The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature

by Robert Irwin

  However, Buhturi was to become famous as the leading specialist in wasf, or descriptive poetry. Wasf became fashionable in this period. Descriptions couched in verse were coming to be appreciated in their own right, rather than as details which served to decorate a lament for a lost Bedouin girl or a boast of success in tribal warfare. (Farabi’s Canons of Poetry (Risala fi Qawanin Sina’a al-Shi ‘r), written under the influence of Aristotle’s Poetics, was to argue that poetry was like painting, for ‘in practice both produce likenesses and both aim at impressing men’s imagination’. Buhturi’s descriptive verse was couched in the popular badi’ style. In general, poets working in the badi’ manner were interested, in a way their predecessors had not been, in describing buildings, towns, gardens and animals. This sort of descriptive verse may possibly have owed something to the older tradition of ekphrasis, or rhetorical exercise in description, as employed in classical Greek poetry.

  When loyalty turns, I never delay

  for the day to break where evening falls:

  Troubled, I turned to the road, towards white

  Madain directing my mount, with a last

  farewell to illusion, sorrow to greet

  in the age-long silence of the house of Sasan,

  recalled to mind by the knocks and blows

  that summon echoes from forgotten doors.

  They had ruled recumbent in a towering shade

  baffling the eye with its starry hub,

  its gateway closed on the distant line

  from grand Caucasia to deep Lake Van;

  worlds removed from gazelle’s abode

  that the driving sands obliterate,

  achievement beyond the ambition of tribes –

  were it not for the bias that runs in my blood.

  The years cried havoc, the centuries wore

  till they left the palace a lifeless shell,

  vast halls of naked solitude,

  the vaulted dismay that warns of a tomb.

  Could you see it now, the walls would tell

  of a wedding that turned at a funeral dirge,

  yet manifest still is the glory of men

  whose record dispels all shadow of doubt.

  At the sight of Antioch’s fall you would start

  at Greek and Persian turned to stone,

  with the fates at large as Anushirvan

  under banner imperial drives his troops

  in sea of armour closing in

  on Byzantium’s emperor saffron-robed;

  and under his eyes the men fight locked

  in the surge and din of battle unheard,

  as one irrevocably thrusts his lance

  and another flashes his shield at the blade,

  and alive to the eye indeed they come,

  regiments signalling signs of the mute,

  that enrapt in contemplation I find

  my fingers tracing out their forms.

  For my son had brought me ample supply

  in stealth to drink on the battle field,

  wine like a star that in moonless night

  illumines the dark, or a beam of the sun,

  that sends a glow through pulsing veins

  at every draught, a bringer of peace,

  and with a ray from every heart distilled

  in the glass unites all men in love,

  that I fancied Khosro Parvez himself

  and his laureate keeping me company then:

  a vision closing my eye to doubt,

  or a daydream, sense to tantalize?

  The hall of presence in immensity stands

  like a cave high-arched in the face of a cliff.

  In commanding sorrow I seem to sense

  someone coming – Is it early or late? –

  grey at the parting of friends much loved,

  at a wife’s disloyalty coming home.

  Time’s revolution reversed its luck

  when in baleful aspect Jupiter turned,

  yet in majesty still it stands unbowed

  by the heavy oppressive breast of fate,

  unmoved by hands uncouth that stripped

  the silk, the velvet, the brocade and damask,

  soaring, sovereign, that battlements crown

  in final culmination raised,

  reaching white against the sky

  as if to fly like scuds of fleece.

  None might know: Was it built by men

  for demon to dwell, by demon for man?

  save that unanswerable witness it bears:

  that its builder was king, unquestioned, of kings.

  In the final glass in a vision I see

  the state’s high officers, the multitudes;

  embassies, weary from sun and dust,

  awaiting their call from vast colonnades;

  singers in marble enchantment remote,

  dark their lips, and darker the eyes –

  as if life had been but a week ago,

  and departure had rung but a few days past,

  that the rider bent on haste might find

  the procession on the fifth night fading away.

  To them, whose domains in felicity shone

  and in sorrow still consolation bestow;

  to them I owe the tribute of tears,

  slow to emerge, from the deeper heart.

  Such were my thoughts, though the place by right

  not mine I call, nor mine their race,

  but for a debt that my country owes

  for a deed of old – a tall tree now –

  when to South Arabia’s shores they came,

  valiant men in illustrious arms,

  and with bow and sword against wild odds

  freed us of the Abyssinian foe.

  Bound, then, to the noble in spirit I feel,

  to the gallant, whatever their nation and name.

  Tuetey, Classical Arabic Poetry, pp. 241–3

  COMMENTARY

  The poet, troubled by personal problems, rides out to contemplate the pre-Islamic ruins of the Arch of Kisra. In this somewhat unconventional qasida the deserted campsite has been replaced by a ruined palace. The vanished glories of Persian culture were quite frequently evoked in Arabic literature and it was, for example, common for wine poets to describe the Sasanian imperial decoration of the silver or glass cups from which they were drinking. The Sasanian emperors cast a long shadow in the history of Islamic culture. The Persian palace at Ctesiphon, also known as the Arch of Kisra, also known as Madain, was located in southern Iraq (and in this poem Buhturi is implicitly expressing a preference for Syria over Iraq). Buhturi contemplates surviving frescoes in the ruined palace and re-creates the vanished splendour of the Persian imperial court. His contemplation widens to encompass the vicissitudes of fate and time (anticipating in his own way the fifteenth-century French poet Villon’s, ‘Où sont les neiges d’antan?’).

  Khosro Parvez is yet another way of spelling Chosroes or Khusraw, the Persian emperor who also featured in Abu Tammam’s ‘Spring’ qasida.

  Antioch in north-west Syria was one of the most important cities fought over by the Persians and the Byzantines. Today it is within the frontiers of Turkey, but in the Middle Ages it was treated as being part of Sham or Syria.

  The Christian Abyssinians occupied Yemen in the sixth century, but around the year 572 the Persians, responding to an Arab appeal, drove the Abyssinians out and made Yemen a Persian satrapy for a while.

  Ibn al-Mu‘tazz, another early experimenter with wasf, praised Buhturi’s qasida on the Arch of Kisra as the greatest poem of all time. Abdallah IBN AL-MU‘TAZZ (861–908), a member of the ruling ‘Abbasid dynasty, was born in the palace city of Samarra in a period when being a caliph was a hazardous occupation. His grandfather, al-Mutawakkil, and his father, al-Mu’tazz, were both murdered by the Turkish slave soldiers who were supposed to protect them. Ibn al-Mu‘tazz, who was devoid of ambition, eventually sought a retiring life in Baghdad as a pensioned writer and party-goer. Unfortunately, however
, after the deposition of one of his cousins in 908, he was persuaded to become caliph. He lasted less than a day.

  During Ibn al-Mu‘tazz’s more successful career as a poet, he produced not only a great deal of excellent verse in the badi‘ style, but also a pioneering treatise on poetics. This book, the Kitab al-Badi‘ (877–8), dealt with the aesthetics of contemporary poetry. Paradoxically, Ibn al-Mu‘tazz justified the badi’ style, as practised by Abu Tammam and Buhturi, by citing precedents for its metaphors and mannerisms which he had discovered in earlier poems and in the Qur’an. In the course of his apologia for modern ways of composition, the poet-prince discussed metaphor, alliteration and antithesis, as well as the order of treatment of subjects and the technique of rounding off a poem by returning to the subject referred to in the opening lines. Ibn al-Mu‘tazz, like earlier and later literary critics, tended to focus on individual lines or turns of phrase rather than on a poem as a whole.

  Together with Buhturi, Ibn al-Mu‘tazz was one of the earliest and most distinguished practitioners of wasf. His poem in praise of the caliphal Pleiades Palace in Baghdad is particularly famous. More generally his poems, which are usually direct and make use of brilliant, concrete imagery, are peculiarly likely to appeal to the contemporary reader. His longer poems, including one on the future decadence of the caliphate, may have owed something to an awareness of Persian literary traditions.

  Seven short poems, mostly exercises in wasf, are given below.

  1

  If you can sleep, the night is short. The sickness

  Seems trivial to the visitor.

  But let me not deny upon the blood,

  The little dear blood you have left me –

  You gave your gift:

  I embraced a fragment stem

  That breathed in its own cool night;

  If any saw us in the shirt of darkness

  They must have thought us wrapped in a single body.

  2

  Star in utter night: a lovesick glance

  Stolen past watchers.

  Dawn clambers out

  From under dark:

  White hints in a skein of black hair.

  3

  Hand, until you must drop,

  The sparrow hawk you perch at dawn

  Achieves your pleasure.

  The fugitive will not be saved by flight,

  The claws home in when you release them.

  Quick at your word, all skill, grace,

  He is, but for death his passion, flawless.

  4

  As she peels off her blouse to bathe

  Her cheeks become a rose.

  She offers the breeze

  Harmonies finer than air

  And moves a hand like water

  To the water in the jug.

  Then, done, about to hide

  In her clothes once more,

  She catches a glimpse of the spy:

  The lights go dead

  As she shakes midnight hair

  About her body’s shimmer

  And steady drops of water

  Spring over the water.

  May all praise God who fashioned

  Such loveliness in woman!

  5

  Looking, the narcissus, looking.

  To blink – what unattained pleasure!

  It bows beneath the dewdrop

  And, dazed, watches

  What the sky is doing to the earth.

  6

  A treeful of bitter oranges: carnelian

  Boxes of pearls

  Glimmer among the branches, like faces

  Of girls in green shawls –

  You recognize the fragrance of one you desire

  And a less obvious sadness.

  7

  Another glass!

  A cock crow buries the night.

  Naked horizons rise of a plundered morning.

  Above night roads: Canopus,

  Harem warder of stars.

  Andras Hamori (trans.), Literature East and West 15 (1971), pp. 495–7

  Abu’l-Hasan IBN AL-RUMI, ‘the son of the Greek’ (836–96), was the son of a Greek freeman and claimed descent from Byzantine royalty. He began his career as a poet in Baghdad at a time when the caliphs were in Samarra and Baghdad was controlled by the Tahirids, a clan of Persian dihqan origin, who had become the city’s military governors. At first Ibn al-Rumi experienced disappointment in failing to obtain patronage from the clan and he wrote to Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah ibn Tahir, citing the ancient proverb ‘He who kisses the bum receives wind as his reward’. Later he became the fulsome partisan of another Tahirid, ‘Ubaydallah. Eventually Ibn al-Rumi moved to Samarra, where he continued the struggle to support himself with panegyric and blackmailing satire. He earned handouts but no fixed salary as he went in and out of favour with various patrons. Ibn al-Rumi cannot have been an endearing client. He was ugly, quick-tempered, gluttonous, blasphemous and superstitious. He wore dirty clothes, drank heavily and spent money lavishly when he had it. His disreputable personality notwithstanding, he claimed to admire ascetic holy men.

  Ibn al-Rumi was a prolific poet who produced an extensive diwan. Like Abu Tammam, he was a partisan for the badi’ style. He was noted for descriptive poetry and for love poems addressed to both sexes. He composed a number of poems in praise or blame of particular singing-girls. However, above all he was a specialist in hija’, that is satirical poetry, much of it crudely abusive. Besides pillorying stingy patrons, he waged a satirical war against rival poets throughout his career. He was particularly envious of more successful poets like Buhturi.

  How Ibn al-Rumi died is not clear, but it is alleged that in or around the year 896 he was poisoned by the Caliph al-Mu’tadid’s vizier, Qasim. Qasim was afraid lest the poet’s sharp tongue might be turned against the vizier’s clan. According to the account given in Ibn Khallikan’s thirteenth-century biographical dictionary, Ibn al-Rumi, after having been fed a poisoned biscuit, rose to leave. Qasim asked him where he was going. The poet replied that he was going where the vizier had sent him. The vizier then said to the poet, ‘In that case, convey my greetings to my father.’ ‘I am not going to the fires of Hell,’ retorted Ibn al-Rumi.

  Ibn al-Rumi was a versatile poet. The poem which follows is unusual in that it is a poem about poetry and the inevitability of imperfection in literature.

  Say to whoever finds fault with the poem of his panegyrist:

  Can you not see what a tree is made of?

  It is made of bark, dry wood

  and thorns and in between is the fruit.

  But it should, after all, be so, that what

  the Lord of Lords, not Man, creates is finely made.

  But it was not so but otherwise,

  for a reason Divine Wisdom ordained,

  And God knows better than we what he brings about

  and in everything he resolves there is always good.

  Therefore let people forgive whoever does badly or

  falls short of his aim in poetry; he is [after all only] a human being.

  Let them remember that his mind

  is heavily taxed and his thoughts are exhausted in writing his verse.

  His task is like pearl-fishing at the bottom

  of the sea: before the pearls lies danger.

  In pearl-fishing, there is the expensive, the precious

  that the choice accepts, but also what it leaves behind,

  And it is inevitable that the diver bring with him

  what is selected and what is scorned.

  Gregor Schoeler (trans.), in ‘On Ibn ar-Rumi’s Reflective Poetry. His

  Poem about Poetry’, Journal of Arabic Literature 27 (1966), pp. 22–3

  5

  The Wandering Scholars

  (c. 900–c. 1175)

  The tenth century, which was a great century for Arabic poetry and prose – especially prose – was at the same time the century in which Persian politicians and writers assumed an unprecedented importance in Islamic cu
lture. The Buyids were a clan of Persian mercenaries from the Caspian region. In 945 they established themselves as protectors of the puppet ‘Abbasid caliphs and Baghdad became the capital of what was in effect an Iranian monarchy. The heyday of Buyid power and cultural patronage was under ‘Adud al-Dawla (reigned 949–83). The Buyids were Shi’ites who governed in the name of a Sunni caliph, and in general they tolerated and employed Sunni Muslims. Although the Buyids were soldiers and of Persian origin, they promoted literature written in Arabic. Hamadhani, Mutanabbi and Tanukhi were among the writers who benefited from their patronage. The government of the caliphate was shared out among members of the Buyid clan in Rayy, Shiraz, Isfahan and Hamadhan.

  The rise of Persian as a literary language effectively began in the ninth century and this rise may be linked to the growing political importance of Persians in government. The Persian Samanid rulers of Transoxania and Khurasan (819–905) sponsored works written in Persian. The most important work to have been commissioned by a Samanid prince was undoubtedly Firdawsi’s Shahnama, an epic poem devoted to Persian legends and history. Although the eastern lands subsequently fell under the domination of the Ghaznavid Turks and later the Seljuk Turks, Persian literature continued to evolve and from the eleventh century onwards important Persian prose works in such genres as history and belles-lettres started to appear. Despite these developments in this period, most Persians with literary or scholarly ambitions still preferred to write in Arabic.

  Although the Buyids controlled the heartlands of the ‘Abbasid caliphate, many of the outlying provinces had become covertly or overtly independent. Transoxania and Khurasan, for example, had fallen under the control of the above-mentioned Persian dynasty, the Samanids, and from 969 until 1171 Egypt was ruled by an Arab Shi’ite dynasty, the Fatimids. Although Baghdad remained the most important centre of literary production, cities like Rayy, Hamadhan, Aleppo, Isfahan and Cairo were increasingly prominent as centres of patronage and literary production. As we shall see, the Hamdanid dynasty of Arab princes in Aleppo and Mosul were particularly keen to attract writers to their courts. The dispersal of centres of patronage meant that this was an age of wandering scholars and goliard poets.