The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature

by Robert Irwin

  ‘Man has the gift of hila and the Jinn that of haula.’ The meaning of this is not at all clear. Hila can mean ‘trick’ or ‘artifice’; haula can mean ‘marvel’, or, more likely here, ‘calamity’.

  Ma‘arri’s Risalat al-Ghufran was written five years after a somewhat similar work by an Andalusian Muslim, Ibn Shuhayd (see Chapter 6). It has been suggested that Ibn Shuhayd’s and Ma‘arri’s fantasies about the afterlife were indirectly the inspiration of Dante’s Divine Comedy, though this remains controversial.

  6

  The Lost Kingdoms of the Arabs:

  Andalusia

  The peculiar charm of this dreamy old palace is its power of calling up vague reveries and picturings of the past, and thus clothing naked realities with the illusions of the memory and the imagination.

  Washington Irving, The Alhambra

  Arab and Berber armies crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 711. They went on to inflict a series of defeats on the Vandal rulers of Spain and by 720 the Muslims were in occupation of almost all of the Iberian peninsula, as well as a large part of the south of France. The north-west corner of Spain, Galicia, remained Christian. Muslims advanced further into France and in 732 a Muslim army encountered a Frankish army under Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers. Edward Gibbon speculated that, had the Muslims won, perhaps ‘the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pupils might demonstrate to a circumcized people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mohammed’. In fact the Muslims were defeated and after their defeat the Muslim leaders abandoned attempts to advance further into Europe. The Arabs were to rule over a large Christian and Jewish population, many of whom became Arabized in their culture and some of whom converted to Islam. In the early eighth century Muslim territory in Spain was, theoretically at least, subject to the Umayyad caliphs ruling from Damascus, until, in the mid-eighth century, the Umayyads in the eastern Islamic lands were deposed and hunted down by the ‘Abbasids. The ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur (reigned 754–75) eventually established a new capital for the Islamic empire at Baghdad. However, one Umayyad prince escaped the general slaughter, and fleeing westwards in 756 established an emirate in Spain in opposition to the ‘Abbasid caliphate. ‘Abd al-Rahman I (reigned 756–88) made Cordova the capital of the territory of Andalusia. (The Arabic toponym ‘Al-Andalus’, which probably originally meant ‘Of the Vandals’, subsequently came to refer to Muslim Spain.)

  ‘Abd al-Rahman I was himself a poet. The poem which follows was written at Rusafa, his Spanish palace, which he had named after one of the Umayyad palaces in Syria where he had grown up.

  A palm tree I beheld in Ar-Rusafa,

  Far in the West, far from the palm-tree land:

  I said: You, like myself, are far away, in a strange land;

  How long have I been far away from my people!

  You grew up in a land where you are a stranger,

  And like myself, are living in the farthest corner of the earth:

  May the morning clouds refresh you at this distance,

  And may abundant rains comfort you forever!

  Nykl, Hispano-Arabic Poetry and its Relations with

  the Old Provencal Troubadors, p. 18

  ‘Abd al-Rahman’s poem about exile and longing was to set a precedent for the many backward-and eastward-looking laments which form a leading theme in Andalusian literature.

  Despite the power and wealth of the early Umayyad rulers in Spain, little of any literary worth has survived from the first century and a half or so. For a long time Andalusian writers were accustomed to imitate literary forms which had been pioneered in the eastern Arab lands and a ‘cultural cringe’ in the direction of Baghdad was often in evidence. ‘Ali ibn Nafi’ ZIRYAB (789–857) arrived in Spain in the reign of ‘Abd al-Rahman II (reigned 822–52). At the gates of Cordova Ziryab received a reverential reception, for he came from the East and he had been trained as a musician, poet and courtier at the ‘Abbasid court in Baghdad. Ziryab had studied as a musician under Ibrahim al-Mawsili (see Chapter 4). But then, allegedly driven out by Ibrahim’s jealousy, Ziryab left Baghdad to look for patronage in the first instance in North Africa, before ending up in Spain in 822. Like most nadims, Ziryab was blessed with an extraordinary memory for anecdotes, proverbs and historical lore and he was good company at the royal soirées, which were devoted to conversation and the drinking of palm wine. He was also reputed to know over a thousand songs by heart.

  Ziryab was an innovative singer and lute-player. He used to claim supernatural inspiration for his songs. According to al-Maqqari:

  They relate that Ziryab used to say that the Jinn taught him music every night, and that, whenever he was thus awakened, he called his two slave-girls, Ghazzalan and Hindah, made them take their lutes, whilst he also took his, and that they passed the night conversing, playing music, and writing verses, after which they hastily retired to rest.

  Ziryab added a fifth string to the lute and pioneered the use of eagles’ talons as plectra. He founded an ‘Institute of Beauty’. He introduced a new style in clothes and got people to part their hair down the middle. He introduced underarm deodorants, made from litharge or lead monoxide. He improved the recipe for the detergent used for washing clothes. He set a new fashion for changing dress to match all four seasons of the year. (Previously the only change had been from summer to winter garments.) He also introduced asparagus into Spain, as well as a special recipe for fried meatballs cooked with coriander. At table, he urged the use of crystal rather than the ostentatiously vulgar gold and silver vessels which had previously been the fashion. Leather trays replaced dining-tables, since Ziryab pronounced that leather was more hygienic, being easier to wash. As far as literature was concerned, Ziryab introduced Andalusian poets to the ornate eastern forms of the badi’. So the backwoodsmen of Spain were much more civilized by the time Ziryab had finished with them; nevertheless, he made a number of enemies among the local poets and courtiers.

  Andalusia reached its political and military apogee during the reign of ‘Abd al-Rahman III (reigned 912–61) who declared himself to be caliph, thereby underlining his opposition to the new Shi’ite Fatimid caliphate in North Africa. In 942. ‘Abel al-Rahman invited the distinguished philologist ‘Ali al-Qali (901–65) from Baghdad. Qali wrote the Kitab al-Amali, a belles-lettres compilation which chiefly focused on lexical issues, and in which he picked out difficult words in famous fragments of poetry and prose and explained them.

  It was also during the caliphate of ‘Abd al-Rahman III that the most famous work of Andalusian belles-lettres was produced. Al-‘lqd al-Farid (‘The Unique Necklace’) was written by Abu Umar Ahmad ibn Muhammad IBN ‘ABD AL-RABBIH (860–940). Ibn ‘Abd al-Rabbih was a Cordovan who served the Umayyad rulers as a courtier and panegyric poet. Although he was a poet in his own right, he is most famous for a literary anthology of other men’s flowers. He was at pains to include material by and about local authors, but his book looked to the East and was quite closely modelled on Ibn Qutayba’s ‘Uyun al-Akhbar (see Chapter 4). It drew heavily upon ‘Abbasid authors, including Ibn Qutayba, Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, Jahiz and others. When Ibn ‘Abbad, the Buyid vizier in the East, read Al-‘lqd al-Farid, he remarked: ‘This is our merchandise. Give it back to us!’ Each of the twenty-five chapters of the anthology is named after a different precious stone. It was an expression of ‘chancery culture’ in that its contents embodied the adab, which a scribe working in the royal chancery might be expected to possess – a knowledge, above all, of the cream of past speeches and wisdom, as they had been transmitted from generation to generation. However, despite Ibn ‘Abd al-Rabbih’s close attention to the literary lore of the past, he was also firmly convinced that modern writers were in all respects superior to the ancients. In his anthology, he junked the chains of transmission because he (rightly) thought that they made compilations prolix and dull. The chapters cover a wide range of subjects, including statecraft, the arts of war, oratory, lives of the
famous, sayings of the prophets, proverbs, religion, poetry, songs, women, geography, the Muslim rulers of Spain, and so on.

  Al-‘Utbi said, I heard Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman Bishr say that in the reign of al-Mahdi there was a mystic who was intelligent, learned and god-fearing, but who pretended to be a fool in order to find a way of fulfilling the command to enjoin what is right and prohibit what is disapproved. He used to ride on a reed two days a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. When he rode on those two days, no apprentices obeyed or were controlled by their masters. He would go out with men, women and boys, climb a hill and call out at the top of his voice, ‘What have the prophets and messengers done? Are they not in the highest Heaven?’ They [the audience] would say, ‘Yes.’ He would say, ‘Bring Abu Bakr al-Siddiq,’ so a young boy would be taken and seated before him. He would say, ‘May God reward you for your behaviour towards the subjects. You acted justly and fairly. You succeeded Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, and you joined together the rope of the faith after it had become unravelled in dispute, and you inclined to the firmest bond and the best trust. Let him go to the highest Heaven!’ Then he would call, ‘Bring ‘Umar,’ so a young man would be seated in front of him. He would say, ‘May God reward you for your services to Islam, Abu Hafs. You made the conquests, enlarged the spoils of war and followed the path of the upright. You acted justly towards the subjects and distributed [the spoils] equally. Take him to the highest Heaven! Beside Abu Bakr.’ Then he would say, ‘Bring ‘Uthman,’ so a young man would be brought and seated in front of him. He would say to him, ‘You mixed [good and bad] in those six years, but God, exalted is He, says, ‘They mixed a good deed with another evil. It may be that God will turn towards them. Perhaps there is forgiveness from God.’ Then he would say, ‘Take him to his two friends in the highest Heaven.’ Then he would say, ‘Bring ‘Ali b. Abi Talib,’ and a young boy would be seated in front of him. He would say, ‘May God reward you for your services to the umma, Abu ‘l-Hasan, for you are the legatee and friend of the Prophet. You spread justice and were abstemious in this world, withdrawing from the spoils of war instead of fighting for them with tooth and nail. You are the father of blessed progeny and the husband of a pure and upright woman. Take him to the highest Heaven of Paradise.’ Then he would say, ‘Bring Mu’awiya,’ so a boy would be seated before him and he would say to him, ‘You are the killer of ‘Ammar b. Yasir, Khu-zayma b. Thabit Dhu’l-Shahadatayn and Hujr b. al-Adbar al-Kindi, whose face was worn out by worship. You are the one who transformed the caliphate into kingship, who monopolized the spoils, gave judgement in accordance with whims and asked the assistance of transgressors. You were the first to change the Sunna of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, to violate his rulings and to practise tyranny. Take him and place him with the transgressors.’ Then he would say, ‘Bring Yazid,’ so a young man would be seated before him. He would say to him, ‘You pimp, you are the one who killed the people of the Harra and laid Medina open to the troops for three days, thereby violating the sanctuary of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace. You harboured the godless and thereby made yourself deserving of being cursed by the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace. You recited the pagan verse, “I wish that my elders had seen the fear of the Khazraj at Badr when the arrows fell.” You killed Husayn and carried off the daughters of the Prophet as captives [riding pillion] on the camel-bags. Take him to the lowest Hell!’ He would continue to mention ruler after ruler until he reached ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-Aziz, then he would say, ‘Bring ‘Umar,’ and a young boy would be brought and be seated before him. He would say, ‘May God reward you for your services to Islam, for you revived justice after it had died and softened the merciless hearts; through you the pillar of the faith has been restored after dissension and hypocrisy. Take him and let him join the righteous.’ Then he would enumerate the subsequent caliphs until he reached the dynasty of the ‘Abbasids, whereupon he would fall silent. He would be told, ‘This is al-‘Abbas, the Commander of the Faithful.’ He would reply, ‘We have got to the ‘Abbasids; do their reckoning collectively and throw all of them into Hell.’

  Moreh, Live Theatre and Dramatic Literature in the

  Medieval Arabic World, pp. 91–3

  COMMENTARY

  Although live theatre was not an important art form in the medieval Arab world, nevertheless fairly simple dramas were sometimes staged, as can be seen from this account of a performance before the’Abbasid Caliph al-Mahdi (reigned 775–85) of a trial of the caliphs by God. The heavy politico-religious content of this performance is probably unusual. Most dramas seem to have been bawdy and vulgar.

  The command to ‘enjoin what is right and prohibit what is disapproved’ (al-amrbi-’l-ma‘rufwa-’l-nahy ‘an al-munkar) is a phrase found at several points in the Qur’an. It was and is the watchword of Muslim rigorists. It was also the basis of the authority of the muhtasib (market inspector).

  The reed served as a kind of hobby-horse used by this Lord of Misrule.

  Abu Bakr al-Siddiq (reigned 632–4) became caliph after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. He was succeeded by ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab (reigned 634–44), who was succeeded by ‘Uthman (reigned 644–56).

  ‘They mixed a good deed with another evil. It may be that God will turn towards them’: a quotation from the Qur’an, sura 9, verse 103.

  ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (reigned 656–61) was the last of the ‘Rightly Guided Caliphs’.

  The umma is the Muslim community.

  Mu’awiya (661–80) was the first of the Umayyad caliphs and as such abhorred by Shi’ites.

  The Sunna is the practice of the Sunni Muslim community as established by precedent.

  Yazid, Mu’awiya’s son, was caliph from 680 to 683.

  ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-Aziz (reigned 717–20) was the Umayyad caliph with the greatest reputation for piety – but there does not seem to have been much competition.

  The Umayyad caliphate found itself in difficulties from the opening of the eleventh century onwards. Between 1017 and 1030 a series of puppet caliphs pretended to rule, while insubordinate generals and armies contended for real power. In 1013 Cordova was sacked by Berber armies and the fiction of a continuing Ummayad caliphate was abandoned. The palace complexes of Madinat al-Zahra and Madinat al-Zahira outside Cordova were also sacked. The princely libraries were dispersed. The ruin of Cordova was a favourite subject for poets in the centuries that followed. For example, Ibn Shuhayd (see pages 261–5) wrote of his birthplace:

  A dying hag, but her image in my heart is one

  of a beautiful damsel.

  She’s played the adulteress to her men,

  yet such a lovely adulteress!

  A friend of Ibn Shuhayd’s, the Cordovan writer IBN HAZM, wrote:

  A visitor from Cordova informed me, when I asked him for news of that city, that he had seen our mansion in Balat Mughith, on the western side of the metropolis; its traces were wellnigh obliterated, its way-marks effaced; vanished were its spacious patios. All had been changed by decay; the joyous pleasaunces were converted to barren deserts and howling wildernesses; its beauty lay in shattered ruins…

  Ibn Hazm went on to relate how he remembered the beautiful youths and maidens of his youth (now all in exile, if not dead) and how he saw in his mind’s eye that his noble house had become a ruin fit only for habitation by owls. Ibn Hazm lived through the ruin of the Umayyad caliphate and his masterpiece, The Ring of the Dove, can be read as a commemoration of the courtly ways of old Cordova. Abu Muhammad ‘Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Sa’id ibn Hazm was born in 994 and raised in the harem of the palace of Madinat al-Zahira until the age of fourteen. Possibly this harem upbringing gave him a lifelong interest in female psychology. His father maintained a lot of concubines and Ibn Hazm was taught the Qur’an and poetry by harem women. After the political disgrace of his father who had held the office of vizier, Ibn Hazm moved from Madinat al-Zahira to Cordova, but then, after the sacking of Cordova by Berbers in 1
013, he had to adopt a peripatetic existence. Having abandoned an early abortive career as a politician, he wrote Tawq al-Hamama, or The Ring of the Dove, in 1027. It is therefore a young man’s book. In this book (whose title alludes to the fact that messenger-pigeons were used by lovers, as well as by husbands and wives, to communicate with one another), Ibn Hazm expounded the code of love. After a preface in which he condemned traditional ways of writing about love, he went on to discuss signs of love, falling in love with a person seen in a dream, other more common modes of falling in love, means of communicating with the beloved, concealment of the secret one’s love, revealing the secret, compliance or resistance of the beloved, and so on. ‘Love, my friends, begins jestingly, but its end is serious.’ In keeping with this maxim, the final chapters of The Ring of the Dove are moralistic and are entitled ‘The Vileness of Sinning’ and ‘The Virtue of Continence’.

  These last sections do not sit easily with earlier parts of the treatise in which Ibn Hazm looks back at his own amorous affairs and those of people he has known or heard of. Admittedly these dalliances were not with women of his own class. A slave-girl was the most favoured object of affection for a courtly lover (and he liked his slave-girls to be blondes, if possible). ‘Humiliation before the beloved is the natural character of a courteous man.’ The lover was exalted and refined by abasing himself and by suffering the agonies of unrequited love. To some extent, Ibn Hazm tried to break away from the Eastward-looking traditional formulations of unrequited love. ‘Spare me those tales of Bedouins and of lovers long ago! Their ways were not our ways.’ But despite his effective, even enchanting, use of autobiographical material, he also drew on more traditional sources and wrote within a conventional genre. In his approach to the ennobling power of love, even when – especially when – the object of that love was unworthy of it, he was following in the path of that arbiter of taste in the ‘Abbasid period, Ibn Washsha. Some of the figures Ibn Hazm wrote about, such as the reproacher, the spy and the trusted confidant, had routinely featured in Arabic love poetry for centuries. Moreover, Ibn Hazm tended to illustrate the propositions in his philosophy of love with supporting verses, many of which were of Eastern origin.