A short treatise on isolation

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

God's prayers be upon our master, His Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and companions, and upon them be peace.

It is narrated from ‘Umar ibn Jabir al-Lakhmi that Abu Umayya said:
     I asked Abu Tha‘laba al-Khushani about the Qur’anic verse: "O you who believe! You are responsible for your own souls." He said, "You're asking someone well-informed in the matter, for I asked God's Prophet, God's blessings and peace be upon him, about this same verse. He said, 'Abu Tha‘laba, command each other to do what's right, and forbid each other from doing what's wrong. But if you see that this world below is being preferred [to the world to come], and that avarice has taken over, and that everyone glories in their own opinion, then you are responsible for your own soul.'"
     Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti said: "Rightly it is said that the commentary in this hadith has come to pass in the present time, and that we are in Doomsday's courtyard, and the very staging-ground of Resurrection.

It is the year 1349 after the Prophet's Emigration, prayers and peace be upon him, (=1930 or 1931 CE) and O brother! Take care not to despise those who isolate from people in these times, for it is now necessary. Even in early times, there were people who isolated themselves in dread of wicked new practices that became prevalent in their day.
     In his book Jurisprudence of Essential Entities according to the True Meanings of the Qur’an, Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti, may God have mercy on him, says [quoting al-Ghazali's The Way for Worshipers to Make it into the Garden of the Lord of the Two Worlds]: "When one has ascertained that the harm that comes from socializing with people as religious duty stipulates is greater than the harm of abandoning that duty, then in that case one is excused from it. I saw in Mecca, may God protect it"—this is in one of al-Suyuti's books, may God have mercy on him—"I saw in Mecca, may God protect it, one of the senior religious scholars who practiced seclusion. He did not attend congregational prayers at the Holy Mosque, even though it was right nearby, and there was nothing wrong with his health. One day, I asked him about the infrequency of his attendance, and he gave the same excuse that I have indicated here, which is that being in the presence of the Curtain [covering the Ka‘aba] was not worth all the vices he had to come into contact with, and the negative consequences arising from going to the mosque and meeting people.
    "In summary, for one thus excused, there is no reproach. And excuses are up to God, be He Exalted, for he knows what is contained in every breast."

I say: Take care, O brother, not to despise those who take their faith and flee, and pray in seclusion in their homes, leaving the mass of humanity behind, since this is necessary practice of the end times. Prayer in isolation is now made licit, given the deficiency of prayer-leaders in our time, and this is according to requisites laid down by scholars.
     In the commentary by Muhammad Mayyara on The Helpful Guide of Ibn ‘Ashir, which is entitled The Pearl of Great Price, he says regarding the necessary education of the prayer-leader: "Fourthly, he must know the fundamentals of prayer, which are the necessary recitations and other regulations whose inobservance makes prayer go wrong. On the subject of recitation, Ibn al-Qasim says in the Compilation of Imam Malik: 'If one with correct knowledge of the Qur’an is led in prayer by one without correct knowledge, they must never allow it to happen again.'" The end.

Ahmed Baba Institute (Timbuktu) MS 17632 (fol. 1r, 1v-2r, 2v).
Author unknown.

Enslaved men and blacksmiths in the poems of Jarīr

         al-Bayzār "Plowman" : The name of a slave
         Baghthar "Not Too Bright" : The name of a slave
         Thu‘āla "The Fox" : A slave of Mujāshi‘
         al-Jaythalūṭ [Unspecific term of abuse] : A slave
         Dāsim "Mindful Worker" : The name of a blacksmith
         Za‘‘āb "Bearer of Heavy Loads" : A blacksmith belonging to Ṣa‘ṣa‘a
         al-Zubbayyān (sic) [al-Waqbān?] :
               A slave belonging to [Ṣa‘ṣa‘a's mother] Qufayra
         Shuqār "Red" : The name of a slave
         Ibn Ṣam‘ā’ "Son of the Woman with Dainty Ears" : A freedman
         Ḍāṭir "Big Guy" : A slave
         Qunābir (sic) : A slave
         Masrūḥ "Easy-going" : A blacksmith belonging to
               Ṣa‘ṣa‘a and Qufayra
         Makḥūl "Sooty" : A slave belonging to Taym
         Hurmuz [A royal name of Persia deriving from Ahura Mazda]:
               A slave belonging to Qufayra

A prosopography by Dr. Nu‘mān Muḥammad Amīn Ṭāhā, editor of
Muḥammad ibn Ḥabīb's Commentary on the Collected Poems of Jarīr

 HANDS AT WORK 

The Poison Shirt 

 

Resist-dyed textile fragment; cotton (detail).
Yemen, 10th century CE. Metropolitan Museum of Art

Anyone who reads Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber will be struck by chapter 10's surmise that the deadly poison robes of mythology had a basis in chemical fact. Tetraarsenic tetrasulfide is a soft red mineral known as realgar (and sandarakē to the ancient Greeks), which like other compounds of arsenic would be excellent dyestuff if it weren't lethal to the touch. Not right away (as in the story of Medea's rampage at Corinth), but over time: Barber estimates it would take a month of wearing realgar next to the skin to kill a person, and this might be reflected in the protracted throes of Heracles, which went on long enough for him to avenge himself while still alive.

Francisco de Zurbarán, The Death of Hercules (1634)
Oil on canvas, 136 x 167cm (53½" x 65¾"), Museo del Prado

A recent article by Teddy Fassberg on the "The Greek Death of Imru’ al-Qays" confirms that the poet's legendary assassination by poison robe (al-Jahiz calls it a shirt) derives from the death of Heracles. But other iterations of the motif in Arabic are independent of this tradition, e.g., the punitive "robes of fire" tailored in the Islamic afterlife for unbelievers to wear. Here I would like to share an original, unconventional example of poisoned cloth in Arabic poetry—the poetry of Jarir (d. ca. 110 A.H./728 CE), which is basically a 40-year torrent of invective against his contemporary poets. And invective is the main type of poetry that textile metaphor was used to describe.

Metaphors of weaponry would seem more appropriate to the purpose, and sure enough, spearheads, arrows, and flung stones—missiles that inflict damage from a distance—are common figures for the social injuries that abusive verse can do. For Jarir, these were either too tame or old hat; in any case, his metaphors draw on more intimate forms of harm, two in particular. One is poison, and the other is amputation of the nose (jad‘), brought together in these verses (meter: kāmil):

      I prepared for the poets a fatal poison,
         serving the last of them with the first draught,
      laying my branding-iron on al-Farazdaq,
         and docking al-Akhtal's nose while al-Ba‘ith yelps out loud. 

On the subject of facial mutilation, Hands at Work has a lot to say. It was characteristically an enslaved person's ordeal, and a slave's marking in the ancient Near East, including Greece which is how we got the word stigma. But poison is what's at issue here. Again and again, Jarir brags of forcing his rivals to drain cups of it. Exactly what kind of poison, I wish I knew, though it has little bearing on the metaphor. Poison is Jarir's figure for the efficacy of his poetry, i.e., its power to diminish the social capital of his rivals through abuse and taunting, and this metaphor is easy to understand. That weaving should be a figure for the same thing, indeed a traditional, conventional figure, is relatively counter-intuitive, and that is why Hands at Work had to be written.

The poison cloth of Jarir is woven from these two metaphors. Small wonder that it comes with facial mutilation bundled in, along with casual prejudice against metalworkers (so typical of nomadic societies of the Near East), making these verses a "quadfecta" of Arabic invective poetry (meter: kāmil):

      O son of blacksmiths, long have you tested me,
         and long have I pulled free where thongs are tied.
      What comes of my eternal return to al-Farazdaq? Be it known
         that what Mujashi‘ gets is nothing to celebrate.
      Mujashi‘'s nose has been docked by poems
         of poison whose weft was woven on the beam of a loom.

Does Jarir's toxic weave allude to the death of Imru’ al-Qays? If so, he doesn't make it obvious. It seems to result inadvertently from the cramming of three metapoetic images into a single line. But I'm not one to insist. The important thing here is that textile craft is very far from signifying pro-social artistry or aesthetic beauty. For Jarir, it is an instrument of deadly abuse, more like Clytemnestra's "net of Hades" than the fancy carpet Agamemnon walks in on. What makes a net admirable is its efficacy, and this is what Jarir boasts of in his poetry: its power to incapacitate the foe, leaving them unable to answer (meter: basīṭ):

      I repaired to the grave heaped over Marran
         when a delusional poet confronted me in anger.
      His hauteur had gone unchallenged, and amid his sons
         who were likewise haughty, he embroiled us in unrest.
      By us was the oppressor beat back and refuted, and led away
         in cuffs of leather that were stoutly plaited.

  

Now for three notes to the above. (1) I have a new book of poems out, and on pages 12-13 there is one called "The Poison Shirt" whose inspiration by Jarir is unmistakable.

  

(2) As someone who always credits my secondary sources, I am pleased to acknowledge a valuable article by Abdulkarim Yakoub and Samar Eskander, "al-Ṣinā‘a al-shi‘riyya fī mafhūm al-shu‘arā’ al-Umawiyyīn" (Poetic Craft as Understood by Poets of the Umayyad Era), appearing in Majallat Dirāsāt al-Lugha wa-Ādābihā (Syria) 12 (2014), 139-62, where the first two passages from Jarir are cited. The third is in Ibn Qutayba's Big Book of [Verses with Obscure] Meanings, where last installment's verse by Aws ibn Hajar also appears.

   

(3) Previewing unpublished research like this is not without risk. An unethical competitor might follow the leads I have indicated, and steal into print with them before I'm through. But anyone tempted to make uncredited use of the material in these date-stamped blog posts may be assured that, like a second Jarir, I will dump poison all over you, and your career will be finished, and that will be that ©

Alexander the Sleepless XVI

The blessed one reflected on the zeal and faith he observed in the brothers and the magnitude of their devotion. What could this mean? Through the Holy Spirit, it dawned on him that even in these quarters he was being called to wage the struggle. Energized by this conclusion, he made himself ready, and prayed for Christ's will to be done swiftly. And God, Who loves humanity, was swift to answer his prayer. 

Alexander took up residence near the shrine of the sainted martyr Menas, and within a few days there flocked to him noble athletes of Christ out of every monastery in the area—three hundred of them, all sound of mind, belonging to three races: Romans, Greeks, and Syrians. To fulfill his mission of hymn-singing without pause, Alexander separated them into six groups, and schooled them in monastic poverty, molding everything after the pattern of his old rule. Within a matter of days, the hierarchy he laid out was ordered as to every virtue, and the basis for their struggle was made plain to all. For he grouped them in tens and fifties, ordaining decarchs and penetecontarchs to lead them, and hourly they poured their strength into singing the praises of God.

On beholding their systemized struggle, their ceaseless hymn-singing, their immaculate poverty, and the incredible mysteries made no less wondrous by the evident truth of their accomplishment, the commonfolk of the city came devoutly to Alexander as a benefactor and teacher, and inhaled his teachings about hope and the life to come. Before long, he had become the harbor of salvation and educator of justice for all. When he was silent, his life gave continual voice, crying its admonishments aloud against the adulterators of God's commandments, while his free and unrestrained speech excoriated the unrepentant. Above all, though, it was seeing the extremities of poverty the brothers took on, and the severity of their discipline, and the fact that their possessions were limited to parchments containing the holy scriptures, and their capacity for singing hymns without pause, and the bodiless way they inhabited their bodies—it was seeing all these things that roused the people's astonishment and praise of God, Who had revealed His incredible mysteries even in those quarters.

The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.43-4

 HANDS AT WORK 

A Poem Is a Mantle  
of Resist-Dyed Weave  

Resist-dyed textile fragment; cotton; with pseudo-Kufic script in gold leaf (detail).
Yemen, 9th-10th centuries CE. Cooper Hewitt Museum

In how many ways is a poem like a robe? Don't make me count them. Whatever answer works for you intuitively is probably fine. For instance, texts and woven things are alike the products of cumulative effort—a likeness with no basis in etymology, history of technology, or any domain but practical experience to prove that it is so. You could call it a truism, or an apothegm, or (why not) a universal truth.

In early Arabic poetry, the analogy is not so multivalent. It is under specific circumstances that Arab poets of the 6th-8th centuries CE compare their work to textile craft, and to a specific textile form. Let me tell you about it, after answering one "so what" question that makes this more than a matter of antiquarian curiosity.

Since the 9th century, Arabic prose writers have been eloquent about the ways in which poetry is a craft like weaving (nasj) or the ordering of pearls on a string (naẓm), to the point that nasj and naẓm became synonymous with poetry itself (shi‘r). I don't like to say this is "well known," but it is comparatively well studied since Abdelfattah Kilito's 1979 article. Meanwhile, what the poets actually said about their poetry, in their poetry—the boasts they made of it and the similes they coined for it—is mostly ignored, and a lot of important social information along with it. What effects did the
poets think they were accomplishing through their work? That information is available, if you read what they say about their poetry, and what they compare their poetry to.

Take fabrics. Early Arab poets mention different types of cloth imported from different places (Egypt, Syria, Persia), and very rarely Arabian homespun. But when they say their poem is like a robe, it is a specific type of weaving that they reference: a striped cotton mantle made in Yemen of resist-dyed weave (a forerunner of Indonesian ikat). In collections in the US and Canada there are examples dating to the 9th and 10th centuries, many with bands of pseudo-Kufic writing in gold leaf (as pictured here).

This style of weaving is mentioned in an enigmatic verse by Aws ibn Ḥajar, a poet of the mid-sixth century (meter: ṭawīl):

               When people rush at me in angry temper
                   I deck them out, marking them with fine, striped raiment
                       (kasawtuhumu min ḥabri bazzin mutaḥḥami).

I say the verse is "enigmatic" because it appeared in an anthology of enigmatic verses by Ibn Qutayba, who glossed it like this:
    "Mutaḥḥam (striped) is an epithet of the garment he makes out to be al-atḥamī, which is a variety of Yemeni mantle. 'I deck them out in the very best of that type of garment,' he says. But this is a similitude, meaning 'I besmirch them in verse, and [the effect] is as evident as if they went dressed in these garments.'"
      In other words, Aws is not talking about donations of fine clothes (as Geyer thought). What he says is that the object of his invective versecraft is marked out and made conspicuous, as if by an attention-getting robe. The atḥamī robe is defined by al-Aṣma‘ī as "a resist-dyed mantle of Yemen without embroidery," looking maybe like the ikat fragment pictured here.

But the true keyword of Aws's verse is ḥabr. Dedicated readers of early Arabic poetry are well acquainted with cognates of this word, which name the genre of Yemeni mantle that atḥamī weave belongs to. Historians of Islamic art know the stuff too (see Vera-Simone Schulz, "Crossroads of Cloth," for references), but between resist-dye weave as material artifact and poetic signifier the correlation has been made by exactly no one until this blog post. When it is laid out in Hands at Work, the reader will gain access to something rare, and that is the chance to envision early Arabic poetry as it was conceived and represented by the poets themselves.