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 the frowning 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

Asking for a friend

I'm intrigued to discover how much of al-Safadi's Tadhkira (Memoranda) is still extant, including parts 27–30 which are currently for sale, separately bound in morocco leather (except for part 27 which is incomplete and appears to be loose). Hopefully, the buyer won't disappear with them, but make them available to the public. Somewhere there is someone who needs this manuscript more than Gollum needs the ring, and would do wonderful things with what they find there. And they don't have €144,200 to blow. I know this because with regard to part 23 I am that someone. Let me explain.

     
Last page of part 27 of al-Safadi's Tadhkira, courtesy INLIBRIS     

Taqi al-Din ‘Ali ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Jabir was a poet of Baghdad known as Ibn al-Maghribi. He died in his forties in the year 1285, so at the time the Mongols took over he was in his teens. He was what they call a "secretary poet," that is a civil servant who wrote poetry on the side, as opposed to a "court poet" whose whole entire job was poetry. But his work was much esteemed, and was published in one volume by his friend Qawam al-Din Turki, probably after the poet's death. I have no hope that this volume will ever be recovered.
      What's left of Ibn al-Maghribi's poetry is preserved in biographical dictionaries. There are fewer than a dozen poems and (with two panegyric exceptions) they are all bangers. I've done several of them (1, 2, 3) and am committed to translating them all, but if someone else jumps in I won't mind because they're obscenely difficult.
      They're also kind of obscene. His poetic specialty was mujun "drollery" and khala‘a "boasting about stuff that can get you in serious trouble." These aren't genres, exactly, but modes, of prose as well as poetry, which brings me to the favor I am asking.
      Ibn al-Maghribi is credited with a prosimetrum treatise called "The Epistle of the Two Luminaries," which is how I'm translating Risalat al-Nayyirayn for the time being. It seems to be about a love triangle. The "luminaries" he means are the sun and moon. Ibn Abi Hajala quotes two bits from it in Diwan al-Sababa, and you can read them here.
      It pains me to report that Risalat al-Nayyirayn is listed on the title page of Universität Tübingen Ma VI 70, and must have been contained in the forty pages now missing from that manuscript. The only other trace of it to surface is in al-Safadi's biographical entry for the poet: "Ibn al-Maghribi also has an epistle known as 'The Two Luminaries,' written in the style of Ibn al-Wahrani—an excellent treatise which I copied into part 23 of my Tadhkira."

       
Title page of part 28 of al-Safadi's Tadhkira, courtesy INLIBRIS       

Other parts of the Tadhkira are out there. Part 14 is prized for its selection of Ibn Daniyal's poems and has been published. Chester Beatty MS 3861 contains it, together with parts 24–26, and hipsters know where to find the microfilm. I found one unnumbered part at the National Library of Iran without trying. Karabulut shows parts of it in Cairo and Istanbul, Brockelmann has them at the Bodleian, the Escurial, the British Library, the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, some God-forsaken "Ind. Off." and at this point my impatience has summated.
      I don't know if manuscript research seems fun or glamorous but it's not. You spend most of your time looking at screens. There is no limit to the amount of time I could lose to the search if it became my project, and so I am going public with this rant of a plea, or "crowd sourcing" it, if you will. If you or someone you know is sitting on part 23 of al-Safadi's Tadhkira, please reveal it. I don't need to be the one who locates it, but I do need to edit and translate Risalat al-Nayyirayn. I know how entitled this sounds, and guess what? Ibn al-Maghribi and I are way past that. Send the manuscript to my work email, or writing dot gathering dot field at gmail dot com, and doubly you will be on the right side of literary history, helping out two mujun poets at the same time.

Windblowed

This verse is by Jamil (meter: ṭawīl):

      I wish I had the power to forget her! But
          every way I go, it's like Layla's there.

It's been said that he would absent himself from [Buthayna] for fear the Evil Eye would turn her against him:

Abu Ahmad [al-Hasan ibn ‘Abd Allah al-‘Askari] learned these verses of his from [Abu Bakr Muhammad] al-Suli, who heard them from both Ahmad ibn Yahya [Tha‘lab] and Ahmad ibn Sa‘id al-Dimashqi, who heard them from al-Zubayr [ibn Bakkar], and he taught them to me (meter: ṭawīl):

      She stuck with me long enough for me to dread the Eye.
          Two days I stayed away, fearing separation.
      I found it hard. It tested my endurance, but not hers.
          My darling found my absence no vexation.

In this vein, Abu Ahmad taught me some eloquent verses by Ibrahim ibn al-‘Abbas [al-Suli], which he heard from [the other] al-Suli, who heard them from both Tha‘lab and Abu Dhakwan, who heard them directly from the poet (meter: ṭawīl):

      A passing East wind buffets the scrubland lodger.
          The stirring of that wind just breaks my heart,
      that East wind lately come from where my beloved is.
          What soul is safe from passion where the beloved used to stay?
      And now there dawns awareness of despair inside of me,
          with the sensation of your strike against my soul.

Ibrahim "raided" this motif from Dhu 'l-Rumma, who said (meter: ṭawīl):

      When wind kicks up from the direction
          of Mayy and her people, I am kicked by longing too,
      and passion wrings the tears out of my eyes.
          What soul is safe from passion where the beloved used to stay?

Al-‘Abbas ibn al-Ahnaf had a different take on it (meter: ṭawīl):

      North winds of heartbreak
          are all I see from you, Zalum.
      When you break us up through no fault of mine,
          they'll lay fault for it with you.
      My complaint is old, her rebuff nothing new,
          but the shock of it is ever renewed.

From The Register of Poetic Motifs by Abu Hilal al-‘Askari