HANDS AT WORK 

Footnotes to Goldziher  

    

Resist-dyed textile fragment; cotton (detail). Yemen, 10th century CE.  
The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C.  

My research has entered the crucial phase where I crawl through five pages by Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921) on the subject of poetry and textiles. Since an early encounter with Mythology Among The Hebrews—a brash work of his 26th year, full of pre-structuralist thrills and spills of the kind you find in The Golden Bough of fourteen years later—I've been in awe of this scholar. To claim him as a predecessor would be arrogance enough, and now it's my job to check his work? But it's necessary, because the footnotes to these five pages from his 1896 essay on "Old and New Poetry in the Estimation of Arab Critics" are an absolute treasury of testimonia on the fiber arts, in particular the Yemeni robe called al-ḥibra and its cognates (muḥabbar, taḥbīr, etc). It is marvelous evidence, over fifty citations' worth, and tracking them down has increased my admiration for Goldziher, even as my interpretations clash with his.
      Since I began this project, it's bothered me that I would have to critique Goldziher, but I'm more serene about it now. To center his work of 130 years ago and devote this much attention to it is the greatest tribute I'm able to pay.

   

Undated photograph of Ignaz Goldziher by Ellinger Ede.           
Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, MS. 10.206/39

       

To begin, I say yet again that no answer can be wrong, if the question be "How is a poem like a woven thing?" I also warn against projecting private intuitions onto tradition globally. Whatever connection between texts and textiles you believe in, it is risky to assume your hunch is everywhere true.
      Goldziher's answer is explained with perfect clarity. What poetry has in common with robes of prestige manufacture is Schema, that is, "structure." It is due, he says, to the structural patterning of the pre-Islamic ode's components that such poems are compared to richly-patterned garments. And for many devotees of qasida poetry in Arabic—typically, a polythematic production punctuated by transitions that can be quite inventive—Goldziher's explanation suffices. If, however, they review the evidence, they'll find that when early Arab poets compare their work to luxury mantles, it's not poetic form but function that they're talking about, and the efficacy of their praise and blame. To appreciate this, you have to read Goldziher's tersely-quoted evidence in the context of whole poems.
      One of these I blogged in January: "I will help you out with taḥbīr of poetic odes" says al-Hakam ibn ‘Abdal to his cellmate. The phrase seems to suggest a long and intricate composition, which Goldziher takes at face value (I.129n4). But the poem is short, just five lines, and very far from "high" qasida style. In the form we have it, the poem is an invective brief that regrettably (but sensibly) omits the name of the poet's jailer.
      Al-Hakam is the earliest of Nefeli Papoutsakis's begging poets, and as far as I know he left behind no long-form odes in the classical mode. His most famous poem is has talking cartoon animals in it. Al-Hakam ibn ‘Abdal was an amazing poet, but emphatically not in the style Goldziher thought the taḥbīr of poetry to be.

       

Goldziher's prime example of the weave of poetry is al-ḥabīr al-musalsal, an evocative phrase from the Hudhalī diwan. Musalsal derives from silsila "chain," which Goldziher interprets as a metaphor for co-intrication of a poem's component parts. This is inconsistent with his (correct) reading of mirṭ muraḥḥal in the magnum opus of Imru’ al-Qays as "a cloak decorated with saddlery designs" (I.130n4). In accordance with that reading (and its well-attested paradigm), musalsal would describe a robe that is "decorated with chainlike forms." But what does it mean for a poem to be decorated in this way?
      For an answer, we may consult the rest of the poem likening itself to al-ḥabīr al-musalsal in the first verse. The poem is tricky, because it exists in at least two versions—one with 11 verses, the other 8—from two different recensions of the poems of the Hudhalī tribe (1, 2). The poet is Umayya ibn Abi ‘A’idh who was active at the turn of the eighth century CE. It is a poem of praise and mockery, the latter directed at a maternal branch of the poet's extended family, whom he calls "Layla" and compares unfavorably to one "Umm Nafi‘," a seeming byname of the poet's mother. The poem stresses that Layla's group has undergone a loss of status. They used to keep camels, but now they ride on asses, and among the Bedouin this is a mark of coming down in the world (meter: ṭawīl):

      You once praised Layla, so now praise Umm Nafi‘
          in verse like a luxury robe decorated with chainlike forms.
      And if you praised any other of Ka‘b ibn Kahil's children,
          your praise was truthful and did not err.
      If only Layla could keep pace with Umm Nafi‘
          at the arroyo of Tehama where folks congregate on a summer's day!
      Formerly, both their families were occupied
          with the best [of herds, i.e., camels] to be driven and dispatched
             to places far away.
      On that day, you won't be seeing Umm Nafi‘
          on a big-headed [ass] of the brood of Sa‘da come a-crupper,
      plodding behind a head of cattle
          whose guts resound when swollen—
      another class of beast, the kind loaded down
          by farmers and grape-growers from Mahwar to Mazi’.
      Rather, [you will see her] on a camel-stallion of noble white
          tacked out in saddlery, or on a long-necked camel-mare
              [whose flesh is thick and densely knit, as if woven on a loom]
                 of two heddle-rods.
     [Do you savor] the haunches of a ewe in a well-fermented dish,
          as sour as yogurt? Is there hump-meat cut in chunks?
      And what about the wind that blows through the lands? Redolent
          with cypress and dodonea, is it not as [sweet as] lavender,
              or cloves in a walled garden,
      when the big-eyed gazelle settles down in the wilderness
          and the antelope does the same?

Al-Sukkarī says that verses 6, 9, and 10 of this poem were transmitted by just two scholars (both Kufan). If others left them out, perhaps it's because those verses interrupt the poem’s flow. Their content, however (nostalgic sense memories of Bedouin life, contrasted with verse 6’s joke about cow farts), is quite in line with the rough-hewn aesthetic of the Hudhalī diwan. It is a superb poem, for reasons that have nothing to do with arrangement of constituent parts, and its preservation in different versions is proof of this. It would be difficult to divide the poem into parts at all.
      I discount therefore al-ḥabīr al-musalsal as the emblem of long-form structure in Umayya's poem. And almost everywhere that muḥabbar occurs as an epithet for poetry, it attaches to the individual verse (bayt), or poetic output in general (shi‘r), more clearly than it ever is about integral poems. This contention will displease some, because formal unity is a beloved notion, and most people assume that's what textile metaphor is all about. But if you read what early Arab poets actually say, you find cause for a change of view.

       

I've undergone several changes of view in my time with Goldziher, most dramatically with regard to the meaning of taḥbīr. Like him, I always thought it was essentially a textile craft, but now I find otherwise. In fact it doesn't name any craft in particular, but the superlative performance of one: "to mark a thing with beauty," more or less.
      For a long time, I've wondered about a connection between Arabic ḥabra and Greek habrosyne, and I'm not the only one. But while habrosyne is all about luxury and softness, the root meaning of Arabic √ḥbr is the idea of a mark. "A mark that is beautiful and highly visible," specifies Ibn Faris; "other meanings ramify from this," including the ink (ḥibr) with which one writes. With Hebrew ḥabarbura for a leopard's spots in Jeremiah 13:23, we begin to apprehend taḥbīr's Semitic root as a marker of visible pattern—but then where Arabic ḥabr is defined as "the mark of a life of ease" we are thrown back on habrosyne.
      That's where I'm at with the Yemeni mantle called al-ḥibra: somewhere between Greek poikileia "intricacy of pattern" and habrosyne "luxury." Two things that go together but are not the same. If you wear a ḥibra, you'll be conspicuous, and that's what it's like to be spoken of in verse that is muḥabbar, for good or ill: It brings pleasure to its hearers, it's all about you, and it's never going away.

    

Two crutches

I was told by my uncle, who was informed by al-Kurani, and also by Ibn ‘Ammar who said: I was informed by Ya‘qub ibn Nu‘aym, who said: I was informed by Abu Ja‘far al-Qurashi, who said:

Al-Hakam ibn ‘Abdal, who lacked the use of his limbs, was friends with a blind man named Abu ‘Ulayya. One night, the two set out from their homes to the home of one of their confidants—Ibn ‘Abdal being carried, Abu ‘Ulayya being led—only to run into the security chief of Kufa, who jailed them on the spot.
      They had been locked up for a while when Ibn ‘Abdal noticed Abu ‘Ulayya's cane lying next to his. At this, he burst out laughing, and came up with this poem (meter: majzū’ al-kāmil):

     Locked up with Abu ‘Ulayya!
          This is a marvel of the age,
      one of us a blind man led around, the other one
          a paralytic whose hands and foot are of no use,
      I, whose shanks disown me!
          The sightless one is him right there.
      Ever seen a spiny-tailed lizard of the desert
          in cahoots with a fish?
      My steed and Abu ‘Ulayya's
          are one such fated pair.
      To you who boast of equine nobility
          we boast of two crutches,
      two stallions that never fight each other
          and need no costly fodder.
      Suppose they caught fire, his and mine.
          Would there even be smoke?

These verses by Ibn ‘Abdal are also about Abu ‘Ulayya, whose name was Yahya (meter: ṭawīl):

      To Yahya I said in amazement on the night that we were jailed,
          in my sleep which was the sleep of a fettered prisoner:
      Help me scan the stars and shepherd them,
          and I will help you out with odes of luxury pattern.
      Our state at present is a caution to be pondered.
          The jailing of the blind and crippled is a shocking thing.
      If he or I lose hold of our crutches, we are flung
          flat on our faces, prostrate on the ground.
      One crutch leads the way blindly.
          The other one stands for a foot in the hand.

From the Book of Songs

Al-Farazdaq and the wolf

Abu ‘Ali al-Hirmazi said: The poet al-Farazdaq halted with his traveling party at al-Ghariyyan at the end of their first night's journey out of Kufa. On one of their camels went the skinned and dressed carcass of a sheep he had just had slaughtered when their departure was made in haste.
      There came a wolf, who tried to wrest the carcass from the back of the camel it was tied to. This threw all the camels of the riding party into a panic, at which al-Farazdaq rose to see the wolf tugging at the meat. He cut off one hoof of the sheep and threw it to the wolf, who picked it up and went a little ways off with it. When the wolf came back, al-Farazdaq cut off another hoof and threw it.
      Morning came, and when the company awakened, al-Farazdaq told them what had happened, and went on to say this about it:

      The loping wolf, whose coat is threadbare. How affable was he!
          I invited him to share my fire when night was late.
      When he came close, I said: "Come closer!
          What's mine has been provided us in common."
      That night, I divided my provisions equally,
          now in the fire's light, now in its smoke.
      He laughed and bared his teeth, and I said to him,
          with the grip of my sword firm in my hand:
     "Eat up, wolf! Now that there is trust between us,
          let us be like boon companions.
      You are a gentleman, wolf, but you
          were nursed on the same teat as treachery itself.
              You and treachery are each other's little brother!
      Anyone else you woke to beg a meal from
          would come at you with arrows, or the point of a spear.
      But even though companions come to blows,
          on the road they must be brothers to each other.
      [After all,] when has God ever put a disunited soul back
          upon the track of travelers, anywhere they go?"

Verses 1–9 of a 47-verse poem (meter: ṭawīl)
from the Collected Poems of al-Farazdaq
collected by Muhammad ibn Habib (cf.)

 HANDS AT WORK 

Unraveling the Riddle  
of the Thread  

     

Detail from The Spinners (ca. 1657) by Diego de Velázquez    

It's smart to move on from a subject after publishing about it. Continued study can lead to mournful discoveries of things you wish you'd said, or hadn't. That hasn't quite happened with "The Riddle of the Thread," my article that came out two years ago, but I did just have a close call, and for my own reference (if no one else's) I need to create this record of it.

The idea for the article was to treat the subject of spinning apart from Hands at Work, so as not to weigh the book down or risk confusion in readers' minds with weaving, which is the book's main focus. (Even Gandhi got the two crafts mixed up, early in his career.) "On the subject of spinning, please see Larsen (2023)" is all I planned to say, until my recent encounter with a text of al-Ṣafadī's previously unknown to me: Faḍḍ al-khitām ‘an al-tawriya wa-'l-istikhdām (Breaking the Seals on Ambiguity and Polysemic Usage). If only I'd had this book five years ago! My 2021 article on abyāt al-ma‘ānī would have been much improved by al-Ṣafadī's classification of ambiguity in its various types (and a comparative reference to Empson's wouldn't have hurt either), though no one who reads that article will complain that it's too short.
      With regard to "Riddle of the Thread," my chagrin is double. In the first place, al-Ṣafadī upholds my thesis admirably, and I wish the article reflected this. In the second place, he discusses an idiom, apparently well known, that almost overthrows something I say on p. 67. Remarking on the near-homophony between the ghazl of "spinning" and the ghazal of "amorous discourse" which lent its name to the genre of poetry, I not only said that it went unplayed-on by Arab poets, but that "If any evidence could be found to align poetic composition with spinning in the early poetic record, it would certainly undercut the argument put forth here." Thank goodness for the word early! because the idiom in question emerged in the Mamluk period, but it did become commonplace, and some awareness of this would have strengthened "The Riddle of the Thread."

     

The idiom is hard to translate. It derives from an old metaphor, where the look in someone's eye is said to "speak aloud" though no words are pronounced: "Eyes have logos when mouths are silent," goes one verse by ‘Abd Allah ibn Mu‘awiya (d. ca. 130 A.H. / 747 CE), and this is so conventional it could be by anyone. Was I not just reading in Colette about someones' "eloquent eyes"?
      Any verb of speech may be used in poetry for the logos/manṭiq of the eye. It was therefore inevitable that ghazila yaghzalu "to engage in amatory discourse" would serve this function, because it is esssentially a verb of speech. And so ghazal came to stand for "seductive looks," which kind of makes sense, but what happened after that suprised me. Poets did come to play on this verb's near-homophony with ghazala yaghzilu "to spin," and I should have seen it coming. Just because Ibn Faris opined that ghazal and ghazl are alien to each other doesn't mean poets can't splice them together. So the vocabulary of spinning came to be used with reference to seductive looks—not because the act of spinning is seductive, but because ghazl and its cognates substitute playfully for ghazal. When al-Ṣafadī talks about the paronomastic transfer of attributes from one entity to another, resulting in "ambiguity that is far-fetched" (al-tawriya al-ba‘īda), this is what he means.
      Nor did things stop there. The idiom was enlarged (somewhat absurdly, if you ask me) to include the figure of a widow at her spinning, as a proxy for the beloved's bewitching eye. (Last night's post from Faḍḍ al-khitām ends with two examples of this). For an example that combines spinning with weaving, we can thank al-Ṣafadī's contemporary Shihāb al-Dīn al-Ḥājibī, as quoted by al-Badrī (meter: wāfir):

                         In her kohl-rimmed eye are ghazal and ghazl.
                              In my eye, only tears.
                         The darting gaze of her eye entrances.
                              Yours is the eye that spins and weaves

  

If the ghazal of amorous discourse can be enmeshed in the ghazl of spinning, how about the ghazal of poetry? Some poet somewhere must have drawn the connection, and in that event I'll retract my remark on p. 67 of "Riddle of the Thread," my second work of literary theory. And that's the whole point of theory, as I understand it. If not the domain of things not yet known for certain, then theory's been misnamed.

Far-fetched ambiguity

We have discussed cases of ambiguity that fail due to some misconception of the poet's. Ambiguity that is far-fetched belongs in a separate category. This type of ambiguity comes about when a condition or attribute pertaining to the explicitly-stated referent is transferred to a referent that is hidden, or vice versa. Without full exercise of the poet's discrimination, comprehension, and taste, this type of ambiguity cannot be achieved, as it was achieved by Shams al-Din Muhammad al-Tilimsani in these verses [corrected against the edition of Shams al-Din's poem by Shakir Hadi Shukr, ditt. Charakh, meter: basīṭ]:

      Many are stripped of their intellect by a certain gazelle fawn
          who abandons them ungently to their passions.
      How many are slain by his come-hither looks
          that fill their hearts with obsession?
      They cast a spell that never gets old,
          ever spinning and speaking of passion

Here the word maghzal "spinning" denotes the action of the spinner's tool called al-mighzal. Neither of these is an affiliated noun [of ghazal "amorous discourse"]. Maghzal in this context makes no sense, but when poets expand the ghazl that is spinning to signify the ghazal that is flirtatious speech, they are forgiven, it being so commonplace.
     And that is how the act of spinning became attributed to the look in someone's eye. If you think about what I'm saying, the truth of it will dawn on you—because the same poet is correct [in his critique of the idiom] in another poem where he said (meter: ṭawīl):

      Your looks are virile weapons—nothing like
          widows at their spinning, as has been claimed

And ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Amidi said (meter: sarī‘):

      Fenced by hateful censure
          is the garden of his face.
      The orb of his eye lodges in my heart.
          It is a widow who lives by her spinning

From Breaking Open the Seals on Ambiguity and Polysemic Usage
by al-Khalil ibn Aybak al-Safadi

Bathhouses of Damascus

     The bathhouse of the Guarded Citadel
     The Judge's Bathhouse, by the al-Jabiya Gate
     The bathhouse in the quarter of al-Qassa‘
     The bathhouse along the Hashimites' Lane, which was old and fallen into ruin, becoming known as "The New Bathhouse" after its restoration by the eunuch Hasan
     The Bathhouse of al-Qusayr
     The Bathhouse of the Daughter of the Emir Jarukh is a nice one.
     The Bathhouse of al-Sharif al-‘Aqiqi
     The Bathhouse of the Diwan is a nice one.
     The Hatters' Bathhouse in the al-Fakhriyya bazaar
     The Saddlers' Bathhouse in the Market of ‘Ali
     The new Bathhouse of Nur al-Din, in the Corn Market
     The Bathhouse of Ibn Abi Nasr, behind the little market of Bab al-Saghir
     The bathhouse of Palm Lane by the same Bab al-Saghir, an endowment of Nur al-Din, may God have mercy on his soul
     The bathhouse of al-Hijji [al-Hamawi] on al-Jumahi Lane, near the quarter of al-Maqsallat [< Gk. makella], which fell into ruin and was converted into a house by Ibn Qawwam
     The Bathhouse of Suwayd, by the house of Ibn Manzu
     The Bathhouse of the Staircase, on Staircase Alley by the slaughterhouse
     The Bathhouse of Greengrocers Lane
     The Bathhouse of al-Rahba
     The bathhouse by the Confectioners' Gate [of the Umayyad Mosque], known as the Mu’ayyad Bathhouse
     The bathhouse next to it, known as the Bathhouse of al-Sallariya
     The Bathhouse of Khafif, on Khafif Lane near the Bab al-Faradis
     The Bathhouse of Ibn Kulli, by the Tarkhan's house
     The Coppersmiths' Bathhouse near the portico of Karrus, which sits above a well
     The bathhouse right by it, known as the bathhouse of Ibn Qutayta, which also sits above a well.
     The small bathhouse of the vizier al-Mazdaqani's house
     The Cheesemakers' Bathhouse, on Cheesemakers Lane, behind the ironworkers
     The Bathhouse of Ibn Abi Hisham, on Ropemakers Lane
     The Bathhouse of al-Tamimi in the Watermelon Building, which fell into ruin and was converted into homes
     The bathhouse in [the market of] the Khuraymis, behind the Embroiderers' Market, sits on a well.
     The Embroiderers' Bathhouse, behind the covered acqueduct of the Sunday Market
     The Bathhouse of al-Lu’lu’a (The Pearl), known long ago as the Bathhouse of the Yazidis, used to be nice. It was built on a circular plan, later enlarged, and an aqueduct was dug for it. Now only its circular outline remains.
     The Bathhouse of Ibn Abi Hadid, by the minaret of Fayruz
     The ‘Alawi Bathhouse, behind ‘Alawi Way, in the Church of Mary
     The Bathhouse of the Lane of the Rock sits over a well, and water was diverted to it [later on].
     The bathhouse by the head of the Bridge of Sinan
     The Bathhouse of Khutluba, near the Church of Mary
     The Bathhouse of Ibn ‘Ubada, near the park of Qassam and the portico of Janah
     The Bathhouse of ‘Ali al-Manjaniqi, by the Eastern Gate
     The Bathhouse of Ibn Sasri, by the Gate of Thomas
     The Bathhouse of al-Sharif, by the house of Ibn Buri, fed by an aqueduct and a well

From Ibn ‘Asakir's History of Damascus

Icemen of Damascus

THALLĀJ is the name for a bringer of ice from spots where it is deposited in winter, like a mounded knoll or a crevasse or some such place in barren high country where frost descends during the winter months. They then take it and compress it and lay it away in special storehouses they maintain, where it is prevented from melting away by some means they have adopted, until the summer months when they haul it around and sell it for a considerable price.

The profession of the durma shukr (?) proliferates among us in Syria. More than a hundred loads of ice are sold every day in summer, to licorice and syrup vendors, and for domestic use as well as other purposes. In Syria, our supply never gives out in summer or in winter, with Mt. Hermon covered in snow year round since God created it.

Doctors of science tell us that snow is formed from water that rises from the sea. When it hits the sphere of celestial cold called al-zamharir, it becomes rain, but when played by cold winds it coagulates and falls on countries that are far from the sun, in the nutlike pellets we know as hail, or the delicate flakes that we call snow.

Against high fevers, against mange and other inflammations of the skin, and for digestion systems weakened by the heat, the benefits of ice are huge. It is an aid to fattening every animal except the human. Its effects can be injurious to the aged, the phlegmatic, and those afflicted with chronic dry mouth, unless it is mixed with cloves and honey.

Al-Sayyid ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, God bless and keep his soul, [reported that ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Ibrahim ibn ‘Abd al-Razzaq] said in its praise (meter: khafīf):

      Ice is water from the fount of life.
          It soothes the heat of fevers,
      cools down livers, and keeps
          stomachs from boiling over.
      Be free from words of doctors and their promises,
          and brush off their advice,
      and smile and sip its waters, and the toughest
          foods will go down nice.
      Cold and white as cotton fluff,
          to the overheated it's like rain to tender plants.
      May we never be without our bringer
          to the ailing of the cure of cures.
      Ice of Damascus takes away more pains
          than ice of any other place.

Here's another charmer of a witty poem on the subject (meter: khafīf):

      Don't despise Damascus when you visit.
          She doesn't hide from you what she's about.
      Pass through in the spring, and
          in your face she'll laugh with flowers.
      Come by in winter, and you'll see
          her snow gobbed on your beard.

In sum: It is a trade by which a lot of people earn their living, praise be to Him Who inspires anything He wants to do anything He wants.

From the Dictionary of Syrian Trades, vol. 1
by Muhammad Sa‘id al-Qasimi (1843–1900)

If on Washington Square @ Sullivan Street

Wednesday 12 November
was the day of the Book of Rain's launch at NYU's
Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies.
For captioned video, please follow this link

Fun and games

Ibn Jinni related this anecdote from the poet Abu ‘Ali al-Sanawbari [altered to Abu ‘Ali al-Farisi in a later report], who said:

At Aleppo, I set out for Sayf al-Dawla's palace. Just outside the city walls, I was met by a masked rider making for me with a long spear! Aiming its tip at my chest, he blocked my movement and nearly hurled me from my mount. Not until he drew closer and loosed his mask did I recognize the grinning countenance of al-Mutanabbi, who recited (a verse from his "Ode on the Reconquest of al-Hadath," meter: ṭawīl):

      At al-Uhaydab we scattered their leaders
          like coins scattered over a bride

     "How do you like my poem?" he asked. "It's good, right?"
     "Damn you!" I said. "You could have killed me."

Ibn Jinni said: [Later on,] I recounted this anecdote to al-Mutanabbi in Baghdad. He didn't deny it, but laughed and declared his admiration for al-Sanawbari, and praised him for spreading the story around.

From The Pearl of the Age by Abu Mansur al-Tha‘alibi

The baker-poet of Basra

For those who care so much about al-Mutanabbi's thievery from Abu Tammam, I shall expose his thievery from a latter-day poet far below Abu Tammam in stature and fame, lacking Abu Tammam's technique, his savvy, and his elevated style: namely, Nasr al-Khubza’aruzzi (The Rice-Bread Baker). Because if you really want to understand how al-Mutanabbi rips off Abu Tammam, you need to stop focusing on just him.

I'm well aware that some reject my view. They don't accept that al-Mutanabbi would copy the baker-poet, preferring Abu Tammam to a contemporary whose verse is ignored by scholars. They care only for imitations of al-Mutanabbi's great predecessor, whose prestige looms in their minds. But al-Mutanabbi's fans only know the sublimity and prosperity of his later years. They didn't know him when he was a total unknown of obscure station, even though this period of his life lasted longer than his riches and high estate, when his name became famous, and the sharpness of his acumen known to all.

The following report came to me from Abu 'l-Qasim ‘Ali ibn Hamza al-Basri, one of his closest friends who knew him best. Abu 'l-Qasim said he was with al-Mutanabbi at the time of his arrival in Kufa from Egypt, and observed his reaction when an old man [who had known the poet as a young man] used him less reverently than al-Mutanabbi was then accustomed to. "Ho, Abu 'l-Tayyib!" the old man said. "When you took leave of us, you had three hundred poems in your catalog. Thirty years later, you're back with just a hundred some-odd poems. Did you go scattering them along the road?"
    "Cut the funny stuff," said al-Mutanabbi.
    "Then tell me what happened to the poem called al-Shāṭiriyya (?), your emulative response to the poem by al-Khubza’aruzzi. You went all the way to Basra to make him hear it! Why have you stricken it now?"
    "That one was a lapse of my early career," said al-Mutanabbi.
    "Do you remember any of it?" I asked the old man, and he recited a few verses for me.
     Abu 'l-Qasim said: A good while later, I found another pretext for asking al-Mutanabbi: "Were you ever in Basra?"
    "Yes," he said.
    "Where'd you stay?" I asked him, and he named a place I knew to be just four or five houses down from al-Khubza’aruzzi's shop. And then I knew the old man was telling the truth.

Abu 'l-Qasim reported also that he asked the baker-poet's neighbors about al-Mutanabbi, and was told that long ago, in his youth, Abu 'l-Tayyib had indeed fraternized with him. But the stans deny that al-Khubza’aruzzi would hold any appeal. Due to the baseness of his poetic art, and his contemporaneity, they don't consider al-Khubza’aruzzi worthy of study, let alone an actual source for al-Mutanabbi. And so they miss al-Mutanabbi's appropriations of his work.

From Fair Judge of the Thief and the Stolen-From: An Exposé of the Plagiarisms of Abu 'l-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi by Ibn Waki‘ al-Tinnisi

Now available

I began reading this text in Cairo, fifteen years ago. Since then, I've talked about it nonstop to everyone I know. At last my translation is out from Wave Books, and you can order your copy now—or, better yet, ask for it at your local bookstore until it appears on shelves there.

Men killed by mules (part two of two)

Muhammad ibn Harun, brother of the gifted poet and writer Sahl ibn Harun, rode a mule that bolted underneath him in a panic. This happened in broad daylight, in the quadrangle by the Gate of ‘Uthman [ibn Abi 'l-‘As, in Basra]. They say that in the commotion, Muhammad's abdomen was lacerated by a saddle-strap, and that he died on the animal's back—and that his mule collided with another, killing both animals together with their riders.

It was reported to me by Sa‘id ibn Abi Malik that a stablehand belonging to one of the land grant holders [of Rabi‘ ibn Yunus, in Basra] used to copulate with his master's she-mule. One day, while he was in the act, the mule retreated backward to increase his thrusting power, until he was pressed into a corner of the stable where he was crushed to death. Another servant came to the stable on some errand and, finding it barred from inside, called out his fellow's name. Hearing no answer, he wrenched open the door to find the stablehand squashed into the corner, with the mule pressing back against him still. At his cry, the mule stepped away, and the body fell down dead.
      Some have opined that, even though the active role in their coupling was played by the stablehand, the true aggressor was the mule, who used to lick her lips every time she saw him, and no one else. If assault wasn't her intent, then he was killed in retribution or self defense.

These verses are from a satire by Qays ibn Yazid, in which he accused Ibn Abi Sabra of fornicating with his own mule (meter: kāmil):

      I'm told the mule you dote on
          gets restless when you don't screw her.
      She lowers her rump and swings it toward you
          when over the manger wall she sees you coming

They say that when the poet al-Farazdaq was captured by a group of Banu Kulayb, they brought a she-ass and said, "Either fornicate with this animal, as you accused ‘Atiyya ibn al-Khatafi [father to the poet Jarir] of doing, or we kill you." Al-Farazdaq said, "In that case, bring me the rock ‘Atiyya stood on when he shtupped her, so I can accomplish the same." They all laughed at his wit, and let him go.

Another man killed by mules was Zayd ibn Hulq, whose job it was to train them. His sons are famous at Basra. Also killed by mules were Muhammad ibn Sa‘id ibn Hazim al-Mazini and his uncle, ‘Amr ibn Haddab, killed by a mule at Shushtar. Al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra died on muleback at al-Talaqan. Iyas ibn Hubayra al-‘Abshami, who once paid bloodwit, also died on the back of a mule, a mean one.

From The Book of Mules by al-Jahiz

Leaky roof

Abu Ahmad said: ‘Abd Allah Niftawayh said: I heard these verses from Muhammad ibn Yazid al-Mubarrad (meter: wāfir):

      I dread the night when leaks flood in and dump their worries,
          harrassing me until the break of day.
      Unwinking nights, thanks to my house
          when skies above are like a lovelorn eye.
      That is, it was a house when clouds grew thick.
          By the time the clouds moved on, it was a road hazard.
      The hearts of all my neighbors fill with pity over me
          at the appearance of the faintest cloud of rain.

The verses are by al-‘Abbas al-Mashuq, who was called "The Lovelorn" (al-mashūq) after the namesake verse:

    ...when skies above are like a lovelorn eye

[Abu Ahmad said:] These verses by Dik al-Jinn were recited to me by someone else (meter: sarī‘):

      I've never spent a night, my brothers, and neither have you,
          as bad as the one I had last night.
      Every inch of my house
          has a leak streaming down from above

By al-Sanawbari (meter: wāfir):

      What a house I stay in! with a leak for my bunkmate,
          who shows no sign of ever moving out.
      When heaven weeps out of one eye,
          my ceilings weep back out of one thousand

And Ibn al-Mu‘tazz said (meter: ṭawīl):

      When I tell about the rain that fell I don't exaggerate,
          by the Lord Who into souls art the All-Seeing!
      My house's roofing sags to the earth we trample.
          Its walls kneel and bow down to the ground.

And Ibn al-Rumi said (meter: ṭawīl):

      Thr roof above me has me sleepless, looming over me
          like a stormcloud gushing.
      When its clay [takes on water and] weighs it down,
          its edges creak like chirping crickets.

From A Well-Tended Treasury of Literature by Abu Ahmad al-‘Askari

Three poems by David Larsen

appear in R&R, the online journal of Relegation Books (Falls Church, VA). Thanks, Joseph!

Aiden Milligan, "Mon the Minks!" (2024). Acrylic on canvas, 45 x 30cm     

Men killed by mules (part one of two)

Among those killed by their own mules was Khalid, the son of ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan, may God be pleased with him. Khalid was at a spot called al-Suqya when he said: "Today is Friday! If I don't join the community for midday prayers behind the Commander of the Faithful, it will be a terrible offense." He had a mule unmatched for speed, and for seventy miles he rode it to Medina, falling dead on arrival at the hour of prayer. But the mule survived.

Another man killed by his mule was al-Mundhir ibn al-Zubayr, who was called Abu ‘Uthman. He rode a mule with a sorrel coat into battle against a battalion of Syria [in the Second Civil War of Islam], after his brother ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr harangued and goaded him into it. When his mule heard the clash of arms, it bolted for high ground, carrying al-Mundhir wide of his companions. And the Syrian fighters went after him. "Run, Abu ‘Uthman!" cried ‘Abd Allah. "My father and mother be your ransom!" But the mule stumbled, and the Syrians caught up to him and killed him.
      Yazid ibn al-Mufarrigh referred to this event in his invective against ‘Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad (meter: kāmil):

      On any given day, Ibn al-Zubayr was the better fighter,
          but on the day he urged al-Mundhir into war,
      what distinguished him was the patient endurance
          of a meanfisted man holding short on a sale

The poet ‘Abbas al-Mashuq rode mounted on a mule behind a young man who promised him a donation of clothing. Then the mule balked, and the man was thrown to the ground and broke both femurs. At this, al-Mashuq said (meter: ramal):

      I would give hand and foot
          for your injury [to have befallen me instead of you].
      It wasn't the mule's fault!
          The fault was my own penury.

Another man thrown by his mule was the poet al-Bardakht, by name ‘Ali ibn Khalid, who showered Jarir ibn ‘Atiyya with invective verse. "What invective poet is this?" Jarir asked. "Al-Bardakht," they told him.
     "And what, pray tell, is a bardakht?" he asked. "It means someone with free time," they said.
     "Well I'm not the first to put him to work," Jarir said.
      The mule that threw Bardakht was granted him by Zayd al-Dabbi, on whom Bardakht said (meter: basīṭ):

      To the mule that almost killed me, I say:
         "No thanks to Zayd and his donations!"
      Gold and shining silver he kept back when I came asking,
          gifting me instead a portion of death

It was Bardakht who satirized Zayd for the newness of his wealth. At a celebration of Zayd's reign [as governor of Khorasan], he came up to him and said (meter: wāfir):

      As long as I live, I'll never greet Zayd
          with the greeting reserved for a ruler.

"I could care less, by God!" said Zayd. Bardakht said:

      Do you remember when a sheep's hide was your blanket
          and for sandals you had camel hide?

"So what, by God!" said Zayd. Bardakht said:

      Praise be to Him Who made you regent,
          and assigned you a throne for your seat

"Yes! Praise be to Him," said Zayd, and Bardakht took his leave, having distinguished himself at the encounter.

From The Book of Mules by al-Jahiz

An ass is being beaten

     Hard as a chemist's pestle is the ass they beat on.
     Rinsed in his own piss, and gagging on it
         [if pools of piss be all there is to drink],
     his forelegs pebbled like a pox victim's hide,
     he lunges at aggressive rivals, and when his bite misses,
     his clashing teeth chirp like a sparrow.
     In this ass's stable, the yearlings are pregnant.
     But do you know the abode in the heights of Dhu 'l-Qur
     defaced by dust on the bawling winds?
     Blanketing sands are what's left of the place
     gone bleak and abandoned to the weather,
     only an outline where their trench was
     long ago, and it was a joy to the eye
     that beheld the dark-eyed beauties there abiding    

From The Book of Lexical Rarities of Abu Zayd al-Ansari (meter: rajaz)

The myth of concrete languages

Whether railing against literary theories or the literary works in which they are realized, Julien Benda graces rhetoric with a proof per absurdum. His intention is, in effect, to show that our modern literature, incapable of conforming to rules and conventions, stuck in raw emotion, the purely carnal, and the individual—that its verbal orientation toward concrete particulars is analogous to "primitive" languages like the language of the Hurons, who have one word for eating rice, another for eating meat, another for eating fruit, and so on, but not one single word meaning to eat, nor words for infinite or absolute, and exhibit likewise a most peculiar lack of general ideas. To this, Benda opposes the faculty of abstraction: "the human race's great title to nobility," such as Rhetoric offers it to us.

The common thesis in which Benda participates here, and might well find sociologists to sustain it, is all too plain, its falsity easy to spot. After all—no less than modern writers—primitives have their own abstract ideas that are not ours (among which it is sufficient to name taboo, mana, and wakan). The primitive has then the right to say: "The French have ten words [for 'chicken']: poussin, poulet, poule, coq, and so on, where I have only one, akoho. What a pitifully concrete language! What a lack of abstract wit!"
     "But," the Frenchman will say, "I have a concept of the species, even if I lack the word."
     "And what makes you so sure I lack the concept of eating?" the Huron will reply.

The illusion that Benda obeys here is what I'll call the myth or mirage of concrete languages. It is the same illusion that causes foreign language, argot and technical usage to seem more "lively" and imagistic than our own, to the degree that they are foreign. (And indeed, it is upon their concrete side that we stumble first.)

"Julien Benda, or the Myth of Concrete Languages" (1953)
 by Jean Paulhan

Into the Tigris

Al-Hasan ibn Ja‘far said to me: I was told by ‘Abd Allah ibn Ibrahim al-Hariri that

Abu l-Khayr al-Daylami said: I was sitting with Khayr the Weaver when a woman came up and said, "I'm here for the kerchief I left with you." "Okay," he said, and gave it to her.
     "What do I owe you?" she asked. "Two dirhams," he said.
     "I don't have it on me right now," the woman said. "I'll bring it to you tomorrow, if God wills. But more than once I've passed by here and not found you."
      Khayr said to her, "If you bring it by and can't find me, just throw it in the Tigris River, and I'll pick it up when I get back."
     "Pick it up from the Tigris?" the woman asked. "How?"
     "Your curiosity goes too far," he said. "Just do as I've instructed."
     "If God wills," she said, and went away.

Abu l-Khayr said: I went back the next day, and Khayr was absent. Then along came the same woman, with two dirhams wrapped in a rag. Finding him gone, she sat down and waited for an hour, then stood up and flung the rag into the Tigris—where along came a crab, grabbed hold of the rag, and dove with it below the water's surface.
      An hour later, Khayr came back and opened the door to his shop, then crouched by the river's edge to wash his feet. And the crab emerged from the water and came toward him with the rag upon its back! And brought it close enough for Khayr to pick it up.
      I spoke. "I just saw...." He said, "I'd rather you not tell people about this while I'm alive," and I answered, "Okay."

From The Ornament of God's Friends by Abu Nu‘aym al-Isbahani

Fire's triple name

[T]he third ring [of Hell's seventh circle is] where he pictures the torments of the violent against Divinity. Just as violence can be committed in three ways, this form of violence is likewise divided in three: blasphemy, unnatural sex acts, and usury.

He pictures mortal sinners—blasphemers, sodomites, and brute fornicators—crisscrossing a field like the sandy plain of Libya trod by Cato. From his station at the edge of this field, or its outer bank, he says it is showered with flames like those Alexander witnessed raining on his army, which he and his armed battalions took care to smother. These flames represent the thoughts and impulses that fire up such infamies as the three sins under discussion here.

One blasphemer he mentions is Capaneus the king, who together with kings Adrastus, Tydeus, Polynices, Amphiaraus, Hippomedon, and Parthenopaeus went against Eteocles, king of Thebes, and mounted a seige against his city. The arrogance of Capaneus was so outsized that he railed against the gods as if they were men, above all Bacchus, god of Thebes. For this he was struck down and killed by Jove amid the fray, about which Statius says:

     Here then was Capaneus in a towering passion for war
     [....] a confirmed hater of the gods, and of justice

Against such blasphemers, David says [in Psalm 18 / II Samuel 22]: "Hail and coals of fire shot through the clouds that screened the brilliance in His glare [....] He sent His arrows out, and scattered them; He multiplied His bolts of lightning, and threw them into panic." And John in the second chapter of his letter [Nicholas Trevet in his commentary on Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, 1.M4] says: "Persecution of the haughty is symbolized by a bolt of lightning, because hauteur, like lightning, originates on high." Blasphemy is a sin against the Holy Ghost, for which reason God in Leviticus says to Moses: "The man who curses his god shall bear his sin."

Capaneus's speech "If Jove should" etc. is a poetic expression of his hubris. His words about Jove's blacksmith, Vulcan, and how Jove pleads with him, engage the idiom in which Vulcan is poetically called the god of smiths, since no smith can forge metal without fire. It is said that Vulcan was born from Juno's thigh, and that he was hurled out of heaven by reason of his deformity, and landed on the island of Lemnos, which explains why he is called Lemnius. They say he was born of Juno's "thigh" because [air is Juno's realm, and] lightning is birthed from the bottom of the air. Thus says Lucan:

      Lightning sets ablaze the air that's closest to the earth

[Fire] is called by the triple name of Jupiter, Vulcan, and Vesta. Jupiter is the ethereal fire abiding in its own sphere, where it is simple and harmless. Vulcan is the lightning, the middle fire that causes harm, by which his name might be construed as "The Devouring Brilliance" (vorans candor > *Vorcan > Vulcan). And Vesta is the fire whose closeness we enjoy.

[Capaneus boasts that] if Vulcan and all the smiths of Aetna, whom the poets call Cyclopes or Telchines, were to blast him with their lightning, as at the battle of Phlegra, it would be futile. Phlegra was the site of the Gigantomachy, in or around Thessaly. If not for Vulcan and his smiths who munitioned Jove with lightning bolts and arrows, the Giants would have defeated him there. Statius mentions this battle in book two:

      Exactly thus did giant Briareus stand against
      the arms of Heaven, if you believe on Phlegra of the Getae

From Pietro Alighieri's Commentary on the Comedy of his Father Dante
(Inferno XIV.7–72)

Back in mauve

Thank you, James Sherry, for keeping
Zeroes Were Hollow (Kenning Editions, 2022)
before the public as a Roof Book!

Rear cover text by LRSN, animated by Josh Rigney