The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature

by Robert Irwin

  In the poem which follows one must envisage Ibn Hamdis and his companions sitting in a garden which is surrounded by a stream. Their cupbearer sends their wine floating round to them.

  I remember a certain brook that offered the impiety of drunkenness to the topers [sitting] along its course, with [its] cups of golden [wine],

  Each silver cup in it filled as though it contained the soul of the sun in the body of the full moon.

  Whenever a glass reached anyone in our company of topers, he would grasp it gingerly with his ten fingers.

  Then he drinks out of it a grape-induced intoxication which lulls his very senses without his realizing it.

  He sends [the glass] back in the water, thus returning it to the hands of a cupbearer at whose will it had [originally] floated to him.

  Because of the wine-bibbing we imagined our song to be melodies which the birds sang without verse.

  While our cupbearer was the water which brought [us wine] without a hand, and our drink was a fire that shone without embers,

  And which offered us delights of all kinds, while the only reward [of that cupbearer] for [giving us those delights] was that we offered him the ocean to drink.

  [It is] as if we were cities along the riverbank while the wine-laden ships sailed [the stretch] between us.

  For life is excusable only when we walk along the shores of pleasure and abandon all restraint!

  Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry: A Student Anthology, p. 204

  The proliferation of courts encouraged the movement of poets from patron to patron. The most famous of the eleventh-century Andalusian poets, Abu’l-Walid Ahmad IBN ZAYDUN (1003–71), came from an old Cordovan family, but he pursued a turbulent career in the service of several courts; in the course of his peripatetic career, high office alternated with prison or exile. As a politician-poet, Ibn Zaydun specialized in panegyric and satire, but his best and most personal work was on the theme of lost love. As a young man, Ibn Zaydun fell in love with a beautiful blonde princess, Wallada (see page 274). The two at first exchanged letters of mutual devotion, but when later their relationship deteriorated Wallada composed poems of rejection, while Ibn Zaydun responded with poems of desperation and reproach. His case was hopeless and Wallada began to consort with his former friend and chief rival, Ibn ‘Abdus, a prominent politician. Ibn ‘Abdus was eventually successful in having Ibn Zaydun cast into prison. On his release, Ibn Zaydun sought employment as a politician and poet elsewhere. He ended up in Seville, as vizier first in the service of Mut’adid and then of Mu’tamid.

  How many nights we passed drinking wine

  until the marks of dawn appeared on the night;

  The stars of dawn came to strike the darkness

  and the stars of night fled, for night was conquered.

  When we attained the best of all delights

  no care weighed on us, and no sorrow irked us.

  Had this but remained, my joy would have endured

  but the nights of union fell short.

  When we met in the morning to say goodbye,

  and the pennants fluttered in the palace court

  And the proud horses gathered and the drums rolled

  and the hour signalled depart,

  We wept blood – as if our eyes

  were wounds from which the red tears flowed.

  We had hoped to come again after three days

  but how many more have been added to them!

  Bernard Lewis (trans.), in TR (Reading, Berks., 1976), I, ii, p. 47

  The next poem was written at the al-Zahra, site of the caliphal palace outside Cordova.

  With passion from this place

  I remember you.

  Horizon clear, limpid

  The face of the earth, and wind,

  Come twilight, desists,

  A tenderness sweeps me

  When I see the silver

  Coiling waterways

  Like necklaces detached

  From throats. Delicious those

  Days we spent while fate

  Slept. There was peace, I mean,

  And us, thieves of pleasure,

  Now only flowers

  With frost-bent stems I see;

  At my eyes their vivid

  Centres pull, they gaze

  Back at me, seeing me

  Without sleep, and a light

  Flickers through their cups,

  In sympathy, I think.

  The sun-baked rosebuds in

  Bushes, remember

  How their colour had lit

  Our morning air; and still

  Breaths of wind dispense

  At break of day, as then,

  Perfume they gather up

  From waterlilies’

  Half-open drowsy eyes.

  Such fresh memories

  Of you these few things

  Waken in my mind. For

  Faraway as you are

  In this passion’s grip

  I persist with a sigh

  And pine to be at one

  With you. Please God no

  Calm or oblivion

  Will occupy my heart,

  Or close it. Listen

  To the shiver of wings

  At your side – it is my

  Desire, and still, still

  I am shaking with it…

  Pure love we once exchanged,

  It was an unfenced

  Field and we ran there, free

  Like horses. But alone

  I now can lay claim

  To have kept faith. You left,

  Left this place. In sorrow

  To be here again,

  I am loving you.

  Middleton and Garza-Falcon, Andalusian Poems, pp. 14–15

  WALLADA bint al-Mustakfi (d. 1091/2), the object of Ibn Zaydun’s passion, was the daughter of one of the last Umayyad caliphs of Cordova, Mustakfi (whose reign and murder took place in 1025). Wallada was one of a relatively large number of women who wrote poetry in Muslim Spain. She maintained a literary salon which was probably where Ibn Zaydun first encountered her.

  The superbly arrogant verses which follow were inscribed on the sleeves of her robe, the first couplet on the right sleeve and the second on the left. The custom of adorning the embroidered sleeves of garments with pious invocations, declarations of political allegiance or poetry was common throughout the Muslim world.

  I am, by God, fit for high positions, And am going my way, with pride!

  Forsooth, I allow my lover to touch my cheek,

  And bestow my kiss on him who craves it!

  Nykl, Hispano-Arabic Poetry and its Relations with

  the Old Provencal Troubadors, p. 107

  The four poems which follow were all addressed to her ultimately rejected lover. They trace the trajectory of a heart’s affections.

  1

  Wait for me whenever darkness falls,

  For night I see contains a secret best.

  If the heavens felt this love I feel for you,

  The sun would not shine, nor the moon rise,

  Nor would the stars launch out upon their journey.

  2

  Must separation mean we have no way to meet?

  Ay! Lovers all moan about their troubles.

  For me it is a winter not a trysting time,

  Crouching over the hot coals of desire.

  If we’re apart, nothing can be otherwise.

  How soon just the very thing I feared

  Was what my destiny delivered. Night after night

  And separation going on and on and on,

  Nor does my being patient free me from

  The shackles of my longing. Please God

  There may be winter rains pelting copiously down

  To irrigate the earth where you now dwell.

  3

  Had you any respect for the love between us,

  You would not choose that slave of mine to love.

  From a branch flowering in beauty you turn

&
nbsp; To a branch that bears no fruit.

  You know I am the moon at full,

  But worse luck for me

  It’s Jupiter you have fallen for.

  4

  They’ll call you the Hexagon, an epithet

  Properly yours even after you drop dead:

  Pederast, pimp, adulterer,

  Gigolo, cuckold, cheat.

  Middleton and Garza-Falcon, Andalusian Poems, p. 16

  After the fall of the caliphate of Cordova and the dispersal of its courtiers and littérateurs, the taste for poetry became more widely diffused throughout Muslim Spain. Some of the poetry produced in provincial centres seems to have been written in conscious rejection of the urban, Arab and elitist values of the old Cordovan court, and some was inspired by Shu’ubi sentiments as the non-Arab peoples of Spain (Ibero-Latins, Visigoths and Jews, as well as Berbers) disputed the Arabs’ claims to religious and cultural superiority. Christian converts to Islam (muwalladun) made a major contribution to Arabic literature, as did musta‘riba, or mozarabs, Arabized Christians who had mastered the Arabic language and absorbed much of Islamic culture without actually converting to the Islamic faith.

  Strophic poetry (that is, verses arranged in stanzas) first appeared in Spain in the ninth century. Examples of a particular form of strophic verse, the muwashshahat (sing. muwashshah), start to appear as early as the ninth or the tenth century. The full sense of the word is not clear, though it appears to be related to the word for a certain type of ornamental belt, the wishah, with a double band. Interpretations differ. According to one authority, ‘Since it was held together by the concluding line as by a belt, and written down the visual effect was of a chain belt, it was called muwashshah ‘girdled’ [poem]’. The muwashshah was a multi-rhymed strophic verse form written in classical Arabic. When the fourteenth-century North African philosopher-historian, Ibn Khaldun, came to discuss the form, he had this to say:

  The muwashshah consists of branches and strings in great number and different metres. A certain number [of branches and strings] is called a single verse [stanza]. There must be the same number of rhymes in the branches [of each stanza] and the same metre [for the branches of the whole poem] throughout the whole poem. The largest number of stanzas employed is seven. Each stanza contains as many branches as is consistent with purpose and method. Like the qasida, the muwashshah is used for erotic and laudatory poetry.

  Ibn Khaldun went on to suggest that such poems were popular both with the court and with the populace at large because they were easy to understand.

  Usually the muwashshah consisted of five stanzas. It was customary to open with one or two lines which matched the second part of the poem in rhyme and metre, but then, in the first part of the poem proper, there was a sequence of lines which rhymed within the stanza. However, the rhyme changed from stanza to stanza, before reverting in the second part of the poem proper to the opening rhyme and metre. Although the main body of the poem was in classical Arabic, the final line, the kharja (literally ‘exit’), was written in colloquial Arabic or in some other vernacular tongue. The kharja, the punch-line of the poem, was a ‘quotation’ in direct speech. As often as not it took the form of a slave-girl’s dismissive response to the poet’s amorous proposal. The failure of the muwashshah to conform more than occasionally to the strict metrical forms of the classical qasida meant that many did not consider it to be poetry at all.

  The muwashshah was intended to be sung, and was often performed at banquets. Glorification of a ruler or the loving address to a girl (often a Christian slave-girl) were its most usual themes, though other topics were employed. Ibn al-‘Arabi (see page 297) and others made use of the form to express mystical themes. Although the muwashshah form was first developed in Spain it subsequently spread throughout North Africa and the Middle East and it was particularly popular in Mamluk Egypt. The following muwashshah is by Abu Balkr IBN ZUHR. Although his father was a famous physician, Ibn Zuhr was a less distinguished medical practitioner and littérateur. His one dubious claim to fame is that when the Almoravid ruler Ya’qub ibn Mansur decided to have all books on philosophy and logic destroyed, Ibn Zuhr was put in charge of the bonfires.

  My heaving sighs proclaim Love’s joys are bitterness.

  My heart has lost her mentor,

  She spurns my anguished cry

  And craves for her tormentor;

  If I hide love, I die.

  When ‘Oh heart!’ I exclaim My foes mock my distress.

  O tearful one who chantest

  Of mouldering ditch and line,

  Or hopefully decantest,

  I have no eyes for thine.

  Let yearning glow aflame, Tears pour in vain excess.

  Mine eye, love’s attribute venting,

  Expended all its store,

  Then its own pain lamenting

  Began to weep once more.

  My heart is past reclaim Or sweet forgetfulness.

  I blame it not for weeping

  My heart’s distress to share,

  As, weary but unsleeping,

  It probed the starry sphere.

  To count them was my aim But they are numberless.

  A doe there was I trysted

  (No lion is as tough.)

  I came, but she insisted

  ‘Tomorrow’, and sheered off.

  Hey, folks, d’you know that game? And what’s the gal’s address?

  Gibb, Arabic Literature. An Introduction, pp. 111–12

  The zajal was similar to the muwashshah, but it was written in colloquial Arabic and it might even contain a sprinkling of non-Arabic words. The noun derives from the verb zajala, ‘to utter a cry’. (Arabic dictionaries also define zajal as ‘the soft humming sound made by the jinn at night’). Again according to Ibn Khaldun, people ‘made poems of the type in their sedentary dialect, without employing vowel endings. Thus they invented a new form, which they called zajal. They have continued to compose poems of this type down to the present time [the late fourteenth century]. They achieved remarkable things in it. It opened the field for eloquent poetry in dialect, which is influenced by non-Arab speech habits.’

  Although the earliest surviving examples of the zajal seem to date from the twelfth century, it may well have developed in tandem with the muwashshah. Because of the nature of Arabic script and syntax, which make it peculiarly difficult to register the colloquial, zajal poems were different to transcribe; perhaps for this reason we find examples of the form only in manuscripts of a relatively late date. The zajal was likely to have more lines than the muwashshah. Like the muwashshah, the zajal had a concluding kharja and the whole poem was composed to be sung.

  Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn ‘Isa IBN QUZMAN (d. 1160), the great poet of Hispano-Arabic colloquial, was certainly the most famous composer of zajals. He led the life of a goliard, wandering from town to town in search of patronage. In his poems he celebrated the delights of wine, women and song. However, bitterness and sarcasm alternate with hedonism in Ibn Quzman’s poetry. He was unhappily married and he claimed that he was constantly accompanied on his travels by the Qird, the Ape of Evil Fortune. Ibn Quzman was a keen observer of everyday events in the streets. In his poems he presents himself as a low-lifer, dissolute, ugly and hard-drinking. A literary cult of the low-lifer and criminal had flourished among the educated elite in tenth-century Iraq (see Chapter 5), and it may be that the disparaging self-image that Ibn Quzman presented to his audience was in part a literary affectation, although he did spend time in prison for immorality and impiety. He made use in his zajals of Romance words as well as vernacular Arabic.

  As for refined love – let others claim it.

  May God, instead, give me contentment:

  Kisses, embraces and the rest.

  (If you ask any further, you prove yourself nosy.)

  A. Hamori (trans.), in Ashtiany et al. (eds.), The Cambridge

  History of Arabic Literature: ‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres, p. 212

  Disparagers of l
ove, now hear my song;

  Though you be of a mind to do love wrong,

  Believe me, moonlight is the stuff whereof

  My lady’s limbs are made. I offer proof.

  Something I saw, full moon in her, alive,

  Cool in her balanced body, took me captive;

  Her beauty, young, her anklets, with a thrill

  They pierced my heart, to cause my every ill.

  A lover is a man amazed. Desire

  Can drive him mad the moment he’s on fire;

  Heartsick, when he has had the thing he wants;

  Worse, if he’s deceived by what enchants.

  A lover knows he’s not the only one.

  His lady’s garden gate, she keeps it open:

  A challenge – passion hurts him even more.

  Whom will she choose? Whom will she ignore?

  I’m of a kind a woman’s body charms

  So to the quick, it’s Eden in her arms:

  Absolute beauty being all we seek,

  We can be melted by a touch of magic.

  As for the moon, so for the sun: from both

  She draws her power; moon pearls grace her mouth,

  Solar fire crimsons her lips, and yet

  She’s not ambiguous when her heart is set:

  Burning in my reflections, day by day,

  In every act of mine she has her say;

  Even when, if ever, she’s at peace,

  You’ll never find her supine in the least.

  Such is my proven moon, my lady love.

  Yet of myself she did once disapprove:

  Pointing to the marks my teeth had made

  Across her breast, then eyeing me, she said:

  ‘Easy does it, not too quick,

  I like it slow, and nothing new.

  Custom knows a thing or two,

  It’s to custom we should stick:

  Festina lente, that’s the trick –

  Come at me slow, I’ll come with you.’