by Robert Irwin
This is the enchanted palace and the picture to which Roderic is said to have alluded afterwards, on the day of the battle of Guada-lete, when, as he was advancing upon the Muslims, he saw for the first time before his eyes the very men whose representations were on the parchment. Of this more will be said hereafter …
P. de Gayangos, History of Mohammedan Dynasties
in Spain, vol. i (1840-43), pp. 261–3
COMMENTARY
This story attached itself to the historical account of the invasion of Spain by an army of Arabs and Berbers in 711 and the defeat of Roderic, the last Visigothic king of Spain.
In Arabic, Rumi usually means ‘Greek’, but it can mean ‘Roman’. In the context of Maqqari’s story, ‘Roman’ should be preferred to Gayangos’s translation of Rumi as ‘Greek’.
Although a great deal has been written about the Crusades and the Crusader states as important channels for the dissemination of Arab culture in the West, in fact Spain and the day-to-day contacts of medieval Muslims, Christians and Jews in that peninsula were far more important. The mixing of Arabs, Berbers, Jews, Visigoths and Ibero-Latins was of fundamental importance for the history of European culture. Spanish Muslim architecture, ceramics and silkwork had an obvious visible impact on Christian art and architecture. The history of medieval European philosophy and medicine are impossible to understand without reference to what Christian scholars took from texts written in Arabic in Spain. To stick with literature, the precise extent and nature of the influence of Arab prose and poetry on later European literature is extremely controversial. However, it has been argued that literary versions of the afterlife described by Ibn Shuhayd, Ibn al-’Arabi and others influenced the composition of Dante’s Divine Comedy. It has also been claimed that Ibn Hazm’s treatise on love influenced the themes and imagery of courtly love, as did muwashshah poetry. As has been noted, it has been suggested that Ibn Tufayl’s desert island fantasy was one of the intellectual sources of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. It has also been suggested that the origins of the Spanish and then more broadly European genre of the picaresque are to be found in Arab tales about wily rogues (such as are to be found in al-Hariri’s Maqamat). It is certain that the version of Kalila wa-Dimna put together by Ibn al-Muqaffa’ was translated into Latin in Spain, and thereafter this collection of animal fables became one of the most popular texts in Christendom. It is also certain that many tales of Arab origin are to be found in such Latin or Spanish story collections as Petrus Alfonsi’s Disciplina Clericalis and Don Juan Manuel’s El Conde Lucanor.
7
Servitude and Military Grandeur
The entry of large numbers of Turks into the Islamic lands inaugurated an age of ‘servitude and military grandeur’ (to borrow a phrase from the nineteenth-century French poet and novelist, Alfred de Vigny). Turkish slaves had long performed military and administrative roles under the 'Abbasids and rival rulers. Military slaves were known as mamluks. However, from the late tenth century onwards, Turks began to take power in various parts of the territories of Islam. The Ghanavid Turks took control of Afghanistan, eastern Iran and north-west India. In the following century they were supplanted in Iran and most of Afghanistan by the Seljuk Turks. The Seljuks went on to occupy the central Islamic lands and they established their control over Baghdad and the 'Abbasid caliphs who resided there. (The 'Abbasid caliph remained the nominal head of the Sunni Muslim community, but the Seljuk sultans, pretending to act in the name of the caliph, exercised all real power.) Although the Seljuk sultanate began to fall apart in the course of the early twelfth century, the petty rulers who established themselves in the fragmented territories of Persian, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Anatolia tended to be of Turkish or, less frequently, of Kurdish origin. Many of those rulers and their attendant elites had a military background and they had often started out as mamluks. The growing role of these soldiers in directing affairs of state culminated in the mid-thirteenth century with establishment of a mamluk or slave-soldier regime in Egypt and Syria.
The political and military rise of the Turks was accompanied by the literary resurgence of Persian. Turkish warlords with pretensions to culture tended to interest themselves in the culture of the Persian country gentlemen and the old Persian epics. Their relative lack of interest in Arabic literature may explain what has been widely perceived as a falling-off in the originality and vitality of Arabic prose and poetry in the later Middle Ages. Jahiz, Hariri, Mutanabbi and Ma'arri do not seem to have had worthy successors. However, it may be that the growing self-consciousness of Sunni orthodoxy and the increased popularity of fundamentalist religious positions among many intellectuals played a part in increasing suspicion and hostility towards poetry and fiction. Poetry and story-writing did not feature on the official syllabuses of the madrasas, the religious teaching colleges which were established in this period. Although some Sufis wrote poetry and used story-telling to illustrate spiritual truths, other Sufis were resolutely anti-intellectual and were opposed to reliance on book-learning. Then again, it is possible that the perceived decline in literary creativity in the late Middle Ages is a matter of mistaken perception. Certainly late medieval Arabic literature (the so-called 'Asr al-Intihat, or Age of Decadence) has not received from modern scholars the attention it deserves.
In the age of the Crusades, both courts and administrative systems in the Middle East and North Africa tended to be highly militarized. Some important literature in Arabic was actually produced by Turkish and Kurdish officers. A very large part of the literature of this period was produced by Arabs who served those officers as officials, scribes or pensioned poets. The most influential prose writers of the age, 'Imad al-Din al-Katib al-Isfahani and al-Qadi al-Fadil, were not storytellers but the drafters of pompous chancery documents on behalf of non-Arab warlords. 'Imad al-Din Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Katib AL-ISFAHANI (1125-1201) was a Persian and he was born, as his name indicates, in Isfahan. He worked at first in the caliphal administration in Baghdad, but in 1165 he was politically disgraced and cast into prison for two years. After his release, he travelled westwards to Syria in search of a new patron, and was employed by Nur al-Din, the Turkish military ruler of Aleppo and Damascus. When Nur al-Din died in 1174, al-Isfahani took service with the famous leader of the Muslim counter-crusade, the Kurdish warlord Saladin (more correctly, Salah al-Din).
Isfahani wrote two histories which celebrated in rhymed prose the history of Saladin’s triumphs over the Crusaders and his reconquest of the holy city of Jerusalem in 1187, the Fath al-Qussi fi al-Fath al-Qudsi (‘Eloquence on the Conquest of the Holy City’) and the Barq al-Shami (‘Syrian Lightning’). He also compiled a major collection of poetry, the Kharidat al-Qasr, or ‘The Garden of the Palace’, an anthology of twelfth-century poetry, with biographical details of the poets. The Persian ‘high style’ is ornate and flowery and echoes of it are detectable in Isfahani’s Arabic. The prose style favoured by Isfahani was given further currency by his chancery colleague and literary ally, al-Qadi al-Fadil (1134-1200). Thereafter, under their influence almost all high-level government correspondence and decrees were drafted in an embellished style which made use of rhymed prose, forced metaphors, parallelisms and balanced antitheses. However, although Isfahani’s account of Saladin’s achievements is full of flourishes and fanfares, it is still one of the major sources of information on the momentous events of those decades. As he put it, he sought to cater ‘both to the literati who watch for brilliant purple passages and to those with historical interests who look out for embellished biographies’. He also presented his readers with a lot of information about himself, for, as far as he was concerned, he was a major player in the turbulent events of those decades. In the following piece of bombastic, pun-laden rhymed prose, Isfahani describes Saladin’s entry into Jerusalem after its capture from the Crusaders in 1187. One gets the impression from Isfahani that at least half the glory of the victory rested in the scribal recording of it.
By a striking coincide
nce the date of the conquest of Jerusalem was the anniversary of the Prophet’s ascension to heaven. Great joy reigned for the brilliant victory won, and words of prayer and invocation to God were on every tongue. The Sultan gave an audience to receive congratulations, and received the great amirs and dignitaries, sufis and scholars. His manner was at once humble and majestic as he sat among the lawyers and scholars, his pious courtiers. His face shone with joy, his door was wide open, his benevolence spread far and wide. There was free access to him, his words were heard, his actions prospered, his carpet was kissed, his face glowed, his perfume was sweet, his affection all-embracing, his authority intimidating. His city radiated light, his person emanated sweetness, his hand was employed in pouring out the waters of liberality and opening the lips of gifts; the back of his hand was the qibla of kisses and the palm of his hand was the Ka'ba of hope.
Sweet was it for him to be victorious; his throne seemed as if surrounded by a lunar halo. Qur’anic reciters sat there reciting and admonishing in the orthodox tradition. Poets stood up to declaim and to demand, banners advanced to be displayed, pens scribbled to spread the joyful news, eyes wept with great joy, hearts felt too small to contain their joy at the victory, tongues humbled themselves in invocation to God. The secretaries prepared long and ornate dispatches; eloquent stylists, both prolix and concise, tightened up or opened out their style. I could not compare my pen to anything but the collector of the honey of good news, nor liken my words to anything other than the messengers of the divine graces, nor make my pen run except to apply itself to letters, to accompany virtue, divulge benefits, give widespread accounts and lengthy divulgence of superiority; for its arguments are long, even if its length is short, its words make it powerful although in itself its power to alarm is small, it reveals its master as well-fed although in itself is thin, it makes the army’s weight felt, although it is light itself, by making clear the brilliance of the white star in the darkness of the inky night, by revealing the splendour of light from the path of the shadow, by sending out decrees of death or reward, commands to bind or loose, by opposing or yielding, enslaving or freeing, promising and holding to it, enriching and impoverishing, breaking and mending, wounding and healing. It is indeed the pen that brings armies together, elevates thrones, alarms the confident and gives confidence to the discouraged, raises up the stumbler and causes the upright to stumble, sets the army against the enemy for the benefit of friends. Thus with my quills I gave good news to the four quarters of the earth, and with the prodigies of my pen I expressed the marvels of memorable events; I filled the towers with stars and the caskets with pearls. This joyful news spread far and wide, bringing perfume to Rayy and to the evening conversation at Samarkand; it was welcomed with enthusiasm and its sweetness surpassed candied fruits and sugar. The world of Islam was ready and adorned for a festival to celebrate the fall of Jerusalem. Her merits were illustrated and described and the duty to visit her explained and specified to everyone.
Francesco Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades
(London, 1969), pp. 160–61
COMMENTARY
The Mi'raj, the midnight journey to the seven heavens made by Muhammad from Jerusalem, is held to have occurred on the 27th of the Muslim month of Rajab.
The qibla is the direction in which Muslims pray.
When Isfahani refers to ‘towers’, he is punning, for the Arabic word burj refers both to a tower and a Zodiacal sign.
Government correspondence was business correspondence, but it was also an art form. Official decrees and works of propaganda were treasured by cultured readers for their literary beauty. In Ghuzuli’s belles-lettres compilation devoted to the pleasures of life (see page 433), he included chancery correspondence among those pleasures.
Abu al-Fadl ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Ali Baha’ al-Din ZUHAYR (1186–1258), later quaintly dubbed the ‘Grand Master of Peculiar Lovers’, was born in Mecca but later moved to Egypt where he grew up and where he studied. In the 1230s he was in the service of one of Saladin’s descendants, al-Salih Ayyub. When in 1239 al-Salih Ayyub became the sultan of Egypt, Zuhayr became his vizier. However, he fell out of favour with the sultan shortly before the latter’s death in 1249 and died in poverty in 1258.
Although Zuhayr was well known as a calligrapher, he was yet more famous as a poet. Naturally he produced panegyrics in praise of his master, but he also produced qasidas on a wide range of topics, some humorous, some savage. In addressing one poem to an old woman, he referred to her as ‘a lot of bones in a leather sock’. He wrote many poems about the passing of pleasures and the coming of white hairs. He wrote a poem in praise of brunettes – and another preferring blondes (see below). Some of his poetry can be read as homoerotic; in one poem he portrays himself as fancying the moonfaced and slender monks in a monastery where he sits drinking (see below), and another poem is cast in the form of a lament for a young man who is about to grow his first beard. Nevertheless, Zuhayr was particularly celebrated for his ghazals, or love poetry addressed to women, and he was particularly fond of the theme of doomed love.
On a Brunette
O ne’er despise the sweet brunette!
Such dusky charms my heart engage.
I care not for your blondes; I hate
The sickly tint of hoary age.
On a Blonde
That man, believe me, greatly errs,
Whose heart a dusky maiden prefers.
For me, I love my maiden bright,
With teeth of pearl and face of light.
My bright example truth shall be,
For truth is always fair to see.
The water-wheels go round and round,
The song-birds trill with merry sound,
The hour is one of perfect joy,
Bright and pure without alloy.
Arouse thee, then, pretty my lass!
And send around the sparkling glass:
And hand it, bright as coins of gold,
Although it costs us coins untold.
Aye, pass it will while the morn is bright,
’Twill be but adding light to light.
Old wine and choice, it will be found
Like ‘sunbeams not diffused around’.
'Tis pleasanter than fires that rise
Before the shivering traveller’s eyes.
A seat beside the Nile was ours,
Upon a carpet strewn with flowers;
the wavelets rippled on apace,
Like dimples on a maiden’s face;
And bubbles floated to the brink,
Round as the cups from which we drink.
We raced each other out to play,
Full early at the dawn of day.
With here a revered divine,
And there a man who worshipped wine;
Here very grave and sober folk.
There others who enjoyed a joke.
The serious, and the lively too;
the false one mingling with the true;
Now in the cloister’s calm retreat,
Now seated on the tavern’s seat.
And Coptic monks, you understand,
A learned but a jovial band.
And pretty faces too were there,
Their owners were as kind as they were fair.
And one who from the Psalter sang,
In tones that like a psaltery rang;
While faces in dark cowls we spy,
