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.

Fabrics

If a robe is woven on a loom of two heddle rods, it is called munayyar. If it has little quadrangular shapes on it resembling a wild ass's eyes, it is called mu‘ayyan. If it has stripes, it is called mu‘aḍḍad and mushaṭṭab. If it has long trailing forms on it, then it is musayyar. If it has white stripes, or other designs in white, it is mufawwaf. If it has a chevroned pattern it is called musahham. If it has columnar forms, it is called mu‘ammad. If it has a zigzag pattern, it is called mu‘arraj. If it has crescent-shaped figures, it is called muhallal. If it is embroidered with cubical forms, it is called muka‘‘ab. According to Abu ‘Amr, if it flashes [with metal coins?] it is called mufallas, if it has birdlike forms, it is called muṭayyar, and if it has horse designs it is called mukhayyal.
     Abu 'l-Ḥasan al-Salami gave an excellent description of a battlefield (meter: kāmil):

      The sky was a patterned robe, muṭayyar with its vultures.
          The earth was a patterned bed spread, mukhayyal with fine horses.

From The Statutes of Lexicography by Abu Mansur al-Tha‘alibi

More special feelings

Malik ibn Dinar, may God be pleased with him, said:

I set out as a pilgrim to the holy House of God, when I saw a young man walking on the road without food, water, or a mount. I greeted him, and my greeting was returned. "Young man, where are you from?" I asked him. He said, "From Him."
      "And where are you going?" I said. "To Him," he said. "And where are your provisions?" He said, "They're up to Him."
      "But you can't travel this road without carrying water," I told him. "Do you really have nothing on you?" "That's right," he said. "except five letters I brought with me when I set out." I asked him what these letters were, and he said, "God's word:"

كهيعص

(Kāf–hā–yā–‘ayn–ṣād)

"And what does it mean?" I asked.
      "Kāf is for the All-Sufficing (al-Kāfī)," he said, "and hā is for the Guide (al-Hādī). Yā is for the Refuge (al-Ma’wā), and ‘ayn is for the All-Knowing (al-‘Ālim). And ṣād is for the Keeper of Promises (al-Ṣādiq). Whoever keeps company with the All-Sufficient Guide, the Refuge, and the All-Knowing Keeper of Promises is not ruined, has nothing to fear, and has no need to carry food and water."
      Malik said: When I heard the young man's words, I stripped off my overshirt to dress him, which he declined. "Old man," he said, "it is better to go naked than wear the shirt of this world, whose lawful deeds are numbered, and whose unlawful ones will be punished. When the naked man is covered by the night, he can raise his face to heaven and say, 'O You, Who are gladdened by our obedient actions and unharmed by our disobedient ones, grant that I may always gladden You, and forgive my actions that do You no harm.'"
      When [we arrived at Mecca, and] the people readied themselves for purification and shouted Labbayka! I asked the young man, "Why do you not perform the ritual greeting?" He said, "I fear that if I say Labbayka, He will say, 'There is no labbayka, and no sa‘dayka, and I do not hear your words or look upon you.'" And with that, he departed. I did not see him again, except at Mina, where he was saying (meter: basīṭ):

My friends are pleased for my blood to be spilt.
    For them it's licit, in sacred months as in profane.
Just who is my spirit attached to? If she knew, by God
    she would stand on her head, and not her feet.
I say to my faultfinder: Leave my love for Him out.
    If you saw what I see in Him, you would not find fault.
There are some who circumambulate the House without moving a muscle,
    and they need no sacred precinct to do it in, by God.
When others celebrate Eid al-Adha, sacrificing things
    like sheep and goats, [God's true] lover sacrifices the lower self.
People have one pilgrimage, and I've got another, toward stillness.
    I lead forth my blood, my vital being, when sacrificial animals are led.

From The Garden of Aromatic Herbs of ‘Afif al-Din al-Yafi‘i.
(The poem is elsewhere ascribed to al-Hallaj)

Special feelings

Maymun al-Hadrami [legendary digger of a namesake well] said: I was about to make the pilgrimage when a woman I was chatting with told me:
     "Come and circumambulate my house seven times, the way they do the holy House. Run your camel there, and shave your head as pilgrims do. Fling stones at my nosy neighbor, the way they stone the Devil [at Mina], and then kiss me as they kiss the cornerstone."
      Maymun said: I did everything she told me. This is my poem about it (meter: basīṭ):

       I resolved to make the pilgrimage, but my heart
           had other plans. Beside the holy House I was intending,
       there was a woman's house, the house of Juml,
           and to her undraped house my steps conveyed me.
       My circumambulations lacked for nothing,
           all seven of them, as they do for God.
       And just as pilgrims vie to throw their pebbles,
           I threw mine at her neighbor with all my might.
       I was to shave my head
           and be made hairless,
       and run my camel as they do
          ’til his sores go down.
       Another of their rites is the kissing of the stone,
           but kissing you is nothing like a stone.
       If ‘Umar or ‘Uthman had been to your house
           their pilgrimage would be to you alone.

Maymun said: Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad ibn Musa ibn ‘Imran al-Bakri said to me, "What induced you—God have mercy on you!—to leave out [the first caliph,] Abu Bakr, when you put ‘Umar and ‘Uthman in your poem?"
     "Because people have special feelings about Abu Bakr," I said. "May God have mercy on you as well."

From Reports that Are Agreed Upon by al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar

Two biters busted

Yunus the grammarian said: Ibn Abi Ishaq (d. 117/735) declared Islam's greatest poet to be Kuthayyir (d. 105/723), whose prestige and worth were conceded by the Quraysh. But Talha ibn ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Awf (d. 97 or 99/between 715 and 718) said:

I was with al-Farazdaq when he met Kuthayyir. He said, "O Abu Sakhr! [That is, Kuthayyir.] Of all the love poetry of the Arabs, yours is the best where you say" (meter: ṭawīl):

      I wish I could forget her. But everywhere
          I look, it's like Layla's there.

Kuthayyir responded, "O Abu Firas! [That is, al-Farazdaq.] Of all the Arabs' tribal boasting, yours is the best where you say" (meter: ṭawīl):

      We walk before other people, and they behind us.
          All we have to do is gesture, and they halt.

Talha said: Both verses are by Jamil. The first was ripped off by Kuthayyir, and the other by al-Farazdaq.
      Then al-Farazdaq said to Kuthayyir, "O Abu Sakhr! Did your mother used to come to Basra?" "No," said Kuthayyir, "but my father sure did."
      Talha said: Kuthayyir's comeback cracked me up. I never met anyone crazier than him. I was with a Qurashi group one time when we found him unwell. "How are you getting on?" we asked him. "Fine," he said. "Have you heard otherwise?" (Now Kuthayyir had Shi‘ite leanings.)
     "Yes," we said. "They say you're the Antichrist."
      Kuthayyir said, "By God, now that you mention it, I have been losing sight in one eye for the past few days!"

From the Commentary on the verses cited in the Summa of Ibn Hisham
by Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti; cf. the Book of Songs (1, 2)

If in Abu Dhabi

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Alexander the Sleepless XV

The clergy, seeing every day how things were going, professed their admiration but were privately consumed by envy. [....] Taking counsel together, they went and entreated the military commander, asking him one favor: that he banish the holy one and his brothers to the city of Chalcis in Syria. But God, Who loves humankind, made their knavery a benefit, since the blessed one's Syrian retreat would expedite his reunion with spiritual children he had not laid eyes on after twenty years.

The faith of everyone [in Chalcis] was strengthened upon Alexander's entry into the city. The rulers' fear of him was such that he spent some time as a ward of the public guards, only for the citizens to take over his protection, such was their desire to be with him. And he marveled at God's forbearance, and how He had frustrated the subterfuge of [Antioch's] wicked people, of which Alexander was well aware.

After some time, he resolved to withdraw and move on someplace else, as he had done six times in the past. He could not take leave openly, due to the military commander's orders, so he changed clothes with a beggar, and in this dress made his departure by night. 

Many days on the road later, he came to a place where he discovered a monastery called "Barleycorn," whose men were distinguished for their piety. He went in and greeted them all, and was struck by the order and consistency of the holy brothers' life, and the greatness of the love they shared. "I recognize this way of life," he said to himself, "as if it bore the stamp of my old precepts. I wonder how they were spread into this region, for their leaders are new to me. Never on all the roads I've traveled have I seen anything like it." Then, on learning who had instituted the monastery and its principles, he discovered that it was founded by one of his own flock! And he gave glory to God, Who showed him that his labors had borne fruit, even in that [unknown, but seemingly westward-lying] place. 

The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.40-2

Oil in classical Arabic tradition

Although there is no historical evidence by which a first discoverer of oil and its properties might be singled out, classical Arabic tradition can be identified as the premodern linguistic culture most permeated by words for oil, in its onomastics, proverbs, and poetry going back to pre-Islamic times. Occurrences of the word nafṭ in classical verse have modern political implications, highlighting the historical priority of the Arabs where oil is concerned, and the falsehood of Western claims to it. On this point, it should not go without saying that Western notice of oil in the region began with an Arab merchant from Bahrain, who mentioned it to a quartermaster of the British army while at Addis Ababa. That officer resigned his post forthwith and transferred to the Gulf in search of oil.

The word nafṭ calls attention for its antiquity and its particularity, indicating that Arabs have understood oil's nature for over 2,000 years. It denotes the reality of oil better than terms in use by the Europeans who, judging from basic appearances, called it petroleum, that is, "rock oil," as if it were a culinary oil pressed from rock. The Arabic designation of nafṭ is less naïve, designating a rare substance with distinct properties [from those of botanic oils, which are called in Arabic by a different word]. But those who hypothesize a relation between nafṭ and nabt "vegetation" [best defended through a shared connection to nabṭ, which is "the issue of water from the ground"] hit on the fact that geological oil is an organic substance. This would not preclude the possibility that nafṭ entered Arabic from another cultural domain, or that it derives from more ancient languages.

Nafṭ has an array of meanings in Arabic. As a substantive noun, it refers to petroleum. As an epithet, it conveys the sense of boiling, sneezing, or furious anger; correspondingly, the verb nafaṭa yanfiṭu is said of a pot [when it boils], a goat [when it sneezes], and a man [suffused by anger]. Nafṭ also signifies a blister filled with fluid that appears on the hand after manual labor. There is clear affinity among these meanings, in that they all have to do with the emergence of something with force and violence. And although this similitude was incomprehensible until modern times, the topology of an oil deposit resembles that of a blister on the skin.

Nafṭ also carries the meaning of tar (qār), which is properly speaking a category of nafṭ. Ibn Manẓūr in Lisān al-‘arab (art. √qwr) states that "Qār is a black substance that camels are smeared with [to treat their mange], and also boats, in order to prevent water from seeping in." The Arabs were well acquainted with the fundamental properties of tar, in particular the intensity of its blackness and the impossibility of its taking on other colors. There are many proverbs to this effect, such as "I'll do that when tar turns white" [i.e., never]. In Averroes's commentary on the Posterior Analytics (I.6), he mentions [tar, saying: "Whereas predication of essential attributes is possible when these are substances, it is necessary when they are accidents, in] the way that white is predicated of snow, and black is predicated of qār." [....] And Mu‘āwiya al-Ḍabbī said (meter: ṭawīl):

     Until I see tar gleaming like the dawn [mughraban],
         or I see the mute stones speaking, I am stuck here.

The word mughrab is glossed as "white" in Lisān al-‘arab (art. √ghrb), where the verse is explained: "The poet wound up in a spot that was disagreeable to him, from which rescue was impossible unless tar should turn white, or stones begin speaking—things that do not and should not happen in the normal course of events." These proverbial expressions are sufficient to indicate that petroleum was a familiar, everyday part of early Arab life. 

After the entry of the Mongols into Baghdad at the end of the Abbasid Dynasty, the scientific heritage of the Arabs suffered major losses, especially in the discipline of chemistry. However, the poems and stories that remain have a lot to tell us. Poetry has many functions, one of the most important being the witness it bears to matters that are not otherwise recorded, thereby preserving the history of the nation. Even low forms of verse spoken hundreds of years ago have important political and sociohistorical implications for our time. Among these is the fact that the Muslims of Baghdad were familiar with petroleum. Nor were they the only ones, but—as indicated in books of Islamic law and history, as well as poetry [of the 9th century CE]—Muslims were the first to establish a legal and administrative framework for the utilization of oil, which they extracted from deposits called nafāṭāt. The city of al-Qayyāra outside Baghdad was so named precisely for the number of nafāṭāt in that region. And Dhū Qār [site of the famous battle] was nothing but a boggy area where oil rose to the earth's surface.

To oversee the qayyārāt and nafāṭāt and regulate their exploitation by the oil sector, the Abbasid caliph appointed an "oil czar" (wālī al-nafāṭāt), whose office resembled present-day ministries of oil. This is attested in verses [by ‘Abd al-Ṣamad ibn al-Mu‘adhdhal] appearing in al-Zamakhsarī's Campsite of the Righteous, later quoted in the chapter "On vices of governorship" in Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad al-Bayhaqī's Virtues and Vices [and, before either of these, in the Virtues and Their Opposites of al-Jāḥiẓ] (meter: ṭawīl):

     By my life! You put on such pompous airs,
         as if ministering from the dais of al-Faḍl ibn Marwān. 
     And if, Abū 'l-‘Abbās, you governed in his stead
         as my superior, I would not expect your character to change.
     How proud would you be of musk and ambergris,
         if you're this proud to oversee pools of nafṭ?
     Brook your hauteur. Don't lose your humility.
         A governor of nafṭ ought not be haughty.

One of the topmost authorities of energy law in our time—a British legal counselor to the World Bank and a number of oil-rich countries—was reduced to amazement when I recited these verses and explained them to him, for Westerners think they were first to bring oil extraction within the domain of law in the late nineteenth century. And these verses highlight the fact that the Abbasids were the first to do this. 

From "Political Implications of the Word Nafṭ in Classical Arabic Tradition" (2018), a blog post by Anas Alhajji

Alexander the Sleepless XIV

Theodotus, bishop of Antioch, was in thrall to a party of wretched hypocrites (called periodeutae). On learning that the blessed Alexander had entered the city with a mob of monks singing psalms without pause, he gave orders for their abuse and expulsion with blows, and this warrant to injure the servants of God was carried out unsparingly as they were driven away. But the holy one saw through the Devil's trappings and, in the middle of the night, together with his brethren, he re-entered the city unseen, and found an old bathhouse in which to resume their continuous singing of hymns. [The acoustics were probably amazing.] Their audacity sparked the bishop's wrath, which he dared not take out on them again for fear of the people of his city. For the Antiochenes, having heard of Alexander's incredible feats and seen them for themselves, revered the blessed one as a prophet, wherefore they abandoned the church to attend to him and his wondrous teachings.

Finding that honor, glory, and the license to speak universally without restraint were now his, and that his preaching was enjoyed by all, and that they were ready to do anything he called them to, he saw it was time for action, and turned straightaway to caring for the city's poor. Here too, the holy one's majesty of soul is cause for wonder. Hounded from place to place, this man without possessions focused his zeal on the construction of a hospice. He gathered the city's wealthy before him, and lectured them as the divine presence dictated, and that is how the necessities of the hospice were furnished. Even with the bishop and the military commander, he was conspicuously unrestrained in his complaints about many things they had left undone. In short, he made himself the teacher and the trainer of all and sundry.

The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.38-9

Aubade

          (On ½ a line of Suhrawardi)

                    Why did papyrus have to go away
                    Why not come in sheets to write on
                    or else forget it as it’s happening
                    and forever wonder why
                    It takes a lot of time to turn aside
                    from all I thought I saw along the way
                    Bright planet, form a sign for me
                    because don’t you know the
                    stars that wander are the noble ones
                    Hasty are we, in harness pressing on
                    The nearest place to where we are
                    is miles away
                    Some thing to travel on
                    as high as it is wide
                    the next to go will be the ultimate
                    Read it to me softly, now
                    from papers on the floor
                    printed lightly with two feet to fly on

          By David Larsen (2022)

It's Out and It's On

    

      Thank you Patrick Durgin, editor and publisher of Kenning Editions
      Thank you Faride Mereb, who designed the cover
      Thanks to all subscribers to the press
      Thanks to Sinan and Rachel

      ISBN 979-8-9856628-2-5
      iv + 75 pages, 21 cm. $16
      Poetry is a furnace

Out of My Hut

     Get out of my hut, you mice who hug the shadows!
     You mice will find no fodder in Leonidas's crock.
     The old man's fine with two barley loaves, if there's salt.
     My forefathers lived this way, and I heed their example.
     So why scrabble in my corners, treat-seeking
     where prandial tidbits are never spilled?
     Go on to houses that aren't so frugal
     where sustenance is yours to scuttle away with

By Leonidas (Greek Anthology 6.302)

Auspicious Sana‘a

     I say to my near one through flowing tears
         when the will to go abroad is on me:
     Let me make my journey, let me pass unmourned.
         The stars that wander are the noble ones.
     Travel leads to betterment of outcome.
         Sitting still in comfort is the way of ruin.
     In darkness I see illumination,
         as if day switched place with night,
     when lightning from [auspicious] Sana‘a reminds me
         my destination isn't far away.
     Why should I rejoice at spending nights out in the desert
         when high above Ursa Minor is my home?
     And how will I be food for worms, with
         four elements on every side?
     How long will I live next to Draco
         with constellated serpents for my friends?
     My union with that light will be annihilation,
         and my passing out of knowing left from right,
     and the walls will echo with a pounding
         by rejectors of my secrets with their heads.

By Suhrawardi (meter: wāfir)

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