Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period

By the thirteenth century, Arabic poetry had entered a phase of conservation as scholars and littérateurs sought to protect and preserve their Arab heritage. The recurrent Crusades and, above all, the Mongol advance challenged Arab culture and Muslim supremacy, which were shaken further in 1492 by the Christian reconquest of Spain. These same events, however, contributed to the creative growth in Arab religious poetry that occurred at this time. In particular, the mystical verse of Ibn al-Fāriḍ and al-Būṣīrī’s hymns to the Prophet Muḥammad struck a devotional chord, which continues to resonate within Arabic religious poetry and Muslim culture.¹

Reference to religion was common in classical and post-classical Arabic poetry. A poet might invoke the Koran and the fast of Ramadan, trace his lineage to a prophet, or compare his beloved’s beauty to that of Joseph. But such features were standard, often clichéd elements of the poetic repertoire, and so alone should not define verse as religious. By contrast, numerous poems directly address concerns involving God, His prophets, and pressing matters of life and death. Many Sunni and Shia Muslims, together with some of their Jewish and Christian contemporaries, composed Arabic verse to place their joys and sorrows within religious contexts that would give them meaning. Not surprisingly, Arabic religious poetry assumes many forms, from the refined verse of professional poets to the vernacular prayers of pilgrims. This verse, then, is not restricted to a particular style or set of themes, though Arabic religious poetry has been closely associated with several specific genres, including zuhdiyya, or ascetic poetry.²

Reflecting life’s vicissitudes and the human condition, ascetic verses were composed by many poets of the period, often in the popular quatrain form. Following the standards set by al-Ma῾arrī (d. 1057) and other Abbasid poets, later ascetic verse is generally pointed and concise like that of the Syrian poet ῾Abd al-῾ Azīz al-Anṣārī (d. 1264):

Such a life of pious circumspection should always be tempered by an acute awareness of one’s shortcomings, as expressed in this couplet by the Christian Makridāj al-Kasīḥ of Aleppo (fl. eighteenth century):

The stoic tone of ascetic poetry becomes more urgent in prayers seeking God’s mercy in troubled times, particularly during periods of drought, famine or an outbreak of plague, which evoked these verses from the Cairene judge Ibn al-Tansī (d. 1449):

Such verses are also linked to a second genre tightly bound to religion, elegy (rithā’. Once reserved for fallen warriors, Arabic elegy expanded in the Islamic periods to eulogize statesmen and scholars, friends and family. Religious beliefs, rituals and symbols are frequently invoked as the poet attempts to make sense of his loss and find solace in his faith. This work of mourning is vividly illustrated in the elegies composed by the Andalusian scholar Abū Ḥayyān (d. 1344) for his daughter Nuḍār. She had died from a debilitating disease and so her father sought consolation in an Islamic tradition that declared such victims to be martyrs:

Other elegies strike a more sombre, even chilling note, as in the following verse on a drowning victim:

Death’s tragic dimension is underscored further in the many elegies composed for fallen cities, especially Baghdad. The Mongol destruction of this Muslim capital in 1258 was accompanied by the slaughter of thousands of people, including the caliph and his family, and for many Muslims the end seemed near. Feelings of desolation and despair pervade the lamentations of survivors, whose sense of guilt and alienation from God find voice in verses such as these by Ismā ῾ īl ibn Abī Yusar (fl. thirteenth century):

Similar sentiments were expressed later in North Africa and Andalusia as Christian armies steadily advanced, but many poets, including al-Sharīf al-Rundī (d. 1285), also raised a call to arms:

The same martial spirit is evident in numerous panegyrics for sultans and amirs, whether the Nasirids of Andalusia, the Almohads of North Africa, the Mamluks of Egypt, Syria and the Arab peninsula, or their Ottoman successors. The glorious victories of Muslims over their infidel foes are dramatically recounted in this verse, and while some poets no doubt hoped to profit from lauding the valiant efforts of their patrons, many poems convey a sense of gratitude and relief that the enemies of Islam have been put to flight.¹⁰

Beside these poems of holy war against the infidel is an abundance of other religious verse reflecting the personal struggle against selfishness and a sinful life. At times, this verse is tinged with asceticism, but quite often these poems take on a mystical hue as they revolve around notions of love and union with God or the Prophet Muḥammad. Many Arabic mystical poems are short and didactic to highlight teachings, as in this piece by the great Sufi theosophist Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al- ῾Arabī (d. 1240):

Brevity and paradox lend a creed-like quality to this poem, which concludes Ibn al-῾Arabī’s chapter on Abraham in his Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (Bezels of Wisdom). The poem highlights the chapter’s main theme of the interdependence between creator and creation. In a complex rhetorical style reminiscent of earlier verse by al-Ḥallāj (d. 922), Ibn al-῾Arabī repeats verbs with different subjects, at times negating them for antithesis. Further, the pronominal suffix hu, found in every verse, becomes a sliding referent with three possible meanings – him/Him/it – grammatically reinforcing Ibn al-῾Arabī’s ideas on interdependence. According to a tradition popular among the Sufis, God was a hidden treasure who desired to be known and, so, initiated creation. God’s self-knowledge, therefore, is dependent on His being known in and by creation. Thus, while enlightened believers praise and worship God, it could be said, relatively speaking, that He praises and worships them for helping to manifest Him. The realized gnostic discovers this reality within himself and so lives not according to his own selfish desires, but according to the divine will, which he finds throughout existence. As God says in a famous tradition on mystical union referred to in the final verse of the poem:

Ibn al-῾Arabī composed a great deal of poetry, found in many of his doctrinal works and in his Dīwān – a substantial collection of verse in various forms on a variety of subjects. The poems include several odes (sing. qaṣīda) and elegies along with numerous shorter poems on such topics as astral phenomena, dreams, the spiritual significance of the alphabet, the ninety-nine names of God and the chapters of the Koran. In addition, a few poems reflect newer poetic forms such as the five-hemistich quintrain (takhmīs) and the Andalusian muwashshaḥ, a kind of strophic poetry (discussed in more detail by Larkin in Chapter 10), which was becoming popular in North Africa, Egypt and Syria. Ibn al-῾Arabī also compiled a second collection of verse, entitled Tarjumān al-ashwāq (The Interpreter of Desires), consisting of about sixty odes and love poems (ghazal), to which he added a gloss on the mystical allusions within them.¹³ These latter poems are indicative of the trend in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries towards longer, more thematically complex mystical verse, which is invariably associated with the Egyptian poet ῾Umar Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 1235).

Ibn al-Fāriḍ was a religious scholar, Sufi and poet, whose most famous work is the Naẓm al-sulūk (The Poem of the Sufi Way), also know as al-Tā’iyya al-kubrā (Major Ode in T) since its end-rhyme is in the letter ‘t’. This is a long poem of 760 verses, and so resembles other lengthy didactic poetic works composed around this time on Muslim jurisprudence, Koranic commentary and other topics.¹⁴ Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s focus was the arduous quest for spiritual transformation, and he relays traditional Sufi wisdom regarding such issues as ascetic discipline, unselfish love and mystical union. He does this, however, with a beautiful lyricism drawn largely from Arabic wine and love poetry, as when the beloved rejects her impudent suitor:

The open road to me is plain to see

for one right-guided,

But commonly the passions

blind and lead astray.

So I will expose your passion and who it is

who has worn you out;

I will sweep away your pretence to my love:

you are love’s ally, alright,

But for its sake, not for me; as my proof,

you have saved an attribute of yours.

For you never loved me

so long as you were not lost in me,

And you will never be lost

without my form revealed in you.

So give up claim to love, and call your heart

to something else to drive away your erring ways.

Shun union’s courtyard, that was not to be –

here you are living; die if you be true!

Such is love: if you do not die,

you will win nothing from it;

So decide on death or leave my love alone.¹⁵

Throughout the Naẓm al-sulūk, Ibn al-Fāriḍ assumes the role of the enlightened teacher, and to underscore his lessons he occasionally juxtaposes highly charged poetic language with appealing everyday subjects. In this respect, portions of the Naẓm al-sulūk resemble the mystical narrative poems in Persian by ῾Aṭṭār (d. c. 1220) and Rūmī (d. 1273). In one instance, Ibn al-Fāriḍ likens the human condition to a shadow play (for further detail, see Dorigo Ceccato’s contribution to this volume, Chapter 17). The material world is the backdrop for a person’s sense of self, which uses the five senses to produce an image of the world, similar to the way a puppeteer manipulates his puppets to perform his shadow play on a screen. Heedless individuals forget, however, that there is more to life than superficial qualities and personal desires. Just as the puppeteer removes the screen and stands revealed at the play’s end, so too must the mystic tear away his self-love that he might see again his divine origin. But, then, the mystic in selfless union also resembles a puppet, though now it is God who pulls the strings to act on the mystic’s behalf. Thus, the shadow play reveals another of reality’s hidden truths, and one stressed by Ibn al-῾Arabī and other Sufis, namely that the creator only exists with his creation. The puppeteer relies on his puppets to perform his play, while God as creator is revealed only through His creation which, paradoxically, conceals His oneness. Therefore, the mystic who peers behind the screen of multiplicity finds only God, one and alone. This, declares the poet, is union’s truth, and a central lesson of the Naẓm al-sulūk:

In illusion’s drowsy dream, the phantom shadow

leads you to what shimmers through the screens.

You see the shapes of things in every display

disclosed before you from behind the veil’s disguise.

Silent, they seem to speak; still, they seem to move,

shedding light, though dark,

And you see two armies on land, at times,

other times, at sea, in great companies.

Courageous, dressed in iron mail,

they stand their guard with swords and spears.

The soldiers of land – knights on horse

or mainly manly infantry –

And the heroes at sea – riding the decks

or climbing the lance-like masts –

Are violently striking with shining sword,

thrusting the brown strong-shafted quivering spear,

Drowning in the fire of striking arrows,

burning in the deluge of piercing hot blades.

You will watch other shapes I have not mentioned,

but I will trust in these choice few.

All that you witnessed was the act of one

alone within the cloistering veils,

But when he removes the screen,

you see none but him;

No doubt lingers about

the forms and figures,

And you realize when the truth is shown:

that by his light you were guided

To his actions in the shadows.¹⁶

In addition to the Naẓm al-sulūk, Ibn al-Fāriḍ composed about a dozen shorter poems on love and longing, including his ode to mystical wine. These poems, too, reveal a dense rhetorical style (badī῾) dominated by alliteration, antithesis and wordplay, which Ibn al-Fāriḍ deftly employed to intimate his mystical view of life. This verse then set the standard for generations of later poets who consciously imitated his work in terms of style and religious content, as is evident in verse by the Iraqi poet ῾Āmir ibn ῾ʿĀmir al-Baṣrī (d. c. 1330). Ibn ῾Āmir composed his own Tā’iyya of over five hundred verses as a critique of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s teachings based on his own Shia mystical perspective. Ibn ῾Āmir was an active participant in one of several Messianic movements that arose in the wake of the Mongol invasion, and his Tā’iyya expounds Shia doctrine with the hope that the Hidden Imam will soon return to rid the world of evil:

Imam of Right Guidance, how long will you hide?

Bless us, Holy Father, with your return.

Your army’s banners will appear before us

and diffuse among us the fragrance of musk.

That wondrous news will spread throughout the world,

bringing with it smiles of joy and delight.

Seize and set right time’s cycle and show mercy

to dear ones, meek and in misery.

You have been destined always for this command

since God declared: ‘You are My caliph!’

So we pray to you for victory,

for truly we are in need –

One like you is always called

whenever disaster strikes.¹⁷

Another admirer of Ibn al-Fāriḍ was the Palestinian scholar and Sufi῾Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1731), who not only composed a mystical Tā’iyya, but wrote a long prose commentary on all of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s verse. In addition, al-Nābulusī left an account of his visits to Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s shrine in Cairo, where people fell into ecstasy during Friday poetry readings. This highlights an essential feature of Arabic religious verse, namely that it served primarily spiritual, as well as aesthetic, functions.¹⁸ For centuries, Sufis have recited verse in meditation sessions, while preachers have quoted poems in their sermons. The Ottoman official and preacher ῾Abd al-Raḥmān Ibn Farfūr (d. 1554) once admonished:

This accords well with the homiletic character of many short poems, like that of the Egyptian judge Muḥammad al-Ḥatādī (or al-Ḥatātī, d. 1641):

Above all, Arabic religious poetry often becomes a prayer, as in Ibn al-Tansī’s lament, Ibn ῾Āmir’s Tā’iyya and in the following quintrain by ῾Uthmān ibn Muḥammad Fūdī (aka Usman dan Fodio, d. 1816), the West African Islamic reformer and founder of the Sokoto caliphate:

As in this poem, Muslims frequently expressed their religious sentiments in many of the new verse forms which flourished during this period, including the popular strophic muwashshaḥ and zajal. Both were preferred by some North African poets, especially the Sufi singer Abū᾽l-Ḥasan al-Shushtarī (d. 1268–9).²² Likewise, many Christian poets favoured these popular, more colloquial poetic forms, perhaps due to a poor knowledge of formal Arabic prosody or, more likely, to a desire to spread their faith among the masses, as was the case with the Syrian poet Mīkhā’īl Ḥātim (fl. seventeenth century):

But zajals, poetic riddles and other playful verse also reveal a lighter side to religion. Sometimes, poets excuse themselves from the fast of Ramadan, for drinking wine, or both, as in the case of the Mamluk courtier and Shia poet Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī (d. 1349). The Koran exempts travellers from the fast, so the poet happily hits the road at the start of Ramadan:

Humour turns to satire in other verses that ridicule charlatan Sufis, corrupt judges and a religious elite more often concerned with positions than piety. Conflicts between religious communities also surface; in the thirteenth century al-Būṣīrī railed against the influence of Christians within Egypt’s bureaucracy, while the Catholic bishop and poet Sulaymān of Gaza (fl. sixteenth century) condemned both Muslim doctrine and Christian heresy. Similarly, in the seventeenth century, the Shia scholar Bahā’ al-Dīn al-῾Amilī (d. 1621) continued to denounce the Sunni usurpers of῾Alī’s right to rule.²⁵ However, a more frequent target of invective verse was government officials who tyrannized the populace in the name of religion. In the following couplet, the Mamluk court poet Ibrāhīm Mi῾mār (d. 1348) alludes to the Koranic edict to recite the name of God when butchering an animal, as he complains to the sultan regarding a rapacious official:

The dominant tone of most later Arabic religious verse, however, was not invective but devotional, especially to the Prophet Muḥammad. In fact, during the post-classical period, poems in praise of Muḥammad formed a distinct genre, the al-madīḥ al-nabawī, the ‘prophetic panegyric’. Of course, the earliest panegyrics for Muḥammad had been composed during his lifetime, and subsequent generations elaborated and catalogued the Prophet’s fine qualities and miracles, which quickly attained mythic proportions. But most of these works were in prose, and though some poets alluded to Muḥammad in their verse, few poems appear to have been directly addressed to him prior to the eleventh and twelfth centuries when several elements coalesced.²⁷ One factor was verse composed by Shia poets to praise Muḥammad’s holy family and to commemorate the martyrdom of his grandson al-Ḥusayn. Much of this verse sought heavenly intercession in times of oppression, frequently offering a critique of contemporary politics and society. Subsequently, Shia panegyrics served to praise and legitimize the Fatimid caliphs of North Africa, Egypt and Syria (reigned 909–1171), who claimed genetic and spiritual descent from Muḥammad via his daughter Fāṭima and her husband῾Alī, the first imam.²⁸ For similar reasons, the Fatimids sponsored mawlids, or birthday celebrations, for members of this holy family, but Muḥammad’s mawlid soon took precedence after the Ayyubids re-established Sunni rule late in the twelfth century. Under these counter-crusading sultans, the Prophet’s birthday grew into an elaborate festival lasting several days, during which poets composed and recited panegyrics to the Prophet, and this tradition quickly spread throughout the Islamic world.²⁹

A third factor contributing to the genre was the mystical view of Muḥammad as a type of logos principle, often referred to as the Nūr Muḥammad, ‘the Light of Muḥammad’. As early as the tenth century, Sufis asserted that God had created the universe with this primordial light which permeates all of creation, providing a source for spiritual illumination. Reflections of this light increasingly appear in Arabic religious poetry, including the mystical panegyric of the Iraqi poet al-Ṣarṣarī (d. 1258) and Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Naẓm al-sulūk.³⁰ Moreover, Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s verse was the model for the most famous panegyric of Muḥammad, the Burda by Muḥammad al-Būṣīrī (d. 1296). Al-Būṣīrī was a minor Egyptian bureaucrat, and a poet who based his poem on the ode by Ibn al-Fāriḍ which begins:

Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s short poem is a meditation on the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina with several allusions to Muḥammad, while the Burda explicitly praises the Prophet in most of its 160 verses. Nevertheless, recollections of lost love and the same nostalgic mood open al-Būṣīrī’s panegyric:

The poet grieves for his thoughtless, sinful life, and so turns to the Prophet in hopes of salvation. For Muḥammad is God’s chosen one, whose prophetic light will guide those gone astray:

Al-Būṣīrī details Muḥammad’s exemplary character, his many miracles and victories over his enemies, but then the poem becomes a prayer as it ends with an appeal for forgiveness and Muḥammad’s intercession on the poet’s behalf:

According to legend, al-Būṣīrī had been partially paralyzed by a stroke when he composed this poem. The Prophet then appeared to him in a dream, threw his mantle (burda) over the poet, and healed him. Likewise in search of blessings and miracles, Muslims have copied and recited the Burda over the centuries, and the scholar and poet ῾A’isha al-Bā῾ūniyya (d. 1516) extols the amazing effects of pious praise in one of her own popular hymns beginning:

Similar motives continued to inspire Shia panegyrics to their imams, Christian poems in praise of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, and verse recited as votive offerings at saints’ shrines.³⁶ But al-Būṣīrī’s Burda has had a special place, and even more than Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s verse, this ode has been the subject of numerous commentaries and imitations in Arabic and other languages. Probably the most celebrated poem ever composed in Arabic, al-Bū īrī’s Burda is a hallmark of post-classical Arabic literature and among its most popular and enduring contributions to Islam and Arab culture.³⁷

¹ Homerin, ‘Reflections on Arabic Poetry in the Mamluk Age’.

² Bellamy, ‘The Impact of Islam on Early Arabic Poetry’; Hamori, ‘Ascetic Poetry’.

³ al-Anṣārī, Dīwān, p. 414; al-Ayyūbī, Āfāq al-shi῾r al-῾arabī, pp. 285–305, 350–9. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

⁴ Shaykhū, Kitāb shu῾arā’ al-naṣrāniyya, pp. 498–500.

⁵ Ibn Taghrī Birdī, Nujūm, vol. ⅩⅤ, p. 539; al-Ayyūbī, Āfāq al-shi῾r al-῾arabī, p. 334; Ḍayf, Ta’rīkh, pp. 342–7.

⁶ Homerin, ‘A Bird Ascends the Night’. See also Bauer, ‘Communication and Emotion’.

⁷ Ibn Taghrī Birdī, Nujūm, vol. Ⅶ, p. 252; al-Ayyūbī, Āfāq al-shi῾r al-῾arabī, pp. 162–76.

⁸ Jarrār, al-Ghazw al-Maghūlī, pp. 38–40, ⅴⅴ. 20–2; Shaykh Amīn, Muṭāla῾āt, pp. 99–114.

⁹ Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry, p. 334. Also see Jayyusi’s translation in Sperl and Shackle (eds.), Qasida Poetry, vol. I, pp. 15–17; vol. Ⅱ, pp. 112–19, 424.

¹⁰ E.g. Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry, pp. 292–300, 338–88; Homerin, ‘Reflections’, 66–70, 79.

¹¹ Ibn al-῾ Arabī, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, p. 83; Schimmel, As Through a Veil, pp. 1–48; Lings, ‘Mystical Poetry’.

¹² Homerin, ‘Tangled Words’; Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying, pp. 63–115.

¹³ Ibn al-῾Arabī, Dīwān, pp. 135–6, 164–79, 206–10, 218–32, 313; Ibn al-῾Arabī, Tarjumān al-ashwāq, tr. Nicholson, The Tarjuman al-Ashwaq; Lings,‘Mystical Poetry’, pp. 250–1. See also Sells, Stations of Desire.

¹⁴ Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint; Schimmel, As Through a Veil, pp. 41–5; Lings, ‘Mystical Poetry’; Sperl, ‘Qasida Form and Mystic Path’, pp. 65–81; al-Ayyūbī, Āfāq al-shi῾r al-῾arabī, pp. 467–85.

¹⁵ Ibn al-Fāriḍ, Dīwān, pp. 95–6, ⅴⅴ. 96–102. See also Homerin, ῾Umar Ibn al-Fāriḍ; Ibn al-Fāriḍ, The Mystical Poems; and his The Poem of the Way; and Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, pp. 162–266.

¹⁶ Ibn al-Fāriḍ,Dīwān, pp. 165–7, ⅴⅴ. 679–80, 682, 688–93, 702, 704–6.

¹⁷ Marquet, Poésie ésotérique ismaïlienne, pp. 94–5, ⅴⅴ. 317–19, 321, 324–5; al-Shaybī, al-Ṣila bayn al-taṣawwuf, vol. Ⅱ, pp. 115–26.

¹⁸ al-Nābulusī, Dīwān al-ḥaqā’iq, pp. 78–83; Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint, pp. 78–83.

¹⁹ al-Ghazzī, al-Kawākib al-sā’ira, vol. Ⅲ, p. 164.

²⁰ Ibn Ma῾ṣūm, Sulāfat al-῾aṣr, pp. 417–18, ⅴⅴ. 1, 7, 8; ‘Am I not Your Lord’, is from Koran 7:172. See also Ḍayf, pp. 346–7; Homerin, ‘Preaching Poetry’.

²¹ Tr. Hunwick (with my slight modification of the final word), in ‘The Arabic Qasida in West Africa’, p. 90

²² al-Shushtarī, Dīwān; Lings, ‘Mystical Poetry’, pp. 261–4.

²³ Shaykhū, Kitāb shu῾arā᾽ al-naṣrāniyya, pp. 441–2; see also pp. 408–9, 431–2.

²⁴ al-Ḥillī, Die vulgärarabische Poetik, pp. 115–18, ⅴⅴ. 1–2, 23–4, 27–30; al-Ayyūbī, Āfāq al-shi῾r al-῾arabī, p. 391; Homerin, ‘Reflections’, 73–5; Harb, ‘Wine Poetry’.

²⁵ al-Būṣīrī, Dīwān, pp. 12–15; Shaykhū, Kitāb shu῾arā’ al-naṣrāniyya, pp. 400–2; Ḍayf, Ta᾽rīkh, pp. 680–2; Homerin, ‘Reflections’, 79.

²⁶ Ibn Iyās, Badā᾽ī al-zuhūr, vol. Ⅰ, p. 612; al-Ayyūbī, Āfāq al-shi῾r al-῾arabī, pp. 248–58, 339–49, 389–92.

²⁷ Mubārak, al-Madā’iḥ al-nabawiyya; Schimmel, As Through a Veil, pp. 171–211; and her Muḥammad.

²⁸ Mubārak, al-Madā’iḥ al-nabawiyya, pp. 68–187; Ḍayf, Ta᾽rīkh, pp. 239–56, 667–79.

²⁹ Von Grunebaum, Muḥammadan Festivals, pp. 67–94; Shinar, ‘Mawlid Celebrations’; Schimmel, Muḥammad, pp. 144–58; Homerin, ‘Reflections’, 78–9.

³⁰ Schimmel, Muḥammad, pp. 123–43, 187.

³¹ Mubārak, al-Madā’iḥ al-nabawiyya, pp. 189–214; Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint, pp. 5–9.

³² al-Būṣīrī, Dīwān, p. 238, ⅴⅴ. 1–4. See Stefan Sperl’s recent translation and insightful comments in Sperl and Shackle (eds.), Qasida Poetry, vol. Ⅱ, pp. 388–411, 470–6.

³³ al-Būṣīrī, Dīwān, p. 242, ⅴⅴ. 50–3.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 248, ⅴ. 152; Sperl and Shackle (eds.), Qasida Poetry, vol. Ⅱ, pp. 470–2.

³⁵ ῾A’isha al-Bī῾ūniyya, Dīwān, p. 25. Also see Homerin, ‘Living Love’, 211–34.

³⁶ E.g. Marquet, Poésie ésotérique ismaïlienne, pp. 27–30; Shaykhū, Kitāb shu῾arā’ al-naṣrāniyya, pp. 399–511; Mayeur-Jaouen, al-Sayyid al-Badawī, pp. 59–73.

³⁷ Mubārak, al-Madā’iḥ al-nabawiyya, pp. 215–64; Schimmel, Muḥammad, pp. 181–9; Hunwick,The Arabic Qasida in West Africa, pp. 85–6; Sperl and Shackle (eds.), Qasida Poetry, vol. Ⅱ, pp. 470–4.