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

Horn and thorn

THE PARTISAN OF THE ROOSTER: The rooster is characterized by boldness and resilience at the encounter—qualities of people who can withstand the blows of whips and staves, and are steadfast in the clash of arms. He is a wily strategist, adept at feints and dodges, as are also necessary in war. His skills are honed, and once he decides how best to plant his ṣīṣiya [which is his spur] in the eye of another rooster, his aim is inerrant, and he goes in for the kill.

People wonder at the slaughterer, whose art is proverbial for inerrant throat-cutting, and at the meat-cutter's skill at separating joints. This is where the proverb comes from: "He goes right to the stabbing-place, and does not miss the joint," said in praise and dispraise [of blunt-spoken people]. The rooster excels at this, and is quick to pounce, lifting himself high in the air with his sharp and uniquely-placed weapon.

Only the rooster is so outfitted. The horn of the oryx bull is called ṣīṣiya after the rooster's weapon. And the defensive fortifications at Medina are called ṣayāṣī [which is the word's plural form]. God says, be He Exalted and Magnified, said: "He brought their backers from the People of the Book down from their ṣayāṣī..." [This is because defensive munitions can be considered weapons, and vice versa:] An armed man is called in Arabic dāri‘ "armored" and dhū 'l-junna "covered." The horn that the bull gores with is much bigger than the rooster's ṣīṣiya, which is likewise a defensive weapon. So when men made towers to be their strongholds, forts and coverts, in the way of shields and helmets and coats of mail, they called them ṣayāṣī.

They gave the name ṣīṣiya to the weaver's barb because of its shape, despite its greater length. Weavers use it to even out their warp and weft, and defend against the misalignment of their weaving. It fits in the hand like a weapon, and could be used to strike a person if one wished. Durayd ibn al-Simma said (meter: ṭawīl):

     You see him touched by hostile spears
         the way a stretched weaving is struck by ṣayāṣī.

The Arabs used to call the scorpion's barb a shawka. The rooster's spur can also be called shawka, by analogy to the shawk of the date palm [which are its "thorns"]. A person afflicted with erysipelas is said to be "struck by al-shawka," because the condition is commonly brought on when a date palm thorn breaks the person's skin. Al-Qutami called the barb of the scorpion its "thorn" (meter: ṭawīl):

     He travels on through frost of night, until his extremities
         [ache and tingle] as if attacked by scorpions' thorns.

A thorn is slim at the tip and wide at the base. For this reason, a mare [if it is small in the chest and big in the rump] may be called sullā’, which is another word for "thorn," heard in the description of ‘Alqama ibn ‘Abada (meter: basīṭ):

     A thorn of a horse, like an old Nahdite's staff: [the frog of her hoof]
         adheres there, tough as the gnawed pit of a date of Qurran.

Erroneously, some people call the the scorpion's barb a ḥuma. Ḥuma is in fact the creature's venom, and that of wasps and hornets with their stingers, and the fangs of vipers and other venomous snakes. The word is not used of botanical poisons. Some creatures carry venom in their proboscis, like the mosquito and the biting fly, and others, including spotted geckoes and certain spiders, transmit it in their bite. The bite of the tick can be grievous, and the tarantula's can kill. Bedbugs and scorpionflies aren't so deadly, and in our considered view not all these animals can be said to carry ḥuma.

Two who died from poisonous bites are Safwan Abu Jusham al-Thaqafi and Da’ud al-Qarrad, and ahead will come a chapter on this subject, if God wills, be He Exalted.

A man or boy who, from a surfeit of lust, can't stop playing with his member unless actively or passively engaged in coitus is a ṣīṣiya. Even a eunuch may be so called. "Nothing but a ṣīṣiya," people say of a man addicted to sodomy—an expression that evokes the excitability of the rooster and the hardness of his spur.

From The Book of Animals of al-Jahiz

Alexander the Sleepless XXIII

Over a half century of ascetic rigor, the Blessed One suffered unceasing oppression, nakedness, hunger, and thirst, and rejoiced in them. He taught the word of truth bluntly and outspokenly, gathering up multitudes and ferrying them to Christ, as his disciples do today. He was brilliant at it, and to the blessed and untroubled end of his labors, when a saintly sleep at last came over him, he was outpaced by no one. He was laid to rest in Bithynia, at a place called Gomōn [which Janin locates here, but van Esbroeck says was here].

Through the Blessed One's intercessions after taking leave of life, the order attracted still more disciples. I have already told of their renown, not just locally but all over creation, and of the monastery founded by the leaders of the brotherhood, the aforementioned Monastery of the Sleepless Ones, so named for their unceasing and unsleeping doxology. It is an institution worthy of his way of life. Here were his blessed, saintly remains translated, and in order that God, Who loves humankind, might demonstrate right there that that He honors those who honor Him, and that everything the Blessed One did was in accordance with His will, these holy relics work miracles every day. Meanwhile, those of unclean spirit cannot endure the mention of his name, and react as if burned by the sound of it.

As proof of our brotherly love and affection, and caring only for the truth, we have despite our incapacity for the task [set forth the Blessed One's virtues] as we saw them. By the Lord, our hope is that the Holy Spirit will inspire others with more knowledge than we to expound it more clearly, as an edifying boon to those who would follow this way of life. May it happen that we all become disciples worthy of him, and may his intercessions guide us to what he shares in now, by the good will and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

          

The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.52-4            

Ahmad of the Seventh Day I.3

[‘Abd Allah continued:]

The caliph returned to his seat, and they brought water to soothe his face. "How did you come to know him?" he asked me.
      I told him the whole story, and he went back to weeping. "That was my first-born son," he said. "My father al-Mahdi decreed my marriage to Zubayda, but my eye was caught and my heart was captured by a woman of another class. We married in secret, and when she bore me a son I settled them in Basra. And one of the things I gave her was this ring. I told her, 'Stay hidden until you hear that I've been made caliph, then come to me.'
     "After I assumed the Caliphate, I inquired after my wife and son, and was told that both had died. I had no idea my son was still alive! Where," he asked me, "did you bury him?"
     "I interred him in the Cemetery of ‘Abd Allah ibn Malik, O Commander of the Faithful," I said.
     "I need your help," he said, "Wait for me after sundown outside the palace gate. I'll come down in disguise to visit his tomb." So I waited, and he came out in disguise with a crew of eunuchs. He put his hand in mine, and at a shout from him, the eunuchs retreated. I brought him to the tomb, where he wept away the night until the dawn, rubbing his head and beard against the slab and calling out, "My son! You have given guidance to your father!" And I wept with him, out of pity.
      And then he heard a voice. "I think I hear people talking," he said. "Yes," I said. "Morning has broken, O Commander of the Faithful, and the dawn rises."
     "I am giving the order that ten thousand dirhams be disbursed to you.," he said. "Inscribe your family members and loved ones among my own, as is your right for seeing to my son's burial. And when I die, I will tell my successor to keep up what's coming to you, as long as your progeny are alive."
      He took my hand again, and up to a short distance from the palace we walked hand in hand, to where the eunuchs were waiting. As the company entered the palace, the caliph said to me, "See to all I have told you, and wait for me here at sunrise. When I see you, I'll summon you up to talk some more."
     "If God wills," I said. And I never went back.

       

Another version of ‘Abd Allah's story is reported by a different chain of narrators, and it goes like this: [Continued.]

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

 HANDS AT WORK 

Penelope at Mecca   

"Spider and Fly" (detail). A weaving from the pattern-book
of the author's great aunt Laura Todd Burnell (1913–1999)

Six weeks ago, I attended a conference on Islamic art history at the University of York, and presented some research from the project I'm blogging here. A lot of my talk was about epic simile, which—much the way Homer likens battlefield exploits to humble trades like spinning and fishing, and various agricultural tasks—is the main context for representations of craft production in early Arabic poetry. And in the Q&A, the question came up: Is this coincidence, or is it a sign of Homer's reception and influence in Arabia of the Late Antique?
      "I call it uncanny" was my first response, and this was inspired. The rest of my answer came out in a jumble that I'd like to reorganize here.

There is dynamism and pathos in repetitive manual labor, and through the magic of simile they are transferred to heroic gestae, playing on a social antithesis that anyone can appreciate. For these effects to be exploited in more than one literary tradition isn't cause for wonder, nor proof of influence. One example I love from Arabic poetry is the verse by Zuhayr (meter: basīṭ):

      They fan their horses out on every battlefield,
          like sparks thrown out at a blacksmith’s blow.

In the matter of textiles, one major difference between archaic Greek and Arabic tradition is the silence about domestic weaving that prevails in early Arabic poetry (as discussed in my previous installment). Meanwhile, the aristocratic heroines of Greek myth are consummate weavers, and this is too well known to call for examples.
      For contrast, let me mention a couple of reports gleaned by al-Suyuti from Ibn ‘Asakir's History of Damascus, in which noblewomen are found spinning in their homes. "You, a governor's wife, are spinning?" the woman is asked in one version (no. 4345 in al-Tabarani), to which she responds: "I heard my father say: The Prophet, God's blessings and peace be upon him, said: 'Lengthen your thread and increase your reward. It chases Satan away, and causes ruminative thoughts to dissipate' (wa-yudhhibu ḥadīth al-nafs)." The report is charming, the hadith is beautiful, and I bring it up in order to underline the corresponding lack of praise for weaving in classical Arabic tradition, where it is consistently derogated as the work of enslaved people. And that is not at all how it was in archaic Greece.
      Consider also this hadith: "Tailoring is excellent work for pious men, and spinning is excellent work for pious women." The craft that comes between spinning and tailoring is conspicuously left out. Although the hadith is judged noncanonical by most authorities, it is highly characteristic and symptomatic of tradition, where I wager that no aristocratic Arab woman can be found working at a loom.

Detail of a terracotta oil flask painted by the Amasis Painter,
ca. 550–530 BCE. Metropolitan Museum of Art

Now for the uncanny. There is a Quranic verse that proclaims the sanctity of treaties, and rules out their dissolution once they are made. This is Sūrat al-Naḥl (The Bee) 16:92, and in making this injunction it resorts to an allegory that seems to come from Homer's Odyssey. Here let me quote the translation of Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, slightly modified:

Be not like she who unravelleth her thread (ka-llatī naqaḍat ghazlahā), after she hath made it strong, to thin filaments, making your oaths a deceit between you because of one nation being more numerous than (another) nation. God only trieth you thereby, and He will explain to you on the Day of Resurrection that wherein ye differed.

Ibn Kathir says there are two schools of commentary on the verse. One is that the woman in question is an ad hoc metaphor for anyone who would "unravel" an agreement after swearing to it, and Ibn Kathir takes this view. The other is that there was an actual madwoman at Mecca who used to undo her threads after having spun them tight (al-Farra’ says her name was Rayta), and that the Quran's first hearers would have recognized the verse's reference to this individual.
      As to the meaning of ghazl, Ibn Kathir has no comment, but Ibn al-Jawzi reports conflicting views. Majority opinion, he says, understands ghazl as nothing more than thread spun from cotton, wool, or hair. Then, there are those who take it for rope. And then he cites Ibn Qutayba's view that this woman would spin her thread, then weave it, and then unravel that weaving, reducing it to filaments. This is the interpretation one might have suspected all along—namely, that the madwoman's "thread" is a metonymy for her weaving, and that, rather than untwisting strands of thread, some woven thing is what she would unravel after having made it tight. Bringing us at last to Penelope's famous unweaving of the shroud on Ithaca, seemingly transplanted to Mecca of the seventh century CE.

Detail of the Penelope Painter's namesake wine cup (L-R: Telemachos and Penelope),
ca. 450–400 BCE. Chiusi, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 63.564

Is it possible that Quran echoes Odyssey at 16:92? That depends on your definition of "echo." My definition would include Sūrat al-Kahf (The Cave) 18:60-63, where a bit from the end of the Gilgamesh epic appears in transmuted form. This is where Gilgamesh loses the sea-plant that restores youth, converted in Alexander Romance tradition into a story about testing the Fountain of Youth by dipping dried fish in it (and then losing the fish, which swims away, and losing track of the Fountain altogether), in which form it was re-transmuted (probably via the Syriac Song of Alexander of Pseudo-Jacob of Serugh) into a tale of Moses in Sūrat al-Kahf. This is what I call a legit echo, with an intertextual trail to back it up.

To my knowledge, no such trail leads from the poems of Homer to the Quran. I have seen a couple attempts to read Quran and Prophetic biography in generic terms of epic (1, 2), and these are interesting comparativist readings with little to say about true intertext. It's not impossible for Greek Epic Cycle material to have made it to Arabia—in the form of travelers' tales, say—and the legend of a woman who unravels by night what she weaves by day has what they call "legs." By that I mean it's memorable, portable, and adaptable, and that's as far as I'm willing to go in endorsing the Homeric echo of Sūrat al-Naḥl 16:92, i.e., not very. My word for it is still "uncanny."

For purposes of Hands at Work, the most important takeaway is the Quran's avoidance of words for weaving. Sūrat al-Naḥl 16:80 eulogizes tents and the raw material they are made of (wool from sheep and camels, and hair of goats), but actual weaving is nowhere mentioned. Nor does the namesake spider of Sūrat al-‘Ankabūt (The Spider) 29:41 weave her house, but ittakhadhat baytan: she "takes" it. This seems to parallel ghazlahā "her thread" at 16:92, where nasjahā "her weaving" would be the Penelopeian meaning, and in the view of Ibn Qutayba (who was no dummy) the true one.

If in Abu Dhabi 2.0

For captioned video, follow this link.

Alexander the Sleepless XXII

Fifty years of struggle. Who is equal to narrating them down to the last detail? Who is graced with sufficient inspiration for the task? Faithless haters of the good will no doubt take me for a teller of impossible things, outlandish things, all out of proportion with human nature, because flesh is all they are. But the faithful, who believe as we in property as something held in common with our neighbors, will accept that we are telling the truth, for they also believe in our Lord who vowed: "The works I do, you will not only do yourselves, but greater works besides," when his disciples marveled at the withering of the fig tree. And again: "All things are possible for one who believes."

As for us, we recognize no higher proof than the correctness of the way of life perfected by our teacher. So let us finish our story here, where his life came to its close.

The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.52

Niches

      

      

Al Jahili Fort (Al Ain, Abu Dhabi), 2024

Alexander the Sleepless XXI

They released Alexander, thinking that God's slave would be isolated, but he had Christ with him and was not alone. As if roused by one trumpet, all the brothers came together just as soon as he was free, and that same day the rule of their service to God was reinstated, and they carried it through as if as if nothing had happened—nay, exulting in it like finders of spiritual treasure, and still more brothers joined them in their progress in the Lord.

If you're ever of a mind to travel the whole world under heaven, you'll find disciples of this Blessed One blossoming in Roman and barbarian lands alike. For they founded the famous Monastery of the Sleepless Ones, and many great ones besides, each as conspicuous as the sun in heaven. And if I tried to number every single one of the noble athlete's virtues, "time would fail me," just as the blessed apostle Paul said.

The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.51

Ahmad of the Seventh Day I.2

[‘Abd Allah continued:]

I awoke the next morning to hear the man calling my name. "How do you feel?" I asked him.
      "I'm about to die," he said. "Open up the purse that's in the sleeve of my cloak." I opened it and found a ring set with a red stone. "When I am dead and buried," he said, "take this ring to Harun, the Commander of the Faithful, and tell him: 'He whose ring this is warns you to beware! Don't let death find you in your inebriated state, or you'll regret it.'"

After I had seen to his burial, I inquired into what day Harun would appear outside the palace. I wrote an account of the case, presented myself before the Commander of the Faithful, and submitted it to him.
      And then began my sufferings, for once inside the palace, the caliph read my account and said, "Bring me the author of this tale!" And I was hustled inside the palace to face his wrath.
     "This is how you address me?" Harun said. "This is how you act?" Seeing his anger, I brought out the ring, and when he beheld it, he asked where it came from.
     "It was given me by a man who works in plaster," I said. "A plasterer," the caliph said. "A plasterer!" And he bid me come closer.
      I said, "The man sent me with instructions, O Commander of the Faithful." "Woe unto you!" he said. "Tell them to me."
     "O Commander of the Faithful," I said, "he told me to give you this ring and say: 'He whose ring this is sends you his greetings, and warns you to beware! Don't let death find you in your inebriated state, or you'll regret it.'"
      The caliph rose to his feet, and flung himself onto the carpet. "My son!" he cried, writhing about, "you have admonished your father!" And to myself I said, "It is as if the father were the son!" [Continued.]

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

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.