Night and Horses and the Desert

by Robert Irwin

  So when the time of separation grew so long for al-Ashtar that he could bear it no more, he came to me, and said: ‘O Numayr, have you no aid for me?’ I answered: ‘There is with me naught but what you wish.’ Then he said: ‘You must help me to visit Jayda’, for the longing to see her has carried away my soul.’ ‘Most gladly and freely!’ I replied; ‘Only set out, and we will go whenever you wish.’ So we rode away together, and journeyed that day and night, and the morrow until evening, when we halted our beasts in a ravine near the settlement of the clan we were seeking. Then he said: ‘Do you go on, and mingle with the people; and when you meet anyone, say that you are in search of a stray camel. Let no mention of me pass lip or tongue, until you find her servant-girl, named so-and-so, who is tending their sheep. Give her my greeting and ask her for tidings; tell her also where I am.’

  So I went forth, not averse to do what he bade me, until I found the servant-girl and brought her the message, telling her where el-Ashtar was, and asking her for tidings. She sent back this word: ‘She is treated harshly, and they keep watch of her. But your place of meeting will be the first of those trees which are near by the (undermost of the tents, and the time the hour of the evening prayer.’

  So I returned to my comrade, and told him what I had heard. Thereupon we set out, leading our beasts, until we came to the designated spot at the appointed time. We had waited only a few moments when we saw Jayda’ walking toward us. El-Ashtar sprang forward and seized her hand, giving her his greeting, while I withdrew a little from them; but they both cried out: ‘We adjure you by Allah to come back, for we intend nothing dishonourable, nor is there anything between us that need be hid from you.’ So I returned to them and sat beside them. Then el-Ashtar said: ‘Can you contrive no way, Jayda’, by which we may have this night to ourselves?’ ‘No,’ she replied, ‘nor is it in any way possible for me, without the return of all that misery and strife of which you know.’ ‘Nevertheless it must be,’ he answered, ‘even if that results which seems likely.’ But she said: ‘Will this friend of yours assist us?’ I answered: ‘Only say what you have devised; for I will go through to the very end of your plan, though the loss of my life should be in it.’ Thereupon she took off her outer garments, saying: ‘Put these on, and give me your garments in place of them.’ This I did. Then she said: ‘Go to my tent, and take your place behind my curtain; for my husband will come to you, after he has finished milking, bringing a full jar of milk, and he will say: “Here, your evening draught!” But do not take it from him, until you have tried his patience well; then either take it or leave it, so that he will put it down and go away; and then (please Allah) you will not see him again until morning.’

  So I went away, and did as she had bidden me. When he came with the jar of milk I refused to take it, until he was thoroughly tired of my contrariness; then I wished to take it from him, and he at the same time wished to put it down; so our two hands met at cross purposes on the jar, and it upset, and the milk was all spilled. Thereupon he cried out: ‘This is wilfulness beyond the limit!’, and he thrust his hand into the front part of the tent and brought out a leather whip coiled like a serpent. Then he came in, tearing down my curtain, and had used the whip on me for full twenty lashes when his mother and sister entered and pulled me out of his hands. But, by Allah, before they did this I had lost control of myself, and was just ready to stab him with my knife, whether it cost me my life or not. However, as soon as they had gone out I fastened up my curtain again, and sat down as before.

  Only a short time had passed when Jayda’’s mother entered and spoke to me, never doubting that I was her daughter. But I struck up a weeping and a sobbing, and hid my face in my garment, turning my back to her. So she said: ‘O my dear daughter, fear Allah and keep from displeasing your husband, for that is where your duty lies; as for el-Ashtar, you have seen him for the last time.’ Then as she was going out she said: I will send in your sister to keep you company tonight.’ And sure enough, after a few minutes the girl appeared. She began crying and calling down curses on him who beat me, but I made no answer. Then she nestled up close to me. As soon as I had her in my power, I clapped my hand over her mouth, and said: ‘O Such-a-one, that sister of yours is with el-Ashtar, and it is in her service that my back has been flayed this night. Now it behoves you to keep her secret, so choose for yourself and for her; for by Allah, if you utter a single word, I will make all the outcry I can, until the disgrace becomes general.’ Then I took away my hand from her mouth. She trembled like a branch in the wind; but after we had been together a little while she made friends with me, and there passed the night with me then and there the most delightful companion I have ever had. We did not cease chatting together, and she was also rallying me, and laughing at the plight I was in. And I found myself in the position of one who, had he wished to take a base advantage, could have done so; but Allah restrained me from evil, and to him is the praise.

  Thus we continued until the dawn broke, when lo, Jayda’ stole in upon us. When she saw us, she started, and cried out: ‘Allah! Who is this?’ ‘Your sister!’ I replied. ‘What has happened?’ she asked. ‘She will tell you,’ I answered, ‘for she, on my word, is the sweetest of sisters.’ Then I took my own clothing, and made off to my companion. As we rode, I narrated to him what had happened to me, and bared my back for him to see. Such a flaying as it had had – may Allah throw into hell-fire the man who did it! – from every single stripe the blood was oozing out. When he saw this, he exclaimed: ‘Great was the deed which you did, and great the acknowledgement due you; your hand was generous indeed! May Allah not withhold me from repaying you in full.’ And from that time on he never ceased to show me his gratitude and appreciation.

  Ghuzuli, Matali 'al-Budur fi Manazil al-Surur, ‘A Friend in

  Need’, trans. Charles Torrey, Journal of the American

  Oriental Society 26 (1905), pp. 303–30

  Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Muhammad IBN 'ARABSHAH (1392–1450) was born in Damascus. In 1400, when Ibn 'Arabshah was only nine, Syria was invaded by a Turco-Mongol army under the command of Timur (also known in the West as Tamerlane), Damascus was sacked, and Ibn 'Arabshah and his family were among the thousands taken off in captivity to Timur’s Central Asian capital, Samarkand. While in the eastern lands, Ibn 'Arabshah learnt Turkish, Persian and Mongolian. Subsequently he travelled widely in the Islamic world and for a time served as secretary to the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Mehmed I, before settling in Egypt, where he wrote various works designed to attract the patronage of the Mamluk sultan. In the long run he was unsuccessful in this endeavour and, despite having begun a eulogistic biography of the Sultan Jaqmaq, the sultan imprisoned him and Ibn 'Arabshah was to die in captivity.

  Ibn 'Arabshah’s earlier works included a volume of animal fables in the tradition of Kalila wa-Dimna and Sulwan al-Muta. The Fakihat al-Khulafa' wa Mufakahat al-Zurafa’, or ‘The Caliph’s Delicacy and Joke of the Refined’, like its predecessors purports to give guidance on good government and how to take wise counsel. The ape is the governor of a province, the fox is his vizier, the mule is the qadi, the panther an obedient subject, and so on. Wise animals teach man. Like Ibn Zafar, Ibn 'Arabshah in his preface justified the writing and reading of animal stories by quoting the Qur’an and other impeccable precedents. Some of the Fakihat is really no more than a plagiarization of the Marzuban-nama, an eleventh-century Persian collection of animal fables by Marzuban-i-Rustam-i-Sharwin. On the other hand, much of the work, particularly the diatribes against Timur, is original to Ibn 'Arabshah.

  Ibn 'Arabshah’s chief claim to fame is his full-length biography of Timur. Although his time as a prisoner in Samarkand was the intellectual making of him, Ibn 'Arabshah was not grateful to his captor and his life of Timur is an act of retrospective revenge. The 'Aja’ib al-Maqdur fi-Nawa’ib Timur, or ‘Wonders of Destiny regarding the Misfortunes Inflicted by Timur’, is a vitriolic biography of the would-be world conqueror, written in the most extraordinarily ornate and
metaphor-laden rhymed prose. Ibn 'Arabshah’s colourful but rather strained imagery is certainly the product of his familiarity with the classics of Persian literature. Among the chapter headings of the biography one comes across such choice specimens as ‘What Timur Did with the Rogues and Villains of Samarkand and how He Sent Them to Hell’, ‘The Cause of His Invading Arabian Iraq, Though His Tyranny Needed No Reason or Cause’, ‘An Example of the Way in which that Faithless Despot Plunged into the Seas of His Army, and Dived into Affairs, then Advanced with the Surge of Calamities; and Particularly His Plunges into Transoxania and His Coming Forth from the Country of Lur’, and ‘The Thunderstorms of that Exceeding Disaster Pour from the Clouds of Greed upon the Territories of Syria’. Ibn 'Arabshah’s portrayal of Timur, which verges on parody, may remind some of Sir Thomas More’s life of Richard III.

  … when he [Toqtamish] saw that the attack could not be avoided and that the place was settled, he strengthened his spirit and the spirit of his army and put aside heaviness and levity and placed in the front line the bolder of his followers and arrayed his horse and foot and strengthened the centre and wing and made ready arrows and swords.

  But Timur’s army was not wanting in these things, since what each one had to do was decided and explored and where to fight and where to stand was inscribed on the front of its standards. Then both armies, when they came in sight one of the other, were kindled and mingling with each other became hot with the fire of war and they joined battle and necks were extended for sword-blows and throats outstretched for spear thrusts and faces were drawn with sternness and fouled with dust, the wolves of war set their teeth and fierce leopards mingled and charged and the lions of the armies rushed upon each other and men’s skins bristled, clad with the feathers of arrows and the brows of the leaders drooped and the heads of the heads [captains] bent in the devotion of war and fell forward and the dust was thickened and stood black and the leaders and common soldiers alike plunged into seas of blood and arrows became in the darkness of black dust like stars placed to destroy the Princes of Satan, while swords glittering like fulminating stars in clouds of dust rushed on kings and sultans nor did the horses of death cease to pass through and revolve and race against the squadrons which charged straight ahead or the dust of hooves to be borne into the air or the blood of swords to flow over the plain, until the earth was rent and the heavens like the eight seas; and this struggle and conflict lasted about three days; then dust appeared from the stricken army of Toqtamish, who turned his back, and his armies took to flight …

  COMMENTARY

  Toqtamish was the Khan of the Golden Horde, ruling over the Kipchak Turks of the south Russian steppes. This first defeat at the hands of Timur took place in 1387.

  ‘Ibn ‘Arabshah offers a perfectly useless all-purpose literary description of a battle.

  The ‘heads of the heads’ phrase is a pun, as ru’asa’ means both ‘heads’, as on necks, and ‘heads’ in the sense of captains.

  How that proud tyrant was broken and borne to the house of destruction, where he had his constant seat in the lowest pit of Hell

  Now Timur advanced up to the town called Atrar and since he was enough protected from cold without, he wished something to be made for him, which would drive the cold from him within and so he ordered to be distilled for him arrack blended with hot drugs and several health-giving spices which were not harmful; and God did not will that such an impure soul should go forth, save in that manner of which he by his wickedness had been the cause.

  Therefore Timur took of that arrack and drank it again and again without pause, not asking about affairs and news of his army or caring concerning them or hearing their petitions, until the hand of death gave him the cup to drink. ‘And they shall be made to drink boiling water which will rend their bowels.’

  But he ceased not to oppose fate and wage war with fortune and obstinately resist the grace of God Almighty, wherefore he could not but fail and endure the greater punishments for wickedness. But that arrack, as though making footprints, injured his bowels and heart, whereby the structure of his body tottered and his supports grew weak. Then he summoned doctors and expounded his sickness to them, who in that cold treated him by putting ice on his belly and chest. Therefore he was restrained from the march for three days and prepared himself to be carried to the house of retribution and punishment. And his liver was crushed and neither his wealth nor children availed him aught and he began to vomit blood and bite his hands with grief and penitence.

  ‘When death has fastened his talons

  I have marked that every charm is in vain.’

  And the butler of death gave him to drink a bitter cup and soon he believed that which he had resolutely denied, but his faith availed him naught, after he had seen punishment; and he implored aid, but no helper was found for him; and it was said to him: ‘Depart, O impure soul, who wert in an impure body, depart vile, wicked sinner and delight in boiling water, fetid blood, and the company of sinners.’ But if one saw him, he coughed like a camel which is strangled, his colour was nigh quenched and his cheeks foamed like a camel dragged backwards with the rein; and if one saw the angels that tormented him, they showed their joy, with which they threaten the wicked to lay waste their houses and utterly destroy the whole memory of them; and if one saw, when they hand over to death those who were infidels, the angels smite their faces and backs; and if one beheld his wives and servants and those who continually clung groaning to his side and his attendants and soldiers, already what they had feigned fled from them and if one saw, when the wicked are in the sharpness of death, angels stretch forth their hands and say, ‘Cast out your souls; to-day you shall receive the punishment of shame, because you spoke concerning God without truth and proudly scorned His signs.’

  Then they brought garments of hair from Hell and drew forth his soul like a spit from a soaked fleece and he was carried to the cursing and punishment of God, remaining in torment and God’s infernal punishment.

  That happened on the night of the fourth day of the week which was the 17th of Shaban, the month of fires, in the plains of Atrar and God Almighty in His mercy took from men the punishment of shame and the stock of the race which had done wickedly was cut off; praise be to God, Lord of the ages!

  J. H. Sanders, Tamerlane or Timur the Great Amir

  (London, 1936), pp. 81–2, 231–3

  COMMENTARY

  Timur died in 1405 while he was on his way to conquer China. His death occurred at Atrar (or Utrar), a town on the caravan route to China, some 250 miles east of Samarkand.

  He had been drinking the spirit arrack heavily until the very last days.

  ‘And they shall be made to drink boiling water which will rend their bowels’ is from the Qur’an.

  The Mamluk sultanate survived Timur’s occupation of Syria, which lasted less than a year, and during the fifteenth century its fortunes revived somewhat, particularly during the long reign of the Sultan al-Ashraf Qaytbay (1468-96). Qaytbay himself wrote poetry in Turkish and Arabic, as did at least one of his senior generals, the Amir Yashbak. In the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and probably as a result of the prestige of the courts of the Timurid princes in Samarkand, Bokhara and elsewhere, Persian increasingly came to be regarded as the language of the courts and high literature, not only in the Timurid lands, but also in Ottoman Turkey and Mughal India. The more cultivated members of the Mamluk elite also interested themselves in Persian poetry and prose. The penultimate Mamluk sultan, Qansuh al-Ghuri (reigned 1501-16), was of Circassian origin, but wrote poetry in Arabic, Turkish and Persian. He commissioned a translation into Turkish of Firdawsi’s epic saga of Persian legend and history, the Shahnama. (Qansuh al-Ghuri could read it in the original; he commissioned the translation for the benefit of those of his emirs who could not read Persian.)

  Qansuh al-Ghuri used to hold twice-weekly majalis, or soirées, in the Cairo Citadel which were attended by the city’s leading scholars and literary men. (No wine was
drunk at these very proper soirées.) The subjects of conversation that came up in these gatherings were many and various, but religious topics were the most frequent. A partial record of what was said in the course of some of the sessions has survived in two sources. The first of these, the Nafa’is Majalis al-Sultaniyya, ‘The Gems of the Royal Sessions’, was written down by Muhammad ibn Muhammad al -HUSAYNI called Sharif and covers a run of sessions from February to December 1505. The second source, the Kawkab al-Durri fi-Masa’il al-Ghuri, ‘The Glittering Stars regarding the Questions of al-Ghuri’, was completed in 1513-14, but the second half of the text has been lost. Religious, historical, humorous and literary matters came up for discussion. The meaning of an obscure couplet in Ibn al-Farid’s poetry was debated. The sultan and one of the chief qadis debated the rightness of addressing a love poem to an Abyssinian slave rather than to a Circassian or Turk. Harun al-Rashid’s request for panegyric lines on brevity was alluded to. However, in general the sultan and his courtiers seem to have been more interested in Persian and Turkish history and literature than in Arab culture.

  In the extract which follows, as so often the sultan has produced a story from Persian literature about the Turkish Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna (who ruled over Afghanistan and north-west India from 998 to 1030) and the famous poet Firdawsi. (The story is legendary. The real origins of the Sbahnama were quite different.)