, rather than discord, is produced.160 There is no negative implication – the conjunction was deemed auspicious – but in the eagerness to demonstrate the inbuilt misogyny not only of Islam but of its languages, context is ignored in favour of polemic. Both Malti-Douglas and Spellberg derive their arguments for the misogynistic implications of fitna from Fatima Mernissi.161 An issue that Malti-Douglas, curiously, does not raise is that of grammatically feminine words such as dunyh, ‘world’, nafs, ‘soul’ (and, indeed, fitna), which provided convenient pegs on which to hang sermons or poems admonishing or blaming the soul, the material world and so on. There is no doubt that Islamic, like other societies, saw uncontrolled sexual activity as potentially disruptive socially and sought to regulate it. No aspect of life in medieval Islamic societies was free from considerations of sex. The boundary between male and female was drawn firmly and was deeply embedded both in views of the cosmos and in social structures. The most visible expression of this boundary, the social segregation of men and women, was only a particularly concrete demonstration of the notion that male and female were opposites, and that an ordered human society depended on maintaining boundaries that had been ordained by God.162 The notion of ‘opposites’ should not be overstressed: unlike the distinction between man and God, who belong to mutually exclusive categories, male and
Writing medieval women 73 female are both subsumed under the single category of ‘humankind.’ On the broader social implications of fitna, Sanders notes: ‘Although the danger [of fitna] was located among women, it is not their being that represented disorder, but the possibilities of their illicit relationships with men’, who ‘were considered susceptible to seduction and the actors’.163 The sexual activity of males (especially those lower in the social hierarchy) was as rigidly controlled as that of females – perhaps even more so, since men were more vulnerable to attack in the case of discrepancy ‘between their public image as dominant persons and their private role as sexually submissive’;164 such regulation applied also to homosexual relations. Such restrictions were motivated less by hatred or fear of women than by the ideal of a well-ordered polis based on a perceived natural hierarchy encompassing all its members, male and female, as well as by more practical considerations bound up with ideas of status, reputation and honour. To explore these issues further is beyond the scope of the present essay, the primary purpose of which has been to point out the dangers inherent in treating texts – and not only complex literary texts such as adab or history, but more apparently normative and straightforward religious texts – as simple reflections either of social realities or of ideological positions. What the texts themselves reveal is not a univocal narrative of Islamic misogyny, reiterated down the ages by ‘male Muslim scriptors’, far less a ‘flight from the female’ which informs a putative ‘Arabo-Islamic discourse’ concerned solely with gender politics. What both those texts cited by our authors as well as many others ignored by them reveal is a multiplicity both of experiential realities and of modes of textual representation of women. The importance of women as authorities for and transmitters of åadjth, for example, precludes the silencing of women’s voices, while in adab anecdotes, women’s voices as well as men’s are heard in a wide variety of contexts unrelated to gender or to ‘sexuality’ in a reductive sense. The soaring flights of love poetry, the celebrations of love and sensuality in (for example) the Persian romances, testify to mutual yearnings and to the delights of consummation. It is remarkable how rarely our authors address the issue of love – all the more so, given the abundance of writings on the subject in Arabic as well as other languages, and the prominence of love as a socio-cultural phenomenon associated with nobility of nature and refined conduct.165 Are we to excise these voices from the narrative, on the assumption that, since the texts were written by men, they are the constructs of male fantasies? Are we further to assume that ‘male Muslim scriptors’ were devoid of imagination or sophistication; bereft of humour, irony or a sense of ambiguity; possessed of no political or moral agendas or prejudices that go beyond simple misogyny or indeed may have nothing to do with women, or with ‘woman’? Not that there were no misogynists in medieval Islamic societies, any more than in ours (and the ‘flight from the female’ is seen in alarming abundance in much contemporary literature). But to substitute a uniform ‘ideology’ of gender for what might be called an ‘ideal’, or multiple ideals, of gender – which may or may not either influence or reflect reality – is to deny medieval Muslim men and women alike – whether ‘real’ or literary constructs – any claim to personhood.
74 Julie Scott Meisami Spellberg devotes considerably less space to the modern period than do Ahmed and Malti-Douglas; nevertheless, implicit in her arguments is that the roots of modern problems facing women lie in the medieval period, and specifically in ambivalent representations of ‘H’isha as, on the one hand, a model of female piety and, on the other, an exemplar of the disastrous consequences of women’s political involvement. The true intent of all three authors is not to explore either the lives of medieval Muslim women or the ways in which they are represented in medieval texts, but to demonstrate that ‘Islam’ harbours a deeply negative attitude towards women, and that the roots of present problems lie in the Islamic past. To this end, an entire literary-cultural tradition is reduced to a lowest common denominator: a presumed obsession with women which informs each and every reference to a woman, or women, in any (male-authored) text: if a woman is mentioned, ‘woman’ – all women – must be implicated, and the author’s statement must be both definitive and prejudiced. Thus for example in accounts of the first fitna, civil strife cannot be the real issue, and anything said of ‘H’isha must apply to all women, for all time. Whose, we might ask, is the obsession? Such studies as the three discussed here obscure their purported subject behind the veils of their authors’ own prejudices and preconceptions, and perpetuate stereotypes of Islam based on modern Western cultural assumptions. If we wish to redress this situation, we need to approach the texts afresh, to see what they might actually be saying rather than reading into them what we expect, or wish, to find. The first step in this direction must be to discard the ‘idealist bias’ against which Keddie warned, opening our minds instead to the multiplicity of voices which inform medieval Islamic literatures and which speak of complex attitudes and situations. The second step is to cease privileging certain classes of texts as enshrining in themselves normative definitions of ‘the female’ (or, for that matter, of ‘the male’), and to examine other, largely underexploited sources;166 and to refrain from reading complex literary works as if they were nothing more than tracts. We must also abandon the hackneyed ‘women in . . .’ approach represented by so many studies, which is narrative and descriptive rather than analytical, and which typically begins with the Qur’hn and Åadjth and then moves through the customary historical periodization with its attendant preconceptions, in favour of a more analytical approach directed at specific texts.167 In studying these, we must consider such factors as authorial intent, patronage and audience, questions of genre, form and style, of relationships to sources and so on. Above all, we must be sensitive to textual contexts and to the subtleties of language, and adopt a comparative method that will elucidate both similarities and differences with other literary and cultural traditions. It is true that our difficulties are compounded by the ‘traditionalist’ nature of the sources themselves ‘in which important variations over space as well as in time are largely masked by adherence to canonical forms’.168 Once this is recognized, however, we will be able to perceive such variations more clearly. We should extend our comparative method to benefit from the insights provided in studies in other disciplines, which seem to have attracted little if any interest on the part of authors writing about representations of Muslim women, presumably because
Writing medieval women 75 Islam is so ‘Other’, although this does not prevent such authors from applying the dicta of modern Western feminist critics (Malti-Douglas, for example, cites such figures as Luce Irigaray, Toril Moi and Eve Sedgwick, among others). I know of no work on representations of Muslim women, whether in early sources or in later historiography, comparable to the volume edited by Stuard (1987) for medieval Europe, or Pomeroy (1994)169 for classical antiquity, both of which raise important methodological issues not addressed by our authors.170 Pomeroy’s conclusion, which contrasts markedly with that of our authors, is that neither a ‘polemic against men’ nor ‘a verdict based on modern principles’ is a proper scholarly objective in the study of representations of women.171
Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Waines (1982), p. 643. Keddie (1979), p. 225. Keddie (1979), p. 227. Keddie (1979), pp. 227–8. Ahmed (1992), pp. 95, 3. Ahmed (1992), p. 64. For a criticism of this position, see Fadel (1997), especially pp. 185–6. Ahmed (1992), pp. 66–7. See also Ahmed (1991), p. 58: ‘Patriarchal marriage and male dominance were basic components of the institution of marriage as established by Muhammad in the first Islamic society, and yet Islam preached an ethical egalitarianism as a fundamental part of its broader spiritual message’ (emphasis added). For a discussion of this ‘Islamic’ institution in earlier and contemporary Mediterranean societies, see Keddie (1991). On Islamic ‘patriarchy’ within the larger context of male-dominated societies in the Middle East and Africa, see Kandiyoti (1991). Ahmed (1992), pp. 80, 81–2, 86, 87. The Arab conquest of the Persian empire began with the defeat of Yazdigird III at the battle of Qhdisiyya in c.16/636. Ahmed (1992), p. 79. Marriage, however, is a key issue for Ahmed, who states: ‘During the transition from the first Muslim community to Abbasid society attitudes towards women and marriage changed extensively concerning everything from the acceptability of marrying nonvirgins, such as widows and divorcées – hideous and shameful matches in Abbasid literature – to women’s legitimate expectations in marriage’ (1992, p. 75 and see pp. 75–8). She argues, pp. 95, 98, that ‘movements of political and religious dissent’ held different views on women, gender relations and marriage, and that Sufism in particular offered women an autonomy which enabled them ‘to resist the orthodox imperative to marry and live under male authority’. For a discussion of the place of women in Sufism, see Elias (1988). Ahmed (1992), pp. 68–9. Ahmed (1992), p. 87. Mhlik ibn Anas (d. Medina 179/795) formulated a system of jurisprudence based on the example of the Prophet and the practice of his city of Medina. Compare the use of juristic sources in Shatzmiller (1994), chapter 7: ‘Women’s Labour’. Ahmed (1992), pp. 116–21. See Berkey (1995). Hodgson (1974) coined this term in parallel to ‘Christendom’ to denote a geographical area and its dominant culture. Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 4. On this book, see also Meisami (1995). Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 10.
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18 Ibn al-Baƒanunj is an obscure figure, but Malti-Douglas points out, (1991) p. 54, that its existence in numerous manuscripts attests this work’s popularity. 19 ‘It has . . . been observed that with the possible exception of the Thousand and One Nights, no work from the literary heritage of classical Islam has been published or translated so frequently as Ibn Ïufayl’s Åayy ibn Yaq©hn’, Conrad (1996), p. 267; but on its probable circulation during its author’s lifetime, see text to note 123 below. On Ibn Ïufayl, the Andalusian physician and philosopher (d. 581/1185), and for a summary of the tale, see Goichon (1971), pp. 333–4. Malti-Douglas discusses it again in Conrad (1996), chapter 4: ‘Flight from the Female Body: Ibn Tufayl’s Male Utopia’. 20 Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 4–5. Malti-Douglas makes little mention of audiences or readership, but seems to assume that they, like ‘scriptors’, were predominantly male; see, for example, her remarks on Ibn al-Baƒanunj, discussed below. Compare Rosen (1988), p. 68, commenting on the lack of Jewish (Hebrew) women’s literature in medieval Andalus: ‘It is only men who voiced their opinions through the texts they produced and consumed.’ 21 Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 74–5. 22 Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 33. Richter-Bernburg (1996), p. 109 suggests that Åayy’s ascetic regimen ‘is . . . meant to subdue his sexuality, even though this is not openly stated’ – a denial of natural impulses which is ‘in the Islamic tradition of humoral physiology . . . well-nigh unthinkable’. 23 Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 33. 24 Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 29–30. Malti-Douglas’s assertion, pp. 34–5, that most women who figure in adab anecdotes are nameless, and hence deprived of ‘personhood’, calls for closer examination. Limitations of space do not allow for such an effort here; we might however take a random example drawn from two chapters in Ibn Abj Ïhhir Ïayfur (d. 280/893), Balhghht al-Nish’ (‘Examples of Women’s Eloquence’). The first, ‘Akhbhr dhawht al-ra’y wa al-jazhla’ (‘Anecdotes of shrewd and pithy women’), contains forty anecdotes. In twenty-three, both male and female protagonists are named; in nine, the male is named, the female is not; in three, the female is named, the male(s) not; in four, both protagonists are unnamed; there is one borderline case, where some protagonists are named, others not. In the second, much shorter chapter, on ‘ribald’ (mawhjin) women and their repartees, there are 14 anecdotes. In three, both protagonists are named; in five, only the female is named (four of these involve Åubbh, on whom see later); in five, only the male is named; in one, neither is named. This is too small a sample on which to base conclusions, but it does suggest that the incidence of named or unnamed women will vary according to the sources and that genre in particular is an important consideration. 25 Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 45. 26 Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 46–7. 27 Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 88, 91. 28 The term ‘awra encompasses both male and female genitalia, which both sexes are enjoined to keep concealed. On discussions of ‘awra in this broader legal context of åijhb, see Stowasser (1994), pp. 92–4 and Sanders (1991), pp. 82–5. 29 Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 89–90. 30 See Richter-Bernburg (1998) (a) and (b), p. 244, Irwin (1998) (a) and (b) and on the sailor Buzurg to whom ‘Ajh’ib al-Hind is attributed. 31 Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 95. 32 Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 50. 33 Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 56, 106. The Åayy ibn Yaq©hn of Ibn Sjnh is summarized and discussed by Goichon (1971), pp. 331–2. 34 Vadet (1969), p. 81. 35 The opposite view is argued in Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 36–7. See also Rowson (1991), pp. 61–2. 36 Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 109–10.
Writing medieval women 77 37 For reasons of space I will not deal with treatments of ‘H’isha’s ‘interference’ in the issue of who was to lead the prayer during the Prophet’s final illness, interpreted retrospectively as relating to the question of his succession. Abbott (1942), pp. 75–81 questions the assumption that leadership of the prayer at this time necessarily had the political importance later assigned to it. All the relevant traditions have a partisan, political import, and not only ‘H’isha but others of the Prophet’s wives (Åafßa, Umm Salama) also figure in some versions. 38 Spellberg (1994), pp. 6, 8. 39 Spellberg (1994), pp. 8–9. 40 On the dating of the appearance of this term, see Juynboll (1973). Donner (1998), pp. 185–8 argues that it was originally a Shj‘j term which was taken over by Sunnj ‘Abbasid historians. 41 Spellberg (1994), p. 102. 42 Spellberg (1994), p. 104; compare, however, Abbott (1942), p. 176. 43 Spellberg (1994), p. 106. Spellberg comments that ‘nowehere is there evidence that ‘H’isha herself sought to rule the Islamic community’ (p. 107), but elsewhere she observes that ‘in one fourth/tenth-century Shj‘j chronicle the only way in which [‘H’isha] was misled in her political mission was in her own desire to become caliph’ (p. 129). The chronicle is al-Mas‘udj’s Muruj al-Dhahab; the opinion is not Mas‘udj’s but that of an unnamed supporter of ‘H’isha, expressed after her defeat, and related on the authority of al-Madh’inj (d. mid-third/ninth century), Mas‘udj, Muruj, III, ¶1647. 44 Spellberg (1994), p. 109. Spellberg repeatedly stresses, pp. 107–8, the gender of ‘H’isha’s ‘co-conspirators’, Ïalåa ibn ‘Ubayd Allhh and al-Zubayr ibn al-‘Awwhm (both killed in the Battle of the Camel): thus for example in a single paragraph they are termed her ‘male allies’, ‘male conspirators’ (sic) and ‘male companions’. The ‘written responses to ‘H’isha’s role’ date from the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries, and are divided into five main ‘thematic categories’: ‘slander, humor, regret, predictions of doom and negative definitions of the feminine’, p. 109. The authors cited under the rubric of ‘slander’ include Ibn Sa‘d (d. 230/845), Khaljfa ibn Khayyhƒ (d. 240/854), al-Balhdhurj (d. 297/892), al-Ïabarj (d. 314/923) and al-Kulaynj (d. 329/940–1?); the citations are a mixture of historical reports (akhbhr) and åadjths. Despite the variations in these accounts, all are seen both as testifying to ‘Islam’s’ (whether Sunnj or Shj‘j) position on ‘H’isha and as relating to all women. 45 Spellberg (1994), p. 135. 46 Spellberg (1994), pp. 135–6. 47 The ‘Age of Ignorance’, the time before Islam. 48 Ibn Sa‘d, Ïabaqht, VIII, p. 81. 49 Compare, for example, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), Minhhj, II, p. 185; see also Stowasser (1994), p. 116 on the varying reactions of the Prophet’s wives to the injunction. Spellberg notes, (1994), p. 136, that fourth/tenth-century exegesis rarely connects the Qur’anic verse with censure of ‘H’isha, and that the Sunnj Ibn Taymiyya, in his ‘late medieval defense of the faith from Shi‘i polemic suggests that the use of such verses to condemn ‘H’isha [is] invalid and represent[s] only a selective application of the divine word’. 50 Spellberg (1994), p. 118. The passage referred to is from ‘The Martyrdom of Hasan’, Scene IX of the nineteenth-century ta‘ziya (passion play) texts published in translation by Lewis Pelly (1879), I, pp. 168–9 (the reference in Spellberg (1994), p. 213, n. 43 is incorrect). The words are Åusayn’s, spoken after ‘H’isha has refused to let him bury the body of his brother Åasan in the Prophet’s tomb. The exchange occupies about a page and a half of the two-volume collection, which contains no further reference to ‘H’isha. Åusayn’s words can hardly be taken as representing the views of the entire ‘Islamic community.’ On the eulogistic treatment of Shj‘j women in the ta‘ziya, see Humayuni (1979). See also Pinault (1998) on women in Shj‘j devotional literature and in contemporary lamentation poetry.
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Julie Scott Meisami Spellberg (1994), pp. 132–3. See note 44 above. Spellberg (1994), p. 137. Spellberg (1994), pp. 137, 138–9. For a discussion of the relationship between Åadjth scholarship and history, see Donner (1998), especially pp. 255–85. Spellberg (1994), p. 139. Bukhhrj, Íaåjå, V, ed. and trans. Khan (1979), p. 508. As if coinage were about hairstyles (with the implication of ‘feminine’ frivolity) rather than about legitimacy. While revising this chapter, I was fortunate to see a slide of one of Burhn’s coins, dated in the third year of her reign. The ‘intricate hairstyle’ consists of several plaits descending from beneath her crown, which is the winged crown of Varathegna (Bahrhm), the Zoroastrian angel of victory; diadem ribbons are also seen on the ruler’s shoulders. The iconography asserts the ruler’s legitimacy. On Burhn and her coinage, see Rose (1998), pp. 143–5. Spellberg (1994), pp. 139–40. Ïabarj, Ta’rjkh, I (ii), p. 1064. Ibn al-Athjr, Khmil, I, p. 499; Gardjzj, Zayn al-Akhbhr, p. 39. A slightly different version is found in Bukhhrj’s chapter on fitan (‘afflictions’, most of which are political or eschatological in nature), and belongs to the theme of political fitna. Other versions represent what Donner terms the ‘historicization’ of åadjths, which often contributed as well to their ‘hybridization’, combining issues relating to more than one theme; see Donner (1998), pp. 212–13. It is a ‘singleton’ åadjth with only one source: all versions can be traced back to Abu Bakra Nafj‘ ibn al-Åhrith ibn Kilda al-Thaqafj (not, as Abbott conjectured (1942), pp. 173–6, the Prophet’s freedman Nafj‘ ibn Masruå). Abu Bakra was a Companion who resided in Basra, where he died in 52/672. The åadjth seems to have been in limited circulation in the ascetic circles of Basra and, later, Baghdad; the tradents include al-Åasan al-Baßrj (d. 110/728) and Hawdha ibn Khaljfa ibn ‘Abd Allhh al-Thaqafj, nicknamed al-Aßamm, a Baghdadi who died in 216/831–2 (data from Mawsu‘at al-Åadjth al-Sharjf ). Spellberg (1994), p. 141. Ni©hm al-Mulk, Siyar al-Muluk, p. 243, trans. Darke (1978), pp. 179–80. See Meisami (1999) (a), chapter 3: ‘Ni©hm al-Mulk and Iranian History’. Or Terken, not Turkhan, as Spellberg has it. Historians of the Saljuqs, while criticizing Turkhn Khhtun’s policies, in particular her insistence on placing her infant son Maåmud on the throne, which resulted in a lengthy period of civil strife, do not base their criticisms on her gender but on her politics; see for example Rhvandj (early seventh/thirteenth century), Ráåat uß-Íudur, pp. 134, 139–42; see also Lambton (1988), pp. 44–5, and Roded (1994), p. 118 (where Turkhn Khhtun is wrongly identified as ‘a descendant of Afrasyab, a ruler of Persia’; she was in fact a princess of the Qarhkhhnid house, which traced its descent to the legendary Turkish ruler of Turhn, Afrhsiyhb). Ni©hm al-Mulk, Siyar al-Muluk, trans. Darke (1978), pp. 182–3. Spellberg (1994), pp. 142–3. Niyhm al-Mulk, Siyar al-Muluk, trans. Darke (1978), pp. 140–3, 143–4. Ni©hm al-Mulk, Siyar al-Muluk, trans. Darke (1978), pp. 149–56. The anecdote begins: ‘There was a woman of Turkish birth, who could write and read, knew several languages, and was well-spoken. She used to come regularly to the private quarters of Maåmud’s palace, and talk, joke, and sport with Maåmud, and read to him Persian books and stories; she was on most familiar terms with him’ (Siyar al-Muluk, p. 150). While the story is apocryphal, it is of interest that the persons Ni©hm al-Mulk credits with obtaining it are both women. On the compositional history of Siyar al-Muluk, the second half of which was not made public until some time after the deaths of both Ni©hm al-Mulk and Malikshhh, see Siyar al-Muluk, trans. Darke (1978), pp. xiv–xv.
Writing medieval women 79 72 The Persian historian Bayhaqj (d. 470/1077), in the course of a long digression concerning the fate of ‘Abd Allhh ibn al-Zubayr (son of al-Zubayr ibn al-‘Awwhm, see note 44) and the courage shown by his mother, Asmh’ bint Abj Bakr, on learning of his death, attributes to the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwhn (65–86/685–705) the following statement: ‘Praise be to Almighty God! If ‘H’isha the Mother of the Believers and this sister of hers had been men, this caliphate would never have passed to the Umayyads! Such is true courage and endurance!’ Thrjkh-i Bayhaqj, p. 241. Bayhaqj also quotes the åadjth about the fate of a people who entrust rule to a woman, ibid., p. 485; this occurs in an encomium on the newly enthroned Ghaznavid sultan Ibrhhjm (451–92/1059–99), and is determined by its generic content. On Bayhaqj’s treatment of women, see further Meisami (1999) (b). 73 Spellberg (1994), pp. 148–9. 74 Ahmed (1992), p. 82. 75 Compare Rosen (1988), p. 68: ‘In medieval Judaism and Islam writing was considered an exclusively male competence. Hence the central place occupied by the praise of calligraphy in panegyrics addressed to men. The pen was depicted as a sublimation of man’s virility and braveness and is often likened to his sword . . . . Pen and penis were identified as instruments and symbols of male fertility . . . authorship and authority were thus intimately linked. He who is authorized by society to be an author (i.e. the literate male) is also the one who exercises authority over those who do not write.’ 76 There is abundant evidence of poems, letters, etc., written by women in their own hand; see, for example Kilpatrick (1981); see also Lutfi (1981), Staffa (1987), Petry (1991). Women who could not write had recourse to scribes for the preparation of correspondence, legal documents and the like, see Staffa (1987), pp. 74–5 (who quotes S. D. Goitein’s observation that in their letters ‘we hear the female voice guiding the male pen’). As for office-holding, Staffa’s observation with respect to Mamluk Egypt – that the dominant, non-native military élite ‘withheld the highest positions of their establishment from all others, men as well as women’, and that in the hierarchical power structure ‘the question of “equality” is something of a red herring’ as ‘rank was seen to be a personal attribute and not primarily an attribute of official position’ (ibid., p. 63) – is true, mutatis mutandis, for other periods. Staffa sees the position of women in Mamluk Egypt as somewhat analogous to that of dhimmjs ( Jews and Christians), in that the special status of both groups ‘cut across class and there were women and dhimmjs at all levels of society from the highest to the lowest . . . . Women enjoyed an advantage that men, dhimmj or Muslim, did not enjoy. They could gain access to the highest level of the elite group through marriage’, (ibid., p. 64). On political and administrative positions that were in fact occupied by women, see Staffa (1987), pp. 69–70, 77, 86–7 and Roded (1994), pp. 80–84. On women as legal experts (and for a corrective view), see Fadel (1997). 77 Spellberg (1994), p. 11. 78 See al-Munajjid (1995) and the references there cited. The issue requires further study. Al-Khaƒjb al-Baghdhdj (d. 463/1071) mentions one Munya al-khtiba (‘Munya the scribe’), a jhriya (slave woman) of the caliph al-Mu‘tamid’s concubine Khalhfa, who transmitted åadjths; from her appellation, she may also have acted as her mistress’s secretary/scribe. He also mentions two female muftjs ( jurisconsults), Ta’rjkh Baghdhd, XIV, pp. 441–2. See also Roded (1994), pp. 78–84 and especially Fadel (1997). 79 Fadel (1997), p. 195. 80 Throughout the medieval period, the transmission of knowledge was primarily oral: ‘A work was published by being recited and written down to dictation’, Pedersen (1984), p. 24, even when an author read from an autograph (draft) copy. For procedures relating to the publication and authorization of texts, see ibid., pp. 25–36. Al-Khaƒjb al-Baghdhdj mentions a woman who transmitted a compilation of her
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Julie Scott Meisami father’s in this way, Ta’ rjkh Baghdhd, XIV, p. 442. See also Roded (1994), pp. 71–8, 84–6. On the (largely unsuccessful) efforts of the ‘ulamh’ (religious scholars) to control the transmission of knowledge, see Berkey (1995). Because the Nights has been the subject of many studies, I do not intend to discuss Malti-Douglas’s treatment of it here. Storytelling and sexuality are for her closely linked: Shahrazhd’s (healthy) female sexuality cures Shahriyhr’s (unhealthy and immature) male sexual attitudes, see Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 20–24. One reviewer has noted that, in at least one version of the frame story, Shahrazhd’s conduct is, by strict Islamic standards, zinh’ (fornication), as she is not married until the end, and that ‘In neither of the frame story versions . . . is it her body, her sexuality, the desire she arouses in the king by which she cures [him]. It is her prudence in the earlier versions, her purity, her faithfulness, the . . . power of her body in the later ones, by which she overcomes and gives remedy. So this famous story . . . gives evidence of the openmindedness of Arabo-Islamic culture during the Middle Ages’ (Walther (1993), p. 205). Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 26–7 considers that the Nights’ ‘closure’ with marriage contrasts with ‘the somewhat feminist implications of the prologue of the frame story.’ The command that a story, or stories, be written down is a topos which reflects the transfer of material from oral tradition into written. Such references are not genderspecific, except insofar as the listener is usually a male in a position of authority; thus, for example in the Persian prose romance the Iskandarnhma, Alexander commands that various tales told to him (mostly by male storytellers, including Aristotle), be written down, see Rubanovitch (1998), pp. 232, 236–7 and 243 notes 12, 15. Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 33. Spellberg (1994), p. 1. For an alternative reading of åadjths relating to ‘H’isha, see Elias (1997). He considers such åadjths as an early form of ‘life-writing’, and argues that ‘‘H’isha’s life resists the movement to anonymity that affects male companions [of the Prophet], who were no doubt models of behavior for early generations of Muslims, but whose lives (as heroic models) all converge on the life of the Prophet who becomes the sole super-hero and ultimate exemplar’ (Elias (1997), p. 226). Fadel (1997, p. 190) takes issue with Ahmed’s argument (Ahmed (1992), p. 74) that ‘had the medieval law of testimony prevailed in the early centuries of Islamic history, the reports of women regarding the life of the Prophet would not have been incorporated into normative religious doctrine’ on the grounds that ‘testimony and transmission were regulated differently.’ On women’s testimony, see further note 139 below. See Abbott (1946), pp. 240–7, 250–60. See note 75. For an intelligent discussion of the broader implications of such comparisons, see Glünz (1995). Rowson (1991), p. 72. Rowson oversimplifies somewhat, as the boundaries between ‘private’ and ‘public’ are not so well-defined as he suggests and varied over space and time. For an intriguing study of the gradations between public and domestic space in Mamluk Cairo, see Marmon (1995), pp. 3–30, who notes, significantly, the absence of spatial distinctions based on gender, p. 116, notes 12, 13. Rowson makes the important point that medieval writers were concerned with sexual acts rather than sexuality. Thus for example women in same-sex relationships do not ‘take on any of the non-sexual gender attributes of men’, nor is there, in cases of women who adopt ‘masculine modes of behavior’, any association ‘with any particular form of sexual irregularity’, Rowson (1991), p. 68. Passive homosexuality was considered a pathology; imputations of sexual excesses and improprieties were a standard topic of hijh’ (satire, lampoon). Sanders (1991), p. 88 notes that – in contrast to early European texts on hermaphroditism, whose authors ‘agonised over the dangers of homosexual activity in a union involving a hermaphrodite’ – this was not an issue for medieval Muslim writers, whose concerns lay elsewhere. One subject which invites further study is cross-dressing; pace Malti-Douglas’s comments (1991), pp. 63–6, on a story in Ibn
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al-Baƒanunj’s Makhyid, there seems to have been little connection between cross-dressing and either sexual preference or gender role, and no concept of sexual ‘identity’ as such. See Rowson (1991), especially pp. 67–73, on the mukhannathun (‘effeminates’), men who dressed like women. Cross-dressing worked both ways: Staffa (1987), p. 90 cites the early nineteenth-century al-Jabartj’s account of a Íufj shaykha who was highly regarded by upper-class Cairene families, but who, on dying, ‘in the harjm of a learned shaykh’, was found to be a man. This is demonstrated in, for example, Pomeroy (1994), the essays in Stuard (1987), and Biale (1992). Sanders (1991), p. 89. For a recent discussion of this issue in the context of male-dominated transmission of learning, see Toorawa (1997). Biographical dictionaries might devote a separate (final) section or volume to women. Roded (1994), p. 6 speculates that the reason for this may have been less ‘ideological’ than practical, as it ‘facilitate[s] locating individual biographies of women,’ and notes a further problem relative to the study of medieval writing on women ‘in that the women’s section of certain collections may be lost or unpublished.’ Ahmed (1992), p. 86. Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 46. See Rowson (1998). It is not clear at whom Åubbh’s ‘act of aggression’ is directed since there are no males present in the anecdote, nor wherein her ‘bestiality’ resides, though Malti-Douglas elsewhere refers to ‘unnatural sexual acts’, specifically anal intercourse, see for example, Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 40. The four stories concerning Åubbh are taken from Ibn Abj Ïhhir Ïayfur’s chapter on mawhjin al-nish’, see note 24 above. Thus, because some authors state that ‘the women of Medina called Hubbâ “Eve, the Mother of Mankind” because she taught them different positions for sexual intercourse, on which she then bestowed names’, Åubbh and Eve are seen to be linked by their (dangerous) sexuality, Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 45–6 and note 74. On the ‘demonization’ of Eve, see Spellberg (1994) (another composite picture based on a highly restricted selection of sources, yet purporting to elucidate ‘the Islamic understanding of Eve’s life’, p. 311); see also Stowasser (1994), pp. 25–38, which further demonstrates the perils of trying to construct a narrative out of discrete accounts. As Goldman (1995), p. 86 comments, the ‘disparate and often contradictory fragments of folkloric elaboration’ characteristic of exegesis, legends of the prophets and so on ‘were not conceived of as a discrete and consistent entity. It is only in the modern period that attempts were made to blend these tales together . . . . When we read the great medieval anthologies of legends, both Jewish and Islamic, we find that the creation of a coherent narrative consistent in its details is not the anthologist’s primary aim. Rather, the editor wants to make available all authoritative interpretations of the scriptural text under discussion.’ Spellberg (1994), pp. 66–74. Spellberg (1994), p. 74. See Rowson (1991), p. 55, notes 9, 10. Rowson (1991), p. 77, note 31. Ahmed (1992), p. 79. See, for example, Roded (1994), pp. 123–5. Kilpatrick (1995), pp. 62, 66, 68, 74–5. On the attribution of pseudo-Ibn Qayyim see Kilpatrick (1995), pp. 69–70 and notes 38–40 and Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 30, note 2. See also Kilpatrick (1991) on Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj’s al-Imh’ al-Shawh‘ir (‘Female Slaves who were Poets’), which deals with the ‘Abbasid period, and see more generally Roded (1994). Kilpatrick (1995), pp. 75–7. Ya‘qubj, Historiae, II, pp. 209–10.
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106 On Umm al-Fa∂l, wife of the prophet’s uncle al-‘Abbhs ibn ‘Abd al-Muƒƒalib, see Ibn Sa‘d, Ïabaqht, VIII, pp. 277–9. 107 Ïabarj, History, trans. Brockett (1997), p. 42. 108 Ïabarj, History, trans. Brockett (1997), pp. 40–2; for a slightly different account from a different informant, see pp. 44–5. 109 Spellberg (1994), pp. 133–4. 110 See Abbott (1942), pp. 138–41. 111 Abbott (1942), pp. 177–218. 112 Spellberg (1994), pp. 120–6; Abbott (1942), pp. 143–4. 113 Mas‘udj, Muruj, III, ¶ 1628. 114 Ibn Taymiyya, Minhhj, II, p. 185. 115 See, for example, Abbott (1942), pp. 15–16, 37–8. 116 Spellberg (1994), p. 132. 117 Miskawayh, Eclipse, V, pp. 76–9. 118 Miskawayh, Eclipse, VI, p. 107 119 See Khan (1969), pp. 724–5. 120 Lutfi (1991), p. 102. 121 Berkey (1995), p. 44. 122 Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 109. 123 Quoted by Conrad (1996), p. 11; see also pp. 9–14. 124 See Gohlman (1974), pp. 81–3. 125 Heath (1992), pp. 160–1. 126 Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 99. 127 Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 32. 128 See Miquel (1967), II, pp. 484–5. 129 Walther (1993), p. 206. On islands of women and on Waqwhq, see Miquel (1967), II, pp. 493–5, 511–13. 130 See Chapter 2, p. 34. 131 See, for example, Kruk (1993), (1994). We might also mention the ‘warrior women’ of Persian epics. 132 See Elias (1988), pp. 215–16. 133 Mernissi (1993). A weakness of Mernissi’s entertaining study is the assumption that to rule one must be a ‘head of state’, with appropriate titulature (pp. 9–25) and the right to strike coinage and be mentioned in the Friday sermon (pp. 71–87). On women rulers see also Roded (1994), pp. 115–23. 134 Spellberg (1994), p. 139. 135 Weiss (1998). 136 Elsewhere Spellberg notes, with greater accuracy, that ‘in the ninth-century Åadjth literature, fitna is used exclusively in a political sense, one which implicitly summons the individual to a moral choice’ (1988), p. 112, note 9. 137 Juynboll (1989), pp. 358–60. 138 Juynboll (1989), pp. 371–2. 139 Juynboll (1989), pp. 374–5. The traditions relating to women’s supposed ‘characteristic lack of ‘aql’ are part of the larger ‘women are the majority in Hell’ group, studied by Juynboll. When the women ask why so many of them will go to Hell, they are told that it is because they are ‘deficient in reason and religion’ (nhqißht ‘aqlan wa djnan). Their deficiency as to religion is, typically, their failure to pray or fast in Rama∂hn (while menstruating, though this is not always stated explicitly); proof of their deficiency in reason is that a woman’s legal testimony is worth only half that of a man. That the latter principle was never universally accepted or applied by jurisprudents has been demonstrated by Fadel (1997), who notes, for example, that even such ‘conservatives’ as Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya rejected it (p. 197). See also Turki (1982) on the Andalusian jurist Ibn Åazm (d. 456/1064), who not only rejects the notion of women’s legal deficiency but even asserts that they, like men, have powers of prophecy.
Writing medieval women 83 140 Spellberg (1994), p. 138. 141 Mas‘udj, Muruj, IV, ¶ 2682. 142 Other historians attribute the poem to professional poets. Mas‘udj also cites elegies on Amjn by Zubayda and by his widow Lubhba, Muruj, IV, ¶ 2690, 2691. 143 Mas‘udj, Muruj, IV, ¶ 2621–3; see Meisami (2005). 144 Mas‘udj, Muruj, IV, ¶ 2640. 145 Mas‘udj, Muruj, IV, ¶ 2443–4. 146 Kilpatrick (1995), p. 64 makes this point in commenting on the story as it appears in al-Ma‘hfirj’s Åadh’iq (where Murayya is clearly an error for Muzna). 147 Mas‘ud j, Muruj, V, ¶ 3271–6. 148 See Leder (1996), especially pp. 307–13. 149 Leder (1996), p. 308. 150 Leder (1996), p. 315. 151 Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 49–50. 152 Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 49. 153 On the decidedly ungendered uses of kayd, which may be treated both as a positive and as a negative characteristic depending on its purpose, see Goldman (1995), pp. 47–53. 154 Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 52, 53, 56. 155 See Stowasser (1994), pp. 50–6. 156 Malti-Douglas (1991), p. 57. 157 Stowasser (1994), p. 53. On the complexities of the Joseph story, see Goldman (1995). 158 Malti-Douglas (1991), pp. 105–6. 159 Ibn Sjnh, Åayy ibn Yaq©hn, in ed. Amjn (1952), p. 58. 160 Ni©hmj Ganjavj (d. early seventh/thirteenth century) names one of the female characters in his allegorical romance the Haft Paykar ‘Fitna’, see Ni©hmj, Haft Paykar, trans. Meisami (1995), §§ 25, 26 and Meisami (1987) pp. 214–18. Spellberg notes the fact (1994), p. 215, note 93, but not its significance. As the romance’s protagonist Bahrhm Gur is astrologically associated with Mars – Bahrhm is the Persian name of that planet – there would appear to be a link between Ni©hmj’s poem and Ibn Sjnh’s allegory. 161 Mernissi (1985). 162 Sanders (1991), p. 74. 163 Sanders (1991), pp. 75–6. 164 Rowson (1991), p. 72. 165 For an overview, see Giffen (1971), who notes, inter alia, the importance of the use of Qur’anic verses and åadjths in the prose literature on love, pp. 54–7 and passim. 166 See for example Rowson (1991), p. 51 and Rapoport (2005). 167 Books of the ‘women in’ type tend to cover the same ground and the same sources. To take a recent example, Roded (1999) is a reader which presents ‘core texts’, with some commentary, on the following topics: ‘The Foundations of Islam’, ‘Early Islamic History’, ‘Women as Sources, Actors and Subjects of Islamic Law’, ‘Women’s Roles in Medieval Society’ and ‘Twentieth-Century Vicissitudes’; most of the material is predictably familiar. The essays in Hambly (1998), while considerably more wide-ranging, are, with a few notable exceptions, predominantly narrative and descriptive. 168 Rowson (1991), p. 52. 169 First published 1975. 170 See also Davidman and Tenenbaum (1994) for comparable methodological issues in Jewish studies. 171 Pomeroy (1994), p. 229.
Bibliography of works cited in this chapter Abbott, Nabia (1942), Aishah the Beloved of Mohammed, Chicago. —— (1946), Two Queens of Baghdad: Mother and Wife of Hhrun al-Rashjd, Chicago.
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Ahmed, Leila (1991), ‘Early Islam and The Position of Women: The Problem of Interpretation’, in Keddie, Nikki R. and Beth Baron (eds) (1991), pp. 58–73. —— (1992), Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, New Haven. Amjn, Aåmad (ed.) (1952), Åayy ibn Ya©qhn li-Ibn Sjnh wa Ibn Ïufayl wa al-Suhrawardj, Cairo. Atiyeh, George N. (ed.) (1995), The Book in the Islamic World: The Written Word and Communication in The Middle East, Albany. Bayhaqj, Abu al-Fa∂l, Thrjkh-i Bayhaqj, ‘Alj Akbar Fayyh∂ (ed.), Teheran 1995. Berkey, Jonathan (1995), ‘Tradition, Innovation and the Social Construction of Knowledge in the Medieval Islamic Near East’, Past and Present 146, pp. 38–65. Biale, David (1992), Eros and The Jews, from Biblical Israel to Contemporary America, New York. Brockett, Adrian, trans. (1997), The History of al-Ïabarj: The Community Divided, Albany. al-Bukhhrj, Íaåjå: see Khan, ed. and trans. (1979). Cameron, Averil and Lawrence I. Conrad (eds) (1996), Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East. 1st Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 1989, Princeton. Chelkowski, Peter J. (ed.) (1979), Ta‘ziyeh: Ritual and Drama in Iran, New York. Conrad, Lawrence I., ed. and Introduction (1996), The World of Ibn Ïufayl: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Åayy ibn Yaq©hn, Leiden. Darke, Hubert, trans. (1978), The Book of Government or Rules for Kings, London. (First published 1960.) Davidman, Lynn, and Shelley Tenenbaum (eds) (1994), Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies, New Haven. Donner, Fred M. (1998), Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing, Princeton. Elias, Jamal J. (1988), ‘Female and Feminine in Islamic Mysticism’, Islamic World 78, pp. 209–24. —— (1997), ‘The Åadjth Traditions of ‘H’isha as Prototypes of Self-Narrative’, Edebiyat, N. S., 7, pp. 215–33. Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, Meisami, Julie Scott and Paul Starkey (eds), London and New York, 1998. ( EncArLit). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, H. A. R. Gibb et al. (eds), Leiden, 1960–2002. ( Encyclopaedia of Islam). Epstein, Julia and Kristina Straub (eds) (1991), Bodyguards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, New York and London. Fadel, Mohammad (1997), ‘Two Women, One Man: Knowledge, Power and Gender in Medieval Sunni Legal Thought’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 29, pp. 185–204. Gardjzj, ‘Abd al-Åayy, Zayn al-Akhbhr, ‘Abd al-Åayy Åabjbj (ed.), Teheran, 1968. Giffen, Lois Anita (1971), Theory of Profane Love Among The Arabs: The Development of the Genre, New York. Glünz, Michael (1995), ‘The Sword, the Pen and the Phallus: Metaphors and Metonymies of Male Power and Creativity in Medieval Persian Poetry’, Edebiyat, N. S., 6, pp. 223–43. Gohlman, William E., ed. and trans. (1974), The Life of Ibn Sina: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation, Albany. Goichon, A. -M. (1971), ‘Åayy b. Ya˚©hn’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, III, pp. 330–4. Goldman, Shalom (1995), The Wiles of Women, The Wiles of Men: Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife in Ancient Near Eastern, Jewish, and Islamic Folklore, Albany. Hambly, Gavin R. G. (ed.) (1998), Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage and Piety, London. Heath, Peter (1992), Allegory and Philosophy in Avicenna (Ibn Sînâ), Philadelphia, PA. Hodgson, Marshall G. S. (1974), The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, vol. 2, Chicago.
Writing medieval women 85 Humayuni, Sadeq (1979), ‘An Analysis of the Ta‘ziyeh of Qasim’, in Chelkowski (ed.) (1979). Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih, al-‘Iqd al-Farjd, ‘Abd al-Majjd al-Taråjnj (ed.), Beirut, 1983. Ibn Abj Ïhhir Ïayfur, Balhghht al-Nish’, ed. Aåmad al-Alfj, Cairo, 1908. Ibn al-Athjr, ‘Izz al-Djn, al-Khmil fj al-Ta’rjkh, C. J. Tornberg (ed.), Cairo, 1965–7. (First published Leiden 1851–76.) Ibn Sa‘d, al-Ïabaqht al-Kubrh, Beirut n.d. [198–?] Ibn Íjnh, Åayy ibn Yaq©hn: see Amjn (ed.) (1952). —— see Gohlman, William E., ed. and trans. (1974). Ibn Taymiyya, Minhhj al-Sunna al-Nabawiyya, Cairo 1904. Ibn Ïufayl, Åayy ibn Yaq©hn: see Amjn (ed.) (1952). Irwin, Robert (1998) (a), ‘Buzurg ibn Shariyhr’, EncArLit, I, pp. 166–7. —— (1998) (b), ‘al-Qazwjnj’, EncArLit, II, pp. 637–8. Juynboll, G. H. A. (1973), ‘The Date of the Great Fitna’, Arabica 20, pp. 142–59. —— (1989), ‘Some Isnhd-Analytical Methods Illustrated on the Basis of Several Woman-Demeaning Sayings from Åadjth Literature’, al-Qantara 10, pp. 343–84. Kandiyoti, Deniz (1991), ‘Islam and Patriarchy: A Comparative Perspective’, in Keddie, Nikki R. and Beth Baron (eds) (1991), pp. 23–42. Keddie, Nikki R. (1979), ‘Problems in the Study of Middle Eastern Women’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 10, pp. 225–40. —— (1991), ‘Introduction: Deciphering Middle Eastern Women’s History’, in Keddie, Nikki R. and Beth Baron (eds) (1991), pp. 1–22. Keddie, Nikki R. and Beth Baron (eds) (1991), Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, New Haven. Kennedy, Philip F. (ed.) (2005), On Fiction and Abab in Medieval Arabic Literature, Wiesbaden. Khan, Muhammad Muhsin, ed. and trans. (1979), Íaåjå al-Bukhhrj, The Translation of the Meaning of Sahih al-Bukhari, 4th edn, Lahore. Khan, M. S. (1969), ‘Miskawaih and Arabic Historiography’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 89, pp. 710–30. al-Khaƒjb al-Baghdhdj, Ta’rjkh Baghdhd aw Madjnat al-Salhm, Cairo, 1931. Kilpatrick, Hilary (1991), ‘Women as Poets and Chattels: Abu l-Farax al-Ißbahhnj’s “al-Imh’ al-mawh‘ir” ’, Quaderni di Studi Arabi 9, pp. 161–76. —— (1995), ‘Some Late ‘Abbhsid and Mamluk Books About Women: A Literary Historical Approach’, Arabica 42, pp. 56–78. Kruk, Remke (1993), ‘Warrior Women in Arabic Popular Romance: Qannâßa bint Muzâåim and Other Valiant Ladies’, Journal of Arabic Literature 14, pp. 213–30. —— (1994), ‘Clipped Wings: Medieval Arabic Adaptations of the Amazon Myth’, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 1, pp. 132–52. Lambton, Ann K. S. (1988), Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia, London. Leder, Stefan (1996), ‘The Literary Use of the Khabar: A Basic Form of Historical Khabar’, in Cameron and Conrad (eds), (1996), pp. 277–315. Lutfi, Huda (1981), ‘Al-Sakhhwj’s Kithb al-Nish’ as a Source for the Social and Economic History of Women During the Fifteenth Century AD’, Muslim World 71, pp. 104–24. —— (1991), ‘Manners and Customs of Fourteenth-Century Cairene Women: Female Anarchy versus Male Shar‘i Order in Muslim Prescriptive Treatises’, in Keddie and Baron (eds), (1991), pp. 99–121. Malti-Douglas, Fedwa (1991), Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing, Princeton. —— (1996), ‘Flight from The Female Body: Ibn Ïufayl’s Male Utopia’, in Conrad (ed.) (1996), pp. 52–68.
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Marmon, Shaun Elizabeth (1995), Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries in Islamic Society, New York and Oxford. al-Mas‘udj, Muruj al-Dhahab wa Ma‘hdin al-Jawhar, ed. and trans. Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille, rev. Charles Pellat, Beirut, 1971–9. Mawsu‘at al-Åadjth al-Sharjf, Íhliå ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azjz Hl Shaykh (ed.), Riyadh 1420/1999/ CD-ROM Cairo 1997. Meisami, Julie Scott (1987), Medieval Persian Court Poetry, Princeton. —— (1995), ‘An Anatomy of Misogyny?’, Edebiyat, N. S., 6, pp. 303–15. —— trans. (1995), Haft Paykar: A Medieval Persian Romance, Oxford. —— (1999) (a), Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century, Edinburgh. —— (1999) (b), ‘Eleventh-Century Women: Evidence from Bayhaqj’s History’, in Nashat (ed.) (1999), pp. 80–103. ——(2005), ‘Mas‘udj and the Reign of al-Amjn: Narrative and Meaning in Medieval Muslim Historiography, in Kennedy (ed.) (2005), pp. 149–76. Mernissi, Fatima (1985), Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Muslim Society, London. (First published 1975.) —— trans. Mary Jo Lakeland (1993), The Forgotten Queens of Islam, Cambridge. (First published Paris, 1990 as Sultanes oubliées: femmes chefs d’État en Islam.) Miquel, André (1967–88), La Géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du 11ème siècle, The Hague and Paris. Miskawayh, continued by al-Rudhrhwarj, The Eclipse of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate: Original Chronicles of the Fourth Islamic Century, ed. and trans. H. F. Amedroz and D. S. Margoliouth, Oxford, 1920–1. al-Munajjid, Íalhå al-Djn (1995), ‘Women’s Roles in the Art of Arabic Calligraphy’, in Atiyeh, George N. (ed.) (1995), pp. 141–8. Nashat, Guity (ed.) (1999), Women in Iran from Medieval Times to The Islamic Republic, Albany. Ni©hm al-Mulk, Siyar al-Muluk (Siyhsatnhma), ed. Hubert Darke, 2nd edn, Teheran 1968 (first published 1962); trans. Darke (1978). Ni©hmj Ganjavj: see Mesiami, trans. (1995). Olson, Robert and Salman al-Ani (eds) (1987), Islamic and Middle Eastern Societies: A Festschrift in Honor of Professor Wadie Jwaideh, Brattleboro. Pedersen, Johannes, trans. Geoffrey French and Robert Hillenbrand (ed.) (1984), The Arabic Book, Princeton. Pelly, Lewis, comp. (1879), The Miracle Play of Hasan and Husain, revised by Arthur N. Wollaston, London. Petry, Carl (1991), ‘Class Solidarity versus Gender Gain: Women as Custodians of Property in Late Medieval Egypt’, in Keddie and Baron (eds) (1991), pp. 122–42. Pinault, David (1998), ‘Zaynab bint ‘Alj and the Place of the Women of the Households of the First Imhms in Shi‘ite Devotional Literature’, in Hambly (ed.) (1998), pp. 69–98. Pomeroy, Sarah B. (1994), Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity, London. (First published 1975.) Rapoport,Yossef (2005), Marriage, Money and Divorce in Medieval Islamic Society, Cambridge. Rhvandj, Muåammad ibn ‘Alj, The Ráåat us-Íudúr wa áyat as-surúr, Muhammad Iqbal (ed.), Leiden and London 1921. Richter-Bernburg, Lutz (1996), ‘Medicina ancilla philosophiae: Ibn Ïufayl’s Åayy ibn Yaq©hn’, in Conrad (ed.) (1996), pp. 90–113. —— (1998) (a), ‘ ‘Ajh’ib literature’, EncArLit, I, pp. 65–6. —— (1998) (b), ‘Geographical literature’, EncArLit, I, pp. 244–7.
Writing medieval women 87 Roded, Ruth (1994), Women in Islamic Biographical Collections, from Ibn Sa‘d to Who’s Who, Boulder, Co and London. —— (1999), Women in Islam and the Middle East: A Reader, London. Rose, Jenny (1998), ‘Three Queens, Two Wives, and a Goddess: Roles and Images of Women in Sasanian Iran’, in Hambly (ed.) (1998), pp. 29–52. Rosen, Tovah (1988), ‘On Tongues being Bound and Let Loose: Women in Medieval Hebrew Literature’, Prooftexts 8, pp. 67–87. Rowson, Everett (1991), ‘The Categorization of Gender and Sexual Irregularity in Medieval Arabic Vice Lists’, in Epstein and Straub (eds) (1991), pp. 50–79. —— (1998), ‘Mujkn’, EncArLit, II, pp. 546–8. Rubanovitch, Julia (1998), ‘The Reconstruction of a Storytelling Event in Medieval Persian Prose Romance: The Case of The Iskandarnhma’, Edebiyat, N. S., 9, pp. 215–47. Sanders, Paula (1991), ‘Gendering the Ungendered Body: Hermaphrodites in Medieval Islamic Law’, in Keddie and Baron (eds) (1991), pp. 74–95. Shatzmiller, Maya (1994), Labour in The Medieval Islamic World, Leiden. Spellberg, Denise A. (1988), ‘Ni©hm al-Mulk’s Manipulation of Tradition: ‘H’isha and the Role of Women in Islamic Government’, Muslim World 78, pp. 111–17. —— (1994), Politics, Gender, and The Islamic Past: The Legacy of ‘A’isha bint Abi Bakr, New York. Staffa, Susan Jane (1987), ‘Dimensions of Women’s Power in Historic Cairo’, in Olson and al-Ani (eds) (1987). Stowasser, Barbara Freyer (1994), Women in the Qur’an, Traditions and Interpretation, New York and Oxford. Stuard, Susan Mosher (ed.) (1987), Women in Medieval History and Historiography, Philadelphia. al-Ïabarj, Muåammad ibn Jarjr, Ta’rjkh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, M. J. de Goejes et al. (eds), Leiden 1879–1901, vol. 16, trans. Brockett (1997). Toorawa, Shawkat M. (1997), ‘Language and Male Homosocial Desire in the Autobiography of ‘Abd al-Laƒif al-Baghdhdj (d. 629/1231)’, Edebiyat, N. S., 7, pp. 251–65. Turki, Abdel Magid (1982), Théologiens et juristes de l’Espagne musulmane: Aspects polémiques, Paris. Vadet, Jean-Claude (1969), ‘Quelques remarques sur la racine ftn dans le Coran et la plus ancienne littérature musulmane’, Revue des Études Islamiques 37, pp. 81–101. Waines, David (1982), ‘Through a Veil Darkly: The Study of Women in Muslim Societies’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 24, pp. 642–59. Walther, Wiebke (1993), review of Malti-Douglas (1991), Journal of Arabic Literature 24, pp. 205–7. Weiss, B. (1998), ‘Åadjth’, EncArLit, I, p. 261. al-Ya‘qubj, Historiae [Ta’rjkh]. Pars alteria, historiam islamicam continens, M. Th. Houtsma (ed.), Leiden, 1883.
Part II
Appearance and truth
4
Al-Jhåi©’s Kithb al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn James E. Montgomery
Introduction This chapter is very much preliminary to a proper, fuller and more nuanced reading of al-Jhåi©’s (c.160–255/c.776–868 or 9) Kithb al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn, ‘The Treatise on Clarity and Clarification’: the ideas which I shall present are tentative and exploratory. The thrust of my approach is to move away from the consideration of Jhåi© as an adjb (man of letters) with a penchant for Mu‘tazilj theology whose works can be sifted and mined for the information they convey about early Mu‘tazilj theology and theologians, to a reading of his works in general, but this work in particular, as instantiations of the theories and methodologies of Jhåi©’s own brand of Mu‘tazilj theology in the realm of subjects which are generally considered not to have been the preserve of speculative theology.1 It may strike the reader of this article as paradoxical that a contribution to a volume of this nature, much of which is devoted to the exploration of the notion of literature, or of literary representation, in the medieval Arabo-Islamic context, should advocate for the late second/eighth and early third/ninth centuries the abandonment of the very notion of literature as a critical diagnostic of any hermeneutic worth. The prevalent scholarly division of ‘Abbasid literature into belles-lettres and technical (in the sense of specialist) works is exemplified in volumes 2 and 3 of The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature (1990), entitled respectively ‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres and Religion, learning and science in the ‘Abbasid period. In his review of these works, Mohammed Arkoun remarks: Why violate the notion and the practice of both writing and knowledge held by the authors themselves by separating that which was unitary in more than one sense? Thus, [in ‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres] there is a short chapter on al-Tawåjdj, a perfect example of the humanist of whom our modern division between belles-lettres and thought cannot be sustained.2 I may not agree with the introduction of the concept of humanism into the debate, but I wholly concur with Arkoun’ s condemnation of the anachronistic artificiality of the distinction between literature and thought. Jhåi©’s al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn, a compendium devoted to language, will accordingly be considered
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from a critical perspective which does not essay a distinction between literature and thought. Instead, I shall argue the non-aesthetic nature of Jhåi©’s enterprise and emphasize its theological dimensions (though these dimensions are predicated upon a basic aesthetic response to the divine majesty of Arabic as a language), whilst maintaining that such theological discourse contributed to the contemporary debates as to how Islamic authority was best articulated.3 It is a principal contention of my argument that Jhåi©’s theory of bayhn (clarity) is to be understood as an engagement with the jurist al-Shhfi‘j’s (150–204/767–820) exposition of the same concept in his treatise on the primacy of the Qur’hn and the practice (sunna) of the Prophet Muåammad as the fundaments of Islamic authority. By examining the interface between rhetoric and ethics, this article is also intended to contribute to the academic debates urrounding the relationship between Islam and the classical world and late antiquity. As Garth Fowden has remarked: Islam . . . the third of the ancient monotheisms after Judaism and Christianity, continues to be treated as an intrusion, a narrowing of Christendom’s eastern and southern horizons, rather than as rooted in antiquity, even consummating it, and a decisive influence on medieval and modern Christendom’s evolution.4 The debate has hitherto been cast in the bipolarities of change and/or continuity. Indeed, it is difficult to envision a resolution of this binarism. One such attempt is Aziz Al-Azmeh’s boldly synchronic analysis of Muslim kingship; he argues that ‘Muslim polities had available a floating repertoire of immensely ancient and awesomely persistent institutions, metaphors, iconographies, and propositions concerning power, and most particularly concerning power in relation to the sacred’.5 In my reading of the development of an ‘Abbasid interest in Arabic as a language, I discern the mutualities of appropriation and adaptation, without excluding invention or neglecting the temporal, religious and cultural specificities of an enunciation. To this end, therefore, in my comparative survey of rhetoric and ethics, I discuss, in some detail, the theories of Aristotle, Isocrates, Cicero and Quintilian, together with a temporal projection, two centuries after Jhåi©, into Byzantium of the eleventh century, when Christianity had long enjoyed hegemony over the use of Greek. In the context of the ‘Abbasid second and third (our eighth and ninth) centuries, the constituents of this religio-cultural matrix (Al-Azmeh’s ‘floating repertoire’) find expression in a reverence of Arabic as numinous (the divine medium of Allhh’s communication with mankind: the language of the Qur’hn), accompanied, in the human sphere, by the collocation of linguistic aptitude and religious worship. In some respects, this process is similar to the Christian appropriation of pagan Hellenistic rhetoric and discourse through the celebration of paradox.6 The Muslims, from the late Umayyad period (the first half of the second/eighth century) and throughout the two centuries of what Dimitri Gutas discusses as ‘the translation movement’,7 were captivated by ancient Greek and Hellenistic conceptions of discourse, logic and argumentation. For the early
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period, this was most notably encapsulated in the third ‘Abbasid caliph al-Mahdj’s (d. 169/785) commission of a translation of Aristotle’s Topics as ‘a handbook in Arabic that would teach the art of argumentation and disputation’8 for the inter-faith debates conducted between Muslims, Christians, Jews and Manichaeans. A development of this disputational context is the transition from polemic – though inter-faith polemic continued unabated – to recognition of the numinousness of Arabic, that is, from external to internal debate. The social and administrative importance of the proper use of Arabic contributed to this transition. Relevant also are the ethical dimensions of classical and late antique rhetoric, possibly afforced with the intellectual (and religious) ramifications of the Rhetoric of Aristotle in Arabic, whether transmitted in textual form or through oral diffusion, be it in pedagogical contexts or in more general intellectual discussions. The default position concerning ‘the theory of the “voie diffuse” ’ (‘the presumably oral, or at least non-literary, transmission of ideas’, in the words of Dimitri Gutas) is that expressed forcibly by Gutas,9 with whom I agree in the main: unless it can be narrowed down and documented in some way, it is ‘useless at best (minimalist position) and misleading at worst (maximalist position)’.10 I would attempt to define it thus: although I have been unable to uncover ‘hard’ philological evidence that Jhåi© quotes verbatim from the Arabic Rhetoric,11 its presence in thoughts about language and rhetoric in his intellectual milieu can be established; and, precisely because of the culture-specific difficulties which it and its sister text, the Poetics, presented to an Arabic readership of his time, it would seem foolhardy to discount it as a relevant component of the intellectual ambience of his age. If its role was that of a catalyst, then Jhåi©’s silence about it in the Bayhn, which as Pierre Larcher rightly points out is to Arabo-Islamic civilization what Aristotle’s Rhetoric is to Greek civilization,12 may be a deliberate act of exclusion. Thus, such ramifications could have been transmitted in conjunction with the translation or exposition of a text from a donating culture into a recipient culture, or they may be examples of Otto Pretzl’s ‘worn coins’, that is ‘ideas of classical origin which had lost their classical contours in the course of circulation in the Fertile Crescent’,13 although the dynamics of classical and late antique rhetoric were, I would argue, neither ‘worn’, nor had they lost their ‘classical contours’, but, to continue the metaphor, were very much in circulation.14 My argument, therefore, advances points made by D. Daube’s reading of first-century Palestine, that the Jews had ‘borrowed Hellenistic modes of reasoning through the medium of rhetoric’,15 with two important accretions: first, I wish to avoid the polarities of geneticism and parthenogenesis, that is, I do not wish either to attribute third/ninth-century Islamic modes of reasoning to imported Hellenistic precursors, or to defend the implausible dictates of cultural isolation, preferring instead to see the impropriation of classical rhetoric as contributory to emergent intellectual and religious interests. Second, I wish thereby to stress the electivity of third/ninth-century Islamic religio-cultural autonomy. This chapter is divided into six sections: (a) Ars rhetorica and the forging of identities; (b) Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Arabic; (c) The ‘arabiyya (Arabic language) as sacral; (d) Jhåi© as rhetorical paradigm; (e) Patronage and the date of the Bayhn
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and (f ) Multivalency and the text. Section (a) discusses classical and late antique rhetorics; (b) presents the Rhetoric in Arabic; (c) is sub-divided into a discussion of the jurist Shhfi‘j’ s treatment of the ‘arabiyya and a survey of early grammatical works dealing with errors in Arabic language; (d) presents Jhåi©’s life as an instantiation of many of the concepts analysed in the chapter; (e) locates his al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn within the issue of patronage, in an attempt to locate it historically within the fortunes of the theological movement known as Mu‘tazilism and (f ) is a discussion of the concept of bayhn as it is presented in Jhåi©’s treatise. The reader is free, then, to put this article together in whatever way she or he pleases: (d), (e) and (f ) will be of interest to the reader who wants to know more about Jhåi©, his work and my reading thereof; (c) will be of interest primarily to specialists in medieval Arabo-Islamic culture, and (a) and (b) may interest the classicist or historian interested in the transition from late antiquity to Islam. The longer footnotes deal with details that are intended for the specialist.
(a) Ars rhetorica and the forging of identities Vir bonus, dicendi peritus (‘A good man, skilled in speaking’). Cato the Elder Auctoritas ab oratoribus vel historicis peti solet (‘Authority ought customarily to be sought from orators or historians’). Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 1.vi.2
Aristotle and Isocrates In Aldous Huxley’s Antic Hay, published in 1923, the hero, Theodore Gumbril, invents a pair of pneumatically inflatable trousers for the improved ease of a sedentary civilization. In the course of trying to market these trousers, he encounters Mr Boldero: ‘The most masterly examples I can think of,’ Mr Boldero went on with growing enthusiasm, ‘are those American advertisements of spectacles, in which the manufacturers first assume the existence of a social law about goggles, and then proceed to invoke all the sanctions which fall on the head of the committer of a solecism upon those who break it. It’s masterly . . . a social law has been created, according to which every self-respecting myope or astigmat must have four distinct pairs of glasses. Think if he should wear the all-shell sports model with full dress! Revolting solecism!’16 The elimination and avoidance of mistakes made in the course of producing language, mistakes such as solecisms (‘incorrectness in the construction of sentences’), barbarisms (‘incorrectness in the use of words’), catachreses (‘the use of words in senses that do not belong to them’) and malapropisms (‘wordfowling with a blunderbuss’),17 figure prominently in cultures in which the learned acquisition and proper use of language are considered a mark of the élite (or the preserve of the democracy), or are deemed ways of social and political self-furtherance, or are available
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as means of cultural control and maintenance.18 Therefore grammatical handbooks designed to eliminate such linguistic, hence cultural, faux-pas and treatises intended to instruct in the art of speech have featured prominently in the Greek, Roman, late antique and Arabo-Islamic socio-intellectual and political traditions. The performance of judicial, deliberative or demonstrative (epideictic) speeches was, in the ancient world, accompanied by the teaching of, and instruction in, the art of appropriate speech-making. Rhetorical theory, by which I mean reflection on the communication or codification of rhetorical knowledge or oratorical skill, however rudimentary, was inseparably linked to the formation of character, the imparting of codes of conduct: ithos engenders pathos, in Aristotle’s famous juxtaposition, whether the ithos is that of the speaker, be it assumed for the occasion or cultivated as a lifestyle, or that of the audience, or both.19 The ars rhetorica, then, is not only an epistemic activity but becomes an ethical enterprise, because it concerns ‘due regard for the characteristics of individuals’ and because ‘the proofs furnished . . . depend upon the moral character of the speaker’:20 The account (diigesis) must [centre on] character. Indeed it will be such, if we know what character engenders: one way is to demonstrate choice (proairisis), as character is the same as the way in which choice is demonstrated and choice is the same as its end (telos). Thus, mathematical discourses (logoi) do not have character, since they do not have choice . . . . Furthermore, do not discourse (legein) out of intellect (dianoia), as they do today, but out of choice.21 (Aristotle, Rhetorica, III.xvi.8–9/1417a.16–25) Plato’s older contemporary Isocrates expounds the correlation of moral character and rhetoric in many of his speeches; indeed, he even claims that rhetoric (and the moral character it formulates) is the principal organ of his programme of Panhellenism, in a manner which suggests that Aristotle’s concentration on the person is in reaction to it, although, of course, Aristotle’s person is always a civic actor and his rhetoric is a civil art: Our city has, with regard to thought (phronein) and discourse (legein), left other men so far behind that her disciples have become the instructors of all others; she has made the name ‘Hellene’ seem no longer the name of a people (genos) but of intellect (dianoia), and indeed that ‘Hellene’ is the designation of those who have a share in our education (paideusis) rather than of those who share in our common nature (physis). (Panegyricus, 50) As N. Livingstone rightly remarks, ‘Panegyricus 50 is not about the potential of barbarians but about the potential of paideia’,22 Isocratean paideia to be precise. In the Antidosis, 274–8, Isocrates’s apologia pro vita sua, he describes how rhetoric conditions the ithos, since the practice of logoi politikoi is the best ‘incitement and preparation’ for virtue,23 as he argues in Against the Sophists, 21. Isocrates maintains that there is a direct correlation between physical training (paidotribiki), including gymnastics, and philosophy, by which he means the mental and moral improvement
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engendered in an individual through rhetorical training.24 Those educated in the Isocratean manner are given to thought (phronimous),25 and are complete men, possessors of all the virtues (areti).26 Their ability to discourse in Isocrates’s voice qualifies, indeed forces them to promote Panhellenism. Panhellenic aims cannot be realized without Panhellenic logoi: to paraphrase Livingstone: ‘producing Panhellenic speeches may come to appear more important than realising Panhellenic aims’.27 Yun Lee Too considers ‘how Isocrates constructs a language within which he proceeds to fashion and authorise his own identity’. My point is that the authorization of this identity also forges a culture.28 Cicero and Quintilian The cultural/political dimensions of rhetoric were the cause of much discomfort for the Roman Senate. When the law courts were removed from the power of the Senate, and with the consequent popularization of the law, ‘formal rhetoric entered Roman society . . . rhetoric that could be handled by anyone who had a reasonable education became available in handbooks and was taught to patricians and plebeians alike’.29 In 161 BC, the rhetoricians were banned from Rome, a ban which was reiterated in 92 BC. These bans were actuated both by a fear not just of eloquence but of the ability to refashion culture which rhetoric permitted its exponents, and by a desire to ‘prevent the path to political and social advancement from being widened’.30 Indeed, such was the distrust of the ethico-cultural aspect of rhetoric that the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium (c.85 BC) advises the use of maxims (sententiae), ‘that we may be seen to be advocates of a case (rei auctores), not preceptors in how to live (vivendi praeceptores)’ (4.25). In the 50s and 40s BC, ‘at a time when Roman public address was being checked’,31 Cicero composed the De Oratore, the Brutus and the Orator; in the Brutus, Cicero emerges as the pinnacle of Roman rhetorical achievement. Thomas Wiedemann views as the effect of repopulation after the Social War of 91–89 BC the emergence of a sense of ‘nationhood’: The land-owning élite of Italy soon came to see itself as one single Latinspeaking community, rather than two hundred or so individual cities and tribes each with different languages and identities. That new and artificial community needed new cultural symbols, and they were taken from the entire range which competing Roman leaders had to offer: the promise of world empire, gladiatorial games, a common system of law, a wider Latin vocabulary to express the technical terms of Greek scholarship, a corpus of poetry to rival Greece . . . and of course oratory. No one planned the long-term effect of these competing strategies for glory; as with most social and cultural revolutions – including that leading to a new pan-European culture in our own generation – few, even of the intellectuals, saw why a new culture was needed. But there were some who did see that it was needed, and Cicero was perhaps better than any at realising his personal ambitions by providing what the unification of Italy called for.32
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Cicero, the vir bonus of the Late Republic, is, of course, a prime example of a man self-made through his abilities to exploit his oratorical skills and his command of the mechanisms of cultural manipulation, moulding and formulation.33 For Thomas Habinek, Cicero’s treatises are prescriptive and ‘constitutive of political and social context’ rather than ‘descriptive or reflexive’.34 According to Habinek, his prefaces aim to benefit ‘a sector of the aristocracy cast in a new political role . . . the means through which that sector’s authority is to be augmented is the expropriation of the cultural capital of a conquered people, namely the Greeks’.35 Intriguingly, he reads Cicero’ s preface to the De Oratore (55 BC) as a ‘belittlement of practical politics to the advantage of cultural distinction’, presenting ‘the bulk of his political and forensic career as, in essence, an interruption of his work as a rhetorician’.36 This culturally sanctioned dichotomy (between public life and private study) is often belied by Cicero’ s speeches, such as the De Lege Maniliana in which he expresses his political ideals, and the published version of the In Catilinam in which he is upbraided by the fatherland for his leniency as consul, speeches which are strongly justificatory and apologetic. His ‘insistence on the primacy of culture’ is inclusive of politics and the law courts; his ‘treatises create both ideology and the conditions under which ideology can continue to be created’.37 During Quintilian’ s lifetime, the ethical pedagogy which rhetoric saw as its preserve had been usurped by the philosophers.38 Although the philosophers eschewed public life, Domitian banished them from Rome in AD 89 and 93 (or 95). Quintilian, in contrast, enjoyed the favour of Nero, Vespasian and Domitian,39 and in many respects was representative of the imperial Roman court. T. Morgan argues persuasively that Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria ‘presents itself as a sort of educational theory, not merely a handbook of rhetoric or a sourcebook of literary criticism’, and points to how ‘in the ancient world educational theory regularly occurred in the context of political theory . . . the function of rhetoric was to produce people suited to bring about or maintain whatever political organisation the author proposed for a particular state’.40 For her, the work is ‘Quintilian’s own vision of how Roman society might be if his educational programme were carried out’. Cato’ s ‘good man’ (vir bonus) and ‘skilled speaker’ (dicendi peritus) are inseparable, representing the product of Quintilian’s oratorical education. At the heart of Quintilian’s theory is the power of language, as is also the case for Isocrates and Cicero: If in some sense the product of an education in a certain type of language is political power and virtue, then the use of that language comes close in itself to guaranteeing the virtue and authority of the man who uses it.41 Rhetoric in Byzantium During the Second Sophistic – the revival of Greek rhetoric in the Roman empire of the second to third centuries – as Tim Whitmarsh has argued, Arrian and Herodes Atticus represent the most outstanding instances of the symbiosis of political and literary activity, of the ‘competition for status . . . bound up with the display of paideia both a sign of élite status and a highly charged locus within
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which the élite staked out their competing claims for status’.42 A brief glance at the Byzantium of late antiquity can offer us some interesting examples of what happens in societies where the acquisition of language is the gateway to success. According to Peter Brown, ‘the reign of Constantine, especially the period from 324–37, saw the final establishment of a new “aristocracy of service” at the top of Roman society.’ It consisted of ‘salaried officials’ among whom one finds the self-conscious effort of a more fluid upper class to regain its roots in the past and achieve a firm basis of cohesion. . . . The new governing classes needed scholars, and, in turn, the scholars came to staff the bureaucracy, and at moments dominated the court. Brown discerns a genuine striving to create an élite . . . . Men sought, by studiously absorbing classical standards of literature and by modelling their behaviour on the ancient heroes, a stability, a certainty which they could no longer find in unself-conscious participation in a traditional way of life. He paints a picture of a society whose principal mechanism of cultural selfdefinition was through a study of its literary heritage effected by a bureaucracy composed of scholars.43 In Byzantium, however, the picture is complicated by the domination of the ecclesia and Christianity: rhetoric and the acquisition of proper speech were often employed as instruments of the maintenance of Christian culture. In the tenth century, under the reforms of the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (913–59), control of education and rhetoric was control of the social hierarchy. The emperor was an active patron of learning, according to a passage in an anonymous historian of the period.44 On the strength of this passage, P. A. Agapitos concludes: this was not a system which furthered research but which collected, selected and ultimately codified knowledge for its easier manipulation and control. The presence of the ruler legitimated this control and elevated it to a pedagogical dogma of prime political importance. In this society, ‘the teachers came from the highest ranks of civil and ecclesiastical administration; the students in their turn were groomed to take on key positions’, and education enacted ‘a programmatic role in the formation of the governing elite’.45 The eleventh century in Byzantium witnessed a brief but powerful hiatus in the intellectual hegemony of emperor and ecclesia, in the form of the ‘government of philosophers’, though their tribulations clearly attest to the resistance to any attempts at cultural forging which might run counter to the maintenance of the socio-intellectual and religious status quo. (It is little wonder, then, that in the words of Thomas Conley, ‘despite the fact that the text was available to scholars
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in Constantinople in the eleventh century, there is no evidence that anyone working there had actually read Aristotle’s Rhetoric’: the two Byzantine commentaries on the Rhetoric were compiled in the first decades of the twelfth century.)46 Despite belonging to families of the middle strata of society in the case of Michael Psellos and Constantine Leichoudes, or hailing from the provinces in the case of John Mavropous and John Xiphilinos, these men rose to positions of social, political, cultural and intellectual pre-eminence under Constantine IX Monomachos (1042–55), and as such they contrast strongly with ‘the tenth century officials who belonged to the capital’s bureaucratic aristocracy’.47 Their academic attitudes and pedagogical reformism posed a genuine threat to the ecclesia: indeed, in 1054 Michael Psellos was ‘forced to submit a public admission of orthodox faith’48 and retire, briefly, to life as a coenobite in Bythnia. In 1082 John Italos, the protégé of the emperor Michael VII Doukas (1071–8) and pupil of Michael Psellos, was subjected by Alexius I Comnenus (1081–1118) to an examination of his faith and condemned; a new anathema was added to the Synodikon of Orthodoxy:49 Those who offer courses on Hellenic subjects and do not teach these subjects solely for the sake of education, but who follow the vain opinions of the Hellenes and believe in them as being true, and thus, considering them to be correct, induce others – either secretly or even publicly – to follow them and instruct them without second thoughts, let them be anathematised.50 The philological dispute over the respective rhetorical prowess of the Three Hierarchs (Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea and John Chrysostom), which began under the reign of Michael VII and grew to serious proportions under Alexius Comnenus, was the swan-song of the pedagogical enterprise of the ‘government of philosophers’: ‘the ruling family of the Komnenoi systematically extended their power in the State’s military and bureaucratic ruling class’, and ‘the twelfth century witnessed a steady growth of imperial interference in matters of theology and education’.51 Typical of Athens, Rome and Byzantium is that language, its agonistic display in oratory, its codification in rhetoric and its impartation through paideia constitute a socio- and politico-intellectual matrix. This matrix can also be discerned in the Basra, Kufa and Baghdad of the ‘Abbasids articulated in a variety of differing manners.
(b) Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Arabic52 The Baghdadi bibliophile Ibn al-Nadim, who wrote at the end of the fourth/tenth century, provides the following piece of information in his catalogue of Arabic books, al-Fihrist (‘The Index’):53 An account of (the work) Rjƒurjqh, which means ‘rhetoric’ (al-khaƒhba): it is found in an old translation; it is said that Isåhq [ibn Åunayn]54 translated it into Arabic, and it was translated by Ibrhhjm ibn ‘Abd Allhh.55 Abu Naßr
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James E. Montgomery al-Fhrhbj56 wrote a commentary on it. I have seen in the handwriting of Aåmad ibn al-Ïayyib [a note saying]: This book is about 100 folios [long] in an old translation.57
There are two inferences which, for the present investigation, I wish to draw from this passage: the existence of an ‘old translation’ and what may be deduced from the comment attributed to Aåmad ibn al-Ïayyib al-Sarakhsj (d. 287/899),58 the pupil of the Neoplatonist philosopher al-Kindj (d. after 250/865). F. E. Peters remarks that ‘though nothing in the Rhetorica is preserved under [al-Kindj’s] name, this copy of the vetus made by one of his pupils suggests that the Rhetorica was also studied in the circle of al-Kindj; in whose translation is not known’.59 Indeed, in his epistle on the books of Aristotle (Fj Kammiyyat Kutub Arisƒhƒhljs, ‘On the number of Books written by Aristotle’), Kindj mentions in his description of the Organon ‘the seventh of the logical treatises, the one called Rjƒurjqh, the meaning of which is “the eloquent” (al-balhghj)’,60 and I can see little reason to question his general familiarity with the work, which his wording implies.61 We can conclude, then, that the Arabic Rhetoric played a modest role in the Neoplatonizing Aristotelian curriculum of Kindj, a contemporary of Jhåi©, and his circle.62 That the influence of this treatise was not confined to this milieu may be indicated by the reference in the corpus of pseudepigrapha ascribed to the shadowy figure of Jhbir ibn Åayyhn, the second/eighth-century Arab alchemist, to ‘our treatise in which we explained the treatise of Aristotle on eloquence (balhgha) and poetic and spoken [i.e. non-poetic?] declaration (al-khaƒhba al-shi‘riyya wa al-kalhmiyya)’.63 We should not, of course, place too great reliance on this body of writings, although I find in it much that is relevant for a reconstruction of the intellectual climate in the early third/ninth century.64 The version of the Arabic translation of the Rhetoric extant today is the collated edition prepared by the Aristotelian scholar Ibn al-Samå, who died in 418/1027.65 The Marginalia transcribed and translated by M. C. Lyons show that he had at his disposal two Arabic versions and one Syriac.66 Of the two Arabic versions, Ibn al-Samå says that one ‘was very defective indeed, and then I found another Arabic copy less defective than the first.’67 In his erudite and cautious summary of the evidence, Lyons believes that an Umayyad date (113, corresponding to AD 731) ‘would seem to be substantially justified’ for the oldest Arabic translation, and goes on to say: The transmission of a text of this type over a period of centuries must serve as an indicator of the vitality of the academic tradition that preserved it. There seems no reason to doubt that what we have is the ‘old’ translation, and all the evidence . . . can be made to fit with the statements by Ibn al-Samå that show that this is a carefully constructed composite text. Its weaknesses are perhaps less remarkable than the fact of its preservation.68 An Umayyad provenance, then, for Ibn al-Samå’s version should perhaps not be discounted, though as W. Heinrichs points out, the evidence is weak;69 and we
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have noticed that Kindj and his disciple Sarakhsj had expressed an interest in the work in the third/ninth century and Vagelpohl (2002) connects this translation with the Kindj circle. The absence of any hard, philological evidence that Jhåi© quoted Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Arabic does not rule out the possibility that he may have been familiar with the ideas which this work represents; and it is also manifest from my survey of classical and late antique rhetoric that the ethical dimensions remain constant in the tradition – a general tradition of which the Muslims of the Umayyad and early ‘Abbasid periods found themselves inheritors. Aristotle begins the Rhetoric with the asseveration that ‘rhetoric is a counterpart of dialectic’ (in the Arabic: ‘rhetoric depends on (tarja‘u ‘alh) dialectic (al-d-yhl-q-ƒjqiyya),70 and R. Smith notes that ‘dialectical skill is an essential component in rhetorical skill’.71 The Rhetoric, then, is a counterpart to the Topics; and the latter is a work which became central to the theological establishment of ‘Abbasid legitimacy. A translation was commissioned by the caliph al-Mahdj (d. 169/785) from Timothy I, the Nestorian catholicos, with the participation of Abu Nuå, a Christian governmental secretary (khtib).72 In addition, Heinrichs has established beyond doubt the intellectual and philosophical significance of an agnate text, the Poetics,73 and D. L. Black has argued a very cogent case for reassessing the Alexandrian and Islamic inclusion of the Rhetoric and Poetics in the Organon: ‘The logical contextualisation of rhetoric and poetics therefore suggests an exaltation, and not a denigration, of these two arts’.74
(c) The ‘arabiyya as sacral The burgeoning of ‘Abbasid prose in the late second/eighth and early third/ninth centuries is concomitant with the religious realization of the sacral and numinous nature of the ‘arabiyya, the language of the desert Arabs (‘Arab) consecrated in the Holy Qur’hn. Thus the seemingly variant accounts of the origin of Arabic grammar espoused by Michael Carter (that grammar was developed out of Islamic legal thinking because speech was considered as a social act) and by C. H. M. Versteegh (that grammar was developed as an attempt to prevent the corruption of the ‘arabiyya which resulted from the spread of the Muslim conquests: this is the traditional Islamic version), however one accounts for the details of this phenomenon, are inflexions of the sacralization of the ‘arabiyya: if it is irreligious to misuse the language of Allhh, the avoidance of linguistic mistakes becomes an ethical issue, and grammar consequently becomes a sister-science of jurisprudence, for both endeavours share similar religious aspirations.75 Therefore, the socio- and politico-intellectual dimensions of language which can be seen as central to Athens, Rome and Byzantium must, for the ‘Abbasid third/ninth century, be understood in terms of the religious significance of the linguistic medium used by Allhh for His revelation: the Qur’hn makes innumerable references to itself as ‘an Arabic Qur’hn’, and thus the ‘arabiyya enjoys divine sanction. Michael Cooperson’s reading of early ‘Abbasid historical writing in his Classical Arabic Biography: the heirs of the prophets in the age of al-Ma’mun in terms of the dynamic of ‘heirship to the Prophet . . . as a religious and political metaphor’76 should therefore be enhanced by an appreciation of the linguistic medium chosen
102 James E. Montgomery for these claims to prophetic heirship: to compose in, and to excel in, the ‘arabiyya is a celebration of the Divine Revelation, and imbues the work thus composed with a religiously sanctified aura. Shhfi‘j’s Rishla If we accept the validity of the postulate that literature should not be divorced from thought in the third/ninth century, then it follows that thought should not be divorced from literature. In other words, in order to appreciate the nature of intellectual activity during this period, we need to divest ourselves of the anachronistic accretions of categories and distinctions which were forged later. I wish to establish, therefore, an intellectual and polemical connection between the legaltheoretical Rishla (‘Epistle’) of Shhfi‘j and the Bayhn of Jhåi©, to suggest that that jurisprudence and rhetoric were not as hermetically sealed off from each other as modern scholarship seems to have presumed.77 Until recently Shhf i‘j (d. 204/820)78 was universally considered the ‘master architect’ of Islamic jurisprudence’.79 However, Wael Hallaq has proposed that, in terms of the fully fledged genre of Islamic jurisprudence, ußul al-fiqh, codified in the fourth/tenth century, ‘Shhfi‘j’s Rishla and the theory it embodied had very little, if any effect during most of the 9th century; and that the image of Shhfi‘j as the founder of ußul al-fiqh was a later creation’.80 In terms of later ußul al-f iqh, Hallaq is right to insist on discontinuity between Shhfi‘j’s ‘Epistle’ and the fully developed examples of the jurisprudential genre. Yet he errs when he holds that ‘the 9th century produced neither works on ußul nor commentaries on or refutations of the Rishla.’81 Jhåi©’s Bayhn is one such engagement with, and refutation of, Shhfi‘j’s thought, and Shhfi‘j’s influence has been discerned by Herbert Berg in ‘the very presence of isnhds [chains of transmitters] in exegetical åhdjths . . . in the realm of qur’hnic commentary’. Berg argues that Shhfi‘j’s ‘insistence on the presence of a sound isnhd spurred the proliferation of åadjths and the manufacture of isnhds’.82 The Rishla of Shhfi‘j is a work on legal hermeneutics composed originally in Iraq for a Basran Traditionist (muåaddith), ‘Abd al-Raåmhn ibn Mahdj (d. 197/813), and later revised in Egypt. It is a work which attempts ‘to set forth a theory that describes, and in fact prescribes, the methods by means of which law is formulated’.83 It has, however, been variously interpreted. Hallaq discerns in it a ‘predominant interest in, and elaboration of, the legal science of Prophetic reports [åadjths]’, and believes that ‘in theorizing about the law, it was clearly the prophetic Sunna that was Shhfi‘j’s first and last concern’, thus effectively categorizing him as a Traditionist (muåaddith).84 Joseph Lowry has interpreted it as a legal-theoretical exploration of the interpretative possibilities of Shhfi‘j’s theory of bayhn as applied to the Qur’hn and Sunna.85 For Mohammed Arkoun, Shhfi‘j’s work comes under the heading of the investigation of what he terms ‘la raison islamique’, Islamic reason,86 while George Makdisi holds that Shhfi‘j’s purpose in writing the Rishla was ‘to counter any system of religious knowledge that pretends to go beyond the Koran and the Prophet’s Sunna . . . Shhfi‘j’s doctrine declared
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the scriptures to be all that was needed for salvation’.87 Finally, Norman Calder argues: the limits of . . . [divine] revelation, its modes and its valid principles of interpretation, constitute the subject matter of the Rishla, as indeed of all of Shhfi‘j’s polemical writings. Such epistemological considerations defined, however, not only the nature and limits of knowledge (‘ilm) but defined also its possessors and the limits of their authority.88 As Calder argues, the Rishla presents an epistemology of how authority – scriptural, textual, legal-theoretical and therefore political – should be enunciated. As Makdisi realized, its burden is soteriological, because it is a deontology as well as a system of epistemological hermeneutics: its very stuff is the question of how the believer must live. Central to its epistemological hermeneutics, as Lowry demonstrates, is the notion of bayhn, which is predicated in part upon the sacrality of the ‘arabiyya. I would further suggest that a reflection of this can be seen in Jhåi©’s Bayhn, which I see as a riposte to, and engagement with, Shhfi‘j’s salvationist deontology as encapsulated in the theory of bayhn in the Rishla. For Jhåi© presents an axiology – a theory of ultimate values – in which man’s reasoning intellect dominates: man has to decide how he should live. Shhfi‘j and the ‘arabiyya In the Rishla, in his explication of ‘the fifth mode of clarity’ (al-bayhn al-khhmis), Shhfi‘j explores the implications of the resonances of the numinous quality of the ‘arabiyya.89 In his discussion of the Arabic Qur’hn (Rishla, nos 173–8), he proposes a theory of language which provides an exposition of the inexhaustibility and incommensurability of Arabic and its similarity to fiqh (juridical reasoning) (nos 138–43), of how only a prophet can know Arabic fully (no. 138), of how language is acquired and used (nos 146–8) and of how words can be uttered with conventional (maw∂u‘) meanings.90 The context throughout, for each of these propositions, is, however, dialectical and polemical: they are cast as a rebuttal of an unspecified disputant.91 Through inclusion in Shhfi‘j’s grand design, the study of Arabic and linguistic knowledge are hereby claimed for jurisprudence, in the form of a declaration of the similarities this discipline bears to knowledge of the practice (sunna) of the Prophet (Rishla, nos 142–3).92 In many respects, the treatment of ‘the fifth mode of clarity’ is the most ambitious of Shhfi‘j’s discourse – it is certainly the most difficult to grasp in its entirety. Khadduri struggled with the author’s train of thought, interrupting the argument uniting qiyhs (analogy) and the divine nature of the revealed language of the Qur’hn (‘arabiyya) by transposing the discourse on ‘ilm (knowledge) from its position in the discussion of åadjth on the grounds that it ‘deals with a broad jurisprudential subject, not on traditions as a source of the [sharj‘a, legal system]’.93 A feature of Shhfi‘j’s argumentation is the use of four loci probantes from pre-Islamic poetry to explain what the desert Arabs understood by the words
104 James E. Montgomery shaƒr and jiha (‘direction’).94 These passages are fundamental to his contextualist approach to the meaning of the Qur’hn and illustrate, through application, the value of the discussion of ‘arabiyya which is to follow. They also, in a small way, attest to the intellectual milieu in which the Rishla was intended to operate: by arrogating to jurisprudence the linguistic study of pre-Islamic poetry, and by demonstrating the applicability of this scholarly pursuit to the foundation of legal certainty, Shhfi‘j challenges the antiquarian study by philologists and grammarians of the poetry of the desert Arabs, and the prevailing conception of the relationship between the study of Arabic poetry and the science of Arabic grammar (naåw). There is also a challenge to the way poetry is, or will be, used in treatises such as the future al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn of Jhåi©. A further feature of Shhfi‘j’s exposition of ‘the fifth mode of clarity’ is the relation of the sections on the five categories of meaning (Rishla, nos 179–257) to the preceding discussion of the nature of the Arabic of the Qur’hn: they are amplifications of, and investigations into, the generation of meaning and the process of communication in Arabic with which Shhfi‘j concludes his exposition of ‘the fifth mode of clarity’ (nos 173–8).95 Also relevant is the relation of the discussion of Arabic to the exposition of ijtihhd,96 which is, properly, the ‘fifth mode of clarity’. Shhfi‘j’s subtle process of argumentation is not, however, discrete or watertight. He begins his treatment of ‘the fifth mode of clarity’ with several cases of ijtihhd: determining the direction of prayer (qibla) (Rishla, nos 104–14), the probity of witnesses (nos 115–16) or the compensation to be given for hunted game (nos 117–19), observing: ‘the topic (ma‘nh) of this chapter is that of analogy (qiyhs), for through it are sought indications (sing. daljl) for correct qibla, for probity (‘adl) and for similarity (mithl)’ (Rishla, no. 121). Personal pronouncements are rejected in favour of knowledge (‘ilm): ‘the direction of knowledge is [either] the information (khabar) contained in the Book [the Qur’hn] or Sunna, or consensus or analogy’ (Rishla, no. 120). As Shhfi‘j goes on to explain, the Qur’hn and that sunna of the Prophet which is acknowledged universally represent certain, unproblematic legal knowledge, whereas analogy (qiyhs) and the cognate ijtihhd are a means of guaranteeing ‘that revelation always provides the basis for a legal decision’ (Rishla, nos 122–5).97 Consensus (ijmh‘) is another mechanism which belongs in this latter category, and at Rishla no. 126 Shhfi‘j refers to its impending discussion later in the treatise: ‘for Shhfi‘j, ijmh‘ always represents the opinion of scholars, and that opinion always concerns the interpretation of a revealed text’.98 It is at this point, with the discourse on analogy, that the exposition of the ‘fifth mode of bayhn’ is concluded; the common capping device of authorial selfreferencing intimates that one section has terminated and points to the advent of another. At this stage, Shhfi‘j heralds a further development in his synthesis: the definition of ‘that which knowledge of the Book of Allhh comprises’ (jimh‘ ‘ilm Kithb Allhh). Such knowledge comprises four constituents: 1 2
the Qur’hn contains Arabic alone and no foreign vocabulary (Rishla, no. 127); abrogation (naskh), obligation ( far∂ ), paraenesis (adab), guidance (irshhd ) and permission (ibhåa) (no. 128);99
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the divinely sanctioned role of the Prophet as clarifier of Allhh’s decrees (no. 129); the divine injunction to obey the Prophet (no. 130).
Shhf i‘j concludes this section with a statement of the relevance of these four categories to the proper use of ijtihhd and avoidance of istiåshn (‘decision in accordance with personal opinion’) (Rishla, nos 13l–2).100 Such expository techniques are commonly encountered when an author wishes to proceed to the amplification of statements which have just been made, and constitute another capping device used to signal the end of a section or discourse. The four constituents of knowledge explicated in Rishla no. 127 function as an organizational heading for a significant portion of the remainder of the treatise: the Arabic Qur’hn is the subject of Rishla nos 133–257, Qur’anic sanction of the Prophet is the subject of nos 258–68, the injunction to obey the Prophet is the subject of nos 269–311, while of the items detailed in 2 given earlier, abrogation (naskh) is discussed in nos 312–45 and 393–420, and obligation ( far∂) in nos 346–92 and 421–568. As in his exposition of the aspects of bayhn,the ‘fifth mode’ of which we have passed in review, we note that Shhfi‘j avoids the linear exposition of the constituents of ‘knowledge of the Book of Allhh’ and is not at pains to provide a comprehensive amplification of their details. (Typical of his method is the organization of the discussions of abrogation and obligation.) Such are some of Shhfi‘j’s formal expository and argumentative techniques as exemplified in the Rishla. The burden of the exposition, the semantics of the argumentation, is not quite so straightforward: the discussion of the Arabic nature of the Qur’hn, after all, can hardly be distinguished from the discussion of bayhn, certainly in general third/ninth-century cultural terms, and also, I would argue, in Shhfi‘j’s own jurisprudential definitions. The virtual synonymity of clarity (bayhn) and Arabic (‘arabiyya) and the interdependence of his discussions of them are attested to in the Qur’anic quotations which are given, at Rishla, nos 156–62, to corroborate the superiority of the language spoken by the Prophet Muåammad (nos 153–4). Within the dialectical context of the rebuttal of his unspecified opponent and the establishment of the exclusively Arabic nature of the Qur’hn, Shhfi‘j discusses various ways of generating meaning available to native speakers of Arabic: Shhfi‘j said: Allhh expressed His Book to the ‘Arab in their native tongue solely, in accordance with such concepts (ma‘hnj) as they understood. Among such concepts as they understood were the extensiveness of their native tongue (ittish‘ lishnihh), and that its very nature ( fiƒra) is to express something [either] generally (‘hmm) and evidently (©hhir), by which the general and the evident are intended – the first part of such a statement dispenses with the last;101 [or] generally and evidently, by which the general is intended and into which the particular (khhßß) enters – this is inferred from part of the expression
106 James E. Montgomery thereof;102 [or] generally and evidently, by which the particular is intended; [or] evidently, from the context of which it is known that something other than the evident is intended. Knowledge of all this is to be found in the beginning, middle or end of a speech (kalhm) (Rishla, no. 173). They [i.e. the ‘Arab] can begin one speech [in such a way that] their first word clarifies the last, and they can begin one [in such a way that] their last word clarifies the first (no. 174). They [i.e. the ‘Arab] can utter something and convey its meaning without expressing it unambiguously with words, just as an indication (ishhra) conveys meaning, for in their estimation this is one of the most elevated [types] of speech, because the people who know it are few, and are distinct from those who do not know it (no. 175). They [i.e. the ‘Arab] can apply many nouns to one thing, and apply one noun to many meanings (no. 176). The extensiveness of the ‘arabiyya, then, allows (a) for the use of words in a general and self-evident (universal) sense; (b) it allows the application of universals to refer partially to specific individuals or things (I am unsure what Shhfi‘j means by this) and also (c) the application of universals to specific particulars and (d) it allows the use of literal language to express non-literal meaning as determined by the context of its use, by which I understand Shhfi‘j to mean metaphorical usage (majhz). Such issues were later developed into the science of the conventionality of language (wa∂‘ al-lugha).103 Shhfi‘j proceeds to emphasize not only the copious fecundity and flexibility of Arabic but also the importance of context for the correct construal of meaning. His valorization of ‘indication’ (ishhra) crops up, of course – as we shall see – in Jhåi©’s quintuple definition of bayhn, while in Rishla no. 176 Shhfi‘j voices the jurisprudential position that, as the exegete and theologian Fakhr al-Din al-Rhzj (d. 606/l209) was to phrase it, ‘the expressions have not been established to signify the external objects, but they have been established to signify the conceptual meanings’.104 In the continuation of this passage, Shhfi‘j makes explicit the juristic prerogative on the proper understanding and use of Arabic. It is difficult to determine the identity of the group at whom his attack is levelled:105 perhaps he has an antiShu‘ubj purpose in mind – the Shu‘ubjs were those who glorified the achievements of non-Arab cultures – or he may intend Christian polemicists with their anti-Islamic disputations in Arabic;106 perhaps the butt of his objections is the importation into Islam of Greek philosophical concepts. That all three are intended would fit with Shhfi‘j’s epistemological ambitions: These modes (wujuh) which I have described as encompassed in the understanding of the people of knowledge thereof, even if the ways (asbhb) of understanding them differ, are, in their estimation, a clear understanding, but are repudiated in the estimation of others, such as those who have no knowledge
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of this [feature] of [the ‘Arab’s] native tongue, even though the Book came down and the Practice (Sunna) arrived in their native tongue. They undertake to make pronouncements concerning knowledge of this [i.e. the Book and the Practice], which is to undertake something which they do not know in full (Rishla, no. 177). Those who undertake that of which they have no knowledge and on which their understanding is not secure, then for them to happen upon what is correct, if they happen upon it by means of that which they do not know, is not laudable, God knows best! They cannot be excused for their error (khaƒa’ ) when they pronounce on (naƒaqa) [a subject] with regard to which they do not fully know the difference between correctness (ßawhb) and error (no. 178). For Shhfi‘j, then, the ‘arabiyya is central to his jurisprudential exposition of the principles of the establishment of the law (bayhn): it is inexhaustible, and only a prophet can understand it fully; and proper appreciation and true knowledge of it are religious duties.
Solecisms of the commonalty (laån al-‘hmma) This intellectual climate of intense scrutiny of, and competing claims for prerogative in, the use of the ‘arabiyya also stimulated the appearance of manuals designed to encourage and facilitate its proper use, the so-called laån al-‘hmma (or al-‘awhmm) treatises (treatises on ‘the solecisms of the commonalty’). From Charles Pellat’s entry on this topic in the Encyclopaedia of Islam,107 it is apparent that the third/ninth century witnessed the production of some fourteen such works, the earliest being the Kithb mh talåan fj-hi al-‘Awhmm (‘Vulgar Solecisms’) of the philologist al-Kish’j (d. 189/805) and the latest the Kithb al-Faßjå (‘The Eloquent Speaker’) of the Kufan grammarian Tha‘lab (d. 291/904). (Kufa, founded in 17/638 after the Muslim conquest of Iraq, became one of the prime religious and cultural centres of the new empire. In Arabic grammar, however, the term ‘Kufan school’ applies not to scholars born and bred there, but to an approach which accepts the anomalies of the spoken language, as opposed to the ‘Basran school’, which sought to discover systematic rules of regularity in the ‘arabiyya.108 The patron of the ‘Basran school’ was Sjbawayh (d. end of second/eighth century), who ‘came to Basra to study religion and law, but is said to have turned to grammar after commiting a solecism himself . . . His . . . Book (Kithb) [is most easily understood] when viewed as [his] application of legal theory to . . . linguistic data’.)109 Many of the seminal and authoritative figures of early Arabic linguistic activity (in which I include antiquarian interest in the poetry of the ‘Arab, philology, grammar and exegesis) appear to have contributed to the debate: al-Farrh’ (d. 207/822), pupil of Kish’j and a prominent grammarian,110 Abu ‘Ubayda (d. 209/824–5), the philologist and specialist in the pre-Islamic Arabs, al-Aßma‘j
108 James E. Montgomery (d. c.213/828), Basran philologist and collector of pre-Islamic poetry, Ibn Sallhm al-Jumaåj (d. 232/846), Basran critic and anthologist of pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry, al-Mhzinj (d. 249/863), grammarian and pedagogue, and al-Sijisthnj (d. 255/860), Basran philologist and lexigographer. The emphasis throughout seems to have been on the avoidance of solecisms in speech; Pellat suggests that ‘as far as it is possible to judge, the treatises are concerned essentially with oral usage and its more or less accidental repercussions as they affect the written language’.111 Jhåi©’s al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn, which so often focuses on how not to speak or pronounce words, derives considerable impetus from this tradition. In his Kithb al-Bukhalh’ (‘Book of Misers’), the following characteristic auctorial intrusion occurs: If you find in this treatise a solecism (laån) or speech which is not properly Arabic (kalhm ghayr mu‘rab) or a word which has been used inappropriately (laf© ma‘dul ‘an jihati-hi) then you must realise that we have let them stand because the proper use of Arabic (i‘rhb, that is the full and correct use of case and verb endings, which are often dropped in ordinary speech) would render this chapter obnoxious and would frustrate it of its desired purpose – unless, of course, I am reporting one of the speeches of the pseudo-intellectual niggards and tight-fisted men of religious learning (muta‘hqilj al-bukhalh’ wa ashiååh’ al-‘ulamh’) such as Sahl ibn Hhrun.112 In other words, Jhåi© himself is not to blame for the solecisms which this work contains: the individuals who commit these errors are not fully formed ethically and are incapable of using the ‘arabiyya properly. More famously, in another authorial intrusion in the Bayhn, Jhåi© makes a distinction between what he understands by the ‘hmma (the commonalty) and the khhßßa (the élite):113 Abu ‘Uthmhn [i.e. Jhåi©] said: As far as I am concerned, I have never encountered a more exemplary method in composition (balhgha) than that of the amanuenses (government secretaries, kutthb), for they have a firm grasp of those words which are not uneven (mutawa‘‘ir) and outlandish (waåshj) or vulgar (saqjƒ) and disreputable (suqj). When you hear me mention the commonalty (‘awhmm), I do not mean the peasants, the riffraff, artisans and vendors, nor do I mean the Kurds in the mountains or the island-dwellers in the seas, nor indeed do I mean groups (umam) like the Berber (Barbar), the Ïaylashn, the Muqhn and the Jjlhn, the Zanj and those who resemble the Zanj.114 Those races among mankind who [deserve] mention are exactly four: the ‘Arab, the Fhrs, the Hind and the Rum:115 the rest are a rabble, or as good as a rabble. As far as the commonalty within our community (milla) and of our religious calling (da‘wa), [who share] our language (lugha), our cultural education (adab) and our mores (akhlhq) is concerned, they are a stratum (ƒabaqa) [within our society] whose reasoning intellects (‘uqul ) and mores
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(akhlhq) are superior to these [other] races but who have not attained the status (manzila) of our élite, although the élite also vie for superiority in various strata (ƒabaqht). This passage has been variously used in attempts to determine the identity of the khhßßa and the ‘hmma, malleable terms which are employed variously by various authors throughout a long and complex conceptual history. Such attempts generally endeavour to fix, albeit hesitantly, the transient referent of these substantives, and Pellat’s is no exception: It will be seen from this passage that al-Djhåi©, without making a decisive contribution to the problem posed by the definition of the khhßßa and the ‘hmma, excludes from the latter, from a linguistic point of view at least, the lower orders of society and the foreign elements whose language was not regarded as belonging to the ‘arabiyya, as strictly defined, and he includes among the ‘awhmm a medium social class who, at a time when literary Arabic and dialectal Arabic, as we call them, had not been irretrievably divorced, were expressing themselves in a language which was already less formal, but still fairly close to that of the khhßßa, of the intellectual élite, or the upper echelons of the latter, theoretically guardians of the norms of the past, of the innate and spontaneously [observed] faßhåa.116 And yet, Jhåi© dissembles. He appears to be predicating his distinction on linguistic grounds, but this distinction is not purely linguistic, for he has a definite set of opponents in mind when he refers to the ‘awhmm, namely the supporters of the ahl al-åadjth, the Traditionists, and in particular the followers of Ibn Åanbal (Aåmad ibn Åanbal, 164–241/780–855), characterized by their belief in the anthropomorphism of Allhh (tashbjh).117 Jhåi© discusses them in an epistle on the rejection of anthropomorphism dedicated to the son of the qh∂j Aåmad ibn Abj Du’ hd: May Allhh prolong your life and keep you, may He perfect His blessings upon you and His munificence to you! You know – may Allhh shower His generosity upon you! – how the people (nhs)118 talk of anthropomorphism (tashbjh), how they support one another therein and how hostile they are [to us] about it. [You also know] how heinous a sin (ithm), how obscene a falsehood (firya) it is, as well as how many groups there are of those who hold it and how obvious their strength (quwwa) is, how consolidated their power (sulƒhn), given the unquestioning acceptance of the commonalty (taqljd al-‘awhmm) and the sympathy of the rabble and the dregs. The élite (khhßßa) have no power over the commonalty (‘hmma) and the aristocracy have no power over the plebs.119 In this epistle, Jhåi© corroborates his dismissal of the rabble with quotations from, for example, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib – an
110 James E. Montgomery example of the high regard in which he is generally held in the writings of Jhåi©120 – and Whßil ibn ‘Aƒh’ (d. 131/748), lionized in the Bayhn as a founding father of Mu‘tazilism. He proceeds to uphold theology (kalhm) as the fundament of religion and refuge from apostasy (ilåhd ). His solecistic commonalty, then, are those who lend their support to the ahl al-åadjth, and particularly Ibn Åanbal and his companions.121 With regard to Jhåi©, therefore, it is impossible to agree with Pellat’s interpretation of the term laån al-‘hmma as ‘pure euphemism designed to disguise the truth and spare the feelings of the khhßßa by laying responsibility for linguistic deviations on the ‘hmma.’122 Once again, it is clear that linguistic aptitude and religious belief are two sides of the same coin. Moreover, committing linguistic faults disqualifies the locutor from membership of the khhßßa, which membership is, among other things, guaranteed through and by command of the ‘arabiyya as instantiated in avoidance of error. It is this religious, intellectual and socio-political dimension of control of the ‘arabiyya which provides one of the impulses for the development of linguistic and rhetorical activity in the late second/eighth and early third/ninth centuries, as much as the influence of the exegesis (tafsjr) of the Qur’hn,123 the controversies over its createdness (khalq) or co-existence in eternity with God and over its ontological status as text,124 and as much too as the antiquarian study of the poetry of the desert ‘Arab, emulation and influence of late antique grammatical pedagogy or Aristotelian logic, and concern over the corruption of a supposedly pure language occasioned by the Islamic conquests.
(d) Jhåi© as rhetorical paradigm Abu ‘Uthmhn ‘Amr ibn Baår ibn Maåbub al-Kinhnj al-Fuqaymj al-Baßrj, better known as al-Jhåi©, an appellation which means ‘Goggle-eyed’ or ‘Popeyes’, was born at Basra about 160/776 in an obscure family of mawhlj from the Banu Kinhna and probably of Abyssinian origin.125 His upbringing in Basra is said not to have involved any education beyond that of the elementary Qur’hn school, and he is reported at one time to have made a living by selling fish. He became involved with the intellectuals who frequented the Great Mosque, a common meeting place for discussion and debate, and is said to have attended as a spectator the philological enquiries conducted on the Mirbad. This was a vast open space on the outskirts of Basra where the caravans stopped, and was a locale intimately associated with the study and collection of Bedouin poetry from the mouths of the Bedouin themselves, and hence, according to the traditional account, with the development of the Arabic linguistic sciences. In Basra, in spite of his indifferent education, he was admitted into Mu‘tazilj circles – and Pellat notes that ‘his contacts with affluent and educated circles also gave him the opportunity to read voraciously, in particular the translations from Greek and Pahlavi that were then beginning to appear.’126 At this time he wrote several works on the nature of the imamate, which won him the approval of the caliph al-Ma’mun (198–218/813–33) and led to his moving to Baghdad, and later to Shmarrh, which became the caliphal capital under Ma’mun’s successors (while
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Baghdad remained New York to Shmarrh’s Washington).127 The question of the imamate involved the issue of the right to the leadership of the Muslim community, and was a topic very germane to the politico-legal legitimization of the ‘Abbasid caliphate, one very hotly debated and contested at this time. According to Pellat, ‘Jhåi© acted as an adviser to and apologist for the government, and seems to have exercised this role quite openly’.128 Indeed, ‘the stylistic qualities which alMa’mun then perceived in him were to enable Jhåi© to write both for the general public and for the intellectual élite, and so to serve as a popularizer and promoter of official doctrines’.129 Though Baghdad and Shmarrh were to provide the framework for most of the rest of his life, as far as we know, Basra remained Jhåi©’s literary metropolis, fascinating him as St Petersburg did Dostoievsky or London Dickens. In Baghdad he appears to have been supported by patronage, both caliphal and ministerial. We are told that he spent three days as a government amanuensis (khtib) and a brief period as tutor to the children of the caliph al-Mutawakkil (232–47/847–61), from which post he was dismissed because of his ugliness; but this cannot be the whole story. In all, he composed some 245 works, the longest of which to have survived is the (very long) Kithb al-Åayawhn, ‘Book of Living Creatures’, left unfinished.130 He died, in his nineties, in Basra in 255/868–9, crushed, according to a later annalist (though not without some poetic irony), by a pile of books. Jhåi© was, then, able to progress to, and to maintain, a position of no little prominence at the ‘Abbasid court, although it seems to have been an unofficial one. He did not owe this position to his birth, but to his imperious command of the ‘arabiyya.131
(e) Patronage and the date of the Bayhn The influence of patronage on Arabic prose has rarely been investigated in any depth. To what extent was an author expected to respond, or pander to the wishes and tastes of a patron? What happened when a work was commissioned by one patron and presented to a second? What types of influence could a patron exert on an author and his work? Can a patron’s philosophical or theological proclivities be determined from a work composed in his honour or at his request? An example of the problem is the Traditionist ‘Abd al-Raåman ibn Mahdj’s request to Shhfi‘j to compose the Rishla.132 To what extent does Shhfi‘j’s valorization of the Traditions of the Prophet reflect the Traditionist’s interests? Some progress on the issue of patronage has been made by Gutas in his study of the translation movement133 and by Gerhard Endress in his investigation of the translation complex connected with the philosopher Kindj,134 but much remains to be done. This section is intended as a preliminary foray into the dynamics of patronage. It emphasizes the closeness of the connections, intellectual and patronal, which obtain between the Bayhn and Jhåi©’s other major work, the Kithb al-Åayawhn (‘Book of Living Beings’), a subject which requires more study. The Bayhn is thought to have been written before the year 237/851–2, since it is dedicated to Aåmad ibn Abi Du’hd, the qh∂j al-qu∂ht (Chief Qh∂j, the head of
112 James E. Montgomery the judiciary, at this period a close associate of the caliphal administration), whose family fell from power in this year after he had been replaced by his son Abu al-Waljd Muåammad during the caliphate of Mutawakkil (232–47/847–61), Abu al-Waljd having acted as his father’s deputy during the previous reign, that of al-Whthiq (227–32/842–7). Work on the Bayhn may also have begun before the death of Jhåi©’s other, major patron, the vizier Ibn al-Zayyht,135 who was executed by Mutawakkil in the year 233/848, and to whom he dedicated either part or an early version of the Åayawhn, according to Pellat – who, however, in a more sober estimate, gives its date of composition merely as ‘before 237’.136 Lakhdar Souami maintains that the Åayawhn was continued by Jhåi© after the completion of the Bayhn,with the composition of the Åayawhn interrupted by that of the Bayhn.137 This is by no means impossible, though the evidence on which this statement is based is unknown to me. In his brief but illuminating survey of Ibn al-Zayyht’s role as a patron of the translation movement, Gutas describes him as ‘clearly a social climber’ who ‘despite his humble origins . . . had pretensions to being a poet’.138 He is reputed to have spent some 2,000 dinars per month on translators and scribes. Jhåi© and Ibn al-Zayyht shared an interest in Greek philosophy in Arabic: the Åayawhn frequently engages with Aristotle’s zoology.139 Little is known, however, of Ibn al-Zayyht’s religious orientation, or of the part he played in the Miåna, the attempt by the caliphs he served before Mutawakkil to impose conformity with their own anti-Traditionist views on the judiciary and on leading figures such as Aåmad ibn Åanbal.140 The fourth/tenth-century bibliophile Ibn al-Nadjm records that he was said to have been a Manichaean (zindjq).141 Jhåi© composed the epistle ‘On Sobriety and Flippancy’ (Fj al-Jidd wa al-Hazl ) for him.142 In his study of the biography of Aåmad ibn Abj Du’hd, Josef van Ess has established that, although he studied with Abu al-Hudhayl al-‘Allhf (d. between 226–35/840–50), the doyen of the Basran school of the Mu‘tazila,143 and with a pupil of Whßil ibn ‘Aƒh’ – of whom we shall have more to say later – Aåmad was not a Mu‘tazilj himself, despite Ibn al-Nadjm’s assertion to the contrary.144 Rather he was a Åanafj, a follower of a school of law which found favour with the caliphs and which critics thought tainted by the association, who, if he had little inclination for Tradition, was perhaps (unlike many Mu‘taziljs) equally unused to philosophical reflection.145 The cause of the confusion maybe that some Åanafjs and Mu‘taziljs had in common at this period a belief in the use of personal opinion (ra’y) in both theology and jurisprudence, together with a tenet which made them both congenial to caliphs who saw the Traditionists’ appeal to the urban masses as an affront to their own leadership of the Muslim community. This was the tenet of the createdness (khalq) of the Qur’hn, which implied that religious authority did not rest with the Traditionists, who claimed to be the guardians of the Qur’hn and of the Prophet’s example. Aåmad ibn Abj Du’hd was also celebrated as a considerable patron of poetry.146 Jhåi© composed a number of treatises on major aspects of Mu‘tazili doctrine for Ibn Abj Du’hd’s son Abk al-Waljd, who himself ‘wrote a number of books about the law, agreeing in point of view with Abu [Åanjfa].’147 It would be injudicious to insist on Ibn Abj Du’hd as the ultimate dedicatee of
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these compositions;148 more work remains to be done on the commissioning of Mu‘tazilj writings by these prominent Åanafj men of power. A notable dedication to Ibn Abj Du’hd, however, is Jhåi©’s ‘Treatise on Legal Judgements’ (Kithb al-Futyh), written before the Åayawhn, in which the treatise is mentioned, and which Devin Stewart thinks ‘must have treated ußul al-fiqh’ (i.e. the theoretical bases of jurisprudence) ‘including, at the very least, sections on consensus, legal analogy and ijtihhd’ (individual reasoning).149 On the matter of the dating of the Bayhn, three points must be taken into consideration: the incompleteness of the Åayawhn; the patronage of both the Åayawhn and the Bayhn; and a key passage in the Bayhn, which will be discussed later. As regards the first two points, the Åayawhn is manifestly incomplete. I find it impossible to conceive that the Åayawhn was continued without patronage; it is possible that Aåmad ibn Abj Du’hd took over patronage of it upon the death of Ibn al-Zayyht, though we do not know whether it was continued at all after its presentation to Ibn al-Zayyht. An anecdote given by Ibn al-Nadjm has Jhåi© state that the Bayhn was presented to Aåmad ibn Abj Du’hd.150 It must have been given its present format before his fall from grace, while revision of the Åayawhn (if we follow Souami’s sequence), may still have been in progress. The passage in the Bayhn runs as follows:151 It was my custom in the books of the Åayawhn for me to include in every one of its parts ten leaves of excerpts from the [poetry] of the ‘Arab and other markworthy poems, because you mentioned to me that they met with your favour. Accordingly, I very much wanted this book to be [still] more voluminous in this regard, if Allhh wills. This certainly suggests that a version of the Åayawhn had previously been presented to the patron of the Bayhn. It seems plausible that the patron addressed in this passage is Ibn al-Zayyht, and we may infer that the Bayhn was originally composed for him. Given the extent of Mu‘tazilj thinking which Ibrahim Geries has identified in the Åayawhn,152 we are confronted with at least two possible (though not mutually exclusive) inferences: that Ibn al-Zayyht was not unsympathetic to this brand of thought; that Jhåi©’s treatise was apologetic, promoting the values of Mu‘tazilj rationalism with the chief bureaucrat of the day. Clearly, however, after Ibn al-Zayyht’s execution, the Bayhn must have been rededicated to Aåmad ibn Abj Du’hd, to whom Jhåi© had already dedicated a work on legal issues. The Bayhn in its present version, then, is a reworked version for Aåmad ibn Abj Du’hd of a text previously intended for Ibn al-Zayyht. Ibn Abj Du’hd had been acquainted with a disciple of Whßil ibn ‘Aƒh’, one of the Mu‘tazilj heroes of the treatise; according to Pellat, Ibn al-Nadjm suggests that the introduction was written for the purpose of this rededication, though the text of the Fihrist is frustratingly lacunose at this point, and we must simply content ourselves with Ibn al-Nadjm’s statement that the second manuscript is ‘better’ and ‘more correct’
114 James E. Montgomery than the first.153 If Ibn al-Zayyht and Ibn Abj Du’hd were not themselves Mu‘taziljs, then we should consider Jhåi©’s treatise as apologetic, a promotion of a Mu‘tazilj world view. In sum, these considerations suggest that Jhåi© worked on the Bayhn when in his seventies, during the first third of the caliphate of Mutawakkil. The Bayhn and the earlier, incomplete Åayawhn form a pair, with similar aims and methodologies.154 But the caliphate of Mutawakkil was noted for the fall from grace of the first wave of Mu‘tazilj theologians and a reaction in favour of Traditionalism, later to crystallize with other trends into what we now recognize as Sunnism. The textual symbiosis of the Åayawhn and the Bayhn therefore requires further scholarly attention, for the latter’s re-dedication seems to have come just before the change of direction in caliphal policy and in the cultural and administrative sphere more generally. The intellectual champion of this shift was Ibn Qutayba (2l3–76/828–89),155 whose withering criticism of Jhåi© destined the latter to be remembered as ‘an uninteresting joker’.156
(f ) The Bayhn Multivalency and the Bayhn The Kithb al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn is an encyclopaedic compendium of the Arab and Arabic ‘humanities’,157 a work concerned with the demonstration of the linguistic and rhetorical excellences of the Arab people. Pellat observes: [ Jhåi©’s] intention is not absolutely clear, but his main object seems to be to show that the Arabs are unquestionably superior to non-Arabs in the fields of poetry and rhetoric. A secondary aim may have been to educate contemporary taste, which had already diverged some distance from the mainstream of Arabic literature proper, by laying the foundations of poetics and enunciating the principles of literary criticism.158 It is a work which is polemical, literary-theoretical, educational and descriptive. It is polemical in that its celebration of the ‘arabiyya is directed against the Shu‘ubiyya. As already noted in passing, by this term is meant the movement, ‘widespread among the new “middle” class of mixed race and the influential government secretaries (khtibs), aimed at remoulding the political and social institutions and the whole spirit of Islamic culture on the model of Sasanian institutions and values’. Some of the leading scholars of the day were Shu‘ubjs: ‘Those scholars with Shu‘ubj sympathies tried to prove that the non-Arabs, especially the Greeks and the Persians, had far surpassed the Arabs in linguistic skill and literary flair.’159 In the estimation of Gibb, by the breadth and vigor of his writing, al-Jahiz overwhelmed once and for all the literary frippery of the secretarial school . . . . The secretaries found themselves confronted with a living literature, instinct with the new Hellenistic learning as well as the solid erudition of the philological
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schools . . . for a decade or two they held out, but were finally constrained to recognize that the Arabic humanities had triumphed, and that their task henceforth would require of them at least a passable familiarity with the Arab tradition.160 Jhåi©’s attitude to the kutthb is not, however, consistently hostile or disparaging.161 For Jhåi©, the Shu‘ubiyya was also of a religious nature, as he says in Kithb al-Åayawhn: The bulk of those who are sceptics in regard to Islam, at the outset, were inspired by the ideas of the Shu‘ubiyyah . . . . If a man hates a thing then he hates him who possesses it. . . . If he hates [the Arabic] language then he hates the [Arabian] peninsula . . . . Thus matters go from bad to worse with him until he forsakes Islam itself, because it is the Arabs who brought it; it is they who provided the venerable forebears and the example worthy of imitation.162 The Bayhn is theoretical, in that it both discusses and defines concepts which were later to dominate Arabic linguistic and literary-theoretical thinking; it is educational, in that in it Jhåi© seems to attempt to mould the literary and ethical values of his age. To this extent, it fits two of the ‘types’ of adab defined by Pellat: instilling ethical precepts, and providing readers with a general education.163 Pellat observes that ‘in his moral adab Jhåi© . . . urges the acquisition of good qualities and the suppression of bad ones . . . without the tone of moral censure normally considered de rigueur among Mu‘tazilites’.164 Finally, the Bayhn is descriptive, in that it describes the style, techniques and practices of prominent orators of Jhåi©’s literary heritage; and I would also urge that it is religious, in its exaltation of the divine ‘arabiyya, theological, being an exposition of a Mu‘tazilj theory of language and of the role of bayhn in the cosmos; and, as such, epistemological, being an axiological engagement with Shhfi‘j’s jurisprudential deontology as encoded in his hermeneutics of bayhn. Norman Calder, while noting that the Bayhn is ‘no more than incidentally concerned with fiqh’, suggests that it ‘reflects the same oral culture’ as the second/eighth and third/ninth-century works of fiqh that he discusses, and that ‘its technical terminology is broadly the same as that of the juristic . . . works’. He perceptively describes it as ‘paradoxically, a written recreation of the oral milieu which engendered it’, but disappoints when he labels it ‘a characteristic work of adab, conforming to the pattern of the educational miscellany’.165 I submit that, however much scholars protest to the contrary, we do not know what constitutes a ‘characteristic work of adab’ in the third/ninth century, let alone whether the sense in which Calder, and earlier Pellat, use the term is even applicable to the intellectual milieu.166 Jhåi©’s introduction to the Bayhn Although much reference is made to the Bayhn in modern scholarship, few scholars seem to have bothered to listen to what Jhåi© himself has to say about the treatise by way of introduction.
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Towards the beginning of the ‘Chapter on bayhn’ (Bhb al-bayhn), after a preliminary discussion of the concept of bayhn, Jhåi© makes the following remark: Abk ‘Uthmhn [ Jhåi©] said: This chapter should really have come at the beginning of this treatise, but we held it back for the sake of some [aspect] of organization (li-ba‘∂ al-tadbjr). Jhåi©’s authorial remarks are usually playful, often disingenuous, sometimes misleading. He is generally most coy when discussing the deployment and arrangement of his subject matter, and tends to draw attention to two features of his style such as his inability to stick to the point which he wishes to make (and in this his technique resembles what Aristotle calls the lexis eiroumeni of Herodotus), and his pandering to audience demands. Yet this remark seems to fit into neither of these types, and the author specifically refers to the organization (tadbjr) of his work. I find his vagueness – the flavour of the original is difficult to convey – telling, and I suspect that it is obfuscatory. If it is an excuse – and it can be read as one – it is a weak excuse. What has Jhåi© been doing at the beginning of his treatise that necessitates this tantalizing auctorial intrusion? The Bayhn resembles Jhåi©’s other major works in that, while it does not have a designated or advertised muqaddima (proem), it does boast a prolegomenon in which the author declares his intention, as he does conceptually in the Åayawhn and stylistically in the Kithb al-Bukhalh’ (‘Book of Misers’), where his dazzling opening display of irony and parody sets the stage for the topsy-turvy world which he intends to depict. In the Bayhn, the headings which Jhåi© gives to his chapters and sections can be read as critical pointers to his thought. The first section of the treatise, Bayhn, I, pp. 3–74, functions as a prolegomenon in which Jhåi© ponders and ruminates on some of the principal themes of his work. It falls into three sub-sections: 1 2
3
Untitled; with introductory bismillhh (‘In the name of Allhh’) (Bayhn, I, pp. 3–22). Discussion of the events surrounding Whßil ibn ‘Aƒh’’s receipt of the cognomen ‘the Weaver’ (al-ghazzhl), and of those who denied this (ibid., pp. 23–34).167 Discussion of the consonants which are susceptible to mispronunciation (luthgha) and of how Jhåi© is afflicted in this regard (ibid., pp. 34–74).
I shall concentrate on the first two sub-sections and follow the topics and themes in the order in which Jhåi© develops them. The work begins with the following pious petition: Abu ‘Uthmhn ‘Amr ibn Baår, may Allhh have mercy on him, said: Allhh, we take refuge in You from seductive words, as we take refuge in You from seductive deeds. We take refuge in You from affecting that which we cannot do well, as we take refuge in You from conceit in that which we do well. We take refuge in You from intemperate and prattling speech, as we take
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refuge in You from linguistic ineptitude (‘iyy) and gaucherie (åaßar) Of old (qadjman) have [people] sought refuge in Allhh from the evil (sharr) that they [i.e. inaptitude and gaucherie] bring and have besought Him for immunity from them. (Bayhn, I, p. 3, 2–5) There are a number of aspects to this petition which raise it from the level of a mundane, pietistic topos. First, it declares that speech (qawl) as much as action ( fi‘l ) can seduce the upright Muslim into error, thereby declaring the religious character of Jhåi©’s enterprise. This is entirely consistent with ‘the deeply rooted notion that speech is a form of behavior and therefore can only be judged by the same ethical criteria which underlie the Islamic legal system’.168 Second, and accordingly, the production of speech is a moral (and not merely an ethical) endeavour, involving both knowledge of one’s limitations and a decorous probity concerning one’s abilities. Third, linguistic faults and epideictic incapacities bring harm to men (the inspecificity of the third person plural surely refers to a community of like-minded believers – presumably the Muslim Mu‘tazilj community? – and implies that among them there is ijmh‘, doctrinal consensus, on this point), and are thereby intended to exemplify how speech can engender seduction ( fitna). By fitna is meant both ‘temptation’ and ‘trial of faith’, and, in its religio-political sense, ‘(civil) upheaval’ or ‘anarchy’. Its use here is a fine example of the politicoreligious consequences of linguistic incompetence in Jhåi©’s vision of the Muslim community. Fourth, corroboration of these views is sought in the community ‘of old’ (qadjman), implying that Jhåi©’s prayer is in keeping with the practice of the early Muslim community. In many respects, then, this introit encapsulates some of the major themes of Jhåi©’s treatise: the religious and moral dimension of speech; the deleterious effects of linguistic errors; the assent of the Community on whose behalf Jhåi© undertakes to speak. Of course, there are more, and varied, aspects to Jhåi©’s treatment not covered in it. Suffice it to say that the prayer covers the conceptual focus of this sub-section and of the subsequent two. Having established the parameters of his discourse, Jhåi© explores these conceptual foci initially through a series of some sixteen shawhhid (loci probantes), verses or snippets of verse used to corroborate a major point, followed by a series of akhbhr, units of information (sing. khabar). The poetic examples treat of ‘iyy (linguistic ineptitude), åaßar (gaucherie), silence (ßamt) and knowledge (‘ilm), as well as broaching the notion of matching deeds to words (Bayhn, I, pp. 3–6). A khabar related of the Persian sage Buzurjmihr ibn al-Bakhtakhn effects a transition to the next major series of akhbhr: Buzurjmihr ibn al-Bakhtakhn the Persian was asked: ‘What is the most effective way of concealing [linguistic] ineptitude (‘iyy)?’ He replied: ‘A reasoning intellect (‘aql) which adorns it.’ They asked: ‘And if he has no reasoning intellect?’ He replied: ‘Material wealth (mhl) will conceal it.’ They asked: ‘And if he has no material wealth?’ He replied: ‘Then brethren who will speak in his stead.’
118 James E. Montgomery They asked: ‘And if he has no brethren who will speak in his stead?’ He replied: ‘Then he will be inept and silent’ They asked: ‘And if he cannot keep silent?’ He replied: ‘A speedy death is better for him than this mortal coil.’ (Bayhn, I, p. 7, l–5)169 Fundamental to this khabar, and to the treatise as a whole, is the notion that, by speaking, one reveals one’s true character. Hence, if one is linguistically inept (and this is both a religious and a moral fault, as well as a social disgrace, as the introit makes clear), an individual will go to great lengths to hide this fact, just as others will for their part, go to great lengths to uncover it. Silence, therefore, is crucial, and Jhåi© will expend much energy in this treatise on explaining the secret of successful silence. The next set of akhbhr (Bayhn, I, pp. 7–9) are central to my interpretation of one of the major facets of Jhåi©’s concept of bayhn, and hence to my reading of the treatise. Their primary focus is the relation between Allhh and mankind, in the form of the prophet Mush (Moses), as mediated by bayhn. This set is divided into two: first, how Allhh appointed Hhrun (Aaron) to act as Mush’s spokesman in response to Mush’s declaration of his oratorical inadequacy; second, bayhn as a divinely appointed test (balh’) for mankind.170 Throughout there is ample quotation of the Qur’hn. As in the Sura of the Poets in the Qur’hn (26: 10–68), Mush is despatched by Allhh as an emissary to Fir‘awn (Pharaoh) ‘to declare His message (iblhgh rishlati-hi), enunciate His argument (al-ibhna ‘an åujjati-hi) and voice His proofs (al-ifßhå ‘an adillati-hi) (Bayhn, I, p. 7, 7). Mush’s divine mission, then, involves the triad of bayhn, balhgha and faßhåa. This triad is not, I think, being used with any great precision here: several lines later, we find ifßhå conjoined with åujja and mubhlagha with adilla. Jhåi© declares a divine prerogative for the proper use of language: he attributes Mush’s request for the company of his brother Hhrun to his desire for a more efficacious mission – ‘that [men’s] necks might incline to him more, their reasoning intellects (‘aql ) comprehend him better, and their souls (nafs) go out to him quicker’ (Bayhn, I, p. 7, 15–16). A further authorial interjection enunciates the function of the Mosaic paradigm: It is Allhh’s [prerogative] – He is august and magnificent – to put His devotees to the test (miåna and balh’ ) through making [their lot] heavy (tathqjl ) or light (takhf jf ) according to His will, and to try their experiences (akhbhr) with such lovesomeness (maåbub) and loathsomeness (makruh) as He desires (aåabba). Every era has its own type of edification (maßlaåa), its own type of tribulation (miåna) and its own brand of devotion (‘ibhda). (Bayhn, I, p. 7, 18–20) I have decided to translate several key terms here in their widest possible sense, although tathqjl and takhf jf can both be applied to the human intellect, and akhbhr – which I render elsewhere, in the literary-scholarly context of Jhåi©’s own times, as ‘units of information’ – is, of course, more inclusive than my ‘experiences’ might
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suggest. Allhh puts His devotees’ collective lore to the test. This blending of man’s material welfare with his epistemological condition lies at the very heart of Jhåi©’s semantic mix of bayhn. As is so often the case in Arabic prose writings, the conceptual and semantic connections between this statement and the surrounding akhbhr (this time in the sense of ‘units of information’) are left implicit, and their meaning is expressed through juxtaposition. In this instance, the notion of divine balh’, explored in the Mosaic paradigm, and man’s response, is resumed upon completion of the discussion of Mush, rounded off with a characteristic Jhåi©ian cross-reference (‘we shall speak of the situation of Mush – peace be upon him – and his request [i.e. for Hhrun to accompany him] in his place in the treatise, if Allhh wills’, Bayhn, I, p. 8, 6–7). The divine provenance of bayhn as a religious duty is discussed upon completion of the Mush episode, through a series of Qur’anic quotations: the instruction of bayhn is one of His pleasant tribulations ( jamjl balh’i-hi); straightening the tongue (taqwjm al-lishn) brings His mighty beneficence (‘a©jm ni‘mati-hi). The Qur’hn is bayhn taught to man by Allhh. It contains euphony (ifßhå), beautiful elaboration (åusn al-tafßjl), pellucidity (j∂hå), virtuous instruction (judat al-ifhhm) and sagacious communication (åikmat al-iblhgh): Allhh has named it a furqhn (deliverance) as He has named it a qur’hn and said: ‘in an Arabic which is clear’ (Qur’hn 26:195) and: ‘Thus have We sent it down as an Arabic qur’hn’ (Qur’hn 20:113), and: ‘We have sent the kithb (scripture) down to you, as a clarification of every thing’ (Qur’hn 16:89), and: ‘every thing have We elaborated in detail’ (Qur’hn 17:12). (Bayhn, I, p. 8, 12–14) The ‘arabiyya is of divine status, and Allhh teaches man bayhn in the form of the Qur’hn, in which all Arabic linguistic knowledge is exemplified. It is man’s religious and moral duty to acquire, pass on and apply this knowledge. This then is the balh’, the test, for Jhåi©’s age. Jhåi© continues his disquisition with a discussion of the seductive charm and appeal of the rhetorical abilities of the pre-Islamic Quraysh, the Prophet’s tribe, who were hostile to his mission, information relayed by Allhh to His Prophet, Muåammad. The Quraysh, in their opposition to the Prophet, embody the (moral and religio-political) corruption engendered through the seductiveness of speech ( fitnat al-qawl ). The theme of the disparity between speech and deed (an equation made in the introit) introduces the Bedouin ‘Arab notion of welcoming conversation as one of the ‘obligations of hospitality and a feature of consummate magnanimity’ (Bayhn, I, p. 10, 4–5). Jhåi© thereby enlarges upon the social aspects of bayhn. The theme of Allhh and bayhn, with a concomitant, divinely sanctioned, attack on the opposition to Muåammad of the pre-Islamic Quraysh and the Bedouin ‘Arab, brings the discourse to a close (Bayhn, I, p. 11, 5–11). Transition to the next section, a recapitulation of the equivalence of linguistic and ethical incapacity, is effected through a divine apophthegm and a poetic exemplum (Bayhn, I, pp. 11, 12–12, 8).171
120 James E. Montgomery The passages on oratorical ineptitude, which include the Prophet’s animadversion to certain types of inept public speakers (Bayhn, I, pp. 12–14), lead into an apologetic account of Whßil ibn ‘Aƒh’’s inability to pronounce the letter rh’ (Bayhn, I, pp. 14–18, 21–2), which frames an enquiry into dialectal variation among the settled townships (amßhr) of the Muslim conquests, with particular attention paid to the differences between Kufan and Basran vocabulary and the ideal, manifest in the Qur’hn, of the apt use of words and of concepts (ma‘hnj) (Bayhn, I, pp. 18–21). Of course, given Jhåi©’s (and Aåmad ibn Abj Du’hd’s) predilection for the latter settlement, Basran vocabulary is deemed to be more correct.172 The shawhhid attesting to the propriety and acceptability of the term burr, for which Whßil would substitute the less correct qamå or åinƒa (all of which mean ‘wheat’), are part of an ingenious argument in the continued defence of Whßil, ‘who knew that the language of those who say burr is more euphonious (afßaå, from faßjå) than the language of those who say qamå or åinƒa’ (Bayhn, I, p. 17, 6–7). Whßil’s ingenuity in composing orations consisting of words which do not contain the letter rh’, which he could not pronounce, becomes, in both this and the second sub-section, the very stuff of legend, and these shawhhid contribute indirectly to the delineation of Whßil’s linguistic invention (ƒarhfa) and his cornucopia of recondite vocabulary (gharhba) (Bayhn, p. 15, 8–9).173 Jhåi©, however, is not content merely with a dazzling apologia of Whßil. His compositional artifice leads him to liken the dysphonic Whßil to the tongue-tied Mush: just as Mush, with Allhh’s help, managed to cast off his tribulation (miåna), so Whßil overcame his dysphonia, through sheer determined effort, application, assiduousness and perseverance. The significance of this comparison can scarcely be overestimated. The father of Mu‘tazilism is limned as victorious over adversity, as triumphant in his knowledge, as tantamount to one of Allhh’s prophets: in Íafwhn al-Anßhrj’s verses, quoted Bayhn, I, p. 22, 6 the epithet mulham, ‘divinely inspired’, is applied to Whßil. Throughout this sub-section and the next, it is Whßil’s linguistic prowess, his extemporaneous fluency and his disputational adroitness (Bayhn, I, p. 15, 10–11), rather than any doctrinal theories, which Jhåi© valorizes. The second sub-section of the introduction, on Whßil’s acquisition of the laqab (cognomen) ‘the Weaver’, is foreshadowed in the discourse on Whßil’s dysphonia, when Jhåi© refers to the enmity between Whßil and the poet Bashshhr ibn Burd (d. c.167/784).174 Such thematic anticipation is a compositional technique which Jhåi© employs frequently in the course of the whole of this section. It casts doubt, in my estimation, on the author’s self-disparagement of his organizational skills. The valorization of this father of Mu‘tazilism continues in Jhåi©’s discourse on his cognomen. It begins with three poetic repudiations of the religious beliefs of groups within the Community. According to the first verses cited, ‘the Weaver’ and ‘Ibn Bhb’ (respectively Whßil and the early Mu‘tazilj thinker ‘Amr ibn ‘Ubayd, d. c.145/761 (Bayhn, I, p. 23, 2–7) belong to the radical secessionist group, the Khhrijjs.175 In the second, Bashshhr declares that he ‘does not belong to the party of a weaver’ (ibid., pp. 8–9), while in the third, Whßil the Weaver is said to have a group of ‘disciples’ (ibid., pp. 10–13). This disarmingly hostile beginning to a
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defence of Whßil leads into a discussion of the enmity between Whßil and Bashshhr, which arose when Whßil was declared the victor in a disputation before the Umayyad governor of Iraq (ibid., pp. 24, 1–25, 2).176 Twenty-two verses of a panegyric in honour of Whßil by the Íafwhn al-Anßhrj mentioned earlier, in the first sub-section, are given: the picture which the panegyrist paints of Whßil is that of an effective proselytizer, the friend of the orphaned, who unites such seemingly disparate groups as the Rhfi∂js and the Murji’js, and indeed even Khhrijjs,177 the defender of the religion of Allhh against unbelief. His followers, with their distinctive costumes and their instantly recognizable marks, spread the word through all lands, with the efficacy of a butcher’s knife cutting through bone. They are also singled out for their piety and devotion to Allhh. Importantly, in the context of Jhåi©’s foundational equation of speech and character, Íafwhn claims that ‘their words mirror their inmost minds’ (wa-©hhiri qawlin f j mithhli l-∂amh’iri) (Bayhn, I, p. 26, 6). The text of another longish poem, of thirty-four lines, by Íafwhn al-Anßhrj, in praise of the Qur’anic vision of man’s creation from clay, is given at Bayhn, I, pp. 22, 5–30, 3, where it is described as a refutation of Bashshhr’s celebrated poem on fire and in defence of Ibljs (Satan). Íafwhn’s poem is much concerned with an enumeration of mineralogy, and includes a defence of ‘‘Amr the physician’ (al-naƒhsj) and Whßil (ibid., p. 29, 5), with a vigorous distinction being made between them and other sects then prevalent (ibid., pp. 29, 5–30, 3).178 Precious little is known about Íafwhn. Pellat emphasizes that the poem is part of a disputatio with Bashshhr’s Mazdean ode to fire, and warns that we should be wary of reading too much into its terrestrial and mineralogical references,179 taking issue with H. S. Nyberg’s suggestion that they are an indication of connections between the early Mu‘tazila and alchemy (‘it is the philosophy of the alchemists, the physicists of late antiquity, a kind of summa of the scientific principles which seem to have been accepted everywhere in Asiatic Hellenism’).180 W. Heinrichs reminds us that ‘the context(s) in which this polemics became meaningful is none too clear’.181 S. P. Stetkevych interprets Íafwhn’s poems in terms of the classical Arabic qaßjda (polythematic ode), and concludes that they express ‘contemporary social and cultural ideas – in this case the leading politico – religious issue of the day, Islam versus Zandaqah [dualism], portrayed in terms of the old Semitic chthonism versus Zoroastrian pyrolatry’.182 Jhåi© next regales his audience with various poems lampooning Bashshhr before rounding off this disquisition with the quotation of yet another poem by Íafwhn al-Anßhrj on the Whßil-Bashshhr affair and on the superiority of clay over fire (Bayhn, I, p. 32, 5–15). The second sub-section is brought to a close with Jhåi©’s own analysis of the cognomen ‘the Weaver’, which he explains by saying that Whßil used to sit often in the market of the weavers (ibid., pp. 32, 16–34, 1). Reference to two of his own writings on related matters functions, as it does so often in Jhåi©ian compositions, as a marker of closure (Bayhn, I, p. 34). The early history of the Mu‘tazila has been narrated in a highly individual manner, in the context of the dysphonic defects of one of its founding fathers, Whßil ibn ‘Aƒh’, a rhetorical genius likened to the prophet Mush. The Mu‘tazila’s
122 James E. Montgomery representative membership of the Islamic Community has been established, and it has been portrayed as a corrective to many of the aberrant groups then prevalent. The poetry of Íafwhn also reveals it to be fully conversant with the intricacies of mineralogy, a metonym of its acquisition of scientific learning. Overall, the first section of Jhåi©’s Bayhn establishes the three principal domains in which the treatise will operate: the divine nature of bayhn and its significance for mankind; Mu‘tazilism as the bastion of the beliefs of the Community; the analysis and survey of linguistic ineptitude and speech defects as political, religious, moral and legal failings. Bayhn as a general concept I translate the title of the work, Kithb al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn, as ‘The Treatise of Clarity and Clarification’.183 Other suggested translations include ‘Elegance of Expression and Clarity of Exposition’,184 ‘The Book of Eloquence and Exposition’,185 and ‘The Book of Lucid Style and Elucidation’.186 In the notion of bayhn lies the principal key to interpreting Jhåi©’s work. Although the gerund of the second form, tabyjn, does not occur in the Qur’hn, the corresponding verb and other derivates are well attested, and in Bayhn, I, p. 273, Jhåi© states that Allhh ‘praises’ (madaåa) tabyjn. The word bayhn occurs three times in the Qur’hn: 1
2
3
Surat Hl ‘Imrhn (Qur’hn 3:138): hhdhh bayhnun li l-nhsi wa hudan wa maw‘i©atun li l-muttaqjna, ‘This is clarity for the people and right guidance and admonishment for those who fear Allhh’; Surat al-Raåmhn (55:1–4): al-Raåmhnu: ‘allama l-qur’hna: khalaqa l-inshna: ‘allama-hu l-bayhna, ‘The Compassionate: He taught the Qur’hn: He created man: He taught him clarity’; Surat al-Qiyhma (75:16–19): lh tuåarrik bi-hi lishna-ka li-ta‘jala bi-hi: inna ‘alaynh jam‘a-hu wa qur’hna-hu: fa-idhh qara’nh-hu fa-ttabi‘ qur’hna-hu: thumma inna ‘alaynh bayhna-hu, ‘Do not so agitate your tongue as to be hasty with it: Its collection and recitation are [incumbent] upon Us: So when We recite it, attend to its recitation: For then its clarity is [incumbent] upon Us’.
In connection with passage (2), Régis Blachère concludes that ‘al-bayhn, “the Exposition”, is a name given to the new revelation’.187 I prefer to discern a sequence in the verses, and to see bayhn as the third item of a logical movement such as Qur’hn, Man, Clarity. As such it constitutes a gift from Allhh commensurate with the blessings of the Qur’hn and of creation. That bayhn is somehow distinct from (by virtue of being posterior to) qur’hn and yet is inseparable from it (by virtue of being a very part of its nature) is implied in the compositional sequence in which the third instance of bayhn occurs in the Qur’hn, see earlier. In other words, the qur’hn is an instantiation of bayhn.188 The tafsjr (Qur’hn commentary) of the exegete, jurisprudent and historian al-Ïabarj (d. 314/923) records the remnants of a discussion of the meaning and
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import of the word bayhn in connection with its use in passages (2) and (3); ultimately, however, it is the force of its use in passage (1) which predominates. Ïabarj’s discusion of (2) considers the instruction of the Qur’hn, the creation of man and the instruction of bayhn as manifestations of Allhh’s compassion (raåma), notions which in the text are epexegetical to the divine epithet al-raåmhn. He notes that ‘the people of interpretation’ (ahl al-ta’wjl ) are divided on their understanding of bayhn: for some it is the clarification of what is licit and what is illicit (bayhn al-åalhl wa al-åarhm), whereas others hold that it denotes the power of ‘speech’ (kalhm). Ïabarj’s own solution is to combine the two: Allhh taught man what he needed [to know] concerning the matter of His religion and the world below – what is licit and illicit, [permissible] ways of living (ma‘hyish), the faculty of speech (manƒiq) and whatever else [man] needed [to know]. Allhh – august is His praise! – did not specify in this khabar that He gave instruction in one part of bayhn to the exclusion of another, but instead generalized (‘amma).189 The exegesis that equates bayhn with kalhm – the exegesis later favoured by the Mu‘tazilj exegete and theologian al-Zamakhsharj (d. 538/1144) – is incorporated within a declarative construction of the term which draws heavily on its occurrence in (1) and makes it synonymous with tabyjn. This use of bayhn is encountered in the åadjth: ‘Lord God, in the matter of wine provide us with a remedial clarification (bayhnan shifh’an).’190 It also crops up in an oration (khuƒba), quoted by Jhåi© at Bayhn, II, p. 138, 12–13, in which the Umayyad governor al-Åajjhj (d. 95/714), after crushing a rebellion, berates the people of Iraq for their imperviousness to experience, Islam and bayhn. It is clear, however, that prior to Ïabarj the passage had been explained by some as a declaration that Allhh had taught man the power of speech. In the åadjth just quoted, while bayhn carries its explicative sense, an elucidation from Allhh, we note that it is communication from Allhh to man, and that it functions as a remedy (shifh’) for man’s ignorance. Ïabarj’s exegesis of (3) concentrates on the import of verse 16 and on how the remaining verses elucidate Allhh’s command to Muåammad. Bayhn is glossed once more with the åalhl/åarhm (licit/illicit) distinction.191 From these Qur’anic occurrences we can conclude that (a) in the Qur’hn, bayhn is, according to some scholars, on at least one notable occasion – that is, in passage (2) – possibly a synonym for the Revelation; (b) that in passages (2) and (3) it is semantically implicated in the notion of qur’hn and (c) that in all three passages it bears the meaning both of clarity of expression and of exposition or elucidation: Allhh declares His intention not only to enunciate the Revelation but also to express it with clarity in order to guide man. Furthermore, ‘in the first and third instances in the Koran, bayhn is used in reference to God; in the second it is what God teaches man.’192 All three occurrences involve the notion of communication between God and man and their proper roles in this process.
124 James E. Montgomery As Jhåi© intimates, his treatise is devoted to the explication of the Qur’anic use of the word bayhn (which, according to the Kithb al-Åayawhn,193 is a gift from God to man): The sign (dalhla) which makes the hidden concept apparent is the clarity (bayhn) which you have heard Allhh, august and majestic, praising ( yamdaåuhu), calling and urging [us] to. The Qur’an has spoken (naƒaqa) of it, the Arabs have prided themselves on it, and non-Arab peoples (aßnhf al-‘ajam) have contended for superiority in it. (Bayhn, I, p. 75) Elsewhere in the Bayhn we read: ‘The clearest discourse (abyan al-kalhm) is the discourse (kalhm) of Allhh. It is He who praises (madaåa) clarification (tabyjn) and the people of exposition (ahl al-tafßjl )’ (Bayhn, I, p. 273, 10–11).The conceptual field of bayhn also includes the notions of ‘communication’, which is a divine benefaction intended to function as the basis (sabab) of society (ijtimh‘),194 and of . ‘insight’. K. Skarzyqska-Bocheqska refers to W. Najm’s ‘interesting development of the idea of bayhn as a link between God and human beings’;195 bayhn, then, would include communication between God and man, tabyjn, perhaps, communication between man and man. It is clear, however, that in the body of the text Jhåi© uses bayhn to mean both. One of the problems of interpreting Jhåi©’s pronouncements on language is the determination of the technicality of the language which he uses. It is my contention that his vocabulary should not be interpreted in terms of the later development of ‘the science of bayhn’ (‘ilm al-bayhn). It strikes me as having as much in common with the logical works, not only the early translations but, to some extent, the termini as developed by the philosopher Fhrhbj (d. 339/950)196 in, among other works, his commentary on the translation of Aristotle’s De Interpretatione, as with the legal theoretical language of Shhfi‘j and the linguistic reflections of the early grammarians and the mutakallimun.197 This impression requires corroboration, of course. With the passing of time, for example, bayhn came to denote ‘the means by which clearness is achieved’.198 Jhåi©, however, distinguishes between faßhåa, ‘purity and euphony of language’,199 bayhn, ‘clarity’ and balhgha, the semantic and syntactic means whereby these two factors are properly combined in an expression.200 It is therefore misleading when G. E. von Grunebaum opposes Jhåi©’s concepts of faßhåa and balhgha, on the one hand on the grounds that Jhåi© himself entertains a ‘dualism of form and content’, and on the other because of ‘the dualism which the Muslim philosophy of language predicates of its subject’.201 According to von Grunebaum, ‘when the activity which results in language is analysed into its two components, faßhåa emerges as the “virtue” coordinated with man’s physiological, phonetic effort and balhgha as the “virtue” registering the realisation of his mental endeavour’. Von Grunebaum’s dualist postulate must be re-examined in view of the role accorded by Jhåi© to bayhn: bayhn is the basic prerequiste of verbal communication which is best enunciated through a combination of faßhåa and balhgha. Moreover, contrary
Al-Jhåi©’s Kithb al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn 125 . to what Skarzyqska-Bocheqska argues – ‘balhgha refers exclusively to language expressions which fulfill the definite aesthetic requirements’202 – Jhåi©’s notion of balhgha is not exclusively determined in aesthetic terms: as she herself points out, the ‘features of eloquence’ which she discusses are not all formal, and ‘several are derived from the contents of an expression’. The third, fourth and fifth sections of Kithb al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn deal with the three concepts of faßhåa, bayhn and balhgha. They are Bayhn, I, pp. 34–74: ‘Mention of the Consonants which are Prone to Mispronunciation (luthgha)’, and which are hindrances to faßhåa; Bayhn, I, pp. 75–87: ‘Chapter on bayhn’; and the section on balhgha, Bayhn, I, pp. 88–97.203 This order is not estimative. In this respect, the arrangement of these chapters differs from the organizational principle discerned by Fedwa Malti-Douglas in Ibn Qutayba’s ‘Uyun al-Akhbhr, whose organization, according to her, possesses a semiotic value. The subjects run in generally declining importance (in the value system of the society) from the beginning to the end of the work. Hence there is a syntax of position; the book of women is the last of the ten.204 Development of the concept of bayhn, Bayhn, I, pp. 75–87 In the preliminary chapter of the Bayhn, Jhåi© establishes three of the principal concerns of the treatise such as ‘clarity’ as a religious and moral duty, the essentials of which are exemplified by and expressed in the Qur’hn; the importance of the concept of ‘clarity’ for the Mu‘tazila and the importance of the Mu‘tazila for the treatise; the treatise as a guidebook to and manual of the proper use of language and thus the avoidance of sin. As Jhåi©’s comments on Bayhn, I, p. 75 (translated earlier) indicate, the section entitled ‘The Chapter on Clarity’ is the first ostensibly to treat of the topic of the treatise, although I have argued that Jhåi© uses the introductory sections to address many of the issues germane to his subsequent treatment of the topic in the body of the treatise. I repeat my contention, that Jhåi©’s rhetorical endeavour is not primarily or exclusively aesthetically determined. The structure of ‘The Chapter on Clarity’ is expository. Jhåi© begins with a preliminary discussion of ma‘nh (‘meaning’, also ‘idea’, ‘concept’, which exists separately of laf©, ‘utterance’) as part of an intriguing psychology of language, then presents a quintuple definition of bayhn, proceeds to an orderly exegesis of each of the five definitions, though taking them in a different sequence from the one in which he presents them, and finally concludes with an exploration, through shawhhid (loci probantes) and akhbhr (units of information), of the notions of bayhn, balhgha and ‘aql. The latter is the nexus of Mu‘tazilj thought, for ‘aql is the reasoning intellect. In this respect, the chapter differs from compositional structures which are more customarily associated with Jhåi©, whether the digressional, the expository structure with which Jhåi© is most often credited (likened earlier to lexis eiroumeni in Herodotus), the list (the chief structuring principle of the chapter on man’s
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inherent character, khuluq and ƒab‘, Bayhn, II, pp. 175–207), or the dialectic, in which a logical argument is constructed without auctorial intrusion and from the juxtaposition of disparate materials, of which the chapter on balhgha (Bayhn, I, pp. 88–97) is an example. (Let us note that Shhfi‘j uses a logical structure in his disquisition on bayhn, and that logic is as much a feature of Shhfi‘j’s seminal work on fiqh – legal thinking – as it is of Aristotle’s Topics or Categories: the ‘influence’ of both the Arabic Aristotle and Shhfi‘j looms large in Jhåi©’s discourse on bayhn.) Jhåi© begins with an anonymous ‘psychology’ attributed to ‘one of the mighty scholars of words ( jahhbidhat al-alfh©) and critics of meanings (nuqqhd al-ma‘hnj), to the effect that the intentions of men defy scrutiny: The concepts (ma‘hnj) which subsist in the breasts of men, which are given forms (mutaßawwara) in their minds (adhhhn), which occupy their souls (nufus), which are coterminous with their ideas (khawhƒir) and occasioned by their thoughts ( fikar) are covered and hidden, distant and foreign, veiled and secreted. They exist in the sense of non-actual [literally: ‘they are found in the sense of being absent’, mawjuda fj ma‘nh ma‘duma]. No man knows the innermost mind (∂amjr) of his companion, or the desire (åhja) of his brother and comrade, or the intention (ma‘nh) of his partner and the one who assists in his affairs and in such of his own desires (åhjht nafsi-hi ) as he could not achieve without the assistance of someone else.205 It is their [i.e. men’s] mention (dhikr) of them, their promulgation (ikhbhr) of them, and their use (isti‘mhl ) of them which gives these concepts (ma‘hnj) life. (Bayhn, I, p. 75, 1–7) Some of my translations are clearly tentative, and this psychology seems to owe as much to the language of Graeco-Arabic philosophy and the kalhm as it does to that of rhetoric. I have thus far been unable to trace its origins. I suspect that it is of Jhåi©’s own devising,206 the more so as when, at Bayhn, II, p. 75, 7–12 Jhåi© cites the words in which ‘an eloquent individual described language’, it is no more than a thinly disguised quotation from his own epistle Fj Íinh‘at al-Quwwhd.207 Whatever the case, the extent to which Jhåi© intends his vocabulary to be seen as technical is speculative. Perhaps the most that we can say is that Jhåi© describes a situation in which one person cannot determine the true motives of another until that person speaks. It is clear that for him and his audience such knowledge is a desideratum and, by implication, that mistaken identification of motive is pernicious. The psychology continues with a paean to the three terms enumerated at the end of the ‘psychology’, ‘mention (dhikr), ‘promulgation’ (ikhbhr) and ‘use’ (isti‘mhl ): These characteristics (khißhl ) are the ones that bring them [i.e. the hidden concepts] close to the understanding ( fahm), which bring them to the light of the reasoning intellect (‘aql ), which render what is hidden apparent, what is invisible (ghh’ib) visible (shhhid ), what is distant close. They are the ones which disentangle what is entangled and loosen what is knotted, which point the
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consonants and give the vowelling of the unpointed (muhmal ) consonantal outline of a word,208 which show how the word thus ‘tied down’ (muqayyad) morphologically can be given free (muƒlaq) grammatical play, which make the unknown known, the strange familiar – which [as it were] put a brand (wasm) on things of unknown ownership and let us know where they belong. (Bayhn, I, p. 75, 8–11)209 Jhåi©’s system is a performative ethics, in which a man’s character is defined through his actions and not through his intentions: his moral duty is to enable his companions to understand his intentions through endowing them with bayhn. The next stage of Jhåi©’s argument is to explain how best one can clarify such intentions to others: The [extent to which] the concept is made apparent [is] in accordance with the extent of the lucidity of the sign (wu∂uå al-dalhla), the aptness of the indication (ishhra), the fineness of the summary (ikhtißhr) and the subtlety of the premise (diqqat al-madkhal ). Whenever the sign is more lucid and euphonious and the indication is clearer and more luminous (abyan wa anwar), then it [i.e. the exposition of the concept] is more beneficial and more successful. The sign (dalhla) which makes the hidden concept apparent is the clarity (bayhn) which you have heard Allhh, august and majestic, praising, calling and urging [us] to. The Qur’hn has spoken (naƒaqa) of it, the Arabs have prided themselves on it, and non-Arab peoples (aßnhf al-‘ajam) have contended for superiority in it. (Bayhn, I, p. 75, 11–16) The divine, Qur’anic bayhn, then, is how best to achieve this moral, religious injunction. The context in which Jhåi© describes this process of communication as occurring is a dialectical debate, for such are the implications of the vocabulary he uses (‘summary’ and ‘premise’, for example), and such debates are communal – improvement is not a solitary phenomenon. The prolegomenon to the chapter, then, picks up and explores a further aspect of a psychology repeated throughout the treatise, namely that one’s nature is reflected in one’s words. It would appear, then, that many individuals resort to silence to cloak their intentions. Jhåi©, by clarifying the finer mechanics of clarity, provides his audience with the wherewithal of properly expressing their own intentions and interpreting the intentions of others. This process is not always conducted in a context of like minds, but is preeminently suited to the cut-and-thrust of polemical debates: Clarity (bayhn) is a noun which comprises everything which removes for you the headscarf [enveloping] the concept and tears down the veil [covering] the inmost mind, so that the auditor may attain its true reality (åaqjqa) and seize upon ( yahjuma ‘alh) its product (maåßul ) whatever that clarity actually is and no matter what type of sign is used, for the nub of the matter and the
128 James E. Montgomery aim towards which both locutor and auditor are moving is understanding and making-to-understand (al-fahm wa al-ifhhm). By whatever means you achieve making-to-understand and render the concept lucid, that is clarity (bayhn) in that instance. (Bayhn, I, p. 76, 1–5) Jhåi© recognizes various kinds and types of ‘clarity’: their common denominator is communication. His is an inclusive definition, though an exclusive prescription: his type of ‘clarity’ is more efficacious and beneficial than other kinds. His view of language production is meliorist: language is always directed towards understanding and making-to-understand; and we note finally that ‘clarity’ is a two-way process, incorporating both communication and perception, for although the type of bayhn outlined in the first sentence of this paragraph seems more suited to an auditor than a locutor, the revelatory nature of ‘clarity’ is as relevant to the latter as it is to the former. Jhåi© connects his discourse on ma‘nh (conceptual meaning) with the definition of bayhn by means of the following statement: Now, know – may Allhh preserve you! – that the rule governing concepts (åukm al-ma‘hnj) is different to the rule governing words, because concepts are extensive, with no terminus, and are comprehensive, with no end, whereas the names of concepts (asmh’ al-ma‘hnj) [i.e. nouns] are restricted, calculable, definite and definable.210 (Bayhn, I, p. 76, 6–8) Then comes Jhåi©’s quintuple definition and concomitant epexegesis of the notion of ‘clarity’: All varieties of signs, verbal and non-verbal (dalhlht), for concepts [amount to] five things, no less, no more: the first is the word (laf©), then indication (ishhra), then counting (‘aqd or ‘uqad ), then writing (khaƒƒ), then the condition which is called ‘location’ (nißba). ‘Location’ is the signifying condition (al-åhl al-dhlla), which can take the place of those [other four] varieties and which is no less efficacious than those [other four] signs. Every one of these five has a form [or species] (ßura) which differs from the form of its companion and an external appearance (åilya) at variance with the external appearance of its sister. These uncover for you the very essence of the concepts (a‘yhn al-ma‘hnj) in general, and then their true realities in exegesis, their classes (ajnhs)211 and quantities (aqdhr), those which are specific (khhßßa) and general (‘hmma), their echelons with regard to pleasure and pain, and those which are prattling and sham, deficient and to be discarded. (Bayhn, I, p. 76, 9–16) Fascinating is the inclusion of the concept of nißba, ‘location’, the term used to translate the seventh of the ten Aristotelian ‘categories’, namely to keisthai, in the
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Manƒiq (nos 25, 32 and 47) and in the translation of the Topics attributed to Abu ‘Uthmhn al-Dimashqj, whose floruit is 303/915, some sixty or so years after Jhåi©’s death.212 The preferred translation of Ibn Sjnh (Avicenna, d. 428/1037) is wa∂‘;213 that of Isåhq ibn Åunayn (d. 289/910–11)214 in the Kithb al-Maqulht (‘Treatise on the Categories’) is maw∂u‘. The Neoplatonic philosopher Kindj, a contemporary of Jhåi©, in his epistle on Aristotle’s works, Fi Kammiyyat Kutub Arisƒhƒhljs,215 uses wa∂‘ (‘situation’) as the preferred term for to keisthai: this is the earliest instance of wa∂‘ that I have been able to trace, and its novelty as a translation in this context (a discussion of Aristotle’s Categories) is corroborated by the use of the word nißba to explain it.216 Jhåi©’s innovative inclusion of nißba within the remit of bayhn was intimated by Shhfi‘j in his discussion of the signs (‘alhmht) which Allhh has set up (naßaba) and to which men must turn the reasoning intellects (‘uqul ) which He has given them for use in the juridico-epistemological procedure of ijtihhd (Rishla no. 65). That Jhåi©’s usage was recognized but only hesitantly accepted is attested to by the caution with which ‘Ibn al-Mudabbir’ (d. 279/893) includes it in a discourse on bayhn which is in general heavily dependent on Jhåi©.217 Jhåi©’s varieties of bayhn are, in an Aristotelian sense, highest forms of communication, an attempt to classify clarity in terms of its modalities. He clearly states, however, that the ontological status of a thing, its nißba, ‘location’, can replace the other varieties of the generation of meaning and is no less communicative than them. This marks a significant departure from the Aristotelian notion of to keisthai, in which tradition this category is considerably ignored.218 In this regard, Jhåi© is thinking fully within the kalhm tradition, as Frank points out when he glosses nißba as ‘setting up “an indicative situation” ’ and connects it with ‘the notion of God’s erecting signs . . . that point to Him . . . frequent and common in the kalhm’.219 In four of the seven quotations which follow, bayhn is associated with ‘ilm. One of them is a quotation from Aristotle – called ßhåib al-manƒiq, ‘the Logician’ – to the effect that the definition (åadd ) of man is ‘the living being which reasons (nhƒiq) and uses “clarity” (mubjn)’ (Bayhn, I, p. 77). Another runs: ‘They said: A man’s poetry is part of his speech (kalhm), his thought part of his knowledge (‘ilm) and his choice (ikhtiyhr) part of his reasoning intellect (‘aql )’. The Mu‘tazilj stamp is prominent in the collocation of ‘choice’ and ‘reasoning intellect’, and as legitimization of bayhn, the authority of Aristotle is added to that of the Qur’hn. The exposition of the quintuple modalities of bayhn begins with a rather disconcerting authorial comment to the effect that ‘we have [already] spoken about signification through words’ (Bayhn, I, p. 77, 15), although there is nothing in the chapter which is instantly recognizable as a discussion of verbal signification. It is possible that Jhåi© intends by this the section on luthgha (mispronunciation), discussed earlier. Jhåi© proceeds immediately to a discussion of ‘gesture’: ‘Gesture and words are partners: what a fine assistant gesture is to words, and what a fine translator (tarjumhn) it is for them!’ (Bayhn, I, p. 78, 1–2). It has no need of either words or writing: ‘What gesture can convey is greater than what the voice can convey. This is another aspect (bhb) in which gesture takes precedence over the voice’ (Bayhn, I, p. 79, 5–6). Six poetical shawhhid (loci probantes), variations on the
130 James E. Montgomery notion that the eye can reveal a man’s innermost mind, corroborate Jhåi©’s analysis of gesture. The section concludes with a short discussion on the voice, ‘the tool (hla) of words’ (ibid., 7–12). The third modality of bayhn is writing, which is accorded a special status in the Qur’hn as Allhh chose to instruct man by the pen (qalam) (Bayhn, I, p. 79, 15 Qur’hn 96:3–5). The advantages of writing are exemplified in a sequence of quotations, such as: ‘They said: The pen leaves a longer-lasting trace, while the tongue is more inclined to prattle’ (Bayhn, p. 79, 18), or: and they said: ‘The tongue is restricted to what is near and at hand, while the pen is free for what is visible (shhhid ) and invisible ( ghh’ib), and is as suited to what is bygone and dead as it is to what is permanent and present.’ (Ibid., p. 80, 3–4) This section ends with the following statement: Books are read in every place and are studied in every epoch, whereas the tongue does not go beyond its auditor and does not pass on to anyone else. (Bayhn, I, p. 80, 5–6) It is difficult not to see this as a rejection of the primacy of orality, oral instruction and verbal memory. The fourth modality of bayhn is counting, ‘which is computation without words and writing’, for the excellence of which Qur’anic recommendations are provided (Qur’hn 55:5 and 96:6 (åusbhn) and Qur’hn 10:5 and 17:12 (åishb), which deal with basic calendrical computation, i.e. counting the years and distinguishing night from day.). Computation is a way of preparing for the rewards of the after-life, and enables man to appreciate fully the system of benefits and advantages which Allhh has provided for him: ‘Were His worshippers to have no knowledge of the concept (ma‘nh) of computation in this world, they would not be able to understand Allhh’s concept (ma‘nh) of computation [‘reckoning’] in the after-life’ (Bayhn, I, p. 80, 16–17). The fifth modality, nißba (location), is accorded more treatment than the other four, suggesting the degree of conceptual innovation which this notion involved for Jhåi© and his audience: As for location, it is the condition which communicates (nhƒiqa) without words and which gestures without [using] the hand. It is apparent in the creation of the heavens and the earth, in both the aphonic and the phonic (nhƒiq), the solid ( jhmid ) and the crescent (nhmin), the abiding (muqjm) and the transient (©h‘in), in what increases and decreases. The signification contained in inanimate solids is like the signification which is contained in communicative living creatures (al-åayawhn al-nhƒiq), for the aphonic is phonic with regard to signification (dalhla), and that which is non-Arabic produces pellucid Arabic (al-‘ajmh’ mu‘riba) with regard to demonstration (burhhn).220
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[. . .] When a thing indicates a concept (ma‘nh), then it has provided information about it, even if it is aphonic, and gestures to it, even if it is silent. This [way of] speaking is common to all languages and is a point of convergence, despite the excessive differences [which obtain between them]. (Bayhn, I, pp. 81, 1–5 and 82, 1–2) The opposition of ßhmit and nhƒiq, rendered neutrally in the passage given earlier passage as ‘aphonic’ and ‘phonic’, suggests that for Jhåi© nißba is a process which can include more than simply the animal kingdom or inanimate creation, but which can be extended so as to embrace ordered discourse. This is not a point which Jhåi© labours, however. It is intriguing to consider how the generic category of to keisthai as explicated by Aristotle has been adapted, amplified and metamorphosed by Jhåi© into this hermeneutic model of ‘clarity’, a means of interpreting the created world for the signs of Allhh’s presence. As such it is tantamount to a communicative version of the argument from design and governance, that Allhh’s existence is manifest in the care with which He manages His creation. The three akhbhr (units of information) and four shawhhid (loci probantes) with which Jhåi© illustrates his exposition of location concern the interpretation of the natural world, both animate and inanimate (the heavens and the earth; a crow presaging the departure of the tribe; the wind), and the paraenetic presence of the corpses of great men (the corpse of Alexander the Great, for example). They are testaments to Allhh’s governance and to the mortality of man. The following is typical: One of the orators said: I bear witness that the heavens and the earth are signs (hyht) which signify and permanent testaments (shawhhid ), each producing an argument concerning You and testifying to Your godship, marked with the traces of Your power, waymarks of Your governance (tadbjr), through which You have conveyed to Your creation and have made available to their hearts such knowledge of You as has tamed them of savage thoughts and of guesses and conjectures. While they acknowledge You and are in need of You, they testify that no attributes (ßifht) can encompass You and that no imaginings can define You, and that the boon (åa©©) of thinking about You is acknowledgement of You. (Bayhn, I, p. 81, 8–13) Location, then, is one of the means whereby the Mu‘tazilj acknowledges Allhh’s presence in the cosmos and endeavours to gain an understanding of Him without the limitations to His omnipotence and presence which anthropomorphism, anathema to the Mu‘tazila, would entail. As such, it occupies a place in Jhåi©’s system similar to that occupied by ijtihhd in Shhfi‘j’s, and represents a further example of his axiological recalibration of the earlier thinker’s legal epistemology. Jhåi© continues his disquisition on bayhn with a sequence of akhbhr and authorial comments in which holy and revered figures of early Islam exemplify the religious
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and moral nature of speech.221 They stress that true, effective and meaningful speech must come from the heart (the seat of the intelligence, not the emotions), and intone Jhåi©’s theory of bayhn, that a man’s speech reveals his true nature, as encapsulated in the following remark: They said: Muåammad ibn ‘Alj ibn ‘Abd Allhh ibn al-‘Abbhs [the father of the first two ‘Abbasid caliphs, al-Saffhå and al-Manßur; he died in 127/743] referred to the eloquence (balhgha) of one of his people and said: ‘I dislike the extent of his tongue being greater than the extent of his knowledge, just as I dislike the extent of his knowledge being greater than the extent of his reasoning intellect.’ This speech (kalhm) is honourable and useful: therefore memorise its words and scrutinise (tadabbaru) its meaning. [. . .] Something which corroborates the words of Muåammad ibn ‘Alj ibn ‘Abd Allhh ibn ‘Abbhs is the words of a certain sage, when he was asked: ‘When is education (adab) worse than a lack of it?’ viz.: ‘When education is abundant and the innate temper (qarjåa) deficient.’ (Bayhn, I, pp. 85, 10–17 and 86, 11–13) In the midst of these two authorial comments, Jhåi© launches into a remarkable passage in which deficient speech is zoomorphized, indeed bestialized, when it enters into a man’s heart, makes its nest there and begins to procreate, spreading its vile disease throughout his body. In the course of this diatribe, Jhåi© refers to ‘the people of clarity and reasoning intellect (ahl al-bayhn wa al-‘aql), stresses the need for learning and instruction, and posits the dependency of bayhn on choice (takhayyur). The text urges a community of scholars and like-minded individuals to avoid nonmembers of this community. They should, rather, continue to study and learn from their elders, as it is from this communal enterprise and continued activity, and the instruction which its adherents provide and the examples which they set, that men learn how to do that which is good and avoid that which is pernicious (Bayhn, I, pp. 87, 17–86, 10). Of course, Jhåi©’s text is itself one such document and is part of this communal activity. The transition to the next chapter, that on balhgha, is effected in the form of a khabar and an authorial comment: ‘Abd al-Raåmhn ibn Isåhq the qh∂j used to relate on the authority of his grandfather Ibrhhjm ibn Salama, to the effect: ‘I heard Abu Muslim [the leader of the ‘Abbasid revolution in Khurhshn] say: I heard the Imhm Ibrhhjm ibn Muåammad [i.e. the brother of the first two ‘Abbasid caliphs, Saffhå and Manßur, d. 132/749] say: “It is a sufficient determinant of eloquence that the auditor is not misled by the locutor and the locutor is not misunderstood by the auditor.” ’222 Abu ‘Uthmhn [ Jhåi©] said: ‘For my part, I approve heartily of this speech.’ (Bayhn, I, p. 87, 1–4)
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For Jhåi©, bayhn is a two-way process in which both locutor and auditor participate, and to which they both contribute. By implication, I think, the optimal condition for this process to operate is among a community of like-minded thinkers, those who would concur with Jhåi©. His notion of bayhn is not narrowly . aesthetic, but is rather the heaven-sent gift of communication, pace SkarzyqskaBocheqska, who explains bayhn as ‘explicating a thought or sense in its widest meaning . . . explicating mental content . . . in a clear and beautiful way, that is, in a beautiful, lucid style . . . the work . . . is devoted to this third interpretation of bayhn’.223 Unfortunately she gives no textual references to substantiate these claims, and the two examples she does give of bayhn in the sense of ‘beautiful style’ can just as readily mean ‘clarity of expression’.224
Conclusion The Kithb al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn, then, contrary to the prevalent categorization of it as a literary work, has more in common with what Pellat terms the ‘politicoreligious’ works, in which ‘Jhåi©’s aim was to act as an apologist for the ‘Abbasids and the Arabs respectively, on the one hand, and, on the other, to uphold and spread Mu‘tazilism and to prove the existence of God by rational argument and the direct observation of nature’,225 than with what he calls the ‘quasi-scientific’ works, such as the Kithb al-Åayawhn, which ‘aim to make the reader think, both about received knowledge and about nature and the evidence it offers of the existence of God’.226 If the composition of the Bayhn is to be fixed to the early period of Mutawakkil’s caliphate, it may represent Jhåi©’s greatest Mu‘tazilj work prior to the intellectual ascendancy of Ibn Qutayba, which brought with it, in the wake of the inquisition of Aåmad ibn Åanbal and the termination of the Miåna, the burgeoning consolidation of Sunnism.
Notes 1 This chapter does not present a synthesis of Jhåi©’s brand of Mu‘tazilism, but argues the preliminary case for his presentation of al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn as Mu‘tazilj. On the former subject, see van Ess (1997), pp. 96–118. On Mu‘tazilism in general, an accessible introduction is Martin and Woodward (1997). This approach to Jhåi© is further elaborated in Montgomery (2005) (a). Two excellent articles by Abdallah Cheikh-Moussa (1990) and (1999), reveal the advantages to be gained from reading the Jahizian corpus in this manner. I should like to thank Julia Bray for her editorial guidance in the preparation of this article. 2 Arkoun (1993). On al-Tawåjdj (c.315–411/c.927–1023), see Rowson (1998) (b). 3 For an overview of the doctrine of the divine majesty, and inimitability (i‘jhz) of the Qur’hn, see Neuwirth (1983) and Neuwirth (1987), pp. 126–8. Leaman (2004), pp. 141–64 ultimately disappoints because of the ahistoricity of his approach. Vasalou (2002) is excellent on the theological dimensions of the doctrine but less accomplished on its history, while Martin (1980) fails properly to take account of the contributions made by Jhåi© and Ibn Qutayba to its articulation. On the latter, who will be referred to again in the course of this chapter, see Lecomte (1965), p. 374 and
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4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18
19
20 21
van Gelder (1982), p. 6 for the introduction to Ibn Qutayba’s Ta’wjl Mushkil al-Qur’hn (‘Interpretation of Problematic Passages of the Qur’hn’) as being in certain respects an early treatment of i‘jhz. Fowden (1993), p. 10. On Islam and late antiquity, see further Brown (1971), Crone (1987), Bowersock (1990) and (1999), Hoyland (1997), and, on the Sasanian context, Morony (1984). Al-Azmeh (1997), p. 10. See Cameron (1991). Gutas (1998); see also references in Chapter 6 below, notes 1–4. Gutas (1998), p. 67. Gutas (1994), pp. 4944–9. Gutas (1994), p. 4948. Nor have earlier scholars; see the discussions in Bonebakker (1970), p. 77 and Larcher (1998). Larcher (1998), pp. 248–50. Crone (1987), p. 8. Cognate examples of such systems and practices are the now well-known, but still perplexing and unaccounted for, similarities between the propositional logic employed by the Muslim speculative theologians (mutakallimun) and jurisconsults ( fuqahh’ ) and that developed by the Stoics of Late Antiquity, and the fourfold method of Qur’anic exegesis (literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogical) attributed to early Íufjs such as Sahl al-Tustarj (d. 283/896), in outline and detail remarkably reminiscent of ‘the principles of exegesis developed in the Jewish tradition and in Christian patristic exegesis’, Böwering (2003), p. 352. There is a textual link which bridges the three latter traditions, namely the translation into Arabic via Syriac of the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite; there is no such textual link to support arguments for a direct link with Stoic thought as advanced by R. McKeon in discussion of Shehaby (1975), pp. 84–5. Crone (1987), p. 11, see Daube (1949). Huxley (1923), p. 116. These quotations are taken from Fowler’s Modern English Usage, revised by E. Gowers (1982). For this aspect of medieval Arabic grammar, see Carter (1983). Thus too Anna Comnena, in her Alexiad, criticized John Italos’s compositional style, since ‘it is a commonplace of Byzantine criticism that poor style is an unerring sign of bad character’, Conley (1998), p. 54. Aristotle, Rhetorica, I. ii. 3/1356a. On ithos and pathos see, for an introductory overview, Kennedy (1992), pp. 60–2, Fortenbaugh (1979) and (1992), Wisse (1989), Garver (1994), Barnes (1995), Urmson (1997). There is much of relevance in the collection edited by Rorty (1996). Kennedy glosses ithos as ‘presentation of character’ and pathos as ‘emotion that the speaker can awaken in the audience’ (1992), pp. 4–5. See also Kennedy (1991), pp. 316 and 318. Freese (1994), pp. 477 and 17. The Arabic rendering, Lyons (1982), p. 213, lines 15–19 – p. 241, lines 1–7, runs: ‘It is imperative that the relation (iqtißhß) be indigenous [ahlj, literally ‘domestic’: see Endress and Gutas (1998), p. 589]. This comes about through our knowledge of the type (naåw) or innate character (khuluq) operative in the man; which can only come about with reference to those actions which he has taken by prior choice and if we know which type of innate disposition (naåw al-khuluq) produces that [prior choice]. Prior choice (taqaddum al-ikhtiyhr proairisis) is that which is directed at an end ( ghhya telos). Therefore there is no ethical discourse (kalhm khuluqj) contained in manuals of instruction (ta‘hljm, a literal rendering of mathimatikoi from the cognate manthano, ‘to learn’), because they do not contain prior choice . . . Indeed, he [Suqrhƒ?] did not speak ( yaqul ) on account of any view (ru’ya) which he held, as these
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29 30 31 32 33
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people do now, but out of prior choice.’ Here, appropriate discourse is the product of knowledge of the addressee’s character and how his actions are motivated. The Aristotelian emphasis on the character of the speaker has been turned to an emphasis on the character of the addressee (hence manuals of instruction do not reveal individual motivation, which is a prerequisite of ethical discourse). In a similar manner, Ibn Qutayba (213–76/828–89) stresses the psychological effect of the nasjb (opening passage) in his notorious description of the Arabic qaßjda or polythematic poem (Shi‘r, pp. 14–15), in a manner reminiscent of the notion of captatio benevolentiae, see Meisami (1987), pp. 49–54, Stetkevych (1993), pp. 8–10 and Montgomery (2004) (a). Livingstone (1998), p. 275. Livingstone (1998), p. 268; see Kennedy (1992), pp. 47–8. Isocrates, Antidosis, pp. 181–5. Though this does not imply that they are not men of action: Isocratean pupils are educated to rule. See Kennedy (1992), pp. 43–9 and Livingstone (1998), pp. 265–7, and in particular the case of the ‘failed’ Isocratean, the commander Timothios. Isocrates, Panathenaicus, 32. Livingstone (1998), p. 280. Too (1995), p. 1. From this perspective, I think that Isocrates and Aristotle can be considered together as ‘paradigms of Athenian civic identity’, Too (1995), p. 233, similar in their programmes of forging cultural identities, though these programmes are radically dissimilar in their scope (despite sharing Athens as a projected, idealized base) and in their ambition. Calboli and Dominik (1997), p. 6. Calboli and Dominik (1997), p. 7. Cape (1997), p. 224 refers to ‘the impressive power of political oratory to effect change in the state’; see further Millar (1986). Kennedy (1992), p. 151. Wiedemann (1994), p. 13. See further Sinclair (1993), p. 561: ‘Rhetoric at Rome was not only a means of persuasion, it was also an opportunity for self-invention for the would-be statesman, for the newcomer who could convincingly “speak the language” of his social superiors, who could incorporate the general views and opinions that were canonical to their class, who could successfully reproduce their patterns of speech and language, who, in short, could “act out” their own image of themselves. Such a man was a long way towards obscuring and overcoming whatever social disadvantages might hold him back.’ In the process, he was also redefining these norms, views and opinions, however much the Rhetorica ad Herennium protests otherwise. Montefusco (1992), p. 204 argues that for Cicero’s forensic speeches ‘the ethos of the client consists only of the description of his good mores and of his appearance when speaking. This second component represents a partial revival of the nature and the function of Aristotelian ethos.’ Habinek (1994), p. 66. Habinek (1994), p. 55. Habinek (1994), p. 56. Habinek (1994), p. 65. See Dominik (1997), p. 53. ‘Domitian awarded him consular insignia in 94/5, a rare honour for a man who was neither a soldier nor a senator’, Morgan (1998), p. 247. Morgan (1998), pp. 246–7. Morgan (1998), p. 259. Whitmarsh (1998), pp. 196–8. Brown (1971), pp. 27–32. See also Kaster (1988), p. xi, who considers the role of the grammarian to have been on the periphery of polite society (‘on the social pyramid of the elite they stood far closer to the base than to the pinnacle’) and Brown (1992), chapter two, ‘Paideia and Power’. See also Lim (1995). The notion that a ‘classical
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44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64
65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77
education was one of the only passports to success’ for men of slender means is central to Brown (2000): see pp. 9–10. Agapitos (1998), pp. 175–6. Agapitos (1998), p. 176. Conley (1998), p. 49. Agapitos (1998), p. 179. Agapitos (1998), p. 181. On this episode and on the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, see Angold (1997), pp. 139–40 and Conley (1990), pp. 53–7. Agapitos (1998), p. 187. Agapitos (1998), p. 191. See further Conley (1990) and Angold (2000), (1994) and (1998). See Aouad (1994) (a), (b) and (2003), Aouad and Rashed (1997) and (1999–2000) and Vagelpohl (2002). On the Fihrist as a source for the literary history of the period, see Osti (1999). Isåhq ibn Åunayn ibn Isåhq al-‘Ibhdj, a translator of Greek texts like his father Åunayn, on whom see Chapter 6 below, note 4 and p. 235. Ibrhhjm ibn ‘Abd Allhh al-Nhqid the Christian; Ibn al-Nadjm makes several references to his translations. The philosopher (c.259–339/c.872–950); see also note 196. Lyons (1982), p. i (my revisions given in italics above); Ibn al-Nadjm, Fihrist, p. 310, trans. Dodge (1970), II, pp. 601–2. A teacher of the caliph al-Mu‘ta∂id (279–89/892–902) and later a member of his bureaucracy. The caliph had him executed for reasons which remain unclear. Peters (1968), p. 28. Kindj, Fj Kammiyyat Kutub Arisƒhƒhljs, p. 392. See Heinrichs (1969), pp. 123–7 for a similar assessment of Kindj’s interest in the Poetics. On Kindj’s circle, see Endress (1997). Kraus (1935), p. 355 and (1943), p.164; Aouad (2002), p. 4. The evidence attesting to a commentary on the Rhetoric by Muåammad ibn Mush (c.200–61/815–73) is inconclusive, see Aouad (1994) (a), p. 461. The family of the Banu Mush were active promoters of translations from Greek and themselves wrote a number of treatises, mainly on mathematical subjects. See Stern (1956) and Lyons (1982), pp. iv–vi. On the Syriac version, see Aouad (1994) (a), pp. 456–7, Watt (1994) and (2003). Lyons (1982), p. iii. Lyons (1982), pp. vi, xiii. Heinrichs (1984), p. 313. Lyons (1982), p. 3; Freese (1994), p. 1. See also Green (1990). Smith (1997), p. xv. See Gutas (1998), pp. 61–74. Heinrichs (1984), pp. 313–14 refers to Timothy’s epistolary request for commentaries on the Topics, the On Sophistical Refutations, the Rhetoric and the Poetics. Heinrichs (1969) and (1978). Black (1990), p. 247. Carter (1983); see further, for example, Carter (1972), (1973) and (1991) and Versteegh (1983). Cooperson (2000), p. 188. Reinhart (1995), p. 14 goes part of the way towards this position: ‘A more appropriate picture of the development of principles of jurisprudence as a science is to see al-Shhfi‘j’s ideas, if not necessarily his works, percolating through Islamic scholarly circles until these ideas were conjoined with the nascent science of dialectical theology [kalhm].’
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See Chaumont (1997). Coulson (1964), p. 53. Hallaq (1993), p. 588. See also Melchert (1997). Hallaq (1993), p. 594. Stewart (2002), pp. 136–7 takes Hallaq to task for the first half of this statement, arguing that ‘it is more likely that the lack of literature on jurisprudence from this century is due particularly to the ravages of history . . . the genre of ußul al-fiqh did not arise . . . only after the turn of the tenth century, its first authors were not students of Ibn Surayj [d. 305/917–18] and the genre as a whole did not result from a compromise between rationalism and traditionalism engineered primarily by Ibn Surayj himself.’ I should like to thank Dr Stewart for giving me a pre-publication copy of this article. See further Lowry (2001) and (2004) (b) and Stewart (2004). Melchert (2004) is a very plausible exploration of the transmission process involved. Berg 2003, p. 332. Hallaq (1997), p. 21. This work contains the most accessible summary of the Rishla in English. The translation by Khadduri (1961/1997), to which references will be given, is seriously flawed. There is also a French translation by Souami (1997). Hallaq (1997), p. 29. I am most grateful to Dr Lowry for presenting me with a copy of his 1999 University of Pennsylvania PhD dissertation, ‘The Legal-Theoretical Content of the Rishla of Muåammad b. Idrjs al-Shhfi’j’. Unfortunately, I received it too late to give it the full consideration it merits in this chapter. Arkoun (1984). Makdisi (1990), p. 46. Calder (1983), pp. 55–6. Shhfi’j, Rishla, nos 133–78, trans. Khadduri (1961/1997), pp. 88–9 and Souami (1997), pp. 68–77. For Shhfi‘j’s reputation as a grammarian, see Carter (1972), p. 89, note 3. See in general on the conventional nature of language, and on the Mu‘tazilj influence on fiqh in this respect, Versteegh (1997), pp. 127–39. For Sjbawayh, the creator of systematic Arabic grammar (second/eighth century), ‘all meaning was conventional’ Carter (1973), p. 149, note 33. ‘The function of the interlocutionary persona in this work was to provide opportunities of repetition and explanation, intended to enhance or clarify the argument’ Calder (1983), p. 57. Compare Versteegh (1997), p. 133: ‘With this division in categories of religious knowledge ash-Shhfi‘j legitimizes the work of the legal scholar, which must be a combination of textual evidence and accepted methods of elucidation.’ Khadduri (1961/1997), p. 81. Khadduri takes the passages in the following order: Rishla, nos 104–32 Khadduri (1961/1997), pp. 77–80, nos 133–78 Khadduri, pp. 88–95, with Rishla, nos 961–97 interposed. Compare the translation of Rishla, nos 104–78 in Souami (1997), pp. 62–77. Khadduri renders ‘ilm as ‘legal knowledge’; see also Hallaq (1997), 15:4 ‘‘ilm came to signify knowledge of the Quran and Sunna’, and Calder (1983), pp. 56–7; but given the word’s location in the context of Shhfi‘j’s exposition of åadjth, perhaps ‘knowledge of traditions’ is more appropriate. Shhfi‘j’s treatment of åadjth, and the relevance of the concept of ‘ilm to that argument, cannot be considered here; suffice it to say that I hold Khadduri to be unjustified in his editorial interferences. On the notion of qiyhs, and that of ijtihhd, see Calder (1983), p. 61: ‘two words with one meaning . . . . They represent, in effect, the intellectual process whereby a finite body of revealed texts may be rendered relevant to the infinite complexity of human events.’ This too is misunderstood by Khadduri (1961/1997), p. 77, note 31. Trans. Khadduri (1961/1997), pp. 94–5, Souami (1997), pp. 75–7. See note 93, end, above.
138 James E. Montgomery 97 Lowry (2002), pp. 37–8. 98 Lowry (2002), p. 39. 99 Shhfi’j uses these terms to describe the processes of deriving norms and legal instruction from divine revelation. Naskh applies to Qur’anic rulings which were superseded and are abrogated by other Qur’anic rulings; the remaining terms apply to the identification of that which is obligatory and that which is permissible. 100 On istiåshn, see Paret (1978), p. 256: ‘Shhfi‘j . . . fundamentally rejected istiåshn, because he feared that in this way by going beyond the methodologically secure and generally recognized principles of legal interpretation a loophole would be made for arbitrary decision.’ According to Ansari (1972), p. 288: ‘ra’y [“opinion”] is the genus of which qiyhs [analogy] and istiåshn are species . . . ra’y signified the use of human reasoning, and it was for this reason that the school of law of Iraq, where the use of human reasoning was relatively more prominent, came to be known as the school of ra’y and qiyhs.’ 101 See Semah (1991) for a discussion of this criterion applied to poetry, where it is identified as tashjm. 102 From an aspect of a general and evident expression one infers the meaning of the particular. See the discussion of the ‘restricted’ and ‘unrestricted’ in Lowry (2004) (a). 103 See Versteegh (1997), pp. 127–39 for a convenient summary. 104 Versteegh (1997), p. 129. 105 Much of my translation of the passage is speculative, as will be apparent if it is compared with the rendering of it by Khadduri (1961/1997), p. 95. 106 See Gutas (1998), pp. 68–9. 107 Pellat (1986). See Goldziher (1881), Kahle (1948), Anwar (1983), Versteegh (1983) and Ivànyi (1988) in addition to the works cited by Pellat. Overviews are given in Sezgin (1984), pp. 24–5 and Fischer (1982), pp. 91–5. 108 See Carter (1998) (b), pp. 254–7, and Leder (1998). 109 Carter (1998) (c). 110 His ‘most significant production is a grammatical commentary on the Koran’, Carter (1998) (a). 111 Pellat (1986), p. 608. 112 Jhåi©, Bukhalh’, p. 40. See Ibn al-Nadjm, Fihrist, trans. Dodge (1970), pp. 262–3 on the Persian Sahl ibn Hhrun (d. 215/830). 113 Jhåi©, Bayhn, I, p. 137; an abbreviated translation is at Pellat (1986), p. 605. 114 Ïaylashn is on the south-western shore of the Caspian Sea, and is adjacent both to Muqhn, a steppe south of the Araxes river, and to Jjlhn, also on the south-western shore of the Caspian. Zanj is black Africa, in particular the Indian Ocean littoral. See Bosworth (2000), Minorsky (1993) and Miquel (1975), pp. 42, 531 and 554 ( Jjlhn) and pp. 167–73 (Zanj). See also the following note. 115 The ‘Arab, as previously noted, are the desert Arabs (and those who use the ‘arabiyya); the Fhrs are the Persians, the Hind the Indians east of the Indus and the Rum the Byzantine Greeks. For theories of geography and race or civilization in Jhåi©’s time, see Miquel (1967–88), and for a consideration of Miquel’s approach, see Montgomery (2005) (b); more briefly on third/ninth-century geographical writing, see Chapter 5 below, note 19. 116 Pellat (1986), pp. 605–6; Blichfeldt (1989–90). 117 See Cooperson (2000), pp. 107–53. 118 I have left my translation of this difficult term vague. On occasion, as here, Jhåi© seems to make the nhs identical with the ‘awhmm, that is, the Traditionists. Generally at this period the term applies to a group with interests or characteristics in common. 119 Jhåi©, Rash’il, I, p. 283. 120 Zaman (1997), p. 34 argues that the ‘Shj‘ite orientation’ of the early ‘Abbasids is ‘expressed in the special position accorded to the person of ‘Alj as the sole legitimate successor of the Prophet’ (which was, of course, denied, by the ‘Abbasids’ predecessors, the Umayyads). ‘In building the ideological bases of their legitimacy,’ he continues,
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‘the ‘Abbasids eventually tried to bypass ‘Alj completely, but that clearly is a development which began to take shape only some time after the establishment of the dynasty in power’. Elsewhere he refers to this group as al-åashwiyya, see Rash’il, II, p. 154 Rishlat al-Qiyhn (‘The Epistle on the Singing-Girls’), ed. and trans. Beeston (1980), ¶ 16. On this term, see Halkin (1934), Watt (1998), pp. 121, 191, 225 and 363, and Zaman (1997), pp. 54–5. Pellat (1986), p. 606. Versteegh (1990) and (1993). Bohas et al. (1990), pp. 113–17. See Watt (1998), pp. 242–9 for a succint exposition of the nexus of conceptualizations of the ontological status of the Qur’hn. Pellat (1965), p. 385. The fullest study of Jhåi© remains Pellat (1953) (a), which is summarized in Pellat (1990). On the term mawlh (pl. mawhlj), meaning a non-Arab convert to Islam, see Crone (1991). In order to be integrated into Arab Muslim society, a convert needed to secure an Arab patron, whose tribal affiliation would be extended to him, hence Jhåi©’s family tribal affiliation and sub-affiliation to Kinhna and Fuqayma. Pellat (1990), p. 79. On Shmarrh, the huge palatial and military complex built by the caliph al-Mu‘taßim (218–27/833–42), which was the seat of government from 220–79/836–92, see Hodges and Whitehouse (1989) pp. 151–6. Pellat (1990), p. 80. Pellat (1969), p. 5. For this period of Jhåi©’s career, see Pellat (1952) (a). For Jhåi© and the question of the imamate, see Pellat (1961). See Pellat (1984) (a). See Pellat (1953) (a), pp. 223–59, Enderwitz (1979), Souami (1988), pp. 16–23, and Montgomery (2005) (a). See above, pp. 102–3. Gutas (1998), pp. 121–50. See Endress (1997). On relations between Ibn al-Zayyht and Ibn Abj Du’hd, see Sourdel (1959–60), pp. 245–70. See also Pellat (1952) (a), (1952) (b) and (1953) (b) for Ibn Abj Du’hd’s patronage of Jhåi©, and Kahl (1999) for a discussion of a poem in praise of Mutawakkil by al-Buåturj (Djwhn, no. 861) which refers to the demise, among others, of Ibn Abj Du’hd. On Ibn Abj Du’hd, see also Bray (2000), pp. 35–40 and van Ess (1992) (b), pp. 481–502. Pellat (1969), p. 10; Pellat (1984) (a), p. 133. Souami (1988), p. 32. Gutas (1998), pp. 130–1; see also Rowson (1998) (a). See al-Åhjirj (1952–3) and (1954), Najm (1979) and (1985), and and Kruk (1985). See Sourdel (1971). Ibn al-Nadjm, Fihrist, p. 401, trans. Dodge (1970), II, p. 804. See Montgomery (forthcoming) for the argument that he was a Rhfi∂j. See Pellat (1969), pp. 207–16 and van Gelder (1992), pp. 95–106. See Chapter 5, for text to note 129 read p. 179 for an anecdote which depicts him in a comic light. Van Ess (1992) (b), pp. 480–502; Ibn al-Nadjm, Fihrist, p. 212, trans. Dodge (1970), I, p. 409. Van Ess (1992) (b), p. 481. Bray (2000), pp. 37–40. Ibn al-Nadjm, Fihrist, p. 212, trans. Dodge (1970), I, p. 410; Bray (2000), p. 39. Zetterstéen and Pellat (1960). Stewart (2002), p. 109. Ibn al-Nadjm, Fihrist, p. 209, trans. Dodge (1970), I, p. 402. Jhåi©, Bayhn, III, p. 302.
140 James E. Montgomery 152 Geries (1980) and (1982). 153 Pellat (1984) (a), p. 133; Ibn al-Nadjm, Fihrist, pp. 209–10, trans. Dodge (1970), I, pp. 402–4, especially note 132. 154 Souami (1988), pp. 32–3. 155 See Chapter 6, pp. 216–17. 156 ‘Un plaisantin sans interêt’, Pellat (1984) (a), p. 117. Ibn Qutayba’s assessment of Jhåi© is to be found in his Mukhtalif al-Åadjth, pp.71–3; see also Lecomte (1962), pp. 65–7 and Malti-Douglas (1985), p. 49. For Pellat’s assessment of the appropriateness of Ibn Qutayba’s invective, see Pellat (1990), pp. 94–5 and Pellat (1980). 157 Pellat (1965), p. 386. Compare with my subsequent characterization of the Bayhn Lawrence Green’s description (1998), p. 290 of Dialogo della eloquenza by the sometime Venetian ambassador to the English court of Edward VI (from 1549–51) and Renaissance humanist Daniele Barbaro: its purpose ‘is not to prepare young Italians for forensic, judicial and epideictic oratory . . . . The purpose is to form a true and perfect gentleman who has the eloquence and wisdom to govern the city-state, to move the souls of the people, and to serve as a sacred orator, an illustrious gentleman and a true Christian.’ 158 Pellat (1969), p. 15. 159 Norris (1990), pp. 31, 43. See further Pellat (1990), p. 88 and Gibb (1962), p.71 for this aspect of the Bayhn. 160 Gibb (1962), pp. 71–2; he adds: ‘It was the merit of [Ibn Qutayba] that, grasping this need, he furnished [the kutthb] with volumes of extracts and selections on the various Arabic and Muslim sciences.’ On Ibn Qutayba’s project of educating the kutthb in the basics of Arabic and Islam, see also Montgomery (2004) (a). 161 See further Mottahedeh (1976) and Enderwitz (1979). 162 Jhåi©, Åayawhn, VII, p. 220, trans. Norris (1990), pp. 35–6. 163 Pellat (1990), p. 83. 164 Pellat (1969), p. 24. 165 Calder (1993), pp. 170–1. 166 See Souami (1988), p. 31 for a discussion of the polysemy of the Åayawhn. 167 On Whßil generally, see Daiber (1988) (reviews by Radtke (1990) and Frank (1991)), van Ess (1992) (b), pp. 234–80 and (2002), pp. 131–3, Pines (1997), pp. 142–50 and (1937), pp. 67–8 ( Pines (1996), pp. 48–9). Weaving was a despised trade. 168 Carter (1991), p. 9. This excellent article is a succinct illumination of the basic ethicolinguistic attitude expressed in Jhåi©’s Bayhn. 169 Jhåi©’s use of Persian, Indian and Greek maxims in the Bayhn requires further study. 170 On Mush in the Qur’hn, see Heller (1993). 171 In exegesis of Qur’hn 14:4: wa-mh arsalnh min rasulin illh bi-lishni qawmi-hi li-yubayyina la-hum, ‘And We have sent no Messenger save with the tongue of his people, that he might make all clear to them’, trans. Arberry ([1964] 1991), p. 246. Jhåi© equates Qur’anic bayhn and tabayyun with ifhhm and tafahhum in his own gloss, and equates a speaker’s bayhn with the mind’s insight ‘because the issue centres on clarity (bayhn) and clear comprehension (tabayyun) and on instruction and understanding (ifhhm and tafahhum): the greater the clarity the tongue [speaks with], the more praiseworthy it is; the more intense the [ability] for clear discernment a mind (qalb) has, the more praiseworthy it is’ (Bayhn, I, pp. 11, 13–14). 172 See Carter (1990), pp. 126–7 for the intellectual rivalry between Basra and Kufa; see also text to notes 108 and 109 above. 173 See van Ess (1992) (a), pp. 245–8 for a discussion of Whßil’s mispronunciation (luthgha). 174 See Meisami (1998) for Bashshhr’s Persian origin, his Shu‘ubism and anti-Mu‘tazilism and his involvement with the leading intellectual figures and controversies of his day. He was courted as a panegyrist, feared as a satirist and his love poetry launched a new, ‘modern’ style in Arabic poetry. He was also a noted orator, but only his poetry has survived. The caliph al-Mahdj (158–68/775–85) had him executed for alleged heresy.
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175 See Watt (1974) and (1998), pp. 9–37, Pellat (1970) and Crone (2004), pp. 54–64. 176 ‘Abd Allhh ibn ‘Amr ibn ‘Abd al-’ Azjz; see further van Ess (1992) (a) , pp. 240–5 and Daiber (1988). 177 See Watt (1998) and Kohlberg (1995). 178 Annotated translations of these quotations from poems by Íafwhn al-Anßhrj are given by van Ess (1993), pp. 182–92. See also van Ess (1992) (b), pp. 382–7. 179 Pellat (1984) (b), p. 26. 180 Nyberg (1936), p. 790. 181 Heinrichs (1995). 182 Stetkevych (1991), p. 14. See further Watt (1974), pp. 306–11 and Cook (2000), pp. 196–8. 183 See Horst (1987), p. 217: ‘Buch der Klarheit und Erklärung.’ I have decided for the purposes of this article to keep to the generally accepted title of the work, with the second form gerund tabyjn rather than the fifth form gerund tabayyun, which is a possible reading (see the envoi to the treatise, Bayhn, IV, p. 101, 1, where Jhåi© refers to . the work as Kithb al-Bayhn wa al-Tabayyun). On this see Skarzyqska-Bocheqska (2004), p. 91. On the different meanings of bayhn and the derivatives of its radical, see the summary of Larcher (1998), p. 250, note 3. 184 Pellat (1969), p. 19. 185 Pellat (1990), p. 88. . 186 Skarz yqska-Bocheqska (1991), p. 90. 187 Blachère (1949–50), pp. 74–5. 188 See Madigan (2001), pp. 153–7 for further discussion. 189 Ïabarj, Jhmi‘ al-Bayhn, VII, p. 177. 190 Wensinck (1936), I, p. 259. Two other instances of bayhn in the corpus of Åadjth attest to suspicion among the Traditionists of the potency of the concept, the åadjth included in the collection of Aåmad ibn Åanbal (d. 241/855), in so many respects Jhåi©’s arch-opponent: ‘Frivolity and clarity (bayhn) are two branches of hypocrisy’ and the saying ‘Clarity contains bewitchment (inna mina l-bayhni siåran)’, in a åadjth which equates clarity with poetry as disreputable activities. That Jhåi© was aware of the animosity of the Traditionists to bayhn is suggested by his impassioned query in Bayhn, I, p. 273, 7–9: ‘But as for bayhn itself, how could he [the Prophet] have forbidden it?’ 191 Ïabarj, Jhmi‘ al-Bayhn, VII, pp. 412–3. 192 Makdisi (1990), p. 142. 193 Jhåi©, Åayawhn, I, p. 44, 12. 194 Jhåi©, Åayawhn, I, pp. 44–6, trans. Souami (1988), pp. 107–9. . 195 Skarzyqska-Bocheqska (1991), p. 111, note 11. Najm (1988–9) is presently unavailable to me. 196 See note 56. Al-Fhrhbj, ‘quite rightly called . . . the second master, coming only next to Aristotle in importance in Islamic Peripatetic philosophy . . . played a crucial part in the battle between the grammarians and theologians’, Leaman (1998). 197 See Zimmermann (1981). 198 Von Grunebaum (1960), p. 1114. 199 His notion of faßhåa also involves the use of language appropriate to a given context and the avoidance of mixing idiolects (such as the use of town dialects by the Bedouin), although this latter could be justified by the former (contextual appropri. ateness), see von Grunebaum (1965), p. 824, and Pellat (1986), p. 607. SkarzyqskaBocheqska (1991), p. 13, maintains that ‘the term faßhåa is used by al-Jhåi© in relation to three different aspects of expression: clarity of the vocabulary [lexical aspect] . . . correctness in articulation [phonetic aspect] . . . and grammatical correctness [grammatical aspect],’ but she provides no references for this last aspect. 200 See Bayhn, I, p. 87, 1–4 where Jhåi© expresses his admiration for a definition of balhgha as ‘rendering misunderstanding impossible’. The definition is reported by Abk
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209 210
211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220
Muslim, the leader of the ‘Abbasid revolution in Khurhshn, who attributes it to Ibrhhjm ibn ‘Alj, the brother of the first ‘Abbasid caliph, al-Saffhå (r. 132–136/ 749–754). Von Grunebaum (1965), p. 827. . Skarzyqska-Bocheqska (1991), p. 95. It is unclear whether a distinction should be made between the terms ‘Mention’ (dhikr) and ‘Chapter’ (bhb) in the overall organization of the work. Thus section three, on mispronunciation, is in fact the final section of ‘the first chapter (bhb)’, while section 5, as I have labelled it, is without a title, and is marked as a new section only by the bismillhh (‘In the name of God’), suggesting that it is a second, but distinct, section of the ‘Chapter on bayhn’, and hence that balhgha is included as a a feature of bayhn. Malti-Douglas (1985), p. 14. My translation of this passage differs from that of Frank (1981), pp. 265–6. Though the use of the terms nhqid and jahbadh – the latter a Persian word in origin – which both have a primary connotation of testing coin or metal, is attested earlier in Ibn Sallhm al-Jumaåj’s (d. 232/846) enquiry into the authenticity and quality of early Arab poets, Ïabaqht al-Shu‘arh’, see Ouyang (1997), pp. 94–102. Jhåi©, Rash’il, I, p. 379. On this epistle, see Sadan (1982) and (1985). He renders its title as ‘On the Crafts of the Masters’, since the body of it consists of love poems written by various conditions of men in the jargon of their situation or calling. Sadan misunderstands Jhåi©’s agenda, which is religio-rhetorical, as socialist: (1985), p. 92. Arabic consonants fall into groups of letters which have the same outline and are distinguished only by diacritical points, which are sometimes omitted. The short vowels, which enable one to distinguish between e.g. an active and a passive participle, are usually omitted. The image of the wasm refers to the branding of beasts or the stamping of merchandise. See the comments of the exegete and theologian Fakhr al-Djn al-Rhzj (d. 606/1209) as translated by Versteegh (1997), p. 128: ‘It is obvious that there need not be for every meaning an expression signifying it. This is even impossible, since the number of intelligible meanings is infinite.’ Jins, pl. ajnhs, is presumably used here in its grammatical sense of ‘class’, not in the sense of ‘genus’. See Frank (1981), p. 275 for the difference between jins according to the grammarians and according to the philosophers. Badawi (1948–9), II, p. 482; Peters (1968), p. 21. Ibn Sjnh, al-Qaßjda al-Muzdawija, p. 6; Gutas (1993), pp. 29–76. See note 54. Kindj, Kammiyya, p. 392; see note 60 above and text thereto. See Nallino (1919–21), Rescher (1963), p. 53, Mattock and Zimmermann (1991), table p. 204 and Shehaby (1975), pp. 67–8 and 77. Ibn al-Mudabbir, ‘Adhrh’, p. 40, section 28. On the authorship of this epsitle by the mathematician and littérateur Ibrhhjm ibn Muåammad al-Shaybhnj (d. 298/911), see Sourdel (1952–4), p. 116, van Gelder (1982), p. 9, and Labidi (1997), p. 396. See, for example the discussion of the term by Porphyry, Strange (1992), pp. 157–8, and its omission in the commentary of Dexippus, Dillon (1990). Frank (1978), p. 31. Frank also gives an instance, ibid., of the word’s use by the grammarian al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898) ‘to explain . . . instances of radical ellipsis where one of the major elements of a sentence is omitted’. On the meaning of this last oxymoron, Dr Bray suggests that it refers to the common poetic images of foreign (‘ajmh’ ) singing women, or of the cooing of doves; both lack Arabic speech yet have the power of speaking directly to the heart, thus proving, by a poetic conceit, what Jhåi© is about to demonstrate by argument, that Arabic is the underlying and divine universal language, since all language, even non-verbal forms, aspires to the bayhn of Qur’anic Arabic, of which Allhh’s signs are simply another form.
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221 The authorities quoted, Bayhn, I, pp. 83–4, are the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib, the first/seventh-century ascetic ‘Hmir ibn ‘Abd al-Qays, the martyred son of ‘Alj, al-Åusayn, and his grandson ‘Alj Zayn al-‘Hbidjn and greatgrandson Muåammad al-Bhqir, both of whom were known for their quietist policies, refusing to support revolts against the Umayyads, see Kohlberg (1993), pp. 397–400. 222 ‘Abd al-Raåmhn was ‘a Åanafj scholar, involved in the enforcement of the Miåna in al-Ma’mun’s reign’, Bosworth (1991), p. 95; his grandfather Ibrhhjm ibn Salama is mentioned in Ïabarj’s ‘History’, Ta’rjkh, III (i), pp. 27, 28, 35, 36, where he is found exerting himself on behalf of Saffhå in the capacity of a trustworthy messenger. · 223 Skarzyqska-Bocheqska (1991), pp. 90, 93–4. 224 See Souami (1988), p. 33. 225 Pellat (1969), p. 19. 226 Pellat (1969), p. 21.
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150 James E. Montgomery Nyberg, H. S. (1936), ‘Mu‘tazila’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition, III. Osti, L. (1999), ‘Authors, Subjects and Fame in the Kithb al-Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadjm: The Case of al-Ïabarj and al-Íulj’, Annali di Ca’ Foscari 38.3, pp. 155–70. Ouyang, W.-C. (1997), Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Culture: The Making of a Tradition, Edinburgh. Paret, R. (1978), ‘Istiåshn and istißlhå’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, V. ˇ håi© à Bag.dhd et Shmarrh’, Rivista degli Studi Orientali 27, pp. 47–67. Pellat, C. (1952) (a), ‘G —— (1952) (b), ‘La “Nâbita” de Djâhiz’, Annales de l’Institut d’Études Orientales 10, pp. 302–35. —— (1953) (a), Le Milieu baårien et la formation de Ghåi©, Paris. ˇ håi©’, al-Machriq, 47.3, pp. 281–303. —— (1953) (b), ‘Epître inédite d’al-G ˇ håi©’, Studia Islamica 15, pp. 23–52. —— (1961), ‘L’imamat dans la doctrine de G —— (1965), ‘al-Djhåi©’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, II. —— , trans. D. M. Hawkes (1969), The Life and Works of Jhåi©, London. (First published Zurich 1967.) —— (1970), ‘Djhåi© et les Khhridjites’, Folia Orientalia 12, pp. 195–209. ˇ håi© jugé par la postérité’, Arabica 27, pp. 1–67. —— (1980), ‘al-G —— (1984) (a), ‘Nouvel essai d’inventaire de l’œuvre xhåi©ienne’, Arabica 31, pp. 117–64. —— (1984) (b), ‘Íafwhn ibn Íafwhn al-Anßhrj et Beshshhr [sic] ibn Burd’, in Savory and Agius (eds) (1984), pp. 21–34 . —— (1986), ‘Laån al-‘hmma’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, V, pp. 605–10. —— (1990), ‘al-Jhåi©’, in Ashtiany (ed.) (1990), pp. 78–95. Peters, F. E. (1968), Aristoteles Arabus: The Oriental Translations and Commentaries on the Aristotelian Corpus, Leiden. Pines, S. (1937), ‘Some Problems in Islamic Philosophy’, Islamic Culture 11, pp. 66–80. (Reprinted in Pines, ed. Stroumsa (1996), pp. 47–61.) —— , ed. S. Stroumsa (1996), Studies in the History of Arabic Philosophy (The Collected Works of Shlomo Pines, Volume 3), Jerusalem. —— (1997), ed. T. Langermann, trans. M. Swartz, Studies in Islamic Atomism, Jerusalem. Radtke, B. (1990), ‘Subåhnallhh! Von der Anwendung des Münchhausen-prinzips in der Philologie’, Der Islam 67, pp. 322–61. Reinhart, A. K. (1995), Before Revelation: The Boundaries of Muslim Moral Thought, Albany. Rescher, N. (1963), ‘Al-Kindj’s Sketch of Aristotle’s Organon’, The New Scholasticism 37, pp. 44–58. Rorty, A. O. (ed.) (1996), Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Rowson, E. K. (1998) (a), ‘Muåammad ibn ‘Abd al-Malik, Known as Ibn al-Zayyht’, EncArLit, II, p. 544. —— (1998) (b), ‘al-Tawåjdj’, EncArLit, II, pp. 760–1. Sadan, J. (1982) and (1985), ‘Kings and Craftsmen – A Pattern of Contrasts. On the History of a Medieval Humoristic Form’, Studia Islamica 56, pp. 5–49, and 63, pp. 89–120. Savory, R. M. and D. A. Agius (eds) (1984), Logos Islamikos. Studia Islamica in Honorem Georgii Michaelis Wickens, Toronto. Semah, D. (1991), ‘Poetry and its Audience according to Medieval Arab Poeticians’, in Somekh (ed.) (1991), pp. 92–105. Sezgin, F. (1984), Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums Band 9: Grammatik bis c.430 H., Leiden. al-Shhfi‘j, al-Rishla, Aåmad Shhkir (ed.), Cairo 1940; trans. Khadduri (1997) and Souami (1997).
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152 James E. Montgomery Versteegh, C. H. M., K. Koerner and H. -J. Niederehe (eds) (1983), The History of Linguistics in the Near East, Amsterdam and Philadelphia. Watt, W. M. (1974), ‘Was Whßil a Kharijite?’, in Gramlich (ed.) (1974), pp. 306–11. —— (1994), ‘Syriac Rhetorical Theory and the Syriac Tradition of Aristotle’s Rhetoric’, in Fortenbaugh and Mirhady (eds) (1994), pp. 243–60. —— (1998), The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Oxford, 1998) (First published Edinburgh, 1973). —— (2003), ‘Aristote de Stagire. La Rhétorique. Tradition Syriaque et Arabe (Compléments): Version Syriaque’, in Goulet (2003), p. 219. Weiss, B. G. (ed.) (2002), Studies in Islamic Legal Theory, Leiden. Wensinck, A. J. (1936–88), Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane, Leiden. Whitmarsh, T. (1998), ‘Reading Power in Roman Greece: the Paideia of Dio Chrysostom’, in Too and Livingstone (eds) (1998), pp. 192–213. Wiedemann, T. (1994), Cicero and the End of the Roman Republic, London. Wisse, J. (1989), Ethos and Pathos from Aristotle to Cicero, Amsterdam. Young, M. J. Y. L., et al. (eds) (1990), Religion, learning and science in the ‘Abbasid period (The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature), Cambridge. Zaman, M. Q. (1997), Religion and Politics under the Early ‘Abbhsids: The Emergence of The ProtoSunnj Elite, Leiden. Zetterstéen [K. V.] and Pellat, Ch. (1960), ‘Aåmad b. Abj Du’hd’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, I, p. 271. Zimmermann, F. (1981), Al-Farabi’s Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione, Oxford.
5
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests Ref lections on Abdelfattah Kilito’s Les Séances* Philip F. Kennedy
Introduction The maqhma: a lay definition The Maqhmht of a single author, al-Hamadhhnj, are the focus of this essay. Nevertheless, it will be useful to give a general definition of the genre. The maqhma (pl. maqhmht) – variously translated as ‘assembly’, ‘session’ or ‘séance’ – is a picaresque anecdote written in rhyming prose (saj‘) which crystallized into a genre in the late fourth century AH/tenth century AD. Its creator was Badj‘ al-Zamhn al-Hamadhhnj (358–98/968–1008), and it reached its apogee a century and a half later in the work of al-Åarjrj (446–516/1054–1122). Between the two lie a number of lesser-known authors,1 notably Ibn Nhqiyh (410–85/1020–92), whose works are also briefly discussed in the following sections. The maqhma genre is important in Arabic literary history chiefly because adab literature (educative collections of anecdotes, usually involving historically identifiable personages) is here fashioned into a self-consciously rhetorical form in which features of language and style can seem to outweigh the narrative content. (They may indeed have been designed in part, especially in their later development, to coach the administrative secretariat of the day, the khtibs, in the use of Arabic.) The maqhmht are in general perceived as the first avowedly fictional genre in Arabic high literature, though they are far from constituting the origins of fiction in Arabic. In this respect, certain characteristics of the genre should be described further. They feature a single, named or pseudo-historical narrator, who relates anecdotes or adventures in which the largely picaresque hero whom he espies in action inevitably turns out to be an ubiquitous shape-shifting anti-hero whose name is then given. The collection of Hamadhhnj contains fifty-two extant tales (which survive in different order, and indeed in different numbers in the various MSS which have come down to us);2 that of Åarjrj contains fifty, and only ten survive for Ibn Nhqiyh. Åarjrj was careful to give his collection a fixed form and order, and he endorsed numerous signed copies of his work. However, none of these writers, despite giving their characters recurrent traits, fashioned a novel from his multiple anecdotes: the tales are not arranged sequentially according to an overarching narrative design; there is no chronological implication in the
154 Philip F. Kennedy sequence – indeed, there are some glaring and deliberate anachronisms and contradictions that emerge when we set them side by side – and no single theme is developed in a carefully regulated way. However, they do nourish each other: one might say that the anecdotes relate to each other paradigmatically rather than syntagmatically. And while they are in the main picaresque – they are certainly sceptical – tales, they draw on a variety of categories, genres even, of adab anecdotage, spanning a range from debauched saturnalia to pious sermons the sincerity of which is difficult to determine. Often we can trace if not the original anecdotes, then at least types of anecdotes, which have been given their most enhanced – and most conspicuously fictional – form in a given maqhma. In this sense, the maqhmht are a literary cornucopia. It is this last aspect of the Maqhmht of Hamadhhnj, and their generic contextualization, which will be the privileged theme of the following essay. Here now is a typical narrative paradigm of a Hamadhanian maqhma, indicating, between brackets, all possible overt or implied voices. The anonymous narrator (Hamadhhnj himself ?) tells his readership that the narrator of the episode (‘Jsh ibn Hishhm) related to him how he once arrived in a town to witness the verbal antics of (an at first anonymous, bedraggled, and in fact disguised stranger), who was holding forth eloquently before (an engrossed crowd). The latter are induced into parting with ‘charitable’ lucre, at which point the internal narrator fixes his gaze on the stranger and recognizes him as the ubiquitous silvertongued rogue, Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj, whom he takes aside, or follows, to accost in private. They separate after some manner of remonstration, though the picaresque hero seldom expresses remorse. The Maqhmat of Åarjrj exhibit a similar narrative pattern, but are cast in a more markedly aureate diction, with a more intense use of rhyming prose and a rich tissue of unusual and difficult vocabulary.
Kilito: Les Séances Abdelfattah Kilito’s brilliantly imaginative and intellectually nimble monograph on the maqhmat – mainly those of Hamadhhnj – Les Séances: récits et codes culturels chez Hamadhhnj et Åarjrj (1983) stands as a milestone in the field of maqhma studies. That few reviews of the work have appeared in the more pertinent journals is puzzling;3 its qualities are marked. It is a work of broad vision and astute and detailed observation, engaging with its material in a way that is often unique. It is erudite but intuitive in equal measure, frequently navigating speculative and imaginative excursions that render one primary text a point of departure into a number of others (though never in exactly the same way). Kilito may not have convinced the entirety of his readership, since his are not close, in the sense of philologically driven, readings of individual narratives; but many have recognized his ability to detect and enucleate the connotations of a work: the meanings, associations, analogies and questions that are offered to the reader’s mind by its composite texture,4 in its entirety or by its constitutive elements: its tone, its characters or its dynamics of plot. As evidenced by his other writings (L’Auteur et ses
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 155 doubles, L’Œil et l’aiguille among others),5 Kilito has a perhaps unique sensibility and flair, by means of which he explores creatively the implications of his material, which he sets in the broad context of a multi-faceted, conservative or organically cohesive, literary culture. In a very important sense, Kilito recreates the text in his own exploratory writing. And the significance of his work is that it can teach one how to read: he instructs one in a richly rewarding habit of reading the medieval Arabic canon.6 His is a personal view, and while his compass is broad, it is by no means exhaustive. Within the arc he has constructed of related generic categories and operations, there is room for further nuancing, especially in the analysis of individual narratives. Recent studies have tended in contrast to concentrate on one or other of the individual Maqhmht. Even James T. Monroe’s important work, The Art of Badj‘ az-Zamhn al-Hamadhhnj as Picaresque Narrative (which dates by coincidence from the same year, 1983), is much more a succession of close, and relatively fixed, individual readings. Both Monroe’s and Kilito’s monographs have been inherited by, and subsumed in, a host of subsequent essays. Most, if not all, recent works have in common a strong sense of the multiplicity of literary influences, the interdependence of generic topics, and the interpenetration of the themes and discourses of a variety of texts and literary codes. With the broad arc of generic influences now sufficiently established, in addition to the detailed literary history of the genre,7 there is scope to annotate further and to pursue close readings of the individual narratives. In what follows, I offer, in varying detail, further reflections on six of Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmas (and on two other texts that are rather more sui generis), under the canopy of Kilito’s literary epistemology, but giving due consideration to many of the arguments of Monroe. First, though, a little more needs to be said about Kilito’s approach and about the scope of Les Séances. The preface of Les Séances leads us into the subject with a typically animate metaphor: The time has come to examine the maqhma which, for as long as one cares to remember, has been exhibited in a museum slowly gathering dust. Once in a while, tourists or local visitors come to contemplate it, lowering their heads or bending their bodies in some uncomfortable posture. What are we to do with Hamadhhnj and Åarjrj? What does the séance represent for us today? How are we to read it? We must admit that these questions are hard to resolve, since we are implicated in them. In effect, we examine ourselves when we scrutinize a classical text; and any discourse about the past is at the same time a discourse about the present.8 Kilito’s purpose is (or was) to bring the maqhma back to life, introducing it into a dialogue with late twentieth-century readers while situating it fully in its own era and cultural context. He is guided by the following perception: The séances of Hamadhhnj do not present a consistent tone, but exhibit rather a tonal slippage that manifests itself in multiple varieties. They effectively
156 Philip F. Kennedy integrate a considerable number of genres which, when considered apart, are mono-tonal. This complexity of the genre seems to us to be an important aspect to study.9 Les Séances deals essentially with a small corpus of five groups of works that are analysed in detail: the Maqhmat of Hamadhhnj, Ibn Nhqiyh and Åarjrj, Ibn Buƒlhn’s (d. 458/1066) ‘The Physicians’ Dinner Party’ (Da‘wat al-Aƒibbh’)10 – not a maqhma – and Ibn Sharaf al-Qayrawhnj’s (d. 460/1067)11 ‘maqhma known as Matters of Criticism’ (al-maqhma al-ma‘rufa bi Mash’il al-Intiqhd ), which survives only in fragmentary form and is not a narrative maqhma of the type under discussion here.12 A number of other, more or less contemporaneous works are also adduced in passing. Here is Kilito’s methodological rationale in gathering this corpus, not all of which consists of maqhmht. His statement may be broad in its parameters, yet it has the merit of utter clarity in setting the agenda: Starting from the premiss that a question addressed to a work is addressed simultaneously to works that are contemporary with it, we have, in the first instance, placed the séances in parallel with other texts of the fourth century AH, some of which are little known, and we have tried, on the basis of this parallel arrangement, to disentangle a certain number of historical, geographical, social and poetic codes.13 This endeavour constitutes, in fact, the first – and in my view most memorable – part of the book. Part Two, overlapping substantially with Part One in evoking relationships between texts, addresses the reception of Hamadhhnj among his immediate successors: the view of his work that informed his epigones’ writings. The third and last part of the book deals with Åarjrj, and is quite different. Some interesting aspects of Åarjrj’s Maqhmht are delineated, such as the overarching structure or arrangement of the collection as a whole – a feature entirely absent from Hamadhhnj, as D. S. Richards has clearly demonstrated from his examination of manuscripts14 – but analysis here is not a patch on the detailed analysis of a single maqhma by Åarjrj found in Kilito’s al-Ghh’ib.15 In the following sections, I develop reflections prompted in the main by Part One, and to some extent by Part Two, of Les Séances.
The journey: space The adventures of Hamadhhnj’s anti-hero, Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj, take place in twenty-one different urban centres of the medieval Muslim East.16 If the Muslim West, the Maghrib, is ignored, yet some of the farthest reaches (the marches or thughur) of the eastern region feature in, and give their names (in certain MSS) to individual narratives. They mark, in some sense, the limits of the Muslim East beyond which ‘alterity triumphs’.17 That these episodes are collectively hemmed in by the territories of Islam is an important detail, and a preliminary investigation of its significance is furnished by Kilito through reflections on certain
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 157 geographical works. This critical procedure forges an affinity between the Maqhmht and the fourth/tenth-century geographical writings of al-I߃akhrj, Ibn Åawqal, and especially al-Muqaddasj, and it is a quotation from the latter which provides Kilito’s rationale: We have written here only about the realm of Islam and nothing more; we do not bother ourselves with the countries of the unbelievers, because we did not enter them and we see no use whatever in describing them.18 This delimitation of geographical interest is by no means shared by all Muslim geographers and travellers in all periods.19 The Maqhmht, then are Islamic (quite broadly so), in terms of their settings; but they are deliberately not marked by specific local features in most cases. Incident, in the majority of instances, is not made a factor of a certain locale, a certain people, in the way that, for example, al-Jhåi© (d. c.255/868 or 9) accentuates the miserly temperament of the people of Marv in the first chapter of his Kithb alBukhalh’ (‘Book of Misers’). Conversely, that the rogue-hero of Hamadhhnj is associated with a particular place – Alexandria – is certainly a detail to address in consideration of space and geography. Kilito does so, and he asks a pertinent question that coalesces nicely with his delineation of boundaries of interest, and the motives thereof, in Muqaddasj inter alia: ‘Abu al-Fatå hails from Alexandria, but who can tell us where this city is situated? Many are the towns built by Alexander the Great that now carry his name. We may as well be saying of Abu al-Fatå that he came from anywhere and everywhere.’20 Is there some agenda in the choice of this name?21 Is it designed to accentuate the themes of travel, vagrancy and mutability? If this is so, it is clearly not the same agenda as that which underpins Åarjrj’s, far more specific, choice of Saruj as home town for his rogue-hero, Abu Zayd al-Sarujj. Saruj was a city which fell to the Franks in 494/1101. According to Åarjrj’s son, a refugee from Saruj appeared in the mosque in the quarter of Basra where Åarjrj lived, and ‘excited the curiosity of the company by the fluency and eloquence of his address, in which he related the destruction of his city, the loss of his daughter, and his own exile and beggary. Åarjrj went home and wrote what is now the forty-eighth Assembly, in which he describes this incident.’22 Saruj is thus a town which has fallen into the hands of the infidels, and is effectively, in this respect, at the very cusp of Islam and heathendom, a fact not irrelevant to the ambiguous morality of the narratives themselves. This constant reminder of the fact that the mortal world is mutable and unstable may be an important aspect of Åarjrj’s choice of name. Kilito observes, of the space which Hamadhhnj’s characters inhabit: The protagonists move in the midst of terrain which is certainly changing, but always familiar. Their peregrinations take place on solid ground, which no unexpected discovery shakes. They come across no bizarre customs in the Other’s domain such as to make them raise their eyebrows and stare. Their quest has nothing in common with that of Sindbad, who faces an environment whose syntax and morphology are quite disquieting.23
158 Philip F. Kennedy The point is well taken, especially the second part, which must be further emphasized. Sindbad travelled the world beyond Islam (it is those such as he who must subsequently have taken Islam to its farthest reaches). At the time of Hamadhhnj, those on whom Sindbad was partly calqued survived through their contacts with ‘the Other’. Travelogues that had their seeds in merchants’ adventures are concerned not with territory, but with strange customs and mores. It seems unlikely that such ‘ajh’ib texts24 are really intended to provide itineraries and geographical information. (Richard Hole did, to some extent, try to extract such data from them, but his was a zealous reading.)25 In any case, in Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht, there is no such adventure, painted in the hyperbole-of-the-strange;26 but there is one occasion on which there is an evocation of that which lies beyond the Dhr al-Islhm (the Terrain, or Abode, of Islam): the Maqhma of Qazwjn. Kilito does not mention this Maqhma. We ought to redress this omission: doing so may in fact prove his essential point. The Maqhma of Qazwjn27 On a raid of conquest to the marches beyond Qazwjn on the southern shores of the Caspian, the narrator, ‘Jsh ibn Hishhm, encountered a crowd listening to a man ‘who had a voice harsher than the braying of a donkey.’ He had, so his story goes, been a pagan in heathen lands, but with time he converted to Islam. The manner in which he masked his newly acquired faith from polytheist compatriots is described poignantly in verse. He eventually made his escape, and is now a stranger in the town of Qazwjn, where he appeals to the people: ‘People, I have come to tread on your terrain!’ (dhra-kum – deliberately evocative, it might seem, of the term Dhr al-Islhm). Some recompense, monetary and material, is afforded him; he is only then, privately, recognized as an impostor and challenged by the angered narrator. The Dhr al-Åarb (Abode of War, or Terrain of the Pagans) is not actually visited, but imagined and evoked. It is not so much a geographical entity as the site of a spiritual void. But a vague sense of geography does play its part, for it is the zealous presence of the narrator in these distant, disturbing marches that lends credibility to the ‘convert’s’ story. Leaning on the psychology of fear and insecurity, its function in this story is to stress the fraternity of Muslims in Islamic lands. Pagan territories beyond Qazwjn, imagined as they are mendaciously, are another way of shadowing forth the rogue’s deception of his audience: he deceives the Muslims, purveyors of charity, by describing fictitiously how he once concealed his new-found faith from his pagan community: I continued to conceal my religion from my people, And to worship God with a penitent heart. I adored the goddess al-Lht,28 for fear of the enemy, And in dread of the watcher, I looked not towards the Ka‘ba29 This might be construed as the (at least to Shj‘js) religiously acceptable practice of taqiyya (concealing one’s true faith in hostile territory); but it is dissimulation
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 159 nevertheless. The two deceptions – the second, Abu al-Fatå’s bluffing tale, the first, the pretended erstwhile concealment which it relates – may be qualitatively distinct, but they penetrate each other. As with all recognition narratives, when read in retrospect this tale takes on a different meaning. Abu al-Fatå’s ruse is based on the fact of his being a stranger; but once the narrator has unmasked him, it becomes clear that essentially, and with skilful evocations of the Qur’anic text, he has played upon the fact of being a stranger among his own spiritual kind, having escaped from the land of the infidel. In this connection, we should note the irony of the poem’s parting scriptural phrase, wa fatåun qarjb (‘a conquest/escape is at hand’)30 – indeed, it may suggest one of the reasons why Hamadhhnj gave this particular kunya31 (Abu al-Fatå, meaning ‘father of victory’ or ‘possessor of divine aid’) to his escapologist hero.
The journey: time Related to space in the collectivity of Maqhmht is the issue of time. Some of Hamadhhnj’s material is patterned, if only according to some subversive agenda, as a quest for particulars of literary knowledge, in which, says Kilito, the journey serves as much to unearth the treasures of the past [my emphasis] as it does to observe the world in the present . . . A mastery of adab cannot be separated from a familiarity with the texts and books of the past . . . A prisoner of synchronicity [i.e. the present], the traveller addresses himself to tradition in order to move around in time and dominate diachronicity [i.e. to move around in time].32 But to move the narrator in time (if only in a minority of cases) is problematic. On one level, Kilito’s point seems simply to stress the temporally layered aspect of adab. Yet it also forces one to consider the problem of anachronism – glaring anachronism – as it features in one or two of the Maqhmht, and which is a way for Hamadhhnj of avowing (scandalous) fiction. As a result, a mildly åadjth-like rubric of presentation – that is, the citation of a supposedly authoritative person as the ‘source’ of the anecdote, as for Prophetic traditions – emerges as being transparently unable to guarantee the authenticity of a statement. Conversely, and in a deliberately paradoxical way, it serves, in fact, to call attention to these incredible fictions, not least because Hamadhhnj’s isnhds are so short, consisting of only one transmitter, who is also narrator, witness and protagonist: ‘I was told by ‘Ish ibn Hishhm . . .’.33 (Can there be a satirizing of the phenomenon of the mu‘ammarun, or centenarians, of åadjth circles – whose traditions were prized for small number of intermediate transmitters in their isnhds, which shortened the number of generations between the Prophet and the most recent transmitter – in the absurd logic of the ‘Maqhma of Ghaylhn’,34 which narrates an encounter with the Umayyad poets Dhu al-Rumma (Ghaylhn ibn ‘Uqba) and al-Farazdaq, and suggests that the narrator is, by the time of Hamadhhnj, well over two hundred years old? Perhaps.)
160 Philip F. Kennedy
The journey: character The itinerant man-watching narrator of Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht, half dupe, half savvy, has a steady eye for sundry situations. It may seem hard to credit that he has his model or analogue in the earnest fourth/tenth-century polymath Muqaddasj; yet the point is worth exploring, and further identifies the possibly wide-ranging scope and butts of Hamadhhnj’s wry – and sometimes summary – literary humour. Muqaddasj presents his credentials thus: [ I have travelled] throughout the countries [and visited] the regions of Islam . . . met the learned, and been of service to princes, had meetings with the Qh∂js [judges], and studied under the jurists . . . frequented the society of men of letters, the Readers of the Qur’hn [i.e. scholars of its variant textual readings], and writers of the traditions [of the Prophet] . . . associated with ascetics and Íufjs; been present at the assemblies of the tellers of stories, all this while engaging in trade everywhere, and associating with all the people I encountered . . . . With all this, I suffered severe privation, and spent lots of money. I sought to practice what is lawful, and avoid what is sinful, while dealing honestly with Muslims so as to please God.35 ‘Ish ibn Hishhm, Hamadhhnj’s roving narrator, and even more so his wandering anti-hero, Abu al-Fatå, are a Muqaddasj transfigured – (a)morally so in the case of Abu al-Fatå. It is in this context that we must introduce an odd congruence in the Maqhmht: the coupling of a protean figure, Abu al-Fatå, the personifcation of spatial and temporal wandering, with the constancy of narrative pattern, exemplified particularly by the ubiquity of the protagonists and, in turn, by the consistency of the final or near-final recognition scene. The Maqhmht of Hamadhhnj are not in their collectivity a novel, as we have said; there is discontinuity between the narratives and some inconsistency in the behaviour of the two main players. About ‘the lack of a narrative link between the séances’, Kilito observes: It is hardly appropriate to deplore this fragmentary aspect and to regret [as did some earlier historians of Arabic literature] the fact that Hamadhhnj did not write a novel. It would be wiser to limit one’s scrutiny to the logic peculiar to the maqhma, as well as to the cultural family to which it belongs, which is not necessarily familiar to us.36 Is this discontinuity a feature of the picaresque text; or are we here in the realms of the ‘arabesque’, and is there here, therefore, the sign of a distant narrative kinship with, say, the tales in ‘The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad’ of the Thousand and One Nights – tales that are patterned according to each other without narrative sequentiality, steadily raising the volume of the uncanny?37 As Kilito observes, In the accentuated fragmentation of the maqhma episodes (as an ensemble), there is a parting of the ways with Muqaddasj, whose experiences are all his
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 161 own, ordered sequentially, we must assume, as his life unfolded, and never – God forbid – crossing the threshold into an area of moral opprobrium: ‘Of all the things which can happen to a traveller, there is nothing in which I have not played my part, except for begging or the responsibility for some grave sin.’38 Muqaddasj presents a coherent, unfragmented persona. The poem of Ibn al-Åajjhj It is the notion of transgression which prompts Kilito to move on from his parallel with Muqaddasj to examine that literary culture which treads conspicuously and deliberately beyond the bounds of decency. In this connection, he briefly captures the spirit of the poetry of Ibn al-Åajjhj (d. 391/1000),39 a Baghdadi poet who specialized in obscene verse and enjoyed great popularity, and his exposition leads into the subject of a textual palinode in Abu al-Muƒahhar al-Azdj’s (or Abu Åayyhn al-Tawåjdj’s) Åikhyat Abj al-Qhsim (‘The “Tale” of Abu al-Qhsim’), which will be discussed in the next section. Here is his sketch of a performance by Ibn al-Åajjhj: In a panegyric apostrophising ‘Izz al-Dawla Bakhtiyhr,40 Ibn al-Åajjhj does not speak, as tradition demands, about the courage and generosity of this prince. He contents himself (and this is rare in panegyric) with lauding his beauty. We are scarcely surprised when he compares the Buyid to [the Qur’anic] Joseph, paragon of masculine beauty. But our suspicions are aroused when he evokes Potiphar’s wife. If she had seen ‘Izz al-Dawla, it is suggested, she could not have avoided being captivated by his charms and would certainly have sought to seduce him. And this latter-day Joseph would not have resisted. As a man who appreciated women (Ibn al-Åajjhj puts it more crudely), he would have pursued her through the house of many chambers.41 Analysis of Ibn al-Åajjhj’s literary success is not particularly searching, but Kilito observes that the reason for it ‘is to be sought in the ambivalent tone of his verse, which combines traditional features with a blasphemous element,’ adding: His public, which was an educated one, appreciated his subversion of the poetic tradition – though the latter must be understood to provide the undertone and structure of his work. It should be stressed: violation does not obliterate that which has been violated; it articulates simultaneously transgression and the law.42 The violence of Abu al-Qhsim The literary temperament of Ibn al-Åajjhj is also to be found in a remarkable and singular text of contested authorship: Hikhyat Abj al-Qhsim.43 The word åikhya,
162 Philip F. Kennedy translated earlier as ‘tale’, requires some commentary. In fact, it means neither a story nor a tale, but an imitation or reproduction. The narrator of the Åikhya recites in this respect a passage from Jhåi©’s al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn (‘The Treatise on Clarity and Clarification’) which is precisely about the åhkiya or mime artist.44 The essential point is that åikhya is about types, not individuals, unlike adab, which relays authenticated accounts of true-to-life individuals. The sense of mimesis in the Åikhya is thus the conscious development of the idea of fiction which causes anxiety in adab, and which adab seeks to avoid. (More of this is made elsewhere, in Kilito’s analysis of Ibn Nhqiyh’s preface to his Maqhmht.) Kilito finds an even sharper generic kinship with the Åikhya in al-Tha‘hlibj’s (350–429/961–1038) Yat jmat al-Dahr,45 the source for Ibn al-Åajjhj’s poem to ‘Izz al-Dawla and for its reception. He singles out a piece which describes the intimate literary parties (or orgies) of the vizier al-Muhallabj (d. 352/963)46 at which one of the regular guests was the judge (qh∂j) ‘Alj ibn Muåammad al-Tanukhj (the father of the author of al-Faraj ba‘da al-Shidda and of ‘The Table-Talk of a Mesopotamian Judge’, who is discussed in Chapter 6 below). It is related of [Abu al-Qhsim ‘Alj ibn Muåammad al-Tanukhj] that he was one of a group of qh∂js who were intimates of Muhallabj the vizier, assembling at his home informally two nights a week . . . . They all had long grey beards, like the vizier himself . . . [Once they were all feeling relaxed and frivolous] . . . and each had in his hand a gold cup weighing a thousand mithqhls or more filled with the best vintages . . . each would soak up most of his wine with his beard and spray the others with it,47 and [dressed in coloured garments instead of the dark robes of judges] they would all dance around, saying ‘Har, har!’ the more they drank . . . The following morning they would again assume their grave vestments and their decency, careful to preserve the imposing demeanour of judges and the reserve of the great and the good.48 In this storyline Kilito identifies a model, in relation to which Abu al-Qhsim, the protagonist of the Åikhya, emerges as the most fully-fledged incarnation of adab narratives that straddle the barrier between truth and fiction. In support of his interpretation, Kilito notes that the story of Abu al-Qhsim is told in the historic present. It is thus the most significant surviving example of an ‘iterative’ story, which is to say a story that is part of a perpetual cycle of similar or nearidentical episodes. Implicit here is the suggestion that Hamadhhnj may have taken his cue from just such a narrative to produce his own collection. The Åikhya opens in this ‘iterative’ mode with a description of Abu al-Qhsim’s entrance into a house in which some notables are gathered.49 He wears a ƒaylashn (a kind of scarf or mantle, worn over head or shoulders, which is associated with those of venerable status). Having greeted the guests in a soft voice, he begins to recite the Qur’hn, first in an undertone, then more audibly. He continues to affect humility until, upon spotting a smile on the face of one of those present, he excoriates him: ‘You hard heart! All this joy when Åusayn ibn ‘Alj [the son of the Shj‘j
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 163 Imhm ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib, martyred at Karbala in 61/680] has had his throat cut!’50 He recites a eulogy of ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib in reverent tone, all tears and sighs. At this point, in the literary orchestration of the Åikhya’s development, the author shows his hand. It is made to unfold as a drama, for one of the guests cries out: ‘Abu al-Qhsim, do not fear! There are none among us but who drink and love the pleasures of the flesh!’51 The second, substantive act of the Åikhya now begins; it is to be one characterized by obscenity and the carnivalesque. As a gesture of social defiance, Abu al-Qhsim takes off his belt and removes the ƒaylashn from his forehead – a symbolic act of liberation and the prelude to a whole chain of taboobreaking. This extended passage is cast in a shocking counterpoint: any expression of praise for the individuals present is followed with alarming suddenness and freakish caprice by satirical tirades of the very basest kind. This same antithetical patchwork extends into and informs the antagonistic comparison (or munh©ara) between Baghdad and Isfahan. This latter section forms the central part of the narrative and sustains the agonistic tone of the narrative. The reaction of those who are present at this display of vocal social violence is mixed at first, but they conspire in the end to punish Abu al-Qhsim with a metonymic death, agreeing to get him drunk in order to put an end to his ghastly logorrhea. There is a ritualistic aspect to be highlighted here: Abu al-Qhsim appears at first as a liberating hero, but his aberrant discourse goes on to provoke a salutary reaction among his auditors which distances any sense of culpability on their part and allows them to restore the equilibrium upon which the life of the community must rest. Even Abu al-Qhsim partakes of this virtue, for upon his awakening, twenty-four hours after his arrival,52 he is again the very paragon of discretion and probity. As Kilito stresses, these narratives are indeed written as palinodes. (In the Maqhmht, the resolution of social disequilibrium has greater ambivalence, for they are more clearly part of a repeating cycle.) In his edition of this work, ‘Abbud al-Shhljj attributes its authorship to Abu Åayyhn al-Tawåjdj (c.315–411/927–1023) and gives it the title al-Rishla alBaghdhdiyya (‘The Epistle of Baghdad’). Though most scholars appear to discard this attribution, Shhljj’s case for Tawåjdj’s unavowed authorship53 still begs consideration. Shmuel Moreh considers it unfeasible, since Tawåjdj would have been unlikely to garble a quotation from his own al-Imth‘ wa al-Mu’hnasa.54 On the other hand, Shhljj argues for Tawåjdj’s unavowed authorship in part on the grounds of the extent and concentration of obscenity in the Rishla/Åikhya. The subject of mixed attribution is relevant to our discussion of Kilito’s analysis of the context of the Maqhmht in the light of his declared interest in ‘authors and their doubles’,55 and it is the obscenity of the Åikhya that we will need to emphasize, without being unduly explicit, in our discussion of this singularly degenerate text. The Muqaddima – the author’s own brief introduction to the Åikhya, where he gives his name, real or assumed, as ‘the shaykh and adjb (man of letters and fine manners) Abu al-Muƒahhar Muåammad ibn Azmad al-Azdj’56 – lays claim to some stature for the work as a valuable socio-linguistic document of Baghdadi mores. He sets it alongside other categories of discourse respected as worthy of scholarly attention: Bedouin (i.e. pure Arab) speech (al-khiƒhb al-badawj),
164 Philip F. Kennedy ancient poetry and modern anecdotal literature. Significant is the author’s untroubled and blithe admission that some of his material has been falsely appropriated by him. A note of doubt as to authorship is established. It affects the whole text: where do unavowed appropriation on the one hand, and genuine authorship on the other, begin and end? Of further significance is a phrase at the end of the list of literary categories on which the author has apparently drawn widely, and which he subsumes under the broad, undefined category of adab: ‘. . . epistles (or ‘essays’, ‘treatises’, rash’il) that I have propagated and séances (maqhmht) that I have prepared; whereas this åikhya is about a man from Baghdad . . . ’ Maqhma cannot here mean the same thing as åikhya, for while they are not defined for us, they are nevertheless clearly differentiated as literary categories. (Given this differentiation, it would be ironic if it were the mention of the term maqhma that led Kilito, and others, to study the Åikhya in the light of the Maqhmht.) The Åikhya is, in sum, a documentary and ironically edifying work of adab, ‘designed to serve as a memoir (tadhkira) of the mores (akhlhq) of the people of Baghdad’. In this lies very strong justification for the crude obscenities that ensue. Nothing, we should note, is ever so boorish in any of the Maqhmht of Hamadhhnj; Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj’s antics as a sharpster are never quite so unseemly. Ibn Nhqiyh stands apart from Hamadhhnj in this respect; his chiselled anecdotes may not be obscene, but they do blaspheme, and are in a very deliberate sense offensive. They consciously stretch and extend the boundaries of mujun (libertinage or licentiousness as a literary pose), aware that some harness of tolerance may be about to snap: the community’s patience is hostage to the threat of yet greater profanity. The fact that this is a åikhya rather than a ‘treatise’ (rishla) justifies the sordid realism of the language: it is a quasi-mimetic rendering of an (amplified) stylization of life. It is a story (another of the senses of the word åikhya) only secondarily. As in James Joyce’s Ulysses, events take place within a single day. The author takes the trouble to tell us so,57 which serves to emphasize the work’s prolixity: it can only, as a mimetic performance, be replayed and listened to (to borrow modern images of performance and reception) in a measure of time equal to its fabula. The mimetic aspect is underlined here, and so too, just as essentially, is the intensity of its contents. This is not just obscenity; it is a whole day and night of obscenity mimetically reproduced, a sustained engueulade that can only leave the reader jaded. One must consider whether or not there is design in this wearisome effect. Does this text deliberately exhaust the repertory of sukhf (gross buffoonery) and mujun (libertinage)? Does it, in some considered and programmatic way, fight the fire of opprobrium with like fire? Some such dynamic is detectable in Ibn Buƒlhn’s Da‘wat al-Aƒibbh’ (‘Physicians’ Dinner Party’, see below). Linguistically, the Åikhya has a somewhat hypnotic effect. The opening paragraph illustrates this well and establishes a pattern for the text as a whole. Abu alQhsim is introduced descriptively, in a long series of sometimes coupled and contrasting epithets. Many of the adjectives require explanatory editorial glosses; the language is too rich to be consistently familiar, and this is part of the author’s ploy: much of the work’s lexicon is recondite, and when it is coarse, it is often
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 165 reconditely so. It is as a repository of gharhba, lexical rarity, that the work acquires status. The following random example is representative of both acoustic and rhetorical effect: ‘ßiddjqan zindjqan nhsikan fhtikan ghurratan ‘urratan’ (‘a righteous believer, a freethinker; an ascetic, a desperado; a good man, a vile man’).58 Ghurra (‘white-complexioned’) and ‘urra (‘base’ or ‘vile’) are virtual antonyms but are kept apart orthographically merely by a diacritical dot; the pairing illustrates well the linguistic competence of the author. Significantly, the whims of the darkly mercurial Abu al-Qhsim turn on just such slimness of detail. This interwoven texture of opposites is also rendered in poetry.59 The work is shot through with shocking dissonance, and perhaps we are meant to infer early on that scandal and moral impurity contaminate their opposite, not vice versa – or far less. Abu al-Qhsim is described physically at the outset in terms of his sartorial imposture: his arrival in a ƒaylashn, a sort of official mantle of godliness. The presentation is reminiscent of Chaucer’s horrendous Pardoner. Dark sarcasm is rife here, and is evinced in the mocking titles of invented books – those, for example, which one unfortunate object of Abu al-Qhsim’s scorn is alleged to have ‘studied’: Kithb Ta’khjr al-Ma‘rifa (‘The Book of the Postponing of Knowledge’), Kithb Nisyhn al-‘Ulum (‘The Book of Forgetting the Sciences’), Majmu‘ Nuqßhn al-Fahm (‘The Compendium of Inadequate Understanding’).60 Abu al-Qhsim’s offensive and foul-mouthed remarks are then made ad hominem successively to each individual in the majlis (gathering), and they are unstintingly scatological. Some details are particularly striking: one of his victims is accused of having a hand that ‘wanders over the food tray [when eating with others], and his face moves like a gobetween61 among the various dishes’ (tushfiru yadu-hu ‘alh l-khuwhni wa yasfiru wajhuhu bayna khtilhfi l-alwhni).62 It is, as it happens, a relatively mild rebuke. What is arresting is that the accusatory phrase is borrowed from Hamadhhnj’s ‘Maqhma of Jhåi©’ (‘Abduh’s edition has tushf iru yadu-hu ‘alh l-khuwhni wa tasfiru bayna l-alwhni, ‘his hand wanders over the food tray and moves like a go-between among the dishes’).63 Does this establish an affinity between the two works? Or is it simply an acknowledgement of the status of Hamadhhnj’s œuvre? More typical of the tone of invective is the following. In verse, Abu al-Qhsim says of someone that dhiknu-ka fi-st-j, ‘Your beard is in my arse.’64 Taken by the words, the majlis repeat the phrase in unison, and the victim of the affront is understandably enraged. Abu al-Qhsim cajoles him sarcastically: ‘Poor man, his liver is in his guts [perhaps ‘he’s gutwrenched’ in English]; yet he has the demeanour of kings – indeed, Chosroes sired no other son!’ At a point when the tone seems to be fixed in squalor, Abu al-Qhsim begins to lace his speech with religion. He quotes Qur’hn and åadjth in the description of this host. Will this temper the tone of the work? A rash conjecture: for he is then able by steps to mould multiple citations of the Qur’hn into a statement to the effect that in present company he is simply casting his pearls of adab before swine.65 But what pearls are these if not appalling verbal outrages of the lowest kind? A disturbing gulf opens up between the generic and ethical frame adopted disingenuously for his monologues – a frame affected by the words waßiyya (admonitory testament), amr and nahy ( prescription and prohibition, especially in matters of religion), naßjåa
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(counsel)66 – and the enjoinment of vulgarities that it contains. This is a moral dystopia. And we are forced to ask, Is there some ritualistic aspect intended in the obscenities, which continue to intensify? To deny this possibilty is to disregard the scale of the work. At this point, we are scarcely a fifth of the way through it; yet a pinnacle of verbalized turpitude has already been reached. After an appeal by Abu al-Qhsim to his audience to fornicate indiscriminately,67 one of those present laughs. This provokes a response filled with shocking images of blasphemy from which, in the end, Abu al-Qhsim disingenuously dissociates himself: [ Why do you laugh?] . . . . Have I claimed that God is the second of two? Or the third of three?68 Have I challenged the Qur’hn in verse? Did I break the Prophet’s tooth?69 Have I ransacked the grave of Imhm Åusayn? Did I use ballistas to bombard the Ka‘ba and did I desecrate it with menstrual rags? Did I void ordure in the well of Zamzam?70 Did I hamstring the she-camel of Íhliå?71 Have I said about God what the Jews and the Christians allege about him?72 Have I fornicated between the tomb and the pulpit? Did I defecate on the Black Stone? Did I cut off the head of al-Åusayn ibn ‘Alj or the hand of Ja‘far ibn Abj Ïhlib? Did I devour Åamza’s liver? Did I [assassinate ‘Umar ibn al-Khaƒƒhb]?73 You clever so-and-so! [If I did none of these things] why then are you laughing? A summons to fornication is then repeated in verses typical of the literary pose of mujun (‘Make the most of your hardwood penis today, for tomorrow it will be as soft as plywood!’) which are only mildly offensive in contrast with what went before. Is this blasphemy, then, rhetorical? Is the reader deliberately inured to verbal squalor whilst in the récit the author establishes a domineering and scabrously tyrannical mercurialism? A comparison between Baghdad and Isfahan ensues. It is an exercise in obscure listings and a companion glossary of local vocabularies (all of which are helpfully explained in detail by the modern editor). This is a veritable document of material, and other, aspects of Baghdadi and Isfahani local culture, and it offers itself as a compendium, while possibly being intended also, in the context of the Åikhya, to intimidate its audience within the text and outside it. Anecdotal digression interrupts the forward movement of the text intermittently.74 A memorable interlude features Abu al-Qhsim telling how he once enjoyed the company of the poet Ibn al-Åajjhj (discussed above) and others, in the Iraqi town of Whsiƒ, in a garden idyll that provoked the lyricism of Ibn al-Åajjhj. Description of the gathering does not issue in any single event or deed, and it is striking for its relative absence of lewdness. Upon stirring from this reminiscence, Abu al-Qhsim requests food, and when asked what he would like to eat, he recites fourteen lines of poetry listing his wishes.75 It is here that we find one of the most significant connections with Hamadhhnj, for the verses are, with minor variants and some additions, the lines that form the very backbone of Hamadhhnj’s al-Maqhma al-Shshniyya (‘Maqhma of the Underworld’).76 The editor curiously fails to note this fact, as does Kilito, who appears to have been relying on the older edition by Adam Mez, but it surely
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 167 suggests the validity of an exercise in comparison. It also sharpens the perspective of our scrutiny, for in Åikhya, the poem of Hamadhhnj (if he is indeed its author) is no more than a small detail in a richly varied tapestry; locally in the text, it simply introduces a lengthy interlude on food. The themes of the poem are tangential, if not irrelevant; and it is the fact that Hamadhhnj’s poem is rendered incidental that is of significance in our textual and generic considerations, for it adds to our understanding of where Hamadhhnj may have stood in the chain of borrowing and receiving. Kilito’s discussion of this monstrous text is, in view of its length, relatively short. One cannot – need not – disagree with any of the points he makes. Especially felicitous is his analysis of antitheses in the Åikhya: that no quality is evoked without provoking its opposite in speech and action. Intriguingly, he characterizes Abu al-Qhsim as a symptom of the Arabic linguistic phenomenon of a∂dhd (words with two opposite meanings). In adding to his remarks, one can only draw attention to the self-conscious expansiveness of the work: it is awash with detail, a sort of narrativized lexicon of quotidian, at times vulgar and at other times specialized jargons; and, as intimated, it is the quasi-mimetic performance of a morally abrasive, and even violent, prolixity. It is a descent into madness of sorts. It should be noted that Abu al-Qhsim is in an altered state when he indulges his scandalous logorrhea. In this, he is quite unlike Hamadhhnj’s Abu al-Fatå, who is always aware, in a smaller-scale and more controlled scenario, of what he has done and said and just how he has duped his victims. One wonders if a medieval audience could ever forgive and forget the Åikhya’s indelicacies? It goes a stage beyond the Maqhmht in transgressing the boundaries of conservative morality and decorum; it is qualitatively, and thus generically and more than just quantitatively, distinct from them. The Maqhmht do not threaten taboo in the same way that the Åikhya does. Ibn Nhqiya, Hamadhhnj’s apparent successor in composing maqhmht, perhaps did (as we shall suggest presently). Chronologically, he comes midway between Åamadhhnj and Åarjrj. In temperament, however, he is perhaps to be located between Hamadhhnj and the author of the Åikhya.
Antithesis and morality The tavern and the mosque Antithesis brings us conveniently to Kilito’s next section: ‘The Tavern and the Mosque’. A number of modern scholars, notably Monroe, have commented on Hamadhhnj’s ‘Maqhma of Wine’ (al-Maqhma al-Khamriyya).77 While one cannot deny the role of satire and irony in this piece, some of Monroe’s analysis is too onerous in the share of morality it imposes on the reader, for example: By clever use of irony, [Hamadhhnj] has led us to hate hypocrisy without telling us to do so. He has shown us, instead, a group of hypocrites in action, and allowed us to draw our own conclusions. In this way, al-Hamadhhnj, as a satirist, has successfully aroused our indignation against vice while shifting
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Philip F. Kennedy the credibility problem from himself to his characters . . . . The author has, instead, placed us in a position where we must reject the arguments of his characters if we are to retain a modicum of self-respect.78
One cannot dismiss outright this aspect of the Maqhma Khamriyya: it is open to the ethical response of individual readers, medieval and modern alike. But one should look more closely at the craft of the piece – in a sense, the physical space it occupies; examine it as if it were a meticulouly wrought artifact, for its linguistic and even physical ontology is so enhanced that perhaps we need not draw programmatic conclusions, but may be allowed to respond to the text simply in aesthetic terms. There is a sort of protocol to it, a sense of careful balance that inheres in its symmetry and its structure. Its literary enhancement displaces and suborns any discursive agenda. Besides, Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht are cyclical, even if not sequentially serialized: the reader will seldom have read this Maqhma and no other. We do not conclude with moral outrage at the end of each Maqhma: we wait to see how the next will qualify our moral reflexes before trying to justify our perpetual search into what it is exactly the author, as a literary craftsman, is doing. Can literary craft act as an antidote to a sense of moral opprobrium? If the ‘Maqhma of Wine’ is a textual palinode, it is so in a form quite distinct from that of Åikhyat Abj al-Qhsim. The Åikhya is about horrendous breaches of societal norms of behaviour – of simple courtesy and etiquette, not all of which need mask the attendant hypocrisies of conservative and orthodox society. Conversely, it is possible to read the ‘Maqhma of Wine’ precisely as an illustration of etiquette, of the fact that there is a proper time and place for everything. Bacchanalia, traditionally, and especially during the period of the rich celebration of wine in classical Arabic poetry from pre-Islamic Arabia in the sixth century AD to the third/ninth-century ‘Abbasid heyday,79 are never a behavioural anarchy. Åilm (forbearance) and tawba (repentance) are important apologetic motifs in Arabic wine poetry of all periods, and allow this ostensibly insubordinate and libertine genre to key in with the religious ethic of mainstream Islamic society as expressed in other genres of poetry;80 and there are norms of demeanour and comportment which inform even the carefree spirit of self-indulgence. With some notable exceptions, the khamriyyht (wine songs) of Abu Nuwhs (d. c.198/813) – perhaps the greatest of all ‘Abbasid poets, and surely the most gifted and celebrated composer of wine poetry – bespeak the values of companionship: cameraderie, generosity, and, ultimately, a form of self-restraint. Hypocrisy is abhorrent to the culture of wine. Religion is held in scorn where it is associated with the cult of avarice (Abu al-‘Athhiya, d. 211/826, author of the most developed ascetic and pious poems (zuhdiyyht) of the period, was a notorious miser). We must not overstress this point, but should bear it in mind when reading Hamadhhnj’s ‘Maqhma of Wine’, and especially when comparing it analytically with that of Ibn Nhqiyh.81 Kilito summarizes Hamadhhnj’s ‘Maqhma of Wine’ as a text of opposites: ‘The narrator declares that he has “contrived a careful balance between the serious and the trivial”. This twin orientation gives rise to two dissonant scenes.’82 The ‘two scenes’ are then summarily described. We might linger on this dual aspect awhile.
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 169 The narrator tells us: ‘I gave up my days to people and my nights to the wine-cup.’83 This apportioning of time, read retrospectively, is in part an enjoining of orthopraxis. The sense given to the word ‘people’ is that of the public, communal and societal sphere (including, therefore, much of the religious sphere); the ‘cup’ is the private sphere. Two divisions are contained within the statement: it is an allotment of time, on the one hand, and of fraternal intercourse and activity on the other. Association of the night with ‘the cup’ is enhanced by the imagery that celebrates the bacchic context: the carousers pass around ‘starry cups’ of wine, as they do in wine poetry. But if this yarn borrows from and expands upon the narrative paradigm of the khamriyyht of Abu Nuwhs, it also introduces what are, to my knowledge, new and significant elements – principally, the depletion of the wine. Whether or not this image is reminiscent of the Gospels – the wine ‘giving out’ at the Wedding in Cana – the motif is rare in Arabic bacchic poetry. It is this element that provokes the crisis of the anecdote and the resolution of that crisis. When the companions agree to go out and seek more wine in the tavern, they are caught and trapped, as it were, in the public sphere by the morning call to prayer. This announces the end of the night and symbolically, surely, the end of the temporal sphere of indulgence. The course of action which appears to be forced on them is to go to the mosque. They heed the call to prayer, and justify their actions with the following words: li kulli bi∂h‘atin waqt wa li kulli ßinh‘atin samt (‘Every commodity has its own time and every practice its place’).84 Herein lies the clue to interpreting the Maqhma as a whole. When they utter these words, they exude self-satisfaction; and it is from this mood that they are harshly awoken by the rebuke of the imhm (prayer leader). When he incites the pious worshippers in the mosque against carousers, it is with the following words: ‘What punishment is reserved for those who have spent the night laid low by Satan yet then come early to the mosque?’85 The juxtaposition of antithetical practices highlights their hypocrisy, it would seem – and ultimately also that of the false imhm. But it is not by his actions that we should judge him, but (in this particular situation) by the latent logic of his words – words foreshadowed in the very statement of praxis that the topers themselves have uttered: ‘There is a time and place for everything!’ Those who are morally outraged when the imhm shows up in the tavern the following night (and this seems to be the majority of the Maqhma’s readers today) have not properly understood the tacit refrain that underscores the narrative and provides its own, specific message (as opposed to the more ponderous, reiterative message of the Maqhmht as a cycle that we tend to turn to as a reflex: the mutability apophthegm). As a whole, the narrative articulates resoundingly the Qur’anic injunction lh taqrabu l-ßalhta wa antum sukhrh åatth ta‘lamu mh taqulun (‘Do not go to prayer when you are drunk, that you may discern what you are saying’).86 If they – the carousers – knew what they were saying, they would understand the deft metatextual irony of this Maqhma – but they would also no longer be drunk! The flaw in their actions emerges from a glance at Abu Nuwhs: a famous verse of his is a‘ƒi-nj ka’sa salwatin ‘an adhhni l-mu’adhdhini (‘Give me a cup of solace from the muezzin’s call’).87
170 Philip F. Kennedy Where, in another poem, Abu Nuwhs feels the obligation to pray at dawn, his true underlying sentiments are nevertheless transparent: wa åjna åhnat ßalhtu-nh li ∂uåan qumnh nußallj bi ghayri takbjri (‘And when the time for the forenoon prayer came, we prayed without uttering the formula, God is Great’).88 He is not really praying at all, thus effectively preserving a separation between the practice of religion and indulgence. There is something more canny afoot in Abu Nuwhs’s verse than the entrapment which embroils the unthinking narrator in the ‘Maqhma of Wine’. Not all Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht are so neatly balanced. Narratively as well as thematically, its dual recognition is unique – for of course the false imhm is Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj, who throws back at the narrator, ‘Ish ibn Hishhm, a version of his own moral timetable: ‘Sometimes I frequent the prayer niche, at others the tavern’, following which he and the carousers pass a pleasant week together before going their separate ways89 – and herein Hamadhhnj has provided the reader with a sort of performative ethics of the cyclical genre whereby unequivocal moral reproval is constantly deferred. It is the balancing here which puts paid to any sense of hypocrisy. It is this piece’s careful symmetry ( juxtaposition, contradiction and moral dissonance) that both dupes one and yet articulates its real message. Abu al-Fatå might be a hypocrite (more consciously so than the narrator), but he has charm and social grace, and it is he, most importantly, who has a proper sense of context and social occasion. This emerges especially from a comparison of Hamadhhnj’s Maqhma with the ‘Maqhma of Wine’ of Ibn Nhqiyh.90 The latter describes a young qayna or singing-girl (a similar person figures in Hamadhhnj’s Maqhma) who captivates an entourage of carousers, though they are not all equally duped by her. She is capable, it is said at the outset, of making men betray their qualities by their speech: ‘She will show you who is eloquent of tongue, and who a falterer and stammerer.’ The evocation of weakness or flawed character here is important, as it will be the privileged motif of a later portrayal. When al-Yashkurj, Ibn Nhqiyh’s anti-hero, arrives on the scene, he is entranced by the girl. With the approach of dawn, and once the other imbibers have become forfeit to slumber, she is urged by one of the entourage to play a trick on Yashkurj ‘to defeat his miserliness’. (The role of the qayna in a game of deception brings to mind, of course, the courtesans in the Rishlat al-Qiyhn (‘Epistle on Singing Girls’) of Jhåi©.)91 She cajoles him with her craft, by singing songs each of which he requests of her, and in each case he applauds her rapturously. The scene has its own literary pedigree.92 Her musical technique is described in detail; a tapestry of enhanced craft is woven, and she is emboldened by the effect she has on Yashkurj to ask for his bejewelled and precious ring ‘to remember him by’. With this, the mood is suddenly transformed: oppressed by this request, he rejects her forthrightly, and an unseemly struggle ensues: she grabs the ring to wrest it from him and he falls to the ground in a swoon. Despite fears that he has died, he soon comes to, and absconds, uttering a Prophetic dictum: ‘I’ll have no part in dalliance,
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 171 nor will dalliance have a part of me!’93 Yashkurj’s wretchedness now inflects the scene. It is this breach of the bacchic protocol of generosity that distinguishes this narrative qualitatively from Hamadhhnj’s Maqhma and allows one to read it as a development of and, more importantly, a deviation from, an earlier and established mode of comportment. Is this part of Ibn Nhqiyh’s literary temperament? Cumulatively, his ten Maqhmht would suggest this may be the case. Or is this simply, in fact, a tale of avarice (bukhl )? One is tempted to observe in this Maqhma an admixture of literary codes and protocols; Kilito has taught us to pose these sorts of questions. The physicians’ dinner party: Ibn Buƒlhn’s Da‘wat al-Aƒibbh’ Kilito summarizes the story as follows:94 the narrator, a youthful Arab Felix Krull, arrives in the northern Mesopotamian town of Mayyhfhriqjn and soon comes into contact with an elderly doctor. He speaks to him of his desire to learn and practise medicine, and also, paradoxially, of stomach pains and a chronic lack of appetite. This latter point persuades the doctor to invite him to dinner. Once home, he orders various succulent dishes to be brought before the youth, but for diverse and spurious medical reasons, he prevents his guest from actually indulging in them – he is allowed to taste only the boiled chicory. The better to demonstrate the virtues of frugality, the old doctor orders a last dish on which are displayed an array of surgical instruments: these, he explains, would be required to be applied mercilessly on whosoever neglects to observe a strict dietary regime. After this tantalizing and only virtual repast, the doctor invites some of his colleagues in to examine the young stranger’s medical knowledge. The latter is then repeatedly unmasked, having claimed by turns to be a pathologist, a surgeon, an oculist, an orthopaedist and an apothecary. When these guests have at last departed, the doctor, who has all the while indulged in much wine, falls asleep. At this point, the stranger colludes with the domestic servant: they both throw themselves on the victuals, which have remained untouched, and devour every last morsel. Upon waking up, the doctor flies into a rage and refuses in future to receive the young charlatan. The moral ambiguity of the drama is evident. Which of the characters are we to reprove? The text signals and develops a topsy-turvy world in which moral uncertainty is hard to resolve. In this aspect, the Da‘wa is unlike those Maqhmht of Hamadhhnj where one is often tempted – probably mistakenly – to draw a simple moral conclusion, the narrator, while he is sometimes obtuse, being morally unassailable whereas Abk al-Fatå is to be rebuked. Abu al-Fatå goes on to justify himself; but his self-justifications sustain a note of doubt, and it is this latter ambiguity which has been amplified in the Da‘wa. Ibn Buƒlhn’s Da‘wa has been studied variously since the appearance of Les Séances. Felix Klein-Franke’s twin publications, Ibn Buƒlhn. Das Ärztbankett aus arabischen Handschriften übersetzt (1984) and Ibn Buƒlhn. The Physicians’ Dinner Party edited from Arabic manuscripts (1985), both with an introduction, are not primarily literary criticism, but the annotations, which discuss the particulars of medicine as treated
172 Philip F. Kennedy in the text, are particularly useful, since Ibn Buƒlhn, himself a physician, was immersed in the medical science of his day. Some literary analysis of the Da‘wa has appeared in Daniel Beaumont’s discussion of comic anecdotes in medieval Arabic literature,95 which in turn refers us back to Iåshn ‘Abbhs’s Malhmiå Yunhniyya fj al-Adab al-‘Arabj (1977), a study of Greek and Hellenistic elements in medieval Arabic writing. ‘Abbhs saw the Deipnosophists of Athenaeus (early third century AD)96 as a model for the Da‘wa, arguing that since Ibn Buƒlhn was not only a physician but a Christian, he would have had access at least to the Arabic translations of Greek medical and philosophical texts that were largely made by Christians,97 and since he travelled to Constantinople and stayed in a monastery nearby, he may also have been familiar with some of the Greek literary texts that were not translated into Arabic. Beaumont, on the other hand, observes parallel literary strategies in the Da‘wa and Hamadhhnj’s ‘Maqhma of the Ma∂ jra’,98 where the point of a lengthy discourse is ‘to prevent something’ – namely eating – ‘from taking place’. In this respect, the Da‘wa may be calqued on stories of avarice (bukhl) familar from Jhåi©’s ‘Book of Misers’. Some, in my view essential, aspects of the Da‘wa merit further attention. To some degree, generic aspects have not been fully probed, although Klein-Franke is clear about his own view: [ The historian of medicine and man of letters] Ibn al-Qifƒj (568–646/1172–1248) has already called the ‘Physicians’ Dinner Party’ a ‘charming maqhma’. Maqhma designates a genre of rhymed and rhythmic prose composed of several episodes, the hero of which is often a vagabond who was driven away from his native town and landed in a remote country. He is the ‘witty vagrant’ . . . of so many old Arabic stories who is always in a jesting mood behind which he conceals his true character.99 But this is not a satisfactory definition of the term maqhma, particularly in the light of the way it is used in the Da‘wa itself; nor is it complete, for the term has several uses: at the end of the first episode of Hamadhhnj’s ‘Maqhma of the Sermon’ (al-Maqhma al-Wa‘©iyya), for example, one of the bystanders refers to the unknown preacher’s performance as a maqhma100 (one stands up, qhma, in order to preach). If the term can be applied to the Da‘wa, however, it would have to be in reference to the pattern of dialogue described by Klein-Franke: At the core of chapters 4 to 8 are the questions of the other specialists, including the druggist, who all examine [the youth] with the hidden intention to make him fail and to convince him of his inferiority in all matters of medicine. Klein-Franke reminds us that this sort of disputation was common practice in many fields of learning.101 There are uses of maqhma in the Da‘wa which show an understanding of the word not quite in tune with Hamadhhnj but possibly
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 173 connected to the idea of disputation. When the young man, amid suffering the recondite and sometimes risible questions of the apothecary on the properties of plants and chemicals, is derided: Yh yabruå ßanamj mh hhdhh min maqhmati-ka hhdhihi maqhmht Djsqurjdas’ (‘Poor herbal root of the mandrake plant, my pretty! [ These questions] are not within your competence [maqhma, singular; Klein-Franke translates ‘Niveau’]; they belong to the maqhmht [plural; ‘teachings’?] of Dioscorides’)102 the term has a didactic dimension (a dimension that may also linger dimly in Hamadhhnj, especially in those abstruse quizzes that reduce adab to a knowledge of trivia). The term occurs again later in the Da‘wa, giving this idea sharper focus: I had maqhmht [‘exchanges’?] with this rascal . . . for example, I asked him one day by way of jest why it is that dog excrement is good for tanning while cattle dung is useful in the fuller’s craft.103 An agonistic aspect of the term as used here reminds one of its earliest usages, examples of which go back to pre-Islamic Arabia.104 The Da‘wa is also a text fraught with antitheses; they feed off each other and enhance the solipsism of the work, the effect of amusing self-reference. Often the characters, through incidental dialogue, trace and mirror their own situation. For example, the doctor, to distract his young guest from his stomach ailments (he cannot keep down food), suggests the alternative sustenance of adab: the recounting of choice anecdotes (nawhdir) and table-talk. Yet when the youth offers to tell stories of spongers and leeches, the doctor hastily changes the subject, asking for poetry instead! But even here, in the youth’s choice of recitation, there is some gentle ribbing of his host: We visit you, not requiting your harshness [with like treatment]; a generous man, if not asked to pay a visit, will visit of his own accord. Passion and love make distant houses appear close by; yet whoever suffers love considers no abode too distant.105 Antithesis is introduced at the outset: the prologue states the hoary claim that this is a work containing measured portions of jidd and bhƒil, serious and frivolous matter,106 the purpose being, in the tradition of Jhåi©, to educate and entertain simultaneously, and here specifically to illustrate ‘the excellence of skilled physicians and the impotence of the quacks of this profession’.107 In the questions and answers that carry much of the narrative, both sides of this coin are illustrated, as quack doctors, devoid of social graces, ask scientifically pertinent questions, but by steps go on to reduce their discipline to a mire of absurd hair-splitting, with some indecorous slips. They have a greater fund of knowledge than the young impostor, to be sure, but their comportment is boorish and bespeaks an ignorance of sorts.
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Here is the description of the old doctor in the opening lines of the narrative: Sweet featured, of pleasant wit, elegant in his manners, distinguished from those of his ilk, clinging assiduously to the tails of adab (refined conversation), and skilfully and generously hospitable.108 There is no inkling of doubt here – no half-measure: he is at the outset an urbane and cultured man. But the narrative transforms him: in the epilogue of the story, he shuts out the youth, physically closing the shutters of his house in a fit of avaricious petulance; his august veneer, which as the drama progresses is tarnished by degrees, has now been utterly shattered, and his true personality is unmasked. What is fascinating about the intervening pages, between the prologue and the irrevocable closure of the epilogue, is the psychological nuancing: there are insinuations of homoerotic attraction, professional jealousy, indigence, dishonesty and wit, and there is, of course, an increasingly abject avarice. For a while – for the larger part – the text goes round in circles, modulating these themes, arranging them in a chiaroscuro, and borrowing (or sharing) along the way the structure of an anecdote in Tanukhj’s (d. 384/994) al-Faraj ba‘da al-Shidda (‘Deliverance after Distress’). In this, a high official on his way to take up a post gives passage on his boat to an indigent old man, who then proceeds to quiz him about the various kinds of administrative skill in which the official claims to be competent but of which he turns out to be ignorant. The dialogue formula is exactly the same as that employed in the Da‘wa, where each series of questions by the four specialists leads to the youth’s confession: ‘I’m not in fact a such-andsuch’ and the rejoinder: ‘What are you, then?’ ‘A such-and-such!’109 In the Faraj story, as the old man reveals his own skills, his relationship with the official undergoes a shift. In the Da‘wa, there is a different sort of shift. All players in the story are tainted by ambivalence of motive, and the way that themes and literary genres interpenetrate each other is symptomatic of this trait: themes are unusually patterned so as to lead to contrary conclusions. Whereas in the prologue the sense is, at first, that Time has ushered in a general corruption of the commonweal, the opposite soon emerges as being the case: Time has healed the community of Mayyhfhriqjn of its ailments – it has become a hellish place to practise medicine and the grave-diggers have all been thrown out of work. An image of desolation is conjured up in conversation according to the norms of poetry (the classic manner of opening an Arabic poem is to contrast elegiacally the ‘deserted encampments’ of the poet’s present with their happy state in the past), but when the ‘desolation’ comes into focus, we find that we have been duped into accepting an absurd situation: the people are healthy, and the doctor is abjectly bemoaning the loss of a livelihood. ‘Would that the days would return people to the contented state in which they were’ – to a time when plagues ravaged the land, funeral processions were a common sight and people were diseaseridden! Even the medical complaints of patients have become anomalous, such as those of the man who approached a doctor complaining of simultaneous pains in his heel and his nose. Upon being instructed to eat snow and palm leaves, the
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 175 patient protests: ‘What combination of medicine is that?’ To which the retort: ‘And what combination of pain afflicts both the heel and the nose?’ It is the manner of the exchange here, the rotating situation, which sets a pattern that dominates the central part of the Da‘wa, alternating between dominance and submission, invective and humiliation, specialized knowledge and ignorance, candour and dishonesty.110
Homoeroticism Here is an example of candour and dishonesty intertwined: the old doctor seeks the intimacy of the youth because of his very ailment, and professes that he is no sociable sort ordinarily; rather he is to his friends and companions like the shimmering light of a mirage.111 Can one in fact be honest about one’s own mendacity? At the end of Chapter Two (as we may call it), the subject of the Da‘wa turns to wine, which the youth’s stomach is, so he claims, too weak to take. For the old man, predictably, this promise of abstemiousness is a pleasant and comforting trait. In the opening words of Chapter Three, deception and disingenuousness are trumpeted through a standard antithetical doublet: ‘He (the old man) took my comment about drink at face value’; literally: ‘He thought the surface (©hhir) of the matter was as its interior (bhƒin).’112 Deception is now evenly distributed among the (as yet still only two) players in this drama. Other players will have equally duplex motives in both their speech, manner and comportment. It is in this same chapter that the psychological complexity of the drama is introduced. The old man lauds wine as, among other things, a substance that resists avarice; guests are invited – Abu Shlim the surgeon, Abu Mush the apothecary, Abu Ayyub the eye specialist (kaååhl ). For a while, the old man is their spokesman and his words are evenly balanced: The old man said: ‘Wine today and work tomorrow; mens sana in corpore sano,’ as Galen has said’. With this endorsement the men drink and slide into mirth, all but the ‘abstemious’ youth, who consoles himself by nibbling at some appetizers. He is incited to ask ironically: ‘Which appetizer is most beneficial to me?’ To which the reply is: The caliph al-Mutawakkil (r. 232–47/847–61) asked [his physician], Jibrjl ibn Bukhtjshu‘113 [the same question and received the reply:] ‘The appetizer of Abu Nuwhs, O Commander of the Faithful, [when he said:] No-one is quite like me! For water, I have wine, and as appetizers: Kiss kiss.’114 At this insinuation, the youth disappoints, even insults, his interlocutor: Mutawakkil lived in a palace with ten thousand nubile concubines, so am I, old man, to be satisfied for my appetizer with the likes of Abu Ayyub the eye specialist or Abu Shlim the surgeon?
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The reaction of the (decrepit?) old man is transparent: ‘He was angered by what I had said and asked: Did you not mention that you were a doctor?’115 Anger inflects the following exchange, and we come to suspect the motives which lead each specialist in turn to upstage the dissembling young man. In the four chapters that ensue, he will be tested on four successive claims (that he is a physician, surgeon, apothecary and eye specialist). And all the while we cannot forget the transparency of the old man’s initial testy reaction. Is there homoerotic tension in the technical questions and answers that follow? The old physician is able soundly and resoundingly to lampoon the youth, referring back very pointedly to the facetious comments about appetizers.116 A sexually explicit question prompts this conundrum: Why do men who dream that they are urinating not wet their beds, despite the quantities of urine that they retain in their bladders? And why, conversely, do men who have wet dreams actually produce semen despite the small quantity of it that they secrete?117 Unable to answer – indeed, no answer is ever provided – the physician berates the young man for his earlier sneer about appetizers and proceeds to stigmatize him by associating him with a life of erotic dalliance in a way that says more about what may be on his own ageing mind than the mind of the youth. He accuses him of being ignorant of the medical manuals of Hippocrates and Galen, and of occupying himself rather with anecdotes about dandies and effeminate seducers (akhbhr almukhannathjn wa al-muftinjn).118 What provokes this tirade? Is it merely a general and loose attack, or does it, as we might begin to suspect, give vent to some hidden frustrated resentment and a muted erotic tension? The boy, referred to sarcastically by the old physician as Mubhrak al-Nhßiya (‘Cute Locks’), has neither broached this subject nor invited its discussion except by dint of his (provocative) youthful presence. And there have been frequent references to the famously homosexual Abu Nuwhs in the text leading up to this particular exchange. It is the extent of this accusation of obssessive dalliance that is arresting. Most noteworthy of all in this respect is a detail which recurs at the outset of each of the three subsequent examinations: the lyric motif of enchanting eyes. When the oculist (kaååhl ) is invited to drink wine, he raises his glass and quotes a saturnalian line; his lyricism extends into two further amatory fragments that celebrate ‘a death-dealing eye’.119 The transition is natural enough given the kaååhl’s area of expertise, but this cannot suppress the question: Who is being evoked in the following lines? (the second of two fragments): His eyes were innately as beautiful as eyes adorned with kohl [kuål, the word from which kaååhl is derived]; his beauty was at odds with the ugliness of his deeds and caused embarrassment to show on his cheeks. In Chapter Six, the surgeon ( jarh’iåj) similarly makes his profession echo the norms of Arabic lyricism: Every wounded person ( jarjå) can hope to be healed except the one afflicted by her/his glance,
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 177 and so too the cupper in Chapter Seven: If his looks were his cupping scalpels, with mere looks he would gently bleed you. The apothecary abandons the ocular motif but sustains the amorous register in a plainly suggestive way: The beloved of your desires has come . . . Welcome, O visitor!120 The details of the apothecary’s questions are symptomatic of the situation. One question is particularly arresting: ‘Do you know the name of the stone which is white to look upon, then red when gazed upon further, then violet if one fixes one’s stare, until eventually it seems black?’ This may be read as a tropical crux for the role playing and changing aspects that govern every player in this fiction (In fact, no answer to the question is ever furnished – the text remains persistently open-ended.) When the youth finally comes clean, confessing that he is no doctor of medicine but rather, in a manner of speaking, a doctor of learning (an owner of books and manuscripts), he evokes in the minds of his hosts another, earlier, impostor, with whom they have had dealings in the past. This other man, who is never present at the scene but only ever talked about, is then described in fabulous detail. How does this affect the psychology of the piece? What ensues is a genuine lampoon with a note of true rancour aimed not so much at the absent charlatan himself as at a society that allows (or has allowed) him to operate in the way he does. There is some careful nuancing of the tension between superficial aspect and true content: this youth was unseemly, appearing in fine clothes to examine the indigent squalor of diseased patients, so that they were ashamed to give him the specimens needed for diagnosis.121 He did not grasp the true measure of dissimulation required of a medical practitioner, and his pretensions were fuelled by his ability to forget the misery of others when swathed in the robes of affluence. This other man has also corrupted a woman’s morals by acting as a pander – a warped and sordid return of the erotic register. He has behaved thus, ostensibly, to console the woman for her husband’s wandering eye. In fact, he is in cahoots with a druggist and is able to pressure this credulous woman into buying overpriced powders in order to promote the healthy conception of a male child and thus win back her husband’s heart. This manoeuvring is described extensively and in detail, exposing along the way the professional jealousy of those in attendance, who re-live their resentment at seeing someone less qualified than themselves enjoy the fruits of gainful employment. And perhaps just below the carapace of feelings is some other fascination with the handsome aspect of the youth, sustaining the dim notes of a homoerotic tension.122 The psychology of the Da‘wa has not been adequately probed by anyone. In the depth of its caricaturing characterization of motive, does it do enough to
178 Philip F. Kennedy capture the label of novel? (It could certainly easily be transcribed as a play.) There is a layering in the character of both the Old Doctor and the Young Pretender: it illustrates not just the ambiguity of the situation but more especially the persistent ambiguity of ethos. The insinuation of erotic motive, as described earlier, is tacit but insistent, though never resolved; the stronger motives that direct lives are muted, and the issue is in the end silently abandoned. The final irony of this text may well be that, of the two deceptions performed by the young man (false pretensions to practising medicine, and false claims of being infirm and unable to eat), it is the latter that bothers the old man most – that he has been duped into providing a banquet of food and drink for this impostor. Priorities are all wrong, even in this wretched microcosm of dishonesty. A curious detail in the Da‘wa’s epilogue is the young man’s insouciant return to the scene of the cenacle. The old man shuts him out in a fit of pique. But the question remains, Why has he returned? No analogous detail exists in Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht. In the latter, the impostor is always, understandably, keen to exit and disappear once and for all. In all its complexity, and especially in its modulating psychology, this work is thus far more evolved than any single narrative in Hamadhhnj. To study it the better to understand the Maqhmht is in a way putting the cart before the horse. But the propinquity of texts in our critical view is fruitful; Kilito is the first to have juxtaposed them in this discursive way.
In praise of folly Both Kilito and Monroe devote a section of their monographs to displays of insanity in Hamadhhnj’s anti-hero Abu al-Fatå. Two maqhmas are involved in this discussion: the ‘Maqhma of the Asylum’ (al-Maqhma al-Mhristhniyya) and ‘The Maqhma of Åulwhn’ (al-Maqhma al-Åulwhniyya).123 Kilito brackets praise of insanity ( junun) with the flippant regard accorded by sophisticates to sukhf (obscenity and scatology) and åumq (imbecility). This is apt; sukhf and åumq colour these anecdotes. However, in each of the Mhristhniyya and the Åulwhniyya a literary and textual game is afoot. Kilito draws our attention to the presence of a sustained discourse in the Mhristaniyya: We should note that in this séance, the discourse of Abu al-Fatå is, from beginning to end, a coherent refutation of the principles of a theological school; no contradiction and no anomaly is detectable. A sense of incoherence [my emphasis] makes itself felt only when one considers the situation of the person pronouncing the discourse: a dialectician detained in an asylum.124 Kilito does not take this any further; he does not, therefore, pursue the implications of the sustained Mu‘tazilj discourse (see below) of the Mhristhniyya in order to draw hard and fast conclusions as to Hamadhhnj’s own personal theological agenda. (In this I think he is wise.) Rather, he contrasts the coherence of one madman’s speech (that of the inmate of the asylum in the Mhristhniyya) with the utter irrationality of the (same?) madman, the barber, in the Åulwhniyya.
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 179 The temperament of an individual text can indeed be the dominant aspect of its literary ontology, as I have intimated earlier in discussing Ibn Nhqiyh. However, I have reservations about the precise conclusion that Kilito draws for the Mhristhniyya: that observing the absurd and irrational deportment of the mentally deranged provides, by antithesis, a model of coherence for the sane.125 Or at least, I would suggest that a possible alternative reading might force one to understand the text, beneath the diegetic sequence of events, simply as a riddle. I would also like to suggest that, if we are to contrast the Mhristhniyya and the Åulwhniyya, we salvage something from the ‘incoherence’ (hadhayhn) topos of the Åulwhniyya on the one hand, and, on the other, that we develop further our sense of what it is that makes for coherence in the Mhristhniyya, which is woven through with Qur’anic allusion. It may prove more important to understand these allusions than to accept the momentum and logic of the madman’s theological discourse. Discourse or riddle, Part 1: ‘The Maqhma of the Asylum’ The most striking part of the plot of the Mhristhniyya is the deranged detainee’s sustained and eloquent diatribe against anti-predestinarian, or more specifically Mu‘tazilj, anti-determinism. Mu‘tazilj theology had its heyday in court circles in the first half of the third/ninth century and experienced a revival in Hamadhhnj’s time. In their zeal to preserve the idea of the absolute unity and justice of God, Mu‘taziljs were staunchly anti-determinist. It is determinism pitted against antideterminism that forms the main discursive subject of the Mhristhniyya. Two points may be noted: first, the madman’s speech is an eminently knowledgeable expository harangue. From this one may be licensed to draw conclusions as to a sincere doctrinal position held by Hamadhhnj himself (Monroe in particular was taken by this possibility). Second, the Maqhma is constructed from an existing narrative type, as already noted by Michael Dols in his Majnun: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society.126 We can, in fact, be more specific about this than previous discussions have been, for there is a particular anecdote in the ‘Uqalh’ al-Majhnjn (‘Wise Fools’) of al-Åasan ibn Muåammad al-Njshburj (d. 406/1015) which appears to shed light on the Mhristhniyya. Though Njshburj’s is the earliest book on this theme to have come down to us,127 it is known to have had precursors, and the following anecdote is set in the first half of the third/ninth century: [ The Mu‘tazilj theologian] Abu al-Hudhayl al-‘Allhf (d. between 226/840 and 235/850) said: I was travelling from Basra to Samarra [the new caliphal capital] and passed by Dayr Hirqil.128 I thought good to enter and have a look around, and lo! I came upon an old man with a well-kempt beard in chains. I stared at him long and hard. When he saw that I was not averting my gaze from him, he asked me: ‘Are you a Mu‘tazilj?’ I answered: ‘Yes.’ He asked: ‘Are you an Imhmj [i.e. a Shj‘j]?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, at which he asked further: ‘Do you then consider the Qur’hn to be created?’ I said: ‘Yes,’ and so he surmised: ‘You must be Abu al-Hudhayl al-‘Allhf ’ [literally: ‘Be (kun) Abu al-Hudhayl al-‘Allhf ’].129
180 Philip F. Kennedy The most obvious meaning for kun to be understood here is that given by William Wright in his Grammar of the Arabic Language: The imperative of the verb khna [‘to be’] with the name of a person in the accusative [as its predicate] is used to express one’s guessing that the person whom one sees coming, or whom one meets with, is that individual.130 However, kun is also part of the Qur’anic vocabulary of creation, for example, Qur’hn 3:59: ‘He created [Adam] from dust. Then He said, Be (kun)! And he was’, and other verses of a wider bearing such as Qur’hn 16:40: ‘When We decree a thing, We need only say, Be, and it is.’131 By combining the two meanings, what the madman evokes is the creation of that which already exists (for the reader knows that Abu al-Hudhayl already existed before these words were addressed to him). So, by implication, did the Qur’hn already exist before it was created. The joke impugns the Mu‘tazilj stance, and is a very summary debunking.132 An analogous situation obtains in the Mhristhniyya, in which the narrator, ‘Ish ibn Hishhm, goes with a Mu‘tazilj theologian, Abu Dhwud al-‘Askarj,133 to the mhristhn of Basra. There he sees a madman, whose glance ‘first met and then avoided mine’ and who divines, unsurprisingly, that the two men (whom he addresses in the plural, not the dual!) are ‘strangers, if the presages (al-ƒayr) speak truly’. On learning their names, he guesses that they are Mu‘taziljs, and curses them roundly.134 He then shows real prescience by warning ‘Ish ibn Hishhm, in veiled terms, not to marry a Mu‘tazilj woman – a half-formed design of which he had spoken to no one, though the madman says he has ‘heard’ about it.135 His uncanny powers lend support to his emphatically deterministic (and orthodox) view of human existence,136 and the connotations of some of his earlier fulminations, quoted out of context from the Qur’hn, become apparent in retrospect.137 Hamadhhnj simply augments within his own narrative the theology from which this satirical rhetoric derives its force. A closer examination of the Mhristhniyya would reveal its sustained internal eloquence in the way that elements of the Qur’hn, for example, are used to convey subliminal meaning, as when the madman taunts his Mu‘tazilj visitors that (like the unbelieving peoples of the Qur’hn, who were duly punished), ‘you are [actually] frightened of the presages (taƒayyarun)’ represented by the tenets of literalist traditional belief, which rationalists such as themselves dismiss as metaphors.138 The two visitors end up genuinely disconcerted by the madman, and although the theologian dismisses him as ‘a devil in chains’, they return for a second visit to find out who he is (which he tells them in a riddling poem).139 But it is towards the ‘Maqhma of Åulwhn’, that other site of madness, that we should now turn our gaze. Discourse or riddle, Part 2: ‘The Maqhma of Åulwhn’ Like a number of of other Maqhmht, such as the ‘Maqhma of Wine’, already discussed, and the ‘Maqhma of the Lion’ (al-Maqhma al-Asadiyya),140 the ‘Maqhma of Åulwhn’ is an articulated narrative, that is to say it has a plot with at least two
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 181 separable incidents. One is sometimes inclined to think of these as amalgamations of pre-existing anecdotage, though their sources are not always identifiable, nor, more importantly, are the ways in which the pre-existing narratives may have been used. In the Åulwhniyya, it may be that the two separate, though related incidents expand upon a single pre-existing plot, for both parts are principally tales about barbers to which is added a gloss from the ‘wise fools’ (‘uqalh’ al-majhnjn) genre already referred to. The most renowned ‘barber’s tale’ of this kind in Arabic literature forms a substantial section of the ‘Story of the Hunchback’ in the Thousand and One Nights.141 With its amplification of a narrative archetype – that of the garrulous practitioner – the Nights tale provides an appropriate retrospective backdrop for Hamadhhnj’s story. (In its earliest surviving form, it must have been added to the collection in or after the thirteenth century AD; the fictitious date mentioned by the barber in the course of the narrative is 653 AH (1255 AD), and from the fact that many of the events take place in Cairo, it is safe to assume that it is part of the Mamluk accretion to the Nights.) Though it postdates Hamadhhnj substantially, what is crucial is the illustration of how a basic narrative type, with which Hamadhhnj was familiar, was elaborated in the course of time.142 Daniel Beaumont has compared this tale with another of Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht, the ‘Maqhma of the Ma∂jra’,143 but there are basic similarities between the ‘Maqhma of Åulwhn’ and the ‘Barber’s Tale’ of the Nights that are just as pertinent. The following résumé of the ‘Barber’s Tale’ highlights the elements of the narrative that are shared with Hamdhhnj’s Maqhma.144 A young man is in love with a young lady of Baghdad; with the help of an aged go-between, his advances seem set to achieve requital. One Friday, when a tryst is imminent, the old woman asked, ‘Why don’t you go to the bath and wash off the traces of your illness?’ I replied, ‘I have no desire to go to the bath and I have already washed . . . but I do want a barber (muzayyin) to shave my head.’ Then I turned to the servant and said to him: ‘Get me a sensible and discreet man (rajul ‘hqil qaljl al-fu∂ul )145 who will not give me a headache with his chatter. The servant went out and returned with this wretched old barber. When he entered, he greeted me and I returned his greeting. Then he said to me, ‘My lord, I see that you are emaciated.’ I replied, ‘I have been ill.’ He said, ‘May God be kind to you and make you well.’ I said, ‘May God hear your prayer.’ He said, ‘My lord, be cheerful, for your recovery is at hand,’ adding, ‘O my lord, do you want me to shave your head or to let blood?’146 I said, ‘Shave my head at once and spare me from your raving (hadhayhn), for I am still weak from my illness.’147 At this point, one of the formal episodes in Shahrazhd’s narration comes to an end; eight nights later,148 and after a typical run of Thousand and One Nights adventures, the barber has still not cut the young man’s hair and the latter himself has fled to China. Thereafter the barber, to extract himself from a separate dilemma, relates yet more tales, whose function is to show – quite contrarily and
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ridiculously – that he is a discreet and reticent man (his self-given sobriquet is al-Íhmit, ‘the Silent’). The measure of the man’s ‘malaprop loquacity’, to borrow a phrase used by Prendergast, the early twentieth-century translator of Hamadhhnj, can be gleaned from the following passage: I said to the barber, ‘I am still weak from my illness. Then he put his hand in his leather bag and took out an astrolabe with seven plates inlaid with silver and, going into the courtyard, held the instrument up to the sun’s rays and looked for some time. Then he said to me, ‘O my lord, eight degrees and six minutes have elapsed of this day, which is Friday, the eighteenth of Safar, in the six hundred and fifty-third year of Hijra and the seven thousand three hundred and twentieth year of the Alexander era, and the planet now in the ascendant, according to the mathematical calculations on the astrolabe, is Mars, which is in conjunction with Mercury, a conjunction that is favorable for cutting hair. I can also see that you intend to meet another person, and for that the time is inauspicious and ill-advised.’ I said to him, ‘By God, fellow, you are pestering me and wearying me with your wretched auguries. I have not brought you here to read the stars, but to shave my head. Proceed at once to perform what I have brought you for, or get out and let me call for another barber to shave my head.’ He said, ‘ . . . You have asked for a barber, and God has sent you a barber who is also an astrologer and physician, versed in the arts of alchemy, astrology, grammar, lexicography, logic, scholastic disputation, rhetoric, arithmetic, algebra, and history, as well as the traditions of the Prophet according to Muslim and al-Bukhhrj149 . . . .’ When I heard his speech, I said to him, ‘You will surely be the death of me today’. . . The barber added, ‘Am I not the one whom, because of my taciturnity, people call the Silent One? . . .’ The barber kept talking until I got exasperated and angrily said to my servant, ‘For the sake of Almighty God, give him four dinars and let him go. I do not wish to have my head shaved today.’150 The experience of Hamadhhnj’s narrator, ‘Ish ibn Hishhm, at Åulwhn is not dissimilar. Upon arriving at the town on his return from the Pilgrimage (åajj ), he dispatches his servant with the following instructions: I find my hair is long and my body somewhat dirty, so choose for us a bath . . . and a barber . . . . Let the bath be of spacious yard, of clean locality, of pure atmosphere and the water of moderate temperature; and let the barber be deft of hand, with a sharp razor (åadjd al-mush) and clean dress, and little given to gossip (qaljl al-fu∂ul ).151 What then ensues, in two discrete episodes, contravenes sharply – and with obvious humour – the instructions of the narrator: the first locale visited is a small bath-house in which ‘Ish ibn Hishhm soon becomes the object of a dispute between two truculent and pugnacious employees; the one smears his face with
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 183 mud, the other gives him a bone-shaking massage and whistles ‘a whistle that scattered spittle’. The owner of the establishment is made to arbitrate in the dispute. When ‘Ish ibn Hishhm, summoned as a ‘witness’, states that his head, for possession of which the two men are quarrelling in quasi-legalistic terms, belongs to neither of the barbers, but rather to himself, he is dismissed with a reproving and galling: ‘Silence, garrulous fellow!’ (uskut yh fu∂ulj).152 He is accused of the very fault he has been keen to avoid in others. He slips away, and after rebuking his servant, demands of him: ‘Go fetch me a barber to remove this load.’ The person subsequently ushered into his presence is ‘a man of delicate build and agreeable make’ (literally dumya, ‘an image’, a term applied to a beautiful woman or a pretty thing). But he is neither discreet nor coherent. What Prendergast translates as ‘malaprop loquacity’ is a rambling stream of muddled, inchoate, and increasingly absurd nonsense in which there is only a dim trace of the narrator’s original instructions to his servant: [ The barber] came and said: ‘Peace be upon thee! From which town art thou?’ I replied: ‘Qum.’ He said: ‘May God prosper thee! From a land of plenty and comfort, the city of the Sunnís.153 I was present there in its cathedral mosque in the month of Ramadán when the lamps had been lit and the taráwih prayers were inaugurated,154 but, before we knew it, the Nile rose and came and extinguished those lights, but God made me a shoe which I put on when it was green,155 but there was no embroidery produced on its sleeve. And the boy returned to his mother, after I had performed the evening prayer when the shadow is equal. But how was the pilgrimage? Didst thou perform all its ceremonies as was incumbent? And they cried out: ‘A marvel! A marvel!’ so I looked at the beacon, and how light a thing is war – to the spectators! And I found the Harísah156 in the same state, and I knew that the matter was decreed and pre-ordained by God. And how long this vexation? And to-day, and to-morrow, and Saturday and Sunday, but I will not be tedious, but what is this prating? And I like thee to know that Mubarrad in grammar wields a keen razor, so do not occupy thyself with the speech of the common people. Now if ability preceded action I would have shaved thy head. Dost thou consider it advisable that we begin?’ Said ‘Isá ibn Hishám: ‘I was bewildered at his fluency with his malaprop loquacity, and I feared he might prolong his sitting, so I said: ‘Till to-morrow, if God will.’157 The description of the famous grammarian al-Mubarrad (d. c.286/898) as ‘wielding a keen razor’ (åadjd al-mush) is an amusing, and surely deliberate, reminder of the narrator’s original request to his servant (‘let the barber be deft of hand, with a sharp razor (åadjd al-mush)’), and shows to what degree the barber has rendered things outside of their proper context. ‘Ish ibn Hishhm is quite naturally bewildered at ‘his fluency (bayhn) with his malaprop loquacity’, or raving (hadhayhn),158 and it takes someone else to fix the prattling barber’s identity within the wider context of the Maqhmht. ‘Ish ibn Hishhm says: ‘Then I asked those present concerning him, and they said: “This is a man from the country of
184 Philip F. Kennedy Alexandria, this climate has disagreed with him and madness has overtaken him, so that he babbles the whole day . . .” ’ It is further said of him that ‘he has much excellence ( fa∂l )’, another meaning of the root which gives fu∂ul, ‘garrulity’. Against the backdrop of other Maqhmht, this goes some way further towards locating the character who lies behind the mask of madness: in the ‘Maqhma of Balkh’ (al-Maqhma al-Balkhiyya), ‘Ish ibn Hishhm asks the rogue: ‘Where is the native soil of this excellence ( fa∂l )?’159 and in the ‘Maqhma of the Criminal Underworld’ (al-Maqhma al-Shshniyya), the narrator begins to suspect the identity of Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj thus: ‘When this speech of his had penetrated my ear I knew there was excellence ( fa∂l ) behind it.’160 This, then, is not merely a garrulous barber; this is the man whose speech is the shattering and scattered shards of a breadth of knowledge exposed with far greater poise in other narratives. It may even be the case that he simply doesn’t know how to cut hair – he does after all say, in a phrase which reflects a knowledge of Mu‘tazilj (and subsequent, more conciliatory) theology: ‘If ability (istiƒh’a) preceded action ( fi‘l ) I would have cut your hair.’ Here, and in the analysis to follow, there is an engaging relationship of bathos between theology and reason and the barber’s inability to do his job. The orthodox theologian al-Ash‘arj (d. 324/936) – who had, however, originally been a Mu‘tazilj – wrote in his survey of Muslim schools of thought, Maqhlht al-Islhmiyyjn: ‘The Mu‘taziljs are in consensus that ability (istiƒh‘a) precedes action ( fi‘l ), and is the ability both to act and not to act.’161 The protasis of Hamadhhnj’s conditional sentence thus articulates Mu‘tazilj dogma. Yet by the context given to it, the Mu‘tazilj position is undermined. As a result one might aver that the position of Ash’arj himself, where istiƒh‘a is deemed to be synchronous with fi‘l, is endorsed.162 This interpretation is, however, somewhat literalist and surely too earnest. It would accord more with the spirit of the genre to suggest that all theological disputation is, if only locally and temporarily, being scoffed at.163 The effusions of the barber are laced with other erudite references and, for this reason, effect a nice rhetorical crescendo – one which would seem to privilege a completely lay understanding of this article of kalhm (theology). We know of Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj, in general, only that his gift is one of profitable eloquence. In this respect there is perhaps a rhetoric that informs his babble, for there is a designedly cumulative aspect to his raving – this jabbering patter streaked with glimpses of genuine ratiocination leading to the question: ‘Dost thou consider it advisable that we begin?’ Now the barber in the Nights tale claims knowledge of astrology, alchemy, grammar, scholastic disputation, rhetoric, arithmetic, history and åadjth; yet apart from an absurdly irrelevant consultation of his astrolabe, he exhibits none of the vaunted arrows in his quiver. Iskandarj, however, in his rhetoric of madness reveals glimpses of a broader discourse; he evokes religious sectarianism, geography, religious practice, philology, grammar and speculative theology. There is a sharper edge to this version of the garrulous barber. It is channelled to reflect affected dementia and is capped with a loaded question. For in the midst of the barber’s fragmented stream of consciousness – this clinically schizophrenic display – is a genuine and coherent enquiry: ‘Yet how was your
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 185 pilgrimage? Didst thou perform all its ceremonies (manhsik) as was incumbent?’ The query takes us back to the opening of the Maqhma, where the narrator had said: ‘When I returned with the others from the Pilgrimage . . . I told my servant boy: “I find my hair is long.” ’ The significance of this will become apparent if we consider the rituals of the åajj. The manhsik refer strictly to the ƒawhf (circumambulation of the Ka‘ba), the sa‘y (running) between al-Íafh and al-Marwh, the wuquf (vigil) at ‘Arafa, and the stoning of the Devil at Minh.164 They must be performed in a state of ritual purity, iårhm. Only some details of this are relevant to our discussion. Before entering the state of iårhm, the pilgrim performs a major ablution and has his hair cut and armpits shaved. Even more significant to us are the acts that mark the end of iårhm, deconsecration or iålhl, and which include the trimming or cutting of the hair, after which normal clothes are resumed. The Íaåjå (canonical åadjth collection) of Bukhhrj contains a chapter on these matters, Bhb al-Åalq wa al-Taqßjr ‘inda al-Iålhl (‘Shaving or cutting the hair upon deconsecration’),165 from which it is clear that there was difference of opinion as to whether the hair was to be merely cut, or shaved. Both states, of course, are sanctioned in a single Qur’anic verse (48:27): ‘. . . you shall enter the Holy Mosque, your heads shaved or trimmed . . .’ The one other verse to treat of this practice, Qur’hn 2:196, mentions only shaving: ‘. . . and shave not your heads, till the offering reaches its place of sacrifice . . .’ This, together with Qur’hn 2:197–200, forms a detailed discussion of the åajj; Qur’hn 2:200 concludes with the following phrase: ‘. . . when you have fulfilled the manhsik, remember God . . .’ It is this particular Qur’anic phrase, together with its association locally in the sacred text with shaving (åalq) as opposed to trimming (taqßjr) of the hair,166 which is evoked in the barber’s question: ‘Didst thou perform all its ceremonies as was incumbent?’ As a barber – albeit a charlatan in this role – he would surely privilege åalq over trimming; moreover, this root occurs at intervals throughout the Maqhma. Thus there may be here an intimation (a gentle ribbing) that a returning pilgrim should not be in need of a trimming – that is, if he has properly fulfilled all the religious prescriptions of the åajj according to the letter of the Sunna. If he has, how could he say of himself: ‘I find my hair long’? Pursuing the quaint logic of these allusions, we may consider the length of time it would have taken in the late fourth/tenth century to travel to Åulwhn from Mecca. The answer may be garnered from two sources. Ibn Jubayr’s Riåla (travel memoir) offers a precise account of the first leg, from Mecca to Baghdad: he set out from Medina on 8th Muåarram 580/1185, and arrived at Madh’in Kisrh, an afternoon’s journey from Baghdad, at dawn on Tuesday 3rd Íafar, twenty-three days later.167 Idrjsj’s (d. c.555/1162) geography, Nuzhat al-Mushthq fj Ikhtirhq al-Hfhq gives information on the second leg: ‘The distance separating Baghdad from Åulwhn is six days, or 114 miles.’168 These add up roughly to a calendar month. Would this ordinarily be long enough for hair to grow to a trimmable length after it has been shaved? One may now adjudge that our conjecture is roaming absurdly; but there are some tantalizing implications, and if a readerly smile breaks out at this view of the material, we may be keeping company with the author.
186 Philip F. Kennedy The previous section is a personal perspective on the Åulwhniyya. We might consider those of others. Åarjrj’s is that of an author. He may have been alluding to the Åulwhniyya in two of his own Maqhmht. In the knowledge that Åarjrj took Hamadhhnj for his model, we can offer the following observations. The first is quite general: that it was natural when travellers arrived in a town for them to make straight for the bath-house, and this might in itself constitute a narrative topos. The second is that this topos is capable of being divorced from the theme with which it is usually associated. It may function, as it were, as a smoke-screen, by being given a new development, as at the beginning of Åarjrj’s 10th Maqhma (al-Maqhma al-Raåbiyya): Al Åârith, son of Hammâm, related: – The summoning of desire called me to Raåba, the city of Mâlik, son of Towk, – And I obeyed it, mounted on a fleet camel, and unsheathing an active purpose. – Now when I had cast my anchors there, and fastened my ropes, and had gone forth from the bath after shaving my head, – I saw a boy cast in a mould of comeliness.169 Or the topos may be developed with closer reference to Hamadhhnj as a model, but with its members redistributed and modified, as in the 47th Maqhma of Åarjrj (al-Maqhma al-Åajriyya), where Abu Zayd al-Sarujj masquerades as a cupper while his son dissembles as a client. The setting up of events involves the despatching of a servant boy with instructions, a delay in his return, and intimations of a violent encounter – a reminiscence rather than an analogue of Hamadhhnj. This Maqhma also contains an oath (in the parting doggerel of the Åulwhniyya, the narrator swears never again to have his head shaved), but here it occurs centrally and provides a pivotal part of the narrative. Nevertheless, it too contains a reminsicence of the Åulwhniyya in that it recalls the Pilgrimage (‘I swear by Mecca’s holy house, whither flock in pilgrim’s garb the pious from far and wide . . .’).170 Finally, Åarjrj’s cupper, like Hamadhhnj’s barber, is incompetent; this is evoked in the parting exchange between the narrator and Abu Zayd al-Sarujj, and al-Iskandarj is mentioned in the penultimate verse of the poem, in which Åarjrj says not that he is distinct from Hamadhhnj, but that he is better than him (a symptomatic impulse in all Åarjrj’s Maqhmht). Monroe’s approach is that of a critic who holds certain preconceptions about Hamadhhnj’s doctrinal views. He argues that the narrator of the Åulwhniyya, having performed the Pilgrimage, ‘has a special claim to . . . respect and honour’,171 which of course he does not receive at the hands of the barbers. But performing the Pilgrimage entails performing the manhsik properly. Absence of the outward signs of these rites might explain the lack of respect with which he is manhandled. This may be an excessively fanciful explanation, but it is an obvious rejoinder to Monroe’s overly mechanistic assumption of the narrator’s ritual purity. My own preliminary conclusion, which derives from a different contextualization of the narrative both in terms of cultural codes and literary types, is that this is a tale about a barber who cannot cut hair, and a pilgrim who – for the Sunnj pedant at least – has not properly performed his duties. Hamadhhnj manipulates his
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 187 material to produce a whimsical narrative riddle about a twin deception. This does not sit uncomfortably with the rest of the Maqhmht, nor is it the result of an overall literary-cum-theological programme.
The sermon One is often drawn into analysing in depth a given text, and its hidden meanings, by adducing other texts as evidence, overlooking the fact that those other texts may in turn themselves be adduced in respect of their superficial meanings and/or narrative forms. So, for example, in order to illustrate the discontinuity of character found in Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht taken collectively – a discontinuity of character and ethos that, as we have seen, is conspicuously internalized in the ‘Maqhma of Wine’ – Kilito adduces the ‘Maqhma of the Sermon’ (al-Maqhma al-Wa‘©iyya),172 among others, as an example of a narrative in which Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj does not dupe his audience for monetary gain. But to characterize the Wa‘©iyya implicitly as an ingenuous narrative, not to peer below its textual carapace in turn, is misplaced trust. For in the Wa‘©iyya there is some latent contrivance: the parodying of the sermon, and an intriguing treatment of the Qur’anic register. The two-part plot of the ‘Maqhma of the Sermon’ is simple. In the first episode, the narrator, ‘Ish ibn Hishhm, is in Basra, and finds himself drawn to a crowd surrounding an unknown preacher. Most of this episode consists of the text of his sermon, an alternation of short, rhymed prose periods and of simple zuhd (ascetic) verse; its burden is the uncertainty of this world and the need to prepare for the next. The stranger fails to identify himself at the end of his sermon; his last words simply pick up his earlier exhortation to the crowd to be guided by ‘ilm (true knowledge)173 and to put it into action (‘amal ).174 ‘Ish ibn Hishhm follows and accosts him, and is reproached for not recognizing Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj. The latter’s hair has turned white, and his parting words are a two-line zuhd poem to the effect that this is a harbinger of death. The ‘Maqhma of the Sermon’ has generally been taken at face value, with a straightforward acceptance of its religiosity; it is certainly superficially devout and ostensibly earnest. The dénouement appears to reinforce such a reading. Monroe, it is true, discerns in it a hidden religious message, which will be discussed later. Kilito, to my knowledge, devotes only two lines to the Wa‘©iyya, put off, perhaps, by its earnestness – by the fact that it is less easy for him to do with it what he does with other Maqhmht: suggest, very cogently and with broad brushstrokes of literary contextualization, their flippant tone.175 Abu al-Fatå gains no pecuniary recompense by his preaching; the Maqhma cannot therefore easily be identified with an agenda that subverts a social and literary culture. Eloquence is one of the central features of the Maqhma, but it is an eloquence that is never so spontaneous and original as to be free from certain generic constraints. It draws transparently on the conventions of homiletic and paraenetic material (both the sermon in rhyming prose and pious verse). It is also marked by two particular rhetorical processes: ‘aqd (literally ‘knitting together’, i.e. the versification of prose) and åall (literally, ‘unbinding’, i.e. the prosification of verse).
188 Philip F. Kennedy Islamic homilies in verse, both as single compositions and as a genre, tend towards repetition; they can be said to be constituted of a cumulative rhetoric. The zuhdiyyht (ascetic or homiletic poems) of Abu al-‘Athhiya (d. 211/826), to take the most famous and appropriate example, constantly reiterate and reaffirm a repertory of simple yet essential themes or truths.176 Many of these are representatively encapsulated in this Maqhma. The generic character of the prose homily (wa‘©) is also repetitive, and is marked by the use of rhymed prose (saj‘, the medium of the Maqhmht), which is traditionally associated with public oratory and with hammering home a message. This combination of factors allows one to hear (or read) the repetitiveness of Hamadhhnj’s sermon without – perhaps – remarking any oddity. But the repetitiveness is marked, and also various, for within the sermon which forms the first episode of the Maqhma is nested a second sermon. The bulk of this second sermon is made up of poetry, which is annotated or explicated by the rhymed prose between which it is sandwiched. Wolfhart Heinrichs has referred to this Maqhma in passing in a recent article, ‘Prosimetrical Genres in Classical Arabic Literature’.177 This essay gives us relevant background information on the relationship between prose and poetry in classical Arabic literature in general, and more specifically on how poetry is used by Åarjrj, Hamadhhnj’s successor as a writer of maqhmht, of whom Heinrichs provides an excellent taxonomical analysis. A similar taxonomy would be hard to establish for Hamadhhnj, who was making up the genre as he went along, whereas Åarjrj was consciously and systematically refining it. Nevertheless, it is not irrelevant to survey Hamadhhnj’s recourse to poetry and his lateral reflections on aspects of the poetic culture and heritage of his day. His ‘Maqhma of the Devil’ (al-Maqhma al-Ibljsiyya),178 for example, is an exquisite curio that contains, imbricated in its familiar anecdotal frame, an enriched discussion about the nature of, and beliefs about, poetic inspiration.179 In this Maqhma, it can be suggested that Hamadhhnj passed off a poem of his own as a piece by the great Abu Nuwhs. This beguiles the reader, and in the process makes a silent, somewhat tangled statement about the evolved nature of inspiration in an age when poetry had almost certainly become an acquired craft. Similarly, in the ‘Maqhma of the Sermon’, the poetry attached to the homily attributed to ‘Alj ibn al-Åusayn (grandson of ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib and great-grandson of the Prophet, known for his pious homilies as Zayn al-‘Hbidjn, ‘the ornament of the devout’) is, I suspect, an invention of Hamadhhnj’s. Heinrichs raises two particular points which we shall pursue. First, he contrasts the way in which poetry was used in real sermons with the way in which Åarjrj uses it in his mock sermons: . . . poetry does not seem to play much of a role in the preaching of [real-life] ‘revival preacher[s]’. In the official[ly sanctioned] version of their activity, the Friday sermon (khuƒba) of the [officially appointed preacher,] khaƒjb, poems, whether original or as quotations, are not permitted . . . .The exhortations of the Åanbalj180 preacher Ibn al-Jawzj (d. 597/1201), collected in a volume
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 189 aptly called al-Mudhish, ‘The Terrifier’, do contain a fair amount of poetry, often . . . quotations from well-known poets, but they serve more as shawhhid, testimonies . . . for what the [preacher has] said181 . . . Even [Åarjrj’s] admitted model, the maqhmht of al-Hamadhhnj, does not have anything similar, except [the Wa‘©iyya]. But there the orator goes back and forth between prose and poetry.182 We will explore further this periodicity of registers, which by Heinrichs’s account is rare and exceptional. Heinrichs goes on to address the relationship between prose and poetry referred to earlier, known as åall and ‘aqd, ‘unravelling and knotting’. In pre-Islamic times, prose oratory and poetry had been separate activities with separate practitioners. The dichotomy persisted into the Islamic period, when the main practitioners of ornate prose, the khtibs (‘scribes’, ‘secretaries’ or government officials) were rarely also poets. Nevertheless, the scribes developed the idea that, since epistles [rash’il] and poems often dealt with the same topics, such as congratulations, condolence, and complaint [which formed part of the official or semi-official, semi-private matter with which scribes had to deal], the difference of the two media was just a surface matter. Transformation from one medium into another was considered . . . a good exercise . . . Since it was the scribes who promoted the ideas [of ‘aqd and åall ], the process of åall [turning poetry into prose] was much more frequently employed, because it was seen as a means to enrich the style and language of their epistles, and whole books were written about how to proceed. At the same time the scribes started to produce their own poetry as well, a poetry that was considered characteristic of them and thus dubbed ‘scribes’ poetry’. They cultivated the private rather than the ceremonial genres, [that is] the long princely praise poems that only the professional poets were able to compose . . . Scribes like Badj‘ al-Zamhn al-Hamadhhnj . . . left two djwhns to posterity: one of poems and one of ornate letters.183 Tha‘hlibj’s Nathr al-Na©m wa-Åall al-‘Aqd (‘Prosifying Verse and Untying the Knot’) is the earliest of the manuals referred to by Heinrichs, and significantly Tha‘hlibj was, as we have seen, a near-contemporary of Hamadhhnj; yet we gather from Nathr al-Na©m that åall and ‘aqd were not processes that operated in paraenetic material, a public though not ceremonial literary category, and one in which the mood is quite distinct from the delicate and mannered baubles of the khtibs. However, the slightly later Washy al-Marqum fj Åall al-Man©um (‘The Figured Fabric: How to turn Verse into Prose’) of Îiyh’ al-Djn Ibn al-Athjr (558–637/1163–1239), is more technically diverse, and Ibn al-Athjr throws some light, albeit obliquely, on the textual manipulations that take place in both of the sermons that make up the first episode of the ‘Maqhma of the Sermon’. The fact that there are indeed two sermons in this episode may be crucial, and has not yet been adequately addressed. Each is introduced by the phrase qh’im ya‘i©, ‘one who stood preaching’, used the first time by ‘Jsh ibn Hishhm of the unknown preacher he sees in Basra, and the second time by the preacher himself
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of ‘Alj ibn al-Åusayn, whose sermon he then quotes.184 Ya‘i©, of course, unambiguously means ‘preaching’, and qhma, ‘to stand’, the root which also generates maqhma, ‘séance’ can have the specific meaning of ‘standing up to preach’. As already noted in a parenthesis to our discussion of Ibn Buƒlhn’s ‘Physicians’ Dinner-Party’, maqhma itself can mean ‘sermon’, and is so used by a bystander in Hamadhhnj’s Wa‘©iyya of the preacher’s performance as it draws to a close.185 But the Wa‘©iyya itself is a maqhma in the new, Hamadhanian, literary sense of the term. The whole ‘Maqhma of the Sermon’ is thus suffused with a terminological irony.186 Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj’s first, Qur’anic sermon This first sermon is stylistically tight. It has an essentially Qur’anic feel. Yet what is curious is the way the Qur’hn has been used (or abused), for it constitutes a kind of pastiche. In general, of course, Qur’anic echoes and allusions lend a significant flavour of religious authenticity and authority to sermon material. One should consider, however, the protocol of this practice in order to decide where to draw a line of demarcation between simple ta∂mjn (quotation), the more complex procedure of evocation, and, finally, pastiche. This protocol is not clearly established, especially as early as Hamadhhnj’s time.187 Nevertheless, in one or two places, and cumulatively, we may perhaps feel that the stylistic integrity of the Qur’hn has not met with due reverence. Very conspicuous in the texture of the sermon is the opening sentence inna-kum lam tutraku sudh ‘Ye shall not be left to roam at will’. The key word, sudh or sudan, occurs only once in the Qur’hn, at 75:36 (‘What, does man reckon he shall be left to roam at will?’).188 It is therefore significant that it should figure twice in this repetitive Maqhma; it reappears in line 3 of the sixth verse passage in the second sermon: ‘It is as though we thought there is no resurrection and we are left at liberty (sudan) and that, after dissolution, there is no future state for us.’189 There is also transparent borrowing from the syntax of the Qur’hn in the sentence which follows, and in lines 4 and 12 of ‘Abduh’s edition, in the cumulatively overworked (and perhaps even clumsy?) wa inna ma‘a l-yawmi ghadan (‘After today is a morrow’), wa inna ba‘da l-ma‘hshi ma‘hdan (‘After life is a Return’) and inna ba‘da l-åadathi jadathan (‘After [life’s] eventfulness is the grave’). Compare the Qur’anic fa-inna ma‘a l-‘usri yusrh inna ma‘a l-‘usri yusrh (94:5–6), ‘For verily with hardship comes ease, verily with hardship comes ease’, which, perhaps relevantly, is itself a striking instance of Qur’anic repetition. The third and fourth sentences consist of the rhyming couplet wa inna-kum whridu huwwah/fa a‘iddu la-hh mh staƒa‘tum min quwwah (‘Ye are descending into a deep place,/therefore prepare against it what force ye are able’).190 The first half of the couplet is not Qur’anic, though whrid is used with a similar sense in the scripture, but the second half is a word for word citation of Qur’hn 8:60, which I quote with its context in Arberry’s translation: ‘And thou art not to suppose that those who disbelieve have outstripped Me; they cannot frustrate My will. Make ready for them whatever force and strings of horses you can (wa a‘iddu la-hum, etc.).’
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 191 Hamadhhnj has forged a new context for this phrase, and has chosen it precisely because it rhymes with huwwah, or vice versa. (He has also changed the initial conjunction from wa to fa, a trifling emendation, but perhaps a signal that a stylistic exercise is being carried out.) The couplet which straddles lines 6 to 7 lingers on the subject of eschatology, bringing together in a loose but pertinent manner two related Qur’anic expressions. It reads a lh wa inna lladhj bada’a l-khalqa ‘aljmh yuåyj l-‘i©hma ramjmh (‘Verily He, who with knowledge created the [human] race, maketh the dry bones live’).191 Compare Qur’hn 10:4, inna-hu yabda’u l-khalqa thumma yu‘jdu-hu, ‘[God] originates creation, then He brings it back again’. In similar verses of the Qur’hn, it is always the verb yu‘jdu which gives the sense of God bringing back the dead to life, but Hamadhhnj gives the same sense by using yuåyj, in a phrase that evokes Qur’hn 36:78–9, And he has struck for Us a similitude and forgotten his creation; he says, ‘Who shall quicken ( yuåyj) the bones when they are decayed (ramjm)?’ Say: ‘He shall quicken ( yuåyj) them, who originated them the first time;’ He knows (‘aljm) all creation. Not insignificantly, the word which resolves the assonance with ramjm in the Qur’hn is, as in Hamadhhnj, ‘aljm; we notice that Hamadhhnj has simply inverted the order. This loose evocation of the Qur’hn crystallizes into a direct, if puzzling, citation of the Qur’hn some lines later, in the three-part sentence kadhabat ©ununu l-mulåid jna/lladhjna jaåadu l-d jna/wa ja‘alu l-qur’hna ‘i∂jna (‘False are the imaginations of the perverters of truth who have denied the faith (djn) and made the Qur’hn discordant’).192 Jaåada, ‘to deny’, occurs twelve times in the Qur’hn, and in each case its object (introduced by the preposition bi) is the verses of the Scripture, never djn, for example, Qur’hn 11:59: ‘They are ‘Hd who denied ( jaåadu bi) the signs of their Lord and flouted His messenger.’ As for the last phrase, ‘and made the Qur’hn discordant’, it is a slender adaptation of Qur’hn 15:91, alladhjna ja‘alu l-qur’hna ‘i∂jn, ‘Those who have made the Qur’hn discordant’; one might thus understand Hamadhhnj’s middle phrase, jaåadu l-djna wa, as being spliced into a scriptural verse, as emerges when the sequence Qur’hn 15:89–91 is taken together. Yusuf Ali translates and interprets this Qur’anic passage as follows: And say: ‘I am indeed he that warneth openly and without ambiguity’ – / (of just such wrath) as We sent down on those who divided (scriptures into arbitrary parts), – / (so also on such) as have made [the] Qur’hn into shreds (‘i∂jn) (as they please).193 The medieval commentators differ as to the precise meaning of the last two verses, but there is some consensus for the view that they refer to those who took out of Scripture what suited them, and ignored or rejected the rest. There is more
192 Philip F. Kennedy than one interpretation of ‘i∂jn, but it is consistently explained as referring to a sceptical manipulation of the Qur’hn. Given this, we are licensed at least to ask ourselves what Hamadhhnj is himself doing, or depicting his preacher as doing. Has he himself made the Qur’hn into ‘fragments’ (as in Arberry’s translation of Qur’hn 15:90–1: ‘So we sent it down to the partitioners, who have broken the Qur’hn into fragments’)? The peroration of this first sermon reaches a pointed conclusion: ‘You are the most wretched creatures under heaven’, the preacher tells the congregation, ‘if you make your ‘ulamh’ (men of religious learning) wretched by not heeding them.’ People are ‘only as good as their imhms’ (religious leaders), and it is through the latters’ guidance that they can be saved. Finally, people falls into two categories, the learned (‘hlim) and the ignorant, who are like ‘beasts pasturing at pleasure’ (a gloss on the key word of the sermon’s opening sentence, sudan, ‘left to roam at will’, as ‘Abduh’s note observes). Woe to the worthy and the learned if they are under the authority of the base and the ignorant!194 But what kind of an ‘hlim and imhm is this preacher? How competent is he to expound, as opposed to fragmenting, Scripture? We, the readers, have already guessed that he is none other than Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj. Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj’s second sermon (of ‘Alj ibn al-Åusayn) This second sermon is made up almost entirely of poetry: eight three-line fragments and one four-line fragment;195 these are separated by short comments in prose. The verse passages share not only the same themes and sentiments – they amplify one of the opening motifs of the first sermon, that of the transitoriness of this world – but also the same rhyme and metre.196 It therefore seems reasonable to treat them as parts of a single poem – putatively an already existing one – which Hamadhhnj (or his preacher) has broken up into a kaleidoscope of frames for the rhetorical questions and exclamations he addresses to his audience (e.g. ‘How many successive generations have the hands of Fate snatched away! . . .’ ‘O people, beware, beware! Make haste, make haste! . . .’ ‘How could any man of sense desire this world, or any man of understanding rejoice in it? . . .’).197 Given that the poetry bulks larger than the prose, it would seem that it is the privileged register; but if we consider the varied functions of the prose, this view is tempered. The poem in fact acts as an expansion of the opening words of the sermon, attributed to ‘Alj ibn al-Åusayn: O my soul, how long will you put your trust in [this] life and your assurance in the edifice of this world? Have you not taken warning from your forebears who have perished, from your friends who are hidden in earth, from the brethren whom you mourn, and from your fellows, borne away to the abode of decay? This introduction provides the ‘text’ of the poetic sermon.
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 193 The poem bears all the marks of a mature specimen of the zuhd genre, sharing many of the thematic and stylistic features of the zuhdiyyht of Abu al-‘Athhiya; it would therefore seem unlikely to be by ‘Alj ibn al-Åusayn, who died several decades before Abu al-‘Athhiya set his decisive stamp on the genre. Nevertheless, initially the poem and the opening homily are closely linked. There are no markers to show where the words of ‘Alj ibn al-Åusayn end, or whether we are meant to think that the poem, or indeed the whole sermon, is by him. Passages 1, 3 and 4 of the poem dwell on those who have perished in the past and on the theme of their ruined worldly habitations (compare ‘Alj ibn al-Åusayn’s ‘the edifice of this world’), which are contrasted with the dust in which they now have their abode. Passage 2 is addressed to ‘you’ in the second person singular: the poet may be addressing himself, in the same way as ‘Alj ibn al-Åusayn addressed his soul. This passage and passage 5 contrast the false ‘preachers of this world’ – its seductions – with the imperativeness of zuhd (renunciation), which experience of this world teaches and which ‘you’ should heed. These two passages, which address and exhort the listener directly, thus constitute a sermon within a sermon. Passages 7 and 8 describe the fruitlessness of remorse, and passage 9, again addressed to ‘you’, urges repentence while there is yet time. In their turn, the preacher’s interjections point up or restate the message of the poem. Prose and poetry are alternate registers for the same message, and are often syntactically interdependent, with the first line of a stanza depending on the preceding prose. Thus ‘Alj ibn al-Åusayn’s closing words, ‘your fellows, borne away to the abode of decay’, run into the opening words of the first verse passage: ‘And now they lie in the belly of earth who once walked upon its back’; and the preacher’s comment, ‘Look upon the nations who have passed away and the kings who have perished . . . .’ is continued in the third verse passage: ‘They have become rotten (ramjm) in the dust’ (the phrase echoes a passage in the first sermon, ‘Verily, He . . . maketh the dry (ramjm) bones live’). The close integration of prose and poetry makes for a high degree of repetitiveness even within the conventions of homily, an intrinsically repetitive genre. Is this, in fact, a studied monotony? ‘Ish ibn Hishhm, the narrator, is usually the first to wonder at Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj’s eloquence; but here, when he asks one of those present who the speaker is, the reply comes: ‘A stranger who has arrived; I don’t know his identity, so wait (or ‘be patient’, fa ßbir) until the end of his maqhma/sermon.’198 Is this, then, an unusually boring sermon? Our analysis of it shows up its generic resonances, but offers no clear answer to this question, and no unequivocal statement of what the author wishes to say; it simply suggests the textual ambiguities of both the first and second sermons. Prendergast interprets the words with which the preacher finally identifies himself to ‘Ish ibn Hishhm somewhat expansively as follows: ‘Good gracious! art thou not satisfied with pondering over externals, that thou madest for the truth and then failed to recognize it?’199 but ‘Abduh’s gloss of the same riddle suggests that it yields a simpler literal meaning, namely: ‘Good God! Not satisfied with finding [my] appearance (åilyat-j) changed, you even try to deny knowing [me] (ma‘rifat-j).’200 (Hence Abu al-Fatå’s two-line envoi on the white hair that has made him unrecognizable and
194 Philip F. Kennedy the nearness of death which it betokens, which – anticlimactically – merely underlines the burden of his sermons.) Prendergast’s ‘pondering’ is an interpolation, and his ‘the truth’ is an over-translation of ma‘rifa, ‘knowledge’, ‘recognition’. Nevertheless, Abu al-Fatå’s riddle does raise the question of what it is that his old acquaintance (or his congregation, or we) should have known or recognized beneath appearances. A parody of a public sermon (and of orthodox sentiment) couched in the very language of orthodoxy? And what are we to make of Abu al-Fatå’s parting words to his congregation, whom he had earlier urged to follow men of true religious knowledge (‘ilm) in order to avoid perdition: ‘Adorn knowledge (‘ilm) with works (‘amal ) . . . and God will pardon both me and you’? Hamadhhnj may have given a plausible depiction of a dour preacher, but he does so equivocally. To some extent, this Maqhma has been the engaging literary display of a scribe on whom the literary exercises of åall and ‘aqd and of quotation (ta∂mjn), and probably the game of false quotation too, may have exerted an influence. The two sermons are linked thematically, and there are instances of prose-to-verse ‘translation’ between the two (as with the words ramjm and sudan in verse passages 3 and 6), but overall they stand in piquant technical contrast to each other. This is not a purely formal literary exercise, however. There is an intrinsic irony in a preacher who tells his audience that they are ‘only as good as their imhms’, but may himself be a fraud, and who condemns ‘fragmenters’ of the Qur’hn in the same breath as he himself proceeds to fragment it. There is also a joke played on Hamadhhnj’s audience when they discover, late in the day, that this new-style literary Maqhma is, to all appearances, nothing but an old-style sermonmaqhma after all, and one, indeed, in which sermon is ruthlessly piled upon sermon, despite the diversions that poetry and the disguise of the preacher might have seemed to offer.
Monroe: The Art of Badj‘ al-Zamhn James T. Monroe’s The Art of Bad j‘ al-Zamhn al-Hamadhhnj as Picaresque Narrative (1983) has been intermittently referred to previously. Like Kilito’s Les Séances, it attempts to contextualize the Maqhmht within a cultural and intellectual milieu, and has stimulated further research; but it has a more consistent view of Hamadhhnj’s moral and theological agenda. Monroe’s belief (shared more recently by Katia Zakharia) that Hamadhhnj was an Ismh‘jlj convert or sympathizer does not seem sustainable.201 Nevertheless, some further attention should be given to Monroe’s influential readings before surveying briefly more recent work. We will concentrate here on general points and on individual Maqhmht already touched on in this chapter. In his chapter 4, ‘In Praise of Folly’, Monroe assumes that the determinist, Sunnj diatribe of the madman in the ‘Maqhma of Åulwhn’ is to be rejected simply because he is a madman. Yet how do we reconcile this tacit attack on determinism with the fact that the madman is able to disconcert his Mu‘tazilj visitors with his foreknowledge of ‘Ish ibn Hishhm’s marriage plans? Somewhat similarly,
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 195 Monroe’s analysis of the ‘Maqhma of the Sermon’ assumes that a proverbial scoundrel, now grown old and repentant, warns others, on the basis of Mu‘tazilj and Shj‘j doctrine,202 that one is responsible for one’s acts; that unless one performs good deeds in this life, there will be no last minute pardon or salvation in the world to come.203 Much of this is plausible; but the reading overlooks the, equally pertinent, stylistic and generic games played in the Maqhma. Monroe’s chapter 7, ‘Rending the Veils of Obscurity’, decries the (then) prevailing view among European Arabists that characterized maqhmht as a superficial genre, obsessed with aureate language and carrying little meaningful content. (Maqhma studies have now moved beyond this view.) The overt content of the Maqhmht should not, Monroe counsels, be taken at face value; he observes convincingly that ‘the views defended by Hamadhhnj in his . . . correspondence [Rash’il]204 are diametrically opposed to those espoused by the rogue in the maqhmht.’205 He goes on to examine the nature of creative originality in medieval poetry and other literature with a view to justifying Hamadhhnj’s claim, made in his Rash’il, that no two of his Maqhmht were the same. The discussion here is extremely valuable, insofar as he states that If . . . we study [them] in terms of their structure, that is to say in terms of the interrelationship between their different materials, and look for meaning in this structure, we will find that Hamadhhnj was right: no two maqhmas are exactly alike;206 but Monroe goes on to play down the literary nature of the Maqhmht, arguing that ‘they each explore different aspects and ramifications of a clearly conceived and unifying overall theme, namely that of human responsibility for good and evil’. This sweeping claim seems to do scant justice to the various ethical codes implicit in, for example, the ‘Maqhma of Wine’. Much of Monroe’s analysis is excellent, however. To describe language as a ‘veil of obscurity’ surely captures well an aspect of at least some of the Maqhmht. In this context, he quotes Kilito, who evokes the rhetorical concept of tawriya (double-entendre), in which the primary sense of a word is intended to mislead, and it is the secondary sense which carries the true meaning, just as, in many of the Maqhmht, the purpose of appearances is to deceive.207 Tawriya is just one aspect of the allusiveness and intertextuality of the Maqhmht, and in this connection, Monroe points out the multiple resonances of al-Iskandarj’s kunya (agnomen), Abu al-Fatå: In [the ‘Maqhma of Sijisthn’]208 Abu l-Fatå al-Iskandarj is addressing a multitude, to whom he identifies himself in this wise: ‘He who knows me, knows me well, and he who does not know me, I will make myself known to him. I am the f irst fruits of Yemen, the much talked-of of the age, the enigma of men
196 Philip F. Kennedy and the puzzle of the ladies of the harem.’ In order to understand this obscure language, we first need to know (1) that the fruit of the nab‘ tree (Chadra tenex) is called Fatå. (2) The people of Yemen [were the first to convert] to Islam. (3) The first Yemenite envoy to visit Muåammad was . . . named Abu l-Fatå. (4) The word Fatå means ‘beginning, opening, victory’. Thus, in a passage crowded with references to knowing and not knowing, to enigmas and puzzles, the speaker enigmatically reveals his name, but only to those capable of penetrating the veil of his arcane discourse.209 Despite his sensitivity to disguise and multiple meaning, however, Monroe’s conclusion assigns to the Maqhmht an agenda that is surely too rigid and serious, when he claims that ‘The picaresque genre is ultimately exemplary and didactic. It seeks, by negative example, to improve man’s spiritual condition. By exposing his weaknesses, it challenges him to overcome them, thus stimulating him to restore order on earth while earning his eternal reward in Paradise for doing so.’210 This may be true of the picaresque, but it is not wholly true of the Maqhmht. Monroe’s discussion of several individual Maqhmht is perceptive and persuasive; but much work has been done since to identify the textual and generic inspiration that lies behind particular narratives, and these more recent studies, taken together, have given us a more sophisticated understanding of the complexity of their layers and moods. We will now look very briefly at some points raised in recent scholarship.
Recent maqhma scholarship L. E. Goodman has responded to Monroe’s thesis that the Maqhmht contain a moral agenda by restating it within a broader frame of literary and cultural reference. His conclusion shifts the emphasis away from the idea that Hamadhhnj was re-using ready-made religious ideas or that his literary medium can in some way be distinguished from its message; he concludes rather that In puncturing pretension Abu l-Fatå does service to the cardinal values of Islam, because such values are worth nothing in any culture if they are merely mummed by figure-heads . . . [He voices] a kind of criticism which [could not be voiced] . . . within the language and categories of those values themselves, drawing instead on pre- and non-Islamic discourse and values.211 In line with earlier critical trends,212 but in contrast to most recent literary scholarship, which has focussed on the thought-world of Hamadhhnj and emphasized its essential intertexuality, Wendelin Wenzel-Teuber’s Die Maqamen des Hamadhani als Spiegel des islamischen Gesellschaft foregrounds the freshness and naturalism of much of Hamadhhnj’s observation. What is new is that the sociological content of the Maqhmht is examined through a systematic categorization of the social groups depicted in them.213
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 197 Fedwa Malti-Douglas, some of whose studies have been cited earlier,214 has analysed the social codes (as opposed to categories) embodied in adab anecdotes and in the Maqhmht, pointing out, however, that though these derive from social values, they are used to construct literary genres – tales of bukhl (avarice), and so on – and to structure narrative. The work of the Finnish scholar Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila has already been referred to frequently. His most recent survey of the genre appeared in 2002; he is without doubt the leading scholar of the history of the genre, providing a detailed map of its post-Hamadhanian development, and has shed much unexpected light on Hamadhhnj’s own varied literary affinities as well as his influence on other writers.215 Monroe has now published a study and translation of an Andalusian writer of maqhmht, al-Maqhmht al-Luzumiyya by . . . al-Saraqusƒj (2002), in which he gives his present overall view of the genre. The late Rina Drory’s Models and Contacts: Arabic Literature and Its Impact on Medieval Jewish Culture, which appeared in 2000, deals also, as its title suggests, with Hamadhhnj’s influence, and in addition contains a valuable opening chapter on the maqhma and the concept of fictionality which discusses the textual and theoretical background of both Hamadhhnj and Åarjrj.216 As regards the detail of Hamadhhnj’s literary technique, Devin J. Stewart’s forthcoming Intertextuality and the Maqhmht of Badj’ al-Zamhn al-Hamadhhnj may be expected to qualify much of the discussion in the present chapter. The language of the Maqhmht – Hamadhhnj’s use of saj‘ (rhymed prose) and his vocabulary – has received surprisingly little attention; there are a handful of recent studies.217 The late John Mattock, Julia Ashtiany Bray, and Hämeen-Anttila have all identified possible thematic or schematic prototypes for a number of Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht not discussed here,218 and Bray shows how some of these were given significantly different literary development at the hands of slightly earlier authors. She is at pains to demonstrate that ‘earlier’ does not necessarily mean ‘less sophisticated’, either technically or conceptually, and that to appreciate the generic limits within which Hamadhhnj chose to write, we must understand other prevailing literary norms in their own right. She also takes issue with Kilito’s contention that the ‘tonal slippage’ of the Hamadhanian Maqhma stands in simple contrast to the supposedly ‘mono-tonal’ genres which it combines.219 Modern textual theory (specifically Roland Barthes’s notion of tacit codes which operate in literary texts in such a way as to defer the enunciation of unambiguous meaning) is applied to Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht in Mohamed-Salah Omri’s ‘ “There is a Jhåi© for Every Age” ’, a good example of how to use a contemporary theoretical model in such a way as not to obfuscate the primary material. The article acknowledges and clearly exhibits its debt to Kilito while moving beyond him, and contributes to our understanding of the fact that the maqhma as a genre is a self-conscious intertextual staging of the codes that inhere in adab. Our survey of recent developments in Maqhma scholarship thus brings us back to Kilito himself. Broad concerns with codes and adab are of course characteristic of Kilito’s work; we are reminded especially of his comments on the tensions
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which – in the Maqhmht – threaten the atmosphere of complacency which prevails in the orthodox temple of adab: In classical Arabic culture, a pronouncement becomes an adab text when it emanates from a known authority. The casing of adab envelopes those pronouncements considered original together with those associated with them; in other words, adab rests on the idea of authorship. But In the Maqhmht, one reads: ‘Yesterday I saw a man of great eloquence . . . begging.’ That a man should elicit admiration for his adab and yet have to beg for a living – here is an intolerable dissonance, a paradox of a kind to rouse the indignation of ‘Ish ibn Hishhm, whose first concern, as we know, is the acquisition of adab. Despite his eloquence Abu al-Fatå leads a miserable existence; for all the texts he produces, and for all that he is a repository of the poetic values approved by his community, he leads the life of a scrounger.’220 Some of these thoughts are taken up in Kilito’s other writings, and will be considered briefly in conclusion.
Kilito’s The Author and his Doubles There is a chameleon-like aspect to Arabic literary texts, and Kilito’s L’Auteur et ses doubles – written in 1985 for an even wider readership than Les Séances, and frequently more imaginative than scholarly – teases out further implications of this issue. It has recently been translated by Michael Cooperson as The Author and his Doubles (2001), and it is to this translation that we shall refer.221 The more one comes to appreciate the extent of anecdotal source material behind Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht, together with the broad rainbow of textual influences, the more Hamadhhnj’s status as an author is, in a sense, assailed. Yet questions of authorship need to be contemplated carefully: one must be sure to disentangle the issue of the originality of material from that of its authorship. In a way that is possibly counter-intuitive to modern – though perhaps not to postmodern – reflexes and sensibilities, The Author and his Doubles offers a slightly surreal vision of how a single seedbed of anecdotal material may, as it were, generate a variety of authors. Such, at any rate, appears to be Kilito’s experimental proposition: the anecdote fashions its authors, in a process that is both synchronic and sequential. Without drawing further on the Maqhmht for material, Kilito explores various avenues of this proposition laying bare some of the fundamental methodological and ontological features of medieval Arabic literature. In the opening chapter, ‘Verses and Reverses’, Kilito quotes the following anecdote from a seventh/thirteenth-century biography of Abu Nuwhs222 as a way
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 199 of identifying the issue of influence and creativity in classical Arabic poetry. Abu Nuwhs asked [his teacher] Khalaf [al-Aåmar] for permission to compose poetry, and Khalaf said: ‘I refuse to let you make a poem until you memorize a thousand passages of ancient poetry.’ So Abu Nuwhs disappeared; and after a good long while, he came back and said, ‘I’ve done it.’ ‘Recite them,’ said Khalaf. So Abu Nuwhs began, and got through the bulk of the verses over a period of several days. Then he asked again for permission to compose poetry. Said Khalaf, ‘I refuse, unless you forget all one thousand lines as completely as if you had never learned them.’ ‘That’s too difficult,’ said Abu Nuwhs. ‘I’ve memorized them quite thoroughly!’ ‘I refuse to let you compose until you forget them,’ said Khalaf. So Abu Nuwhs disappeared into a monastery and remained in solitude for a period of time until he forgot the lines. He went back to Khalaf and said, ‘I’ve forgotten them so thoroughly that it’s as if I never memorized anything at all.’ Said Khalaf: ‘Now go compose!’223 Adducing the evidence of this famous apprenticeship allows Kilito very effectively, and without the need for obtrusive commentary, to answer the question posed, representively, by the opening line of the great mu‘allaqa224 of the preIslamic poet ‘Antara, who lived in the sixth century AD. ‘Antara had wondered, as he contemplated the abandoned traces of his beloved’s desert encampment,225 whether there was any image or sentiment – any poetry, in short – left for him to declaim. The answer, provided conclusively by fourteen subsequent centuries of poetic tradition, is, of course, yes. Khalaf al-Aåmar’s instruction to Abu Nuwhs was clearly simply meant to reflect the efforts needed to produce optimal creativity and originality within the field of influence of a conservative poetic tradition. Medieval Arabic literature contains, it would seem, its own, sometimes oblique, reflections on the nature of authorial creativity and originality. (In this context, what are we supposed to make of the fact that Khalaf al-Aåmar was notoriously one of the great forgers of pre-Islamic poetry in early ‘Abbasid times?) In Kilito’s words, [Arabic] poetic creation reorganizes the wreckage, and in rebuilding, it refashions . . . . Every poem has lived before, and not even the most diligent efforts to revive its memory can unearth more than a few scraps of its unique, irreplaceable, and glorious past.226 In the following chapter, ‘Adoption’, Kilito describes a number of literary processes that have been referred to earlier in this chapter, or are related to them: iqtibhs (quotation from the Qur’hn), ta∂mjn (quotation more generally) åall and ‘aqd (prosification and versification) and talmjå (allusion). Clearly influenced by Gérard Genette’s Palimpsestes (1982), Kilito reminds us that antithetical to plagiarism
200 Philip F. Kennedy (where one claims for oneself the work of others) is the fabrication of texts (where one attributes one’s own work to others). Considered in tandem, these aspects of the culture of poetry characterize the floating relationship between text and author in classical Arabic literature. To sustain the absolute or general truth of his argument, Kilito avoids specific detail; indeed, hardly any primary texts are presented analytically. However, the anecdotes he cites in illustration of his argument are striking, such as the description of ‘Abu Yhsjn’, a mad mathematician to whom, according to Jhåi©, the poet Abu Nuwhs, doubtless to amuse himself . . . attributed poems appropriate to his ravings. Abu Yasin would learn these poems by heart and claim them as his own. Everyone knew better, but Abu Yasin remained convinced that the verses . . . were his own. He was not so far from the truth, as he was the only one who could adopt poems so eminently suited to him alone.227 Chapter 4 describes the protocols of åadjth. The material is familiar, but it is seldom long before Kilito brings into play something that breaks down the barriers of our perception. Here is a trope, as expressed by Ibn Qutayba (213–76/828–89), for an author saying the same thing time and again: It may happen that a man forgets a åadjth which he once transmitted, but which someone else remembers. Should someone remind him of it, he cannot remember; but when he is told that he himself was the [original] transmitter, he transmits it on the authority of the person who reminded him of it.228 One might begin to suspect, quite rightly, that medieval Arabic is a textually promiscuous culture despite itself. Other material is evoked to exaggerate the problem: Kilito captures the culture of fraudulent transmitters in short narratives that are part of the parentage of the self-consciously profane and picaresque maqhma. Ignaz Goldziher had earlier translated a number of these anecdotes about false åadjth transmitters. They are all somewhat similar, and their very proliferation suggests that we are dealing with a narrative topos of the kind that may well have exerted an influence on subsequent anecdotal, more purely fictional literature. Here is an example: It is told that . . . Harim b. Åayyhn (d. 46 [AH]) – the same of whom it is related that his mother carried him for four years – met a storyteller [qhßß] in a mosque who told religious tales quoting him (Harim) as authority. When Harim revealed his identity and it became obvious that the storyteller had never seen him, the latter answered, there and then: ‘I have always heard that you were a very strange fellow; what you are saying is very odd indeed. In this mosque alone there are fifteen people praying with us who are called Harim b. Åayyhn and you appear to flatter yourself with the thought that you are the only one bearing this name.’229
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 201 In the Maqhmht, it will be recalled, the narrator generally recognizes and reveals the identity of the impostor, whereas here the impostor filches a man’s identity from him and bestows it elsewhere. But what both this anecdote and the Maqhmht suggest is that truth can be appreciated only subjectively. Only Harim ibn Åayyhn can truly know that he is Harim ibn Åayyhn. The certain knowledge that both he and the qhßß share, on the other hand, is that false åadjth are being propagated among the community of believers. In the case of this particular anecdote, Goldziher adds a fascinating detail: It need not be pointed out that this tale has been back-dated to those early [Islamic] patriarchal times from the circumstances of a later period. In Harim’s time there was no such system of tradition as might have produced these excesses. The tale of imposture is itself an impostor! Here, in a short, absurd anecdote cited by Kilito in Chapter 6, ‘The Poetics of the Anecdote’, is another facet of invention within a culture ostensibly obsessed with truth. A certain woman wished to have the image of the devil engraved on her ring. Since the engraver was hard pressed to find a model, she went out into the street, and spotting Jhåi©, led him to the engraver, saying: ‘Like him!’230 Jhåi©, being a man who was by all accounts famously ugly,231 authenticates the image of the devil; he may not actually be the devil, but his image will do when this woman’s cronies ask to see the figure that she has had carved into her ring (for what purpose is not explained). So it is with texts, one assumes, when what rings true – or suits an argument – is authenticated by means of a mechanistic rubric that states simply: ‘This is true!’ The very gist of an anecdote may in the end be the impulse that generates its authentification; it will thereby go on to acquire a variety of forms, further authenticated by protean isnhds. There is a spectrum in classical Arabic literature that spans the propagating of recorded truth and the writing of pure fiction. Kilito helps us to understand that there is a promiscuity in this literature that defies the conservatism for which it is sometimes condemned, at least in modern perceptions. Our critical focus must therefore be able to adapt accordingly, because the truth of this literature is never simply a matter of reading the words upon the page. The literature’s internal perspectives must guide our scrutiny, and these will change with the nebulous but increasing force of accumulative reading and deepening anagnostic intuition. The texts are open-ended: ‘Where knowledge is lacking, imagination will fill the gap. A closed text is one that offers no such latitude, but closed texts are monsters of the sort that no one has ever actually seen.’232 A perspective may be a question, or a hunch; it may not be susceptible of proof, but it need not be driven underground by that fact. Some imaginings are worth protecting, for reading and interpretation will otherwise become chained entities – surrogate products of positivist critical editions. They should never be this exclusively.
202 Philip F. Kennedy Kilito’s writing is often the distillation of what one might call associative imaginings; he works according to a largely metonymic process. There is also something of the act of restoration in his literary criticism. The restorer of an ageing work of art must immerse himself in that work, and must at a certain point make a decision to interpret creatively. He may over-restore – over-interpret – the intensity of a certain colour, say, in a painting; but even so, he may help one to discern the features, and therefore the meaning, that it contains.
Notes * The author is grateful to Julia Bray for her editorial work on this chapter. All remaining flaws are the author’s own. 1 See Hämeen-Anttila (1998) (a), p. 91: ‘Between al-Hamadhhnj and al-Åarjrj there were half a dozen maqhma writers [taking the word in a sense which excludes works without real literary pretensions],’ and ibid. (2002), pp. 365–75 for a listing which supersedes that of Blachère and Masnou (1957), pp. 123–9. See also Brockelmann and Pellat (1991). 2 See Richards (1991) (a). 3 Monroe (1983), which has been more influential in English-speaking academic circles and will be discussed later in this chapter, has fared better. 4 The word ‘texture’ evokes another subject – textual history; this is not in Kilito’s purview. Kilito’s perceived philological insouciance may be a source of anxiety to more rigidly scholastic readers. We should note here that there is still no critical edition of the Maqhmht of Hamadhhnj, though one is in preparation by Pierre MacKay according to Monroe (1983), p. 14 and note 11. In the continued absence of a critical edition, the edition in general use is that of Muåammad ‘Abduh (Cairo, 1889 and reprints; the printing used here is that of Beirut, 1973), and the comments of Richards (1991) (a) are invaluable. 5 See Bibliography. Aspects of L’Auteur et ses doubles are discussed at the end of this chapter. 6 He can also give the impression that he is recreating faithfully the thought process, with full associative digressions, of his original reading of a given text, which is no mean feat given the evanescent nature of anagnostic reflection. 7 On the history of the genre, see Beeston (1971) and Hämeen-Anttila (2002) and Bibliography thereto. A detailed and layered sense of the antecedents of Hamadhhnj’s al-Maqhma al-Asadiyya (‘The Maqhma of the Lion’) can be gained from Mattock (1984), Ashtiany Bray (1998) and Hämeen-Anttila (1998) (b); see also Chapter 6, note 91 below; similarly, for al-Maqhma al-Ma∂jriyya (‘The Maqhma of the Ma∂jra’), see Malti-Douglas (1985), Ashtiany (1991) and Hhmeen-Anttila (2002), p. 109. For each of Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht, Hhmeen-Anttila (2002) gives a bibliography of the most pertinent modern studies where they exist. 8 Kilito (1983), p. 15. 9 Kilito (1983), p. 13. 10 Ibn Nhqiyh, Ibn Buƒlhn and Åarjrj were all active in Baghdad. Most of Hamadhhnj’s life was spent in eastern Iran. 11 Born in Tunisia, travelled to Sicily and died in Spain. 12 Pellat (1953) is one of two editions. See Hämeen-Anttila (2002), pp. 231–4 for a description of those narrative maqhmht of Ibn Sharaf that have survived in other sources. He calls the surviving fragments of Mash’il al-Intiqhd ‘philological or aesthetic maqhmas’, and likens them to those of Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht which deal with matters of literary criticism, on which he claimed to have modelled them. On the latter,
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 203
13 14 15
16
17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
see Mu߃afh (1984), Ouyang (1997), especially pp. 55–8, Omri (1998), and Hämeen-Anttila (1997). Kilito (1983), p. 15. Richards (1991) (a). Kilito (1987), a brilliantly sensitive and penetrating essay that has given rise to a lengthy review essay in its own right, Munjr (1996). It is precisely this sort of analysis that some readers might have wished for in Les Séances. For further analysis of Åarjrj’s Maqhmht, see also Kilito (1982). Compare al-Khmil al-Khwhrizmj, a contemporary of Åarjrj, who ‘wrote one work which belongs to the genre maqhma’, but who chose for it the title of Kithb al-Riåal, ‘The Book of Journeys’, Hämeen-Anttila (1997), p.141. One of these maqhmht is translated in Hämeen-Anttila (2002), pp. 431–44. Kilito (1983), p. 19. Kilito (1983), p. 20; Muqaddasj, Aåsan al-Taqhsjm, trans. Collins (2001), p. 8. Richter-Bernburg (1998) provides a succinct contextualization of Muqaddasj among other Muslim geographers and topographers: ‘[He] approximates to a modern definition of geography, albeit restricted in its scope to the “Islamic lands” (al-aqhljm al-islhmiyya), in his enumeration of the subjects comprised by what he calls a “science” (‘ilm) and a “discipline” ( fann). (‘Ajh’ib, “mirabilia”, which occur in virtually all Arabic texts of geographical interest, are discussed separately [in EncArLit ] under that heading.) The first extant Arabic works of descriptive geography . . . date from the middle to late 3rd/9th century . . . Ibn Khurradhdhbih . . . in his . . . Kithb al-mashlik wa-al-mamhlik (Book of Stage-Routes and Dominions), of which he revised a first draft of 232/846 around 272/885 . . . lists all the factual data about the provinces of the Islamic empire which a civil servant might have use for; in a manner normally associated with adab, he includes a variety of additional information as well. It ranges from elements of “literary geography” . . . with the requisite verse quotations . . . to data relevant for merchants and diverse curiosities; in these sections, the author does not restrict himself to the lands of Islam [my emphasis].’ From the third/ninth century onwards appeared travelogues, notably that of Ibn Fa∂lhn, who journeyed to the Volga Bulghars in 309–10/921–2, see Canard (1958) and (1981). Kilito (1983), p. 20. For further discussion of the identity of Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj, especially his toponymic, see Stewart (forthcoming). Chenery (1898), p. 20. Kilito (1983), p. 21. See note 19 and Chapter 3, pp. 51–2. See Hole (1797). See Ghazoul (1996), pp. 72–4, ‘The Tropes of the Voyage’. ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 86–91. A pre-Islamic Arabian goddess, mentioned in the Qur’hn, 15:19. Trans. Prendergast (1915), p. 79. Qur’hn 28:18 and 27 and 61:13. The agnomen used, politely, in preference to the given name. It is made up of Abu (‘father of ’, ‘possessor of ’) and the name either of a real or supposed child or that of an attribute. Kilito (1983), pp. 24, 25. For the theory of fiction as it touches on the earliest maqhmht, see especially Drory (1994) and (2000). ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 38–42. Kilito (1983), p. 29; Muqaddasj, Aåsan al-Taqhsjm, trans. Collins (2001), p. 2. Kilito (1983), p. 34.
204 Philip F. Kennedy 37 For this tale in the oldest extant, ‘Syrian’ recension, which postdates Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht by some three centuries, see Mahdi (1984), pp. 132–217, trans. Haddawy (1990), pp. 66–150. 38 Kilito (1983), p. 34, paraphrasing Muqaddasj, Aåsan al-Taqhsjm (see text to note 35). 39 See Meisami (1998). 40 Buyid prince; reigned 356–67/967–77 in Baghdad. The Buyids (or Buwayhids) were soldiers of fortune from northern Iran who seized power in the eastern ‘Abbasid empire in the political and economic chaos of the mid-fourth/tenth century and ruled as a loose family confederacy, nominally as deputies of the caliph, although they were themselves Shj‘js; see now Donohue (2003). Hamadhhnj’s own career began under the patronage of a Buyid vizier. 41 Kilito (1983), p. 38, based on Tha‘hlibi, Yatjma, III, pp. 53–4. For a further discussion of parody in Ibn al-Åajjhj, see Meisami (1993). One notes that the type of parody which Kilito uncovers in Ibn al-Åajjhj existed in many vivid figures all of two centuries before him, the poetry of Abu Dulhma al-Asadj, the buffoon poet of the caliph al-Manßur, being one of the finest early examples, see Chapter 2, p. 30 above. 42 Kilito (1983), p. 40. 43 This is the title under which the work is known from the edition (1902) of Adam Mez, who attributes it to the otherwise obscure Abu al-Muƒahhar al-Azdj. 44 See Moreh (1992), p. 87. 45 ‘The Nonpareil of the Age’, an anthology of vignettes of contemporary men of letters and literary patrons. 46 On whom see Donohue (2003), pp. 139–47. 47 Perhaps a reference to the image of women playing with the grilled fat of a camel slaughtered for them by the poet in the most famous of pre-Islamic poems, the Mu‘allaqa of Imru’ al-Qays, see Irwin (1999), pp. 7–12, trans. A. J. Arberry. 48 Kilito (1983), pp. 44–5, trans. from Tha‘hlibj, Yatjma, II, p. 394. 49 Kilito (1983), p. 46. References to the Arabic text are to the edition (1980) of al-Shhljj, who attributes its authorship to Abu Åayyhn al-Tawåjdj (d. 411/1023) and gives it the title of al-Rishla al-Baghdhdiyya (‘The Epistle of Baghdad’). 50 Tawåjdj (attrib.), Rishla Baghdhdiyya, p. 53. 51 Ibid., p. 55. 52 Hence the title of Khawhm’s French translation (1998), Vingt-quatre heures de la vie d’une canaille. 53 Lucidly made in his preface, Tawåjdj (attrib.), Rishla Baghdhdiyya, pp. 9–12. 54 Moreh (1992), p. 95; he summarizes and discusses the Åikhya pp. 94–100. 55 His L’Auteur et ses doubles (1985) issues from his fascination with the broadly intertextual nature of authorial creativity. 56 Tawåjdj (attrib.), Rishla Baghdhdiyya, p. 42. 57 Ibid., p. 44. 58 Ibid., p. 48. 59 Ibid., p. 52. 60 Ibid., p. 57. 61 A mediator between warring parties. 62 Tawåjdj (attrib.), Rishla Baghdhdiyya, p. 66. 63 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), p. 74. 64 Tawåjdj (attrib.), Rishla Baghdhdiyya, p. 72. 65 Ibid., p. 82. 66 Ibid., pp. 83–4. 67 Ibid., p. 84. 68 Like Manichaeans and Christians respectively. 69 The prophet was hit by a stone when the Muslims fled from the pagan Meccans at the battle of Uåud; he fell and broke a tooth.
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 205 70 The ‘Abbasid caliph Mutawakkil ordered the tomb of al-Åusayn ibn ‘Alj to be razed. In their wars with the counter-caliph ‘Abd Allah Ibn al-Zubayr, the Umayyads twice bombarded the Ka‘ba, in 64/683 and 73/692. The other atrocities referred to may be connected with this, or possibly with the raid on the Ka‘ba by Carmathian heretics during the Pilgrimage of 317/930. 71 The camel which God sent to Thamud as a miraculous sign endorsing the prophet Íhliå; disbelieving his message, they hamstrung the camel and received condign punishment, Qur’hn 7:73–8; 11:61–7; 17: 59; 26:141–158; 54:18–31 and 91:11–14. 72 A reference to Qur’hn 9:30, where the Jews are said to claim that Ezra was the son of God and the Christians that Christ was the son of God. 73 Al-Åusayn ibn ‘Alj, son of ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib and grandson of the Prophet, was killed at the battle of Karbala by the Umayyads who then, infamously, cut off his head. Ja‘far ibn Abj Ïhlib carried the Muslim standard at the battle of Mu’ta, in which the Prophet’s army was defeated by the Byzantines. When his right hand was cut off, he took up the standard in his left; when that too was severed, he cradled the standard against his chest until he fell a martyr having suffered seventy Byzantine wounds. Åamza, the Prophet’s uncle, fell at the battle of Uåud and had his liver torn out by Hind bint ‘Utba, wife of the Meccan leader, Abu Íufyhn. ‘Umar ibn al-Khaƒƒhb, the second caliph, was stabbed to death by a slave while praying in 23/644. The other allusions are unidentified. 74 E.g. Tawåjdj (attrib.), Rishla Baghdhdiyya, p. 234, an anecdote set in a lunatic asylum, as are Hamadhhnj’s al-Maqhma al-Mhristhniyya (‘The Maqhma of the Asylum’) and a related anecdote from al-Njshburj’s ‘Uqalh’ al-Majhnjn (‘Wise Fools’) (see below). 75 Tawåjdj (attrib.), Rishla Baghdhdiyya, pp. 274–5. 76 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 93–4. A conservative editor, ‘Abduh may have edited out obscenities such as urjdu ayran laƒjfan, ‘I’d like a pleasant penis’ which occurs in the corresponding poem in Åikhya; but it should be noted that the Bibliothèque Nationale MS of the Maqhmht BN arabe 3923 also omits this line, nor is it found in the Constantinople edition of 1298/1880, see Iványi (1996), p. 225, note 1, where passages absent from ‘Abduh’s edition are listed. 77 See Monroe (1983), pp. 42–5 and Beaumont (1994). 78 Monroe (1983), pp. 44–5. 79 See Kennedy (1997). 80 See Kennedy (1997), chapter 4, ‘Åilm and Tawba’. 81 Ibn Nhqiyh, Maqhmht, no. 9, pp. 109–13. 82 Kilito (1983), p. 49. 83 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), p. 238. 84 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), p. 240, trans. Prendergast (1915), p. 179. See Omri (1998) for a discussion of the slogan ‘Every situation has its proper saying’ in Jhåi©ian discourse. Jhåi©’s apparently banal and commonsensical phrase is central to adab and concepts of rhetoric, hence, for example his fascination with the incongrous eloquence of the avaricious in his ‘Book of Misers’ (Kithb al-Bukhalh’). 85 ‘Abduh (1889/1973) p. 241. 86 Qur’hn 4:43. 87 Abu Nuwhs, Djwhn, III, p. 317, no. 272 (metre: khaf jf ). 88 Abu Nuwhs, Djwhn, III, p. 179, no. 148 (metre: munsariå). 89 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 244–5. 90 For a detailed overview of Ibn Nhqiyh’s Maqhmht and the fullest available bibliography, see Hämeen-Anttila (2002), pp. 133–40, see also Kennedy (2000). For Ibn Nhqiyh’s ‘Maqhma of the Grave-Robber’, see Chapter 6, note 98 below. 91 See Beeston (1980). 92 See Kennedy (1997), pp. 58–61. 93 Ibn Nhqiyh, Maqhmht, p.114. For this åadjth, see, for example, Ibn Qutayba, Mukhtalif al-Åadjth, trans. Lecomte (1962), p. 321, paragraph 305.
206 Philip F. Kennedy 94 Kilito (1983), p. 145. 95 Beaumont (1993). 96 In which ‘Galen . . . was portrayed as one of a group of learned men who were meeting at dinner and talking on a great variety of topics . . . when the assembled company was just ready to eat, Galen interfered: “We shall not dine until you have heard from us also what [the physicians] have to say about bread and cake and meal as well” ’, Temkin (1973), pp. 59–60. 97 See now Gutas (1998). 98 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 104–17; see Bernard Lewis’s translation quoted in Irwin (1999) pp. 180–6. 99 Ibn Buƒlhn, Dinner Party, p. 2. 100 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), p. 136. 101 Ibn Buƒlhn, Dinner Party, p. 5. 102 Ibid., p. 49, trans. Klein-Franke (1984), p. 102. 103 Ibn Buƒlhn, Dinner Party, p. 66. 104 See van Gelder (1998), p. 186. 105 Ibn Buƒlhn, Dinner Party, p. 26. 106 In adab literature, such dichotomies indicate a gamut as well as its extremes, hence the ambiguities of Jhåi©’s discursive writings. 107 Ibn Buƒlhn, Dinner Party, p. 3. 108 Ibid., p. 5. 109 Tanukhj, Faraj, III, pp. 306–13. Beeston (1971) put forward this anecdote of ‘the Weaver of Words’ (åh’ik al-kalhm, which is how the old man identifies his own profession) as a possible generative model for the Hamadhhnian maqhma. The anecdote seems to have had a wide circulation, see Hämeen-Anttila, (1998) (a), p. 84, note 6, and Sourdel (1952–4) identified a third/ninth-century secretarial manual as its possible non-narrative prototype. 110 Ibn Buƒlhn, Dinner Party, p. 11. 111 Ibid., p. 13. 112 Ibid., p. 28. 113 Grandson of Jurjjs ibn Jibrjl ibn Bukhtjshu‘ (or Bakhtjshu‘), Christian physician, who was head of the medical college in Gondeshhpur and was summoned to Baghdad by the second ‘Abbasid caliph, al-Manßur, in 148/765. Jurjjs and his descendants, who remained Christians, played leading roles in the development of medicine in Baghdad in the next three centuries and were patronized by the ‘Abbasid caliphs and court, see Klein-Franke (1984), p. 222, and Chapter 6, note 26 below. 114 There may be a deliberate cultural vector established by the presence of the Christian Jibrjl ibn Bakhtjshu‘ in the text, and the Galenic idea that wine is medicinal gives an additional dimension to wine-drinking, whether in the context of bacchic literature or that of ordinary life. 115 Ibn Buƒlhn, Dinner Party, p. 31. 116 Ibid., p. 33. 117 Klein-Franke (1984), p. 232–3 suggests that Ibn Buƒlhn is alluding wryly to problems in jurisprudence. For a Muslim, passing the lesser liquid (semen as against urine) requires the major ablution (ghusl as against wu∂u’) to achieve a state of ritual purity. Some legal schools disapproved of reasoning by analogy (qiyhs) on the basis of examples of faulty logic inherent in situations such as the one described here. 118 Ibn Buƒlhn, Dinner Party, p. 34. 119 Ibid., p. 35. 120 Ibid., p. 47. 121 Ibid., p. 53. 122 Ibid., p. 73. 123 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 121–6, 171–5.
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130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142
143 144
145 146 147 148 149 150
Kilito (1983), p. 51. Ibid., p. 53. Dols (1992), pp. 392–3; see also Monroe (1983), p. 69. It may be relevant here to note that he also wrote a book on Qur’anic philology, see Seidensticker (1998). The Monastery of Hirqil (Ezekiel), in Nu‘mhniyya, was ‘the best illustration of the monastic care of the insane in the East . . . . Apparently, the care for the insane dated from before the Arab conquests; it clearly continued to function as a madhouse in the ninth and tenth centuries’, Dols (1992), p. 203. Njshburj, ‘Uqalh’ al-Majhnjn, pp. 332–3. The Mu‘taziljs held the position, highly objectionable to most Muslims, that the Qur’hn was created, not eternal and coeval with God. Notwithstanding the madman’s question and the fact that in this anecdote Abu al-Hudhayl identifies himself as a Shj‘j, Mu‘tazilism was not necessarily associated with Shj‘ism. Wright (1896/1979), Part Third, paragraph C, p. 44. I am grateful to Professor Andras Hamori for drawing my attention to this point of grammar. Similarly Qur’hn 2:117, 6:73, 19:35, 40:68. See also Nyberg (1960) on Abu al-Hudhayl’s own thinking on the question of ‘the divine will/the eternal creating word kun’. Hämeen-Anttila (2002), p. 44, note 15, is cautiously willing to agree with Monroe (1983), p. 66 that he may have been a real person. ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 121–2. Ibid., pp. 124–5. According to Monroe (1983), p. 49, in Mu‘tazilj thinking, if God is just, then men possess free will, and God (and hence men) cannot know future events, a simplification which fits the polemical context of the madman’s tirade. See ‘Abduh’s footnotes, ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 122, 124. Ibid., p. 124, note 3. Ibid., pp. 125–6. See note 7. When Henry Fielding refers in Tom Jones to the hero’s garrulous sidekick, Partridge, as ‘the Barber of Baghdad’, it is clear that he had this character from the recently translated Thousand and One Nights in mind. A version which predates Hamadhhnj and claims to be historical is found in the encounter which took place between the first Fatimid caliph, al-Mahdj, in c. 905 AD and a barber of Qayrawhn (in modern-day Tunisia). For the ‘Life’ (Sjra) of the caliph, written by his chamberlain, Ja‘far al-Åhjib, in which this incident occurs, see Iwanow (1942), pp. 184–223 and Halm (1996), p. 427. On the possible influence of Shj‘j writings on the Maqhmht, see Stewart (forthcoming), and on possible Ismh‘jlj influences in particular, see Zakharia (1990) and Kennedy (2004). Beaumont (1993); for the ‘Maqhma of the Ma∂jra’, see notes 7 and 98 above. Trans. Haddawy (1990), pp. 249–66. The events of the ‘Barber’s Tale’ take place within the sub-frame of the ‘Tailor’s Tale’. Haddawy’s translation is based on the text of Mahdi (1984), the earliest extant (fourteenth or fifteenth-century AD), so-called ‘Syrian’ version. Mahdi (1984), p. 334. Barbers were often cuppers too; in the ‘Maqhma of Åulwhn’, the barber is termed a cupper (åajjhm), ‘Abduh (1889/1973), p. 171. Haddawy (1990), p. 254. In the ‘Syrian’ version. The two principal compilers of canonical Sunnj åad jth collections, died 261/875 and 256/870 respectively. Haddawy (1990), pp. 255–6.
208 Philip F. Kennedy 151 Prendergast (1915), p. 131; ‘Abduh (1889/1973), p. 171. 152 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 172–3. 153 This is, of course, nonsense: Qum was and remains one of the intellectual centres of the Shj‘js, who furthermore baulk at the Sunnj practice of the tarhwjå prayers mentioned in the next sentence. 154 The supererogatory prayers performed during the month of Rama∂hn and instated as practice by the second caliph, ‘Umar ibn al-Khaƒƒhb. 155 That is, when the leather was unseasoned. 156 Cooked meat and wheat pounded together. 157 Prendergast (1915), pp. 133–4. 158 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), p. 174. 159 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), p. 17; Prendergast (1915), p. 34. 160 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), p. 95; Prendergast (1915), p. 83. 161 Ash‘arj, Maqhlht al-Islhmiyyjn, I, p. 230. 162 See Gardet (1978). 163 Cf. the grammarian al-Khwhrazmj’s taunting of his rival Hamadhhnj as one who goes ‘beyond his Ash‘arite master, [who] required of the incapable what was not in his power because of his incapability’ by requiring ‘of the ignorant knowledge of the unknowable because of its impossibility’, Rowson (1987), p. 660. 164 An engaging description is given in von Grunebaum (1981), pp. 15–49. 165 The numerous editions and translations are more usefully referred to by chapter heading than by page number. 166 Manhsik occurs only at one other place in the Qur’hn, at 2:128. 167 Ibn Jubayr, Riåla, pp. 188–207. Ibn Jubayr’s description of his stopover in Medina is highly reminsicent of elements in Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht, with its account of the antics of a fraudulent, money-extorting preacher. His ‘Travels’ have been translated in to English, Broadhurst (1952). 168 Idrjsj, Nuzha, trans. Jaubert (1975), II, pp. 159–60. 169 Chenery (1898), pp. 158–9. 170 Ibid., p. 161. 171 Monroe (1983), p. 69. 172 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 130–7. 173 Ibid., pp. 131–2. 174 Ibid., p. 136. 175 Kilito (1983), p. 50. 176 The bulk of his Djwhn consists of zuhd poems, which were widely quoted and imitated. 177 Heinrichs (1996). 178 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 181–5. 179 See Kennedy (1999). 180 The Åanbaljs, named after Aåmad ibn Åanbal (164–241/780–855), were the most rigorist of the Sunnjs. 181 For detailed analyses of the sermons of Ibn al-Jawzj, which were famously moving and successful, see Leder (1984) and Swartz (1999). 182 Heinrichs (1996), p. 267 (my emphasis). 183 Heinrichs (1996), p. 268. A djwhn is a collection of poems or rash’il. 184 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 130, 132. 185 See note 100. 186 The two senses of maqhma converge in the sermons of the Mu‘tazilj theologian al-Zamakhsharj (467–538/1075–144) collected under the title al-Maqhmht fj al-Mawh‘i© (‘Homiletic Maqhmht’), which are described in Hämeen-Anttila (2002), pp. 180–3. 187 See Sanni (1998), especially pp. 6–8 and 56–8, van Gelder (forthcoming), and MaltiDouglas (1997). 188 A-yaåsabu l-inshnu an yutraka sudh. The translation of Arberry (1955) is used here and throughout unless otherwise specified.
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 209 189 Prendergast (1915), p. 108. In full, the Arabic of the line runs: ka-an-nh narh an lh nushura wa anna-nh / sudan mh la-nh ba‘da l-fanh’i maßhyiru. 190 Prendergast (1915), p. 104. 191 Ibid. 192 Ibid., p. 105. 193 Yusuf Ali (1934). 194 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 131–2. 195 The third poetic passage, ibid., p. 133. 196 The metre is ƒawjl. 197 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 132, 133, 134. 198 Ibid., p. 136. 199 Prendergast (1915), p. 110. 200 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), p. 136, note 9. 201 See Rowson (1987), Zakharia (1990), and Hämeen-Anttila (1998) (c), p. 144. 202 My emphasis. 203 Monroe (1983), p. 81. 204 On which see Rowson (1987), Richards (1991) (b) and al-Qadi (1993). 205 Monroe (1983), pp. 91–2. 206 Ibid., p. 95. 207 Monroe (1983), pp. 96–7, quoting Kilito (1976), p. 33, note 1. 208 ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 18–23. 209 Monroe (1983), p. 97. ‘Abduh (1889/1973), pp. 19–20, notes 9 and 1, goes on to explain that men will try to work out the reference to glorious deeds, and women – presumably because it is familiar from love poetry – the allusion to the pliant branches of a tree. 210 Monroe (1983), p. 170. 211 Goodman (1988), p. 35; see also Goodman (1993), which provides a translation of the ‘Maqhma of Ißfahhn’, pp. 320–1, in which Abu al-Fatå fraudulently sells prophetic incantations inspired by a phoney dream. 212 And with the use sometimes made by art historians of illustrations of the Mhqhmht of Åarjrj, see, for example Grabar (1984) and Guthrie (1995). 213 Wenzel-Teuber (1994). 214 Notes 7 and 187. 215 See, for example Hämeen-Anttila (1996–7), (1998) (b) and (2002). 216 Drory (2000), pp. 11–33. 217 On saj‘, see Messadi (1981). Iványi (1996), a study of prose rhyme in the Maqhmht, has elicited a detailed and important response in van Gelder (1999), which is the best technical guide on how to read Hamadhhnj aloud. Chabir (1997) analyses the entire lexicon of the Maqhmht in terms of frequency, but without cross-reference to other texts such as the Qur’hn. 218 See note 7 and Hämeen-Anttila (2002), passim. 219 Ashtiany [Bray] (1991); on ‘tonal slippage’, see pp. 155–6 above. 220 Kilito (1983), pp. 73–4. The reference actually seems, from Kilito’s notes, to be to Åarjrj’s narrator al-Åhrith ibn Hammhm, who may accurately be described as always in pursuit of adab. 221 As Kilito (1985/2001). Cooperson supplies a number of the references lacking in the original French version and where possible gives direct translations of the sources cited by Kilito. 222 Ibid., p. 115, note 10. 223 Ibid., p. 14. 224 A term applied to the most famous pre-Islamic odes. 225 This was the standard way of beginning an ode. 226 Kilito (1985/2001), pp. 15–16. 227 Ibid., p. 23.
210 Philip F. Kennedy 228 229 230 231 232
Kilito (1985/2001), p. 40. Goldziher (1967), II, pp. 151–2. Kilito (1985/2001), p. 54. And a Mu‘tazilj to boot. Kilito (1985/2001), p. 50.
Bibliography of works cited in this chapter ‘Abbhs, Iåshn (1977), Malhmiå Yunhniyya fj al-Adab al-‘Arabj, Beirut. ‘Abduh, Muåammad (1889/1973) (ed.), al-Hamadhhnj, al-Maqhmht, Cairo and Beirut, 7th reprinting. Abu al-‘Athhiya, Djwhn, Shukrj Fayßal (ed.), Beirut, 1964. Abu al-Muƒahhar al-Azdj, Åikhyat Abj al-Qhsim: see Mez (ed.) (1902) and Khawam, trans. (1998). See also al-Tawåjdj, Abu Åayyhn (attrib.). Abu Nuwhs, Djwhn, III, Ewald Wagner (ed.), Stuttgart, 1988. Afsaruddin, Asma and A. H. Mathias Zahnister (eds.) (1997), Humanism, Culture and Language in the Near East: Studies in Honor of George Krotkoff, Winona Lake. Ali, Yusuf (1934), An English Interpretation of the Holy Qur-an, Lahore. Arberry, A. J. (1955), The Koran Interpreted, London. al-Ash‘arj, Maqhlht al-Islhmiyyjn, Helmut Ritter (ed.), Istanbul 1929–30. Ashtiany [Bray], Julia (1991), ‘Tanukhj’s al-Faraj ba‘d al-shidda as a Literary Source’ in Jones (ed.) (1991), pp. 108–28. ——(1998), ‘Isnhds and Models of Heroes: Abu Zubayd al-Ïh’j, Tanukhj’s Sundered Lovers and Abu ’l-‘Anbas al-Íaymarj’, Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures 1, pp. 7–30. Badj‘ al-Zamhn al-Hamadhhnj: see al-Hamadhhnj and ‘Abduh (ed.) (1889/1973). Beaumont, Daniel (1993), ‘A Mighty and Never-Ending Affair: Comic Anecdote and Story in Medieval Arabic Literature’, Journal of Arabic Literature 24, pp. 139–59. —— (1994), ‘The Trickster and Rhetoric in the Maqhmht’, Edebiyât 5, pp. 1–14. Beeston, A. F. L. (1971), ‘The Genesis of the Maqhmht Genre’, Journal of Arabic Literature 2, pp. 1–12. ——, ed. and trans. (1980), The Epistle on Singing-Girls by Jhåi©, Warminster. Blachère, Régis, and Pierre Masnou, trans. (1957), Al-Hamad-hnj. Choix de maqhmht (séances), Paris. Brewer, D. S. (ed.) (1996), Prosimetrum. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Narrative in Prose and Verse, Cambridge. Broadhurst, Ronald J. C., trans. (1952), The Travels of Ibn Jubayr: Being The Chronicle of a Mediaeval Spanish Moor Concerning His Journey to The Egypt of Saladin, The Holy Cities of Arabia, Baghdad, The City of The Caliphs, The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem and The Norman kingdom of Sicily, London. Brockelmann, C. and Pellat, Ch. (1991), ‘Maqhma’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, VI, pp. 107–15. Canard, Marius, ed. and trans. (1958), ‘La Relation du voyage d’Ibn Fadlân chez les Bulgares de la Volga’, Annales de l’Institut d’Études Orientales, Algiers, pp. 41–146. ——, trans. (1981), [Ibn Fa∂lhn] Voyage chez les Bulgares de la Volga, Beirut. Chabir, Ayadi (1997), Approche lexicométrique et lexique-index des Séances d’al-Hamad-hnj, Villeneuve d’Ascq. Chenery, T., trans. (1898), The Assemblies of al-Hariri, volume I, London. Collins, Basil, trans. (2001), The Best Divisions for Knowledge of The Regions. Aåsan al-Taqhsjm fj Ma‘rifat al-Aqhljm, al-Muqaddasj, Reading.
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 211 Cooperson, Michael, trans., (2001), The Author and his Doubles, Syracuse. Dols, Michael W., Diane E. Immisch (ed.) (1992), Majnun:The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, Oxford. Donohue, John J. (2003), The Buwayhid Dynasty in Iraq 334 H./945 to 403 H./1012. Shaping Institutions for the Future, Leiden and Boston. Drory, Rina (1994), ‘Three Attempts to Legitimize Fiction in Classical Arabic Literature’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 18, pp. 146–64. —— (2000), Models and Contacts: Studies in Arabic and Comparative Poetics, Leiden, Boston and Cologne. Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature Mesiami, Julie Scott and Paul Starkey (eds), London and New York. ( EncArLit). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, H. A. R. Gibb et al (eds), Leiden 1960–2002. ( Encylopaedia of Islam). Gardet, L. (1978), ‘Istiƒh‘a’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, IV, pp. 271–2. Gelder, G. J. H. van (1998), ‘Debate literature’, EncArLit, I, p. 186. —— (1999), ‘Rhyme in Maqhmht, Or Too Many Exceptions do not Prove a Rule’, Journal of Semitic Studies 44, pp. 75–82. —— (forthcoming), ‘Forbidden Firebrands: frivolous iqtibhs (quotation from the Qur’hn) according to medieval Arab critics’. Ghazoul, Ferial (1996), Nocturnal Poetics, Cairo. Goldziher, Ignaz (1967), Muslim Studies, S. M. Stern (ed.), trans. C. R. Barber and S. M. Stern, London. (First published in German, Halle 1889–90.) Goodman, L. E. (1988), ‘Hamadhhnj, Schadenfreude, and Salvation through Sin’, Journal of Arabic Literature 19, pp. 27–39. —— (1993), ‘The Sacred and the Secular: Rival Themes in Arabic Literature’, in Mir (ed.) (1993), pp. 288–330. Grabar, Oleg (1984), The Illustrations of the Maqhmht, Chicago. Grunebaum, G. E. von (1981), Muhammadan Festivals, London. (First published New York 1951.) Gutas, Dmitri (1998), Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbhsid society (2nd – 4th/8th – 10th centuries), London and New York. Guthrie, Shirley (1995), Arab Social Life in The Middle Ages: An Illustrated Study, London. Haddawy, Hussein, trans. (1990), The Arabian Nights [I], New York. Halm, Heinz, trans. Michael Bonner (1996), The Empire of The Mahdi: The Rise of The Fatimids, Leiden. al-Hamadhhnj, Badj‘ al-Zamhn, al-Maqhmht, Muåammad ‘Abduh (ed.), Cairo 1889 and reprints. The pagination of the reprints differs slightly from that of the 1889 edition; the edition used here is the 7th Beirut printing of 1973 ‘Abduh (ed.) (1889/1973). —— : see also Prendergast, trans. (1915). Hämeen-Anttila, Jaakko (1996–7) [recte 1998], ‘Ibn Shuhayd and His Rishlat al-Tawhbi‘ wa’l-Zawhbi‘ ’, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 1, pp. 65–80 (http://www.uib.no/jais/ jais.htm). —— (1997) [recte 1998], ‘al-Khmil al-Khwhrizmj and his Kithb al-Riåal as a maqhma collection’, Anaquel de Estudios Arabes 8, pp. 141–62. —— (1998) (a), ‘Al-Hamad-hnj and the Early History of the Maqhma’, in Vermeulen and De Smet (eds) (1998), pp. 86–96. —— (1998) (b), ‘The maqhma of the Lion’, Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures, 1, pp. 141–52.
212 Philip F. Kennedy Hämeen-Anttila, Jaakko (1998) (c), ‘The Author and His Sources: An Analysis of al-Maqhma al-Bishrjya’, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 88, pp. 143–64. —— (2002), Maqhma. A History of a Genre, Wiesbaden. al-Åarjrj: see Chenery trans. (1898). Heinrichs, Wolfhart (1996), ‘Prosimetrical Genres in Classical Arabic Literature’, in Brewer (ed.) (1996), pp. 249–75. Hole, Richard (1797), Remarks on the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment in which the Origins of Sindbad’s Voyages, and other Oriental Fictions, is Particularly Considered, London. Hovannisian, R. G., and G. Sabagh (eds) (1999), Religion and Culture in Medieval Islam (Fourteenth Giorgio Levi Della Vida Biennial Conference), Cambridge. Hoyland, Robert G. and Philip F. Kennedy (eds) (2004), Islamic Reflections Arabic Musings. Studies in Honour of Alan Jones, Oxford. Ibn al-Athjr, Îiyh’ al-Djn, Washy al-Marqum fj Åall al-Man©um, Baghdad 1989. Ibn Buƒlhn, Ibn Buƒlhn. The Physicians’ Dinner Party edited from Arabic Manuscripts, Felix-KleinFranke (ed.), Wiesbaden 1985, trans. ibid. (1984). Ibn Fa∂lhn: see Canard ed. and trans. (1958) and trans. (1981). Ibn Jubayr, Riålat Ibn Jubayr, W. Wright and M. J. de Goeje (eds), London 1907, trans. Broadhurst (1952). Ibn Nhqiyh, Maqhmht, Åasan ‘Abbhs (ed.), Alexandria 1988. Ibn Qutayba: see Lecomte, trans. (1962). Ibn Sharaf al-Qayrawhnj: see Pellat, ed. and trans. (1953). al-Idrjsj, Nuzhat al-Mushthq fj Ikhtirhq al-Hfhq: see Jaubert, trans. (1975). Irwin, Robert (1999), Night and Horses and the Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature, Harmondsworth. Iványi, Tamás (1996), ‘On Rhyming Endings and Symmetric Phrases in al-Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht’, in Smart (ed.) (1996), pp. 210–28. Iwanow, W. (1942), Ismaili Tradition Concerning The Rise of The Fatimids, London, Calcutta and Bombay. al-Jhåi©, Kithb al-Bukhalh’: see Serjeant, trans. (1997). ——, Rishlat al-Qiyhn: see Beeston, ed. and trans. (1980). Jaubert, P. – A., trans. (1975), La Géographie d’Edrisi, Amsterdam. Jones, Alan (ed.) (1991), Arabicus Felix: Luminosus Britannicus. Essays in Honour of A. F. L. Beeston on his Eightieth Birthday, Reading. de Jong, F. (ed.) (1993), Verse and the Fair Sex: Studies in Arabic Poetry and in The Representation of Women in Arabic Literature, Utrecht. Kennedy, Philip F. (1997), The Wine Song in Classical Arabic Poetry, Oxford. —— (1999), ‘Some Demon Muse: Structure and Allusion in al-Hamadhhnj’s Maqhma Ibljsiyya’, Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures 2, pp. 115–35. —— (2000), ‘Reason and Revelation, or A Philosopher’s Squib (the Sixth Maqhma of Ibn Nhqiyh)’, Journal of Islamic Studies 3 (http://www.uib.no/jais/jais.htm). —— (2004), ‘Recognition and Metonymy in Early Ismh‘jlj Memoirs: The Case of Ibn Åawshab “Manßur al-Yaman” ’, in Hoyland and Kennedy (eds) (2004), pp. 91–119. Khawam, René, trans. (1998), Vingt-quatre heures de la vie d’une canaille, Paris. Kilito, Abdelfattah (1976), ‘Le genre “séance”: une introduction’, Studia Islamica 43, pp. 25–51. —— (1982), al-Adab wa al-Gharhba, Beirut. —— (1983), Les Séances: récits et codes culturels chez Hamadhhnj et Åarjrj, Paris. —— (1985), L’Auteur et ses doubles: essai sur la culture arabe classique, Paris, trans. Cooperson (2001) ( Kilito 1985/2001).
The Maqhmht as a nexus of interests 213 —— (1987), al-Ghh’ib: Dirhsa fj Maqhma li-al-Åarjrj, Casablanca. —— (1992), L’Œil et l’aiguille: essais sur ‘Les mille et une nuits’, Paris. Klein-Franke, Felix, trans. (1984), Ibn Buƒlhn. Das Ärtzbankett aus arabischen Handschriften übersetzt, Stuttgart. Lecomte, Gérard, trans. (1962), Le Traité des divergences du Åad jt- d’Ibn Qutayba (mort en 276/889). Traduction annotée du Kithb Ta’wjl Muh-talif al-Åadjt-, Damascus. Leder, Stefan (1984), Ibn al-Gauzj und seine Kompilation wider die Leidenschaft, Beirut and Wiesbaden. Mahdi, Muhsin (ed.) (1984), The Thousand and One Nights (Alf Layla wa-Layla). From the Earliest Known Sources, I, Leiden. Malti-Douglas, Fedwa (1985), ‘Maqhmht and Adab: “Al-Maqhma al-Ma∂jriyya” of al-Hamadhhnj’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 105, pp. 247–59. ——(1997), ‘Playing with The Sacred: Religious Intertext in Adab Discourse’, in Afsaruddin and Zahnister (eds) (1997), pp. 51–9. Mattock, J. N. (1984), ‘The Early History of The Maqhma’, Journal of Arabic Literature 15, pp. 1–18. Meisami, Julie Scott (1993), ‘Arabic Mujun Poetry: The Literary Dimension’, in de Jong (ed.) (1993), pp. 8–30. —— (1998), ‘Ibn al-Åajjhj’, EncArLit, I, p. 329. Messadi, Mahmoud (1981), Essai sur le rythme dans la prose rimée en arabe, Tunis. Mez, Adam (ed.) (1902), Abulk.âsim ein bagdader Sittenbild von Muåammad ibn aåmad abulmuƒahhar alazdî , Heidelberg. Mir, Mustansir (ed.) (1993), Literary Heritage of Classical Islam. Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of James A. Bellamy, Princeton, NJ. Monroe, James T. (1983), The Art of Badj‘ az-Zamhn al-Hamadhhnj as Picaresque Narrative, Beirut. ——, trans. (2002), al-Maqhmht al-Luzumiyya by Abu l-Ïhhir Muåammad ibn Yusuf al-Tamjmj al-Saraqusƒj ibn al-Amtarkuwj (d. 538/1143), translated, with a preliminary study, Leiden, Boston and Cologne. Moreh, Shmuel (1992), Live Theatre and Dramatic Literature in The Medieval Arab World, Edinburgh. Munjr, Waljd (1996), ‘al-Maqhma wa al-ta’wjl: dirhsa fj kithb al-Ghh’ib li ‘Abd al-Fatthå Kjljƒu’, Alif [Cairo], 1996, pp. 366–75. al-Muqaddasj: see Collins, trans. (2001). Mu߃afh, Muåammad Qhsim (1984), ‘al-Naqd al-adabj fj Maqhmht Badj‘ al-Zamhn al-Hamadhhnj’, al-Mawrid 13, iii, pp. 63–72. al-Njshburj, al-Åasan ibn Muåammad, ‘Uqalh’ al-Majhnjn, ‘Umar al-As’ad (ed.), Beirut 1987. Nyberg, H. S. (1960), ‘Abu ’l-Hudhayl al-‘Allhf ’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, I, pp. 127–9. Omri, Mohamed-Salah (1998), ‘There is a Jhåi© for Every Age: Narrative Construction and Intertextuality in al-Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht’, Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures 1, pp. 31–46. Ouyang, Wen-chin (1997), Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Culture. The Making of a Tradition, Edinburgh. Pellat, Charles, ed. and trans. (1953), Questions de critique littéraire (Mash’il al-Intiqhd), Algiers. Prendergast, W., trans. (1915), The Maqhmht of Badj‘ al-Zamhn al-Åamadhhnj: Translated with an Introduction and Notes, Historical and Grammatical, London. al-Qh∂j, Wadhd (1993), ‘Badj‘ al-Zamhn al-Hamadhhnj and His Social and Political Vision’, in Mir (ed.) (1993), pp. 197–223. Qur’hn: see Ali, trans. (1934) and Arberry, trans. (1955).
214 Philip F. Kennedy Richards, D. S. (1991) (a), ‘The Maqhmht of al-Hamadhhnj: General Remarks and a Consideration of the Manuscripts’, Journal of Arabic Literature, 22, pp. 89–99. —— (1991) (b), ‘The Rash’il of Badj‘ al-Zaman al-Hamadhhnj’, in Jones (ed.) (1991), pp. 142–62. Richter-Bernburg, Lutz (1998), ‘Geographical literature’, EncArLit, I, pp. 244–7. Rowson, Everett K. (1987), ‘Religion and Politics in the Career of Badj‘ al-Zamhn al-Hamadhhnj’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 107, pp. 653–73. Sanni, Amidu (1998), The Arabic Theory of Prosification and Versification, Wiesbaden. Seidensticker, T. (1998), ‘al-Njshburj, al-Åasan ibn Muåammad’, EncArLit, II, p. 588. Serjeant, R. B., trans. (1997), Abu ‘Uthmhn ibn Baår al-Jhåi©. The Book of Misers. A Translation of al-Bukhalh, Reading. Smart, J. R. (ed.) (1996), Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Language and Literature, Richmond, Surrey. Sourdel, Dominique (1952–4), ‘Le Livre des secrétaires de ‘Abdallhh al-Bagdhdj’, Bulletin d’Études Orientales, 14, pp. 115–53. Stewart, Devin (forthcoming), Intertextuality and the Maqhmht of Badj‘ al-Zamhn al-Hamadhhnj. Swartz, M. (1999), ‘Arabic Rhetoric and The Art of The Homily in Medieval Islam’, in Hovannisian and Sabagh (eds) (1999), pp. 36–65. al-Tanukhj, al-Faraj ba‘da al-Shidda, ‘Abbud al-Shhljj (ed.), Beirut 1978. al-Tawåjdj, Abu Åayyhn (attrib.), al-Rishla al-Baghdhdiyya ( Abu al-Muƒahhar al-Azdj, Åikhyat Abj al-Qhsim), ‘Abbud al-Shhljj (ed.), Beirut 1980. Temkin, Owsei (1973), Galenism. Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy, Ithaca and London. al-Tha‘hlibj, Nathr al-Na©m wa-Åall al-‘Aqd, Cairo 1317. ——, Yatjmat al-Dahr fj Mahhsin Ahl al-‘Aßr, M. M. Qumayåa (ed.), Beirut 1400/2000. Thousand and One Nights: see Haddawy, trans. (1990) and Mahdi (ed.) (1984). Vermeulen, U. and D. De Smet (eds) (1998), Philosophy and Arts in The Islamic World, Leuven. Wenzel-Teuber, Wendelin (1994), Die Maqamen des Hamadhani als Spiegel der islamischer Gesellschaft des 4. Jahrhunderts der Hidschra, Würzburg. Wright, William (1979), A Grammar of the Arabic Language. Translated from the German of Caspari, 3rd, revised edition, Cambridge. (This edition first printed 1896.) Zakharia, Katia (1990), ‘al-Maqhma al-Bimriyya. Une épopée mystique’, Arabica 37 pp. 251–90.
6
The physical world and the writer’s eye Al-Tanukhj and medicine Julia Bray
Modernity and medicine in the third to fourth/ ninth to tenth centuries Medicine, the translation movement and rationalism The history of medicine involves not only the development of its own theories and practices, but also laymen’s attitudes towards it in different times and places. In this chapter, it is a sample of the attitudes of laymen that I shall examine, through adab stories – stories meant for the common reader rather than for medical experts – which claim to reflect the real-life experiences of people living in Muslim Mesopotamia, Iraq and points east in the fourth/tenth century. These stories offer a particular perspective on the representation both of the physical world and of the world of ideas. This is because the adab medical story embodies a special kind of modernity. Its subject matter is non-traditional; so, by and large, is the way in which it treats it; and it circulated among people who prided themselves on having minds that were open to non-traditional thought. Why should medicine, in particular, have been associated with modernity? The third/ninth century had seen a significant growth of the medical profession, probably in consequence of the expansion of cities and the increasingly sophisticated expectations of city-dwellers, but also as a result of a systematic development of medical theory and practical medical knowledge, stimulated by what modern scholars call the translation movement.1 Which came first, demand for medicine or supply, is hard to say, but both seem to have derived from the example set by the élite, the new ‘Abbasid regime, its entourage and bureaucrats. Court physicians trained in the Graeco-Roman tradition make their appearance in ‘Abbasid histories and anecdotal literature at an early date,2 and the third/ninth century witnessed an organized programme, under caliphal and court patronage in Baghdad, of translations into Arabic of Greek and Syriac texts, for which the main source was the still flourishing Christian monasteries of Mesopotamia and Iraq.3 The Muslim patrons of translation were selective; they seem to have been interested for the most part in intellectual tools which could be given general application, such as logic, and in practical ones such as mathematics and medicine: in intellectual technology, as one might call it, and not in the recovery
216 Julia Bray of a past in which they did not share and whose literature and beliefs had no relevance to their political concerns.4 Rationalism, however – the essential underpinning of the technology the ‘Abbasids wished to harness – is more than a tool. The wider impact on Muslims of the translation movement reflects this. Its most visible stimulus was to theology, philosophy and political theory, and to science. Some of the ideas it generated passed on into general circulation, and their origins were soon lost sight of; others had a limited acceptance, or provoked hostile reactions among traditionally-minded Muslims. Non-rationalist modernity There were other paths to modernity than through the products of the translation movement. The effects of the new learning on shallow minds are mocked by Ibn Qutayba (213–76/828–89). Writing in the middle of the third/ninth century, he was appalled by the ignorance of the members of the ever-expanding bureaucracy in the metropolis. Moving in circles where new ideas reached them quickly, they could mouth fashionable philosophical jargon, but without knowing what it meant, and they had no general knowledge and no command of the tools of their profession5 – and learned Arabic grammarians and Muslim religious scholars too, he remarked in passing, were often grotesquely ignorant of the practicalities of their subjects and of anything outside them.6 So-called polite society was badly in need of basic education. Gérard Lecomte suggests that the crisis was caused by the sacking of senior administrators and their underlings when the caliph al-Mutawakkil (232–47/847–61) turned against the pro-Mu‘tazilj cadres of the previous reigns, who had been eager consumers of the ideas thrown up by the translation movement. They were replaced by increasing numbers of recent converts who (at least according to Ibn Qutayba) had a weak grasp both of Arab culture and of their own intellectual traditions. Hence – as James Montgomery argues – Ibn Qutayba’s keen engagement with the writings of al-Jhåi© (d. c.255/869), the champion of Arab culture according to a Mu‘tazilj viewpoint.7 Both Jhåi© and Ibn Qutayba, and their political masters, had this much in common: they were ambivalent towards foreignness. Muslims were only a minority of the general population, and far from united in their beliefs and loyalties, so that although Muslim political dominance was assured, there was still unease at the thought of the influence that non-Muslims or insincere converts might wield. Converts must assimilate Arabness as well as Islam. Ibn Qutayba rose to the challenge. Though he was a man of religious training and outlook, and a judge (qh∂j) by profession, he set about compiling self-help manuals for the new, poorly educated intake of khtibs (bureaucrats). His aim was to give them a sense of the richness and moral authority not just of Arab culture, but also of the other cultures to which they were heir.8 This is modernity of sorts, but a conservative modernity. Ibn Qutayba shows openness and imagination in the way he welcomes strangers into the fold – an example is his life-long interest in the Old and New Testaments, and in the preface to ‘Uyun al-Akhbhr
The physical world and the writer’s eye 217 (‘Choice Narratives’), he goes so far as to say: This book, although not on the subject of the Qur’hn and sunna [model of behaviour established by the Prophet] . . . yet points to sublime things . . . the ways to [God] are many . . . it shall not disparage truth should you hear it from polytheists.9 He thus invites his readers to enjoy what is best in all cultures; but the best does not include Aristotelian logic and impertinent speculation: Had the author of Åadd al-Manƒiq [‘Logic’, i.e. Aristotle] lived until our times, so as to hear how subtle is the discussion (kalhm) of matters of religion, jurisprudence, inheritance law and grammar, he would have reckoned himself dumb; and could he have heard the discourse (kalhm) of the Prophet and his Companions, he would have known for a certainty that the Arabs possess ‘wisdom and speech decisive (al-åikma wa faßl al-khiƒhb)’ (Qur’hn 38:20).10 The term kalhm, which had been appropriated by rationalist theology, is used ironically, in its non-specialized sense; what Ibn Qutayba is saying is that productive discussion had always been part of the Arab and Muslim tradition. Arabic speakers, whether or not Arabs themselves, should look to the example of divinely blessed Arab native wit, and cultivate it in a disciplined fashion: this way lies the path of intellectual and moral righteousness. A hybrid modernity Whether the picture of bureaucratic ignorance was really as bad as Ibn Qutayba painted it – Lecomte notes that his works were commissioned by highly placed members of the new, anti-Mu‘tazilj regime, and argues that their purpose was to re-educate the bureaucracy politically as well as professionally11 – and whether or not his efforts helped to improve things, the next generations of functionaries were often formidably well-read and intellectually versatile. They had digested the excitements of the new learning, and now combined them with a solid training in Tradition (Åadjth), the Qur’hn and its interpretation, including the law, together with a detailed knowledge of Arabic philology, poetry, literary and historical anecdotes (akhbhr) and various professional competences – very much the programme outlined by Ibn Qutayba.12 This is the background of al-Muåassin ibn ‘Alj al-Tanukhj, the author or compiler of the medical anecdotes we shall discuss, and these are the kind of people addressed by him. Since Tanukhj derived much of his material from, and many of his stories are about, khtibs,13 he, like Ibn Qutayba, was most likely writing mainly for an audience of khtibs. There is, though, a noticeable difference: Tanukhj, a hundred years later, addresses his readers as equals and assumes that they have the same intellectual range and inquisitiveness as himself. Nevertheless, like Ibn Qutayba, he also has a programme, although not one which received any official backing, since
218 Julia Bray he had fallen from favour by the time he turned to writing. As with Ibn Qutayba, there are two strands in the materials he puts before the reader. One is decidedly modern, and the other is traditional, at least in some respects. His al-Faraj ba‘da al-Shidda (‘Deliverance from Evil’) is a systematic and wide-ranging development of a pious commonplace which had been explored in earlier anthologies,14 the idea that hardship will be followed by relief and that God will deliver those who call upon him sincerely. It is firmly rooted in the Qur’hn and in Åadjth. Chapters One and Two respectively are devoted to Qur’anic passages about deliverance and to åadjths, many of which were taught to Tanukhj by his father.15 But Tanukhj’s starting point represents a minority view: it is that God is necessarily just in ways apparent to human reason, a Mu‘tazilj tenet, for Tanukhj was a declared Mu‘tazilj. The adherence was one he had inherited from his family. Thanks to charismatic figures, Mu‘tazilism had built up significant pockets of popular following in southern Iraq, where he was brought up, and it also, once again, enjoyed élite support, from the Buyids, who had made themselves overlords of the caliphs in 334/945, shortly after he was born;16 but despite this, there was a growing intellectual as well as populist backlash against it.17 In Mu‘tazilj thinking, because God is just, men choose their own actions, for good or ill.18 The Faraj’s thirteen chapters of anecdotes (there is a fourteenth chapter of poems) go on to explore the guiding theme of deliverance as much from the aspect of Mu‘tazilj theodicy, which Tanukhj referrs to in Chapter One of the Faraj, as from that of divine mercy. They demonstrate that God has designed the world in such a way that, even unwittingly or accidentally, men can by their own actions set in motion a chain of events that will extricate them from seemingly desperate plights. The determined and all-embracing optimism which Tanukhj displays in this work – many of whose heroes and heroines seem barely deserving of their deliverance, even when, as is often the case, it is merely material and represents at best a worldly moral transaction between the rescuing and rescued parties – is not mainstream even in terms of Mu‘tazilism. It seems to be his own interpretation of a particular trend in Mu‘tazilj thinking which had developed fairly recently in the area where he was brought up and which included a concept of grace.19 Perhaps, in one sense, it is a trivialization of serious theology. By bracketing the professional reverses of khtibs and the woes of lovers with the trials and persecutions suffered by the Qur’anic prophets, Tanukhj certainly seems to be suggesting that the deliverances of all his protagonists are equally tokens of grace which offer promise of ultimate salvation – a comfortable rather than rigorist attitude. On the other hand, he brings a richness of human detail to bear on a problem which, when stated in abstract terms, can appear arid and too remote for ordinary people to apply to themselves. By pressing a wide variety of familiar types of story into service as concrete, touching or comical, examples of how faraj (deliverance) operates in this world, he makes it possible to accept imaginatively and emotionally, through the example of experiences which many of his readers will have shared, that divine justice is compatible with human free will and the ways in which different kinds of people exercise it. Story by story, he builds up a picture of a divine pattern of requital which, in modern times, is realized through fully intelligible this-worldly agency,20 with one human action
The physical world and the writer’s eye 219 leading to another and finally to faraj in a process in which everyone can collaborate, either as rescuers or as beneficiaries. The same thinking carries through into Tanukhj’s attitude towards the world of nature. Nature is not arbitrary. To those able to read them, it offers signs which are clues to how men may use it for their benefit; and in Tanukhj’s purview, the human body, in peril from natural forces such as wild beasts (Chapter Nine of the Faraj ), and especially in sickness and in cure, is the most important interface with nature. (He shows no interest in the curiosities of nature for their own sake.) Hence his liking for medical stories: they offer proof, based on experience, of the cohesion of visible reality with the underlying realities of reason and divine justice. In the Faraj, medical tales receive a chapter of their own (Chapter Ten, with fifteen stories). Tanukhj’s earlier collection of anecdotes, Nishwhr al-Muåh∂ara (‘The Table-Talk of a Mesopotamian Judge’),21 does not state a theological premise, and its overall plan is not easy to decipher since large parts of it are now lost, but it shows an equal interest in the rationally explicable causes of apparent coincidence, and in medical stories.22
Tanukhj’s medical stories and their authorship Tanukhj’s sources There are two main points to be noted about these stories from the outset. One concerns the now familiar issue of veracity, discussed extensively in earlier chapter in this volume: the question, in this instance, not of whether the content of the stories is factually true (we can leave this on one side for the moment), but of who was their real author. Although they are attributed to different people, they are all told to or recorded by Tanukhj, who was born in Basra in 329/940 and died in Baghdad in 384/994, and was a qh∂j and man of letters (adjb), and at one period of his life a courtier of ‘A∂ud al-Dawla, the Buyid ruler of Iraq (367–72/978–83). Thanks to this varied career, and to his family’s network of acquaintances, he had a wide range of personal informants; but how faithfully did he reproduce what they told him?23 The medical stories in particular show a marked similarity of outlook. Might Tanukhj have invented them to reflect his own ideas, and given them plausible pedigrees (isnhds) so as to make them seem genuine? The style generally affords few clues as to authorship, and whereas many of the non-medical stories in his Faraj are reproduced accurately from other extant sources, which Tanukhj acknowledges, most of the medical stories are unique. We cannot check any of the sources of the Nishwhr, since Tanukhj made it a point of pride that none of the stories in it had previously been written down, although he did re-use some of them himself in his Faraj, where they are usually slightly polished up. Nevertheless, the isnhds offer some clues. Most of the people named in them, whether as sources or as transmitters, can be identified in some detail and fitted to a background: they are not fictional. Nor would they usually have been well enough known to the wider reading public for it to be worth Tanukhj’s while to foist spurious authorship on them. And, in fact, he demonstrably takes the matter of identifying copyright and paths of transmission very seriously. Even when, in
220 Julia Bray the Faraj, he quotes from well-known works, he likes to give the names of the people who taught them to him or gave him copies of them. This was good scholarly practice, a reflex of the way he was trained in both Åadjth (largely by his own family) and adab (by the leading adjb of the time, Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj) to record all his sources. However, from the sort of intimate, even trivial details he gives about them, one senses that he also wished to leave a record of himself by memorializing the people who had formed his outlook, and to give them, and their stories, the same formal, if not heroic, status as the adab and adjbs recorded in the monumental Kithb al-Aghhnj (‘Book of Songs’) of his teacher, Abu al-Faraj. In effect, through his use of detailed isnhds to preface his stories, Tanukhj is representing two worlds simultaneously – the world as shown in the stories themselves, and the world of his own intellectual contacts and affinities. Taken together, the stories and isnhds affirm a certain shared world view, even if it may sometimes be suspected that the detail of the way in which things are presented and described in them is Tanukhj’s own. The prototypes of Tanukhj’s medical stories A second point to be noted is that most of the medical stories are self-evidently literary and have developed their own generic conventions. This is especially apparent if we compare them with the case notes of al-Rhzj (Rhazes, c.251–313/ 865–925): the great physician’s cures are not nearly as spectacular or elegant as those related by Tanukhj, and sometimes his treatments fail. Tanukhj’s Rhzj and his other medical heroes do not derive from case notes but from exemplary tales, and their forerunners are found not in literary, but in medical adab, which in turn draws on late antique stories about the exploits of Galen and others.24 Often these prototypes can no longer be traced even in the writings of professional physicians, such as the Adab al-Ïabjb (‘Medical Ethics’) of al-Ruhhwj (Isåhq ibn ‘Alj of Edessa), who seems to have been active some time in the third/ninth century,25 and I do not think it likely that Tanukhj or his sources were immediately conscious of this ancestry, the more so as by the fourth/tenth century, Graeco-Islamic medicine had produced several all but legendary figures of its own to rival those of the past, such as the Bukhtjshu‘ dynasty of physicians, whose skills as courtiers no less than medical men won them a place in mainstream adab.26 Guiding conventions of the medical stories These stories, then, are not technical literature; but they show a considerable interest in medical terminology, in diagnosis, and in the underlying natural processes that are invoked to explain how cures work: in cause and effect. This is only to be expected in the depiction of physician-heroes; as J. C. Bürgel stresses, What the medical textbooks contained were only the general facts of anatomy, pathology, therapeutics, etc. From these general rules . . . physicians had to derive the appropriate individual treatment for a given case by
The physical world and the writer’s eye 221 means of logical procedure, especially by the so-called analogical conclusion . . . . This was why no one could be a good physician without having thoroughly learned the rules of logic.27 However, it is not only the medical heroes who are close reasoners in Tanukhj’s stories; often, subsidiary characters are too. Moreover, the underlying rationalistic attitude holds good throughout the corpus of Tanukhj’s medical stories, despite the fact that the practices shown in them do not all derive from the new, scientifc tradition. Some are based on an idealized view of Bedouin or other folk medicine, and others on the ideas behind what was coming to be called Prophetic medicine (though Tanukhj does not use the term), which used prayer and a variety of other treatments allegedly approved by the Prophet.28
The stories in detail A story with no prototype: the Siamese twins The curiosity value to its original audience of the first story I shall cite is so evident that, in spite of the caveats just outlined, it could almost be taken as a record of raw observation, the more so as it has lost any literary context it might once have had in Tanukhj’s Nishwhr, and has survived only as a quotation in a later history.29 It is set in the early 340s (950s) in Mosul, and is told jointly by two men, one of whom, Abu Muåammad Yaåyh ibn Muåammad al-Azdj, who is cited twenty-nine times as a source by Tanukhj in the Nishwhr and the Faraj, had served the Åamdanid ruler of Mosul, Nhßir al-Dawla (317–58/929–69), and is therefore likely enough to have witnessed the episode described. (His father in turn had been secretary (khtib) to the Åamdanid prince of Aleppo, Sayf al-Dawla (333–56/945–67), whom Tanukhj’s father also served at one point in his career. Al-Azdj is one of a number of his father’s Åamdanid court connections with whom Tanukhj remained in touch.) He and his fellow-narrator refer to a host of unnamed eyewitnesses of ‘proven reliability’ in Mosul and elsewhere. Independently of this, they know that the story is true because it is so famous and widespread and there are no breaks in the chains of transmission through which they have heard it. (Tawhtur, a technical term applied to the transmission of Prophetic traditions, is the word they use.)30 The different sources of information are unobtrusively conflated and channelled through the named narrators, and the language is in several registers, including unpolished direct speech. It is made to sound as if it was jotted down exactly as heard. It is noticeable, however, that the opening descriptive passage is so constructed as to anticipate possible queries and comments, which I supply in square brackets. This is not, therefore, a naive transcription of unexamined impressions. There is no plot; in essence, the story is simply a description of: two men who had been sent by the lord of Armenia to Nhßir al-Dawla as an object of wonderment (li-al-‘ujuba). They were about thirty years old, and were joined together down one side from just above the groin to slightly
222 Julia Bray below the armpit. [Thirty seems a good age for conjoined twins to have reached, and is something to wonder at in its own right. It suggests that they had been very well looked after.] Their father, who had come with them, said that they had been born like this [A skilful piece of condensed reported speech based on good psychology: the question it anticipates or answers is silly, but natural.]. We used to see them dressed in two separate shirts and two pairs of trousers – each of them was dressed quite separately [which must have called for ingenious tailoring, and again suggests care, or perhaps showmanship, on their father’s part] – but because they were joined at the shoulder and arm, it was difficult for them to walk. Each would put the arm on the side where he was joined to his brother round his brother’s back, and this is how they would walk. They would ride together on a single beast [we must picture them sitting sideways; one behind the other would have been impossible], and neither of them could do anything unless the other did it too. If one of them wanted to defecate, the other had to go with him even if he didn’t need to. Their father told our informants that when they were born he had wanted to separate them, but was told that they would die of it because they were joined at the side, and that they mustn’t be severed, so he let them be, and they were fine. They were received by Nhßir al-Dawla and given robes of honour, and the people of Mosul, who used to go to marvel at them, gave them money. Several of these Mosulis said that when they were returning to their own country, one of them fell ill and died. After a few days he began to rot; his brother was still alive but unable to move independently, and his father was unable to bury the corpse, until the surviving brother succumbed to grief, and to the stench, and died too, and they were buried together. Up to this point, the twins have been discussed in terms more sensational than scientific. Now follows a scientific and psychological account of them: Nhßir al-Dawla had summoned physicians to look at them and had asked if there was any way of separating them. The physicians asked the brothers if, when they felt hungry, they both felt hungry at the same time. One of them replied: ‘If one of us feels hungry, the other does too a short while later, and if one of us takes physic to loosen his bowels, it affects the other one soon after. Sometimes one of us needs to defecate when the other doesn’t, but soon after the other one does too’ [This again must be a condensation of a series of questions and answers, unless the brothers had been through the same sort of examination before and could anticipate what the physicians wanted to know.]. The physicians inspected them and found that they had only one abdominal cavity, one belly-button and one stomach, a single liver and a single spleen, and that where they were joined they had no ribs. From this they knew that if they were separated they would die. However, they found that they had two separate penises and four testicles.
The physical world and the writer’s eye 223 Sometimes they would fall out with each other and quarrel, so violently that they would swear never to speak to each other, for days on end, and then they would make it up. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this anecdote is its lack of comment. Although it seems to be told from two fairly distinct angles – that of the spectators of the objects of wonderment, and that of the father and his children – everyone involved appears to share the same pragmatic attitude. The father had wanted normality for his children; but when this proves impossible, he and they adjust to an approximation to normality. Nhßir al-Dawla shows a spirit of enquiry proper to an intelligent prince, whether out of a wish to give his physicians an opportunity to demonstrate their prowess or from more humane motives it is left to us to guess. The twins are a physical and psychological curiosity, but the mystery of two human personalities, or souls, sharing parts of the same body provokes no theological or philosophical speculation. No one in the story – none of the actors, and none of the narrators or spectators – invokes God or any higher principles. Type and antitype: traditional piety versus the search for cure Many of these points hold good for all Tanukhj’s medical stories. In most of them, medical treatment is shown as being eagerly sought without religious qualms. In all, cure is desired and welcomed without doctrinal probing. No one expresses a preference for the consolation of faith and prayer. Pious resignation is not an option – if a painful illness seems incurable, the patient may even be prepared to commit suicide. No moral value is attached to the experience of physical suffering, and no moral censure is extended to people who have reached the end of their endurance and simply wish to die. It is worth stressing, as Bürgel has done, that these attitudes were not universal, even though they appear so in Tanukhj’s corpus of medical stories. To cite some examples of contrary attitudes, a åadjth has the Prophet say: ‘A believer will suffer no sickness nor even a thorn to pierce his skin without expiating one of his sins.’31 Bürgel observes not only that ‘a positive sense [was] assigned to suffering in this saying, as in similar ones,’ but that From here it was only a small step to the conviction of many pious Muslims that suffering was a religious virtue and disease a sign of holiness. The Prophet was reported to have said: ‘He who dies on a sickbed dies the death of a martyr and is safe against the inquisition of the tomb.’32 Assigning a theological sense and moral reward to illness rested on the ‘argument . . . that no such thing as natural causality existed . . . . All . . . phenomena were immediately caused by the prime cause, which was God.’33 If a sufferer could not summon up true resignation, he should at least try to temper his longing for death by saying: ‘O God, keep me alive as long as life is better for me, and let me die if death is better for me.’34
224 Julia Bray Tanukhj’s stories are, in a sense, antitypes of such åadjths or the attitudes they embody: the latter provide the thesis against which his tales of scientific medicine develop a tacit counter-argument. Some types of cure stories In matters of structure and detail – plot and motifs – since the literary setting of the remaining stories that I shall cite has survived intact, they need not be taken at face value like the story of the Siamese twins. Indeed, they are organized by Tanukhj into groups or sequences which emphasize the recurrence of motifs and of basically similar situations, so that even when the plot is slight, the reader will appreciate the narrator’s skill in unfolding it. This holds true of all the stories in the Faraj, not just the medical ones: they are arranged by theme or type, with the common situation they illustrate announced in Tanukhj’s chapter headings. The Nishwhr is also arranged typologically, but by loose association and without chapter headings. Here is one of the simplest forms of medical anecdote, which consists of little more than a puzzle: a baffling illness is subjected to an equally baffling treatment; once the cure is achieved, the physician provides a rational explanation. The following example of the type is set in a ‘mirror for princes’ frame or semi-frame, which provides an unusual and piquant contrast to the intimacy and immediacy of the story, and serves to announce the physician’s dual skills as a medical detective and a man of the world. The foregrounded narrator is a Chief Qh∂j of Baghdad, al-Åusayn ibn Abj ‘Umar, member of a well-known legal dynasty, who died in about 330/940. The person who introduces the Chief Qh∂j’s narrative is described as a åhfi© (‘memorizer’ usually of the Qur’hn) and is called al-Ja‘hbj (he died in 355/966, and other sources inform us that he was a qh∂j as well as a formidable memorizer of åadjths).35 Ja‘hbj told the story to Tanukhj’s informant, the qh∂j Abu al-Fa∂l Muåammad Ibn al-Marzubhn, a frequent source for the Nishwhr whom Tanukhj knew through the vizier al-Muhallabj, his father’s friend and his own patron.36 The frame of the story therefore fixes its circulation in legal and bureaucratic rather than professional medical circles. The main story has an unspecified local setting on a rural estate. It will be noticed how accurately the two qh∂js report the terms used by the physician, and how eagerly the layman father of the patient, a landowner and, as we infer, a man of some education as well as ‘consequence’, uses medical terminology when relating his own part in the tale.37 One day (said al-Ja‘hbj), on visiting the Chief Qh∂j Abu al-Åusayn ibn Abj ‘Umar, I found him dejected. ‘God send the Chief Qh∂j good cheer!’ I cried. ‘Why is it I find him thus despondent?’ ‘Yazjd the Urinanalyst (al-mh’j) is dead,’ he replied. ‘And who might Yazjd the Urinanalyst be, that his death should throw the Chief Qh∂j into such gloom?’ ‘Shame upon you!’ he exclaimed. ‘Can a man of your quality be ignorant of one who was the nonpareil of his age in his craft, whose death leaves none
The physical world and the writer’s eye 225 to touch him for skill? What glory can nations boast if not the number of their master-craftsmen and ingenious men of learning? What is the passing of a man who possessed unparalleled command of an essential art but a sign of the degeneracy of the times and of the decadence of nations?’ He then began to enumerate Yazjd the Urinanalyst’s virtues, the unusual treatments he had employed and the serious illnesses which he had managed to cure. Among the many instances which he cited was the following. Some time ago (said the Chief Qh∂j), a man of consequence in these parts told me of a strange disorder contracted by his daughter, which she at first concealed, and which her father, when he became aware of it, in turn kept secret for a while, until the girl was at death’s door. ‘Her trouble,’ said her father, ‘was a pain in her vagina, which prevented her from resting by night or day and made her scream dreadfully. The pain was associated with a slight bloody discharge of the consistency of thin gravy (ka-mh ’ laåm), but there was no visible wound or swelling. In the end,’ said the father, ‘fearing I might find myself guilty [of her death if he refused to let a physician see her], I sent for Yazjd the Urinanalyst and consulted him. ‘Would you forgive me,’ Yazjd asked, ‘if I made a suggestion? I can issue no prescription unless I am allowed to see the site of the complaint and palpate it with my own hands, and ask the woman questions as to how the disorder may have arisen.’ Her condition was now so serious, indeed desperate, that I consented; but after he had examined her externally and found the site of the pain, his questions went on for so long and had so little to do with her illness that I felt tempted to lay violent hands on him. However, I reminded myself of the good character that he bore, and contained myself with difficulty. At last he said: ‘Have someone hold the girl down.’ I gave the order; he thrust his hand into her vagina; she screamed, then fainted; blood spurted out, and he withdrew his hand, displaying a creature smaller than a dung-beetle, which he tossed aside. The girl immediately sat up, crying: ‘Papa! you must send this man out of my room now, for I am well again!’ Yazjd caught up the creature he had extracted and went out; I hurried after him, made him sit down, and demanded that he explain. He replied: ‘My little interrogation, which I have no doubt caused you displeasure, had no other purpose than to find a clue to the cause of the illness. The clue was revealed when the girl told me that one day she had gone and sat in the shed which houses the water-wheel which the oxen turn in your produce garden, and that it was on the following day that she fell ill, for no apparent reason. It occurred to me that a tick (qurhd), a cattle-tick, might have crept into her vagina – there are always ticks in cattle-sheds. After first getting a firm hold, it would have begun to suck her blood, and that is what would have caused the pain. Whenever the tick was too full to suck, the pain would abate, and instead the blood would flow out of the girl’s vagina
226 Julia Bray from the wound made by the tick when it sucked. At any rate, I thought, I’ll put my hand in and feel. When I did so, I found the tick, just as I had guessed, and pulled it out. This is the little creature here, looking rather different from the way it usually does, because of the amount of blood it has sucked over a long period.’ I inspected it (said the father), and it was indeed a tick.38 The girl made a full recovery.’ In another story, a cure for ticks is effected by an unnamed physician; but here the psychological balance of the narrative is different. In the Chief Qh∂j’s story, it was necessary for the physician to placate the patient’s father. In this story, the physician focuses the force of his personality on the patient, who is a young boy, and needs to be talked to very simply. His handling of the boy is exemplary, as is his attention to his comfort. The psychology on which his treatment is based owes much to tales of Galen’s recourse to ‘useful deceit’, and his care for the patient to the practices recommended in medical literature.39 These textbook origins are, however, naturalized. The anecdote is offered to the reader as a family story and a local story, again with a rural setting, and again with a frame which anchors its circulation in the legal bureaucracy. It was told to Tanukhj by ‘a servant of my father [who was a qh∂j serving in the southern province of Khuzisthn], who was told it by Ibn al-Íaydalhnj, his deputy as qh∂j in the town of Banathdhur’.40 From his name – ‘son (or descendant) of the pharmacist (or pharmacologist)’ – it seems that besides being a judge, Ibn al-Íaydalhnj had medical blood in his veins. Perhaps out of local pride, in the manuscript reading that I have followed he credits the anonymous physician who is the story’s hero with inventing an entirely novel treatment when the city physicians had failed. Near Banathdhur (said al-Íaydalhnj), in our village of Suq al-Arbi‘h’, there was a young boy, a member of a landowning family, who developed a severe pain in his stomach for no apparent reason, and suffered so dreadfully, almost without intermission, that he nearly died. He could hardly eat and grew very thin. He was taken to Ahwhz [the nearest big city], where every cure was tried, but to no effect; and so, giving up his case for hopeless, they sent him home again. {Now a certain medical man (hsin or ba‘∂ al-hsiya), of whom the boy’s father had heard, happened to be passing through our neighbourhood. The father sent for him}41 and showed him the boy. The doctor told the lad to sit down and tell him everything that had happened since before he became ill. He insisted on hearing every detail, and at last the patient said: ‘I went into our produce garden, where there was a cowshed with lots of pomegranates in it which had been piled up to send to market, and I ate several of them.’ ‘Ah!’ said the doctor, ‘and how did you eat them?’
The physical world and the writer’s eye 227 ‘I bit off the tops and spat them out, and then broke the fruits open and ate the pieces.’ Thereupon the doctor promised to treat him the following day, saying that by God’s leave he should be cured. He then departed. The next day he returned with a pot of stew which he had made out of the flesh of a plump puppy, and said to his patient: ‘Eat this.’ ‘What is it?’ asked the boy. ‘I’ll tell you afterwards,’ he said, and the boy began to eat. He made him eat until he was full, and then fed him quantities of water-melon, left him for a while, and gave him beer mixed with hot water and dill to drink.42 When he had finished, the doctor said: ‘Do you know what you’ve just eaten?’ ‘No,’ said the boy. ‘Dogflesh!’ said the doctor; and as soon as the boy heard this, he began vomiting up everything in his stomach. The doctor ordered them to hold the boy’s head and cover his eyes while he vomited, and himself examined the vomit, until finally he brought up something black, which looked like a large fruit-stone and wriggled. Then the doctor took hold of the lad and told him to raise his head. ‘You are cured,’ said he. ‘God has delivered you ( farraja ‘an-ka).’43 [After calming the boy, bathing his head in rosewater and giving him a drink to stop the nausea, the doctor displays the tick to the boy’s father and explains his reasoning to his patient.] ‘Knowing that ticks love dogflesh, I made you eat some. I said to myself, if I’ve guessed right, the tick will transfer itself to the dogflesh and stick there when he vomits, and that will cure him; and if my guess is wrong, well, it won’t hurt him to eat some dogflesh’. [His concluding words to the boy make this into a cautionary tale.] ‘Never put anything in your mouth again without looking first to see what’s in it!’
New departures in storytelling Scenes from domestic life Part of the appeal of the medical tale, and probably one explanation for its elaboration as a new literary genre, is that it allows the teller to lift the veil of domestic life and to show scenes of unusually mundane intimacy. In other examples than those just quoted, the medical-domestic perspective makes it possible to give a central role to relationships that are barely present in most other types of narrative: family relationships, and relationships with family servants. Children or the attitudes of adults towards children may be portrayed, with understanding and delicacy. The last story gives a brief glimpse of this, but the most extended example is to be seen in the story of Rhzj and the local notable’s son in northern Iran whom Rhzj gives up for as good as dead.44 The dying boy’s old
228 Julia Bray nurse looks after him alone in her apartments at his own request, because he can no longer bear to be with the healthy young companions his father has provided for him; but while her back is turned, he tries to kill himself by eating a favourite dish which has been brought for her and into which he has seen a snake spit its venom.45 In this story, the cure is accidental, and it is the boy’s father, not Rhzj, who represents rational reflection and learning. ‘I was amazed [by the cure],’ he tells Rhzj, ‘although I had remembered the ancient physicians saying that if a person suffering from dropsy eats the flesh of an old, old snake hundreds of years old, he will be cured. But had I told you that this was the proper treatment, you would merely have thought that I was contradicting you. Besides, how is one to tell how old a snake is, supposing one should be to hand? So I said nothing.’ Here again, a layman enjoys showing off his medical knowledge. The story is told by Rhzj in the first person, and was circulated by three of his contemporaries, all of whom came from Rayy in northern Iran like himself, and one of whom was a physician and his pupil. It has a cast-iron isnhd, except that, as Tanukhj remarks, for some reason he never heard it from his informant’s informant, though he had known him well, and his informant never heard it from Rhzj’s pupil, although he had seen him and knew him to be a trusted transmitter of Prophetic tradition. From Tanukhj’s Faraj the story found its way, some three centuries later, into Ibn Abj ‘Ußaybi‘a’s (d. 668/1270) ‘Uyun al-Anbh’ fj Ïabaqht al-Aƒibbh’ (‘Choicest Information about Physicians, chronologically arranged’), as did a story about a man who unknowingly swallows a leech and whom Rhzj cures by force-feeding him a pond weed to which the leech attaches itself,46 a variation on the story of the boy and the tick quoted earlier.47 This has a weak isnhd: Tanukhj’s informant gives his source merely as ‘a trustworthy medical man’. These are the only stories about Rhzj that Ibn Abj ‘Ußaybi‘a quotes, and they do not seem to be found in earlier medico-biographical literature.48 Rhzj tells no such stories about himself in his case-notes; but, in keeping with his reputation, the story of the leech, if not that of the snake venom, is nothing if not logical. The medical hero should always display logic, as we have seen, and preferably a command of the situation, and stories where ingenious diagnosis provides the focus are essentially brain-teasers; their heroes are interchangeable and the other actors are not so much characters as bearers of local colour. Where the focus is divided between the physician and the patient, however, the latter’s feelings come into play, and ratiocination furnishes only part of the plot. The snake-venom story is a complex compound which illustrates this. The boy attempts suicide because he has guessed Rhzj’s prognosis. Instead of Rhzj healing the patient, his usual role of wise collaborator with nature is transferred to the notable, who observes the stages of his son’s reaction to the venom and decides to let it take its course. But just as important as the clinical details are the touches which show the father’s love for his son, his trust in the nurse, and the son’s anxiety, even when he thinks he is dying, that no one else should accidentally come to harm from the poisoned dish. Both the nurse and the boy are given substantial speaking parts, and the story’s dramatic high point is the scene in which he tells her that he has poisoned himself.
The physical world and the writer’s eye 229 Autobiographical stories: suspense and argument Stories with an autobiographical narrator who is himself the patient form a sub-genre of the medical anecdote which introduces significant variations. In these, the cures are accidental, self-induced and natural, like the snake-venom cure; these cures are afterwards demonstrated to have a rational scientific basis, as in the stories where the physician is the hero. The crucial feature, however, is not the nature of the cure, but the fact that these are subjective narratives. In contrast to those stories of applied logic in which the physician is the hero, by a curious illogicality which is a major discovery in the art of telling a tale of suspense, an autobiographical survivor tale is more nail-biting than any distanced narrative no matter how ingenious its twists. Subjective narratives convey fear; and they make the reader fear with the hero and not just for him. In subjective narratives, the quality of fear and suffering can also be differentiated more accurately than in conventional descriptive Arabic storytelling with its rather restricted and unspecific vocabulary of emotional terms. For example, in an autobiographical story of a spontaneous recovery from chronic total paralysis resulting from a snake-bite, the hero reaches the nadir of his suffering after a year of complete helplessness, blindness and speechlessness, during which he has been unable to make his most basic needs known to his wife. Another woman calls to ask after him, and he (and we) overhear his wife (his ex-master’s widow, whom he married out of charity) tell her, in a horribly apt cliché, that he is ‘neither alive so one could hope him [cured] nor dead so one could forget him’. We share his thrill of misery and despair. So too do we share the detached wonder he feels when, that night, after an excruciating bout of pain (∂arb or ∂arabhn), he finds that his limbs have moved, and starts to test them.49 (Both physical details and emotions are more developed in the Faraj version of this story than in the Nishwhr one.) It is anecdotes where the patient is allowed to describe his or her own experiences that probably have the highest direct documentary value, in conveying something of what it felt like to be ill. This is also where their literary interest lies: when the characters speak, they speak to their own situations, without making, or inviting, intertextual parallels; and they are allowed to say what they feel, not what they ought to feel. It bears repeating that, in the corpus under discussion, illness and suffering are not seen as being character-forming – except in our last example, where the former paralytic becomes an ascetic – or worth dwelling on for their own sake once the sufferer has recovered. What the sufferer often does dwell on, with considerable satisfaction, is the explosive nature of the cure and the extraordinary number of purgings that usually accompany it; and again, there is usually a marked relish for medical terminology.50 The fact that the patient himself is able to give a clear account of how his body behaves as the cure progresses points to the fact that, perhaps unexpectedly, the emphasis on subjectivity goes hand in hand with a critical stance that is inherent in the way the larger narrative is managed. The subjective stories are, in fact, argumentative; they represent one side of a debate. They are dominated by the encouraging idea that for every natural disorder, nature, even when unmediated
230 Julia Bray by the physician, has a cure. Bürgel believes that, statistically speaking, this is the attitude most strongly represented in the canonical åad jth collections, and adds that ‘One [åadjth to this effect] was usually quoted in the introduction of the medical books, “God did not send down any disease without also sending down a medicine or cure”.’51 I feel that he overstates the case; Bukhhrj’s Íaåjå is perhaps the most favourable to medicine,52 but even there, the emphasis is on prayer, talismanic recitation of the Qur’hn and a few natural remedies such as honey. Despite the idea that there must be a wide range of God-given remedies, the approved repertory is actually fixed and very limited. Tanukhj’s stories show a rather different attitude. Natural cures can be discovered by chance even when physicians fail, and they are not confined to those identified by the Prophet; and freakish occurrences serve to affirm the underlying consistency of nature. Physicians usually use treatment by opposites, in order to help redress any imbalance of the humours, but nature by itself can also cure by treatment of like by like. The effects of one bang on the head, for example, can be cured by another;53 or a scorpion bite, normally fatal, can cure birshm, a sort of inflammation of the brain.54 Even Prophetic medicine usually operates systematically, with Qur’anic healing amulets or recitations (ruqyas) working by sympathy – as, for example, a written amulet to prevent miscarriage, which quotes Qur’hn 35:41: ‘It is God who keeps the heavens and the earth from falling,’ and another to prevent nosebleeds, which quotes Qur’hn 11:44: ‘Earth, swallow up your waters. Heaven, cease your rain!’55 (The nosebleed amulet is to be attached – ‘allaqa – to the forehead and the charm against miscarriage to the waist.) These two amulets are not, apparently, folk charms, or not merely folk charms. They were written by a senior civil servant56 ‘according to a principle which he discovered’ (or perhaps, as D. S. Margoliouth translates the phrase, ‘according to a prescription which came into his hands’, ‘alh aßl waqa‘a ‘alay-hi fj dhhlika), and they seem to reflect the application of logical or analogical reasoning to the permission to use healing recitations established by the Prophet’s example. They are, however, very different from the kinds of unspecific Qur’anic healing recitations illustrated in the åadjth collections. In Bukhhrj’s Íaåjå, the chapter on medicine has a series of short sections on the use of healing ruqyas, which consist either of reciting the opening chapter of the Qur’hn, the Fhtiåa, or of prayers for healing uttered by the Prophet, neither of which mention the disease to be cured or establish any kind of sympathetic analogy. If they work, it is by faith alone, and we should not seek other reasons.57 In the contrast between the way healing recitations are used in åadjths and Tanukhj’s examples of healing amulets from modern life, we have another instance of type and antitype of the kind referred to earlier. We also find subtler instances, where the terms of reference are literary rather than religious, but where, again, what is presented as real life carries with it an implicit challenge to received ideas. The amulets just referred to, and others, were described to Tanukhj by the son of the civil servant who wrote them down, and he says that he, or his family, has ‘tested’ ( jarrabnh) the amulet against miscarriage over the years, and that ‘it has never failed’. (Amulets that worked on analogous principles and were similarly
The physical world and the writer’s eye 231 ‘tested’ were also in circulation among Tanukhj’s father’s Mu‘tazilj in-laws.)58 The civil servant’s son, who in his youth ‘enjoyed both slave girls and boys, and found abstention very onerous’, gives his own recipe for a medicine to prevent childbearing, this time a preparation which has to be ‘applied’ (‘allaqa) in some unspecified way to the woman. Its ingredients – mainly banj (a kind of henbane) – were shown to him in a dream. When he doubted whether it would work – ‘I have never heard of this from a physician’ – the dream-voice (instead of reproving him for questioning supernatural tidings) told him a chemical test (imtiåhn), namely heating it in a vessel (qhrura) of water over fire, which would prove its efficacy.59 The test worked, and it is implied that the contraceptive did too, thus solving the worry which had caused the dream, as his expensive slave girl could then be re-sold without loss (which it would have been difficult for him to do legally if she had become pregnant, while a slave who had actually had a child by her master could not be sold).60 The anecdote stands in contrast not only to Prophetic faith-healing, by its emphasis on proof rather than faith, but also to the romantic love stories which Tanukhj was later to collect in the last chapter of stories in the Faraj, in which the hero, having fallen on hard times, persuades himself that he must sell his beloved slave girl, with whom he has lived for many years, so as to give her a chance of a better life.61 In these, the woman is always childless and never pregnant. This seems unlikely – the historical slave-courtesan heroines of Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj’s ‘Book of Songs’ often have several children – but it is necessary to give verisimilitude to the plot in view of the legal restrictions just mentioned. The ideal of faithful, quasi-conjugal love between slave and master which Tanukhj depicts in the Faraj is part of an ongoing debate about the nature of modern love, and seems to be Tanukhj’s own construct from disparate sources, an attempt to graft the lyrical mood of Bedouin romances about lovers who remain faithful unto death on to the crueller romances of unequal love between ‘Abbasid grandees and slave women, both of which are well represented in the ‘Book of Songs’, which Tanukhj had studied before embarking on his own career as a writer. Sentiment is absent from the Nishwhr; nevertheless, the crudely practical young man of the Nishwhr would not normally have found his way into the pages of polite literature, where venal love was usually clothed in some semblance of romance even if romance was admitted to be transient. Presumably, then, Tanukhj expected his readers to note the implicit contrast between life and art. Narrative and the making of ideas On the evidence of stories of the type just described and of their isnhds, there seems to have been a fascination with scientific medicine among people who shared a certain outlook or certain ‘intellectual techniques’ (to use the phrase which Michael Cook coined to describe the eclectic way in which a variety of persuasions drew upon Mu‘tazilism at this period);62 and not only the scientific physician, with his ability to detect regular causes behind irregular symptoms, but even nature itself, with its self-correcting abilities, can be taken as culture-heroes of
232 Julia Bray people of this cast of mind. The fact that heroic scientific cures could be hypothesized, described with verisimilitude, and retailed to an (albeit select) reading public in the form of something not unlike pulp fiction, corresponds to a leap in the imagination; it is a new way of putting ideas to work. It has already been suggested that the process is argumentative, and it can also create new ideas, or new ways of demonstrating them. The first stage of this creative process is the use of narratives as a means of reasoning which can stretch ideas to new limits or, ultimately, transfer them to new contexts. As an example of pushing ideas to their limits, the amulets described by Tanukhj are the centrepieces of short, unplotted narratives, which form a sequence whose purpose is to bear witness that the ‘recipes’ have been tested and to suggest the common features or principles which make them efficacious. These principles are transparent and could be – and in some of the anecdotes are – used to invent new ruqyas. This is very different from what we find in the third/ninth-century åadjth collections. There, ruqyas, like other Prophetic cures, are presented in a form and sequence which seems deliberately unsystematic and designed to discourage analogy and extrapolation. It is only much later with, for example, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (691–751/1292–350), that åadjths are first selected from Bukhhrj and his peers in such a way as to affirm that it is religiously wrong not to seek medical treatment, and then organized systematically to support a medical theory.63 But by this time, Prophetic medicine had also borrowed something of the framework of Galenic medicine along with the assumption that cure is something to be hoped for and that the patient should be able to understand how it works.64 Perhaps Tanukhj, as a story-teller rather than a Mu‘tazilj, is a forerunner of this trend, which seems to have developed out of a persistent attachment to adab, and particularly to stories of wit, romance and human interest, the imaginative ground common to all persuasions (as the early example of Ibn Qutayba would suggest, and as studies of later traditionalist thinkers have shown).65 For example, the Sunnj Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya has much to say, in a medical context, about love, infatuation and the psychological treatment of the latter, and his discussions of the feelings and reactions not just of lovers but of sick people in general are based on ideas of equilibrium and decorum which derive from the literary as well as the religious and medical traditions. As regards the creation of new ideas, the structure of an antique tale about a physician’s sagacity may not, perhaps, change much when it is applied, in the anecdotes retailed by Tanukhj, to Rhzj or some other modern figure; but the cultural details do change to a greater or lesser degree; and an interest in clinical details grafted on to specific social realities – even as pictured by storytellers who themselves usually belong to a social élite – can not only allow new psychological perspectives to be exploited, as we have seen, but can generate techniques which break free from literary convention, as happens in the story of the paralyzed man. In both the Faraj and the Nishwhr versions of this story, the basic pattern of sudden incapacity followed by sudden cure is paralleled by the reversal in the man’s relations with his wife. He marries her, ‘God knows, only to protect her;’ then he becomes wholly dependent upon her; finally he divorces her. The Faraj version fleshes out the two protagonists enough to produce a drama of feelings, not just of situation. As in
The physical world and the writer’s eye 233 the Nishwhr version, the man is a former Byzantine slave and a soldier, but here we guess that he is deeply grateful to his owner, who we are told was also a soldier, and who raised him from childhood, trained him to arms and died after manumitting him; hence his wish to ‘protect’ his widow. This gives an added twist to his relations with her and his sense of her unworthiness, and she is given a larger role. When he has recovered, she tries to set their life on its old footing again by asking: ‘Why are you shaving off [your military moustache]? Your mates won’t like it!’ only to be brushed off (as in the Nishwhr version) with ‘From now on, I serve no one but my Lord.’ The paralytic’s first words upon recovering could be taken as a vow (‘O Thou who hast shown kindness of old, thanks be to Thee!’), and it is in order to fulfil it that he becomes an ascetic, or so we infer – but also, we gather, out of disgust with his wife. The greater prominence given in the Faraj version to the sufferer’s old ties of gratitude throws the wife’s ingratitude (as he sees it) into relief, and gives a new dimension to his cry of ‘O Thou who hast shown kindness of old’. This version is not only a deliverance but also a conversion story, or rather a story in which the hero’s decision to devote himself to God confirms and fulfils his earlier conversion to Islam and decent gratitude to the man who brought him up. Nevertheless, it retains the curious feature that when the former foreign slave becomes an object of Muslim veneration, he passes from being an insider (a man with a wife and comrades) to being something of an outsider. He constantly repeats the phrase ‘O Thou who hast shown kindness of old’, but will have no truck with the popular belief that he was cured by seeing and being touched by the Prophet in a dream and is ‘a man whose prayers are answered’ (and hence a potential intercessor for others). Tanukhj’s informant for the story, Abu al-Åasan Aåmad ibn Yusuf Ibn al-Buhlul, known as Ibn al-Azraq, whom he cites some sixty-four times, was an in-law of his father and a fellow-Mu‘tazilj. The cured paralytic was a well-known figure in Baghdad, and in the isnhd of the Faraj version, Ibn al-Azraq says that he was ‘friends with my own father’. And in the Nishwhr version, his refusal to agree that he was cured by a miracle is pressed into service by the Mu‘tazilj Ibn alAzraq, who adds an example from his own experience of how the common people will seize upon anything unusual and de-rationalize it.66 The cured paralytic is held up by contrast as a specimen of innate, honest rationality. Stepping out of the format of a faraj story with emphasized, rubricated thematic cognates and a neatly closed plot, he is made by Ibn al-Azraq’s addendum to serve as a real-life, natural, non-constructed emblem of truth – a new device in a literature where usually nothing is, or is meant to be seen as, entirely raw or innocent. It is seldom, outside Åadjth literature, that Arabic writing proclaims itself artless, a transcript of life all the more authoritative for being pristine.
The problem of combining life, art and ideas Medical ideas in adab and occasional poetry How may we recognize such emblems and the ideas and debates which converge in them? It is rare for the substrate of ideas to be articulated openly in narrative
234 Julia Bray or even in paraenetic writing. For example, it is a commonplace of adab writings of this period that the author, in his preface, promises to vary the subject matter and the tone so as to keep the reader alert and engaged. The paedagogic principle of using an agreeable variety never seems to be attributed to any authority. Yet, in a culture which placed a great value on memory, but seems, at this date, to have produced no handbooks on the arts of memory, it is one of the few technical pointers we have as to how people might have managed to assimilate the very large amounts of material they needed to know in order to be considered educated. I suspect that the prescription of varying the intellectual menu to make the process of digesting it as easy as possible smacks of dietetics and patient psychology, and nods to the Galenic principle of adapting medical treatment to the constitution of the person treated. But this theory is never invoked, so far as I am aware. Perhaps we can take this as a mark of the extent to which some medical ideas merged inextricably into the general pool of ideas. There are two points that I should like to make in this connection: one is that the niches into which ideas insert themselves can be unpredictable, so much so that the fertilizing effects of a mode of thought may result in products that might seem to have nothing to do with that mode of thought per se, as we shall see in the last part of this chapter. The second point is that the fact that modern scholarship tends to be disciplinespecific makes the history of Arabic ideas difficult to write. It often happens that ideas will be traced to the borders of one discipline, but not beyond. Yet this is not necessarily how ideas circulate and develop; they often cross boundaries. Thus, though medieval Arabic has a vast literature of ideas nakedly expressed as such, it is, I think, highly characteristic of the culture that some of its guiding ideas are not expressed abstractly, but are explored through narrative, or through other forms of representation which are not overtly analytical. A problem raised in one discipline, such as Åadjth or theology, may, as we have seen, be debated outside the rules and conventions of that discipline.67 This is not surprising, given that writers such as Tanukhj, or Ibn Qutayba, or Jhåi©, usually had a detailed command of several fields of learning now considered discrete. A relatively crude example of the migration of ideas across disciplines is the impact of medicine on poetry at the time of the translation movement. Because poetry served social functions – congratulation and commiseration, for example – some of which were directly connected with undergoing medical treatment, there are minor branches of poetry whose purpose is to describe procedures such as blood-letting ( faßd ) in terms which represent an unpleasant routine as a heroic event and use metaphors to transfigure the painful details. These poems were written by courtiers to ingratiate themselves with illustrious patients, but they also had a direct therapeutic purpose, that of speeding recovery by lifting the patient’s spirits, a Galenic principle which is stressed in the medical handbooks of the period and is sometimes stated in the poems themselves.68 Though I have just called this a crude example of transferral, the poems, which constitute a new, wholly modern genre, in fact show a very high degree of literary integration. Paradoxically, they owe this to their therapeutic function: it is the poet’s job to
The physical world and the writer’s eye 235 assist the physician by delighting the patient without overtaxing him, which he does by his sleight of hand in translating medical facts into familiar poetic motifs. Occasional poetry of this kind is a case of life being dragged into literature and literature into life – life at the higher levels of society, that is – for specific practical purposes. Literature of this sort does not engage in intellectual or ideological debate or tackle life outside the confines of polite etiquette. A case which at first appears similar is that of a book about medicine and poetry written by an ‘Abbasid prince who was also a ground-breaking poet and literary theorist, Ibn al-Mu‘tazz, who died in Baghdad in 296/908 in his mid-forties as the result of a botched attempt to make him caliph.69 His anthology of poetic descriptions of wine, Fußul al-Tamhthjl fj Tabhshjr al-Surur (‘Chapters of Similes about the Harbingers of Joy’), which has been little discussed in modern scholarship, was composed at a time when wine poetry was one of the most popular forms of verse. He says that he wrote the book in solitude, having fled court society in disgust at the vulgar manners of his companions.70 Unlike Ibn Qutayba, he does not propose to reform an ignorant generation – the etiquette of wine is for the élite, not for upstarts; as the Prophet has said, equality is the beginning of the end.71 Instead, he sets out to vindicate true kingliness and courtliness, the symbol of which is wine, and to demonstrate the medicinal virtues of wine drinking. This endeavour, indeed, forms the bulk of the book. Ibn al-Mu‘tazz says that wine is wholly beneficial, and prevents disease if used in moderation.72 He devotes only a perfunctory paragraph or two in the middle of the book to the notion that it might be prohibited in Islam, which he counters by quoting åadjths to show that the Prophet never banned it in so many words, and that the ferociously pious second caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khaƒƒhb – a Companion of the Prophet said to have been far more rigorist than the Prophet himself – took wine on his physician’s orders, and drank it on several other occasions.73 In fact, the only legally punishable crime is not drinking but drunkenness, which is liberally defined as ‘not knowing who one is [literally ‘not being able to recognize one’s own clothes/oneself ’] and not being able to find one’s way home,’ or ‘being incoherent, incapable of speech, and reeling;’ or, in the definition of one leading legal authority (Abu Yusuf, d. 182/798, a founding father of the Åanafj school of law which was much in favour with early ‘Abbasid caliphs): ‘not being able to tell the difference between the sky and the earth’.74 The rest of the book is larded with systematic quotations from ‘the physicians’ on the benefits of wine and the properties of the three different ages and four different colours of wine; Ibn alMu‘tazz claims that he got some of this information personally from Åunayn ibn Isåhq, the court physician and translator of Galen, who died in 260/873 when Ibn al-Mu‘tazz would have been about twelve years old.75 He gives detailed recipes for wine substitutes which, separately, have some of the medicinal virtues that are combined in wine,76 and then treats wine exhaustively and scientifically as a branch of diet.77 The book’s purpose as proclaimed in its title is, however, to cite poetic similes about wine; yet medicine and poetry are not fully integrated. Poetic conventions can be bent only partly to Ibn al-Mu‘tazz’s purpose of underwriting an élite
236 Julia Bray courtly ideology in which wine’s highest virtue is to banish the cares of princes and promote their health, and this despite the fact that Ibn al-Mu‘tazz was a poet himself and could, if he had wished, have written poetry which would have made his points. Rina Drory, in discussing the effet du réel in the wine poetry of Abu Nuwhs (d. c.198/813), has distinguished between poems full of ‘reality items’, which are ‘not used to convey realism so much as to support . . . an elaborate imagery’, and those lacking in reality items, but contrariwise conveying a ‘realistic’ or ‘lifelike’ effect.78 Ibn al-Mu‘tazz is plainly aware of the difference, for only rarely does the poetry he quotes directly illustrate medical teaching. For example, poetry has plenty to say about the psychological effects of drinking (though not about moderation); but, as he observes when discussing the ‘scents’ or bouquets of wine (either ‘perfumed’ or ‘bad’), ‘in the poetry of the Arabs, the only descriptions of the scents of wine are those which compare it to perfume and flowers’.79 In the end, Ibn al-Mu‘tazz juxtaposes the voices of medicine and poetry, and each is as authoritative as the other. They have a common function as adjuncts of a courtly ideology, but the rules of art are not those of life. Tanukhj, homme-récit Let us compare the boundaries observed by Ibn al-Mu‘tazz in coordinating art and life with what happens with Tanukhj. The latter seldom narrates a story himself, yet he is constantly present in his isnhds and in his asides about his informants, which tell the reader about their relation to himself at various points in his life. From this point of view, the isnhds are really snatches of autobiography, and the stories themselves, as a legacy from men, and occasionally women, whom he had known, can be taken as an autobiographical extension of the isnhds. This is especially so in the Nishwhr, a record of private conversations never before written down, which, he says, represent the values he cherishes which have vanished for ever.80 The stories in the Nishwhr, and those in the Faraj which Tanukhj learned through people he knew well, are an externalized expression of identity: the constituents of Tanukhj’s identity as a man of letters and a thinking man, an adjb. Even in the Faraj, a much more eclectic work than the Nishwhr, they are not a random harvest or an attempt to present a topic from all the angles under which it has been discussed before. They are a repeated affirmation of a consistent vision of the world, an assertion of intellectual community and of a stable self (even if the self that can be pieced together from external biographical sources is not remarkable for its consistency). Tanukhj may be called an homme-récit – the term used, rather differently, by Tzvetan Todorov in his discussion of the hero-narrators of the Thousand and One Nights81 – in the sense of being a man who realizes himself in the act of retelling stories and reciting the genealogies which connect them to himself. Sometimes a sly irony is perceptible in the telling, as in the story of the young man and the contraceptive; but there is no real clash between ideas, imagination and literature, and their relation to personal experience, the world and to a belief in a unified reality.
The physical world and the writer’s eye 237
Tanukhj’s tales of detection, adventure and terror Patterns and textures In the material that we have seen so far, medical procedure or theory have been foregrounded deliberately in the text. In conclusion I should like briefly to discuss examples which do not so readily proclaim their affiliation to medicine, but which nevertheless support a view of the world and the patterns of human life as consistent and rationally explicable, and demonstrate a way of looking at and describing the physical world which rests on that assumption and is qualitatively different from previous ways of doing so. On the evidence of the stories in the Nishwhr and the Faraj, scientific medicine made people seek, in their own experience, for the causes which underlie effects; it taught them that gross and bizarre effects can have ordinary causes, which can be worked out step by step. This attitude produced not only the medical story, but also the ‘scientific’ detective story, for which our earliest extant source is, once again, Tanukhj.82 Fedwa Malti-Douglas’s pioneering studies of the genre focus on structure: on the morphology of the narratives and the unfolding of sequences of narrative functions, and she stresses that thieves in adab stories should be seen not necessarily as a socio-historical category but as a literary one83 – one which affords the opportunity of developing a set of narrative premises in a particular way. (She is more interested in theft than in murder or other crimes giving rise to detective activity.) Literary categories, however, result in various ways from social and historical circumstances, and Malti-Douglas duly draws attention to some similarities in the historical contexts of the modern Western detective story and those she discusses.84 But in order to appreciate quite what the latter represent, it is necessary to examine their texture as well as their mechanism, and their texture becomes apparent only if they are viewed in their broader literary context rather than as an isolated genre. The link between medicine and detection is a classic configuration in modern culture, familiar from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle among others, as is that between tales of scientific detection and tales of terror and of the uncanny; and it hardly needs saying that atmosphere – scene-setting, local colour, thumbnail characterization and suspense – is as important an ingredient as science or logic both in classic Western detection fiction and in related genres of sensational literature. It is therefore not surprising to discover that ‘scientific’ tales of terror, where the uncanny is presented in lurid form before being stripped down to natural causes in the dénouement, are likewise found together with medical and detective stories in the Faraj and the Nishwhr, or that two or even three of the elements may be combined in a single story. In these stories, more important than the theory that effects have regularly discoverable causes is medical practice – the practice of observing human and natural phenomena comprehensively, closely and accurately. To the reader, these observations at first seem random, because they are conveyed by a frightened and confused narrator; but as the narrator gains control of the situation, he is
238 Julia Bray able to convert his impressions into clues which in retrospect fall into a plausible pattern. By what is probably a syncretic process – a combination of ideas about the old Arab practice of qiyhfa (reading the appearances of men and nature) and the newer practice, again stimulated by the translation movement, of firhsa (physiognomy)85 – diagnostic observation produced in the storytelling retailed by Tanukhj a brief but astonishingly accomplished interlude of landscape description,86 a phenomenon for which there is nothing to prepare us in earlier Arabic writing, still less in the surviving record of the visual arts of this period. These literary landscape descriptions seem gratuitous at first – pure visual essays, geographically localized, sharp, detailed and spatially coherent. But they always form part of a story, and they actually provide the conditions and plot for the adventures which then follow. In other words, they have something in common with the symptoms which form the prelude to medical stories. They also share some of the narrative tricks of the medical story and the detective story. A contrast with the techniques found in Tanukhj can be seen in Kathrin Müller’s study of variants on an anecdote which was widespread throughout this period. It is based on the idea of qiyhfa, and consists of a blind Bedouin interpreting the visual evidence reported to him by a sighted but uncomprehending companion.87 These variations on a theme can best be described as examples of philological ethnology or as scholarly exercises masquerading as folklore. They emphasize rare Arabic vocabulary and the Bedouin wisdom that comes from experience, and what slight plot they have is not carried by nature description. In Tanukhj, nature description is an integral part of the plot, or indeed is, or replaces, the plot. Thus in the medical stories, the reader is too absorbed in matching the physician’s explanations of natural processes to the symptoms described at the beginning of the anecdote to cavil at the slenderness of the narrative. So too in the obviously closely related Arabic detective story: the narratorhero discovers a seemingly impossible theft; he reads the physical clues – the man-made landscape as it were – narrows down the possibilities, reconstitutes the thief ’s modus operandi, tracks him down and recovers his property.88 In this sense, neither the medical story nor the detective story has a true plot. Both are generally brief episodes which contain little more than a situation and its reversal. In both, the outcome is that the natural balance is restored; the patient recovers his health; the owner reclaims his property. We should note how modern this is in the context of the fourth/tenth century. The anecdotes are symmetrical – a time-honoured device – but they are also self-contained, borrowing techniques from other genres but not overtly drawing attention to their literariness. This is undemanding storytelling, storytelling for the pleasure of solving a puzzle, not adab of the kind which imparts obvious cultural polish, nor does it illustrate spiritual gain. Discussing a story of double theft, in which a thief-turned-merchant is the ‘detective’ and steals back his own property, Malti-Douglas notes its moral ambiguity: it is ‘a kind of game played according to its own rules . . . in which the sides could potentially [be] changed’.89
The physical world and the writer’s eye 239 Nevertheless, the idea of moral (or amoral) equivalence can be more than a game. It is worked out in a variety of ways in Chapter Eleven of the Faraj, which includes both detective stories proper and tales of crime and adventure. In the latter, it can take on a sharper, politicized edge, as when the robber chief Ibn Åamdj, who steals only from the rich, never from the poor or from women, argues that he is only redistributing property for his own benefit in the same way as the lawful rulers of the day. Moreover, he is prepared to return part of their property to victims who can demonstrate real need. This he does when a Baghdadj merchant pleads with him; and he also provides the merchant with an escort through the territory of less scrupulous outlaws.90 Moral retribution is enacted in the concluding story of the chapter when a band of highwaymen spare a pilgrim but mock him when he ‘repays’ them by advising them to release a woman and their booty. The pilgrim, having begged for a bow and arrows to protect himself when he is alone in the desert, turns out to be a marksman of extraordinary skill. He kills the robbers and slaughters their beasts, and as a result the survivor of the robber band repents and reforms.91 Although the stories in this chapter share a basic schema (a theft is reversed by the victim’s skill, whether as a detective or a strategist), symmetry is not their only or their most important feature. They range from the plausible to the romantic and near-fantastic, spanning a spectrum of styles and degrees of moral seriousness, or lack of it, and could each be given a different generic label on this basis. Their most significant common point is that they are dramatic, and that the high point of the drama lies in the victim’s discovery of physical, or physical and psychological, opportunities of turning a seemingly hopeless physical situation to his advantage. It is the stories’ physical parameters too that generate their suspense: how far will the hero be able to exploit the loopholes that they offer? Certainly there is ‘a kind of game’ involved here: the rule that the hero must escape by his own ingenuity, without benefit of supernatural intervention. This is what makes the stories seem credible and realistic, if only fleetingly, however far-fetched the other premises of the plot may be. A century before, ‘modern’ realism, including stories about thieves and fraudsters, was pioneered by another Mu‘tazilj, al-Jhåi© (d. 255/868–9); but his stories had a consciously élitist intellectual edge: they were written against the current of received ideas and styles, and his naturalism was provocative. In his ‘Book of Misers’ (Kithb al-Bukhalh’ ), he used physical props to create a purely social landscape which is an outgrowth of the distortions produced by his characters’ idées fixes. His misers wish to see, and do see, God, reason and nature working in everything for their gain and justification; and Jhåi©, from a position of tacit superiority, ridicules the automatic symmetry detected by the semi-rational – learned theologians at one end of the intellectual scale, thrifty housewives at the other – everywhere and in everything, between the supreme order of the universe and their own desires and the material objects on to which they project them.92 The neat resolution of his misers’ penny-pinching dilemmas appears to them to be a form of divine deliverance, but to the reader it is obvious that the logic by which they interpret their experiences is unbalanced. It is sometimes difficult to say
240 Julia Bray exactly why – after all, what is wrong with calculating the cost of wear and tear on household goods or the maximum use to be extracted from a sack of bran? – yet one is always left with the uncomfortable feeling that the narrative symmetry into which these calculations are translated is a sign of flawed reasoning, and that the solidity and specificity of the stories’ physical props, which is much foregrounded, is a blind. A century later, in Tanukhj’s stories, symmetry has come to be equated with the real natural balance and with a shared intellectual security. It is symptomatic not of skewed mental constructs but of the actual structure of things. A kind of scientific thought has been acculturated along with the comforts brought by scientific medicine; and irony and scepticism, though not absent, are no longer the moving spirit in naturalistic storytelling. Nature, including nonhuman nature, has become a given, the narrative canvas instead of the embroidery. Objects yield clues to the rightness of things, not to the wrongness with which human passion may apprehend them. Clues and adventures In its simplest form, the nature-based adventure story with its sharp delineation of landscape is similar to the scientific medical and crime stories: it consists of a life-threatening situation such as being cornered by a snake or falling into a pit;93 the autobiographical narrator escapes from it by reading natural clues. Chapter Nine of Tanukhj’s Faraj, ‘Escapes from Wild Beasts’, to which these stories belong, contains both far-fetched but plausible stories, like that of the fish-eagle which snatches a baby dropped from a high bridge into a river – the narrator, a general, quickly reads the lie of the land and orders his soldiers to give chase, whereupon the bird drops the child, which is retrieved and given artificial respiration; highly naturalistic tales with quasi-supernatural elements, like that of the black ‘king’ lion, summoned from under the ground by its fellows, which terrorizes a party of reed-cutters; and improbable stories with a rational resolution, like the autobiography of an Egyptian woman who, in order to explain the son she has borne out of wedlock, claims to have been raped by a crocodile in her youth.94 (As Tanukhj’s informant, who questioned the woman himself, discovers, her graphic account of the ‘crocodiles’ larder’ and of her rescue from it is only part of the story.) Like the autobiographical medical story, the nature-based adventure story is suspenseful because readers suffer the same alarms as the narrator and there is no omniscient figure standing by to come to the rescue. Again, discrepancies in the solution can be overlooked in the excitement of reaching safety with the hero or heroine. But one step further down the path of literary complexity is the scientific tale of terror, which is an outgrowth both of the nature-based adventure story with its landscape features and of the detective story. In the tale of terror, there appears what seems to be a new element in Arabic storytelling: the strong, sustained plot in which one situation develops naturally out of another. Here it is the sheer momentum of the plot, in which the hero extricates himself from one bizarrely perilous situation by reading clues only to fall into another, that makes
The physical world and the writer’s eye 241 us suspend disbelief. The substratum, of course, is the irrational: the ghouls and bogeys of folklore, which are rationalized or semi-rationalized as psychological freaks only after the hero, and the reader have been subjected to their terrors. The best-known example of such stories is that of the grave-robbing daughter of the qh∂j of Ramla,95 who disguises herself as an animal for her macabre sorties and is surprised and mutilated by the narrator. Reading the confusing clues he has witnessed by moonlight, he tracks her to her home and blackmails her father into marrying her to him. She eventually attempts to murder him and he flees. The motivation of the story is provided by the adolescent girl’s confession of her ‘inexplicable’ pleasure in her nocturnal adventures and her loathing of the doting husband who has hacked off her right hand96 and curtailed her illicit freedom. Subsidiary drama is provided by her mother’s manipulation of her father who, as a qh∂j, is anxious to preserve his social standing and is made to collude in hiding his daughter’s crimes.97 The footloose hero gains a life of ease and sexual satisfaction at the price of being virtually imprisoned with his wife in his father-in-law’s house. The final scene shows him wakened (literally) from his life of indolence as his wife tries to cut his throat in his sleep, pinning him down with her knees since she is one-handed. Once again, his quick-wittedness enables him to seize what few opportunities the situation affords; the pair engage in a psychological duel, and he escapes with his life and a bribe. In such stories, however, modern scholarship has until quite recently been inclined to focus more on the folklore elements than on the accuracy of psychological observation which is the operative component in their telling.98
Conclusion What scientific observation did for tenth-century Arabic literature – or for some of it – seems to be very similar to what it did for some genres of modern Western fiction, though the effects were less durable. Tales of scientific medicine and detection and sensational adventure stories created secular miracles alongside the old, supernatural miracles; scientific tales of terror brought non-religious folklore into respectable literature, created, and legitimated, an appetite for thrills and suspense. This strengthened and sharpened the art of plotting; and because low-life characters, perverts and freaks, slaves, women, and sometimes even children and animals, were essential actors in sensational plots, it also helped to broaden the base of behavioural description.99 At the same time, though, under the appearance of naturalism – still, a century after Jhåi©, a modern and sophisticated literary technique, and by no means the story-teller’s only option – it gave new currency to older instincts, mythic and irrational. The intellectual edge of rationalism was absorbed and blunted, and its imaginative potential was released. This was apparently no more than an interlude in Arabic storytelling – or it may be that modern scholarship has failed to recognize the complex of ideas that it embodies in deceptively terse and simple language, and has yet to follow up its clues when they surface in other contexts and new guises.
242 Julia Bray
Acknowledgement I am most grateful to Emilie Savage-Smith for help in this chapter with medical terminology, concepts and references.
Notes 1 On the translation movement, see Gutas (2000), pp. 225–31 and Gutas (1998); see also Chapter 4 above. 2 See Savage-Smith (2000), p. 452. 3 Savage-Smith suggests, ibid., that the Christian court physicians/translators effectively blocked the adoption of other learned medical traditions (the Indian and Iranian). On Indian medicine at the court of Hhrun al-Rashjd in the late second/eighth century, see Jacquart and Micheau (1996), p. 238. 4 Meyerhof (1926), pp. 713–20 gives the pre-eminent translator Åunayn ibn Isåhq al-‘Ibhdi’s (192–260/808–73) list of those for whom his translations of Galen were made, and notes that among them the ‘prominent statesmen [were] nearly all . . . Muslims’. Though the translators might know Greek literature, ‘it seems that very few Greek literary texts dealing with poetry or drama were translated’, Leaman (1998), p. 257. 5 Ibn Qutayba, Adab al-Katib (‘The Right Conduct of Scribes’), pp. 1–5, Lecomte (1957), pp. 49–54. 6 Ibn Qutayba, Ma‘hrif, p. 3. 7 Lecomte (1965), pp. 439–41; see also Montgomery (2004), pp. 36–40. 8 Lecomte (1965), p. 441 thinks that he had been a khtib himself in the earlier part of his career. He suggests on p. 90 that his didactic works for bureaucrats were composed in the following order: Adab al-Khtib, a little after 236/850; ‘Uyun al-Akhbhr; al-Ma‘hrif (‘General Knowledge’), first version before 252/866, second version between 266/879 and 276/889. 9 Ibn Qutayba, ‘Uyun al-Akhbhr, I, p. ii, trans. Gutas (1998), p. 159. A recent select bibliography of studies of Ibn Qutayba’s interest in the Bible is given in Bray (2003). 10 Ibn Qutayba, Adab al-Khtib, pp. 5–6. The Qur’hnic phrase describes God’s gifts to David. 11 Lecomte (1965), p. 441. 12 Ibn Qutayba, Ma‘arif, pp. 3–6, Adab al-Khtib, p. 12 (see Lecomte (1957), pp. 57, 60–1), and ‘Uyun al-Akhbhr, I, pp. i–ii, trans. Horovitz (1930), pp. 173–5. 13 This is why Sourdel (1959–60) drew on them heavily for his history of the ‘Abbasid vizierate. 14 Tanukhj, Faraj, I, pp. 9–10 (editor’s preface) and pp. 52–3 (author’s preface). 15 Chapter Two also contains prayers, maxims, etc. 16 On the Buyids, see Chapter 5, note 40. 17 The most important intellectual representative of anti-Mu‘tazilj reaction is al-Ash‘arj (d. 324/936), who had been trained as a Mu‘tazilj theologian; see Chapter 5, p. 184 and note 163. 18 For a lucid discussion of justice (‘adl ) in Mu‘tazilj thought, see Gimaret (1993), pp. 189–91. 19 On Tanukhj’s Mu‘tazilism and his references to theodicy in Chapter One of the Faraj, see Bray (2004) (a). On the ways in which Mu‘tazilism ‘as an intellectual technique’ might combine with a variety of beliefs and attitudes, see Cook (2000), p. 195. On grace in Basran Mu‘tazilizm, see Gardet (1965), p. 570. 20 There are few modern miracles and very few supernatural beings in the Faraj. Dreams of the Prophet and his family do, however, play a role. 21 In Margoliouth’s translation, Margoliouth (1922 and 1929–32); a closer rendering would be ‘The Cream of Conversation’.
The physical world and the writer’s eye 243 22 On the chronology of Tanukhj’s works, see Shhljj, editor’s preface to Tanukhj, Faraj, I, p. 14. 23 The issue has been discussed by Hamori (1998) in relation to some of Tanukhj’s political anecdotes; see also Hamori (1990), p. 75. 24 Meyerhof (1935) translates and comments on thirty-three of Rhzj’s case notes taken from the section of his al-Åhwj fj al-Ïibb (‘The comprehensive Book of Medicine’ or Continens) that is based on the Hippocratic treatise On Epidemics. 25 See Bürgel (1976), p. 52, note 8 and Levey, trans. (1967). An early source for such stories, now extant only in extracts in later works, was Åunayn ibn Isåhq al-‘Ibhdj (see note 4), Kithb Nawhdir al-Falhsifa wa al-Åukamh’ wa Hdhb al-Mu‘allimjn al-Qudamh’, a collection of anecdotes about ancient philosophers and sages ‘based on similar Byzantine florilegia and [containing] very old material’, Strohmaier (1971), p. 580. 26 See Chapter 5, note 113. On the lives and legends of the Nestorian Christian Bukhtjshu‘s, who by Tanukhj’s time were in their sixth generation as court physicians and now served not only the caliphs but the Buyid rulers, see Le Coz (2004), pp. 103–26. 27 Bürgel (1976), p. 48. 28 On these types of medicine, see Savage-Smith (1996) and (2000). Bürgel (1976) sees Prophetic medicine as a relatively late traditionalist reaction to the success of scientific (Graeco-Islamic) medicine, born out of pious misgivings about having recourse to medicine. Hawting (1989), p. 134 argues that such feelings arose early. Savage-Smith puts the formal emergence of Prophetic medicine in the third/ninth century. 29 It is quoted by Ibn al-Jawzj (d. 597/1201) in his history, al-Munta©am, XIV, pp. 151–2, under the year 352/963, from an informant at one remove from Tanukhj’s son, who quotes it from Tanukhj without naming a written source. Tanukhj’s editor, Shhljj, identifies it as belonging to one of the lost volumes of Nishwhr, and reproduces it at Nishwhr, IV, pp. 240–1. 30 Tanukhj, Nishwhr, IV, p. 240. 31 Trans. Bürgel (1976), p. 55, from Bukhhrj (d. 256/870), Íaåjå, chapter on the sick (mar∂h), opening section; variants are cited at nos.545, 551 and 571 in Íaåjå, trans. Khan (1979). 32 The torment which sinners undergo in the tomb while awaiting final judgement, see Wensinck and Tritton (1960). 33 Bürgel (1976), p. 55. 34 Bukhhrj, Íaåjå, trans. Khan (1979), chapter on the sick (mar∂h), no. 575. 35 See Shhljj’s note 1 to Tanukhj, Faraj, IV, p. 215. 36 On Muhallabj, see Chapter 5, p. 162 and note 46; on Ibn al-Marzubhn, see Shhljj’s note 1 to Tanukhj, Faraj, I, p. 106. 37 Tanukhj, Nishwhr, III, pp. 233–5 and Faraj, IV, pp. 215–17. Margoliouth (1932), pp. 199–200 translates the introductory passage but omits the story itself as ‘unsuitable’ (his translation was intended for a family readership). The above translation of both story and introduction is my own. 38 He wanted to make sure that no sleight of hand was involved. Compare Savage-Smith (1996), pp. 937–8: Rhzj describes various fraudsters who, for example, ‘insert worms generated in cheese into the ear or into the roots of the teeth and then extract them’; some of their deceptions could have dangerous or fatal results. 39 See Levey, trans. (1967), p. 90 for Galen’s ‘useful deceit’ and Bürgel (1967) on the textbook principles underlying the handling of patients. 40 Tanukhj, Faraj, IV, p. 201. 41 Tanukhj, Faraj, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Pococke 64, f. 66a and Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS BN arabe 3483, f. 205a. This reading differs from Shhljj’s ‘his father sent for a skilled physician’. 42 Dill causes vomiting; for its general medicinal properties, see Dietrich (1997), pp. 431–2 and the Aqrabhdhjn (‘Formulary’) of the philosopher and scientist al-Kindj (d. c.250/865), Levey, trans. (1966), p. 292, no. 166.
244 Julia Bray 43 Tanukhj, Faraj, IV, p. 203; the phrase is an echo of the book’s title. 44 Tanukhj, Faraj, IV, pp. 223–6. 45 Self-poisoning is a sin which will earn torment – probably eternal – in Hell, according to a åadjth cited with variants in the chapters on medicine in Bukhhrj, Íaåjå and al-Tirmidhj’s (206–79/821–92) al-Jhmi‘. For the latter, see note 57 below. 46 Tanukhj, Faraj, IV, pp. 199–200. 47 Ibn Abj ‘Ußaybi‘a, ‘Uyun al-Anbh ’, pp. 417–19. 48 Emilie Savage-Smith points out to me that there exist in manuscript almost 900 other case histories of Rhzj of a different type to those translated by Meyerhof (1935) in a work usually referred to as Kithb al-Tajhrib, but that unlike those related by Tanukhj they are unlikely to afford any biographical or pseudo-biographical glimpses of him; see Alvarez-Millan (2000). 49 Tanukhj, Nishwhr, II, pp. 287–9, trans. Margoliouth (1922), pp. 256–8, and Faraj, IV, pp. 196–8. 50 For example, Tanukhj, Nishwhr, III, pp. 161–3 , trans. Margoliouth (1932), pp. 49–50 and Faraj, IV, pp. 210–12; Nishwhr, III, pp. 164–5, trans. Margoliouth (1932), pp. 50–1, and Faraj, IV, pp. 213–14. 51 Bürgel (1976), p. 55, quoting from Bukhhrj, Íaåjå, chapter on medicine (ƒibb), first åadjth in the opening section. 52 Neither Muslim (c.202–62/817–74), Íaåjå, nor al-Nash’j (215–303/829–915), Sunan, has a chapter on medicine. The åadjth ‘No disease . . . without a cure’ prefaces the chapters on medicine of Abu Da’ud (202–75/817–88), Sunan, and Ibn Mhja (209–73/824–87), Sunan, and is cited in his chapter on medicine by Tirmidhj, Jhmi‘. For these collections, see note 57 below. 53 Tanukhj, Faraj, IV, pp. 306–7. 54 Ibid., p. 222. The term has different applications, but this is what is described here. 55 Tanukhj, Nishwhr, III, pp.149 and 151, trans. Margoliouth (1931), pp. 578 and 579. Compare Savage-Smith (1996), p. 954: ‘The writings of highly learned physicians were not devoid of beliefs in sympathetic magic . . . al-Rhzj . . . records the wearing of an unwashed or sweaty garment which had been worn by a woman in labour to cure a particular type of fever.’ 56 See Tanukhj, Nishwhr, II, p. 327, Shhljj’s note 1. 57 So also Abu Da’ud, Sunan, Tirmidhj, Jhmi‘ and Ibn Mhja, Sunan. Early traditionalist attitudes to the use of healing recitations may be compared in omnibus editions of what have come to be regarded as the authoritative ‘six books’ of åadjth compiled in the third/ninth century such as Mawsu‘at al-Åadjth al-Sharjf (1999). It is sometimes difficult to avoid using the convenient word ‘charm’ to refer to such practices; for caveats, see Savage-Smith (2004), pp. xxii–xxiii. On charms and magic proper, involving the co-opting of spirits, see the description of a contemporary of Tanukhj, Ibn al-Nadjm (late fourth/tenth century) in his Fihrist, cited by Dols (1992), pp. 264–6. 58 Tanukhj, Nishwhr, III, p. 202, trans. Margoliouth (1932), p. 185. 59 Tanukhj, Nishwhr, III, p. 37 (not translated by Margoliouth). I am grateful to Emilie Savage-Smith for explaining to me how the test was supposed to work. 60 See Schacht (2000), pp. 857–9. 61 See Bray (1998) (b), pp. 12–15 and Bray (2004) (b). 62 See note 19. 63 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Medicine of the Prophet, trans. Johnstone (1998), pp. 9–11. 64 See Perho (1995), pp. 42–9, 56–8, 63 on the features of early Prophetic medicine. Perho places the emergence of fully articulated theories of Prophetic medicine receptive to Graeco-Islamic medical practice in the seventh/thirteenth to the eighth/fourteenth centuries. There are ambivalences in this receptivity, however: ‘Prophetic medicine assumed the religious and philosophical position that certainty of knowledge could only be obtained from revelation . . . .Thus, the final authority for medicine is prophetic revelation and not Galen . . . or Ibn Sjnh [Avicenna]’, Savage-Smith (1996), p. 930.
The physical world and the writer’s eye 245 65 See Vadet (1968), part 2, Bell (1979) and Leder (1984). 66 Tanukhj, Nishwhr, II, p. 289. 67 An example of the discipline-specific approach is Cook (2000), who omits imaginative writing and ‘lay’ uses of åadjth from his discussion of how the injunction to ‘command right and forbid wrong’ developed as a religious and political idea. 68 See Bray (1999). 69 See Jacobi (1998). 70 Ibn al-Mu‘tazz, Fußul al-Tamhthjl, pp. 26–7. 71 Ibid., pp. 30, 32–3. 72 Ibid., pp. 53, 155. 73 Ibid., pp. 146–8, 152. 74 Ibid., p. 150. 75 Ibid., pp. 80–7, 92–3, 106–8, 119–21, 128, 155, 163–4; information from Åunayn: pp. 80, 82, 83. 76 Ibid., pp. 156–9. 77 Ibid., pp. 159–66, 199, 201–13, 229–32. 78 Drory (2000), p. 4. 79 Ibn al-Mu‘tazz, Fußul al-Tamhthjl, p. 67. 80 Tanukhj, Nishwhr, I, pp. 7–11, trans. Margoliouth (1922), pp. 4–7. 81 Todorov (1971), chapter 3. 82 Malti-Douglas (1988) (a) and (b) deals with later sources than Tanukhj, mainly the Kithb al-Adhkiyh’ (‘Book of the Sharp-Witted’) of Ibn al-Jawzj (c.511–97/1116–1201), though in (1988) (a) she also compares two of Ibn al-Jawzj’s stories with their originals in Tanukhj’s Faraj. 83 Malti-Douglas (1988) (a), p. 108. 84 Malti-Douglas (1988) (b), pp. 88–9. 85 See Fahd (1965), (1986). 86 See Bray (1998) (a). 87 Müller (1994). 88 Tanukhj, Faraj, IV, pp. 244–7. At Faraj, IV, pp. 251–5, it is the thieves who explain their ingenious modus operandi. They are part of a fraternity whose chief controls them from prison and who takes pity on one of their victims. 89 Malti-Douglas (1988) (a), pp. 118–19, 123–5; the story discussed is Tanukhj, Faraj, IV, pp. 256–8. 90 Tanukhj, Faraj, IV, pp. 238–40. A literature-loving highwayman quotes a similar argument from the (now lost) ‘Book of Thieves’ (Kithb al-Lußuß) of Jhåi©: merchants deserve to be robbed if they do not pay their alms tax (zakht), Faraj, IV, p. 232. 91 Tanukhj, Faraj, IV, pp. 264–7. The schema of this or some related story is borrowed, and queerly perverted, by al-Hamadhhnj in the second half of his Maqhma Asadiyya (‘Maqhma of the Lion’), where the extraordinarily skilled bowman who comes to the rescue of a caravan which has been robbed turns out to be a motiveless killer who, after infatuating the travellers with his beauty and lulling them into a false sense of security, starts to murder them one by one, ‘Abduh (ed.) (1889/1973), pp. 32–6. 92 Jhåi©, Bukhalh’, trans. Serjeant (1997). It should be noted that Serjeant’s translation conveys only the descriptive quality of the original and offers the English reader no intellectual signposts to what is a highly learned jeu d’esprit at the expense of naive rationalism. 93 Tanukhj, Faraj, IV, p. 180 and pp. 162–5. 94 Tanukhj, Faraj, IV, pp. 166–7 (see Bray (1998) (a), pp. 87–8), ibid., pp. 152–3 and pp. 168–9. 95 Tanukhj, Nishwhr, III, pp. 236–43 and Faraj, III, pp. 378–85, trans. Margoliouth (1932), pp. 200–205; for a discussion and further bibliography, see Hamori (1990). 96 The legal penalty (åadd ) for theft, which the narrator-hero has applied unwittingly, thinking her to be a bear or wolf about to attack him. He is moved by the prettiness of her severed hand when it is extracted from the iron gauntlet she had used to dig up
246 Julia Bray graves, and falls in love when she is summoned to her father’s presence and he sees her for the first time in human form. 97 After cauterizing the stump, the mother and daughter had agreed to pretend that she had developed a tumour and that they had had her hand amputated medically, an unlikely operation for a surgeon to have attempted at this period, I am informed by Emilie Savage-Smith and Lawrence I. Conrad. 98 For an approach which instead analyses ‘psychological mimesis of the highest order’ in Tanukhj and the ways in which fantastic elements are ‘transformed into their everyday equivalents’, see Hamori (2004), pp. 206–8, 215. By contrast, for a burlesque handling of the folk elements in Tanukhj’s tale of the qh∂j’s daughter, see Ibn Nhqiyh (410–85/1020–92), Maqhmht, no.2, ‘The Grave-Robber’, pp. 71–4, which plays off the uncanny against the Hamadhanian motif of the rogue preacher (see Chapter 5 above, pp. 169, 187–94). Ibn Nhqiyh’s narrator chances by night on an animal-like creature which (like the qh∂j’s daughter) runs on all fours, is clothed in skins and wears iron gauntlets. He follows it to a graveyard where (again like the qh∂j’s daughter) it digs up the most recently buried corpse and steals its grave-clothes. On being surprised by the night watch, it starts to preach on the transience of this world and the Day of Judgement. The narrator follows and upbraids it: it is Ibn Nhqiyh’s anti-hero al-Yashkurj, who claims to be obeying the Prophetic injunction to ‘seek a livelihood from what is hidden in the earth’ (in fact, the åadjth is an encouragement to practise agriculture). 99 Examples are the story of the miller, his mighty helper and the cannibal who stores live victims in a cave while he disports himself with his abducted paramour; the story of the ape-leader, his wife and his ape, which bribes the narrator to keep silent while it fornicates with the wife; and the story of the effeminate young man who, taunted by his companions, spends the night unarmed in a lonely spot where he discovers first an abandoned pet monkey, then its mistress, whom he rescues from her abductor, Tanukhj, Faraj, IV, pp. 259–63 and pp. 146–7, and Faraj, III, pp. 406–8.
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The physical world and the writer’s eye 249 Perho, I. (1995), The Prophet’s medicine. A creation of the Muslim traditionalist scholars, Studia Orientalia, lxxiv (Finnish Oriental Society), Helsinki. Rashed, Roshdi (ed.) (1996), Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, 3, London and New York. al-Ruhhwj (Isåhq ibn ‘Alj of Edessa): see Bürgel (1967) and Levey, trans. (1967). Savage-Smith, Emilie (1996), ‘Medicine’, in Rashed (1996), pp. 903–62. ——(2000), ‘Ïibb’, Encylopaedia of Islam, X, pp. 452–60. ——, ed. and introd. (2004), Magic and Divination in Early Islam (The Formation of the Classical Islamic World, 42) Aldershot and London. Schacht, J. (2000), ‘Umm al-walad’, Encylopaedia of Islam, X, pp. 857–9. Serjeant, R. B., trans. (1997), The Book of Misers. A translation of al-Bukhalh’, Reading. Sourdel, Dominique (1959–60), Le Vizirat ‘abbhside de 749 à 936 (132 à 324 de l’hégire, Damascus. Strohmaier, G. (1971), ‘Åunayn b. Isåh˚; al-‘Ibhdj’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, III, pp. 578–81. al-Tanukhj, al-Faraj ba‘da al-Shidda, ‘Abbud al-Shhljj (ed.), Beirut 1978; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Pococke 64, and Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS BN arabe 3483. ——Nishwhr al-Muåh∂ara, ‘Abbud al-Shhljj (ed.), Beirut 1971–3, trans. Margoliouth, D. S. (1922) and (1929–32). Todorov, Tzvetan (1971), Poétique de la prose, Paris. Vadet, Jean-Claude (1968), L’Esprit courtois en Orient dans les cinq premiers siècles de l’Hégire, Paris. Wensinck, A. J. and Tritton, A. S. (1960), ‘‘Adhhb al-˚abr’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, I, pp. 186–7.
Index
‘Abbhs, Iåshn 172 al-‘Abbhs ibn ‘Abd al-Muƒƒalib, uncle of the Prophet 69, 82 n.106 ‘Abbasid dynasty 17, 133, 138–9 n.120, 215 ‘Abbasid society 48, 57–8, 60–1, 75 n.7, 81 n.103; intellectual trends 92, 100, 102, 104, 107, 110, 114 Abbott, Nabia 53, 65 ‘Abd Allhh ibn ‘Umar 63 ‘Abd Allhh ibn al-Zubayr 79 n.72, 205 n.70 ‘Abd al-‘Azjz ibn Åhtim ibn Nu‘mhn al-Bhhilj, Umayyad governor of Armenia: storyteller 24 ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Åabjb (d. 853): Ta’rjkh 18 ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwhn, Umayyad caliph 79 n.72 ‘Abd al-Raåmhn ibn Mahdj 102, 111 ‘Abduh, Muåammad 190, 192, 193, 202 n.4, 205 n.76 Abu al-‘Athhiya (d. 826) 168, 188, 193 Abu Bakr, first caliph 53; oratory 19 Abu Dhwud al-‘Askarj 180 Abu Dulhma al-Asadj (d. c.777) 30, 204 n.41 Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj (d. c.972) 26; al-Imh’ al-Shawh‘ir 81 n.103; Kithb al-Aghhnj 36, 40, 220; women in Aghhnj 62, 231 pseudo-Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj: Kithb al-Ghurabh’ 36–9 Abu al-Fatå al-Iskandarj, anti-hero of al-Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht 154, 156–60, 164, 167, 170–1, 178, 183–5, 187, 192–6, 198 Abu al-Hudhayl al-‘Allhf 112, 179–80, 207 n.129 Abu Muslim 132, 141–2 n.200
Abu al-Muƒahhar al-Azdj: Åikhyat Abj al-Qhsim 162–8, 204 n.43 Abu Nuå, Christian khtib 101 Abu Nuwhs (d. c.813) 168–70, 175–6, 188, 198–200, 236 Abu Rhfi‘: accounts of his killing 32 Abu ‘Ubayda ibn al-Jarrhå: characterization 33 Abu ‘Ubayda Ma‘mar ibn al-Muthannh (d. 824–5) 107 Abu ‘Uthmhn al-Dimashqj 129 Abu Yusuf 235 adab 6–7, 22, 29, 50–1, 59–62, 66, 73, 76 n.24, 108, 115, 132, 153, 154, 159, 162, 164–5, 173–4, 197–8, 205 n.84, 209 n.220, 215, 220, 232–4, 237, 238; medical adab 220; in Qur’hn 104 Adam 180 a∂dhd 167 ‘adhhb al-qabr, the torment of the tomb 8, 223, 243 n.32 adjbs, possessors of adab 22, 26, 91, 163, 219, 220, 236; historians 6–7, 29, 34, 40; humanism 23 ‘A∂ud al-Dawla, Buyid ruler 219 adultery and unlawful intercourse (zinh’) 33, 61, 80 n.81 adumbration, narrative device 8 adventure stories 239–40 aesthetics 125, 133, 168 Agapitos, P. A. 98 Aåmad ibn Abj Du’hd, Chief Qa∂j 109, 111–14, 120, 139 n.135 Aåmad ibn Åanbal (d. 855) 20–1, 26, 109–10, 112, 133, 141 n.190 Aåmad ibn ‘Jsh ibn al-Shaykh ‘Abd al-Razzhq 69–70 Aåmad al-Khh’in ‘the Traitor’, Ottoman Pasha 4, 6, 10
252 Index Ahmed, Leila 75 n.9; Women and Gender in Islam 48, 57–8, 61–3, 65–6, 74 ‘H’isha, daughter of Abu Bakr and wife of the Prophet 53, 56, 59–60, 65–8, 74, 77 nn.37, 43, 79 n.72, 80 n.84; battle of the Camel 29–30, 53–5, 63–4; in Ibn Sa‘d 54; political role 53–5, 57; slandered 26, 61, 77 n.44 ‘ajh’ib, mirabilia 5, 6, 50–2, 66, 158 ‘Ajh’ib al-Hind 51, 76 n.30 akhbhr see khabar akhbhrjs, scholars of akhbhr 20, 21; record multiple variants 32; unavowed authorship 30–1; use of Biblical narratives 22; use of emplotment 30–1; use of isnhds 21 alchemy 121, 182, 184 Alexander the Great 3, 157; Alexander Romance 11 n.3; Persian Iskandarnhme 80 n.82 Alexandria 157, 184 Alexius I Comnenus, Byzantine emperor 99 Ali, Yusuf 191 ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet and fourth caliph 53, 68, 109, 138–9 n.120, 143 n.221, 163, 188; battle of the Camel 30, 63–4; battle of Íiffjn 34; holy warrior 10 ‘Alj ibn al-Åusayn Zayn al-‘Hbidjn 143 n.221, 188, 190, 192–3 ‘Alj Pasha al-Ïawhshj ‘the Eunuch’, Ottoman governor of Egypt 6 ‘hlim see ‘ulamh’ Allhh 54, 101, 105, 109, 116–24, 127, 129, 130–1, 142 n.220 allegory 39, 50, 52, 65, 66, 72, 83 n.160 alphabet: hidden meanings 8 alternating perspective 9 ambiguity 70, 73, 157, 171, 178, 190, 193, 206 n.106, 238 al-Amjn, ‘Abbasid caliph: caliphate 68; elegies 83 n.142; war with al-Ma’mun 55 ‘hmm and khhßß, general and particular 105–6, 123, 128 ‘hmma and khhßßa: ‘awhmm identified with muåaddiths 138 n.118; the commonalty and the élite 108–10 ‘Amr ibn al-‘Hß 34 ‘Amr ibn ‘Ubayd 120 amulets see incantations; Qur’hn, ruqyas (healing recitations)
anachronism, literary device 159 analogical reasoning see qiyhs anatomical description 221–2 anecdotes 6, 16, 23, 30, 35, 50–1, 57, 59, 61, 73, 76 n.24, 113, 153–4, 159, 164, 169, 172–4, 176, 178, 179, 197, 200–1, 217, 219, 223–4, 226, 229, 231–2, 238, 243 nn.23, 25; used in historiography 6; see also åad jth; khabar angels 21; Gabriel 71; Zoroastrian angel of victory (Bahrhm/Varathegna) 78 n.58 animals 131, 192, 240, 241, 245 n.96, 246 nn.98, 99 Anna Comnena: Alexiad 134 n.18 ‘Antara (sixth century) 199 anthropomorphism (tashbjh) 109, 131 anticipation, compositional device 120 antiquity 92–3, 95, 101, 134 n.4; Greek literature 242 n.4; medical writings 220, 228, 232; see also Galen and Galenism; Persia, pre-Islamic; Rome and Roman society antithesis 163, 167–71, 179 ‘aqd and åall 187, 189, 194, 199 ‘aql (pl. ‘uqul): rational intellect 22, 66, 102, 108, 118, 125–6, 129, 132, 184, 218, 239; women 82 n.139 ‘Arab, desert Arabs 101, 103, 105–7, 108, 110, 113, 114, 119, 127; wisdom 238 Arabic language 153, 163; compared by al-Shhfi‘j to fiqh and sunna 103; preserved by Arab tribes 26; sacrality x, 92, 93, 101, 115, 119; see also ‘arabiyya Arabic names xiii ‘arabiyya 93–4, 101–2, 103–4, 105–7, 108, 110, 111, 115, 119 Arberry, A. J. 190–1 Aristotle 110, 116, 135 nn.21, 28, 217; Categories 126, 128–9; De Interpretatione 124; Organon 100, 101; Poetics 93, 101; Rhetoric 93–4, 95, 99–100, 101; storyteller 80 n.82; to keisthai 128–9, 131; Topics 93, 101, 126, 128–9; zoology 112 Arkoun, Mohammed 91, 102 Armiyhnus Island for Men 51; for Women 51 Arrian 97 articulated narrative 180–1 artificial respiration 240 al-Ash‘arj (d. 936) 242 n.17; Maqhlht al-Islhmiyyjn 184
Index 253 Ash‘arism 208 n.163 al-‘Askarj, Abu Hilhl (d. c.1010): Kithb al-Awh’il 25 Aßmh’ bint Abj Bakr 79 n.72 al-Aßma‘j, ‘Abd al-Malik (d. 828) 107; Ta’rjkh al-‘Arab qabla al-Islam 26 asmhr (sing. samar) fanciful tales 17 astrolabe 184 astrology 5, 25, 72, 83 n.160, 182, 184 Athenaeus: Deipnosophists 172 Athens 99, 101, 135 n.28 authorship, medieval xi, 18–19, 32–3, 38, 40, 163–4, 167, 198–201, 219–20; see also compilation; fiction; transmission autobiographical narrators and autobiography 3, 229, 236, 240 avarice (bukhl ): literary theme 35–6, 168, 170–2, 174–5, 197, 239–40 Avicenna see Ibn Sjnh awh’il, firsts: historiographical genre 25 Ayalon, David: Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom 4 Hzarmjdukht, Sasanian monarch, daughter of Khusraw II 55 al-Azdj, Abu Muåammad Yaåyh ibn Muåammad (tenth century) 221 al-Azdj, Muåammad ibn ‘Abd Allhh (active c.805): ‘Conquest of Syria’ 33–4 Baghdad: ‘Abbasid 49, 99, 110–11, 163–4, 166 Bahrhm Gur 83 n.160 al-Bakrj, Aåmad ibn ‘Abd Allhh (thirteenth century): romances of 3, 11 n.5 al-Balhdhurj, Aåmad ibn Yaåyh (d. 892): 31, 33, 39, 40, 77 n.44; Futuå al-Buldhn 25 balhgha, eloquence 100, 108, 118, 124–6, 132, 141 n.200 Banu Mush 136 n.64 barber’s tales 181–7, 207 nn. 141, 142, 144 Barthes, Roland 19, 197 Bashshhr ibn Burd (d. c.784) 120–1, 140 n.174 Basil of Caesarea 99 Basra: ‘Abbasid 99, 110–11, 120, 179–80; grammarians 107; Mirbad 110 battle of the Camel 29–30, 53–5, 63–4, 77 n.44 battle of Åunayn 26 battle of Karbala 205 n.73 battle of Marj Dhbiq 5 battle of Mu’ta 205 n.73
battle of Raydhniyya 5 battle of Uåud 204 n.69 bayhn 92, 94, 115–16, 118–19, 122–33, 183; al-Shhfi‘j’s theory 102, 103–7 Bayhaqj (d. 1077): Thrjkh-e Bayhaqj 79 n.72 Beaumont, Daniel 27, 35–6, 172, 181 Berbers 108 Berg, Herbert 102 Berkey, Jonathan 65 Bible 169, 216, 242 n.8 Biblical narratives: used by akhbhrjs 22 Bilhl ibn Abj Burda 30–1 biographical dictionaries 81 n.91 biography 50, 54, 198; of Companions of the Prophet 65; of the Fatimid caliph al-Mahdj 207 n.142; of the Prophet see also sjra Blachère, Régis 122 Black, D. L. 101 boasting 6, 9; fakhr 10; pre-Islamic contests 27 books 130; invented titles 165; medical textbooks 220, 226, 234; self-help manuals 216 Bray, Julia Ashtiany 197 Brown, Peter 98 al-Buåturj (d. 897) 139 n.135 al-Bukhhrj (d. 870): Íaåjå 55, 58, 65, 78 n.62, 182, 185, 230, 232 Bukhtjshu‘ dynasty of physicians 220, 243 n.26; Jibrjl 175, 206 nn.113, 114 Burhn, Sasanian monarch, daughter of Khusraw II 55–6, 78 n.58 bureaucrats and bureaucracy: Byzantine 98, 99; Islamic 113, 215, 216–17, 224, 226, 230; see also khtibs Bürgel, J. C. 220, 223, 230 Buyid dynasty 204 n.40, 218, 243 n.26 Buzurjmihr ibn Bakhtakhn 117–18 Byzantines 99, 134 n.18, 233, 243 n.25; battle of Mu’ta 205 n.73; depicted by al-Azdj 33; depicted by pseudo-Waqidj 34; Rum 108, 138 n.115 Byzantium 92, 98–9, 101 Cairo: Mamluk 10, 49, 65, 181 Calder, Norman 103, 115 Cambridge History of Arabic Literature 18, 39, 91 cannibal 246 n.99 canonical forms and works 74, 155 capping devices: in expository writing 104, 105
254 Index Carleton, William: ‘An Essay on Irish Swearing’ 16 Carter, Michael 101 Cato the Elder 94, 97 cattle-sheds 225–6 celibacy 52 characterization 6, 7, 25, 31–2, 33–4, 187, 237; see also psychology Chanson de Roland 8 Chaucer, Geoffrey 165 chemistry 231; see also alchemy children 226–7, 241 chivalry ( furusiyya) 6, 9, 10 Christians and Christianity 34, 92, 93, 99, 101, 106, 136 n.55, 166, 172, 204 n.68, 205 n.72, 206 nn.113, 114, 215, 242 n.3, 243 n.26; patristic exegesis 134 n.14; see also dhimmjs chronology 23, 25 Cicero 92, 97, 135 n.33; Brutus 96; De Lege Maniliana 97; De Oratore 97; In Catilinam 97; Orator 96 City of Women 51 civil wars 29; meaning in salvation history 29; see also fitna codes and encoding 48, 58, 71, 115, 155, 156, 171, 197; codes of conduct 95, 195; cultural codes 154, 186; tacit codes 197 coherence 155, 178–9, 183, 219 coinage 78 n.58, 82 n.133 comedy 218 Companions of the Prophet: biographies 65; freedom from error 29; involvement in civil war 29 compilation 18, 19, 32, 36–8, 39–40 concubines and concubinage 48, 60, 69, 79 n.78, 231 Conley, Thomas 98 consensus see ijmh‘ Constantine, Byzantine emperor 98 Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, Byzantine emperor 98 Constantine IX Monomachos, Byzantine emperor 99 Constantinople 34, 99, 172 contraception 231, 236 conventionality of language 103, 106, 137 n.90 converts and conversion stories 27, 158–9, 216, 233 Cook, Michael 231 Cooperson, Michael 198; Classical Arabic Biography 40, 101
courtly ideology 235–6; see also kings, kingship and kingliness; mirrors for princes crocodiles’ larder 240 Crone, Patricia 19 cross-dressing 80 n.87 Crowley, Aleister 5 Daniel, prophet 5 Dhr al-Åarb 158 Dhr al-Islhm 158 Darke, Hubert 56 dates, Hijrj xiii–xiv Daube, D. 93 David, prophet 242 n.10 Dayr Hirqil 179, 207 n.128 decorum 168–71, 173, 232 Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe 39; Serious Reflections on Robinson Crusoe 39; The Storm 39 detectives and detective stories 224, 237–41, 245 n.82 Devil see Ibljs dhimmjs, Christians and Jews under Muslim rule 79 n.76 Dhu al-Qarnayn 3; see also Alexander the Great Dhu al-Rumma (d. c.735) 159 diagnosis 220, 222, 238 dialect 141 n.190, 166, 167; in Mamluk historiography 6 dialogue 6, 7, 9, 11 n.6, 31, 34, 172–3, 174, 228; see also direct speech Dickens, Charles 6, 111 al-Djnawarj, Abu Åanjfa (d. 895): al-Akhbhr al-Ïiwhl 34 pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite 134 n.14 Dioscorides 173 direct speech 6, 22, 70, 221 disputation and debate 172–3, 182, 184, 229–30, 232, 233; see also inter-faith debates; munh©ara divorce 75 n.9, 232 djwhn 189 Dols, Michael: Majnun 179 domestic life: in storytelling 226–9, 232–3 Domitian, Roman emperor 97 Donner, Fred M. 28 Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan 237 drama 7, 9, 25, 33–4, 70, 175, 178, 228, 238; dramatic debate 10; dramatic irony 8
Index 255 dreams: premonitory 4, 8, 68; of the Prophet 8, 233, 242 n.20 Drory, Rina 197, 236 El-Hibri, Tayeb: Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography 40 élites 94, 97–9, 109, 215, 218, 232, 235; see also ‘hmma and khhßßa emplotment 25–6; interpretative structure 26–30; narrative structure 30–2 Encyclopaedia of Islam xiii Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature xiii encyclopedias 60, 114 Endress, Gerhard 111 epistolary exchanges, narrative device 33–4, 54 erotic manuals 51 eschatology 191; see also åadjth; Mahdj; malhåim Ess, Josef van 112 ethics x, 92, 93, 95–6, 101, 117, 119, 127, 132, 165–8, 170–1, 194–6, 223, 229, 238–9 ithos 95, 134 n.19, 135 n.33 eunuchs 6, 68, 69 Eve 56, 81 n.96 exegesis (tafsjr) and exegetes 102, 106–7, 110, 122–3 exile and homesickness, literary theme 36–9 experiment 230–1 Fa’alhtj clan, astrologers and storytellers 5 fables 6, 24, 39 fabrication and forgery 6, 17, 18, 21, 199–200 Fadel, Mohammad 58 Fakhr al-Djn al-Rhzj (d. 1209) 106, 142 n.210 family 38, 61, 218–20, 226, 227, 230 al-Fhrhbj, Abu Naßr (d. 950) 99–100, 124, 141 n.196 al-Farazdaq (d. 728) 159 al-Farrh’ (d. 822) 107 faßhåa 118, 124–5, 141 n.199 fate 8, 10 Fhƒima, daughter of the Prophet and wife of ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib 53 fatwh, legal opinion 10, 25 feminist critics and criticism 47, 74 fiction 17–19, 21, 32–4, 36–7, 39–40, 50, 153–4, 159, 162, 197, 200–1, 219
Fielding, Henry: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling 39 fiqh and fuqahh’: Åanafj 112–13, 235; jurisprudence, and jurisprudents 47, 49, 52, 101, 102, 103–7, 115, 126, 134 n.14, 136 n.77, 137 n.90, 206 n.117, 217, 231; Sunnj schools 58, 75 n.9; ußul al-fiqh 102, 113, 137 n.81; women muftjs ( jurisconsults) 79 n.78 firhsa, divination by physiognomy 6, 7, 238 firearms: identified with Christians 5, 10; use by Ottomans 4, 8 fish-eagle 240 fitna 52, 55–7, 66–7, 70, 72–3, 78 n.62, 82 n.136, 117, 119; ‘first fitna’ (civil war) 53–4, 74, 77 n.40; ‘fourth fitna’ 68; muftinun (seducers) 176 flashback, narrative device 5, 9 folklore 241, 246 n.98 formative period of Islamic thought xi Forster, E. M. 7 Fortune, Dion 5 foundation myths: of Muslim culture x Fowden, Garth 92 frame stories 224, 226 Frank, R. M. 129 free will 207 n.136, 218 Galen and Galenism 175–6, 206 nn.96, 114, 220, 226, 232, 234–5, 242 n.4, 244 n.64 gender and gender roles 59; gendered space 80 n.87 genealogy 22, 26, 28 Genette, Gérard: Palimpsestes 199 genre 74, 155–6, 165, 167, 168, 170, 174, 181, 184, 187–90, 193, 195, 197, 203 n.16, 227, 234, 237–9 geography and geographical literature 108, 138 nn.114, 115, 156–8, 184, 185, 203 n.19, 208 n.167, 238 geomancy 4, 8, 11 n.10 Geries, Ibrahim 113 gesture 129–30, 131 ghul, man-eating women 66; ghouls 241 Gibb, H. A. R. 114 God 38, 72, 133, 166, 179, 223, 233, 239; theodicy 179, 218–19, 207 n.137, 242 n.19; see also Allhh Gogol, Nikolai: Taras Bulba 10 Goldziher, Ignaz 200–1 Goodman, L. E. 196 graffiti 36–8; collection 38–9
256 Index grammar and grammarians 95, 101, 104, 107, 124, 134 n.18, 137 n.90, 182–4, 217 grave robbing 241, 245 n.96, 246 n.98 Gregory of Nazianzus 99 Grundriss der arabischen Philologie 18 Grunebaum, Gustave von 19, 124 Gutas, Dimitri 92–3, 111–12 Haarmann, Ulrich 6 Habinek, Thomas 97 åadd offences 61, 241, 245 n.96 al-Hhdj, ‘Abbasid caliph 69 Åadjth: authenticity 66–8, 201; corpus of Tradition xiv, 82 n.136, 217, 220, 233–4; Åadjth scholarship and history 78 n.55; al-Shhfi‘j 111; viewed as normative source 47, 74 åadjth, items from the corpus of Tradition: on bayhn 123; categorization 21; collections 21, 65, 230, 232, see also al-Bukhhrj, Muslim ibn al-Åajjhj; component of general knowledge 182, 184; condemning women rulers 55–6; on dalliance 170–1; describing women as fitna 55, 66–7; on equality 235; eschatological 67, 78 n.62; exegetical 102; åadjth al-ifk (report of the slandering of ‘H’isha) 26, 61; åadjth-based history 40; historical report 17, 20; historicization and hybridization 78 n.62; and ‘ilm 103; ironic use 246 n.98; lay uses 245 n.67; ‘life-writing’ 80 n.84; on love 83 n.165; memorizers 224; model for action 17; mu‘ammarun, centenarian transmitters 159; multiple versions 32; narrative xiv; narrative relating the Prophet’s example xiv, 20; reflecting authors’ views 27–8; science of åadjth 28; al-Shhfi‘j’s influence 102; on sickness 223–4, 244 nn.45, 52, 57; tawhtur 221; transmission 24, 58, 67; transmission by women 58, 61–2, 73, 79 nn.78, 80; on wine 235; on women’s rule 79 n.72; see also medicine and medical theory, Prophetic medicine; muåaddiths Åafßa bint ‘Umar, wife of the Prophet 63, 77 n.37 hagiography 28, 50 åajj: pilgrimage 182–3, 184–6; ritual purity of pilgrims (iårhm) 185 al-Åajjhj, Umayyad governor 123 åakawhtj, public storyteller 9
åhkiya, mime artist 162 al-Åallhj, Íufj martyr 8 Hallaq, Wael 102 al-Hamadhhnj, Badj‘ al-Zamhn (d. 1008): authorship 198; manuscripts and editions 156, 202 n.4, 205 n.76; Maqhma of the Asylum 178–80, of Balkh 184, of the Devil 188, of Ghaylhn 159, of Åulwhn 178–85, 194, of Ißfahhn 209 n.211, of al-Jhåi© 165, of the Lion 180, 245 n.91, of the Ma∂jra 172, 181, of Qazwjn 158–9, of the Sermon 172, 187–94, 195, of Sijisthn 195, of the Underworld 166, 184, of Wine 167–71, 180, 187, 195; Maqhmht 153–6, 163–4, 167–71, 178, 183–4, 201; poetry 166–7; Rash’il 195; rivalry of al-Khwhrazmj 208 n.163; Shj‘j influences suggested 194, 207 n.142 Hämeen-Anttila, Jaakko 197 Åammhd al-Rhwiya (d. 772) 16, 17 Åammhda bint ‘Ish, wife of al-Manßur: burial 30 Åamza, uncle of the Prophet 166, 205 n.73 Åamza al-Ißfahhnj (d. c.960): Ta’rjkh Sinj Muluk al-Ar∂ 23, 25 harem 49, 196 Harim ibn Åayyhn 200–1 al-Åarjrj (d. 1122): anti-hero of Maqhmht 157, 167, 186, 209 n.220; illustrations 209 n.212; Maqhmht 153–7, 186, 188–9, 197 Hhrun (Aaron) 118 Hhrun al-Rashjd, ‘Abbasid caliph 55, 57, 69, 242 n.3 al-Åasan ibn ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib 77 n.50 al-Haytham ibn ‘Adj (d. 822) 30–1, 33 Heath, Peter 66 Heinrichs, W. 100–1, 121, 188–9 Hell 66–7 hermaphrodites 60, 80 n.87 Herodes Atticus 97 Herodotus: History 7; lexis eiroumeni 116, 125 heterosexuality 60 åikhya 161–2, 164 Hind bint ‘Utba 205 n.73 Hippocrates 176 historical novel, Arabic see al-Azdj, Muåammad ibn ‘Abd Allhh; Ibn Zunbul; sjra
Index 257 historical novel, European 3 historical report see åadjth; khabar historiography: early Islamic xiii, 18–19, 24, 53, 75; Mamluk 6 history, status of 24–5, 182, 184 Hole, Richard 158 Homer 8; Iliad 6 homme-récit 236 homoeroticism 174–8 homosexuality 37, 73, 80 n.87, 231 homosociality 50, 52 Åubbh of Medina, type of female sexual voracity 51, 60–1, 76 n.24, 81 nn.95, 96 humanism and humanities 23, 91, 114–15 Åunayn ibn Isåhq al-‘Ibhdj (d. 873) 235; Kithb Nawhdir al-Falhsifa 243 n.25 al-Åusayn ibn Abj ‘Umar, Chief Qh∂j 224–6 al-Åusayn ibn ‘Alj ibn Abj Ïhlib 77 n.50, 143 n.221, 62–3, 166, 205 nn.70, 73 Åusn of Shjrhz 64 Huxley, Aldous: Antic Hay 94 Ibljs, the Devil 121, 185, 201 Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih (d. 940): al-‘Iqd al-Farjd 23, 54, 63–4 Ibn Abj Ïhhir Ïayfur (d. 893): Balhghht al-Nish’ 76 n.24, 81 n.95 Ibn Abj ‘Ußaybi‘a (d. 1270): ‘Uyun al-Anbh’ 228 Ibn al-‘Arabj (d. 1240) 66; handbooks of prophecy attributed to 5, 11 Ibn al-Athjr, Îiyh’ al-Djn (d. 1239): Washy al-Marqum 189 Ibn al-Athjr, ‘Izz al-Djn (d. 1233) 40 Ibn al-Azraq, Abu al-Åasan Aåmad Ibn al-Buhlul 233 Ibn al-Baƒanunj (d. 1494): Makhyid al-Niswhn 50, 52, 71, 76 nn.18, 20, 81 n.87 Ibn Buƒlhn (d. 1066) 172; Da‘wat al-Aƒibbh’ 156, 164, 171–8, 190 Ibn al-Dawhdhrj (d. 1335) 6 Ibn al-Åhjj al-‘Abdarj (fourteenth century): Kithb al-Madkhal 49, 57, 65 Ibn al-Åajjhj (d. 1000) 161, 166, 204 n.41 Ibn Åanbal see Aåmad ibn Åanbal Ibn Åawqal 157 Ibn Åazm (d. 1064) 82 n.139 Ibn Hishhm (d. 833): biography of the Prophet (Sjra) 61 Ibn Isåhq, Muåammad (d. 761): biography of the Prophet 26–7;
influence of Near Eastern hagiography 28; use of åadjth 27–8 Ibn Iyhs (d. c.1524): Badh’i‘ al-Zuhur 7, 9 Ibn al-Jawzj (d. 1201) 23–4; Akhbhr al-Åamqh’ 36; Kithb al-Adhkiyh’ 245 n.82; al-Mudhish 188–9 Ibn Jubayr (d. 1271): Riåla 185 Ibn Kathjr (d. 1373) 40 Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) 5; studied by Ottoman historians 11 Ibn al-Marzubhn, Abu al-Fa∂l Muåammad 224 (pseudo-) Ibn al-Mudabbir (d. 893) 129 Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ (early eighth century) 22 Ibn al-Mu‘tazz (d. 908): Fußul al-Tamhthjl 235–6 Ibn al-Nadjm (active end tenth century) 112, 113; al-Fihrist 99, 136 n.53 Ibn Nhqiyh (d. 1092): anti-hero of his Maqhmht 170–1, 179; Maqhmht 153, 156, 162, 164, 167–8, 170–1, 246 n.98 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350) 82 n.139, 232 pseudo-Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya: Akhbhr al-Nish’ 62, 81 n.103 Ibn al-Qifƒj (d. 1248) 172 Ibn Qutayba (d. 889) 133, 216–18, 232, 234, 235; and Bible 216, 242 n.8; career and works 242 n.8; and inimitability (i‘jhz) of Qur’hn 133–4 n.3; and khtibs 140 n.160, 216–17; opinion of al-Jhåi© 36, 114, 140 n.156; theory of qaßjda 135 n.21; ‘Uyun al-Akhbhr 125, 216–17, 242 n.8 Ibn Sa‘d (d. 845) 54, 77 n.44 Ibn al-Sh‘j (d. 1276): Nish’ al-Khulafh’ 62 Ibn Sa‘jd al-Andalusj (d. 1266) 65 Ibn Sallhm al-Jumaåj (d. 846) 108, 142 n.206 Ibn al-Samå 100 Ibn Íaßrh (fourteenth century) 6 Ibn al-Íaydalhnj 226 Ibn Sharaf al-Qayrawhnj (d. 1067): Mash’il al-Intiqhd 156, 202 n.12 Ibn Sjnh (Avicenna, d. 1037) 66, 129, 244 n.64; Åayy ibn Yaq©hn 52, 72, 76 n.33, 83 n.160 Ibn Surayj 137 n.81 Ibn Taghrj Birdj (d. 1470) 9 Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) 64, 77 n.49, 82 n.139 Ibn Ïufayl (d. 1185): Åayy ibn Yaq©hn 50, 65, 76 nn.19, 22
258 Index Ibn al-Wardj (fifteenth century) 51 Ibn al-Zayyht, Muåammad, ‘Abbasid vizier 112–14, 139 n.135 Ibn Zunbul, Aåmad ibn ‘Alj (sixteenth century): dream interpreter and geomancer 4; employed by Maåmud Pasha, Ottoman governor of Egypt 4; first historical novelist in Arabic? 3, 4; Infißhl 6, 8, 10, 11, 42 n.55; Infißhl chronicle or historical novel? 4, 6, 7, 11 n.6; Infißhl’s narrative features 7–9; life 4, 12 n.11; Turkish translations of Infißhl 11; use by modern historians 4; versions of Infißhl 5, 11 n.10; works on astronomy, cosmography, geography, and geomancy 4–5 Ibrhhjm ibn ‘Abd Allhh al-Nhqid the Christian 99, 136 n.55 Ibrhhjm ibn Mas‘ud, Ghaznavid ruler 79 n.72 Ibrhhjm ibn Muåammad ibn ‘Alj (Ibrhhjm al-Imhm) 69, 132, 142 n.200 idealist bias 47, 74 ideology of gender 49 al-Idrjsj (d. c.1162): Nuzhat al-Mushthq 185 ijmh‘, legal consensus 104, 117 ijtihhd 104, 113, 129, 131, 137 n.93 ‘ilm, religious knowledge 22, 103, 104, 129, 137 n.93, 187, 194 imagination xi, 18, 41 n.6, 73, 232, 236, 241; takhyjl 17 Imhm, legitimate leader of the Muslim community xiv; imamate 110–11 imhm, prayer leader xiv, 169–70; religious leader 192, 194 Imru’ al-Qays (sixth century): Mu‘allaqa 204 n.47 incantations 209 n.211; ruqyas (recitations of Qur’hn) 230, 232 India and Indians (Hind) 108, 138 n.115, 242 n.3 inheritance law 217 inns 37, 167, 169 insults 9, 161, 163–7; see also satire intercession 233 inter-faith debates 93, 106 interlocutionary persona 137 n.91 intertextuality 195, 229, 230, 233 invisibility 8 Irigaray, Luce 75 iron gauntlets 245 n.96, 246 n.98 irony 7, 8, 68, 73, 111, 116, 159, 164, 167, 169, 175, 178, 190, 194, 217, 236, 240
‘Jsh ibn Hishhm, narrator of al-Hamadhhnj’s Maqhmht 154, 158–60, 169–70, 180, 182–4, 187, 189, 193, 198 Iser, Wolfgang: Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre 40 Isfahan 166 Isåhq ibn Åunayn al-‘Ibhdj (d. 910–11), 99, 136 n.34; Kithb al-Maqulht 129 ishhra, indication 106, 127 Islamic conquests 101, 107, 110, 120; in al-Azdj 33–4; epics 39; salvation history 29; stock themes of narratives 6; in pseudo-Whqidj 34 island of women 51, 82 n.129 Ismh‘jlism 194, 207 n.142 isnhds: chains of transmitters of reports 20, 21, 67; in exegetical åadjths 102; manufactured 102; in maqhmht 159; use by pseudo-Abu al-Faraj al-Ißfahhnj 37, by al-Azdj 33, by al-Djnawarj 34, by Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih 23, by al-Jhåi© 36, by al-Minqarj 34, by al-Tanukhj 219–20, 228, 231, 233; use by akhbhrjs 22 Isocrates 92, 96; Against the Sophists 95; Antidosis 95; Panegyricus 95 al-I߃akhrj 157 istiåshn 138 n.100 Italos, John 99, 134 n.18 iterative story 162 ‘Izz al-Dawla Bakhtiyhr, Buyid ruler 161 al-Ja‘hbj, Abu Bakr Muåammad ibn ‘Umar 224 al-Jabartj (d. 1825) 81 n.87 Jhbir ibn Åayyhn 100 Ja‘far ibn Abj Ïhlib 166, 205 n.73 Jhhiliyya, pre-Islamic Age of Ignorance 29, 54 al-Jhåi©, Abu ‘Uthmhn ‘Amr ibn Baår (d. 868 or 9) 58, 100, 173, 200–1, 216, 234; adjb 91; and Aristotle 93, 101; al-Bayhn wa al-Tabyjn 91, 93, 102–4, 106, 108–10, 114–33, 162; composition of Bayhn 111–14; Fj al-Jidd wa al-Hazl 112; Fj Íinh‘at al-Quwwhd 126, 142 n.207; Ibn Qutayba’s opinion of Jhåi© 36, 114, 140 n.156; Kithb al-Bukhalh’ 35–6, 108, 116, 157, 172, 205 n.84, 239–40; Kithb al-Futyh 113; Kithb al-Åayawhn 111–16, 133; Kithb al-Lußuß 245 n.90; life 110–11, 139 n.125; Mu‘tazilism 91, 122;
Index 259 recommends critical investigation 22; Rishlat al-Qiyhn 170 Jhnbirdj al-Ghazhlj 6, 8, 10 Jews 93, 166, 205 n.71; exegetical tradition 134 n.14; see also dhimmjs jihhd 10; in sjras 34–5 Jjlhn 108, 138 n.114 John Chrysostom 99 Jonah, prophet 27–8 Joseph, prophet 56, 71, 161 Journal of Arabic Literature 19 Joyce, James: Ulysses 164 judges (qh∂js) xiv, 160, 162, 216, 219, 224, 226, 241; Chief Qh∂js see Aåmad ibn Abj Du’hd; al-Åusayn ibn Abj ‘Umar; Muåammad ibn Aåmad ibn Abj Du’hd; as historians 25 jurisprudence see fiqh and fuqahh’ Juynboll, G. J. 67 Ka‘ba 166, 185, 205 n.70 kadhib, lying 17, 20 kalhm: speech 106, 123, 124, 129, 132, 217; theology 110, 126, 129, 136 n.77, 184, 217 al-Khmil al-Khwhrizmj, ‘Abd Allhh ibn Muåammad (early twelfth century): Kithb al-Riåal 203 n.16 khtib (pl. kutthb): historians 25; poets 189; secretaries 101, 108, 111, 114–15, 140 n.160, 153, 216–17, 218, 221 kayd 52, 57, 71, 83 n.153 Keddie, Nikki 47, 74 Kennedy, Philip F. 40 khabar (pl. akhbhr): causal linkage 25; combined in narrative 26; historical report 17, 19, 20, 70, 117–18, 118–19, 125, 131, 132, 217; multiple versions 32; Qur’hn and sunna 104, 123; scholars travel to collect 26; use in qaßaß (religious storytelling) 23 Khadduri, M. 103, 137 n.83 Khalhfa, concubine of al-Mu‘tamid 79 n.78 Khalaf al-Aåmar (d. c.796) 199 Khhlid ibn al-Walid: characterization 32–3 Khalidi, Tarif 29 Khhlid al-Qasrj, Umayyad governor of Iraq: account of his fall 30–1, 33 Khaljfa ibn Khayyhƒ (d. 854) 77 n.44 Khhrijjs 120–1 al-Khaƒjb al-Baghdhdj (d. 1071): ‘Misers’ 36
Khayrbak 6, 8, 10 al-Khayzurhn, concubine of al-Mahdj 69 khurhfht (sing. khurhfa) fanciful tales 17 Khusraw II Parvjz, Sasanian monarch 55–6, 165 khuƒba, Friday sermon 188–9 al-Khwhrazmj, Abu Bakr (d. 993) 208 n.163 Kilito, Abdelfattah: L’Auteur et ses doubles 154–5, 198–202; al-Ghh’ib 156; literary epistemology 155; methodology 156–7, 202 n.4; Les Séances 154–6, 158, 159–64, 166–8, 171, 178–9, 187, 194–5, 197; l’Œil et l’aiguille 154 Kilpatrick, Hilary 18, 40, 62 al-Kindj, Ya‘qub ibn Isåhq, philosopher (d. c.865) 111, 136 nn.61, 62; comic character in al-Jhåi©, Bukhalh’ 35; Fj Kammiyyat Kutub Arjsƒhƒhljs 100–1 kings, kingship and kingliness 23, 25, 28–9, 38, 52, 56, 70, 72, 80 n.81, 92, 161, 165, 189, 223, 235–6; see also mirrors for princes al-Kish’j (d. 805): Kithb mh talåan fj-hi al-‘Awhmm 107 Kisrh (Chosroes) see Khusraw II Parvjz Klein-Franke, Felix 171–2 Kufa: ‘Abbasid 99, 120; grammarians 107 al-Kulaynj (d. 940–1?) 77 n.44 kunya, agnomen xiii, 159, 195, 203 n.31 Kurds 108 laån al-‘hmma, solecisms of the vulgar 107, 110 Lampedusa, Giuseppe di: Il Gattopardo 10 Landau-Tasseron, Ella 26 landowners 224 landscape description 238, 240 language: and culture 96–7, 98, 99; and register 42 n.59; and virtue 95–6; see also dialect; laån al-‘hmma Larcher, Pierre 93 law see fatwh; fiqh and fuqahh’; åadd offences; ijmh‘; inheritance law; legal testimony; ra’y; sharj‘a Lecomte, Gérard 216–17 Leder, Stefan 18, 30, 40, 70 legal testimony 61, 183 legends 18, 39; Islamic and Jewish 81 n.96; Turkish 6 legitimacy and legitimation: historical 17; normative 20; political 10, 78 n.58, 101, 111, 133, 138 n.120; salvation history 28
260 Index Leichoudes, Constantine 99 Lellouch, Benjamin 4 lexicography 25, 182 life and art 231, 233–6 lighthouse of Alexandria 38 linguistic error 94–5, 101, 116–18, 120, 122, 129, 132, 170; see also laån al-‘hmma lion king 240 literary criticism and critics: medieval 17, 114; modern 202, 235 literature: scope of x, 19, 91–2, 101, 201, 236, 238 Livingstone, N. 95–6 local colour 228, 237 logic 92, 110, 126–7, 133, 182, 215, 217, 221, 228–30, 237, 239–40; Stoic 134 n.14 love and love stories 26, 37, 73, 83 n.165, 218, 231, 232 Lowry, Joseph 102–3 Lubhba, widow of al-Amjn 82 n.142 Lukacs, George: The Historical Novel 3–4 lunatic asylum (mhristhn): Basra 180; Dayr Hirqil 179, 207 n.128 Lutfi, Huda 65 lying see kadhib Lyons, M. C. 100 Lytton, Edward Bulwer 5 al-Ma‘hfirj, ‘Alj ibn Muåammad (d. 1208): al-Åadh’iq al-Ghannh’ f j Akhbhr al-Nish’ 62 al-Madh’inj (d. 842–3) 63, 77 n.43 madness 178–87, 194, 207 n.128; wise fools 179, 181 maghhzj, military campaigns of the Prophet, literary genre 20, 34–5, 56 magic 8, 244 n.57 al-Mahdj, ‘Abbasid caliph 16, 69, 93, 101, 140 n.174; Fatimid caliph 207 n.142 Mahdj, righteous ruler at the End of Time 5, 11 Maåmud of Ghazna, Ghaznavid ruler 57, 78 n.71 Maåmud Pasha, Ottoman governor of Egypt 4 majlis (pl. majhlis) salon 62, 165 Makdisi, George 102–3 malhåim: apocalyptic and eschatological prophecies 5, 8, 11; Ibn Kathjr 40 male scriptor 49, 53, 57, 58, 73, 76 n.20 Mhlik ibn Anas (d. 796) 24, 75 n.9 Malikshhh, Saljuq Sultan 56, 78 n.71 Malory, Sir Thomas: Le Morte d’Arthur 8
Malti-Douglas, Fedwa 197, 237–8, 245 n.82; Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word 48, 49–52, 57–8, 60–2, 65–6, 71–2, 74–5 al-Ma’mun, ‘Abbasid caliph 110–11; war with al-Amjn 55, 68 ma‘nh (pl. ma‘hnj) concept 126, 128, 130–1 mandrake 173 Manichaeans 93, 204 n.68; zandaqa 121; zindjqs 112 al-Manßur, ‘Abbasid caliph 22, 30, 132 maqhma, literary genre 153–4, 160, 164, 172–3, 190, 193–4, 203 n.16, 206 n.109, 208 n.186; maqhma studies 154–5, 196–8, 200; see also al-Hamadhhnj, Badj‘ al-Zamhn; al-Åarjrj; Ibn Nhqiyh marginality 50, 59, 60 Margoliouth, D. S. 230 marriage 48, 52, 60, 75 nn.7, 9, 79 n.76 Mars, planet 72, 182; Bahrhm 83 n.160 marvels 5; see also ‘ajh’ib Marwhn II, Umayyad caliph 69 massage 183 al-Mas‘udj, ‘Alj ibn al-Åusayn (d. 956) 55, 64, 68–70, 77 n.43, 83 n.142; adab and Muruj al-Dhahab 6–7, 29 mathematics and arithmetic 130, 136 n.64, 182, 184, 200, 215 Mattock, John 197 Mavropous, John 99 mawlh (pl. mawhlj) 110, 139 n.125 Mazdeans 121 al-Mhzinj (d. 863) 108 medicine and medical theory 52, 76 n.22, 171–8, 206 n.114, 215, 226, 228, 232, 234–6, 237, 242 n.3, 246 n.96; charlatans 243 n.38; folk medicine 221; medical anecdotes 217, 219–33, 237–8, 240–1; Prophetic medicine 221, 230–2, 243 n.28, 244 n.64; types of medical practitioner 171, 175–7, 186, 207 n.146, 220, 224–7; unusual medicinal substances 227, 228 medieval period: defined ix, xi memory 234; mnemonics 4 Mernissi, Fatima 66, 72, 82 n.133 Meyrink, Gustav 5 Mez, Adam 166 Michael VII Doukas, Byzantine emperor 99 Miåna, inquisition 112, 133, 143 n.222; tribulation 118, 120
Index 261 mime see åhkiya mimesis 164, 167, 246 n.98 mineralogy 121 al-Minqarj, Naßr ibn Muzhhim: Waq‘at Íiffjn 34 mirrors for princes 56, 224 Miskawayh, Abu ‘Alj Aåmad (d. 1030): Tajhrib al-Umam 25, 64–5 modernity 141 n.174, 164, 215–19, 231, 234, 238–41 Moi, Toril 75 monasteries 37, 179, 207 n.128, 215 monologue 9, 165 Monroe, J. T. 197: The Art of Badj‘ al-Zamhn al-Hamadhhnj 155, 167–8, 178–9, 186–7, 194–6 Montgomery, James 216 Moreh, Shmuel 163 Morgan, T. 97 motifs 7, 31, 224, 235; recurrence and variants 32 motivation 6, 9 Motzki, Harald 40 Mu‘hwiya, Umayyad caliph 34 al-Mubarrad (d. 898–9) 142 n.219, 183 al-Mufa∂∂al-al-Îabbj (d. after 780) 16, 17 muåaddiths, scholars of åadjth (Traditionists) 20, 67, 102, 160; anthropomorphism (tashbjh) 109; ‘awhmm 138 n.109; claim authority 112; criteria for evaluating åadjth 21; fraudulent 200–1; goals differ from historians’ 55; hostile to speculative reasoning 28; hostility of al-Jhåi© 109–10; nhs 109, 138 n.118; record multiple versions of an event 31–2; satirized 35–6; uncritical approach (taqljd) 22, 35, 109 al-Muhallabj, Buyid vizier 162, 224 Muåammad, Prophet 26, 48, 55, 63, 65, 69, 75 n.7, 77 n.37, 101, 105, 120, 123, 159, 166, 196, 217, 235; appears in dreams 8, 233, 242 n.20; battle of Uåud 204 n.69; continuity of example 20; first reception of Qur’hn 27; letter to Khusraw II Parvjz 56; narrator of åadjth 21; receives delegations of Tamjm 27; salvation history 28; see also Åadjth; åadjth; medicine and medical theory: Prophetic medicine; sjra Muåammad ibn Aåmad ibn Abj Du’hd, Chief Qh∂j 109, 112 Muåammad ibn ‘Alj ibn ‘Abd Allhh ibn al-‘Abbhs 132
mujun, libertinage 61, 164, 166 mukhannathun, effeminates 176 munh©ara 163 al-Muqaddasj 157, 160–1, 203 n.19 Muqhn 108, 138 n.114 Murji’js 121 Mush (Moses), prophet 118–19, 120–1 Mush ibn Nußayr 18 music 170 Muslim community (umma) 117, 120–1; impact of first civil war 54; salvation history 28–9; women 48 Muslim ibn al-Åajjhj (d. 875): åadjth collection 21, 182 al-Mustakfj, ‘Abbasid caliph 64 al-Mu‘ta∂id, ‘Abbasid caliph 69–70, 136 n.58 al-Mu‘tamid, ‘Abbasid caliph 79 n.78 al-Mutawakkil, ‘Abbasid caliph 111–12, 114, 133, 139 n.135, 175, 205 n.70, 216 Mu‘tazilism 91, 94, 110, 113–14, 115, 117, 120–2, 123, 125, 129, 131, 133, 137 n.90, 178–80, 184, 194–5, 207 nn.129, 136, 208 n.186, 216–17, 231–3, 239, 242 nn.17, 18, 19; Basran 112, 218–19, 242 n.19; see also free will; God: theodicy al-Muttaqj, ‘Abbasid caliph 64 Muzna, widow of Marwhn II 69 Najm, W. 124 Namier, Sir Lewis 3 narrativity 19 nhs 109, 138 n.118 Nhßir al-Dawla, Åamdanid ruler 221–3 naturalism x, 196, 226, 236, 239–40; linguistic 164; verisimilitude 232; see also mimesis nature and the physical world 219, 220, 228–31, 237–40 Nero, Roman emperor 97 al-Njshburj, al-Åasan ibn Muåammad (d. 1015): ‘Uqalh’ al-Majhnjn 179 nißba, location 128–31 Ni©hmj Ganjavj (d. early thirteenth century): Haft Paykar 83 n.160 Ni©hm al-Mulk, Saljuq vizier (d. 1092): Siyar al-Muluk 56–7, 63, 78 n.71 Noah 10 Nyberg, H. S. 121 obscenity 6, 163–6, 178; see also insults occult and occultism 5–10
262 Index O’Hara, John 7 oil lamps 36 Omri, Mohamed-Salah 197 oral culture 9, 58, 79 n.80, 80 n.82, 108, 115, 129 oral performance 6, 9 oral testimony 9 oratory 19, 32, 33, 95–7, 188–9 originality 32, 39, 195, 198–201 paideia 95, 99 Paret, Rudi 34–5 parody 35–6, 116, 204 n.41; of love poetry 173, 176–7; of sermons 187–94; of theology 184 patriarchy 75 n.7 patrons and patronage 25, 74, 93–4, 98, 99, 111–14, 224; see also women Pellat, Charles 107–11, 113–15, 121, 133 pen: compared to sword or phallus 59, 79 n.75; in Qur’hn 130 Persia, pre-Islamic 29, 34, 55, 114, 117–18, 134 n.4; medical tradition 242 n.2 Persian literature 56, 73, 78 n.71, 80 n.82, 82 n.131, 83 n.160 Persians (Fhrs) 108, 138 n.115 personal experience 22, 23, 37–8, 53, 57, 60, 64, 72, 73, 118, 123, 160, 193, 214, 218, 219, 223, 229, 233, 236, 237, 238, 239; (tajriba) 22; experiences of the nations 25 personal opinion see ra’y Pharaoh 118 Pharaonic lore 5 philology 19, 107–8, 184, 207, 217 philosophy and philosophers 95, 97, 98–9, 112, 126, 172, 216, 223; Almohad hostility 65–6; satirized 35; al-Shhfi‘j’s hostility 106 physiognomy see firhsa picaresque 153–4, 160, 196, 200 pilgrimage see åajj plagiarism 199 plot 9, 31, 154, 224, 233, 238, 240–1; see also emplotment poetry 17, 22, 32, 50, 52, 70, 107–8, 110, 112, 113, 114, 121, 142 n.220, 164–5, 195, 217, 234–5; ascetic (zuhdiyya) 168, 187–9, 192–3; conventions 142 n.220, 174, 193, 199, 235; doggerel 186; elegies 83 n.142; love poetry 52, 73, 173, 176–7; mu‘allaqa 199; qaßjda 9, 121, 135 n.21; satire (hijh’) 80 n.87;
used to explicate Qur’hn 103–4; wine poetry (khamriyya) 168–9, 235–6 political theory 216; see also legitimacy and legitimation Pomeroy, Sarah B. 75 popular epic see sjra popular idioms: in Mamluk historiography 6 prayer 223, 230, 233; see also tarhwjå Prendergast, W. 182, 193–4 Pretzl, Otto 93 produce gardens 225–6 prolepsis 9 prophecy 7; women capable of 82 n.139; see also malhåim Prophet see Muåammad prophets see Qur’hn and individual names; legends 81 n.96 prose 17, 19, 49, 50, 83 n.165, 101, 119, 188; rhymed 172; see also saj‘ proverbs 6, 24, 32 Psellos, Michael 99 psychology 174, 177–8, 222–3, 226, 232, 235, 239, 246 n.98; abnormal 184, 241; see also madness psychology of language 125–7 Pyramid: qaßjda inscribed on 9 qahramhna, stewardess 64 Qhnßawh al-Ghawrj, Mamluk Sultan 4, 5, 10; misinterprets prophecy 7 qaßaß religious storytelling 23–4 qhßß, religious storyteller 23–4, 41 n.21, 200–1 Qhytbhy, Mamluk Sultan 10 al-Qazwjnj (d. 1283) 51 Qirƒhy al-‘Izzj al-Khhzindhrj (thirteenth century) 6 qiyhfa 238 qiyhs, analogical reasoning 61, 103, 104, 113, 137 n.93, 138 n.100, 206 n.117, 221, 230, 232 Quintilian 92; Institutio Oratoria 94, 97 Qum 183, 208 n.153 Qur’hn 17, 34, 40, 47, 48, 52, 54, 61, 77 n.49, 101–2, 120, 121, 129, 162, 165, 169, 190–2, 217; Abraha and the People of the Elephant 8; adab 104; bayhn 122–4, 127; counting 130; createdness (khalq) 110, 112, 179, 207 n.129; exegesis (tafsjr) 110, 134 n.14; far∂ 104–5; Fhtiåa 230; first reception by Muåammad 27; furqhn 119; inimitability (i‘jhz) 133 n.3, 166;
Index 263 kayd 52, 71; khabar 123; literary allusion to 159, 179–80, 187, 190–2; literary quotation (iqtibhs) 199; love 83 n.165; naskh 104–5, 138 n.99; pen (qalam) 130; pilgrimage 185; pre-Islamic poetry in exegesis 103–4; prophets as examples of grace 218; provides historical model 28, 42 n.39; Qur’anic commentary and åadjths 102; Qur’hn readers 160; Qur’hn school 110; recited by converts 27; revelation turning point in salvation history 28–9; ruqyas (healing recitations) 230, 232; sanctions war in self-defence 10; in al-Shhfi‘j’s thought 92; Sura of Hl ‘Imrhn 122; Sura of Joseph 52, 56, 71; Sura of Light 36; Surat al-Qiyhma 122; Surat al-Raåmhn 122; viewed as normative source 47, 74 Rhbi‘a al-‘Adawiyya, Íufj saint 66 Rhfi∂js 121 rationalism 113, 137 n.81, 180, 215–17, 221, 224, 228, 229, 233, 237, 240–1, 245 n.92; see also ‘aql Rhvandj (early thirteenth century) 78 n.67 ra’y, personal opinion 28, 105, 112, 138 n.100 al-Rhzj, Abu Bakr Muåammad (Rhazes, d. 925) 227–8, 232, 243 n.38; case notes 220, 243 n.24, 244 nn.48, 55 readerly competence x, xi reason see ‘aql recapitulation, narrative device 6 recognition 170 repetition 66, 137 n.91, 188, 190, 193 reported speech 222 rhetoric 25, 33, 92–4, 95–6, 97, 99, 101, 102, 110, 114, 119, 126, 153, 165, 180, 182, 184, 188, 205 n.84 Rhetorica ad Herennium 96 rhymed prose see saj‘ Richards, D. S. 156 Richardson, Samuel: Clarissa Harlowe 39 Ricœur, Paul 19 rishla (pl. rash’il), epistle or treatise 164, 189 Rome and Roman society 96, 99, 101 Rosenthal, Franz: History of Muslim Historiography 3 Rowson, Everett 59, 74, 83 n.168 al-Rudhrhwarj (d. 1095) 64–5 al-Ruhhwj, Isåhq ibn ‘Alj (ninth century?): Adab al-Ïabjb 220
Saba’iyya 29–30 al-Íafadj (d. 1363) 58 al-Saffhå, ‘Abbasid caliph 132 Íafwhn al-Anßhrj 120–2 Sahl al-Tustarj 134 n.14 Sahl ibn Hhrun 108, 138 n.112 saj‘, rhymed prose 18, 153–4, 172, 187–8, 197, 209 n.217 Íhliå, prophet 166, 205 n.71 salvation history 28–9 Shmarrh 110–11, 179 al-Samaw’hl ibn Yaåyh al-Maghribj: autobiography 3 Íamßhm al-Dawla, Buyid ruler: mother 64 Sanders, Paula 60, 72–3 al-Sarakhsj, Aåmad ibn al-Ïayyib (d. 899) 100–1 Saruj 157 satire 35, 66, 80 n.87, 140 n.174, 159, 163, 167–8, 180; see also irony Sayf al-Dawla, Åamdanid ruler 221 Sayf ibn ‘Umar al-Tamjmj (d. 796): Kithb al-Jamal 29 Scott, Sir Walter 3 secretary see khtib Sedgwick, Eve 75 Selim I, Ottoman Sultan 4, 5, 7, 8; lineage traced to Noah 10; piety 6; skill at physiognomy 6 Sellar, W. C. and Yeatman, R. J.: 1066 and All That 6 Serjeant, R. B. 245 n.92 sermons and preachers 187–94, 208 n.186, 246 n.98; khaƒjb 188 al-Shhfi‘j, Muåammad ibn Idrjs (d. 820) 92, 124; bayhn 102, 115; grammar 137 n.89; åadjth 21, 102; ijtihhd 129, 131; influence 136 n.77; istiåshn 138 n.100; logic 126; nißba 129; Rishla 102–4, 111; and Sunna 102 Shahrazhd 58, 59, 80 n.81, 181 Shahriyhr 50, 59, 80 n.81 Shakespeare, William: Richard III 7 al-Shhljj, ‘Abbud 163 sharj‘a 103; see also åadd offences Shj‘js and Shj‘ism 53, 54, 57, 58, 64, 77 nn.40, 43, 49, 121, 138 n.120, 158, 162–3, 194, 195, 204 n.40, 207 nn.129, 142, 208 n.153; women 77 n.50, 179 Shu‘la ibn Shihhb al-Yashkurj 70 Shu‘ubjs and Shu‘ubiyya 106, 114–15, 140 n.174
264 Index Sjbawayh (d. end eighth century) 137 n.90; Kithb 107 Sjbhy, Mamluk governor of Syria 7 ßidq, truthfulness 17, 22; veracity 219 al-Sijisthnj (d. 860) 108 simile 59, 120, 163, 166, 167, 235 sin: punishment see ‘adhhb al-qabr; Hell Sindbad 157–8 single combat 8, 9, 33 sjra: biography of the Prophet 24, 29; Ibn Hishhm 61, 65; Ibn Isåhq 26–7, 28; Ibn Kathjr 40; in universal chronicles 28 sjra, popular epic 3, 10, 17, 66; al-Anqh’, heroine of popular epic 3; al-Badr Nhr 34; al-Baƒƒhl, hero of popular epic 3, 34; Ghazwat al-Arqhƒ 34; Sjrat ‘Antar 3; Sjrat Banj Hilhl 3; Sjrat Dhht/Dhu al-Himma 3, 34; Sjrat al-˝hhir Baybars 3, 10, 11 n.5 . Skarzyqska-Bocheqska, K. 124–5, 133 slaves and slave girls 47, 48, 51, 60, 81 n.103, 231, 233, 241; qayna (singing-girl) 170; umm walad 231; see also concubines and concubinage Smith, R. 101 soldiers 233, 240 Solomon, prophet 18 Souami, Lakhdar 112–13 speech 71, 95, 98, 101, 106, 108, 116–17, 119, 121–3, 129, 132, 135 n.33, 142 n.220, 163, 167, 170, 174, 178–9, 182, 183–4, 217 Spellberg, Denise: Politics, Gender and the Islamic Past 48, 52–7, 58, 59, 60, 63–4, 66–8, 70–2 statues 5, 18 Sterne, Lawrence: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy 39 Stetkevych, S. P. 121 Stewart, Devin J. 113, 197 stock themes: in Islamic conquest literature 6; in Near Eastern hagiography 28; see also motifs storytellers 5, 18, 24, 31, 160, 229, 232, 238, 241; see also autobiographical narrators and autobiography, åakawhtj; qhßß Stowe, John: The Survey of London 10 strangers 36–9, 159 Stuard, Susan Mosher 75 Sudhba, Kayhnid queen 56 Íufjs and Íufism 8, 36, 65, 66, 75 n.7, 134 n.14, 160; ribhƒs (lodges) 62; shaykhas 49, 81 n.87
suicide 223, 228, 244 n.45 Sulaymhn ibn Ïarkhhn al-Taymj 67 sunna, custom 35; orthodox conduct xiv, 10; in al-Shhfi‘j’s thought 92, 102–3, 104 Sunna, the Prophet’s example xiv, 104, 107, 112 Sunnjs and Sunnism 10, 53, 54, 57, 58, 64, 77 nn.40, 44, 49, 114, 133, 153, 186, 194, 208 n.153, 232 supernatural 39, 231, 239, 240–1, 242 n.20 suspense 229, 237, 239, 240–1 al-Suyuƒj (d. 1505) 58; al-Musta©raf min Akhbhr al-Jawhrj 62 sword: cast into waters 8; pen compared to 59, 79 n.75 symbols and symbolism 29, 71, 79 n.75, 163, 169, 235; cultural 47, 96 Synodikon of Orthodoxy 99 Syriac 100, 134 n.14, 136 n.66, 215 al-Ïabarj, Muåammad ibn Jarjr (d. 923) 20, 28, 31, 33, 39, 40, 54, 55, 63–4, 70, 72, 77 n.44; tafsjr 122–3 ta∂mjn 190, 194, 199 takhyjl, imaginative invention 17 Ïalåa ibn ‘Ubayd Allhh: battle of the Camel 30, 63–4, 77 n.44 al-Tanukhj, Abu ‘Alj al-Muåassin ibn ‘Alj (d. 994): audience 23, 217, 219; authorship 219–20; al-Faraj ba‘da al-Shidda 162, 174, 218, 220, 221, 224, 228, 229, 231–3, 236–7; life 236; Nishwhr al-Muåh∂ara 23, 219, 221, 224, 229, 231–3, 236–7; see also medicine and medical theory al-Tanukhj, Abu al-Qhsim ‘Alj ibn Muåammad (d. 953) 162, 218, 221, 224, 226, 231, 233 taqiyya 158 taqljd 22, 35, 109 tarhwjå, supererogatory prayers 183, 208 nn.153, 154 al-Tawåjdj, Abu Åayyhn (d. 1023) 91, 133 n.2; al-Imth‘ wa al-Mu’hnasa 163 (pseudo-)Tawåjdj: Åikhyat Abj al-Qhsim 161–8, 204 n.49 tawriya 195 Ïaylashn 108, 138 n.114 ta‘ziya, Shj‘j passion play 54, 77 n.50 terror, tales of 239–40 texture 154, 202 n.4, 237 al-Tha‘hlibj (d. 1038): Nathr al-Na©m 189; Yatjmat al-Dahr 162
Index 265 Tha‘lab (d. 904): Kithb al-Faßjå 107 theology and theologians 91, 92, 101, 106, 112, 178–80, 184, 187, 194, 216, 218–19, 223, 234, 239; mutakallimun 124, 134 n.14; see also Ash‘arism; kalhm; Mu‘tazilism thieves and robbers 237–9, 245 nn.88, 90; see also grave robbing Thousand and One Nights 8, 17, 41 n.6, 50, 66, 71, 76 n.19, 80 n.81, 160, 181, 184; ‘Syrian’ recension 204 n.37, 207 n.144, 236 ticks 225–7 Time, literary theme 38, 174; decadence of nations 225 Timothy I, Nestorian catholicos 101, 136 n.72 Todorov, Tzvetan 236 Tolkien, J. R. R.: The Lord of the Rings 8 tonal slippage 155, 197 Too, Yun Lee 96 translations and translation movement 92, 110, 111, 112, 136 n.64, 215–16, 234, 242 nn.3, 4 transmission 16, 17, 19, 21, 24, 25, 40, 167, 219, 221, 238; unavowed authorship 31; see also isnhds transposed literary formats: historiography 28, 42 n.40 travel: dangers 38, 160 tribes: Fuqayma 139 n.125; Kinhna 110, 139 n.125; Quraysh 30–1, 119; Tamjm 26–7; tribal feuds in sjras 34; tribal lore 22, 26 Trinity 33 truthfulness see ßidq Ïumhnbhy I, Mamluk Sultan 7 Ïumhnbhy II, Mamluk Sultan 5, 6, 8, 9; composes ode 9; Íufism 8 Turkhn (Terken) Khhtun, wife of Malikshhh, Saljuq Sultan 56, 78 n.67 twins, conjoined 221–4 ‘ulamh’ (sing. ‘hlim): historians 25, 29; possessors of ‘ilm, religious knowledge 22, 80 n.80, 192 ‘Umar ibn al-Khaƒƒhb, second caliph 57, 166, 205 n.73, 208 n.154, 235; characterization 32; holy warrior 10 Umayyad dynasty 16–17, 79 n.72 Umayyad period: intellectual trends 92, 101 umma see Muslim community Umm al-Fa∂l 82 n.106
Umm Salama, wife of the Prophet 54, 63, 68, 77 n.37 Umm al-Sharjf 70 Unbuba, fictional island 51 ‘Urwa ibn Åizhm and ‘Afrh’, lovers 26 ‘Uryhn ibn Haytham 30–1 ‘Uthmhn, third caliph 29, 53, 63, 68 Vadet, J.-C. 52 Vagelpohl, U. 101 Venus, planet 72 Versteegh, C. H. M. 101 Vespasian, Roman emperor 97 villains and heroes 6, 10, 34–5 virginity 52 Volksroman 6 Wagner, Richard: Ring cycle 8 Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. c.728) 27 Waines, David 47, 75 n.1 al-Whqidj, Muåammad ibn ‘Umar (d. 823) 20, 26–7 pseudo-Whqidj: Futuå al-Shhm 29, 34 Waqwhq, fabulous islands 51–2, 82 n.129 Whßil ibn ‘Aƒh’ (d. 748) 110, 112, 113, 116, 120–1 water wheels 225 al-Whthiq, ‘Abbasid caliph 112 Wells, H. G.: The Invisible Man 8 Wenzel-Teuber, Wendelin 196 White, Hayden 17, 19 Whitmarsh, Tim 97 Wiedemann, Thomas 96 wine 33, 162, 168–71, 175–6; medicinal properties 206 n.114, 235–6; wine poetry 168–9, 235–6 Winterson, Jeanette: Oranges are not the Only Fruit 16 women 47–83, 225–5, 228, 229, 230–1, 239, 240–1; in adab 50–1, 59–62, 76 n.24; ‘aql 82 n.139; ‘awra 51, 76 n.28; in biographical dictionaries 81 n.91; charity 59, 67; contraception 231; eloquence 59; fitna 52, 55–7, 66–7, 73; ghul 66; grave robber 241; hair 51, 55, 78 n.58; in Hell 66–7, 82 n.139; Ibn Qutayba, ‘Uyun al-Akhbhr 125; in Jhhiliyya 54; in Kithb al-Aghhnj 62; legal testimony 61, 80 n.84, 82 n.139; literacy 58, 78 n.71, 79 nn.76, 78; literature 58; piety 74; political role 48, 53–5, 56–7, 58, 63, 68–70, 74, 79 nn.72, 76, 82 n.133;
266 Index women (Continued) producers and patrons of culture 61–2, 81 n.103; prophets 82 n.139; raped by crocodile 240; sexuality 51–2, 55, 57, 71–3, 81 nn.95, 96; Shj‘j 77 n.50; socializing in Mamluk Cairo 49; Íufjs 49, 66, 81 n.87; transmitters of åadjth 58, 61, 73, 79 nn.78, 80; umm walad 231; Waqwhq 51, 82 n.129; warriors 51, 66, 82 n.131; widows 55, 69, 75 n.9, 83 n.142, 229, 233; see also celibacy; concubines and concubinage; divorce; marriage; sjra; slaves and slave girls women’s history: materials 47, 49, 74, 83 n.167 Wright, William: A Grammar of the Arabic Language 180 writing 130; and power 58–9; see also women: literacy Xiphilinos, John 99 al-Ya‘qubj, Aåmad ibn Abj Ya‘qub (d. 897) 54; Ta’rjkh 25, 29, 63
Yazdigird III, last Sasanian monarch 55–6 Yemen 196; legendary sagas 39; pre-Islamic 22 Yusuf ibn ‘Umar al-Thaqafj, Umayyad governor of Iraq 30 zh’irja, fortune-telling device 5 zakht, alms tax 245 n.90 Zakharia, Katia 194 al-Zamakhsharj (d. 1144) 123; al-Maqhmht f j al-Mawh‘i© 208 n.186 Zamzam, well of Mecca 166 Zanj 108, 138 n.114 Zaydhn, Jurjj: al-Mamluk al-Sharjd 3 Zaynab bint Sulaymhn ibn ‘Alj 69 Zoroastrianism 121 Zubayda, wife of Hhrun al-Rashjd 55, 57, 59, 68, 70, 82 n.142 al-Zubayr ibn al-‘Awwhm: battle of the Camel 30, 62, 63–4, 77 n.44 Zuhayr ibn Abj Sulmh (d. 608) 16 al-Zuhrj, Ibn Shihhb (d. 742) 26 Zulaykhh 56, 71, 161
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