The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature

by Robert Irwin

  … when he [Toqtamish] saw that the attack could not be avoided and that the place was settled, he strengthened his spirit and the spirit of his army and put aside heaviness and levity and placed in the front line the bolder of his followers and arrayed his horse and foot and strengthened the centre and wing and made ready arrows and swords.

  But Timur’s army was not wanting in these things, since what each one had to do was decided and explored and where to fight and where to stand was inscribed on the front of its standards. Then both armies, when they came in sight one of the other, were kindled and mingling with each other became hot with the fire of war and they joined battle and necks were extended for sword-blows and throats outstretched for spear thrusts and faces were drawn with sternness and fouled with dust, the wolves of war set their teeth and fierce leopards mingled and charged and the lions of the armies rushed upon each other and men’s skins bristled, clad with the feathers of arrows and the brows of the leaders drooped and the heads of the heads [captains] bent in the devotion of war and fell forward and the dust was thickened and stood black and the leaders and common soldiers alike plunged into seas of blood and arrows became in the darkness of black dust like stars placed to destroy the Princes of Satan, while swords glittering like fulminating stars in clouds of dust rushed on kings and sultans nor did the horses of death cease to pass through and revolve and race against the squadrons which charged straight ahead or the dust of hooves to be borne into the air or the blood of swords to flow over the plain, until the earth was rent and the heavens like the eight seas; and this struggle and conflict lasted about three days; then dust appeared from the stricken army of Toqtamish, who turned his back, and his armies took to flight…

  COMMENTARY

  Toqtamish was the Khan of the Golden Horde, ruling over the Kipchak Turks of the south Russian steppes. This first defeat at the hands of Timur took place in 1387.

  Ibn ‘Arabshah offers a perfectly useless all-purpose literary description of a battle.

  The ‘heads of the heads’ phrase is a pun, as ru’asa’ means both ‘heads’, as on necks, and ‘heads’ in the sense of captains.

  How that proud tyrant was broken and borne to the house of destruction, where he had his constant seat in the lowest pit of Hell

  Now Timur advanced up to the town called Atrar and since he was enough protected from cold without, he wished something to be made for him, which would drive the cold from him within and so he ordered to be distilled for him arrack blended with hot drugs and several health-giving spices which were not harmful; and God did not will that such an impure soul should go forth, save in that manner of which he by his wickedness had been the cause.

  Therefore Timur took of that arrack and drank it again and again without pause, not asking about affairs and news of his army or caring concerning them or hearing their petitions, until the hand of death gave him the cup to drink. ‘And they shall be made to drink boiling water which will rend their bowels.’

  But he ceased not to oppose fate and wage war with fortune and obstinately resist the grace of God Almighty, wherefore he could not but fail and endure the greater punishments for wickedness. But that arrack, as though making footprints, injured his bowels and heart, whereby the structure of his body tottered and his supports grew weak. Then he summoned doctors and expounded his sickness to them, who in that cold treated him by putting ice on his belly and chest. Therefore he was restrained from the march for three days and prepared himself to be carried to the house of retribution and punishment. And his liver was crushed and neither his wealth nor children availed him aught and he began to vomit blood and bite his hands with grief and penitence.

  ‘When death has fastened his talons

  I have marked that every charm is in vain.’

  And the butler of death gave him to drink a bitter cup and soon he believed that which he had resolutely denied, but his faith availed him naught, after he had seen punishment; and he implored aid, but no helper was found for him; and it was said to him: ‘Depart, O impure soul, who wert in an impure body, depart vile, wicked sinner and delight in boiling water, fetid blood, and the company of sinners.’ But if one saw him, he coughed like a camel which is strangled, his colour was nigh quenched and his cheeks foamed like a camel dragged backwards with the rein; and if one saw the angels that tormented him, they showed their joy, with which they threaten the wicked to lay waste their houses and utterly destroy the whole memory of them; and if one saw, when they hand over to death those who were infidels, the angels smite their faces and backs; and if one beheld his wives and servants and those who continually clung groaning to his side and his attendants and soldiers, already what they had feigned fled from them and if one saw, when the wicked are in the sharpness of death, angels stretch forth their hands and say, ‘Cast out your souls; to-day you shall receive the punishment of shame, because you spoke concerning God without truth and proudly scorned His signs.’

  Then they brought garments of hair from Hell and drew forth his soul like a spit from a soaked fleece and he was carried to the cursing and punishment of God, remaining in torment and God’s infernal punishment.

  That happened on the night of the fourth day of the week which was the 17th of Shaban, the month of fires, in the plains of Atrar and God Almighty in His mercy took from men the punishment of shame and the stock of the race which had done wickedly was cut off; praise be to God, Lord of the ages!

  J. H. Sanders, Tamerlane or Timur the Great Amir

  (London, 1936), pp. 81–2, 231–3

  COMMENTARY

  Timur died in 1405 while he was on his way to conquer China. His death occurred at Atrar (or Utrar), a town on the caravan route to China, some 250 miles east of Samarkand.

  He had been drinking the spirit arrack heavily until the very last days.

  ‘And they shall be made to drink boiling water which will rend their bowels’ is from the Qur’an.

  The Mamluk sultanate survived Timur’s occupation of Syria, which lasted less than a year, and during the fifteenth century its fortunes revived somewhat, particularly during the long reign of the Sultan al-Ashraf Qaytbay (1468–96). Qaytbay himself wrote poetry in Turkish and Arabic, as did at least one of his senior generals, the Amir Yashbak. In the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and probably as a result of the prestige of the courts of the Timurid princes in Samarkand, Bokhara and elsewhere, Persian increasingly came to be regarded as the language of the courts and high literature, not only in the Timurid lands, but also in Ottoman Turkey and Mughal India. The more cultivated members of the Mamluk elite also interested themselves in Persian poetry and prose. The penultimate Mamluk sultan, Qansuh al-Ghuri (reigned 1501–16), was of Circassian origin, but wrote poetry in Arabic, Turkish and Persian. He commissioned a translation into Turkish of Firdawsi’s epic saga of Persian legend and history, the Shahnama. (Qansuh al-Ghuri could read it in the original; he commissioned the translation for the benefit of those of his emirs who could not read Persian.)

  Qansuh al-Ghuri used to hold twice-weekly majalis, or soirées, in the Cairo Citadel which were attended by the city’s leading scholars and literary men. (No wine was drunk at these very proper soirées.) The subjects of conversation that came up in these gatherings were many and various, but religious topics were the most frequent. A partial record of what was said in the course of some of the sessions has survived in two sources. The first of these, the Nafa’is Majalis al-Sultaniyya, ‘The Gems of the Royal Sessions’, was written down by Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-HUSAYNI called Sharif and covers a run of sessions from February to December 1505. The second source, the Kawkab al-Durri fi-Masa’il al-Ghuri, ‘The Glittering Stars regarding the Questions of al-Ghuri’, was completed in 1513–14, but the second half of the text has been lost. Religious, historical, humorous and literary matters came up for discussion. The meaning of an obscure couplet in Ibn al-Farid’s poetry was debated. The sultan and one of the chief qadis debated the rightness of addressing a love poem t
o an Abyssinian slave rather than to a Circassian or Turk. Harun al-Rashid’s request for panegyric lines on brevity was alluded to. However, in general the sultan and his courtiers seem to have been more interested in Persian and Turkish history and literature than in Arab culture.

  In the extract which follows, as so often the sultan has produced a story from Persian literature about the Turkish Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna (who ruled over Afghanistan and north-west India from 998 to 1030) and the famous poet Firdawsi. (The story is legendary. The real origins of the Shahnama were quite different.)

  Our lord the Sultan said: ‘The Sultan Mahmud intended to perpetuate his name up to the Day of Resurrection. It was suggested to him that he could become known as the “Supreme Builder”, but he said, “Buildings perish after three or four hundred years.” So then everyone agreed that a book should be compiled bearing the name of the Sultan Mahmud. They gave orders for the composition of the Shahnama and they promised its author Firdawsi a mithqal of gold for each couplet. However, when the work was complete, Mahmud’s vizier suggested that a mithqal of silver for each couplet should suffice the poet. The whole work ran to 60,000 verses, so the Sultan sent 60,000 mithqah of silver to Firdawsi. At the time of receipt Firdawsi was in the hammam, so he gave 20,000 to the bath-keeper and another 20,000 went as payment for a bubbling barley drink, and he gave the final 20,000 to the bearer of the drink. When the Sultan heard of this he gave orders for Firdawsi to be killed because of this grievous insult. Firdawsi went into hiding. Then he composed a satire on the Sultan and he spent half the night with the treasurer and (while he was there) he requested a copy of the Shahnama so that he could consult it. He took the book and wrote in it his lampoon on the Sultan Mahmud before fleeing from him.

  Then one day when the Sultan was out hunting, he requested the copy of the Shahnama to be brought to him. When he opened the book and he saw the satire, he became utterly enraged. He ordered the execution of the vizier and at the same time he sent sixty thousand mithqals of gold to Firdawsi’s home town. Just as this money reached one of the gates of Tus, Firdawsi’s coffin was being carried out by another gate. So they offered this money to his daughter, but she refused it. So the Sultan ordained that the money be spent on buildings in honour of the spirit of Firdawsi, and they built a great bridge which is still extant today.

  Husayni, Nafa’is Majalis al-Sultaniyya

  (ed. ‘Abd al-Wahhab ‘Azzam), in Majalis al-Sultan

  al-Ghawri (Cairo, 1941), pp. 81–2, trans. Robert Irwin

  COMMENTARY

  Firdawsi’s Shahnama, written around 1110, is one of the longest poems in the world. There is no fixed text, but its length is between 50,000 and 60,000 couplets. It was normal for a medieval ruler to store books (which were expensive artefacts) in his treasury. Thus a treasurer, or kbazindar, often doubled as a librarian.

  A mithqal is a unit of weight. Like most such units it varied from region to region.

  Tus is a town in north-east Iran.

  Sadly there was little discussion of literature. Though the records of the sultan’s night conversations are absolutely fascinating, if one compares these sessions with the soirées of ‘Abbasid caliphs, Mamluk culture seems less impressive. There seems (to me at least) to have been a diminishment in the range of topics, the erudition and the literary skill displayed in the Mamluk sultan’s soirées.

  In 1516 the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Selim I invaded Syria and Qansuh al-Ghuri was defeated and died at the battle of Marj Dabiq. (He seems to have died as the result of a stroke, or a hernia.) Although Qansuh al-Ghuri’s nephew, Tumanbay, proclaimed himself sultan in Egypt and rallied last-ditch resistance to the Ottoman invasion, he was defeated at the battle of Raydaniyya in 1517 and subsequently executed. Thereafter the Mamluk territories were annexed to the Ottoman sultanate.

  The heroic last days of the Mamluk sultanate were celebrated in a prose romance entitled the Kitab Infisal dawlat al-Awam wa’lItisal Dawlat Bani Uthman (‘Book of the Departure of the Dynasty of Time and the Coming of the Ottoman Dynasty’). Nothing is known about its author, Ahmad IBN ZUNBUL al-Rammal, apart from what can be deduced from his own writings. Neither the date of his birth nor of his death is known, but he was probably a boy at the time of the Ottoman conquest of Egypt, and he was certainly still alive in 1558. He was a ratmmal, that is to say a geomancer who told fortunes from randomly made markings in the sand. He wrote treatises on geomancy, astrology, dream interpretation and apocalyptic prophecy.

  The Infisal has been misclassified by some scholars as a serious historical chronicle. It is in fact a remarkably early example of the historical novel. It tells the tale of the chivalrous but doomed Mamluks. Although Ibn Zunbul clearly sympathized with the Mamluks, he also recognized the justice of the Ottoman cause and gave due weight to Selim’s piety. To paraphrase 1066 and All That, the Mamluks were wrong but romantic, whereas the Ottomans were right but repulsive. Ibn Zunbul is interested in the motivations of his protagonists and he often makes use of invented dialogue to bring out those motivations. The dialogue is vigorous, even at times to the point of crudity. His heroes are Tumanbay and his allies. Yet, for all their chivalric élan and martial prowess, the Mamluks are destined to be defeated. At one level, this is because of traitors within their ranks and the superiority of Ottoman firearms; but at another level, the Mamluks are fighting a hopeless series of battles against fate itself. All dynasties and people have their appointed times. Ibn Zunbul’s book is a nostalgic romance about a society on the turn. Unsurprisingly, given Ibn Zunbul’s other profession, his novel is pervaded by occult themes and imagery. The Infisal survives in many manuscripts, almost all of them containing significant variations and additions. The basic text seems to have been revised again and again over several decades. The way Ibn Zunbul presents his story suggests that it was designed for oral delivery.

  In the passage which is extracted here, a leading Mamluk general, Kurtbay the Wali (‘Governor’), has surrendered after the battle of Raydaniyya and has been brought before Selim’s tent.

  Then Selim emerged from his tent and took his seat on the throne which had been put there for him. He looked at Kurtbay and said to him, ‘You are Kurtbay?’

  He replied, ‘Yes’.

  ‘Where now is your chivalry and valour?’ asked Selim.

  ‘They are as ever.’

  ‘Do you recall the damage you have done to my army?’

  ‘I do and I shall never forget any of it.’

  ‘What did you do with ‘Ali ibn Shahwar?’

  ‘I killed him together with a lot of your army.’

  Then, after he had seen the treachery in the eyes of the Sultan and realized that Selim had resolved to kill him, so that it was all up with him, Kurtbay abandoned decorum and spoke in despair of his life. He looked the Sultan in the eyes and he raised his right hand and said, ‘Listen to my speech, so that you and others may know that we count Fate and the Red Death among our horsemen. A single one of us could account for your army. If you do not believe it, have a go, so long only as you refrain from using the gun. You have two hundred thousand men of all races here with you. So stand your ground and deploy your troops, and three of us will sally out against you: myself, the slave of God; the noble horseman, the Sultan Tumanbay; and the Emir ‘Allan. Then you will see for yourself how we three will fare and you will then learn about yourself, whether you are really a king in spirit and whether you deserve to be a king. For only an experienced warrior deserves to be king – as were our virtuous predecessors (may God be pleased with them). Look into the history books and consider ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab (may God be pleased with him) and observe his courage and similarly consider the Imam ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (may God be merciful to him and bless his face). But you have pieced together an army from the Christian and Anatolian regions and from other places as well and you have brought with you this device which the Franks invented, because they were incapable otherwise of encountering Muslim armies.

  The nature of the musket is
that, even if a woman fired it, it would keep at bay such-and-such a number of men. If we had chosen to use this weapon, you would not have beaten us to it. However, we are a people who will not abandon the practice of the Prophet. Shame on you! How dare you fire upon Muslims who profess the unity of God and the mission of the Prophet (blessings and peace be upon him). The right way is that of Holy War with the lance and the victory belongs to God.

  It happened once that a Maghribi with a musket appeared at the court of Qansuh al-Ghuri (may God be merciful to him and slay his killer). The Maghribi informed the Sultan about how the musket had appeared in Venetian territory and how all the Ottoman and Arab armies were using it, and here was the weapon.

  Then the Sultan ordered him to teach the use of it to some of his mamluks. So he did so. Then he brought them in to the Sultan’s presence and they fired their guns, but the Sultan was displeased and he said to the Maghribi, “We are not going to abandon the way of our Prophet in order to follow the way of the Christians, for God, may He be praised and exalted, has said ‘If God aids you, then you will be victorious.’”

  So the Maghribi went home, saying, “There are those now living who will see the conquest of this land by the musket.”

  Then Sultan Selim asked Kurtbay, “If you possess bravery and brave men and cavalry and you follow the Book and the Sunna, as you claim, then how is it that you have been defeated and expelled from your land and your children enslaved and many of you perished? How is it that you stand before me a prisoner?”

  Kurtbay replied, “You have not taken our land because of your strength or because of your horsemanship. It has only happened by God’s decree and fate fixed from eternity. For every dynasty there is a fixed duration and an appointed end. This is the way of God (may He be praised) with his creation. What has become of the holy warriors:? And what has become of kings and sultans? You also must certainly die…” ‘