Wierd Horror (sic)

  

    Dry-point etching, 5" x 7"

No secrets left

                 Nothing remains in doubt after
                     my assay of every enigma,
                 from what Hermes said at the beginning
                     to what Heraclius said at the end,
                 to the riddles couched by Galen
                     in twisting dodges,
                 and the primordial traditions
                     upheld by sacred revelation,
                 and the encryptions of Jabir, who
                     practiced what the ancients did.
                 For all they held back, I vindicate them.
                     For all they put forth, I have commentary.
                 From all the materials I have gathered,
                     I have clarified and broadcast every secret
                 in my Keys, the book loaded with wisdom
                     that springs the lock jammed shut,
                 and its concomitant Lamps
                     of brilliant flame,
                 like nothing produced by anyone
                     before my time or after.
                 Nothing less than the epitome
                     of every long-studied science
                         is what my verses hold.

By Mu’ayyad al-Din al-Husayn ibn ‘Ali al-Tughra’i (meter: mutaqārib)

Ahmad of the Seventh Day II.2

[‘Abd Allah continued:]

"When I die," the laborer said, "wash for me the woolen robe and wrap that I have on, and sell my shovel. That'll be enough [for my burial clothes and the price of my interment]. But the robe has a pocket, and when you undo the seam you'll find a ring. Take the ring and await the day the caliph Harun al-Rashid rides by. On that day, you must make yourself conspicuous. Call out to him, and show him the ring, and surrender it to him when he bids you approach. But none of this until I'm dead and buried."

I agreed to his terms, and after he died I carried out all his instructions. Then I waited for the caliph to appear. When that day came, I staked out a place along his route, and as he rode by I shouted, "Commander of the Faithful! I am entrusted with something that belongs to you," and flashed the ring at him. At his command, I was seized and borne along to the palace, where he sent away every one of his guardians and retainers and asked my name. "‘Abd Allah ibn al-Faraj," I said.
      "Where did you get this ring?" he asked. I told him my story of the young man, and the caliph burst into tears that moved me to pity. I waited for him to take notice of me again, and then I asked, "What relation was he to the Commander of the Faithful?"
      "He was my son," the caliph said. I asked him, "How did he get into this condition?"
      "He was born to me before I became caliph," Harun said. "He grew up strong and healthy, and studied Qur'an and religious science, but when the Caliphate befell me, he fled, taking with him no reminder of the world around me. He never lost reverence for his mother, though, and I pressed this ring on her, a ruby ring of great price, and told her: 'Give this to him, and ask him to keep it handy. Perhaps it will be of use in his hour of need.'
      "After that," he continued, "his mother died, and from that time to this I know nothing about him but what what you've told me." Then he said, "Take me to his grave after night falls."
      Night fell, and he came out alone with me from the palace, and walked until we were at the grave. The caliph sat down and wept strenuously until the dawn. When the sky began to lighten, we rose and returned to the palace, where he set a date with me to visit the grave again after a number of days. And I returned with him on the appointed night, and escorted him back to the palace afterward.

‘Abd Allah ibn al-Faraj said: I had no idea that he was Harun al-Rashid's son, until the caliph told me so himself.

       

So goes Ibn Abi 'l-Tayyib's version—a fine report, in my estimation, though the first version is better authenticated, with an unbroken chain of transmission by trustworthy narrators.
      Popular storytellers have lengthened this account into an episodic tale. In their version, Ahmad is Harun's son by Zubayda [rather than the secret marriage of Harun's youth. This is how they say Ahmad turned his back on palace life and became an ascetic:] He went out hunting, only to encounter Salih al-Murri and hear him preaching, and then Ahmad's horse stumbled, and fell to the ground... But all of that is drivel. I report only what has been authenticated, and God gets the final say.

From Characters of Integrity by Ibn al-Jawzi; cf. the Book of Strangers
of al-Ajurri

No art of memory

Memory is not an art, nor could it ever be. The arts are Memory's gift to us, but memory itself cannot be taught or attained by any art. It is an advantage that some receive from nature, or the luck of their immortal soul. Without it, humanity would have no connection to eternality, and nothing we learn could ever be taught, if Memory did not dwell within us.

Whether Memory should be called the Mother of Time or its Child, I leave to the poets, who can say what they want. But no one among the truly wise would be dumb enough to throw away their good standing by [claiming to train the memory through mystic arts, and] posing like a juggler in front of little kids—the kind of thing that gives actual pedagogy a bad name.

So how did the students of Dionysius of Miletus all have such prodigious memories? The answer is that his lectures were so enjoyable that his listeners craved to hear them again, and Dionysius, in awareness of his own charisma, was obliged to repeat them many times. They became stamped in the minds of his brightest students, who declaimed them to each other until all had memorized through practice what memory alone could not supply. This is how they came to be called the "Mnemonic School," and were credited with turning memory into an art. It's also why people say the declamations of Dionysius are a piecemeal corpus, augmented in different places by different individuals where Dionysius himself had been succint.

From Lives of the Sophists by Flavius Philostratus

Ahmad of the Seventh Day II.1

According to Abu Bakr ibn Abi 'l-Tayyib [as reported in the Book of Strangers of al-Ajurri], ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Faraj the ascetic told the story like this:

I needed a day laborer to do some work in my house, and went to market to look them over. At the end of the row was a sallow-faced youth dressed all in wool, with a big basket and a shovel in his hands. "Ready for work?" I asked him. "Yes," he said, and when I asked his fee he said, "A dirham and a daniq." "Let's get to work," I said.
     "On one condition," he said. "What's that?" I asked. "At the call to mid-day prayer, I'll perform my ablutions and go pray at the congregational mosque, and when it's time for afternoon prayer I'll do the same." "That's fine," I said.
      We went back to my house and came to terms on all that needed doing in each area, and he cinched up his waist and got to work. He didn't speak a word to me until the call to mid-day prayer, when he said, "O ‘Abd Allah, the muezzin calls." "You're free to go," I said. He went off to pray, then returned to his task, which he did expertly until the call to afternoon prayer, when he said again, "O ‘Abd Allah, the muezzin calls." "You're free," I said, and off he went to pray. He then came back and worked without stopping until the end of the day, when I counted out his wage and he went away.

Some days later, we needed more work done, and my wife said, "Seek out that young one, whose heart was in his work." So I went to market, where I didn't see him. When I asked around, they said: "You mean that sallow-faced unfortunate? We only see him on Saturdays. Always he sits at the very end of the row."
       I stayed away from the market until that Saturday, when I came upon him right away. "Ready to work?" I asked him. "You already know my wage and my conditions," he said.
     "And on God I rely for guidance, Exalted be He," I said.
      The man came and worked as he had before. When I counted out his wage, I added something extra, but he refused to accept, and when I pressed it on him he became irate and took off. I was pained at this, and followed after him, cajoling him until he accepted his stated wage and nothing more.

After a while, we needed work done again, and I went back on a Saturday but could not find him. "He's sick," they told me when I asked around. "He used to come on Saturdays and work for a dirham and a daniq. The rest of the week he lived on one daniq a day. But now he isn't well."
      I asked for his address, and was led to a room kept by an old woman. "Is this where the young day laborer lives?" I asked her. "He's sick," she said. "Has been for days."
      The state I found him in upset me. His head was resting on a brick of clay. I bid him peace, and asked if there was anything he needed. "Yes," he said, "if you accept my conditions."
     "If God wills," I said to him, "that's what I'll do. [Continued.]

From Characters of Integrity by Ibn al-Jawzi

Avant Abraham

"My opinion is that Adam never worshiped idols, but that he did worship planets, approximating through this form of devotion to what is higher than the planets and stronger than they." If you contemplate this statement by Yanbushad, you'll find that it excludes idolatry as a means of approaching the living, speaking gods. You'll also notice it's expressed as Yanbushad's opinion, and not a categorical declaration, even though he knew for a certainty that Adam was no idolater.

There is evidence for all I'm saying—to wit, that Yanbushad did not countenance idolatry, nor even perhaps the worship of the sun and moon—in his book On the seasons, where he says: "The earthly consequences of the seasons' rotation are not the work of a visible mover, but a Mover too subtle to be perceived with the senses." The passage ends in what seems like a barrage of digressions, deliberately interspersed with enigmas and double meanings, and this is how his beliefs are often stated, becoming clear only after diligent contemplation of the text.

[And sometimes his beliefs went unstated.] "Oh sage," Yanbushad was once asked, "why do you spend your life in waterless desert wastes, instead of attending the festivals of your people and observing their devotions?" He said, "If their form of worship were agreeable to me, I would not be averse to what they practice in their temples, and I would follow their path."
     "May your lord have mercy on you," the asker said. "Let us know exactly where their path goes wrong, and we will follow yours." Yanbushad remained silent, and gave no answer. The man repeated his question several times, at which Yanbushad fixed his gaze on him without speaking, until the asker turned away, crying, "Yanbushad is mad! Mad, I tell you!"

There is further evidence for Yanbushad's beliefs in his conformity with the Book of Agriculture of Anuha, whose views he upheld against those of Tamithra the Canaanite. Against Tamithra, who propagated the worship of idols, and ruled that abstainers should be imprisoned and flogged, Yanbushad was sharply critical, and wholly uncritical of Anuha, the famous rebel against the idolatry of his people who was subjected to corporal punishment and imprisoned for his beliefs. When Yanbushad told the story of Anuha's maltreatment by the people of his city, he took relish in narrating their destruction, and how their own god sent a rainstorm to their country and drowned the place, along with the territories of the numerous Greek and Chaldaean nations. Anuha alone was saved, and sought refuge in Egypt, and when the Egyptians drove him away they too were destroyed by a terrible famine.

From Nabataean Agriculture by Ibn Wahshiyya

Mercury of Babylon

Alchemy is the work through which gold and silver are produced without mining them. Its devotees say the first to speak of it was Hermes, the sage of Babel, and that when Babel's people were scattered he moved to Egypt and ruled it as a wise philosopher king. They credit him with a number of books on alchemical science, which he developed through theoretical research into the physical and spiritual properties of things. They also say he instituted the craft of making talismans, and credit him with a number of books on the subject, though the partisans of sempiternity date this craft and its origins to thousands of years before Hermes.

Abu Bakr al-Razi, who is Muhammad ibn Zakariya, says that no philosophical system is valid without a working theory of alchemy, and that no one ignorant of the science of alchemy can be called a philosopher. By this art, he says, the philosopher can do without other people, but they cannot do without the philosopher's scientific and practical insights. Some alchemists say their science was revealed by God, Magnified be His name, to a group of the work's devotees. Others say that God, be He Exalted, revealed it to Moses and Aaron the sons of ‘Imran, peace be upon them, and that they delegated the work to Korah, who enriched himself with gold and silver and waxed tyrannical. God, Blessed and Exalted be He, took note of this, and in answer to Moses's prayer, peace be upon him, He took the life of Korah amidst his treasures.

Al-Razi claims elsewhere that many philosophers were schooled in the work, including Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, and last of all Galen. Modern authorities have books and teachings on it, as did the ancients, and about these matters God knows best. In summarizing them here, I cannot be blamed, for I do not imitate either group.

On the Bablylonian Hermes. Accounts of him differ. Some say he was one of seven ministers appointed to protect the Seven Houses, with the house of ‘Uṭārid assigned to Hermes. Mercury in the Chaldaean language is named ‘Uṭārid, and by this name Hermes was called. For one reason or another they say he migrated to the land of Egypt, where he was the wisest man of the age, and that he ruled the place and fathered sons there named Ṭāṭ, Ṣā, Ushmun, Athrīb, and Qifṭ. After his death, he was interred at Egypt's capital in a construction called Abū Hirmis, now known as "The Two Pyramids." One pyramid houses Hermes's tomb, and the other his wife's—or, by another account, it is the tomb of the son who succeeded Hermes to Egypt's throne.

From the Fihrist of (Ibn) al-Nadim

Rebus erudire

When you ask the meaning of a word, whether from a native speaker or a scholar, the answer is sometimes in their actions and not their words.
      Al-Asma‘i said that ‘Isa ibn ‘Umar asked the poet Dhu 'l-Rumma about the meaning of naḍnāḍ. "All he did was flicker his tongue at me," ‘Isa said. Ibn Durayd reports this anecdote in Jamharat al-lugha, where he defines the verb naḍnaḍa as what a snake does with the tongue in its head, and says the snake is called al-naḍnāḍ for this reason.
      In his commentary on Adab al-kuttab, al-Zajjaji reports that when someone asked the poet Ru’ba about the word shanab [which is the dewy glow of a young person's teeth], he made them look at a pomegranate seed.
      Al-Qali reports in his Dictations that when al-Asma‘i was asked about the ‘awāriḍ of a man's beard [which cover his cheeks], he placed his hands on his cheeks above the ‘awāriḍ of his teeth [which are the bicuspids].

From Bringer of Light to the Language Sciences by Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti

Sharjah memories

Blue Souk, October 2023

Muwashshahat al-Nuniyya

This muwashshaha, in which Ibn al-Wakil incorporated hemistichs from the Nuniyya of Ibn Zaydun, is one of the most remarkable poems I have come across:

                Our death has been announced.
                The crier proclaims our sentence.
             Were we unschooled in sorrow, it would do us in

                The sea of love drowns
                all who try to swim it,
                     and all who fret and moon
                     the fire of love scorches.
                Many's the young hero
                whose sleep it takes away.
                     It racks and ruins bodies
                     and makes the days turn
             Lightless, when our nights with you were brilliant

                Dear confidant, mine own,
                stay a while and hear me out.
                     Beware of giving in to passion,
                     it'll burn you up.
                An ordeal to be avoided!
                So hear and spread the word.
                     The sea of love is bitter.
                     Heedless, we dove in
             And at once the crier announced our annihilation

                When hopes turn to fine young things
                you are in for disquiet.
                     My efforts were for
                     a gorgeous and inhumane lad.
                Though his only care was gift-getting,
                the favors he got he turned down.
                     And when he favored me
                     with caress or near miss,
             Morning replaced closeness with separation

                I call on all that
                ties us together: Unless
                     you restore our union
                     and relieve my burning eyes,
                this life of isolation
                will grind me down.
                     Let it be the way it was
                     with my kin and brethren
             When the wellspring of our joys was unpolluted

                I call on the community
                that flees this lovelorn fool,
                     breaking faith with him
                     for no wrong done.
                It shouldn't be like this.
                It is a social ill.
                     They scant the damage done
                     by their estrangement
             Though ever was estrangement lovers' ruin

                O you who crowd my willow!
              "By the even and the odd,"
                     and the Ant and the Criterion,
                   "and the night when it passeth,"
                and al-Rahman and al-Hijr
                and the Bee, enlighten me:
                     Is it lawful in any religion
                     to kill a man with thirst
             For one whose pure love used to fill my cup?

                O seeker after rain!
                Turn aside at the wadi
                     of the people of Badr.
                     Mayhap your thirst
                will be quenched by a torrent
                if you stand among them and call out:
                   "Bring me to life,
                     and bring me kind word
             From a distant one whose word alone can revive me"

                My days go by
                as if they were years.
                     It used to be the
                     other way round.
                The days flew by like erotic dreams.
                I wish they'd never ended,
                     and a cup of
                     Mixed wine went flew
             between us, and the singers were singing our song

From The Whiff of Scent from a Green Bough of al-Andalus
by Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Maqqari

Fairuz and Wadi al-Safi, "Ghada Munadina."

From Qasidat al-Hubb (Baalbek, 1973).

Lyrics by Sadr al-Din ibn al-Wakil

Another biter busted

Ahmad ibn Yahya Tha‘lab was one of Ibn Abu 'l-‘Abbas ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Mu‘tazz's teachers. It is narrated that, after some time apart, Ibn al-Mu‘tazz missed him sorely, and wrote to him (meter: rajaz):

      A man in fetters thirsts
      for water from cold rainclouds sent careening
      by the wind, unsullied, unmuddied,
      shed in abundance by dark cloud cover,
      wetting the rock and coating it like reflective glass
      that would flash if the sun hit it,
      unmixed rainwater, clean and pure—
      what passion equals his desire, if not mine for you?
      And yet I dread you. Unlocker of barred knowledge,
      you are the sharp-eyed language critic who,
      if he says, "That's no good," then it won't fly.
      Now we are apart, and far from one another,
      but recollection reunites us, even though we don't unite.

Tha‘lab answered his student: "May God prolong your life! You took the opening lines from that poem of Jamil's I dictated to you: (meter: ṭawīl)

      Women thirsting at a spring. Day and night
          they hover, weakened, shrinking from the blows of rods,
      never turning away and never getting
          close enough to touch cool water.
      On every drop, their eyes are fixed. The water-keepers' voices
          are all they hear. With death for a barrier,
      are they thirstier than I, who rave in love for you,
          despite the opposition of the foe?

"And you took the closing lines from Ru’ba ibn al-‘Ajjaj!" (meter: rajaz)

      Although you do not see me, I am
      your brother still. You need vigilance, and my eye is on you,
      and I love what it sees, whether or not you are seeing me.

Ibn al-Mu‘tazz was open to his teacher's reproach, and accepted it without resentment. It is said that, later on, Tha‘lab wrote to him (meter: basīṭ):

      Tell this to your brother. Although he's far away,
          and we are not together, really we are,
      for my gaze is on his mental image
          while our homes are far apart.
      God knows I cannot recollect him.
          How to recollect the one you never forget?

From A Selection from the Poetry of Bashshar by the Khalidi brothers

What the hoopoe said

Far from great in make, I did what Solomon could not, for all his never-to-be-equaled kingdom, and brought him knowledge of what he and all his host did not suspect. Everywhere he journeyed, as swiftly as he went I would go with him, pointing out where waters lay below the ground. Then there came the hour I was not there, and helplessly he stood before his retinue and said: "I do not see the hoopoe. Is it me, or has he gone missing? Harshly I will scourge him, or take away his life, unless he bring a lucid explanation." In his moment of need he missed me, and under color of his might he threatened to scourge or kill me—but a higher power said, "No, By God! I'll bring him back and put him on the right path."
        When I returned from Sheba and said, "I have knowledge you do not," his anger mounted. "Small offender, great offense!" he said. "Not only were you absent without leave, but now you claim more knowledge than I have!"
      "Give me protection, O Solomon," I said. "You have sought a kingdom that is never to be equaled, and I went seeking knowledge unsuspected by your host. With that, I come to you from from Sheba with a sure report." He said to me, "O Hoopoe, those who act rightly may be entrusted with royal missives. Go you forth with this one from me."
       Off I went, and back to Solomon I sped with the reply, and to his side he brought me near. After my time outside his inner circle, he brought me within, and in recognition of the need that I had met, he dressed my head in a crown of nobility. His orders for my death were abrogated, and the signs of my merits were openly proclaimed.

Now if you are of the sort who can accept advice, you will clean up your way of life, disburden your conscience, sweeten your character, beware your Creator, and adopt the best manners even if they are of the beasts. There is no place among the perspicacious for one who does not know how to interpret the creaking of a door, the buzzing of the flies, the barking of dogs, or the creeping vermin of the dust, and has no grasp of what is signified in the traces of the clouds, the flicker of the mirage, or the lightning that lights up the gloomy mist.

From Revelation of the Secret Wisdom of the Birds and Flowers
by 'Izz al-Din ibn Ghanim al-Maqdisi

His throne and lenticular cloud

ABU ‘UBAYD SAID: In hadith it is recorded that the Prophet, God's blessings and peace be upon him, said: "God's throne rests on the shoulders of Israfil, who is humble as a waṣa‘ in His presence."

Ahmad ibn ‘Uthman reported this hadith to me on the authority of Ibn al-Mundhir, who heard it from ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak, who heard it from Layth ibn Sa‘d, who heard it from ‘Uqayl on the authority of Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, who reported it with full isnad.

Al-waṣa‘ is said to be the runt of a sparrow's brood of chicks, or a species of bird resembling the sparrow, only smaller.

ABU ‘UBAYD SAID: In hadith it is recorded that the Prophet, God's blessings and peace be upon him, was asked by Abu Razin al-‘Uqayli: "Before our Lord created the heavens and the earth, where was He?" He answered: "He was in [the type of cloud called] an ‘amā’, with a void below it and a void above."

Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al-Farisi and others have related this hadith to me on the authority of Hammad ibn Salama, who heard it from Ya‘la ibn ‘Ata’, who heard it from Waqi‘ ibn Hudus (Hushaym corrects this name to ‘Udus in the isnad of a separate hadith), who was the nephew of Abu Razin and heard it from him directly.

According to al-Asma‘i and others, in the speech of the Arabs al-‘amā’ is a white cloud with horizontal extension. Al-Harith ibn Hilliza said (a variant of his Mu‘allaqa's 25th verse, meter: khafīf):

      Against the blows of fate, we're like the stony fastness
          whose summit the ‘amā’ leaves open space for.

He means by this a high mountain peak that parts the clouds. The "fastness" of al-Harith's people is their unassailability and security in strength, meaning that their defenses are stronger than whatever fate throws at them. And Zuhayr said, describing gazelles or oryx (meter: wāfir):

      They spy the lightning, and their brows are wetted
          when the South Wind's path is showered by the ‘amā’.

      We interpret this hadith according to the speech of the Arabs, and defer to their understanding. Only God knows the size and scale of His ‘amā’ and what it was like. The ‘amā that is "blindness" has nothing to do with the meaning of the hadith.

From Uncommon Vocabulary of Prophetic Hadith by
Abu ‘Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam

Two by Ibn al-Maghribi

There was a Hanafi jurist named Baqbaq who installed himself at the Mustansiriyya Madrasa, and when the professor Kamal al-Din ibn al-Ibari died a few days later, Ibn al-Maghribi composed this mawali about him:

          Can you recite from memory a thousand rulings by Quduri?
          How about a thousand lines of Abu Hafs?
                [Ibn al-Ibari was equal to it,] but without cribsheets
                 old Baqbaq gets lost
          You're a bird of evil omen in human form,
          and bad vibes are your only share
                If you'd only pull up stakes and travel on—
                Hey screech owl! Disappear to anywhere

And in jest he addressed these verses to a friend of his (meter: sarī‘):

          Well done, my hoopoe of Bilqis!
              Well done, my permit of Iblis!
          My spy amid the sodomites
              and to the youth my go-between!
          Up now, to the monastery!
              Drink with me to clanging bells,
          where liquid gold that flows in cups
              is ransomed by what's hard and cold.
          The branches on the spreading tree
              are clothed in beauty, don't you see?
          When joy comes to your frowny face
              the cloud of gloom above our heads
          will be made shade of wings of doves
              and peacock tails in fans outspread

From Choice Notices of the Historical Record by Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi