SOME HUNTING POEMS AND A GAME OF POLO
“A hound like a flash of lightning, throwing up white stones, as he gathers up the ground like something fried flying out of the pan” (trans. Rex Smith)
Abu Nuwas hunted game and sang of the fact in extraordinary descriptive poems. If he had written none of the other poetry for which he was (and remains) either famed or notorious, he would still occupy an important place in Arabic literary history as the “supreme cynegetic poet” (EAL, art. “Tardiyya”, J.E. Montgomery). He represents the apogee of this genre in the same way he does for the wine poem. The hunting poems probably date in bulk from his life in the Abbasid capital and owe much in particular to the patronage and shared passion of al-Amin; they may thus be a relatively late development in his poetic endeavor. Though he begins one poem with the words, “Hunting ... was my pleasure as a young man”, this nostalgic posture is something of a topos and one must be wary about using the line as evidence in fixing a biographical scheme. We can say with certainty that Abu Nuwas was as fond of the chase as he was of wine, and on occasion he even placed these pleasures side by side in his verse:
“Oft I go forth early before morning is clear and before the slowly advancing hens cluck, / With a [peregrine] ruddy and whitish in colour, sitting up on the fist like a little eagle. / With garments tucked up away from her feet, which seem to have been dyed with indigo ... My companions continue with their dolce vita, eating the meat of their quarry or drinking wine...” (trans. Rex Smith)
The hunting poem (Ar. tardiyya) was written largely in a special meter known as rajaz. It was an informal meter, eschewed almost totally in other genres in which it was considered inferior or substandard. A poem written in rajaz is known as an urjuza, which also has some other formal features that need not be described here. It was a meter of extemporization, which is relevant as it seems there was, already in the Umayyad period, a “practice of composing such pieces at the end of a hunt” (EAL). Twenty-nine hunting urjuzas in Abu Nuwas’s Diwan carry the sterling-stamp of authenticity together with four qasidas (in formal meter), and a substantial number of other hunting poems are also attributed to him. It is the same situation as for his love and wine poetry, i.e., the genres in which he excelled; and as with much in those other genres, the persona detectable in the more doubtful ascriptions is barely distinguishable from the authentic core. Some special curios have been placed among the “cynegetic” poems, notably, a poem describing a polo match in Isabadh – a delightful piece conveying the energy of the contest, apparently extemporized while players indulged themselves with food and drink after a game.
Hunting poetry has a literary genealogy that goes back in some form to pre-Islamic poetry; in this earlier canon
... hunting scenes are included within the polythematic qasida and are of two types; the professional, or ‘primitive’ hunt, and the aristocratic, or royal, hunt ... The professional hunt occurs as part of the camel description ..., the prey being the oryx and the wild ass ... The aristocratic hunt is linked with the personal vaunt and often concludes the ode: it is sometimes linked with equine description. (EAL)
Independent hunting poems are first attested in the poetic remains of the Umayyad Abu al-Najm al-‘Ijli (eighth century). Abu Nuwas was thus part of a lineage that preceded him and extended beyond him to the end of the tenth century and, to a limited extent, thereafter (there survives, for example, a hunting urjuza muzdawija, i.e. in rhyming couplets, by Ibn Nubata from the fourteenth century). In the later period some changes in diction can be seen, but the genre also then came, essentially, to a fairly abrupt halt. Abu Nuwas’s
... tardiyyat are crisp and vivid metonymical descriptions of the chase and can be categorized as (a) the early morning expedition (the prototype of which is Imru’ al-Qays ); and (b) the purely descriptive ... The milieu is aristocratic and the full panoply of hunting animals and techniques is celebrated. (EAL)
The Saluki, the cheetah, the goshawk, the tiercel gos, the saker, the peregrine, and the merlin: these are the animals to which individual poems are devoted. The animals that were hunted are described in relatively less detail; these include the hare, the fox, the gazelle, the crane and the bustard. (In the artistic subordination of hunted fauna to the animals of the chase these poems contrast with the detailed engraved artwork on modern hunting rifles which tend to depict the game [in its glory before its destruction]: geese, ducks, pheasants, deer, boars, lions and elephants, etc. It is a notable inversion.)
“the saluki, pendulous-eared, hound, who hunted entirely by sight – only rarely mentioned by name, ... though this was without doubt the only canine to have been used in the chase” (Lyons)
There are nine authentic, and a further twenty-eight possibly speciously ascribed, urjuzas about hounds alone in Abu Nuwas’s Diwan. With the extraordinary energy it conveys of the animal raring to go, pulling at the leash, “champing at the bit” at the crack of dawn, the following is a fine representative example of the vigor and ethos of the tardiyya. The poem exists in two versions. Both are given below to show how texts can be scrambled with time. Several lines are identical; others, the later ones especially, are quite distinct, taking the poems in the end in different directions. The second version may be a variant or even corruption of the first (though it has its very own qualities); or it may be a copy by another author inspired by the original. One simply cannot be certain. While the first has the prestige of being, apparently, the more authentic poem, they are cast from similar molds and stimulated by the same passion. And both give an excellent idea of the great stamina of the Saluki, which had already been used in pre-Islamic and Umayyad times.
Poem I: (there is some confusion about the first two lines of the poem – below is one possible reading):
When morning appeared from behind its veil
Like the figure of a greying man from his robe (Jilbab)
...
And like an Abyssinian grinning to reveal his teeth,
We stirred with a dog we have long met the day with
He almost left the leash in tatters with his lurching,
Heaving with uncontrolled excitement
– with the energy that commanded his youth;
When he strutted forwards the two lines along his back
Were like a pair of snakes slinking briskly forwards;
His claws, sheathed inside their paws,
Were like the razors of a cupper ensconced in their scabbard;
When the hunter called out to him as he ran
He almost sprang from his own hide;
The valley floor resounded with his pace
At which he seemed to be leaving the ground.
He was like a drunkard (one we relied upon [for provisions])
Effacing his traces by dragging his clothes along the soil13
All but those marks traced by the very fringes of his garment.
Pasturing animals were rounded up by him,
Like prisoners of war to his claws and his fangs. (D. ii, 187–9)
Poem II:
When morning appeared from behind its veil
And night returned whence it came
The hunter harnessed him and set off,
Restraining him when he pulled at the leash –
At times constraining the intractable beast
Then relaxing his hold whenever he gave.
He bared his fangs to reveal
Whetted blades and spearheads;
The eyes which he glared from
Were like carnelian gems convening upon his face;
His upper chest heaved from his breast-girth
Draping down as he held his nose to the ground.
After reaching the summit of a slope, or half-way,
And casting a glance quickly around
At the wonders of gardens in the valley basin
Where herds of animals had appeared,
He dispatched him like an arrow; he was more than this:
Zealous and faster than the blinking of an eye,
Sprinting down to the valley floor
At a pace that almost flayed his own hide.
He flashed like lightning in the clouds
Until he was almost ... no more
And the hunter called out to him from his now distant spot
Scolding this uncontrolled attack14
When the prey had been thrown into the dust he chided him again
And the dog turned back towards the voice that had called him.
These were restless hounds, fervent for the chase, as captured brilliantly in the following image: “I shall describe a hound pulling on his tether, like a madman fleeing from having medicine introduced up his nose ...” (trans. Rex Smith).
There is just one fully authentic urjuza about the cheetah in the Diwan (in the critical edition five further poems on the cheetah are given in a section of poems deemed less reliable by the redactor, al-Isfahani).15 We can recognize the first line as formulaic; but the continuation is as relatively rare as the animal it describes.
(Textual Note. The essayist al-Jahiz [d. 869] ascribes a substantially similar poem to one al-Raqashi [d. c. 815] in his “Book of Animals”. This is suspect, and ironical, since the two poets couldn’t stand each other; but it is also understandable since they shared much in the way of poetic temperament. The ascription to Abu Nuwas has greater authority, but since al-Jahiz is such an early source it is hard to discredit him altogether. The issue of authenticity often has one turning in circles; and so it is wise at times to draw a sponge across the matter, insouciantly – to read the poetry that is otherwise trapped in a philologist’s limbo.)
I would set off at dawn,(– when the night was [still dark]
Like a cloud blocking sight
Yet morning made headway upon the shadows,
Slicing through the dimness like a sword finely wrought –)
With a beast, broad jawed, swift and energetic,
Stout in frame, with a strapping back and heavy set
Yet taut, lean, and tapering in at the waist
Vicious to look at! Ample folds on bright cheeks
Black at the base of the ears and the root of the jaws
Broad-muzzled like a Bactrian camel over a rosy collar
With large paws and razor-sharp claws
Like a lion yet with stippled coat
Ready to pounce on any moving figure
* * *
After an extensive look around he spotted
Two herds of gazelle appearing on a hard flatland
So he set off to stalk them at a furtive pace;
He crept along, sneaking up unawares,
Gliding forward like a male viper
Over raised and hollow terrain,
Then when poised before the quarry
He scattered them upon the even ground
Wreaking carnage with lacerating tears.
* * *
After a period of want and economy
There is no benefit from a hunt without a cheetah.
(D. ii, 200–202)
In fascinating and pertinent remarks one scholar writes:
In his “Book of Taming the Wild Beasts of the Desert” the writer Muhammad ibn al-Mankli (d. 1384) describes the process of capturing and training a cheetah in great detail. A professional cheetah-keeper (fahhad) and his assistants had to track down, subdue, and train adult animals since they did not give birth in captivity. The trickiest part of this process was teaching the cheetah, a creature so indolent that an Arabic proverb, “sleepier than a cheetah”, was coined after it, to ride a horse to the hunt (at the front of the keeper’s saddle).
...
Al-Mankli also described the cheetahs of Iraq, among them those ... of Samawah, who are: “very beautiful, mostly white, with small spots, light bodied and long-boned” and whose “backs and tails are long. When they appear their necks look like dice and when they retreat their backs are like snakes, and their tails, when they hold them up, are like spears.”
(World Literature and Its Times, vol. 6, art. “Abu Nuwas”, Mark Wagner)
By the time al-Mankli was writing, some of his vivid impressions had the ring of five centuries.
While out hunting, Abu Nuwas’s hound, Hallab, was bitten by a snake and died. He wrote this elegy on the occasion. As with all elegies, the language is accessible and less intricately descriptive than the average hunting poem. It is also more particular, depicting a specific occasion in the second half, and denuded of some of the formulaic language associated with the poems that lie closer to the median-line of the “genre”.
Poor dog! – He was a lord among hounds!
He fulfilled my need of a falcon,
Took the place of butcher
And stockpiling quartermaster.
Among the throngs of ruddy white gazelles, dogs
And every rampant catcher,
He snatched hill-dwelling fauna
Quick as a lightning flash glimpsed mid star and cloud.
How many a lean-flanked gazelle
Who came and went defiantly
Did he provide me with for grilled meat?
I set out with him when the world rested,
My teeth and utensils still
Yellow-stained from the saffron cooking of a previous catch,
As if greased lightly with liquid gold.
There we were, in the thicket,
When, lo, a serpent appeared baring its fangs,
Striped and naked of all covering,
And staring through its facial mask.
It dug its fangs into my poor hound’s hocks
And showed no partiality for me –
O would I had not returned without punishment
... Not before you had tasted the most painful chastisement! (D. ii, 280)
An elegant introduction to this genre, showcasing Abu Nuwas in particular, is Rex Smith’s “Hunting Poetry (Tardiyyat)”. The poetic devices employed are described succinctly (simile, metaphor, metonymy [here reference to animals according to adjectival qualities rather than generic nouns], and hyperbole), followed by extensive translated excerpts with valuable explanatory notes. We learn, for example, about the consistent zoological accuracy of Abu Nuwas’s observations; e.g., the saker, in one poem, is
... spotted between the back and the throat, her primaries little distinguished one from another at the extremities, nimble.
... The primaries are the feathers at the end of the wings, the main flying feathers; on the saker they are found close together, though in some birds of prey they can be spaced out with clear gaps between them.
Abu Nuwas ... must have gained wide practical experience on the hunting field, for technical faults are negligible and the work utterly convincing.
Abu Nuwas did not confuse hunting with polo. After giving in full twenty-six “genuine” hunting urjuzas and four “genuine” hunting qasidas, al-Isfahani relays five anomalous poems about whose authorship he was uncertain. These poems were apparently lumped together precisely because of their unusual contents which did not fit snugly within any of the main generic categories of the Diwan. Since the first and second poems are allusive and veiled descriptions of a penis and a dirham, respectively, borrowing the imagery of a saker falcon, al-Isfahani placed them here – faute de mieux. It is the subject matter which appears to have cast doubt in his mind as to the authenticity of the five poems. But the editorial reflex is not entirely convincing and the poem about polo is one of the exquisite curios of the Diwan. It is imbued with the amateurism (in the real sense) and energy of a hunt, and is a quite fabulous piece of descriptive verse.
(In English the first three lines, delineating the pedigree of the players, read like clutter; in Arabic such expression has elegance and succinctness – it is itself, in a sense, part of the pedigree of the society depicted.)
Noble Men
And I might watch the pleasures of bright young men,
From among the descendants of al-‘Abbas, lords of men,
Or the tribes of Qahtan or Mudar;
Or simply an intimate friend who gives shelter
A face enhanced by good repute.
Riders, Sticks and Balls
They were all mounted on steeds as exquisite as a picture
Lean noble stallions, issue of A‘waj,
Not cauterized by the farrier to treat overfeeding.
The players were like Jinn upon Jinn, even if they were only men,
As if stitched to their mounts with needle [and thread]
Or it was as if the rider was riveted to his pony
In a verdant field as lush as striped garments
Laurelled with splendor and pride
And so on a cold and chilly day,
When the sun shone after a downpour of rain
They took out polo sticks at which the eye marveled
Their extremities perfectly curved and bent round
Faultlessly measured by craftsmen
Neither too long nor too short.
The players called out, hitting the balls to each other
Smooth balls with plaited seams
Bound tightly around a stuffing of hair
That had been expertly made by the artisan
Wielding a bone awl deftly, stitching,
Leaving not a trace of the tool upon the surface of the ball
One would think it was an apple dangling from the tree!
The Climax of the Game
When the [players on one team] had closed off the danger
They delegated the bravest among them for the fight
One tested in battle, fugitive from a near death,
Distinguished by his skill, famous for clean strokes
Fair-minded, with a restless eye,
A leader of significance to captain the team;
He drove the ball on, then struck it forwards [and high]
And it fell like a star dropping from the sky,
Up and down, the ball bobbed at a steady rhythm
Hit onwards with keen and solid strokes
Like arrows propelled by the string of a bow.
Among these normally self-possessed and dignified men,
You could see many now snorting like beasts when the ball was struck sweetly
And the man dying for victory shouted out and screamed.
And the soul of the man who fears the vicissitudes of Time despaired
They knew they where beaten or trounced.
...
The Lesson (for Player and Pundit)
In order for those who place bets to win
Some are hard done by and others delight;
Such are the vagaries of Time and Fate! (D. ii, 256–7)
The circumstances of the game are given briefly in the Diwan. In the town of Isabadh, Abu Nuwas was in the company of al-‘Abbas ibn Musa al-Hadi when they came across Zuhayr ibn Musayyab and Saqr ibn Malik, of the tribe of Khuza‘a, stick-and-balling on the main square. He joined the players who divided up into two teams. In the end, the poet won these noblemen over and joined them for food and drink after the game, composing this poem about the contest in a merry state.
It is a rare, perhaps unique, poem. Yet it conforms in several ways to the tradition of poetry, particularly in the epigrammatic ending about time and fate – a lesson to be drawn even from a game of polo. Like all the best poetry, there is a mixture of formula and utter invention: the nobility of the players, as already intimated, is somewhat well-worn but the description of, for example, how these expert horsemen stayed on the saddle (like genies sown or riveted to their mounts), and the quality of the polo-balls, seamlessly sown, are the descriptive jewels of this piece. Two further things might be noted.
1. First, the fine linguistic quality of Qur’anic evocation to describe the champion hitter:
He drove the ball on, then struck it forwards [and high]
And it fell like a star dropping from the sky.
The Arabic for “drove” here is daha; it is a Qur’anic verb used for God’s “spreading out” of the land in Sura 79 referring to creation. The allusion is unmistakable, especially in combination with the image of the “dropping star”, which employs apocalyptic language borrowed most notably from Sura 81. One can view this either simply as part of the enhanced linguistic texture of the poem, underscoring with lofty scriptural association the lauded qualities of the player; or introducing the serious cadence of the poem’s ending. Or both, conceivably. We should be reminded, in any case, that Abu Nuwas’s poetry generally is studded with Qur’anic evocations of just this quality.
The euphony of this and the following line in Arabic is superb, evoking with repeated word patterns and sounds the smooth, energetic and constant movement of the ball; one can sense this even without knowledge of the language:
Bikuratin daha biha thumma zajar
Fa-nhadarat ka-l-najmi walla fa-nkadarat
Raf‘an wa-wad‘an ayyuma dhaka staqar
Tudfa‘u bi-l-darbi idha l-darbu stamar.
2. In the ethos of this culture, forbearance and self-control were cardinal virtues, as they had been in pre-Islamic Arabia (and the Near East in general). How expressive of the excitement of a game, therefore, that even a man of forbearance should scream and shout with abandon, desperate for a win when the game is – apparently – played down to the wire. The poem is structured, one might say, to convey the nail-biting ordeal.