7
Servitude and Military Grandeur
The entry of large numbers of Turks into the Islamic lands inaugurated an age of ‘servitude and military grandeur’ (to borrow a phrase from the nineteenth-century French poet and novelist, Alfred de Vigny). Turkish slaves had long performed military and administrative roles under the 'Abbasids and rival rulers. Military slaves were known as mamluks. However, from the late tenth century onwards, Turks began to take power in various parts of the territories of Islam. The Ghanavid Turks took control of Afghanistan, eastern Iran and north-west India. In the following century they were supplanted in Iran and most of Afghanistan by the Seljuk Turks. The Seljuks went on to occupy the central Islamic lands and they established their control over Baghdad and the 'Abbasid caliphs who resided there. (The 'Abbasid caliph remained the nominal head of the Sunni Muslim community, but the Seljuk sultans, pretending to act in the name of the caliph, exercised all real power.) Although the Seljuk sultanate began to fall apart in the course of the early twelfth century, the petty rulers who established themselves in the fragmented territories of Persian, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Anatolia tended to be of Turkish or, less frequently, of Kurdish origin. Many of those rulers and their attendant elites had a military background and they had often started out as mamluks. The growing role of these soldiers in directing affairs of state culminated in the mid-thirteenth century with establishment of a mamluk or slave-soldier regime in Egypt and Syria.
The political and military rise of the Turks was accompanied by the literary resurgence of Persian. Turkish warlords with pretensions to culture tended to interest themselves in the culture of the Persian country gentlemen and the old Persian epics. Their relative lack of interest in Arabic literature may explain what has been widely perceived as a falling-off in the originality and vitality of Arabic prose and poetry in the later Middle Ages. Jahiz, Hariri, Mutanabbi and Ma'arri do not seem to have had worthy successors. However, it may be that the growing self-consciousness of Sunni orthodoxy and the increased popularity of fundamentalist religious positions among many intellectuals played a part in increasing suspicion and hostility towards poetry and fiction. Poetry and story-writing did not feature on the official syllabuses of the madrasas, the religious teaching colleges which were established in this period. Although some Sufis wrote poetry and used story-telling to illustrate spiritual truths, other Sufis were resolutely anti-intellectual and were opposed to reliance on book-learning. Then again, it is possible that the perceived decline in literary creativity in the late Middle Ages is a matter of mistaken perception. Certainly late medieval Arabic literature (the so-called 'Asr al-Intihat, or Age of Decadence) has not received from modern scholars the attention it deserves.
In the age of the Crusades, both courts and administrative systems in the Middle East and North Africa tended to be highly militarized. Some important literature in Arabic was actually produced by Turkish and Kurdish officers. A very large part of the literature of this period was produced by Arabs who served those officers as officials, scribes or pensioned poets. The most influential prose writers of the age, 'Imad al-Din al-Katib al-Isfahani and al-Qadi al-Fadil, were not storytellers but the drafters of pompous chancery documents on behalf of non-Arab warlords. 'Imad al-Din Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Katib AL-ISFAHANI (1125-1201) was a Persian and he was born, as his name indicates, in Isfahan. He worked at first in the caliphal administration in Baghdad, but in 1165 he was politically disgraced and cast into prison for two years. After his release, he travelled westwards to Syria in search of a new patron, and was employed by Nur al-Din, the Turkish military ruler of Aleppo and Damascus. When Nur al-Din died in 1174, al-Isfahani took service with the famous leader of the Muslim counter-crusade, the Kurdish warlord Saladin (more correctly, Salah al-Din).
Isfahani wrote two histories which celebrated in rhymed prose the history of Saladin’s triumphs over the Crusaders and his reconquest of the holy city of Jerusalem in 1187, the Fath al-Qussi fi al-Fath al-Qudsi (‘Eloquence on the Conquest of the Holy City’) and the Barq al-Shami (‘Syrian Lightning’). He also compiled a major collection of poetry, the Kharidat al-Qasr, or ‘The Garden of the Palace’, an anthology of twelfth-century poetry, with biographical details of the poets. The Persian ‘high style’ is ornate and flowery and echoes of it are detectable in Isfahani’s Arabic. The prose style favoured by Isfahani was given further currency by his chancery colleague and literary ally, al-Qadi al-Fadil (1134-1200). Thereafter, under their influence almost all high-level government correspondence and decrees were drafted in an embellished style which made use of rhymed prose, forced metaphors, parallelisms and balanced antitheses. However, although Isfahani’s account of Saladin’s achievements is full of flourishes and fanfares, it is still one of the major sources of information on the momentous events of those decades. As he put it, he sought to cater ‘both to the literati who watch for brilliant purple passages and to those with historical interests who look out for embellished biographies’. He also presented his readers with a lot of information about himself, for, as far as he was concerned, he was a major player in the turbulent events of those decades. In the following piece of bombastic, pun-laden rhymed prose, Isfahani describes Saladin’s entry into Jerusalem after its capture from the Crusaders in 1187. One gets the impression from Isfahani that at least half the glory of the victory rested in the scribal recording of it.
Francesco Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades
COMMENTARY
The Mi'raj, the midnight journey to the seven heavens made by Muhammad from Jerusalem, is held to have occurred on the 27th of the Muslim month of Rajab.
The qibla is the direction in which Muslims pray.
When Isfahani refers to ‘towers’, he is punning, for the Arabic word burj refers both to a tower and a Zodiacal sign.
Government correspondence was business correspondence, but it was also an art form. Official decrees and works of propaganda were treasured by cultured readers for their literary beauty. In Ghuzuli’s belles-lettres compilation devoted to the pleasures of life (see page 433), he included chancery correspondence among those pleasures.
Abu al-Fadl ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Ali Baha’ al-Din ZUHAYR (1186–1258), later quaintly dubbed the ‘Grand Master of Peculiar Lovers’, was born in Mecca but later moved to Egypt where he grew up and where he studied. In the 1230s he was in the service of one of Saladin’s descendants, al-Salih Ayyub. When in 1239 al-Salih Ayyub became the sultan of Egypt, Zuhayr became his vizier. However, he fell out of favour with the sultan shortly before the latter’s death in 1249 and died in poverty in 1258.
Although Zuhayr was well known as a calligrapher, he was yet more famous as a poet. Naturally he produced panegyrics in praise of his master, but he also produced qasidas on a wide range of topics, some humorous, some savage. In addressing one poem to an old woman, he referred to her as ‘a lot of bones in a leather sock’. He wrote many poems about the passing of pleasures and the coming of white hairs. He wrote a poem in praise of brunettes – and another preferring blondes (see below). Some of his poetry can be read as homoerotic; in one poem he portrays himself as fancying the moonfaced and slender monks in a monastery where he sits drinking (see below), and another poem is cast in the form of a lament for a young man who is about to grow his first beard. Nevertheless, Zuhayr was particularly celebrated for his ghazals, or love poetry addressed to women, and he was particularly fond of the theme of doomed love.
On a Brunette
O ne’er despise the sweet brunette!
Such dusky charms my heart engage.
I care not for your blondes; I hate
The sickly tint of hoary age.
That man, believe me, greatly errs,
Whose heart a dusky maiden prefers.
For me, I love my maiden bright,
With teeth of pearl and face of light.
My bright example truth shall be,
For truth is always fair to see.
The song-birds trill with merry sound,
The hour is one of perfect joy,
Bright and pure without alloy.
Arouse thee, then, pretty my lass!
And send around the sparkling glass:
And hand it, bright as coins of gold,
Although it costs us coins untold.
Aye, pass it will while the morn is bright,
’Twill be but adding light to light.
Old wine and choice, it will be found
Like ‘sunbeams not diffused around’.
'Tis pleasanter than fires that rise
Before the shivering traveller’s eyes.A seat beside the Nile was ours,
Upon a carpet strewn with flowers;
the wavelets rippled on apace,
Like dimples on a maiden’s face;
And bubbles floated to the brink,
Round as the cups from which we drink.
We raced each other out to play,
Full early at the dawn of day.
With here a revered divine,
And there a man who worshipped wine;
Here very grave and sober folk.
There others who enjoyed a joke.
The serious, and the lively too;
the false one mingling with the true;Now in the cloister’s calm retreat,
Now seated on the tavern’s seat.
And Coptic monks, you understand,
A learned but a jovial band.
And pretty faces too were there,
Their owners were as kind as they were fair.
And one who from the Psalter sang,
In tones that like a psaltery rang;
While faces in dark cowls we spy,
Like full moons in the murky sky;
Faces, like those pictures fair,
To which they make their daily prayer;
And 'neath the belt of each we traced
A slender and a wasp-like waist.
We joined them, and they scorned to spare
The old wine they had treasured there.
And, oh! we passed a happy day,
One notably most bright and gay!
Just such a one as fancy paints
Without formality’s restraints.
In speaking of it do your best,
And then imagine all the rest!
E. H. Palmer, The Poetical Works of Beha-Ed-Din Zoheir
(Cambridge, 1877), pp. 27, 42, 109
Zuhayr adopted a conversational style in poems, which came close what is known as ‘Middle Arabic’. The early development and the particular qualities of Middle Arabic which distinguish it from classical Arabic in the strict sense are complex and, indeed, controversial. Briefly, by the twelfth century at least, and almost certainly earlier, the rules of classical Arabic regarding such matters as word-order and case-endings were no longer being scrupulously observed by all writers. High Arabic (fusha) was being infected by colloquial forms. There was now a general tendency to indicate subject and object by word-order – the word-order doing the work of lost case-endings. Writers who fell into the lazy habits of Middle Arabic usage put the subject in front of the verb, whereas sticklers for the old classical forms placed the subject where they wanted the emphasis to fall in the sentence. Other features which marked out Middle from classical Arabic included the frequent dropping of the dual form for nouns and the imperative form for verbs. The way the Bedouin of seventh-century Arabia spoke ceased to be the inflexible literary model. It is true that well-educated authors who took trouble over what they wrote still took pride in writing correct classical Arabic, but in general in the late medieval period written Arabic more closely reflected spoken colloquial Arabic. (It is because there are so many Middle Arabic features in The Thousand and One Nights that these stories are regarded with disdain by fastidious stylists.) The controversy about colloquial and literary Arabic continues to rage today; for example, the famous Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz has described the colloquial as ‘a disease of language’.
Diya’ al-Din Abu’l-Fath Nasr Allah IBN AL-ATHIR (1163–1239) was yet another leading writer employed by the Ayyubid dynasty to celebrate their triumphs and transact government business. (Diya’ al-Din is not to be confused with his brother, 'Izz al-Din (d. 1233), a well-known historian also in the service of the Ayyubids.) Diya’ al-Din ibn al-Athir was also a literary critic and theorist. Mathal al-Sba’ir fi-Adab al-Katib wa al-Sha’ir, ‘The Popular Model for the Discipline of Writer and Poet’, is his best-known work of literary criticism (and note the punning rhyme: sha’ir means ‘popular’, while sha’ir means ‘poetry’). As a writer of prose himself, Ibn al-Athir favoured prose over poetry. In the first passage quoted below, he commends the study of the poetry and prose of the Ancients.
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Thorough familiarity with the discourse of the Ancients in poetry and in prose, is replete with benefits; because it makes known the aims of the masters, and the results of their thoughts. Through their writings we come to know the aims of each group of them, and how far their art has taken them. For these are things that sharpen the intellect and kindle the intelligence. When the practitioner of this art familiarizes himself with their writings, the ideas enclosed therein, and which he toiled to extract, become as something delivered into his hands; he takes what he wishes, and leaves out what he wishes. Also, the ideas previously invented, on becoming familiar to him, may provide the spark in his mind for a rare and unprecedented idea. |
It is a known fact that the minds of men, although differing in good and bad qualities, yet some are not higher nor lower than others except to a slight extent. It thus often happens that talents and minds are equally capable of producing ideas, in such manner that one may produce that same idea in the same words, without being aware of his predecessor’s idea. This phenomenon is what practitioners of this art call ‘the falling of a hoof upon a hoof’. |
George Makdisi, The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam
and the Christian West (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 357, 361
Under the patronage of the Seljuks and their ministers, as well as of later dynasties, the Sunni Muslim religious institutions of the madrasa and the khanqa came to play an unprecedentedly important role. The madrasa was a college devoted to the teaching of religious subjects: the Qur’an and its exegesis, hadiths and Islamic law. Although this was the standard syllabus, it was quite common for other more secular subjects to be taught in the madrasas – including, for example, poetry and the correct interpretation of such literary works as Hariri’s Maqamat. A khanqa was a hospice and centre for prayer and study for the use of Sufis. The khanqa bears some resemblance to a monastery – so long as one bears in mind that a Sufi was not expected to spend all his life in it. The normal expectation was that he would earn a living and marry, in conformity with the Prophet’s saying, ‘There is no monkery in Islam.’ Khanqas were really quite similar to madrasas and it was often difficult to tell them apart. There was a good deal of movement between khanqa and madrasa.
Al-Ghazzali (also frequently spelt Ghazali), one of the most famous of all Sufis, made his reputation as an academic teaching in a madrasa before pursing a more spiritual path as a Sufi. Abu Hamid Muhammad al-GHAZZALL (1058-1111) was born the son of a poor wool-spinner in eastern Persia. The boy’s obvious intellect secured him influential patronage, which allowed him to pursue studies in theology and religious law. At the age of thirty-three he started teaching as a professor in the Nizamiyya madrasa in Baghdad (founded by Nizam al-Mulk, the famous vizier of the Seljuks). According to Ghazzali’s spiritual autobiography, it was while teaching at the Nizamiyya that he fell victim to an intellectual and spiritual crisis. He was unable to speak and hardly able to eat, and he went into seclusion. He doubted not only his religious faith, but also the reality of the world and the evidence of his senses. Ghazzali’s doubts prefigure those of Rene Descartes, though the answer ultimately discovered by the twelfth-century Sufi bears little resemblance to that worked out by the seventeenth-century French philosopher.
In 1095 Ghazzali absconded from academic life and set out to travel in the Near East. He spent time meditating as an ascetic in Mecca, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Damascus, and his meditations brought him to acknowledge the ultimate truth of Sufism and its superiority over rival spiritual philosophies that were popular at the time. Only then did he return to lecturing, this time at a madrasa in Nishapur in eastern Iran, but he soon retired and a few years later he died in his native Tus. That, at any rate, is the version of Ghazzali’s life presented for public consumption. However, the spiritual crisis leading to all-encompassing doubt, the travel to holy cities in search of enlightenment, and the ultimate resolution of the crisis through the full understanding of the truths of mysticism, all feature so frequently in Sufi biographies that one may suspect that this pattern of ‘biography’ was a cliche of devotional writing – merely a conventional way of packaging mystical and pietistical treatises. Ghazzali’s account of his spiritual journey bears a suspicious resemblance to that of an earlier Sufi writer, al-Muhasibi. Indeed there are good grounds for believing that Ghazzali was already a Sufi before he abandoned his first teaching post.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Ghazzali’s writings did a great deal to popularize Sufi doctrines and make them respectable. For example, he spent a great deal of time and ink in trying to explain how Hallaj’s vainglorious and apparently blasphemous statement ‘I am the Truth’ could be interpreted in some way that could be accepted by more conventional Muslims. Ghazzali was not a systematic thinker and his books are jackdaw collections of bits of past wisdom. Much of what he wrote is visionary; he described God moving among the 70,000 veils, as well as the ceaseless movement of prophets and saints up and down through the heavens. He drew on ancient doctrines and images of ‘light’ mysticism. However, even more of what he wrote is moralistic and world-hating; the world is ‘a prison’, ‘a fiery torment’, ‘a deceitful prostitute’.
He wrote copiously in both Persian and Arabic. Mishkat al-Anwar, ‘The Niche of Lights’, is an esoteric treatise with Platonic elements; ‘this visible world is a trace of the invisible one and the former follows the latter like a shadow’. Tahafut al-Falasifa, ‘The Incoherence of Philosophers’, as its title suggests is a denunciation of philosophy, particularly philosophizing developed under the influence of the ancient Greeks. The philosophers’ alleged denial of the reality of the resurrection of the body was particularly impious. Ghazzali insisted that there must be limits to the authority of reason and that reason could not direct faith. Ihya al-'Ulum al-Din, ‘The Revival of Religious Sciences’, is a kind of spiritual encyclopedia, a reference work on dogma which is still consulted today. (Kimiya-yi Sa'dat, ‘The Alchemy of Happiness’, is an abridgement in Persian.) In the stylishly written Al-Munqidh min al-Dalal, ‘The Deliverance from Error’, Ghazzali describes how he investigated the competing claims of philosophers, conventional theologians and Shi'i illuminationists before he decided to become a Sufi. In the following passage he describes a crisis of doubt:
W. Montgomery Watt, The Faith and Practice of
al-Ghazali (new edn., Oxford, 1990), pp. 21–4
COMMENTARY
Hal in everyday parlance means ‘state’, ‘situation’, ‘position’. However, in the vocabulary of the Sufis it refers to a mystical state, usually ecstasy. A hal is a state which has been temporarily reached by the mystic, as opposed to a maqam, which is a permanent station.
Sharaf al-Din 'Umar ibn 'Ali IBN AL-FARID (1181-1235), ‘the Sultan of the Lovers’, was an older contemporary of the Andalusian Sufi, Ibn al-'Arabi. Ibn al-Farid was born in Egypt. His father was a professional allocator of shares in inheritances. (That is what farid means.) Ibn al-Farid seems to have led a quiet and solitary life, much of it as an ascetic hermit living on the rubbish tips of Mount Muqattam on the edge of Cairo. However, he also spent some years in Arabia and underwent a particularly intense mystical experience in Mecca. His poetry was reported to have been composed in trances that often lasted several days. His Nazm al-Suluk (‘Poem of the Way’) is 761 verses long and instructs his disciples about a series of mystical experiences. His other poems are much shorter and his Diwan is small, though highly esteemed. Ibn al-Farid, like Ibn al-'Arabi, redirected the conventional imagery of the deserted campsite and of the ‘wine poem’ to divine ends. Not only did he imitate old poems, he stole directly from them. Thus his poems recycled snatches of Mutanabbi, Buhturi and others, though of course the old verses acquired new meanings in a mystical context. (The practice of stealing or quoting from earlier poems, tadmin, was widely accepted and practised in the medieval Arab literary world.) Ibn al-Farid may have composed his verses in a state of mystical ecstasy, but those verses are ornate, highly intellectual and make great play with conventional courtly forms.
More controversial were the dangerous doctrines which Ibn al-Farid had clothed in conventional poetical imagery. A leading religious thinker of the early fourteenth century, Ibn Taymiyya, denounced Ibn al-Farid for espousing the heresy of monism and of claiming that the mystic could attain full unity with God. One of Ibn Taymiyya’s followers, al-Dhahabi, observed of Ibn al-Farid that his ‘Diwan is famous, and it is of great beauty and subtlety, perfection and burning desire. Except that he adulterated it with explicit monism, in the sweetness of expressions and subtlest metaphors, like pastry laced with venom!’
A. J. Arberry, The Mystical Poems of Ibn al-Farid
COMMENTARY
‘Labbaika! meaning ‘I am here!’, is the cry of pilgrims as they stand on the plain of 'Arafat, outside Mecca, during the hajj.
Note the stock poetical figure of the upbraider or chider. The images of the twig on the sand-dune to describe a woman’s figure and the full moon her face are, if anything, even more conventional in Arabic love poetry. However, ‘the tales of the Beloved’ refer not to any woman, but to the Prophet Muhammad. The wine stands for spiritual drunkenness and so on throughout the poem.
from the tight swaddling wrap,
and restlessly yearns
for relief from distress,He is soothed by lullabies, and lays aside
the burden that covered him –
he listens silently
to one who soothes him.The sweet speech makes him
forget his bitter state
and remember a secret whisper
of ancient ages.His state makes clear
the state of audition
and confirms the dance
to be free of error.For when he burns with desire
from lullabies,
anxious to fly
to his first abodes,He is calmed
by his rocking cradle
as his nurse’s hands
gently sway it.I have found in gripping rapture
when she is recalled
In the chanter’s tones
and the singer’s tunes –What a suffering man feels
when he gives up his soul,
when death’s messengers
come to take him.One finding pain
in being driven asunder
is like one pained in rapture
yearning for friends.The soul pitied the body
where it first appeared,
and my spirit rose
to its high beginnings,And my spirit soared past
the gate beyond my union
where there is no veil
of communion.
Th. Emil Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint. Ibn al-Farid, His
Verse and His Shrine (Columbia, South Carolina, 1994), pp. 12-13
COMMENTARY
The call to remembrance was one of the most important features of the traditional qasida, for, as we have seen, contemplation of the deserted campsite regularly led the poet to recall a past love or loves. The theme of remembrance is crucial to these verses by Ibn al-Farid (extracted from a much longer poem by him, the Al-Ta'iyah al-Kubra, or ‘Great Poem Rhyming in Ta’). Remembrance was also a leading theme in the previous poem by him. However, dhikr, which means ‘remembrance’, also has a more specialist meaning in the vocabulary of the Sufis. In Sufism, dhikr refers to the incessant repetition of certain words or formulas in praise of God, often accompanied by music and dancing. A typical dhikr might consist of the repetition of such a phrase as Ya Latif, ‘Oh Kind One’ (that is, ‘O God’) thousands of times. In the poem above, Ibn al-Farid makes an extended comparison between the dhikr and the lullaby.
The controversy over the doubtful orthodoxy of Ibn al-Farid’s verses rumbled on through the centuries. Some critics even wrote their own poems rhyming in ta, in order to refute Ibn al-Farid’s ideas. However, Ibn al-Farid’s reputation was fiercely defended by Sufis who chanted his poems in their meetings and, by the late fifteenth century, his defenders could be seen to have triumphed over his critics.
Other poets besides Ibn al-Farid made use of the qasida form for devotional purposes. Together with Imru’ al-Qays’s Mu'allaqat, Busiri’s Burda is probably the most famous poem in the Arabic language. Sharaf al-Din Muhammad al-Busiri (1211–1294/6?), a mystic belonging to the Shadhili order of Sufis, earned a living in Alexandria as a manuscript copyist. It is said that the inspiration for the Qasidat al-Burda, ‘The Ode of the Mantle’, came to him as the result of a dream after he had suffered a paralysing stroke. The Prophet appeared in Busiri’s dream and put his mantle on the stricken poet, and at that instant he was cured. Busiri composed the qasida entitled ‘Luminous Stars in Praise of the Best of Mankind’, but more popularly known as the Burda, as an act of thanksgiving. The poem follows the conventional structure of the qasida and uses that structure to present a compendium of lore about the Prophet together with a call to repentance. The Burda, the product of a supernatural cure, itself acquired healing powers and its words were widely used as a kind of talisman against disease and misfortune.
That made you blend your flowing tears with blood?Was it the wind that blows from Kazima?
Or did lightning flash in darkness over Idam?Why are your eyes overflowing though you tell them to stop?
Why is your heart so frantic though you try to keep it calm?How can a lover hope to hide his love
When his is both streaming and burning?Without your passion you’d sprinkle no ruin with tears
Nor lie awake remembering 'Alam and Ban.Can you still deny your love when tears and illness,
Fair witnesses both, are speaking out against you,And when passion has marked your cheeks with two deep lines
Of sickness like narcissus and tears like 'anam fruits?’Yes, I admit my beloved’s apparition has robbed me of my sleep.
Love will spoil all pleasure with pain.O you who blame me over ‘Udhri love, take note
Of my excuse – were you but just, you would stop blaming me:News of my state has spread far beyond you,
My secret to slander lies exposed and my disease is fatal.Your advice is most sincere but what you say I cannot hear.
To the riling of his critics the lover is stone deaf.Even the advice of age I spurned when it censured me.
Yet age is far above suspicion in its counsel.But my hell-bent soul in its ignorance did not
Take heed of the warnings of hoariness and age,Nor did I, unashamedly, prepare good deeds of welcome
For that guest who has descended now upon my head.Had I known I would fail to pay him due respect
I would have concealed this secret for ever with katam dye.Who can restrain my bolting soul from sin,
Like one restrains bolting steeds with bridles?Do not try to cap its desire through transgression.
Food only strengthens the glutton’s lust.The self is like an infant: given free rein, it craves to suckle
Until it is grown up; if weaned in time, it will abstain.Curb its passions and beware of letting them take charge –
When passion rules, it kills or brings dishonour.Be watchful when it forages in the field of deeds;
If the meadow pleases it, do not let it roam.How many deadly delights has it not made enticing for those
Who never knew that the best cuts are most poisonous.Beware of its hidden snares in hunger and satiety;
Some hunger is far worse then overeating.And drain of tears an eye once filled
With forbidden sights, and stick to the diet of remorse.Oppose the Self and Satan and rise up against them;
Treat their claim of good counsel with mistrust.If they pretend to litigate or judge, do not obey!
You know the cunning of both litigant and judge.May God forgive me for words without deeds;
Through which I have ascribed progeny to impotence.I urge you to do good and myself had no such urge.
Not upright myself, how can I tell you ‘be upright’?I did not prepare for death with supererogatory works.
Prayer and fasting for me were but an obligation.I sinned against the example of one whose dark nights spent in
prayerMade his feet complain of painful swelling,
Whose hunger made him squeeze his entrails and fold,
Despite its tender skin, his belly over stones.To tempt him, high mountains turned to gold
Only to meet with his utmost disdain,His needs but strengthening his restraint;
True resolution is not swayed by need.How should his needs draw to the world one without whom
The world would not have been extracted from the void?Muhammad, lord of both universes, lord of men and jinn,
Lord of the two peoples, Arabs and foreigners,Our Prophet, source of all command and prohibition,
More truthful than the word of any other in his ‘yes’ or ‘no’,The beloved in whose intercession all hope resides
In sudden terror and calamity of every kind.He called us to God. Whoever holds on to him
Holds on to a rope that will not break.The other prophets he outstripped in virtues physical and moral.
In generosity and knowledge they failed to approach him.They all seek from the Prophet
A handful from his ocean or a draught from his rain,Standing before him as befits their limits:
Dots as to knowledge, diacritical signs as to wisdom.In him, form and essence reach perfection,
And mankind’s Creator chose him as beloved.In virtues he is exalted above every peer,
And of his beauty’s core none can claim a share.Forget all the Christians pretend about their prophet;
Devise and decree what you wish in his praise,Attribute to him whatever honour you wish,
Ascribe to his rank any greatness you wish,The merits of God’s Prophet are limitless;
No human speech can encompass them.If his miracles in their greatness were equal to his rank
Dry bones would revive at the mention of his name.Out of craving for us, he spared us trials that surpass our reason
And freed us from uncertainty and doubt.Comprehension of his meaning confounds mankind;
All appear dumbstruck, be they distant or near,Like the sun which appears small to the eye
From afar, and blinds when viewed from close at hand.How in this world can his true nature be grasped
By a people of sleepers concerned only with their dreams?The sum of our knowledge about him is that he is human
And that he is the best of God’s creation,And that all noble messengers’ miracles before him
Became theirs only through his light.He is the sun of excellence, they are its stars,
Reflecting its rays for people in the dark.Marvel at the person of the Prophet, with virtues adorned,
In beauty clad, with a smile endowed,Fresh as blossoms, grand as the full moon,
Generous as the sea, unflinching as Time.He is one, but appears to you in his glory
As though in the midst of an army or retinue.The pearl concealed in its shell seems as though
Made from the mine of his speech and smile.No perfume can equal the dust on his bones;
Lucky is the one who smells its fragrance and kisses it.Proof of his noble descent are the events at his birth;
How great a beginning, how great an end!On that day the Persians perceived
Warnings of retribution and impending doom,And Kisra’s Aiwan was cleft asunder,
To be rejoined no more, like Kisra’s royal house;Bemoaning it, the fire’s flames died down
And the river’s source stopped flowing out of pain.Sawa suffered when its lake ran dry,
And the thirsty returned in distress.Fire flowed like water out of grief
And water flamed like fire,The jinn screamed, the lights rose high
And Truth appeared in meaning and in word.Yet they were blind and deaf; the message of good tidings
Was not heard, nor was the lightning’s warning seenAfter the diviners had told their peoples
That their twisted faith would not stand up,And meteors in the firmament had fallen down
Before their eyes like idols on this earth,Until, swept from revelation’s path,
Droves of devils in rout followed each others’ tracks,Like Abraha’s knights in their flight,
Or that army he pelted with pebbles,Which praised him before they were thrown from his palms
As when Jonah was thrown from the swallower’s gut.At his call the trees came prostrate
Walking on legs without feet,As though drawing straight lines for those wondrous signs
Which their branches inscribed on the way,Or like clouds that moved wherever he went
To shield him from the heat of fiery midday.By the moon split in half, I swear that it shares
A resemblance with his heart that lends truth to my oath,And by the greatness and goodness contained in that Cave
To which the eyes of all doubters were blindFor Truth and Truthful were in the cave unseen
Yet they said: There is no one inside!’ –Thinking the dove would not lend its wings,
Nor the spider weave its web to shield the Best of Mankind.God’s protection dispenses with need
For double armour and ramparts high!Whenever fate threatens harm and I seek his help
I am assured of a sanctuary beyond harm’s reach,And when both worlds’ wealth I beg from his generous hand
I gain precious gifts from the best who ever gave.Do not reject the Revelations that he dreamt;
His eyes may have slept but his heart never did.They came to him at the onset of his prophethood
When his maturity of vision was beyond refute.May God be praised! Revelation is no acquired skill,
Nor can prophets be faulted about the unseen.How many sick he cured with his palm,
How many afflicted he freed from madness’s chains!How often his call restored such life to the ashen year of drought
That its abundance outshone the seasons of plenty,With clouds so generous the valleys seemed as though
Submerged by the sea or drowned in the Flood of the Dams.Let me describe his miracles that shone
Like hospitality’s fire lit upon hills at night.Pearls when strung together gain in beauty
Though unstrung their value does not sink;Yet eulogy can never hope to fathom
The noble traits and virtues that were his:Signs of truth from the All-merciful, both newly formed,
And, as attributes of the Eternal One, eternal,Of timeless import, giving news of Judgement Day
And of the days of Iram and 'Ad,Remaining ours for ever and so surpassing
All former prophets’ wonders which came but lasted not,Firmly cast, leaving no room
For doubters to sow dissent, nor needing arbitration,Never yet opposed without the worst of enemies
Desisting from his pillage in surrender,Their eloquence repelling all aggressors,
As honour jealously wards off the harem’s desecrators,Containing meanings of expanse wider than the ocean
And greater in beauty and value than its pearls,Their wonders uncountable and beyond number,
Never causing lassitude however much repeated,Cooling the reciter’s eye until I said:
‘You have seized the rope of God. Now hold it tight.If you utter them in fear of the Laza fire
Their cool springs will extinguish its flames.’They are like the Pool that renders the sinners’ faces
White when they had come to it as black as coal,Or like the Bridge and the Scale in equity;
Without them righteousness would not prevail among mankind.Do not wonder at their rejection by the envious
Who feign ignorance when they understand full well;Struck by disease, an eye may fail to see the sun,
And mouths may be too ill to know the water’s taste.O best of all whose courtyard ever supplicants sought,
Running, or riding she-camels with sturdy hooves,O greatest sign for all those who take heed,
Greatest boon for all who seek increase!In one night you journeyed from sanctuary to sanctuary,
Passing, like the full moon, through bleakest darkness on the way,Ascending all night till you came within Two Bow-lengths,
A point never attained, nor aspired to before.There, all messengers and prophets gave you precedence,
Like servants who for their master happily make way.When you marched through the seven heavens
In procession with them, you were their standard bearer,Till, when you came so close that no goal was left for other
runners,And no summit for other climbers,
You lowered all ranks by comparison
Since you were summoned high as only overlordTo reap a union – how secluded from all eyes! –
And a secret – how totally concealed! –And so gathered every unapportioned honour
And traversed every undiscovered place,And achieved the most exalted rank
And obtained blessings beyond all comprehension.Good tidings for us people of Islam, for in him we have
A pillar of kind care which none can overthrow.When God called him – who calls us to obedience of Him –
His noblest messenger, we became the noblest of nations.The news of his mission struck fear in the enemies’ hearts,
As the lion’s roar makes heedless herds stampede.He met up with them in every battle
Till lances made them seem like meat on a butcher’s block.Vainly they hoped to flee, in envy almost of their slain
Whom eagles and vultures carried off in bits.They lost count of the nights that passed
Except for the nights of the sacred months.Religion alighted upon their courtyard like a guest
Bringing chiefs hungry for their enemies’ flesh,Leading armies vast as the sea, mounted on swift steeds,
Foaming with surging waves of heroes,Each answerable to God and trusting in His reward,
And wielding swords that uproot and shatter unbelief,Until the faith of Islam, exiled from among them at first,
Became part of their lineage and kin,And was provided through them with the best father and husband,
And would never be orphaned or widowed.They are the mountains. Ask their foes
What they saw of them on the battlefield;Ask Hunain, ask Uhud, ask Badr,
Seasons of death more calamitous than the plague.They brought their white swords back red
From the drinking fount of their enemies’ black locks.With the brown lances of Khatt they wrote, their pens
Leaving no parts of the body without dots.Armed to the teeth, they have a special mark
Like the mark that distinguishes roses from thorns:In their fragrance blows the wind of victory;
You would think their every warrior was a rose in its bud.Seated on their steeds they appear as though planted on hills
Due to their tough resolution, not to their tight saddle-straps.Their enemies’ hearts fled from their power in fear
Unable to distinguish herds from hordes.When they meet those helped by the Prophet of God,
The lions of the thicket are stunned.Never will you see an ally of his not aided
By him, nor an enemy of his not crushed.His people he placed in the fortress of his creed,
Just as lions raise their cubs in dense bush.How often has God’s word felled his opponents,
How often has His proof confounded his contestants.Suffice it as a miracle to see in the Jahiliyya age
An orphan of such education and knowledge.I served him with my eulogy to be redeemed thereby
From the sins of a life of poetry and servitudeWhich wound around my neck collars of fearful portent
As though I was a lamb destined for ritual death.In both pursuits I obeyed the folly of youthful passion
And reaped nothing but sins and bitter remorse.What a loss my soul incurred in this trade!
In exchange for this world it did not buy faith nor even tried to
bargain.Those who sell their assets for short-term gain
Shall see loss in their sales and transactions.Yet, despite my sins, my covenant with the Prophet is unharmed,
Nor is the rope that links me to him severed.I have his protection, for I am named
Muhammad, and he is mankind’s most faithful protector.If he does not gently take me by the hand
On Judgement Day, my foot is sure to slip.Far be it from him that a supplicant should be deprived of his gifts
Or that a neighbour seeking his help should remain
unprotected.Since I have devoted my thoughts to his praise
I have found him the best guarantor of salvation.No dust-stained hand will ever miss out on his richness;
Rain makes flowers sprout on desert hills.But I do not seek the flowers of this world
Which Zuhair picked through praising Harim.O most generous of mankind, I have none to turn to
Save you when the final catastrophe comes.Your glory, O Prophet, shall not diminish through me
When the Generous one assumes the name of Avenger,For this world and its counterpart spring but from your bounty
And the Tablet and Pen are but part of your knowledge.O soul, do not despair over the gravity of your faults;
Great sins when forgiveness comes are like small ones.When God divides His mercy, its shares
Perchance may equal the size of our transgression.O Lord, let my hope in You not be thwarted,
And do not annul my account with You,And be kind to Your servant in both worlds,
For when terror beckons, his fortitude shall wane,And let a cloud of Your incessant blessings
Pour showers of abundant rain upon the Prophet,For as long as the zephyr moves the branches of the willow
And camel drivers delight their grey animals with songs.
Stefan Sperl and Christopher Shackle (eds.), Qasida Poetry in
Islamic Asia and Africa, vol. 2 (Leiden, 1996), pp. 389–411
COMMENTARY
The Burda starts with a lament over the deserted campsites (Dhu Salam and Kazima) and ends with a panegyric-just like the traditional pre-Islamic qasida. In the mid-part of the poem, Busiri compares his wasted youth to the glorious career of the Prophet.
'Udhri love is chaste or unfulfilled love, as celebrated by elegiac poets of the Umayyad period. The name derives from the south Arabian tribe of Banu Udhra, two of whose members allegedly died of love.
Katam is a plant used for dyeing the hair black, but there is a play upon words here, for katama means ‘conceal’.
Kisra is a generic name for a Persian emperor.
In pre-Islamic times, Abraha was the Christian Abyssinian viceroy over the Yemen. In 570 (the Year of the Elephant) he attempted to march against Mecca, intent on desecrating the Ka’ba. His army was accompanied by elephants. However, the elephants refused to enter Mecca and then, as the Abyssinian army began its retreat, it was pelted by pebbles dropped by birds. Most of the army perished under the hail of stones, but Abraha died of a plague which slowly rotted his body, so that his limbs dropped off. The story is referred to in the Qur’an, sura 105, ‘The Elephant’.
In pre-Islamic times Iram was the magnificent palace of many columns built by King Shaddad to rival Paradise, but a great shout from heaven destroyed the king and his retinue before they could enter the palace. The whereabouts of the lost palace gave rise to many stories. A version of the legend of the impious King Shaddad is found in later compilations of The Thousand and One Nights.
'Ad was a pre-Islamic tribe who failed to heed the warnings of God’s prophet, Hud. They were destroyed by a roaring wind.
Laza fire is hellfire.
Zuhair is Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulma, a pre-Islamic poet who wrote a celebrated Mu'allaqa which included a panegyric of a tribal mediator, Harim ibn Sinan.
In the late Middle Ages, Sufi groups were playing a more prominent social and cultural role than they had done hitherto. In a passage extracted below, the twelfth-century writer and adventurer Usamah ibn Munqidh (1095-1188) describes the impact a Sufi gathering had upon him when he was first introduced to one of their meetings.
Usamah is one of the most interesting and appealing of medieval Arab authors. He was born into the ruling dynasty of the tiny principality of Shayzar in northern Syria. However, having fallen out with his uncle who was the Emir of Shayzar, Usamah spent most of his life in exile. (He was therefore one of very few members of his clan not to be killed when an earthquake struck the castle at Shayzar in 1157.) He had a chequered and not entirely honourable career in politics and warfare in Egypt, Syria and Iraq. He had many encounters, on and off the battlefield, with the Franks of the Crusader principalities, whom he seems to have regarded as a kind of horrible marvel created by Allah. He thought that they were good for fighting, but not for much else. Many, though not all, of his anecdotes about the Franks are to be found in his Kitab al-I'tibar (‘The Book of Example’). This has sometimes been described as Usamah’s autobiography, but this is not quite accurate, for autobiography was not a recognized genre in the medieval Arab world. Rather in the I'tibar Usamah aimed to instruct his descendants through teaching by examples. (He did not have a general readership in mind.) 'Ibra is an example, or something from which one takes warning. Thus, for example, pious folk who studied the Qur’an drew example from the fate of once proud dynasties who had displeased God and had since perished. Usamah drew upon the personal experiences of a long and eventful life in order to provide examples which might encourage his descendants to be brave, wary and, above all, mindful of God; the principal theme of his book is that though man proposes, it is God who disposes. Despite its edifying aim, the I'tibar is a good read – full of humour, vivid detail, idiosyncratic thoughts and exciting incidents.
However, Usamah was not always so cheerful …
When, at eighty, time plays havoc with my power of endurance,
I am chagrined at the feebleness of my foot and the trembling of my hand.
While I write, my writing looks crooked,
Like the writing of one whose hands have shivers and tremors.
What a surprise it is that my hand be too feeble to carry a pen,
After it had been strong enough to break a lance in a lion’s breast.
And when I walk, cane in hand, I feel heaviness
In my foot as though I were trudging through mud on a plain.
Say, therefore, to him who seeks prolonged existence:
Behold the consequences of long life and agedness.
My energy has subsided and weakened, the joy of living has come to an end. Long life has reversed me: all light starts from darkness and reverts to darkness. I have become as I said:
Destiny seems to have forgotten me, so that now I am like
An exhausted camel left by the caravan in the desert.
My eighty years have left no energy in me.
When I want to rise up, I feel as though I had a broken leg.
I recite my prayer sitting; for kneeling,
If I attempt it, is difficult.
This condition has forewarned me that
The time of my departure on the long journey has drawn nigh.
Enfeebled by years, I have been rendered incapable of performing service for the sultans. So I no more frequent their doors and no longer depend upon them for my livelihood. I have resigned from their service and have returned to them such favours as they had rendered; for I realize that the feebleness of old age cannot stand the exacting duties of service, and the merchandise of the very old man cannot be sold to an amir. I have now confined myself to my house, therefore, taking obscurity for my motto.
Hitti, Memoirs of an Arab-Syrian Gentleman, pp. 164–5, 194–5
Usamah played a leading part in the politics and warfare of the age, but, as the lament in rhymed prose given above indicates, he was to outlive his strength.
The I'tibar is rightly Usamah’s most famous book and has been translated into many European languages. However, Usamah did not write the book for a general audience and in his own lifetime he was chiefly famous as a poet. The two short poems which follow are somewhat cryptic:
– I stand over against his face which, wherever I see it, keeps shedding light for any who turns towards him in search of knowledge. As if he is covering my body with his eyelids’ illness. In whichever place he appears to me, I see eye to eye beauty in its perfection.Many a lonely one weeps (silently dying), when the night darkens around her, but in her entrails is a nagging fire.
She melts from grief, either for one’s turning away and departure, or because of such separation that those divided will never unite again.
Yet I did not see glowing embers melting, her tears excepted; nor saw I ever before the body of one who weeps so that it totally consisted of tears.
Pieter Smoor (trans.), in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen
Gesellschaft, vol. 138 (1988), pp. 300–301
These are riddles cast as poems: in both cases the unnamed object evoked is a candle. Yet the first version is more than a mere riddle, for it is also a metaphorical evocation of Usamah’s own lachrymose state.
Usamah was also a noted anthologist. His compilation Kitab al-Manazil wa al-Diyar, The Book of Campsites and Abodes’, is an anthology of poetry devoted to the traditional Bedouin themes of abandoned campsites, lost homelands, lost loves and nostalgia. These were popular subjects in classical Arabic literature, but they also particularly reflected the substance of Usamah’s life of wandering, exile and loss; some of the best poems in the anthology are by Usamah himself. In Usamah’s introduction to this book, he reflected on the earthquake of 1157 which destroyed the ancestral castle of Shayzar and wiped out almost the entire clan of the Banu Munqidh, who had gathered there to celebrate a circumcision.
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I was moved to compose this volume by the destruction which has overcome my country and my birthplace. For time has spread the hem of its robe over it and is striving with all its might and power to annihilate it … All the villages have been levelled to the ground; all the inhabitants perished; the dwelling has become but a trace, and joys have been transformed into sorrows and misfortunes. I stopped there after the earthquake which destroyed it … and I did not find my house, nor the house of my father and brothers, nor the houses of my uncles and my uncles’ sons, nor of my clan. Sorely troubled I called upon Allah in this great trial which he had sent me and because he had taken away the favours which he had formerly bestowed upon me. Then I departed … trembling as I went and staggering as though weighed down by a heavy load. So great was the loss that swiftly flowing tears dried up, and sighs followed each other and straightened the curvature of the ribs. The malice of time did not stop at the destruction of the houses and the annihilation of the inhabitants, but they all perished in the twinkling of an eye and even quicker, and then calamity followed upon calamity from that time onwards. And I sought consolation in composing this book and made it into a lament for the home and the beloved ones. This will be of no avail and will bring no comfort, but it is the utmost I can do. And to Allah – the glorious and great – I complain of my solitude, bereft of my family and brothers, I complain of my wanderings in alien lands, bereft of country and birthplace … |
I. Y. Kratchkovsky, Among Arabic Manuscripts
As a keen rhabdophilist, Usamah produced another beguiling anthology, the Kitab al-'Asa (‘The Book of the Stick’), in which he collected anecdotes and poems about sticks – walking-sticks, crutches, wands, cudgels, herdsmen’s crooks – all manner of sticks. Moses and Solomon had famous magical sticks, but Usamah also included more mundane stories about sticks drawn from his own experience and that of his friends. The following scene was witnessed by Usamah during one of his frequent visits to the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem:
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I paid a visit to the tomb of John the son of Zechariah – God’s blessing on both of them! – in the village of Sebastea in the province of Nablus. After saying my prayers, I came out into the square that was bounded on one side by the Holy Precinct. I found a half-closed gate, opened it and entered a church. Inside were about ten old men, their bare heads as white as combed cotton. They were facing the east, and wore [embroidered?] on their breasts staves ending in crossbars turned up like the rear of a saddle. They took their oath on this sign, and gave hospitality to those who needed it. The sight of their piety touched my heart, but at the same time it displeased and saddened me, for I had never seen such zeal and devotion among the Muslims. For some time I brooded on this experience, until one day, as Mu'in ad-Din and I were passing the Peacock House, he said to me: ‘I want to dismount here and visit the Old Men.’ Certainly,’ I replied, and we dismounted and went into a long building set at an angle to the road. For the moment I thought that there was no one there. Then I saw about a hundred prayer-mats, and on each a sufi, his face expressing peaceful serenity, and his body humble devotion. This was a reassuring sight, and I gave thanks to Almighty God that there were among the Muslims men of even more zealous devotion than those Christian priests. Before this I had never seen sufis in their monastery, and was ignorant of the way they lived. |
Francesco Gabrieli, Arab Historians of
the Crusades (London, 1969), pp. 83–4
COMMENTARY
Usamah was not the only Arab to write on the subject of sticks. The Shu'ubiyya used to mock the way that Arabs when speaking used sticks to emphasize their rhetorical points. In reply, several Arab authors, including Jahiz, produced treatises attesting to the antiquity and usefulness of sticks.
John, the son of Zechariah, is John the Baptist – who is revered by Muslims as well as by Christians.
Usamah also produced treatises, now lost, on dreams and on women. However, the Lubab al-Adab (‘The Pith of Literature’) has survived. This was a belles-lettres anthology in which Usamah collected traditional material on a wide range of subjects – among them politics, generosity, holding one’s tongue, the way women walk, the wisdom of Pythagoras, the moral and social purpose of adab, and eloquence in the service of virtue. Like Abu Tammam, the compiler of the Hamasa, Usamah was particularly preoccupied with courage and he dedicated a special chapter to it. Usamah was also a noted literary critic and his Kitab al-Badi' fi Naqd al-Sh'ir (‘The Book of Embellishment in the Criticism of Poetry’) deals with the new, or badi' style in poetry.
ATHIR AL-DIN Muhammad ibn Yusuf Abu Hayyan al-Andalusi (1256-1344) was born in Granada and came from Berber stock. However, he travelled east on the hajj and eventually settled in Cairo. There he taught the religious sciences and grammar in the madrasas. He was particularly famous as a grammarian and linguist; he knew Turkish, Persian and Ethiopian, and wrote the oldest grammar of the Turkish language to have survived. He was also a notable poet, as was his learned daughter Nudar, and when she died young, he wrote a short book about her called the Idrak (‘The Achievement’). The elegy which follows comes from Athir al-Din’s Diwan:
has settled in the grave,
my life would be sweet again
could my soul only taste it.A brave young woman
seized for six months
by a strange sickness
of varied nature:Swelling stomach and fever,
then consumption, coughing, and heaving –
who could withstand
five assaults?She would see
visions sometimes,
or leave this world
for the Realm Divine,And inwardly,
she was calm, content
with what she saw of paradise,
but of life, despairing.Yet she was never angry for a day,
never complaining of her grief,
never mentioning the misery
she suffered.She left her life on Monday
after the sun’s disk
appeared to us
as a deep yellow flower.The people prayed
and praised her,
and placed her in the tomb –
dark, desolate, oppressive.
Th. Emil Homerin (trans.), in ‘Reflections on Poetry in the Mamluk
Age’, Mamluk Studies Review, vol. 1 (Chicago, 1997), p. 81
Athir al-Din knew by heart the fundamental work on Arabic grammar, Sibawayhi’s monument Kitab (‘The Book’). This was a noteworthy feat, for the Kitab is roughly 900 printed pages long. However, Athir al-Din’s achievement has many parallels. Saladin, though a Kurdish military adventurer, seems to have been entirely Arab in his culture and, among other feats, he had memorized the entire Diwan of Usamah ibn Munqidh’s poems. Usamah himself was reported to know by heart over 20,000 verses of pre-Islamic poetry. Such mnemonic feats were quite common in the pre-modern Middle East. It was normal for a scholar to know the Qur’an by heart and this must have had an influence on the literary styles of those who had memorized the Holy Book. The tenth-century philologist and traditionalist Abu Bakr al-Anbari was reported to have dictated from memory 45,000 pages of traditions concerning the Prophet. The tenth-century poet, philologist and scribe Abu Bakr al-Khwarizmi sought audience of the Vizier Ibn 'Abbad (on whom see Chapter 5). Ibn 'Abbad said, ‘Tell him I have bound myself not to receive any literary man, unless he know by heart twenty thousand verses composed by Arabs of the desert.’ The chamberlain reported this to al-Khwarizmi, who replied, ‘Go back and ask him if he means twenty thousand composed by men or twenty thousand composed by women?’ On being told this, Ibn 'Abbad realized that it must be the illustrious al-Khwarizmi who was seeking audience and gave instructions for him to be shown in straightaway. Blind poets like Buhturi and Ma'arri committed anything they heard to memory.
Literary men were walking, talking books (rather like that closing scene in Truffaut’s film Fahrenheit 451, in which the rebels dedicated to literature are shown wandering about and declaiming texts they have committed to memory in order to preserve them from oblivion). Writing was not a necessary vehicle for literature and a number of important poets were illiterate.
The Spanish poet ABU HAMID AL-GHARNATI (d. 1169-70) wrote,
So be not infatuated with fun and play.
Memorise, understand, and work hard to win it.
Great labour is needed; there is no other way.
George Makdisi, The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam
and the Christian West (Edinburgh, 1990), p. 207
Ibn Khaldun, having noted that poetry rather than the Qur’an was used to teach Arabic in Andalusia, went on to urge poets to train themselves in their art by memorizing the poems of their great predecessors, especially those included in al-Isfahani’s anthology, the Kitab al-Aghani (see Chapter 5). Ibn Khaldun believed that one was what one had committed to memory; the better the quality of what had been memorized, the better it was for one’s soul. For Ibn Khaldun and his contemporaries, rote-learning was a source of creativity rather than a dreary alternative to it. The impromptu quotation of apposite verses or maxims (so greatly esteemed by those who attended literary soirees) was only made possible by a well-stocked memory. Similarly the ability of poets to extemporise within traditional forms depended in the first instance on memory.
Riwaya, which in modern Arabic means ‘story’, originally referred to the act of memorization and transmission. The written word was seen as an accessory, a kind of aide-mémoire for people who preferred to rely on memorization and oral transmission. Often manuscripts were copied with the sole aim of committing to memory what was being copied. Reading aloud also helped to fix a book in the memory. Incidentally, reading silently in private was commonly disapproved of. One should read aloud with a master and by so doing insert oneself in a chain of authoritative transmission. Medieval literature was a continuous buzz.
Repetition was crucial to memorization. According to one twelfth-century scholar, ‘If you do not repeat something fifty times, it will not remain firmly embedded in the mind.’ Treatises on technical and practical subjects, such as law, warfare, gardening or the rules of chess, were commonly put into verse or rhymed prose in order to assist in their memorization. Men worried ceaselessly about how to improve their memory. Honey, toothpicks and twenty-one raisins a day were held to be good for the memory, whereas coriander and aubergine were supposed to be bad. Ibn Jama'a, a thirteenth-century scholar, held that reading inscriptions on tombs, walking between camels haltered in a line, or flicking away lice, all interfered with memory.
Many of the best-known literary productions of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries were stodgy compilations of received knowledge put together by men whose daytime work was as clerks in some government office, or as tenured professors in madrasas. Nevertheless, there were exceptions and it is even possible to discern elements of late medieval ‘counter-culture’, and elements too of a literature of vagabondage, satire, scurrility and eroticism.
The sophisticated craze for stories about thieves and charlatans which had been embraced by litterateurs and intellectuals in tenth-century Baghdad persisted in the late medieval period and, sometime in the 1230s or 1240s, Jawbari produced the classic work on rogues’ tricks. Zayn al-Din 'Abd al-Rahman ibn 'Umar al-JAWBARI was born in Damascus. He pursued an exciting career as a dervish, alchemist and professional treasure-hunter, in the course of which he travelled widely – even as far as India. The Kashf al-Asrar, ‘The Unveiling of Secrets’, was written at the behest of Mas'ud, the Artuqid ruler of Mosul. It is a treatise in thirty chapters on the tricks of all sorts of rogues – peddlers of quack medicines, horse doctors, professional seducers, disreputable monks, fraudulent alchemists, and so on. Besides explaining the technical details of all sorts of criminal and fraudulent activities, Jawbari also tells lots of entertaining stories, some said to be based on personal experience. However, it is clear that some of the stories he claims as his own are in fact very old, and despite his pretence to rendering a public service by warning his readers about various dangers and deceits, it is also clear that Jawbari’s primary purpose in assembling his material was to amuse and excite. What follows is from the chapter on the tricks of the Banu Sasan.
Again, I was once in Konya …
‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jawbari, Kashf al-Asrar, trans. Robert Irwin
COMMENTARY
The ancient city of Harran, in the Euphrates basin, is in present-day eastern Turkey.
The year 613 in the Muslim calendar corresponded to April 1216-April 1217 in the Christian calendar.
The use of a toothpick (siwak) was part of piety, for, according to a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, ‘Cleanse your mouths with toothpicks; for your mouths are the abode of guardian angels; whose pens are the tongues, and whose ink is the spittle of men; and to whom naught is more unbearable than the remains of food in the mouth.’ According to the tenth-century belletrist Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Tha'alabi, Abraham was the first person to trim his moustache, part his hair and use a toothpick. According to al-Washsha, use of the toothpick ‘whitens the teeth, cleans the brain, perfumes the breath, puts off choler, drives out phlegm, strengthens the gum, cleans the sight and renders food more tasty’. Despite all this, public use of the toothpick was seen by some as anti-social and the 'Abbasid poet Ibn al-Mu’tazz characterized an undesirable table companion as one who ‘continually picks his teeth with, a toothpick’. Some Muslims believed that prayer was more efficacious after the use of the toothpick.However, it is debatable whether the toothpick should be used during the fasting hours of Ramadan.
Friday, in Arabic yawm al-jum'a, literally ‘the day of assembly’, is the day when all adult males are supposed to assemble for the noon prayer in the main mosque of the town or region.
A mihrab is a niche in the wall of the mosque indicating the direction of prayer (towards Mecca).
Regarding the ape’s hose, sar-muza is an imported Persian word, meaning ‘hose placed over boots’.
It is quite common for Muslim worshippers to place a handkerchief (or mandil) on the ground where their head will touch during the prostrations of prayer.
Mamluks (slave soldiers) who were beautiful attracted high prices in the slave markets and homosexual love affairs between master and slave sometimes occurred.
Jawbari’s reminiscence should be compared to ‘The Second Dervish’s Tale’ in The Thousand and One Nights, in which a prince is transformed into an ape by a wrathful demon but demonstrates his underlying human nature by his skill at calligraphy.
A French translation by René Khawam exists of a somewhat longer version of the Kashf al-Asrar (Le Voile arraché, 2 vols., Paris, 1980), with a longer and slightly different text of this story. Khawam does not identify his source text, but it is probably a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
Like Jawbari, Ibn Daniyal claimed that his writings about villainy served a moral purpose. Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Daniyal was born in Mosul in 1248 and worked as an oculist in Cairo, where he died in 1311. He is the only playwright to be included in this anthology. Live theatre scarcely existed in the medieval Near East. Although there is evidence of plays (usually of a fairly crude and bawdy nature) being performed in Arab cities, no scripts of those plays seem to have survived, apart from three which Ibn Daniyal produced for shadow-theatre performances.
Egyptian shadow-theatre seems to have offered popular entertainment for the masses, but there is some evidence that members of the elite also enjoyed such performances. It is said that Saladin once persuaded al-Qadi al-Fadil to watch a shadow play, at the end of which the pompous minister remarked, ‘I have had a lesson of great significance. I have seen empires coming and going, and when the screen was folded up, I discovered that the Prime Mover was but one.’ (For pious moralists like al-Fadil everything in life had a moral, if only one could discover it.)
Ibn Daniyal himself was a member of the Egyptian elite and a friend of senior mamluk officers. He was a literary disciple of ‘Imad al-Din al-Isfahani and he wrote didactic poetry in classical Arabic on the history of the qadis (judges) in Egypt and on medicine. His use of low-life dialect and Middle Arabic forms in his plays was therefore for artistic effect. In his preface to the text of his plays, he claimed that they were works of literary art, which could only be understood by men of adab. There are indeed a number of similarities between the plays of Ibn Daniyal and the Maqamats written by, among others, Hamadhani and Hariri. Like those Maqamats, Ibn Daniyal’s plays deal with low life but enjoy a high literary status, and, again like them, they are written in a mixture of verse and rhymed prose. In his preface Ibn Daniyal addresses a certain 'Ali ibn Mawlahum who, he says, requested his play scripts: ‘So I let my thoughts range through the wide fields of my profligacy and I was able to fulfil your request without the slightest delay. I have composed for you some licentious plays, pieces of high not low literature, which, once you have made the puppets, divided the script into scenes, assembled your audience and waxed the screen, you will find to be entirely novel and truly superior to the usual shadow play.’
The first of his three plays, Tayf al-Khayyal, ‘The Imaginary Phantom’, recounts the attempts of a disreputable hunchbacked soldier called Wisal (the name means ‘sexual congress’) to find a bride. He is assisted by Umm Rashid, a dishonest marriage-broker. Poorly served by Umm Rashid, Tayf al-Khayyal ends up with a hideous bride, who wants to beat her husband and who farts a lot; but she dies, in time for Wisal to repent his dissolute ways.
The next play, 'Ajib wa-Gharib, has no plot worthy of the name. The ‘play’ merely consists of a parade of low-life characters who come on stage to describe their various professions. The play’s title can be translated as ‘Marvellous and Strange’, but 'Ajib and Gharib are also the names of two of the leading figures in the parade. 'Ajib is a low-grade, unlicensed popular preacher. Gharib is a wizard, who rubs along precariously by writing out spells, handling animals, and faking illnesses. He is versed in most of the arts of the Banu Sasan. Other characters include a snake-charmer, an astrologer, a juggler, a sorcerer trading in amulets, an acrobat, a lion-tamer, and so on. The last characters to appear are a camel-driver who wants to go to the Holy Places, and a lamp-lighter (masha'ili) who is the jack of all pariah trades. He sings a song about Christianity and a mocking lament for the good old days of debauchery now brought to an end by the puritan legislation of the Mamluk sultan Baybars (reigned 1260-77). In the passage which follows, the masha'ili starts to describe not only his job, but also what he gets up to when he is moonlighting. Having entered the maydan, or square, carrying his brazier, he describes his work as a lamp-lighter and lamp-bearer and then goes on to describe the different sorts of patter he uses when begging from Muslims, Christians and Jews.
He ends his appeal to the Jew as follows:
Like a glowing coal in my brazier,
And do not say to me ‘Away!’ and do not delay like a miser.
You think perhaps that I am a boor. No, by 'Ali! No, by 'Ali!
(Curses against him who does not give.)So it is, and of how many sewers have we not emptied the bottom
with the mattock,As though we were doing the work of the aperient remedy in their interior.
Our trade is a laudable one, where the sewer is like a full belly.
And when you find one who is led around like a criminal on an ass
with a white hind-foot,Whose eye weeps, as though it had been rubbed with pepper,
Then we strike his neck with whips,
We cry with a voice which shocks even the deaf:
That is the reward of the man who says what he does not do.And when we act as criers, how often have we ordered people (by
order of the Government) what they should do in the future,You people who have assembled, do so and so, but he who does not do it,
Let him not be surprised at what he shall receive [as punishment] from him, who instructed me [the Emir].
In the same way we cry out when a man has lost something.
He who directs us to it, we grant him a gift,
And God’s reward, oh honourable gracious Sirs.
And we flay the skin from the carcase, whether it be from bullock
or from camel,So that it may act as a protection against harm for the feet,
And you see no men who are not provided with shoes.
And how many of the crafty people have we punished with
flogging, robbers of all kinds, who come by night like approaching disaster.Who in their cunning know the house better than its owner.
Such a man climbs up to the house like a travelling star,
Enterslightly by its narrow side, like a sustained breath,
With courageous heart, without fear because of his cunning,
He creeps slowly into the house like an ant,
Comes to the sleepers in the middle of the night, soft as a Zephyr,
Till his protective covering fails him.
We seize him so that he is like a chained horse.
Sometimes we sever his hand from the wrist,
And sometimes we hang him on the cross, when he is guilty of murder.
And in playing with dice we are famous as a proverb.
They gleam in our hands like assembled jewels.
Our man is at peace [has won], he sweeps it together, that for himself, that for me.
From the other they have taken everything, so that he must despise himself,
Saying: Oh, had I been satisfied with my first winnings!
And how often have I thought that I would never lose my position!
And if they, the dice, were lucky stars in their changing influence over the dynasties.
And how much trade do we do with best fresh plants,
Hashish of the colour of down on a shining cheek,
Which is made into pills, perfumed with ‘Anbar, spiced and roasted for us,
Or with indigo which is handed round in the beggar’s bowl for those drunk with hashish.
We sell that to the people when it is cheap for the price of an ear of corn.
We are the sons of Sasan, descended from their kings, who possessed golden ornaments.
Our qualities are these in detail and in general.
They are shortly related in a qasida, which suffices and need be no longer.
Our might is on the peak of two mountains in Mosul.
We are honoured there as the sun is honoured in the Zodiac of the Ram,
And I pray to God, as prays a suppliant, a petitioner,
That he may forgive these sins and the bad speech.
When he has set forth his qualities and filled his fodder bag he turns and departs.
Paul Kahle (trans.), Journal of the Royal Asiatic
COMMENTARY
The masha'ili's performance is followed by that of a camel-driver, before Gharib reappears at the end of this disreputable cavalcade to wind up the play. According to Ira Marvin Lapidus’s Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1967) the masha'iliyya were ‘the night-watchmen and torch-bearers who cleaned the latrines, removed refuse from the streets, and carried off the bodies of dead animals, served as police, guards, executioners and public criers, and paraded people condemned to public disgrace whose shame may have consisted in part in being handled by such men. At the same time, the masha'iliyya made use of their intimacy with nightlife to become involved in gambling, theft, and dealing in hashish and wine.’
I have no idea why the drinkers of hashish were presented with indigo.
Kahle has omitted some of the obscenities in his translation, particularly those hurled at any who are too mean to respond to the begging patter.
The whole speech rhymes in lam.
Finally, ‘Al-Mutayyam wa’l-Da'i' al-Yutayyim‘, ‘The Man Distracted by Passion and the Little Vagabond Orphan’, is a play about unfulfilled homosexual love. In the first part, al-Mutayyam laments his frustrated love for the beautiful boy, Yutayyim. Mutayyam is interrupted by an old and ugly lover, who recites a poem in praise of small things. Then Mutayyam and the beloved boy Yutayyim meet for a cockfight, a ram fight and a bullfight. After the boy has departed, Mutayyam has a bull slaughtered for a homosexual feast. His guests make speeches on various naughty things like wine, masturbation, and gluttony. The host had been hoping to attract Yutayyim to the feast, but the Angel of Death arrives instead and Mutayyam repents (thereby giving the play a belated and perfunctory moral gloss).
Ibn Daniyal’s portrayal of conmen working the market-place in his play 'Ajib wa-Gharib catered for the contemporary interest in stories of cunning exploits (hiyal). The heroes of popular epics and stories often relied more on crafty eloquence than they did on swordsmanship. The Raqa’iq al-Hilal fi Daqaiq al-Hiyal, ‘Cloaks of Fine Fabric in Subtle Ruses’, catered to the same sort of taste. This anthology is anonymous, but it can tentatively be dated to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century.
René Khawam (trans.), The Subtle Ruse: The Book of Arabic
Wisdom and Guile (London, 1976), pp. 185–6
COMMENTARY
Evidently what we have here is a distorted and much simplified version of the story, in Homer’s Iliad, of the anger of Achilles and his eventual fight with Hector (Aqtar). As far as one can tell, neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey was translated into Arabic in the medieval period and the Arabs were much less familiar with the name of Homer than they were with those of the Greek philosophers. Nevertheless, a handful of scholars in the 'Abbasid period had been aware of the contents of the two epics, and fragments of Homer resurfaced in such popular stories as ‘The Seven Voyages of Sinbad’. In Homer’s Iliad the focus was on the anger of Achilles; here, in this dim reminiscence of the Trojan War, the point is the cunning of the Greek king.
Ifriqiya should be Phrygia.
Tales of ingenuity also played a leading role in the story-collection of The Thousand and One Nights. The origins of this collection have already been discussed. However, all that survives from the (doubtless primitive) tenth century is a fragment of the opening page. The oldest substantially surviving manuscript (in three manuscript volumes in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) dates from the fourteenth or fifteenth century. It seems to have been skilfully put together by a single editor who probably lived and worked in Mamluk Syria. The stories have many references to Mamluk topography, household articles, coinage and so forth. It is likely that there was originally a fourth, concluding, manuscript volume. The surviving three volumes contain some thirty-five and a half stories. These latter stories are artfully boxed within one another, and are linked in their themes and imagery. They deal with telling one’s story in order to save one’s life, sexual betrayal, magic, mutilation, and fulfilment deferred. The Tale of King Yunan and the Sage Duban’, which as we shall see contains two stories boxed within it, is told to a jinn, or demon, by a fisherman who hopes that he will thereby save his life. The Story of the Fisherman and the Demon’ is told by Shahrazad to King Shahriyar, in the hope that her nightly suspenseful story-telling may prevent, or at least delay, her execution.
Demon, there was once a king called Yunan, who reigned in one of the cities of Persia, in the province of Zuman. This king was afflicted with leprosy, which had defied the physicians and the sages, who, for all the medicines they gave him to drink and all the ointments they applied, were unable to cure him. One day there came to the city of King Yunan a sage called Duban. This sage had read all sorts of books, Greek, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Byzantine, Syriac, and Hebrew, had studied the sciences, and had learned their groundwork, as well as their principles and basic benefits. Thus he was versed in all the sciences, from philosophy to the lore of plants and herbs, the harmful as well as the beneficial. A few days after he arrived in the city of King Yunan, the sage heard about the king and his leprosy and the fact that the physicians and the sages were unable to cure him. On the following day, when God’s morning dawned and His sun rose, the sage Duban put on his best clothes, went to King Yunan and, introducing himself, said, ‘Your Majesty, I have heard of that which has afflicted your body and heard that many physicians have treated you without finding a way to cure you. Your Majesty, I can treat you without giving you any medicine to drink or ointment to apply.’ When the king heard this, he said, ‘If you succeed, I will bestow on you riches that would be enough for you and your grandchildren. I will bestow favours on you, and I will make you my companion and friend.’ The king bestowed robes of honour on the sage, treated him kindly, and then asked him, ‘Can you really cure me from my leprosy without any medicine to drink or ointment to apply?’ The sage replied, ‘Yes, I will cure you externally.’ The king was astonished, and he began to feel respect as well as great affection for the sage. He said, ‘Now, sage, do what you have promised.’ The sage replied, ‘I hear and obey. I will do it tomorrow morning, the Almighty God willing.’ Then the sage went to the city, rented a house, and there he distilled and extracted medicines and drugs. Then with his great knowledge and skill, he fashioned a mallet with a curved end, hollowed the mallet, as well as the handle, and filled the handle with his medicines and drugs. He likewise made a ball. When he had perfected and prepared everything, he went on the following day to King Yunan and kissed the ground before him.
But morning overtook Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence. Then her sister Dinarzad said, ‘What a lovely story!’ Shahrazad replied, ‘You have heard nothing yet. Tomorrow night I shall tell you something stranger and more amazing if the king spares me and lets me live!’
THE TWELFTH NIGHT
The following night Dinarzad said to her sister Shahrazad, ‘Please, sister, finish the rest of the story of the fisherman and the demon.’ Shahrazad replied, ‘With the greatest pleasure’:
I heard, O King, that the fisherman said to the demon:
The sage Duban came to King Yunan and asked him to ride to the playground to play with the ball and mallet. The king rode out, attended by his chamberlains, princes, viziers, and lords and eminent men of the realm. When the king was seated, the sage Duban entered, offered him the mallet, and said, ‘O happy King, take this mallet, hold it in your hand, and as you race on the playground, hold the grip tightly in your fist, and hit the ball. Race until you perspire, and the medicine will ooze from the grip into your perspiring hand, spread to your wrist, and circulate through your entire body. After you perspire and the medicine spreads in your body, return to your royal palace, take a bath, and go to sleep. You will wake up cured, and that is all there is to it.’ King Yunan took the mallet from the sage Duban and mounted his horse. The attendants threw the ball before the king, who, holding the grip tightly in his fist, followed it and struggled excitedly to catch up with it and hit it. He kept galloping after the ball and hitting it until his palm and the rest of his body began to perspire, and the medicine began to ooze from the handle and flow through his entire body. When the sage Duban was certain that the medicine had oozed and spread through the king’s body, he advised him to return to his palace and go immediately to the bath. The king went to the bath and washed himself thoroughly. Then he put on his clothes, left the bath, and returned to his palace.
As for the sage Duban, he spent the night at home, and early in the morning, he went to the palace and asked for permission to see the king. When he was allowed in, he entered and kissed the ground before the king; then, pointing toward him with his hand, he began to recite the following verses:
The virtues you fostered are great;
For who but you could sire them?
Yours is the face whose radiant light
Effaces the night dark and grim,
Forever beams your radiant face;
That of the world is still in gloom.
You rained on us with ample grace,
As the clouds rain on thirsty hills,
Expending your munificence,
Attaining your magnificence.
When the sage Duban finished reciting these verses, the king stood up and embraced him. Then he seated the sage beside him, and with attentiveness and smiles, engaged him in conversation. Then the king bestowed on the sage robes of honour, gave him gifts and endowments, and granted his wishes. For when the king had looked at himself the morning after the bath, he found that his body was clear of leprosy, as clear and pure as silver. He therefore felt exceedingly happy and in a very generous mood. Thus when he went in the morning to the reception hall and sat on his throne, attended by the Mamluks and chamberlains, in the company of the viziers and the lords of the realm, and the sage Duban presented himself, as we have mentioned, the king stood up, embraced him, and seated him beside him. He treated him attentively and drank and ate with him.
But morning overtook Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence. Then her sister Dinarzad said, ‘Sister, what a lovely story!’ Shahrazad replied, ‘The rest of the story is stranger and more amazing. If the king spares me and I am alive tomorrow night, I shall tell you something even more entertaining.’
THE THIRTEENTH NIGHT
The following night Dinarzad said to her sister Shahrazad, ‘Sister, if you are not sleepy, tell us one of your lovely little tales to while away the night.’ Shahrazad replied, ‘With the greatest pleasure’:
I heard, O happy King who is praiseworthy by the Grace of God, that King Yunan bestowed favours on the sage, gave him robes of honour, and granted his wishes. At the end of the day he gave the sage a thousand dinars and sent him home. The king, who was amazed at the skill of the sage Duban, said to himself, This man has treated me externally, without giving me any draught to drink or ointment to apply. His is indeed a great wisdom for which he deserves to be honoured and rewarded. He shall become my companion, confidant, and close friend.’ Then the king spent the night, happy at his recovery from his illness, at his good health, and at the soundness of his body. When morning came and it was light, the king went to the royal reception hall and sat on the throne, attended by his chief officers, while the princes, viziers, and lords of the realm sat to his right and left. Then the king called for the sage, and when the sage entered and kissed the ground before him, the king stood up to salute him, seated him beside him, and invited him to eat with him. The king treated him intimately, showed him favours, and bestowed on him robes of honour and many other gifts. Then he spent the whole day conversing with him, and at the end of the day he ordered that he be given a thousand dinars. The sage went home and spent the night with his wife, feeling happy and thankful to God the Arbiter.
In the morning, the king went to the royal reception hall, and the princes and viziers came to stand in attendance. It happened that King Yunan had a vizier who was sinister, greedy, envious, and fretful, and when he saw that the sage had found favour with the king, who bestowed on him much money and many robes of honour, he feared that the king would dismiss him and appoint the sage in his place; therefore, he envied the sage and harboured ill-will against him, for ‘nobody is free from envy’. The envious vizier approached the king and, kissing the ground before him, said, ‘O excellent King and glorious Lord, it was by your kindness and with your blessing that I rose to prominence; therefore, if I fail to advise you on a grave matter, I am not my father’s son. If the great King and noble Lord commands, I shall disclose the matter to him.’ The king was upset and asked, ‘Damn you, what advice have you got?’ The vizier replied, ‘Your Majesty, “He who considers not the end, fortune is not his friend.” I have seen your Majesty make a mistake, for you have bestowed favours on your enemy who has come to destroy your power and steal your wealth. Indeed, you have pampered him and shown him many favours, but I fear that he will do you harm.’ The king asked, ‘Whom do you accuse, whom do you have in mind, and at whom do you point the finger?’ The vizier replied, ‘If you are asleep, wake up, for I point the finger at the sage Duban, who has come from Byzantium.’ The king replied, ‘Damn you, is he my enemy? To me he is the most faithful, the dearest, and the most favoured of people, for this sage has treated me simply by making me hold something in my hand and has cured me from the disease that had defied the physicians and the sages and rendered them helpless. In all the world, east and west, near and far, there is no one like him, yet you accuse him of such a thing. From this day onward, I will give him every month a thousand dinars, in addition to his rations and regular salary. Even if I were to share my wealth and my kingdom with him, it would be less than he deserves. I think that you have said what you said because you envy him. This is very much like the situation in the story told by the vizier of King Sindbad when the king wanted to kill his own son.’
But morning overtook Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence. Then her sister Dinarzad said, ‘Sister, what a lovely story!’ Shahrazad replied, ‘What is this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night! It will be stranger and more amazing.’
THE FOURTEENTH NIGHT
The following night, when the king got into bed and Shahrazad got in with him, her sister Dinarzad said, ‘Please, sister, if you are not sleepy, tell us one of your lovely little tales to while away the night.’ Shahrazad replied, ‘Very well’:
I heard, O happy King, that King Yunan’s vizier asked, ‘King of the age, I beg your pardon, but what did King Sindbad’s vizier tell the king when he wished to kill his own son?’ King Yunan said to the vizier, ‘When King Sindbad, provoked by an envious man, wanted to kill his own son, his vizier said to him, “Don’t do what you will regret afterward.” ‘
The Tale of the Husband and the Parrot
I have heard it told that there was once a very jealous man who had a wife so splendidly beautiful that she was perfection itself. The wife always refused to let her husband travel and leave her behind, until one day when he found it absolutely necessary to go on a journey. He went to the bird market, bought a parrot, and brought it home. The parrot was intelligent, knowledgeable, smart, and retentive. Then he went away on his journey, and when he finished his business and came back, he brought the parrot and inquired about his wife during his absence. The parrot gave him a day-by-day account of what his wife had done with her lover and how the two carried on in his absence. When the husband heard the account, he felt very angry, went to his wife, and gave her a sound beating. Thinking that one of her maids had informed her husband about what she did with her lover in her husband’s absence, the wife interrogated her maids one by one, and they all swore that they had heard the parrot inform the husband.
When the wife heard that it was the parrot who had informed the husband, she ordered one of her maids to take the grinding stone and grind under the cage, ordered a second maid to sprinkle water over the cage, and ordered a third to carry a steel mirror and walk back and forth all night long. That night her husband stayed out, and when he came home in the morning, he brought the parrot, spoke with it, and asked about what had transpired in his absence that night. The parrot replied, ‘Master, forgive me, for last night, all night long, I was unable to hear or see very well because of the intense darkness, the rain, and the thunder and lightning.’ Seeing that it was summertime, during the month of July, the husband replied, ‘Woe unto you, this is no season for rain.’ The parrot said, ‘Yes, by God, all night long, I saw what I told you.’ The husband, concluding that the parrot had lied about his wife and had accused her falsely, got angry, and he grabbed the parrot and, taking it out of the cage, smote it on the ground and killed it. But after the parrot’s death, the husband heard from his neighbours that the parrot had told the truth about his wife, and he was full of regret that he had been tricked by his wife to kill the parrot.
King Yunan concluded, ‘Vizier, the same will happen to me.’
But morning overtook Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence. Then her sister Dinarzad said, ‘What a strange and lovely story!’ Shahrazad replied, ‘What is this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night! If the king spares me and lets me live, I shall tell you something more amazing.’ The king thought to himself, ‘By God, this is indeed an amazing story.’
THE FIFTEENTH NIGHT
The following night Dinarzad said to her sister Shahrazad, ‘Please, sister, if you are not sleepy, tell us one of your lovely little tales, for they entertain and help everyone to forget his cares and banish sorrow from the heart.’ Shahrazad replied, ‘With the greatest pleasure.’ King Shahriyar added, ‘Let it be the remainder of the story of King Yunan, his vizier, and the sage Duban, and of the fisherman, the demon, and the jar.’ Shahrazad replied, ‘With the greatest pleasure’:
I heard, O happy King, that King Yunan said to his envious vizier, ‘After the husband killed the parrot and heard from his neighbours that the parrot had told him the truth, he was filled with remorse. You too, my vizier, being envious of this wise man, would like me to kill him and regret it afterward, as did the husband after he killed the parrot.’ When the vizier heard what King Yunan said, he replied, ‘O great king, what harm has this sage done to me? Why, he has not harmed me in any way. I am telling you all this out of love and fear for you. If you don’t discover my veracity, let me perish like the vizier who deceived the son of the king.’ King Yunan asked his vizier, ‘How so?’ The vizier replied:
The Tale of the Kings Son and the She-Ghoul
It is said, O happy King, that there was once a king who had a son who was fond of hunting and trapping. The prince had with him a vizier appointed by his father the king to follow him wherever he went. One day the prince went with his men into the wilderness, and when he chanced to see a wild beast, the vizier urged him to go after it. The prince pursued the beast and continued to press in pursuit until he lost its track and found himself alone in the wilderness, not knowing which way to turn or where to go, when he came upon a girl, standing on the road, in tears. When the young prince asked her, ‘Where do you come from?’ she replied, ‘I am the daughter of an Indian king. I was riding in the wilderness when I dozed off and in my sleep fell off my horse and found myself alone and helpless.’ When the young prince heard what she said, he felt sorry for her, and he placed her behind him on his horse and rode on. As they passed by some ruins, she said, ‘O my lord, I wish to relieve myself here.’ He let her down and she went into the ruins. Then he went in after her, ignorant of what she was, and discovered that she was a she-ghoul, who was saying to her children, ‘I brought you a good, fat boy.’ They replied, ‘Mother, bring him to us, so that we may feed on his innards.’ When the young prince heard what they said, he shook with terror, and fearing for his life, ran outside. The she-ghoul followed him and asked, ‘Why are you afraid?’ and he told her about his situation and his predicament, concluding, ‘I have been unfairly treated.’ She replied, ‘If you have been unfairly treated, ask the Almighty God for help, and he will protect you from harm.’ The young prince raised his eyes to Heaven …
But morning overtook Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence. Then her sister Dinarzad said, “What a strange and lovely story!’ Shahrazad replied, ‘What is this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night! It will be even stranger and more amazing.’
THE SIXTEENTH NIGHT
The following night Dinarzad said, ‘Please, sister, if you are not sleepy, tell us one of your lovely little tales.’ Shahrazad replied, I shall with pleasure’:
I heard, O King, that the vizier said to King Yunan:
When the young prince said to the she-ghoul, ‘I have been unfairly treated,’ she replied, ‘Ask God for help, and He will protect you from harm.’ The young prince raised his eyes to Heaven and said, ‘O Lord, help me to prevail upon my enemy, for “everything is within your power”‘. When the she-ghoul heard his invocation, she gave up and departed, and he returned safely to his father and told him about the vizier and how it was he who had urged him to pursue the beast and drove him to his encounter with the she-ghoul. The king summoned the vizier and had him put to death.
The vizier added, ‘You too, your Majesty, if you trust, befriend, and bestow favours on this sage, he will plot to destroy you and cause your death. Your Majesty should realize that I know for certain that he is a foreign agent who has come to destroy you. Haven’t you seen that he cured you externally, simply with something you held in your hand?’ King Yunan, who was beginning to feel angry, replied, ‘You are right, vizier. The sage may well be what you say and may have come to destroy me. He who has cured me with something to hold can kill me with something to smell.’ Then the king asked the vizier, ‘My vizier and good counsellor, how should I deal with him?’ The vizier replied, ‘Send for him now and have him brought before you, and when he arrives, strike off his head. In this way, you will attain your aim and fulfil your wish.’ The king said, ‘This is good and sound advice.’ Then he sent for the sage Duban, who came immediately, still feeling happy at the favours, the money, and the robes the king had bestowed on him. When he entered, he pointed with his hand toward the king and began to recite the following verses:
If I have been remiss in thanking you,
For whom then have I made my verse and prose?
You granted me your gifts before I asked,
Without deferment and without excuse.
How can I fail to praise your noble deeds,
Inspired in private and in public by my muse?
I thank you for your deeds and for your gifts,
Which, though they bend my back, my care reduce.
The king asked, ‘Sage, do you know why I have had you brought before me?’ The sage replied, ‘No, your Majesty.’ The king said, ‘I brought you here to have you killed and to destroy the breath of life within you.’ In astonishment Duban asked, ‘Why does your Majesty wish to have me put to death, and for what crime?’ The king replied, ‘I have been told that you are a spy and that you have come to kill me. Today I will have you killed before you kill me. I will have you for lunch before you have me for dinner.’ Then the king called for the executioner and ordered him, saying, ‘Strike off the head of this sage and rid me of him! Strike!’
When the sage heard what the king said, he knew that because he had been favoured by the king, someone had envied him, plotted against him, and lied to the king, in order to have him killed and get rid of him. The sage realized then that the king had little wisdom, judgment, or good sense, and he was filled with regret, when it was useless to regret. He said to himself, ‘There is no power and no strength, save in God the Almighty, the Magnificent. I did a good deed but was rewarded with an evil one.’ In the meantime, the king was shouting at the executioner, ‘Strike off his head.’ The sage implored, ‘Spare me, your Majesty, and God will spare you; destroy me, and God will destroy you.’ He repeated the statement, just as I did, O demon, but you too refused, insisting on killing me. King Yunan said to the sage, ‘Sage, you must die, for you have cured me with a mere handle, and I fear that you can kill me with anything.’ The sage replied, ‘This is my reward from your Majesty. You reward good with evil.’ The king said, ‘Don’t stall; you must die today without delay.’ When the sage Duban became convinced that he was going to die, he was filled with grief and sorrow, and his eyes overflowed with tears. He blamed himself for doing a favour for one who does not deserve it and for sowing seeds in a barren soil and recited the following verses:
Maimuna was a foolish girl,
Though from a sage descended,
And many with pretence to skill
Are e’en on dry land upended.
The executioner approached the sage, bandaged his eyes, bound his hands, and raised the sword, while the sage cried, expressed regret, and implored, ‘For God’s sake, your Majesty, spare me, and God will spare you; destroy me, and God will destroy you.’ Then he tearfully began to recite the following verses:
They who deceive enjoy success,
While I with my true counsel fail
And am rewarded with disgrace.
If I live, I’ll nothing unveil;
If I die, then curse all the men,
The men who counsel and prevail.
Then the sage added, ‘Is this my reward from your Majesty? It is like the reward of the crocodile.’ The king asked, ‘What is the story of the crocodile?’ The sage replied, ‘I am in no condition to tell you a story. For God’s sake, spare me, and God will spare you. Destroy me, and God will destroy you,’ and he wept bitterly.
Then several noblemen approached the king and said, ‘We beg your Majesty to forgive him for our sake, for in our view, he has done nothing to deserve this.’ The king replied, ‘You do not know the reason why I wish to have him killed. I tell you that if I spare him, I will surely perish, for I fear that he who has cured me externally from my affliction, which had defied the Greek sages, simply by having me hold a handle, can kill me with anything I touch. I must kill him, in order to protect myself from him.’ The sage Duban implored again, Tor God’s sake, your Majesty, spare me, and God will spare you. Destroy me, and God will destroy you.’ The king insisted, ‘I must kill you.’
Demon, when the sage realized that he was surely going to die, he said, ‘I beg your Majesty to postpone my execution until I return home, leave instructions for my burial, discharge my obligations, distribute alms, and donate my scientific and medical books to one who deserves them. I have in particular a book entitled The Secret of Secrets, which I should like to give you for safekeeping in your library.’ The king asked, ‘What is the secret of this book?’ The sage replied, ‘It contains countless secrets, but the chief one is that if your Majesty has my head struck off, opens the book on the sixth leaf, reads three lines from the left page, and speaks to me, my head will speak and answer whatever you ask.’
The king was greatly amazed and said, ‘Is it possible that if I cut off your head and, as you say, open the book, read the third line, and speak to your head, it will speak to me? This is the wonder of wonders.’ Then the king allowed the sage to go and sent him home under guard. The sage settled his affairs and on the following day returned to the royal palace and found assembled there the princes, viziers, chamberlains, lords of the realm, and military officers, as well as the king’s retinue, servants, and many of his citizens. The sage Duban entered, carrying an old book and a kohl jar containing powder. He sat down, ordered a platter, and poured out the powder and smoothed it on the platter. Then he said to the king, ‘Take this book, your Majesty, and don’t open it until after my execution. When my head is cut off, let it be placed on the platter and order that it be pressed on the powder. Then open the book and begin to ask my head a question, for it will then answer you. There is no power and no strength save in God, the Almighty, the Magnificent. For God’s sake, spare me, and God will spare you; destroy me, and God will destroy you.’ The king replied, ‘I must kill you, especially to see how your head will speak to me.’ Then the king took the book and ordered the executioner to strike off the sage’s head. The executioner drew his sword and, with one stroke, dropped the head in the middle of the platter, and when he pressed the head on the powder, the bleeding stopped. Then the sage Durban opened his eyes and said, ‘Now, your Majesty, open the book.’ When the king opened the book, he found the pages stuck. So he put his finger in his mouth, wetted it with his saliva, and opened the first page, and he kept opening the pages with difficulty until he turned seven leaves. But when he looked in the book, he found nothing written inside, and he exclaimed, ‘Sage, I see nothing written in this book.’ The sage replied, ‘Open more pages.’ The king opened some more pages but still found nothing, and while he was doing this, the drug spread through his body – for the book had been poisoned – and he began to heave, sway, and twitch.
But morning overtook Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence. Then her sister Dinarzad said, ‘Sister, what an amazing and entertaining story!’ Shahrazad replied, ‘What is this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night if the king spares me and lets me live!’
THE SEVENTEENTH NIGHT
The following night Dinarzad said to her sister Shahrazad, ‘Please, sister, if you are not sleepy, tell us one of your lovely little tales to while away the night.’ The king added, ‘Let it be the rest of the story of the sage and the king and of the fisherman and the demon.’ Shahrazad replied, ‘Very well, with the greatest pleasure.’
I heard, O King, that when the sage Duban saw that the drug had spread through the king’s body and that the king was heaving and swaying, he began to recite the following verses:
For long they ruled us arbitrarily,
But suddenly vanished their powerful rule.
Had they been just, they would have happily
Lived, but they oppressed, and punishing fate
Afflicted them with ruin deservedly,
And on the morrow the world taunted them,‘’ Tis tit for tat; blame not just destiny.’
As the sage’s head finished reciting the verses, the king fell dead, and at that very moment the head too succumbed to death. Demon, consider this story.
But morning overtook Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence. Then her sister Dinarzad said, ‘Sister, what an entertaining story!’ Shahrazad replied, ‘What is this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night if I live!’
Haddawy (trans.), The Arabian Nights, pp. 36–47
Stories about poisoned books have a long ancestry, going back to ancient Indian times.
The version of The Thousand and One Nights which circulated in the Mamluk period probably contained relatively few stories, artfully arranged in such a manner that they could – implicitly, at least – comment on one another. However, in the centuries which followed compilers and copyists swelled the bulk of the anthology with all manner of stories – with whatever took their fantasy. Large numbers of stories were added in the Ottoman period (from the early sixteenth century onwards). Many of these tales were pilfered from traditional anthologies of adab and featured the caliphs, their cup companions, and poets. Others were pietistic parables or Sufi teaching-stories. Some were animal fables. Some swashbuckling popular epics were used to increase the bulk of the Nights. Many of the added tales dealt with low-life exploits, or the buffoonery of drinkers and drug-takers. Adultery and the cunning of would-be adulterers were especially popular topics.
The Tale of Judar and His Brothers’, which is given below, is a superb tale of treasure-hunting and sorcery.