Alexander the Sleepless XX

Then the Enemy of Truth got in Alexander's face and bellowed: "Why do you bedevil me before my appointed time? Mine own Master and my Judge are unto me." Consequently, the judges took no just decision, and their judgment went against the greater judge. They took it in hopes he would be torn apart by the people [of Constantinople] and the Devil's shield-bearers. But Alexander took courage from God's protection, and made his way through their midst, for the mob were smitten by a terror of the Lord, and their mentality fell apart.

[....] When that battle was stopped by the power of Christ, Truth's Enemy did not keep silent, but schemed and did everything he could to arrest the incessant hymn-singing that was mobilized against him. Considering how often states and nations are betrayed by their own citizens, he hit upon the tactic of enlisting confederates of Alexander's own rank. And together with his holy brethren, the blessed one was seized, and clapped in chains and beaten. Their hymn-singing was arrested for several days, and the brethren and the holy powers were awash in grief, for all were hauled back [to their monasteries of origin] by their former shepherds on [episcopal] command.

From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.49-50

Ahmad of the Seventh Day I.1

I was told by Abu 'l-Qasim Hibat Allah ibn Ahmad al-Hariri that Abu Talib Muhammad ibn ‘Ali ibn Fath al-‘Ashari said: It was reported to me by Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ghalib al-Khwarazmi that Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Mizki told him: ‘Abu 'l-‘Abbas Muhammad ibn Ishaq al-Thaqafi heard from ‘Ali ibn al-Muwaffaq that ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Faraj [al-Qantari] said:

I went out one day in search of a man to repair something in my home. One was pointed out to me with a promising countenance, and a shovel and a basket in his hands. "You'll work for me?" I asked him. "Yes," he said, "for a dirham and a daniq." "Come along," I said, and that is how he began doing jobs for me at the rate of one dirham and one daniq.

There came a day I sought him out and was told: "That guy only shows up once a week. On Fridays, never." So I went on the appointed day and asked him, "Will you work for me?" "I will," he said, "for a dirham and a daniq." "One dirham only," I said. "A dirham and a daniq," he said. "Come along," I told him, for I desired his services, even though I had no daniq on me.

When evening came, I laid my dirham on him. "What's this?" he said. "One dirham," I told him. "Ugh," he said. "Didn't I tell you: 'One dirham and one daniq'? You're doing me wrong."
      "And did I not say: 'One dirham'?" I asked him. "I'm not taking anything from this guy," he muttered. And when I offered him the equivalent of one dirham and one daniq, he refused to accept. "Glory to God," he said, "I told you I won't take it, and still you pester me," and went away.
      My family confronted me over this. "What in God's name made you so intent on getting the man's work for a dirham, that you would cheat him?" they said.

Some days later, I went asking after him. "He's not well," they told me. So I asked for directions to his house, where I knocked and entered to find him doubled over with a stomach complaint. Aside from his shovel and his basket, the place was empty.
      "Peace be upon you," I said to him. "There's something I need from you, and [do not refuse me, because] you know that bringing happiness to another believer is a meritorious act. I wish for you to come to my home and let me care for you."
      "That's what you wish for?" he said. "Yes," I said. "Okay," he said, "on three conditions." "Go ahead," I told him.
       He said: "The first is that you don't give me any food unless I ask for it. The second is that you bury me in these clothes, if I should die." I assented to both these things.
      "The third condition is more severe than either of these," he said. "It is strenuous indeed."
      "Whatever you say," I said, and loaded him onto my back and carried him home. [Continued.]

From The Lamp that Sheds Its Brightness on the Caliphate of al-Mustadi’ by Ibn al-Jawzi; cf. Characters of Integrity by the same author

Alexander the Sleepless XIX

Alexander's service was carried out to perfection, with God's help, and his disciples were far advanced in their faith. They took so much joy in their psalms and hymns and peaceful way of life that the Enemy was outraged at the sight, and went against the noble athlete like an army going to war.

Before armies charge at each other in unison with swords drawn, and victory goes to the stronger force, they fire missiles from far away, and that is how the Enemy began. For fifty years he had battled Alexander, and always the battle went against him, and the man remained unbroken. Now, for one last time, the Enemy joined all his demonic forces to a population he had recruited from humanity and, hurling his bolt against the slave of God, made his advance.

And so word went to the eparchs that Alexander the monk was a heretic, out to defile the church of God. But with his prayers to see him through, the blessed one's enemies couldn't even stand up to his shadow, so to speak. For it is in the nature of falsehood to be ruined by the truth. To state the truth opaquely, righteousness made it through the storm.

The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.48

 HANDS AT WORK 

Tent Weaving   

 

Woven panel of a Bedouin bayt mushatta (winter tent); wool and goat hair (detail).
Souq Al Qattara, Al Ain, Abu Dhabi. Photograph by Omar Al-Yammahi, 2015

In the poetic tradition of a tent-dwelling society, you would expect to hear a lot about domestic weaving. Modern ethnography tells us that several times a year, the women of the Bedouin household must weave a new tent panel, called a flīj, to replace one that's wearing out, and that a single flīj takes about three days. And yet descriptions of tent-weaving are vanishingly hard to find in the first three centuries of Arabic poetry.

Partly it's a matter of selection. The poetry that survives from the 6th to 8th centuries CE was recorded by latter-day scholars of Iraq, so our purview is limited to verse that didn’t clash with their ideals of taste and ideology—nor the ideals of the ruwāt, who were the generations of oral transmitters between the scholars and the early poets. If the invisibility of Bedouin women's labor (not just textile craft but cooking, childcare, and their other duties) wasn't imposed in these later periods, then it owes to the early period itself.

Weaving the goat-hair tent. Palestine. Source: Jahalin Solidarity, 2020

Skill in tent-weaving was nothing for male poets to boast about. Consider the line by al-Samaw’al of the mid-6th century (meter: wāfir):

           Formidable is the house I raise, not of clay
               or wood, and formidable the glory I bring forth.

In the poet's disdain for permanent constructions, his pride in tent-dwelling is implicit. Bayt, the word for "house," really means "tent" (as well as "verse," which complicates things a little—or a lot, actually. At a glance, there is no way to tell if بيت الشعر means "verse of poetry" or "tent of goat hair"). In any case, al-Samaw’al claims no responsibility for the tent's manufacture, nor for setting it up and taking it down, all of which is women's work.

In classical parlance, the flīj is called falīja, as in a stray verse by the Umayyad-era poet ‘Umar ibn Laja’ (meter: wāfir):

           He went clothed in nothing but
               the worn-out scrap of a falīja.

And for other components of the Bedouin tent, more loci could be cited. But if you find a mention of tent-weaving as technique or process in early Arabic poetry, then what you've found is precious and rare. Other textile crafts are mentioned with regularity—matweaving, for one—but with regard to domestic Bedouin weaving there seems almost to be a conspiracy of silence. This leads me to issue not a challenge but a plea. If you know of a reference to tent-weaving in the first three centuries of Arabic poetry, please let me know, either at my faculty email or writing dot gathering dot field at gmail dot com, and you'll be thanked by name in Hands at Work.

As a show of good faith, here is one reference I can show, in a pair of verses by the pre-Islamic warlord Durayd ibn al-Simma (meter: ṭawīl):

      "The cavalry have felled a knight!” they cried to each other,
           at which I told ‘Abd Allah: “They’re the ones who are going down,”
       and he called back as spears went for him on that morning
           the way a stretched weaving is struck by ṣayāṣī.

A ṣīṣiya, pl. ṣayāṣī, is a weaving tool, and literally it is a "horn," and when you see one in the hand of a present-day Bedouin weaver you'll understand why:

Gazelle horn used in al-Sadu weaving, Kuwait. Photographs by Rana Al-Ogayyel, 2019

The meaning of the verses is that ‘Abd Allah came unhurt through the fight. The enemy's spears went at him without touching him, just as ṣayāṣī pass between warp threads and cause no harm. I believe the simile affords a glimpse of domestic weaving in the pre-Islamic period, and the fact that the fabric is horizontally "outstretched" (mumaddad) only strengthens my conviction. Because the Bedouin weave on ground looms, not upright ones.

And that's how far you have to go for a peek at pre-Islamic Bedouin weaving. If you wonder why this matters, I guess I don't blame you, unless you've been researching textiles in Arabic poetry as obsessively as I have. And even then the stakes might not be well apparent. The silence surrounding domestic weaving in poetry of the pre- and early Islamic periods has been remarked on by no one that I know of. One thing that makes this silence hard to recognize is the nostalgic esteem in which traditional weaving is held today, the institutional protection it receives (from Kuwait's Al Sadu Society, the House of Artisans in Abu Dhabi, the Sharjah Institute for Heritage, etc.), and its recognition by UNESCO, all of which make it seem that Bedouin weaving has been neglected only in recent times. The true history of the matter is unknown to me, but I know it is more complicated than that.

I take seriously David Hume's age-old caution that causality and the answers to "why" questions aren't subject to logical proof. So when it comes to explaining why something is not, how much more caution is needed? But the mind is restless, and fumbles for answers, and in the book I'm writing I'll share mine. It's not the only silence in poetry to be made sense of.