Mercury of Babylon

Alchemy is the work through which gold and silver are produced without mining them. Its devotees say the first to speak of it was Hermes, the sage of Babel, and that when Babel's people were scattered he moved to Egypt and ruled it as a wise philosopher king. They credit him with a number of books on alchemical science, which he developed through theoretical research into the physical and spiritual properties of things. They also say he instituted the craft of making talismans, and credit him with a number of books on the subject, though the partisans of sempiternity date this craft and its origins to thousands of years before Hermes.

Abu Bakr al-Razi, who is Muhammad ibn Zakariya, says that no philosophical system is valid without a valid theory of alchemy, and that no one ignorant of the science of alchemy can be called a philosopher. By this art, he says, the philosopher can do without other people, but they cannot do without the philosopher's scientific and practical insights. Some alchemists say their science was revealed by God, Magnified be His name, to a group of the work's devotees. Others say that God, be He Exalted, revealed it to Moses and Aaron the sons of ‘Imran, peace be upon them, and that they delegated the work to Korah, who enriched himself with gold and silver and waxed tyrannical. God, Blessed and Exalted be He, took note of this, and in answer to Moses's prayer, peace be upon him, He took the life of Korah amidst his treasures.

Al-Razi claims elsewhere that many philosophers were schooled in the work, including Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, and last of all Galen. Modern authorities have books and teachings on it, as did the ancients, and about these matters God knows best. In summarizing them here, I cannot be blamed, for I do not imitate either group.

On the Bablylonian Hermes. Accounts of him differ. Some say he was one of seven ministers appointed to protect the Seven Houses, with the house of ‘Uṭārid assigned to Hermes. Mercury in the Chaldaean language is named ‘Uṭārid, and by this name Hermes was called. For one reason or another they say he migrated to the land of Egypt, where he was the wisest man of the age, and that he ruled the place and fathered sons there named Ṭāṭ, Ṣā, Ushmun, Athrīb, and Qifṭ. After his death, he was interred at Egypt's capital in a construction called Abū Hirmis, now known as "The Two Pyramids." One pyramid houses Hermes's tomb, and the other his wife's—or, by another account, it is the tomb of the son who succeeded Hermes to Egypt's throne.

From the Fihrist of (Ibn) al-Nadim

Rebus erudire

When you ask the meaning of a word, whether from a native speaker or a scholar, the answer is sometimes in their actions and not their words.
      Al-Asma‘i said that ‘Isa ibn ‘Umar asked the poet Dhu 'l-Rumma about the meaning of naḍnāḍ. "All he did was flicker his tongue at me," ‘Isa said. Ibn Durayd reports this anecdote in Jamharat al-lugha, where he defines the verb naḍnaḍa as what a snake does with the tongue in its head, and says the snake is called al-naḍnāḍ for this reason.
      In his commentary on Adab al-kuttab, al-Zajjaji reports that when someone asked the poet Ru’ba about the word shanab [which is the dewy glow of a young person's teeth], he made them look at a pomegranate seed.
      Al-Qali reports in his Dictations that when al-Asma‘i was asked about the ‘awāriḍ of a man's beard [which cover his cheeks], he placed his hands on his cheeks above the ‘awāriḍ of his teeth [which are the bicuspids].

From Shedder of Light Upon the Science of Language and Its Typology by Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti

Sharjah memories

Blue Souk, October 2023

Muwashshahat al-Nuniyya

This muwashshaha, in which Ibn al-Wakil incorporated hemistichs from the Nuniyya of Ibn Zaydun, is one of the most remarkable poems I have come across:

                Our death has been announced.
                The crier proclaims our sentence.
             Were we unschooled in sorrow, it would do us in

                The sea of love drowns
                all who try to swim it,
                     and all who fret and moon
                     the fire of love scorches.
                Many's the young hero
                whose sleep it takes away.
                     It racks and ruins bodies
                     and makes the days turn
             Lightless, when our nights with you were brilliant

                Dear confidant, mine own,
                stay a while and hear me out.
                     Beware of giving in to passion,
                     it'll burn you up.
                An ordeal to be avoided!
                So hear and spread the word.
                     The sea of love is bitter.
                     Heedless, we dove in
             And at once the crier announced our annihilation

                When hopes turn to fine young things
                you are in for disquiet.
                     My efforts were for
                     a gorgeous and inhumane lad.
                Though his only care was gift-getting,
                the favors he got he turned down.
                     And when he favored me
                     with caress or near miss,
             Morning replaced closeness with separation

                I call on all that
                ties us together: Unless
                     you restore our union
                     and relieve my burning eyes,
                this life of isolation
                will grind me down.
                     Let it be the way it was
                     with my kin and brethren
             When the wellspring of our joys was unpolluted

                I call on the community
                that flees this lovelorn fool,
                     breaking faith with him
                     for no wrong done.
                It shouldn't be like this.
                It is a social ill.
                     They scant the damage done
                     by their estrangement
             Though ever was estrangement lovers' ruin

                O you who crowd my willow!
              "By the even and the odd,"
                     and the Ant and the Criterion,
                   "and the night when it passeth,"
                and al-Rahman and al-Hijr
                and the Bee, enlighten me:
                     Is it lawful in any religion
                     to kill a man with thirst
             For one whose pure love used to fill my cup?

                O seeker after rain!
                Turn aside at the wadi
                     of the people of Badr.
                     Mayhap your thirst
                will be quenched by a torrent
                if you stand among them and call out:
                   "Bring me to life,
                     and bring me kind word
             From a distant one whose word alone can revive me"

                My days go by
                as if they were years.
                     It used to be the
                     other way round.
                The days flew by like erotic dreams.
                I wish they'd never ended,
                     and a cup of
                     mixed wine went briskly
             between us, and the singers were singing our song

From The Whiff of Scent from a Green Bough of al-Andalus
by Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Maqqari

Fairuz and Wadi al-Safi, "Ghada Munadina."

From Qasidat al-Hubb (Baalbek, 1973).

Lyrics by Sadr al-Din ibn al-Wakil

Another biter busted

Ahmad ibn Yahya Tha‘lab was one of Ibn Abu 'l-‘Abbas ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Mu‘tazz's teachers. It is narrated that, after some time apart, Ibn al-Mu‘tazz missed him sorely, and wrote to him (meter: rajaz):

      A man in fetters thirsts
      for water from cold rainclouds sent careening
      by the wind, unsullied, unmuddied,
      shed in abundance by dark cloud cover,
      wetting the rock and coating it like reflective glass
      that would flash if the sun hit it,
      unmixed rainwater, clean and pure—
      what passion equals his desire, if not mine for you?
      And yet I dread you. Unlocker of barred knowledge,
      you are the sharp-eyed language critic who,
      if he says, "That's no good," then it won't fly.
      Now we are apart, and far from one another,
      but recollection reunites us, even though we don't unite.

Tha‘lab answered his student: "May God prolong your life! You took the opening lines from that poem of Jamil's I dictated to you: (meter: ṭawīl)

      Women thirsting at a spring. Day and night
          they hover, weakened, shrinking from the blows of rods,
      never turning away and never getting
          close enough to touch cool water.
      On every drop, their eyes are fixed. The water-keepers' voices
          are all they hear. With death for a barrier,
      are they thirstier than I, who rave in love for you,
          despite the opposition of the foe?

"And you took the closing lines from Ru’ba ibn al-‘Ajjaj!" (meter: rajaz)

      Although you do not see me, I am
      your brother still. You need vigilance, and my eye is on you,
      and I love what it sees, whether or not you are seeing me.

Ibn al-Mu‘tazz was open to his teacher's reproach, and accepted it without resentment. It is said that, later on, Tha‘lab wrote to him (meter: basīṭ):

      Tell this to your brother. Although he's far away,
          and we are not together, really we are,
      for my gaze is on his mental image
          while our homes are far apart.
      God knows I cannot recollect him.
          How to recollect someone you never forget?

From A Selection from the Poetry of Bashshar by the Khalidi brothers

What the hoopoe said

Far from great in make, I did what Solomon could not, for all his never-to-be-equaled kingdom, and brought him knowledge of what he and all his host did not suspect. Everywhere he journeyed, as swiftly as he went I would go with him, pointing out where waters lay below the ground. Then there came the hour I was not there, and helplessly he stood before his retinue and said: "I do not see the hoopoe. Is it me, or has he gone missing? Harshly I will scourge him, or take away his life, unless he bring a lucid explanation." In his moment of need he missed me, and under color of his might he threatened to scourge or kill me—but a higher power said, "No, By God! I'll bring him back and put him on the right path."
        When I returned from Sheba and said, "I have knowledge you do not," his anger mounted. "Small offender, great offense!" he said. "Not only were you absent without leave, but now you claim more knowledge than I have!"
      "Give me protection, O Solomon," I said. "You have sought a kingdom that is never to be equaled, and I went seeking knowledge unsuspected by your host. With that, I come to you from from Sheba with a sure report." He said to me, "O Hoopoe, those who act rightly may be entrusted with royal missives. Go you forth with this one from me."
       Off I went, and back to Solomon I sped with the reply, and to his side he brought me near. After my time outside his inner circle, he brought me within, and in recognition of the need that I had met, he dressed my head in a crown of nobility. His orders for my death were abrogated, and the signs of my merits were openly proclaimed.

Now if you are of the sort who can accept advice, you will clean up your way of life, disburden your conscience, sweeten your character, beware your Creator, and adopt the best manners even if they are of the beasts. There is no place among the perspicacious for one who does not know how to interpret the creaking of a door, the buzzing of the flies, the barking of dogs, or the creeping vermin of the dust, and has no grasp of what is signified in the traces of the clouds, the flicker of the mirage, or the lightning that lights up the gloomy mist.

From Revelation of the Secret Wisdom of the Birds and Flowers
by 'Izz al-Din ibn Ghanim al-Maqdisi

His throne and lenticular cloud

ABU ‘UBAYD SAID: In hadith it is recorded that the Prophet, God's blessings and peace be upon him, said: "God's throne rests on the shoulders of Israfil, who is humble as a waṣa‘ in His presence."

Ahmad ibn ‘Uthman reported this hadith to me on the authority of Ibn al-Mundhir, who heard it from ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak, who heard it from Layth ibn Sa‘d, who heard it from ‘Uqayl on the authority of Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, who reported it with full isnad.

Al-waṣa‘ is said to be the runt of a sparrow's brood of chicks, or a species of bird resembling the sparrow, only smaller.

ABU ‘UBAYD SAID: In hadith it is recorded that the Prophet, God's blessings and peace be upon him, was asked by Abu Razin al-‘Uqayli: "Before our Lord created the heavens and the earth, where was He?" He answered: "He was in [the type of cloud called] an ‘amā’, with a void below it and a void above."

Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al-Farisi and others have related this hadith to me on the authority of Hammad ibn Salama, who heard it from Ya‘la ibn ‘Ata’, who heard it from Waqi‘ ibn Hudus (Hushaym corrects this name to ‘Udus in the isnad of a separate hadith), who was the nephew of Abu Razin and heard it from him directly.

According to al-Asma‘i and others, in the speech of the Arabs al-‘amā’ is a white cloud with horizontal extension. Al-Harith ibn Hilliza said (a variant of his Mu‘allaqa's 25th verse, meter: khafīf):

      Against the blows of fate, we're like the stony fastness
          whose summit the ‘amā’ leaves open space for.

He means by this a high mountain peak that parts the clouds. The "fastness" of al-Harith's people is their unassailability and security in strength, meaning that their defenses are stronger than whatever fate throws at them. And Zuhayr said, describing gazelles or oryx (meter: wāfir):

      They spy the lightning, and their brows are wetted
          when the South Wind's path is showered by the ‘amā’.

      We interpret this hadith according to the speech of the Arabs, and defer to their understanding. Only God knows the size and scale of His ‘amā’ and what it was like. The ‘amā that is "blindness" has nothing to do with the meaning of the hadith.

From Uncommon Vocabulary of Prophetic Hadith by
Abu ‘Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam

Two by Ibn al-Maghribi

There was a Hanafi jurist named Baqbaq who installed himself at the Mustansiriyya Madrasa, and when the professor Kamal al-Din ibn al-Ibari died a few days later, Ibn al-Maghribi composed this mawali about him:

          Can you recite from memory a thousand rulings by Quduri?
          How about a thousand lines of Abu Hafs?
                [Ibn al-Ibari was equal to it,] but without cribsheets
                 old Baqbaq gets lost
          You're a bird of evil omen in human form,
          and bad vibes are your only share
                If you'd only pull up stakes and travel on—
                Hey screech owl! Disappear to anywhere

And in jest he addressed these verses to a friend of his (meter: sarī‘):

          Well done, my hoopoe of Bilqis!
              Well done, my permit of Iblis!
          My spy amid the sodomites
              and to the youth my go-between!
          Up now, to the monastery!
              Drink with me to clanging bells,
          where liquid gold that flows in cups
              is ransomed by what's hard and cold.
          The branches on the spreading tree
              are clothed in beauty, don't you see?
          When joy comes for your frowny face
              the cloud of gloom above our heads
          will be made shade of wings of doves
              and peacock tails in fans outspread

From Choice Notices of the Historical Record by Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi

Asking for a friend

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

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

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

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

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

Windblowed

This verse is by Jamil (meter: ṭawīl):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: [TO BE CONTINUED]

From Characteristic of Faultless People 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 remains "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. The namesake spider of Sūrat al-‘Ankabūt (The Spider) 29:41 doesn't "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.