Medieval Arabic-Islamic Poetics: The Transformation of the Amatory Prelude

Sahar Ishtiaque Ullah

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

2018

Copyright 2017

Sahar Ishtiaque Ullah All rights reserved

ABSTRACT

Medieval Arabic-Islamic Poetics: The Transformation of the Amatory Prelude

Sahar Ishtiaque Ullah The dissertation investigates the medieval poetics of the amatory prelude beginning

with the thirteenth century Qaṣīdat al-Burdah – or The Mantle Ode – by the poet

Muhammad ibn Sa'īd al-Būṣīrī (d. 1294). Poets expanded the trope of the

abandoned ruins to include urban space; incorporated sacred beloveds as poetic

beloveds; and foregrounded the self-conscious authorial voice within the prelude.

The first chapter locates the thirteenth century Qaṣīdat al-Burdah within the larger

Arabic poetic legacy that extends to the ancient pre-Islamic period. The second

chapter considers the discursive formation of sacred poetic beloveds, such as the

Prophet Muhammad, incorporated among the repertoire of the amatory prelude’s

classical and ancient poetic beloveds. The third chapter analyzes the authorial voice

and role of the lyric “I” in the preludes of Shaʻbān al-Āthārī (d. 1425) and ʻĀʼishah

al-Bāʻūniyyah (d. 1517) who pay homage to their literary predecessors including

Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 1235), al-Būṣīrī, and Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī (d. 1349) by mirroring their

metrical composition. The fourth chapter interrogates the intersection of poetics and

literary criticism in the medieval Arabic-Islamic devotional invocation that is the

hallmark of medieval prolegomena. The preludes within the genre of instructive

poems on rhetoric known as the badīʿiyyāt encapsulated literary criticism’s

definition of “ingenious beginnings.” Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī (d. 1362) demonstrates

this intersection in his prose introduction to al-Ghayth al-Musajjam fī Sharḥ

Lāmiyat al-ʿAjam. I conclude by returning to modern iterations of al-Būṣīrī’s

Qaṣīdat al-Burdah in literary texts in order to further challenge and raise questions

about the discontinuity of medieval Arabic poetics in modern culture.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments..………………………………………………………………..…ii

Dedication..………………………………………………………………..…………iv

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..1

Chapter 1

Prelude Campsites: Space and Time in Performative Remembrance……….……….38

Chapter 2

Prelude Beloveds: The Prophetic, the Divine, and the Cursed………………….…...87

Chapter 3

The Subjective Prelude: Reading the Authorial Voice……..………………………147

Chapter 4

The Pedagogical Prelude: The Intersection of Poetry, Criticism, and Literary

Style………..………………………………………………..……………………...195

Conclusion

The Burdah as Aṭlāl: Medieval Poetic Continuity in Modern Arabic

Literature?...…..………………………………………………………………….....245

Bibliography………..……………………………………………………...………273

Appendix………..………………………………………………………………….297

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Dr. Muhsin al-Musawi and my dissertation committee, thank you for

sharpening my questions of literary scholarship. To Dr. Moustafa Fouad and Dr.

George Saliba, thank you for revealing to me the deep ocean that is the Arabic

language. To anyone who taught me a single Arabic letter, thank you for leading me

to its shores.

To the mashayikh, and especially Abdallah Adhami, thank you for generously

allowing me a view of your minds’ Syrian, Egyptian, Tunisian, Yemeni, Moroccan,

Gambian, Senegalese, Turkish, and Indian libraries. To my Azhari teachers, thank

you for showing me that if you have love and learning, you will never be

impoverished. To all my students, thank you for teaching me what makes being a

scholar-teacher worthwhile.

To Dr. Isabel Geathers – thank you for exemplifying the transformative power

of a brilliant woman of color in the halls of academia. To my colleagues, especially

Dr. Noemie Ndiaye and Dr. Jennifer Rhodes, thank you for modeling ambition with

integrity and endurance. To the OAD Research Collective, thank you for challenging

me to clarify and sharpen my style of poetic analysis. To the Writing Center, and

especially Jason Ueda, thank you for creating a community of writers and your

invaluable feedback. To Zachary Ugolnik, thank you for your writing consultations as

we combed through the work. To the Heyman Center for the Humanities, thank you

for supporting me in the final months of my revisions.

To my friends Kamilah A. Pickett and Tyson Amir – thank you for reflecting

back to me in clear terms what this is all really about. To the people who brought me

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food and medicine, who accompanied me to the hospital, who gave me company and

advice in hours of need, who assisted in finding housing and moving over the last

seven and a half years – thank you for acknowledging and supporting the human side

of intellectual life.

And to my family – especially Adnan, Mom, Dad, Duff, Sana, and Anu –

thank you. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for

celebrating me when I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I love you and hope this makes

you proud.

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DEDICATION

In memory of our absent beloveds

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INTRODUCTION The presence of poetry about love is a prevailing phenomenon of the human

experience; the specifics of its images, symbolic registers, rhythm, and rhetorical

style, however, are shaped and changed according to shifting contexts. Hence, the

objects and subjects of love as well as its role and direction are not stable matters.

Sappho of Lesbos, the seventh century B.C. ancient Greek poet, is reported to have

composed the following verses in the fragments that remain of her poetry:

Some men say an army of horses and some men say an army on foot And some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing On the black earth. But I say it is What you love.1

Although very little is known about her, the images Sappho invokes most likely

constituted the experience of warfare in the ancient world and thus her context. The

multi-layered poetics of the fragment speak also too audiences and of their

communities.2 The poet lists images of ancient war – horses, an army, and ships – that

others have articulated as objects of beauty and desire. The claim that these are “the

most beautiful thing[s]” is indicative of a discourse rooted in a larger martial and

material culture that informs values, which in turn inform what is desired. The

interpolation of the poet at the end, “But I say it is/What you love” is an argument

about the relationship between love and the aesthetic values attributed to the desirable

1 Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, trans. Anne Carson (New York: Vintage Books, 2002), 27. 2 See Stein Haugom Olsen, “What Is Poetics?” The Philosophical Quarterly (1950-), 26. 105 (1976): 338–351.

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object. The poet’s argument is rhetorically effective because it demonstrates

knowledge of other traditions before offering a poetic departure from them.

In Arabic literature, the qaṣīdah or ode repeatedly begins with the poetics of

love and longing and that familiar ancient figure of the lover contemplating a

beloved. Beginning in such a manner becomes a well-known poetic convention

referred to as the nasīb or amatory prelude in which the poetic voice is that of the

lover addressing an absent beloved. The hallmark for beginning the ancient qaṣīdah

or Arabic ode, the ancient nasīb remains a literary convention after the advent of

Islam in the seventh century and well into the modern period.3 Moreover, the nasīb is

not only a site of continuity but also innovative transformation that reflects the poets’

changed language, new patrons, and audiences’ shifting engagement with the theme

of love and longing in relation to time, space, and the figure of the poetic composer.

For this reason, and especially if we accept Jerome W. Clinton’s argument that the

nasīb can generate the meaning of an entire poem, the amatory prelude represents a

fertile site of poetic analysis and inquiry even if exceptions to the presence and

absence of this convention develop over time as different genres of Arabic poetry

emerge over a millennium.4

3 See See ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muslim ibn Qutaybah, Kitāb Al-Shiʻr wa al-Shuʻarāʼ: Wa qīla Ṭabaqāt al-Shuʻarāʼ (Bayrūt: Dār Ṣādir, 2005); also see Kitāb al-Shiʿr wa al-Shuʿarāʾ: Introduction to the Book of Poetry and Poets, trans. Arthur Wormhoudt (Oskaloosa, IA: William Penn College, 1973). For another translation, see Reynold A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 71–140. 4 See my article "Postclassical Poetics: the Role of the Amatory Prelude for the Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters," The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 3.2 (2016): 203-225.

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Newly developed genres of Arabic poetry emerged after Islam from the

first/seventh century and onward that incorporate the poetics of the nasīb. Among

these genres are forms of Arabic devotional poetry including al-Madā’iḥ al-

Nabawiyyah or panegyrics dedicated to the Prophet Muḥammad; Sufi poetry like the

khamriyyāt or wine odes in the tradition of the early ʻAbbāsid period;5 and the

musical muwashshaḥāt or strophic poetry.6 Arabic devotional poetry is composed as

love poems and arguably more widely circulated among a much larger public than

courtly poetry. The result of their success is that centuries-old poetry lives on in oral

recitations, musical compositions, visual representations, and performance art in

varied spaces until today including among non-Arabic speaking Muslim regions and

communities in Indonesia, India, Nigeria, and Albania. For example, while searching

for the text of poetry written by sixteenth-century Damascene poet and scholar

ʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūniyyah (d. 923/1517),7 about whom very little is known in the North

5 The medieval Sufi khamriyyāt are preceded by and modeled after the non-Sufi wine poetry such as that of Abū Nuwās (d. 199/813), Muslim ibn al-Walīd (d. 208/823), and other wine poets. 6 On a medieval study of the development of the Andalusian muwashshaḥāt, see the Egyptian scholar Ibn Sanā' al-Mulk’s (d. 608/1211) treatise Dār al-Ṭirāz fī 'Amal al-Muwashshaḥāt (al-Riyāḍ: Markaz al-Turāth li al-Barmajīyāt, 2013). For secondary readings, see Lois Ibsen al-Faruqi, “Muwashshaḥ: A Vocal Form in Islamic Culture,” Ethnomusicology, 19:1 (1975), 1–29; Jareer Abū-Haidar, “The Arabic Origins of the Muwashshaḥāt,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 56:3 (1993), 439–458. 7 The first date indicates the Hijrī year of the Islamic lunar calendar, and the second date indicates the Gregorian year.

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American academy,8 I found a 2014 recording of a recitation of the mawlid from her

dīwān by an elderly Iraqi reciter named Walīd Al-Dulaymī on an Iraqi television

interview.9 Al-Bāʻūniyyah’s poetry lives on through oral recitation as evidenced in

this clip recorded during the most recent U.S. occupation of Iraq. Moreover, the

person who excerpted this clip from the larger interview cites the poet in the

YouTube video details. Unlike other forms of Arabic poetry like the medieval

muwashshaḥāt that are popularly known through song without an author attributed,

al-Bāʻūniyyah’s name is invoked and exists in cultural memory as a historical literary

and saintly figure.

The dissertation investigates the poetic continuities and transformations of the

medieval amatory prelude, a convention with a genealogy extending to the ancient

Arabic ode, as a text signifying the opening of a work. Poets expanded the prelude

trope of the abandoned ruins to include urban space; incorporated sacred beloveds as

poetic beloveds; and foregrounded the self-conscious authorial voice. The amatory

prelude of devotional poetry, and specifically al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah, took a

significant poetic turn in replacing the abandoned desert campsites with urban space

including Madīnah the City of the Prophet. Narratives about the Prophet’s physical

beauty as well as the metaphysical benefits of yearning affirmed and ensured the

8 The English translations published by Th. Emil Homerin have been groundbreaking in introducing ʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūniyyah to an English reading and speaking audience. See his translation of ʻĀʼishah al- Bāʻūniyyah in Emanations of Grace: Mystical Poems by ʻĀʼishah Al-Bāʻūniyyah, Trans. Th. Emil Homerin. Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011; also see The Principles of Sufism. Trans. Th E. Homerin. New York: Library of Arabic Literature, 2014. 9 Muhammad Ss, “Sa’du in ji’ta thaniyyāti al-lu’ayy,” YouTube, 10 March 2016.

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prolific poetic incorporation of the figure of Muḥammad among the repertoire of

imagined beloveds in the medieval Arabic ode. In doing so, the medieval prelude

conveyed the singularity of the yearned-for-beloved and the celebrated subject of the

panegyric. Because of its effectiveness, poets also used the literary convention as a

pedagogical model for other writers to understand Arabic literary criticism.

Furthermore, by unifying the ancient erotic poetics of the prelude with devotional

poetry, poets created out of the encomium a vehicle that encapsulated both palpable

nostalgia and the aspirational ideal. In some cases, the nostalgia that overwhelms the

prelude of the devotional ode permeating the text as a whole, whereby the idea of the

poem itself becomes another campsite eliciting further longing. For this reason, I

conclude with an inquiry about the iteration of thirteenth century Arabic-Islamic

poetics in nineteenth century Arabic literature.

My research will pivot around the central questions of how pre-modern

Arabic devotional poetics problematizes the division of “elite” and “popular” poetry

as well as “religious” and “secular” works. I respond to ways in which Arabic

literature has been read through contemporary Eurocentric theories by demonstrating

the application of medieval Arabic literary criticism to both practices of writing and

reading texts. Located in the implosion of anachronistic binaries, the reception of

such texts by a diverse audience also challenges understandings of the exclusivity of

poetic literacy and affirms the view that oral cultures are indicative and necessary for

the circulation and preservation of a poem. This is most clearly demonstrated when

Arabic devotional poetry is composed in engagement with the existing poetic

conventions of literary traditions, such as the amatory prelude and classical metrical

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forms. These conventions traverse a number of poetic genres, accommodate thematic

varieties, and incorporate language associated with new emerging disciplines

including medieval Arabic literary criticism.10

TERMS OF PERIODIZATION

In order to engage with the prelude as a site of continuity and transformation within

emerging genres of Arabic literature, one must grapple with the problematic terms of

periodization articulated by contemporary Arabic literary studies including the terms

ancient, classical, medieval, post-classical, and modern. The qualification of both

ancient and classical has been attributed to poetry composed by pre-Islamic poets. For

example, Adonis refers to a division of ancient and modern poetry early on in his

work on Arabic poetics, and Jaroslav Stetkevych refers to “canon-setting classicism

between the pre-Islamic and the mid-`Umayyad11 periods.”12 Works composed during

10 See Michael Sells’ foreword to Th. Emil Homerin, ʻUmar Ibn Al-Fāriḍ: Sufi Verse, Saintly Life (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), xiv. He writes,

For over two centuries, studies of Islamic mysticism have tended to divorce it from the poetic tradition exemplified by the aṭlāl, even though Islamic mystics were steeped in the poetics and spirituality of these ruins. One reason for the divorce in the rigid boundary imposed by many scholars between the worlds of Sufism and Islam more generally, and between the worlds of religion and poetry…some scholars claimed that love was an import into Islam from Christianity, since the tradition of love poetry in which Islamic conceptions of love are grounded was consigned by them to the realm of the secular and thus not taken seriously as an element within religion. To break out of such artificial boundaries requires more than refutation. It requires a complex set of translations. The poem itself, its rhythms, tone, meter, assonance, and other qualities must be rendered in an English style that can create an analogous effect in a different discursive world.

11 The Umayyad period extends between 661 to 750 CE.

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the early period of Islam until the ʻAbbāsid13 period – and even as late as the end of

the fifteenth century in the Iberian Peninsula – has also been described as classical.

For example, Michael Sells refers to the twelfth century poet Ibn ʻArabi (d. 638/1240)

and his works as an example of poetry that brings together the “language worlds of

classical Islamic civilization.”14 The works that emerge from the period of robust

literary production particularly after the Seljuqs conquer Baghdad in 442/1050 and

the latter end of the ʻAbbāsid period are sometimes referred to as medieval or post-

classical period,15 although literary and intellectual historians more often qualify the

12 See Adonis, An Introduction to Arab Poetics, trans. Catherine Cobham (London: Saqi Books, 2013), 9; Jaroslav Stetkevych,The Hunt in Arabic Poetry: From Heroic to Lyric to Metapoetic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016), 14. Also see Ali A. Hussein, The Lightning-Scene in Ancient Arabic Poetry: Function, Narration and Idiosyncrasy in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Poetry (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014). 13 The Abbasid period extends between 750 to 1258 CE. 14 See Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 63; and Muhsin al-Musawi’s discussion on “classical transgressions” in Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition (London: Routledge, 2010), 245-246. 15 For a full reading of the problem of periodization in Arabic literary studies, see Muhsin al-Musawi, The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 1–3, 15–17, 89–90; Thomas Bauer, “In Search of a Post-Classical Literature: A Review Article,” Mamlūk Studies Review 11.2 (2007): 137–48. See also Muhsin al-Musawi, “The Republic of Letters: Arab Modernity? Part I,” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 1.2 (2014): 273; and Roger Allen and D. S. Richmonds, Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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period after the Mongols conquered Baghdad in 656/1258 as such.16 To add to the

unsettled historiography of Arabic-Islamic literary production, the same post-classical

period from the mid-thirteenth century to the late eighteenth century is also referred

to as the medieval or premodern period in Islamic studies including Islamic

intellectual history and the history of Islamic science.17

These terms of periodization as well as the points of beginning and ending a

period do not pass without critique. Moreover, each term and its definition are related

to the socio-political contexts from which they emerge and have acquired cultural

connotations within and outside the academy. Nevertheless, the descriptive terms as

temporal markers are useful in conveying longue durée historical significance and

facilitate communicating the development of Arabic literature across literary worlds

including the classics and medieval studies. In order to represent the complexity of

the matter of periodization and not necessarily to make a claim about a general

condition of the period, I will use the terms medieval and post-classical

interchangeably throughout the dissertation to refer to the long period between the

16 Suzanne Stetkevych classifies the post-classical and medieval period of Arabic poetry and literature from 1100-1850 CE in her article “From Jāhiliyyah to Badīʿiyyah: Orality, Literacy, and the Transformations of Rhetoric in Arabic Poetry,” Oral Tradition, 25.1 (2010): 219. 17 See George Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam (New York: New York University Press, 1994). Also see Frank Griffel, "Contradictions and Lots of Ambiguity: Two New Perspectives on Premodern (and Postclassical) Islamic Societies." Bustan: the Middle East Book Review. 8.1 (2017): 1-21.

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thirteenth to the late eighteenth century.18 Other times, I will refer specifically to the

dynastic period or century of a work as suggested by Thomas Bauer.19

My interest in this project is situated within a broad interest in comparative

literature and the humanities and the intersection of writing style, literary criticism,

and newly formed genres within Arabic literary production. Considering that the post-

classical period coincides with Europe’s medieval and early modern period, this

project is also situated within the Andalusian and Mediterranean experience of

political upheaval, mutation, as well as forced migration during the Crusades and

conquests of the Iberian peninsula.20 The Crusades had mobilized Christian soldiers in

Europe to march on to Jerusalem since 488/1095 as well as wage war within Europe

until well into the ninth/fifteenth century; the Spanish conquest of the Iberian

Peninsula itself became a policy of the Catholic Crown by the end of the

fifth/eleventh century until the subsequent fall of Granada and encounter with the

New World in 897/1492.21 In eastern Muslim lands, the Turkic Seljuqs had taken

18 Both Muhsin al-Musawi and Suzanne Stetkevych do this in their more recent work. 19 See Thomas Bauer, “In Search of a Post-Classical Literature: A Review Article,” Mamlūk Studies Review 11.2 (2007): 145. 20 Regarding Christian and Muslim conversion and captivity narratives in the early modern Mediterranean, see Patricia E. Grieve, "Conversion in Early Modern Western Mediterranean Accounts of Captivity: Identity, Audience, and Narrative Conventions," Journal of Arabic Literature, 47 (2021): 91-110. Also see Patricia E. Grieve, The Eve of Spain: Myths of Origins in the History of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). 21 See Elizabeth Siberry, Criticism of Crusading: 1095-1274 (Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, 1985); Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy P. Mottahedeh, The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World (Washington, D.C: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection), 2000; Lee Manion, “The Loss of

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over the ʻAbbāsid capital Baghdad in 442/1050 to later be followed by the Mongols

in 656/1258; and in 647/1250, Cairo came under the rule of the Mamlūk slaves-

turned-rulers who eventually repelled the Crusaders from the Levant. By the

tenth/sixteenth century, the Ottoman, Mughal and Safavid empires were well-

established rivals and Persianate literary production flourished in the courts of eastern

Muslim lands. Such historical changes over the centuries not only led to migration of

large numbers of people and rapidly changing communities, but undoubtedly

influenced and shaped the aesthetic and cultural terrain, symbolic registers, and the

geographical and political imagination of Arabic literature.22

THE DECADENCE THESIS DEBUNKED Over at least the last two decades, Arabic literary critics and historians23 around the

world have contested modernist and nationalist rhetoric regarding the Nahḍah – or

what is translated as the Arab Renaissance or Awakening – that relegated medieval

the Holy Land and ‘Sir Isumbras’: Literary Contributions to Fourteenth-Century Crusade Discourse,” Speculum, 85.1 (2010): 65–90; and Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (London: Saqi, 2012). 22 See Osman Latiff, The Cutting Edge of the Poet's Sword: Muslim Poetic Responses to the Crusades (Leiden: Brill, 2017). 23 In the field of Arabic-Islamic science, historian George Saliba has compellingly argued for re-envisioning the medieval period—also called the Age of Decline in Islamic intellectual history—as the Golden Age of Arabic science, especially with regard to the field of astronomy. See George Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam (New York: New York University Press, 1994).

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Arabic-Islamic literary production to the decadent and stylistically imitative.24 The

intellectuals associated with the Nahḍah argued that the ʻAbbāsid Golden Age

overshadowed the cultural production that emerged from the medieval period of

Islam in innovativeness.25 Celebrated late-nineteenth and early twentieth century Arab

intellectuals such as Ṭāhā Ḥusayn, Salāmah Mūsā, and Jurjī Zaydān wrote prolifically

about the medieval period in a way that paralleled if not duplicated their European

counterparts’ Enlightenment understanding of the medieval period as the Dark

Ages.26 These prominent Nahḍah writers characterized the medieval period beginning

24 For a look into how Arab intellectuals described the Nahḍah, see Salāma Mūsā, Mā Hīya al-Nahḍa? (Bairūt: Maktabat al-Maʻārif, 1974). For a historiographical critique, see al-Musawi’s “Beyond the Modernity Complex: 'Abd Al-Ḥakīm Qāsim's Re-Writing of the Nahḍah Self-Narrative,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 41.1-2 (2010): 22–45; Mehmet Akif Kirecci’s dissertation Decline Discourse and Self-Orientalization in the Writings of al-Tahtawi, Taha Husayn and Ziya Gokalp: A Comparative Study of Modernization in Egypt and Turkey (ScholarlyCommons, 2007); Elizabeth M. Holt, Fictitious Capital: Silk, Cotton, and the Rise of the Arabic Novel (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017); and Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss, Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Also see Tarek El-Ariss, Trials of Arab Modernity: Literary Affects and the New Political (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013). 25 Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych argues that Arab writers and intellectuals themselves produced the Nahdah idea in response to European imperialism. In the nineteenth century poetry of Baradunī, European colonialism is likened to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad and the end of the Golden Age. See "Abbasid Panegyric: Badīʿ Poetry and the Invention of the Arab Golden Age," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 44.1 (2017): 48-72. 26 See Muhsin al-Musawi, “The Republic of Letters: Arab Modernity? Part I,” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 1.2 (2014): 273. Also see Muhsin al-Musawi, Islam on the Street: Religion in Modern Arabic Literature (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), xxx. Regarding the origins of the European conception of the Dark Ages, also see Theodore Mommsen, “Petrarch's Conception of the 'Dark Ages'.” Speculum, 17.2 (1942): 226–242.

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as early as the fall of Baghdad to the Seljuqs in 1050 and more commonly as late as

the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258 and ending with the beginning of the

Nahḍah or “Arab Awakening” following Napolean’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 as the

Age of Decadence (trans.ʻAṣr al-Inḥiṭāṭ). Identifying the ʻAbbāsid Golden Age (132–

367/750–978)27 as the pinnacle of classical Arabic literary excellence, Nahḍah

intellectuals mirrored the European Englightenment construction of a genealogy

rooted in the ancient Greco-Roman world in which Enlightened Europe was

ultimately indebted to Greek philosophy and science. In this construction, the

medieval period was described as the Dark Ages.28

Following this argument, Arab modernists who were often simultaneously

responding to European imperialism envisioned a historiographical thesis in which

the early Arab empires were the final patrons of Arabic literary innovativeness. They

argued that an Age of Decline, or what is referred to as ʻAṣr al-Inḥiṭāṭ, began after the

Mongols conquered ʻAbbāsid Baghdad. The narrative proposes that the Arab world’s

proto-nationalist consciousness was reawakened from its medieval slumber by

European colonization, which then provoked the Arab struggles for cultural – in

27 Like other “Golden Ages” of other literatures, the framing of the Abbasid Golden Age set the standard for the academic study of Arabic literature even more than the earlier Umayyad period. Suzanne Stetkevych, re-emphasizes this in "Abbasid Panegyric: Badīʿ Poetry and the Invention of the Arab Golden Age." 28 See Muhsin al-Musawi, “The Republic of Letters: Arab Modernity? Part II,” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 2.1 (2014): 4. Also see Rabia Ali Umar, “Medieval Europe: The Myth of Dark Ages and the Impact of Islam.” Islamic Studies, 51. 2 (2012): 155–168.

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addition to political and economic – independence.29 Orientalist and Arab nationalist

proponents of the ʻAṣr al-Inḥiṭāṭ concept, a period which encompassed centuries of

non-Arab30 Muslim led empires — including the gunpowder empires of the Safavids,

Mughals, and Ottomans31— reinforce modern racialized proprietary views of Arabic

literary production. Although the contemporary racialization of the Arab and Arabic

language also emerges from an attempt to clarify and split apart the conflation of

Arab and Muslim identities, it also contributes to imagining the entirety of Arabic

literary production as geographically limited within the borders of the modern Middle

East. Such racialized proprietary views of Arabic literary production further reify the

notion of the Middle East as the “center” of Islamic history by neglecting the

significant contributions of pre-modern Arabophone writers and the African, Asian,

and European libraries archiving their Arabic-Islamic literary works.32 The tenability

29 Another aspect of such periodization is the manner in which the term the medieval is deployed against the Renaissance and Enlightenment that connotes a lack of civilization, complexity, dynamic cultural exchange, and literacy. See Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul’s important edition on Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World: The Idea of “The Middle Ages” Outside Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). 30 Here, non-Arab as an identity marker—in contradistinction with the modern national and ethno-racial category of Arab—does not, however, sufficiently encapsulate and characterize the identity of the premodern Muslim subject and specifically the border-crossing Arabophile intellectual enmeshed in wide ranging literary networks that constituted the medieval Islamic republic of letters. 31 See Marshall Hodgson’s discussion on the center and periphery of Islamic history in The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, Volume 3: The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). 32 On the contributions of the Mamlūks, for example, see ʻUmar Mūsā Bāshā, Tārīkh al-Adab al-ʻArabī: al-ʻAṣr al-Mamlūkī (Beirut, Lebanon: Dār al-Fikr al-Muʻāṣir,

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of the decline thesis and Arab modernists’ reproduction of European claims about the

medieval period in a postcolonial milieu of racialized nation-states rests at best on a

misreading of a massive corpus of evidence and at worst a deliberate neglect of an

incredibly vast undertaking of post-classical cultural production that ranged across

classical and innovative genres as well as across pre-modern imperial borders.33

Such assumptions led to a dearth of North American and European academic

studies on post-classical Arabic literary production in the twentieth century, the

neglect of which is being rectified through Mamlūk and Ottoman studies, South

Asian and African Studies,34 and the works of contemporary Arabic literary critics,

writers, and artists.35 Although Arab modernists and orientalists relegated medieval

1989). On Arabic in Africa, see Abdullah Abdul-Samad and Abdullah Abdul-Sawad, “Arabic Poetry in West Africa: An Assessment of the Panegyric and Elegy Genres in Arabic Poetry of the 19th and 20th Centuries in Senegal and Nigeria,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 35. 3 (2004): 368–390. On Arabic in the Indian Subcontinent, see Tahera Qutbuddin, “Arabic in India: A Survey and Classification of Its Uses, Compared with Persian,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 127.3(2007): 315–338. 33 For a detailed account regarding Arabic literary production in the post-classical period, see al-Musawi’s The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction. 34 On Arabic and Islam in South Asia, see Tahera Qutbuddin, “Arabic in India: A Survey and Classification of its Uses, Compared with Persian,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 127:3 (2007); Manan A. Asif, A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016). On Arabic and Islam in Africa, see Rudolph T. Ware, The Walking Qur'an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa (University of North Carolina Press, 2014); Ousmane Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016). 35 Also, see historical fiction writing like Jamal al-Ghitani, Zayni Barakat, trans. Farouk Abdel Wahab (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2006); and Ahmed

15

Islamica to the stagnant gaps, investigating these gaps have led to accounting for the

pathways of transmission of ancient texts reconfigured, interpreted, and translated

through the lens of a robust Arabic scholarly and literary tradition. Furthermore,

analyses of the medieval gaps demonstrate how pre-modern Arabic intellectual and

literary development was epistemologically rooted in the ancillary Qur’ānic sciences

such as Arabic grammar, rhetoric, and morphology, which were specifically targeted

during the colonial period. It is no coincidence that European colonial administrations

developed policies directed at “native and national languages to dislodge their main

domain in Qur’ānic and religious studies and communication” knowing that Arabic

and Islamic knowledge production was a powerful shared cultural force.36 The culture

of Arabic-Islamic letters informing and shaping highly developed networks of shared

poetic registers, libraries and scholarship, and seminary curricula was more far-

reaching in a multiethnic and multilingual post-classical Islamic literary world than

ethno-racially bound nationalist discourses. For this reason, many Muslim

intellectuals in various regions took Arabic lexical exploration particularly seriously

as a countermovement to colonial education practices during the earlier phases of

Arab and Islamic revival.37

On the other hand, Sufism studies heavily focus on the history of the

development, specific lexicon, and philosophical universe of Sufism such as that of

Toufiq, Abū Musa's Women Neighbors: A Historical Novel from Morocco, trans. Roger Allen (Sausalito: Post-Apollo Press, 2006). 36 “The Republic of Letters: Arab Modernity? Part I,” 277. 37 Ibid.

16

famous post-classical Sufis ‘Umar ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1235) and Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn

‘Arabi (d. 638/1240) and to a lesser extent al-‘Afīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī (d.

690/1291).38 For the outsider looking in, it is a closed universe of semiotics where a

specialist could only understand an analysis of Sufi lexicon. This creates an

impression of an enclave of Arabic literature tightly sealed from larger literary

culture, when recent studies have shown that was not the case.39 The works of Stefan

Sperl and Jaroslav Stetkevych significantly point to the continuities of the qaṣīdah

form and its influence on mystical poetry and devotional poetry and in turn, their

influence on what is considered secular poetry.40

38 For a reading of significant contributions to Sufism studies, see Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001); Alexander D. Knysh, Islamic Mysticism: A Short History (Leiden: Brill, 2010); Mark J. Sedgwick, Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Yousef Casewit, The Mystics of Al-Andalus: Ibn Barrajan and Islamic Thought in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2017); Michael Ebstein, Mysticism and Philosophy in Al-Andalus: Ibn Masarra, Ibn Al-'Arabī and the Ismā'īlī Tradition. Leiden: Brill, 2014; Jonathan G. Katz, Dreams, Sufism and Sainthood: The Visionary Career of Muhammad Al-Zawâwî (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996); Lloyd V. J. Ridgeon, The Cambridge Companion to Sufism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Sa'diyya Shaikh, Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn 'Arabī, Gender, and Sexuality (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); Denis E. McAuley, Ibn 'Arabī's Mystical Poetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Ikbal M. Y. Ahmad, Ibn Qayyim's Critique of Philosophical Sufism: The Refutation of Al-Tilimsani's Version of Wahdat Al-Wujud (Gombak: Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia, 2004); Anne K. Bang, Sufis and Scholars of the Sea: Family Networks in East Africa, 1860-1925 (London: Routledge, 2014). 39 See my review article "Book Review: Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel, Written by Ziad Elmarsafy," Journal of Arabic Literature, 46.1 (2015): 148-153. 40 See Stefan Sperl and C Shackle’s edited two-volume publication on Qasida Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996). Also see Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Hunt in Arabic Poetry: From Heroic to Lyric to Metapoetic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016).

17

MOVING FORWARD: IMAGINING A MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF LETTERS The dissertation begins with an understanding that the texts discussed are composed

and circulated under the conditions that constituted what can be described as a

medieval Islamic republic of Arabic letters.41 Stretching across and circulating within

the Iberian Peninsula in the West to the Chinese east, Arabic-Islamic literary

production emerged not as inaccessible, elitist codes for mimesis but as a rigorous,

discursive phenomenon in which there was longstanding lively critique and debate as

well as competitive showmanship. This is what is encapsulated by the theorization of

a medieval Islamic republic of letters, referring to

a general condition that makes it possible for scholars, modes, genres, and ideas to consort with each other over time and...create new cultural trends and projects along with an ethos of reciprocity, exchange, and obligation.42

Not exactly the ideal city-state of Plato’s Republic nor a republic defined by the

European Enlightenment that would take the form of modern nation-states, the

qualifier “of letters” is key to understanding how this particular discursive formation

41 According to Pascale Casanova’s World Republic of Letters, eighteenth-century Paris as “the locale and armature” functioned as “an intellectual centripetal and centrifugal force” creating a republic of cultural networks that ran counter to national communities. The term “republic of letters” however was coined far earlier by Pierre Bayle at the end of the seventeenth century. See The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters, 323. Decentering France as a model, al-Musawi argues that the existence of a medieval Islamic republic of letters demonstrates a far more extensive project informed by multiple shared cultural registers including poetics. Challenging the constructed secular-religious binary in which the secular equals humanist, al-Musawi directs attention to traditions that problematize a universal application of Casanova’s theory. See “The Republic of Letters: Arab Modernity? Part I,” 268. 42 The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters, 3.

18

is organized. The qualifier “Islamic” points to the notion that the affinity to Arabic in

such a literary republic was not because it was the “mother-tongue” of its

interlocutors but that Arabic was respected as the language of Muslims’ shared sacred

text and messenger—the Qur’ān and Muḥammad. Therefore, as Islam spread to areas

where Arabic was not the local language, the Arabic language itself became

associated with unique prestige and cultural capital in addition to power that partly

informed its ascendant position as a language of scholarship. This point in particular

is important when considering the invocation of sentimentality and nostalgia by the

amatory prelude of post-classical devotional poetry and instructional poetry in Arabic

grammar and rhetoric.

From the encyclopedic to the anecdotal, from prose to poetry, from the ribald

to the mystical, from satire to meticulous rhetorical critique, the massive corpus of

Arabic-Islamic literary production emboldened the “republic.” With the rise of other

imperial Muslim languages—including Persian and Turkic dialects—the producers of

Arabic literature increasingly received patronage and occupied spaces outside the

imperial court and in transformed institutions like the chancery and the educational

institutions.43 Instead of following the trajectory of vernacularization north of the

Mediterranean during the medieval period,44 the Islamic republic of letters witnessed

43 For how culture provided shared codes for the khawāṣṣ (elite) or ‘āmmah (the common public), see al-Musawi, “The Republic of Letters: Arab Modernity? Part I,” 267. 44 This important medieval European moment of vernacularization is the period in which famous figures moved away from composing works in scholastic Latin like Berceo (d. 1264) who, for example, composed hagiographical accounts in Castilian

19

a “lexical turn” in Arabic production initiated in the eleventh century.45 This

coincided with the rise of other forms of Islamicate literary production in the realms

of Persian literature.46 Disciplined and codified, medieval Arabic literary discourse

invited endeavors in compiling dictionaries, lexicons and grammatical compendia,

including the well-known Lisān al-‘Arab by Ibn Manẓūr (d. 711/1312) and its

successor in popularity Tāj al-ʿArūs by al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/1790).47 Such

lexicographic production manifested a commitment to knowledge and skill outside

courtly engagements.48

Considering adab as both field and practice as the Arabic term refers to both

literature as well as the refined character of a human being,49 the prolific output of

Spanish and others like Dante (d. 1321) and Boccaccio (d. 1375) who wrote prose and poetry in Florentine Italian. 45 See Muhsin al-Musawi, “The Medieval Islamic Literary World-System: The Lexicographic Turn,” Mamlūk Studies Review 17 (2013): 43-71. 46 See Hamid Dabashi, The World of Persian Literary Humanism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 47 Al-Musawi, “The Republic of Letters: Arab Modernity? Part II,” 16. 48 Ibid., 277 49 Numerous academics have attempted to define and succinctly translate adab into English. Tarif Khalidi, for example, translates adab as Islamic paideia. See Tarif Khalidi, Classical Arab Islam: The Culture and Heritage of the Golden Age (Princeton, N.J: Darwin Press, 1985). For the most part, I will refer to adab in Arabic without translating the term from the original Arabic. Also see See Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s discussion on adab in “Al-Adab al-Ṣaghīr,” Rasāʼil al-Bulaghāʾ: A Collection of Literary Epistles by ʻAbd Allāh Ibn Al-Muqaffaʻ and ʻAbd al-Hamīd Ibn Yaḥya al-Kātib, ed. Muhammad Kurd ʿAlī (Cairo: Al-Zāhir, 1908); Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, 180; and Nuha Al-Sha'ar, The Qurʼan and Adab: The Shaping of Literary Traditions in Classical Islam (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2017).

20

adab also points to an extensive and highly literate public that existed as readers and

patrons.50 Cairo—a major African metropolitan center at the crossroads of pilgrimage

caravans and merchants coming from the north, east, west, and south—was witness to

this post-classical scholarly and literary culture. Like ʻAbbāsid Baghdad, post-

classical Mamlūk Cairo represented a central city of power in socioeconomic,

political, and symbolic terms as can be seen in The Thousand and One Nights.51

Neither imperial Baghdad nor Cairo, however, held the position of Madīnah—the

City of the Prophet—as the poet-lover’s locus of pious devotion, sentimentality,

nostalgia, desire, recuperation, and ideal destination as it emerged in the poetics of the

encomia dedicated to the Prophet.52

DEVELOPING GENRES OF DEVOTIONAL AND PEDAGOGICAL TEXTS The poets of early Islamic empires constructed the patrons of their panegyrics as

poetic subjects worthy of adoration. When writing in praise of a caliph in Baghdad or

Damascus or Cairo or Cordoba, classical poets such Abū Nuwās al-Ḥasan ibn Hānī

al-Ḥakamī (d. 199/813), Abū Tammām Ḥabīb Ibn Aws (d. 231/843), Abū al-Ṭayyib

50 See Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, “From Jāhiliyyah to Badīʿiyyah: Orality, Literacy, and the Transformations of Rhetoric in Arabic Poetry,” Oral Tradition, 25/1 (2010): 211-230. 51 See Muḥsin al-Mūsawī, The Islamic Context of the Thousand and One Nights (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). 52 Madīnah as aṭlāl is repeatedly invoked in the al-madā’iḥ al-nabawiyyah collection as well as the post-classical badī‘iyyāt which I will discuss further in the following chapter An early echo of Madīnah as a symbolic site of yearning as well as standing in as the object of the beloved but not directly the beloved himself, finds some of its earliest echoes in poetry of the early Muslim community after the Prophet’s death.

21

Aḥmad ibn Ḥusayn al-Mutanabbī al-Kindī’s (d. 354/965), and Abū al-Walīd Aḥmad

Ibn Zaydūn al-Makhzūmī (d. 394/1071) wrote as members of a court competing for

continued employment, love, and political legitimacy (which are not necessarily

mutually exclusive). `Umayyad and ʻAbbāsid courtly poetry participated in a poetics

of Islamic legitimacy that negotiated status and political authority.53 When no longer

the commissioning patron, the same subject of a poet’s praise could also become the

object of the poet’s vitriolic mockery, as in the case of Kāfūr (d. 357/968) – the

Ethiopian slave who became ruler of Egypt – who inspired some of al-Mutanabbī’s

most famous madīḥ as well as hijā’ poetry.54

For the court poet, the poetic economy of praiseworthy subjects was

circumscribed by whose pocket supported the poet's’ pen. A poet of independent

means like the twelfth-century poet Ibn Khafājah (d. 532/1138) of Valencia, for

example, could write independently. He was a prolific writer known for his poetic

reflections on the fauna and flora of al-Andalus. A writer of both poetry and prose,

he was not bound to a court which would dictate the direction of his production. He

reimagined a site with illustrative descriptions of his natural environment that was the

lost country and object of nostalgia to which the subject could return. In one of Ibn

Khafājah’s poems, he writes in praise of a mountain:

53 Suzanne Stetkevych develops this argument in The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). 54 See Margaret Larkin, Al-Mutanabbi: The Poet of Sultans and Sufis (New York: Oneworld Publications, 2012).

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أصخت إلیھ وھو أخرس صامت◌ فحدثني لیل السرى بالعجائب

وقال أال كم كنت ملجأ قاتلاه تبـتل تائب وموطن أو

I listened to it, though it was dumb, silent, For it talked to me, during the night of travel, of wondrous things,

And said: “How often have I been the refuge of a killer,

And the habitation of a sigher who retired from the world repenting.”55

The poetic voice belongs to both the traveller and the personified mountain that is

attributed with sermonizing speech at the end of the poem. The poet had the luxury of

giving voice to inanimate objects. Nothing comes between the poet communicating

with and giving expression to his natural surroundings.

During the medieval period, the station of Muḥammad and the imperative to

love him as a spiritual patron and poetic beloved was a subject of study that generated

volumes of prose and poetry. The genre of biography of Muḥammad known as al-

sīrah al-nabawiyyah, including the oldest known biography by Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq

(d. 151/768), informed the popular composition and reception of love poetry about

the Prophet.56 Scholars from the Muslim East to the Muslim West collected

descriptions of Muḥammad’s physical appearance and personality that became a

55 Translation by Magda Nowaihi, The Poetry of Ibn Khafajāh: A Literary Analysis (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 164. For another translation, see Abū Isḥāq Ibn Khafājah, “Bi ‘ayshika hal tadrī ahūju l-janā’ibi?” Hispano-Arabic Poetry: A Student Anthology, Ed. James Monroe, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 242-245. 56 See Qāḍī ʻIyāḍ Ibn Mūsá (d. 544/1149), Muhammad, Messenger of Allah: Al-Shifā’ of Qāḍī ʻIyāḍ, trans. Aisha A. Bewley (Inverness, Scotland: Madinah Press, 1991).

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genre of literature known as al-shamā’il, such as the ninth century Shamā'il al-

Tirmidhī by Muḥammad ibn ʻĪsá al-Tirmidhī (d. 279/892) and Kitāb al-Shifā’ bi

Ta'rīf Ḥuqūq Al-Muṣṭafā by al-Qāḍī 'Iyāḍ ibn Mūsā (d. 543/1149).57 The shamā’il

literature influenced Muslim visualization of the Prophet as a paragon of beauty.

The impact of the Prophetic biography and al-shamā’il literature can be seen

in the panegyrics dedicated to the Prophet known as al-madā’iḥ al-nabawiyyah.

Muḥammad ibn Sa’īd al-Būṣīrī’s (d. 696/1294) famous Qaṣīdat al-Burdah or The

Mantle Ode, a poem that has generated several subgenres of Arabic poetry,

exemplifies how a single panegyric successfully synthesized classical biography and

hagiography as well as Sufi poetics of dhikr – or remembrance – modeled by writers

like `Umar Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1235). It is not a coincidence that the poet al-Būṣīrī

previously made a career of composing panegyrics commissioned by and for Mamlūk

officials until he became disillusioned with his work and left it for the Sufi path.58

The poetics of the nasīb in al-madā’iḥ al-nabawiyyah functions to provoke

longing for a sacred patron and beloved who intercedes and represents hope in

worldly recuperation and otherworldly redemption. Like a Sufi wird or litany, the

nasīb serves to remind through the persona of the lover the poet constructs and the

audience of another land of lost bliss. Depending on the tone the poet intends to

convey, poetry such as al-madā’iḥ al-nabawiyyah and the khamriyyāt meant

57 See Muḥammad Zakariyyā al-Kāndahlawī’s commentary on Shamāʼil Tirmidhī: Al-Shamāʼil al-Muḥammadiyyah sallā Allāh ʻalayhi wa sallam, Khaṣāʼil Nabawī Sharḥ Shamāʼil Tirmidhī (Ghaziabad, India: New Era Pub, 2001). 58 See Aḥmad Ibn ‘Ajība al-Ḥasanī (d. 1224/1809), The Mainstay: A Commentary on Qasida al-Burda, trans. Abdul Aziz Suraqah (Keighley: Abu Zahra Press 2015), xxii.

24

specifically for Sufi gatherings and celebrations such as the mawālid differ in direct

and indirect invocation of the sacred beloveds in the opening verses. For example,

Shihāb al-Dīn al-TilimsānīMuqrī (d. 1041/1631) cites the following poetry in his

work Azhār al-Riyāḍ fī Akhbār Qāḍī ʻIyāḍ:

سل ما لسلمى بنار الھجر تكویني وحبھا في الحشي من قبل تكویني

Inquire. What is it about Salmā that burns my core like fire? Yet love for her existed before my existence.59

The author clearly states that the verse refers to the Prophet and is among some of the

most innovative poetry composed “in praise of the chosen one,” yet the poet does not

directly name Muḥammad.60

On the other hand, it is only in the third section of al-Būṣīrī’s Qaṣīdat al-

Burdah that the poet reveals the identity of the beloved by directly and ecstatically

mentioning the name “Muḥammad.” Prior to that, the beloved is unnamed and

allusively referred to in the amatory prelude. The poet writes,

محمد سید الكونین والثقلین والفریقین من عرب ومن عجم

Muḥammad is the master of both abodes, of both who bear responsibility, Of both parties: Arabs and non-Arabs61

59 The translation is mine. See Shihāb al-Dīn Abū al-'Abbās Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Tilimsānī Muqrī, Azhār al-Riyāḍ fī Akhbār al-Qāḍī 'Iyāḍ: Al-Juz' al-Awwal (al-Qāhirah: Matba`ah Lajnah al-Ta’līf wa al-Tarjamah wa al-Nashr, 1939), 316. 60 Ibid. The translation is mine. 61 The translation is mine. See Sharaf al-Dīn Abī ʿAbd-Allah Muḥammad al-Būṣīrī, Burdat al-Madīḥ al-Mubārakah (Abu Dhabi: Dār al-Faqīh, 2001), 31.

25

Unlike the nasīb verses of the Qaṣīdat al-Burdah, which will be discussed in detail in

the following chapter, the above madīḥ verses are direct and clear in its address and

purpose as an act of petitioning, or tawaṣṣul.62

THE BADĪ‘IYYĀT VOGUE: THE INTERSECTION OF POETRY AND LITERARY CRITICISM Less than a century later after al-Būṣīrī’s thirteenth century qaṣīdah gained

widespread fame and incredible popularity, Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī (d. 750/1349) wrote a

badīʿiyyah poem modeled after al-Būṣīrī’s Burdah and entitled it Al-Kāfiyah al-

Badīʿiyyah fī l-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah. The poem, al-Ḥillī claims, is based on

seventy books on the subject of rhetoric.63 A subgenre of al-madā’iḥ al-nabawiyyah,

the badī‘iyyāt poetry that developed in the fourteenth century was composed along

the same rhyme and meter of the Burdah in praise of the Prophet. They can be

62 Unlike the prelude of al-Būṣīrī’s Qaṣīdat al-Burdah, a twentieth-century poem by the Moroccan Sufi Muhammad ibn al-Ḥabīb ibn al-Ṣiddīq al-Amgharī al-Idrisī al-Ḥasanī (d. 1392/1972) directly addresses the prophet and articulates the purpose of the poem in the opening verse. The poet writes,

نحن في روضة الرسول حضور طالبین الرضا وحسن قبول

We are present in the garden of the messenger Seeking pleasure and felicitous acceptance.

See Muhammad ibn al-Ḥabīb, The Dīwān of Shaykh Muhammad Ibn al-Ḥabīb: Dīwān Bughyat al-Murīdīn al-Sāʼirīn wa-Tuhfat al-Sālikīn al-ʻĀrifīn (Cape Town, South Africa: Madinah Press, 2001). 63 Alī Abū Zayd documents in detail the development of badī’iyyāt in the post-classical period in Al-Badīʿiyyāt fī l-Adab al-ʻArabī: Nashʼatuhā, Taṭawwuruhā, Atharuhā (Beirut: ʻĀlam al-Kutub, 1983), 26.

26

described as both panegyric and pedagogical in its attempt to create within each verse

an example of a rhetorical trope (i.e., badī’). ‘Alī Abū Zayd defines the badīʻiyyāt as

the following:

The badī‘iyyāt are a collection of odes that appeared in the 8th/14th century and continued until the 14th/20th century. The purpose of [the odes] was to praise the prophet, and the aim was to collect all figures of speech (i.e., badī’) within its verses [by way of] incorporating one trope in each verse. The poem has a basīṭ meter and mīmiyyah rhyming scheme, which was popularized through the Burdah of al-Būṣīrī.64

Unlike the general collection of al-madā’iḥ al-nabawiyyah, the badī‘iyyāt had a two-

fold aim. The combination of purposes of the post-classical badī‘iyyāt distinguishes it

from the classical badī' poetry of ʻAbbāsid courtly culture and other devotional

poetry. The first aim was to fulfill the obvious role of praising the Prophet. The

subgenre maintained the Prophet as the imagined muse of the poet, yearned-for

beloved and worthy subject of emphatic praise. The second function is its

pedagogical role in demonstrating as many literary tropes as the poet would have

gathered from his or her study of the disciplines of rhetoric and literary criticism. The

pedagogical aim reflects the rhetorical and poetic innovativeness in post-classical

literary production as well as the use of poetry as a preferred method of instruction in

the medieval period.65

64 Ibid., 7. The translation is mine. I also include this in my article "Postclassical Poetics: the Role of the Amatory Prelude for the Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters." 65 For an important discussion on classical understandings of badī‘, see Suzanne Stetkevych, "Toward a Redefinition of Badī' Poetry," Journal of Arabic Literature 12 (1981): 1-29. Stetkevych critiques Ibn al-Mu‘tazz’s understanding of badī' as a rhetorical device that can be reproduced; rather, she argues, linguistic innovativeness in the Abbasid period was a result of particular modes of thought influenced by

27

A concise poetic articulation of a subdiscipline of Arabic rhetoric in the poetic

form of praising the Prophet, al-Ḥillī’s badīʿiyyah had an incredible impact. His

innovative poem inspired competitive contrafaction after contrafaction and numerous

scholarly commentaries in attempts to exhibit knowledge and include more literary

tropes. Each of its verses was a demonstration of one aspect of Arabic poetics,

instructing scholars and students in the sub-discipline of balāghah or Arabic rhetoric

known as ‘ilm al-badī‘ that could then be applied when analyzing other texts – poetry

and prose. The vogue of badī‘iyyāt spread across the republic of Arabic-Islamic

letters including the Indian subcontinent where Ghulām `Alī Azād ibn Nūḥ al-

Ḥusaynī (d. 1194/1780) composed his badīʿiyyah. Arabophile Christian scholars such

as Nīqūlās ibn Ni`mat-Allāh al-Sāyigh (d. 1169/1755) and Fāris ibn Yūsuf ibn

Ibrāhīm al-Fākhūrī (d. 1301/1883) also composed badī‘iyyāt, substituting Jesus as the

poetic beloved of the poem. One of the latest badīʿiyyah Abū Zayd records in his

study was composed in the early twentieth-century by the North African writer

Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad `Abd al-Raḥmān al-Maghribī (d. 1340/1921). The

codified articulation of rhetorical standards had an impact on medieval literary styles

of scholarly prose writing.

Muʿtazila ideas which were prevalent at that time, 29. Stetkevych’s argument concerning a specific unit of analysis in Arabic poetics in a specific period of Arabo-Islamic literary history resonates with Hayden White’s broader discussion regarding the poetic and linguistic content deeply embedded in historical imagination demonstrated through writing. See Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). Also Thomas Bauer, “Die badīʿiyya des Nāṣīf al-Yāziǧī und das Problem der spätosmanischen arabischen Literatur,” Reflections on Reflections, ed. Neuwirth and Islebe, 49–118.

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It is important to mention that those who composed badī‘iyyāt were not

obscure, inaccessible names mentioned in marginalia and rarely cited by their

contemporaries; rather they include well-known figures of Islamic intellectual history

including Shaʿbān al-Āthārī (d. 828/1425), Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505),

‘Āʼishah bint Yūsuf ibn Ahmad al-Bāʻūniyyah (d. 922/1516), and ‘Abd al-Ghanī ibn

Ismā‘īl al-Nābulsī (d. 1144/1731). Each of the aforementioned individuals has written

important, if not foundational, texts of different disciplines.66 For that reason, I have

selected to analyze in this dissertation poems composed by these well-known figures

all of whom depend on al-Būṣīrī as their poetic predecessors.

Echoes of al-Būṣīrī’s Burdah reverberate not only in the form of al-Ḥillī’s

badī‘iyyah but also in the narratives about the occasion for the poets’ composition of

their odes. Like the inspiration story of al-Būṣīrī’s Burdah, the story of al-Ḥillī’s

Badī‘iyyah also involved illness, a desire for healing, and a dream vision.67 Both

poets are attributed to accounts of being afflicted by illness and a dream vision of the

Prophet when they resolved to write a poem about the Prophet. When they completed

their poems, the narratives relate that the poets consequently found themselves

healed.68 Considering the social significance for Muslims of claiming a dream vision

of the Prophet, the story surrounding the composition of a poem was almost as

66 See Abū Zayd’s appendix that includes a list of at least ninety-two badīʻiyyāt poems although there are possibly over three hundred, 351-358. 67 Ibid., 21-32. Also see Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, “From Jāhiliyyah to Badīʿiyyah: Orality, Literacy, and the Transformations of Rhetoric in Arabic Poetry,” Oral Tradition, 25.1 (2010): 220. 68 Abū Zayd, 17-18.

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important as the poem itself in establishing the poets’ sincerity, legitimizing their

innovativeness in writing, and popularizing the qaṣīdah form.69

The resulting volumes of commentaries on such poetry were also a literary

space for writers to perform their mastery of poetry as well as other kinds of

knowledge in friendship and rivalry with contemporary poets and scholars.70 Ibn

Ḥijjah al-Ḥamawī’s (d. 837/1434) Khizānat al-Adab, or The Treasure Trove of

Literature, is one example of a compendium in which the compiler not only offers

commentary on verses of poetry but on other contemporaries themselves.71

Regarding al-Ḥillī, al-Ḥamawī writes, "Ḥillī is of those [who posses] the refinement

of permissible magic [i.e., eloquence] with which he blew into the knots of pens."72

69 On the significance of dreams in among Muslim communities, see Özgen Felek and Alexander D. Knysh, Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012). Also see John C. Lamoreaux, The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002). 70 During the Mamlūk period, texts on balāghah and badī’ circulated as the foundational canon for studying the ‘ulūm al-‘arabiyya (Abū Zayd, 16). Unlike the views put forth by other literary scholars that the sole purpose of the badī‘iyyāt is purely ʻilmī or of disciplinary interest, Abū Zayd is convinced that the badī‘iyyāt reflect both spiritual and epistemological concerns on the part of their composers, 26. 71 See Taqī al-Dīn Abū Bakr ibn ʻAlī ibn Ḥijjah al-Ḥamawī, Khizānat al-Adab wa Ghāyat al-Arab (Bulāq: al-Maṭbaʻah al-Miṣrīyah, 1874). 72 See Abū Zayd, 27. Also see Ibn Ḥijjah al-Ḥamawī, 3. The translation is mine. The phrase siḥr ḥalāl or permissible magic is in reference to the following ḥadīth:

اإن من البیان لسحر in which eloquence is described figuratively as a form of sihr or enchantment. See Jami` at-Tirmidhi, Book 27, Ḥadīth 134. The image of blowing into knots is also connected to practices of pre-Islamic magic that is mentioned in the Qur’ān in Sūrah al-Falaq 113:4.

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Badīʿiyyah composers like Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī made transparent their

intentions to leave behind a work of devotion to the Prophet that also conveyed the

science of Arabic rhetoric. Al-Ḥillī wrote the following as his dedication: “To the

verses of an Ode which incorporates all forms of badī‘ and is embroidered with the

praise of his most elevated Honor.” In addition to the performative and pedagogical

functions of the poetic form, the subject of the badī‘iyyāt would lend its popularity to

a wider audience outside of the courts.

LITERATURE REVIEW This dissertation is possible in the light shed by the research and secondary literature

of scholars of Arabic literature, Islamic studies, literary history, and poetics. Critical

to this study is Jaroslav Stetkevych’s work particularly in The Zephyrs of Najd: The

Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Nasīb in which he explores the motifs of loss

and yearning in the ancient elegiac prelude. By looking at classical Arabic poetics

through a comparative, historical, and anthropological lens, Stetkevych facilitates the

study of the amatory prelude as a site of continuity in the later periods of Arabic-

Islamic literary production.

Stefan Sperl and Christopher Shackle’s two-volume Qaṣīdah Poetry in Asia

and Africa significantly widen the field of qaṣīdah studies by probing the reach and

limits of the qaṣīdah form’s influence in the wider Muslim literary worlds. Suzanne

Stetkevych’s work on the classical courtly panegyric and its deployment in shaping

and securing a poetics of legitimacy in The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy sheds light

on the continuity of the panegyric ode and its role in the ʻAbbāsid period.

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Furthermore, her work on The Mantle Odes reveals the shift in performance of

political allegiance and supplication of a material patron to a spiritual patron in al-

Madā`iḥ al-Nabawiyyah. Zakī Mubārak’s al-Madāʼiḥ al-Nabawiyyah fī al-Adab al-

ʻArabī is also invaluable in providing an overview and helpful chronology of a

continued transnational tradition rooted in the ancient qaṣīdah and transformed in

trope and motif. In the field of badī‘iyyāt studies, ‘Alī Abū Zayd’s critical study on

the historical development and influence of the badī‘iyyāt genre on Arabic literature

will remain of utmost importance for years to come and open the doors for further

critical inquiry of a literary tradition that has much to be explored. These scholars’

works on the form and function of the qaṣīdah as well as genre development help

advance analyses of its ancient conventions as sites of transformation.

Roger Allen and D.S. Richard’s edited volume on Arabic Literature in the

Post-Classical Period as well as Lowry and Stewart’s Essays in Arabic Literary

Biography makes sense of the cultural continuities over a period of five centuries that

had been traditionally neglected in the modern academy. ‘Umar Hasan Basha’s Al-

Adab al-ʻArabī fī ‘Aṣr al-Mamlūki offers an important overview of the arguments of

North American, European and Arab academics who were proponents of the concept

of the ‘Asr al-Inḥiṭāt. By offering a revised historiographical account of the medieval

period of Arabic and Islamic history, they shed light on primary sources have yet to

be translated, let alone studied by contemporary scholarship.

In terms of theoretical engagement with the literature, Muḥsin al-Musawi’s

Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition and The Medieval Islamic

Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction present unequivocally that the

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decadence thesis is patently false. The work offers a language with which to convey

to comparative literary studies the extent of breadth and depth of Arabic literary

production in the medieval period particularly through the theoretical articulation of a

republic of Arabic letters. Likewise, Edward Said’s Beginnings: Intention and

Method provides a valuable analysis for discerning the meaning-generating role of

beginning a text. His discussion on intentionality, in particular, aligns with how

medieval literary critics of adab themselves understand and theorize the capacity of a

prelude or prologue to convey meaning and purpose. His conclusions regarding the

absence of certain forms of medieval Arabic literature including autobiography and

literary criticism, however, are misleading and reflect his specialization as an English

literary scholar.

From here, I turn to the archives which Abū Zayd, Allen, al-Musawi and

others point to as having been neglected by academia including numerous devotional

and pedagogical Arabic poetry. Although many panegyrics dedicated to the Prophet

have yet to be studied, al-Būṣīrī’s Qaṣīdat al-Burdah has no dearth of English

translations and Arabic commentaries. On the other hand, only one complete pre-

modern commentary on the Burdah has been translated in English. Pierre Cachia’s

translation of ʻAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulsī's badīʿiyyah is also the only English

translation of a complete badīʻiyyah available. Thus, the partial translations of the

badīʻiyyāt by Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī, Shaʿbān al-Āthārī, ʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūniyyah, and

Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī are my own. With regard to Sufi wine odes, I will rely largely

on the translations of Homerin and Sells. While the academy has largely approached

such poetry as sources of Sufi thought, both scholars identify medieval commentaries

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that treat Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poetry as the subject of literary criticism in addition to Sufi

commentaries concerned with his philosophy. For this reason, I also read the Sufi

poetry of Ibn al-Fāriḍ in conversation with al-Būṣīrī as well as Ibn Dāniyāl’s (d.

646/1248) satirical poetry in order to present a literary analysis of the poets’ works as

they engage in a wide range of poetic techniques, narration, and Sufi themes.

OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS

The first chapter of the dissertation “Prelude Campsites: Space and Time in

Performative Remembrance” locates and establishes the thirteenth century ode within

the larger Arabic poetic legacy that extends to the ancient pre-Islamic period. As

conventional topoi, time and space structural ly constituted the amatory prelude from

the pre-Islamic period and continued into the post-classical period. The prelude of the

famous Qaṣīdat al-Burdah (trans. The Mantle Ode) by Muḥammad ibn Sa'īd al-Būsīrī

(d. 693/1294) exhibit how the amatory prelude is a site of innovation. The prelude

encapsulates the poet’s subjectivity through the affects of nostalgia for an absent

beloved and yearned-for past in association with shifting space and time. Working

within the classical form of the Arabic ode, al-Būṣīrī conveys the ancient poet’s

nostalgia by invoking the trope of the aṭlāl or abandoned campsite. The poet then

departs from the ancient space by entering the sacred city-space and historical time of

the Prophet signaling the poetic genre to which the ode belongs. By thematically

merging the sacred with love and desire, the prelude is a textual repository of cultural

memory and engages a far larger Muslim public and Arabophile literary networks.

The chapter considers how the prelude positions the audience as participants in the

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performance of collective remembrance and longing through associations with space

and time outside of the discursive borders of the imperial in courtly poetry. The

prelude continued to perform its classical function as a liminal space that transformed

as a shared experience of re-imagining the desert campsite as the past City of the

Prophet or the symbolic urban tavern offering pre-eternal wine of the Divine.

The second chapter “Prelude Beloveds: The Prophetic, the Divine, and the

Cursed in Sacred History” analyzes the discursive formation of sacred poetic

beloveds incorporated among the repertoire of ancient and classical beloveds in the

qaṣīdah prelude. In addition to the divine beloved, the Prophet Muḥammad is

prominently included among these poetic figures. During the rise and proliferation of

Sufi orders in the thirteenth century, the recurrence of the Prophet as a poetic beloved

and literary trope encountered little resistance among medieval Muslim litterateurs

although some critics debated the parameters of amatory language in reference to the

Prophet. Moreover, the discursive context of the embodiment and beauty of

Muḥammad as well as the nature of prophetic speech all contributed to the poetic

construction of the Prophetic beloved. The prolific production of Arabic literature

devoted to poeticizing Muḥammad as an exemplary beloved coincided with medieval

European Christian polemics on. the Prophet as morally and physically repugnant.73

Alongside the Prophet as a poetic beloved, medieval poets also wrote about the divine

73 See Miguel A. Palacios, Islam and the Divine Comedy (Routledge, 2013) or in the original Spanish as La Escatología Musulmana En La Divina Comedia: Seguida De La Historia Y Crítica De Una Polémica (Madrid: Instituto Hispano Arabe de Cultura, 1961). Also see Avinoam Shalem, Cesare M. Di, Heather Coffey, and Alberto Saviello, Constructing the Image of Muhammad in Europe (Berlin: W. De Gruyter, 2013).

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beloved in wine poetry. The Sufi poet Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 1235) engages the same poetic

motifs that constitute the wine ode as a genre in his poems about the Sufi way. He

constructs a lover of the divine who pines for the beloved in an urban tavern over pre-

eternal wine and in nostalgic remembrance of sacred time. The poetic construction of

the divine beloved as gendered feminine or masculine rather than gender-less elicited

debate among medieval jurists and theologians. Finally, Ibn Dāniyāl’s (d. 710/1310)

reference to Iblīs as a cursed beloved speaks to the familiarity the intended audience

would have with devotional poetry that enables the effectiveness of the poet’s satire.

The third chapter “The Subjective Prelude: Reading the Authorial Voice”

investigates the autobiographical component of the prelude as a dedicatory text as

well as a claim of departure from poetic predecessors. Within post-classical

devotional poetry, the authorial voice is most prominently deployed within the

prelude, although the lyric “I” is present throughout devotional poetry. The prelude is

the audience’s first encounter with the poet’s range of reading registers as well as the

poet’s persona and disposition. Unlike the autobiography as a formal genre in which

the author intentionally narrates a chronological self-history, the prelude offers what I

call an “autobiography of affect.” The poet communicates an autobiography of affect

by demonstration and incantation of the poetic persona on the occasion of composing

the poem. In particular, the self-reflectiveness of Sufi poetry illustrates and deploys

experiential transformation to exemplify for the spiritual aspirant the goals of the Sufi

path. I demonstrate idiosyncratic formalism in the poets’ works through a close

reading of the prelude verses of the badīʻiyyāt of Shaʿbān Al-Āthārī (d. 828/1425)

and Ṣafī Al-Dīn Al-Ḥillī (d. 750/1349) as well as the Tā’iyyah of ʻĀʼishah al-

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Bāʻūniyyah (d. 923/1517) against the Tā’iyyah – or Ode in ‘T’ – of Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d.

633/1235). Most noticeably, al-Bāʻūniyyah rhetorically incorporates the style of Ibn

al-Fāriḍ and critiques his construction of the lover who desires isolation rather than

social engagement. Her poetry raises questions about gender and the psychological

conflict between the poetic voice of the annihilating self and the performative

demonstration of a scholarly master.

The fourth chapter “The Pedagogical Prelude: At the Intersection of Poetry,

Criticism, and Literary Style” focuses on the pedagogical aims of the badīʿiyyāt

prelude and the latter’s demonstration of the concept of barāʻat al-istihlāl or

ingenious beginnings. Medieval literary critics defined and explicated barāʻat al-

istihlāl as a literary value during the Mamlūk period and onward. I interrogate the

intersection of poetry and literary criticism in the medieval Arabic-Islamic devotional

invocation that is the hallmark of medieval prolegomena. According to Ṣafī al-Dīn al-

Ḥillī (d. 1349), the introduction of a text – whether for poetry or a work of prose – is

the space in which an adept writer conveys the intention of the text. Written as

devotional invocations, the introduction to medieval texts are often demonstrations of

the self-conscious writer attempting to achieve the stylistic standards defined by their

contemporary literary critics. Writers thus deployed the prolegomenon not only to

secure a text’s barakah or blessings but also to perform their stylistic prowess in

order to create an initial impression as a literary writer. Thus, the introductions to

even prose texts can be read as a display of incredible self-consciousness on the part

of the scholarly writer to fulfill the rhetorical expectations badīʿiyyāt poetry demands.

A particularly revealing example of the intersection of medieval prolegomenon

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aesthetics, poetic consciousness, and authorial flare can be read in the introduction to

al-Ghayth al-Musajjam fī Sharḥ Lāmiyat al-ʿAjam by the litterateur Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-

Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363), a contemporary of al-Ḥillī. Finally, by closely reading the

introductions of classical literary works outside of Arabic literature in light of barāʻat

al-istihlāl, I demonstrate that the badīʿiyyāt serve to articulate Arabic literary theory

and criticism.

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CHAPTER ONE PRELUDE CAMPSITES: SPACE AND TIME IN THE POETICS OF REMEMBRANCE

فما لعینیك إن قلت اكففا ھمتا وما لقلبك إن قلت استفق یھم

What is the matter with your eyes, that when you tell them to refrain, They only weep more? And your heart? – when you try to rouse it, It only becomes more bewildered.74

— Muḥammad ibn Saʻīd al-Būṣīrī (d. 693/1294), The Mantle Ode

I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing.

— T. S. Eliot (d. 1965), Preludes

According to medieval Arabic rhetoricians, an ingenious beginning is a well-crafted

opening—whether an invocation or prelude in poetic or prose form—that creatively

indicates through diction and imagery the intent and literary abilities of the writer and

the work’s subject matter, and orients the reader in terms of method in approaching

the text.75 On the other hand, the amatory prelude of the Arabic-Islamic qaṣīdah is

qualitatively different from the medieval Arabic-Islamic prolegomena organized

according to a tripartite structure of the basmalah or the invocation of the divine 74 Aziza Spiker’s translation of Imām Sharaf al-Dīn al-Būṣīrī, The Burdah with the Mudariyya and the Muḥammadiyya (Guidance Media, 2012), 4. Also see Suzanne P. Stetkevych, The Mantle Odes: Arabic Praise Poems to the Prophet Muhammad (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), 93. 75 I will return to this point on how rhetoricians defined a well-crafted beginning of a text and its impact on writing style in Chapter Four.

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name, ḥamdalah or the invocation of divine praise, and ṣalawāt or the invocation of

prayers on the Prophet. The qaṣīdah is composed and constructed within a distinct

literary genealogy that contributes to its unique structural components. In prose

introductions, medieval writers like Abū al-Faraj ʻAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʻAlī Ibn al-

Jawzī (d. 597/1200) in Taqwīm al-Lisān76 or Ibn Ḥijjah al-Ḥamawī’s (d. 837/1434) in

Khizānat al-Adab exercise and perform their rhetorical skill and semantic knowledge

through wordplay, figurative language, and rhyming prose within the conventional

three part form of the prose introduction.

Post-classical poets, on the other hand, achieve barāʻat al-istihlāl through

reconfiguring the ancient topoi of the qaṣīdah prelude. Regarding the purpose of the

amatory prelude, Aḥmad Ibn `Ajība (d. 1224/1809) says, “The wisdom … is that they

stir the listener and evoke yearning in the heart for the object of praise.”77 Poets

deploy and transform the conventions of space and time; the characters of the lover,

the beloved, and their accompanying love critics; and the affects of the lyric “I” and

nostalgia through their unique poetic styles in order to create a distinct emotional

landscape, convey the psyche of the poet, and set the tone of the poem. Thus, adding

to the al-Ḥillī’s analysis of the difference between the introductions of prose and

poetry, I would argue that the major distinguishing characteristic of the amatory

76 See Ibn al-Jawzī, Taqwīm Al-Lisān (al-Qāhirah: Dār al-Maʻrifah, 1983), 55. 77 See Aḥmad ibn ‘Ajiba al-Ḥasani, The Mainstay: A Commentary on Qasida al-Burda, trans. Abdul Aziz Suraqah (Keighley: Abu Zahra Press 2015), 1.

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prelude is one of affect.78 More specifically, poets invoke love and nostalgia through

distinct constructions of time and space.

During the Mamlūk period, there was a prolific outpouring of different forms

of Arabic literary production that included devotional poetry.79 The post-classical

period was witness to the rise of Sufi Orders and concomitant development and

increasing popularity of Arabic devotional Sufi poetry and al-Madā’iḥ al-

Nabawiyyah, in particular. This poetry plays a significant role in sustaining the

medieval Islamic republic of letters in which its composers, audiences, competitive

respondents, and participating interlocutors performatively imagined and recollected

an idealized past and place constructed and referenced within the prelude itself.80 The

78 By affect, I mean non-verbal communication that elicits emotional and sensual reception and response. Ibn Wahb al-Katib (d. 335/946-947) comes closest to contemporary notions of affect theory when he defines the non-verbal aspect of effective communication as that which “is the speech of things by its essences without spoken language.” The translation is mine. See Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm Kātib, Al-Burhān fī Wujūh al-Bayān (Cairo: Maktabat al-Shabāb, 1969), 56. On modern affect theory, see Silvan Tomkins, Affect Imagery Consciousness: The Complete Edition (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2008); Kathleen Stewart, Ordinary Affects (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007); and Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotions, Second Edition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014). 79See Muhsin al-Musawi, “The Republic of Letters: Arab Modernity? Part II,” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2.1 (2014): 115-130. 80 I am using the term “performatively” to emphasize the oral and spoken aspect of such Arabic poetry – and particularly the prelude – and the imagined or real presence of an audience. The poetic form begs to be recited out loud before an audience in order to convey the poem’s full effect and affect. As a speech act, the prelude confirms the identity of the poetic voice, particularly in devotional poetry, as a lover. In this genre of poetry, form is as significant as content in terms of invoking longing for the beloved. I am considering the poetic voice of the “lover” as not only a speech act but also an identity that can be described as performative especially as the lover is repetivitely constituted within the prelude through poetic conventions of nostlagia. To borrow from Judith Butler on the performativity of gender, the lover “is an

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amatory prelude of al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah,81 in particular, can be read as a site of

continuity, innovative poetics, and subjectivity-formation deeply rooted and

developed within the Arabic-Islamic literary imagination. Like the pre-Islamic

amatory prelude, the post-classical prelude arguably functions as a liminal space, or

threshold, in which the invocation and provocation of nostalgia is a unifying shared

experience that readers-audiences are impelled to pass through in order to enter the

subject of the larger poetic ode. Although a critical site of nostalgia, the relevance of

the structures of feeling embedded in the prelude was lost on many Arab-African-

Asian modernists,82 a point that al-Musawi raised and that I take as a starting point for

considering the ramifications and significance of spatiality and temporality in the

prelude poetics of devotional poetry.

AN OVERVIEW OF THE CLASSICAL ARABIC ODE

The qaṣīdah or Arabic ode has persisted and transformed through changing eras of

empires and aesthetics. An investigation of the qaṣīdah encounter with other Muslim

cultures and languages such as Swahili in East Africa and Bahasa in Southeast Asia

identity tenuously constituted in time – an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts.” Moreover, the lover is “a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe.” See Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal, 40.4 (1988): 519-520. 81 The prophetic encomia, or al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah, are considered as a distinct genre of poetry that also includes the badī’iyyāt as a subgenre. They are panegyric odes dedicated to Muhammad and are one of the most often recited forms of Arabic poetry up to today. 82 See al-Musawi, “The Republic of Letters: Arab Modernity? Part I,” 265-280.

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further illustrate the impact of the transformation and adaptation of the qaṣīdah and

its conventions in other literary traditions as well as the impact of those cultures on

the Arabic qaṣīdah.83

The different functions of the qaṣīdah were explored at length by classical

literary scholars like Ibn Qutaybah (d. 276/885) who is known for his description of

the form of the panegyric ode.84 The Arabic ode, much like other poetic traditions of

the ancient world, has been composed as praise (madḥ) or, in reverse, as satire (hijā’);

as mournful elegy (rithā’) for the dead; and as a boast (fakhr) of conquests and

victories.85 One of the most popular forms of qaṣīdah composition commissioned and

presented to courtly patrons during the `Umayyad and ʻAbbāsid periods was the

madīḥ or the panegyric and the rithā’ or elegy.86 The central figure of the ancient

Arabic ode was celebrated or memorialized through extended narratives about the

subject’s martial valor such as that of `Antarah ibn Shaddād (d. 608), sexual

adventures such as that of Imru’ al-Qays (d. 544), and displays of socially valued

virtues such as hospitality and generosity such as that of Ḥātim al-Ṭā’ī (d. 578).

The tripartite structure of the early qaṣīdah, which emerged from the pre-

Islamic period and continued to survive in the classical period, usually consisted of

83 Sperl, Qaṣīdah Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa, xv–xxvi. 84 See Ibn Qutaybah, Kitāb Al-Shiʻr wa al-Shuʻarāʼ.. 85 See Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasīb. Stetkevych offers three theories of structure to the tripartite qaṣīdah showing that each structure is interdependent, 1–26. 86 See Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode, 80.

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three thematic movements including the amatory prelude known as the nasīb; the

depiction of the rider’s mount on an adventurous journey known as the raḥīl; and the

poet’s self-boast known as fakhr or celebratory praise of a patron known as the

madīḥ.87 According to Jaroslav Stetkevych, who takes a utilitarian rhetorical approach

to poetics as craft, these are the three main nuclei of the qaṣīdah in which the theme

of loss and yearning in the prelude is crucial.88 This tripartite structure of the qaṣīdah

was not, however, rigidly followed over the course of the pre-Islamic, `Umayyad, and

ʻAbbāsid periods. For example, the bipartite nasīb-madīḥ form dominated the

ʻAbbāsid panegyric. Another example of a departure from the tripartite qaṣīdah

structure apart from the Mu`allaqāt89 is the famous pre-Islamic ode by Shanfarā

known as Lāmiyyat al-`Arab (trans. The Arabian Ode in “L”). The poem opens with

the following verses:

ي صدور مطیكمأقیموا بني أم فإني إلى قوم سواكم ألمیل

Get up the chests of your camels and leave, sons of my mother I lean to a tribe other than you.90

87 See Renate Jacobi’s argument in Stefan Sperl and C. Shackle, Qaṣīdah Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1996), 21–31. 88 See in Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasīb. 89 The Mu‘allaqāt (i.e., The Suspended Odes) or the Mudhahhabāt (i.e., The Golden Odes) refer to seven famous pre-Islamic odes reported to have been written in gold and hung inside the Ka‘bah in Makkah as a reward and tribute to their composers’ eloquence. 90 Translation by Michael Sells, Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (Middletown, CN: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), 21-31. The poem is included in the eighth-century anthology al-Mufaḍḍaliyāt. Some scholars speculate that the poem

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The poem does not begin with the nasīb convention of weeping before a tribe’s

abandoned campsite; rather, the poet begins with a call to leave the tribe.

As the qaṣīdah moved through time and different spaces—from the desert to

ancient urban centers of trade, newly developed institutions of learning and power,

and the use of paper to record poetry—the qaṣīdah fluidly took on other forms and

birthed new genres and subgenres of poetry that led to the beginnings of dīwāns or

collections of poetry. Gradually leaving behind the descriptions of beasts of the desert

characteristic to the raḥīl section in which the poet-persona undertakes harrowing

journeys filled with metaphorical allusions, poets extended the lyrical nasīb to

become a single standing poem or crafted different odes around the same poetic

beloved and abandoned campsite.91 Moreover, the qaṣīdah did not strictly remain

within one genre without inscribing elements from another. The poetry of al-

Mutanabbī (d. 354/965), for example, famously exhibits the poet’s ability to praise

himself while also reproducing prelude longing, celebratory praise and gentle rebuke

– sometimes enfolded in one. In the prelude to one of his many odes dedicated to

Sayf al-Dawlah (d. 356/967), al-Mutanabbī writes,

واحر قلباه ممن قلبھ شبم

is an Umayyad forgery. See Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, “Archetype and Attribution in Early Arabic Poetry: Al-Shanfara and the Lāmiyyat Al-ʿArab,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18.3 (1986): 361–390. 91 The poetry of al-Mutanabbī (d. 354/965), for example, reproduced the nasīb and madīḥ. For examples of the camel-section, see Jacobi’s “The Camel-Section of the Panegyrical Ode” for a detailed structural analysis of the changes within the qaṣīdah form over four periods, 21–22.

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وحالي عنده سقمومن بجسمي

ما لي أكتم حبا قد برى جسدي وتدعي حب سیف الدولة األمم

My heart is aflame for one whose heart is cold And for whom my body and state has fallen ill

And yet why do I conceal a love that has consumed my body When the rest of the world feigns love for Sayf-Al-Dawlah?92

In the above verses, the love-trial of the poet and the beloved for whom he pines for is

clearly pronounced in the prelude. The raḥīl section is minimal in comparison to the

verses of longing, loving praise, and rebuke that begin and end the poem.

What remains an important component to the ode is the transformative

journey initiated by the prelude in which an audience is enlisted to join and carried

through until the end of the ode. Thus, the recognition of the possibilities of an

audience’s transformation is embedded in the function of the ode to serve as a form of

supplication, diplomatic exchange, and gift giving as well as a means to convince and

legitimize power.93 This also continued from the early classical to the medieval

period. One of the most famous examples representing the diplomatic role of the

medieval devotional ode is during the episode when Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) met the

feared and powerful Mongol ruler Timūr (d. 1405) – known in English literature as

92 The translation is mine. Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Mutanabbī, Poems of Al-Mutanabbī, trans. A.J. Arberry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 71. 93 This is Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych’s larger argument in The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode,

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Tamerlane. Over a period of forty-eight days and in thirty-five meetings, Timūr met

with various scholars of Damascus and among whom was the North African Ibn

Khaldūn.94 In a moment described as “no better instance of the complexity of the

politics of medieval and premodern Islamic cultural life,”95 Timūr is described as

having inquired of Ibn Khaldūn of the latter’s vast knowledge of the Islamic west.

During their meetings, Ibn Khaldūn reportedly gifted Timūr al-Būṣīrī’s Qaṣīdat al-

Burdah.96 The a narrative related to the Qaṣīdat al-Burdah literally being offered to a

feared ruler exists, regardless of its historical truth, indicates that the ode was

believed to be a means of intercession and could be offered with the intent of quelling

the potential violence that could be inflicted by the hand of a powerful ruler like

Timūr.

THE AMATORY PRELUDE: CONTINUITIES OF A CONVENTION The persistence of the performative nasīb and the orality of poetry attest to the critical

role of the audience. The lyricism of the nasīb or amatory prelude, although it

remained within the post-classical and modern Arabic ode as a convention that

94 See the excerpt of “Timūr’s Debate with the Damascene Theologians Outside the Gates of Damascus” in Muhsin al-Musawi, The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, 313-322. 95 Ibid., 21. 96 See Sharaf al-Dīn Abī ʿAbd-Allah Muḥammad al-Būṣīrī, Burdat al-Madīḥ al-Mubārakah (Abu Dhabi: Dār al-Faqīh, 2001),12. Also see Ibn Khaldūn and Walter J. Fischel, Ibn Khaldūn and Tamerlane: Their Historic Meeting in Damascus 1401 A.D. (803 A. H.) a Study Based on Arabic Manuscripts of Ibn Khaldūn's "Autobiography," (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952). For a historical fictional account of Ibn Khaldūn’s life, see Roger Allen’s translation of Ben Salem Himmich, The Polymath (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2009).

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represents a “vestige of the past,”97 also underwent rhetorical shifts reflective of

discursive and disciplinary developments as well as transformations outside the text.

Jaroslav Stetkevych, who has written on the amatory prelude as both theme and

poem, likens the prelude to the sonata form.98 As such, he says that the prelude theme

of the abandoned encampment, or aṭlāl, establishes the tone upon which the rest of

the poem is harmonically dependent.99 Stetkevych’s conceptualization of the role of

the prelude is consistent with Ibn `Ajība’s eighteenth century commentary on the

prelude of the Burdah. He writes,

The nostalgic rhapsody evokes feelings in the soul and softens the heart when heard. It provides extra energy for listening, and no sooner does the poet finish it and continue the panegyric that souls are collected, hearts softened, and bodies stilled. When this is achieved, the praise leaves a deep impression and powerful impact. It is akin to the plucking of lute strings and the striking of drums that take place before a song is sung…100

That established tone is exactly what medieval Arabic rhetoricians indicate as crucial

to the trope barāʿat al-istihlāl — or felicitous beginnings — which will be discussed

further in the chapter four. In the case of the qaṣīdah, the poet who fulfills the

demands of barāʿat al-istihlāl encapsulates the significance of the poem, attracts, and

guides the reader-audience through a deft poetic hand.

97 See Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasīb, 50. Also see Hussein Kadhim, The Poetics of Anti-Colonialism in the Arabic Qaṣīdah (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2004). 98 Ibid., 16, 79. 99 Ibid., 20. In another analysis-by-metaphor, Jaroslav Stetkevych explains that the amatory prelude is the first act of a three-act play in which the emotional drama of the qaṣīdah is performed and transmitted to the audience. 100 Ibn `Ajība, The Mainstay, 4.

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Conventionally infused with erotic language, the prelude of the ancient

qaṣīdah begins with a beloved – usually a beautiful woman and later young man or

boy. Through the description of the beloved and the performance of the poet-lover’s

trials, the poet is able to provoke the audience’s interest and draw their attention to

the poet before introducing the main subject of the ode, who could be a warrior or

tribal chief. The ancient prelude beloveds were not hidden, allegorically implied, or

signified through associative signposts; rather, they were often unabashedly and

directly identified by name.

Although a common motif, the poetic beloveds of the qaṣā’id are never the

same.101 Unlike the beloveds of Imru’ al-Qays in his Mu`allaqah102 who are

constructed as unstable by way of the poet’s reference to a multiplicity of lovers in

the prelude – `Unayzah, Umm al-Ḥuwayrith and Umm al-Rabāb — and by way of the

rhythm of the poet’s ṭawīl meter, the departure of the imagined singular beloved

named Suʿād in Kaʿb ibn Zuhayr’s (d. 41/662) Bānat Suʿād portrays the departure of

the lover’s happiness and comfort and the resulting need for intercession as it is

expressed in the poem.103 Considered the first mantle ode, Kaʿb ibn Zuhayr

composed the ode as a panegyric seeking the Prophet Muḥammad’s intercession and

101 I analyze the genesis and constitution of the beloved in devotional poetry – particularly the poetics of the Prophet as a beloved – in further detail in the following chapter. 102 For an extensive study on the poem, see Adnan F. Haydar’s dissertation The Mu'allaqah of Imru'al-Qays: Its Structure and Meaning; A Contribution to the Study of Pre-Islamic Poetry, University of California, San Diego, 1977. 103 Hamdi ben Eissa, “Adab and al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah,” Private Lecture, 20 June 2016. Rhoda Institute, Ottawa.

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protection from being a targeted enemy of the young Muslim community.104 Instead

of beginning with a prayerful invocation addressing the divine and supernatural,

which occurs during the classical and post-classical period, Kaʿb’s opening verses are

reflective of the pre-Islamic style of qaṣīdah composition. Thus, the ode opens with

the poet-lover’s lament over the departure of a beloved woman named Suʿād as in the

following verse:

بانت سعاد فقلبي الیوم متبول متیم إثرھا لم یفد مكبول

Suʿād is gone, my heart stunned Lost in her traces, shackled and unransomed.105

The poet identifies the beloved of the prelude by name, and she is invoked as having

left the poet heartbroken. She, however, is not ostensibly the subject of the panegyric

for whom it is dedicated. Although later mystical preludes allegorize the body, that is

not entirely the case in the ancient prelude.106 Literary historians debate whether

104 The ode is referred to as a “mantle ode” because after the recitation of the poem, it is narrated that the Prophet Muhammad gifted Ka’b the poet his mantle as a sign of the prophet’s acceptance of the poem, protection, and allegiance. Al-Būṣīrī reports dreaming of the Prophet performing this very same gesture for him while writing his most famous poem known affectionately as the Burdah or “the mantle.” For a study on the mantle odes of Arabic literature, see Suzanne Stetkevych’s The Mantle Odes: Arabic Praise Poems to the Prophet Muhammad. For a list of commentaries on al-Būṣīrī’s Burdah, see Ibn-Ḥajar al-Haytamī, Al-ʻUmdah fī Sharḥ Al-Burdah (Dubai: Dār al-Faqīh, 2003), 38-45. 105 Translation from Michael Sells, “Bānat Suʿād: Translation and Introduction,” Journal of Arabic Literature 21.2 (1990): 148. 106 Ibid., 69.

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Suʿād is an actual historical figure.107 Regarding the description of Suʿād, Yūsuf

Ismāʻīl Nabhānī (d. 1932) argues in his multi-volume collection of al-Madāʼiḥ al-

Nabawīyah that it is an example of what is not appropriate for a poem dedicated to

the Prophet.108

On the other hand, if we assume that the poet is not flippant in his naming of

the beloved, the beloved Suʿād can be read as the figurative personification of the

literal meaning of the word (i.e., happiness) and thus signifying the emotional state

the poet wants to convey as being lost to him.109 This suggests a poetic association of

the beloved with the subject of praise – that is, happiness has departed due to the

displeasure of Muḥammad and can only be attained if the poem as a supplication for

prophetic intercession is effective. Once the poet-lover and the readers-audience cross

the prelude threshold, they must travel across treacherous physical terrain before

encountering the Prophet, initiating praise of him, and seeking his intercession.

Between the pathos of the departure of Suʿād in the prelude and the ecstatic praise of

107 Albert Arazi, "Le Narratif dans le Nasīb de Bānat Su'ād," Quaderni Di Studi Arabi 5.6 (2010): 75-88. 108 Yūsuf Ismāʻīl Nabhānī, Al-Majmūʻa al-Nabhānīyah fī al-Madāʼiḥ al-Nabawīyah Volume 1 (Bayrūt: Dār al-maʻrifah, 1974). 109 Hamdi ben Eissa, “Can al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah be considered adab?” Private Lecture, 20 June 2016. Rhoda Institute, Ottawa. Also see Suzanne P. Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 2011).

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arrival at the feet of the Prophet is a far greater distance in imagined time and space in

Kaʿb ibn Zuhayr’s early panegyric than later post-classical prophetic encomia.110

SPATIALITY AND TEMPORALITY IN THE PRELUDE: THE AṬLĀL AS PLACES OF LOST BLISS The symbolic register of the erotic prelude continues to survive within the qaṣīdah

through the aṭlāl, or “places of lost bliss.”111 They constitute the dominant motif of

the amatory prelude, which Jaroslav Stetkevych translates as the lyric-elegiac prelude

for its lyrical tone as well as elegiac landscape of “things irrecoverable.”112 For

example, the following opening verses of one variation of the prelude to the

Mu‘allaqah of ‘Anṭarah ibn Shaddād al-‘Absī (d.15/608) illustrate the poet-lover

before the abandoned home of the beloved ʿAblah:

عراء من متردم ھل غادر الشتوھمأم ھل عرفت الدار بعد

م ار لم یتكلـ أعیاك رسم الد حتى تكلم كاألصـم األعجـم

Have the poets left a single spot for the patch to be sewn,

Or did you recognize the abode after long meditation?

110 For example, see the encomium of ʻĀʼishah bint Yūsuf Bāʻūniyyah’s (d.923/1516) in Sharḥ al-Badīʻiyyah al-Musammāh bi al-Fatḥ al-Mubīn fī Madḥ al-Amīn (Damascus: Rand lil-Ṭibāʻah wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʻ, 2010). 111 Jaroslav Stetkevych situates the qaṣīdah in a larger corpus of lyric poetry in The Zephyrs of Najd, xi–xii. 112 Ibid., 79.

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The vestige of the house, which did not speak, confounded you, Until it spoke by means of signs, like one deaf and dumb.113

The prelude, rather than being a declarative space of clarity, invites the audience to an

interrogative space of open ambiguity in which the poet’s subjectivity—the lover’s

trial—is foregrounded and where signposts of place and time as well as intimations of

the ode’s subject are embedded. The qaṣīdah of ‘Antarah begins with a series of two

interrogative statements opening with the interrogative vocative hal and separated as

parallel statements by the particle am. The first is a question that calls attention to the

absence of the inhabitants, which in this case are identified as poets. The second

question addresses the second-person “you,” which can function as an address to two

audiences – the first being the introspective self and the second being the lover’s

113 Also see ʻAntarah ibn Shaddad, Diwān ʻAntarah: Taḥqīq wa-Dirāsah: Dirāsah ʻIlmīyah Muḥaqqaqah ʻalā Sitt Nusakh Makhṭūṭah, ed. Muḥammad S. Mawlawī (Bayrūt: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1983). The above translation is by A. J. Arberry, The Seven Odes: The First Chapter in Arabic Literature (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1957), 148–84. Arberry’s translation is of one variation of the ode in which two more verses are included before the address to Dār ʿAblah. Michael Sells, on the other hand, translates the verses from another variation as follows:

عراء من متردم ھل غادر الشھل عرفت الدار بعد توھم أم

یا دار عبلة بالجواء تكلمي

وعمي صباحا دار عبلة واسلمي

Have the poets left anywhere in need of patching? Or did you, after imaginings, recognize her abode? O abode of ‘Ablah in Jiwā,’ speak (to me)! Morning greetings, O abode of ‘Ablah, and be safe from ruin!

In this variation, the beloved is identified in the second verse as the master of the home now abandoned and in ruin. See Michael Sells, Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (Middletown, CN: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), 48.

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addressee and wider audience collectively participating in an act of recollection and

recognition with the poet.

Nonverbal objects and apparently non-sentient signs — indicated by the

phrase rasm al-dār or “the vestige of the house” — inhabit the space of the

abandoned encampment. When the addressee perceives only the abandoned home as

a nonverbal material structure, it is confounding and useless; however, when the

addressee perceives meaning conveyed by the nonverbal space as sign and symbol, it

begins to “speak” without words “like one deaf and dumb” and signifies meaning “by

means of signs.” Within ‘Antarah’s verses, the poet is indeed before the physical

abandoned campsite; later, however, the prelude occasions “poetic deflection from

eye sight to insight,” particularly in later devotional poetry when the material

approximations of the beloved are infused with ideas of the sacred and become tropes

by way of the regularity of the motifs.114 The persistent questioning and recalibrating

of the poetic voice within ‘Antarah’s prelude not only opens up a space of ambiguity

but also imbues that space with symbolic power in its heightened significance through

nostalgia and memory. In other words, the poetic voice that emerges within the

prelude immediately associates nostalgia and love to material nonverbal sites. The

formation of a space’s symbolic meaning occurs alongside the development of the

poem’s interiority and the moment the reader-audience experiences an explosion of

feeling. Like an engineer manipulating the flow of water after the bursting of a dam,

114 Al-Musawi, Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, 302.

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the skilled qaṣīdah composer deftly directs that initial powerful release of sentiment

provoked by the prelude throughout the ode.

The amatory prelude offers a window into the structures of feeling the poets

invoke in every period.115 By the eleventh century, amatory prelude themes of pre-

Islamic lamentations over abandoned campsites had transformed and were replaced

by other sites reflecting a symbolic openness including nostalgia for homeland

invoked by the names of cities such as Madīnah as well as desire for the divine

invoked by the tavern and the cupbearer pouring wine in mystical poetry.116 Thus,

claims of medieval stagnation and imitation mentioned earlier certainly do not hold

up before the innovative transformations within the poetic space of the prelude itself,

let alone the entirety of the qaṣīdah form and its emerging genres. The other classical

prelude trope that also continued to persist in post-classical poetics is the trope of the

beloved for whom the poet yearns and will be discussed at length in the following

chapter. The prelude’s evocation of a past or elusive love is a hallmark of the pre-

Islamic qaṣīdah. ‘Antarah’s love for ʿAblah, despite his status as a slave, was

legendary and immortalized in the Ode. ‘Antarah claims,

ولقـد نزلت فال تظني غیـره منـي بمنـزلة المحب المكـرم

115 See Raymond Williams, “Structures of Feeling,” Marxism and Literature (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1977), 128-135. 116 See The Zephyrs of Najd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasīb, 77. Also see Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, 290.

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Indeed you have settled (in my heart) so do not entertain another Other than me in the place of a noble lover.117

The verb nazalti in reference to the action of the beloved means the beloved has

occupied, rested, descended upon, or settled within a space. In the context of the

poem, the beloved occupies the space of the lover’s consciousness or metaphysical

heart. The heart mirrors the physical space of the desert campsite and its tents as if

love is embodied and resides in a location. Once the beloved occupies the site of the

heart, the lover suggests that another figure cannot occupy that same “space” – what

is referred to as manzilat al-muḥibb – without uplifting and replacing the occupant

already settled there. Moving back and forth between physical and metaphysical

space, the prelude plays with notions of the material, immaterial, and its coexisting

significance.

Moreover, the prelude maintains that the objects present in the abandoned

space that once shared or witnessed the beloved’s presence are immediately

perceptible and more visible than the description of the beloved-subject’s body absent

from the campsite. As a given, each material object is an artifact of memory

representing a semiotics of lost love and the erotic tension of a touch desired but

which the lover is unable to attain. Moreover, the poet insists these objects are

sensible. Touched and inhabited witnesses of the beloved, they are subject to the

lover’s jealousy and rivalry that continues within addresses to the earth of Madīnah

and the Prophet’s grave in the al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah. Within the prelude, the

pleasure and pain of the erotic memory is carefully constructed and later ecstatically 117 This translation is my own.

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dispelled in the madīḥ sections in which joyful praise of a heroic character, a

powerful conqueror, a majestic ruler, or a generous patron is expressed.118

Unlike the amatory prelude of the al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah, the pre-Islamic

and early classical prelude did not necessarily inform the audience of the subject of

the entire qaṣīdah; rather, as mentioned before, the nasīb’s discourse focusing on a

young, desirable woman or boy was a convention of classical poetics regardless of the

subject. In other words, the subject to which a panegyric was dedicated and the

beloved of the prelude opening that same panegyric are, on the surface, two different

individuals. The prelude indicates to its audiences the commencement of the ode and

draws their attention to the poet-lover through the familiar and accessible affects of

intimacy with the invoked beloved. The prelude, furthermore, allowed for poets to

introduce themselves and for the audience to dwell momentarily with the trials and

experiences of the lover-poet before moving on to the ode’s subject of praise (or

blame). In the panegyric of al-Buḥturī (d. 284/897) for example, the praise of his new

patron the ʻAbbāsid Caliph Muntaṣir (d. 248/862) comes after the following prelude

verses:

م عن واضح ذي أشر تبس وتنظر من فاتر ذي حور

وتھتز ھزة غصن األراك عارضھ نشر ریح خصر

ومما یبدد لب الحلیم

118 See Jaroslav Stetkevych, “Toward an Arabic Elegiac Lexicon: Seven Words of the Nasīb,” Reorientations: Arabic and Persian Poetry, Ed. Suzanne P. Stetkevych (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 58-129.

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حسن القوام، وفتر النظر

وما أنس ال أنس عھد الشباب وعلوة إذ عیرتني الكبر

She smirks with teeth, white and serrated

And gazes with eyes dark and languid

She sways like the bough of an Arak tree Swept from the side by cool zephyrs

Among the scenes that stir the heart of a staid man

Are a graceful figure and a languid gaze

Though I forget, I will not forget the years Of youth and ʿAlwa when old age rebuked me.119

The verses of al-Buḥturī’s prelude mentions the beloved’s name `Alwa rather

explicity state that the subject of the panegyric is the ruling Caliph himself. Al-

Buḥturī draws in his audience with a description conveying the desirability of

ʿAlwa’s body. The stark contrast between the whiteness of her teeth and darkness of

her eyes are conventional descriptions of beautiful bodies. Her body is illustrated

before her audience as graceful and supple, and it is significant that she is noted for

her ability to catch the attention of the most composed and grave of individuals—a

description that could also be directed toward the poet’s potential audience members

including al-Buḥturī’s patron the caliph and the caliph’s court. The lover-poet situates

both the woman’s body and the audience-reader in the space of the familiar—the

metaphorical natural terrain of the familiar Arak tree and zephyr winds. The poet

119 The ode is constructed along a mutaqārib meter. Translation by Samer Ali, Arabic Literary Salons in the Islamic Middle Ages: Poetry, Public Performance, and the Presentation of the Past (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 141–142.

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nostalgically directs attention to the past by referring to loss of memory when he

states “though I forget, I will not forget,” making an exception for youth. In this case,

the poet associates sexual virility and tempestuousness with youth as indicated by

“old age’s” critical view of youth.

This is significant because the memory of youth is both inextricably linked to

an erotic memory—to ʿAlwa—and distinguished by the poet from all other kinds of

memories. This also immediately establishes an intimacy and rapport of familiarity

between poet and audience before the poet formally introduces his subject of praise

who, by virtue of status and political power, would be a far more inaccessible and

distant figure. Here, the prelude is a site of shared experience in which the poet’s

patron is also included. The poet, through the prelude, initially forgoes an overt

performance of deference to power for a performance of sameness through the

invocation of erotic desire.

The persistence of the amatory prelude and continuity of the motif of the

ruined desert campsite was not lost on urban poets like Abū Nuwās (d.199/814). In

the following verses, he mocks poets’ continued use of the classical ruined desert

campsite motif in spite of their new urbanized context within cosmopolitan Baghdad.

He writes in his diwān,

عاج الشقي على دار یسائلھا وعجت أسأل عن خمارة البلد

The lovelorn wretch stopped at a deserted camping-ground to question it

And I stopped to enquire after the local tavern.120

120 See Diwan Des Abu Nowas: Nach Der Wiener Und Berliner Handschrift, Mit Benutzung Anderer Handschriften, ed. W Ahlwardt, (Greifswald: C.A. Koch, 1861).

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In this opening verse, the classical image of al-shaqiyy or lovelorn wretch is

conventionally associated with the site of the dār or abandoned desert campsite in the

first hemistitch. The classicity of that image is emphasized by its juxtaposition with

the image of the second hemistitch that introduces the poet who prefers the city tavern

in contradistinction with the lover wandering in the desert. The site of satirical

yearning, the tavern provides the poet with wine, shelter, and sociability as the urban

replacement for a desert poetics of nostalgia for the absent beloved that the poet does

not seek to emulate nor invite his audience to emulate. The site of the tavern also does

not remain a stable symbol; rather, the Sufi poets also repurpose the space of the

tavern and the image of the cupbearer in the mystical khamriyyāt or wine poetry.

I will now turn specifically to the poetics of time and space within the post-

classical amatory prelude of al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah, one of the most recited

forms of Arabic poetry to the present day and consider the multiple poetic registers

through which post-classical audiences would have received them.

A DIFFERENT CAMPSITE IN THE POST-CLASSICAL PRELUDE The prophetic encomia or al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah (sing. madīḥ nabawiyy) are a

genre of panegyric dedicated to the Prophet Muḥammad (d. 11/632) and were first

composed in Arabic during his lifetime, including the ode composed by his

contemporary Kaʿb ibn Zuhayr that was mentioned earlier. Some of the madā’iḥ are

composed in the more formal qaṣīdah style while others are composed as

Translation by Reynold Nicholson, Translations of Eastern Poetry and Prose (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 33.

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muwashshaḥāt or strophic poetry. Although it is not the case in Kaʿb ibn Zuhayr’s

ode to the Prophet, the aṭlāl and the beloved of the prelude of the medieval Madā’iḥ

al-Nabawiyyah immediately distinguish the genre from other genres of Arabic poetry.

In chapter two, I will explain in greater detail the invocation of the Prophet as beloved

that is central to the development of this genre.

During the post-classical period, an important subgenre of prophetic encomia

known as the badīʿiyyāt emerged. Inspired and challenged by the immense popularity

and success of Abū ʿAbd-Allāh Muḥammad ibn Sa’īd al-Būṣīrī’s (d. 693/1294)

thirteenth-century panegyric entitled Al-Kawākib al-Durriyah fī Madḥ Khayr al-

Barriyah and better known as Qaṣīdat al-Burdah, scholarly writers competitively

participated in the vogue of badīʿiyyāt composition as an exercise of devotion to the

Prophet, devotion to knowledge, and celebration of rhetorical mastery. By doing so,

scholars as poets accrued prestige that had much currency outside of the courts and

among a larger literate Muslim public such as Ghulām ʻAlī ibn Nūḥ Āzād Bilgrāmī,

an eighteenth century scholar of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu from the Indian

subcontinent where he studied Arabic rhetoric and composed his badīʿiyyah.121

A subject such as the Prophet would be a common point of interest, affinity,

and affection unlike the imperial beloved subjects of classical Arabic panegyrics like

al-Mutanabbī’s patron and poetic beloved Sayf al-Dawlah or al-Buḥturī’s poetic

beloved al-Muntaṣir. The Qaṣīdat al-Burdah or The Mantle Ode and the specific

121 For an example of his works, see Ghulām ʻAlī ibn Nūḥ Āzād Bilgrāmī, Shifa Al-'Alil: Facsimile of Ms Dawawin 1113 in the Government of Andhra Pradesh Oriental Manuscripts Library & Research Institute, Hyderabad (India: David Brown Book Co, 2007) and Subḥat Al-Marjān Fī Āthār Hindustān (Bayrūt: Dār al-Rāfidayn Ṭibāʻah wa-Nashr wa-Tawzīʻ, 2015).

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emergence and popularity of the post-classical badīʿiyyāt among scholars, in

particular, is a striking example of innovative literary production and how the

medieval Islamic republic of letters thrived on a highly literate audience steeped in

knowledge of Arabic rhetoric, Sufi concepts regarding the efficacy of dhikr, and the

biography of the Prophet. As a subgenre of prophetic encomia and as a pedagogical

device encapsulating ‘ilm al-badīʿ—a subfield of Arabic rhetoric focused on

rhetorical tropes—within each verse, a scholar’s badīʿiyyah demonstrated both

scholarship and performance of devotion to the Prophet, Arabic language, and

literariness.

During the post-classical period and with the rise of Sufi orders and a matured

scholastic tradition, the badī`iyyāt – al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah composed in the high

classical badī` style – represented for the composer powerful cultural capital122 that

imbued the poet with social prestige while also inviting patronage as a litterateur.123

For this reason, the amatory prelude remained a powerfully functional classical

convention within the post-classical qaṣīdah as it circulated among Sufi and scholarly

assemblies, popular sites of congregation such as pilgrimages, and personal libraries.

The fluid use of intertextuality and wordplay through jinās (i.e., paronomasia) and

122 Here, I am considering Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital in Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 61-62, 96-100. When poets needed other sources of patronage outside of the court, social prestige offered considerable mobility, attention, and recognition, as well as attracted other forms of patronage. 123 This raises other questions about the context in which these pedagogical concerns regarding Arabic language arose as well as the challenges for the employment of poets and litterateurs.

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tawriyah (i.e., double entendre or dissimulation), for example, assumes an audience

that has the requisite knowledge to appreciate and be entertained by the skill with

which the poet manipulates his or her verses.124 Such intertextuality as an

aesthetically pleasing element of the experience of the text could be successful only

with an audience aware of textual and aural genealogies.125 Similarly, double

entendre, which badīʿiyyah poetry celebrated, is only rhetorically successful when the

reader or listening audience is enabled to identify and enjoy wordplay through a

shared understanding of the surface significance as well as the intended secondary

meaning.126

Within such a geographically expansive literary culture in which scholarly and

literary communities’ trafficked texts, cities that are the titular focus of the faḍā’il

genre – that is, literature regarding the virtues of cities – as well as central to the

networks of literary imagination and Islamic scholarship in the medieval Arabic

republic of letters including Damascus, Cairo, and Granada and the sacred cities of

Jerusalem, Makkah, and Madīnah are incorporated into the amatory prelude as sites

of yearning.127 The case of the prophetic encomia transformed the classical poetics of

124 For a concise translation of rhetorical tropes, see Pierre Cacchia, The Arch Rhetorician: Or the Schemer's Skimmer: A Handbook of Late Arabic Badīʻ Drawn from ʻabd Al-Ghanī An-Nābulsī's Nafaḥāt Al-Azhār ʻala Nasamāt Al-Asḥār (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1998). 125 Al-Musawi, Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, 135. 126 Ibid., 138–39. 127 For examples of faḍāʼil literature, see the eight century compilation of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s Faḍā'il Makkah (al-Qāhirah: Maktabat al-Thaqāfah al-Dīnīyah, 1995); ‘Umar

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the abandoned desert campgrounds into a literary space of collective memory and

yearning for an idealized Islamic past through specifically invoking the site of the

Sanctuary City of the Prophet—Madīnat al-Nabiyy, also referred to as one of the two

Ḥaramayn, the Illuminated City or Madīnat al-Munawwarah, or simply Madīnah.128

By deploying allusions to sacred and historical narratives as well as refurbishing

recurring images, the prelude simultaneously decontextualized and innovatively

reconstructed Madīnah as the center of nostalgia and recuperative pious desire for the

Muslim subject.

The amatory prelude within the post-classical al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah

genre continued to function as a liminal space within the post-classical period as it

also underwent innovative transformations reflective of – and simultaneously

responsible for – the transformation of its audiences. One of those innovations is that

the space of the abandoned desert campgrounds transformed. Within the prelude of

medieval Sufi wine poetry, the abandoned desert campgrounds over which the figure

of the classical poet-lover weeps is replaced with the metaphorical tavern; within the

Al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah, the abandoned desert campgrounds is replaced with the

City of the Prophet—Madīnah.

ibn Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Kīndī (d. 350/961), Faḍāʾil Miṣr (al-Qāhirah: Maktabat Wahbah, 1971); the eleventh century text by Ibn Ḥazm, Faḍā'il al-Andalus wa Ahlihā (Bayrūt : Dār al-Kitāb al-Jadīd, 1968); and the twelfth century compilation of Abu Maʿāli al-Musharraf ibn al-Murajjā ibn Ibrāhim al-Maqdisī’s Faḍāʼil Bayt al-Maqdis wa al-Khalīl wa Faḍāʼil al-Shām. (Shifā ʻAmr: Dār al-Mashriq li al-Tarjama wa al-Tibāʻa wa al-Nashr, 1995). 128 Al-Musawi, Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction 187.

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A RECEPTIVE AUDIENCE: POETIC REGISTERS OF AFFECT

As demonstrated earlier, the amatory prelude immediately created a familiar intimacy

between poet and audience. Drawing from the various metrical rhyming schemes of

Arabic prosody and recited orally for a public, these odes could be memorized and

retold.129 The entertainment value of the qaṣīdah, similar to the ancient Greek or

Sanskrit epic, was in the innovative recounting of a familiar (anti-) hero’s tale

immortalized by verse—not in the novelty of the story following the opening

auspicious verses in the case of Sanskrit poetry, invocations of the Muses in the case

of Greek epics, or Arabic poetry’s ancient amatory prelude. Regarding the reception

of the encomia including the al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah — and the badīʿiyyāt in

particular — an audience of the medieval Islamic republic of letters would have

received the complex poetics of the encomia through multiple registers.

The Arabic encomium carries its audience through the process of

acquaintance, familiarity, and then (if successful) love and adoration for its subject of

praise. Equally, if not more importantly, the prelude positions the audience as

participants in the performance of collective longing.130 Replete with figurative

language indexing references to physical traits, places, major events, and significant

129 One of the important roles of the post-classical poetic form is its ability to encapsulate and be used as an effective pedagogical tool for conveying various Arabic-Islamic disciplines including rhetoric as in the case of the badī’iyyāt. This aspect of the ode, however, will not be addressed in this study. 130 The role of the encomium has been debated even by the ancient Greeks. In Plato’s Republic, praise is shown to be “a powerful forces in the Athenian polis,” and his rendition of Socrates suggests that praise is one of the most effective ways of teaching people. See Andrea W. Nightingale, “The Folly of Praise: Plato's Critique of Encomiastic Discourse in the Lysis and Symposium,” The Classical Quarterly, 43.1 (1993): 112.

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characters related to the beloved-subject, the case of the al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah

or prophetic encomia indicates a shared symbolic language between poet and

intended audiences. This would also suggest that the sīra or biography regarding the

character and life of the Prophet Muḥammad was knowledge about which pre-modern

audiences would have been familiar and vice versa. That is, such poetry was also

instructive and one of the means by which pre-modern audiences learned stories

regarding the life of Muḥammad.

In terms of subjectivity formation, the prelude of the prophetic encomia

gestures toward the incorporation of the audience also as empathetic lovers alongside

the poet-lover. On the other hand, the prelude simultaneously and significantly gives

access to the personal singularity of the poet’s subjectivity. That is, the audience is

privy to the private suffering of the poetic voice that at once wavers between bold

confidence and defensive anxiety. The fluctuation and exchange of praise and blame

occurs in the classical qaṣīdah. Al-Mutanabbī, for example, takes on the heroic cloak

for his poetic compositions in praise and blame of others. While gently reproaching

his patron Sayf al-Dawlah, for example, al-Mutanabbī praises himself as the most

skilled poet in the court multiple times. In one such verse, he states,

أنا الذي نظر األعمى إلى أدبي وأسمعت كلماتي من بھ صمم

I am the one by whose words the blind can see I am the one by whose words the deaf can hear131

131 See Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Mutanabbī, Poems of Al-Mutanabbī, trans. A.J. Arberry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 71.

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Likewise, Abū Tammām does not allow for his own persona to be ignored in the

court of the Caliph within his critique of the astrologers and praise of the Caliph al-

Muʻtaṣim.132

When the seventh/thirteenth century Mamlūk poet al-Būṣīrī introduces

himself in the prelude as a lovesick poet, he is unambiguously present in the first

person and transparent in his vulnerability. He is a lover whose disposition is

emblematic of other poet-lovers in the poetic corpus. He weeps until his eyes turn red

as if bloodshot, and he cannot sleep; he is conscious of the judgment cast by his

peers; and he is defensive of his character deemed as excessive by his critics. After a

series of questions addressing the self in the second person “you,” al-Būṣīrī affirms,

نعم سرى طیف من أھوى فأرقني والحب یعترض اللذات باأللم

Oh yes, the phantom of the one I love did come by night and leave me sleepless

Love does indeed impede delight with pain.133 The lover identifies the unnamed beloved—which the audience familiar with the

poem would know is Muḥammad—with the classical image of the ṭayf or desert

phantom that haunts the lover and keeps him from sleep.134 In the verse, the ṭayf is

132 See “Al-sayfu aṣdaqu anbā’an min al-kutubi,” by Abū Tammām Ḥabīb ibn Aws Al-Ṭa’ī, translated by Suzanne Pinckney Stetkeveych in The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, 304–08. 133 Translation from Suzanne Stetkeveych, The Mantle Odes: Arabic Praise Poems to the Prophet Muhammad, 93. 134 See Ḥasan al-Bannā ʻIzz al-Dīn, Al-ṭayf Wa-Al-Khayāl Fī Al-Shiʻr Al-Qadīm (al-Qāhirah: Dār al-Nadīm, 1988). Also see J. Seybold’s “The Earliest Demon Lover: The Ṭayf al-Khayāl in al-Mufaḍḍalīyāt, Reorientations: Arabic and Persian Poetry, ed. Suzanne P. Stetkevych (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 180-89;

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not a menacing figure; it is the ṭayf al-khayāl or the ṭayf al-habīb or vision of the

beloved. In pre-Islamic poetry, the ṭayf is arguably an apparition that approaches the

lover externally – a real desert phantom; medieval commentators later explain that the

ṭayf, rather, is a dream vision.

The latter conception of the ṭayf as a dream vision is most likely what the poet

Būṣīrī is deploying. The vision of the ṭayf that leaves the lover awake is a vision of

the Prophet, which is understood to be an auspicious vision. In the context of the al-

madīḥ al-nabawiyy and the occasion of its composition, narratives about dreaming of

the Prophet and the impossibility of any demonic creature imitating his form in a

dream further affirms that the image of the ṭayf in the qaṣīdah is welcomed. For

example, the Prophet is reported to have said, "Whoever sees me (in a dream) then he

indeed has seen the truth.135 He is also reported to have said, "Whoever has seen me

in a dream, then no doubt, he has seen me, for Satan cannot imitate my shape.”136 In

yet another narration, he is reported to have said, “The dream of a believer is one of

the forty-six parts of prophecy.”137 At the same time, the poet-lover conveys that the

experience of love is one of both joy and pain of separation. The limited time and

ultimate impermanence of the fleeting vision is also reinforced by the image of the

ṭayf.

Renate Jacobi, “The Khayāl Motif in Early Arabic Poetry,” Oriens, (Vol. 32, 1990), 50–64. 135 Saḥīḥ Bukhārī 6996 Book 91, Ḥadīth 15; Vol. 9, Book 87, Ḥadīth 125. 136 Saḥīḥ Bukhārī 6994 Book 91, Ḥadīth 13; Vol. 9, Book 87, Ḥadīth 123; also see Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī Vol. 4, Book 8, Ḥadīth 2276; Book 34, Ḥadīth 2445. 137 Sunan Ibn Mājah 3894 Book 35, Ḥadīth 2; Vol. 5, Book 35, Ḥadīth 3894.

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From this verse until the final verse of the prelude, the self-consciousness of

the poet is consistently foregrounded by use of the first-person address replacing the

earlier and slightly more distant second-person point of view. Responding to the

poet’s self-consciousness, al-Būṣīrī places directly after the prelude an

unconventional section on disciplining the self-ego where he continues to address

himself in the first-person only to suggest that the egotistical self must submit.

Thereafter, the poet recedes to the background throughout the body of the qaṣīdah in

what I would describe as a poetic gesture of bowing before his subject of praise until

the final two supplicatory chapters when the “I” of the poet comes forward again. The

post-classical badīʿiyyāt composers similarly foreground their own voices in the

prelude that later subtly submerge in their craft.

Intended to invoke and provoke shawq—love and yearning—for the Prophet

as the beloved, the prelude’s participatory implications encapsulate beliefs in the

physical and spiritual healing powers associated with remembering, loving, and

praising such a poetic subject. One of the most significant texts to advance the idea of

healing through poetic invocation of the remembrance of the beloved in the Iberian

Peninsula and across North Africa was Qādī ‘Iyāḍ’s (d.543/1149) Al-Shifā’ bi Ta‘rīf

Ḥuqūq al-Muṣṭafā or Healing by Recognition of the Rights of the Chosen One,

popularly known as al-Shifā’. For at least a century before the composition of the

Burdah and the emergence of the badīʿiyyāt, Al-Shifā’—as indicated in the title

itself—was considered to have the power to heal the spiritually and physically ill who

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read or listened to the text by virtue of its subject.138 Qādī ‘Iyāḍ affirms that

remembrance of the Prophet leads to healing and narrates and lists traditions and

virtues upon which this belief is based. In the section on “What is related from the

ancestors and the Imams about their love for the Prophet and their yearning for him,”

Qādī ‘Iyāḍ includes a story about ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar’s foot going numb. When he

was told, “Remember the most beloved of people to you and it will go away!”

ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar shouted, “O Muḥammad!” and the narrative ends with

ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar being able to feel his foot again.139 The narrative connects the

remembrance of Muḥammad and the love for him to the immediate healing of Ibn

ʿUmar’s foot.

Many other similar narratives inform the affects of the prelude moment in the

al-madīḥ al-nabawiyy. Beyond the classical evocation of erotic desire, the prelude of

the prophetic encomia took on both physical and metaphysical significance in

generating and engendering a state of nostalgia and yearning for Muḥammad in

particular.140 Moreover, narratives of healing attached to the composition of popular

138 See Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 33. 139 See ʻIyāḍ ibn Mūsá, Muhammad, Messenger of Allah: Ash-Shifā’ of Qādī ‘Iyāḍ, trans. Aisha A. Bewley (Inverness, Scotland: Madinah Press, 1991), 226. 140 Both Al-Shifā’ and the Burdah are mentioned in the nineteenth-century Maqāma of Ḥasan al-ʻAṭṭār as texts in which French colonizers took great interest. See Peter Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760–1840 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1979). Also see Shaden Tageldin, Disarming Words: Empire and the Seductions of Translation in Egypt (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011).

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prophetic encomia were recited and circulated in Sufi assemblies including the story

of the healing of al-Būṣīrī when he composed the Qaṣīdat al-Burdah and the healing

of Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī when he composed his al-Kāfiyah al-Badī’iyyah as a

contrafaction to the Burdah. Such narratives function to confirm and reaffirm belief

in the supernatural healing power of actively loving the Prophet and furthermore

serve to lend the poet legitimacy as a true lover of the Prophet, ensuring the

popularity of the genre.

Furthermore, studies in ‘ilm al-balāghah—or Arabic rhetoric—and more

broadly al-naqd al-adabī or Arabic literary criticism also had reached new heights in

the medieval period, particularly in al-Andalus or Muslim Spain and were later

criticized by modernists as irrelevant, cumbersome, and elitist or even non-existent.141

Codified and canonized, texts of the three subfields of Arabic rhetoric bayān, badī’,

and khiṭābah—literally translated as exposition, creativity, and oratory142—were

deeply familiar to the writers of the badīʻiyyāt, a popular subgenre of prophetic

encomia among scholars that derives its name from the subfield al-badīʿ, or the study

of rhetorical tropes. The badīʻiyyāt as poetry, therefore, were devotional as well as

pedagogical works intended to encapsulate all existing Arabic rhetorical tropes in a

panegyric about the Prophet. In spite of the rising Persianate and Turkic empires, the

study of the Arabic language and its ancillary fields remained important for

141 For a response and argument for medieval Arabic literary criticism, see Wen-Chin Ouyang, Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Culture: The Making of a Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). 142 See Linda G. Jones, The Power of Oratory in the Medieval Muslim World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

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individuals aspiring to a life of scholarship in what were categorized in this period as

the rational (‘aqlī) and transmitted (naqlī) sciences or a position in the chancery and

legal courts. The pedagogical value of the discipline of rhetoric for critical

disputation, analysis, and communication with a scholarly and popular audience were

not lost on public figures. Moreover, Arabic poetry was the medium used during the

post-classical period to instruct students in some of the most technical disciplines

including grammar, Qur’ānic recitation, and hadith criticism. This leads to the

composition of some of the most important poems included in seminary curriculums

including the thirteenth-century al-Ajurrumiyyah poem on Arabic grammar and the

fourteenth-century al-Shāṭibiyyah on the different recitations of the Qur’ān.143

The badīʿiyyāt merged the study of rhetoric with celebration of the human

personage of the Prophet. Regarding this point, al-Musawi argues that this medieval

trend broadened the appeal of the study of language and rhetoric for a wider Muslim

and non-courtly elite audience that moved away from the discourse on the

inimitability of the Qur’ān prevalent in classical studies on Arabic language.144 Thus,

the factors that informed the specifically significant role of the prophetic encomia’s

prelude for a medieval Islamic republic of letters were the post-classical audience’s

familiarity with the classical qaṣīdah form and poetics; popular conceptions of the

praiseworthiness of Muḥammad as a beloved figure; circulation of popular narratives

143 See Florian Sobieroj, Variance in Arabic Manuscripts: Arabic Didactic Poems from the Eleventh to the Seventeenth Centuries - Analysis of Textual Variance and Its Control in the Manuscripts (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). 144 See Al-Musawi, Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, 161-164.

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on the benefits of recalling his memory, including dream visions and physical

healing; and the pedagogical concerns of conveying the Arabic linguistic sciences

outside of the court and for the broader public.

Accordingly, I argue that the prelude read even outside its poetic structure is a

powerful written and vocal enterprise that cuts deep into structures of feeling reaching

the contemporary period and generates a political unconscious that cannot be easily

dismissed in postcolonial studies. The cultural imprint of such texts as al-Būṣīrī’s The

Mantle Ode and Qāḍī 'Iyāḍ’s al-Shifā’ so successfully encapsulated nostalgia and

longing for an absent-present beloved and greater past—sentiments that dominate the

poetics of the amatory prelude—that the mere mention of the texts’ titles in modern

Arabic literature commands attention. The affective nods to al-Būṣīrī’s Burdah in the

nineteenth-century work Maqāmah fī l-Faransīs by Ḥasan al-'Aṭṭār or the twentieth-

century novel The Seven Days of Man by ‘Abd al-Ḥakīm Qāsim, for example, evoke

ecstatic longing and sentimentality paralleling the prelude poetics of the aṭlāl in the

Burdah and other prophetic encomia.145

TIME IN THE SUFI REGISTER AND A POETICS OF REMEMBRANCE

As demonstrated earlier, the prelude verses of the post-classical prophetic encomia

are poised to invoke from memory several registers including chains of authoritative

poetic and rhetorical references.146 The other important register includes the Sufi

145 I address the inflection of post-classical poetics in these works in the final chapter. 146 Ibid.

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treatment of the erotic, which communicated material as well as metaphysical

yearning through symbolic representations of the body, masculine and feminine

beauty, intoxication, and desire in terms of eternal time.

In the thirteenth century, the famous Sufi scholar and poet Ibn al-Fāriḍ

(d.633/1235) wrote his famous Khamriyyah or Wine Ode addressing the beloved in a

moment of sociability rather than weeping: “We drank in remembrance of the

beloved.” The second hemistich, however, does not situate the poet in a temporal past

among material ruins of a campsite; rather, he completes the verse with the following:

“We were drunk with it before creation of the vine.”147 Instead of stopping before

abandoned materiality, Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s opening verses invoke nostalgia for pre-eternity

situated in the non-temporal and immaterial Divine Realm.148 Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poetry

influenced the style of a number of badīʿiyyāt composers including the famous

seventeenth-century Damascene scholar ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulsī, who was deeply

influenced by Sufi intellectuals and practitioners as reflected in the esotericism of his

badīʿiyyah.149

In terms of both form and content, it is al-Būṣīrī’s Qaṣīdat al-Burdah that

informed and inspired the badīʿiyyāt as an innovative and incredibly popular genre of

147 See the Appendix for the Arabic. Translation by Th. Emil Homerin fromʻUmar Ibn Al-Fāriḍ: Sufi Verse, Saintly Life (New York: Paulist Press, 2000). 148 See Qur’an 7:171 and the related narratives regarding pre-eternity in ʿAbdallāh ibnʿAlawī Al-Ḥaddād, Lives of Man: A Guide to the Human States: Before Life, in the World, and After Death (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2003). 149 Directed study with Abdallah Adhami, “Introduction to Badīʿiyyat,” New York City, July 2014.

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prophetic encomia. Al-Būṣīrī (d.694/1294) wrote in the same century as Ibn al-Fāriḍ

what would arguably become the most recited Arabic qaṣīdah by Muslims—Arabs

and non-Arab—in the world until today.150 Al-Būṣīrī invokes the pre-Islamic and

classical motif of a bygone place and trope of a yearned-for beloved deploying the

prelude as a liminal space. His prelude is simultaneously illustrative of a world of

material, bodily pain such as the ancient preludes of the Muʿallaqāt and it invokes a

world of timelessness such as the poetry of his contemporary Ibn al-Fāriḍ, who refers

to the cosmic, the symbolic, and the spiritual in the prelude to his khamriyyāt.

A series of rhetorical questions, the first verses locate the poet—and the

audience by virtue of participating with the poet in recollection—among familiar

prelude motifs of loss, memory, significant places, and painful weeping. The prelude

of al-Būṣīrī’s Qaṣīdat al-Burdah recalls in the first verse,

ر جیران بذي سلم أمن تذك مزجت دمعا جرى من مقلة بدم

Was it by the memory of those you loved at Dhū Salam

That you wept until your tears mixed with blood?151 The imagery of tears mixed with blood suggests the intensity and longevity of time

passed in weeping over a powerful memory. That is, blood flows because the

addressee’s eyes literally can no longer produce tears. Like the poets of the

Mu‘allaqāt, al-Būṣīrī immediately situates the prelude space of the Burdah in the

150 A Google search of simply “Burdah” results in numerous links to translations and audio recordings from around the world. 151 My translation.

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desert environs of the Arabian Peninsula; unlike the aforementioned classical

preludes, the identification of three locations intimates rather than directly expresses

the specific location of lost bliss as well as the beloved-subject. The following verse

poses two more questions:

یح من تلقآء كاظمـة ت الر أم ھبـلبرق في الظلماء من إضموأومض ا

Or was it the wind that stirred in the direction of Kāẓimahh?

Or the flashing of lightning in the darkness of Iḍam? Unlike the Mu‘allaqāt, the aṭlāl are not among the ruins of a campsite that is by

nature temporary and unsettled but the aṭlāl approximates settled urban space within

the volcanic valley of the Arabian Peninsula’s Hijāz. Through the mention of familiar

locations and an apostrophic address of the loved ones of Dhū Salam, the audience is

led to conclude that the unnamed beloved of this ode is none other than the prophet

Muḥammad, and the place of lost bliss is Madīnah.152 Dhū Salam, Kāẓimah, and

Iḍam are all sites close to Madīnah, the city and resting place of the Prophet. Taking

an innovative turn, the poet mentions these place names as signposts of the beloved-

subject and the beloved’s city. Seeing this in the larger context of the hajj, or

pilgrimage, as the material journey to a land of bliss and human redemption, we may

overlook the everlasting appeal of the encomia to large Muslim audiences. In other

words, postcolonial inquiry has to come to grip with these realities in order to go 152 Madīnah—often spelled as Medina—literally means “city” in Arabic. Originally known as Yathrib before Islam, the adopted city and resting place of the Prophet was resignified as al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah (trans. The Illuminated City), Madīnah al-Nabī (trans. The City of the Prophet), or simply al-Madīnah (trans. The City). Madīnah as aṭlāl is repeatedly invoked in the prophetic encomia.

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beyond the limits of the colonial encounter. Madīnah as a representative space

continues to shoulder immense symbolic power as the prophetic sanctuary regardless

of the aggressive presence, interference, or neglect of a state apparatus.

In the classical deployment of erotic memory, the poetic voice intends to both

entertain and focus the audience’s attention through crafting a space of shared bodily

experience that leaves a physiological as well as emotional memory. In the case of the

post-classical prophetic encomia, that space is transformed, and the erotic is

redirected entirely toward a shared experience of loss in which the figure of

Muḥammad signifies the beloved and the imagined Madīnah signifies the ruins of an

ideal place and time. The badīʿiyyāt also incorporated within the prelude the exact

method of naming the same signposts signifying Madīnah and the Prophet. Hence, for

example, Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī (d. 750/1349) began his al-Kāfiyah al-Badīʿiyyah, the

first prophetic encomium in the form of a badīʿiyyah, as follows:

یرة العلمإن جئت سلعا فسل عن ج واقر السالم على عرب بذي سلمم

If you arrive in Sal’, inquire about the loved one

And convey greetings to the people of Dhū Salam.153 Like al-Būṣīrī, al-Ḥillī mentions the people of Dhū Salam in order to situate the

audience by familiarity of form and content within Madīnah—the same space of the

Burdah’s prelude. Unlike al-Būṣīrī, the poet does not initiate his ode with a series of

questions and ambiguity; rather, it is an open and confident request of a voice that is

experienced and knowledgeable of the layout of the land. Similarly, the sixteenth-153 My translation.

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century ‘Ā’isha al-Bā’ūniyya (d. 922/1516) mentions Dhū Salam in her opening

verse, Fatḥ al-Mubīn fī Madḥ al-Amīn. Unlike al-Ḥillī, however, al-Bāʿūniyyah not

only begins her badīʿiyyah with demonstrative statements rather than questions or

conditional statements, but she refers directly to the first trope she has incorporated in

her opening verse:

في الحسن مطلع أقمار بذي سلم أصبحت في زمرة العشاق كالعلم

It is a felicitous opening with the moons of Dhū Salam I have become a banner among the party of ardent lovers.154

In her opening verse, al-Bāʿūniyyah’s voice is less coy and more forthright

than her predecessor by way of her incorporation of the image of the moon—an

image of beauty—by which the Prophet has often been described. This is significant

because although she does not initially identify the beloved following the style of her

predecessors al-Būṣīrī or al-Ḥillī, she also does not shy away from directly praising

the beauty of her subject unlike her predecessors’ deployment of the more indirect

address to “the people of Dhū Salam.” The image of the moons is both celestial and

strikingly beautiful rather than earthly and mundane, and therefore, al-Bāʿūniyyah’s

prelude initiates with a celebration of physical beauty expressing a form of intimacy

with the Prophet that is distinct.

A poetic of unifying force, the figurative language of these three poets utilizes

the space of the prelude convention to incorporate within it the images of Madīnah

and prophetic presence. To consider the mythic space Madīnah occupies is to locate

the spiritual Madīnah within the material Madīnah. The City of the Prophet is 154 My translation.

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delineated by aṭlāl that are assigned emotional significance due to its geographical

proximity. As signposts, Dhū Salam, Kāẓimah, and Iḍam are at the threshold of

Madīnah, the borders of which are occupied by archetypal characters such as the

lā’imi fī l-hawā—or love’s critics—cautioning the poet-lover before entry. They take

on a folkloric and atemporal quality, having been present in the prelude even prior to

the singular focus on the Prophet as beloved, and they continue to remain as

witnesses to the poetic voice after.

IMAGINING MADĪNAH: TRANSFORMATIONS OF TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL DIMENSIONS After considering the multiple registers by which a medieval Islamic public would

receive the prelude of the badīʿiyyāt and other prophetic encomia, I will now discuss

how the prelude functions to invoke a collective memory reifying a literary republic

whose imaginative center is the notion of a timeless Madīnah. The City of the Prophet

also known as the Illuminated City, as the polis par excellence, is addressed as a

representation of the Prophet and retains its symbolic power by virtue of both its past

as a witness to the prophetic community and its present as a tomb housing the body of

the Prophet.

Post-classical historian Taqī al-Dīn ʻAlī ibn ʻAbd al-Kāfī al-Subkī (d.

756/1355) narrates that Bilāl ibn Rabāḥ (d. 20/640), the well-known Abyssinian

companion of the Prophet known for his adhān or call to prayer, left Madīnah after

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the death of the Prophet.155 The city—as a representation of the Prophet—continued

to painfully remind Bilāl of the beloved, echoing the poet-lover’s attachment to the

beloved’s deserted campsite and its function as a painful reminder of the beloved’s

absence. The narrative continues: after having been away for some time, Bilāl saw in

a dream the Prophet saying, “Oh, Bilāl! How is it that you never visit me?” and upon

waking, he set out for Madīnah.156 The interpretation of Bilāl within the narrative is

significant for the purposes of understanding later permutations of prelude poetics in

the prophetic encomia. Within this anecdote, Bilāl does not understand his dream

metaphorically in which visitation of the Prophet is understood to mean increasing

devotion or pious deeds; rather, he interprets the dream to suggest that the Prophet

has literally requested a physical visit to the city that both houses his body and

signifies the representation of the living Prophet.

155 See Taqī al-Dīn ʻAlī ibn ʻAbd al-Kāfī al-Subkī, Shifāʼ Al-Saqām Fī Ziyārat Khayr Al-Anām (Ḥaydrābād al-Dakan: al-Maṭbaʻah al-Dāʼirah al-Maʻārif al-Niẓāmīyah, 1897), Al-Ṭabʻah 1: 39-40. The narrative includes an account of Bilāl’s reunion with Ḥasan and Ḥusayn, the grandchildren of Muhammad, who request from Bilāl his adhān. He acquiesced, and the people of Madīnah left their homes and took to the streets upon hearing his voice and cried in anguish at the memory of their days with the Prophet. It concludes that he left Madīnah a few days later and died in Damascus. Ḥadīth critics dispute this incident, and some deemed the narrative as a fabrication while others like al-Subkī classified it as sound. The story is often referred to in contemporary contentious discourses regarding visiting Madīnah in order to visit the Prophet’s grave. The story of Bilal’s adhān upon the request of Ḥasan and Ḥusayn is included in Emmanuel K. Akyeampong and Henry L. Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012), 448. 156 In another narrative, Bilāl refers to the moment of death as a celebratory moment of union with his beloved Muhammad saying, “What a happy occasion! Tomorrow I will meet my beloved—Muhammad and his host!” See ʻAbd al-Karīm ibn Hawāzin al-Qushayrī, Al-Qushayri's Epistle on Sufism: Al-Risala al-Qushayriyya fi 'Ilm al-Tasawwuf, trans. Alexander D. Knysh (Reading, UK: Garnet, 2007), 313.

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In the medieval Islamic imagination, the Madīnah of the Prophet is a paradise

lost. In a time of immense instability and conflict as well as migration and movement

including the gradual expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula and the

incursion of the Crusaders into Jerusalem, the ideal Madīnah is constantly resurrected

into being and reconstituted by way of the prelude. Reflective of the period, it is not a

coincidence that, although both the composer of the Burdah and the first badīʿiyyah

as a prophetic encomium lived in Cairo at the time they composed their poems, they

came from other regions with al-Būṣīrī descending from a North African Berber

Sanhaja tribe and al-Ḥillī from Iraq. Both compose their most famous works about the

Prophet, focusing their nostalgic sentiment in verses composed about Madīnah rather

than Cairo.

Unlike the prelude of the classical odes mentioned before, the preludes of

prophetic encomia such as the Burdah and al-Ḥillī’s al-Kāfiyah al-Badīʿiyyah never

mention explicitly by name the beloved at the abandoned campsite or the subject of

the poem, who are both one and the same. The verses subtly intimate, instead, the

identity of the beloved by mentioning prominent signposts near Madīnah as well as

addressing its “people,” or inhabitants. This reference to “the people of Madīnah” as a

collective exemplar of excellent character exists in early classical poetry. For

example, in the famous first/seventh century competitive poetic exchanges between

al-Jarīr and Farazdaq, Jarīr takes Farazdaq to task for even claiming that his camel

yearns for Madīnah. Jarīr says,

ھو الرجس یا أھل المدینة فاحذروا مداخل رجس بالخبیثات عالم

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لقد كان اخراج فرزدق عنكم طھورا لما بین المصلى وواقم

He is filth, people of Madīnah, so beware Of incoming filth that knowingly commits evil

Indeed Al-Farazdaq’s departure from you

Is purification for what lies between the prayer grounds and the city’s borders157 Jarīr addresses the “people of Madīnah” in contradistinction to the unworthiness of

his rival Farazdaq, who he refers to as rijs or filth. Farazdaq’s “filth” then takes on a

metaphysical quality by Jarīr’s invoking the khabīth or evil and malicious elements.

By insulting his opponent, he praises the city and all those who occupy the space of

the city. The inhabited city as a symbol of the Prophet’s perfection is also attributed

extraordinary and peculiar qualities itself.158 At the conclusion of the third section of

the Burdah, al-Būṣīrī says, “No perfume is as redolent as the dust that holds his

bones/The one who inhales or kisses it is blessed.”159 The poet places in comparison

two apparent material opposites in terms of stability and value—evanescent fragrance

and dirt—in the first hemistich emphasizing the peculiarity of the soil of Madīnah and

denying any parity between it and other forms of perfume. By association with the

157 See Jarīr ibn ʻAṭīyah and Farazdaq, Kitāb al-Naqā’iḍ: Naqā’iḍ Jarīr wa al-Farazdaq (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyah, 1998), 285. This translation is my own. 158 For a review of characteristics attributed to Madīnah within Islamic discourses, see Daoud S. Casewit, “Fadā’il Al-Madīnah: The Unique Distinctions of the Prophet’s City,” Islamic Quarterly 35.1 (1991): 5. 159 Translation from Suzanne Stetkevych, The Mantle Odes: Arabic Praise Poems to the Prophet Muhammad (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), 99.

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body of the beloved, the dust attains sublime status. Thus, al-Būṣīrī affirms in the

second part of the verse that the earth of Madīnah is consecrated.

Because of its symbolic power and sentimental resonance as an imagined

ideal time and place, Madīnah—and not Jerusalem or even Makkah—became the

symbolic sacred space upon which the medieval Islamic republic of letters directed its

nostalgia and which the prelude cultivated. Thus, Madīnah as a signpost directed the

poet-lover and the audience’s ecstatic shawq, or yearning to Muḥammad as the

beloved at the center of both the panegyric and the larger Islamic republic of letters.

The prelude of the post-classical prophetic encomia effectively encapsulated the

poetics of Arabic-Islamic nostalgia through the space of Madīnah and the figure of

the Prophet. Transmitted and circulated across discursive and military borders, it

reaches into the modern period notwithstanding modernist narratives of rupture in

Arabic literary historiography.160

Deflecting bodily eroticism to metaphysical yearning, the post-classical

prelude begins with the signposts of Madīnah as the threshold and locus of nostalgia

before encountering the form of earthly perfection ultimately embodied by the

Prophet. The prelude’s ritualistic recitation and reception, then, functions as a liminal

160 In some ways, echoes of Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities as precursors to nationalism could be read here. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, UK: Verso, 1991). On the other hand, this republic of letters is distinct from Anderson’s imagined community that would not have met but felt bound together by other factors. Considering the function of isnād in the scholarly community as a means of acquiring prestige and authorial legitimacy and permission to transmit, writers of badīʿiyyāt would have been placed in direct conversation with each either through textual encounters or in actual space and time.

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space in which both poet and audience experience the pleasure of pain and yearning

for Madīnah and the Prophet as a rite of passage. The rite of passage—to cross over

the threshold of meaning—is a necessary component before proceeding to the next

stage of the ode that explicitly mentions and praises the beloved-subject. The spatial

and temporal dimensions of the prelude verses inform the quality of ambiguity and

disorientation as a result of erotic tension.161 Furthermore, the prelude serves to

initiate the production of an imagined representational space encapsulating a literary

imagination of an ideal center from which the celebratory voice of the post-classical

panegyric emerges.162 Within the pre-modern prelude, we see not only the

intersection of space and time in the motif of Madīnah as the new campsite, but it is at

once mythical and real, sacred and profane.163 As Arabic-Islamic communities went

through violent transformations from the sacking of Baghdad in the east and the

conquest of Andalus in the west, the impulse to make the Prophet the center of poetic

discourse on Arabic rhetoric and creativity redirected attention to the City of the

Prophet and away from contested urban centers of Baghdad, Cairo, and Grenada, as

well as from the temporally and spatially distant memories of desert campsites.

Madīnah, as an ideal replacement of the aṭlāl of the desert, could function as a

unifying representation of an idealized place within Arabic poetics and outside of a

161 See Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process (New York: Penguin, 1969), 155. 162 Lefevbre states that spaces of representation include homes as well as representational spaces such as drawings. See Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1991). 163 See Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias,” trans. Jay Miskowiec. Architecture/Movement/Continuité (1984): 1–9.

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time of immense uncertainty, movement, and identity fluctuation. The outpouring of

Sufi composition of al-madā’iḥ al-nabawiyyah in al-Andalus and the Maghrib alone

is indicative of a poetics emerging from and responding to different forms of political

and material displacement.164

The prelude situates the lover’s campsite approximating the environs of

Madīnah, which itself is not crafted as a utopia in biographical literature, sacred

history, or the poetry informed by it. Madīnah as a city within history is associated

with a range of sentiments on the spectrum of joy and sadness; joy for the presence of

the Prophet and sadness for his simultaneous absence and the power politics of

conveying his presence in his absence. The prelude of the prophetic encomia re-

creates a Madīnah that functions like Foucault’s heterotopia in which “it is a kind of

effectively enacted utopia” that is “outside of all places even though it may be

possible to indicate their location in reality” and “these places are absolutely different

from all (other) sites.” The prelude establishes a sense of poetic time in which visions

of the past are re-created in the present tense where the aṭlāl is a “personal lost circle

of perfection.”165 The prelude preserves and nurtures a nostalgic state of yearning for

a beloved-subject, and the associated time and place is revived through each

164 See Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh, Dīwān Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh al-Judhāmī: Min Shuʻarāʼ Dawlat al-Muwaḥḥidīn fī al-Maghrib wa al-Andalus fī al-Zuhdīyāt wa-al-Madīḥ al-Nabawī, ed. M. A, Muḥammad, Z. ʻAnānī, and Anwar Sanūsī (Cairo: Dār al-Amīn, 1999); Ibn al-Jannān, Dīwān Ibn al-Jannān al-Anṣārī al-Andalusī: Shāʻir al-Madīḥ al-Nabawī Bi-al-Andalus fī al-Qarn al-Sābiʻ al-Hijrī, ed. Munjid M. Bahjat (Mosul: M.M. Bahjat, 1990); Al-Amin Alshareif, Madih Nabawi in Al-Andalus: From Rituals to Politics (Bloomington: Indiana University, 2013). 165 See The Zephyrs of Najd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasīb, 24.

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recitation.166 This act of interactive recollection and reciprocity reflects the

aspirations and sensibilities of the poet and audience in which the audience also

becomes a part of the poetic voice.167

Through active and collective recollection, the post-classical prelude of the

prophetic encomia and the badīʿiyyāt in particular celebrates Arabic-Islamic poetics

and calls attention to Arabic rhetoric through the subject of the Prophet with an

immanence less distant than the inimitable speech of the Divine and a transcendence

that subtly subverts and critiques by decentering figures of political authority

ethnically and linguistically distinguished. Significantly, the genre of prophetic

encomia is referred to as the celebratory panegyric (madīḥ) rather than as the elegy

(rithā’) of mourning.168 The identity of the genre deemphasizes material history in

terms of linear time and emphasizes the aspect of the beloved-subject’s presence in

the world more than the subject’s absence from it. The category, moreover, assumes

that the poetry addresses a living subject who can respond. If we consider the erotic

prelude as a liminal space, the unnamed beloved-subject emerges as a character both

within and outside space and time. Within the encomia, the reader-listener is no

longer in the realm of a linear temporality but a dimension outside of time that is

166 Ibid., 43. 167 Ibid., 52. Also see Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, 301. 168 An exception to this would be the poem the scribe and poet companion Ḥassān ibn Thābit (d. 35-40/674) composed for the Prophet after his death. It is referred to as a rithā’ or elegy. His other poems dedicated to the Prophet are categorized as madīḥ. See Ḥassān, ibn Thābit, Diwan Hassan Ibn Thabit Al-Ansari (Bayrut: Dar Bayrut, 1997); Walid Arafat’s dissertation A Critical Introducton to the Study of the Poems Ascribed to Hassan Ibn Thabit (University of London,1954).

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located within an imagined idealized Madīnah existing in tandem with the material

and temporal Madīnah.

As a side note, the poetics and transformations of the prelude of al-Madā’iḥ

Nabawiyyah are not outside the domain of postcolonial inquiry. On the contrary, their

continuity in recitation among large Muslim communities in Asia and Africa reflect

the deep cultural imprint of the popular Arabic-Islamic prophetic encomia and the

success of the prelude’s encapsulation of nostalgia and longing for an ideal Islamic

past. Their presence in colonial discourse and modern literature since the Napoleonic

conquest of Egypt indicate the need to further explore the make-up of popular culture

where the poetics of the prelude is strongly functional, dynamic, and continues to

resonate. I will pursue this line of inquiry in chapter five.

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CHAPTER 2 PRELUDE BELOVEDS: THE PROPHETIC, THE DIVINE, AND THE CURSED

فقربي منھ جل القصد ثم الغایة القصوى وما أعاني بذا سلمى وال ھندا وال علوى

Being close to him is my highest goal and furthest desire And I don't mean by this old loves like Salmā or `Alwā or Hind.169

حبیب برى األكوان ربي ألجلھ فأصبح روح الكون سر الخلیقة

A beloved for whom My Lord created existing things, So he became the spirit of the cosmos and the secret of the universe.170

– ʻĀʼishah Al-Bāʻūnīyyah (d. 923/1517) The literary study of the classical Arabic qaṣīdah has largely been concerned with

courtly poetry171 although that is changing.172 Panegyrics dedicated to the Prophet

169 See ʻĀʼishah Al- Bāʻūniyyah, Emanations of Grace: Mystical Poems by ʻĀʼishah Al-Bāʻūniyyah, trans. Th. Emil Homerin (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011), Verse 16-17: 42; Dīwān Fayḍ Al-Faḍl Wa-Jamʻ Ash-Shaml (Bayrūt: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmiyyah, 2010), 89. 170 See Verse 167 of ʻĀʼishah Al- Bāʻūniyyah’s Tā’iyyah English Translation 117; Arabic 246. 171 For examples of literary studies of court poetry, see Samer Ali, Arabic Literary Salons in the Islamic Middle Ages: Poetry, Public Performance, and the Presentation of the past (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2010); Rudolf Geyer and David Samuel Margoliouth, The Hamāsah of Al-Buḥturī (Abū 'Ubādah Al-Walīd Ibn Ubaid): A. H. 205-284 (Leiden: Brill, 1909); Maria Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin, and Michael Anthony Sells, The Literature of Al-Andalus (New York: Cambridge UP, 2000); Abu Tayyib Al-Mutanabbi, Poems of Al-Mutanabbi: A Selection with Introduction, Translations and Notes. Trans. A.J. Arberry (London: Cambridge U.P., 1967); Suzanne Stetkevych, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).

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and other Sufi poetry, which experienced a prolific rise in the medieval period,173 are

often read as devotional works reflective of spiritual inclinations and religious

commitment instead of as works of literature that build upon existing genres, adapt

and poeticize the language of different disciplines, and participate in critique of other

writers. In this way, the constructed binary of religious and secular literature

permeates the study of Arabic poetry.174 For this reason, it is important to consider the

literariness of al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah and other Sufi poetry alongside their

devotional character and conceptual elements.175 To add to Michael Sells’s argument

172 See Adam Talib, How Do You Say "epigram" in Arabic?: Literary History at the Limits of Comparison (Leiden: Brill, 2017). 173 Martin Lings, Sufi Poems: A Mediaeval Anthology (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2004). 174 Muḥsin J. Mūsawī argues against and problematizes this in Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition (London: Routledge, 2006). To see an example of a study which eschews this binary, see Suzanne P. Stetkevych, The Mantle Odes: Arabic Praise Poems to the Prophet Muḥammad (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010). 175 Michael Sells writes,

For over two centuries, studies of Islamic mysticism have tended to divorce it from the poetic tradition exemplified by the aṭlāl, even though Islamic mystics were steeped in the poetics and spirituality of these ruins. One reason for the divorce is the rigid boundary imposed by many scholars between the worlds of Sufism and Islam more generally, and between the worlds of religion and poetry….some scholars even claimed that love was an import into Islam from Christianity, since the tradition of love poetry in which Islamic conceptions of love are grounded was consigned by them to the realm of the secular and thus not taken seriously as an element within religion. To break out of such artificial boundaries requires more than refutation. It requires a complex set of translations.

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for a complex set of translations, to break out of artificial boundaries of secular love

poetry and religious devotional texts also requires rigorous literary study and

criticism that takes seriously the language of the disciplines the poets deploy and

articulate and the cultural worlds within which they are situated. Such boundaries are

anachronistic, applying an arguably modern dichotomy between the secular and

religious text to a pre-modern world in which the boundaries between spheres of life

and religious practice were construed differently. Medieval writers and scholars often

studied, occupied, and wrote about multiple fields of learning. This was more the rule

rather than the exception. For example, although many contemporary Sunnī Muslims

know Abū al-Faraj ʻAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʻAlī Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1201) as a Hanbali

jurist, in his time he was also recognized as a historian, a philologist, a Sufi, and a

theologian.

In addition to the extensive analysis offered to Sufi poetry within the

academic field of Religious Studies and Islamic Studies, we cannot dismiss the

critical role of the Prophetic encomia and Sufi poetry in informing medieval Arabic-

Islamic literary production in which the secular-religion binary often collapses. As

works of literature, such poetry had far-reaching influence and arguably much larger

audiences than courtly love poetry, political satire, or panegyrics commissioned by

and dedicated to rulers and administrators.176 At the same time, describing such

See the foreword to Th. Emil Homerin, ʻUmar Ibn Al-Fāriḍ: Sufi Verse, Saintly Life (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), xiv. 176 Because of the performative intertextuality and rhetorical complexity of a large corpus of Arabic poetry, some scholars believed the poetry could not have enjoyed wider circulation beyond the scholarly and courtly classes. This is informed by the

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literary works as folk literature or popular modes of cultural production may not be

entirely accurate. As demonstrated earlier, some of the best known devotional poetry

– including Qaṣīdat al-Burdah of al-Būṣīrī – reflect not only the poet’s mastery of

Arabic-Islamic poetic conventions but also the poet’s ability as a writer to participate

within that poetic tradition, as I will demonstrate.

In addition to the deployment of time and space evocative of the affects of

love and nostalgia, the figure of the desired beloved in the medieval amatory prelude

is another shared convention of the qaṣīdah from the pre-Islamic period. Just as the

signified time and space of a poem is reflective of both the socio-political context of

the poet and the genre within which he or she writes, the figure of the beloved is no

different. The ubiquitous presence of the Prophet or the Divine as a sacred beloved

within medieval Arabic-Islamic poetics, however, is not only incorporated into the

repertoire of famous poetic beloveds to which ʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūnīyyah refers to as

“old loves like Salmā or `Almā or Hind” but acquires a level of symbolic power that

enables the opportunity to legibly satirize the trope as a political rather than

theological critique through the incorporation of another figure of sacred literature –

assumptions of modernization theory based on understandings of European history that claims there was a general widespread illiteracy among the masses prior to the printing press and the industrial revolution of the modern period. Historians of the Islamic world have demonstrated problems with this theory and that it is simply not true for medieval and early modern Muslim societies. This is why the work on this particular genre of poetry in the context of its circulation in mawālid and pilgrimages is so important. It raises questions and challenges assumptions about a generalized mass illiteracy and incomprehension of more “elegant” forms of prose and poetry among “ordinary people” in the medieval period. See Nelly Hanna, "Literacy and the “great divide’ in the Islamic World, 1300-1800," Journal of Global History. 2.2 (2007): 175-193.

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the devil. In this chapter, I will argue for the discursive formation of three beloveds in

the Mamlūk period – the Prophet, the Divine, and Iblīs – as constituting the

innovative poetics of the amatory prelude in Al-Būṣīrī’s Burdah among al-Madā’iḥ

al-Nabawiyyah, ʿUmar ibn al-Fāriḍ’s khamriyyah or wine odes, and Ibn Dāniyāl’s

satirical ode to Iblīs.

THE PROPHETIC BELOVED: LITERARY CONTESTATIONS AND THEOLOGICAL SPECULATION177 Within the prelude of the devotional Arabic encomia, two important components

became established tropes. When paired together, they signal the genre of the ode.

Alongside the incorporation of the figure of Muḥammad the Prophet as a signature

Beloved – the poetic subject and object of adoration – Madīnah the city of the

Prophet—was incorporated among the key sites of yearning. The beloved as Prophet,

177 This section is the result of a conversation after I delivered a paper about the function of nostalgia, time, and space in the amatory prelude within the medieval Prophetic encomia. Andrew Ollett, a scholar of Sanskrit and Prakrit literature, inquired whether the medieval treatment of Muhammad the Prophet as the poetic beloved within the amatory prelude – and in love poetry, in general – posed a theological problem for believers and whether medieval poets faced considerable resistance to the figure of the Prophetic beloved becoming a recurring literary trope constituting a poetic subgenre. Significantly, the question about possible controversy surrounding the trope of the Prophet as poetic beloved had not occurred to me before because of its pervasive presence within not only Arabic encomia but Persian, Urdu, Bangla, Turkish, Swahili, Malay, etc. panegyrics devoted to Muhammad. Another scholar of South Asian studies also noted that in medieval Hindi literature, courtly Rithi and devotional Bhakti poetry have been studied as separate genres with the former being characterized as erotic and the latter as mystical and religious, but often times these boundaries collapse within the erotic poetics of mysticism. Also see Allison Busch, Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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in and of itself, was not only a poetic convention of Muslim literatures but became a

convention of Arabic invocation and supplicatory speech. Al-Būṣīrī writes,

ھو الحبیب الذي ترجى شفاعتھ لكل ھول من األھوال مقتحم

He is the Beloved whose intercession is hoped for, Victorious over every terror and disaster178

On the pulpit, within prose and poetry, and in private supplication, addressing

Muḥammad as the Beloved (habīb), the Most Beloved (Sayyid al-Habīb), Our

Beloved (habībunā), or the Beloved of God (habīb-Allāh) is a common utterance

among Shī’ī and Sunnī Muslims including their ‘ulama.

For the reader unfamiliar with the classical Arabic-Islamic convention of

addressing the Prophet, the reference to him as a poetic beloved may be read as

troubling. Unlike twentieth century Salafi debates regarding the blasphemy of pre-

modern poets with regards to their praise of Muḥammad, the transformation of the

Arabic-Islamic ode’s beloved to be embodied by the Prophet is not a matter fraught

with theological anxieties or debate among pre-modern Arabic-Islamic scholars and

litterateurs. The poetics of the images and descriptions associated with the Prophet as

beloved, however, are later debated in terms of propriety.179

The cultural memory surrounding the figure of the Prophet as the Beloved –

informed in large part by medieval textual production as well as popular recitals of

178 Translation by Abdul Aziz Suraqah, 79. 179 See Yūsuf al-Nabhānī, Al-Majmūʻa al-Nabhānīyah fī al-Madāʼiḥ al-Nabawīyah (Bayrūt: Dār al-maʻrifah, 1974).

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poetry and song within salons and large gatherings – paired with the existing frame of

the prelude facilitated the prophetic subject to seamlessly occupy the space of the

amatory prelude.180 Moreover, the impact of the Crusades on medieval Arabic-

Islamic literary production and the emergent medieval Christian counter-narratives

regarding the figure of Muḥammad cannot be taken lightly, and poets like Al-Būṣīrī

were not unaware of the competitive polemics regarding the figure of the Prophet that

emerged from medieval Christian Europe.181

CONTEXUALIZING CRUSADES POLEMICS ON THE PROPHETIC BELOVED In addition to al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah, which generated of other forms of poety

including the badīʻiyyāt as has been discussed, there were entire genres of medieval

textual production dedicated to the Prophet. These included compendia documenting

odes dedicated to the Prophet; biographies on the life of the Prophet and compendia

indexing those works; biographies on the family and companions of the Prophet;

collections of hadith solely concerned with the physical description and character of

the Prophet; and treatises regarding the virtues of literary production dedicated to

celebrating the Prophet. The most accessible of these, however, were the poems

180 See Annemarie Schimmel’s important work And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985). 181 Undoubtedly, the Crusades impacted the rhetoric and poetics of Arabic speaking and writing Christians and Jews as well. Much has been written about Crusader hostility toward both Muslim and Eastern Christians in Jerusalem which raises questions about how Muslim rhetoric addressing local Christians and vice versa may have shifted in the political context of a larger war framed by the Roman papacy in religious Christian terms and attempts at local Christian alliances as occurred in the Iberian Peninsula. This, however, is beyond the scope of the dissertation.

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about the Prophet. They were recited and sung for and with large audiences in mawlid

(pl. mawālid) celebrations, which originated according to some historians as early as

the tenth century under the Fatimids and as late as the twelfth century in Egypt

according to others.182 The mawālid were vital for the wide circulation and

reproduction of such poetry and its cultural currency.

The ubiquitous and prolific production of Arabic-Islamic literature devoted to

Muḥammad was not lost on medieval Christian Europe. Scholars establish that by the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there was an intellectual shift in European Christian

polemic against Islam because of its formidable presence in the Mediterranean and

Iberian Peninsula, the rise of the Crusades and encounters with and defeat by Muslim

armies in battle, and the expansion of Muslim political control.183 During the

thirteenth century, English philosopher Roger Bacon articulated that war was a futile

way to defeat Islam; rather, the only options available were either philosophical

argument – or miracles.184 In the thirteenth and fourteenth century, when there was

prolific composition and widespread circulation of panegyrics celebrating

182 On the medieval development of the mawlid, see N J. G. Kaptein, Muḥammad's Birthday Festival: Early History in the Central Muslim Lands and Development in the Muslim West Until the 10th/16th Century (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993); Marion H. Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad: Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam (London: Routledge, 2007). 183 See Alberto Ferreiro, “Simon Magus, Nicolas of Antioch, and Muhammad,” Church History, Vol. 72, No. 1 (March 2003): 53-70. An example of medieval Christian polemic against Muhammad cited is Vita Mahumeti by Embrico of Mainz, one of the earliest Latin lives of Muhammad, 56. 184 Jabal M. Buaben, Image of the Prophet Muḥammad in the West: A Study of Muir, Margoliouth and Watt (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1996), 14.

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Muḥammad, medieval Christian European scholars sought to counter the influence of

Arabic-Islamic cultural production with counter-narratives.185 Accordingly, the

Council of Vienne convened between 1311 and 1312 and argued for the need to

establish chairs or professorships for the study of Greek and Semitic languages

including Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic.186 It was also precisely during this period

that Christian European narratives began to emerge about the pathological

Muḥammad, the epileptic Muḥammad, and the Muḥammad eaten by dogs.187

Considered a canonical work of western literature and the source text of what

becomes the modern Italian language, Dante Alighieri’s (d. 1321) Inferno includes

one of the most well-known medieval Christian European depictions of Muḥammad,

referred as Mahometa. This makes Dante’s depiction of Mahometa even more

pertinent to understanding European counter-narrativization of Arabic poetics on the

Prophet as a beautiful beloved. In addition to being considered the fourteenth century

precursor to later significant works of European literature like Paradise Lost, there

are longstanding debates about the extent of influence of Arabic sources and Muslim

lore on Dante’s Commedia including his depiction of the pilgrim’s descent into hell

185 Ibid., 9. 186 Such centers would be established two hundred years later. See Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies (London, England: Allen Lane, 2006). This should not be confused with the Congress of Vienna convened after the defeat of Napolean from 1814 to 1815. 187 Buaben,13.

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and asencent into heaven.188 Moreover, Dante himself exhibits knowledge of the

Islamicate world through an inclusion of intellectual and historial figures in the first

circle of the Inferno among other revered pagans born before Christ like Homer.

Among them is the Andalusian polymath Averroes (i.e., Ibn Rushd, d. 595/1198) and

the sultan-warrior Saladin (i.e., Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb, d. 589/1193) who

famously fought Richard the Lionheart (d. 1199) for Jerusalem. Dante places

Mahometa in the ninth circle of hell among other schismatics who the poet has

described as having sowed discord in the church. In contrast to the reverential

treatment to characters of historical, intellectual, and literary importance in the first

circle of hell, Dante places a physically mutilated Mahometa and his cousin Ali in the

ninth circle of hell among other schismatics who the poet has described as having

sowed discord and schism in the church. Dante’s pilgrim reports,

No barrel, even though it’s lost a hoop or end- piece, ever gapes as one whom I saw ripped right from his chin to where we fart: his bowels hung between his legs, one saw his vitals and the miserable sack that makes of what we swallow excrement. While I was all intent on watching him, he looked at me, and with his hands he spread his chest and said: “See how I split myself! See now how maimed Mohammed is! And he who walks and weeps before me is Ali, whose face is opened wide from chin to forelock.

188 See Miguel Asín Palacios, Islam and the Divine Comedy (Routledge: 2013); La Escatología Musulmana En La Divina Comedia, Seguida De La Historia Y Crítica De Una Polémica Segunda Edición, Madrid, Granada: Escuelas de Estudios Árabes de Madrid y Granada, 1943).

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And all the others here whom you can see were, when alive, the sowers of dissension and scandal, and for this they now are split.189

Due to intra-Christian polemics, there was a shift from categorizing Mahometa as a

pagan to categorizing the Prophet of Islam as another heretic among past and

contemporary heretics. The narrative framing of canto 28 being about schismatics is

reflective of that shift in which Mahometa is characterized as a heretic rather than a

pagan. By incorporating a disfigured Mahometa among other heretics, Dante conveys

a larger point about intra-Christian schisms. According to Brunetto Latini, Dante’s

former teacher who also learned Arabic while he served as ambassador to the court of

Alfonso X the Wise,190 Mahometa was an “evil preacher, who drove the people from

the faith and cast them into error.”191

According to the contrapasso scheme of the Inferno, divine punishment is

crafted to fit the crime, and the punishment for both Mahometa and his cousin Ali is

that their bodies are split and maimed. The punishment exacted on their physical

bodies is meant to highlight their crime of splitting the spiritual bodies of their

communities. On this account, Chiavacci Leonardi notes that Mahometa was believed

189 Alighieri Dante, Inferno, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1982), 28: 22-36. 190 See Vicente Cantarino, “Dante and Islam: History and Analysis of a Controversy (1965),” Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society (125: 2007): 41. 191 See Teodolinda Barolini, "Inferno 28: Tuscany’s Evil Seed," Commento Baroliniano, Digital Dante, Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2015).

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to have originally been a Christian priest.192 As heretics are depicted as being

punished for splitting the body of the Church, Dante depicts the tearing of

Mahometa’s entire body as the expression of divine punishment for splitting the

community from the Church, and Ali’s face “is opened wide” as another recipient of

punishment for the same sin..The defacing of Ali is a reference to further schism

among the body of heretics (i.e., the Sunnī-Shī’ī split).

The crude language of being “ripped right from his chin to where we fart” as

well as the image of excrement between the legs suggests that the poetics of the

mutilated and defiled body of the Prophet of Islam is meant to signal a comedic

moment of Dante’s audience. That is, the tone of the verses is meant to elicit laughter.

Moreover, the style the poet deploys when Mahometa, whose “bowls hung between

his legs,” emphatically draws attention to his body saying, “See how I split myself!”

portrays a character that is unrefined in speech and mannerism. The gruesome

depiction, in its detail, could be imagined as a painting and it is important to note that

indeed, such paintings of Mahometa rent asunder existed in medieval visual culture

alongside the European texts describing him as such.193 The image Dante constructs

through verse as well as the intended comedic effect stands in stark contrast with that

of the prophetic beloved constructed within the prelude of al-Madā’iḥ al-

Nabawiyyah. Dante poetically illustrates a counter image of the Islamic depiction of a

192 See Leonardi Chiavacci, Inferno (Milano: Oscar Mondadori, 2005), 836. 193 See Avinoam Shalem, Cesare M. Di, Heather Coffey, and Alberto Saviello, Constructing the Image of Muhammad in Europe, (Berlin: W. De Gruyter), 2013.

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character repeatedly described by Arabophone poets as the exemplar of eloquence

and elegant manners.

The discursive shift between the categories of pagan to heretic is subtle and

significant for interpreting the character development of Muḥammad within medieval

European Christian polemics. For example, in the fourteenth century anonymous

Liber Nicholay, Muḥammad was linked to Nicolas of Antioch,194 and he was

associated with doctrinal and sexual error.195 In some cases, in order to detract from

and refute Muslim narratives about the Prophet’s miracles, Christian medieval

sources depicted Muḥammad as a fraud and magician. In other cases, they attributed

the well-known stories of Muḥammad’s miracles – especially the Isrā’ and Mi`rāj

narrative that occupies a prominent space in the Prophetic encomia as one of the most

celebrated miracles of the Prophet – to being demonically inspired. In the Vita

Mahumeti, for example, the narrative counters the Muslim story of Muḥammad’s

miraculous night journey to Jerusalem and through the heavens by comparing and

connecting it to the Magus’s own aerial flight through the aid of demons.196

To be a pagan within medieval Christendom is to be one who claims a

completely different set of beliefs and practices as a member of another religious

community completely outside of a community of Christians; to be a heretic,

194 Ferreiro, 62. 195 Ibid., 68 196 Ibid., 58-59. Medieval Christian polemicists were not only aware of the narrative of Muhammad’s night journey to Jerusalem and ascension to heaven but argued that it was “a cheap imitation of the ‘genuine’ ascension of Christ.’”

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however, is to be one who claims to belong to the existing religious community while

also contesting certain tenets of belief within that same community. The latter rejects

that contestation as a heresy and thereby considers the detractor without any

legitimate claim to religion. Thus, to ascribe heresy to Mahometa is to politically

define his role as a Christian leader gone astray; to consider him as a pagan figure

requires acknowledgment of another faith tradition with distinct doctrinal

underpinnings and discursive practices that constitutes a different worldview and

informs another kind of poetics.

PROPHETIC LOVE: A POETIC IMPERATIVE During the era of the Crusades beginning with the First Crusade in 488/1095,

medieval Islamic scholars and litterateurs responded in different ways to medieval

Christian polemics197 on religious and ethnic supremacy (which were often

conflated).198 For example, one of the most well known works of shamā’il was

composed in the sixth/twelfth century by the North African Mālikī jurist and scholar

Qāḍī `Iyāḍ ibn Mūsā (d. 544/1149). Qāḍī `Iyāḍ wrote Kitāb al-Shifāʾ bi Ta'rīf Ḥuqūq

al-Muṣtafā or The Book of Healing By Knowledge of the Rights of the Chosen One as

197 See Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Abi Talib Dimashqi, Muslim-Christian Polemic During the Crusades: The Letter from the People of Cyprus and Ibn Abi Talib Al-Dimashqi's Response, ed. David Thomas, and Rifaat Y. Ebied (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 198 Right before the First Crusade, the Andalusian Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064) wrote a refutation of Abū `Āmir Ahmad Ibn Gharsiya al-Bashkunsī’s (d.1084) argument about the superiority of the `ajam. See James T. Monroe, The Shu’ubiyya in al-Andalus: The Risala of Ibn García and Five Refutations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).

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an evidence-based text regarding the virtues of the Prophet and the reprehensibility of

denigrating his name and character. More famously known as al-Shifāʾ (d. 544/

1149), the work combines elements of biography, textual illustration, and a legal

treatise about his unique status.

The literary construction of Muhammad as a beloved exemplar of noble

character and physical beauty is coterminous to Arabic literary production valorizing

and praising the Prophet. It is difficult, however, to prove whether medieval Christian

polemics elicited increased interest, patronage, and dedication to such endeavors.

Moreover, it is not what the hadith literature, Sīrah or biographical literature,

Shamā’il literature or collections of narrations about the appearance and

characteristics of the Prophet, al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah, and their commentaries

present as the primary justification for such endeavors.

Instead, medieval writers consistently articulate wujūb maḥabbatihī as the

primary impetus for such literary production. As a moral and ethical concept that was

theorized, defined, and argued in classical and medieval Arabic-Islamic texts, wujūb

maḥabbatihī develops beyond a simple idea of personal pious obligations to love the

Prophet. An analogue to the way multiple layers of cultural valences are embedded in

an Arabic term like wājib or wujūb are the terms taqwā and īmān. Used as terms of

personal Muslim piety in everyday contemporary language among Muslims and

originating from pre-Islamic Arabic, the terms also became categories of analysis

within various textual camps of the medieval Islamic republic of letters including the

works of theologians, jurists, and mystics. For that reason, I translate the phrase as the

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Prophetic Love Imperative in order to convey its conceptual valence in medieval

Arabic-Islamic juridical and ethical texts199

The Prophetic Love Imperative rests upon the construction of the Prophet as

the physical human embodiment of sublime beauty. Al-Būṣīrī writes,

منزه عن شریك في محاسن فجوھر الحسن فیھ غیر منقسم

Exalted above having a rival in his perfection In him is the undivided essence of beauty200

His human embodiment is what accounts for the possibility of an amatory poetic to

fluidly appropriate him as a longed-for beloved. Unlike a poetic of embodiment

addressing God as a humanized (and gendered) beloved that was met with objections

and discussions about the parameters of reverence, the concept of a Love Imperative

precluded controversy and debate regarding the trope of the Prophet as a beloved

199 For example, Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s rhetorical style in al-Shifāʾ reflects his background as a jurist although the text itself would not be considered a work of fiqh or jurisprudence. Other sīrah and shamā'il writers and poets similarly appropriate legal language in order to connote the seriousness of an idea. See See ʻIyāḍ ibn Mūsā, trans. Aisha Bewley, (Inverness, Scotland: Madinah Press, 1991). Also see Aḥmad M. Qasṭallānī, Al-Mawāhib Al-Ladunīyah bi Al-Minaḥ Al-Muḥammadīyah Volume 1 (Bayrūt: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmī, 1996).More generally, scholars who mastered multipled disciplines did not shy away from deploying the language of another discipline within their works. This is illustrated by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī who repurposes medical language to make a point about the necessity of kalām and tasawwuf as sciences. For an example, see his introduction to al-Mustaṣfá min ʻIlm al-Uṣūl, ed. Abdullah M. M. Umar (Lebanon: Dar Al-Kutub Al-Ilmiyah, 2010). Also see Deliverance from Error: An Annotated Translation of Al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl and Other Relevant Works of al-Ghazālī. Trans. Richard J. McCarthy. Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 1999. 200 Translation by Abdul Aziz Suraqah, 92.

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within medieval Arabic-Islamic works. Early and late medieval scholars such as Qāḍī

`Iyāḍ (d. 544/1149) and Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Qasṭallānī (d.923/1517), on the

other hand, included entire sections in their works articulating similar arguments

reflecting the prominence of the idea among their intellectual networks and textual

sources. In the three-volume compendium Al-Mawāhib al-Laduniyyah bi al-Minaḥ

al-Muḥammadiyya, al-Qasṭallānī meticulously identifies the parameters of reverence

for Muḥammad as the final messenger. Confirming his awareness of the requirements

of barāʻat al-istihlāl (trans. ingenious beginnings),201 he enumerates the ten purposes

of Al-Mawāhib al-Laduniyyah in his introduction. In doing so, he conveys his own

style of structuring his compilation. Each purpose represents a single chapter of the

work. For the seventh purpose, he states that the chapter is regarding

المقصد السابع: في وجوب محبتھ واتباع سنتھ واإلھتداء بھدیھ وطریقتھ وفرض محبة آلھ وأصحابھ وقرینتھ وعترتھ وحكم الصالة والتسلیم علیھ زاده هللا فضال وشرقا لدیھ لدیھ وفیھ

ثالثة فصول

…the imperative to love him and follow his way, the gift of his guidance and his path, the imperative to love his family, companions, relatives and intimates, and the command to invoke prayers and peace upon him which God himself has attributed to Himself as an blessing and honor.202

Al-Qasṭallānī associates the Love Imperative with not only the expectation of a lover

to follow Muḥammad’s character and actions, but he also articulates that the love of

Muḥammad demands a lover also love the family and friends of the beloved as well

as praise and adore him through expressive language – that is, through the many

201 For a longer discussion, see Chapter Four. 202 Qasṭallānī, 5. The translation is mine.

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forms of speech including poetry. Furthermore, the human speech act of loving and

praising Muḥammad is associated with the divine and angels who are described as

performing the very same genre of speech.203

FROM ḤABĪB-ALLĀH TO BELOVED OF POETS One of the earliest narratives of Muḥammad being addressed as the Beloved of God is

found in the hadith collections.204 In a narrative related by Ibn `Abbās, the cousin of

Muḥammad, the former describes a moment when a group of the Prophet’s

companions began to discuss their awe of the other prophets of God and identified a

selection of them by special titles while they waited for the Prophet himself to leave

his home and join them. When Muḥammad approached the group, he overheard what

they were saying. Ibn `Abbās then continues, narrating that among them, some noted:

“It's amazing that God, the Mighty and Sublime, has taken a close friend (Khalīl) from His creation. He took Abraham as a close friend.” And some of them said, “That is not more amazing than speaking to Moses; he spoke to him with real speech.” And some said, “Jesus is the word of God and his Spirit.” And some said, “Adam was chosen by God.”

203 The idea is not a unique or innovative one. Al-Qasṭallānī is typically invoking the Qur’anic verse which states, “Indeed God and his Angels send blessing upon the Prophet; Oh you who believe, invoke blessings and peace upon him (Al-Ahzab 33:56).” Within the verse is a verbal command to act by way of a genre of speech – that is, by invocation and praise. 204 The impact of the classical ḥadīth tradition on post-classical adab and juridical literature is undeniable. Ṣaḥīh Ibn Ḥibbān, composed by the scholar Abū Ḥātim Muḥammad ibn Ḥibbān (d. 354/965) from Khorosan, was the only ḥadīth book of its time to include one-hundred thirty legal and ethical categories citing major books of ḥadīth. Later, Ibn Ḥibbān is often quoted or taken as a model (by stating, for example, “Bawwaba ibn Ḥibbān”) by books of adab as well as law. For example, see Abū ‘Abdullāh al-Ḥalīmī on al-Hāfiz Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī use of Ibn Ḥibbān in Kitāb al-Minhāj fī Shuʻab al-Īmān, ed. Ḥilmī M. Fawdah (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1979).

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After having listened to his companions identify some of the most prominent prophets

of sacred history, Ibn `Abbās narrates that Muḥammad then approached and greeted

them. He then responded,

وھو كذلك قد سمعت كالمكم وعجبكم إن إبراھیم وھو كذلك وموسى نجي هللا خلیل هللا وھو كذلك أال وأنا حبیب هللا وكلمتھ وھو كذلك وآدم اصطفاه هللا وال وعیسى روح هللا

ل مشفع یوم القیامة وال فخر وأنا حامل لواء الحمد یوم الق ل شافع وأو یامة وال فخر وأنا أو لي فیدخلنیھا ومعي فقراء المؤمن ك حلق الجنة فیفتح هللا ل من یحر ین وال فخر وأنا أو

لین واآلخرین وال فخرفخر وأنا أكرم األ و

I have heard your words, and your amazement that Abraham is the Friend of God (Khalīl-Allāh), and he is such, and that Moses is the one God spoke to in confidence (Najīy-Allāh), and he is such, and that Jesus is the spirit of God (Ruḥ-Allāh) and His Word, and he is such, and that Adam was chosen by God, and he is such. And I am, indeed, the Beloved of God (Ḥabīb-Allāh) and I am not boasting; I am the carrier of the Banner of Praise on the Day of Judgment, and I am not boasting; I am the first intercessor and the first to have intercession accepted from him on the Day of Judgment, and I am not boasting; I am the first to knock at the gates of Paradise, so God will open it for me and admit me into it, and with me will be the poor people from the believers, and I am not boasting; and I am the most noble among the first ones and the last ones, and I am not boasting.205

Although ḥadīth critics deem the narration as weak in its chain of transmission, it

remains a popularly shared and narrated one often reported in manāqib collections

about the virtues of the Prophet. For that reason, it is a tradition of immense

significance in terms of the ubiquitous literary presence of the Arabic epithets that

characterize figures of sacred history encapsulated within the narrative. Immediately

noticeable is the centrality of the epithets by which the prophets are addressed and the

205 Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, Volume 1, English Book 46, Number 3616; Arabic Book 49, Number 3976. See the Appendix for the complete ḥadīth in Arabic.

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manner by which each one is identified. They are not enumerated chronologically;

rather each characteristic identified is consistently a quality that marks the individual

prophet’s unique relationship with the divine. The polyphonic nature of the first part

of the narrative suggests a moment of playfulness in competitive reverence in which

each character reveals what is believed to be the signature remarkable characteristic

of a prophet.

The second part of the narrative is defined by the singular voice of

Muḥammad. He begins speaking by reviewing the list of famous prophets and their

epithets identified by the earlier speakers – including Khalīl-Allāh, Rūḥ-Allāh, Najīy-

Allāh – and then asserts his own. Impressing upon the tone of his audiences’

increasing awe before the possibility of intimacy with the divine, Muḥammad affirms

that he is Ḥabīb-Allāh (trans. the Beloved of God). Building upon the playfully

competitive tone, the rhetorical effectiveness of the statement “I am the beloved of

God” is derived from a sustained approximation to increasingly further intimacy –

friendship, private speech, spirit, selectivity. The finality of the declaration suggests

that no level of intimacy surpasses that between a lover and beloved. It is only after

the speaker asserts this level of intimacy and his role as the beloved that he then lists

other unique qualities related to his prophethood.

The narrative became a source of debate and discussion about degrees of

intimacy. Qāḍī `Iyāḍ notes that a majority of “the masters of the matters of the heart”

consider love to be a higher rank than friendship although he is aware of scholarly

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disagreement about the superiority of love over friendship.206 In his commentary on

the madīḥ section of the Burdah, Ibn `Ajība states unequivocally, “The station of the

beloved is higher than the station of the Intimate Friend (i.e., Ibrāhīm) and proof for

this can be inferred in different ways.”207 Significantly, Ibn `Ajība includes Qur’ānic

and hadith texts about the Isrā’ (i.e., the Prophet’s night journey to Jerusalem) and

Mi`rāj (i.e., his ascent into heaven) as evidence of his high rank among the other

prophets.208 For both early and late medieval scholars, however, the designation of

the Prophet as a beloved of God is the foundation for their understanding of the

imperative to love him.

Moreover, the importance of the speaker in the narrative being Muḥammad

who appears to be the first to affirm his own title as Ḥabīb-Allāh after having listened

to his companions is that it establishes the legitimacy of the epithet for both

devotional and literary purposes. That is, the transmitted narrative demonstrates that

the name “beloved of God” is not one given to him by his community but one that

their Prophet articulated. Secondly, the repetition of “Wa lā fakhra” or “I am not

boasting” which follows after each uniquely particular quality is enumerated is also a

crucial element to the narrative. Although the statement indicates that the tone is

206 Qāḍī `Iyāḍ, 111-112. 207 Ibn `Ajība, 79. 208 The Isrā’ and Mi`rāj narratives inspired numerous reflections in the Islamic literary and visual arts. For example, see Michael A. Sells and Carl W. Ernst, Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Qur'an, Miʻraj, Poetic and Theological Writings (Lahore, Pakistan: Suhail Academy, 2004), 47-74, 242-250.

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Panegyrical, the function of the narrative is primarily pedagogical; that is, it is first a

source of knowledge before it is a source of praise.

In the medieval text Dalāʼil al-Khayrāt by the North African scholar and

mystic Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān Jazūlī (d. 869/1465) – one of the most well-known

collections of prayers recited by Sufi aspirants of the Shādhilī Order – over one

hundred names of Muḥammad are included to be recited devotionally. The litany of

names is curated from numerous other narrations, which identify other names

including Aḥmad and al-Ḥāshir.209 Nevertheless, the name “Beloved of God” became

the most referenced name within poetry arguably due to the already established

convention of the qaṣīdah prelude to invoke a beloved in addition to the other

historical developments described above that informed the discursive formation of the

trope.

A POETIC CHALLENGE: LOVING THE BELOVED AND THE INADEQUACY OF LANGUAGE Another role of Muḥammad in the aforementioned narrative is that of an instructor in

the use of language. The narrative conveys the demeanor of someone who listens

before engaging or speaking as to allow the conversation to continue and end as well

as someone who listens carefully as evidenced by the acknowledgment of the

conversation in which the other speakers provide an initial review. He only adds

additional information relevant to the subject under discussion after affirming his

audience’s previous words. Furthermore, he adopts the style by which they name the

209 See Saḥīḥ al-Bukharī, Volume 6, Book 60, Number 419; Arabic Book 65, Number 4896.

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prophets and identify their signature traits in a rhetorical manner that situates him as a

participant in their conversation but simultaneously informs his audience without

directly stating that he offers information about which they were ignorant. Ultimately,

the narration illustrates a moment in which Muḥammad teaches his followers about

his unique station as a beloved and how to accordingly address him in speech, which

then reappears in literature.

If the narration regarding the epithets of the prophets offers legitimacy to the

epithet given to Muḥammad as the Beloved of God, then the poetry addressing him as

such – particularly as the poetic beloved of the amatory prelude – continually affirms

it. Medieval commentary on panegyrics dedicated to Muḥammad, like Ibn Ḥajar al-

Haytamī’s (d. 974/1566) Al-Minaḥ al-Makkīyah fī Sharḥ al-Hamzīyah, not only insist

on the validity of the poet’s position but also insist on the imperative to compose such

poetry.210 The latter insistence, however, is significantly accompanied with the caveat

that human praise of the ultimate beloved will inevitably be inadequate. That is, the

act of writing about the Prophet was significantly conceptualized as a poetic

challenge rather than a theological one as exhibited by Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī’s

statements regarding a poet’s creative deficiency in praising Muḥammad.

Al-Būṣīrī himself acknowledges the inadequacy of language within his poetry.

Al-Būṣīrī wrote his poetry mid-thirteenth century. It was a century in which

Crusaders fought against the Ayyubids in Syria and Egypt for Jerusalem in the early

part and against the Mamlūks in the latter part. Al-Būṣīrī not only expresses

210 Ibn Ḥajar Al-Haytamī, Al-Minaḥ al-Makkīyah fī Sharḥ al-Hamzīyah: Al-Musammā Afḍal Al-Qurá Li-Qurrāʼ Umm Al-Qurá (Jiddah: Dār al-Minhāj, 2005).

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awareness of Christian polemics on the character of Muḥammad in his poem the

Hamziyyah but he also expresses his view in the Burdah that the deification of Jesus

as a result of love and method of praise goes beyond what he considers acceptable

theological parameters. Regarding Christian adoration of Jesus, Al-Būṣīrī writes in

the madīḥ section of the Burdah,

عتھ النصارى في نبیھم دع ما ادمواحكم بما شئت مدحا فیھ واحتك

Leave what the Christians claimed for their Prophet

And state of his praises what you will, but do so well! 211

The verse is an articulation of a doctrinal position. Commenting on the act of creating

poetry for a beloved, the verse is a revelation of the writer’s self-consciousness about

the form of speech he creates as a poet. Al-Būṣīrī the poet acknowledges that the

language of deification is the one limit to a lover’s adoration of a human being

addressed as the Beloved of God within the form of a love poem. When the poet

refers to “what the Christians say about their prophet,” the verse establishes the limit

of adoration in a reference to the deification of Jesus. For al-Būṣīrī, that is the only

claim – even if in the form of metaphor – that crosses the ethical bounds of expressive

figurative language deployed in order to praise and revere. After having articulated

the limit, the second hemistich then presents a poetic and rhetorical challenge to “say

whatever you will” contesting that beyond deifying a human, the language of love

and praise is a prolific field. 211 Translation of Burdah 3:15 by Abdul Aziz Suraqah from In Praise of the Messenger: Selections from al-‘Umdah fī Sharḥ al-Burdah (Al-Madina Institute: 2015), 51.

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In Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī’s commentary on al-Būṣīrī’s Hamziyyah, Ibn Ḥajar

cites the same verse of the Burdah in his introduction. He then comments that it is

“impossible for a writer to entirely encompass the majesty of the Prophet in his

praise.”212 His argument is centered on the idea that the figure of Muḥammad – as a

representation of human perfection in terms of his physical embodiment, speech, as

well as spiritual nature – necessarily incapacitates the poet or writer who is human

and imperfect. For this reason, the characterization of the challenge to adequately

praise Muḥammad through words that entirely capture his likeness is very similar to

the way in which the discourse on the inimitability of the Qur’ān is articulated. That

is, the language of the Qur’ān incapacitates the poet or writer to offer a verse equal

and indistinguishable in eloquence. A number of poets, along the lines of Ibn Ḥajar

al-Haytamī’s argument, composed verses with a similar tenor on the issue of their

creative deficiency in praising the Prophet, particularly when considering the inability

to do so in a manner comparable to divine speech. This argument regarding prophetic

eloquence and inimitability is another reason why the Prophet was such a productive

poetic subject, particularly when considering the attempt to encapsulate the idea of

eloquence in badīʻiyyāt poetry by way of a prophetic encomium. On this subject, the

Sufi and scholar `Umar ibn al-Fāriḍ al-Sa`dī (d. 632/1235) writes on the

incapacitating nature of the Prophet for the poet:

را ارى كل مدح في النبي مقص وان بالغ المثني علیھ وأكثرا

212 Ibn Ḥajar Al-Haytamī, 68.

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إذ هللا أثنى بالذي ھو اھلھ علیھ فما مقدار ما یمدح بھ الورى

I see every praise of the Prophet insufficient Even if the one praising exaggerates and more

If God praised (him) with that which was appropriate to his station

Then what is the estimation of what you praise thereafter?213 One of the most celebrated Sufi poets, Ibn al-Fāriḍ poetically argues that the

composer of panegyrics dedicated to Muḥammad can never parallel divine eloquence

and rhetorical ability when divine speech also makes the claim to engage in the act of

praising and invoking blessings upon the same poetic beloved.

LOVING THE BELOVED AS POLITICAL CHALLENGE

A similar argument is made by other medieval literary critics and

commentators of al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah when they consider the apparent

absence or dearth of odes dedicated to the Prophet written by famous `Umayyad and

ʻAbbāsid court poets including Abū Tammām, al-Buḥturī and Ibn al-Rūmī.214 The

argument reflects an attempt by commentators to understand the discursive conditions

213 My translation. Al-Haytamī, 68-69. 214 For example, Ibn Ḥajar asserts that the early poets like Abū Tammām, al-Buḥturī and Ibn al-Rūmī did not attempt the writing of encomia because it was too difficult. Ibn ʿAjība (d. 1224/1809) echoes the same argument in his commentary on the Hamziyyah. He related this view, however, to Badr al-Dīn al-Zarkashī (d. 794/1392) who said, “For this reason, the best of the early poets like Abū Tammām, al-Buhturī, and Ibn al-Rumī did not deal with the [genre] of his praise, may prayers and peace be upon him, because praising him was among the most difficult forms of [poetry] among the forms crafted.” See Ibn ʿAjība, Sharḥ al-Hamziyyah, 9. Translation is mine.

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in which particular forms of poetry flourish. Although the argument for the difficulty

of poetic composition concerned with the subject of a figure of immense importance

like Muḥammad, the stated observation of an absence or lack of Prophetic encomia

from the earlier period ignores particular technologies of canonical literary

production. The early Prophetic encomia occupied a non-canonical status as sacred

and devotional literature. Court poets, in particular, had the financial support and

patronage of the caliph to not only compose but also circulate and preserve their

works in manuscripts and not only rely on oral transmission. Post-classical litterateurs

could formally study pre-Islamic and classical court poetry recorded and cited in

diwans and texts of grammar, rhetoric, morphology, semantics, etc.

Moreover, because poets like Abū Tammām and al-Buhturī were employed by

imperial courts, their subjects of poetic composition reflected it. They wrote about

courtly life, the politics of the state, in praise of the caliph, or in critique of political

opponents. This, however, does not mean poets did not compose al-Madā’iḥ al-

Nabawiyyah until the Ottoman courts had an interest in patronizing poets to compose

them, nor does it mean there was an absence of receptive audiences for such poetry

during early Islamic history. As a matter of fact, poets during the time of Muḥammad

including Ka`b ibn Zuhayr, Ḥassān ibn Thābit, and `Abdallāh ibn Rawāḥah –

composed panegyrics dedicated to Muḥammad.215 On the other hand, the genre was

215 A. Schaade, “ʿAbd Allāh b. Rawāḥa,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Edited by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs, 2012.

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most likely ritually recited as sacred literature and transmitted orally among

devotional circles.216

In addition to the question of transcription and preservation of manuscripts is

the question of the court’s disposition toward this particular genre of poetry. The

family of the Prophet or Ahl al-Bayt continued to hold symbolic power among

Muslims after the death of Muḥammad. An outright ban on poetry praising the

Prophet – which often was accompanied by praise of the Prophet’s family – would be

politically foolish. On the other hand, the early caliphates had a troubled relationship

with the political and social status of his descendants among the growing Muslim

community that consistently associated love for the Prophet with love for his family.

Prominent descendents of the Ahl al-Bayt and those accused of being sympathizers

were persecuted or even assassinated during the `Umayyad and ʻAbbāsid periods.

Such incidents include the murder of `Alī ibn Ḥusayn Zayn al-`Ābidīn (d. 95/713)217

and the brothers of Idrīs ibn `Abdullāh (d. 175/791) – the founder of the Idrisid

216 Hamdi ben Eissa, “Can al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah be considered adab?” Private Lecture, 20 June 2016, Rhoda Institute, Ottawa. 217 Some sources mention he was poisoned by the Umayyad ruler al-Walīd in Madīnah at the instigation of the Caliph Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. The circumstances of Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn’s son’s death Muhammad al-Bāqir (d. 115/733) also suggests there was an attempt on the latter’s life although historical records are conflicted as to who is responsible. Twelver Shiites believe Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn and Muhammad al-Bāqir to be, respectively, the fourth and fifth infallible imams. See E. Kohlberg, “Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn,,” Encyclopaedia of Islam Second Edition, ed. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W.P. Heinrichs, 2012. Also see Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, “Al-Sharīf Al-Raḍī and the Poetics of ˓Alid Legitimacy Elegy for Al-Ḥusayn Ibn ˓Alī on ˓Āshūrā˒, 391 A.H.” Journal of Arabic Literature 38.3: 2007, 293–323.

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Dynasty in Morocco – as Idrīs’ own poisoning at the command of the ʻAbbāsid

Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd.218

During the `Umayyad period, there is evidence of poets who refused to be

silenced in their celebration of the Prophet and his family although it was politically

dangerous to do so. In Al-`Iqd al-Farīd (trans. The Unique Necklace), the Andalusian

political historian Abū `Umar ibn `Abd Rabbihī (d. 328/940) includes a story about a

decree of the first caliph of the `Umayyads Mu‘āwiyahibn Abī Ṣufyān (d. 60/680) to

renounce ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib from the pulpit.219 Known for his eloquence and wisdom,

al-Aḥnaf ibn Qays (d. 72/691) was requested by Mu‘āwiyah to repudiate `Alī at the

pulpit. In a rhetorically cautious style, al-Aḥnaf responded in a manner that protected

him from the caliph’s punishment by saying, “Mu‘āwiyah asked me to damn `Alī on

the minbar, so damn him.”220 The remark is considered an example of eloquence on

the part of al-Aḥnaf ibn Qays. The final pronoun in the clause “damn him” is

intentionally ambiguous and leaves open the question of who the speaker means to

signify through the pronoun “him” as the direct object. Thus, in the narrative,

Mu‘āwiyahquestions him about its ambiguity and Al-Aḥnaf responds, “By God, I did

218 See Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 50-54. 219 For other narratives regarding Muʿāwiyah’s disposition toward ʿAli and those who loved him, see Abū ʻUmar Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʻAbd Rabbih al-Andalusī, al-ʻIqd al-Farīd (Bayrūt: Dār al-Masīrah, 1981). English: The Unique Necklace/Al-ʻIqd Al-Farīd, trans. Issa J. Boullata (Reading, UK: Garnet, 2009), 293-293. 220 Translation is mine. See Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Ibshīhī (d. 1446), Kitāb al-Mustaṭraf fī Kull Fann Mustaẓraf al-Ṭabʻah 1 (Miṣr: Maktabat Muḥammad Abd al-Wāḥid al-Ṭūbī, 1902), 55

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not embellish one letter nor was I deficient one letter. Speech is by the intention of

the speaker.” It suggests that al-Aḥnaf was against the caliph’s position yet the

ambiguity relieves the speaker from culpability by its interpretive possibility of

obeying the command of the caliph.

In terms of poetic production, a group of renegade poets who were critical of

the `Umayyad Caliphate in the early second/eighth century compiled the Hāshimiyyāt

– named after Banū Hāshim – in which they praised the Prophet and his family as an

act of rebellion. Described as al-shi`r al-siyāsī or political poetry,221 the Hāshimiyyāt

are a particularly important example of poetry composed in one socio-political

context intended as rebellion and deployed in another as a source of institutional and

imperial legitimacy in which the poetry was later used as propaganda in support of

the ʻAbbāsid movement.222 Other incidents have been recorded in which prominent

political leaders also refused to renounce the family of the Prophet, including the

`Umayyad Caliph `Umar ibn `Abd al-`Aziz (d. 101/720).

Later under the ʻAbbāsids, Abū `Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī

(better known as Imām al-Shāfi`ī) (d. 204/820) also refused to refrain from

composing poetry expressing love for the family of Muḥammad. Best known as the

legal scholar and founder of the four schools of Sunnī law, al-Shāfiʿī composed

several poems in praise of Muḥammad and his family. In one of the poems Tāj al-Dīn

221 See Kumayt ibn Zayd al-Asadī, Sharḥ al-Hāshimiyyāt li-al-Kumayt ibn Zayd al-Asadī: Wa-yalīhi sharḥ mukhtarāt ashʻār al-ʻarab (Cairo: Maṭbaʻat Shirkat al-tamaddun al-ṣināʻīyah, 1911), 11. 222 See W. F. Madelung on "The ‘Hāshimiyyāt’ of Al-Kumayt and Hāshimī Shi'ism." Studia Islamica 70 (1989): 5-26.

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al-Subkī (d. 771/1370) includes in the Ṭabaqāt al-Shafiʻīyyah al-Kubrā, a

biographical work on Imām al-Shāfiʿī, the latter asserts,

رفضا حب آل محمـــــــــد إن كان فلیشھد الثقالن إني رافضـــي

If love for Muḥammad’s family is rebellious

Then witness, weighty ones,223 that I am a rebel.224

The verse responds directly to the ʻAbbāsid caliphal threat to silence the praise of the

Ahl al-Bayt by accusing those who do so of being among the Rāfiḍah.225 The verse

utilizes jinās – or paronomasia – and plays with the meanings of the word rafḍ and

rāfiḍah. By overturning the pejorative connotation attached to the term by the

political establishment, the poetry celebrates the term conveying that the poet would

rather be deemed a rebel than curse the family of the Prophet.

223 The term I have translated as “weighty ones” comes from the Arabic thaqalān, which refers to the two elements of creation that bear the weight or responsibility of free will and choice. According to many Islamic traditions, including the twelfth century tafsīr of al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1143), the two weighty ones are jinn and humanity. See Maḥmūd ibn ʿUmar al-Zamakhsharī, Al-Kashshāf ʻan Ḥaqāʼiq al-Tanzīl wa ʻUyūn al-Aqāwīl fī Wujūh al-Taʼwīl, (Bayrūt, Lubnān: Dār Iḥyāʼ al-Turāth al-ʻArabī, 2001). 224 My translation. Tāj al-Dīn ʻAbd al-Wahhāb ibn ʻAlī al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʻīyyah al-Kubrā al-Ṭabʻah 1 (Miṣr: al-Maṭbaʻah ʼal-Ḥusaynīyah, 1906), 158. 225 The origin of the term rāfidah is debated and has undergone different connotations and meanings. Literally meaning “those who refuse” or “those who reject,” in the context of al-Shāfiʿī, it is a term used to derogatorily refer to those who were critics of the caliphate and carried on to refer to Twelver Shi’ites. See Najam Haider, The Origins of the Shī'a: Identity, Ritual, and Sacred Space in Eighth-Century Kūfa (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 196–7.

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Medieval intellectuals, thus, were conscious of their political utility as writers.

Along these lines, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) advised that the scholar

should avoid entanglement with the political authority stating, “If you sharpened a

pen for the caliph, you are just as criminal as those who killed the grandson of the

Prophet.”226 Al-Ghazāli’s statement displays a Sunnī recognition of the seat of power

as a source of violence against the ahl al-bayt as well as the power of language to

enact violence. Moreover, it also puts forward the possibility that another reason

celebrated classical court poets did not compose poetry on the subject of celebrating

the Prophet and his family because their political loyalty could be questioned.

The political context as well as the state’s disposition toward poetry

celebrating the Prophet – which would inevitably celebrate his family and

companions – undoubtedly had immense consequence in terms of the production,

circulation, and preservation of such poetry. The `Ummayad and ʻAbbāsid courts

understood the symbolic power of the Prophet and by extension his descendants as

well as the poets not attached to the courts yet steeped in a classical poetic tradition,

as can be seen in the incorporation of the Prophet as the Beloved within the prelude of

the qaṣīdah. The explosion and prominence of Arabic Sufi poetry and the Madā’iḥ in

the Arabic-Islamic west in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa and the east

particularly under Fatimid, Mamlūk, and Ottoman rule, however, was not simply a

result of a poetic recognition of the symbolic power of the Prophet but also pertains to

the discourse on eloquent speech associated with the Prophet.

226 See Abdallah Adhami, “The Politics of Pre-Modern Madih Composition,” Private Lecture, Columbia University, New York City, 4 March 2016.

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THE CHALLENGE OF PROPHETIC ELOQUENCE: DIVINE INIMITABILITY AND HUMAN SPEECH Although some medieval commentators argue that the Prophetic encomia have

rhetorical value that distinguishes them from other forms of poetry due to the

difficulty of encapsulating the beloved subject, al-Musawī argues that the rise of the

post-classical badīʻiyyāt as Prophetic encomia suggests a cultural shift from scholarly

interest in i’jāz al-Qur’ān – or the inimitability of the divine speech – to greater

scholarly attention and interest in the human.227 The classical inimitability debates of

the eleventh century advanced by figures like `Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 471 or

474/1078) and Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Sarakhsī (d. 490/1096) inspired a discourse

primarily concerned with the Arabic language and the nature of divine speech.228 The

debates led to a flourishing in the studies of grammar, morphology, and rhetoric

which would later inform the composition of badīʻiyyāt poetry as al-Madā’iḥ al-

Nabawiyyah in the fourteenth century and onward.

As a sub-genre of al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah, the badīʻiyyāt demonstrate not

only a deep interest in language but also a mastery and maturation in the discipline of

Arabic rhetoric among scholars as well as their intended audiences that allowed for

poetic playfulness in the form of pedagogical poetry. The decision to incorporate

Muḥammad as the prelude beloved and the subject of praise of such poetry is proven

to be an intelligent one when considering the popularity of al-Madā’iḥ al-

227 See Muhsin al-Musawī, The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, (Indiana, Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 2015), 161-166. 228 See Rumee Ahmed, Narratives of Islamic Legal Theory (Oxford: OUP Oxford, 2014).

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Nabawiyyah. The prophetic beloved within the prelude functions as both a muse-like

source of heavenly poetic inspiration as well as drives the poet's contemplation and

articulation of a critical theory of eloquent human speech. In a way, texts such as al-

Shifāʾ and Mawāhib al-Laduniyyah perform a similar dialectical balancing act in

extensive prose form. Such texts go to great lengths to establish and affirm the

eminence of the Prophet in terms of his relationship with the divine and also present a

discourse concerned with the humanity and embodiment of Muḥammad as a human

being living in the world. Similarly, al-Būṣīrī’s Burdah poetically encompasses the

dialectical contemplation of Muḥammad as beloved of God and human being. The

famous ode includes a section on the miraculous night journey and the narrative of

ascension through the seven heavens, but it also includes a section on battles as well

as verses about experiences of poverty and hunger.

There is an additional element that must be taken to account in considering the

figure of the Prophet as a poetic beloved in a poetic tradition steeped in discursive

traditions on eloquence, and particularly within a genre of poetry self-consciously

concerned with Arabic eloquence. In Al-Iqtirāh, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505)

delineates the ways in which principles of grammar and rhetoric can be derived and

understood.229 Among post-classical intellectuals, al-Suyūṭī is one of the most

prolific writers across numerous disciplines and genres including Arabic language. In

the chapter on the sayings of the Prophet (i.e., the hadith), the difference between the

229 Jalāl al-Dīn ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al-Suyūṭī, al-Iqtirāḥ fī ʻilm uṣūl al-naḥw, taḥqīq Muḥammad Ḥasan Muḥammad Ḥasan Ismāʻīl (Bayrūt : Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmīyah, 1998).

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discourse on Qur’ānic inimitability and Prophetic speech is highlighted when al-

Suyūṭī tackles the issue of the use of traditions recorded as Muḥammad’s words when

studying Arabic grammar and rhetoric.230 Al-Suyūṭī emphasizes that Muḥammad is

both the most eloquent of Arabs and the most eloquent of human beings although the

Qur’ān defends him multiple times against accusations that he is a poet, a magician,

or suffering from a jinn-inspired madness. Each of accusation is related to the

eloquence and power of persuasion that Muḥammad’s audience perceived from not

only the Qur’ān but also his own speech. In defense, the Qur’ān affirms that

Muḥammad is propelled by a different source of creativity – namely, divine

inspiration.231 Theologians, because they were concerned with defining aspects of

belief including prophets and revelation, spent extensive time considering what this

could possibly mean.

Al-Suyūṭī’s theory regarding Prophetic speech is not uniquely his own. The

hadith in which Muḥammad is reported to have said, “Indeed, there is enchantment in

eloquent speech,” is often cited by rhetoricians.232 After recalling this report, Ibn

Ḥijjah al-Ḥamawī (d. 837/1434) refers to eloquent speech in the introduction to

230 Al-Suyūṭī, 29-33. 231 See Sūrah Yā Sīn 36:69. Within the discipline of theology, the speech of the prophets became a matter of theological concern. For example, the description of the speech of Moses in the Qur’ān became a source of debate because he famously supplicates and asks God to “untie the knot on my tongue” (Sūrah Tā Hā’ 20:27). The Ash’ārī school concluded, for example, that the role and function of a prophet necessitates eloquence and therefore prohibited attributing the quality of a lisp to a prophet. 232 Saḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5767, Book 76, Ḥadīth 81; Vol. 7, Book 71, Ḥadīth 662.

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Khizānat al-Adab wa-Ghāyat al-Arab as siḥr ḥalāl or “permissible magic.” By doing

so, Ibn Ḥijjah al-Ḥamawī argues that eloquent speech as enchantment is an exception

to the general prohibition of magic in Islamic law.233 Muḥammad’s eloquence is the

aspect of his prophethood that is affirmed and praised by Ibn Ḥijjah al-Ḥamawī and

al-Ṣafadī in the introductions to their badīʻiyyāt poetry commentaries. By praising the

prophet’s eloquence and adab, both author-commentators draw their readers’

attention to the writers’ piety when they expound upon their intentions in composing

an extensive commentary on poetic eloquence and rhetorical style.

The judgment on the style of Muḥammad’s eloquence, upheld as the pinnacle

of humanly possible eloquence, is encapsulated in another name given to him –

jawāmiʻ al-kalim or the one of comprehensive, all-encompassing speech. The Prophet

is reported to have said,

أوتیت جوامع الكلم

This can be translated as “I have been given words which are concise but

comprehensive in meaning.” 234 As a communicator, his speech is attributed with the

quality of masterfully conveying extensive, multiple, and subtle meanings within

concise, clear speech that is accessible to his audiences. In order to exemplify this

particular quality of the Prophet, the medieval scholar ʻAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Aḥmad

Ibn Rajab (d. 795/1393) compiled a collection of hadith entitled Jāmiʻ Al-ʻUlūm Wa

233 See Taqī al-Dīn Abū Bakr ibn ʻAlī Ibn Ḥijjah al-Ḥamawī, Khizānat al-Adab wa-Ghāyat al-Arab (Būlāq, al-Maṭbaʻah al-ʻĀmirah, 1874), 3. 234 Saḥīḥ Muslim, Book 5, Ḥadīth 11.

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al-Ḥikam Fī Sharḥ Khamsīn Ḥadīthan Min Jawāmiʻ Al-Kalim.235 The idea of

Prophetic Eloquence or Balāghat al-Rasūl, therefore, is intimately connected to

purpose and brevity as well as preciseness of language, accessibility, and depth of

meaning. Because such eloquence is categorized as prophetic, it is understood to be

both the most beautiful and most effective rhetorical style for communicating truths

that is humanly possible. Therefore, significant theological, legal, and spiritual value

is attached to the aesthetic.

In al-Shifāʾ, Qāḍī `Iyāḍ further describes Muḥammad’s “pre-eminence in

eloquence and fluency in speech.” He characterizes Prophetic Eloquence as “very

concise, clear in expression, lucid, sound of meaning and free from affectation.”236 In

addition to fluidity and clarity of speech, another quality that is identified as

praiseworthy as well as prophetic is Muḥammad’s ability to respond to the arguments

of Arabs in their own dialect and idiom by “using their own style of rhetoric.”237

Thus, Prophetic Eloquence as a rhetorical aesthetic is upheld as peculiar in its

simultaneous pithiness, depth of meaning, clarity, and fluid accessibility to audiences

of varying cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Where the notion of the

transcendence of divine speech is embedded in the theory of i`jāz al-Qur’ān or the

inimitability of the Qur’ān, the notion of human perfection is embedded in the theory

235 ʻAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Aḥmad Ibn Rajab, Jāmiʻ Al-ʻUlūm Wa al-Ḥikam Fī Sharḥ Khamsīn Ḥadīthan Min Jawāmiʻ Al-Kalimed, ed. Wahbah M. Zuḥaylī (Bayrūt: Dār al-Khayr, 1993). 236 ʻIyāḍ ibn Mūsā, Muhammad, Messenger of Allah: Ash-Shifāʾ of Qāḍī ʻIyāḍ, trans. Aisha Bewley, (Inverness, Scotland: Madinah Press, 1991), 39. 237 Ibid.

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of Prophetic eloquence. If clear speech free from embellishment rather than rigorous

attachment to figurative language is considered the hallmark of Prophetic eloquence,

that enables successful communication, such a standard presents a creative challenge

to the classical Arabic poetic, itself steeped in idiom, conventions, and

embellishment. To then make a figure that is representative of the pinnacle of human

eloquence the poetic beloved of the prelude – and therefore claim such a beloved as

the source of inspiration and entry point to the poem – presents a rhetorical challenge.

Al-Suyūṭī is careful in his approach to the issue of belief in the special

category of Prophetic Eloquence and the applicability of the theory of Prophetic

Eloquence to the practice and study of language including grammar and rhetoric. For

him, there are two points to take into consideration regarding the use of hadith. First,

al-Suyūṭī takes into account that hadith are most often transmitted by meaning but not

“precise enunciation,” and therefore they may not always convey the precise words

and therefore style employed by Muḥammad. Secondly, Al-Suyūṭī takes into account

the possible presence of grammatical errors in the transmitted narrations due to the

lines of transmission that pass through non-Arabs and others who may not have

mastered the language.238

What can be inferred from these two points is that the scholarly treatment of

hadith in the study of grammar and rhetoric included the study of rhetorical style,

recurring images and other modes of figurative speech such as metaphors. On the

other hand, the transmitted speech of Muḥammad cannot be separated from the

238 Al-Suyūṭī, 30-33

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possibility of human error particularly in the precise transmission of words unlike the

notion of tawāṭur of the Qur’ān. For that reason, scholars may have refrained from

studying the balāghah of the Prophet unlike the abundant studies produced regarding

the balāghah and inimitability of the Qur’ān.239 On the other hand, certain hadith

considered to be rhetorically beautiful yet categorized as weak have been described as

‘alawī – of the family of `Alī – in style suggesting a theory that the trait of Prophetic

Eloquence was preserved within the household of Muḥammad.240 Notwithstanding

the acknowledgement of human error in narrations preserved and attributed to

Muḥammad, his rhetorical style is still treated as a unique category of eloquent

human speech.

The shift from a grappling with the inimitability of the Qur’ān in works of

literary criticism to ecstatic odes of praise for the Prophet encompassing and

exemplifying all known Arabic rhetorical tropes is a stunning literary historical

development. By incorporating Muḥammad as the beloved of the Arabic ode and the

muse for human eloquence, the badīʻiyyāt as Prophetic encomia and vehicles to

convey rhetoric is not only a celebration of the beloved as Prophet but of the

possibilities of human excellence in expressive language and communication.

ON THE MATTER OF THE BELOVED’S EMBODIMENT

239 See Muḥammad Aḥmad, Muḥammad Z. Sallām, and Issa J. Boullata, Three Treatises on the Iʻjaz of the Qurʼān, Qur'anic Studies, and Literary Criticism: Al-Khaṭṭābī, Al-Rummānī and ʻAbd Al-Qāhir Al-Jurjānī, 2014. 240 Hamdi ben Eissa, “Can al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah be considered adab?” Private Lecture, 20 June 2016. Rhoda Institute, Ottawa.

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The conventional beloved of the Arabic ode often represents a paragon of beauty yet

the emotional effect of the beloved, conveyed by the style and tone of the poet, differs

from ode to ode. The prelude’s language of desire is present regardless of the gender

of the beloved. Moreover, the poet-lover’s longing for one who is absent presumes

an absent body. The physical beauty of the beloved is poeticized in the prelude.

Depending on the genre and context of the poem, however, the illustrated physicality

of the beloved is either a literal or figurative representation.

The poet’s yearning conveyed in the prelude is precisely because the body of

the beloved is no longer present and therefore the poet must make do with the

remains of his or her campsite as a sign of the beloved’s presence in the past. The

substitution of the tribal beloved of a requited or unrequited tryst with the Prophet

does not negate the importance of the physicality of the beloved nor is the

embodiment of the Prophet sublimated to solely signify figurative and esoteric

meanings; rather, the body of the Prophet is central to the reconstruction of the

Beloved as Muḥammad and his concordance as the poetic Beloved figure in the

prelude. In the madīḥ chapter of al-Būṣīrī’s Burdah, the poet draws his audience’s

attention to the eyes, teeth, and scent of the Prophet. He concludes the chapter as

follows:

كأنما اللؤلؤ المكنون في صدف من معدني منطق منھ ومبتسم

ال طیب یعدل تربا ضم أعظمھ

وملتئمطوبى لمنتشق منھ

It was as if shining pearls, protected in their shells,

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Emerged from both his speech and his radiant smile

No perfume could ever match that of the earth that holds his noble form, What bliss for the one who smells that blessed earth or kisses it!241

As mentioned before, the understanding of the Prophet’s sublime and inimitable

nature is not the only source of praise; his humanity is also a subject of complex

analysis and reflection, and his humanity begins with his body. On the other hand, in

both his embodiment and essence, he is constructed as a figure of peerless beauty that

is constituted by physical and ethical values necessary for a prophetic figure yet

unlike any other prophet. This is encapsulated in a verse of poetry attributed to

ʻĀʼishah that begins with a reference to the beauty of Joseph, “If the friends of

Zulaykhah had seen the blessed face of the Messenger of God, peace and blessing be

upon him, they would have cut their hearts instead of their hands!”242

Descriptions of the physical appearance of Muḥammad in the Shamā’il

literature, like descriptions of his eloquence, illustrate a figure that demonstrates both

human relatability and human excellence. Therefore, in the Shamāʼil Tirmidhi, he is

described as an individual who sleeps, eats, and marries and at the same time his

sleeping, eating and marrying are peculiar to him. His sleep is connected to the

divine, his eating is selective (eg. He prefers certains kinds of foods and abstained

from pungent smells) and his sexual prowess is praised. He is a human who urinates

241 Burdah 3: 30-31. Translation by Aziza Spiker, 23-24. 242 Muḥammad Zakariyyā, Shamāʼil Tirmidhī: Al-Shamāʼil al-Muḥammadiyyah ṣallā Allāh ʻalayhi wa sallam, Khaṣāʼil Nabawī Sharḥ Shamāʼil Tirmidhī (Ghaziabad, India: New Era Pub, 2001).

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and sweats yet his urine and sweat are collected by followers and described as

medicinal and fragrant.

In the seventeenth century within the Ottoman Empire, an art form known as

the hilye (translated in Arabic as ḥilyah) developed based on the Shamā’il

narratives.243 Known as the hilye in Turkish, the Ottomans popularized the visual

portrayal of the ḥilyah through Arabic calligraphy as a representation of the beauty of

Muhammad.244 The narratives used for hilye can be characterized as verbal

portraitures of the Prophet. They include incredibly detailed descriptions of his

appearance. They are attempts to convey the singular beauty of a man through the

point of view of one of his companions who met and saw him. In one of the most

commonly portrayed hilye in Arabic calligraphy, `Alī – the cousin and son-in-law of

the Prophet is reported to have said, when asked to describe Muḥammad, the

following:

ط وال كان علي رضى هللا عنھ إذا وصف النبي صلى هللا علیھ وسلم قال لم یكن بالطویل الممغبط كان جعد د وكان ربعة من القوم ولم یكن بالجعد القطط وال بالس ا رجال ولم یكن بالقصیر المترد

وجھ تدویر أبیض مشرب أدعج العینین أھدب األشفار جلیل بالمطھم وال بالمكلثم وكان في ال ي صبب وإذا المشاش والكتد أجرد ذو مسربة شثن الكفین والقدمین إذا مشى تقلع كأنما یمشي ف

ة وھو خاتم النبیین أجود الناس كفا وأشرحھم صدرا وأصدق التفت التفت معا بین كتفیھ خاتم النبوبھ یقول ح الناس لھجة وألینھم عریكة وأكرمھم عشرة من رآه بدیھة ھابھ ومن خالطھ معرفة أ

. ناعتھ لم أر قبلھ وال بعده مثلھ

243 M. Uğur Derman, Letters in Gold: Ottoman Calligraphy from the Sakıp Sabancı Collection, Istanbul (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998), 36. 244 Literally, ḥilyah means ornament. See Valerie Behiery, “Hilye,” Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God, ed. Coeli Fitzpatrick and Adam H. Walker (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2014), 258-262.

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He was not too tall nor too short. He was medium sized. His hair was not short and curly, nor was it lank but in-between. His face was not narrow, nor was it fully round, but there was roundness to it. His skin was bright. His eyes were black. He had long eyelashes. He was big-boned and had wide shoulders. He had no body hair except in the middle of his chest. He had thick hands and feet. When he walked, he walked inclined as if descending a slope. When he looked at someone, he looked directly at them in full face. Between his shoulders was the seal of prophecy—the sign that he was the last of the prophets. He was the most generous-hearted of men; the most truthful of them in speech; the most mild-tempered of them; and the noblest of them in lineage. Whoever saw him unexpectedly was in awe of him, and whoever associated with him familiarly loved him. Anyone who would describe him would say, “I never saw, before him or after him, the like of him.” Peace be upon him.245

The emergence of the hilye as a genre of art contributes to our understanding of

medieval literary reception of Muḥammad as the embodiment of beauty – and

therefore a beautiful beloved. Like the beloved of the classical Arabic ode, the

narrator gives special attention to the subject’s hair, skin, eyes and limbs. The

penultimate description of never witnessing anyone after his death like him veers

toward nostalgic reminiscing most noticeable within the prelude; and the tone at the

end of the narration impresses upon the listener-reader that the speaker is a lover in

awe of his subject of visual study. Unlike many of the beloveds of classical odes,

however, the visual beauty of the Prophet rests in the embodiment of the “medium”

or what I call the moderation of symmetry. The narrator’s first several opening

sentences introduce extreme contrasts in order to negatively illustrate what he is by

expressing what he is not. He is neither one extreme nor the other. The narrative,

after offering a physical description, then moves to a description of the seal of

245 Jāmi ʻ al-Tirmidhī, Book 49, Ḥadīth 3999; English Vol. 1, Book 46, Ḥadīth 3638.

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prophecy that is a physical sign on the body tied to a divine sign. The remainder of

the ḥilyah then proceeds to describe aspects of Muḥammad’s character bridging

physical beauty in association with the Prophet’s non-physical beauty.

The praise of the physical body of the beloved in the medieval Prophetic

Encomia include praise for both his character and physical beauty that is portrayed as

a reflection of his inner nature. In the madīḥ section of the Burdah, for example, Al-

Būṣīrī writes:

أكرم بخلق نبي زانھ خلق بالحسن مشتمل بالبشر متسم

ھر في ترف والبدر في شرف كالز والبحر في كرم والدھر في ھمم

How noble the qualities of a Prophet beautified by such traits: Full of beauty, and marked by smiles and good cheer!

Like flowers in delicate beauty, like the full moon in honor:

like the sea in generosity, like time in persistence.246

The poet interweaves praise of the beloved’s form or khalq with praise of the

beloved’s character or khuluq. Although in both verses, mention of the Prophet’s

physical beauty precedes mention of his character, it is the immaterial character traits

– honor, generosity, persistence – that ornament physical manifestations of beauty.

Furthermore, the pairing of delicate flowers with physical beauty suggests that the

experience of the latter by an onlooker is impermanent. The image of the Prophet’s

smile, in particular, is emphasized. Al-Būṣīrī writes:

246 Translation by Abdul Aziz Suraqah, 112-113.

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اللؤلؤ المكنون في صدف كأنما من معدني منطق منھ ومبتسم

It is as if precious hidden pearls, sparkling from their shells, came from the treasure-mine of his speech and smile.247

The ambiguity of what the pearls signify – teeth exposed from a smile or eloquent

speech – consolidates the notion of human beauty being composed of both khalq and

khuluq.

In one edition of the Burdah, the prelude section is entitled “Fī al-Ghazal wa

Shakwā al-Gharām” or “Nostalgic Rhapsody and Love Complaint.”248 The language

of the title indicates the eros, pathos and ethos the writer al-Būṣīrī attempts to

encapsulate and convey in his verses. The style of the prelude – in this case dedicated

to the Prophet as beloved – can be read as celebratory of the amatory poetics of pre-

Islamic and classical courtly love poetry. In other words, the poet does not obfuscate,

sublimate or shy away from the passion that is conventionally the hallmark of the

classical ode’s prelude regardless of the fact that the Beloved-subject in this case is a

sacred figure. Rather than seeing the trope of the prelude’s poetic beloved as being

unworthy of the Prophet, Madā’iḥ poets argue otherwise – that the Prophet is the

most worthy of beloveds to be celebrated in the qaṣīdah form.

The embodiment of the Prophet as the poetic beloved and an exemplar of

human beauty is not debated by medieval Arabic-Islamic jurists or theologians, many

247 Ibid., 121. 248 Ibid., 1.

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of whom were also poets, as a legal or theological problem.249 Even medieval

scholars who are portrayed in contemporary literature as staunch purists like Ibn

Taymiyyah (d. 728/1328) did not repudiate al-Būṣīrī’s Burdah but rather argued that

praising Muḥammad was central to religion and a foundational practice.250 The

remembrance of the celebrated Prophetic Beloved – who is embodied within the

world – is not only accepted by medieval commentators but is the basis of prolific

poetic composition. Moreover, the effort to produce an experience of ecstasy for

audiences by way of poetry is elevated to the realm of the most commendable acts of

speech. The Prophet as a prelude beloved easily became a ubiquitous trope because

the Prophet is imagined in literature as an embodied human figure.

THE DIVINE BELOVED Unlike the portrayal of Muḥammad as a poetic beloved, the metaphorical

embodiment of the divine as a desired and gendered beloved in Sufi ghazal poetry

like the works by the other Sharaf al-Dīn – the poet and scholar Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d.

249 Although the poetic portrayal of Muḥammad as a beautiful beloved was not a subject of medieval theological or legal debate, the late nineteenth/early twentieth century scholar Yūsuf al-Nabhānī discouraged poeticizing the beauty of the Prophet in a manner that parallels ghazal poetry about young men and women in his al-Majmū`ah al-Nabhāniyyah fi al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah, 12-13. His position is one regarding propriety of language whereas contemporary twenty-first century Salafi debates about the Burdah involves both legal and theological criticisms. The modern development of expressed discomfort with erotic and praise poetics is, however, is beyond the scope of this dissertation. 250 On the other hand, in the context of Crusader polemics and appearance of syncretic Mongol practices, Ibn Taymiyyah wrote a harsh response to those who repudiated and insulted Muhammad. See Ibn Taymiyyah, al-Ṣārim al-Maslūl ʻalá Shātim al-Rasūl (Bayrūt : al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1994).

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632/1235) – was rejected vehemently by some medieval theologians and jurists.

Admired by many during his lifetime and after, his love poetry in praise and

admiration of the divine – particularly the Naẓm al-Sulūk or al-Tā’īyyah al-Kubrā

was met with criticism and even accusations of heresy by some of his contemporary

theologians and jurists including the Sufi al-Quṭb ibn al-Qasṭallānī (d. 686/1287) and

the legal scholar and theologian Taqī al-Dīn ibn Taymīyyah (d. 728/1328). Ibn al-

Fāriḍ’s critics suspected the poet to be a follower of Ibn al-`Arabī (d. 637/1240) and

subscribed to notions of divine incarnation in creation or monism (i.e., waḥdat al-

wujūd) in his poetry.251

The verses of the prelude al-Tā’īyyah al-Kubrā associate women, wine, and

love with the divine and express notions of relationality between the divine and the

embodied human that were a source of the contentions aforementioned. Appealing to

the poetic of wine odes, Ibn al-Fāriḍ begins the prelude of al-Tā’īyyah al-Kubrā with

the following verse recalling the figure of the sāqī or cupbearer:

سقتني حمیا الحب راحة مقلتي وكأسي محیا من عن الحسن جلت

The palm of my eye handed me love’s heady wine to drink,

And my glass was a face of one revealing loveliness.252

251 Th. Emil Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint: Ibn Al-Farid, His Verse and His Shrine (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 28-32. 252 Translation by Th. Emil Homerin, Passion Before Me, My Fate Behind: Ibn Al-Fāriḍ and the Poetry of Recollection (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), 178.

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Unlike the Burdah and the badīʻiyyāt poetry that immediately spatially situates its

audiences among the aṭlāl of the poetic beloved, the opening verses of al-Tā’īyyah

recalls the space of the tavern and soon betrays that we are in the mind of the poet-

lover rather than a geographical space like Madīnah. The poet indicates that the

beloved cupbearer is the poet’s own eye which perceives or “hands” a vision of the

beloved – “love’s heady wine” – in the glass. The vision of the beloved in the glass is

ultimately a reflection of the poet’s face. That is, the beloved revealed is a mirrored

reflection of the lover intimating that the beloved is God. Five verses into the prelude,

the poet-lover is deep in mystical drunkenness. He says,

ا انقضى صحوي تقاضیت وصلھا ولم ولم یغشني، في بسطھا، قبض خشیتي

وأبثثتھا ما بي، ولم یك حاضري رقیب لھا حاظ بخلوة جلوتي

Then, when sobriety ceased, I sought union with her;

Shame’s grip did not seize me as I stretched out for her

There was no one present with me there, no persistent spy of fortune In the seclusion of the bridal chamber where I revealed my all to her253

The poet is aware of the poetic convention of love critics who advise lovers against

their excesses. Erotic language characteristic of the amatory prelude is deployed

through the image of union within the bridal chamber and self-revelation in which the

poet refers to the divine as “her.” In the case of the psychological drama unfolding

within the mind of the poet-lover, the lover is alone with the beloved and the

253 Translation by Homerin, 2011, 179.

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language “I sought union with her” indicates the moment of heightened desire. The

imagined space of the bridal chamber is unlike the aṭlāl. It is not a space of ruins but

exists outside of history and time. There is no past in the prelude because the desired

beloved is present before the lover unlike other pre-Islamic and classical beloveds and

unlike the Prophetic Beloved. Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s portrayal of the lover’s nakedness when

he says, “I revealed my all to her,” conveys and establishes a level of intimacy

between lover and beloved in which the beloved is present and privy to the lover’s

self-disclosure rather than the lover’s audience.

The image of sexual union as a metaphor for mystical union with the divine

and ultimate otherworldly pleasure occurs in other texts outside of poetry early on as

well. The erotic metaphor of jadhb or ecstasy, ʻishq or passionate love, and uns or

intimacy introduced in Sufi texts such as Abū Bakr Kalabādhī’s (d. 990/994/995)

Kitāb al-Ta`arruf fī ‘Ilm al-Tasawwuf254 and later further developed by Sufis like Ibn

al-ʻArabī (d. 638/1240), in his Tarjumán Al-Ashwāq255 reflect an understanding of

love and the erotic experience as the height of human bodily pleasure and a fitting

metaphor to convey the ultimate spiritual experience. The Andalusian Ibn Ḥazm (d.

456/1064) in his famous love treatise Ṭawq al-Ḥamāmah or The Ring of the Dove

also deploys the language of erotic pleasure when he discusses the subject of union.

The discourse is ambiguous enough to leave open the possibility of interpreting the

254 See Abū Bakr Kalābādhī, The Doctrine of the Ṣūfīs: Kitāb Al-Taʻarruf Li-Madhab Ahl Al-Taṣawwuf, trans. A J. Arberry (Cambridge: The University Press, 1935). 255 Ibn, al-ʻArabī, Tarjumán Al-Ashwáq: A Collection of Mystical Odes, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson (London: Theosophical Pub. House, 1978).

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intended meanings as sexual union or union with the divine.256 In another instance, al-

Ghazālī considers sexual union as the experiential reflection of paradisiacal pleasure

for human beings. He argues that sexual union offers the perfect metaphor evocative

of dhawq or taste of the pleasures of paradise.257 The privileging of the erotic as the

closest approximation to a taste of paradise suggests a worldview in which material

reality is not only a metaphor but intertwined and experientially connected to the

metaphysical.

For Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s critics, however, the figurative language that creates an

image of the divine as a female beloved is a theological problem. For jurists, the

criticism is based in notions of the impropriety of erotic language when addressing

the divine;258 for theologians, the criticism is based in notions of how language

creates images – a concept addressed in another chapter with regards to the definition

of badī` – and the language and imagery of embodiment in reference to the divine

present a theological problem. Within the parameters of imagining the divine as

boundless and infinite, the metaphorical construction of the non-Body within an

imagined poetic Body – such as when referring to God as a female beloved – is thus

256 See ʻAlī ibn Aḥmad Ibn Ḥazm, The Ring of the Dove: A Treatise on the Art and Practice of Arab Love, trans. A J. Arberry (London: Luzac, 1953). 257 See Ghazālī, On Disciplining the Soul: Kitāb Riyāḍat Al-Nafs & On Breaking the Two Desire: Kitāb Kasr al-Shahwatayn : Books XXII and XXIII of the Revival of the Religious Sciences/Iḥyāʼ ʻUlūm al-Dīn. trans. T J. Winter (UK: Islamic Texts Society, 1995). 258 The Shāfīʿī scholar Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām (d. 660/1262) argued that divine truths could not be alluded to by the imagery of wine and intoxication due to its prohibition nor could they be alluded to through erotic imagery. See Homerin, 1994, 31.

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considered a breach. Eroticized poetry in celebration of the divine became the subject

of criticism because in the metaphor is the embodiment of a sacred un-gendered

abstraction.

On the other hand, the gender of the poetic voice – that is, male or female

yearning for the Divine or Prophetic Beloved – also does not encounter post-classical

criticism. The profession of love within the constellation of al-Madā’iḥ al-

Nabawiyyah as well as Sufi wine poetry is not gendered in the way that vaunting

within the Homeric epic, for example, is a masculine genre of speech whereas

lamentation is feminine. On the other hand, classical Arabic courtly love poetry often

feminized the beloved, regardless of whether the beloved was male or female and

toward whom poet-lovers directed homoerotic and hetero-erotic desire.259 In such

cases, the beloved were the embodiments of feminine beauty. In other cases, the

male or female beloved is likened to other celestial or animate beings like the full

moon or the gazelle – both images of which are often deployed in addressing the

Prophet.

Men and women alike wrote love poems in which they constructed the divine

and Prophetic beloveds as the subject of their poetry and object of their adoration. A

likely reflection of the influence of other poets and the poet’s own education, the

poets often mirrored each other in language and image. In the case of the Prophetic

encomium, erotic desire is replaced by the elegiac tone of nostalgic yearning for the

259 In the nineteenth century, Ḥasan al-Aṭṭār deploys a similar classical convention of feminizing the beloved when the speaker of Maqāmāt al-Aṭṭār addresses the French male soldiers as beloveds.

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Beloved in his absence. The poetry of sixteenth century poet and scholar `Ā’ishah al-

Bā`ūniyyah is a perfect example demonstrating how poetic works are autobiographies

of mentorship, education, and training in the way the works incorporate distinct

poetic styles as well as scholarly ideas. Because she composes a badī`iyyah, she

utilizes the same meter and rhyme as her predecessor Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī’s

badīʻiyyah; on the other hand, the style of al-Bā`ūniyyah’s badī`iyyah poem Al-Fatḥ

al-Mubīn fī Madḥ al-Amīn is decidedly unique:

في الحسن مطلع أقمار بذي سلم أصبحت في زمرة العشاق كالعلم

The moons of Dhū Salam are harbingers of a felicitous opening

Among the party of ardent lovers, I have become the flag bearer.260 It is difficult to make an argument for reading her profession of love for the Prophet

as gendered or particularly feminine; rather, she exhibits a style that is clear, direct,

pithy, and expressive. Following ʻIzz al-Dīn al-Mawsilī’s innovative style, she

directly identifies the trope she exemplifies within each verse, and she articulates a

more intimate and ecstatic reference to the Prophet as the moon instead of the

neighbors of Dhū Salam or simply the location Dhū Salam. On the other hand, her

contemporary, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, opens his badīʿiyyah poem Naẓm al-Badīʻ fī

Madḥ Khayr Shafīʻ with the following verse exhibiting the indirect style of referring

to the beloved by way of locations near Madīnah:

260 The translation is mine. See ʻĀʼishah Al-Bāʻūniyyah, Sharḥ Al-Badīʻiyyah al-Musammāh bi-al-Fatḥ al-Mubīn fī Madḥ al-Amīn, ed. Riḍā Rajab (Dimashq: Rand lil-Ṭibāʻah wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʻ, 2010), 33.

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من العقیق ومن تذكار ذي سلمھاللھا بدمبراعة العین في است

From the remembrance of red valleys of al-`Aqīq and Dhū Salam

Brilliant eyes open with the redness of blood.261 THE SATIRIZED BELOVED Parody and satire can only be successful if the intended audience is sufficiently

prepared and aware of the convention, trope, genre, character, etc. being satirized.

Considering the general conventions of the prelude in the Arabic-Islamic qaṣīdah and

the more specific conventions of the popular panegyrics in which Prophet and the

Divine stand in as the poetic Beloved, writers had much material that could be

satirized. Thus, around the same period and geographical location from which Ibn al-

Fāriḍ wrote the famous Naẓm al-Sulūk and al-Būṣīrī wrote the Qaṣīdah al-Burdah,

the optometrist and entertainer Ibn Dāniyāl (d. 711/1311) wrote from Mamlūk Cairo a

satirical ode in which Iblīs – the devil of the Qur’ān – is addressed as the poetic

beloved. The Iblīs of Muslim narratives does not develop into a character that makes

an appearance in narratives that parallels Christian demonology narratives as well as

visual art; rather, in narrative, Iblīs is often portrayed as a trickster and someone who

takes pleasure in buffoonery and who takes on many disguises – including a non-

261 The translation is mine. See Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūtī, Naẓm al-badīʻ fī madḥ Khayr Shafīʻ, ed. ʻAlī Muḥammad Muʻawwaḍ, ʻĀdil Aḥmad ʻAbd al-Mawjūd, ʻAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Sinnah (Ḥalab : Dār al-Qalam al-ʻArabī bi-Ḥalab, 1995), 46.

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threatening cat who keeps a person from praying Fajr by encouraging him to pray the

late night optional prayers.262

The occasion of his poem was a campaign that Mamlūk Sulṭān al-Malik al-

Ẓāhir Baybars (d. 676/1277) pursued against vice in which he banned drugs, wine,

and prostitution.263 Reigning from 1260-1277, the sulṭān is credited with defeating the

Seventh Crusade of King Louis the IX of France as well as defeating the Mongols at

the Battle of `Ayn Jalūt in 1260. A Mosul-born transplant in Cairo, Ibn Dāniyāl

responded to the effects of the sultan’s “campaign against vice” and wrote,

مات یا قوم شیخنا إبلیــس وخـال منھ ربعھ المأنـوس

ونعاني حدسي بھ إذ توفـي ولعمرى مماتــھ محدوس

O people! Suddenly Iblīs is dead, His familiar abode now empty.

My intuition told me about his passing,

By my life! His death has been sensed by instinct.264 The forthrightness of the statement “Suddenly Iblīs is dead” contrasts humorously

with the oblique and indirect address of the beloveds’ absences in other poetry. In the

262 Also, for other alternative readings regarding Iblīs, see Whitney S. Bodman, The Poetics of Iblīs: Narrative Theology in the Qur'ān (Cambridge: Harvard University Press for Harvard Theological Studies, 2011). 263 Li Guo, "Paradise Lost: Ibn Dāniyāl's Response to Baybars's Campaign against Vice in Cairo," Journal of the American Oriental Society, 121.2 (2001): 219-235. See the Appendix for the Arabic. For a historical fictional account on Baybars’s campaign, see Ben Salem Himmich, Hādhā Al-Andalusī: Riwāyah (Bayrūt: Dār al-Ādāb, 2007). 264 Ibid., 220.

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case of the latter, the reader/listener is not sure about the current whereabouts of the

beloved or whether he or she is alive or dead which provokes further poetic

contemplation and drives the sentiments of yearning; in the case of the devilish

beloved, nothing more is to be said because the statement is declarative and

definitive. Moreover, the poet begins by addressing an audience instead of

addressing himself or the beloved in a performance of solitude that is assumed in the

prelude by other poets. In doing so, the assertiveness of the poetic voice resembles the

voice of an assertive sermonizer confident in his abilities to discern and interpret the

situation he will proceed to describe. Contrasted with the constructions of divine and

prophetic beloved as present in the sublime sense by other poet-lovers through

interrogative ambiguity, the declaration of finality of Iblīs’ presence intuited by the

poet-sermonizer adds comedic effect.

Ibn Dāniyāl also invokes wine poetry associated with contemplations of the

divine beloved as in Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poetry. However, he overturns the metaphorical

contemplation of the tavern by referring to the actual taverns of Cairo and states,

والحشائش قد حرقنأین عیناه تراع منھا المجوس , بنار

قلعوھا من البساتین إذ ذاك صغارا خضراء وھي عروس

Where are his eyes that would gaze at wine

Now banned from drinking halls and taverns?

There wine containers were smashed, While the tavern keeper was jailed.265

265 Ibid.

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Presenting the literal absence of wine and the jailing of tavern keepers, the

contemplative eyes that gaze upon the metaphorical wine of love in mystical poetry

are parodied. The lover’s painful trial that has spiritual stakes in the preludes of al-

Madā’iḥ and Sufi poetry is reduced to the poet-lover’s political and material reality.

Figurative speech is comedic when the commonplace sign which once signified

meanings beyond the materiality of the thing invoked no longer exists or is banned

and displaced. Thus, Ibn Dāniyāl demonstrates “maturity in art of satire” by

incorporating a devilish beloved into a prelude that impresses upon an elegiac mood

of lamentation rather than amorous longing.266 Because of the established poetics of

other sacred beloveds, the poet is able to satirize the genre and convention

successfully.

POETIC RECONFIGURING OF THE LOVER’S TRIAL AS PIOUS DEVOTION Outside of the world of Arabic letters, the medieval Europe witnessed literary

parallels that also deployed erotic language in devotional Christian poetry. In the

Iberian Peninsula, for example, non-Arabic Christian hagiographical literature

reflected a concern for language and communicating with larger audiences as

literature underwent a process of vernacularization and Latin increasingly was known

as the language of the church.267 During the medieval period in which Prophetic

266 Ibid., 219-220. 267 See Patrick J. Geary, “What Happened to Latin?” Speculum, vol. 84, no. 4, 2009, pp. 859–873.

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encomia flourished in Arabic – including the badīʻiyyāt composed by Arabophone

Christians in praise of Jesus – Christian encomia dedicated to the lives of saints were

composed in vernacular verse form in the Iberian Peninsula. Included among these

works is the Miracles of Our Lady or Milagros de Nuestra Señora, a collection of

Marian poems by the Castilian poet Gonzalo de Berceo (d. 1264). Berceo based each

episode included on the Latin narratives and conveyed them in Castilian verse so that

his audience could better understand, memorize, recite, and subsequently develop an

attachment to Mary, the Mother of Jesus. At times, in order to distinguish his subject

of praise from other subjects, Berceo crafts a Mary with powers afforded to Jesus

including the ability to resurrect the dead and to intercede and save sinners from

Judgment.268 The figure of the Virgin Mary within the Marian poems, although the

subject of immense praise and devotion, is not an exact parallel to the poetics of

desire, yearning and nostalgia for the Prophetic beloved who is both present and

absent in the Arabic-Islamic ode; rather she is constructed as a divine figure who is

present in the way that Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s divine beloved is present.269

Ultimately, the amatory prelude begins with the poet-lover’s trial, and it is the

poet in love who is the central figure within the prelude moment of the ode. That

268 See Gonzalo Berceo, Miracles of Our Lady, trans. Richard T. Mount and Annette G. Cash (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997). 269 The poetics of the brides of Christ, however, is more congruent with the poetics of the amatory prelude of al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah. Similar to the post-conversion language of Augustine, the language deploys and then sublimates the language of erotic sexual desire to signify desire for the divine. The shift from bodily desire for sex to desire for God does not change the language but remains within the metaphor, conflating embodied desires with desire for the un-embodied. This, however, is beyond the scope of this chapter and present study.

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personal figure of the poet, later overshadowed in the ecstasy of praise of the beloved,

occupies the space of the prelude uniquely and prominently in a display of inner and

physical turmoil at the memory of a beloved who is at times an unnamed mystery as

in the case of al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah. The character of the lover, in the opening

lines, also fulfills the role of the lover by displaying symptoms of love for an

audience privy to discussions of those symptoms and familiar with the performance

of lovers in past poetry as articulated by Ibn Ḥazm.

The primary narrative – and symptoms – of the prelude is that of the lovers’

attempt to conceal their secret from their beloveds and their audiences and the

subsequent failure to do so. According to Ibn Ḥazm, concealing the secret as a

symptom of love is a trial on its own in that the lovers’ attempt to verbally conceal a

state leads the lover to reveal themselves through non-verbal signs. Such is the case

with the prelude.270 Even when the beloved is unnamed, the lover reveals through

various signs – such as names of familiar places associated with Madīnah – a

revelation of the lover’s secret. That point of revelation is a moment of exposure but

also a moment of poetic relief. The personal voice of the poet-lover, later overcome

by the ecstasy of praise of the poetic beloved, occupies the space of the prelude

uniquely and prominently in a display of inner and physical turmoil at the memory of

a beloved who is at times an unnamed mystery as in the case of al-Būṣīrī’s Burdah;

symbolically gendered as in the Sufi Wine Odes; or satirically represented as in Ibn

Daniyal’s poem directed in critique of a Mamlūk sultan.

270 See the chapters on concealing and divulging the secret in Ibn Ḥazm, Ṭawq al-Hamāmah (Al-Qāhirah: Dār al-Hilāl, 1994), 157-167

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If we consider the erotic prelude as a liminal space in the ode, then the self-

conscious poet-lover is positioned at the threshold of complete recognition of the

beloved-subject that unfolds only after enacting contemplation of the self’s state of

desire and the objects provoking such a state of longing. With the case of the Divine

beloved, the subject emerges as character outside of space and in the context of

timelessness; with the case of the Prophetic beloved, the subject is situated in

mythical time and space. The latter beloved, in particular, is invoked as a figure

constructed in a state of liminality, in-between the material and spiritual world with

an unchanging essence of perfected compassion, bravery, generosity, and dignity in

fluctuating material history of triumph and adversity, with the assumption that such a

beloved has a freedom of movement to impose their will on the world should the

invocation of the lover be sincere.271

Thus, even the categorization of the genre al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah as

panegyrics (al-madā’iḥ) and not as elegies (al-marāthī) speaks to this point. The

naming of the genre assumes that the poet addresses the prophetic beloved as a living

subject without denying the historicity of the figure of Muḥammad. Although the

Prophet is buried in a space and place, as the longed-for beloved, he is addressed as

one who can respond and at once, he is subject and object in a diachronic and

synchronic history. Within the encomia of al-Būṣīrī and Ibn al-Fāriḍ celebrating

271 The work of Victor Turner is significant in the understanding of the concept of liminality. See Chapter Three on “Liminality and Communitas” in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co., 1969). According to Arnold van Gennep’s original formulation, liminality is the ambiguous phase where the initiate is outside of society but prepares to reenter society. See Arnold Gennep, The Rites of Passage (London: Routledge, 2013).

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sacred beloveds, the reader-listener is no longer in the realm of a linear temporal

history but a dimension outside of time and place located within the imagined and

idealized Madīnah as well as the imagined idealized tavern. For this reason, Ibn

Dāniyāl’s ode can be read as a satire because the poet deploys the figure of Iblīs as

beloved as a strategy of inversion in order to overturn the timelessness constructed in

devotional poetry and confront material history in the politicized tavern.

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CHAPTER 3 THE SUBJECTIVE PRELUDE: READING THE AUTHORIAL VOICE

أال یا صاحبي كرر بحقك ذكر من أھوى فمن وردي لمورده مدى ما عشت ال أروى

My friend, say again, the name of one I love. Despite my devotion to him, I can't get enough as long as I live!

- ʻĀʼishah bint Yūsuf Bāʻūniyyah 272

One might well use autobiography to chart the historical, cultural, and psychological factors surrounding the development of an ideology of the self.

– Ramón Saldívar 273

Literary scholars and historians both acknowledge that autobiography has rich

potential to serve as a historical source without ignoring the critical problems

associated with the selectivity of the author. Autobiographical narratives that tell a

story about the position of a narrator within a genealogy of knowledge demand a

reader pays attention to the intellectual contribution of identified characters, texts,

cities, and disciplines. On the other hand, certain texts associated with Arabic literary

production, such as collections of ijāzah or records of an individual’s intellectual

genealogy as well as scholarly network have not traditionally been understood as

272 ʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūniyyah, Emanations of Grace: Mystical Poems by ʻĀʼishah Al-Bāʻūniyyah (d. 923/1517), trans. Th. Emil Homerin (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011), 41; Dīwān Fayḍ al-Faḍl Wa-Jamʻ al-Shaml (Bayrūt: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmiyyah, 2010), 88. See the Appendix for the Arabic. 273 Ramón Saldívar, "Ideologies of the Self: Chicano Autobiography," Diacritics, 15.3 (1985), 25.

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autobiographical texts.274 The collector of ijāzāt may not refer to him or herself when

in fact such collections reflect the intellectual networks writers belong to; consider

themselves to be a part of; and from which they draw upon as influences in their own

work. Medieval writers took painstaking effort to record their intellectual genealogy.

Al-Musawī describes this as manifestations of autobiographical deference and

allegiance. Such writers produced works of discursive confluence and contestation in

which the acknowledgment of predecessors – as well as competitors – was a key

component to participation in a culture of Arabic letters that that did not solely focus

on originality of form and style but valued continuity and demonstrated mastery

before idiosyncrasy.

In addition to volumes of biographical dictionaries composed during the pre-

modern period, the autobiography as a genre was not unknown to medieval Arabic-

Islamic literary production. The Sufi autobiography, in particular, is concerned with

the development of the self and subjectivity in large part because of Sufi concerns

with the problems of ego, attachment, and desire. Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s (d.

505/1111) autobiography Al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl or The Deliverance from Error is

a particularly well-known example.275 A work of prose, the author claims to write

about his own lived experience in order to make an argument for what he understands

to be truths about different forms of epistemology including revelation and mystical

274 See Brinkley Messick, "Genealogies of the Text," Oxford Scholarship Online, 1992. 275 See Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, Deliverance from Error: An Annotated Translation of Al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl and Other Relevant Works of al-Ghazālī, trans. Richmond J. McCarthy (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 1999).

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experience. His evidence is derived from his life trajectory and what Michael Sells

refers to as the meaning event so central to the mystical experience that can be

poeticized but not necessarily verbally explicated.276 Al-Ghazālī writes his

autobiography in narrative form tracing his upbringing and educational experience

along with his intellectual development and revelations about institutions of

education, the limits of different kinds of knowledge, the position of revelation as a

form of knowledge, and the nature of gnosis. For the most part, the narrative

progresses in clear, linear fashion with personalized commentary by the writer.

Nevertheless, the emotional component of psychological turmoil and transformation

is what drives the plot line rather than an external series of events – elements that are

typically associated with the modern novel.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AFFECT

In the realm of poetry, autobiographical narratives about milestone events

such as pilgrimage, prison, and exile narratives may be infused within a poet’s works.

Taking that into consideration, poetry can provide invaluable historical insight about

the dispositions of their authors by raising questions about the author’s networks,

education, and writing process. For example, the Iberian Sufi scholar Ibn al-ʿArabī (d.

638/1240) in his Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah or Makkan Openings famously records his

276 See Michael Sells’ discussion on the meaning-event and unsaying in Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 1-13.

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recollections of dream visions.277 It is also through the poem that scholars have

speculated about Ibn al-ʿArabī’s connection with a woman scholar during his time in

Makkah.

In addition to offering insight into the details that constitute historical context

such as the time and place of events and encounters, poetry also offers the emotional

details of experience that constitute the personal histories of affect and subjectivity.

Experience, however, when poeticized often unfolds in a reflective and reflexive non-

linear fashion. Mystical poets, in particular, recognized that the transcendent

experience could never fully be described verbally but rather through apophasis or

unsaying.278 An event may be the occasion of a poetic reflection although the

“narrative” itself may not be immediately transparent in the poetry. Moreover, the

defining sentiment on the occasion of poetic composition can determine the

subjectivity of a poetic persona.

For this reason, I read the affective and self-conscious quality of the amatory

prelude as an autobiographical text of a different nature. Neither entirely confessional

poetry nor historical narrative, the amatory prelude of the qaṣīdah is constituted by a

poetic that can be characterized as elegiac. The authorial voice in the form of the lyric

“I” is consistently foregrounded. As mentioned before, it is the space in which the

poet-lover’s trial rather than the beloved’s is staged as the central narrative. That

narrative is thematically constructed by the affects of nostalgia and love associated

277 See Ibn al-ʻArabī, The Meccan Revelations, Trans. Michel Chodkiewicz, William C. Chittick, James W. Morris, Cyrille Chodkiewicz, and Denis Gril (New York: Pir Press, 2002). 278 Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying (1994), 2-10.

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with recognizable spaces – like the urban tavern – repurposed by the poet through her

language and style in a manner that indicates the contours of the emotional landscape

from desire to admiration to awe and shifts in tone from the sorrowful to the satirical

to the ecstatic. The amatory prelude poeticizes autobiographical experience and

privileges the emotional memory of that experience rather than narrativizes

educational or political development of the self. It also invokes a literary continuum

through a form understood to be a poetic convention and calls attention to the literary

tradition within which the poet participates and is situated. That is, the poet presents

the self as a lover who articulates a subjective point of view while simultaneously

performing her rhetorical abilities and literary knowledge in a manner that articulates

recognition of the self in relation to community by way of legacy, genealogy and a

participatory audience.

Moreover, the prelude imparts upon the audience a transmission of experience

that is distinctly performative. Pre-modern Arabic poetry – as it is meant to be heard

in song and recitation – lends itself to be preserved in memory. The process of

preservation is recognized not only by the form and structure of the poem, but also

through the poet’s careful cultivation of affect that seeks an audience response. The

process involves the poet performing and demonstrating the lover’s loss and longing

embedded within the prelude and the audience responding by mimicking the poet.

Thus, the incantation of the poetic persona is crucial to not only the performance but

the life of the poem. Unlike a linear historical narrative constituted by a record of

events in which one event leads to another, the prelude enacts and performs embodied

and affective memory. The rituals of nostalgia invoked by the prelude invites

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participatory longing that creates, reproduces, reifies, and enables the transmission of

poetic experience of the poet as an individual among and in relation to other poets,

intellectuals, and discursive traditions contingent upon specific time and place

without articulating the particular temporal details of either temporality or spatiality.

At the same time, the emotional and psychological landscape developed

within the space of the prelude is indicative of intellectual and cultural currents within

the larger socio-political contexts of the poet. By virtue of creating a new work of

poetry within an existing genre and reconfiguring past literary convention through a

distinct poetic voice and space, the poet seeks legitimacy and the cultural capital of

contemporaries by way of invoking the legacy of predecessors. On the other hand, the

claim of mastery of legacy through idiosyncratic formalism also signals a departure.

To this point, ʻĀʼishah Al-Bāʻūniyyah writes,

فلي بعاله قصة معنویة رمت عربي العقل في تیھ عجمتي

For I have a mystical tale about its lofty places

That threw the Arab intellect into the maze of my gibberish.279

In this verse, Al-Bāʻūniyyah demonstrates her awareness of the limits of formally

learned language which she calls ʻarabiyy al-ʻaqli when she aligns her expression of

love poetry with tayh ‘ujmatī. The distinction within the verse between ʻarabiyy and

‘ajamiyy is not a distinction of letters and linguistics nor is it an argument for the

expressive limits of Arabic; the entirety of the poem proceeds in Arabic. Rather, the

distinction being made is that between the linear prose that is characteristic of the

279 Translation by Th. Emil Homerin. Al-Bāʻūniyyah, 112/244.

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story or qiṣṣah and the apparent circularity of mystical poetry in which expressions of

ecstatic experience and mystical love necessitate another figurative language of

symbolic and esoteric expressions

The biographical narratives of poets like Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī, Shaʿbān al-

Āthāri, and ʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūniyyah indicate that the writers’ literary production

converge with their travel outside of their birthplaces and migration to and from

Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, and as far as Yemen and the Indian subcontinent.280 The

composition of their devotional poetry in which the affects of nostalgia are deeply

embedded can be read as an assertion of one’s literary lineage and mastery as well as

a poetic of displacement and sublimation. Readers-listeners are invited by poets to

connect with imagined forebears through rhetoric of personalized intimacy, metrical

form, and poetic conventions that signal genre, as I will soon demonstrate. By doing

do, poets reinforce the autobiographical pact between them, their predecessors, and

their mentors before their audiences and are afforded the opportunity to be heard and

read.281 Moreover, in a manner contrasting the objective tone of historical narrative

regarding an individual’s intellectual development and educational training, the

280 In addition to `Alī Abū Zayd’s work, see Zayn al-Dīn Shaʻbān ibn Muḥammad al-Āthārī, Badīʻiyyāt al-Āthārī, ed. Hilāl Nājī, (Baghdād: al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻIrāqīyah, Wizārat al-Awqāf, 1977), 1-6; ʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūniyyah, Sharḥ al-Badīʻiyyah al-Musammāh bi al-Fatḥ al-Mubīn fī Madḥ al-Amīn, ed. Riḍā Rajab (Dimashq: Rand lil-Ṭibāʻah wa al-Nashr wa al-Tawzīʻ, 2010), 22-30. 281 The autobiographical pact is one of the central concepts in Lejeune's framework, denoting the contract between author and reader in which the autobiographer commits himself to the sincere effort of coming to terms with and understanding his life. See Philippe Lejeune, On Autobiography, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).

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amatory prelude as a literary convention that expresses the poet’s self-itinerary directs

readers-listeners to the literary influences adapted and modified by the poet.

SELF-ITINERARIES OF READING IN MYSTICAL PRELUDES Within pre-modern Arabic poetry, intertexuality as a literary phenomenon occurs not

only through the interweaving of textual citations and other literary devices but also

through prosody in which a poet mimics another poem’s meter and rhyme. Through

a musical intertextuality, the informed readers-listeners of various kinds of poetry are

immediately attuned to the influences of the poet. According to al-Musawi, the

reading registers invoked by a work can function as an autobiographical index of

texts and scholars the writer has studied or encountered.282 By indexing the texts a

poet would have read, in which the verses she composes functions much like a

literary library catalogue, the poet reveals her educational training. That is, the poetics

of intertextuality conveys biographical information in a non-narrative form that is not

accounted for in the formal use of the term autobiography as a genre of prose

literature.

Returning to the prelude to al-Būsīrī’s Qaṣīdah al-Burdah, the first verse can

be read as a moment in which the poet exposes his poetic influences. When Al-Būṣīrī

writes,

ر جیران بذي سلم أمن تذك مزجت دمعا جرى من مقلة بدم

282 Al-Musawi, “Reading Registers as Autobiographic Historical Probes: The Past in the Present,” MESA Conference 2016.

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Is it by the remembrance of the neighbors of Dhū Salam That your tears flowed mixed with blood?

the verses could not rest upon an audience’s ears familiar with Sufi poetry,

particularly from the same century and region, without recalling the verses from the

prelude of ‘Umar ibn al-Fāriḍ’s (d. 1235) earlier mystical poem in which he writes,

ھل نار لیلى بدت لیال بذي سلموراء فالعلم أم بارق الح في الز

Was that Laylā's flame that shone through the veils of night on Dhū-Salam,

Or lightning's flash round ‘Alam and Zawrā' throughout the vales?283 Not only does the meter and rhyme of Al-Būṣīrī’s verse mimic the other, but the

language and imagery are similar. The lightning scene284 in the second hemistich of

Ibn al-Farid’s verse situates the poet as a participant within the larger poetic tradition

of the qaṣīdah. Although a recurring motif, the lightning scene is deployed in

idiosyncratic ways by pre-Islamic and early Islamic poets. The scene returns in the

second verse of al-Būṣīrī’s prelude when he writes,

أم ھبت الریح من تلقاء كاظمة وأومض البرق في الظلماء من إضم

Or was it the wind that stirred in the direction of Kāẓimahh?

Or the flashing of lightning in the darkness of Iḍam

283 Translation by Th. Emil Homerin From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint: Ibn Al-Fāriḍ, His Verse, and His Shrine (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2001). See the Appendix for the Arabic. 284 On the lightning scene as a recurring motif of the qaṣīdah, see Ali A. Hussein, The Lightning-Scene in Ancient Arabic Poetry: Function, Narration and Idiosyncrasy in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Poetry (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014).

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Two of the three sites al-Būṣīrī mentions differ from Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s opening verses;

nevertheless, the poet invokes his predecessor not only by way of mentioning Dhū

Salam in order to intimate proximity to Madīnah but also by the poem’s musicality

embedded in the poem’s meter and rhyme. Like Ibn al-Farid’s poem, al-Būṣīrī’s

Qasidat al-Burdah is a mīmiyyah or an ode in the letter mīm.

Literary scholars like Suzanne Stetkevych situate Al-Būṣīrī’s poem among

The Mantle Odes, with Ka’b ibn Zuhayr’s being the first, by virtue of the shared

purposes of the poetry to petition the Prophet. Both poems also share a narrative of

the Prophet in audience and pleased with the poem after which the Prophet placed

upon the poets his mantle in approval of the poet’s work. In the case of al-Būṣīrī, the

narrative is regarding a dream vision. On the other hand, the poetics of ‘Umar ibn al-

Fāriḍ’s prelude noted above is far closer to al-Būṣīrī’s Burdah in musicality, style,

and affect than Ka’b ibn Zuhayr’s Bānat Su’ād. In addition to both preludes invoking

Dhū Salam and Iḍam, a mountain near the vicinity of Madīnah and incorporating a

lightning scene to set the stage of longing, the poets’ lead into Sufi themes beloveds

are sacred and symbolic.

Moreover, the thirteenth century beloveds of Ibn al-Fāriḍ and al-Būṣīrī also

share more affinities than the first/seventh century beloved Su`ād of Ka’b ibn Zuhayr.

As mentioned in an earlier chapter, the lover in the latter’s poem weeps over the loss

of a beloved named Su’ād at the abandoned campsite, thereby poetically invoking

pre-Islamic poetic conventions and demonstrating his mastery of it. Although the

name of the beloved can be read as the poet’s use of double entendre, in which Ka’b

ibn Zuhayr means to indicate through the name Su’ād that happiness has left him, the

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name Su’ād itself is not commonly referred to as a generalized beloved in pre-Islamic

and early Islamic poetry. ‘Umar ibn al-Fāriḍ, on the other hand, names his beloved

Laylā invoking the famous love story of Majnūn and Laylā. The poet Qays ibn al-

Mulawwaḥ, believed to be the seventh century figure referred to as Majnūn, speaks of

Laylā as a literal rather than figurative beloved. In a poem from his dīwān, he writes,

توب إلیك یارحمن مماأ عملت فقد تظاھرت الذنوب

فأما من ھوى لیلى وتركي زیارتھا فإني ال أتوب

I repent to You, Oh Most Merciful, from what I have done

For my sins have become exposed

As for loving Laylā and abstaining From seeking her, I do not repent at all285

In the verses, God is addressed as al-Raḥmān and a subject separate from the figure

of Laylā. By the thirteenth century, the story of Laylā and Majnūn is not only well-

known as a seventh-century narrative, but it is repurposed by Sufis within poetry and

narratives to instruct spiritual aspirants on the nature of and relationship between

madness, passion, and true love. As such, Laylā represents the divine object of desire

and Majnūn represents the human aspirant and lover. Thus, in Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s prelude,

Laylā is already a generalized beloved who is positioned to signify not only the divine

but also any beloved figure who is ardently yearned for. The symbol is a prelude to

al-Būṣīrī’s unnamed Prophetic beloved who is only known by association to the

285 Majnūn Laylá, Diwān Qays ibn al-Mulawwaḥ al-Shahīr bi-Majnūn Laylá al-ʻĀmirīyah, (Miṣr: 1294/1877), 6.

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places mentioned within the prelude. Al-Būṣīrī’s poetic shift from the Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s

deployment of the fire of Laylā appearing in Dhū-Salam to the neighbors of Dhū-

Salam establishes a shift in tone and therefore a distinction between two poet’s

characterizations of the beloved. The neighbors offer a gentler tone of intimacy and

familiarity in contrast with the cosmically consuming, awesomely incapacitating, and

unattainable nature of Laylā’s fire. Thus, al-Būṣīrī situates his poetry in relation to a

mystical poet of his time; yet he also poetically distinguishes his far longer ode

through subtle shifts in the prelude.

SELF-ITINERARIES OF READING IN PEDAGOGICAL PRELUDES The reading registers invoked by medieval pedagogical poetry286 meant to transmit

the core concepts of a discipline such as the badīʻiyyāt are particularly and

intentionally reflective of the imagined library necessary to fully understand the text

or work of poetry a writer composes. Although eyewitness accounts and authorial

testimonials are important as windows into an individual writer’s intellectual

development, there are also other ways in which the intellectual trajectory of a

writer's’ work can be read. Considering the multiple reading registers required in

both the composition and reception of a form of poetry like the badīʻiyyāt,

pedagogical poetry not only pays homage to writers of the past but indexes the

various disciplinary formations and debates which inform the changing terminology,

286 Thomas Bauer describes the poems as didactic. Others use the term instructive. See “al-Āthārī,” Encyclopaedia of Islam Volume Three, Edited by Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson, 2009.

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presence, and absence of literary tropes including the celebration or critical

engagement with prolegomenon aesthetics, paronomasia and double entendre.

In the case of writers from the Mamlūk period like Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī, Ṣalāḥ

al-Din al-Ṣafadī, and Ibn Ḥijjah al-Ḥamawī, they systematically list the works from

which they draw commentary in order to compose their own. Al-Ṣafadī, for example,

also notes his reading catalogs along with biographical anecdotes of intellectuals

within his network and those he has encountered throughout his commentary on

Lāmiyat al-’Ajam reflecting the importance of networks, libraries, books and

authorities to the litterateur. By transmitting such information, the writers share the

wide cultural script that is fundamental to intellectual and social history.

For this reason, the verses of the medieval badīʿiyyāt initiated by Ṣafī al-Dīn

al-Ḥillī (d. 1350) can be read as illustrative of a detailed imagined bookshelf – the

contents of which al-Ḥillī actually lists in his commentary. The literal and imagined

bookshelf of the poet is reflective of the poet’s education and reading history. The

first section of the poet’s bookshelf indexed by the prelude of badīʻiyyāt poetry is that

of the general Arabic poetic legacy which informs the continuous incorporation of

poetic conventions, including the foregrounding of authorial voice, the trial of the

poet-lover, the abandoned ruins, and nostalgia within the prelude. The second section

of the bookshelf includes the poets’ readings of the subgenre’s two foundational poets

and their texts including the Burdah of al-Būṣīrī and the Badīʿiyyah al-Kāfiyah of al-

Ḥillī, the former informing rhyme, meter, and theme and the latter informing the

poem of its pedagogical purpose. That is, the foundational texts constituting the

verses of the poem are indexed by the musicality of each poem or within the

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intersection of the purposeful parameters of poetic genre – al-madīḥ al-nabawiyy – of

both texts. The third section of the bookshelf includes the texts specifically related to

the discipline of rhetoric, the study and analysis of tropes, and the commentary and

contentions regarding the latter’s definitions. The badīʿiyyāt, read as self-itineraries

of the composer’s scholarly reading journey, can serve as a source of not only

understanding cultural history but as an archive of foundational texts and concepts

informing medieval Arabic literary and linguistic disciplinary development.

The prelude of the badīʻiyyāt takes on a pedagogical role. The verses signify

the beginning of the lesson thereby interweaving the prelude themes of desire and

nostalgia with learning and transmission of knowledge.287 As a medium of knowledge

transmission, the poetry enacts and performs the tradition of transmitting knowledge

by way of reciting the text and then granting students in audience ijāzah to recite and

teach the same text to another audience of listeners and students.288 Moreover, such

poetry functions as a proclamation that recognizes the genealogy of knowledge within

a discipline in matters of reading and authorized audition. Where prose writers adapt,

appropriate, and directly quote those they have read, references to other writers’

works are primarily sensual and aesthetic – or experiential – in the case of poetry.

287 Thomas Bauer describes the poems as didactic. See “al-Āthārī,” Encyclopaedia of Islam Volume Three, Edited by Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson, 2009. 288 For more about the education system in medieval Cairo, see Jonathan P. Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1992). Also see the edited volume by Joseph E. Lowry, Devin J. Stewart, and Shawkat M. Toorawa, Law and Education in Medieval Islam: Studies in Memory of Professor George Makdisi (Cambridge: E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2004).

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Specifically, the demonstration of a badī’ or rhetorical trope in al-Ḥillī’s prelude

occurs without the poet naming the trope and later provokes competitive attempts by

other poets to include more than the predecessor.

SHAʿBĀN AL-ĀTHĀRĪ IN HOMAGE OF ṢAFĪ AL-DĪN AL-ḤILLĪ

For example, the poet, grammarian, and scribe Abū Sa’īd Zayn al-Dīn

Shaʿbān ibn Muḥammad ibn Dawūd ibn ‘Alī al-Āthārī al-Qurashī al-Mawṣilī (d.

828/1425) – best known as Shaʿbān al-Āthārī – composed more than thirty works

including more than one badīʻiyyah which can be read in the spirit of competitive

contrafaction or mu’āradāh.289 He claims the name al-Āthārī because he was a

khādim or served the Prophet’s mosque. He indicates this in a verse from his al-

Badīʿiyyah al-Kubrā (trans. Badīʿiyyah Major) in which he states,

ألنني خادم اآلثار لي نسب أرجو بھ رحمة المخدوم للخدم

Because I am the servant of the noble sanctuary, I am attributed to it

And by it, I hope the one served has mercy for my service.290

In the verse, al-Āthārī plays with the trilateral root of the verse to serve or kha-da-ma

including the active and passive participles khādim and makhdūm as well as the noun

khidam. The emphasis is on service in relation to the monument dedicated to the

289 A muʿāradāh is a work of poetry that is composed in emulation of another previous work’s rhyme and meter. The poet may compose a muʿāradāh in homage to a poet, in competition with a poet, or both. 290 See Zayn al-Dīn Shaʻbān ibn Muḥammad Āthārī, Badīʻiyyāt al-Āthārī, ed. Hilāl Nājī, (Baghdād: al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻIrāqīyah, Wizārat al-Awqāf, 1977), 3.

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Prophet’s remnants. Born in Mosul, al-Āthārī ultimately moved to Cairo where he

served in administrative positions as a government official. Due to his incurring

debts, he escaped Egypt and then settled in Yemen where he came into the good

graces of the Sulṭān al-Nāṣir Aḥmad ibn al-Ashraf Ismā’īl for a period of time until

the Sultan also exiled Shaʿbān al-Āthārī in 806/1403 to the Indian subcontinent where

he wrote his first work of poetry on grammar. He eventually returned to Yemen and

passed through the Ḥijāz in the Arabian Peninsula on his way to Damascus. In his

final years, when he composed many works, he travelled frequently between Cairo

and Damascus. Historians describe him as boldly straightforward and blunt, and he

earned the ire of his contemporaries who knew him, particularly among well-known

scholars and the elites.291

In the Badī’ al-Badī’ fī Madīḥ al-Shafī’, although the prelude ostensibly takes

on the form of convention, by virtue of the textual legacy within which the poet

situates the poem, it also takes on a tone of bold competitiveness. Al-Āthārī writes,

إن جئت بدرا فطب وانزل بذي سلم سلم على من سبا بدرا على علم

If you arrive in Badr, stay and rest in Dhū Salam Convey greetings to the one who shone as the moon over the world292

291 Hilāl Nājī notes that Ibn Hajar al-Asqalanī, al-Maqrīzī and al-Qalqashandī were all al-Atharī’s contempories. See Zayn al-Dīn Shaʻbān ibn Muḥammad Āthārī, Badīʻiyyāt al-Āthārī, ed. Hilāl Nājī, (Baghdād: al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻIrāqīyah, Wizārat al-Awqāf, 1977), 3-6. 292 Al-Āthārī, 22.

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The opening verse reflects an acknowledgement of the opening verse of Ṣafī al-Dīn

al-Ḥillī’s poem,

إن جئت سلعا فسل عن جیرة العلم وأقر السالم على عرب بذي سلم

If you arrive in Sal’, ask for the neighbors of Dhū Salam

And convey greetings to the loved one

Utilizing the rhetorical devices of allusion and intertextuality, there are layers upon

interpretive layers of meaning within the first verse. As established above, “the

neighbors of Dhū Salam” is a direct reference to the Burdah of Būṣīrī yet the

inclusion of movement and the action of arrival in al-Āthārī’s verse is a poetic

movement away from the act of remembrance in al-Būṣīrī’s prelude to the act of

arrival and conveying greetings in al-Ḥillī’s prelude. The tone of both al-Ḥillī and al-

Āthārī begin with less melancholy and more hopefulness than that of al-Būṣīrī, whose

prelude includes the acts of remembrance, weeping, sleeping, and sleeplessness. Al-

Āthārī furthermore adapts the style of al-Ḥillī to demonstrate a rhetorical device

without identifying it and highlights the concept of barāʻat al-maṭlaʻ or ingenious

openings. It is also in the very first verse of the prelude where Al-Āthārī

demonstrates his divergence from his predecessors and inscribes within the

parameters of the subgenre his tone of competition. That is, instead of highlighting

and demonstrating two rhetorical tropes like Al-Ḥillī, al-Āthārī demonstrates twice as

many tropes. He incorporates barāʻat al-maṭlaʻ wa tasrīʻ wa luzūm mā lā yalzim wa

l-tajnīs al-tāmm or “ingenious beginnings, fission, double rhyme, and perfect

paronomasia.” Moreover, he poetically embellishes the reference to the Prophet.

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Rather than leave the beloved unnamed like al-Būṣīrī or by way of reference as “the

loved one” like al-Ḥillī, Al-Āthārī refers to the beloved as the moon. Although the

reference to Muḥammad as the moon is not unique nor is Al-Āthārī the first to do so,

one can read immediately from construction of his prelude that the poet impresses

upon his reader not only his poetic expertise but that he exceeds his predecessors – if

not in knowledge, then in ability. Al-Āthārī’s prelude appears to incorporate all the

traditional conventions of the amatory prelude yet functions as a critical competitor in

the realm of badīʻiyyāt composition.

ʻĀʼISHAH BINT YŪSUF AL-BĀʻŪNIYYAH AS SUFI MASTER AND CRITIC Multiple genres of the classical Arabic-Islamic ode developed and flourished

particularly during the post-classical period, including the genre of the Madā’iḥ

Nabawiyyah – panegyrics dedicated to the Prophet Muḥammad – as well as other

forms of Sufi poetry like the Khamriyyah or Wine Odes. Characterized as mystical

and viewed as a form of supplication such poetry was read largely as devotional

works although the composers of such poetry utilized classical Arabic-Islamic poetic

conventions and often deployed innovative forms of rhetorical tropes as a display of

poetic prowess that locate their production within a literary tradition and

network. Narratives about super-natural occurrences and visions of saints

surrounding famous poets, particularly in the thirteenth century, elevated the

composer and further popularized their works confirming for their audiences the

efficacy of the poet’s supplication.

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Sufi poetry also articulates the contributions of Sufi masters within the

adaptation of language and concepts as well as form and structure of the poetry but

unlike Shaʿbān al-Āthārī, ʻĀʼishah bint Yūsuf al-Bāʻūniyyah’s (d. 1517) poetry takes

a turn of deference and admiration for the earlier Sufi masters in addition to defiance

in the face of critics of her order and thematically centers on repentance, sincerity,

recollection, and love. A sixteenth century intellectual, litterateur, and mystic, Al-

Bāʻūniyyah’s depiction of the self provides important material for understanding the

poetic encapsulation of philosophical understanding of the self and its connection – or

detachment – to place. Originally from the village of Bāʻūn, al-Bāʻūniyyah settled in

the cosmopolitan city of Damascus where she received her education and intellectual

training; then moved to Cairo in order to secure her son employment; and was buried

in Aleppo. Before entering Cairo, her entire caravan was pillaged and she was left

with nothing. Due to her status and family connections, however, the wife of a

Mamlūk administrator took her in and gave her shelter. Among the works of al-

Bāʻūniyyah that have been preserved are her six long odes dedicated to the Prophet

including her badīʻiyyah and al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah compositions, her treatise on

Sufi concepts and practice, and the autobiographical collection Fayḍ al-Faḍl wa

Jam’u al-Shaml.

Among scholars considered to have been influential to her own intellectual

development are Yaḥyā ibn Sharaf al-Nawawī (d. 676/1277), ‘Abd Allah al-Anṣārī

(d. 481/1089), Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Kalābādhī (d. 385/995),

Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Azdī al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021), Abu al-Qāsim ʿAbd al-

Karīm ibn Hawāzin al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1074), Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al-

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Suhrawardī (632/1234), and Ibn ‘Aṭā’illah (709/1309). An adept of the ‘Urmawī

branch of the Qādiriyyah – the Sufi Order of ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1166) –

al-Bāʻūniyyah’s first primary shaykh was Ismā’īl al-Ḥawwārī (900/1495) and her

second guide was Yahyā al-‘Urmawī, whom she names in her work Fayḍ al-Faḍl wa

Jam’ al-Shaml.

Considered one of the most prolific women writers of the medieval and early

modern period, the notion of Al-Bāʻūniyyah’s exceptionalism as an intellectual and

writerly figure – or the question of whether she represents a radical break from male

dominated spaces – is unsettled by the tone and disposition of al-Bāʻūniyyah’s work.

Ros Ballaster, a scholar of eighteenth century English literature, notes, “ʿĀʾishah’s

unproblematic demonstration of learning.”293 Ballaster explains,

[The text] provides for the woman reader seeking the voice of women in history an instructive example beyond its own intent pursuit of theological truth: we read and see here a woman who communicates her literary sensibility and creativity through acts of translation and mediation of the words of others, who defies our expectations of literary property and ‘originality’ to show us just how urgent, fresh and liberating the encounter with the voices of the past can be.

What Ballaster takes note as distinctively unique in the voice of ʻĀʼishah bint Yūsuf

Al-Bāʻūniyyah could further be argued as characteristic of medieval Arabic-Islamic

writers who called attention to their predecessors and engaged with their works as not

only a matter of convention but in a manner of that which was in vogue.

The Ode in “T” or Tā’iyyah of ‘Āʼishah bint Yūsuf al-Bāʻūniyyah, in

particular, indicates the poet’s reading of and offering of homage to the thirteenth

293 See the Foreword to ʻĀʼishah bint Yūsuf Bāʻūnīyyah, The Principles of Sufism, trans. Th E. Homerin (New York: Library of Arabic Literature, 2014).

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century Sufi master – known as the Sultan of Lovers – Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 1235) who

composed the Tā’iyyah al-Kubrā or Naẓm al-Sulūk (trans. The Poem of the Sufi Way),

one of the longest known Sufi odes.294 Without ever mentioning her predecessor,

ʻĀʼishah immediately invokes him on three levels. The first is primarily by way of

the musicality of the poem. Like Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poem, because al-Bāʻūniyyah’s poem

is a Tā’iyyah, the poem ends with a rhyme in the letter Tā’. Al-Bāʻūniyyah choice of

meter and rhyme reflects a transparency – similar to a citation – with regard to the

poet she intends to draw from in her own work. Al-Bāʻūniyyah’s prelude begins,

سقاني حمیا الحب من قبل نشأتي ومن قبل وجداني طربت بنشوتي

He quenched me with love’s heady wine before my birth, And I delighted in my drink prior to my being295

Her opening verse echoes her predecessor Ibn al-Fāriḍ, who begins his Tā’iyyah with,

سقتني حمیا الحب راحة مقلتي وكأسي محیا من عن الحسن جلت

The palm of my eye handed me love’s heady wine to drink,

And my glass was a face of one revealing loveliness.296 Secondly, Aisha invokes Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Tā’iyyah by way of the language and imagery.

The poems begin with the same verb “to quench” or saqā – with the trilateral root of 294 The poem is also known as al-Tā’iyyah al-Kubrā. See Th. Emil Homerin’s ʻUmar Ibn Al-Fāriḍ: Sufi Verse, Saintly Life (New York: Paulist Press, 2000). 295 Translation Th. Emil Homerin. See Aishah Al-Baʿuniyyah, Emanations of Grace: Mystical Poems by ʻĀʼishah Al-Bāʻūnīyah (d. 923/1517), trans. Th. Emil Homerin (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011), 97; Arabic 237. 296 Translation by Th. Emil Homerin. See ʻUmar Ibn Al-Fāriḍ: Sufi Verse, Saintly Life (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 75.

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sa-qa-ya. In both cases, the actor performing the act of quenching the lover is the

cupbearer. A trope of wine poetry, the figure signals the beginning of the ode and in

the case of both opening verses, the cupbearers are offering the lover the wine of love

to drink. Although Ibn al-Fāriḍ faced criticism by his contemporaries for the use of

the wine motif to signify divine love, al-Bāʻūniyyah composes for a sixteenth century

audience that would take pleasure in her invocation – that is, an audience familiar

with the Sufi Wine Ode genre which references throughout the poem the wine of love

and the intoxication of union with the divine. Similarly, al-Bāʻūniyyah has situated

the poet-lover and the reader in the tavern yet that is where the parallelism ends and

the poetic voice diverges.

Thirdly, the temporal reality of the lover at the beginning of al-Bāʻūniyyah’s

Tā’iyyah does something interesting. The poet does not invoke the Tā’iyyah of Ibn

al-Fāriḍ, but rather another well-known Khamriyyah, or wine ode, in which Ibn Al-

Fāriḍ does this in another wine ode in which he says,

شربنا على ذكر الحبیب مدامة سكرنا بھا، من قبل أن یخلق الكرم

In memory of the beloved we drank a wine;

We were drunk with it before creation of the vine.297

Al-Bāʻūniyyah’s invocation of pre-eternity parallels closely this verse of Ibn al-Fāriḍ

in terms of temporality. Al-Bāʻūniyyah locates the action of being quenched by the

cupbearer of love in pre-eternity before bodily existence whereas Ibn al-Fāriḍ locates

the action of his Tā’iyyah cupbearer within the lover’s more recent embodied past. 297 Ibid., 47.

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Thus, in his Tā’iyyah, Ibn al-Fāriḍ says that the lover’s face reveals the beauty of the

beloved yet al-Bāʻūniyyah states the lover has drunk of the wine before her birth as in

“before the creation of the vine.” Similarly, she plays with the conceit of

remembering pre-existence or pre-eternity. The concept of pre-eternity and union

with God before embodied existence in the material world is often deployed in Sufi

writings to establish the nature of the relationship between lover and beloved is not

only primordial and before the constraints of creation in time and space but an

experiential knowledge embedded in the soul’s memory that can be recalled through a

process and practice of remembering and cultivating attachment and longing. The

practice of remembrance, as discussed within Sufi circles, is designated as

remembrance because of the concept of the first covenant in which all souls testified

to the existence of their creator prior to bodily existence. Both the process and

practice of cultivating remembering and longing is precisely the premiere function of

the erotic prelude especially in its deployment within mystical poetry.

Thus, al-Bāʻūniyyah demonstrates not only her knowledge and mastery of Ibn

al-Fāriḍ’s famous Tā’iyyah – but of the corpus of Sufi poetry; and this is also where

she departs from her predecessor. First, unlike Ibn al-Fāriḍ, her conceptualization of

intimacy with the divine is marked both by immediacy as well as in the materialized

public spaces of sacred ritual rather than primarily through the intermediary of the

private tavern. Secondly, the poets differ in their gendering of the cupbearer and the

beloved which points to the self-identified gender of the lover-poet, and finally, the

poets differ in the unification and duality of the lover and beloved in which the earlier

poet consistently points to the beloved within and where distinction between subject

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and object is blurred where Al-Bāʻūniyyah holds on to the distinction and makes the

reader aware of not only the lover’s identity in relation to the Divine but relation to

others.

Thus, regarding the gendering of the cupbearer, Al-Bāʻūniyyah conjugates the

verb to quench – saqā – in the third-person masculine in which the subject-actor

doing the act of quenching is God. This contrasts with Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poem in which

the lover-poet is gendered masculine and the beloved is gendered feminine. By

inverting the gender of the lover and the beloved in a heteronormative framework, al-

Bāʻūniyyah demonstrates gender consciousness by calling attention to the

autobiographical element of the poem and identity of the lover-poet as a woman as

distinct from her earlier master. Throughout her poem, the poet consistently refers to

the self with the pronouns “I” or “me” or “my” and to the desired beloved with the

pronoun “he” or “him” or “his.” Al-Bāʻūniyyah overturns the gendered dynamics

between lover and beloved in her Tā’iyyah in which the lover is feminine and in

pursuit of her object of desire.

Moreover, the poet-lover of al-Bāʻūniyyah is directly quenched with the wine

of love by the divine. She writes, “He quenched me.” There is no intermediary – no

mirror or eye of reflection as in the case of Ibn al-Fāriḍ who aims to develop the

concept that beholding the Divine Beloved occurs through an act of self-reflection.

The eye – that which symbolically performs the act of the cupbearer – is gendered

feminine and therefore affects the conjugation of the verb saqatnī. Thus, although Ibn

al-Fāriḍ’s enfolds the beloved-object of love and the lover-subject into one, there

remain two symbolic levels of mediation and therefore distance between the lover

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being quenched and the intimacy of beholding the beloved – the symbol of the eye

and the reflection in the glass. Al-Bāʻūniyyah does away with symbolic distance from

the beginning by way of distinction between the lover-subject and the beloved-object

of love in which the latter gives and the former receives.

Bāʻūniyyah also introduces a different space as the gathering place of lovers

that expresses a departure from the wine poetry of Ibn al-Fāriḍ. Although the

thirteenth century is marked as a moment of political decline due to the Mongol

invasion of Baghdad, it is also the century of the rise and flourishing of Sufi orders

and therefore considered the Golden Age of Sufism.298 Three centuries later, al-

Bāʻūniyyah invokes the public sanctuary – the jāmi’ or the mosque where people

gather to pray congregationally – as the space of lovers rather than the privacy of Ibn

Al-Fāriḍ’s urban tavern in which the lover hides and the contours of which mirrors

the taverns of Baghdad in Abū Nuwās’s poetry. She writes,

وصیرني في جامع الحب والھوى أحیعل للعشاق أھل المحبة

In the mosque of love and passion, he made me call to prayer Impassioned lovers, the worthy ones of love. 299

Gendered as feminine, the poet-lover boldly emerges as a public rather than private

voice and figure. Like in the first instance in which the beloved gives the wine of love 298 See al-Musawi’s argument against the decline these in The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015). Also see Annemarie Schimmel, “Sufism,” Encyclopædia Britannica (Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc: January 24, 2017). 299 Translation Th. Emil Homerin. See ʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūniyyah, Emanations of Grace: Mystical Poems by ʻĀʼishah Al-Bāʻūnīyah (d. 923/1517), trans. Th. Emil Homerin (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011), 97.

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to drink, the beloved enables the lover to take on the role of the mu’adhdhin, the one

who calls to prayer – the most recognizable public voice of the Muslim community

within a city or village. The choice of the jāmi’ – instead of the Sufi zāwiyah – is

significant. Although both spaces of worship, the former signifies power and

centrality in the public sphere; it is the central mosque in which the largest Friday

congregational prayers would also be held, and the jāmi’ also functioned as a space of

public scholarship. She illustrates a performance of love and devotion that is an

accessible social act of the public sphere and without remorse unlike Ibn al-Fāriḍ who

writes,

ففي حان سكري، حان شكري لفتیة بھم تم لي كتم الھوى مع شھرتي

So in the tavern of my drunkenness was the time of my thanks to brave young men,

For despite my infamy, I completely hid my love with them. Instead of an encounter with other young men in the hidden homo-sociability of the

tavern, the poet invokes the public space of prayer and learning as the venue of love

and passion. She envisions herself within a community of lovers whereas Ibn al-Fāriḍ

primarily envisions self-disclosure and union occurring when the lover is alone and

completely vulnerable in a private space. Thus, the sixth verse of his Tā’iyyah

announces,

وأبثثتھا ما بي، ولم یك حاضري رقیب لھا حاظ بخلوة جلوتي

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There was no one present with me there—no persistent spy of fortune – In the seclusion of the bridal chamber where I revealed my all to her.300

Again, Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s beloved is first imagined in terms of feminine modesty and in

the seclusion of the bridal chamber that is ultimately necessary for seeing a complete

reflection of the lover’s self. In other words, in order to behold the beloved, the lover

must behold himself.

The incorporation of the image of the bridal chamber lends an erotic element

to the nature of the union between the mystic and the divine. It is also significant

because the poet’s encounter with the feminine beloved is within a secluded space

that can only be legitimately accessed by those offered the privilege. The double

insistence of the absence of anyone else’s presence – specifically the raqīb or “spy of

fortune” – indicates an anxiety of a particular kind of social space that disrupts any

possibility of intimate union. The spy of fortune is not the same as the “love critic”

that figure so prominently in the al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah and other love poems but

is also a figure of concern piquing the anxieties of the lover-poet. In Ṭawq al-

Ḥamāmah or The Ring of the Dove, Ibn Ḥazm dedicates a chapter to the spy who he

describes as functioning in several roles and not always intentionally although

sometimes inspired by malice and jealousy and all in the service of being an obstacle

for the lover to attain the object of desire.301 The invoked imagery of the poet-lover

300 Ibid., 75. 301 See ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad Ibn Ḥazm, Ṭawq al-Ḥamāmah fī al-Ulfah wa al-Ullāf Li ibn Ḥazm al-Andalusī: Taḥlīl wa Muqāranah, ed. Ṭāhir Aḥmad Makkī (Al-Qāhirah: Dār al-Hilāl, 1994); The Ring of the Dove: A Treatise on the Art and Practice of Arab Love, trans. A J. Arberry (London: Luzac, 1953).

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stripping himself of clothing and artifice “where I revealed my all to her” in the

moment of self-disclosure not only characterizes the poet in a position of

vulnerability and in which the feminized beloved has power over him, but is also a

comment on the lover’s sense of safety, trust, and protection.

Although the image of the bridal chamber is invoked later in al-Bāʻūniyyah’s

poem when she writes,

ال ستر وود بال قلىوكشف ب وجمع بال فرق وخلوتي جلوتي

An illumination without a veil, love without hate,

Union without severance, and the seclusion of the bridal chamber302

her beloved is envisioned as separate and powerful. The beloved does not weaken,

strip down, or expose the lover’s vulnerability; rather, the lover enables, gives,

employs, and uplifts. Moreover, although the space of the jāmiʻ is far from intimate,

the relationality between lover and beloved in al-Bāʻūniyyah’s poem suggests more

familiarity, parity, and less vulnerability. The lover has the ability, agency, and power

to be exposed in a public space that does not inflect the same tones of anxiety and

shame of exposure. Thus, unlike the “brave young men” who help to hide Ibn al-

Fāriḍ’s lover, al-Bāʻūniyyah’s beloved and lovers are decidedly public facing.

Ultimately, the lover constructed by al-Bāʻūniyyah is made a social vehicle of

transformation. The verb uḥay’ilu establishes for her audience that the poet is a

legitimate master of the spiritual path. Like the mu’adhdhin, she is appointed to call

to prayer and to success; she calls to the personal and the political. As a lover, she is

302 Al-Bāʻūniyyah Verse 62, 104; 241.

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first an agent of the beloved rather than obliterated in ecstasy and union, and

therefore, she is decidedly a Sufi guide conscious of both her spiritual lineage and

order of spiritual aspirants. By emphasizing the autobiographical components of the

poem later on in the poem through references to her pilgrimage and her shaykh as

well as multiple repetitive uses of “my” within a series of verses, the poet

characterizes her knowledge of the path as highly personal and therefore experiential,

and intimate as she first lays out in the prelude. Rather than characterize herself as

unique, she suggests like a teacher that there are others “worthy” of the same role.

Rather than hide from the spies of fortune who are suspected of envy, the lover is

empowered to reject them and to determine her social circle.

THE DISPLACED POET The prelude articulation of loss and longing underscores the temporary or permanent

social displacement of the poet. The second aspect of the social and political

implications of the foregrounded authorial voice within the amatory prelude is the

nature of the poet-lover’s displacement in the face of abandonment before the aṭlāl as

well as his or her encounter with and relationship to the ‘udhdhāl or “love critics”

who are always present at the moment of nostalgic remembrance. In the case of Al-

Būṣīrī’s prelude to the Burdah, the critics are constructed according to the

conventional trope and take on an archetypal quality. He writes,

یا الئمي في الھوى العذري معذرة مني إلیك ولو أنصفت لم تلم

You who reproach me regarding my love, pardon me

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If you were just, you would not blame me

Al-Būṣīrī the lover is apologetic and later engages in self-critique upon reflection of

his critics and advisers. In the case of al-Bāʻūniyyah, she refers to them in

conversation with her more often than her male predecessors and accompanies

references to the critics with her own response. In one instance, she writes,

یقولون ما تصغي فأبدي تصامما یجرعھم من غیظھم مر غصة

؟یقولون: من تھوى؟ أقول وما الھوى

ما؟ فتنطق عبرتيیقولون: كم كت

They say, “You don't listen!” so I turn a deaf ear

That makes them choke on their bitter rage

They ask, “Who do you love?” I reply, “What is love?” “So many secrets!” they reply, yet my words are telling303

The reference to the critics’ own development of subjectivity and affective response –

rage – is unique. Al-Bāʻūniyyah is not apologetic nor does she characterize her critics

as sincere and rhetorically accept the blame through self-criticism. Compared to al-

Būṣīrī who first informs the reader of the presence of critics and then responds to

their severity with self-reflection, al-Bāʻūniyyah responds with her own critique of

the critics. For her, they are not mere characters of convention; they speak,

demonstrate anger at her defiance, and ask (the wrong) questions based on an

inability to understand figurative speech (i.e.,’ibrati). Her critique in verse 15 is laid

303 Verses 14-15, 98, 238.

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against her critics in the form of a rhetorical question, and her commentary to their

response that she conceals her ideas is an indirect assertion of her authority.

Specifically tied to aims of the larger poem and its genre, the poetics of

displacement and sublimation is subtler than the more apparent dedicatory homage to

legacy as well as the formal declaration of idiosyncratic departure. After verse 127 in

which Al-Bāʻūniyyah recognizes the difficulty of articulating the experience of love

through language, she writes again of her critics,

لحوني وجاروا في المالمة عذلي ولو عدلوا للعذر فازوا بجیرتي

Yet my critics abused me and oppressed me with blame,

Though had they turned to excuse me, they would have won my company304 In these instances, she offers an illustration of the social politics within the spaces in

which she is engaged and her work might circulate. Again, she differs from al-Būṣīrī

in her position regarding her critics. Al-Būṣīrī claims that if the critics were just, they

would not blame him. The latter point is a subtle recognition and acknowledgment

that the critics’ point of view has some basis in the reality they perceive but at the

same time, it is not a judgment that considers the point of view of the poet-lover (i.e.,

it is not based in empathy). Al-Bāʻūniyyah is less conciliatory and takes it a step

further. She reminds her critics that the loss of her companionship is theirs and not

hers. Her refusal to acquiesce to the position of those who criticize her by removing

herself from their company is then followed by a declaration in the next verse that she

304 Al-Bāʻūniyyah verse 128:112, 244.

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“surpassed them in refinement.” She is directly calling attention to her superiority in

spiritual training in spite of the opinions of those she may be referring to.

Thus, al-Bāʻūniyyah’s love critics as well as the poet are not simply enacting

symbolic or conventional roles; the details the poet includes illustrate a social

scenario of intellectual and political competition that explores embodied disposition

and emotional response. Without revealing names, the reader-audience is given the

sense of that these are actual encounters in the life of the poet. Later in the poem,

when the critics emerge again in verse 44, al-Bāʻūniyyah transitions to reveal her

allegiance to her shaykh indicating that the stakes of her conflict with the “love

critics” is greater than the symbolic conventional trope that has existed in love poetry

and points to conflicts of interest and affiliation with regard to circles of Sufi orders.

THE POETICS OF SELF-ANNIHILATION AND SELF-CONSTRUCTION Writing about modern poetry, Sontag notes, “(A)esthetically speaking, personal

poems can … remain cloistered within the prison of the self, along the spectrum of

cocktail party bore to megalomaniac.” On the other hand, Alicia Ostriker states, “A

poetics that denies self is also useless; for without a consciousness that desires,

suffers, and chooses, there is no ethical or political model for the reader.”305 Sufi

poetry in particular focused on the process of the ego-self’s effacement and

annihilation, and poets like Ibn al-Fāriḍ and al-Bāʻūniyyah are highly conscious of

the rhetorical and poetic prison. This is reflected in the construction of a personal self

305 See Alicia Ostriker, “Beyond Confession: The Poetics of Postmodern Witness,” 318.

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that experiences some form of displacement and alienation; union with the Divine

that results in annihilation; reconstruction and recuperation; and reconciliation with

material displacement after the experience of reunion and described as a form of

homecoming.306 The Tā’iyyahs of Ibn al-Fāriḍ and al-Bāʻūniyyah, by way of

modeling a journey of the self, are meant to also instruct the spiritual aspirant in their

development. If one were to consider autobiography as psychobiography, such

devotional poetry provides the means for a form of literary voyeurism.307

Furthermore, poetry such as al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah composed as a means

of intercession and supplication were often composed under conditions in which the

poets were ill, in exile, or during pilgrimages far from their homelands. In this way,

they can also be read as expressing a poetics of displacement. For example, al-Būṣīrī

wrote the Burdah as a means of supplication while he was ill. The centrality of

nostalgia in supplication for an eternal homeland within such poetry enacts a

sublimation of melancholy as a result of physical or social displacement. Whether or

not the story is a historical fact, the narrative about al-Būṣīrī’s paralysis which the

occasion for which he famously wrote the Burdah supports the argument for reading

an articulation of a desire to transform his situation of physical and spiritual

displacement. The supplicatory nature of the Burdah is inextricably tied to the poet’s

306 Ibid., 5. 307 See Robin Ostle, “Introduction,” Writing the Self: Autobiographical Writing in Modern Arabic Literature, ed. Robin Ostle, Ed de Moor, Stefan Wild (London: Saqi Books, 1998).

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experience of illness, disability, and his desire for a cure and transformation.308 The

poet is known to have worked in the service of Mamlūk administrators and leaving

the service for more spiritual pursuits. The feelings of powerlessness the poet

articulates both in the first section as well as the final two sections of the ode is not a

disembodied constructed poetic melancholy but it is meant to clearly convey of the

poet’s emotional state in order to achieve the “ear” of God.

Likewise, when al-Bāʻūniyyah composed her Tā’iyyah during/after the Hajj

like Ibn al-Fāriḍ, she also composed her six long odes dedicated to Muḥammad after

the death of her husband while she was living in Cairo – and city which she

represented as standing in stark contrast to Damascus.309 There is evidence that while

in Cairo, al-Bāʻūniyyah longed for her homeland in Damascus. In a verse, she writes,

حنیني لسفح الصالحیة والجسر أھاج الھوى بین الجوانح والصدر

My longing for the foothills and embankments of Ṣāliḥiyyah Enflames the love between my sides and within my heart310

308 Outside of Arabic literature, Montaigne’s Essays, and particularly “On Experience,” is a good example of how a reader can experience writing that parallels in its shifting style the actual experience the writer seeks to illustrate. Throughout the essay, Montaigne articulates his struggle with ideas and social concerns and punctuates that articulation with expressions of his struggle with the physical experience of illness and embodiment. The writer’s own body cannot be divorced from the production of literature. See Michel de Montaigne, “On Experience,” Essays, trans. J. M. Cohen, (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1958). 309 See ʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūniyyah, Emanations of Grace: Mystical Poems by ʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūniyyah (d. 923/1517), trans. Th. Emil Homerin (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011), 19. 310 The translation is mine from ʿʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūniyyah, Dīwān Fayḍ al-Faḍl wa Jamʻu al-Shaml (Bayrūt: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmiyyah, 2010), 14.

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The occasion of her composition of the al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah and other mystical

odes in her Dīwān Fayḍ al-Faḍl wa Jamʻ al-Shaml is indicative of the poet’s

alienation and desire for comfort from a source outside of her company and society.

Much later, during the colonial period, the Senegalese Sufi Amadou Bamba (d. 1927)

composed his most famous works of Arabic poetry in dedication to the Prophet while

he was sentenced to exile by the French at the end of the nineteenth century.311 Where

the Burdah is associated with curing illnesses and recited for such, Amadou Bamba’s

poetry is recited for the blessings of freedom.

Recognizing ways in which self-narratives may be patronized in order to

confirm and assert particular forms of institutional power, Ramón Saldívar posits that

the autobiographical impulse often comes from the margins through a sense of

powerlessness and is used as an instrument to occupy the center.312 Moreover, the

history of the self is a filtered form of cultural consciousness with fundamental ties to

themes of self and history and self and place.313 Saldívar writes,

311 Bamba is famous for the poetry he wrote to the Prophet while exiled from Senegal by the French from 1895-1907. See David Robinson, “Beyond Resistance and Collaboration: Amadu and the Murids of Senegal,” Journal of Religion in Africa, vol. 21, no. 2, 1991, pp. 149–171. Also see Christine Thu Nhi Dang, “Pilgrimage Through Poetry: Sung Journeys Within the Murīd Spiritual Diaspora,” Islamic Africa 4.1 (2013): 69–101. 312 Ibid., 22. 313 Ramón Saldívar, "Ideologies of the Self: Chicano Autobiography." Diacritics. 15.3 (1985): 25-34.

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(T)he act of knowing and writing the self is an act of critical consciousness, an act of knowing oneself as a product of historical processes that can be interrogated, interpreted, and perhaps even changed.314

In al-Bāʻūniyyah’s dīwān, she references her specific mystical states when she

composes the poems.315 The work has been described as a work in progress in which

al-Bāʻūniyyah continued to include verses and poetry over time and articulated

moments of development and change. This is reflected by the fact that the name of

her second Sufi guide Yaḥyā al-’Urmawī appears only in the latter half of the work.

The paradox of the Sufi poems celebrating the annihilation of the self is that the lyric

“I” and poetic persona, which are not necessarily the same as the autobiographical

“I,” is central to the construction of the poem. In the Tā’iyyah, al-Bāʻūniyyah is

conscious of her selfhood and repeatedly articulates the self as a subject with

attributes of agency including the power of ownership and the ability to claim

possession of things. She writes,

بتبلیغ مقصودي ونیل ومعاربي وتحقیق موجودي واعالع رتبتي

The attainment of my goal and the gaining of my wish The realization of my hope and the raising of my rank316

In another instance later in the poem, she writes,

ومذ ضاق ذرعي من وجودي ورؤیتي314 Ibid., 33. 315 Al-Bāʻūniyyah, 33. 316 Verse 59. See ʿA’ishah al-Baʿuniyyah, Emanations of Grace: Mystical Poems by ʻĀʼishah Al-Bāʻūnīyah (d. 923/1517), trans. Th. Emil Homerin (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011), 104; Arabic 241.

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لنفسي وحبسي في متامیرحجبتي

So when I was oppressed by my existence and self-regard,

And by my confinement in the cellars of my concealment317

The list of possessions and claims are both material (i.e., “my existence”) and

immaterial (i.e., “my self-regard”); they are personally and socially constructed –

such as goals, wishes, hopes, and rank or existence, self-regard, confinement, and

concealment. The authorial voice is self-conscious and self-referential rather than

completely annihilated and effaced. As mentioned before, al-Bāʻūniyyah presents a

different vision of union and the suffering lover when she writes, “An illumination

without a veil, love without hate/Union without severance.”318 Unlike other Sufi

poets, she does not claim complete annihilation nor does she articulate an experience

of contrasting states. Rather, the experience of illumination, union, and love occurs

without the need for its opposition. Interestingly, she incorporates all the terms and

images of union calling attention to the commonality of experiences described in

other Sufi poetry and simultaneously claims difference. Thus, the veil or ḥijāb is

iterated as a stock image but it does not exist within the singularity of the experience

the poet shares for her audience. Similar, the bridal chamber is invoked to argue that

it too is an image that belongs to other poetry so that the experience of seclusion is

not a singular moment for one individual’s state but necessary for all aspirants. Thus,

al-Bāʻūniyyah affirms an individualized experience of union that is simultaneously 317 Verse 178, 119; 247. 318 Verse 62, 104; 241.

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aware of its instructive – and therefore social – implications. She later writes in the

same poem,

ومذ فاق باللطف الجمالي رحمة أناب سبحان اإللھ بتوبة

وماذا عسى عني یقال سوى فني وجودا أنا الفاني بباقي الھویة

Love of wine effaced me, though it left a little behind;

Had it pitied my condition, it would have destroyed the rest of me.

What could be said of me save that the passing existence of “I” Passed away in the everlasting existence of “Him”319

Returning to the first verse in which the love of wine is initially introduced, the poetic

“I” remains as the voice of the lover in trial. There is no complete effacement or

annihilation of the self in the world al-Bāʻūniyyah constructs as the earlier verse

indicates when she says “though it left a little behind,” but there is a suffering self

that remains in the process of passing away after achieving the “love of wine.”

Although the concept of the self’s annihilation is considered to be a preeminent state

by other Sufis, the poet argues here that the existence of the conscious self in love is a

far more difficult trial and therefore reflective of a far greater state. Al-Bāʻūniyyah’s

tone can be read in two different ways. It is possible that the poet expresses humility

before the other Sufi masters who write about annihilation of the ego-self in union

that she cannot attain. The verse can also be read as a critique of the poet. It is

possible she is critical of the possibility of complete annihilation or fanā’ and makes

an argument from experience suggesting the self can never be completely destroyed

319 Ibid., Verse 100-01,109; Arabic 243.

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nor is it even desirable to achieve such a state when on the spiritual path. In al-

Bāʻūniyyah’s prelude, both “I” and “He” are present in the verbal sentence saqānī,

which the divine interacts with the “I” of the poetic-self. The subject and object are

distinctly separate but constructed in relation to one another. She is created. He exists

before her.

On the other hand, the second hemistich of the verse in which the poet says,

“Had (love of wine) pitied my condition/It would have destroyed the rest of me” is

particularly significant when considering the self-consciousness of the poetic voice.

The poet is both sad and reproachful. Embedded within the reproach is an unsettling

rather than a hopeful and ecstatic supplication. The reproach is directed at a pitiless

love rather than the love critics. The verses are reflective of the displacement of the

poet that is a result from both the self in love and the suffering self. Her disposition

toward the experience of effacement is one of resignation rather than ecstasy and

ultimately highlights the tension between the Sufi value of the ego-self’s annihilation

and the self-consciousness of the Sufi poet necessary to articulate that experience.

The interplay of fanā’ in the passing existence of “I” and baqā’ in the everlasting

existence of him in the next verse highlights the notion of process, transition, and

passing through toward the divine. In other words, the limited self of the prelude

associated with “I” is positioned to cross over the threshold into the state of

everlasting boundlessness associated with “Him.” Union, in this case, is not a

merging of the subject and object in the prelude – it is a moment in which the identity

of the subject is inimitably distinguished.

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By reading the extended love poetry of Ibn al-Fāriḍ and ʻĀʼishah al-

Bāʻūniyyah’s Tā’iyyahs as an autobiography of affect, the prelude reveals through the

poetic persona the disposition of the poet as Sufi lover the poet as master aims to

illustrate for the aspirant.320 As a lyrical text, the prelude directly expresses the

emotional state of the poet-lover that preserves cultural and socio-political memory

by inviting performative mimesis in its recitation rather than by making an

autobiographical claim that centers a narrative of material history. The posture of

confession in which the poet claims to articulate an experience that is unique to his or

her selfhood shifts and transmits the burden of knowledge from poet to listener. The

poetry facilitates memorization and remembrance through its incorporation of detail

that can create an emotional experience for the listener.321 Moreover, although such

lyrical poetry allows for the expression of direct emotion, it imposes a degree of

objectivity by formal devices.322 It has what T.S. Eliot describes as its own inner

320 Joan Aleshire defends the lyric form and says it is not merely confessional in that it signals a breakdown in judgment and craft by directly expressing thoughts and emotions. Instead, the lyric poem can “through vision, craft, and objectivity toward the material—give a sense of commonality with unparalleled intimacy.” Moreover, such poetry that deploys conventions with unique personal inflections can be political, particularly in periods demanding artistic and political conformity, such as the poetry of Anna Akhmatova. See Joan Aleshire, “Staying News: A Defense of the Lyric,” After Confession: Poetry As Autobiography, ed. Kate Sontag and David Graham, (Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2001), 14-37. 321 Ibid., 29 322 Ibid., 15.

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coherence comprised by an “inner unity, which is unique to every poem, against the

outer unity which is typical.”323

By enacting the conventional role of the lover-poet and entangling artifice

with a confessional posture in a repetitive performance of nostalgia, the constructed

self begins to function as an experiential fact for the audience. The poet Kate Sontag

writes, after noting the abundance of criticism for confessional twentieth century

American poetry describing the latter as narcissistic; cut off from greater social,

moral, political engagements; and exploitative of personal experience, that:

Lyric poets in many eras and cultures have cultivated the illusion of a sincere voice revealing its intimate secrets, although poets and cultures have varied in the degree to which they expected readers to believe this fiction.324

On the other hand, post-classical mystical poetry expressing love for the divine and

panegyrical odes praising the Prophet as the beloved are composed as expressive

forms of verbalized devotion, remembrance, and supplication (i.e., dhikr). Such

poetry can only succeed among its intended audiences to the extent that the audience

believes not only that the poetic voice is sincere but that the state of the poet’s

sincerity is central to the effectiveness of the poem upon the audience-listener-

reader’s self.325 For that reason, the narrated dream visions of saintly figures – and

particularly of the Prophet – that often were circulated and narrated alongside the

323 Ibid. , 31. 324 See Kate Sontag and David Graham, After Confession: Poetry As Autobiography (Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2001), 7. 325 Al-Bāʻūniyyah notes the centrality of ṣidq al-qaṣd fī maḥabbatihi or integrity and sincerity of purpose in the (expression of) love for Muhammad the Prophet in her introduction to her Mawlid al-Nabiyy. See ʻĀʼishah bint Yūsuf alBāʻūniyyahh (1516 or 1517), Mawlid al-Nabiyy (Dimashq: al-Maṭbaʻah al-Ḥifniyyah, 1301/1884), 4.

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recitation of the poem itself reflect the poet’s and audience’s need for another kind of

patronage and legitimacy not traditionally offered by a caliph or court official. For

example, al-Būṣīrī’s narrative of having a dream vision of the Prophet on the occasion

of composing the poem the Burdah is not the only one. Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī, ʻĀʼishah

al-Bāʻūniyyah, and many other composers of al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah also relate

that they experienced dream visions of the Prophet as a result of or during the process

of writing. In such cases, devotional poetry is composed as an expression of a

visionary experience. The dream vision on the occasion of poetic composition, the

Sufi itinerary of trial, and the consequential acceptance into divine infinitude through

the facilitation of the Prophet informs an understanding of devotional poetry as a

form of literary composition that impresses upon its audiences that it is an utterance

that is the result of ecstatic experience so pivotal to Sufi circles and audiences

The poetic performance of sincere love so central to the prelude had to face

the critical eye of other Sufi masters, aspirants, and the communities surrounding

them. Thus, the centrality of the “love critic” to the prelude is not only to be read as

the figure who stands in opposition to or in criticism of the lover; the love critic is

also a literary critic who understands the rhetoric of love poetry and must be

convinced of its efficacy. Prelude nostalgia shifts in terms of the desired object, and

the disciplinary and cultural expertise of the critic that the poet speaks to, however,

varies depending on genre. The poetics of nostalgia, as the conventional literary mode

of the prelude, is more than more than simply a desire for an idealized past.

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Idealization is a response to present context.326 When Ibn Dāniyāl deploys multiple

poetic conventions and satirically constructs a longing for Iblīs as a beloved, he does

so in order to respond to the orders of the caliph to ban wine.327 The poet achieves an

implosion of the literal banning of wine and taverns with the staple figurative Sufi

imagery of taverns and wine as in the poetry of Ibn al-Fāriḍ. The poet’s critique lies

in the absurdity of the poetic idealization of a space that is politically and materially

threatened.

‘ABD AL-GHANĪ AL-NĀBULSĪ AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE POETIC “I” AND “YOU” The challenge of the Sufi poetic prelude, as an autobiography of affect, is for the poet

to set the stage in which the lover’s trial is at the center and from which the poet will

make a rhetorical shift to replace the centrality of the self-referential “I” with the

centrality of the beloved “You.” The temporal context of the lyric “I” also recedes

and is marginalized as the timelessness of the divine or prophetic beloved is

foregrounded and “the margin becomes a site of intervention.”328 The intervention

facilitates movement from one reference point to another in order to enter the larger

subject of the poem – the Sufi path, the Beloved, and spiritual transformation The

326 See Aaron Santesso, A Careful Longing: The Poetics and Problems of Nostalgia, (Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 2006), 13. 327 See Li Guo, "Paradise Lost: Ibn Dāniyāl's Response to Baybars' Campaign against Vice in Cairo," Journal of the American Oriental Society, 121.2 (2001): 220. 328 See R Smith, Derrida and Autobiography (Cambridge University Press, 1955), 61.

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Damascene Sufi and poet ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulsī (d. 1144/1731),329 who composed

the badīʿiyyah poem entitled Nafaḥāt al-Azhār ʻalā Nasamāt al-Asḥār, begins a poem

from his dīwān with the following verses:

عیني لغیر جمالكم ال تنظرخطروسواكمو في خاطري ال ی

وجمیع فكري فیكمو دون الورى وعلى محبتكم أموت وأحشر

My eyes see nothing other than your beauty Without you, my mind ponders nothing else

You fill my thoughts above all creation

By your love, I die and I am resurrected330 Unlike the other poems mentioned previously in which the prelude continues to

incorporate the main structural conventions, within this poem there is no absent

beloved or aṭlāl that is the occasion of nostalgia and longing. In fact, the poem begins

in conversation with the beloved who is constantly present and addressed as “you”

rather than an internal conversation with the self addressed as “you” as in the case of

al-Būṣīrī’s prelude.

The poem is a short conversation with the divine that concludes with an

invocation for blessings upon the Prophet as a means of attaining the beloved. The

verses move quickly. The back-and-forth movement between attention to the self and

329 For more about ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulsī, see Samer Akkach, Letters of a Sufi Scholar: The Correspondence of ʻAbd Al-Ghanī Al-Nābulusī (1641-1731) (Leiden: Brill, 2010). Also see Elizabeth Sirriyeh, Sufi Visionary of Ottoman Damascusa: ʻAbd Al-Ghani Al-Nabulusi, 1641-1731 (New York: Routledge, 2005). 330 The translation is mine.

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the beloved “you” the poet crafts impresses upon the reader-audience that the

dialogue parallels the process of reflection within a mirror. The image reflected back

by the mirror is immediate. Thus, precisely in the moment in which the poetic “I”

recognizes with clarity that it is decentered, the poem begins. The poet does not ask

questions of himself; rather al-Nābulsī articulates that the state of consciousness of

the lover in the encounter with the beloved is a moment of transformation in which

the self is no longer an agent but a vessel. The vessel of the self, nevertheless, is

conscious of the transformation that occurs as is conveyed by the poet.

On the other hand, the poet does not remain a passive vessel overcome by the

“You” subject consistently addressed within the poem; rather al-Nābulsī says,

ال فرق ما بیني وبین خیالكم إن غاب غبت وإن حضرتم أحضر

There is no difference between me and my vision of you

If you should vanish, so would I; And should you be present, I would be, too331

The shift that occurs after the initial recognition of the self’s consciousness driven by

a subject outside of the self is the poet’s construction of a relationship mirroring

dependence in which consciousness is only possible with both the lover and beloved.

Al-Nābulsī construction of mirroring and the self-reflective and reflexive process of

recognition of the divine echoes Ibn Al-Fāriḍ’s earlier illustration of the eye as the

cupbearer of love and his conception of union and differs from the attention to

distinction of al-Bāʻūniyyah. Moreover, neither lover or beloved are gendered and al-

Nābulsī consistently uses the pronouns “I” and “You” throughout. 331 Ibid.

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Sontag writes, “The deepest value of autobiographical poetry…may be that it

refocuses attention on… fundamental aesthetic problems, not that it solves them.” 332

Like lyric poetry, the prelude offers a sense of intimacy “through vision, craft, and

objectivity.”333 The confessional quality of the prelude both directs the

audience/reader to consider the truthfulness of the poet’s state with the use of artifice

while also participating in a recognizable poetic form. The literary construction of the

self so necessary to the amatory prelude poetic as well as a poetic mode that is

supplicatory and devotional also presents a literary challenge for the poet whose aim

is to convey a notion of the self’s union and annihilation within the contemplation of

the other necessary prelude construction – the beloved.

In his analysis of exilic poetics in Arabic poetry, al-Musawi notes, “The poem

is historical and transcendental, temporal and permanent.”334 The amatory prelude

privileges the individual narrative, savors details and memorial signs, and shatters

fragments of memory.335 On the other hand, the nostalgia central to the emotional

landscape of the amatory prelude in many works of Sufi poetry and the al-Madā’iḥ

al-Nabawiyyah can most accurately be described as a form of reflective nostalgia as

defined by Svetlana Boym in which the imperative of such a nostalgia is “to be

332 Kate Sontag, “Containing Multitudes,” After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography, Ed. by David Graham and Kate Sontag, (Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2001), 8. 333 Ibid. 334 Muḥsin al-Mūsawī, Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of modernity and tradition (London: Routledge, 2010), 200. 335 Ibid.

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homesick and sick of home – occasionally at the same time.”336 Unlike her concept

of restorative nostalgia which stresses home and is most interested in the

reconstruction of the lost home and preservation of absolute truths, reflective

nostalgia stresses longing, delays the homecoming, and fosters the creation of

aesthetic individuality.337

Moreover, I would argue, the manifestation of restorative nostalgia is a

reflection of an experience or state of displacement. The case of devotional poetry

and the association of exilic experience with creativity affirm this argument.338 Read

and recited as texts of supplication seeking divine intervention, the exilic poetics of

the prelude in which the lover experiences a form of banishment from the presence of

the beloved conveys the liminal phase prior to crossing over, travelling toward, or

departing from a site of abandonment in which the lover seeks a return to an eternal

and endless homeland. As late as the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth

century, the Senegalese Sufi leader Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba composed a collection

of al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah in response to his condition of exile from 1895–1902

imposed by the occupying French in Senegal.339 After European invasion and

336 See Svetlana Boym, "Nostalgia and Its Discontents." Hedgehog Review. 9.2 (2007): 7-18. 337 Ibid.,15. 338 al-Mūsawī, Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of modernity and tradition, 200. 339 See Christine Thu Nhi Dang, “Pilgrimage Through Poetry: Sung Journeys Within the Murīd Spiritual Diaspora,” Islamic Africa 4.1 (2013): 69–101; Fallou Ngom,“Aḥmadu Bamba's Pedagogy and the Development of 'Ajamī Literature,” African Studies Review (vol. 52, no. 1, 2009), 99–123; Abdoulaye Dieye, L'histoire

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colonization of Africa and Asia, the post-classical poetics of al-Madā’iḥ al-

Nabawiyyah, and particularly that of the longing of the prelude, continued to live on

in the modern period but in different textual, oral, and visual forms. In the

conclusion, I will pursue the question of modern iterations of post-classical prelude

poetics.

For the next chapter, however, I will interrogate the intersection of the prelude

and literary criticism in the medieval Arabic-Islamic devotional invocation that is the

hallmark of medieval prolegomena.

Du Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, "serviteur Du Prophète": Racontée Aux Enfants, Le Mouridisme (Vacoas, Mauritius: Éditions Le Printemps, 2007).

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CHAPTER 4 THE PEDAGOGICAL PRELUDE: AT THE INTERSECTION OF POETRY, CRITICISM, AND LITERARY WRITING

A verbal beginning is consequently both a creative and a critical activity, just as at the moment one begins to use language in a disciplined way, the orthodox distinction between critical and creative thought begins to break down. Beginning is not only a kind of action; it is also a frame of mind, a kind of work, an attitude, a consciousness.340

– Edward Said (d. 2003), Beginnings: Intention and Method

What does it mean to begin a work and take seriously the meaning-generating

beginnings of a work and its intentionality? One of the most famous opening lines

within western literature is the introductory verse of the Book of Genesis, “In the

beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”341 Well-known for its declarative

thundering in the third person omniscient narrative voice first emphasizing the

Hebrew clause “in the beginning” (be·re·shit) locating the narrative at the beginning

of all things. The statement which follows the clause “in the beginning” with the

subject “God” (e·lo·him) and the verb “created” (ba·ra) establishes the singular and

independent nature of the subject positioned at the origins of all temporal and spatial

existence and all subsequent creative acts bound by such existence. By effectively

overwhelming the reader with the singular creator in the face of nothingness, the

340 See Edward W. Said, Beginnings: Intention and Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), xv. 341 Genesis 1.1-2. I say this fully aware that to consider the text itself, in the original language, as a text of western literature is anachronistic. The text in translation – particularly in contemporary European languages including English – is undeniably one of the most influential texts in western literary production as evidenced by intertextual references in canonical and non-canonical works including Augustine’s Confessions, Dante’s Comedia, and Milton’s Paradise Lost.

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introductory verse imposes upon the listener-reader the expectation for the unfolding

narration of origins and progression of human life in which the God-character of

Genesis increasingly recedes to the background as the immanent driver of human

history. Nevertheless, the introduction rhetorically indicates that the text is primarily

concerned with origin stories – the genesis of the world and the genesis of a people.

Thus, the primary subject’s affective presence, due to the ease by which the initial

words are memorized and due to its tone impresses upon readers how to approach the

text and remains subconsciously intertwined with the later fantastic and mundane

narrated events within the same text that require interpretation.

Along similar lines, post-classical Arabic-Islamic literary critics and

rhetoricians recognized the significant role a well-crafted introduction could play in

conveying the meanings of a work of poetry and prose and therefore attributed

semiotic as well as aesthetic value to the construction of introductory texts.

Notwithstanding medieval theorizations of the introduction as a genre of writing,

contemporary scholars of Islamic Studies often mistakenly gloss over the embellished

introductions of medieval texts in order to get to the “real content” comes after amma

ba’d342 (trans. To proceed). The sentiment that real content begins after amma ba’d,

which I dispute in due course, is not uncommon. When the classical Arabic-Islamic

prolegomena – whether they begin a work of legal thought, theology, grammar, or

poetry – are treated by modern readers as texts of conventional formalities, they are

342 The phrase “amma ba’d” could also be translated as “now, then.” It is used early on in epistle writing as well. See Iḥsān ʻAbbās, ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd Ibn Yaḥyá al-Kātib wa mā Tabaqqá min Rasāʼil Sālim Abī al-ʻAlāʼ (ʻAmmān: Dār al-Shurūq, 1988).

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read as a ritualized flourish of formulaic invocations. Reading the prolegomena in this

manner confirms the suspicions advanced by the now debunked Age of Decadence

thesis regarding the lack of creativity in medieval Arabic-Islamic texts.

Developed by rhetoricians, the classical Arabic-Islamic theory of barāʻat al-

istihlāl – or ingenious beginnings – not only identified the semantic and semiotic

significance of a well-crafted opening but the idea also had a formal and stylistic

impact on the way post-classical works of poetry and prose often began.343 There is,

however, a significant aesthetic difference between the prologue of prose literature

and the amatory prelude, or nasīb, of the Arabic ode. This is because the poetics of

the nasīb requires and places greater value on the subtlety of signification and affect.

In this chapter, I read the preludes of badīʿiyyāt as an articulation of Arabic literary

theory and criticism. The instructive preludes of badīʿiyyāt poetry initiated by Ṣafī al-

Dīn al-Ḥillī (d. 749/1348) illustrate the concept of barāʻat al-istihlāl or “ingenious

343 “Ingenious beginnings” is my preferred translation considering Edward Said’s lengthy reflection on the difference between beginnings and origins, although it is important to note that Pierre Cachia translates barāʻat al-istihlāl as “felicitous openings.” Furthermore, although I will refer primarily to the concept of barāʻat al-istihlāl, there are other terms medieval rhetoricians used, including barāʻat al-maṭlaʻ, to refer to a variation of the same concept as the later post-classical rhetorician ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nablūsī does in his badīʿiyyah poem Nafaḥāt al-Azhār fī Nasamāt al-Asḥār. Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī acknowledges the multiplicity of terminology as well in his earlier commentary Sharḥ al-Kāfiyah al-Badīʿiyyah fī ʻulūm al-Balāghah wa Maḥāsin al-Badīʻ. See Pierre Cachia’s painstaking translation of ʻAbd al-Ghanī al-Nāblūsī, The Arch Rhetorician: Or the Schemer's Skimmer: a Handbook of Late Arabic Badīʻ Drawn from ʻAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulsī's Nafaḥāt al-Azhār ʻala Nasamāt al-Asḥār (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998). Also see Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī, Sharḥ al-Kāfiyah al-Badīʻiyyah fī ʻUlūm al-Balāghah Wa-Maḥāsin al-Badīʻ (Dimashq: Maṭbūʻāt Majmaʻ al-Lughah al-ʻArabīyah bi-Dimashq, 1982).

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beginnings” as understood by rhetoricians. Through a close reading of the

introduction to Al-Ghayth al-Musajjam fī Sharḥ Lāmiyat al-ʿAjam (trans. The

Bounteous Cloud in Commentary on the Foreigner’s Poem in ‘Lām’ Rhyme) the

Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363), I will demonstrate the intersection of medieval

poetry, criticism, and literary style. A multi-volume commentary on a poem, al-

Ṣafadī’s specific choice of opening invocations reveals his desired goals and aims as

a writer; his self-consciousness in the act of writing; and his offering of a

hermeneutical guide to the subsequent reading of the text. To further demonstrate that

barāʻat al-istihlāl, among other badīʿiyyāt, is an articulation of medieval Arabic

literary theory and criticism, I will analyze the opening invocations of two classical

works outside of the Arabic-Islamic literary tradition.

THE AUSPICIOUS INVOCATION

Detailed accounts regarding the most auspicious way to begin any act, including the

act of writing and reading, do exist within advice literature. Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī (d.

974/1566), for example, cites the hadith “Every matter of significance that does not

begin with Bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm is deprived [of barakah],” as textual

evidence for the importance of beginning an act invoking the name of the divine.344

Al-Haytamī explicates that to be “cut off” means the matter is devoid of blessings or

barakah. Thus, the form for beginning a speech act became a convention in the early

344 The translation is mine. Ibn Ḥibbān, Abu Dāwud, Ibn Mājah, and al-Nasā`ī all cite this version of the ḥadīth in their ḥadīth collections. See Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī, Al-Minaḥ al-Makkiyyah fī Sharḥ al-Hamziyyah (Jiddah: Dār al-Minhāj, 2005), 73-74.

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Islamic period and continued within written texts and orations. The development of

such formulas for auspicious invocations, however, did not replace the pre-Islamic

amatory prelude convention that signaled the beginning of the medieval qaṣīdah. As

a matter of fact, post-classical rhetoricians like al-Haytamī, al-Suyūṭī, and others

wrote about the unique demands of the qaṣīdah. Unlike other genres of prose and

poetry, the qaṣīdah was expected to begin with the eros of the nasīb. Thus, the

specific topoi of the prelude remained within devotional as well as courtly poetry.

The Arabic-Islamic adab (trans. etiquette) of beginning required precision

when selecting the opening words of a text. Beginning with such adab could imbue

the writer, orator, listener, reader and the material text itself with barakah or spiritual

power and tawfīq or success in terms of widespread reception, understanding, and

influence.345 To further illustrate this point regarding the seriousness with which these

formulas were developed and finally became accepted as widespread convention,

even the sections making up auspicious opening invocations became categorized as

the ta`awwudh, basmalah, ḥamdalah, and ṣalawāt which represent – respectively –

that section which invokes God’s protection; the section that invokes the name of

God; the section of praise; and finally the section of prayers for the Messenger.346

Hence, even contemporary Muslim readers or listeners, Arabs or not, who are aware 345 For example, see Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Jazarī’s (d. 832/1429) Tuḥfat Al-Dhākirīn bi-ʻUddat al-Ḥiṣn al-Ḥaṣīn min Kalām Sayyid al-Mursalīn (Bayrūt: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmīyah, 1977); English translation: A Comprehensive Collection of Masnoon Duas Based on Al-Hisnul Hasin (Karachi, Pakistan: Darul-Ishaat, 1993), 12. 346 For a medieval treatise on the issue, see Aḥmad ibn ʻAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Sunbāṭī (d. 950/1543), Sharḥ Muqaddimat Al-Basmalah Wa-Al-Ḥamdalah Li-Abī Yaḥyá Zakarīyā Ibn Muḥammad Al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1520), Archive material, 1800.

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of the formula would know that an opening statement that begins with each of these

conceptual elements is a convention.

On the other hand, to borrow from Jaroslav Stetkevych, “There is a riddle, if

not a secret, behind an order which is excessively uniform…there is nothing to do but

face the wall with the gnawing question: Is this all there is?”347 In the context of

medieval Arabic-Islamic literature, I would add that the order appears to be uniform

when in fact the stylistic choices and poetic voice of the writers would indicate

otherwise. Formalities for beginning a text are precisely what facilitates the writer's’

ability to clearly communicate to their audiences their dedicatory position or distinct

critical departures in style and concept from a predecessor. To better understand the

appeal of retaining the ancient amatory prelude within the medieval encomium, it is

important to understand the role of introductory texts that precede the “real content

before amma ba’d” in terms of poetics.

ON THE STUDY OF POETICS, RHETORIC AND LITERARY CRITICISM

By the thirteenth century, `ilm al-balāghah – literally "the science of eloquence" or

more simply, the discipline of Arabic rhetoric – was one of the primary disciplines a

student of Arabic language and literature was required to master.348 The discipline

itself is divided into three branches –`ilm al-bayān which is concerned with

347 See Jaroslav Stetkevych, "The Arabic Lyrical Phenomenon in Context," Journal of Arabic Literature 6.1 (1975): 57. 348 See Roger Allen, “Arabic Poetics,” The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993), xlvi and1383.

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metaphorical language or what could be understood as semiotics;349 `ilm al-ma`ānī

which is concerned with meaning and signification or what could be understood as

semantics; and `ilm al-badī` which is concerned with devices of rhetorical

embellishment and creativity. Each branch was considered to have been developed

and explicated by a specific cadre of scholars.350 Regarding the sub-discipline of `ilm

al-badī, the writer of Kitāb al-Badī` Ibn al-Mu`tazz (d. 296/908) is credited with

having written the first book dedicated to the topic of badī` – literally, that which is

novel or innovative – in which he documented rhetorical devices and argued that they

are actually not new but present in ancient poetry as well.351

According to the contemporary Egyptian rhetorician and literary critic Shafī`

al-Sayyid, al-badī` is what gives “color” to speech in that it enables a single word to

encompass multiple images. He argues,

If `ilm al-bayān elucidates the statement, “For every station, there is a word (trans. Li kulli maqām maqāl),” then `ilm al-badī` elucidates the statement “For every utterance, there is an image (trans. Li kulli lafẓ ṣuwar).352

349 Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm Kātib, Al-burhān Fī Wujūh Al-Bayān (Cairo: Maktabat al-Shabāb, 1969). 350 See Ali Mohamed El Hassan, Asrār Al-Bayān (al-Qāhirah: al-Hayʼat al-ʻĀmmah li-Shuʼūn al-Maṭābiʻ al-Amīrīyah, 1983), 5-12. 351 See Wen-chin Ouyang, Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Culture: The Making of a Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 110. Also see Suzanne Stetkevych, "Toward a Redefinition of Badī' Poetry," Journal of Arabic Literature 12. 1981: 1-29. 352 Shafīʿ al-Sayyid, "Introduction to Arabic Rhetoric," Cairo University, Cairo, Sept. 2008, Balāghah Lecture Series.

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It is within the discourse of `ilm al-badī`, a sub-discipline of Arabic rhetoric, that the

concept of barāʻat al-istihlāl was articulated in scholarly texts and further reified over

centuries through the demonstrative and pedagogical nature of badīʻiyyāt poetry.

The significant aesthetic interest taken in the introduction is a hallmark of the

medieval text, although it is less common in contemporary Arabic-Islamic texts and

sermons. That interest is manifested in the writer-speaker’s distinct rhetorical style

and poetic voice, in which the reader-listener’s primary encounter with the text

occurs. Classical Arabic literary critics identified the rhetorical strength or barāʻat

al-istihlāl of a text’s beginning by the extent to which the initial words of a work is

clearly indicative of the subject matter of the text as well as effective in terms of its

tonal impression upon the reader-listener.353

AL-ḤILLĪ ON BARĀʻAT AL-ISTIHLĀL IN POETRY AND PROSE

In Sharḥ al-Kāfiyah al-Badīʿiyyah fī ʻUlūm al-Balāghah wa Maḥāsin al-Badīʻ, Ṣafī

al-Dīn al-Ḥillī’s own commentary on his badīʿiyyah, he refers to ingenious

beginnings as barāʻat al-maṭlaʻ and defines it as follows:

It is an expression that reflects ease of articulation, verifiable craftsmanship, clarity of significance, the elegant rapture of love poetry, avoidance of redundancy, coherence of parts, and the verse’s independence from the subsequent verse [to complete it].354

353 See Al-Nābulusī 7; Ḥillī 57. Also see ʻĀʼishah Al-Bāʻūnīyah, Badīʿiyyat Al-Fatḥ Al-Mubīn Fī Madḥ Al-Amīn Lil-Shāʻirah Al-Badāʼiʻīyah (ʻAmmān, al-Urdun: Wizārat al-Thaqāfah, 2008), 26. 354 This is my translation. See Ḥillī, 57.

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Al-Ḥillī elaborates, “It is also identified as ḥusn al-ibtidā,’ and it was more narrowly

defined as barāʻat al-istihlāl in poetry and prose.”355 His recognition of various terms

for the same concept exhibits the contestation of definitions and terms characteristic

of theoretical discourse within the field of rhetoric. According to al-Ḥillī’s definition,

barāʻat al-istihlāl is an aesthetic quality within the opening verses of a poem or the

prologue of a work of prose by which the writer poetically indicates the subject

matter of the text and the significance of the content to follow. Through the

introduction, the writer not only creates a first impression but as the classical

rhetoricians posited, introductions are the space in which writers have an opportunity

to creatively establish – either through the varied and specific meanings of the initial

words and images crafted – a hermeneutical frame for their work, regardless of genre

and discipline, in a literary manner. Almost six centuries later, Edward Said would

concur, stating, “The beginning, then, is the first step in the intentional production of

meaning.”356

Significantly, al-Ḥillī’s treats the concept in relation to poetry separately from

prose. He suggests there is a qualitative difference between literary forms that

requires difference stylistic choices in order to have a strong beginning. His

definitions, on the other hand, do not reflect a major difference. For poetry, al-Ḥillī

states, “Its condition upon poetry is that the beginning must be indicative of the aims

355 Ibid. 356 Said, 5.

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of the poet upon which the ode is composed.”357 Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī then cites Abū

Tammām’s (d. 232/845-46) opening verse to his famous panegyric dedicated to the

Caliph al-Mu`taṣim (d.227/842),

السیف أصدق إنباء من الكتب في حده الحد بین الجد واللعب

The sword is more veracious than the book

Its cutting edge splits earnestness from sport358

as an example of barāʻat al-istihlāl. The poem was composed in praise of al-

Mu`taṣim’s war victory and conquest of Ammorium. The results of the war defied the

predictions of al-Mu`taṣim’s court astrologers, and the opening verse reflects the aims

of the poet to celebrate the unpredictable victory.359 Within the first verse of the ode,

deploying ṭibāq (trans. antithesis), Abū Tammām implicitly criticizes the astrologers

who predicted that the Caliph could not conquer Amorium (in Arabic,

`Ammūriyyah).360 Within the verse, the sword represents war and the actions of the

Caliph and the books represent the knowledge of the astrologers of the Caliph’s court.

In this particular context, the question that arises is how does the concept of barāʻat 357 Al-Ḥillī, 58. This is my translation. 358 Translation by Suzanne Stetkevych. See Abū Tammām and the Poetics of the ʻabbāsid Age (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 187. 359 The sixteenth-century scholar Ibn al-Ḥajar al-Haytamī also includes the same verse of Abū Tammām’s poetry as an example of barāʻat al-istihlāl in his commentary of al-Būṣīrī other well-known panegyric Hamziyya, 74. For the Arabic text, see the Appendix. 360 See Suzanne P. Stetkevych, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002), 155 and 164. See the Appendix for the Arabic.

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al-istihlāl as defined by rhetoricians apply in criticism of the amatory prelude in other

works. My argument is that the concept of barāʻat al-istihlāl and other badi’iyyat is

both descriptive and prescriptive. Thus, al-Ḥillī accepts the prelude as a structural

convention by deploying it in his own badi’iyyah and uses the first verse to exemplify

barāʻat al-istihlāl as well as articulate a standard by which other poetry is to be

judged.

For this reason, the barāʻat al-istihlāl of a writer’s introduction is identified

over and over as the first criterion of eloquent composition or speech in badīʻiyyāt

poetry. Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī, for example, begins his badīʻiyyah poem saying,

إن جئت سلعا فسل عن جیرة العلمسلمواقر السالم على عرب بذي

If you arrive in Sal`, inquire about the loved one And convey greetings to the people of Dhū Salam361

Within the first verse, he illustrates the rhetorical trope of an ingenious beginning

followed by a conjunct and patched form of paronomasia (trans. jinās). It is only in

his commentary, however, that he names the rhetorical device he intended to

demonstrate within the poetry. His style of exemplifying a rhetorical concept within

each verse of the poem indicates not only the pedagogical role of the poem but also

that others have already articulated the idea.362 Indeed, it is also a concept that

permeates medieval writers’ poetic preludes and prologues.

361 The translation is mine. 362 ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Mawṣilī (d. 789/1387) is considered to be the first to incorporate rhetorical tropes within a poem by way of composing verses as a demonstration of the trope as well as referring to the trope within the verse. His poem, however, is not a

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This was not lost on the badīʻiyyāt poets following in the footsteps of Ṣafī al-

Dīn al-Ḥillī – including medieval intellectuals and litterateurs like Jalāl al-Dīn al-

Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) from North Africa and his contemporary ‘Ā’ishah bint Yūsuf

ibn Aḥmad al-Bā`ūniyyah (d. 922/1517) from Damascus. Like al-Ḥillī, they all began

the preludes to their badīʻiyyāt poetry with the first verse both illustrating this first

principle of eloquence with slight variations and indicating the beloved of the ode

(i.e., the Prophet).363 In her variation of a badī`iyyah written as a mu`āraḍah or a

contrafaction of her predecessors, `Ā’ishah al-Bā`ūniyyah refers to barāʻat al-maṭlaʻ

more directly by playfully including the actual words within her opening badī`iyyah

verse. She writes,

في حسن مطلع أقمار بذي سلم أصبحت في زمرة العشاق كالعلم

The moons of Dhū Salam are harbingers of a felicitous opening

Among the party of ardent lovers, I have become the flag bearer.364

Although she maintains the same meter and rhyme, the forthrightness of al-

Bā`ūniyyah’s style as reflected by her diction stands in contrast with the subtlety of

al-Ḥillī’s language. Moreover, in another expression of poetic departure, al-

madīḥ of the Prophet. See Suzanne Stetkevych, “From Jāhiliyyah to Badīʿiyyah: Orality, Literacy, and the Transformations of Rhetoric in Arabic Poetry,” Oral Tradition, 25/1 (2010): 225. Also see ʻAlī Abū Zayd’s Al-Badīʻiyyāt fī al-Adab al-ʻArabī: Nashʼatuhā, Taṭawwuruhā, Atharuhā (Bayrūt: ʻĀlam al-Kutub, 1983), 79-80. 363 See ʻAlī Abū Zayd’s Al-Badīʻiyyāt fī al-Adab al-ʻArabī: Nashʼatuhā, Taṭawwuruhā, Atharuhā (Bayrūt: ʻĀlam al-Kutub, 1983). 364 The translation is mine. See ʻĀʼishah Al-Bāʻūnīyah, Sharḥ al-Badīʻiyyah al-Musammāh bi al-Fatḥ al-Mubīn fī Madḥ al-Amīn, ed. Riḍā Rajab (Dimashq: Rand lil-Ṭibāʻah wa al-Nashr wa al-Tawzīʻ, 2010), 33.

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Bā`ūniyyah foregrounds the “I” of the poet who has become a lover unlike al-Ḥillī

who begins the poem with an address to an imagined “you” that is more closely

aligned to the style of his poetic predecessor Muḥammad ibn Sa`īd al-Būṣīrī (d.

695/1294).

With regard to prose, al-Ḥillī similarly writes that barāʻat al-istihlāl requires

that “the opening of a sermon, a letter, or other (forms of writing and speech) are

indicative of the aims of the speaker.”365 He then gives two examples. The first

example he cites is that of the Caliph Al-Ma’mūn’s (d. 217/833) scribe Ṣāḥib `Amr

ibn Mas`adah (d. 216/832) who was challenged to write immediately to the Caliph

informing him that a cow gave birth to a calf that had the face of a human being.

`Amr then wrote, “Praise be to God who created humans (al-anām) from cattle (al-

an`ām).” The second example is that of al-Ḥillī’s own introduction to his commentary

on rhetorical tropes and devices for embellishment.366 He states the following, “All

praises are due to the one who permitted for us the magic of speech367 and made its

playful deployment by intellects a thing to be witnessed.” The praise of God is linked

explicitly to the bayān or eloquent speech that is the subject of both al-Ḥillī’s poem

and commentary.

365 Al-Ḥillī, 58. 366 Ibid. 367 Al-Ḥillī makes an inter-textual reference to a well-known ḥadīth in which the Prophet is reported to have said, “Inna min al-bayān la-siḥrā/Indeed in eloquence, there is magic.” See Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Book 76, Ḥadīth 81. The medieval lexicographer Muḥammad ibn Ya'qūb Al-Fayrūzābādī (d. 817/1414) acknowledges the same ḥadīth under the term siḥr in his Al-Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ (Beirut: Dar al-Maʿrifah, 2007)

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As I will demonstrate, far from being a superfluous text written as the

afterthought of a completed work, the medieval introduction is a literary sub-genre in

its own right. The amatory prelude, as I have discussed, is an integral part of the

structure of the ode that remains a stable feature from the pre-Islamic period to the

post-classical. For that reason, it cannot be categorized as a paratext as defined by

Gérard Genette. It is not an adornment added to the larger work inside or outside of

the material text.368 The stability of the prelude as a literary convention not only

facilitates its legibility as a signal that a poem has begun for its audiences, but it also

enables writers to use the prelude as a pedagogical device for instructing other writers

about the qualities of a strong introduction. It follows, then, that the development of

the embellished medieval prose introduction comes after the study of classical poetry

as a source of eloquence.

THE INTERSECTION OF POETRY, CRITICISM AND COMPOSITION: BARĀʻAT AL-ISTIHLĀL IN AL-SAFADĪ’S INTRODUCTION As mentioned above, post-classical introductions – including scholarly works in the

disciplines of jurisprudence, theology, grammar, philosophy and their commentaries

as well as political speech and religious sermons – underscored the writers’ concern

for demonstrating barāʻat al-istihlāl to their readers-audiences. Displaying a

preference for a rhyming poetic style, the writer reveals her or his intention as well as

the central theme or subject of the text through meticulous choice of diction within

the apparently pious opening invocations of God and prayers for the prophets. Similar

368 See the introduction to Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1-15.

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to the amatory prelude’s conventional deployment of spaces of nostalgia, beautiful

beloveds, and the lyrical “I” in order to capture the attention of an intended

audience,369 the prose introduction is also the space for a scholarly writer to draw in

the attention of the reader by demonstrating his or her poetic skill. Through a

performance of barāʻat al-istihlāl before embarking in disciplinary discourse that is

stylistically distinct, prose gives homage to poetry calling attention to, in particular,

the prelude’s lyrical “I.”

AL-ṢAFADĪ IN PRAISE OF ADAB AND AND THE ADĪB

The fourteenth century Mamlūk biographer, critic, and litterateur Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl

ibn Aybak al-Ṣafadī was born in Ṣafad, a city located in the Galilee. The main centers

of al-Ṣafadī’s life in government service and intellectual endeavors, like al-Ḥillī, were

Cairo and Damascus where he is also buried. He studied and engaged with other well-

known writers and scholars of his time including the jurist Ibn Taymiyyah, the poet

Ibn Nubātah, and the historian Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī and composed numerous works of

literary criticism and his own original poetry.370 Because al-Ṣafadī’s prose style is

369 In the earlier chapters, I discussed in detail the transformation of the distinct topoi that constitute the amatory prelude including the beloved and motifs of space and time as well as the careful construction of the authorial voice. 370 See Franz Rosenthal, "al-Ṣafadī, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl b. Aybak, Abu'l-Ṣafāʾ al-Albakī," The Encyclopaedia of Islam: Second Edition (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 759-760.

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encyclopedic and reflective of an era of encyclopaedism,371 in contrast with his

contemporary Safi al-Din al-Ḥillī’s streamlined commentary Sharḥ Al-Kāfiyah Al-

Badīʻīyah, al-Ṣafadī’s introduction is useful in clearly illustrating the intersection of

poetry, criticism, and composition for which I argue. Simply, al-Ṣafadī’s prose

writing style betrays a deep self-consciousness regarding discourses about poetic

eloquence.

In the multi-volume al-Ghayth al-Musajjam fī Sharḥ Lāmiyat al-`Ajam, al-

Ṣafadī offers an extensive commentary on the poem Lāmiyat al-`Ajam372 by the

Seljuk Mu’ayyid al-Dīn Abū Ismā’īl al-Ḥusayn ibn `Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Abd al-

Ṣamad al-Iṣfahānī al-Tughrā’ī (d. 513/1119). Although identified as a sharḥ or

commentary, unlike Sharḥ al-Kāfiyah al-Badīʻīyyah which remains consistently

focused on explicating the rhetorical devices used in the poem, it becomes apparent

immediately in the style of al-Ṣafadī that the poem being commented upon is a

vehicle by which al-Ṣafadī can explicate and demonstrate to his audience at length his

own vast knowledge of the adab including history, literature, and the religious

sciences as well as numerous other disciplines like medicine and astronomy.373 If a

371 See Elias Muhanna, “Why Was the 14th Century a Century of Arabic Encyclopaedism?” Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. Jason König and Greg Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 343-356. 372 The poem is a contrafaction of the sixth century pre-Islamic epic poem Lāmiyyat al-ʿArab attributed to Al-Shanfarā. 373 Because the commentary is so exhaustive, Kamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Baqā’ Muḥammad ibn Zakī al-Dīn Mūsā ibn ʿĪsā ibn ʿAlī al-Damīrī al-Shāfiʿī (d. 808/1405) wrote an abridgment of the commentary entitled Mulakhkhaṣ Sharḥ Lāmiyat al-ʿAjam.

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reader is not attentive, al-Ṣafadī will take the reader through multiple disciplinary

discourses until the reader forgets the actual verse of poetry that inspired his

explication. In the case of Al-Ghayth al-Musajjam, al-Ṣafadī is the library. Thus, the

text becomes its name – an overflowing rain cloud bearing knowledge of many things

with nods to a fifth/twelfth century poem that is the source and impetus for Al-

Ṣafadī’s encyclopedic commentary.

Lāmiyyat al-`Ajam is written by Al-Tughrā’ī as a contrafaction to the

celebrated pre-Islamic Arabic ode Lāmiyyat al-`Arab. While in Baghdad, Al-

Tughrā’ī, who served as a Seljuq vizer and was later executed, composed the poem

and included descriptions of the conditions in which he lived.374 Al-Ṣafadī proceeds

to produce a text that performs the task of an encyclopedia. Al-Ṣafadī’s diction and

style cleverly reveal his intent as a writer and the lens through which he views the

significance of his contribution. As theorized and demonstrated in the preludes of the

badīʻiyyāt, the rhetorical style of his introduction is laden with authorial recognition

of the introduction as a space of orientation, revelation of intent, and demonstration of

writerly persona with the commentator rather than the poet at the center. As in the

amatory prelude, it is the writer (and not the poetic beloved or scholarly subject) that

is foregrounded in the construction of the introductory text.

374 See ʻAlī Jawād Ṭāhir, Al-Tughrāʾī: Ḥayātuh, Shiʻruh, Lāmīyatuh, Baḥth wa Taḥqīq wa Taḥlīl al-Ṭabʻah 1 (Baghdād: Maktabat al-Nahḍah, 1963); Elizabeth Smith, A Vocabulary, Hebrew, Arabic And Persian (London: W.H. Lunn, 1814).

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A COMMENTARY ON A COMMENTARY Al-Ṣafadī begins the text in praise of God. However, how al-Ṣafadī crafts his praise

including its diction and style is immediately indicative of his larger project. He

writes,

هللا الرحمن الرحیم بسم الحمد B الذي شرح الصدر من تأدب ورفع قدر من تأھل للعلم وتأھب، وجمل من تدرع لباس

الفضل وتدرب ، وكمل من ترقى إلى غایة ما ترقب. أحمده على نعمھ التي جعلت العلوم باألدب مة جواھره فكانت روضا مثمرا، وأعلت ھمة من برى لھ قلما قد اتخذ األنامل منبرا، وأغلت قی

.ثمنا تباع بھ القلوب وتشترى، وأوجدت من كرام اھلھ من ینحر البدر النضار لمن قرى

وأشھد أن ال إلھ إال هللا وحده ال شریك لھ شھادة أن تسجع بھا حمائم الخطباء على غصون عرائس المنابر، وتنجي الذین نصبوا لھا جسور األقالم على معابر المحابر، وتنضد حلیھا على

.السطور في منصات الدفاتر، وتنبھ بإیقاظ نسیمھا مقل الزھر الفواتر

وأشھد أن سیدنا محمدا عبده ورسولھ أفصح ناطق صرف عنان لفظھ وأبلغ صادق أرھف سنان وعظھ وأشرف زاھد ثنى عن زھرة الدنیا عند الحیاة السوام لحظھ وأعرف ناقد بنى في حضرة

ھ، صلى هللا علیھ وعلى آلھ وصحبھ الذین تمسكوا بآدابھ، وسبقوا العلیاء بعد الممات مقام حظمدى لم یطمع أحد من بعدھم في عادیة سكابھ، ونصروا أقوالھ ولسان السیف لم یتلمظ في فم

قرابھ، وھزموا حزب الكفر بنصل كنانتھ ونص كتابھ، صالة تطول لھم بھا القصور، وتحیط بھم ا خففت أقالم الطروس على مواكب السطور، وأودعت نفائس بركاتھا إحاطة الھاالت البدور، م

.الكالم في خزائن الصدور، وسلم، ومجد، وكرم وبعد

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In the name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful All praises are due to the One who opened the heart of the one who was refined in character; who exalts in estimation the one who is worthy of knowledge and equipped with it; who beautifies the one armored with the garment of virtue and discipline; and who perfects the one who advances to the furthest extent of what he envisions. I praise Him for his bounties that made the sciences of adab a fruitful garden and elevated the aspiration of the one who sharpened a pen for Him and [whose] fingertips took to the pulpit. And You increased the value of his precious gems by which hearts were sold and bought. And You have found from among his generous people, the one who tears open his gold purses to honor the guest/the one in distress. I bear witness that there is no god but God, the One and Only without partner with a testimony by which doves coo sermons from the boughs of pulpits; by which those who erected over inkwell crossings bridges made of pens for its sake [and] adorned the bridal lines of precious manuscripts with its jewels are saved; and by which its fragrant breeze awakens the core of blossoming flowers. And I bear witness that Our Liege-lord Muhammad is His servant and messenger; the most lucid of those who speak transforming the reins of his expressions; the most eloquent of those who are truthful; the most sensitive in his warnings; the most honored of ascetics who abstain from the flower of this world for the life to come; the most knowledgeable critical mind standing at the station of his dignity after death in the presence of the Most High. May peace and blessings be upon him and his family and his companions; those who held on to his adab and followed to the extent no one else desired [including] following the habits of his mare; who gave victory to his words and his family did not taste a morsel of the sword’s tongue; who overcame the army of disbelief by the blade of his armor and the pages of his book. May blessings be extended to them by which they attain castles; may blessings encompass them like moonlike halos for as long as the pens of scrolls continue their processional lines and the precious breath of speech are placed within the treasure chests of hearts. Invoke peace upon him, may he be exalted and may he be honored.375 Now, to proceed …

375 The translation is mine. See Khalīl ibn Aybak al-Ṣafadī, al-Ghayth al-Musajjam fī Sharḥ Lāmiyat al-ʿAjam, ed. Al-Ḥusayn A. Ṭughrāʼī. (Bayrūt: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmīyah, 1975), 9.

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THE STRUCTURE OF THE INTRODUCTION Beginning with the formal structure, al-Ṣafadī’s introduction piously follows the

recommended formula to invoke and seal the auspiciousness of any endeavor.376 The

introduction includes the ḥamdalah, shahādatayn, and ṣalawāt – that is, respectively,

the writer praises God; secondly, the writer pronounces the two testimonies of faith;

and thirdly, the writer invokes blessings on the Prophet, his family and companions.

Some writers composed the praise of God and invoking blessings of the Prophet as

sufficient substitute for the two testimonies of faith. One example is Abu Hamid al-

Ghazālī’ (d. 505/1111) in al-Qisṭās al-Mustaqīm (trans. The Just Balance), a

constructed theological debate with an Ismaili interlocutor. Al-Ghazālī’ says in the

opening lines, “I praise God the Exalted, firstly; and I invoke blessings upon His

Messenger the Chosen One, secondly.”377 Significantly, al-Ghazālī’s two statements

376 For this reason, Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī addresses the anxiety of not incorporating the prescribed structure of the auspicious introduction particularly with regard to qaṣīdah composition and the use of the nasīb convention. As mentioned before, one of the narratives cited to establish the notion of auspicious beginnings is the following: “Every important matter that does not begin with the praise of God is devoid of blessings.” See Sunan Ibn Mājah, Arabic Book 9, Ḥadīth 1969; English Vol. 3, Book 9, Ḥadīth 1894. Another narrative cited about the propriety of invoking the name of God when beginning is more closely tied to writing practices. The ḥadīth is related by Abu Sufyan is which he described that Heraclius had sent for him to come along with a group of the Quraish who were trading in the Levant. Abu Sufyan said, "Heraclius asked for the letter of the Messenger of God, may peaces and blessing be upon him. When the letter was read, its contents were as follows: 'In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful. From Muhammad, Allah's slave and His Apostle to Heraclius, the Chief of Byzantines: Peace be upon him who follows the right path (guidance)! Ammā ba'd…’ The narration is located in Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī under the section “How to write a letter to the People of the Book.” See Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī 6260 Book 79, Ḥadīth 34; English Vol. 8, Book 74, Ḥadīth 277. 377 The translation is mine. Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, Al-Qisṭās Al-Mustaqīm, ed. Vīktūr Shalḥat (Bayrūt: Dār al-Mashriq, 1983), 41.

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of praise, connected by the connecting letter wāw or “and,” are rhythmically balanced

and coupled together with the cadence of a short metered rhyme in which both

statements end with temporal adverbs awwalan and thāniyan in the “ḥāl” condition.

In the Bayqūniyyah, a seventeenth century pedagogical poem on hadith

terminology compiled in thirty-four couplets and incorporating thirty-four terms and

their definitions, the Damascene intellectual ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad ibn Futūḥ al-

Bayqūnī (d.1080/1669) begins with the following verse:

أبدأ بالحمد مصلیا علىد خیر نبي أرسال محم

I begin with praise invoking blessing upon

Muḥammad, the best of prophets sent378 Here, the writer deftly subsumes both praise of God and the two testimonies of faith

in one couplet. Also beginning with the personal pronoun “I” actively beginning the

text and verse, the writer links his act of beginning with the verbal noun “to praise”

(al-ḥamd) and then qualifies his praise as an invocation (muṣalliyyan) of blessings

upon the prophet in one couplet. The verse does the work of the multiple functions of

the recommended introductory invocations because the writer, in acknowledging

Muḥammad as “the best of prophets sent” is also praise for the active agent (i.e. God)

who sent them.

378 Translation mine. See Ṭāhā ibn Muḥammad Bayqūnī, Sharḥ Al-Manẓūma al-Bayqūniyyah fī ʿIlm al-Muṣṭalaḥ al-Ḥadith, (Riyāḍ: Dār al-Mughnī, 2009), 9. See the Appendix for the Arabic.

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Returning to al-Ghayth al-Musajjam, al-Ṣafadī crafts and maintains in greater

length than al-Ḥillī’s commentary a style that is fluid and rhythmic and a tone that

can be described as panegyrical in both his praise of God and the litterateur. The

invocations are written in rhyming prose much like the style of the maqāmāt until the

words ammā ba`d appear, after which the writer’s style transforms from a poetic

rhyming mode and reverts to the style of academic analysis. His commentary on the

poem that follows no longer adheres to the rhymed scheme of his introductory

remarks.

Conceptually, the writer’s praise of God in the first statement is connected to a

narrative from the biography of the Prophet (i.e. the one who was refined in manner)

in which angels opened his chest when he was a child and cleansed his heart. Al-

Ṣafadī’s specificity of word choice, however, indicates a meaning beyond the

recollection of a well-known story. Thus, from the very first invocation, al-Ṣafadī

relates his praise of God to a divine action of blessing the Prophet – a human being –

who is specifically described as one actively in the process of refining his character.

The word sharaḥa – although it means “to cut open” – can also be used to mean “to

elucidate” or “to clarify in detail.” Al-Ṣafadī deploys the rhetorical strategy of

tawriyah or double-entendre to produce a multiplicity of meaning from single words

and images.379 In other words, the trilateral verb sha-ra-ḥa literally means to cut

flesh from the bone and figuratively, it means to explicate. Thus, the second meaning

379 See Pierre Cachia’s translation tawriyah or double entendre in ʻAbd al-Ghanī al-Nāblūsī, The Arch Rhetorician: Or the Schemer's Skimmer: a Handbook of Late Arabic Badīʻ Drawn from ʻAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulsī's Nafaḥāt al-Azhār ʻala Nasamāt al-Asḥār. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998),106.

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of the word immediately relates to the work as a sharḥ or commentary. That is, a

meaning of something becomes clear in the process of painstaking commentary in

which the commentator parses and fleshes out the depth of meaning from the bone of

words and form.380 Moreover, even the narrative that the audience is meant to recall

(i.e. the splitting of Muḥammad’s chest) which is also referred to in the ninety-fourth

chapter of the Qur’ān is also expounded upon as having symbolic significance in

terms of expansion of receptivity in order to receive prophetic knowledge.381 Zayn

al-Dīn Abū al-Qāsim 'Abd al-Karīm ibn Hawāzin ibn 'Abd al-Malik al-Nīsābūrī

Qushayrī further notes in his Qur’ānic exegesis Laṭā'if Al-Ishārāt that the “expansion

of the chest” in the verse “Did we not expand for you your chest?” refers to the

allowing for the Prophet to receive the light of the message and prophethood.382

The second signal of immediate interest with regards to the purpose of the

writer is the verb ta’addaba. In this verbal form, the actor or subject actively

participates in the process of becoming adīb or someone erudite with an impeccably

refined character. The verb shares the same tri-lateral root as the term adab, which

means both proper comportment as well as literature. Literally, the person of adab is

one who knows where to properly place a thing, and relatedly, the figurative adab –

380 See Muḥammad ibn Mukarram Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʻArab (Būlāq, Miṣr: Al- Ṭabʿah al-Kubrā al-Miṣriyyah, 1882). 381 See the Qur’an 94:1. 382 See the commentary of the first verse of Surat al-Inshirāḥ by Zayn al-Dīn Abū al-Qāsim 'Abd al-Karīm ibn Hawāzin ibn 'Abd al-Malik al-Nīsābūrī Qushayrī, Laṭā'if al-Ishārāt: Tafsīr Sūfī Kāmil li al-Qurʻān al-Karīm li al-Qushayrī, ed. Ibrāhīm Basyūnī (Al-Qāhirah: Dār al-Kātib al-'Arabī, 1981), 743-44.

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or literature – is the vehicle for a person to learn how to fully realize her human

potential. Al-Ṣafadī begins his work associating “open heartedness” or receptivity to

knowledge as intimately connected to one in the process of actively refining his or her

character indicating that adab and knowledge is the primary concern of the

commentary.

Thus, it should not come as a surprise that the person of adab and knowledge

is next incorporated as an object of praise in the prologue following God and his

prophet. Al-Ṣafadī’s praise of God continues at length, shifting from a focus on the

biography of the Prophet and Prophetic character to another praiseworthy subject.

His praise of God continues for “exalt(ing) in estimation (rafa`a qadr) the one worthy

of and equipped with knowledge (man ta’ahhala li al-‘ilm wa ta’ahhaba).”383 That is,

his praise is next associated with the divine favoring of a certain kind of person. In

the first statement, it is the Prophet of adab. In the second part, al-Ṣafadī draws

attention to the individual who is specifically ennobled by knowledge. Again, al-

Ṣafadī’s choice of verbal form is highly significant. Maintaining the initial rhythm,

he continues to deploy mirrored verbal forms in which rafa`a qadr parallels the form

of sharaḥa sadr and ta’ahhala and ta’ahhaba are in the same verb form as ta’addaba.

Instead of simply saying that scholars, who are often referred to as people of

knowledge – or ahl al-‘ilm – are the ones exalted in estimation, he continues with the

383 My translation. Also see Bonnebakker’s discussion on the classical understanding of the man of letters also being a man of misery in "Supplement: Variations on the Theme of Ḥirfat al-Adab," Quaderni Di Studi Arabi (2002): 17-38; “The Misery of the Men of Letters: Some Quotations from their Poetry,” Quaderni Di Studi Arabi (Vol. 19, 2001): 147–161.

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idea of the individual in an active process of exchange. In this case, already, al-

Ṣafadī is making a distinction between simply people of knowledge and those

“worthy.” He suggests that the person who is exalted is not only the one who has the

personal good of knowledge but also is an individual socially acknowledged as fit to

bear it.

From these two parts of the invocation alone, it becomes apparent that al-

Ṣafadī is carefully intertwining in his praise of God the praise of a figure who is

specifically concerned with adab and the bearer knowledge. His opening words,

then, could be interpreted and function in multiple ways. First, al-Ṣafadī’s rhetoric

could be characterized as inspirational and aspirational. By identifying in detailed

description the characteristics of the blessed writer-scholar, Al-Ṣafadī’s praises

function as a form of supplication that is similar to the supplicatory function of a

panegyric. The supplication would primarily be for the writer of the text who hopes

that praising God through the mention of specific qualities will enable a fulfillment of

those qualities. In this interpretation, the introduction fulfills the notion of barāʻat al-

istihlāl in that it expresses the desires of the author who seeks to establish his claims

to authority.

Al-Ṣafadī’s prologue could also be read as an indirect boast – a form of

humble-brag similar to the representation of Dante’s Virgil as the mentor and guide

of Dante the pilgrim that suggests that the pilgrim is not only worthy but compensated

for his erudition with a comparable guide. That is, the writer of the text is also the

erudite character being praised. Throughout the introduction, Al-Ṣafadī draws the

attention of his audience to the persona and authority of the writer of the text and

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simultaneously highlights the kinds of people God favors – people of adab and

knowledge – to later demonstrate throughout his entire two-volume commentary that

he is among those people. He continues his praise of God who he writes has

Beautified the one who took as his armor the garment of excellence and discipline,

and enables the one who advances forward to the ends of that which he aspires

(taraqqaba) to accomplish.

The next part of al-Ṣafadī’s praise and description of the individual receiving

divine favor is related specifically to the person of ambition composed of excellence,

discipline, and vision. The rhetoric indicates that the prologue is no longer solely a

meditation on the character of the Prophet Muḥammad. Al-Ṣafadī depicts the martial

– and relatedly bureaucratic – imagery of the metaphorical armored soldier as one of

beauty and conflates clothing and armor by introducing the element of the garment

(libās).384 Virtue and excellence as the particular material of the garment, however, is

immaterial and metaphysical, and it is what confers upon the clothing its protective

element as armor. Moreover, it is because the wearer is a person of excellence that

God then grants him or her success and not the other way around. The idea of

discipline – or training – is also connected to the former idea of being worthy of

knowledge. Therefore, al-Ṣafadī continues to build upon the praiseworthy character

384 The idea of clothing as armor can be found as well in the Homeric epics. In the Iliad, Homer devises several scenes of Achaean and Trojan heroes beautifying themselves with armor before battle that parallels the scene of Hera clothing and beautifying herself in her private quarters before sleeping with Zeus in order to distract his from her war plans enacted. Through the extended descriptions of the act of clothing in the context of war and the enabling of violence, Hera’s Olympian gown is likened to armor. See Book 14 in Homer’s Iliad, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951)

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of the person of adab and knowledge engaged in the act of writing because ultimately

he or she is going to make claims about other contemporary figures of adab and

knowledge.

Al-Ṣafadī’s aggrandizement of the role of the scholarly commentator for

recognition as adīb can be read in contestation with the acknowledgement of the poet

of the Arabic-Islamic literary tradition as the exemplary literary figure. During the

pre-Islamic and early Islamic period, the poet assumed the role of the arbiter of public

opinion..385 This could be seen in the case of Ibn Zaydūn and his rival for

Wallādah.386 By the tenth and eleventh century, there was already significant debate

among literary theorists regarding Arabic poetics and poetic license in exceptional

usages of Arabic language reflecting the centrality of the poet to literary study.387 The

absence of mention of the poet by a post-classical Mamlūk writer is as significant as

what the writer does include as characteristic of the litterateur. This also speaks to the

larger culture of the scholastic enterprise, compilation of original curricular texts

including poetry about disciplines including rhetoric, and the resulting output of

385 The historian Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Maqarrī (1577-1632) writes that in al-Andalus, poets had a central role in political life. See Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Maqqarī, Nafḥ al-Ṭīb min Ghuṣn al-Andalus al-Raṭīb wa Dhikr Wazīrihā Lisān al-Dīn al-Khaṭīb, ed. Muhammad Muhyi al-Din ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd (Bayrūt: Dār al-Kitāb al-Arabī, 1967), 207. Also see Amidu Sanni, “Arabic Literary History and Theory in Muslim Spain.” Islamic Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, 1995, 91–102. 386 See Iman Darwish and Ferial J. Ghazoul, Courtly Culture and Gender Poetics: Wallada Bint Al-Mustakfī and Christine De Pizan (Cairo : American University in Cairo), 2014. 387 For example, see Amidu Sanni, “A Fourth Century Contribution to Literary Theory: Ibn Fāris's Treatise on Poetic Licenses,” Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 24, no. 1, 1993, 11–20.

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prolific encyclopedic writing supported by the Mamlūks in which al-Ṣafadī also

participates.388 Although his commentary emerges from a reading of an original

poem, another work of adab, at no point in the introduction does al-Ṣafadī invoke the

image of the poet nor refer to poetry or verse forms.

Another possible significance of the clothing imagery is that it is related to

adab in the sense of proper comportment. In this case, the praiseworthy subject

elegantly armors herself with virtue and training in the battlefield of ideas. Al-Ṣafadī

indicates that one of the greatest accomplishments of a writer is giving all that one

has without withholding. The image of the writer as soldier is also significant in that

it argues for another view of the literary personality having a seriousness of purpose

and sacrifice. This may be read autobiographically considering that according to Ibn

Ḥajar, al-Ṣafadī’s father showed “little concern” for his son’s studies and thus al-

Ṣafadī studied on his own until becoming a young adult. His talents and abilities later

lead him to appointments in government service and in scholarly networks.389

After having mentioned ambition and vision, the prologue then shifts from the third

person point of view that includes the collective voice of praise to introduce the first-

person “I” voice of the writer who speaks to two audiences – God and the reader – in

a more personal and direct manner. He declares emphatically, “I praise Him for his

bounties that made the sciences of adab (i.e., al-`ulūm bi al-adab) a fruitful garden.”

388 See Carl F. Petry, “Scholastic Stasis in Medieval Islam Reconsidered: Mamlūk Patronage in Cairo.” Poetics Today, vol. 14, no. 2, 1993, 323–348. 389 See Franz Rosenthal, "al-Ṣafadī, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl b. Aybak, Abu'l-Ṣafāʾ al-Albakī," The Encyclopaedia of Islam Second Edition (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 759-760.

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Unlike the previous nod to ‘ilm or knowledge in the singular, this statement signifies

the formalized and institutionalized study of adab that a scholarly persona would be

trained in and familiar with including the disciplines of Arabic language such as

grammar, morphology and syntax. Other disciplines among ‘ulūm al-adab also

include rhetoric and its sub-disciplines of semiotics (`ilm al-ma`ānī), literary devices

(`ilm al-badī`), and homiletic oration (`ilm al-khitābah).390

The image of the paradisiacal garden is a common motif within Arabic-

Islamic literature as well as the physical world of Islamic architecture.391 In the

Qur’ān, eternal paradise is described as gardens underneath which rivers flow. The

grave of Muḥammad in Madīnah is also referred to as a garden in Arabic or more

specifically, the rawḍah. Particularly during the post-classical period, the

architectural development of gardens in city planning and publicly endowed buildings

reflect the confluence of Iberian, Persian, and Indian influences. For this reason, the

metaphorical image of a fertile garden is befitting in that is connotes the multiplicity,

abundance, and (re)production of knowledge attributed to adab. Furthermore, a

“fruitful garden” is not merely a beautiful garden or a well-kept garden. The

invocation of “fruitful” indicates productivity and that the garden is one from which

390 For a primer on Arabic rhetoric, see ʻAlī Jārim and Muṣṭafá Amīn’s Al-Balāghah al-Wāḍiḥah: Al-bayān, wa al-Maʻānī, wa al badīʻ, (al-Qāhirah : Dār al-Maʻārif 1979). Also see Philip Halldén, “What Is Arab Islamic Rhetoric? Rethinking the History of Muslim Oratory Art and Homiletics,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 37, no. 1, 2005, 19–38; and Ibn al-Athir’s discussion on components of knowledge in The Chronicle of Ibn Al-Athīr for the Crusading Period from Al-Kāmil fi al-Tārīkh, trans. Donald Sidney Richards, (Farnham: Ashgate 2010). 391 See León Rodríguez Zahar, “Imágenes Del Paraíso En Los Jardines Islámicos,” Estudios De Asia y Africa, vol. 34, no. 2 (109), 1999, 361–378.

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there is collective rather than individual benefit. The collective benefit invoked by the

image of the garden is that of the scholarly enterprise in that the development of a

discipline leads to another and the development of a genre of writing leads to another.

The fertile growth of the garden is representative of the centrifugal force of the study

of literature.

Furthermore, al-Ṣafadī explicitly refers to the sciences of adab and implicitly

remarks on his own experience as a learned individual more directly than previously.

Again, the authorial voice associated with introductions emerges in that it is

revelatory of the writer’s education. By comparing the fields of study within the

world of adab to such a garden, al-Ṣafadī also indicates that he has engaged in a deep

study of adab and found it to be an endeavor of numerous possibilities and

approaches. The study of adab, moreover, demonstrates that the text itself is

productive and produces numerous possibilities – of thought, reflection and

knowledge. Adhering to this idea of the fruitful garden, al-Ṣafadī’s commentary on

Lāmiyat al-`Ajam that follows is not as sparse, controlled, and focused as the

commentary on al-Ḥillī’s own badī`iyyah in which even visually there is a patterned

symmetry between commentary following the verses being explicated. In contrast,

al-Ṣafadī’s style of sharḥ is windingly encyclopedic. A single verse leads him to

numerous tangents, memories, and reflections in which he includes anecdotes and

biographies of colleagues, contemporaries, and rivals as well as interdisciplinary

knowledge including astronomy and medicine. Acknowledging the multiplicity of

scholarly disciplines associated with adab as a productive garden in his introduction,

al-Ṣafadī’s commentary becomes a performance of that fecundity fulfilling the

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promise of the metaphor articulated in the beginning. In a way, he fulfills an

expectation that he constructed.

Adding to the idea of the ambitious scholar addressed previously, the next

element al-Ṣafadī adds to the construction of the praiseworthy litterateur is one who is

intentional in the act of writing and that praiseworthy writing act is for a public. He

continues in his personal praise that God “elevated the aspiration (himma) of the one

who sharpened a pen for Him and [so his] fingertips took to the pulpit.” He persists in

crafting his self-image of the writer-scholar as a visionary character with not only

personally pious but also public aspirations. He is careful to first state that the

praiseworthy writer writes for the one being praised – God – to confirm that the

intention of the act would categorize it as primarily an act of devotion. Furthermore,

the sharpening of the pen recalls the image of the sharpening of the sword and thus

reinforces the imagery of the writer as soldier.

On the other hand, al-Ṣafadī complicates the metaphor by comparing the

ambitious writer-scholar to the orator who stands and delivers sermons at the mosque

pulpit (i.e., the minbar). The selection of the minbar as opposed to other public stages

points to the religious nature and pedagogical role of the writer to articulate and

convey ideas and cultivate a public. Unlike the garden that could be both a space of

private domesticity and an endowed public good, an audience is bound with the

image of the pulpit. Moreover, the pulpit in the Mamlūk period is linked to religion

as an institution of power and legitimacy as well as the mosque as both a shared space

for specialists and non-specialists who would make up the audience in the mosque.

The minbar is the stage from which an orator would offer general sermons for

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Muslims on morality and good character, and it is also the stage from which

representatives of political authority – whether official or oppositional – could

address one of their largest audiences.392 Later, the sixteenth century Damascene poet

ʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūniyyah invokes the image of the jāmi` in the prelude to her Tā’iyyah

Ode as the largest public place for the gathering of lovers to whom she calls.393 By

comparing pages of text to a pulpit – and by extension, the composition of a work of

adab to delivering a sermon – al-Ṣafadī indicates that his intended audience is much

larger than that of adab specialists or people of the courts.

He then directly addresses God as his primary audience while maintaining his

address of the writer in the third-person and states, “And You increased the value of

his precious gems by which hearts were sold and bought.” Al-Ṣafadī introduces the

notion of the persuasive function of eloquent language through the language of

commerce. In addition to God being praised for valuing the writer’s productivity, the

writer’s literary production and rhetorical prowess itself is assigned a value. In this

case, because of divine providence, it is awarded the value of precious gemstones

(jawāhir). The motif of buying and selling in the market of ideas is not unique to al-

Ṣafadī. The language is Qur’ānic. For example, in Sūrat al-Mā’idah – The Chapter

of the Table Spread – scholars are taken to task for making a poor commercial

392 For an example of a medieval sermon that would have been delivered to a large congregation, see the anthology al-Turāth al-thaqāfī al-ʻArabī: Mukhtārāt, Ed. Muḥsin al-Mūsawī & Kamal Abdel-Malek, (al-Dār al-Bayḍāʼ: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʻArabī, 2004), 143-150. As a sample of a sermon, the text includes the famous sermon of Ibn Zakī that was delivered in 579/1183 in Jerusalem after Salāḥ al-Dīn defeated the Crusaders. 393 I discussed this further in Chapter Three.

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transaction in the realm of ideas. The final part of the verse warns, “So fear not men,

but fear you Me; and sell not My verses for a little price.”394 The figurative meaning

to be drawn from al-Ṣafadī’s invocation is indicated by the word qulūb or hearts. The

precious works of the writer are not literally being sold but the value of the text is that

it can affect the state of the reader/audience. The text not only has affective power

but effective power in terms of persuasion. Through the appearance of praise, al-

Ṣafadī claims that his words have power. In a broader sense, the image speaks to the

widespread trafficking and circulation of literature among networks characteristic of

the Islamic republic of letters in a way that is comparable to the bustle and circulation

of commercial goods exchanged and sold in the marketplace. By invoking God again

in order to increase the value of the work, the writer in turn also affirms that his work

is of value.

For a second time, al-Ṣafadī personally addresses God adding in a final image

of the magnanimous and hospitable host beside the garden of knowledge, the martial

discipline of study, the devoted pedagogy of the writer, and the profitability of

persuasion. He says, “You found among the generous people one who tears open his

gold purses to honor the guest.”395 At first, the image is a strange one in light of the

others but the transition is not sudden; rather al-Ṣafadī proceeds from the scene of the

exacting endeavor of trade and commerce to the open handedness of generosity. The

characteristic of the writer that is being emphasized can be understood in relation to

the treatment of al-bidar al-nuḍār or purses filled with pure gold – that is pure

394 The Qur’an, Al-Mā’idah 5:44. Here, I used A.J. Arberry’s translation. 395 This could also be translated as “the one in distress.”

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wealth. The verb preceding the object is from the trilateral root na-ḥa-ra “to tear” or

“to slit the throat of a sacrificial beast.” The verb presents a metaphor. It

particularizes the generosity being identified – that is, the generosity of the host who

spends golds on guests – by comparing the act to that of someone sacrificing an

animal in order to feed others. The characteristic of hospitality highlighted in this

description is one that is extended to others in need or who seek refuge without

abandon or inhibition. Thus, the complete image is that not only is the writer a

treasure of knowledge but a person of immense generosity who shares wealth with

spontaneity and without pause and calculated concern. The final image can be read

as a comment on al-Ṣafadī’s preferred style of commentary as an outpouring of

knowledge in which he writes freely with one idea leading to the next associated idea.

Thus ends the first part of al-Ṣafadī’s introduction.

Thereafter, he proceeds to the second part of the introduction’s formal

structure – the shahādatayn or two testimonies of faith. After testifying, “I bear

witness that there is not God, the One and Only without partner,” al-Ṣafadī continues

in his style of embellishment, in order to qualify and elevate his testimony as that

…by which doves coo sermons from the boughs of pulpits; by which those who erected over inkwell crossings bridges made of pens for its sake [and] adorned the bridal lines of precious manuscripts with its jewels are saved; and by which its fragrant breeze awakens the core of blossoming flowers.

He repurposes and deploys the images of pens, ink, jewels, gardens, and pulpits for a

second time enlisting other new images and sensual and visual memories of doves’

nests, bridges over rivers, bridal jewelry, and the fragrance of flowers. At this point,

the pronounced elaborateness of his rhetoric is unmistakable. Through his

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compounding of the metaphors he already developed in the first part of the

introduction, the second part functions as an exhibition of the author. The images do

not necessarily clarify nor magnify the subtlety of the previous meanings; instead,

they direct the reader to the writer’s literary and rhetorical abilities.

Finally, al-Ṣafadī completes the third phase of the introduction with an

invocation for blessings upon the Prophet, his family and companions after

completing the second part of the testimony of faith:

And I bear witness that Our Liege-lord Muḥammad is His servant and messenger; the most lucid of those who speak transforming the reins of his expressions; the most eloquent of those who are truthful; the most sensitive in his warnings; the most honored of ascetics who abstain from the flower of this world for the life to come; the most knowledgeable critical mind standing at the station of his dignity after death in the presence of the Most High.

His mention of the Prophet is followed by recognition of the Prophet’s eloquence and

a description of his own rhetorical abilities. This is significant because it reaffirms

the initial attribution of adab to the Prophet as well as the writer’s commitment to be

imagined as a successor and heir. Al-Ṣafadī’s description of the Prophet’s speech in

terms of clarity, eloquence, gentleness and sensitivity is reflective of the general

analysis of the rhetoric of the Prophet’s speech.396 As was explained in the second

396 See Qāḍī ʻIyāḍ ibn Musa on the topic of the rhetorical style of the Prophet in which he mainly notes that his speech was clear and eloquent and accommodating of the rhetorical styles of his audiences, Muhammad, Messenger of Allah: Ash-Shifā’ of Qāḍī ʻIyāḍ, trans. Aisha A. Bewley (Inverness, Scotland: Madinah Press, 1991), 39-40. The subject itself has not received in depth critical treatment in the way that the inimitability of the Qur’ān became a subject of study and influenced discourse on God’s speech and the rhetorical style of the Qur’ānic text. A similar idea regarding the eloquence of the Prophet resurfaces in the nineteenth and twentieth century work Khasā’is al-Nabī wa Ummatihī (trans. The Unique Qualities of the Prophet and His

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chapter, the subject of Prophetic eloquence bears enormous significance with regard

to the poetic constitution of the Prophet as a poetic beloved as well as the muse for

poeticizing about eloquence. Although there is less rhetorical analysis of the speech

of Muḥammad,397 the general consensus is that the rhetorical style of the Prophet was

distinct for its clarity and brevity. His epithet Jawāmi` al-Kalim communicates the

idea that numerous meanings could be extrapolated from his use of few words. Al-

Ṣafadī then supplicates,

May peace and blessings be upon him and his family and his companions; those who held on to his adab and followed to the extent no one else desired [including] following the habits of his mare; who gave victory to his words and his family did not taste a morsel of the sword’s tongue; who overcame the army of disbelief by the blade of his armor and the pages of his book. May blessings be extended to them by which they attain castles; may blessings encompass them like

Community) by the Syro-Palestinian Yūsuf ibn Ismāʻīl Nabhānī (d. 1350/1932). He includes in this short collection of ḥadīth the following report:

ʿUmar, may God be pleased with him, said to the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, “How did you become the most eloquent of us (afṣaḥunā), yet you did not reside except amongst us?” He, may God bless him and grant him peace, said, “The language of Ishmael had died out; then Gabriel came with it and had me memorize it.”

See Yūsuf ibn Ismāʻīl Nabhānī, Khasā’is al-Nabī wa Ummatihī/The Unique Qualities of the Prophet and His Community, trans. Rashad Jameer (Toronto: Wasila Press, 2014), 43. 397 Most sayings of the Prophet never reached the level of tawātur or broad authentication through multiple transmissions – in both word and meaning – but rather were often conveyed and transmitted by the meaning alone. The concept was studied in detail within the field of ḥadīth criticism and definitions as to what precisely the word stood for became refined by a subdivision, in which tawātur lafẓī , i.e. the verbatim mutawātir transmission of a text, became distinguished from tawātur maʿnawī. See Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī’s (d. 643/1245) work on ḥadīth terminology in Muqaddimat Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ wa Maḥāsin al-Iṣṭilāḥ, ed. Bint al-Shāṭiʼ and ʻUmar R. Bulqīnī (Al-Qāhirah: Dār al-Maʻārif, 1990).

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moonlike halos as long as the pens of scrolls continue their processional lines and the precious breath of speech are placed within the hearts’ treasure chests. Invoke peace upon him, may he be exalted and may he be honored.

The benediction Al-Ṣafadī presents expresses the writer’s judgment that the prophet’s

family and companions are deserving of prayers precisely because they honored the

adab of the Prophet. The end of the introduction returns full circle to the opening

statement which indicated that the blessed and favored individual is one who strives

to perfect adab, emphasizing at the end that the one whose adab is recognized as

most worthy of following is Muḥammad. Likewise, the same images of the soldier,

the pen, the written word, hearts bearing treasures, and so on are reviewed and

recalled in the context of the Prophet’s family and companions. It then closes with

“And (now), to proceed…”

AUTHORIAL VOICE AND THE SELF-CONSCIOUS WRITER The introduction ends reaffirming that the Prophet is the paragon of adab but as was

demonstrated, al-Ṣafadī’s introduction is also the space where he draws attention to

his own position as a litterateur, writer, and critic. Al-Ṣafadī’s introduction, as a

whole, emphasizes that the exceptional literary project is not only one that attempts to

emulate the Prophet but that it is blessed by providence insofar as the writer is also

exceptional. In order to establish his legitimacy and elevate the status of his work, al-

Ṣafadī makes clear his intention, his preferred method, and his style of commentary

from the beginning. In spite of adhering to the three-part formula of crafting an

auspicious introduction, al-Ṣafadī makes the argument for his exceptionality through

a demonstration of his command of rhetorical style.

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Considering the length of each part of al-Ṣafadī’s introduction, his style can

be described as embellished and ornate in comparison to the brevity and direct style

of his contemporary Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī. That, however, is precisely the point. Al-

Ṣafadī maintains and reiterates throughout the introduction the image of abundance –

whether through the garden or the purse of the generous individual. Instead of

enlisting new metaphors, he multiplies the imagery of his initial metaphors by

repurposing them and then exploring another angle in order to establish the close

relationship between the exceptional writer, wealth of knowledge, and the abundance

of commentary.

The introductory remarks of al-Ṣafadī center the figure of the scholarly writer

as luminary in the way that the amatory prelude centers the figure of the poet as lover.

The elision of the poet as an object of praise in the case of al-Ṣafadī’s prologue

further accentuates the centrality of the commentator’s voice and the commentary

rather than the poem that will be the subject of al-Ṣafadī’s analysis. The poem – not

to mention, the poet – is not referred to at all. His commentary, rather than the

commented work, is the principle concern and demands the reader to consider it as a

work in its own right.

Returning to al-Ḥillī’s definition of barāʻat al-istihlāl, al-Ḥillī remarks, “The

opening of a sermon, a letter, or other (forms of writing and speech) are indicative of

the aims of the speaker.” Not only does Al-Ṣafadī fulfill the requirement to convey

the “the aims of the speaker” but he demonstrates his effort to adhere to the concept

of barāʻat al-istihlāl through his self-referential embellished writing style. As should

be noted from al-Ṣafadī’s extensive introduction, although it followed a prescribed

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form of invocation of praising God, stating the testimony of faith, and invoking

prayers upon Muḥammad, the reader experiences immediately the distinctness of the

style of the writer. Moreover, the introduction informs the reader-audience how the

writer envisions the act of writing and the commentary itself. For the literary critics,

the writer method implicitly informs through figurative language and style as in the

case of al-Ṣafadī who is selectively emphatic in his diction and imagery. By doing so,

the self-conscious writer orients the reader on how to approach the text by first

directing the reader to the centrality of the writer’s efforts.

The introduction of both poetry and prose is the threshold the reader-listener

must cross before entering the larger text. As Edward Said says in Beginnings:

Intention and Method, “A work’s beginning is, practically speaking, the main

entrance to what it offers.”398 It is a mistake for contemporary scholars to gloss over

introductions as imitatively conventional and superfluous because it assumes that the

aesthetics of the introduction does not offer anything new in terms of meaning,

content and interpretive value to the reader-audience. To the contrary, the

painstaking construction of an apparently deft and playful performance of skill and

style—illustrative of the Italian notion of sprezzatura—of the medieval introduction

including the amatory prelude is significant for a number of reasons.399

398 Said, 3. 399 The term sprezzatura was introduced by the Italian Renaissance writer Baldassare Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier during the early sixteenth century and refers to "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it."

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First, close reading of introductions reveal that they are the primary literary

space in which medieval writers perform for their audiences-readers their rhetorical

skill, especially before taking on the language and tone of the discipline in which the

work to follow is situated within like legal jurisprudence (i.e., fiqh) or speculative

theology (i.e., kalām). Through a display of inter-textual sensibility, eloquence,

control of language and subtle word play, the writer is able to reveal the purpose of

his or her composition and offers an interpretive lens by which the reader interfaces

with the rest of the text notwithstanding formulas for maximizing barakah or divine

blessings. Second, the shared language of the medieval Arabic-Islamic introduction

reflects a widespread belief and cultural acceptance in the efficacy of barakah and the

metaphysical power of the Arabic letter in pronouncement, word, and meaning.

Within the discourse of linguists and literary critics, the power of words and the

author’s willful intent could affect reader reception and the experience of wonder

with respect to the speech-text itself from beginning to end.400

MEDIEVAL ARABIC LITERARY CRITICISM AS READING PRAXIS

400 Ultimately, the discourse on i`jāz al-Qur’ān – or the inimitability of the Qur’ān – by linguists and rhetoricians like `Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 474/1078) was concerned with not only the unparalleled character of divine speech but with the analysis of what was considered to be the most eloquent forms of existing literary texts with special attention given to poetry in order to understand through comparative studies the idea of inimitability and the experience of “wonder” as part of the textual encounter. See 'Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī, Dalāʼil al-Iʻjāz (Miṣr: Maktabat al-Qāhirah, 1969). Also see Lara Harb’s thesis Poetic Marvels: Wonder and Aesthetic Experience in Medieval Arabic Literary Theory (New York University, Department of Middle Eastern Studies and Islamic Studies, 2013).

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When Edward Said wrote Beginnings: Intentions and Method in the 1970s, he

believed that there was “no precursive model to follow” to see how the meaning and

form of beginnings have been transformed intentionally and methodically,

emphasizing that “why and how a beginning is determined – intention and method –

comprise a complex act of knowledge, experience, and art.”401 His analysis is based

on the beginnings of western literature from the eighteenth century to the mid-

twentieth century – including the works of writers like Goethe, Conrad, Flaubert,

Joyce, Beckett, and Yeats. Nevertheless, Said’s twentieth theory that the beginning is

where “a writer declares his ambition to make the reader see” articulates medieval

definitions of barāʻat al-istihlāl in which communicating intentionality is central to

the constructing a strong textual beginning.402 On the other hand, fourteenth-century

rhetoricians and litterateurs like al-Ḥillī and al-Ṣafadī were not only concerned with

the intentional construction of beginnings, but they were participants in a much larger

discursive tradition that informed and was informed by poetry, the study of rhetoric

and literary criticism with a deep interest in innovative manners of writing and

speaking. 403

401 Said, 17. 402 Ibid.,19 and 25. 403 This historical reality ultimately contradicts Edward Said’s understanding of Arabic-Islamic literary history when he writes, “(I)t is significant that the desire to create an alternative world, to modify or augment the real world through the act of writing (which is one motive underlying the novelistic tradition in the West) is inimical to the Islamic world-view.” Ibid., 81.

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By closely reading the beginnings of classical works of poetry outside of

Arabic literature in light of barāʻat al-istihlāl, I demonstrate that the badīʿiyyāt

articulate medieval Arabic literary theory and criticism.404 This may also give insight

into why medieval Arabophone scholars took great interest in translating and

studying ancient non-Arabic works of philosophy and science by figures like

Aristotle and Plato whose influence is readily legible in Arabic-Islamic philosophy,

medicine, and astronomy as opposed to other literary works considered Greek and

Roman classics of western literature such as Homer’s epic poetry.405 Regarding the

latter, Etman argues that Arabic poetry is a “deeply rooted tradition” and Homer, the

tragedians, and others were known in a partial and indirect manner by virtue of being

referenced by the philosophers.406

Moreover, medieval Arabic literary criticism upheld certain literary values

including what constitutes a strong poetic prelude. The opening invocations in two of

the most famous Homeric epic poems – The Iliad and The Odyssey – are at variance.

In both poems, the poet invokes the supernatural Muses and informs the audience of

404 I have included this part as well as the section of counter-narratives during the Crusades in Chapter Two in order to establish the comparative significance of my dissertation not only within the range of Arabic literature but outside in order to fulfill the ICLS requirements. This section also responds to ways in which Arabic literature has been read through contemporary Eurocentric theories by demonstrating how Arabic literary criticism can be applied to texts of the European canon. 405 See Peter Adamson, Philosophy in the Islamic World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early 'Abbāsid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th Centuries) (New York: Routledge, 2005). 406 See A. Etman, “Homer in the Arab World,” Receptions of Antiquity, ed. Jan Nelis and Freddy Decreus (Gent: Academia Press, 2011), 69-70.

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the significant events in the epic narratives. The structures of the opening invocations

are similar in that a Muse is invoked to inspire the poet with the words to tell the story

to follow. In the case of Homer’s Iliad, the poet supplicates, “Sing, goddess, the

anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus.”407 The poet indicates in very first verse the centrality

of anger as the primary emotion that drives The Iliad’s narrative of the Trojan War.

Moments of anger in connection to the violence of war are the subject matter of

numerous scenes often illustrated by extended epic similes of martial valor and

tragedy.

The Muses are invoked similarly in The Odyssey. They identify both the

titular character and the driving force for the narrative enfolding and expanding when

the poet exclaims, “Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways.”408 The poet calls to

407 See Homer, 1.1-7, 75. The full introduction translated by Lattimore is as follows:

Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus And its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians, Hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls Of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting Of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished Since that time when first there stood in division of conflict Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus.

408 See Book 1:1-10 of Homer’s The Odyssey, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967). The full introduction to the poem is as follows:

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys, after he had sacked Troy’s sacred citadel. Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of, many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea, struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions. Even so he could not save his companions, hard though he strove to; they were destroyed by their own wild recklessness, fools, who devoured the oxen of Helios, the Sun God,

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attention the primary characteristic of Odysseus – his ability to take on many forms in

order to trick and manipulate – which is the source of his heroic reputation and

relatedly the source of great violence within the poem. Unlike the medieval Arabic-

Islamic preludes, the Homeric epic opens with a direct command by the poetic voice

to grant divine inspiration instead of the subtlety of the supplicatory voice of the

adoring writer in praise of the beloved. On the other hand, “I” of the poet is present

and immediately identifiable through the verbal command of “sing” and “tell” in

which both imply the desire for story.

In terms of barāʻat al-istihlāl, the Homeric introduction would fall short

primarily in its direct style in framing the narrative. Simply, the poet offers too much

information. Both invocations are followed by an explicit rather than subtle

description of the grand epic that will unfold. In The Iliad, the audience is

immediately informed that the anger of Achilleus leads to devastation “which puts

pains thousand fold upon the Achaians.” Furthermore, the Homeric introduction

reveals the primary conflict between “Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant

Achilleus” in the beginning. Similarly, the introduction to The Odyssey reveals the

story of Odysseus’s sea journey with a clear explanation about why he ends up alone

– that is, his companions were “destroyed by their own wild recklessness” before his

homecoming. This interpolation of the poet orients the reader’s interpretation of

events and disposition toward the crew of Odysseus in order to control aspects of the

and he took away the day of their homecoming. From some point

here, goddess, daughter of Zeus, speak, and begin our story.

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audience’s reception. On the other hand, the verse directly states the series of events

as well as their cause in order to inform the audience rather than deploy associated

imagery to direct the audience to the subject.

Moreover, the self-consciousness of the poet and emotional landscape of the

space as well as her intention and the aims of the text are not as central to the opening

invocation as are the central plot points of both epics. The Homeric introductions

would not fulfill the critical expectations encapsulated in the definition of abarāʻat al-

istihlāl, although they both fulfill the expectation to convey aims and intentionality.

Central to the concept is the barāʻah or ingenuity of the writer in which the subtlety

of aesthetic is paramount. Rhetoricians, as literary critics, theorize views the space of

the introduction as the threshold and stage upon which the writer or speaker

demonstrates authorial intention and communicates the central subject of the poem

through rhetorical skill.

On the other hand, Ovid’s prologue to the Metamorphosis – with its narratives

of metamorphoses which occur as punishment, reward, and still other times as

arbitrary transformation enacted by the will of the gods – approaches the concept of

barāʻat al-istihlāl more closely. One reason for the convergence could be that Ovid’s

text is highly conscious of a legacy and tradition of Greco-Roman epic poetry in the

way post-classical Arabic poets were of ancient Arabic poetic conventions.409 Ovid’s

409 Throughout the poem, Ovid demonstrates a learned and critical playfulness with epic conventions by overturning them. For example, the audience is shown that changes of form is not simply a plot interest in the short episode of Daphne transforming into a tree but it occurs on the aesthetic level as well. The book of the Lapiths and Centaurs takes the epic convention of celebrating martial narratives of bravery and violence that invites a seriousness and awe in the disposition of the

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prologue, unlike the Homeric invocations, does not express any one particular plot

point; rather, his prologue is an expression of intention and method through rhetorical

construction in which the poetic voice is crucial and fulfills al-Ḥillī’s definition of

barāʻat al-istihlāl. The stories are not what are central to the prologue; the poet,

however, is. He says,

Changes of shape, new forms, are the theme that my spirit impels me now to recite. Inspire me, O gods (it is you who have even transformed my art), and spin me a thread from the world's beginning down to my own lifetime, in one continuous poem.410

Ovid calls attention to the overarching theme of the poem – change and new forms –

not only by expressing it in the opening verse, but through his choice of meter and

rhyme in contradistinction with Virgil’s epic poetry. It alerts the audience to Ovid’s

unique style.411 The metaphorical language of the “thread from the world’s

beginning” to refer to verses of a poem adds another layer of self-referentiality by

emphasizing the work as a craft. When he concludes his poem with the declaration

that his text about impermanence enables his permanent remembrance in the world,

the poet returns to the initial theme and tone established in the beginning in which the

poet rather than the epic hero is indispensable to the creation of poetry.

audience and transforms it into a scene that invites laughter and mockery. The prologue thus conveys the aim of the writer to challenge and critique convention. See Ovid, Metamorphoses: a new verse translation, trans. D. A. Raeburn (London: Penguin, 2004), 28-33 and 474-489. 410 Ibid., 5. 411 Kristina Milnor, “Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” Literature Humanities Faculty Seminar, Columbia University, January 28, 2015, Lecture.

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Finally, Ovid’s invocation addresses the gods as agents of artistic inspiration,

production, and transformation. In a way, Ovid claims the divine as a guiding hand in

his own project to describe a world in continuous flux on both the cosmic scale as

well as the minuscule. Like al-Ṣafadī’s invocation, Ovid’s prologue could be read as

a boast of his own accomplishments cloaked in pious prayer.

ADDITIONAL NOTES

The disciplinary formation of grammar, syntax, morphology, and rhetoric as it relates

also to medieval Arabic literary theory and criticism is closely tied to Qur’ānic

studies and Arabic poetics. For this reason, classical and post-classical theorists like

`Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 474/1078), Abu Ya`qūb al-Sakkākī (d. 626/1229),

Muḥammad ibn `Abd al-Raḥmān al-Qazwīnī (d. 739/1338), and Sa`d al-Dīn al-

Taftazānī (d. 792/1390) cite verses of the Qur’ān and poetry in their literary analysis

and in order to clarify key rhetorical concepts. Ultimately, classical and medieval

Arabic literary critics theorized from and through poetry and for that reason, the study

of medieval Arabic poetics cannot be divorced from an understanding of the

intersection between the conceptualization of literary theory and its application in

poetry and prose.

In “Śāstrārambha: Inquiries into the Preamble in Sanskrit,” Minkowski

examines the role of the preamble in Sanskrit treatises. He describes the preamble as

“a literary genre or conceptual form for organizing a system of knowledge…where

the intellectual identifies his distinctive argument and where he positions himself

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among past and present interlocutors.”412 Classical and post-classical Arabic

introductions across genres of texts conforms most closely to this description in

which barāʻat al-istihlāl is a literary value. Much like the auspicious verses of the

Sanskrit preamble, the structured and formalized invocation of God and the Prophet

are included in Arabic prologues based on an acceptance of the virtue of its

pronouncement.413 The content of the invocations as well as the highly stylized

rhetoric including the diction and imagery deployed reflect intentionality on the part

of the writer to direct the reader-audience to the project of the author and the

important themes of the text.414

The ancient amatory prelude of the qaṣīdah, on the other hand, adheres to

another formula as reflected in extant pre-Islamic poetry. The amatory prelude

deploys its own tropes and conventional motifs of affect, time, and space with which

later poets build upon and playfully transform in order to convey to their audiences

their own unique style. In his commentary on the opening verse to the poem Naẓm

al-badīʻ fī madḥ Khayr al-Shafīʻ, the sixteenth century intellectual Jalāl al-Dīn al-

412 See Christopher Minkowski’s chapter “Why Should We Read the Maṅgala Verses?” in Śāstrārambha: Inquiries into the Preamble in Sanskrit, ed. W. Slaje (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2008), 1-23. Resonating with the later treatment of the introduction by medieval Arabic-Islamic rhetoricians, the Sanskrit grammarian Patanjali (200 CE) argued that a writer could ensure the goodness of a work by giving it a good start, saying “by auspicious beginnings, middles and ends become famous, make heroes, and promote long life…(and) their readers become endowed with auspicious qualities,” 22. 413Ibid., 13. 414 Interestingly, Minkowski also notes that the Sanskrit preamble of the second millennium is intentionally literary and ornately poetic. Ibid.,19.

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Suyūṭī writes that the concept of barāʻat al-istihlāl demands that “the beginning of

the qaṣīdah be indicative of its central theme.” Furthermore, he clarifies that what this

means with regard to the particularity of the al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah genre of

poetry is that the poet would include “amorous longing and weeping over the

locations in the Ḥijāz like al-`Aqīq, Dhū Salam, Kāẓima, Iḍam, al-Nuqā, and Sal`,

and Ḥājir.”415 The invocations of abandoned campsites are indicative of the memory

of another time with another beloved.

The Islamic imprint within the content cannot also be ignored in that texts like

al-Ghayth al-Musajjam circulated in a world – and literary market –- of Arabic-

Islamic letters. In order to establish authority, legitimacy, or exceptionality, writers

and speakers – including the khatīb of Friday sermons in the mosque space –

performed devotion and pious sincerity in their craft in addition mastering the skill of

beginning a work. The amatory prelude of the Arabic ode, however, veers away from

formulaic structure of invocations including the basmalah, ḥamdalah, and ṣalawāt

present in al-Ḥillī and al-Ṣafadī’s introductions – even within the encomia dedicated

to the Prophet and other genres of devotional poetry.

To return to the beginning, why did medieval Arabic literature care so much

about beginnings? The beginning is the space within which writers make their first

impression. For less literary disciplines, it is the primary space where the writer takes

creative license and performs a literary flare that does not appear in the rest of the

text. It is also the primary text from which the student, reader, or audience learns and

415 The translation is mine. See Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūtī, Naẓm al-Badīʻ fī Madḥ Khayr Shafīʻ, ed. ʻAlī Muḥammad Muʻawwaḍ, ʻĀdil Aḥmad ʻAbd al-Mawjūd, ʻAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Sinnah (Ḥalab : Dār al-Qalam al-ʻArabī bi-Ḥalab, 1995), 46.

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commits to memory. As such, the medieval amatory prelude can be transformed into

an effective pedagogical tool for any number of subjects including that of rhetorical

style.

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CONCLUSION

فخالطني من ذلك العجب ورنحتني إلیھ نشوة األدب وزاد إعجابي بھ اني حین

قلت لھ اني ضیف بجاركم ألم أنشدني على الفور "أمن تذكر جیران بذي سلم؟"

It filled me with wonder – this intoxicating passion for literature. I grew fonder of him. Verily, I professed to him, “I am, indeed, the guest of your neighbors,” [after which] he forthrightly sang to me: “Is it from the remembrance of the neighbors of Dhū Salam?”

– From Maqāmah fī al-Faransīs by Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 1834)

As I have demonstrated, although the structural components of the amatory

prelude largely remained stable, the content of each component transformed in ways

that responded to changes in time. Writers tinkered with the prelude structure which

proved to be adaptable to the changing discursive landscape including the sensibilities

of both writers and their audiences. The poetics of the medieval amatory prelude was

informed by the voice of the poet-lover and the audience that the poet addresses. The

subjective voice of the poet and subjectivity of the audience are both in turn informed

by a familiarity with classical convention, literary and intellectual discourses, political

and sacred history, and popular beliefs in the auspiciousness of specific words and

images as well as the desirability of specific emotional states and nostalgic

attachments.

In due course, both the malleability and stability of the amatory prelude

enabled other writers to consider the convention as an effective text for instruction in

which memory and memorization is central to the process of learning and

preservation of texts. After all, the beginning of a poem or a song is often the first

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thing we remember. Intentionally or unintentionally, ancient Arab poets discovered in

the amatory prelude the essential role of emotions for memory recall. As discussed in

the first chapter, medieval poets and commentators understood that the role of

nostalgia and longing in the prelude is to develop a rapport with the audience and

focus their attention on the emotional and tonal landscape set up for the qaṣīdah. In

order to do that effectively, the writer needs to select the perfect vehicle of nostalgia.

That vehicle is the aṭlāl or traces of the beloved and by its nature, it is circumscribed

by both time and space in which both are of the poet-lover’s past.

THE BURDAH AS AṬLĀL: MEDIEVAL POETIC CONTINUITY IN MODERN ARABIC LITERATURE? Before concluding, I return to the the thirteenth century prelude poetics of

Muḥammad ibn Sa’īd al-Būṣīrī’s (d. 1294) Qaṣīdat al-Burdah, or The Mantle Ode,

and its iterations in modern literary texts in order to further challenge and raise

questions about the discontinuity of medieval Arabic poetics in modern culture. The

notion of discontinuity – or even irrelevance – is lodged in both the enduring effects

of the debunked idea of medieval decline as well as the understanding of the Nahḍah

as Arab renaissance and modern rupture. I will interrogate an intertextual reference to

al-Būṣīrī’s Qaṣīdat al-Burdah among other classical texts as the aṭlāl in the Maqāmah

fī al-Faransīs (trans. Maqāmah of the French) by Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 1250/1834) 416

416 See Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-ʻAṭṭār and Jalāl al-Dīn Sayyidī ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al-Suyūṭī, Hādhihi Al-Maqāmāt Al-Suyūṭīyah (Cairo: Ṣāliḥ al-Yāfī, 1859), 91-96;ʻAbd al-Ḥakīm Qāsim, The Seven Days of Man, trans. Joseph N. Bell (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1996). For Arabic, see ʻAbd al-Ḥakīm Qāsim, Ayyām al-Insān al-Sabʻah: Riwāyah Miṣriyah (al-Qāhirah: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʻArabī, 1969).

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Setting aside al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah written by anti-colonial leaders in

exile417 as a response to European colonization in the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries, the cultural imprint of al-Būṣīrī’s Qaṣīdat al-Burdah as a whole was far-

reaching and long-lasting. The Burdah has been recited continually among various

Muslim communities, exists in visual culture, and is invoked intertextually. Over

time, the text acquired a talismanic value that communicated a lasting nostalgia and

longing for the Prophet as an absent beloved from an idealized sacred past. The

musicality of its one-hundred and sixty verses facilitates repetitive recital,

memorization and adaptation. The result is that the qaṣīdah continues to be recited

until today, and it is one of the few Arabic odes about the Prophet recited by non-

Arabs in Arabic.418 The Burdah is embedded in cultural memory through the

transmission of the poetic persona and the performative affects of nostalgia through

recitation. Indeed, the French Orientalists brought to Egypt during Napoleon’s

expedition from 1798-1801 recognized the importance of the ode and took great

interest in it.419

Also see Roger Allen on Qāsim’s novel in The Arabic Novel: An Historical and Critical Introduction (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1982), 168-177. 417 Aḥmadou Bamba Mbacke – the founder of the Mourīdiyya Sufi brotherhood – is one such example. 418 There are thousands of odes to the Prophet composed by Muslims in their own languages. See Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1985). 419 See Bruce Bradley and William B. Ashworth, Napoleon and the Scientific Expedition to Egypt: An Exhibition of the Description De L'égypte (1809-1828) and

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In Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār’s Maqāmah fī al-Faransīs, the Burdah establishes intimacy

in an important moment of alienation. The protagonist engages the Burdah and other

classical texts as artifacts of an abandoned campsite in the process of becoming

transformed. Al-'Aṭṭār’s nineteenth century story illustrates an encounter with French

orientalists brought to Egypt during Napoleon’s expedition. A maqāmah that

incorporates reference to other genres of literature, the text is composed on the

occasion of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798-99 when the Nahḍah period is

considered to have begun.420 In the scene in which the Burdah appears, the poem has

a strong affective presence and betrays a sense of loss. Moreover, al-ʿAṭṭār curates421

within the maqāmah a classical book collection in which the Burdah is notably

placed. Al-Buṣīrī’s poem as well as the classical book collection is central to the

identity of the narrator and the community to which he belongs. Al-ʿAṭṭār’s

nineteenth century nostalgia for the medieval text and the classical tradition it

represents is one starting point for understanding how later writers and their Muslim

Other Rare Books Documenting the French Expedition to Egypt (Kansas City, Mo: Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology, 2006). 420 Like all periodization, the beginning and end of the Nahḍah is also disputed. See Shaden M. Tageldin, "Proxidistant Reading: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of the Nahḍah in U.S. Comparative Literary Studies," Journal of Arabic Literature, 43 (2012): 227-268. Also see Tarek El-Ariss, Trials of Arab Modernity: Literary Affects and the New Political (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013). Also see Muhsin al-Musawi, “Beyond the Modernity Complex:ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm Qāsim’s Re-Writing of the Nahḍah Self-Narrative,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 41 (2010) 22-45, 34-35. 421 I intentionally use the word “curate” to convey the intentionality and selectivity of the writers’ construction of a book collection in the stories, which is very much descriptive of the nature and process of creating a canon. Curation indicates process beyond the act of selection.

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and Arab audiences envision the classical tradition as the abandoned campsite or aṭlāl

of their contemporary moment.

ḤASAN AL-ʿAṬṬĀR’S AMATORY POETICS AND TEXTUAL SEDUCTION IN MAQĀMAH FĪ AL-FARANSĪS The figure of Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār has perplexed a number of contemporary literary

scholars interested in post-colonial studies.422 An individual who was trained in the

scholarly curriculum of al-Azhar but whose intellectual life had developed and varied

in his travels from Ottoman Cairo to Istanbul and Damascus, al-ʿAṭṭār lived his

formative years during a time in which the world market had begun to dismantle

indigenous commercial communities. Those trained in the classics were in dire need

of new sources of patronage.423 An accomplished poet and author, al-ʿAṭṭār’s

Maqāmah sheds light on the psychological drama of an Azhari intellectual’s

engagement with French scholars. The scholars in the story are reflective of the

people who most likely constituted the Institut d’Égypte established by Napoleon in

1798 including French scientists like Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and litterateurs like

Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon.424 Al-ʿAṭṭār continued to maintain established

422 Peter Gran covers in detail the biography of Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār conveying why he is a figure of immense interest. See Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760-1840 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), xvi. 423 Ibid., 77. 424 See “The Institute of Egypt” in Paul Strathern’s Napoleon in Egypt (New York: Bantam Books, 2013), 191-203.

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relationships with other British and French orientalists including Clot Bey425 and the

British philologist Edward Lane especially as Al-ʿAṭṭār pursued the development of

new institutions of learning.426

The Maqāmah fī al-Faransīs is written in rhymed prose modeled after the

classical genre of Arabic maqāmāt, the most famous of which include Maqāmāt al-

Hamadhānī written in the tenth century by Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (d.1007)

and the later Maqāmāt al-Ḥarīrī by al-Ḥarīrī of Basra (d. 1122). Short fictional

episodic narratives featuring the adventures of a wandering trickster, the maqāmāt

was a popular genre of medieval literature through which writers exhibited his or her

intellectual, including rhetorical and linguistic, mastery such as the polymath Jalāl al-

Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505).427 Their writers, furthermore, often critically parodied

425 See Clot-Bey, Mémoires de Clot Bey: Mudhakkirat Al-Duktur Klut Bay, ed. Antoine-Barthélemy and Jacques Tāǧir (Le Caire: Impr. de l'Inst. Français d'Archéologie Orientale, 1949). 426 See Edward Lane’s praises of Al-ʿAttar in Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (Reissue, London: J.M. Dent, 1963), 196-97. 427 Other maqāmāt writers include Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf ibn al-Ashtarkūnī (d. 538/1143) and Ibn Sayqal al-Jazarī 701/1301. See Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf Ibn al-Ashtarkūnī, Al-Maqāmāt Al-Luzūmīyah, trans. James T. Monroe (Leiden: Brill, 2002) and Ibn al-Ṣayqal, Al-Maqāmāt al-Zaynīyah, Ed. ʻAbbās M. Ṣāliḥī (Beirut: Dār al-Masīrah, 1980). The popularity of the maqāmāt extended to other literary traditions as exemplified by the Andalusian Jewish writer Yaḥyā ibn Sulaymān al-Ḥarīzī al-Yahūdī also known as Yehuda Alharizi (d. 1225) who wrote his maqāmah – the Tahkemoni – in Hebrew. The maqāmāt are believed to be the predecessor of the picaresque genre in Spanish literature, the first of which was La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades (trans. The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities) written in the mid-fifteenth century and anticipates the works of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra including Don Quixote de la Mancha. Also see James T. Monroe, The Art of Badīʻ Az-Zamān Al-Hamadhānī as Picaresque Narrative (Beirut: Center for Arab and Middle East Studies, American University of

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hagiographical narratives through their trickster characters manipulating popular

beliefs and rituals including deploying the motif of the pious-intellectual figure

having a dream vision of the Prophet.428

Al-ʿAṭṭār’s Maqāmah is written in the form of this classical genre and opens

with a narrator wandering in a place unfamiliar to him. The narrator, however, never

reveals himself as a trickster; rather, the character of the narrator is a curious

intellectual who is transformed by his audience. Like al-Hamadhānī’s anti-hero Abū

al-Fatḥ al-Iskandarī, al-ʿAṭṭār’s narrator makes it evident that the protagonist is a

scholar steeped in classical training. In fact, the very first Maqāmah of al-Hamadhānī

reveals foremost the poetic and rhetorical prowess of al-Iskandarī through a citation

of names and works which functions similarly to the citation of names and works in

al-ʿAṭṭār’s Maqāmah. Abū al-Fatḥ enters the scene informing his audience that he

could “quench their thirst for knowledge.” They question him on the most prominent

poets among the ancients, or mutaqaddimūn, beginning with Imru’ al-Qays and then

moving on to Farazdaq and Jarīr. The specified names signal that those interrogating

Abū al-Fatḥ are not only familiar with the literature of their prominent predecessors

but in a position to judge by trial those who claim such knowledge. Before the

exchange ends, he is presented a question his contemporaries were concerned with –

“What is your opinion of the modern and the ancients?” He responds, “The language

Beirut, 1983); Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, Maqāma: A History of a Genre. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2002. 428 See Muhsin al-Musawi, The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 120-121.

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of the ancients is nobler and their themes more delightful, whereas the conceits of the

moderns are more refined and their style more elegant.”429 Al-Hamadhānī’s

wandering vagrant confidently celebrates the literature of the past while also

acknowledging the distinctiveness of the present in which his new contribution to

literature participates. His answer is a statement in which the new is not in

contestation but in continuity and learned refinement of the old.

Here, al-ʿAṭṭār diverges. Unlike the trickster of al-Hamadhānī’s maqāmāt , al-

ʿAṭṭār’s narrator is not a figure characterized as a master manipulator of eloquence,

conscious of knowledge performance and the use of cultural capital in the service of

his own livelihood. He is not in the business of tricking his French interlocutors

through eloquence nor does he astound others with his learned persona; rather, his

audience impresses him.430 Eloquence in al-ʿAṭṭār’s Maqāmah is a source of mutual

admiration, attraction and familiarity between the scholarly Egyptian Muslim and the

429 See Badīʻ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī, Maqāmāt Abī al-Faḍl Badīʻ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (Bayrūt: al-Maṭbaʻah al-Kāthūlīkīyah, 1908), 4; English translation: The Maqāmāt of Badiʻ al-Zamān al-Hamādhāni, trans. W J. Prendergast, (London: Curzon Press, 1973), 29. 430 It is important to note that Gran and Colla both assume that the maqāmah is an autobiographical account and the narrator is al-ʿAṭṭār himself. On the other hand, Tageldin identifies the narrator as “al-ʿAṭṭār’s fictional Egyptian” and presents the narrative as a fictional account. See Shaden Tageldin, Disarming Words: Empire and the Seductions of Translation in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 66. I will identify the narrator as al-ʿAṭṭār although like Tageldin, I do believe there is a difference between the writer al-ʿAṭṭār and the narrator of the story. See Elliott Colla, “Non, Non! Si, Si!: Commemorating the French Occupation of Egypt (1798-1801)," Mln 118.4 (2003).

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French Colonizer.431 Although the ideological themes of love, attraction, and

assimilation dominant in nineteenth and twentieth century Arabic literary responses to

Europe are all woven into the poetics of al-ʿAṭṭār’s Maqāmah, al-ʿAṭṭār’s characters

do not fit into a binary mold of dominance and resistance.432 The politics of

seduction—even within the colonial context—involve multiple layers of power along

gender, ethno-racial, socio-economic, and national lines.433 At times, the construction

of a scenario of seduction involves the inversion of a dominance-resistance binary; at

other times, the erotic poetics of such a scenario involve the implosion of a binary and

veer toward a destabilizing ambiguity seen in the prelude poetics of the Arabic ode.434

431 See Gran, 90-91. According to Gran, al-ʿAṭṭār’s maqāmah was a form of self-defense and a defense of the study of classical literature and other subjects facing declining interest in Cairo in the 1790s. On the other hand, Colla and Tageldin focus less on al-ʿAṭṭār’s relationship with other Egyptians and identify the power dynamics betrayed by the maqāmah between the colonizer and colonized within the maqāmah itself. Both consider the gendered dynamics of language within the maqāmah and how erotic power reflects a different dynamic – not simply one of oppression and resistance but the many sides of seduction between the colonized and colonizer. 432 Tageldin, 6-9. She argues that it is precisely orientalist discourse deeply interested in textual, philological, legal and cultural Arabo-Islamic practices that attracted intellectuals because it appeared to validate the Arabs and Islam even as it denigrated it. 433 For example, Assia Dejbar’s Algerian female informant Touma—a character contextualized in the peak of the Algerian wars of independence—illustrates the possibility of the racialized and sexualized colonized subject whose encounter with the colonizer and native is one of identification, desire, collaboration, and enmity all at once. See Assia Djebar, Children of the New World: A Novel of the Algerian War, trans. Marjolijn de Jager (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2005), 90-94, 170. 434 Colla states, “Colonial power and resistance seem to be phenomena best expressed as neither wholly binary nor wholly ambiguous, and it would be wrong to think that our reading of colonial texts would have to choose between the model of pure opposition and that of benevolent exchange” (1052).

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The erotic poetics of the qaṣīdah prelude offer a theoretical lens by which Al-

ʿAṭṭār’s Maqāmah can be read. Each citation of a classical Arabic-Islamic text

functions as aṭlāl or associative signposts of the beloved. The texts are the new

Madīnah. In this case, the signified beloved paces between pre-modern scholarly

legacy and the new French orientalists. Moreover, like the medieval aṭlāl, these

signposts are designed to seize the interest of the Egyptian lover and the assumed

audience of the Maqāmah as not only Arabs but as Muslims.

The poetics of the amatory prelude necessitates the dialectic between beloved

and lover in which the poetic voice assumes an audience of critics, another prelude

trope.435 The lover, expressing deep vulnerability, appears weak before the beloved

who has imaginative and sentimental control. When the lover’s voice collapses with

the poet’s voice, the agency of the poet-lover to not only construct a beloved but also

argue for the legitimacy of the subject’s position becomes more pronounced when

he/she enlists an audience as participants. Al-ʿAṭṭār’s narrator must impress upon his

audience the legitimacy of his claims. His deliberate use of erotic ghazal language

indicates a desire to include an audience in what appears as a singular, private

experience but upon further analysis is meant to be a pedagogical and even polemical

engagement between the narrator and his assumed audience of critics.

Composed in a fraught colonial moment, the foreign Frenchman’s invocation

of the indigenous classical Arabic-Islamic legacy in al-ʿAṭṭār’s Maqāmah—what

435 Al-Būṣīrī addresses them in the prelude of the Burdah as lā’imi fī l-hawā or the love critics. Sharaf al-Dīn Abī ʿAbd-Allah Muḥammad al-Būṣīrī, Burdat al-Madīḥ al-Mubārakah (Abū Dhabī: Dār al-Faqīh, 2001).

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Tageldin identifies as “the Burdah scene”— allows for the French orientalists to also

become objects of both erotic and epistemological desire.436 In al-ʿAṭṭār’s Maqāmah,

the foreign Frenchman is the Thousand and One Night’s Princess of China Badr al-

Budūr. Where the Princess of China represents the furthest limits of knowledge and

culture, however, the French orientalist represents the limitlessness of knowledge

circulation. I would argue, furthermore, that al-ʿAṭṭār’s use of the rhymed-narrative

Maqāmah form instead of the qaṣīdah in order to construct the Frenchmen in the

scene facilitates their occupying space in a more pronounced manner than the poetic

beloved of the erotic prelude. Although the foreignness of the Frenchmen informs a

partial exoticizing gaze within the erotic fantasy of encounter, the coloniality of the

Frenchmen and the violence associated with it outside of the text requires

recuperation.437

Thus, in addition to appropriating classical poetic conventions and drawing

attention to specifically resonant classical texts, al-ʿAṭṭār uses narrative to provide

contextual support for the embedded love poetry of a problematic beloved who the

narrator proposes is worthy of scholarly praise. Moreover, the Maqāmah register

which al-ʿAṭṭār relies on and its conventionally rhythmic narrative form conveys a

tone of entertaining congeniality that is distinct from the formality of the qaṣīdah or

436 Colla, 1064. 437 The fantasy of the foreign beloved appears in earlier popular narratives, like the Chinese princess in A Thousand and One Nights, but functions distinctly in terms of power and as a representation of the periphery of empire or imperial other rather than an invader.

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ghazal. The difference becomes immediately apparent when the narrator switches

from one register to another within the Maqāmah itself.438

The narrative commences with al-ʿAṭṭār identifying two classes of Egyptian

informants from whom the narrator has learned second-hand information about the

French. The first are described as the debauched and wanton from whom the narrator

learns news about a “disturbance caused by the French.”439 The narrative of such a

disturbance by the collective representation of colonial invasion (i.e., “the French) is

not one that requires much explanation. The disturbance provokes chaos and invokes

fear and suspicion of the French about which the narrator is well aware and which he

will work against. The second class of Egyptian informants is “well-travelled” and

knowledgeable and from whom the reader-audience learns a more extensive

description of the French practice of war.440 In almost an inversion of the qaṣīdah

structure of the encomium, al-ʿAṭṭār first addresses the case of the Frenchmen as

438 The implications of al-ʿAṭṭār’s use of the maqāmah form is a significant stylistic decision and gives al-ʿAṭṭār the opportunity to both narrate and demonstrate within the narrative his ability to compose a panegyric. 439 Al-ʻAṭṭār, 91. The translation is mine and included in the appendix of my dissertation. I began translating the entire maqāmah in collaboration with Mohammad Sadegh Ansari for a graduate seminar the spring of 2014. I continued to work on our first draft since then. I consulted other partial English translations available by Peter Gran, Shaden Tageldin, and Elliot Colla, which do not include a complete translation of the narrator’s poem within the maqāmah. To make clear the identity of the pronouns, I maintained the referred noun in the English. Although each sentence is composed as rhymed couplets as is characteristic of the maqāmah style, I kept the translation of the narrative in prose form and the poetry in verse form. I also kept both the singular and plural pronouns used by the narrator in order to refer to the French scholar he initially meets and praises. 440 Al-ʻAṭṭār, 91.

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warriors before he addresses them as beloveds. He communicates their qualities of

chivalry before transitioning to the moment of erotic ecstasy and nostalgia

characteristic of the ode’s prelude and madīḥ moment of celebration. Noting that he

conveys second-hand information from another reliable source (i.e., the

knowledgeable and well-travelled), al-ʿAṭṭār claims “these people are not hostile

towards strangers except to those who attack them/And they do not terrorize except

those who attempt to dominate them.”441

The introduction of desire, love, and nostalgia – the hallmark of the amatory

prelude – is not immediately possible with the figure of the French colonizer for al-

ʿAṭṭār’s early nineteenth century Egyptian audience. The alienation that the French

figure is anticipated to provoke is displaced and overcome through the introduction of

the intimate and familiar. Al-ʿAṭṭār’s narrative seeks to present a different role for the

Frenchman through the eyes and voice of an Egyptian Muslim man of letters and his

experience of intimacy by adapting a prelude poetic in order to recuperate and endear

the figure of the French soldier. Al-ʿAṭṭār must acknowledge French violence and the

specter of enmity but he does so as a prelude to the larger narrative. Moreover, he

associates knowledge of this narrative with the “depraved” or ahl al-khalāʿah

countered by the cultured and worldly that qualify French violence with Egyptian-

Arab-Muslim provocation.

When the narrator enters into his first-hand account of the French encounter, it

is foremost a visual, physical and sensual experience. The immediate impression

441 My translation of al-ʻAṭṭār; Arabic 92. Regarding this line, Colla comments that “the narrator has fully digested the official French version of the expedition,” 1062.

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upon the narrator and that which he conveys is complete bewilderment before ideal

beauty as a French collectivity and individually. The narrator reports, “I gazed upon

them as a staring fool before roses/Then I stopped and gazed upon the slender beauty

approaching.”442 The Frenchmen are transformed from enemy to desired beloved

through al-ʿAṭṭār’s deployment of recognizable erotic conventions in which he

feminizes the masculine object of desire through the use of the feminine-plural third-

person pronoun and through a presentation of conventional motifs of love poetry

including slender swaying bodies, loosened locks of hair, and luminescent faces. The

writer’s familiarity with the poetic of the encomia emerges and facilitates the shift

from critical distance to intimacy even in absence of the object of desire. The poetic

description of the Frenchmen’s physical beauty that al-ʿAṭṭār’s narrator includes in

his poem is familiar; the narrator invokes a specific classical Arabic-Islamic poetic

register in which the narrator exemplifies the familiar voice of the poet-lover in the

erotic prelude. Where al-Būṣīrī rhetorically incorporates the figure of the Prophet

among the repertoire of poetic beloveds through pre-Islamic poetic conventions, I

would argue al-ʿAṭṭār makes a similar attempt to incorporate a new beloved into the

Arabic-Islamic classical repertoire—with a geneology reaching into the ancient pre-

Islamic period. In the case of this particular poem, the poet constructs a French

orientalist as a beloved.

After addressing their physical beauty, al-ʿAṭṭār introduces the next layer of

the Frenchmen’s desirability — their near native fluency and scholarly erudition with

442 My translation of Al-ʻAṭṭār; Arabic 92.

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regard to the Arabic-Islamic tradition. The Frenchmen’s erudition is proven through

their scholarly interest in the classical Arabic-Islamic texts they have not only

acquired in their possession but are represented as actively studying. Significantly,

the narrator does not approach them – they approach him. They are not passive

objects of adoration; rather, they actively seek the narrator’s attention and admiration

as a performance of acknowledgment and homage to the scholar-narrator, which then

further endears them to him. Significantly, the first Frenchman the narrator

encounters introduces himself through his books.

The narrator continues, “A youth showed me a book, and we began

conversing.443 His Arabic was free from accents; his pronunciation free from all

blemishes.”444 In an inversion of roles, the narrator with whom the audience outside

the text is expected to identify also becomes audience to the erudite Frenchman.445

The narrator first takes immediate notice of the Frenchman’s manner of speech.

Unlike al-Jabartī’s critique of the use of Arabic in Napoleon’s proclamation to the

Egyptians upon his invasion, al-ʿAṭṭār’s analysis of the disarming Frenchman is that

his Arabic is above reproach. Simply, this character speaks like a “native” free from

the expected accent of a foreigner. Their familiarity and fluency in Arabic is the first

443 Gran translates, “And we began talking,” whereas Tageldin translates, “And entered into conversation with me.” 444 Our translation of al-ʻAṭṭār; Arabic 93. 445 For an eleventh century Arabic-Islamic theorization of the inversion of roles in the context of erotic attraction, see the “Preliminary Discursus” in Ibn, Ḥazm, The Ring of the Dove: A Treatise on the Art and Practice of Arab Love, trans. A.J. Arberry (London: Luzac, 1953).

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indication of “authentic” knowledge for the scholarly-narrator-turned-audience and

thereby legitimates the next demonstration of erudition – his knowledge of classical

texts.

He began to introduce the books of great writers and mentioned the books and manuscripts that he owned. He began enumerating and identifying [them], even mentioning The Chronicles of al-Ṭūsī and The Shifāʾ, which he called The Honored Shifāʾ…and it filled me with wonder – this intoxicating passion for literature.446

After establishing the Frenchman’s Arabic prowess, the narrator affirms his

“Islamicity” without ever claiming he is a Muslim.447 He introduces himself as an

owner and collector of texts, and the two literary titles intended to give the narrator

and fellow audience pause are Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s (d. 672/1274) Al-Tadhkirah fī

ʿIlm al-Hay’a or Chronicles in the Astronomical Sciences and Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s Kitāb al-

Shifāʾ bi Ta'rīf Ḥuqūq al-Muṣtafā or The Book of Healing By Knowledge of the Rights

of the Chosen One more famously known as al-Shifāʾ. The ḥattā or “even” which

introduces the two scholarly titles indicates that of all the texts that the Frenchman

may have identified, these are the two that caught the special attention of the narrator.

They are identified by name. Both well-known and influential classical works, each

text occupies two different and distinct spheres of Arabic-Islamic knowledge

production and culture.

Thus, the initial identification of these two titles index and convey the

spectrum and breadth of empirical and metaphysical literature covered by the

446 Our translation of Al-ʻAṭṭār; Arabic 93. 447 Tageldin uses the term to indicate an idiomatic fluency and command of Arabo-Islamic texts, literariness, culture, and history, 80-82.

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Frenchman’s scholarship like two bookends of the classical book shelf to be

constructed within the maqāmah. Furthermore, with each mention of a classical text,

the author widens his circle of registers. Also significantly, the complete titles of the

texts are not mentioned; instead, the narrator simply mentions the titles’ short form

within the lines of the maqāmah – al-Ṭūsī’s Tadhkirah and al-Shifāʾ – indicating that

al-ʿAṭṭār’s audience is highly literate and familiar with not only both texts but also the

textual culture surrounding each. It is a moment in which the scholarly persona of the

narrator is acknowledged and affirmed in the mirrored affirmation of the

Frenchman’s scholarly-cultured persona.

The narrator’s tone reflects that he is especially impressed by how the

Frenchman identifies Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s text with the honorific Al-Shifāʾ al-Sharīf. To

publicly attach an honorific is to publicly acknowledge the special status of a text

afforded by those considered as “insiders” of the scholarly and literary culture. It is a

performance of the other kind of adab – that is, a refined etiquette – to which Adab as

literature supposedly leads the individual. Thus, the narrator is particularly affected

by the reverence of the Frenchman toward al-Shifāʾ because he both expresses an

idiomatic familiarity with textual culture and because he demonstrates through his

reverence of a text about the rights of the Prophet that he is mu’addab and that his

character has internalized an “intoxication with literature.”

The mention of these two works set up the narrator and his reading audience

for the introduction to the Burdah text as a spontaneous moment of disarming

poignancy, charisma, and ultimate accessibility. The Frenchman has now been

established and legitimized as one with scholarly credibility and in possession of

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subtle reverence toward the kutub al-afāḍil al-akābir – the great books of the honored

scholars of the past. After again drawing the audience’s attention to the unnamed

larger collection in the Frenchman’s textual arsenal, al-ʿAṭṭār professes,

I grew fonder of him. Truly, I professed to him, “I am, indeed, the guest of your neighbors.” And forthrightly, he sang to me, “Is it from the remembrance of the neighbors of Dhū Salam?”448

AN INDEX OF MEMORY: THE BURDAH AS AṬLĀL

The apparent spontaneous recitation of the first hemistich of the amatory prelude to

the Burdah is meant to amaze and astonish. Not only is the Frenchman aware of the

great books of the greats and not only does he perform due deference to them, but he

is able to extemporaneously cite a verse appropriate for the occasion of their

conversation. Unlike the other classical texts, the Frenchman does not utter the title

of the well-loved Prophetic encomium. The mention of the prelude verse is sufficient

for both memory recall, evoking nostalgia and establishing intimacy. His timing of

recitation is an indication of his familiarity to a tradition and an acknowledgement of

the narrator’s shared knowledge of the text from which the Frenchman has quoted.

The narrator continues,

He informed me that he translated it in its entirety And this is the one thing that has remained with him. When all was said and done, The demon of love conquered and overcame me…449

448 Ou translation of al-ʻAṭṭār; Arabic 93. 449 Ibid.

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Informed that the Frenchman has translated the entire ode, the narrator is placed on

equal footing through the Frenchman’s poetic playfulness in which a temporary

utopia of mutually shared power framed by a sentimental attachment to a poem is

simultaneously created and undermined by the narrator overcome by love. The

Burdah scene functions as the pivotal moment and places the Burdah text in the

center of the imagined classical bookshelf which emerges within the maqāmah as a

constructed site of intimate encounter and shared power between the Egyptian-

Muslim scholar-narrator and the erudite French colonizer-student.

Here is where a performed familiarity with the text allows for sentimentality

to overwhelm and mimic the prelude poetics of the Burdah. The aṭlāl of the prelude

intimates but does not directly state the identity of the Beloved – an

acknowledgement that the Beloved can be known through associative signposts.

Within the context of the maqāmah, the Burdah verse functions as the aṭlāl of the

encomium. Registering memory of the text as well as the sentiments of nostalgia and

yearning, the Frenchman’s deft and timely invocation of the first hemistich is the

conquering blow to that which alienates the narrator—an Egyptian-Arab-Muslim

man—from his audience, the French male colonizer. The flooding of emotion which

al-ʿAṭṭār identifies when he states, “The demon of love (shayṭān al-maḥabbah)

overcame me,” is enabled by the Frenchman’s association with a love poem for the

Prophet. The Burdah scene recuperates the figure of the individual Frenchman. The

veneer of association is accomplished through the recitation of half of a verse,

without direct mention of the actual text because of its recognizability. It provokes the

narrator to fall into the role of the ode’s sleepless lover who subsequently is inspired

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to compose a love poem for the French, as he says, “I began spending entire nights

sleepless. I saw the break of morning and I was in love. Sleeplessness and

steadfastness compelled me to compose some lines of poetry…”450

The lover-narrator of the maqāmah is transformed by the Frenchman’s

recitation into a role echoing the lover-poet of the Burdah who invokes the more

classical image of the ṭayf or desert phantom in the following verse: “Oh yes, the

phantom of the one I love did come by night and leave me sleepless; love does indeed

impede delight with pain.”451 The first encounter with the individual Frenchman then

moves to a performance of knowledge. He referrs to texts selected from the sciences

and hagiographical literature. The references are punctuated by the poetic Burdah

scene enacts the role of the prelude. It sets the stage for the second encounter, which

is no longer an encounter between strangers but among familiar scholars in which

praise is exchanged.

They asked me to analyze some of the verses of the Burdah, which they had written by hand in Arabic in many copies. Then they showed me some verses of flawed poetry and asked me about the subtleties and the superficial. They informed me that in their country there is a copy of the Diwān of The Seven Suspended Odes…452

In the second encounter, the narrator returns to a collective of French scholars. The

narrator specifically mentions the Burdah by name as well as other texts from various

disciplines and genres when he joins this larger group of Frenchmen to discuss

450 Ibid.; Arabic 94. 451 Translation from Suzanne Stetkevych, The Mantle Odes: Arabic Praise Poems to the Prophet Muhammad (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 93. 452 Our translation of al-ʻAṭṭār; Arabic 95.

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another verse from the poem. By indicating that “there is a copy of the Diwān of The

Seven Suspended Odes” in their own country calls to question the perception that the

French encounter with the Arabic literary tradition is new. The classical book

collection depicted in the hands of the French continues to acquire a wider audience

through greater specificity in the cataloguing of well-known titles. Again, the

Frenchmen are not passive objects of desire but engage the narrator, reifying their

relationship as that among equals in the pursuit of scholarship. They address the

narrator in a manner that privileges his position as a learned scholar among students

immersed in the sciences and classical literature, and their praise of him reflects a

passion for literature that the narrator expresses had been long buried and revived in

their company. He reflects,

Passion stirred within me from an era passed. This passion for literature, which was achieved with great difficulty and had weakened, was strengthened once again.

The narrator articulates what later becomes the trope of the Nahḍah. The embodied

representation of the classical library, the scholar had lost his innovative passion and

fervor. It is with an encounter with a foreigner – specifically a Frenchman

representing the colonial military not only occupying Egypt but promising to

overthrow the “tyranny of the Mamlūks”453 – that awakened him from his slumber.454

453 See Napolean’s letter translated by al-Jabartī in Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥasan al-Jabartī, Al-Jabartī's Chronicle of the First Seven Months of the French Occupation of Egypt (Muḥarram-Rajab 1213/15 June-December 1789)/Tārīkh Muddat al-Faransīs bi Miṣr (Muḥarram-Rajab 1213/15 Yūliyū-Dīsimbir 1798), Trans. Shmuel Moreh (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 40-42. 454 Gran argues that al-ʿAṭṭār’s emotional response in is part due to the experience of alienation he experienced while living in the Ṣaʿīd – the word used to refer to Upper

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At this moment, the narrator is the Nahḍah embodied – at least as it was once

understood in relation to European culture.

Al-ʿAṭṭār’s portrayal of this scene in which the neglected scholar of the

classics is brought to life by the French scholars suggests that the maqāmah functions

to not solely praise and recuperate the figure of the French but is an indirect, self-

referential praise of the narrator as veritable scholar and a critique directed at a

society that abandoned him, his work, and his value. Thus, the figure of the

contemporary scholar is among the older figures of despised and neglected scholarly

characters in the classical maqāmāt. His indication that such passion is “achieved

with great difficulty” conveys his view that scholarship is borne of arduous labor in

which passion is a result of that process and not the beginning. He does not specify

what led to his loss of passion, but his noting that it “weakened” suggests that what he

found with the Frenchmen was the novelty of being inspired, and thus their roles

reverse once more. Because they admire him, they in turn are a source of inspiration

for the scholar in a context that is constructed as one lacking—or worse,

extinguishing – scholarly pursuit.

Like the individual Frenchman, the others present to the narrator other

unnamed books among which the Burdah reappears in its textual form. His attention

to the fact that they have several copies in their possession further reifies that these

men are engaged in scholarly pursuit of the highest caliber – in which they have

Egypt of the South of Egypt – and the new experience of unrestrained intellectual life in Cairo, 90. For more about the context of transformation in late eighteenth century Egypt that may have driven al-ʿAṭṭār’s to this conclusion, also see Affaf Sayyid-Marsot, Women and Men in Late Eighteenth-Century Egypt. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.

267

chosen a qualified local (i.e., native) scholar to participate by way of clarifying,

guiding, and informing them about classical texts among which they have prioritized

the Burdah among their subjects of study. Unlike the first Burdah scene in which the

physical text is not present but orally recited to provoke sentimental attachment and

overcome difference, the second scene of the Burdah as a physically bound text is

incorporated in the larger scholarly discussion about poetry distinctly free from the

homoerotic passion and reverential sentimentality of the first scene and replete with

the tone of scholarly sobriety.

Also unlike the first encounter, the second encounter introduces in the scene

of scholarly engagement with Arabic-Islamic literature the image of another

bookshelf – a French bookshelf –in which a French text is compared to and given

commensurate value to the Arabic-Islamic classical bookshelf. Again, unnamed

Arabic texts of various disciplines in the French’s possession are referred to among

which two are specifically named – Ibn Durayd’s (d. 933) Al-Jamharah fī al-Lughah

and the Mu’allaqāt. The Frenchmen note that they have collections of the pre-Islamic

Arabic odes back in their country in the same line as they mention they possess their

own poetry. Expressing a comparative reading, the equating of French and Arabic

poetry as comparable provokes the narrator to ecstasy paralleling the narrator’s

response to learning from the first Frenchman that he has translated the Burdah into

French,.455 Later, in another role reversal, it is the narrator who compares a French

text to al-Jamharah. He notes, “They asked me to clarify an utterance. They would

455 Tageldin, 98.

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look it up in a precious tome on language, in the style of al-Jamharah in Arabic, and

translate it to French.”456

The order of things are consequential – and the order in which the Maqāmah fī

al-Faransīs identifies texts present in the Frenchmen’s classical bookshelf and in the

cultural memory of the narrator and his audience enables astonishment, admiration,

endearment, and finally imagined parity and fraternity. The named classical titles

stand in not only as representations of classical literature but also as representations

of prestige, popular sentimentality, and scholarly legitimacy. Finally and more

significantly, the named and unnamed texts of the classical Arabic-Islamic library of

al-ʿAṭṭār’s maqāmah do not belong to the narrator-lover or his Egyptian Muslim

compatriots. They belong to the fictionalized French-beloved. The sign of the

classical text, in this case, is meant to re-direct the audience-readers’ attention to the

figure of the Frenchman as a beloved and undermine the figure of the Frenchman as

enemy.

On the other hand, the mutual recognition of the classical invocation is a

double-pronged praise more apparently for the French but in service of the narrator,

and therefore a critique of a society that does not value its scholars in contrast with

the appreciative fictionalized foreigner. Al-ʿAṭṭār’s treatment of the French as

beloved can be read as a critique of his society.457 Not only do the French figures

mirror the beloved of the ghazal, but the writer deploys nostalgia for the classical

456 Ibid. 457 See Li Guo, “Paradise Lost: Ibn Dāniyāl's Response to Baybars' Campaign Against Vice in Cairo”. Journal of the American Oriental Society 121.2 (2001): 219–235.

269

tradition in order to craft a scholarly persona which mirrors the narrator himself. It is

a move which not only appears to applaud the French expedition but in that

endorsement, the writer crafts an exemplary figure in the narrator who is able to

exercise his poetic and scholarly abilities as well as lament over his displacement in

the neglect of the pursuit of scholarship in which he is conversant and immersed.

Through the erotic prelude poetic of the ode voiced by a narrator engaged in suspect

intimacy with French scholars – threatening in their love for literature to overshadow

that of the Arab-Muslim subject –al-ʿAṭṭār makes a case for the classical scholar’s

relevance.

Within the Maqāmah of the French, a classical library is deployed in unique

ways signaling a past that calls for transmission, preservation, or engagement. The

Burdah text, however, is given special attention arguably because other than being

one of the most famous odes of the Arabo-Islamic literary corpus, it manages to

convey and invoke nostalgia. The Burdah functions much like the signposts of

Madīnah within its prelude – as an index of memory. For al-ʿAṭṭār’s narrator, the

recitation of the first verse of the Burdah elicits an immediate sense of longing but

without a narrative, nostalgia hangs over the narrative as an amorphous and formless

sentiment.

FROM MEDIEVAL POETICS TO NEW CAMPSITES AND BELOVEDS

This dissertation is a significant contribution for the study of literature in the

western academy and the humanities in general. I have argued that the unification of

an erotic poetic with the medieval devotional text created out of the ode a vehicle that

270

encapsulated both affective memory of sacred history and aspirational ideal of human

potential. Through an extended engagement with Muḥammad ibn Sa'īd al-Būṣīrī’s

Qaṣīdat al-Burdah and the poetry it inspired, I chronicled the various transformations

of the prelude in devotional poetry that circulated Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and

the Iberian Peninsula.

In a better world in which time never ends and deadlines are non-existent,

there are many other questions I did not pursue in the dissertation but they are worthy

of consideration for my future project. Other concepts of literary criticism emerge in

the badīʻiyyāt beyond barāʻat al-istihlāl that are pertinent to the role of the amatory

prelude in medieval poetics. For example, the concept of iftinān describes a poem’s

verses that encompass the tonality of two different poetic forms such as the nasīb and

ḥamāsah poetry. The concept reveals that the nasīb is not only read as a convention

but is understood by medieval critics as a characteristic of poetry. There are also other

genres of medieval poetry in which the fallen city – such as Baghdad or Grenada –

are sites of yearning and represent existential grief anticipating the patriotic

incorporation of the nation-state among the repertoire of beloveds.

Although I mention that the lyrical “I” of the poet most prominently returns in

the final supplication of al-Būṣīrī’s Qasīdat al-Burdah, I do not trace the

transformation and development of the authorial voice from beginning to end. Doing

so would demonstrate more fully the construction of subjectivity within the medieval

ode and the autobiographical component of the poem. Also, more extensive details of

the biographical trajectories of many of the poets referred to in the dissertation. Each

poet mentioned travelled extensively outside of their homelands that undoubtedly

271

impacted their writing as transplants in Mamlūk Cairo or other major cities. Finally,

modern engagement with representations of al-Būṣīrī’s Qaṣīdat al-Burdah and other

al-Madā’iḥ al-Nabawiyyah in oral and visual culture raise more questions about

contemporary traces and transformations of the medieval text.

In conclusion, I have shown the poetic continuities and transformations of the

medieval amatory prelude through the expansion of three topoi – the abandoned

ruins, the beloved, and the authorial voice – that constituted the literary convention

from the pre-Islamic Arabic ode. Furthermore, I demonstrated through my analysis

that medieval devotional poetry envisions itself in conversation with Arabic-Islamic

scholarship and as participating within a continuum of a larger Arabic literary culture

rather than outside of it. Although orientalist and modern Arabic literary scholarship

defined the medieval period from as early as the eleventh century to the late

eighteenth century as an age of stagnation and decline and such periodization

continues to impact contemporary literary studies, my research presents a major

challenge.

In terms of space, the amatory prelude transformed from imagining the ruins

of the ancient beloved’s desert campsite to the classical city space and its taverns to

the medieval metaphor of the tavern and the sacred city. The transformation does not

end with the medieval period; rather, the poetics of the amatory prelude remains

pertinent and functional in the modern period. For modern audiences of the

nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century, I would argue the classical literature

and pre-modern Arabic-Islamic history is the aṭlāl that is the locus of modern

nostalgia. Thus, the repertoire of prelude beloveds also will continue to expand.

272

Among the beloveds of ancient Arab tribes, the classical court, and sacred history,

modern audiences will turn to new absent beloveds including pre-modern writers and

their texts as well as the modern nation-state.

The transformation of not only the context of the poet and the poet but also

the transformation of the audience also informs the role of textual beginnings and

how they are constructed. The vastness of the medieval Arabic-Islamic republic of

letters no longer exists. Instead, modern Arabic literary production occupies textual

camps circumscribed by different forms of Arab nationalism. This shifts the

pedagogical role of nostalgia and the construction of a unifying language and

imaginary of sacred space that the medieval amatory prelude of devotional Arabic

poetry accomplished for the republic of Arabic letters. More generally, the role of

Arabic devotional poetry to teach Arabic language continues albeit in far more

limited spaces. Nevertheless, the beginning remains the beginning. It is the first text

that is encountered and for that reason, it is most likely to be the most likely text to

remembered, memorized, and memorialized. Memory of the beginning of a text –

poetry or otherwise – will remain central for the recognition and transmission of a

work.

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APPENDIX

Chapter Two Page 105-106

ثنا زمعة بن صا بن عبد المجید، حد ثنا عبید هللا ، حد ثنا علي بن نصر بن علي لح، عن سلمة بن حد

صلى هللا علیھ وسلم وھرام، عن عكرمة، عن ابن عباس، قال جلس ناس من أصحاب رسول هللا ینتظرونھ قال فخرج حتى إذا دنا منھم سمعھم یتذاكرون فسمع حدیثھم فقال بعضھم عجبا إن هللا

وقال آخر ماذا بأعجب من كالم موسى كلمھ . ذ من خلقھ خلیال اتخذ إبراھیم خلیال عز وجل اتخ وروحھ فخرج علیھم فسلم . تكلیما وقال آخر فعیسى كلمة هللا " وقال وقال آخر آدم اصطفاه هللا

وھو كذ وھو كذلك وموسى نجي هللا لك وعیسى قد سمعت كالمكم وعجبكم إن إبراھیم خلیل هللا وھو كذلك أال وأنا ح وكلمتھ وھو كذلك وآدم اصطفاه هللا وال فخر وأنا حامل روح هللا بیب هللا

ل مشفع یوم القیامة وال فخ ل شافع وأو ل من لواء الحمد یوم القیامة وال فخر وأنا أو ر وأنا أو لي فیدخلن ك حلق الجنة فیفتح هللا لین یحر یھا ومعي فقراء المؤمنین وال فخر وأنا أكرم األو

قال أبو عیسى ھذا حدیث غریب . " واآلخرین وال فخر . Page 129

ثنا أبو د بن الحسین بن أبي حلیمة من قصر حد بي وعلي جعفر، محم األحنف وأحمد بن عبدة الض

، مولى غفرة ثنا عمر بن عبد هللا ثنا عیسى بن یونس، حد ثني بن حجر المعنى واحد قالوا حد حدد، من ولد علي بن أبي طالب قال كان علي رضى هللا عنھ إذا وصف النبي صلى إبراھیم بن محم

د وكان ربعة من القوم ط وال بالقصیر المترد ولم یكن هللا علیھ وسلم قال لم یكن بالطویل الممغبط كان ج عدا رجال ولم یكن بالمطھم وال بالمكلثم وكان في الوجھ تدویر بالجعد القطط وال بالس

لكفین أبیض مشرب أدعج العینین أھدب األشفار جلیل المشاش والكتد أجرد ذو مسربة شثن اة وھو والقدمین إذا مشى تقلع كأنما یمشي في صبب وإذا التفت التفت معا بین كتفیھ خاتم النبو

رمھم أك خاتم النبیین أجود الناس كفا وأشرحھم صدرا وأصدق الناس لھجة وألینھم عریكة و قال أبو . ه مثلھ عشرة من رآه بدیھة ھابھ ومن خالطھ معرفة أحبھ یقول ناعتھ لم أر قبلھ وال بعد

معت األصمعي یقول في قال أبو جعفر س . عیسى ھذا حدیث حسن غریب لیس إسناده بمتصل اھب طوال ط الذ ط في . تفسیره صفة النبي صلى هللا علیھ وسلم الممغ وسمعت أعرابیا یقول تمغ

ا شدیدا ابة أى مدھا مد اخل بعضھ . نش د فالد ا المترد دید وأم ا القطط فالش في بعض قصرا وأما المطھم فالبادن الكثیر اللحم وأ جل الذي في شعره حجونة قلیال وأم ا المكلثم الجعودة والر م

ر الوجھ ا المشرب فھو ال . فالمدو دید سواد العین واألھدب وأم ذي في بیاضھ حمرة واألدعج الشقیق الذ عر الد ي ھو كأنھ الطویل األشفار والكتد مجتمع الكتفین وھو الكاھل والمسربة ھو الش

در إلى ال ة قضیب من الص ر ة . س ثن الغلیظ األصابع من الكفین والقدمین والتقلع أن یمشي بقو والشبب الحدور یقول انحدرنا في صبوب وصبب وقولھ جلیل المشاش یرید رءوس المناكب والص

احب والبدیھة المفاجأة یقال بدھتھ بأمر أى فجأتھوالعشیر حبة والعشیر الص ة الص .◌

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TRANSLATIONS OF THE FIRST TEN VERSES OF FIVE BADĪ`IYYĀT458

Al-Kāfiyah al-Badīʿiyyah by Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī 1. Felicitous opening, conjunct and patched paronomasia If you arrive at Sal’, inquire about the loved one And convey greetings to the people of Dhū Salam 2. Bi-conjunct paronomasia I guaranteed for them the existence of tears from nothingness And with that, I could not prevent my tears 3. Tailed and substitutive paronomasia I refused, and the tears wander, pouring and flowing The body is in Idam and flesh placed upon the block 4. Perfects and tipped paronomasia Whoever’s matter is to bear the heavy burden of devastating love If his concern pours with tears, he would not hurt 5. Graphic and consonantal paronomasia Who is there to protect me from their gazelles Vain beauty that cures with a word of speech 6. Homonymic and metathetic paronomasia With each peerless figure of beauty My hope in him does not elapse nor does my pain 7. Implicit paronomasia

458 My translation is based on the Arabic texts of the badī`iyyāt included in ʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūniyyah, Sharḥ al-Badīʻiyyah al-Musammāh bi al-Fatḥ al-Mubīn fī Madḥ al-Amīn, ed. Riḍā Rajab (Dimashq: Rand lil-Ṭibāʻah wa al-Nashr wa al-Tawzīʻ, 2010), 253-371. I have used Pierre Cacchia’s translation for identifying the rhetorical tropes. See Pierre Cachia, The Arch Rhetorician: Or the Schemer's Skimmer: A Handbook of Late Arabic Badīʻ Drawn from ʻabd Al-Ghanī An-Nābulsī's Nafaḥāt Al-Azhār ʻala Nasamāt Al-Asḥār (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1998).

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And every moment comes with the name of Ibn Dhī Yazan459 In his painful destruction of Abī Harim 8. Parallelism The night lengthened and my eyelids fluttered In sleep, so I neither woke nor slept 9. Digression As if the hours of the night in its lengthening Distances the falsifying of my hopes with their proximity 10. Unraveling They nursed me on the breasts of union full [of milk] So how could the condition of the weaned be better than this?

459 Sayf ibn Dhī-Yazan was a Himyarite king of Iraq who lived between 516 and 574 CE.

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Fatḥ al-Mubīn fī Madh al-Amīn by ʻĀʼishah al-Bāʻūniyyah (d. 922/1516) 1. Felicitous opening It is a felicitous opening with the moons of Dhū Salam I have become like a flagbearer among the party of ardent lovers 2. Tailed and perfect paronomasia I say, while the tears pour, wounding and festering And the neighbor running with accusatory blame 3. Consonantal paronomasia Oh for Love, Love is a spirit I was permitted And I did not find [a beautiful] respite of glad tidings from them 4. Limping paronomasia In my weeping state, I was barred from non-existence I ran out of patience, and what is more wonderful than blood ceasing to flow 5. Conjunct paronomasia Oh Sa’d, if your eyes behold Kāẓimah And you came to Sal`, inquire of their people of old 6. Graphic and pseudo derivative paronomasia For there are the moons of perfection rising upon Their dwelling place of Tuwayli’,460 descend upon their neighborhood 7. Paronomasia Love that remains the peak of my hope Even if they enjoin for my pain separation 8. Subtitutive Paronomasia They reached the heights of perfection, glorified in beauty, preceded all nations Increased in guidance, extinguishing my patience 9. Homonymic Paronomasia

460 Tuwayli’ is a body of water.

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I made good my opinion even if they try to distract me And the secret of my character is my not begrudging him 10. Overriding And should you praise when every wounded Abū Tammām Complains to my heart of lovesickness because of them

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Nafaḥāt al-Azhār ʻala Nasamāt al-Asḥār by ʻAbd al-Ghanī al-Nāblūsī (d. 1144/1731) 1.Felicitous opening Oh abode of camel riders, between the willows The world was brought to life by thunder-less rain from the foot of Kāẓimah 2. Conjunct paranomasia Oh rider! They wanted me to die sad In their love while I saw below me ascension with them 3.Bi-conjunct paronomasia Your abandonment – when I was tried by it – cast In my soul as much as you could in retribution 4. Implicit paronomasia My yearning for you was to the extent that The meanings of Abū al-`Abbās and Abū Isḥāq were overturned while ablaze 5. Tipped and metathetic paronomasia Weeping suffices as does the day of union suffice I did not [even] perceive when I became the lightning of proximity 6. Consonantal and homonymic paronomasia Oh heart, overturn the love of the lovers ecstatically For the neighborhood gazelle is trained in the singing of beautiful notes 7. Pseudo-derivative and tailed Leaves sprouted from me throughout the night singing Ask of love: Does it have a covenant with Dhū Salam? 8. Substitutive and graphic Not a mark remained on the body after them For when ardent desire for revenge of the patient was cured, the illness was increased 9. Perfect Paronomasia

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Indeed my tears flow within the canyons [carved] by them So arise, oh my Harbinger, the life of Idam 10. Parallelism Passionate love increased and a beautiful patience decreased Because of their separation, my being [wilted away into] nothingness

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Badī’ al-Badī’ fi Madīḥ al-Shafī’ by Zayn al-Dīn Shaʻbān ibn Muḥammad Al-Āthārī (d. 828/1425) 1. Felicitous opening and fission and double rhyme and perfect paronomasia If you arrive early, rest and stay in Dhū Salam Give greetings to the one you look upon as the world’s moon 2. Proximate Paronomasia and indistinct O you who are hopeful for the spring of his garden Salsabīl In his direction, ask for a way, oh brother of aspirations 3. Incongruent paronomasia How many protected a petitioner from harm and sufficed His reward is one who lives nearby and did not depart 4. Patched and distinct paronomasia Success appeared and emanated from him among all creation One who fears his crimes imagines visiting him 5. Pseudo-derivative and derivative So I praise him and [I] adore him, victorious in [his] protection For the Praised and Chosen One, is there one who praises [only] with lips? 6. Substitutive and variant paronomasia This is a Prophet, eminent is his way Protecting from destruction, he upheld the law for all people 7. Graphic and consonantal Strong of heart and the best of creation without exception The possessor of bounty in ruling and wisdom 8. Inverted and indistinct A special neighbor [in whom we are] hopeful in his generosity There is no withholding from him nor suspicion for the accuser 9. Indistinct paronomasia

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A pure ocean and warm kindness for his people Not one becomes heedless but he is forbearing of the offense 10. Repetitive paronomasia In his council is one who is generous, [who] relents to the one who seeks refuge in him Embracing the outpouring of gracious blessings

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Naẓm al-badīʻ fī madḥ Khayr Shafīʻ by Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūtī (d. 911/1505) 1. From the reddish valleys and from the mention of Dhū Salam The masterful eye sheds blood 2. From the people of purity, purity is perfected The weakening of the body from harm and being set ablaze appears 3. My heart and core is frightened and bewildered/confused from The extremities of what they send of the subjection/collapse/bending of their musk-like fragrance 4. Distorting essence/nature until the heart burns Thoughts Confused/unable to decipher (between) a word and speech 5. The later/joint tears of my two eyes occasionally Are similar to the constrained/hidden streaming/shedding of tears in the furrows of my two cheeks 6. I calmed from fears/mending my patience when torn/shaken (with anger) It does not stand to test falsehood from their love 7. There is no sin upon him in his attraction A trial for him, flight from their wing/protection 8. The critics answer with blame excessively And what is the value of excess except their bad taste 9. If only they had among them the intellect by which they could be guided And they do not complain from affirming their negation 10. And every time they weave (threads) harmoniously with their embroidery It is upon me to nominate for them by their creativity

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COMPLETE TRANSLATION OF THE MAQĀMAH ON THE FRENCH BY ḤASAN AL-ʿAṬṬĀR One of my debauched and wanton brethren informed me of the Tuesday disturbance caused by the French that dispersed many people into the streets gasping for air. I left my home unsettled, not knowing where to go, cutting through many paths and passages. Expecting my own destruction and carnage, I could not remain in one spot. I was not able to stay settled, for I was driven by the force of preordained fate to Azbakiyyah where these people reside. My delusions stirred with introspection. I realized I had taken a grave risk because I plunged into that which so far I had escaped. My heart became resolved, and my will fortified. I considered deeply this problematic quandary [until] it yielded for me clarity and the attainment of safety and security for these people were among the peaceful, and many of them mingle with others. From them, neither evil has come nor disputation. From their conflict, neither retreat nor concession. I used to hear from knowledgeable people of different disciplines and from those who travelled to the far corners of the globe and different nations that these people are not hostile towards strangers except those who attack them. They do not seek to terrorize except those who attempt to dominate them. Some of them have knowledge of the strangest disciplines. The brilliant among them love and adore experimentation. Their hearts have been given to drink the love of philosophy. They are covetous over acquiring its books, intellectual labor, and reflection. They seek out one who has such knowledge, and they engage with such a person in discussion. So I decided to go to Azbakiyyah and rid myself of this dilemma. I went to the home of a friend of mine, the very sight of whom made me joyous. My ideas and his ideas opened up our compatibility. His expertise in the field of these sciences has been proven, and he became a leading authority among experts of these subjects in our Egypt. In the neighborhood and beside the home where my friend dwells, I encountered a young man like the shining sun. Like brides, they were swaying. Resting upon their beautiful faces was a veil. They were tall and straight like spears with a loosened lock of hair. It is as the flag armies of lovers follow. It sways with her swaying in every valley. I gazed upon them as a staring fool before roses. Then I stopped and gazed upon the slender beauty approaching. They understood from the hints I threw [their way]. They knew the meaning of what I had intended. They inclined towards me and began to extend salutations.

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The youth showed me a book, and we began conversing. His Arabic was free from accent. His pronunciation was free from all blemishes. He began to introduce the books of great writers and mentioned which books and manuscripts he owned. He enumerated and identified [them], even mentioning The Chronicles of al-Ṭūsī and the Shifāʾ, which he called The Honored Shifāʾ. It filled me with wonder – this intoxicating passion for literature. I grew fonder of him. Verily, I professed to him, “I am, indeed, the guest of your neighbors,” [after which] he forthrightly sang to me: “Is it from the remembrance of the neighbors of Dhū Salam?” He informed me that he translated it [i.e., The Burdah] in its entirety, and this is the one verse that remained with him. When all was said and done, the demon of love conquered and overcame me. It pained me to leave. Ardor stirred in my fondness for him. He requested me to come to his home in the morning in order to peruse the books and travelogues he had gathered. So I went to the place I had prepared for the night. I knew that indeed in his beauty I was slain. Passion stirred within me from an era passed. This passion for literature, which was achieved with great difficulty and had weakened, was strengthened once again. I began spending entire nights sleepless. I saw the break of morning and I was in love. Sleeplessness and steadfastness compelled me to compose some lines of poetry, so I said: Among the French is a gazelle, whose enchanting gaze Has taken root in the lover’s heart He appeared in a black cloak And I replaced the robes of night with morning light A garden of beauty no hand could approach A desired object guarded by the eye’s blades Delicate of waist, he loosened his forelock As if he is a branch in a cultivated garden He saw the love in my eyes and he addressed me With the pearls of his kind and feminine speech The beauty of his face was in accord with The harmony between his speech and lips

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With only glances, my mind became his hunt – Oh how wondrous! It could be said even the French could plunder reason! Then, when this morning reciter radiated with light, little by little, the tail of night shortened. My hopes got ahead of me, and time’s countenance smiled upon my rendezvous with him. I met him in the late afternoon that day, and he was with his young companions from among their people. All derive meaning from the most enigmatic of knowledge and pursue it. His mind spins with approaching and acquiring the intricacies of literature. When I joined the gathering, they took turns reciting to me [poetry] while passing cups of wine. They showed me large and small books unknown to me; famous books; and all the books regarding mathematics and literature. They informed me about astronomical tools and geometry. They conversed with me about matters regarding these sciences, and they wrote down what I offered from my understanding. They asked me to analyze some of the verses of the Burdah that they had written by hand in Arabic in many copies. Then they showed me some verses of flawed poetry and asked me about its subtle and apparent aspects. They informed me that in their country, there is a copy of the Diwān of the Seven Mu’allaqāt, and that they had collections of poetry in their language that causes ecstasy upon listening [to it]. Over and over, they would request of me linguistic explanations, and they would look it up in a precious tome written about language in the method of the Arabic al-Jamharah [but] translated in French. I wrote for them some poetry, and I explicated for them some of the words. Among those words were two verses I composed earlier at a time that [I was at my best]:

Make me safe from your glances Which struck my heart like a bow and arrow My blood flowed, and spilling it is forbidden So for what sin did it become permissible? Then I fortified the verses with an impromptu ode which included some of their language. It was suggested to me as a challenge, and [the verses are] as follows: Among the French is a tender branch That appeared in all its beauty among everything His countenance is that of the new moon Under the cloaks of night

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He showed me the pearls of his smile Flowing between them cups of wine His black eyes affecting The effects of wine deep within my heart Oh my heart, patience in love! Love for him destroys souls Union with him is impossible For he does not cry over passions I say, “Union?” He says, “Non non.” I say, “Depart?” He says, “Si si.”

This resulted in their ecstatic rapture. They were completely bewildered by me. They continued to praise me excessively. They encouraged me to stay in their company, and they showed me that this was their intention. I evaded giving a response. I hid my decision to not fulfill their request, knowing that this matter would fire upon me the arrows of condemnation and cast upon me enmity and disparagement from all of creation. Thus, I returned to my senses and sought the forgiveness of God from what I had done.