“THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY”
On Panegyric and Satire
“Praise for al-Amin is honest and sincere;
[But] there is much mendacious and dishonest praise” (D. i, 260)
Honesty and sincerity are at a premium in a genre of poetry written for recompense. The panegyric (Ar. madih) is poetry in praise of a patron, ruler or eminent person. By the late pre-Islamic period when certain poets began to travel across the Arabian peninsula and southern Iraq in search of patrons for their eulogistic verse, it was associated with reward and remuneration. It is this fact that might have stymied ingenuousness. Al-Fadl ibn Yahya ibn Khalid, brother of Ja‘far the Barmecide, remarked appropriately at some verses which Abu Nuwas once wrote for him: “You have made me a pimp!” Money and mediation were essential elements in this poetic milieu; and, notwithstanding the fact that this remark was made in jest, it does not mask totally the distaste that was deliberately evoked and which the poet may have shared. In short, panegyric was not, relatively speaking, Abu Nuwas’s poetic bailiwick or forte.
Yet socially it was the most significant of the genres of poetry. And, historically, we can encapsulate its significance by drawing an arc between, on the one hand, the profuse poems composed in honor of the prophet Muhammad in the Islamic late middle ages, some of the most popular and widespread poems of their day (accounting for a relative majority of antique manuscripts of poetry), and, on the other hand, certain of the most famous poems from the early canon of Arabic literature, and especially the “Mantle” (Burda) poem of Ka‘b ibn Zuhayr which was written for the Prophet; he rewarded Ka‘b by conferring his mantle upon him. The Prophet Muhammad had his own court poet, the Medinan Hassan ibn Thabit who wrote largely in the mold of pre-Islamic tribal poets. Indeed, Hassan was, or had been, himself a “tribal poet” of the Ansari (i.e., Medinan convert) tribe of Khazraj. Extant pre-Islamic poetry is not anathema to Islam; it contains few pagan elements, which either means that there never had been many or that they were soon filtered out by Muslim posterity. It is quite striking, in fact, that monotheistic elements in pre-Islamic poetry outnumber pagan ones; they reflect the monotheistic milieu (Jewish, Christian, and, so-called, hanif) with which pre-Islamic paganism coexisted, though some were undoubtedly later interpolations.
Arab poets wrote in a traditional mold inherited from pre-Islamic Arabia, as discussed. It was a tradition that had developed significantly in the century before Islam ( – the earliest poems survive from the early sixth century). Poets were also considered to “say that which they do not do”, according to a famous Qur’anic characterization (26: 226); this is denigration, certainly, but by no means an outlawing of their practice. A combination, then, of poetic tradition and Islamic acceptance explains why the famous “Hamziyya” of Hassan ibn Thabit, which celebrated in panegyric mode the Prophet’s conquest of Mecca in 630, contains in its prelude an idealized description of wine. It defies logic to consider these verses as inauthentic.
Though their language and rhetorical style changed greatly with time, panegyric poems from late pre-Islamic times well into the Abbasid era tended to be structured as follows:
1. An amatory prelude (Ar. nasib); this was written in nostalgic and elegiac mode; its principal motif was the doleful description of the abandoned and time-worn traces of the beloved’s desert tribal encampment; the poet introduces a sense of loss which the remainder of the poem allows him to transcend and come to terms with;
2. A desert journey (Ar. rahil); this can be understood as both a literal and structural move into the final panegyric section: the poet describes a journey (implicitly or explicitly to his patron) mounted on his camel, to which animal he promptly turns his poetic lens; this is to view the “rahil” as purely functional, when in fact it contains elaborate and eloquent descriptions (Ar. wasf) of the desert and its fauna, reflecting the Bedouin origins of the whole tradition;
3. The panegyric section; the patron is praised as a paragon of society’s cardinal virtues, both Bedouin and Islamic: generosity, bravery, forbearance, fidelity to the tribal group, and, in the Islamic period, impeccable faith.
By the time of the great Abbasid panegyricists, Abu Tammam (d. 845) and al-Buhturi (d. 897), the middle section had been largely reduced and the poems became, according to the view of modern scholarship, largely bi-partite (and even bi-polar) rather than tri-partite. There are some exceptions that tend to be stylized to meet a specific occasion such as Abu Nuwas’s panegyric for al-Khasib, his benefactor in Egypt, in which the poet’s journey from Iraq across the Levant to Fustat is described in “cartographic” detail. Most of Abu Nuwas’s panegyrics are bi-partite rather than tri-partite; and some are simply occasional short pieces and fragments. He tended to reduce the amatory nasib to a token minimum, where he included one at all; in his bi-partite poems the prelude is often simply a celebration of wine. The panegyric materials of Abu Nuwas discussed below are divided into three sections: (A) Formal and Sober; (B) Less Formal and Less Sober; and (C) Occasional and Miscellaneous Eulogy.
* * * * *
Praise for Harun al-Rashid Abu Nuwas composed at least five poems in honor of the tall, handsome, upright and dignified potentate Harun al-Rashid, the caliph most associated in the Arab and Muslim historical imagination with an Abbasid Golden Age; the sovereign who, by the late middle ages of the Arabian Nights, had become the symbol of a mythic and more pristine past.
The poet was never properly accepted by al-Rashid, who imprisoned him on at least one occasion, as we know. If Abu Nuwas had been better received by the Barmecides while they wielded extraordinary influence at the caliphal court before 803, the situation with al-Rashid might have been different. It was, in any case, inevitable that Abu Nuwas would eulogize this caliph intermittently whether he was in favor or not – indeed, precisely to curry favor. The extant poems vary in tone and quality (and length). One is a prison poem, from a fair number that he composed during his life, pleading for the sovereign’s forgiveness, though never clarifying what offense he had committed. It appears to have been some kind of perceived treachery: “I did not betray you behind your back” is all he says on the subject. His life of indulgence would occasionally have exacerbated the effect of other misdemeanors. The essence of getting on in society was to find favor with, and to avoid falling foul of, the people in positions of influence; and if one patron was not forthcoming others were there to be approached. They could be played off against each other. Al-Fadl ibn Rabi‘, successor to the enormous ministerial power of Yahya al-Barmaki, compensated to some extent (eventually) for Abu Nuwas’s lack of success with the Barmecides; but it is noticeable that some of the poet’s spates in prison were due to the fact that he managed to vex even al-Fadl. If it was politically expedient (for the sake of the sovereign’s reputation, for example, during the troubled reign of al-Amin) al-Fadl could counsel on the “public relations” benefit of the decadent poet’s incarceration.
A long panegyric for Harun was, according to one source, written on the advice of the Nawbakht family when he returned from Egypt – to appease the caliph upon re-emerging from an exile that had effectively been a flight from the sovereign’s wrath. He received 20,000 dirhams in payment: rare compensation. (If one credits this account of the background of the poem in question one must reject the view that he only returned from Egypt after Harun’s death in 809! Much of what we are told about Abu Nuwas is intrinsically contradictory.)
Another panegyric is remarkable since of its thirteen lines six are devoted to the description of wine; they dominate the prelude. The fact is surprising not because it does not make poetic sense but because of what we know of the venerable and sober public demeanor of the patron. The eminent grammarian and philologist al-Mubarrad (d. 898 or 899) later commented about this fact:
“I know of no poet who has praised a caliph and composed such a prelude (nasib). However, he was serious in his praise and achieved his desired goal. Al-Rashid was protective of his dignity and shunned the mention of ‘kisses’ or ‘wine’ or any such things on account of his majesty and nobility; idle acts of decadence were anathema to him. However, Abu Nuwas was used to attaching to his majestic panegyric poems preludes which reflected his own situation and deportment.” (D. i, 20)
There is an anecdote which relays the actual occasion when Abu Nuwas recited the poem to al-Rashid (an anecdote which both confuses this poem with the one which was composed upon Abu Nuwas’s return from Egypt and brings the Barmecides, long disgraced at this point in history, back into the fold for the occasion).
Al-Rashid would not listen to poetry that had distasteful or frivolous elements in it. So in the love poetry that was a prelude to praise for him no kisses or winks would be mentioned. When Abu Nuwas returned from Egypt, he wrote a panegyric and was received on the mediation of the Barmecides. He recited the [poem beginning] ‘I have long been crying at the traces of the abodes’ and when he reached the description of wine al-Rashid’s face changed; reciting the verse ‘If wine has destroyed my inherited fortune ...’ Al-Rashid went quiet; when he recited
‘I drank a cup of wine that was like the lantern of the sky ...’ He wanted to bring him to heel, but when he recited
‘God bless the one who has governed matters with power and competence ...’ he was moved and ordered him to be paid 20,000 dirhams. (D. i, 121)
In a rudimentary way this story provides insight into the psychology, or the perceived psychology according to medieval Arab poetics, of the multi-themed (bi-partite or tri-partite) panegyric poem. The first part was meant to stir the emotions, in an aesthetic and affective initial response to the poetry, so that the patron might be more receptive to the ensuing praise. The anecdote reflects this fundamental paradigm.
The finest poem in praise of Harun al-Rashid, according to the norms of the genre, is also one of the longest and most formal qasidas in the panegyric section. It gives us a glimpse of the fact that if Abu Nuwas was not a full-time professional panegyricist, like al-A‘sha before him or Abu Tammam and al-Mutanabbi after him, it is because he lacked the temperament rather than the requisite poetic talent.
The poem is translated in full below. The rhyming consonant, the guttural “q”, is relatively rare, difficult and majestic. The meter is the dignified Kamil (the “Perfect” or “Complete”). It is at once a poem giving thanks for release (from prison no doubt), a fact referred to in an early line but which apparently had taken place some time before composition, and also a polite but nevertheless quite direct plea for sustenance and recompense. The last line makes this amply clear and may appear abrupt and prosaic in this respect, referring to poetry effectively as marketable goods.
Prelude
Time has become ragged, though my ardor is still fresh,
And I have fired an arrow targeting my youth;
But the arrow has fallen short of its goal,
Like a chaser kept behind stragglers;
My strengths have been diminished, I have become slow,
Though I once had vigor in supple joints.
* * *
Reminiscence of a Falcon Hunting
I would go out in the early morning with a glove for a trained falcon,
A speedy catcher dressed in resonant bells,
A noble bird trained delicately
To capture its clumsy game;
Its carnelian eyes clear of impure flecks,
Its eyelids healthy and unstitched;8
Its new feathers like a cloak
Woven by the most skilled weaver,
Draped like a silk garment
Not quite covering the legs;
If you witnessed its contest when the cloud of dust
Fell away you would see it was noble and brave:
A goose was held in the beak of this bold
And hungry falcon, pulling at the flanks of its prey;
It had selected the largest and most sluggish,
Clasping it in long and sharpened claws.
Then we raised the cooking pot upon the fire
And the meat either fell apart from stewing
Or was cut up inside.
* * *
Adumbration of Full Panegyric
This is the Prince of the Faithful who rescued me
When my soul was between my larynx and throat.9
May I be [his] ransom for the day he [showed] me his favor;
If it were not for his sensibility and forbearance I would not have been released;
You deemed my [blood] illicit to you though it was quite licit,
And you pulled [me] together when [I] had fallen apart;
The Camel Journey and the Oryx
So goad your mount on towards the court of a caliph,
The first ever to attain his high goals;
We make our way to you from Sulayb and Jasim
Across the highland at a quick and steady pace
Our camels follow an oryx cow which
Gazes with the eyes of a mother bereft of her child ...
A flat-nosed beast looking for her calf upon soft ground
With feelings of deranged intensity
And when she finds it, all she sees
Is a hide torn and dragged [across the dust]
* * *
Fulsome Praise
Harun the Caliph disdains all but a pure essence
That has taken strength in his very core;
A sovereign whose nature and temperament is decent:
Sweet to the mouth of those who taste him;
He meets [and deals with] all matters of religious duties
And takes care of the enemy that has him in his sights;
He protects you from actions he mulls over discreetly within himself
With laughter and a bright face that spares you any doubt;
But when he has determined his opinion [of how to act]
He grabs the very ears and mouth of his foe.
I swear to you the solemn oath of
All those who trim and shave their hair [ritually after pilgrimage]:
You have shown fear and respect of God in perfect measure
And striven above and beyond the striving of the pious;
You have sown fear among the polytheists so that
Even their unformed semen fears you [long before birth]
* * *
The Petition
The goods of a poet are saleable when you deem them so
And what you deem unsaleable remains unsold (D. i, 110–16)
To the untrained eye the poem may come across as a series of discrete and incongruously juxtaposed tableaux. Even so, there would be pleasure to be had from the depictions individually; we are innately moved by: the anxiety of fading youth; the exquisite beauty of a hunting falcon; the tragedy of a mother (an oryx cow) discovering her child (calf) butchered upon the ground; the charisma of a powerful and effective leader; and we can relate to the need for material sustenance. But in Arabic panegyric poetry there is also an unspoken dynamic working across such segments of a poem. Though this dynamic was an atavistic reflex of composition it also developed progressively from pre-Islamic to Abbasid times. There is a broad arc in this particular poem between the prelude and the culmination of the panegyric. Briefly (and simplistically), there is:
• – a movement from loss (fading youth, diminishing strength, the effects of Time) to gain (the victories and religious scruples of the caliph: the basis of a thriving society). This gain is meant both broadly in a historical context and pointedly (and with a touch of bathos) in the poet’s final appeal for recompense;
• – a move from the past (reminiscence, youth) to a celebration of the present and future, symbolized in the person of the sovereign; related to this is
• – a progression from a sense of transcendent Time (the prelude) to transcendent Religion (Islam);
• – the success of the hunting falcon adumbrates the victories of the caliph; this section also undoubtedly reflects the “cynegetic” passion of the author and his patron;
• – the oryx section, far shorter than equivalent sections in pre-Islamic poetry, sustains the elegiac key of the poem’s prelude; death is evoked solemnly before celebration of the death-dealing (and, by inference, life-giving) caliph; procreation is evoked obliquely in the remarkable image of future generations of fearful infidels.
The camel/journey section of this qasida is relatively short compared to the usual paradigm of the panegyric genre. Here the standard description of the feisty mount worn ragged by lengthy journeying has been both displaced by the detailed description of the hunt with the falcon and outshone by the beauty of the short but striking oryx tableau which medieval commentators noticed may have been inspired in particular by a line in Labid ibn Rabi‘a’s pre-Islamic Mu‘allaqa. There is indeed an archaizing aspect to this poem in the description of fauna; for all that Abu Nuwas was a quintessential “Modern” poet in his lyric verse his hunting poems and descriptions of fauna in general show that he was still highly partial to the difficult specialized lexicon which is associated with the more archaic desert poetry. (His so-called Manhuka [because of its “truncated” verses] dedicated to al-Fadl ibn Rabi‘a is an epitome of this mode. It describes a journey made to his patron, taking advantage of this fact to describe fauna, notably the desert onager, in extraordinary detail. The poem had a whole commentary devoted to it by Ibn Jinni in the tenth century.)
There is an amusing anecdote about the penultimate line, concerning the propriety of describing matters of life and death as if wrested from God’s control:
... Kulthum ibn ‘Amr al-‘Attabi met Abu Nuwas and said to him, “Are you not ashamed before God for having written,
‘You have sown fear among the polytheists so that
Even their unformed semen fears you [long before birth].’”
Abu Nuwas retorted, “And you!? Were you not wary of God when you wrote,
‘... You have continued to strive kindly for me
So that I have snaffled death from the hands of my demise.’”
Al-‘Attabi responded, “... You have a ready answer for all who would advise you!”
For al-‘Abbas ibn ‘Abdallah Al-‘Abbas ibn ‘Abdallah, also know as al-‘Abbas ibn Ja‘far, was the grandson of Abu Ja‘far al-Mansur (d. 775), the second Abbasid caliph. Little is written about the relationship between poet and patron. As an Abbasid prince al-‘Abbas was socially eminent by definition; on the evidence of the number of poems dedicated to him, and the relatively informal tone which they adopt, he and Abu Nuwas appear to have been quite close.
Abu Nuwas accompanied al-‘Abbas on pilgrimage to Mecca one year and composed this poem to celebrate his patron’s charity on the occasion. The poet’s motives were mixed, though. He was loath to admit his own indigence, yet he was taking advantage of the fact that his patron had loosened his purse strings.
The abodes of Nawar! Why have the abodes of Nawar
Cloaked you in sorrows, blithe though they are themselves?
* * *
They say that grey hair brings dignity to its people;
My grey hair, thank God, does no such thing!
For I have not desisted from receiving the favors
Of a faun who strives around with the cup of wine
A fresh wine like carnelian when mixed with water
For which men have bargained hard at the merchant’s stall;
It is as if the remnants of bubbles disappearing on its surface
Are scattered hints of grey upon the black down of a cheek;
The wine was cloaked in cobwebs until they were rent from its skin
Just as the night is torn away from the day;
The palm which hands you this wine has fingers
Which meet the eye like the row of teeth on a comb.
* * *
I have now sworn a devout oath unmixed with
Decadence – I could never swear a decadent oath;
Al-‘Abbas made people’s pilgrimage one of rectitude;
He managed it with asceticism and dignity;
He guided them through the waymarks of their religion and showed them
The torch lamps of rectitude, one after the other;
He gave food to the hungry all the way to Mecca
And distributed gifts without ever stalling or postponing;
And you could see the pilgrims who had set out on shank’s mare
Carried upon his mounts, caravan upon caravan [all the way to Mecca];
O ‘Abbas, your charitable soul and noble origin
Made you reject the bejeweled ornaments of this world;
You descend from al-Mansur, the “Victorious One” of Banu Hashim,
After whom one’s pride can have no [other];
Your two grandparents were the best of Qahtan, on the one hand,
And considered the best of Nizar, on the other.
I was brought to you by a need I have not disclosed;
I hide it away for fear of gloaters,
So drape over me the veil of your kindness
With which you covered my defects in the past. (D. i, 148–50)
“Nawar” in the opening verse is a symbolic name for the archetypical beloved of the nasib; Labid ibn Rabi‘a addressed a departed “Nawar” in his pre-Islamic Mu‘allaqa; in Abbasid times the impersonal resonances of the name would have been obvious. This is a token and dismissive nasib.
Al-Mansur, the patron’s grandfather, was the second Abbasid caliph and founder of Baghdad in 762–3. Abu Nuwas puns on the meaning of this name, the “Victorious”. The patron’s grandparents are made to represent the two great divisions of Arab tribes, the Northern Arabians (here represented by Nizar) and the Southern Arabians (Qahtan).
This poem is particularly notable for its ethical transition from the bacchic section to eulogy proper. The poet at first pretends to eschew sobriety and dignity even after his hair has turned grey but he then countermands this posture in the line that leads into the formal madih. Each register of celebration has its own norms: first waggish bacchism then praise of an Abbasid prince performing the Hajj and who has therefore forsworn the pleasures which he formerly enjoyed. Celebration of piety thus benefits from the contrast with dalliance. This is a generous patron and former drinking companion performing his religious duties properly.
It is significant that this poem was apparently known to Harun al-Rashid. His reaction is very telling as to the kind of reception we might expect this poem to have had in conservative society. It is related that
... when Harun al-Rashid heard this poem he disliked the line “... grey hair brings dignity to its people; my grey hair, thank God, does no such thing!”
He said to al-Fadl [ibn Rabi‘], “Tell this reprobate [majin], ‘Do you deny that grey hair brings dignity when God’s messenger himself, peace be upon him, said, “No believer ever turns grey without this providing a veil that protects him from the Fire”?’”
Al-Fadl summoned the poet and told him. He replied, “I did not deny that dignity comes with grey hair or the contents of the prophetic tradition; however, my own grey hair has not brought with it dignity given the way I hasten towards sins and put off repentance. The following line bears witness to the fact: ‘I do not desist from receiving the favors of a fawn’.”
Al-Fadl told this to al-Rashid who laughed and replied, “He knows best his own inner self and the unsightliness of his acts!”
So, it is not the fact of celebrating wine and decadence generally, or of juxtaposing wine and decadence with the celebration of the piety of the Hajj, that is deemed unseemly, but the apparent contradiction of a particular detail from prophetic tradition. It was not then the contents of poetry itself which necessarily dictated a poet’s success in society but the (to some extent random) reaction of those in positions of power and patronage.
A number of poems written for al-Amin are constructed according to this basic paradigm: a section of bacchic lyricism is followed by (at times perfunctory) praise. The more unique poems written for the pleasure-loving al-Amin were those which celebrated his luxurious riverboats shaped variously as a lion, an eagle and a dolphin.
C. Occasional and Miscellaneous Eulogy
The Debate between Munificence and Beauty “Debate literature” (Ar. munazara) in the medieval Arabic canon became established from the ninth century onwards. It was essentially a prose literature with a heritage going back to the tribal contests (munafaras and mufakharas) of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods. In the ninth century al-Jahiz wrote a number of debates which can be considered the progenitor of the prose genre in its developed Arabic form ( – which is not an Arab invention since “The genre was practiced in the Middle East in Sumerian, Akkadian, Persian and Syriac before it appeared in Arabic”; cf. EAL). One of these debates of al-Jahiz is particularly significant: “His ‘Contest of Winter and Summer’, which is lost, may have been a ‘true’ literary debate where the concepts themselves are the antagonists. The earliest surviving true debates date from the eleventh century.” Abu Nuwas of course flourished a few decades before al-Jahiz and in the following charming fragment we find a “true” debate in miniature that dates from even earlier than the lost “Contest of Winter and Summer”. The poem is in praise of a certain Ibrahim al-‘Adawi.
Munificence and Beauty quarreled over you
And began to debate
The former said, ‘His right hand is mine
For charity, benevolence and giving.’
The latter replied, ‘His face is mine
For handsomeness, elegance and perfection.’
They then separated, pleased with each other,
Each one having spoken the truth. (D. i, 297)
The Prison Guard Among the twenty-four poems listed in the Diwan as “panegyrics composed by the poet when he was detained”, there is one that seems to fit the category of eulogy only by a feat of mental agility. The fact is that it is simply grouped together with other materials written to or for a patron. “He wrote to al-Fadl ibn al-Rabi‘ through Bakr ibn al-Mu‘tamir complaining about his prison guard who was called Sa‘id”:
May I be your protection from death! – add more chains to me!
Double my dose of the lash and the club!
Appoint as sentry over me and the doors
Of my cell every rebellious devil
And give my ears reprieve from the filthy,
Harsh voice of a man called Sa‘id:
He has left my chains feeling light
But his hatred [of me] has placed irons on my heart! (D. i, 244)
If this piece were placed among the homoerotic poems there would be little cause to object.
“Hasan of Basra” Hasan of Basra, that is, Abu Nuwas, wrote to al-Fadl ibn al-Rabi‘ from prison testifying solemnly to his new ascetic demeanor. But that he – Abu Nuwas – was trying to pass himself off as “Hasan of Basra”, the legendary ascetic, shows that he had not lost his sense of irony while incarcerated.
You, Ibn al-Rabi‘, have taught me devoutness
And accustomed me to rectitude;
My vanity has thus ceased, my ignorance abated –
I have exchanged them for chastity and asceticism;
If you saw me now you would think of the virtuous Hasan of Basra
Or the religious scholar Qatada;
My humility is adorned with emaciation
And a locust-like jaundice.
...
Pray for me ...
And you will see a mark on my face from prayer
Which one is convinced is the result of worship;
If hypocrites were to see it one day
They would want to buy it, deeming it ample testimony to their faith. (D. i, 246–7)
The sentiments of the last image in particular are conscious at some level of words that began this discussion of panegyric: “There is much mendacious and dishonest praise ...”– if this is praise.
* * * * *
“PENS DIPPED IN BITTER GALL”: SATIRE
“Born to no other but thy own disgrace,
Thou art a thing so wretched and so base
Thou canst not ev’n offend, but with thy face;
And dost at once a sad example prove
Of harmless malice, and of hopeless love,
All pride and ugliness! Oh, how we loathe
A nauseous creature so composed of both! ...”
(Rochester on Sir Carr Scroope)
“Rail on poor feeble scribbler, speak of me
In as bad terms as the world speaks of thee.
Sit swelling in thy hole like a vexed toad,
And full of pox and malice, spit abroad.
Thou canst blast no man’s face with thy ill word:
Thy pen is full as harmless as thy sword.”
(Scroope on Rochester)
“If that son of a bitch thinks he is safe from me
... Well, I have unfurled my tongue
So that comparison be made between us in literary salons
– So that his satire be measured with mine”
(Abu Nuwas, D. ii, 119)
These last menacing lines were written about one “Zunbur”, a jilted or jilting lover. Poets in medieval Islamic society known for their satirical talent were feared. The sting of satire (hija’) lasted for ever, as much of the poetry handed down to posterity corroborates. In a culture where fame was nothing if it was not also posthumous, the stigma of lampoon was to be avoided, and it would seem that the only antidote once it was received was for the victim to give as good as s/he got. Hence the numerous exchanges of satire (Ar. naqa’id) that are such a distinctive feature of early Arabic literature. In the Diwan of Abu Nuwas the naqa’id (sing. naqida) are categorized separately from the chapter of hija’; but the only real distinction between a poem of hija’ and a naqida is that the latter is only one half of a satirical duel. (Naqa’id tend to come in pairs, having the same meter and sharing much in the way of vocabulary and imagery.)
Most amateurs of Arabic literature are familiar with the image, struck in an Umayyad naqida, of a mother urinating in full view of others to put out the hearth-fire whenever strangers approached. Generosity and hospitality were cardinal virtues, as was a proper sense of corporal dignity and shame. But here honor and self-respect are sacrificed to avarice. The image is an invention of vicious satire and was directed by al-Akhtal against his contemporary Jarir – they were two of the greatest and most respected of Umayyad poets. (Their lexically difficult naqa’id were commented on by Abu ‘Ubayda, of the mosque-pillar incident, and remain one of the chief sources of the Ayyam al-‘Arab, that is, accounts of battles and feuds between the pre-Islamic Arab tribes that constitute one of the earliest extant Arab histories.)
Yet compared to some of what ensues in this section the unsightly image of this avidly protective mother is relatively tame. The point about satire is (or could often be) that there was no incentive to pull punches. Hija’ could certainly work well rhetorically with sustained linguistic invention (as in al-Mutababbi’s famous satire of the Ikhshidid ruler of Egypt, Kafur); but it could also be the vulgar pugilist’s equivalent of lining his gloves with horseshoes. And when hija’ was not hideously obscene, it could be sexist, racist, scatological or religiously profane.
In the Diwan eight categories of hija’ are identified, which include:
• – ten poems written “against the Bedouin Arab tribes and the Basrans”; it was in one of these that he mocked the “Northern” tribes, who were politically dominant, vaunted the “Southern” tribes of “Qahtan” and managed to offend Harun al-Rashid so much that he was eventually imprisoned for his efforts;
• – twenty-five poems against the rulers and elite of society;
• – thirteen poems against religious scholars, philosophers and philologists etc.;
• – twenty-three poems against his peers (in addition to his naqa’id which were by definition directed against other poets);
• – a penultimate sub-category of twenty-five satires are labeled “excessively foul”, an extraordinary qualification since there is much that accords with this register of satire in earlier classifications.
There was subtlety also in this apparently indelicate craft; and some lighthearted ribbing, as in the following fragment about a certain tightfisted Sa‘id:
Sa‘id’s loaf of bread is worth as much to him as his soul;
He kisses it sometimes, other times he plays with it,
He puts it on his lap and sniffs it,
He holds it out before him and talks to it;
And when a poor man approaches him for it
He would seem to have lost his mother and relatives! (D. ii, 151)
There are many anecdotes reminiscent of this sketch in al-Jahiz’s Book of Misers, especially in the chapter about the (then) notoriously miserly people of Merv. A son once outdid his father’s meanness with unusual inventiveness: the father had preserved a slab of cheese for ages by limiting guests to scraping their bread along its surface; when the son inherited the cheese upon the father’s death he was even more careful, allowing his “guests” to flavor their bread only by waving it from above.
When Abu Nuwas, for his part, went on repeatedly about the cooking pots of his antagonist Fadl al-Raqashi being pristine white rather than blackened with soot, he was accusing him (in a standard image) of never cooking and certainly, therefore, of never being the generous host at a feast.
The Politics of State and al-Amin
Abu Nuwas may have been fairly indolent when it came to politics – perhaps wisely given the umbrage he provoked in other ways. However, the following lampoon of al-Amin and two of the sovereign’s advisers shows the poet, on a rare occasion, taking exception to what he saw as political suicide on the part of his patron. In 810 the caliph appointed his son as his successor and named him “al-Natiq bi-l-Haqq”. Abu Nuwas considered that al-Fadl ibn al-Rabi‘ (his own patron) and Bakr ibn al-Mu‘tamir, as minister and counsel to the sovereign respectively, were responsible for the decision which could only enrage the caliph’s powerful half brother, al-Ma’mun. With historical hindsight we notice dark presentiment in this poem; it has a grave undertone, notwithstanding the central passage of smuttiness that characterizes this kind of satire.
The folly of the Imam has lost the caliphate,
That and the ignorance of his minister and incompetence of his counselor;
For Fadl, the Vizier, and Bakr, the counselor,
Are eager for something in which lies our Emir’s ruin.
This is all just reckless delusion –
The worst possible path to take!
* * *
Now, the Caliph’s sodomy is strange
But stranger still is the Vizier’s passive role,
For the latter is trodden upon while the former one treads –
A good example, by my life, of how things in general vary!
If the two of them were to leave each other alone
It would be a fine and honorable thing.
However, [the Caliph] is obsessed with Kawthar
Who will not desist from being impaled upon pricks;
Their behavior is deemed vile and back to front,
Like the pissing of a camel10
* * *
But I find even stranger than this, despite myself,
The appointment of a small child as successor –
One who cannot even wipe his own ass and who is
Scarcely out of the arms of his wet-nurse;
This is all down to Fadl and Bakr ...
O Lord! Take them both away swiftly
And place them in Hell’s most torturous fire! (D. ii, 114–15)
Kawthar, the river of paradise, was the name of a eunuch with whom al-Amin was infatuated. Imam, here in the sense of “spiritual leader”, and Emir both refer to the Caliph; emir means “prince” and stands for “Prince of the Faithful”.
(Note. The attribution of this poem is, in fact, by no means certain: it is also attributed variously to Yusuf ibn Muhammad and ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (not the caliph of that name) in the historical works of Tabari (d. 923), Mas‘udi (d. 956) and al-Jahshiyari (d. 942–3)).
Malevolence towards Aban al-Lahiqi, his greatest literary nemesis, drove Abu Nuwas to write a poem associating him with dangerous sacrilege. It is from this poem, as much as any other, that we have a clear picture of the overlap in the generic categories of hija’ and mujun. The poem is so reckless that it contains a glaring grammatical mistake for which even a schoolboy would be severely reprimanded. Some anomalies in Abu Nuwas’s Arabic are colloquial reflexes. In this case the very opposite is true: the author was passing off a mistake as naïve hyper-correction and placing it in the mouth of his adversary as part of his ridicule.
I witnessed Aban one day
– May he not thrive! –
When we were present in the
Emir’s tent in Nahrawan;
It was time
For the dawn prayer,
So the Muezzin stood
To announce God’s grace,
Summoning the people to it
With elegant clarity –
We repeated everything he said
Until the end of the Adhan.
[Aban] asked us, “How can you give testimony
To all this, sight unseen?
I will never give testimony
Except to what my eyes have born witness!”
I said, “Praised be the Lord!”
He replied, “Praised be Mani!”
I said, “Jesus is a Messenger!”
He replied, “– From Satan!”11
I said, “Moses is the confidant
Of our Sovereign Giver of Blessing!”
He replied, “Your Lord ... with
Eyes and ears!?12
Did he create Himself?
Or who else, then!?” – I got up and abandoned
This heathen, draped in the clothes
Of unbelief, to deny the Merciful One;
I stood and dragged off my robes
Away from one who mocks the Qur’an;
Who wants to be an equal
Of that band of libertines (‘usbat al-mujjan):
Hammad al-‘Ajrad, ‘Ubad ibn Furat,
Waliba ibn al-Hubab and
Muti‘ ibn Iyas –
Who lamented the Twin Palms of Hulwan –
And ‘Ali ibn al-Khalil,
“The Boon Companions’ Basil Stick”.
But you and I are fornicators, both –
Born of philanderers and loose women. (D. ii, 78–9)
Abu Nuwas was tarring Aban al-Lahiqi with the brush of Manichaean heresy (zandaqa). A few decades earlier this might have been more hazardous, as a campaign had been organized against heretics in the time of al-Mahdi (d. 775). There are indeed reports that Abu Nuwas was himself accused of, and imprisoned for, zandaqa on account of utterances less outrageous than the profanity above.
We have encountered some of the names listed at the end of the poem before, notably Abu Nuwas’s tutor, Waliba ibn al-Hubab. They are the (in)famous “dissolutes of Kufa” by whom Abu Nuwas was enormously influenced. He was their principal successor in the Abbasid capital, and it would have been transparent to Abu Nuwas’s audience that he was in fact much more connected with these “mujjan” than Aban.
Tasteless Ja‘far the Barmecide
How scarce elegant taste is among the people,
Though they are like grains in a gravel pile,
With the exception of one man with whom the road brought me together
As we traveled of a morning to al-‘Askar;
He said, surmising that I was a poet,
Just as I had surmised his sagacity (not knowing who he was),
“Will you not recite to me some of the poetry you have composed?
Be sure not to omit the best and most majestic of it all.”
So I recited poems in praise of the Barmecide
Abu al-Fadl, that is, the young Ja‘far.
And I was delighted by [my companion’s] show of good taste, for he said,
“Your poetry is like pearls. Were you rewarded with pearls?”
To which I replied in the manner of a poet
Seeking to explain [being overlooked],
“If I praise a man made of shit
Then I am rewarded too with shit!” (D. ii, 115–16)
Abu Nuwas had cast his eulogistic pearls at swine, so he claimed. We have discussed Abu Nuwas’s relationship with the Barmecide family in Chapter 1. From among the eminent father (Yahya ibn Khalid) and his various sons, Ja‘far ibn Yahya – renowned in his day for his learning and elegance until brutally executed by Harun al-Rashid in 803 – was the most detested by Abu Nuwas. It was Ja‘far’s indifference to his poetry which appears to have provoked this resentment, albeit the jealousy of Aban al-Lahiqi, the Barmecide stooge, seems to have been responsible for kindling the antipathy at the outset.
(Abu Nuwas in fact lamented the Barmecides after their tragic downfall. The poet Di‘bil ibn ‘Ali told of how he once stood with Abu Nuwas at the foot of Ja‘far’s jibbeted corpse; Di‘bil assumed his friend would be content, given the way he had satirized the Barmecides so bitterly, but he simply said, “I did not desire this, even though I did say these things.” (D. ii, 51–2) By contrast, in a fit of resentment against al-Fadl ibn al-Rabi‘ the incarcerated Abu Nuwas cursed: “I wish to see you like Ja‘far – your two halves divided [and exposed] upon a bridge.”)
The Alchemist and Phony Genealogies
In a detailed lampoon of al-Haytham ibn ‘Adi, the Abbasid genealogist, Abu Nuwas managed to pour scorn on not one but two professions:
Even though you can, [as it were], change willow’s wood to hard
For all those in search of [good] lineage,
Those alchemists, despite exhausting themselves
With their efforts, are fruitless –
They will never, however much they toil,
Make gold except from gold! (D. ii, 56–7)
Alchemy gets a bad press in its very principle. Genealogy, by contrast, was a genuine science; but it was liable to the abuse of Abbasid social climbers who forged specious lineages for themselves. Ashja‘ al-Sulami, a panegyricist of Harun al-Rashid and protégé of Ja‘far the Barmecide, had a genealogy that was fabricated for him by his adopted tribe of Qays (among whom he was brought up as an orphan in Basra). Abu Nuwas scoffed at them all for this falsified ancestry: “They have made their ancestors into fornicators, yet if I had done the same they would have been incensed ... At home they have one lineage and another in public, like an old lady who wears a veil then reveals her ugly face.”
The circumstances which led Abu Nuwas to lampoon some of his closest patrons are not always (properly) explained, nor are we given clues that allow us to place the poems within the various chronologies of the relationships he had. The background to these poems can be as enigmatic as the poems themselves were brutal. They are more than simply coarse banter, and some harsh motives or distasteful facts (or perceptions of fact) must often lie behind them. Satire was not just a nasty habit; unfortunately, when we are ignorant of the circumstances which provoked attack, it can often seem that it was. When his feelings for an individual were poisoned – for (no) good reason – he would often tarnish the image of that person’s family. Sisters and mothers might be presented in sexually explicit scenes, with details elaborated about sexual preference and the various positions adopted. In this vein he accused Isma‘il ibn Abi Sahl of an illicit relationship with his nephew:
You made the illicit permissible with your sister’s son
Then claimed, “I saw our elders do this.”
And you never screwed a mother’s son
Without taking the mother first. (D. ii, 131)
Isma‘il’s brother, al-Fadl ibn Abi Sahl, was lampooned for siring twin girls. The fact was blamed graphically on the excessive and restless sex he had had when he sired the children – a feature ascribed to his Bactrian origins and a certain kinship with the camels of this region (which have two humps).
Sexual lampoons can be as farcical as they are religiously profane. Indeed, the following is as much preposterous fantasy as ridicule of a certain Abu Riyah.
If you ever sleep next to Abu Riyah
Then sleep with your hand on your sword,
For he has some women who,
In the evening, steal the tips of lances;
Once, when I slept with him, they stole my penis
Which I only retrieved in the morning;
It came back all scratched along the sides,
Moaning to me of its wounds ... (D. ii, 131)
The very next verse is an obscene distortion of the morning call to prayer placed in the mouths of “Abu Riyah’s lascivious women”.
While Abu Nuwas sojourned in Egypt the philosopher Hashim ibn Hudayj made the mistake of disparaging him. The poet’s answer in verse – and withering sarcasm – was to depict him as not just a spurious philosopher but a quack sexual doctor to boot.
All of us, Ibn Hudayj
Are slaves to your learning;
However, medicine is the most worthy
Occupation for you.
You are a veritable philosopher of this subject –
Perspicacious about the causes of infirmity.
So why is it that the penis is light
But heavier when it stands?
And when it empties its
Contents it wilts and hangs?
Is this a contingent thing,
Or pre-eternal – sempiternal?
And why is it pleasurable to rub
When this is done repeatedly,
Yet when the pleasure is spent
The penis stoops over with fatigue? (D. ii, 110–111)
These kinds of impish physiological questions and answers (though the answers are naturally omitted) are to be found in other medieval texts. A good example is in the eleventh-century picaresque narrative by Ibn Butlan, The Physicians’ Cenacle.
Abu Nuwas satirized one Ayyub (Job) ibn Muhammad the Secretary (Katib):
I have seen that true lovers when tormented
Seek comfort in tears and weeping.
Ayyub, however, when his heart recalls
The one whose name we will not divulge, takes action:
He calls for an inkstand with a cotton ink-wad,
Writes his [sweetheart’s] name on his palm and masturbates.
If lovers were contented with what
Contents you, no lovelorn person would ever complain. (D. ii, 98)
Similarly, he satirized one Khamis with whom he was once imprisoned. He overheard Khamis consulting a Jurist Sheikh and fellow inmate about masturbation, and wrote the following spoof:
If you are to marry off a noblewoman to her equal
Then marry Khamis to Palm daughter of Forearm;
Say: “You will gain a fine match by marrying a noblewoman
Whose yard is spacious and surrounded by five children.”
She is chaste when imprisoned
And bound by heavy irons,
But if the fates ever manage [her] release
He will have in her a substitute for every buxom maiden. (D. ii, 98)
The poem is inspired by a simple pun, for Khamis is formed from the root for “five” in Arabic – the fingers on a hand. The image of the “imprisoned”, i.e. clenched, fist is apposite to the circumstances of composition. So supremely apposite that one suspects the poem gave rise to the anecdote.
His way of mocking the effeminate “Zunbur” was to threaten to divorce him like a woman. He himself was accused of being effeminate; both Janan and ‘Inan apostrophized him this way. Yet when one ‘Ala’ ibn al-Waddah called him “ya mukhannath” at the court of Yahya ibn Khalid the Barmecide, the man only succeeded in provoking a lampoon upon his own daughter, “who has lovers as [numerous as the striking of] tablas on Palm Sunday”.
He frequently mocked the singing-girls Barsum, Nabat and ‘Inan, of whom he was doubtlessly fond, in extraordinarily burlesque hyperbole. Barsum’s voice gave him a dose of smallpox; she had the aspect of an animal-bell in the palm of a leper (!?); and made him hoot at night with the owl, farting with love so hard as to wake up the distant Byzantine king. This is hija’ as the anti-ideal of ghazal. For her part, Nabat’s step was so large it could take her from Sheba to China; her face was like the new moon (invisible); her neck had the dimensions of an enormous snake; her smile was like a sick man’s bowl; and she had a look in her eyes like the glint of a madman ... etc., etc.
But one – unnamed – qayna is derided with a finer conceit:
She demonstrates piety outwardly to God’s people
Then meets me with coquetry and a smile.
I went to her heart to complain [about her]
But wasn’t alone – there was a queue for a mile. (D. ii, 83)
Like so much, this is abstract, somewhat inflated metaphor. Yet some of the most interesting images are those that depict relatively innocuous personal details. He made fun of his beloved Janan, either during or after their relationship, describing how she pronounced her “j”-s as “z”-s: one day he heard her say “zanaza” for “janaza” (“funeral”). This is not particularly insulting, and seems simply to be the endearing detail of what he actually heard her say.
It is not hard to credit the belief that Abu Nuwas may have provoked his own demise with some unpalatable glibness. The version of his death according to which he was poisoned by the Nawbakht family is explained in one source with a brief chain of causes. He so offended “Zunbur” (“the louse hunter”) with grotesque insults that in a fit of pique Zunbur falsely attributed some anti-Shi‘ite verses to him and showed them to the Shi‘ite Nawbakhtis. They secreted poison in his food which killed him after a period of four months – they had, in any case, apparently harbored resentment of their own against the poet ever since his acid ridicule of Isma‘il ibn Abi Sahl and his mother Razzin.
But in the end one must be wary of the reflex of assuming that people are forever offended by invective directed against them. Charles II forgave an astonishingly vulgar indiscretion from Rochester who had placed a “terrible lampoon” in the monarch’s hand (by mistake):
... Poor prince! thy prick, like thy buffoons at Court,
Will govern thee because it makes thee sport.
’Tis sure the sauciest prick that e’er did swive.
The proudest, peremptoriest prick alive ...