by Robert Irwin
A muhtasib was an urban officer charged with a range of duties, including the inspection of weights and measures, the quality of goods sold in the market-place and the enforcement of public morals, as well as with policing duties.
Tanukhi also wrote Nishwar al-Muhadara (‘Desultory Conversations’), which he presented as a response to the dying of the arts of conversation in his time: ‘I was present at some salons in Baghdad and I found them empty of those with whom they had been crowded and whose conversations had made them brilliant. I met only with the relics of those old men.’ Writing in 971, he looked back to the great old days of caliphs’ parties. Stressing that he had relied overwhelmingly on oral sources, Tanukhi tells us that he drew on the wit and wisdom of kings, fools, men of miscellaneous knowledge, booksellers, storytellers, sharpers, knife men, thieves, chess-players, hermaphrodites, contortionists, melancholics, jugglers and diviners, among many others. The three stories which follow are part of Tanukhi’s desultory conversational repertoire, and come from the same published source.
The following is a curious device put in practice by a thief in our time. I was informed by Abu’l-Qasim 'Ubaidallah b. Mohammed the Shoemaker that he had seen a thief caught and charged with picking the locks of small tenements supposed to be occupied by unmarried persons. Entering the house he would dig a hole such as is called ‘the well’ in the nard game, and throw some nuts into it as though someone had been playing with him, and leave by the side a handkerchief containing some two hundred nuts. He would then proceed to wrap up as many of the goods in the house as he could carry, and if he passed unobserved, he would depart with his burden. If, however, the master of the house came on the scene, he would abandon the booty and endeavour to fight his way out. If the master of the house proved doughty, sprung upon him, held him, tried to arrest him, and called out Thieves!, and the neighbours assembled, he would address the master of the house as follows: You are really wanting in humour. Here have I been playing nuts with you for months, and, though you beggared me and took away all I possessed, I made no complaint, nor did I shame you before your neighbours; and now that I have won your goods, you begin to charge me with larceny, you mean and wretched creature! Between us is the gambling-house, the place where we became acquainted. State in the presence of the people there or of the people here that I have cheated, and I will leave you your goods. The man might continue to assert that the other was a thief, but the neighbours supposed that he was unwilling to be branded as a gambler, and in consequence charged the other with theft; whereas in reality he was a gambler and the other man was speaking the truth. They would endeavour to make peace between the two, presently the thief would walk away with his nuts, and the master of the house would be defamed.
COMMENTARY
Nard is Arabic for ‘backgammon’. Since it was common for players to gamble on the outcome, the pious stigmatized the game as ‘a work of Satan’. Harun al-Rashid once lost all his clothes gambling on backgammon. The board, its dice and counters frequently featured in poems and prose as images of inscrutable fate.
He informed me that he knew of another whose plan was to enter the residences of families, especially those in which there were women whose husbands were out. If he succeeded in getting anything he would go away; if he were perceived and the master of the house came, he would suggest that he was a friend of the wife, and some officer’s retainer; and ask the master to keep the matter quiet from his employer for the sake of both; displaying a uniform, and suggesting that if the master chose to dishonour his household, he could not bring him before the Sultan on a charge of adultery. However much the master might shout Thief!, he would repeat his story, and when the neighbours assembled, they would advise the master of the house to hush the matter up. When the master objected, they would attribute his conduct to marital affection and help the thief to escape from his hand. Sometimes they would compel the master to let the thief go. Likewise the more the wife denied and swore with tears that the man was a thief, the more inclined would they be to let him go; so he would get off, and the master would afterwards divorce his wife, and part from his children’s mother. This thief thus ruined more than one home and impoverished others, until he went into a house where there was an old woman aged more than ninety years; he not knowing of this. Caught by the master of the house he tried to make his usual insinuation; the master said to him: Scoundrel, there is no one in the house but my mother, who is ninety years old and for more than fifty of them she has spent her nights in prayer and her days in fasting; do you maintain that she is carrying on an amour with you or you with her? So he hit him on the jaw and when the neighbours came together and the thief told them the same story they told him he lied, they knowing the old lady’s piety and devoutness. Finally he confessed the facts and was taken off to the magistrate.
The next story is one of a series told about men who were unsure what to do with inherited fortunes.
Another, I am told, was in a hurry to get rid of his money, and when only five thousand dinars were left, said he wanted to have done with it speedily in order that he might see what he would do afterwards. Suggestions … were made to him, but he declined them. Then one of his friends advised him to buy cut glass with the whole sum, all but five hundred dinars, spread the glass, which should be of the finest, out before him and expend the remaining dinars in one day on the fees of singing-women, fruit, scent, wine, ice, and food. When the wine was nearly drained he should set two mice free in the glass, and let a cat loose after them. The mice and the cat would fight amid the glass and break it all to pieces, and the remains would be plundered by the guests. The man approved the notion, and acted upon it. He sat and drank and when intoxicated called out Now! and his friend let loose the two mice and the cat, and the glass went crashing to the amusement of the owner, who dropped off to sleep. His friend and companions then rose, gathered together the fragments, and made a broken bottle into a cup, and a broken cup into a pomade jar, and pasted up what was cracked; these they sold amongst themselves, making up a goodly number of dirhams, which they divided between them; they then went away, leaving their host, without troubling further about his concerns. When a year had passed the author of the scheme of the glass, the mice and the cat said: Suppose I were to go to that unfortunate and see what has become of him. So he went and found that the man had sold his furniture and spent the proceeds and dismantled his house and sold the materials to the ceilings so that nothing was left but the vestibule, where he was sleeping, on a cotton sheet, clad in cotton stripped off blankets, and bedding which had been sold, which was all that was left for him to put under him and keep off the cold. He looked like a quince ensconced between his two cotton sheets. I said to him: Miserable man, what is this? – What you see, he replied. – I said: Have you any sorrow? He said he had. I asked what it was. He said: I long to see someone – a female singer whom he loved and on whom he had spent most of his wealth. His visitor proceeds: As the man wept, I pitied him, brought him garments from my house which he put on, and went with him to the singer’s dwelling. She, supposing that his circumstances had improved, let us enter, and when she saw him treated him respectfully, beamed on him, and asked how he was doing. When he told her the truth, she at once bade him rise, and when he asked why, said she was afraid her mistress would come, and finding him destitute, be angry with her for letting him in. So go outside, she said, and I will go upstairs and talk to you from above. – He went out and sat down expecting her to talk to him from a window on the side of the house which faced the street. While he was sitting, she emptied over him the broth of a stewpan, making an object of him, and burst out laughing. The lover however began to weep and said: O sir, have I come to this? I call God and I call thee to witness that I repent. – I began to mock him, saying: What good is your repentance to you now? – So I took him back to his house, stripped him of my clothes, left him folded in the cotton as before, took my clothes home and washed them, and gave the man up. I heard nothing of him for three years, a
nd then one day at the Tq Gate seeing a slave clearing the way for a rider, raised my head and beheld my friend on a fine horse with a light silver-mounted saddle, fine clothes, splendid underwear and fragrant with scent – now he was of a family of clerks and formerly in the days of his wealth, he used to ride the noblest chargers, with the grandest harness, and his clothes and accoutrements were of the magnificent style which the fortune inherited by him from his parents permitted. When he saw me, he called out: Fellow! – I, knowing that his circumstances must have improved, kissed his thigh, and said: My lord, Ab so-and-so! – He said Yes! – What is this? I asked. He said: God has been merciful, praise be to Him! Home, home. – I followed him till he had got to his door, and it was the old house repaired, all made into one court with a garden, covered over and stuccoed though not whitewashed, one single spacious sitting-room being left, whereas all the rest had been made part of the court. It made a good house, though not so lordly as of old. He brought me into a recess where he had in old times sought privacy, and which he had restored to its pristine magnificence, and which contained handsome furniture, though not of the former kind. His establishment now consisted of four slaves, each of whom discharged two functions, and one old functionary whom I remembered as his servant of old, who was now reestablished as porter, and a paid servant who acted as s’is. He took his seat, and the slaves came and served him with clean plate of no great value, fruits modest both in quantity and quality, and food that was clean and sufficient, though not more. This we proceeded to eat, and then some excellent date-wine was set before me, and some date jelly, also of good quality, before him. A curtain was then drawn, and we heard some pleasant singing, while the fumes of fresh aloes, and of nadd rose together. I was curious to know how all this had come about, and when he was refreshed he said: Fellow, do you remember old times? – I said I did. – I am now, he continued, comfortably off, and the knowledge and experience of the world which I have gained are preferable in my opinion to my former wealth. Do you notice my furniture? It is not as grand as of old, but it is of the sort which counts as luxurious with the middle classes. The same is the case with my plate, clothes, carriage, food, dessert, wine, – and he went on with his enumeration, adding after each item ‘if it is not superfine like the old, still it is fair and adequate and sufficient.’ Finally he came to his establishment, compared its present with its former size, and added: This does instead. Now I am freed from that terrible stress. Do you remember the day the singing-girl – plague on her – treated me as she did, and how you treated me on the same day, and the things you said to me day by day, and on the day of the glass? – I replied; That is all past, and praise be to God, who has replaced your loss, and delivered you from the trouble in which you were! But whence comes your present fortune and the singing-girl who is now entertaining us? He replied: She is one whom I purchased for a thousand dinars, thereby saving the singing-women’s fees. My affairs are now in excellent order. – I said: How do they come to be so? – He replied that a servant of his father and a cousin of his in Egypt had died on one day, leaving thirty thousand dinars, which were sent to him and arrived at the same time, when he was between the cotton sheets, as I had seen him. So, he said, I thanked God, and made a resolution not to waste, but to economize, and live on my fortune till I die, being careful in my expenditure. So I had this house rebuilt, and purchased all its present contents, furniture, plate, clothing, mounts, slaves male and female, for five thousand dinars; five thousand more have been buried in the ground as a provision against emergencies. I have laid out ten thousand on agricultural land, producing annually enough to maintain the establishment which you have seen, with enough over each year to render it unnecessary for me to borrow before the time when the produce comes in. This is how my affairs proceed and I have been searching for you a whole year, hearing nothing about you, being anxious that you should see the restoration of my fortunes and their continued prosperity and maintenance, and after that, you infamous scoundrel, to have nothing more to do with you. Slaves, seize him by the foot! And they did drag me by the foot right out of the house, not permitting me to finish my liquor with him that day. After that when I met him riding in the streets he would smile if he saw me, and he would have nothing to do either with me or any of his former associates.
I am rather sceptical about the story of … the affairs of the glass; for even a madman in my opinion would scarcely go to that length.
Tanukhi, Nishwar al-Muhadarah, trans. D. S. Margoliouth
as Table Talk of a Mesopotamian Judge (London, 1922),
pp. 84–6, 97–101
COMMENTARY
A sa’is is a stableman or groom in Arabic. However, the word has gained wider currency and according to Hobson-Jobson, The Anglo-Indian Dictionary (1886), ‘syce’ is the term universally in use in the Bengal Presidency for a groom.
Nadd is an incense compounded of aloes wood, ambergris, musk and frankincense.
Abu’l-Hayyan al-TAWHIDI was born sometime between 922 and 932 (and the place of his birth is even more vague than its date) and died in 1023. He was a wandering scholar who sought instruction and later employment in Baghdad, Mecca and Rayy, where he worked as scribe, chancery-man and courtier. Tawhidi was a jackdaw of ideas and a polymathic scholar who specialized in memorizing and writing down the conversations of the salons of the elite for the edification of those not present. A fan of Jahiz’s elegant essays, Tawhidi was himself an elegant writer, though his style was more heavy and elaborate than that of Jahiz. Tawhidi had a conservative temperament and he believed that novelties were for women and children only.
He made a habit of consorting with criminals and other low-life types in an age when it was fashionable to study the techniques and argot of such folk. However, although these were certainly qualities which would recommend him to a patron, he had a scurrilous tongue and made enemies easily. Railing against everyone and everything, he passed from one patron to another. Akhlaq al-Wazirayn, ‘Morals of the Two Wazirs’, was written after he parted company with one of his most distinguished patrons, the cultured Wazir Sahib ibn 'Abbad (938-95).
Ibn 'Abbad, ‘the Supremely Capable One’, had started out as a secretary, working under various Buyid princes, before rising to high office. Reputedly his diwan, or government department, paid the salaries of 500 poets to sing the vizier’s praises, but if Ibn 'Abbad was a vain man, he had plenty to be vain about. Besides his career as a statesman, he was also a polymath, writing treatises on theology and history. He compiled a dictionary, wrote poetry and kept a literary diary. He was a bibliomaniac who owned a vast library (a significant part of which of course consisted of those commissioned panegyrics in praise of himself). It is reported that he turned down one official appointment because shifting his library would have required the services of 400 camels. The arrogant vizier insisted on treating Tawhidi as a mere scribe rather than as a social equal and they quarrelled when Tawhidi refused to make a copy of thirty volumes of the vizier’s letters. Akhlaq al-Wazirayn, a work of retrospective revenge, is such a venomous book that there was supposed to be a curse on anyone owning it. Ibn 'Abbad was depicted as a vainglorious plagiarist. The book also satirizes another scholar-statesman, Ibn al-'Amid, who had been both Ibn 'Abbad’s mentor in the arts of politics and literature and a previous patron of Tawhidi’s.
Here, in a passage from Akhlaq al-Wazirayn, Tawhidi relays the self-description of al-Aqta' al-Munshid al-Kufi, a thief and vagabond and hence well qualified to become one of the protégés of Ibn 'Abbad. (For more on Ibn 'Abbad, see below, pp. 178, 179.)
I am a man who has had one of his hands amputated for brigandage, so what do you have to say about a thief and a gambler? I am a pimp, a sodomite and a fornicator. I sow dissension [between people] with my malicious talk and I incite people into evil ways. I have no part in the virtuous pursuits of this earthly life, for I neither pray nor fast nor give alms nor go on pilgrimage. I have grown up amongst the benches and platforms of the mosques, the banks of the water
channels, the waterfronts and the rear premises of the mosques. I have travelled along with the workshy layabouts for year upon year. I have inflicted wounds; I have strangled people; I have slit purses; I have bored into houses to steal from them; I have killed and plundered; I have lied and blasphemed; I have drunk wine and become tipsy; I have disputed with persons and then made peace with them; I have quarrelled violently, and I have copulated freely. There is not one reprehensible action in the whole world which I have not committed, and no foulness which I have not perpetrated …
Bosworth, The Mediaeval Islamic Underworld, p. 74
It is ironic, given Tawhidi’s interest in thieves, that in 971 he was reduced to destitution when robbers ransacked his house and killed his servant-girl. From 980 onwards Tawhidi was in the service of a senior administrator, the Marshal of the Turks and later vizier in Baghdad, Ibn Sa'dan (d. 992/3). It is clear that the latter was more prepared to treat Tawhidi as an equal and the two men spent many evenings of mingled pleasure and edification together. Indeed Ibn Sa'dan (inspired possibly by the example of Tanukhi’s Nishwar al-Muhadara) asked Tawhidi to write up a record of some of their soirees. The Kitab al-Imta' wa al-Mu’anasa, ‘Book of Enjoyment and Conversation’, relates the conversations of thirty-seven evenings in the course of which the two men covered a great range of literary and intellectual topics, as well as indulging in frivolous gossip. They talked, among other things, about hadiths (orally transmitted traditions concerning the Prophet and his companions) and particularly hadiths and poetry about the merits of conversation. Much political gossip was exchanged. The two men held a munazara debate on the respective merits of Arabs and Persians, and discussed the markets of the Jahili Arabs and the wise sayings of the Greeks.