Night and Horses and the Desert

by Robert Irwin

  A qasida was not defined merely by the characteristic sequence of its subject matter, for it also obeys strict rules with regard to length, rhyme and metre. It is a fairly long poem with a single rhyme and a single metre in hemistichs – that is, each line of verse is cut in half. Bayt (which means tent or house) is also the word for a line of verse. The minimum length for a qasida was about ten lines, while they rarely exceeded eighty lines. The opening couplet, but only the opening couplet, is doubly rhymed, so that the first half of the hemistich rhymes with the second. The rest of the poem rhymes only at the end of the second hemistich, but that rhyme is maintained throughout the whole poem. The set forms, in which Arabic words are derived from what are, usually, triconsonantal roots, means that sustaining a monorhyme is less of a feat in Arabic than it would be in English. Even so, the demands of the monorhyme may go some way to explaining why there are no ancient Arabian verse epics on the scale of, say, the Iliad or Beowulf. Arab poets often favoured feminine rhymes because these are easier. Each line of verse has to have a self-sufficient meaning. Logical development from line to line is not necessarily very strong. As well as sustaining the same rhyme throughout the qasida, the poet also had to choose a metre and, having chosen it, stick with it.

  One of the most flamboyant ways of ‘publishing’ in pre-Islamic Arabia was for the poet to have his work read out at one or other of the annual trade fairs which took place under inter-tribal truce agreements. The most important of such fairs was held annually at Ukaz, near Mecca, and during this fair poets are said to have recited their poems. There was a competitive atmosphere to this literary event and, according to later Arab medieval literary lore, seven of the greatest qasidas ever composed were honoured by being written down and displayed within the Ka'aba enclosure – a holy area in Mecca where in pre-Islamic times a pantheon of pagan idols was venerated. The seven acclaimed qasidas were hung up in the Ka'aba area – hence their name, Mu'allaqat, the ‘hanging ones’. However, the story of the display of poems in the sacred enclosure is almost certainly a retrospective projection, a fabrication generated to explain the puzzling term Mu'allaqat. The real origin of the term is unknown, but it was perhaps based on the metaphor of hanging jewels. It may have been applied to the best pre-Islamic qasidas by an eighth-century literary anthologist. Later Islamic literary critics were agreed that seven odes by seven different poets were chosen to form the Mu'allaqat, but as there was not an absolute consensus about who those poets were, there were ten or twelve candidates for the seven places of honour.

  There was, however, universal consensus that a qasida by Imru’ al-Qays was one of the seven poems and that it was the oldest poem to be so honoured. Imru’ al-Qays al-Dalil, ‘the Vagabond Prince’, belonged to the royal house of Kinda and was descended from the ancient kings of the Yemen. Like so many who came after him, Imru’ al-Qays combined the professions of poetry and warfare. His father had been head of a tribal confederation which broke up after the father’s murder. Imru’ al-Qays was to spend much of his life seeking vengeance for that murder and then, having taken vengeance, he in turn became a marked man. According to legend, he fled into the Byzantine empire and spent some time in Constantinople. It is said that he had an affair with a Byzantine princess, an affair which came to an abrupt end in about A.D. 540, when he donned a poisoned shirt sent to him as a gift by the enraged Byzantine emperor. His Mu'allaqa is probably the most famous poem in the Arabic language.

  The Mu'allaqa of Imru al-Qays

  Halt, friends both! Let us weep, recalling a love and a lodging

  by the rim of the twisted sands between Ed-Dakhool and Haumal,

  Toodih and el-Mikrát, whose trace is not yet effaced

  for all the spinning of the south winds and the northern blasts;

  there, all about its yards, and away in the dry hollows

  you may see the dung of antelopes spattered like peppercorns.

  Upon the morn of separation, the day they loaded to part,

  by the tribe’s acacias it was like I was splitting a colocynth;

  there my companions halted their beasts awhile over me

  saying, ‘Don’t perish of sorrow; restrain yourself decently!’

  Yet the true and only cure of my grief is tears outpoured:

  what is there left to lean on where the trace is obliterated?

  Even so, my soul, is your wont: so it was with Umm al-Huwairith

  before her, and Umm ar-Rabát her neighbour, at Ma’sal;

  when they arose, the subtle musk wafted from them

  sweet as the zephyr’s breath that bears the fragrance of cloves.

  Then my eyes overflowed with tears of passionate yearning

  upon my throat, till my tears drenched even my sword’s harness.

  Oh yes, many a fine day I’ve dallied with the white ladies,

  and especially I call to mind a day at Dára Juljul,

  and the day I slaughtered for the virgins my riding-beast

  (and how marvellous was the dividing of its loaded saddle),

  and the virgins went on tossing its hacked flesh about

  and the frilly fat like fringes of twisted silk.

  Yes, and the day I entered the litter where Unaiza was

  and she cried, ‘Out on you! Will you make me walk on my feet?’

  She was saying, while the canopy swayed with the pair of us,

  ‘There now, you’ve hocked my camel, Imr al-Kais. Down with you!’

  But I said, ‘Ride on, and slacken the beast’s reins,

  and oh, don’t drive me away from your refreshing fruit.

  Many’s the pregnant woman like you, aye, and the nursing mother

  I’ve night-visited, and made her forget her amuleted one-year-old;

  whenever he whimpered behind her, she turned to him

  with half her body, her other half unshifted under me.’

  Ha, and a day on the back of the sand-hill she denied me

  swearing a solemn oath that should never, never be broken.

  Gently now, Fátima! A little less disdainful:

  even if you intend to break with me, do it kindly.

  If it’s some habit of mine that’s so much vexed you

  just draw off my garments from yours, and they’ll slip away.

  Puffed up it is it’s made you, that my love for you’s killing me

  and that whatever you order my heart to do, it obeys.

  Your eyes only shed those tears so as to strike and pierce

  with those two shafts of theirs the fragments of a ruined heart.

  Many’s the fair veiled lady, whose tent few would think of seeking,

  I’ve enjoyed sporting with, and not in a hurry either,

  slipping past packs of watchmen to reach her, with a whole tribe

  hankering after my blood, eager every man-jack to slay me,

  what time the Pleiades showed themselves broadly in heaven

  glittering like the folds of a woman’s bejewelled scarf.

  I came, and already she’d stripped off her garments for sleep

  beside the tent-flap, all but a single flimsy slip;

  and she cried, “God’s oath, man, you won’t get away with this!

  The folly’s not left you yet; I see that you’re as feckless as ever.”

  Out I brought her, and as she stepped she trailed behind us

  to cover our footprints the skirt of an embroidered gown.

  But when we had crossed the tribe’s enclosure, and dark about us

  hung a convenient shallow intricately undulant,

  I twisted her side-tresses to me, and she leaned over me;

  slender-waisted she was, and tenderly plump her ankles,

  shapely and taut her belly, white-fleshed, not the least flabby,

  polished the lie of her breast-bones, smooth as a burnished mirror.

  She turns away, to show a soft cheek, and wards me off

  with the glance of a wild deer of Wajra, a shy gazelle with its
fawn;

  she shows me a throat like the throat of an antelope, not ungainly

  when she lifts it upwards, neither naked of ornament;

  she shows me her thick black tresses, a dark embellishment

  clustering down her back like bunches of a laden date-tree –

  twisted upwards meanwhile are the locks that ring her brow,

  the knots cunningly lost in the plaited and loosened strands;

  she shows me a waist slender and slight as a camel’s nose-rein,

  and a smooth shank like the reed of a watered, bent papyrus.

  In the morning the grains of musk hang over her couch,

  sleeping the forenoon through, not girded and aproned to labour.

  She gives with fingers delicate, not coarse; you might say

  they are sand-worms of Zaby, or tooth-sticks of ishil-wood.

  At eventide she lightens the black shadows, as if she were

  the lamp kindled in the night of a monk at his devotions.

  Upon the like of her the prudent man will gaze with ardour

  eyeing her slim, upstanding, frocked midway between matron and maiden;

  like the first egg of the ostrich – its whiteness mingled with yellow –

  nurtured on water pure, unsullied by many paddlers.

  Let the follies of other men forswear fond passion,

  my heart forswears not, nor will forget the love I bear you.

  Many’s the stubborn foe on your account I’ve turned and thwarted

  sincere though he was in his reproaches, not negligent.’

  Oft night like a sea swarming has dropped its curtains

  over me, thick with multifarious cares, to try me,

  and I said to the night, when it stretched its lazy loins

  followed by its fat buttocks, and heaved off its heavy breast,

  ‘Well now, you tedious night, won’t you clear yourself off, and let

  dawn shine? Yet dawn, when it comes, is no way better than you.

  Oh, what a night of a night you are! It’s as though the stars

  were tied to the Mount of Yadhbul with infinite hempen ropes;

  as though the Pleiades in their stable were firmly hung

  by stout flax cables to craggy slabs of granite.’

  Many’s the water-skin of all sorts of folk I have slung

  by its strap over my shoulder, as humble as can be, and humped it;

  many’s the valley, bare as an ass’s belly, I’ve crossed,

  a valley loud with the wolf howling like a many-bairned wastrel

  to which I’ve cried, ‘Well, wolf, that’s a pair of us,

  pretty unprosperous both, if you’re out of funds like me.

  It’s the same with us both – whenever we get aught into our hands

  we let it slip through our fingers; tillers of our tilth go pretty thin.’

  Often I’ve been off with the morn, the birds yet asleep in their nests,

  my horse short-haired, outstripping the wild game, huge-bodied,

  charging, fleet-fleeing, head-foremost, headlong, all together

  the match of a rugged boulder hurled from on high by the torrent,

  a gay bay, sliding the saddle-felt from his back’s thwart

  just as a smooth pebble slides off the rain cascading.

  Fiery he is, for all his leanness, and when his ardour

  boils in him, how he roars – a bubbling cauldron isn’t in it!

  Sweetly he flows, when the mares floundering wearily

  kick up the dust where their hooves drag in the trampled track;

  the lightweight lad slips landward from his smooth back,

  he flings off the burnous of the hard, heavy rider;

  very swift he is, like the toy spinner a boy will whirl

  plying it with his nimble hands by the knotted thread.

  His flanks are the flanks of a fawn, his legs are like an ostrich’s:

  the springy trot of a wolf he has, the fox’s gallop;

  sturdy his body – look from behind, and he bars his legs’ gap

  with a full tail, not askew, reaching almost to the ground;

  his back, as he stands beside the tent, seems the pounding-slab

  of a bride’s perfumes, or the smooth stone a colocynth’s broken on;

  the blood of the herd’s leaders spatters his thrusting neck

  like expressed tincture of henna reddening combed white locks.

  A flock presented itself to us, the cows among them

  like Duwár virgins mantled in their long-trailing draperies;

  turning to flee, they were beads of Yemen spaced with cowries

  hung on a boy’s neck, he nobly uncled in the clan.

  My charger thrust me among the leaders, and way behind him

  huddled the stragglers herded together, not scattering;

  at one bound he had taken a bull and a cow together

  pouncing suddenly, and not a drop of sweat on his body.

  Busy then were the cooks, some roasting upon a fire

  the grilled slices, some stirring the hasty stew.

  Then with the eve we returned, the appraising eye bedazzled

  to take in his beauty, looking him eagerly up and down;

  all through the night he stood with saddle and bridle upon him,

  stood where my eyes could see him, not loose to his will.

  Friend, do you see yonder lightning? Look, there goes its glitter

  flashing like two hands now in the heaped-up, crowned stormcloud.

  Brilliantly it shines – so flames the lamp of an anchorite

  as he slops the oil over the twisted wick.

  So with my companions I sat watching between Dárij

  and El-Odheib, so far-ranging my anxious gaze;

  over Katan, so we guessed, hovered the right of its deluge,

  its left dropping upon Es-Sitár and further Yadhbul.

  Then the cloud started loosing its torrent about Kutaifa

  turning upon their beards the boles of the tall kanahbals;

  over the hills of El-Kanán swept its flying spray

  sending the white wild goats hurtling down on all sides.

  At Taimá it left not one trunk of a date-tree standing,

  not a solitary fort, save those buttressed with hard rocks;

  and Thabeer – why, when the first onrush of its deluge came

  Thabeer was a great chieftain wrapped in a striped jubba.

  In the morning the topmost peak of El-Mujaimir

  was a spindle’s whorl cluttered with all the scum of the torrent;

  it had flung over the desert of El-Ghabeet its cargo

  like a Yemeni merchant unpacking his laden bags.

  In the morning the songbirds all along the broad valley

  quaffed the choicest of sweet wines rich with spices;

  the wild beasts at evening drowned in the furthest reaches

  of the wide watercourse lay like drawn bulbs of wild onion.

  A. J. Arberry, The Seven Odes (London, 1957), pp. 61–6

  COMMENTARY

  As convention demanded, the qasida opens at a desert campsite (atlal). ‘Halt, friends both’ infers that the poet is addressing two travelling companions, though it is just possible that he is talking to his sword and his horse, and thus effectively talking to himself. The matter of the deserted campsite shades into that of the amatory prelude, or nasib, there being no hard-and-fast break between the two themes. Again, as convention demanded, the opening is retrospective and melancholy, celebrating lost love rather than love itself. Imru’ al-Qays was above all esteemed for his handling of erotic themes and specifically his mastery of the nasib. The nasib dominates the rest of the qasida and is heavy with an earthy sensuality. The fleshiness of the women is tacitly echoed in the poet’s description of the frilled lumps of meat from his slaughtered riding camel, which the women are engaged in cutting up. The fact that the women are both referred to as Umm, which
means ‘mother’, strongly suggests that Imru’ al-Qays has been making love to married women. Boasts of having seduced women belonging to other tribes were a common feature of Jahili poetry.

  Typically, a woman’s beauty is evoked in a piecemeal fashion (commencing in this qasida with the line ‘I twisted her side-tresses to me …’). One feature of a woman’s body or face is praised, usually through simile, and then another, and another, without any attempt to present an overall image of her appearance. Such similes as the comparison of Fatima’s neck to that of an antelope may have been fresh in Imru’ al-Qays’s time, but in the centuries to come they would become wearisomely familiar clichés. Some of the similes are peculiar to their time and place and it may well be difficult for an English reader to imagine the beauty of fingers which are like ‘sand-worms of Zaby, or tooth-sticks of ishil-wood’, but the physicality of the poet’s appreciation of the women is evident. There is no sign that Imru’ al-Qays was interested in the personality of the women he pursued and whose conquest he then boasted of.

  It is hard to say exactly when the nasib ends, but the rahil or ‘journey section’ of the qasida seems to begin with ‘Oft night like a sea swarming …’. The journey described in a qasida is usually a hard one and the poet implicitly or explicitly celebrates his endurance in making it. It is customary to counterbalance the woman, the lost love, with the camel of the journey, but here Imru’ al-Qays rides a horse. The poet’s sense of nature and its potential violence is marvellously vivid and concrete. As if to demonstrate that qasidas do not have to go through the whole set sequence, there is no concluding panegyric in Imru’ al-Qays’s poem and it is not clear why it ends where it does. There may well be a link between the evocation of past passion and the fury of the thunderstorm, but it is difficult to be explicit about the precise nature of that link. Much of the exegesis of this poem must be guesswork. Although the poem is one of the best known and most admired in the Arabic language, not everyone praised it. According to the literary theorist al-Baqillani, writing in the tenth century, this poem was full of ludicrous implausibilities and detestable features ‘which frighten the ear, terrify the heart, and put a strain on the tongue’.