Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia 1909724963, 9781909724969

Citation preview

E thics

and

P oetry

in

S ixth -C entury A rabia

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

by

Nadia Jamil

Gibb Memorial Trust

Published by The E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying without prior permission of the publishers in writing. Trustees: G. van Gelder, R. Gleave, C. Hillenbrand, H. Kennedy, C. P. Melville, A. Williams, C. Woodhead Secretary to the Trustees: P. R. Bligh

© The E. J. Gibb Memorial Trust and Nadia Jamil 2017 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd ISBN 978-1-90972-496-9 A CIP record of this book is available from the British Library

Further details of the E. J. Gibb Memorial Trust and its publications are available at the Trust’s website www.gibbtrust.org

Acknowledgements

This study has been a very long time in the making, and the debt of gratitude I owe to those who have helped me bring it to completion extends back now some thirty years. My most long-standing debt is to the late Michael V. McDonald, who first introduced me, as an undergraduate, to the world of jāhilī poetry. In my postgraduate years, he stood, too, as a second supervisor, giving hours of his time – as he did to all his supervisees – to help sound out problems and possible leads, with a judgement that inspired so much confidence. An inordinately generous teacher, he is still missed by many grateful students who look back on their time with him as an extraordinary piece of luck. To my graduate advisor at Oxford, Julie Scott Meisami, for the friendship and inspiration she, too, gave, mentoring me through a protracted postgraduate career of a kind scarcely now tolerated; for her unending patience, belief and support, as well as the hours of fun with sundry poets, pianos, dictionaries, cats, and trips to the vet, I owe a very great debt indeed, and declare it loudly here, with knobs on. To Stefan Sperl and Wilferd Madelung, who, years ago, examined the first stage of this project as a thesis, I owe thanks not only for kind encouragement, but also for the very constructive comments and cautions they pressed me then to consider, which never left me, and which framed no little part of my thinking as I proceeded. Ronald Nettler – clandestine mentor of many - introduced me to Izutsu and the value of his methods, alongside those of a wealth of scholars with related theoretical interests. When I finally sat down to compose this book, he also read every portion as it came, suggesting all sorts of clarifications, holding the lamp at the end of my tunnel. I thank James E. Montgomery for the great kindness of reading through the entire first draft, and offering feedback that was so very considered and helpful to me in refining the shape. I am also hugely grateful to James for facilitating an approach to the Gibb Memorial Trust, and the privilege of publishing in this series. Geert Jan van Gelder, having also trekked the Empty Quarter of my initial draft, survived, and came back with so many indications for improvement, clarification and amendment, that to thank him adequately would play like a broken record. I express my gratitude here, therefore, for each and every intervention, though perhaps I still give oxygen to some things he would rather choke.

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Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

To Emilie Savage-Smith, Stephanie Dalley, and Julia Bray at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford, I owe thanks for intermittent kindnesses, generous assistance, and sound advice; and to the staff of the Oriental Institute and Bodleian libraries, so much gratitude for ever-patient and good-natured support. Were it not for the extraordinary generosity of Richard de Unger, I would not have been able to complete this project at all, for he provided the grant that enabled me to devote a whole year to writing without having to teach, and finally bring a long incubation to birth. People may say, sometimes too easily, that their gratitude is eternal for something that changed their life, and that they will never be able to repay; but, in my case, this is completely true. The ultimate life-changer for me, of course, though, has been the arrival of the three jays: Jeremy and Joseph, with their unconditional support and love; and Josh, who let me understand, first hand, the canine-tooth of Fortune, and made me a better person. I dedicate this book to them, and to my late father and mother, Hanna and Aziza Jamil.

Contents Part 1 Ethics and Poetry: The Story to Date

1

1:1.

3

Ḥilm and Jahl, Murūwa and Dīn: Once More unto the Breach

Goldziher3 Farès7 Izutsu8 Bravmann18 Islām: The Commercial Connection24 1:2.

Return to the Jāhilīya: How Does a Poem Work?

31

Fragmentations33 The Primitive Link33 Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin37 The Art of the Poet Unconscious46 The Conversely Conscious Homer50 The Poet Resuscitated52 The Purpose-free and the Purposeful56 The Jumbled Mind and the Rhetoric of Vision57 Cohesions59 The Unifying Tension of Doubt versus Ethos59 Unities of Structural Typology60 Unities of Functional Idiosyncrasy62 Matrices and Metanarratives63 Generative Cross-nets of Association64 Art of the Ternary Archetype67 Plasticity of the Poetic Discourse and the Mechanics of the Saddle69 Ritual Triad74 1:3.

Approach and Trajectory of the Study

77

Method77 Izutsu’s Semantic Analysis77 Izutsu’s Semantic Analysis Adapted81

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Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

On Treatment of ‘Authenticity’, Poet Identities, and Printed Editions81 Reconstructing a Pre-Islamic Conceptual Language83 Organisation of the Study84 Note on the Use of Dictionaries85 Direction of the Chapters and the General Conclusion85 Part 2

Ethics and Poetry: The Inseparable Equation

91

Chapter 1

Time

93

Chapter 2

Camps

Chapter 3

Principles of Kinship and Alliance 147 ʿAql, Baʿth, Shades and Phantoms171

Chapter 4

‘Women’ in the Context of Kinship and Alliance

183

Chapter 5

The Mount

211

5:1

The Wheel and the Storm 211 Astral Light and Water215 Groundwater: Well-pulley, Rope and Bucket216 Horse, Hair, Sun and Rain234

5:2

The Gambler and the Storm 239 The Universal Paradigm of Maysir266

5:3

Intoxicated Excursions 277 Honour and the Protected Grove306 The Arterial Vein of Faith and Sin311

Part 3

General Conclusion

115

323

Conception of the Ethic326 Flexibility of Gender and the Nasīb 327 Murūwa and Dīn 329 Projecting Microcosm and Macrocosm331 God and Man335 Poetry and Dīn 338

Contents

ix

Transformation of the Covenant and the Meaning of Redemption339 I. Ransom339 II. Rope and Bucket342 III. Wine and the Enduring Abode  343 Lenses of Theory344 Jung’s Paradigm of Psychological Growth: The Fluxes and Transitions of Being347 I. The Transcendent Function347 II. Transcendent Function, Narrow and Expansive, Mediator of the Archetypes349 III. Transcendent Function and the Drama of the Alchemical Process351 IV. Chemical Flux: Transcendent Function as Mercurius353 V. The ‘Opus’ of Individuation in Sum353 Transcendent Function, Ḥilm, Jahl and Waṣl: The Gendered Alchemy of the Jāhilī Qaṣīda 354 Final: What Implications for Poetic Structure?356 Bibliography & Abbreviations

359

General Index

369

Part 1 Ethics and Poetry: The Story to Date

1:1. Ḥilm and Jahl, Murūwa and Dīn: Once More unto the Breach In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage … I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot: Follow your spirit, and upon this charge Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’ Henry V, Act 3, Scene 1

Goldziher In 1889, Ignác Goldziher published the first part of his groundbreaking Muhammedanische Studien in which he dealt with the emergence of Islamic ideals from out of Arabia in the period of the so-called jāhilīya.1 This work – in the words of Meir M. Bravmann – placed “the accepted view that there was a sharp contrast between the spiritual and ethical foundation of pre-Islamic Arab life and the religion founded by Muḥammad … on a scientific basis.”2 Seeking to clarify the unbridgeable divide he saw between the ethical world of the jāhilīya and that of the Qurʾan, Goldziher epitomised the former by the label of murūwa – the masculine honour-code whose nexus of virtues he related to Latin virtus – and the latter by dīn, or ‘religion’, by which he meant “the loan word dīn [Avestan ‘dēn’] and not the old Arab word which sounds the same.”3 By murūwa, he intended a composite of “virtues which, founded in the tradition of his people, constitute the fame of an individual or the tribe to which he belongs; the observance of those duties which are connected with family ties; the relationships of protection and hospitality, and the fulfilment of the great law of blood revenge … Loyalty to, and self-sacrifice for the sake of all who are connected, by Arab custom, with one’s tribe 1. Goldziher (1889–1890), vol. 1, Chapter 1; Goldziher (2008), pp. 11–44. 2. Bravmann (1972), p.1. 3. On this idea of an Avestan loan word, championed by Theodor Nöldeke and others, see Louis Gardet (1965), who, however, following Gaudefroy-Demombynes, saw no compulsion to accept that such a loan occurred; see also Patrice Brodeur (2004), where the range and challenges of Qurʾanic dīn are progressively explored.

4

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

are the quintessence of these virtues”.4 Although he did not ‘spell it out’, Goldziher clearly extended murūwa to mean the whole complex of what Paul Friedrich, discussing the structure of honour, calls “a code for both interpretation and action with both cognitive and pragmatic components.” That is to say, both a system of values that describe the constituent elements of honour (ʿirḍ); and the acts that are enjoined by that code, acts that resolve conflict, and acts that precipitate “honourable” behaviour.5 As we shall see, it was perhaps this homogenisation of the cognitive and the pragmatic in Goldziher’s analysis that allowed Bichr Farès to criticise it in the terms he did, after having somehow quite dissociated murūwa from ʿirḍ. Seeking to demonstrate that the primary sense of the term, jāhilīya, was not, as commonly then thought, ‘ignorance’, Goldziher undertook the first modern revision of the ancient ethos, focusing on two of its principal elements: jahl and ḥilm. A highly nuanced and elliptical term, ḥilm, and not ʿilm (‘knowledge’), he found, was the true counterpoise of jahl.6 Looking, then, to define jahl in terms of this opposition, he first identified ḥilm as a concept connoting “firmness, strength, physical integrity and health … moral integrity, the ‘solidity’ of a moral character, unemotional, calm deliberation, mildness of manner” – mildness that was no reprehensible weakness as long as it was appropriate to the moment and emanated from a position of practical and constitutional strength. The ḥalīm, who embodied this virtue, was, in short, “a civilised man.”7 The true antitheses to this definition would embrace: infirmness or instability, weakness, lack of moral and physical integrity, sickness, emotional turmoil, impetuosity and harshness of manner – harshness that would be no vice so long as it was appropriate to the moment and did not emanate from a position of practical or constitutional meanness. Yet, Goldziher epitomised the person who embodied jahl simply as: “a wild, violent, impetuous character who follows the inspiration of unbridled passion and is cruel in following his animal instincts”  –  in short, “a barbarian”.8 Goldziher thus leaned towards polarising ḥilm and jahl into mutually exclusive opposites, but his assessment of the balance of information was nonetheless so

4. Goldziher (2008), pp. 21–22. Goldziher does not elaborate on his conception of virtus, but the clear suggestion of this comparison with a range of virtues ascribed to murūwa, is that he understands virtus to embrace a whole complex of ethical values. (Part of his reason for making the comparison, of course, is that he sees that virtus is connected with vir just as murūwa is connected with marʾ (‘man’): (1889–1890), vol. 1, p. 13). Against earlier scholarship, which found this to be true of virtus over the course of its observable history, McDonnell (2006) has argued that, in pre-classical Latin, it evoked simply martial prowess and took on ethical nuances only later through Greek influence. Kaster (2007) refutes this. 5. Friedrich (1977), p. 284. 6. See Pellat (1971) for an overview of the history and complexity of the concept of ḥilm. 7. Goldziher (2008), p. 203. 8. Ibid.

1:1. Ḥilm and Jahl, Murūwa and Dīn: Once More unto the Breach

5

sensitive as to lead him to nuance his conclusion somewhat. He cites several of many poetic examples that indicate a complementarity between ḥilm and jahl, as:9 ‫األحايين أحْ َو ُج‬ ‫ْض‬ ِ ِ ‫إلى ال َجه ِْل في بَع‬ ْ ْ ‫هل بِال َجه ِْل ُمس َر ُج‬ ِ ‫َولي فَ َرسٌ لِ ْل َج‬ َّ َ ‫و َمن را َم تَعويجـي فإ ني ُم َعـ َّو ُج‬

ُ ‫إن ُك ْن‬ ْ َ‫ف‬ ‫الح ْل ِم إنَّني‬ ِ ‫ت ُمحْ تاجا ً إلى‬ ْ ْ ْ ْ ْ َ ‫َولي ف َرسٌ لِل ِحل ِم بِال ِحل ِم ُمل َج ُم‬ ‫فَ َمن را َم تَ ْقويمي فَإنَّي ُمقَ َّو ٌم‬

Although I might have want of ḥilm, the urgency for jahl, at times, is more. One horse for ḥilm I have with ḥilm all bridled; and one for jahl waits saddled in that mode. Seek the straight in me, you’ll know it; come after the crooked, you’ll find me so.

Unable, therefore, to state that the true man simply eschews jahl, he finds it “neither a virtue … nor … entirely condemned. Part of the muruwwa was knowing when mildness was not befitting the character of a hero and when jahl was indicated.” And yet he decides, leaning heavily on a highly literal reading of one wisdom verse (wa-mā l-nāsu illā jāhilun wa-ḥalīmu: “men are ever jāhil or ḥalīm”), not that there might be a question of chemistry and balance, of leaning tendencies, or of choosing the moment, but that all men fall entirely into either one or other of the opposite camps.10 The clean distinction that he finally drew between jahl and ḥilm permitted him to conclude that by ‘jāhilīya’ was meant a time when barbarism and cruelty was prevalent, and which was contrasted with “dīn in a religious sense” (i.e., the new religion of Islam). 11 For him, Islam was attempting to achieve “nothing but a ḥilm of a higher nature than that taught by the code of virtues of pagan days.”12 A still more nuanced relationship between ḥilm and jahl allowed, however, this formulation would need further thought. The question of what dīn was and was not in the scheme of pre-Islamic Arabia, meanwhile, throws up a further complication. The idea of a foreign word being imported to supply an absent concept of ‘religion’ fitted with what Goldziher’s personal understanding of ‘true religion’ was: something which implied a tone of “thankful and submissive feeling towards the gods” such as found in south Arabian inscriptions;13 “those deep religious sentiments, which in 9. Ibid., pp. 204–205 and notes. These are only lines 1, 4, and 5 of a longer version of this fragment cited, translated and discussed by Jaroslav Stetkevych who, seeing in jahl and ḥilm, a certain “intertwined heroic coexistence” finds Goldziher’s dichotomising of the “pre-Islamic Bedouin persona” to be “not entirely felicitous”: (1996), p. 8 and ibid., pp. 114–115, notes 14 and 15. Stetkevych calls these lines ‘anonymous’, perhaps because there are so many contenders. For references, see, e.g., Meir J. Kister’s edition of Kitāb ādāb al-ṣuḥba: al-Sulamī (1954), pp. 72–73, and n. 215, to which Samuel Stern adds: Goldziher (2008), p. 204, n. 3; but there are more. 10. Goldziher (2008), p. 205. 11. Ibid., p. 207. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., pp. 12–13.

6

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

minds attuned to piety make for the need to communicate with the deity and which are the source of devout emotion”.14 These were all things he found to be generally lacking for central Arabia in the sources available to him. Therefore, albeit discerning evidence of religious commitment of sorts embedded in oaths, institutions, and communal practice (the permissibility of wine after blood vengeance, the sacredness of the tribal call, the veneration of the dead),15 he offered:16 It would not be wrong to conclude – though people are less willing to do so now than formerly – that Dozy was right in inferring from the lack of traces of deep religious sense in pagan Arabic poetry that ‘religion, of whatever kind it may have been, generally had little place in the life of the Arabs, who were engrossed in worldly interests like fighting, wine, games and love.’ This at any rate would apply to the time when these poems were composed, i.e., to the time immediately preceding Islam.

Goldziher’s qualification here that “people are less willing to do so now than formerly” is intriguing; but he does not elaborate. The foundations of related scholarship were shifting in his time, some of the more revolutionary ideas evolving in the thought of his friend, William Robertson Smith. In 1889, too, Robertson Smith first published The Religion of the Semites.17 Here, he presented the radical new thesis that primitive religion was integral to, and expressive of, community values; society embraced gods and men in a relationship analogous to that of kinship:18 Broadly speaking, religion was made up of a series of acts and observances, the correct performance of which was necessary or desirable to secure the favour of the gods or avert their anger; and in these observances every member of society had a share, marked out for him either in virtue of his being born within a certain family and community, or in virtue of the station, within the family and community, that he had come to hold in the course of his life … Religion did not exist for the saving of souls but for the preservation and welfare of society, and all that was necessary to this end every man had to take his part, or break with the domestic and political community to which he belonged … Thus a man was born into a fixed relation to certain gods as surely as he was born into relation to his fellow-men; and his religion, that is, the part of conduct which was determined by his relation to the gods, was simply one side of the general scheme of conduct prescribed for him by his position as a member of society. There was no separation between the 14. Ibid., p. 39, with special emphasis on the significance of prayer in this regard. 15. Ibid., p. 30, pp. 64–65, pp. 229–238. 16. Ibid., p. 12. 17. Goldziher had clearly already synthesised some of Robertson Smith’s major ideas: he quotes from the latter’s Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (first published in 1885), and later assisted in producing the second revised edition (first published in 1903 – a task “he unfortunately found himself unable to complete”), which included the author’s additional notes and references as well as ideas modified on the basis of his work on The Religion of the Semites: see Robertson Smith (1907), the editor’s preface, pp. v–vi. 18. Robertson Smith (1894), pp. 28–30 (the second revised edition is referenced here).

1:1. Ḥilm and Jahl, Murūwa and Dīn: Once More unto the Breach

7

spheres of religion and ordinary life. Every social act had a reference to the gods as well as to men, for the social body was not made up of men only, but of gods and men.

If Goldziher was abreast of this, he cannot have been persuaded. Otherwise, he would surely have looked to review his analysis to some degree. Farès Some forty years later, Bichr Farès, making ample use, in his turn, of early poetical sources, challenged Goldziher’s conception of murūwa in such a way as also to effect the dissociation of ‘religion’ from the code of ethics, but by different means. Farès most certainly was aware of the later work of Robertson Smith, as also that of subsequent figureheads of the nascent social sciences, including Emile Durkheim and his protégés. By the time Farès was writing, Durkheim had developed key ideas of Robertson Smith to propose that the primitive gods were not only integral to the community, but that the form they took was a figurative expression of the very social structure. Religion, he hypothesised, emerged out of a social energy generated by the collectivity - something he called ‘effervescence’ - to become a symbol and stimulus of their collective life.19 Farès looked for the Durkheimian principle of common belief and practice, the catalyst that could, in the jāhilīya, have stimulated such an intense group dynamic, and found that religious belief was too diverse and, essentially, too feeble, to constitute that principle. Rather, it was sacred ‘honour’ (ʿirḍ), a complex concept of multiple moral dimensions, which substituted for religion in that capacity. In setting forth the elements of honour, Farès apportioned to ʿirḍ most of the ethical values and practices that Goldziher had related to murūwa. He dispensed with Goldziher’s ḥilm/jahl dichotomy. Focusing solely on ḥilm, he restricts it to being an element of ʿirḍ, which was exclusive to the sayyid, or head, of a kin-group. Ḥilm entailed never ceding to anger, self-mastery to the point of forbearance. The sayyid had thus willingly to suffer affronts and refrain from avenging them, strangely disregardful of his own honour, and glorying in a virtue all the more precious for being at such fierce variance with Arab nature. Moved to construct an explanation for how such ignominy should be acceptable, Farès proposed that this was a communal strategy to clip the wings of the sayyid and obviate tyranny, thus also enhancing the general standing of the group. The group, meanwhile, would swear to his strength and valour, and his honour would be rehabilitated by the prestige of being acknowledged the head of an indomitable people.20 Charles Pellat gently sidelines this idea, asserting rather, a considerable moral authority to this mode of ḥilm when manifest in a sayyid.21 As to murūwa, Farès investigated this on the basis of when it could be said to have become an “abstract term capable of being taken as a symbol”. His answer was ‘not 19. Durkheim (2008), pp. 157–158, 163–164, 283–284, 285, 293, 317. 20. Farès (1932), pp. 55–56, 158–160. 21. See Pellat (1971).

8

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

in the jāhilīya’. He concluded that the murūwa of pre-Islamic Arabia was essentially concerned with “the material conditions of life, not virtue”; that it entailed “the sum of the physical qualities of a man (marʾ)”. Only later, with the coming of Islam did it evolve to embrace his moral qualities after “a process of spiritualisation and abstraction”. Farès arrived at this conclusion largely on the basis of looking narrowly for possible early instances of the word, ‘murūwa’, as “a term to define an abstraction”, without heeding the multifarious poetic statements on what qualities of character and behaviour the man (al-marʾ) or the brave youth (al-fatā) should possess.22 Essentially, he had pitted murūwa against ʿirḍ as a contender for the moral principle of social galvanisation (Durkheimian ‘effervescence’) and proved to himself that it could not compete. It was on this basis that he felt able strongly to dispute Goldziher’s equation of murūwa with virtus;23 and it was his disagreement with Goldziher on this point which was later taken up by Bravmann (see further below), though without any discussion of Farès’ thesis on ʿirḍ and without, therefore, any debate as to the sense of separating ʿirḍ so decisively from murūwa, rather than suggesting, perhaps, their complementarity. Izutsu When Toshihiko Izutsu came to study the transformations of the ancient ethic effected by Qurʾan, he seems to have taken no account of Farès. He introduces the pre-Islamic values that conflicted with the Qurʾanic message – the pride in human power, absolute independence and determination not to bow before authority - by re-associating the behavioural patterns of murūwa with the inspiration of ʿirḍ (sacred honour), unpicking and rearticulating Goldziher’s earlier homogenisation of the two:24 [F]ar from being moral defects, these represented in their eyes the highest ideal of human virtue, the noblest virtue of a man really worthy of the name ‘man’, al-fatā. For these qualities were based on, and various manifestation[s] of, the sense of ‘honor’ (ʿird) which was deep-rooted in their mentality, and which was, indeed, the highest regulating principle of their conduct.

Izutsu concurred with the essential thrust of Goldziher’s thesis on jahl and jāhilīya, but wished to subject the conceptual pair, jahl and ḥilm, as they arose in the early poetry and the Qurʾan, to a more systematic contextual analysis. This was, for him, a matter of quintessential importance, as without it he believed “we cannot hope to understand the

22. This stance stands counter to his appreciation, nonetheless, of early poetical evidence he himself adduces, which points clearly to a certain moral dimension to murūwa - e.g., as in a verse from the Ḥamāsa (he cites Freytag (1828–1851), p. 511): idhā l-marʾu aʿyat-hu l-murūʾatu nāshiʾan/fa-maṭlabu-hā kahlan ʿalay-hi shadīdū, “If murūwa should be beyond a man (marʾ) as a youth, his summoning it later will tax him to excess”: Farès (1993). 23. First in Farès (1932), pp. 30, 32–33, then in Farès (1993). 24. Izutsu (2008), pp. 219–220.

1:1. Ḥilm and Jahl, Murūwa and Dīn: Once More unto the Breach

9

psychological make-up of the ancient Arabs.”25 He aimed to analyse the opposition of the concept of jāhilīya to that of islām and to show thereby that ḥilm was somehow “the pre-religious, pre-Islamic form of the concept of islām itself.”26 In doing so, he offered a view in many ways more nuanced than Goldziher’s and, further to that, a rather different view on dīn (‘religion’). At the same time, the primary expression of murūwa was still distanced from dīn in his conception and restricted to the ‘horizontal’ plane of man’s relationship with man. This led him, also, in the end, to a problematic conclusion on ḥilm. Izutsu presents three complementary faces of jahl. The first of these manifests outwardly in expressions of violence, heated passion, what can be termed ẓulm – that is to say, broadly, ‘oppression’ or ‘harm’. He notes, however, that in the capacity of righteous arousal or moral indignation for a vital reason relating to honour (ʿirḍ), such ẓulm could not be regarded as blameworthy. This is a nice point, powerfully reflected in the wisdom of Zuhayr b. Abī Sulmā:27 ْ ‫اس ي‬ ْ َ‫يُهَ َّد ْم َو َم ْن ال ي‬ ‫ُظلَ ِم‬ َ ّ‫ظلِ ِم الن‬

‫الح ِه‬ ِ ‫ض ِه بِ ِس‬ ِ ْ‫َو َم ْن ال يَ ُذ ْد ع َْن حَو‬

Whoso takes not to arms to defend his cistern (ḥawḍ), will see it destroyed; whoso knows not to assail folk (lā yaẓlim) shall be assailed (yuẓlam).

By a process of reflection, Izutsu sees the spirit of jahl in the Qurʾanic reference to the ẓulm of the unbelievers: the stubborn, violent resistance to the Divine Word that ultimately only harms themselves. It is the fire of jahl, the refusal to submit and compromise honour that he sees in the Qurʾanic phrase, ḥamīyat al-jāhilīya, or the ‘heat’ of what he calls ‘jāhilī-ness’. It is this particular moral aspect of jahl he sees playing a major role in the conceptual world of the Qurʾan. To this first behavioural quality of jahl Izutsu opposes a ḥilm that implies the intellectual rigour to rein in and overcome passion and any impetuous rush to folly. He is careful to emphasise that this is not a passive quality, that in its praiseworthy aspect it is contingent on power, on superiority of mind and standing. The behavioural manifestation of this quality of ḥilm is waqār: a sedate and dignified bearing. It is the implication of power masking the potential for dreadful action that makes sense to him of the use of ḥalīm as applied to God in the Qurʾan. Izutsu also highlights the internal dimension of this first behavioural aspect of jahl, which relates to a man’s intellectual function. This is a quality that also needs to be countered by the intellectual exertion of a ḥalīm: “As a general rule, jahl causes the weakening, if not complete loss, of the function of reason (ʿaql); only when coupled with ḥilm, is ʿaql capable of functioning normally.” Moving away from 25. Ibid., p. 223. 26. Ibid., p. 222. 27. Ahlwardt (1870), Zuhayr, no. 16, v. 53. Bettini (2002) offers a fair overview of the sources on this very major poet, who would seem to have lived at the beginning of the 7th century, A.D.

10

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

a total equation he had earlier drawn between this conception of ḥilm and Greek ‘ataraxia’ – what he called ‘tranquility of the soul’, a very hard thing, he thought then, for the ancient Arab to master28 – he notes that while ḥilm therefore had the potential to be elaborated philosophically in a similar way to the Greek, the Arabs did not eventually go in that direction. Rather, he found, ḥilm evolved into an administrative skill of statesmanship and governance.29 Whilst noting that this aspect of ḥilm was an indispensable quality of the sayyid, he does not, like Farès, restrict it as a quality of a tribal leader. Izutsu identifies the second semantic element of jahl as the kind of mental blindness that results in one who is habitually jāhil: “the incapacity of the mind for having a deep understanding of things which consequently produces always shallow and rash judgments on everything” – an incapacity which, in the Qurʾanic world view manifests as a person’s inability to understand the divine will, or read divine signs or understand his own limitation. It is from this aspect of the semantic structure of jahl that Izutsu infers how the opposite – ḥilm – acquired the meaning of ‘reason’ (ʿaql), though he offers that ʿaql is a narrower concept: ḥilm, he sees, is the basis of ʿaql, the principle that permits the reason to operate appropriately. As to the third sense of jahl – that of ‘ignorance’ or ‘lack of knowledge’ – where the opposite becomes ʿilm (‘knowledge’) instead of ḥilm, Izutsu sees this only as a short step away from the second, and a meaning which, albeit the most usual in later Arabic, is the least important and least represented in the earlier period. In the course of this analysis, Izutsu follows Goldziher’s lead in two important details. First, like Goldziher, he drives a wedge through the possibility of complementarity between ḥilm and jahl. Indeed, he only cites a verse of Maʿbad b. ʿAlqama that asserts such complementarity in order to deny its possibility in the real world:30 ... ‫َوتَجْ هَ ُل أَ ْي ِدينَا َويَحْ لُ ُم َر ْأيُنَا‬

This he translates as: Our hands act in a jāhil way, yes, but our head remains calm and ḥalīm

Rhetorically, he asks: “How can one see things objectively with an undisturbed tranquility of mind when one is blind with passion?” It is evident from his translation that he views ḥilm as an absolute, unadulterated condition, rather than allowing it the dynamism of a process; but that is precisely what the indicative verb used here 28. Izutsu (1964), pp. 216–219. 29. Pellat (1971) offers an overview of the later trajectory of the term. 30. Izutsu (2008), p. 230. The poet is thought to have died around the year 70/690: al-Ziriklī (2002), p. 264. Izutsu cites from Selection 203, v. 6, of the Ḥamāsa in al-Tibrīzī’s recension: Freytag (1828–1851), p. 311. A warning of the response to verbal assaults, the verse continues: … wa-nashtimu bi l-afʿāli lā bi l-takallumī, “We ‘revile’ with deeds and not with talk”.

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has the capacity to show: process, the exercise of a controlling intellectual aptitude that can operate contemporaneously with ferocity of feeling (also expressed by an indicative verb). One might better regard this as an attempt to express an impassioned or adrenalous rush where experience allows a warrior to act with clear-sighted efficaciousness, and interpret: Our hands deal out [the fury of] jahl whilst our mind exerts ḥilm [and remains clear].

In this case, we would not be dealing with a relationship of mutually exclusive antithesis, but one of process and synergy between jahl and ḥilm. Depending on circumstance, one or other of the two may dominate the external appearance or action of a man. Where he is morally driven to fight, the fury of jahl may be most apparent, but the action nonetheless guided by practiced skills of heart and mind. Where he is morally moved to suppress his passion or fury, these skills of heart and mind may rein in an incipient outburst and an aspect of calm will predominate. However, in either case, complete calm or an unadulterated state of ḥilm may not be realised until the catalyst of jahl, or conflict, is dealt with and satisfactorily resolved. Such a chemistry between ḥilm and jahl allowed, some rethinking is required of the way in which Izutsu proceeds to develop his second important lead from Goldziher: that Islam was attempting to achieve “nothing but a ḥilm of a higher nature than that taught by the code of virtues of pagan days”.31 Izutsu takes Goldziher’s thesis a step further, in fact, saying that the concept of islām was “a continuation and development of ḥilm”, but taken to a limit so far beyond its original boundary as to be transformed into something quite different. He notes that the quality of being ḥalīm appears not to have had especial significance in the Qurʾan except in reference to God.32 The quality of ḥilm itself, once such a conspicuous feature of ethical life, has all but disappeared as a human attribute (though, as we shall see, the sole Qurʾanic reference to it, attached to the nonbelievers, is compelling). This is not, he thinks, because it was meant to disappear. Rather, he sees it dominating the Qurʾan in diffuse form: the exhortation to kindness (iḥsān) and justice (ʿadl), the proscription of wrongful violence (ẓulm), the demand for abstinence and the control of passion, the criticism of arrogance and so forth. Of primary importance in the Qurʾanic scheme is the exhortation to combat jahl, the latter now, essentially, an attitude of hostility to the message of Islam. Jahl was no longer – as Izutsu would have it – “exclusively a matter of man-to-man relation”, existing on a ‘horizontal’ plane, but ultimately a ‘vertically’ directed aggression against God Himself. One might then think, he says – following the logic that if jahl, as a ‘vertical’ attitude of man as ‘servant’ (ʿabd) toward God should be banished – then what should take its place must be ḥilm. But, he reasoned, the 31. Goldziher (2008), p. 207. 32. The adjective, ḥalīm, is used of Abraham (Qurʾān, 9: 114; 11: 75), Isaac (ibid., 37: 101) and Shuʿayb (ibid., 11: 87), seemingly restricted to a sense of ‘clemency’.

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either-jahl-or-ḥilm dynamic, which he believed had formerly implied a purely interhuman, ‘horizontal’ extension, was no longer valid. For the ʿabd to approach his master with the attitude of ḥilm is equally out of the question, because ḥilm implies power, a conscious control, which might at any time transform itself into a terrible outburst. What was required was for the ʿabd to go beyond the degree of ḥilm in his humility before God so as to lose all sense of self-sufficiency and power in an attitude of absolute submission. Humility of this degree was no longer ḥilm, but islām. Thus, Izutsu finds islām to be, not a negation of ḥilm, but its continuation and development. This is also, he says, why ḥilm disappears in the Qurʾanic conception of manly virtue, because ḥilm cannot subsist without self-sufficiency and superiority, and only God is entitled to that. He sees a new conceptual articulation where a vast field formerly covered by ḥilm is entirely reorganised. Ḥilm in opposition to jahl gives way to a new antithesis: islām versus jahl; and jahl acquires the sense of kufr or ‘unbelief ’, resulting in another new opposition: the non-believer versus the believer, the kāfir versus the muslim. This is a conception that, for Charles Pellat, “does not provoke any major objection except that the Muslims do not appear to have consciously made ḥilm a directing principle of their conduct”.33 The reason for this may well have its origin in the fact that the Qurʾan is silent on ḥilm as an active moral principle except to highlight it (in the plural, aḥlām) as an expression of arrogant hubris on the part of the non-believers when they deny the Prophet and the truth of his message:34 َ‫أَ ْم تَأْ ُم ُرهُ ْم أَحْ ال ُمهُم بِهَذا أَ ْم هُ ْم قَوْ ٌم طَا ُغون‬ Do their minds (aḥlām) tell them to do this? Or are they an insolent people?

In other words, both ḥilm and jahl are located in the province of unbelief, neither promoted as a desirable quality of the Muslim. Indeed, ḥilm appears here as the guiding principle of the jahl, or kufr, evinced in opposition to Muḥammad and his followers. Of course, this fits with Izutsu’s contention that ḥilm, per se, is an inappropriate attitude in relation to the One God; but it speaks, importantly, of the chemistry or complementarity between ḥilm and jahl discussed above. The problem in Izutsu’s formulation is the absence of this chemistry in the comparison he draws between the non-believer and the believer when he moves to demonstrate his thesis on the evolution of ḥilm; and that, rather than comparing both parties’ attitude to one another in a confrontation that clearly extends to each other’s chosen deity or deities, Izutsu compares the believers’ direct attitude to the One God of Islam with

33. Pellat (1971). 34. Qurʾān, 52: 32. The translation is Jones’ (2007), p. 485.

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the non-believers’ direct attitude to the same. His economical model amounts to the following:35 God jahl kāfir

islām, not ḥilm believer

Necessarily, however, even assuming an ultimate extension of the non-believer’s hostility to the One God of Islam, the confrontation here is primarily ‘horizontal’: non-believers denying the Prophet and his message, and the Prophet’s message most explicitly disparaging both their denial of him and their commitment to their own ‘sharer deities’ (shurakāʾ).36 If we are dealing with a pre-Islamic conception of chemistry and process between ḥilm and jahl where these two qualities differ in relative balance depending on circumstance, we may better look, in the Islamic conception, not simply for an alternative to ḥilm (‘good’) that is the opposite of jahl (‘bad’), but an alternative interactive dynamic. Furthermore, this alternative dynamic should have both internal/intellectual and external dimensions – depending on whether one is simply confronting one’s own self, or confronting an antagonist – even as Izutsu has described in his analysis. In fact, a very compelling illustration of the internal face of such a dynamic within the Qurʾanic conception is evidenced in the story of Joseph:37

ْ ‫ي ِم ّما يَ ْدعونَنِي إِلَ ْي ِه وإِ ّل تَصْ ِر‬ ‫ف َعنّي َك ْي َده َُّن أَصْ بُ إِلَ ْی ِھ َّن‬ َّ َ‫قَا َل َربِّ السَّجْ نُ أَ َحبُّ إِل‬ َ‫َوأَ ُك ْن ِّمنَ ْال َجا ِھلِین‬ He said, “my Lord, I prefer prison rather than that to which these women call me; but if You do not turn their tricks from me, I shall incline to them in youthful folly (aṣbu) and I shall become of the heedless (al-jāhilīn)”.

As Izutsu points out when he cites this passage,38 the verb ṣabā (to succumb to youthful folly, or ṣibā), appearing here in the first person (aṣbu), is practically a technical term for ceding to a surge of unbridled passion that disturbs the balance of mind, and precipitates behaviour that equates to jahl – so much so, in fact, that it stands in its

35. Slightly adapted from Izutsu (2008), p. 238. 36. Amply reflected, for example, in Qurʾān, 9. 37. Qurʾān, 12: 33. Translation Jones (2007), p. 224. 38. Izutsu (2008), p. 225.

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own right as “nothing but a different name of jahl”, often appearing thus in direct opposition to ḥilm, as, for example, in a verse of al-Mukhabbal:39 ‫صبَا ِح ْل ُم‬ َ ‫ْس لِ َم ْن‬ َ ‫صبَا َولَي‬ َ َ‫ف‬

‫َذ َك َر الرَّبابُ َو ِذك ُرها ُس ْق ُم‬

He thought of ar-Rabāb, and the thought of her was his malady (suqm): so he followed after youthful passion (ṣabā); he who does so (ṣabā) has no steadiness of judgement (ḥilm).

The natural manly response to ṣibā, constantly reiterated in the poetry, is the selfreliant, intellectual exertion of one practiced in resisting overruling passion and in reasserting the predominance of ḥilm. What we find in the Qurʾanic story of Joseph is a loud silence on the expected imperative of ḥilm. There is certainly self-exertion and intellectual resistance; but the avoidance of succumbing entirely to jahl is predicated on divine assistance – as a reward, one assumes, for belief. Here, we have an alternative chemistry of the jahl/ḥilm equation, where something in the man – not apparently ḥilm – is striving as a counter-initiative to the precursor of unadulterated jahl. It clearly follows belief, but will we simply call it ‘islām’, or is there another unidentified element? An external face to this dynamic may be isolated by examining Qurʾanic statements on the appropriate counter-initiative to meeting hostility/unbelief – jahl/kufr – in response to the divine message. This also enables us to ascertain that there is, indeed, a missing element to the equation. The non-Muslims are exhorted to abandon their gods, the traditions of their fathers, and a covenant based on blood relations for a new covenant with the One God that is based on belief. They reject this with an intellectual force which it seems they, themselves, would call ḥilm (plural, aḥlām), but which is ridiculed now as hubris.40 This ḥilm rules their hostility to the message so that they evince jahl, a behaviour that, at this point, yields a bivalent interpretation: aggression out of moral indignation from their perspective, but unbelief or kufr from that of the Qurʾan. What behavioural dynamic are believers, then, exhorted to deploy; what intellectual counter-initiative – not called ḥilm  –  with what manifest counterforce – not called jahl? Over and above active ‘endurance’ (ṣabr), the Qurʾanic candidate for this counter-initiative appears to be jihād: striving with one’s soul/self and worldly means (bi-l-anfus wa-l-amwāl) to combat jahl/kufr in all its manifestations, within oneself and without. This is a principle predicated on belief (īmān) and thus, no doubt, self-surrender (islām), but distinct in itself as a behavioural demand.41 39. Lyall (1918–1921), XX1, v. 1. Lyall’s translation. Lyall (ibid., vol. 2, pp. 73–74) offers a brief overview of this poet, whose life is thought to have bridged the jāhilīya and the early days of Islam. The printed verse in Izutsu (2008), p. 225 is defective. 40. Qurʾān, 52: 32, cited shortly above in the main text. 41. That ‘striving’ – jihād – appropriately thus (bi-l-anfus wa-l-amwāl) is based in true belief – īmān – is attested passim in the Qurʾan. That this can earn divine ‘assistance’ (naṣr) and salvation is also apparent (as, e.g., Qurʾān, 22: 77–78). That jihād is the pious counterforce to unbelief (kufr)

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What is more, the Qurʾan illustrates also a quality of inappropriate ‘striving’, which is predicated on erroneous belief and the promotion of alternative gods, i.e., shirk, or ‘association’. This inappropriate jihād is elliptically aligned, in fact, with a hitherto less dominant expression of jahl; namely, ‘ignorance’ (in regard of true belief), for it advocates worship of that of which one has no knowledge (ʿilm):42 َّ ‫َو َو‬ ‫ك بِ ِه ِع ْل ٌم فَال تُ ِط ْعهُمآ‬ َ َ‫ْس ل‬ َ ‫ك لِتُ ْش ِر‬ َ ‫اإل ْنسانَ بِوالِ َد ْي ِه ُحسْنا ً َوإِن َجاهَدا‬ َ ‫ك بِي ما لَي‬ ِ ‫صيْنا‬ We have enjoined man to treat his parents well; but if the two of them strive (jāhadā) to make you associate (tushrik) with Me that of which you have no knowledge (ʿilm), do not obey them.

Thus, within the spectrum of Qurʾanic allusions to jihād, we observe two opposing patterns that represent, indeed, the conflict of ‘striving’ between proponents of belief (īmān) and monotheism (tawḥīd) on the one hand, and those of denial (kufr) and ‘association’ (shirk) on the other: First, an appropriate jihād where both ḥilm and jahl have been stripped from the equation, which is predicated on belief, and implies ‘knowledge’ (ʿilm); second, an inappropriate jihād, aligned with unbelief, where ḥilm is delegitimised, and which implies, rather, only, lack of ‘knowledge’ (ʿilm); that is to say, a newly emergent, dominant mode of jahl. Put otherwise, the Qurʾan unsubscribes the believer from any integral ḥilm/jahl process, and puts him, rather, into a camp of ‘knowledge’ (ʿilm) that is entirely separate from, and counterposed to a camp of ‘ignorance’ (jahl). And, here, we already arrive at the absolute ʿilm/jahl antithesis that Goldziher demonstrated was a product following the introduction of Islamic ideas. In sum, there is no objection to accepting Izutsu’s formulation of a Qurʾanic reorganisation of “the vast field which was once covered by the concept of ḥilm, or of the Qurʾanic construction of new, over-arching oppositions: islām/jahl (kufr), muslim/ jāhil (kāfir). However, our information suggests that the two sides of these oppositions cannot simply be said to stand, respectively, as the new ḥilm/ḥalīm versus the new jahl/jāhil, because ḥilm and jahl were never absolute opposites in separate camps, but combined potential, which, properly managed and in varying balance, could express and its proponents whose destiny, conversely, is Hell, is most emphatically illustrated in exhortations to the Prophet to ‘strive’ against them (ibid., 9: 73, 66: 9, 25: 52); Qurʾān, 3: 142 demonstrates the complementarity of jihād and ṣabr (active ‘endurance’ – a concept discussed in more detail below, Part 2, Chapter 3) in ‘striving’ to prove faith and ward of evil; cf. Imhof (2011), p. 398, and the unprecedented appearance of jihād in the poetry of Kaʿb. b. Mālik as an expression of subordination to the power of Allāh, and the legitimate rule (of the Prophet here) that derives thereof, not from the tribal code of behaviour. Note here (ibid., p. 401, vv. 17, 19) the combination of ṣabr and jihād in antithesis to tribal opposition and tribal values; how the believers’ Prophet-leader has (ibid., v. 14), first and foremost ‘judgement’ (ḥukm) and ‘knowledge’ (ʿilm), and, therewith, a redefined quality of ḥilm that has nothing to do with ‘hasty and ignorant passion’ (… dhū ḥukmin wa-ʿilmin/wa-ḥilmin lam yakun nazaqan khafīfan), and is, furthermore (ibid., v. 18), clearly distinct from the islām which all are enjoined to embrace. 42. Qurʾān, 29: 8; cf. ibid., 31: 15. Translation Jones (2007), p. 363.

16

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the mind and action of virtue; that Islamic belief (īmān) apparently entailed re-casting both of these – perhaps for the very fact that they were not, in their original mould, to be separated  –  and replacing their combined potential with the effort of jihād; that the old, combined dynamic, meanwhile, was collapsed into simple unbelief, duly re-formulated, expressed by an unequivocally negative concept of jahl. While this would entail a huge idealistic blow to ḥilm, it would not necessarily spell the end of it as a human virtue (and, indeed, did not); but it would entail, at least, a reduction in its original scope and its general isolation from any noble synergy with what could thereafter be deemed an appropriate jahl.43 One might lastly add here that, if we view this ideological confrontation in terms of a move to dispense with a ḥilm/jahl ethical behavioural combination that is firmly attached to allegiance to other deities in a pact based on blood, and then to replace it with a new behavioural pattern of striving (jihād) out of allegiance to the One God in a pact based on belief, then this is a clear sign that both old and new behavioural complexes were somehow intimately involved with religious adherence; that there was a relationship, not a divide, between the pre-Islamic ethic and religious attachment which continued – albeit in modified form  –  with the Qurʾanic reshaping of the ethic and the man-to-god relation. This brings us once more to the concept of dīn, or ‘religion’. Izutsu, in contrast to Goldziher, neither created a divide between pre-Islamic murūwa and dīn, nor suggested that ‘religion’ in the jāhilīya was weak or unimportant. Rather, he thought it possibly anachronistic to suppose that ‘religion’ in the jāhilīya should have the ‘non-reified’ sense of a personal existential act for anyone except, perhaps, Jews and Christians. He illustrated how one could, rather, argue for the prevalence amongst those peoples addressed by the Qurʾan, of a ‘reified’ expression of religion, this being “an objective communal matter comprising all the creeds and ritual practices shared by all members of the community”; but then moved to show that it is possible also to trace and identify in the Qurʾan the emergence of precisely that ‘non-reified’, or personal, expression where dīn in the sense of ‘religion’ becomes a matter for each individual believer. Importantly, in doing so, he elaborated and illustrated his view that there was no need to resort to the explanation of dīn as an imported foreign loan word.44 Whilst noting that some scholars had attributed the two predominant meanings for dīn in the Qurʾan, ‘religion’ and ‘judgement’, respectively, to Avestan and Hebrew origins, Izutsu respectfully decided to begin an alternative exploration from within Arabic alone, by looking first at the early poetical repertoire. There, he identified three principal senses: ‘custom’/‘habit’; ‘requital’; and ‘obedience’. The first of these, ‘custom’/‘habit’, he thought possibly relevant on the grounds that this could relate either to the idea of ‘ritual practice’ or else to a ‘reified’ version of the more 43. The key moments in the later trajectory of ḥilm are by mapped Pellat (1971), who illustrates that this is clearly what happens. See also above, n. 41, and Kaʿb b. Mālik’s redefinition of ḥilm in regard of the Prophet. 44. See Izutsu (2008), pp. 239–251 for his statement on dīn.

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17

existential type of personal faith. The second, ‘requital’, he found to be frequently represented both in the pre-Islamic repertoire and in the Qurʾan; but he felt that this meaning belonged properly to “the semantic field of eschatology” and had no direct relevance to the topic in hand, for which reason he set it aside. He focused very intensely on the third expression of dīn he had identified: that of ‘obedience’. He noted, more precisely, though, how this meaning was only one half of an equation. The word dīn, or the verb, dāna, from which it derives, belongs to the world of the aḍdād: so-called ‘antagonyms’, or words offering two contrary meanings. There is a dual perspective crystallised in this term: both that of submitting/yielding (‘obedience’), and of subduing/governing (‘authority’). In other words, represented here are the two contrary perspectives of a relationship between a follower and an authority or protector. The predominant concept of ‘obedience’ occurring in the poetry – with the understanding that the dominion of another party was implied – presented itself to Izutsu as the origin of the important meaning of ‘religion’ that accrues to dīn. This accepted, he concluded, “it would be quite unnecessary to go beyond the limits of Arabic and seek its origin in the Persian word … The formal coincidence might have been purely accidental”.45 On this basis, Izutsu found it also to be no accident that crucial Qurʾanic references to dīn render it “virtually defined in terms of ʿabada, i.e. ‘to worship God’ in the sense of ‘serving him as a humble servant who obeys his master’”, as: 46

* َ‫قُلْ يَأَيُّهَا ْالكَافِ ُرونَ * َل أَ ْعبُ ُد َما تَ ْعبُ ُدون‬ * ‫َو َال أَ ْنتُ ْم عَابِ ُدونَ َمآ أَ ْعبُ ُد * َو َل أَنَا عَابِ ٌد َّما َعبَد ُّت ْم‬ * ‫ين‬ ِ ‫َولَ أَ ْنتُ ْم عَابِ ُدونَ َمآ أَ ْعبُ ُد * لَ ُك ْم ِدينُ ُك ْم َولِ َي ِد‬

Say, ‘O infidels, * I do not serve [aʿbudu] (or worship) what you serve, * Nor do you serve [taʿbudūna] what I serve. * I am not the servant of what you serve, * Nor are you the servants of what I serve * You have your religion [dīnu-kum] and I have my religion [dīn-ī].’ *

It may not be superfluous to underline here that references of this type imply the existence of a well-understood relationship between the Prophet’s non-believing antagonists and those entities that they ‘serve’ according to their dīn, which is expressed in precisely the same terms used to describe the relation between the Prophet and the One God. This is not at all to presume that the relationships are of an identical type, but simply to offer that there appears to be an assumption that the concepts adduced would immediately have been understood on the basis of established 45. Ibid., p. 246. At the same time, Izutsu does point up (ibid., p. 252, n. 36) what he calls the “adverse view” of Wilfred Cantwell Smith  –  although one could regard this, rather, as a compromise view, since it indicates local, established meaning – that Arabic dīn was “a local variety of an ‘international term’ of Persian origin, dīn or den, which had spread widely over the countries of the Middle East”. 46. Qurʾān, 109: 1–6. Translation Jones (2007), p. 593; cf. Qurʾān, 10: 104, 39: 14.

18

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social practice, rather than requiring interpretation as foreign imports. It may also be noted, further to Izutsu’s observation on dāna, that the field of reference covered by this verb in its capacity as one of the aḍdād (antagonyms carrying both a meaning and its opposite), is strikingly broad. Not only do we find it aligned with ‘obedience’ at the same time as ‘authority’, but also ‘requital’, i.e., ‘reward’ as well as ‘punishment’; ‘complying’ or rebelling’; ‘honouring’ or ‘reviling’; ‘incurring a debt’ or ‘extending a loan’; being subject to any state, good or bad, ‘wellbeing’ or ‘disease’.47 This is underlined, not to give undue weight, at this stage, to bald dictionary meanings, but simply to note that these imply that dīn may originally have commanded a conceptual theatre of antagonymic polysemy wider, even, than Izutsu suggests - a critical point to which we shall return. Bravmann When Meir M. Bravmann came to analyse this network of concepts, he seems not to have taken account of Izutsu’s work, but addressed himself to Goldziher and Farès.48 He took exception to Farès’ dismissal of Goldziher’s equation of murūwa with virtus, as also to Farès’ denial of any real ethical or spiritual significance to murūwa prior to Islam, and his relegating it, rather, to the sphere of material concerns. Unhappy that Farès’ assertions seemed to have gone unchallenged, he reviewed his same readings alongside other sources and concluded that while murūwa, “like any other concept of a moral-spiritual character, would occasionally be connected with notions of a concrete-material nature … this does not detract in any way from its moralspiritual significance.”49 (Pellat subsequently devoted a whole article to demonstrate more systematically, in response to Farès, that what could be termed ‘higher moral ideals’ (makārim al-akhlāq) were most certainly intrinsic to the pre-Islamic ethic, only offering that, in his view, the moral components of murūwa were certainly enhanced by later developments, and the material aspects played down, till it evolved into an Islamic ideal).50 What Bravmann did not remark on was that Farès had loaded all the moral-spiritual significance that he did, in fact, identify for the jāhilīya onto the concept of ʿirḍ, having effected to separate it entirely from murūwa. This may simply have been because he saw such little sense to this separation that he did not even notice it.51 His own analysis essentially argued not only for their complementarity, but also the complementarity of murūwa and dīn, and here he diverged dramatically from Goldziher. It is perhaps owing not only to his general sympathy with Goldziher’s position on the matter of what ‘religion’ was, but also to the diffuseness of Bravmann’s overarching 47. Qāmūs, Tāj, arts dāna, dīnun. 48. Bravmann (1972), pp. 1–7. 49. Ibid., p. 7. 50. Pellat (1983). 51. Pellat (1983) makes no remark on this, either.

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argument through the sequence of mini-studies in his Spiritual Background, that Shelomo Dov Goitein construed that Bravmann’s contention with Goldziher rested on the question of ‘secular’, as opposed to ‘religious’, virtue:52 B. tries to prove that Goldziher’s famous study on the contrast between the Arab virtue of manliness and Muslim religiosity … is wrong and that such a contrast does not exist, since muruwwah had an ethical connotation. Now, Goldziher’s interpretation of this or that verse in an Arabic poem might be debatable, but his comprehensive elucidation of the contrast between secular morals and those based on religion stands. The combination of both constituted the greatness of Arabic Islam.

What emerges, rather, from all that Bravmann offers on murūwa and dīn is, first, that he rejects the idea that the dīn of Islam was a foreign concept, imported to invest the new religion with an individualistic, emotional value; second, that, like Izutsu, he strongly questions the assumption that there was such an individualistic character to dīn at all in the early days of Islam; third, that murūwa was, indeed, intrinsic to Islamic dīn – as Goldziher had had to concede – but precisely because there was not the wide gulf between spiritual and ethical conceptions of the order that Goldziher had suggested. More than this, though, Bravmann’s analysis clearly points to a view that murūwa and dīn were complementary, also, in the pre-Islamic period. Adducing comparative data from the early poetry and the Qurʾan, he argues – again, in complement to Izutsu – that dīn was a concept, equally for the pre-Islamic Arabs and the early Muslims, which entailed ‘obedience’: following, submitting, adhering to a chosen community and the chosen deities or deity. This was a pact which implied for all factions the mutual assistance, or naṣr, of man to man, man to deity, and deity to man, where a man’s self-sacrifice in battle, if necessary, was a primary requirement. Murūwa – virtus  –  was “the realization of his war obligation and his social ideals”, and, thus, necessarily, complementary to the pact of dīn, both in its Islamic and preIslamic connotations. Naṣr sought of the gods was not anticipated as an act of grace contingent on prayer. Invoking naṣr from the gods was analogous to invoking naṣr from one’s kin and allies, and victory was a consequence of that help so rendered by human helpers and divine.53 In sum, rather than the radical divide evoked by Goldziher, Bravmann saw a strong relation between murūwa and dīn, which could be identified for both the preIslamic and early Islamic periods. Without reference to Izutsu, he broadly concurs with the thesis that dīn, in either case, was essentially to be understood in terms of ‘obedience’; and while he does not assess dīn in terms of an antagonymic concept of ‘subordination/authority’, as did Izutsu, he highlights an alternative follower/ leader complex in the form of commitment to mutual naṣr - ‘assistance’ – in the compact of dīn. In so doing, he all but offers openly that this compact entails a 52. Goitein (1974), p. 237, where he refers only to pp. 1–7 of Bravmann (1972). 53. Bravmann (1972), pp. 1–7, 34 and n. 1, 36 and n. 1, 66–75.

20

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covenant construed in terms of a greater kinship involving both the human and the divine, thus evoking, precisely, the view of Robertson Smith, cited above in our discussion on Goldziher. He did not explore ḥilm and jahl systematically, but identified commitment to ḥilm, and to assisting a leader who was ḥalīm, as a key coordinate of the murūwa that realised the duty of naṣr in the compact of dīn.54 This did not prompt him, however, to try, like Izutsu, to impose a putative, extreme evolution of ḥilm onto the complex of meaning entailed by the dīn called al-islām. He opted, rather, to reassess its semantics. Bravmann elaborated his view of islām in two phases: the first, in his Spiritual Background, and the second, in his Studies in Semitic Philology.55 He rejected, in the former, the traditional, majority interpretation of islām as “a specific term denoting adherence to the religion of the Prophet Muḥammad, by ‘surrender, resignation to (the will of) God’”. He rejected, likewise, the theories of Grimme, Margoliouth and Lidzbarski, respectively, that islām entailed ‘man’s salvation as a result of his purification’, or was coined first for adherents to the false prophet Musaylima (who was apparently preaching in the Ḥijāz in Muḥammad’s time),56 or originally meant ‘to enter into the state of salvation (salām = σωτηρία)’.57 Bravmann’s own analysis hinged on his conviction that islām, like jihād, was originally a secular concept signifying ‘defiance of death’.58 Once having established to his own satisfaction, that, over and above its “primary sense” – i.e., to “‘hand over someone or something’ or ‘deliver up a person to someone, to his enemy, his pursuer’” – aslama also meant ‘to defy death’, he embarked on an enquiry into the origin of this interpretation which was designed to achieve two things: first, to illustrate a logic for how his suggested meaning had developed; second, to annul any temptation to read the prepositions li or ilā, when they introduce the complement of aslama in the contexts he treats, with the meaning of ‘to’, which would naturally follow when this verb is used in its ‘primary sense’ – i.e., when introducing a complement stating ‘to what’ or ‘to whom’ a thing is being consigned.59 This is where problems emerge in his argument. As to the first imperative of demonstrating a logic for aslama meaning ‘to defy death’, Bravmann argues that this is an elliptical expression for aslama nafsa-hu, ‘to surrender oneself ’, which has evolved out of the negative sense of ‘surrender’ carried by the ‘primary meaning’, i.e., the delivery of a person to his enemy, a surrender 54. Ibid., p. 67. 55. Ibid., pp. 7–26; Bravmann (1977), Chapter 28. 56. Useful overviews of the sources on Musaylima, who was slain in the year 11/632, or thereabouts, are offered Watt (1993), Smith (2002), and Lecker (2004); see, also, Makin (2010) for an extended consideration of Musaylima in the sources. 57. See Bravmann (1972), pp. 7–8 and the literature cited there. 58. Bravmann (1972), pp. 8–13. 59. Ibid., p. 13 ff.

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that can entail ‘betrayal’ - for example of a kinsman. Extended to the self, this would signify a wilful ‘self-betrayal’ and, thus, he asserts, ‘defiance of death’:60 ʾAslama nafsahū and the abbreviated ʾaslama … must be interpreted “he betrayed his own life, he delivered up his own life”, in the same sense as a man betrays and delivers up his friend.

At this point, he moves toward the second imperative of dislodging the preposition li in its capacity as a companion-element to aslama that introduces a dative complement:61 Whereas ʾaslama in its primary meaning “to deliver up”, like any other verb signifying “giving”, is of necessity followed by a complement (introduced by li) denoting the person to whom something is delivered up, such a complement is not required where ʾaslama has the derogatory sense of “delivering up traitorously, betraying”. In this meaning, the expression is absolute, i.e., it makes sense even without the addition of a dative complement; such a complement may be added, but it is, as it were, a separate, nonobligatory element.

This view may serve to clarify the meaningfulness of an expression where ellipsis will often be at issue; but there is no greater or lesser ‘necessity’ to supply a complement introduced by li in either case, as this will be contingent on what, and how much, one wishes to say, and how one wishes to say it. A glance at the dictionaries will indicate that it is not only quite normal to follow the negative proposition with a complement introduced by li (as also ilā, for there is a certain fluidity), but that when the sense of ‘delivering to death/destruction’ is in question, and a complement is produced, it will normally be li that is used. 62 Bravmann, concedes as much, and, indeed, illustrates;63 but what he wishes to argue is that the case of ‘betraying one’s soul’ is a special case where, because the “commendatory” nature, in fact, of such a moral sacrifice is, in origin, “derogatory”, it follows the ‘rule’ of the ‘derogatory’ version of aslama (in the sense of ‘betrayal’), which he has just attempted to assert. At this point he moves definitively to effect the disassociation he desires:64 [In this special case] the sentence-part introduced by li, denoting the person to whom the object (i.e. – in our case – the soul, the self) is surrendered, is usually absent. Li in such cases generally signifies “for the sake of ”; the phrase is thus an adverbial (nonessential) extension. 60. Ibid., p. 16. 61. Ibid., p. 17. 62. Muḥkam, Qāmūs, Miṣbāḥ, s.v. s-l-m, II, IV. 63. Bravmann (1972), pp. 17–18, note 1. 64. Ibid., p. 18.

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The imperative to impose this ‘non-essential’ adverbial extension – li ‘for the sake of ’ – as the proper introduction to the complement in such cases becomes clear when Bravmann finally applies his analysis to Qurʾanic formulations of the type:65 ‫بَلَى َم ْن أ ْسلَ َم َوجْ هَهُ ِلِ َوهُ َو ُمحْ ِسنٌ فَلَهُ أجْ ُرهُ ِع ْن َد َربِّ ِه‬ No. Those who surrender their faces [aslama wajha-hu] to God [li-llāhi] and have done good [wa-huwa muḥsinun] will have their reward with their Lord. ً ‫َو َم ْن أحْ َسن ِدينا ً ِم َّم ْن أ ْسلَ َم َوجْ هَهُ ِ ّل َوهُ َو ُمحْ ِسنٌ َواتَّبَ َع ِملَّةَ إبراهي َم َحنيفا‬ Who is better in religion than those who surrender their faces to God [aslama wajha-hu li-llāhi] and do good [wa-huwa muḥsinun] and follow the religion of Abraham as a true believer?

By this time, Bravmann has made a good case for reading the literal expression, ‘face’ (wajh), as something broadly equivalent to ‘self/soul’ (nafs) via a selection of compelling comparanda involving quasi-commercial conceits of ‘selling/squandering one’s face/soul’, to which we shall return below. Therefore, he is fully positioned now to translate aslama wajha-hu (‘he surrendered his face’) as ‘he abandoned his soul’; and to assert that li-llāhi means ‘for the sake of God’, and cannot mean ‘to Him’. However, there is one Qurʾanic variation on the citations above where the complement is introduced, instead, with ilā (‘to’), rather than li:66 ْ ‫ك‬ ‫بالعُرْ َو ِة ْال ُو ْثقَى‬ َ ‫َو َم ْن يُ ْسلِ ْم َوجْ هَهُ إلَى هللاِ َوهُ َو ُمحْ ِسنٌ فَقَ ِد ا ْستَ ْم َس‬ Whoever surrenders his face [aslama wajha-hu] to God [ilā llāhi] and does good [wa-huwa muḥsinun] has grasped the firmest handle.

Bravmann clearly sees that this poses a serious impediment to his argument, for he cites it insisting that ilā llāhi is not to be regarded as a mere variant of the version li-llāhi, but should be understood as a “special nuance” on the lines of taqarruban ilā – ‘in order to come near to’ – as in a verse of Kaʿb b. Mālik, which he has studied amongst his quasi-commercial comparanda:67 kūnū ka-man yashrī l-ḥayāta taqarruban ilā malikin … (literally: ‘Be like those who sell their life to come near to a ruler …’). 65. Qurʾān, 2: 112, 4: 125. The translation is Jones’ (2007), pp. 37, 103. 66. Qurʾān, 31: 22. The translation is Jones’ (2007), p. 378. 67. Bravmann (1972), p. 21. Watt (1978) offers an overview of the sources on this poet, who seems to have died in the year 50/670, or 53/673. See also Imhof (2011), which discusses two poems of Kaʿb b. Mālik in the context of the early conflict between the tribes and adherents of the Prophet, Muḥammad, which she sees (ibid., p. 390) “not so much due to a conflict between dīn and muruwwa, in the sense of umbrella concepts for diverging ethical outlooks, but rather a conflict between dīn and tradition”.

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This, he renders, “Be like one who defies death, that you may come near to God …” and suggests that whereas Kaʿb’s verse states the “special sense” he refers to in full, the Qurʾanic sūra under consideration (31: 21), “while completely identical in meaning, forms an ellipsis on a pattern frequent in, and particular to, Arabic.”68 This view might carry more weight were the comparison drawn from examples clearly similar within the Qurʾan; but, as it is, on the basis of the similarity in expression of the three sūras cited, there seems a stronger case to be made, rather, for 31: 21 being, precisely, a variation; a variation that evinces the fluidity that the dictionaries demonstrate exists between li and ilā in conjunction with sallama/aslama, as already noted above. This is not to deny that the commitment involved in ‘surrendering the face/the self ’ may not involve a pledge to fight and die in accordance with the exhortation to commit to jihād (though Bravmann, in fact, subsequently goes so far as to draw a perfect equation between islām and jihād);69 but it is to suggest that Bravmann did not seal his argument convincingly and that there perhaps remains something else to be identified in aslama/islām. Goitein was critical of Bravmann’s interpretation of islām, suggesting that he had paid too little attention to the Qurʾanic formulations. At the same time, he endorsed the alternative thesis of David Z. H. Baneth “in which he reminds us that one of the meanings of salima is ‘to belong exclusively’; consequently aslama nafsahu, or wajhahu, which appears with particular frequency in the period in which the Prophet begins to fight the polytheism of the Meccans, would mean serving God exclusively, in other words, it would express a profession of monotheism.”70 Perhaps stung by this, Bravmann recapitulated and expanded his thesis in his Studies in Semitic Philology, where he singled out Baneth’s theory for special treatment.71 Baneth had read the noun salam to mean ‘the exclusive property’ of a person (on which, see the discussion of Qurʾān, 39: 29 shortly below) where, Bravmann insisted, no more than ‘secure property’, or the ‘safe property’ could properly be read. Baneth had speculated that this was derived from a hypothetical first-form verb, salima, meaning ‘to be the exclusive property’ (of a person), which had generated a hypothetical fourth-form verb, aslama, ‘to make (something) the exclusive property (of someone)’. The reason why there was no evidence for this in any literature or dictionary was, Baneth thought, and Bravmann quotes:72 “[m]ost probably because both the noun salam and the verb derived from it [i.e., aslamā] (sic) were peculiar to the dialect of Mecca and the Hedjaz, or … to Western Arabian, at all events to an Arabic idiom that had vanished soon after the great Islamic conquests, at least from written Arabic …” 68. Bravmann (1972), p. 23. 69. Bravmann (1972), pp. 24–25. 70. Goitein (1974), p. 237. The reference is to Baneth (1971). 71. Bravmann (1977), esp. pp. 440–444. 72. Ibid., p. 441.

24

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After feasting down to the bone on everything he saw wrong with this, Bravmann returned to his original theme, compiling now an impressive set of comparanda for the Qurʾanic aslama al-wajh, from both within and without the Qurʾan, where the recurrent conceits of ‘selling the face/selling the soul’ (sharā al-wajh/sharā al-nafs) figure large as an axis of interpretation. Throughout, he is determined to read such quasi-commercial Qurʾanic conceits, and a wealth of others that were catalogued by Charles Torrey,73 in light of his own original understanding of aslama al-wajh li, i.e., ‘to defy death for the sake of …’, and thus rejects the idea that these conceits have a primary commercial nuance. His logic was that, if ‘selling’ (sharā) is equivalent to ‘betraying/sacrificing oneself by defying death’ (aslama), then sharā, like aslama, has to carry a principal sense of ‘defying death by sacrificing oneself ’; and this should invariably be ‘for the sake of ’ God, no ‘selling’ to Him to be entertained. Any clear reference to the idea that the reward of Paradise and the Hereafter are somehow the ‘price’ paid for the ‘sale’ of oneself to Him, that God somehow ‘purchases’ the true believer’s soul, is rejected as a secondary development arising out of “semantic association”.74 There is, however, another way to view the comparanda that Bravmann has compiled and analysed without undermining the sense of self-sacrificial commitment he sees to be intrinsic to islām; one that does not ignore the compelling coherence of the body of ‘commercial’ Qurʾanic expressions, which, together, defy relegation to a secondary sphere of importance.75 This can be done by turning the comparison that Bravmann makes on its head, and viewing the compact of islām, rather, in terms of those ‘commercial’ implications he has sought to downplay. Islām: The Commercial Connection The Qurʾan sends a clear signal that a person’s life may be construed, for one thing, as a commodity, which, in the case of a ‘believer-servant’ (ʿabd - also ‘slave’) is an undivided asset (salam) belonging wholly to one master, or, indeed, a ‘jealous God’. The further implication, of course, is that putative ‘sharer-gods’ (shurakāʾ) would equate to owners who have a share, or joint asset (shirk), in the divided ‘commodity’ that is the life of one who subscribes to a different deity or deities: an ‘associator’ (mushrik):76 ‫يان‬ َ ‫ض َر‬ َ ِ ‫ب هللاُ َمثَالً َّر ُجالً فِي ِه ُش َركا ُء ُمتَشا ِكسُونَ َو َر ُجالً َسلَما ً لِّ َرج ٍُل هَلْ يَ ْست َِو‬ َ‫َمثَالً ال َح ْم ُد ِلِ بَلْ أَ ْكثَ ُرهُ ْم َل يَ ْعلَ ُمون‬ God has coined a likeness: a man in whom disagreeing partners [shurakāʾ] share and a man belonging solely [salam] to one man. 73. Torrey (1892). 74. Bravmann (1977), pp. 452–454. 75. This has already been noted by Torrey (1892), p. 48, as cited shortly below in the main text. 76. Qurʾān, 39: 29. Translation Jones (2007), p. 424. Miṣbāḥ, s.v. sh-r-k, reflects the concept of a shared part-interest (shirk, pl. ashrāk) constituted in the person of a slave: aʿtaqa shirkan la-hu fī ʿabdin, ‘he emancipated a share belonging to him in a slave’.

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Are the two equal in likeness? Praise belongs to God. No, most of them do not know.

As Helmer Ringgren comments: “It is obvious that the parable is intended to illustrate the difference between those who worship God alone and the polytheists … The point is that the man belongs entirely to one other man, and that there are no other people who quarrel as to who shall have the right to dispose of him”.77 Ringgren’s concentration on the point of belonging ‘entirely to one other man’ is obviously relevant; but it is, demonstrably, not where the emphasis should be. Rather, it is the fact of a man’s life equating to a commercial asset which is the centre of gravity here – albeit an asset certainly undivided because it is committed, in advance of death, to the sole disposition of the One God. We can therefore add this equation to the plethora of what Charles C. Torrey calls the “commercial-theological terms” of the Qurʾan; and this will also liberate us from any impulsion to invent, like Baneth (see shortly above), an entirely unattested, hypothetical, vanished act of islām (‘to make something the exclusive property of ’), constructed on the basis of wrong emphasis. Taken together, the so-called “commercial-theological terms” project covenant with the divine as a quasi-financial proposition of a particular kind: not exactly sale and purchase so much as committing to a ‘transaction’ on the basis of ‘payment’ for ‘goods’ in advance (by deeds in this world, the willingness to sacrifice life and possessions), to be honoured later by God (with the ‘goods’ in the next). This proposition is summed up succinctly in the Sūrat al-Tawba (‘Repentance’), where God’s fulfilment of His covenant is to honour a binding promise (waʿd) to redeem, (literally ‘purchase’: ishtarā) the lives of believers with the reward of Paradise in return for their honouring the ‘bargain’ (literally ‘sale’: bayʿ) for which they have ‘bartered’ (bāyaʿtum bi-hi) by committing their persons and possessions (anfus, amwāl), in advance of that, to His cause (i.e., by committing to sustained jihād),78 this amounting, in sum, to a spectacular ‘win’ (fawz):79 َّ ِ‫إن هللاَ ا ْشتَ َرى ِمنَ ْال ُم ْؤ ِمنينَ أ ْنفُ َسهُم َوأ ْم َوالَهُ ْم ب‬ َّ ‫بيل‬ ِ ‫أن لَهُ ُم ْال َجنَّةَ يُقاتِلونَ فِي َس‬ ْ ْ ُ ْ َ ‫آن َو َم ْن أوْ فى‬ ِ ‫هللاِ فَيَ ْقتُلونَ َويُ ْقتَلونَ َو ْعداً َعلَ ْي ِه َحقّا ً فِي التَّوْ را ِة َوالن ِج‬ ِ ْ‫يل َوالقر‬ ‫ك هُ َو ْالفَو ُز ْال َع ِظي ُم‬ َ ‫بِ َع ْه ِد ِه ِمنَ هللاِ فَا ْستَب ِْش ُروا بَ ْي َع ُك ُم الّ ِذي بايَ ْعتُم بِ ِه َو َذل‬ God has bought [ishtarā] from the believers their persons and their possessions for the price that [bi-anna] the Garden will be theirs. They will fight in God’s way and will kill and be killed: a promise binding on God [waʿd ʿalay-hi] in the Torah and the Gospel and the Recitation. Who fulfils His covenant more fully than God? 77. Ringgren (1949), p. 13 (my emphasis), where apposite comparanda from the early poetry are also adduced. 78. The Qurʾanic collocation between jihād and the ‘expenditure’ of ‘persons/souls and possessions’ – al-anfus wa-l-amwāl (see above, n. 41) – is too frequent not to register here. 79. Qurʾān, 9: 111. Translation Jones (2007), p. 192.

26

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia Rejoice in the bargain [bayʿ] you have made with Him [bāyaʿtum bi-hi]. This is the great triumph [fawz].

Charles Torrey underlines that references of this type are not spare, but many, and together add up to a rooted, systematic scheme:80 When one remembers that the facts here dealt with, touching almost every department of life, are expressed regularly in this form, and, besides this, that they are, in most cases reiterated ad nauseam, the fact of their importance to Mohammed’s conception of religion will not be questioned … I venture the assertion that no part of the Koran theological terminology is more characteristically Arabic, or more deeply embedded in the whole structure of the Koran from beginning to end.

Torrey illustrates how all relations between God and man are accounted and weighed in the balance; but we confine ourselves here to the financial conceits. People are projected as having an account (ḥisāb), which is meticulously monitored by God, who enters their acts as credit or debt in a ledger (kitāb).81 Good and evil acts entail an ‘accumulation’ (kasb, iktisāb i.e. of ‘credit’ and ‘debt’),82 which receive their just ‘payment’, ‘return’ or ‘wage’ (jazāʾ/thawāb/ajr) from God,83 who pays in full (waffā).84 The believer’s expenditure of his soul and wealth is conceived as a ‘loan’ (qarḍ);85 ‘payment’ that he makes in advance (aslafa) in the hope of paradise.86 Every person, every soul, is held as a ‘pledge’ (rahīn, rahīna) to be redeemed according to the ‘credit’ or ‘debt’ it has ‘accumulated’.87 The compact the believer makes is an act of ‘bartering’/‘sale’ (bayʿ), which he ‘contracts’, quasi-commercially (i.e., by an oath of allegiance: bāyaʿa) with the Messenger and, therewith, with God. He ‘barters’/‘sells’ (sharā/bāʿa) his life and his wealth for a ‘good price’ (thaman) and a ‘profit’ (ribḥ), namely, Paradise. The non-believer ‘purchases’ (ishtarā) a ‘poor return’, in place of the Life Hereafter, namely, hellfire.88 He incurs ‘loss’ and ‘diminishment’ (khasar, bakhs, naqṣ) that ‘defrauds’ (yaẓlim) his soul.89 The final judgment is the Day of Accounting

80. Torrey (1892), p. 48. 81. Qurʾān, 10: 61, 18: 49, 21: 94, 34: 3, 36: 12, 45: 28–35, 50: 4, 78: 2; Torrey (1892), p. 9 ff. 82. Torrey (1892), pp. 27–29. 83. Ibid., pp. 19–27. 84. Ibid., pp. 22–23. 85. Ibid., pp. 44–45. 86. Qurʾān, 10: 30, 69: 24; Torrey (1892), p. 45. 87. Qurʾān, 52: 21, 74: 38; Torrey (1892), p. 46. 88. Torrey (1892), pp. 36–38. 89. Ibid., pp. 30–35.

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(yawm al-ḥisāb) when no more ‘bartering’, will be allowed (yawmun lā bayʿun fī-hi),90 nor any adjustment to, or annulment of, the ‘contract’.91 Thus, the religion of Islam, or dīn al-islām, implies, certainly, a pact of ‘obedience’ and ‘authority’ as well as mutual ‘assistance’ (naṣr); but it also implies a quasicommercial contract with the divine, via a legitimate leader, where each person, by his or her acts, is individually responsible for the ‘credit’ or ‘debt’ in the final ‘account’, and how the ‘pledge’ of their soul will be redeemed. In this light, it ought to come as no surprise that aslama/islām is easily linked to the same net of commercial conceits: The noun salam relates precisely to payment for goods in advance on a basis of trust. It is considered to be the substantive noun of verbs aslama and sallama when they are used to mean aslafa (noun: salaf, a verb noted above amongst the Qurʾanic ‘commercialtheological terms’); that is to say: “Any money, or property paid in advance, or beforehand, as the price of a commodity for which the seller has become responsible and which is bought on description … or payment for a commodity to be delivered at a certain [future] period with something additional to [the equivalent of] the current price at the time of payment; this [transaction] being a cause of profit to him who makes such a payment … or a sort of sale in which the price is paid in advance, and the commodity is withheld … to a certain [future] period.”92 The nature of this transaction and the profit entailed for the purchaser on this basis, reads as a match for the ‘transaction’ described in Sūrat al-Tawba, cited above. In this light, it makes perfect, integral sense that a believer’s commitment to covenant with the One God would render his self and soul a quasi-commercial, undivided asset (salam) committed to Him in advance of death (as identified in Qurʾān, 39: 29, also cited). That this commercial sense of salam once rang strong in the religious context – albeit perhaps disharmoniously for some – seems to be reflected in a certain desire to distance it from synonymy with salaf: Lane notes that there is a tradition where it is said that “the term salam as meaning salaf was disliked; appar[ently] because the former is applied to obedience, and self-resignation, or submission to God.”93 This might suggest that a more narrowly nuanced translation of ‘self-surrender’ became 90. Qurʾān, 14: 31, 2: 254; Torrey (1892), p. 42 offers further comparanda, and notes, reasonably, that “[t]he idea here seems to be that of ransoming” (fidāʾ). 91. See Qurʾān, 45: 35. It is a day of which it is said: wa-lā hum mustaʿtabūna. This can reasonably be translated: ‘nor will they be allowed to make amends’ (Jones (2007), p. 461); but it may be noted, in this context, that the verb istaʿtaba carries, amongst its meanings, the sense of asking for the cancellation of a bargain or compact (Tāj, s.v. ʿ-t-b, X), and thus also complements the net of quasi-commercial conceits; i.e., no matter what they wish, no amendment or annulment of their contract will be permitted on this day; cf. Qurʾān, 41: 23. 92. Tāj, s.v. s-l-f; Lane, art. salamun. In this light, one does not have to prefer the readings aslafta/ sallafta over the variant aslamta in a verse of Zuhayr that is discussed by Ringgren (1949), p. 20: uthnī ʿalay-ka bi-mā ʿalimtu wa-mā/aslamta fī l-najadāti min dhikrī – since, in any case, the verse would translate: “I praise you for what I know, and for the fame you have earned (or ‘purchased, payment up front’: aslamta/aslafta/sallafta) in battle.” 93. Lane, art. salamun.

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the norm in respect of aslama partly as the result of a pious will for dissociation of the term from the secular financial sphere. In sum, there would appear to be good reason to regard the concept of islām itself as an originally integral component of the net of commercial Qurʾanic concepts that describe the compact of the early Muslims with Muḥammad and, thereby, with God. In this light, aslama/islām may be taken to express the commitment, made by believers who swear loyalty to the Prophet, willingly to put their lives ‘on the line’ and perform every duty enjoined by jihād – i.e., the ‘expenditure’ or ‘loaning’ of their own selves/souls and possessions – on the understanding, and in the faith that, this is a ‘transaction’ wherewith they may build sufficient ‘credit’ to have their soul, which is ‘held in pledge’ (rahīna) by God, redeemed with eternal life in Paradise.94 This is also to say, in response to Bravmann’s thesis, that whilst jihād, self-sacrifice and defiance of death would necessarily, therefore, be implied by islām, they are not precisely equal to it. All the linguistic arguments he brings to bear in an effort to avoid acknowledging the conceit of a commercial transaction are unnecessary. Furthermore, this scheme would only appear to be a readily understandable, though nonetheless dramatic, transformation of the quasi-commercial conception of commitment to blood-covenant that is evidenced in the pre-Islamic poetic repertoire, and one paradigm in particular – that of maysir-gambling – as we shall see.95 Finally, to pick up the earlier thread on the polysemy of Arabic dīn (‘religion’), one sees here already how some of the several antagonyms that accrue to dīn can coexist on a two-way extension with all coherence: not only ‘obedience’ and ‘authority’, but also ‘lending and loaning’, or ‘credit and debt’ as well as ‘reward’ and punishment’. This is all further fuel to the argument that one need not resort to the theory of a newly imported foreign word to explain the use of dīn in the Islamic context;96 that one might, rather, re-examine the indigenous background of ethical concepts 94. That ‘purchasing immortality’ with deeds, thus, is a transformation from the ‘purchase’ of immortal repute before death with the commodity of one’s self, or life-essence (nafs), in the jāhilīya, is most eloquently suggested in verses of ʿUrwa b. al-Ward when he says: dharī-nī wanafs-ī umma ḥussāna inna-nī/bi-hā qabla an lā amlika l-bayʿa mushtarī//aḥādītha tabqā wa-l-fatā ghayru khālidin/idhā huwa amsā hāmatan fawqa ṣayyirī, “Leave me alone with my self [nafs], Umm Ḥussān, for I will purchase with it before I can no longer make such a purchase//Enduring fame, for a man is not eternal since he becomes a spectre [hovering] over a tomb”: Jones’ edition and translation (1992), p. 129. See Montgomery (1998), and Arazi (2000) for an overview of this poet, who is thought to have been active shortly before the rise of Islam. 95. See also Jamil (2004), where the maysir-scheme and its relation to covenant are described in detail. In a final discussion of such transformations in the General Conclusion, it will also be possible to resurrect Bravmann’s idea of aslama as ‘self-betrayal’, but via an altogether different conception of the covenant, namely, that of the bakra, the rotary well-pulley, rope and pail (discussed in some detail in Chapter 5: 1, ‘The Wheel and the Storm’). 96. Torrey (1892), p. 3 has, incidentally, commented on what seems to him to be the peculiarly Arabic expression of the scheme he describes, despite seeing certain parallels, for example in the Old Testament, and suggested (ibid., p. 49) that there may be much more background to be gleaned from a more thorough analysis of the early poetry.

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the better to understand what dīn could already have entailed prior to the Qurʾanic revelation. Re-examining that ethical background is the business of this study, which follows the salient lines of argument emerging from the foregoing survey; namely, that, already in the pre-Islamic period, the manly ethic and ‘religion’ – murūwa and dīn – were complementary and not distinct; that core concepts at the heart of ethical expression – ḥilm and jahl – were also complementary and not distinct, representing together a combined chemistry of alternating balance that would necessarily be implied in all situations, not least the discussion and resolution of ethical concerns; that this complex – which was thus necessarily implied, also, in the conflict arising between ‘old-world’ actors and the proponents of emergent Islamic vision - would therefore, as a matter of urgency, have to be radically de-structured in order to accommodate the transformation of a covenant based on blood and commitment to life in this world, into one based on faith in, and commitment to, the One God in the hope of a life hereafter.

1:2. Return to the Jāhilīya: How Does a Poem Work?

Reassessing the nuances and ethical dimensions of pre-Islamic murūwa inevitably entails revisiting the early Arabian poetical corpus – there is no other historical Arabic source of the time – and immersing oneself in the lake of controversy on how that poetry is to be read. Albeit acknowledging that the extant poetic collections may have undergone certain changes through the activity of transmitters and the Abbasid collectors who recorded them some two hundred years after their last production, scholars in the field now generally consider this corpus to reflect the norms of poetical composition in the Arabian Peninsula from approximately the mid-fifth to the early sixth century A.D.1 Apparently then already a highly developed art the origins of which are unknown, this body of verse takes multiple forms, from the shorter monothematic poem, or qiṭʿa, to the longer qaṣīda, which could comprise two or more contrasting thematic frames brought together in widely varying order. Early orientalist studies charged this poetry with being ‘molecular’ in its structure (one self-contained verse after another); of being repetitive and stereotypical in its imagery. More recent studies have re-examined and challenged these views whilst seeking to explain the concatenation of diverse themes – often abruptly juxtaposed - in the multi-thematic qaṣīda. This enterprise has inspired a wide range of approaches, most making at least some use of social or critical theory, thus offering a variety of prisms through which to view the art. These divide roughly into studies that either reject or entertain the possibility of reading encoded symbolic meaning or sustained pragmatic intent into the qaṣīda. I will not seek to repeat the groundwork of existing overviews of studies on the unity and coherence of these poems,2 but will concentrate on highlighting those salient aspects of the current discourse which I shall later also take up. The 1970s saw a renewed surge of scholarly interest in early Arabic poetry, and the studies of Renate Jacobi since that time have undoubtedly offered a seminal contribution to the wider critical discourse, certain of her ideas gaining general 1. Jones (1992), pp. 17–21; Montgomery (1997), pp. 6, 38–40; Bauer (2011), pp. 699–703, who makes an impassioned statement on the mistakenness of scholars with an interest in the Qurʾan and the early history of Islam, in continuing – for reasons debunked and outdated – to ignore “the riches that lie before them in the corpus of pre- and early-Islamic poetry”; cf., further, in this respect, Seidensticker (2011), esp. pp. 317–318. 2. See, e.g., with differing slants, van Gelder, (1982), pp. 14–22; Wagner (1987), vol. 1, pp. 145–160; Jacobi (1996), pp. 22–23; Riedel, (2002), pp. 274–276; Stetkevych (2009), pp. xiii–xxix.

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traction, and others sitting at one farthermost end of the spectrum of controversy.3 With great elegance and transparency of method in analysing representative samples of verse, Jacobi has demonstrated the considerable variety of thematic order in the pre-Islamic, composite qaṣīda. She has argued convincingly that judicious sifting of the poetry allows us to discern, out of all the variety, the gradual emergence of a distinct preference for a tri-partite qaṣīda consisting of nostalgic prelude (nasīb), followed by a camel-borne journey (raḥīl), often accompanied by no little descriptive effort (waṣf), and culminating in a third thematic unit that could, variously, take the form of selfpraise or praise of the tribe (fakhr), or a hostile invective (hijāʾ), or a panegyric address (madīḥ). This, she has termed ‘the emergence of a genre’; one which would finally resolve itself into a panegyric model that would become popular in the Umayyad period,4 and finally approximate to the famous and relentlessly quoted offering of Ibn Qutayba (828–885/213–276) on what the qaṣīda was, or may have been.5 She illustrated the interdependence of lines within given sequences, and the linkage of seemingly independent, autonomous images via a variety of linguistic and syntactic means. A prominent aspect of her study of linkage is her work on the mechanisms of transition (takhalluṣ) between the diverse thematic units. These, she has graded basically into three divisions: first, those economical introductory formulae that contain no explicit “signal or pointer indicating the change of subject” (such as the use of wāw rubba, ‘I think of …’/‘many a …’, or the particle, qad, followed by an imperfect verb, ‘and (oft) I might …’); second, “more advanced” formulae (such as daʿ dhā, ‘leave this’, or hādhā, ‘enough of this’), which nonetheless remain for her “indefinite” in offering no explicit reference to the context; third, “explicit transition”, or “a takhalluṣ in the proper sense, motivating the poet’s change of subject or providing a link between different themes”.6 With these in hand, she argues a strong case for recognising the development, over time, of an aesthetic regard for more explicit transitional devices to enhance cohesion and continuity. Furthermore, in her micro-analyses of nasīb and raḥīl, which bring together sequences of synchronic studies from the jāhilīya onward, she has traced clearly discernible developments which argue, indirectly, for an essential authenticity to the early poetic corpus. At the same time, her reading of the precise nature and implications of the concatenated patterns of the early composite qaṣīda, its developments and transformations, which is grounded in her hierarchy of linkages and an insistence on thematic separation – whilst accepted amongst a contingent of scholars – is a matter of sustained conjecture, which resurrects 3. I refer, in this paragraph, synthetically, mainly, to Jacobi (1971), (1982), (1985), and (1996). 4. This is to say, the period beginning with the end of the first Muslim civil war in the year 661/41. 5. Namely, the ‘nutshell guide’ to the qaṣīda in Ibn Qutayba’s Kitāb al-Shiʿr wa-l-shuʿarāʾ (Book on Poetry and Poets, now treated extensively by James E. Montgomery (2004), who laments (ibid., p. 2) the cockroach-durability of “its specious universality and applicability” amongst a far too large contingent of scholars. 6. Jacobi (1996), p. 25.

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something akin to the unilineal evolutionism that once had traction in social theory, but is now generally rejected. Fragmentations The Primitive Link Jacobi constructs a speculative narrative on the origins of the composite pre-Islamic qaṣīda that maintains, throughout, the essential disjuncture of the diverse thematic frames. I will concentrate on this narrative in some detail, not only because the specifics arising are central to the current debate, but also because the assessment of early Arabian ‘consciousness’ to which it leads, and of what that is meant to entail for the early poetic art and its development, can hardly be ignored. This narrative rests, first, on accepting the hypothesis that the emergent, tri-partite pre-Islamic qaṣīda, or ‘tribal ode’ constituted a complex of thematic units, each one once an independent genre, which came to be joined together, fortuitously, by virtue of similar metre and rhyme.7 She concedes there is no evidence of any independent genre of love that resembles nasīb (though finds it “inconceivable” that there would not have been one),8 nor, either, of an independent genre that looks like the raḥīl (though proposes that the raḥīl once typically introduced a thematic element of self-praise, or boasting – mufākhara – from which it then developed away to become its own evolved section within the qaṣīda, thus leaving a gap where the boast would have been, which could then be replaced by any other ‘independent’ unit, personal or political).9 The absence of any evidence for this could also suggest – perhaps with more reason – that the corpus as we see it represents an art where thematic juxtaposition was always intentional, not arbitrary; but Jacobi’s proposed frame more comfortably accommodates the next major assumption: that the composite parts of the ‘tribal ode’, even in the developed form in which we find it, are intrinsically unrelated. A certain support for this view of disconnectedness is sought by reference to the studies of James T. Monroe and Michael Zwettler on the application of the Parry/Lord theory of oral composition to the pre- and early-Islamic qaṣīda. Although the direct relevance of these studies has been convincingly rejected,10 she nonetheless sees that they can teach us “something of the fundamental characteristics of poetry composed and distributed orally”; namely, “the treatment of details and the way of structuring greater units of composition”.11 She moves in this way to address the technique of composition by parataxis, the juxtaposition of distinct parts of a poem, often without 7. Jacobi (1982), p. 4, and (1996), p. 24. 8. See Jacobi (1996), p. 24; conversely, Thomas Bauer’s conviction that there was no such thing: Bauer (2005), p. 12. 9. Jacobi (1996), pp. 24, 27–29. 10. See Schoeler (2006), pp. 87–110, which is also rigorous in refusing to blur the relevant, diverse forms of ‘oral poetry’, and thus to blur their respective, diverse implications. 11. Jacobi (1996), p. 26; Monroe (1972); Zwettler (1978).

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developed interlinking. We are then asked to view the “basic difference between the pre-Islamic qaṣīda and later Islamic odes” via Jan Mukařovský’s observations on critical oppositions between ‘oral’ (type unspecified) and written work, as paraphrased by Karel Petráček: ‘Oral work’ is presented as “a complex of semantic details” that are “independent” and connected in additive fashion; ‘written work’, as a semantic unity where details are subordinated to the whole and synthetically linked.12 However, whilst additive, rather than subordinative, treatment of constituent parts in ‘oral’ discourse is certainly recognised,13 one should be clear that this carries absolutely no necessary intrinsic implication of semantic disconnectedness. We are told that “the relevance of these oppositions will be evident to anybody who closely compares preIslamic, and Islamic, especially Abbasid odes”.14 But this is not exactly evident: We are not merely being asked to recognise the external structure of an artistic process facilitated, perhaps, in the early period, by common recourse to a series of mnemonic patterns comprised of blocks of well-established figures and rhetorical devices that are conducive to ‘oral’ composition;15 we are being invited to understand that the thematic diversity of constituent parts in the pre-Islamic qaṣīda equates to a “semantic independence”, by which it seems we are meant to understand semantic disjunction. This is thoroughly underlined by Jacobi’s use of the term, “change of subject”, for the movement from one thematic frame to another;16 and it establishes a premise that denies the possibility of meaningful continuity through these frames via a considered technique of paratactic composition. It is on this basis that we are told “we should cease to expect … that each detail of the early polythematic ode forms part of a general concept or vision, and derives its meaning from there”.17 It is on this basis, also, that the historical variety of thematic order and number in composite poems is not to be entertained as a sign of multiple possibilities for their meaningful aggregation, but is reduced simply to evidence that “ancient poets were at liberty to join different thematic units, and to conclude their odes when they felt a passage to be particular[ly] pleasing to themselves or to their audience”;18 Even those evolving patterns which came to be favoured – by virtue, Jacobi suggests, of fulfilling a particular collective need of expression and thus being imitated and taken as models – “did not emerge by conscious planning”.19 This assertion runs somewhat counter to the evidence adduced by Gregor Schoeler in his work on oral poetry theory and Arabic Literature, where internal, external and comparative data 12. Jacobi (1996), p. 26. 13. Ong (2002), pp. 37–38. 14. Jacobi (1996), p. 26. 15. Ong (2002), p. 33 ff. 16. Jacobi (1996), p. 25. 17. Ibid., p. 26. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., p. 27.

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are marshalled to argue that “[i]n early as well as later times, the great classical Arabic qaṣīdah poems were … the result of a slow, systematic, and often laborious process”.20 An unproven edifice of original disjuncture and arbitrary juxtaposition firmly constructed, however, it is the device of transition – takhalluṣ – to which we are next taken, and which will be the arbiter of ‘conscious planning’. As outlined above, mechanisms of takhalluṣ are catalogued from ‘simple’ to ‘more advanced’ and then ‘proper’, according to their degree of specificity in alluding to motivation and surrounding context. But these are not merely considered to be markers of a developing aesthetic tendency over time to effect more explicit linkage; they are taken as quasi-evolutionary signifiers of degrees in sustained semantic connection. The more explicit forms of takhalluṣ, assumed to be ‘more advanced’ and historically posterior, are taken as inverse pointers both to the temporal antecedence of the ‘simple’ varieties, and to their relative lack of semantic significance. By comparison, the absence of explicit allusion to motivation and context in the ‘simple’ forms of transition is taken to constitute ‘loose’ cohesion, and, implicitly, to demonstrate a relative lack of purpose in linking the parts, irrespective of the poet’s having chosen to juxtapose them.21 There is, of course, no possible way to see proof of less purpose in ‘simple’ transitions; but with these temporal and semantic values now imposed on the ‘graded’ methods of takhalluṣ, a formula is found both to identify an order of ‘structural evolution’, and to support the assumption of an original, accidental accumulation of ‘semantically independent’ units based on no plan or conception: ‘More advanced’ transitions – presumed to be historically later developments and demonstrating the purpose to link – seem to be well attested from early times between nasīb and raḥīl, but comparatively rare for introducing other thematic frames. This suggests to Jacobi that the convention of joining nasīb to raḥīl – each reduced, respectively, to “a love poem and a mufākhara” – must have been established as a bipartite structure before their being linked to additional units.22 However, there are cases, also, of nasīb being connected to raḥīl by ‘simple’ wāw rubba, a one-letter amoeba-connective, presumed to be the earliest poetical conjunction, a particle bereft of purpose to link, and characterised simply as a typical introduction to fakhr – thus somehow evoking greater independence of the parts. This inclines Jacobi to conclude that the pattern of nasīb plus raḥīl, conjoined by wāw rubba, is a historically earlier phenomenon wherewith the camel-theme only came to follow the nasīb “by chance” when the ‘independent genres’ of love and mufākhara – “where the camel-theme often took first place” – were joined. 23 Accordingly, on the assumption that early thematic parataxis 20. Schoeler (2006), p. 94. Nonetheless, opening the door to ‘conscious planning’ is not at all to reject Jacobi’s surmise that developments may have been influenced by “[c]hance … spontaneous creativity, the ingenuity of individual poets and the collective judgement of a traditional society” (1996), p. 27. 21. Jacobi (1996), p. 29. 22. Ibid., pp. 24–25, 27. 23. Ibid., p. 27.

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has no semantic implication in itself, and that ‘simple’ connectives somehow suggest semantic disjunction, it follows, not that there may have been conceptual associations intrinsic to the nasīb and camel-theme which made it attractive and meaningful to bring them together, and which were appreciated and artistically enhanced over time, but that any psychological or aesthetic possibilities in their connection were only perceived by the poets who composed them after the combination had accidentally taken place. At the same time, it is precisely psychological association that informs Jacobi’s thinking on how nasīb and raḥīl should have been brought together at all. Jacobi’s eloquent overview of the rationale she sees for the movement from nasīb to raḥīl – whilst reducing these to the monochromes of “amatory verses and selfpraise” – overrides the minute attention she has devoted to transitional devices: The very question ‘why join them?’ cuts to the quick in seeking to identify the process involved in the poets’ choosing to bring them together; and, indeed, it is a process that inspires her to infer a good deal of non-explicitly articulated inner life and emotion, psychological and ethical motivation. She defines the essence of the nasīb as loss and crisis, inner turmoil, and emotional imbalance with the excitement of memory; a state of mind requiring compensation, which thinking of one’s own merits  –  specifically, moving to self-praise introduced by the camel-theme – can assist.24 This movement, she finds, conforms to a pattern of balancing opposites, which may have significant gender implications (she reminds us of Andras Hamori’s observation on the opposition of the female of the nasīb and the she-camel of the raḥīl);25 but they also have ethical implications: “The … ‘Bedouin hero’ must provide a solution to this problem in accordance with tribal norms and ethics … to regain soberness of mind (ḥilm) after folly (jahl)” – folly epitomised by futile emotional hankering over a break of relations, demanding resolution to seek equilibrium, which is seen through by decisively taking to the mount.26 Otherwise put, this aggregate suggests self-reflective, ethically-driven motivation to counter and treat psychological dis-ease ostensibly engendered by a fracture of relations; something which Jacobi, too, seems to infer, for she expresses her conviction, in this context, “that the function of the qaṣīda in tribal society was primarily therapeutic”. Once restored to mental balance, she concludes, the poet is in an appropriate condition to turn, if desired, to “a definite task”, panegyric or otherwise.27 Even if this was not the intention, one can see here the rudimentary makings of a case for how parataxis, in and of itself, can constitute a functional, quasi-narrative unity; one where it is the role of the audience to make sense of a sequence of thematic collisions  –  (i) desolation/intellectual dissolution/jahl; (ii) travel episode/seeking 24. Ibid., p. 28. 25. Ibid. Jacobi points here to Hamori’s perception of a dominant principle of equilibrium in the qaṣīda, achieved by use of contrasting pairs, which he epitomises in terms of plerosis and kenosis, ‘filling’ and ‘emptying’: Hamori (1974), pp. 18–19. 26. Jacobi (1996), p. 34. 27. Ibid.

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intellectual reintegration/ḥilm; (iii) capacity/effectual activity)  –  on the basis of culturally well-understood ethical norms and conventions of expression that crossreference relations between the parts. This would imply, for one thing, that the complexity or explicitness of takhalluṣ (linkage) need not be regarded as any arbiter of coherence or non-coherence, or, indeed, of planning. Even the ‘simplest’ device – wāw rubba – would emerge with a context-dependent semantic value, in keeping with the implications of such a mode of composition. At this point, we diverge a little to pursue wāw rubba and parataxis in just these capacities, before returning to Jacobi’s further theses. ***** Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin Andras Hamori long ago called attention to the deictic function of wāw rubba in his work on the use of “elementary rhetorical devices” to manage coherence paratactically. Most importantly, here, he underlines how misleading it can be to translate wāw rubba as “many a …,” reminding us of M. J. de Goeje’s non-pluralising suggested translations such as “I remember, I think of, O that! etc.”28 Hamori’s beautiful exposition of the way in which this device can be used to inspire coherent reception via a sequence of competing remembrances highlights how, as gaps in continuity suppress the perspective of the author’s mind along with spatial and temporal specifics, the burden of intellectual mediation is imposed on the reader/hearer:29 The wāw rubba is deictic, but it does no more than point; it is as if it pushed a fresh slide into the projector. The gesture of pointing then takes the place of intellectual mediation, which is left to the reader … The gaps in continuity suppress the perspective of the author’s mind, and we seem to get random associations, the jumble of memory. It is one of the characteristics of the type of poetry we are dealing with that most of the lyrics are hung on the poet’s “I,” but the “I” often does not order the phenomena. The hoops of poetic form – internal references that cut across the linear sequence, or distinct compositional patterns – keep the superficially disparate parts together, and create a self. Under their pressure the gaps between parts become a source of echoes. The paradoxical relation between this formal self and the discontinuity among the things that the self remembers endows the poetry with the poignancy of the instant, with the fascination of the dancer under stroboscopic lights.

Abū Nuwās – the focus of Hamori’s attention at this point – was only playing with a well-established, archaic compositional technique, making an aesthetic choice to unfold his discourse in the form of a vivid visual montage.30 It is doubtful that many 28. Wright (1964), vol. 2, p. 217; Hamori (1974), p. 106. 29. Hamori (1974), pp. 112–113. 30. Kennedy (1997) presents the creative, synthetic ingenuity of Abū Nuwās (b. between 130/747 and 145/762; d. between 198/813 and 200/815) against the backdrop of formative antecedents

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would wish to assert on the basis, here, of the disappearing “I” and the fronted sequence of distinct ‘remembered’ scenes, that his verse lacks sustained conception, or that he is only describing things ‘objectively’, lacking self-reflexivity and the capacity for introspection; and this ought to serve as a caution against hastening to impose such a judgement on poetic predecessors who regularly manipulated the same structures (albeit, perhaps, more as a symptom of existing in a less literate culture) – on which, more below. The psychology of the interactive process that Hamori describes – a story plotted by the juxtaposition of distinct, ‘objectively’ presented episodes of which the audience must make sense  –  is analogous to the psychology explored and confirmed in the cinematic experiments of dialectical montage. The theory of montage, as elaborated, for example, by Sergei Eisenstein in his 1929 essay, “Beyond the Shot”, was that independent shots could be juxtaposed or successively cross-cut, fused or compounded in split-screen, to produce emotional and intellectual effects by way of creating, not a ‘sum’ of two or more ‘representable’ objects, but a ‘product’, a ‘concept’ that would defy image, like the fusion of two hieroglyphs to create an ideogram:31 The combination of two hieroglyphs of the simplest series is to be regarded not as their sum, but as their product, i.e., as a value of another dimension, another degree; each, separately, corresponds to an object, to a fact, but their combination corresponds to a concept. From simple hieroglyphs has been fused – the ideogram. The combination of two ‘depictables’ makes it possible to represent something graphically undepictable.

A famous illustration of this occurs in his 1925 silent film, ‘Strike’, where the armed suppression of workers taking industrial action in pre-revolutionary Russia (1903) is enacted cross-cut with independent footage of cattle at the abattoir. One could say that the director, using the cinematic ‘wāw rubba’ of a lens-switch, suddenly decides to think of cattle taken matter-of-factly to slaughter; how a leg thrashes, an arm rises, a knife descends, a neck opens, innards pour; but the conceptual ‘product’ is more than the ‘sum’. It promotes collectivist ideology, as the target audience would surely have had the cultural competence to surmise: innocent workers, united in right-guided, communal solidarity, are savaged by a depraved tsarist regime, which dehumanises and dispatches them like cattle-meat. The directorial “I”, chronological time, and geographic space are suppressed and unified. Images are chosen and presented in a calculated way, but not analysed. The varied length, pace and focus of cumulative shots enhance the ‘product’, eliciting moral empathy, shock and outrage.32 The principles of montage – supported by a judicious selection of complementary theoretical perspectives – have been taken up by Dagmar Riedel to propose that “the qaṣīda’s composite structure presents a complete poetic narrative organised in the Arabic poetic tradition. 31. Ivanov (1985), p. 225. 32. This scene is available to view online, for example, at: http://youtu.be/jWiDciPuSW4.

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through parataxis”,33 this resting on “the axiom that narratives are structures that are not bound to a certain medium, so that the adjective ‘narrative’ cannot be used to distinguish a prose text from a poem or heroic from lyric poetry.”34 In addition to its offering an exit-route from the trap of perceiving that “the texts’ coherence, or better, their alleged lack thereof, is measured against the prevalence of heroic ethos or lyric sentiment”,35 the treatment of parataxis as a narrative strategy is, for Riedel, an approach with two distinct advantages: First, it provides “a methodological safety-valve against the intentional fallacy” by interfering with “any projection of an [authorial] intention … onto a pre-Islamic qaṣīda to explain its poetic validity and inner logic”; second, in offering a solution to how the ‘story’ can be determined from within the poem itself, it obviates the need to resort immediately to explanations of meta-narrative and archetype.36 An important working assumption emerges from her comparison of diverse critical studies on composition of this type; namely, that a cogent connection between the parts can only be established retrospectively, once the audience finally puts together what each part of the plot contributes to the ‘story’. This understood, plotting by parataxis constitutes no argument against coherence, albeit that cause and motivation become a problem for the audience to divine.37 On this basis, she proposes a reading of Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII, attributed to Bishr b. Abī Khāzim, which she translates forwards, but interprets with retrospective vision.38 The poem falls, broadly, into three phases: a nasīb evoking the poet’s distressed confusion, unilaterally abandoned in love; a short raḥīl – introduced paratactically by wāw rubba – on a she-camel which evolves, as he rides it, into a lone, suffering, anthropomorphised bull-oryx; and a furious complaint at erstwhile allies who have rejected his people’s love, coupled with a promise, therefore, to deny resources, all tailed with a sequence of boasts and a final threat. The following is a paraphrased summary of this sequence:39 33. Riedel (2002), pp. 278–283. 34. Ibid., p. 277, and notes. 35. Ibid., p. 276. 36. Ibid., pp. 288–289. 37. Ibid., pp. 279–281. 38. Riedel (2002), p. 297 ff. Riedel refuses to ignore the implications of the poem’s written recension in the context of the ‘authenticity’ question; namely, the facts of scholarly choices and editing, and she explores these, offering an informative overview of the diverse attitudes to the matter (ibid., pp. 289–297). She finds that one will not get closer to a jāhilī original than the poem’s constitution, or reconstruction, at the hands of al-Mufaḍḍal, and concludes (ibid., p. 297) that the philological concern about an authentic pre-Islamic text is a moot point. 39. See Lyall (1918–1921), XCVII, vol. 1, pp. 648–659, and vol. 2, pp. 273–277. Owing to verse 1, like verse 2 having a double rhyme (typically a feature reserved for the first line of a qaṣīda), Lyall assumes (ibid., vol. 2, p. 275: the note on v. 2) that verse 1 belongs to a different nasīb. This is closely discussed by Riedel (2002), pp. 298–299, n. 69. For a useful summary of references to Bishr b. Abī Khāzim, who seems to have been active in the second half of the sixth century, see

40

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia (i. vv. 1–8) The poet is confounded, unsure whether it is reality, dream, or night-terror that has haunted his vision as he lies awake while his comrades sleep. Idām (‘flavoursome seasoning’) is gone (ẓaʿanat); how [the bond of] union (wiṣāl) with a fair spouse falls to tatters (rimām). He indulged his earnest love for her (bi-ḥubbi-hā) until, once old, it was said his mind was addled with the thirst of passion (mustahām). They were both content for a while – though Fate (al-dahr) knows no continuity – during nights when she enslaved him with the drink of a wine-like kiss, and days when her beauteous radiance shone forth. He sees her as an oryx-doe (ẓabya), having forsaken the herd (khadhūl) in Ṣāḥa (‘a plain in which is no good’),40 presenting a smooth-horned profile in acacia-lined pastures, heart fearful at the lowing of a dusky companion with languishing eyes. (ii. vv. 9–14) The poet thinks (wāw rubba) of a dry, wind-swept desert-expanse, echoing with whistling hot blasts and the drumming of jinn, where he has frightened the she-oryx (ẓibāʾ) that had halted of a noon defined by mirage-cloaked dunes; this, riding a swift shecamel, pushed till she emaciates and her hump melts away. She is like a vagrant bull-oryx, trapped, at Ḥarba (‘spear/spear-thrust/stab’),41 in a night of water-spent clouds (jahām),42 where he remains, throughout, calling: ‘Turn to morning, O Night’, till finally, when the gloom dissipates from his lonely sand-pile, he emerges out of the dark into morning like a pearl surrendered by its [broken] thread (niẓām). (iii. vv. 15–38) The poet demands a message be delivered to the Banū Saʿd: he and his folk want righteousness (rashād). Those who discard their love (wudd) will see censure for their conduct in war. With the hearts’-vessels of love (wudd) exhausted, there is no longer between them a sacred bond (dhimām) implying moral obligation. They will find the way blocked to well-watered lands where camels grow fat and their humps swell; from luxuriant, well-defended pastures where milch-camels rest content. The poet boasts multitudinous warriors, cavalry to a man; horses accustomed to stand, ready-bridled, through the night and early morning before racing to meet enemy spears (asinna) with the alacrity of doves jostling to drink from the rain-pools. He reminds them how Fate (al-dahr) brings forgetfulness and oblivion, as happened with Judhām, another erstwhile tribal affiliate  –  no longer remembered  –  who acted injuriously (baghaw ʿalay-nā), and were driven off north, no longer to enjoy supreme, fort-like protection. They had said that the poet’s people would never abide (lan tuqīmū) if they were to leave (in ẓaʿannā); yet the poet’s people, indeed remained (la-nā … muqāmū) though Judhām were gone (wa-qad ẓaʿanū). Khuzayma’s hearthstones (athāfī) remain fast in place. All routes – the open and the

ibid., p. 292, n. 50. Although I differ slightly from Riedel in my reading of the poem’s details, this does not affect the salient points arising. 40. Asās, Qāmūs, s.v. ṣ-w-ḥ: art. ṣāḥatun; Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 2, p. 276, the note to v. 7, identifies Ṣāḥa as a tract in the territory of Bishr’s tribe, the Banū Asad. 41. Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 2, p. 276, the note to v. 12, on Ḥarba as a territory in the Ḥijāz, often mentioned by poets as a resort of the oryx. 42. Lyall (ibid.) justifies his translation of jahām as ‘rainclouds’ – “a night set thick with rainclouds” – noting that, although it is usually to be rendered, ‘clouds having no rain in them’, or ‘clouds that have discharged their rain completely’, the scene is reminiscent of a conventional poetic panel where the oryx may be exposed to rain. This is true, but by no means a uniform scenario: see for example below in Part 2, vv. 5–7 of Poem 1, Chapter 5:3, where, while the oryx takes refuge by an arṭāh-tree which is fragrant after a rainburst, he himself is actually afflicted by drought.

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interdicted – are theirs. The curse that they call down for this [sin] in [the sacred month of Dhū l-Ḥijja, at] the valley of Dhū l-Majāz will bring the appropriate punishment [athām].43

Riedel sees a range of formal unities for this poem, including a unity of time and place, wherewith chronological time and geographic space are compressed, equally accessible and anchored together, in the experience of the ‘male lyrical ego’. The passage of time is nonetheless suggested by progressive allusion to place-names, changeability and fickleness underlined in the double allusion to al-dahr. Riedel reads the poem retrospectively from the curse directed against the erstwhile allies – “a decisive reaction to an assumed threat” – to see it as “a story of separation and anxiety”, of a man’s development “from a flabbergasted lonely lover to the member of a pugnacious tribe who gains a firm resolve …44 The male lyrical ego, who had been left behind by a fickle beloved in the nasīb, is now in an active role, since his tribe will punish those [former allies] who do not respond to their affection.”45 She observes that the overarching theme of union as opposed to loneliness is present in all three parts and “guarantees a smooth transition” from nasīb to raḥīl and from raḥīl to fakhr, despite the lack of explicit clarification between thematic frames.46 She also supports her thesis of continuity by allusion to a number of conceptual echoes that she perceives to cut through these frames.47 At the same time, noting that there is no final resolution to the acrimony, she suggests that the closing curse against the unreliable ally – which she does not see linking directly to the opening confusion of the nasīb – “undermines the invincibility to which the male lyrical ego has tried to lay claim throughout the fakhr, because only a man whose authority and power is already threatened turns to supernatural intervention on his behalf.”48 There may be psychological truth to this point; but it does not address a more important one, which relates to the grave sanctity of covenantal ties; and this may, indeed, be linked back to the poem’s opening and all that follows by recourse to those conventional topoi in the nasīb and raḥīl, which, against Riedel’s expectation,49 can assist us further in seeing how the poem works as an integral text. This is because they are vessels of shared, ethico-cultural assumptions, which, for now, may briefly be illustrated as follows, where we concentrate only on the most salient details. 43. Ibid., p. 277, the note to v. 38, clarifies athām as punishment in consequence of ithm, ‘sin’ (apparently used in a similar sense in Qurʾān, 25: 68); and also offers a gloss on Dhū l-Majāz, the site of one of the fairs held by the Arabs during the sacred months, noting: “Apparently the celebrations there … were of a religious character: hence the solemnity of the curse uttered, at a sacred place, in a sacred month, against the dissident section of the tribe”. 44. Ibid., p. 306 45. Ibid., p. 309. 46. Ibid., p. 306. 47. Ibid., pp. 306–309. 48. Ibid., p. 309. 49. Ibid., p. 311.

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The final phase of Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII is an open condemnation of, and response to, a sin (ithm): the sin of infidelity to the ties of covenant, as indicated by allusion to the anticipated athām. The curse tells us, for one thing, that the covenant and sin within covenant are perceived, respectively, to extend to the divine and to merit divine sanction. Sin is the opposite of righteousness (rashād); it is the antithesis of ‘love’ (wudd), which tells us that ‘love’ in this context is not centred in passionate engagement, but ethics: constancy to one’s pledge of fidelity and the fulfilment of all the moral obligations that this implies. The pledge and accompanying obligations are simply figured by sacred bonds of duty (dhimām). Abuse of these bonds entails their damage, and, if not repaired, their mutual and complete severance, the termination of every duty of protection, ‘love’, and succour that they impose. The sinful aggression that damages these bonds is figured by ‘departure’ (ẓaʿn), connoting unilateral withdrawal from the duty of guaranteed assistance. The immediate effects of such sin, in the poet’s estimation, are isolation, insecurity and impoverishment for the erroneous, allegedly weaker, party. The projected long-term effects are ignominy and oblivion. Conversely, virtue, fidelity, and solidarity, as epitomised by the poet’s people, imply strength, security, resources and longevity. This is encapsulated in the concept of ‘remaining’ (iqāma) – which here also implies a faithful ‘abiding’ the opposite of ẓaʿn – and is most expressively enhanced by the image of fixed, live and enduring ‘hearthstones’ (athāfī), the athāfī so much more often appearing abandoned in the context of wasted desert camps, and expressing, rather, the desolation of Time (al-Dahr) and the disappearance of communities.50 Returning, then, to the first phase of this poem, we can identify some major coordinates that parallel and prefigure the essence of the final complaint. The dominant thought of the poet – that which engenders his horror and confusion to the point of suggesting phantasm – is ‘departure’; ‘departure’, encapsulated, from the first, in the term ẓaʿn, which becomes a principal concept of contention in the final frame.51 The partner here is an erstwhile spouse, the love once harboured, the poet’s long-term love (ḥubb) for her. This was satisfactory for as long as mutual contentment existed; but with the passage of time, the once satisfying intoxication of intimacy becomes, for the poet, the inebriating knowledge of what he is denied. This is judged to be addled thirsting (the poet is mustahām), a wayward vice, not to 50. Stetkevych (1994c), pp. 89–105, is informative on the athāfī in early Arabic poetry. 51. The high incidence of the ‘departure’ (ẓaʿn) of tribal women anticipating an aggressive stance later in a composite poem informs the thesis of Hassan El-Banna Ezz El-Din that the appearance of this motif “does not constitute the mere arbitrary repetition of a literary convention, but functions as part of a larger poetic paradigm, and that, in so doing, it may signal what may be designated in structural terms as a ‘battle ode’”. Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII does not fit either of the typologies ‘a’ and ‘b’ he proposes; but it would be covered by his ‘sub-type’ of a tripartite qaṣīda with ‘abbreviated’ raḥīl, i.e., one where the further agonistic development of a hunt does not appear: Ezz El-Din (1994), p. 173). This thesis is discussed below in this Section, s.v. Unities of Structural Typology, where implications of gender in the parallels we have drawn are also considered.

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be heedlessly indulged, especially in old age. It is to be equated with ṣibā and jahl, and demands ethical, corrective action.52 Most importantly, the figure of the bond of union (wiṣāl), presents us with a precursor, also, for the covenantal ties (dhimām) of the final phase, whilst the detail of the bond being reduced to tatters (rimām) informs us that some kind of treachery or shortcoming is in play: The image of the tattered bond will most typically appear, as here, with the faithless lovers and phantoms of the nasīb, and I shall later illustrate closely how it equates to the covenantal rope (ḥabl/sabab) of ‘neighbourhood’ (jiwār), or alliance. Here, it suffices to offer an open illustration of the ‘tattered rope’ motif as the bond of a covenant betrayed, carried in the acrimonious words of Zuhayr.53 The poet opens with a group’s ‘departure’, which incites his burning desire (ishtiyāq) and makes him wonder if he can overtake them. Using the ‘simple’ transition, wa-qad, followed by an imperfect verb, he switches to an ostensibly natural scene and rides out, having in mind to hunt onager.54 He soon finds the shoe on the other foot, however, for he and his horse become a bereft sandgrouse targeted by a hawk from which it only just escapes alive after a close, prolonged and deadly chase.55 At the point that the ‘sandgrouse’ takes cover, and the ‘hawk’ finally takes off to alight on a promontory, seemingly spattered with quasi-sacrificial blood,56 the ‘lens’ switches abruptly again onto the poet, who launches into a blistering tirade:57 ُ ‫وار ُكـ ْن‬ ُ ‫ـت أَ ْمـت َِس‬ ‫ك‬ ٍ ‫بِأيِّ َحب ِْل ِج‬ ُ َ ‫ك في أسْبابِ ِه هَلكوا‬ َ ‫لوْ كانَ قَوْ ُم‬

ّ َّ ‫هل َسأ َ ْلتَ بَني ال‬ ‫صيْدا ِء كـُلَّهُ ُم‬ َ ‫ق‬ ٍ ‫فَـلَن يَـقـولوا بِـ َحب‬ ٍ ‫ْـل وا ِه ٍن َخل‬

Why not ask them all, the Banū al-Ṣaydāʾ, what kind of kinsmen’stie (ḥabl jiwār) I was clinging to? They’ll never say: a rope ragged (wāhin) and rent (khalaq); were your folk in its coils (asbāb) they’d be good as dead. 52. The status of ḥilm and jahl as combinative elements of an ethical complex was set forth above in Part 1:1. 53. Ahlwardt (1870), Zuhayr, no. 10. 54. Ibid., v. 10. 55. Ibid., vv. 13–24. 56. Ibid., v. 24. Sense of the sacrificial is suggested by comparison with the ceremonial stone – manṣib al-ʿitr – on which the blood of sacrifices (nusuk) is shed. Jones (1996), pp. 133–134, discusses the inherent ambiguity of the verse – whether it is the head of the promontory that is being compared to the bloodied stone, or that of the hawk, as the commentators take it, inclining to the former. Jaroslav Stetkevych (1996b), p. 113, lives with the ambiguity, focusing on the suggestive power of the comparison that goes beyond its “imagist level”. Stetkevych sees this hunter turned hunted-sandgrouse episode as a transposition and transformation of ‘chivalrous hunt’ that ‘breaks the code’ of a radical tripartism he proposes, occupying what he sees as the paradigmatic place of the ‘oryx/onager/ostrich-as-hunted-prey’ episode that can often characterise the camel-borne raḥīl. This is disputed further below in this Section, s.v. Art of the Ternary Archetype. 57. Ahlwardt (1870), Zuhayr, no. 10, vv. 25–26.

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The poet’s point of contention is treachery (ghadr), no more, no less;58 and Ṣaydāʾ are warned to correct this, without further abuse, or suffer the penalty of an excoriation which, he swears “by God’s life” will stain their reputations forever.59 Leaving aside, for now, discussion of how Zuhayr’s poem may be read as a coherent, paratactic narrative on treachery and the response to it, we can see clearly here that the ubiquitous, ‘tattered rope’ motif is a reference to a faulty and dangerous covenant. By a process of poetic association, the presence of this motif in the first phase of Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII, above, rings as a cultural encoding for the same, and anticipates, in highly emotional terms, the complaint of spent love and the full severance of ties alluded to in the final frame. Furthermore, the isolation, impoverishment and insecurity of the sinful party in the final phase can now be seen pre-figured in the poet’s projection of his erstwhile companion as a she-oryx, stranded apart from the herd, fearful for her companion (or offspring) in an area whose name, Ṣāḥa, connotes the production of nothing. In the meantime, we can see that full withdrawal from the damaged tie and concomitant suffering is not yet effected. In the second phase of the poem, there is another allusion to a fractured kinshiptie, the distressing and disintegrative connotations of which are carried this time in the image of the broken gem-string (niẓām) that surrenders the ‘pearl’. This is another image which will be treated more closely in due course. Here, verses attributed to Labīd suffice to show its significance in the context of group cohesion: The ‘gems’ are constituted by community members who are dependent on the ‘binding thread’ (niẓām) of a strong leader. The ‘departure’ involved in this case is the irrevocable departure to death, for the poet laments his kinsman, Arbad:60 ُ ‫َوكانَ ال َج ْز‬ ‫ظام‬ ِ ِّ‫ع يُحْ فَظُ بالن‬ ‫وهـام‬ ‫َوال هُـ ْم غَـيْـ ُر أصْ دا ٍء‬ ِ

ً ‫َو ُك ْنتَ إما َمنا َولـَنا نِـظامـا‬ ‫َقير‬ َ ‫ْس النّاسُ بَ ْع َد‬ َ ‫َولَي‬ ٍ ‫ك في ن‬

You were our leader, our binding thread (niẓām); the ‘gems’ were indeed preserved by that thread Folk, without you, exist not in the groove of a datestone; are nothing but corpse-owls (hām) and thirsting shades (aṣdāʾ)

The fateful stroke which, as it were, surrenders the people from their preservative niẓām, their essential binding, reduces them conceptually to the unavenged dead: 58. The poet warns them – ibid., v. 28, not to delay what they are bound by their honour (ʿirḍ) to do; only the treacherous (al-ghādir) act thus. 59. Ibid., vv. 31–33. 60. Labīd (1962), p. 209, vv. 28–29; cf. the hunt in Imruʾ al-Qays’ muʿallaqa (vv. 64–67 in the edition of al-Tibrīzī), where the full picture in social ‘oryx-terms’ is conveyed when a clutch of doeoryx with their bull are projected as the variegated beads of a necklace hung on the neck of a noble youth (… ka-l-jazʿi l-mufaṣṣali bayna-hū/bi-jīdi muʿammin fī-l-ʿashīrati mukhwalī): Lyall (1894), p. 24.

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corpse-shades in need of redemptive ‘drink’.61 The essence of these connotations, brought into relation with the second phase of Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII, complements the ‘tattered rope’ motif of the opening frame, both at the level of a covenant undone – though now suggesting a complete break – and at the level of concomitant confusion and trial. Confusion and trial layer the background, in any case, in the mirage-laden, whistling desert and the unsettling rumble of jinn; but, if the poet’s startling the unwitting she-oryx suggests a shift in self-possession, suffering remains the focus with his mounted transformation into a bull. This must surely be understood as emotive self-projection, for the poet knows precisely what the oryx thinks and says: Like Imruʾ al-Qays in his long night of suffering, where the universe appears to be in stasis as he begs the night to cede to a dawn that can herald better, the oryx spends the entire night willing the dark to turn to day.62 This, of course, picks up the lonely night of suffering in the first phase; but the much-wanted day here brings also a final break with suffocating stasis, and the possibility of recovery. Recovery and resolution of sorts, then, are the substance of the third phase of the poem with its ethicallydriven statement of a definitive break of ties in return for love spurned, and its final curse. At this point, surveying the whole poem, one may regard its closing chemistry in terms of the synergy of ḥilm and jahl, discussed in Section 1 above: Intellectual recovery and independence of mind, connoting ḥilm, finally contain and guide the jahl that has been aroused by the abuse of covenant – explored through the first two phases of the poem – and, fuelled now by that fury, the poet responds to the grievous sin with effective, legitimate aggression. To bring this excursus on paratactic composition to a close, there are grounds to conclude, first, that the composition of pre-Islamic poems merits close investigation as an art of dialectical juxtaposition where the audience is required to mediate meaning between the parts, and expected to possess the cultural information to do so; second, that ability to mediate this meaning would be based on assumed knowledge: the recognition of an array of conventional figures and constructs, which may carry connotations that relate to wider ethical concerns, and may be tailored and modified according to purpose; third, that once the semantic and ethical dimensions of such figures and constructs are fully accessed, the thematically discrete poetical frames may reveal themselves to be interdependent, or, indeed, inter-referential. In this way, one would be discussing an art where diverse, inter-referential thematic frames are subordinated, in sequential blocks, to an overarching message, contention, or preoccupation, which may typically be clarified by an open statement, as in the case of Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII, above. It should be underlined that in the latter case, where the parts have been viewed as subordinate to a whole, ‘love’ in the nasīb (the 61. The souls of the unavenged dead were thought to escape from their nostrils in the form of an ‘owl’ that would cry for drink (isqāʾ), i.e., vengeance. Homerin (1985) explores this figure in some detail. 62. See Ahlwardt (1870), Imruʾ al-Qays, no. 48, v. 44. The parallel is not lost on Ibn al-Anbārī, who quotes Imruʾ al-Qays’ verse in his commentary on v. 13: Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 1, p. 653.

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opening prelude) emerges with clear, ethical connotations relating to commitment in covenant, and quite distinct from the poet’s residual passion. This passion equals, rather, haunting dis-ease and an ‘arousal’ of jahl the specific nature and source of which remain to be clarified in his open condemnation. Similarly, in the raḥīl (‘journey’), the anthropomorphic transformation of the poet’s state in the saddle emerges as a further exploration of the contention and suffering of the nasīb; as a revelation of his inner life through projection onto the natural world and a bull, cast off like himself, from a social preserve: Rather than take us inward to confess his soul, the poet invites us to witness his endurance and hear his mind by turning it outward and embodying it in a natural actor. The poetical ‘I’ is at once invisible and entirely transparent – nakedness both modest and resplendent, dressed in the wardrobe of nature. Furthermore, taken as a totality that sets forth the perceived consequences, personal and communal, of commitment to, or betrayal of, the covenantal expectation of ‘love’, in a framework where all times become available, the poem demonstrates a thick cocktail of temporal perception: In the nasīb, we witness time past and time re-experienced where a denial of love entails that the injured party suffers a crisis from which he must extract himself, and the betrayer is exposed to isolation and insecurity. In the raḥīl, we witness time indeterminate and in flux as the poet thinks of riding out using the wāw rubba formula: First, the suggestion of drawing on the experience of time past, to effect, in the present, a shift in the negative chemistry of the nasīb. This dissolves into a variation on that chemistry, in subsequent time, with the transformation into the bull. Then we see time experienced as intolerably slow due to nocturnal suffering; and, lastly, future time, the hope for change, anticipated in the turn to day. In the poem’s final phase, the poet, now living his present, anticipates a future of renewed strength and success, and the survival of his people’s line beyond his lifetime, by virtue of an ongoing commitment to ‘love’ in compact. The iniquity of an uncommitted people invites the opposite, in the poet’s estimation, promising future radical extinction. This perfectly sophisticated temporality in the context of ‘love’ as a communal ethic that opposes group extinction and imagines life for the generations beyond, is noted for further reference below. In the meantime, we retrieve the thread of Renate Jacobi’s thesis of the semantic independence of the parts of the poem and its further extrapolations. ***** The Art of the Poet Unconscious If it can be the case that the diverse thematic frames of a pre-Islamic poem are interdependent, inter-referential and subordinated to an overarching, ethical message, it would be risking error to base weighty conclusions on the nature of ‘love’, for example, or the value of natural description, or, indeed, the poet’s mental evolution or temporal appreciation, on a vision restricted to comparison across, rather than through, the parts – only nasīb, or only raḥīl – whilst neglecting to

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examine the symbolic possibilities of all kinds of constructs, similes and metaphors that would merit investigation with reference to the ethos and the wider repertoire. But such weighty conclusions are precisely what emerge from Jacobi’s dissociation of the poetical frames. Her undoubtedly elegant study on the camel-section of the panegyrical ode is devoted to demonstrating developments of the genre in terms of surface structure only, consciously excluding the consideration of any special function that might attach to a given theme or motif.63 With a prepared position of a ‘tribal ode’ developing from disparate parts that are only properly joined, over time, by ever-more explicit, and thus ‘conscious’, narrative transitions, there is nothing to hamper the conclusion that, in its ‘most coherent’ state – exemplified, for example, in ode 5 of al-Nābigha in Ahlwardt’s edition  –  the ‘tribal ode’ was “a narrative sequence, interrupted by descriptive passages”.64 No matter what transpires before or after, no matter the details attending a mount, no matter what its conceptual transmogrifications – onager, oryx, ostrich or other, panicked or assured, failing or succeeding, hunting or hunted – natural episodes are “lively scenes of desert-life, representing the wild animal in its typical actions and surroundings”, and, like the journey itself, reduced to ‘self-praise’ (mufākhara), albeit somehow transcending that function by virtue of being “more deeply rooted in Beduin society, perhaps, than any other motif ”.65 The formulae, ka-anna/kaʾannī – ‘it is as if ’/‘it is as if I’ [mounted with my appurtenances on such a camel] were [a given creature doing, or suffering, a given thing]’ – often used to preface such ‘natural’ elaborations, are simply not allowed their explicit semantic content, having originally anyway only ever been classed as a “demarcation of comparison and metaphor”;66 and thus they pose no obstacle here. No more are any questions asked why ‘journeys’ should often be without itinerary and appear to have no definite destination.67 Meanwhile, poetical equations,68 which are sometimes difficult to appreciate, are not only deemed ‘objective’,69 but wanting by comparison with the Homeric simile, ‘profoundly inadequate’ and deficient in the ‘essence of reality’.70 As such, they inspire no further exploration, and provide a blank sheet for assertions. Maintaining such a literalist reading of descriptive passages as key to the poets’ relationship with ‘reality’, is taken substantially further in Jacobi’s equally elegant 63. Jacobi (1982), p. 4. 64. Ibid., p.7 (my emphasis); Ahlwardt (1870), al-Nābigha, no. 5, pp. 6–8. 65. Ibid., p. 5. 66. Jacobi, (1971), p. 124 (my emphasis). Two examples of composite poems involving ka-annī – it as if I were ... - to introduce a ‘natural’ panel are studied in detail in Part 2 below, Poems 5.3.2 and 5.3.3. 67. Jacobi (1982), p. 5. 68. Jacobi (1971), p. 157 ff. 69. Ibid., p. 165. 70. Ibid., p. 167.

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“Time and Reality in Nasīb and Ghazal”.71 Here, she addresses the emergence of characteristic features of the independent genre of ghazal in the early Islamic period, “the new concept of love inherent in it”, and what elements contributed to its development. She concludes that these are partially attributable to “a change in aesthetic consciousness based on two interrelated factors: 1. a new experience of time, 2. A new attitude towards reality.”72 While she sets forth a convincing case in regard of the aesthetic consciousness of the ghazal, the assertions she makes, by comparison, on the intellectual state of jāhilī poets of the nasīb, and the implications thereof for their art and its transformations, are contentious – largely, but not only, because they are rooted in the now wholly debunked proposition of the ‘naive objectivity’ of the Homeric persona and its ilk (on which, more below). Beautifully presented is the emergence of a new, romantic consciousness preoccupied with direct disclosure of the interior self; the systematic relativising of time and place in harmony with a poet’s sometimes unrelenting commitment, and wholehearted accession to, the needs and will of the object of his desire; the obsessive will to adhere to present passion and, thus, the ‘forward extension’ of the mind toward an expectation of future suffering on account of this love-commitment, or a hope of future connection even beyond the grave, till time becomes “neither linear nor cyclical, but continuous, the unchanging flow of the lover’s emotion.”73 Jacobi concludes, in this vein, quite reasonably, that “[t]raditional ethics have been abandoned in favour of individual moral decisions;74 but also adds that “[t]he phenomena of nature, people and events, even the beloved, are not mentioned for their own sake, but offer an opportunity to dwell on his inner experience.”75 By this it seems that we are meant to infer and accept that the pre-Islamic poet does, by contrast, focus on nature, people, the topic of love ‘for their own sake’; and that the new aesthetic consciousness somehow constitutes a linear evolution from out of a simple, agenda-less treatment of love and passion in the jāhilī scheme. This is certainly the message of that portion of the article devoted to the jāhilī nasīb. The jāhilī poet is presented as ‘extending his mind’ only toward a love-relation of the past. This, he might momentarily re-live and mourn, but will then generally recover and ‘cut his bond’ in conformity with the behaviour expected by the manly ethic. Then it is all over. Summarising her personal understanding of the meaning of love for jāhilī poets – while never distinguishing ‘love’ (the ethic, as discussed above) from ‘passionate desire’ – Jacobi states that “[l]ove means pleasure, possession, success and social prestige”,76 and believes that it is the unattainability of these things 71. Jacobi (1985). 72. Ibid., pp. 1–2. 73. Jacobi (1985), p. 16. 74. Ibid., p. 9. 75. Ibid., p. 17 (my emphasis). 76. Ibid., p. 5.

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that underlies both the perception that indulging hopeless passion is foolishness (i.e., ṣibā jahl), and the motivation for ‘cutting the bond’ (the ḥabl al-wiṣāl); that this love “has only one dimension”.77 While there may be a certain relativisation of time – for example, in the depiction of the ‘long night’ – this does not demonstrate for her the jāhilī poet’s conscious “realization of his own subjectivity”, as demonstrated in later musings on time and place.78 She asserts that “the early poet does not project his feelings into his surroundings”,79 and believes that the outward focus of the jāhilī poet’s attention demonstrates “the illusion that reality – the outward world – is as he sees it”,80 that he is motivated to depict it out of a “passionate desire for giving permanence to the phenomena of the material world by describing them in detail and with as much precision as possible”.81 Because she deems it that the jāhilī poet “depicts what he sees and hears without telling us what he thinks or feels about it”,82 she believes that “complicated emotions and ambivalence of feeling are not yet realized”,83 that he is “not yet able to reflect upon them and to analyse their implications.”84 This all rests on the absolute conviction that he is subject to a “naive objectivity” which “constitutes a previous stage of knowledge” that the ghazal poet “has lost”;85 a “naive, unconscious objectivity characteristic of pre-Islamic and all early poetry” 86 (no time-frame specified), which “the poet of early periods has no choice” but to evince.87 Inspiration for this alleged ‘unconscious objectivity’ comes from Friedrich Schiller’s concept of the ‘naive’ Homer versus the ‘sentimental’ Vergil, in his 1795 essay, Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, and Jacobi makes it very clear that it is a prior stage of human development that she has in mind: “‘naive’ poetry in the true sense, as represented by the Homeric epics … a stage of literature irretrievably lost”.88 Before responding to Jacobi’s observations on ‘love’ in the jāhilī nasīb, it would be useful to remove this last perceived obstacle to the cognitive capacity of the jāhilī poet. ***** 77. Ibid., p. 6. 78. Ibid., p. 8. 79. Ibid., p. 7. 80. Ibid., p. 8. 81. Ibid., p. 17. 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid., p. 6. 84. Ibid., p. 8. 85. Ibid., p. 16. 86. Ibid., p. 8 (my emphasis). 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid., pp. 16–17, n. 24.

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The Conversely Conscious Homer Martin Mueller has produced a succinct overview of how, “[w]hile the Homeric poems have maintained a highly canonical status through 2,500 years of Western culture, later ages have tended to put an existential divide between themselves and ‘Homer’.”89 Schiller’s opposition of ‘naive’ and ‘sentimental’ poetry “turned out to be a powerful and deeply consequential ideological construct”; a manifestation of “the Myth of the Two Poets” – “a poetic version of the Fall” which “contrasts the self-effacing naive with the self-projecting sentimental poet” – where the lack of historical data for identity, predecessors, physical state and literacy afforded Homer a supreme advantage in the stakes for prototype of the self-effacing, naive variety:90 Anonymous, blind, unlettered – what better image could there be of an original genius existing prior to the division of self and community, subject and object, thought and feeling, thing and meaning, concrete and abstract, or whatever other oppositions have been used to illustrate this particular ideological construct?

The parallel dearth of historical Arabic data for the jāhilīya, which offers an equally convenient blank sheet for the self-effacing construct, need not be laboured. The further impetus that this mythologising tendency received from nineteenth-century evolutionary theory is also all too evident to Mueller:91 A very important strand of twentieth-century Homeric scholarship is rooted in nineteenthcentury evolutionary theory, whether Hegelian or Darwinian, and sees Homer’s world as a stage in the cultural evolution of mankind. The debts of that scholarship to the concept of a ‘naive’ Homer are obvious. Hermann Fränkel’s Ways and Forms of Early Greek Thought or Bruno Snell’s Discovery of the Mind are books that carry their story lines in their title. E. R. Dodds’ argument about Homeric shame culture or A. W. H. Adkins’ theories of the competitive structure of Homeric society are other distinctive scholarly contributions of this type, where ‘not yet’ or ‘no longer’ are important words. Equally significant is a tendency to draw a very sharp line not merely between us and Homer but between Homer and the Greek world for which the Iliad and the Odyssey were the most canonical works. The reductio ad absurdum of this approach is probably The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes, who took the narrative conventions of divine intervention in the Homeric epics very literally and argued that the Greeks of Homer’s day were wired differently and that the Socratic daimonion was the residue of an earlier age in which each human had a ‘bicameral’ mind in which one chamber could be addressed directly by the gods … Jaynes’ homo homericus never existed, but he demonstrates the temptations of pushing a hypothesis beyond any reasonable limits.

Any residual excuse for resorting to an argument based on Homer’s ‘naive objectivity’ was effectively extinguished in 1987 with the appearance of Irene J. F. de Jong’s 89. Mueller (2009), p. 9. 90. Ibid., pp. 10–11. 91. Ibid., p. 11.

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Narrators and Focalizers: the Presentation of the Story of the Iliad, now in its second edition;92 a work whose reviewers found it to have, for example, “an undeniable accuracy”,93 and one which has become “compulsory (if difficult) reading for serious students of Homer”,94 owing to a consensus that she “succeeds in refuting the ‘dogma’ of the objectivity of the presentation in the Iliad convincingly”.95 She does this by adapting the narratological model developed by Gérard Genette and Mieke Bal for facilitating analysis of the modern novel, so as to demonstrate, in “(over)simplified layman’s terms … who is telling what to whom, from what point of view, and what colouring is applied”, 96 and, thus, “the narrator’s absolute control of all aspects of his narrative”.97 One of the criticisms levelled at de Jong (perhaps a misunderstanding) offers additional food for thought for our purposes. This comes from Jeroen P. J. van der Heijden, who objects to de Jong’s presentation of the temporary surrender of perspective from the ‘primary narrator-focalizer’ (NF1 – not to be conflated with the poet himself) to another character, saying that, with this ‘assimilation’, he essentially “suppresses his own focalization”.98 Understanding her to mean that this ‘assimilation’ is somehow innocent or objective, van der Heijden stresses how, even whilst multiple perspectives may thus be offered, the NF1 is an autocrat who ultimately determines the ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘how’ of everything narrated and everything focalized, and that, in this case, no ‘assimilation’ is ever innocent:99 By means of a simile, the NF1 does not only illustrate the focalization of a character, but he also interprets that focalization. It makes all the difference, whether a sensory perception of a character is compared to, e.g., the lurking look of an eagle or to the innocent look of a young deer. Thus, it is inevitable to conclude, that the NF1 does not hand over narration and focalization to characters in an objective way. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the NF1 adapts everything to his own focalization.

One might well heed all of this when surveying the plethora of conventional faces and forms that populate pre-Islamic poetry, and the highly expressive and varied turns that the details of simile and metaphor take. The un-ignorable lesson would be, at 92. de Jong (2004). 93. Willcock (1989), p. 177. 94. Alden (2006), p. 113. 95. van der Heijden (1990), p. 467. 96. Alden (2006), p. 113. 97. Ibid., p. 115. 98. van der Heijden (1990), p. 466, in respect of de Jong (2004), p. 34, n. 11. ‘Focalisation’ is glossed here (ibid., p. 467, n. 2) basically as: “both the sensory perception of the events and the related interpretation of those events”. 99. van der Heijden (1990), p. 467 (my emphasis). What de Jong actually says is: “In principle, the F1 suppresses his own focalization in favour of that of the F2, but the vision of this F2 is given within the all-encompassing vision of the F1”: (2004), p. 255, n. 11. The omniscience she thus ascribes to the primary ‘narrator-focalizer’ hardly suggests that she asserts ‘objectivity’.

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the very least, that there is no merit in ‘naive Homer’ as a model for the ‘unconscious objectivity’ of the Homeric epic, or, indeed, any other ‘early poetry’. The Homeric epic might, rather, serve as an exemplar of the ways that an ‘early poet’ may reveal much through what he chooses to show, the medium he uses to convey that, and how he colours it;100 of an aesthetic that may demand our recognition and empathy more than our attention to direct confession.101 We may return, then, on this basis, to the further specifics raised above in relation to jāhilī ‘love’ and temporal appreciation. ***** The Poet Resuscitated Jacobi’s general overview of the early nasīb is indistinct in its attention to the concept of ‘love’. Whilst ‘love’ per se – or its betrayal – may be implied as the heart of the matter, the focus of the nasīb is generally (though not always) the experience or reexperience of thwarted passion or irretrievable loss. This is conducive to an ethically disapproved lapse into ‘juvenile folly’ (ṣibā), to the arousal of jahl, and requires principled attention. Highlighting the expectation that a man will typically attend to his jahl in the nasīb by moving to cut his ‘bond’, or ‘kin-tie’ (ḥabl al-wiṣāl) offers a nod to the ethos, but this ethical response is granted no more weight than is the experience of crisis. The implication of ‘cutting the bond’, in itself, offers a salutary antidote to the assertion of ‘objectivity’. This ‘bond’ or ‘rope’ (ḥabl) is self-evidently not a concrete thing that the poet sees and thinks he must cut. It may perhaps relate to an actual ‘tying’ ceremony of mutual bonding (waṣl) in the ‘neighbourhood’ of kinship (jiwār): Certainly, ‘binding one’s rope to another’s’ features, at least, as a figurative, solemn act of commitment;102 and, certainly, in the broader scheme of things, the ‘rope’ of 100. Cf. Wayne C. Booth (1991), p. 20: “The author’s voice is as passionately revealed in the decision to write the Odyssey, “The Falcon,” or Madame Bovary as it is in the most obtrusive direct comment of the kind employed by Fielding, Dickens, or George Elliot. Everything he shows will serve to tell; the line between showing and telling is always to some degree an arbitrary one … we must never forget that though the author can to some extent choose his disguises, he can never choose to disappear.” Booth’s position has already been noted by Riedel (2002), p. 275, n. 2, to illustrate “the logical deconstruction of the alleged antagonism between description and action.” Booth is also flagged by de Jong as an important voice, which she laments (2004), p. 24, has not impinged more on Homerists. She offers an informative, evaluative overview of scholarship on the “vicissitudes of the Homeric text in the hands of its readers” since 1795 when Wolf ’s Prolegomena and Schiller’s Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung were published (ibid., pp. 14–28), breaking down the critical thinking for and against the dogma of ‘objectivity’. 101. Ong (2002), p. 45, flags Homer in the ‘Empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced’ category of his ‘psychodynamics of orality’: “The ‘objectivity’ which Homer and other oral performers do have is that enforced by formulaic expression: the individual’s reaction is not expressed as simply individual or ‘subjective’ but rather encased in the communal reaction, the communal ‘soul’.” 102. See, for example, below in Part 2, verse 20 of Poem 4.3.

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the covenant can be identified as a component of one of the conceptual figures for the community compact; namely, the bakra (the ‘rotary well pulley’);103 but what is important here is that it clearly comes invested, in the poetry, not only with the concepts, but the feelings of, commitment and vulnerability to another person (or people). In its ‘past-remembered’, ‘bad’, or ‘tattered’ form, it can provide the focus for what we may well all recognise as the disillusion, fear and insecurity that results from distrust in the fastness of such a tie; as the near-physically experienced bind and pull of an emotion that is self-destructive if indulged and not remedied; and if it cannot be remedied by the wished-for response from the party to whom one feels ‘tied’, then personal resources, intellectual and physical, must be harnessed to extract oneself and sever the ‘pull’. In short, the ‘bad bond’ comes pre-invested with signals of negative chemistry and danger. At the same time, contrary to what has been asserted, the poets can and do tell us what they feel in this situation, as we shall later illustrate closely: The experience, over and above all else, is expressed as ‘sickness’ (dāʾ/suqm); as disorientation, loss of confidence, fear of fortune and the future (rayb); alternatively, as fury at being forcibly meekened, enticed and ‘led’ (mustaqād), or treacherously ensnared as prey (muṣṭād); as intoxication of a physically paralysing variety that dissolves the intellect (ʿaql), and so forth. This would indicate quite a close appreciation of one’s inner ‘mindscape’ and the ability to express it. A certain ambivalence is also frequently to be inferred, since, otherwise, there would be no motivation for a poet – who is, after all, in charge of the characters – to bring in other figures as a foil to express self-justification, or to urge him to ‘pull himself together’; but ambivalence is also directly expressed.104 The poet of the early nasīb will normally not wish to indulge such passion or grief and make a virtue of it, not because he is unable to do so, but because he – and inferrably his whole society, since this is very much a public discourse – is very much afraid that he can; for, in doing so, he may suffer not only shame, but mental dissolution and physical incapacity. Hence, lā tahlik asan wa-tajammalī – the most famous ‘pull yourself together’ in ancient Arabic literature: ‘Do not self-destruct for grief, but restrain yourself as becomes you’.105 The typical crisis of the nasīb, thus, in a sense, comes socially pre-analysed: Not only is a ‘bad bond’, dangerous, or even deadly to, the aggrieved party – as one sees in the verses of Zuhayr cited shortly above – but indulgence thereof invites pathological ‘sickness’, psychological and physical dissolution. The ethical motivation for heeding this danger is constituted in the opposite face of Zuhayr’s contention: If one’s own 103. We return to this figure below in Part 2; but the pre-Islamic bakra in this capacity, and its Islamic transformations, have already been traced in Jamil (1999). 104. One example of explicit ambivalence opens a poem rhyming in ṣād, analysed below in Part 2, Poem 5.3.2: Dwelling on the ‘withdrawal’ of one Salmā, the poet expresses the contrary tug of desire to overtake her, or to hold back. This generates an extraordinary ‘natural’ panel devoted to the reassertion of balance. 105. From the muʿallaqa of Imruʾ al-Qays, v. 5 in the edition of al-Tibrīzī: Lyall (1894), p. 4.

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commitment to appropriate conduct in compact is diminished, one will not have the capacity to fulfil one’s responsibilities, but will become a liability to everyone else in that compact. As Imruʾ al-Qays says, cautioning himself after tears at recognising the abodes of a former beloved, and remembering the entire tribe – a crisis he is well able, eloquently and consciously, to express as a resurgence of the ‘residual sickness’ (ʿaqābīl suqm) of grief [suppressed] deep in the mind (ḍamīr) – showing that he knows he has one:106 ‫ان‬ ْ ‫ْس عَلى ش‬ َ ‫فَلَي‬ ِ ‫َي ٍء ِسواهُ بِ َخ َّز‬

ُ‫إذا ال َمرْ ُؤ لَ ْم يَ ْخ ُز ْن َعلَ ْي ِه لِسانَه‬

If a man (marʾ) has not the capacity to hold his tongue, he will have capacity for nothing else besides.

This is his cue to perform a move toward self-resurrection and the reversal of his negative chemistry by curtailing his ‘leaky’ tongue and thinking, via a concatenation of paratactic ‘remembrances’ introduced by wāw rubba, and against the strain entailed by countering his current immersion in crisis, of the catalogue of communally responsible and hardy endeavours he has previously undertaken; cumulative projections that build an ever-strengthening sense of resolve, the overlaying of which, onto the nasīb, creates a series of dialectical ‘collisions’ and, ultimately, a ‘product’; namely, the poet’s reclamation of his capacity for virtue, and his commitment to act accordingly. Meanwhile, an open statement of the demand for faithful endeavour as the premise for a ‘good bond’ – which is weighed in direct antithesis to a faithless beloved of the type whose ‘bond’ he is ready to sever – is found in the same poet’s definition of his ideal ‘brother’ as one with whose ‘rope’ (ḥabl) he would join his own, with whose arrow’s feather he would feather his own, as long as that connection does not become suspect.107 Thus, it is not the case that the poet ‘cuts the bond’ and refuses to indulge passion and longing because his love is ‘one-dimensional’, or because he is in ‘a previous state of knowledge’, but because he sees that emotional and intellectual commitment must be invested in true ‘love’ within a faithful compact that will not prejudice his interests, incapacitate or endanger him – exactly the greater ‘love’ articulated in Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII (see above, under Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin), which was the key to communal survival through the generations and, therefore, ultimately what commanded both the poet’s temporal focus and his future projections. The message to be drawn, in this light, would be that to restrict oneself only to the pre-Islamic nasīb to draw data for comparison with the aesthetic and developmental consciousness of later ghazal may be misleading for a number of reasons: First, it is a frame which is clearly devoted to referencing an attachment that carries potentially destructive implications, which must be confronted and managed; an attachment to which one must not simply remain indulgently committed if it cannot be repaired, 106. This qaṣīda is analysed below, Part 2, Poem 2.5. 107. This qaṣīda is analysed below, Part 2, Poem 4.3.

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and the severance of which, in that case, will normally be an ethically-driven, forgone conclusion. That is to say, it can be taken as an indicator of intrinsic balance and ethical commitment, but not proof of what the poet is capable or not capable of as a human being. Second, the nasīb thus suggests itself as a frame which, contrary to Jacobi’s assertion, is not about love with a partner ‘for its own sake’ at all, but a foil for discussing or demonstrating some aspect of virtue not evinced in, or else undermined by, a damaged and damaging connection or sense of connection, the specific sense of which may be taken up in other thematic frames. Third, if appropriate ‘love’ and the ethical and emotional commitment to that ‘love’ is, in fact, being explored and elucidated through other thematic frames, one necessarily precludes, by concentrating solely on the nasīb, the possibility of observing accurately what ‘love’ is, what the broader poetical implications of gender interplay may be, and what the contingent complexities of a poet’s relationship with himself and the world, temporality and reality, truly are. The sum of this brings us to conclude that comparing the pre-Islamic nasīb with the later ghazal is not an equal equation because the early nasīb would be only one of a number of thematic frames which, precisely by an intended process of aggregation, are coordinated to elucidate one key issue or message that relates in some way to ethical concerns, or greater ‘love’. The ghazal, meanwhile, is, demonstrably, a genre where ideas and themes drawn not only from the pre-Islamic nasīb, but also from the wider world of thematic possibilities, are coordinated by subordination to the unified focus of an individual preoccupation cast as passionate love – a preoccupation arguably far more expressive of a certain love ‘for its own sake’ – wherewith the poet may evince, or indeed embrace and make a virtue of, precisely the symptoms of ‘sickness’ and self-dissolution that the jāhilī poet is wholly at pains to avoid.108 This is not to contradict the assessment that a noticeably different aesthetic consciousness is at play in the early nasīb, only to offer that it is not of the order that Jacobi describes, and that endeavouring to identify what it is, rather, merits a wholly different approach to the pre-Islamic qaṣīda: one which takes account of all its parts and pays particular attention to the ethic.109 108. On the differing inter-textual lines of nasīb and ghazal, see now Bauer (2005), p. 16 ff.; Bauer (2006), pp. 1–13. 109. This would indicate the need entirely to re-evaluate and nuance the starting point for an analysis of ghazal as “a new understanding of the phenomenon of love itself ”, which is cast in terms of a genre “[n]o longer exclusively focused on a retrospective view of an earlier love relationship now past, the sole theme of the pre-Islamic nasīb”, and a shift that “allowed new perspectives on the present and future to emerge and to flank the orientation to the past.”: Bauer (2005), p. 12. A re-evaluation of the development of ghazal that took better account of the ancient ethos and its multi-thematic, related reflections in poetry of the early period might result also in a more nuanced assessment of the nature of later transformations of the ‘love’-genre – its appropriation within mystical poetry, for example - than that achieved by casual repetition of a caricature of the complex of pre-Islamic ethos, ‘love’ and ‘consciousness’: e.g., Kuntze (2005), pp. 158–161.

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The Purpose-free and the Purposeful Paratactic composition as a sign of the substantial independence of the constituent parts of the early qaṣīda has been taken up with conviction by Thomas Bauer in studies that demonstrate incontrovertibly the artistic ingenuity of inter-textual play and transformations.110 The premise of the essential separateness of the parts justifies these studies being presented and considered exclusive of the remainder of the poems to which they belong, and contributes, for one thing, to the view that the pre-Islamic nasīb was a device purely for emotional and artistic effect; a prelude of melancholic longing that offset the mood of other ‘unrelated’ themes of “mostly heroic nature”:111 As the prelude did not pursue any pragmatic intent, the poet was able to concentrate completely on its artistic and aesthetic shape, thus opening up new horizons for Arabic poetry and creating a perspective that, situated in a purely artistic poetry went beyond any pragmatic objective.

As for developments arising in the raḥīl, and with specific regard for those that feature the transformation of poet and mount into onager, Bauer eschews the term ‘description’ on account of the independent dynamism and integrity of such components, opting instead for ‘episode’;112 and he seems to suggest that, at least in the hands of sensitive poets, the details of these ‘episodes’ can have relevance for the poem as a whole when examined in relation to the accompanying frames.113 At the same time, his reading of the use of epithets,114 which seem to him not to capture the essence of their subjects so much as caricature them by ‘the protruding detail’, inclines him to regard metonymy as an essential artistic device that is meant to convey “no deeper meaning”.115 This, combined with the fact that poems can, more than seldom, be composed of units – e.g., nasīb plus raḥīl – with no open announcement of an occasion for the composition, inclines him to conclude that such panels constitute, in principle, “purpose-free art”, vehicles for artistic ingenuity which can invariably be mixed and matched with ‘purposeful’ components of the poet’s message.116 These are, in large part, conclusions to which I do not subscribe for all the reasons I have set forth above, and which I shall illustrate later, with others, in greater detail; but they have already been strongly contested (see further below). 110. Bauer (1992), (1993a), (1993b). 111. Bauer (2005), p. 11. Conceptual analogies that harmonise with the thesis of the separate parts are proposed (ibid., n. 3) in the “entry through nature” of troubadour songs, and the mansöngr of Icelandic poetry, as originally suggested by Thomas M. Johnstone (1972). 112. Bauer (1992), vol. 1, p. 64. 113. Ibid., p. 270 ff. 114. Ibid., pp. 172–180. 115. Ibid., p. 178. 116. Ibid., p. 263; cf. Riedel (2002), p. 275, n. 3, who suggests that Bauer’s insistence on ‘episode’ as opposed to ‘description’ – on the grounds that such components are usually secondary to actions - stands in contradiction to his assumption of a “purpose-free art”.

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The Jumbled Mind and the Rhetoric of Vision Jacobi’s views on early poetic structure, composition, mentality and temporality, together with Bauer’s estimations of ‘purpose’, have been taken up by Kirill Dmitriev to support his proposition that the form of the pre-Islamic qaṣīda, “its fragmentation, semantic as well as structural, correlates to an aesthetic of perception determined by a pre-modern concept of time and space”.117 Attributing the modular arrangement of early Arabic poetry to a hypothetical principle of composition general to “[a]ncient and, to a great extent, all of medieval art”, he sees this as comparable to the “jumbled … contents of a delimited container” by which Erwin Panofsky at one time described figures arising in the art of antiquity, and which he attributed to a different psycho-physiological disposition: one that lacked the concept of space that would permit artists to develop one-point perspective.118 Dmitriev does not, however, consider the problems that critics have found in Panofsky’s essentially Hegelian, and often de-contexualised, methods and readings in this regard. Joel Snyder, for example, finds particularly troublesome his oscillation “from the historical to the transhistorical to the ahistorical, from the atomised and contextualised particulars to transhistorical categories of description and analysis” such that his perceptions “force a peculiarly tendentious reading onto the very historical texts that he uses to support his argument”.119 E. H. Gombrich, meanwhile, feels that the reader could even have been spared the “strenuous exercise” of Christopher Wood’s learned critique of the ‘ideological antecedents’ to Panofsky’s thesis on space in the ancient world, and its flaws,120 “because meanwhile the philological arguments on which he relied have proved erroneous”:121 In his searching article “Ancient Perspective and Euclid’s Optics” (strictly for masochists), Richard Tobin has demonstrated that Panofsky, in drawing his conclusion about ancient concepts of space, misinterpreted Euclid’s text.9. Much earlier Decio Gioseffi had made a similar charge against Panofsky’s reading of an admittedly very obscure passage in Vitruvius. Panofsky was humble enough to accept such a knock to one of his pet ideas with good grace.

Dmitriev also assumes for “ancient man” – quoting Aron J. Gurewič’s work on Medieval culture - a hypothetical concept of time where “past, present and future were not clearly separated from each other and were considered simultaneous”. This would explain why “representations in art that is dominated by such a conception of time, often stand in no chronologically ordered relation to reach other”. Suggesting that it 117. Dmitriev (2006), p. 14. 118. Dmitriev refers to Panofsky’s 1927 essay, Perspective as Historic Form, now translated into English by Christopher S. Wood with a critical introduction and breakdown of Panofsky’s influences and methods: Panofsky (1991). 119. Snyder (1995), p. 338. 120. Panofsky (1991), pp. 7–24. 121. Gombrich (1996).

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is “reasonable” to consider pre-Islamic poetry in this light, he supports his view as to its fragmentation by reference, indifferently, to iconography, “old Russian literature” and “old Japanese poetry”. The sum of this collage of “extra-temporality and spatial disconnection” points, for him, to an ancient Arabian principle of composition “that requires no unity and consistency of contents, but rather is based solely on formal characteristics, principally meter and rhyme”.122 This thoroughly evolutionist conception of a transcultural, transhistorical, ‘ancient’ Other has no more observable basis in fact than the ‘unconscious’ and ‘objective’ Homer. As Johannes Fabian has illustrated with no little passion, it belongs to the residue of a post-Enlightenment, spatialised conception of Time that gave rise to the ‘science of cultural evolution’ and “sanctioned an ideological process by which relations between anthropology and its object were conceived not only as difference, but as distance in space and Time”:123 When, in the course of disciplinary growth and differentiation, evolutionism was attacked and all but discarded as the reigning paradigm of anthropology, the temporal conceptions it had helped to establish remained unchanged. They had long become part of the common epistemological ground and a common discursive idiom of competing schools and approaches. As conceptions of Physical, Typological and Intersubjective Time informed anthropological writing in turn, or in concert, each became a means toward the end of keeping anthropology’s Other in another Time.

These temporal conceptions, having persisted and pervaded also sign-theories of culture, permit of what is fundamentally a power-relation in which the ‘observer’ can continue to impose meanings and beliefs on the ‘object’ examined, essentially from without and above, in a process that Fabian has called the “rhetoric of vision”:124 Potentially, and perhaps inevitably, [sign-theories of culture] have a tendency to reinforce the basic premise of an allochronic discourse in that they consistently align the Here and Now of the signifier (the form, the structure, the meaning) with the Knower, and the There and Then of the signified (the content, the function or event, the symbol or icon) with the Known. It was this assertiveness of visual-spatial presentation, its authoritative role in the transmission of knowledge, which I designated as the “rhetoric of vision.” As long as anthropology presents its object primarily as seen, as long as ethnographic knowledge is conceived primarily as observation and/or representation (in terms of models, symbol systems, and so forth) it is likely to persist in denying coevalness to its Other.

In sum, Dmitriev’s proposal of a psycho-physiologically determined principle of despatialised and de-temporalised composition poses no academic obstacle to the merit 122. Dmitriev (2006), p. 13. 123. Fabian (2002), pp. 147–148. 124. Ibid., pp. 151–152. Fabian’s presentation (ibid., pp. 123–131) of Hegel’s Aesthetic as a philosophical antecedent to an anthropological trend that uses the idea of symbol as a unifying concept, and how that fits his argument on allochronic discourse, is illuminating.

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of persisting with the qaṣīda in an attempt “to overcome its fragmentation through an interpretation of content”.125 Cohesions What could be called a ‘middle-ground’ in the field is occupied by scholars who, in quite various ways, have concentrated on arguing a general integrity to the parts of the pre-Islamic qaṣīda that involves neither assumptions of intrinsic fragmentation nor metanarrative. Recent specialist work of this kind has been undertaken by James E. Montgomery, Hassan El-Banna Ezz El-Din and Ali Hussein. The Unifying Tension of Doubt versus Ethos Montgomery’s method has been “to eschew any single, modish methodological filter” and adopt a course informed by “philology tempered by a demand for, though not obsession with, historicity,” whilst adapting his approach where occasion requires.126 His consideration of a spectrum of ‘amatory’ frames leads him to conclude - against Jacobi - that poets “do manage … the expression of complex emotional attitudes, an expression that evinces a degree of introspection and self-reflection … held to be incompatible with the pre- and early Islamic nasīb.”127 Inspired by Bauer’s detailed investigation of early onager panels, he undertook something similar for those of the oryx, though transparently with consideration for the overall scope of the poems in question. Whilst regarding the oryx panel as having a certain “generic adaptability”, which inclines him not to reject Bauer’s conception of the ‘purposefree’,128 he finds quite against the principle of “semantic independence” inferred by Jacobi from her study of the late jāhilī giant, al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī (qaṣīda number 5 in the edition of Ahlwardt, as noted earlier), considering, rather, that “a case can be made for considering every detail of [it], especially the oryx episode, germane to the poet’s task at hand, the appeasement of the king.” Another late jāhilī poet – Aws b. Ḥajar  –  moreover, for him, shows convincingly “how all movements within the qaṣīdah could contribute to the expression of the poet’s poetic purpose.”129 Rather than verity in the minutiae of description, for all its “fidelity to nature”, he sees a verisimilitude, accompanied by many individual choices, which accord with the poet’s individual concerns.130 The appeal of the panel is “for its broad symbolism, and for

125. Dmitriev (2006), p. 11. 126. Montgomery (1997), p. v. 127. See ibid., pp. 108–109 and the literature discussed in n. 179. 128. Ibid., p. 162, n. 221. 129. Ibid., pp. 158–159 etc., n. 218, 164. Weipert (2007) offers an overview of the sources on this poet, whose dates are uncertain. 130. Ibid., p. 163, n. 223.

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the malleability of that symbolism, appropriate to fakhr, madīḥ or hijāʾ.”131 Paratactic planning, meanwhile, is essentially an aesthetic choice or strategy:132 Arabic poetry … is not at pains to explicate connections between statements, themes, images or passages: It contents itself with the careful arrangement of its contents and expects the connections to be made by the auditor (or reader).

Structurally and intrinsically, all poems are different;133 variant versions studied are found to be equally valid and consistent,134 “each blessed with its own inner dynamic and logic”.135 If there is a unifying principle, Montgomery has elsewhere suggested it lies in what he sees as a very real tension existing between pessimism and the poets’ commitment to murūwa.136 The conclusions of the present study complement the main thrust of these observations. Unities of Structural Typology Hassan al-Banna Ezz El-Din, to whose work I have alluded above,137 has sought to demonstrate how a particular internal logic may link the disparate parts of the qaṣīda by positing, as an example, the structural typology of a “battle ode” to explain the relation of non-martial elements of a qaṣīda to explicitly martial ones.138 He does this by concentrating on the concept of ‘departure’ expressed by ẓaʿn – specifically, the motif of departing women (ẓaʿāʾin) – which constitutes one of the dominant recurring themes of the nasīb. He finds that the generating verb, ẓaʿana, only occurs in the nasīb and in the distinct frames of ‘boasting’ (fakhr) and ‘praise’ (madīḥ) which may, typically, conclude an ode, thus creating a semantic binding between the parts, though one which is founded on contrasting connotations: ẓaʿana in the nasīb creates a sense of longing and sorrow, while in a concluding frame it has clearly hostile, negative resonances. A further relationship between the concept of ‘departure’ expressed by ẓaʿn in the opening and concluding frames of a qaṣīda is to be found in the association of both with the theme of war (leading Ezz El-Din to reject the thesis that ẓaʿn is poetically founded on, or restricted to, the habit of seasonal migration for water and pasture). In addition, he identifies a moral polarity between ẓaʿana and the antithetical verb aqāma, ‘to abide’,139 as indeed was witnessed in Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII of Bishr b. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137.

Ibid., p. 164. Ibid., p. 86. Ibid., p. 258. Ibid., p. 38. Ibid., p. 25. Montgomery (1986). See above, n. 51, apropos of the concept of ẓaʿn as a ‘departure’ from ethical obligations that is conducive to the ‘departure’ of radical evanescence. 138. Ezz El-Din (1994), developed in idem (1998). 139. Ezz El-Din (1994), pp. 168–171.

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Abī Khāzim, discussed earlier in this Section (Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin). His survey of the sources in this light leads him to set up a basic typology where, if the ‘departure’ of ẓaʿn is the sole motif to occur in a tripartite qaṣīda with a raḥīl where a she-camel evolves into a wild animal that struggles with enemies, there will be no mention of war in the final section: the struggle of the raḥīl seems somehow to render that redundant. If, on the other hand, ẓaʿn is the sole motif to occur in the nasīb of a bi-partite qaṣīda, the theme of war appears in the second frame. This latter model he views as a paradigmatic “battle qaṣīdah”. He mentions two possibilities where war will nonetheless be mentioned in a tripartite qaṣīda: First, when the ẓaʿāʾin motif is not the predominant one in the nasīb; second, when it is the governing, but not sole, motif, in which case the raḥīl unit is abbreviated and does not contain the struggle or hunt of wild animals (the model which best fits the shape of Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII, outlined above).140 On this basis, Ezz El-Din concludes that the departure of ẓaʿāʾin in the nasīb is no random repetition of a convention or an element without pragmatic poetic intent, but, rather, that it is symptomatic of a “highly organised poetic structuring of motifs and themes”; one that “signals precise possibilities for thematic and structural development … It’s presence in the concluding frame of an ode “resonates its nasīb appearance and is poetically predetermined by it.” 141 There is no doubt that Ezz El-Din has pointed up important conceptual connections, and, structurally, his bi-partite paradigm is compelling. However, some qualifications are in order: The will to forge a direct equation of ẓaʿn with ‘war’ is arguably off-centre: As we saw with Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim – where, indeed, the theme of war arose after an ‘abbreviated’ raḥīl – the concept of ẓaʿn equated not, primarily, to ‘war’, but precisely to what it denotes: ‘departure’, albeit of a particular kind; namely, ‘departure’ from compact and the moral obligations that that imposed, constituting, there, a sin that was apparently subject to divine sanction. One can point, furthermore, to a qaṣīda, analysed later, in Part 2, in which the motif of departing women (ẓuʿun) appears in an opening nasīb, but which conforms to none of the structural options that Ezz El-Din mentions. Rather, it reveals itself as the prelude to a discussion on divergence from, or adherence to, the ethic, and resolves itself in a clear assertion of the moral demands that a kinsman must meet in order to avoid a fracture of relations.142 There is also another highly illuminating window onto this same structure of ideas, which is to be found in Mufaḍḍalīya LXX of Bishr b. ʿAmr.143 This is a short, six-line poem that opens with an apparently ironic address to someone epitomised as ‘the one who strives in his contractual duty to defend’ (al-sāʿī bi-dhimmati-hi – thus fronting the issue of ethical commitment, or the lack of it), who is invited to greet the imminent arrival of war. The poet appears to satirise his antagonist’s army (verse 3) as 140. 141. 142. 143.

Ibid., pp. 172–173. Ibid., p. 176. This poem is analysed below in Part 2, as Poem 4.3. Lyall (1918–1921), LXX, vol. 1, pp. 551–553; vol. 2, pp. 216–218.

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an over-cautious caravan associated with a place called al-Mafārīq; a place not located in the geographical dictionaries, but which connotes separation and deviation from a proper course.144 He compounds the insult (verses 4–6) by affecting to see ẓuʿun, departing women, sheepish and tardy, sneaking through mountain side-roads, hiding in litters, disobedient to their leaders and, therewith, untrustworthy in their faith (dīn); i.e. – as Lyall inclines to interpret – these are warriors comparable to women in litters, un-eager to advance, taking side-roads to avoid the enemy, and refusing orders to stand and attack; a body undisciplined, disobedient and faithless in service.145 This aligns the motif of departing women squarely, for one thing, with a ‘departure’ from compact and contractual obligation. It also demonstrates the possibility of manipulating gender to ‘unman’ the faithless - a possibility, which, as we shall see, is one that recurs and recurs in the poetry. None of this is to negate Ezz El-Din’s assessment of the motif of ẓaʿāʾin as a considered device with “precise possibilities for thematic and structural development.” It is only to offer that these possibilities are not restricted precisely to the paradigms and lines he proposes; that ẓaʿn may much more broadly be related to a fracture of compact which, in the normal way of things, may imply a move to war; and that it may also utilise a morally significant construct of gender. Finally, in this light, if we posit the relevance of such implications of gender to the nasīb of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim’s Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII, discussed above, this would offer a further, significant, cohesive dimension to the parallel between the debilitating passion aroused in the poet by the ‘departure’ (ẓaʿn) of Idām, and his explosive passion against sinful allies for their ‘departure’ (ẓaʿn) in the final frame: If the poet is not merely flagging a female – Idām – as an emotive emblem of fractured relations, he may be ‘unmanning’ his antagonists holistically on moral grounds. The further possible correlation of this is that the poetry may sometimes reflect not only a conceptual, but an emotional, relationship between the arousal of jahl occurring in a frame of ‘love’ and the arousal of aggressive jahl that can explode in other thematic frames – that is to say, a quasi-gendered expression of antipathetic relations. These are considerations that will be explored further as we proceed, and picked up in the General Conclusion. Meantime, the touchstone of poetic coherence remains, for us, the manly ethic, or murūwa. Unities of Functional Idiosyncrasy Ali Hussein has dealt with the question of the relation between the parts of the composite pre-Islamic qaṣīda – which he considers “a complete and organic literary work” – on the basis that it “should never be approached as a text made up of scattered fragments that have been illogically combined by using one meter and one rhyme”.146 Also inspired by Bauer’s detailed work on the intertextuality and artistic ingenuity 144. Tāj, s.v. f-r-q. 145. Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 2, the notes on pp. 217–218. 146. Hussein (2009), p. 35.

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of the onager panel, Hussein undertakes what he sees as a complementary study of the ‘lightning scene’ in ancient poetry, only insisting that the poems be viewed always holistically. Building on a method for analysis earlier set forth,147 he proposes a division of poems into ‘functional units’ that go beyond the broad, classical thematic divisions (aghrāḍ al-shiʿr).148 These are to be read in terms of the specific role they play in a given poem and the mutual relations that may be identified between them. He rejects all ‘symbolic’ interpretation advanced through mythological, psychological or structural approaches – or, indeed, it seems, any symbolism whatever.149 To a degree, nonetheless, he advances his own terms of symbolism under the rubric of ‘function’,150 and demonstrates a good deal of speculation, sometimes contradictory, based on his own inferences and conjectures.151 He comes to no precise final thesis: his aim is essentially “to shed more light on the term function in the ancient Arabic poem”,152 and the thematic, functional, narrative and internal idiosyncrasies he identifies therein.153 His provisional conclusions are that, despite their sharing similar ‘functional units’, the poems in his sample display multiple internal idiosyncrasies to the unit, and that these combine within a given poem to achieve a coherent, highly individual purpose. The recommended way forward is for further studies to be undertaken along similar lines, focusing on alternative ‘functional units’ to that of the lightning scene, so as to reveal their idiosyncrasies and interrelations also.154 Although one could infer that Hussein supposes that this methodological procedure might, eventually, reveal some system or unifying principle operating within or across the poems, he makes no open statement to that effect. Matrices and Metanarratives At the farther side of the interpretative spectrum are scholars who, in varying degrees, and in different ways, present their arguments on the stylistic and structural strategies of the pre-Islamic qaṣīda through the filter of metanarrative. Prominent recent studies that have received a good deal of critical attention include those of Michael Sells, Jaroslav Stetkevych and Suzanne P. Stetkevych. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151.

152. 153. 154.

Hussein (2005). Hussein (2009), pp. 21–26. Ibid., pp. 8–12; cf. Hussein (2011), pp. 2–3, and nn. 11, 12. For example, he describes the ‘function’ of the onager scene as something which can be “The inexorability of ‘Time’”, or “The Supreme Power of Death”, on the one hand, or “The Lover’s Attitude” on the other: Hussein (2009), pp. 34–35. As, e.g., ibid., p. 119: the alternative guesses on the ‘function’ of selection IQ2 (a poem which is alternatively analysed below, Part 2, Poem 5.2), based on unknowable details of the poet’s life; cf. the review of van Gelder (2011), which voices reservations about the sensitivity of these categories and aspects of the analysis. Hussein (2009), p. 35. Ibid., p. 155 ff. Ibid., pp. 259–261.

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Generative Cross-nets of Association Michael Sells, for one, in his studies of the nasīb and camel-section of the qaṣīda,155 has strongly contested Renate Jacobi’s perception of a purely descriptive character to the early poetical language, the ‘objective’ nature of the simile, and its “profound insufficiency” by comparison with the Homeric analogue.156 To his mind, Jacobi’s assertion that “the qaṣīdah simile aims at an unreflectively complete ‘reproduction’ and ‘illustration’ is based upon a misunderstanding of the nature of the early Arabic simile.”157 These similes, he concedes, can be difficult to appreciate. This, he says, is because many do not depend on straightforward relations between image and aesthetic object: “We cannot say of these similes … that X is a symbol for Y.”158 Indeed, the range of meaning sustained in ‘Y’ as an initial likeness can be developed “beyond any logic of similarity, into chains of similes or extended simile” the nature of which Sells has characterised by the quality of “dissembling”.159 Such similes function by highly elusive analogy:160 One cannot easily explicate the analogy they posit. As we are led through guise after guise back to the mythopoetic and archetypal underpinnings, we encounter meanings that, like the ghūl, elude our grasp.

In the case of the nasīb, he finds that these enchained elements, taken together, do not make of the beloved a mere object of description, but, rather, evoke “the mythopoetic world of the lost garden”.161 Sequential association and evocation can constitute a process of “performative displacement” where sense experiences, too, are obliquely captured: the act of sexual coupling, for example, something seldom directly described, the eroticism strongly enhanced by “the dynamic polarity of water as sexual and ablutionary.”162 Complementary work on extended similes that involve the female riding-camel (nāqa) of the poet’s ‘journey’ (raḥīl) inclines him to see the nāqa in terms of a twofold polarity of symbolism: “the self of the poet hero and his cosmos”.163 As to its constituting a symbol of the self, Sells reckons this evident in the trials and mortal confrontations that typically occur in ‘journey’ episodes, and sees the symbolic logic of this reflected most absolutely in the funerary practice of hobbling and tethering a dead man’s riding camel (in this case, called a balīya) to his 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163.

See, e.g., Sells (1994a) and (1994b). Sells (1994a), p. 153. Ibid., p. 154, and n. 33; cf. 1994b, p. 40 n. 23 and the literature there discussed. Sells (1994a), pp. 153–154. Ibid., p. 155. Ibid., p. 154. Ibid., 156. Ibid., pp. 156–157 Sells (1994b), p. 25 (my emphasis for clarity).

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grave and leaving it there, head turned back, to starve to death.164 As to cosmos, he sees “an entire mini-cosmos” in the combined epithets, descriptions and similes of the camel-section that reference multifarious layers of reality, elemental, animal and human.165 Offering a more elaborate vision than Montgomery’s conception of choices that tailor detail according to purpose, and of intertextual play that is the purposeful exercise of a common frame of discussion, Sells describes a highly generative system of supra-tribal ‘image families’ and ‘simile families’, long in the making, where stock images and similes retain a constant core but involve developments that vary in length and complexity, and then interweave in more or less complex ways. These constitute matrices in which there can be “almost unlimited play of associated fields”,166 the specific details of which converge, in a given poem, with the chosen poetic ‘mode’, be that elegiac, erotic, satiric, heroic or tragic, and so forth.167 All the ‘little details’, therefore, matter and may not be dismissed as mere description or repetition: the scheme is geared to express the diversities of “a commonality of feeling and being”.168 It is according to this conception of a purposeful, generative, tailored intertextuality that Sells interprets how, for example, the churning forelegs of the she-camel in Mufaḍḍalīya X of Bashāma b. ʿAmr should be so specifically (verse 27) “like the arms of a drowning man”.169 This he sees, surely, as both descriptive and expressive: a ‘performance’ that resonates, at base, with a wider ‘image family’ of multifariously conceived ‘thrashing legs’ – in this case linked to the vast network of water imagery that swells through the poetry (reckoned by Sells, broadly, to reference “ the life force”)170 – and tailored to the ‘tragic mode’. He sees the idea of a drowning man specifically to pick up the distress of separation from the beloved in the nasīb,171 and to anticipate the emergence of Bashāma’s poetic persona in the final frame, where he “seems to be drowning in the midst of the internecine chaos”172 – a linkage all reinforced by semantic and lexical connections he identifies through the diverse frames.173 164. Ibid. Macdonald (1995) notes the antiquity of this practice, being attested in an unpublished, Nabatean Inscription from Southern Jordan, which was found associated with such a burial. See below, Part 2, the extended discussion of the concepts of ʿaql and baʿth that follows the analysis of Poem 3.7 (s.v. ʿAql, Baʿth, Shades and Phantoms), for further consideration of the balīya. 165. Sells (1994b), p. 25. 166. Ibid., p. 31. 167. Ibid., p. 41. 168. Ibid., pp. 40–41 and notes. 169. Biographical notes on Bashāma b. ʿAmr, and an overview of the ‘War of al-Ḥurāqa’ to which this poem relates, are offered in Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 2, p. 25, and 34–35, respectively. 170. Sells (1994b), pp. 33–37. 171. Ibid., p. 37. 172. Ibid., p. 39. 173. Ibid., pp. 37–39.

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Sells makes an eloquent case for his theses on the basis of close reading, apt comparanda and a rich sense of comparative worlds. At the same time, the immediacy of linkage to “mythopoetic and archetypal underpinnings”, and to lost gardens – even as the similes apparently elude capture – may take people out of their comfort zone, especially if they feel that the elusive is being explained by the not necessarily universal or, indeed, by the invisible.174 Discomfort of this kind can be offset by grounding explanations in observable, culture-specific data; and that kind of grounding can be supplied, in part, by systematically pursuing answers to the conspicuous challenge that Sells highlights – a poetic language replete with comparisons where it is often scarcely obvious how X equals Y – in an effort to pin down the conceptual ghūl. E. E. EvansPritchard has addressed the problem of ostensibly implausible comparisons arising in the poetical discourse of the Nuer to caution against erroneous conclusions or unjustified assertions about their psychology – and that of others like them – through failure to see that unspoken cultural assumptions may be in play. Explaining how the equation that the Nuer make between the ox and the wild cucumber should not be taken to indicate their naive inability to discern that there is no ‘real’ relationship between the two, he observes:175 I think that one reason why it was not readily perceived that statements that something is something else should not be taken as matter-of-fact statements is that it was not recognized that they are made in relation to a third term not mentioned in them but understood. They are statements, as far as the Nuer are concerned, not that A is B, but that A and B have something in common in relation to C. This is evident when we give some thought to the matter. A cucumber is equivalent to an ox in respect to God [C] who accepts it [as a sacrifice] in the place of an ox.

This illustrates how the world of simile may express not only “a commonality of feeling and being”, but an accessible, allusive world of structured, moral ideas. It also illustrates how understanding this may require us to detect all sorts of unspoken cultural associations that are not openly articulated because they are aimed at, and assumed to be obvious to, an initiated audience. As regards the ancient Arabic poetical discourse, we have already discussed a case of this type earlier in this Section, which came in the form of the ‘bull-oryx-pearl’ in the second phase of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim’s Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII. While the lustrous white of an oryx in its natural surroundings may readily suggest the gleam of a pearl,176 it is not immediately apparent why the comparison should so specifically involve 174. Hence, for all that he concedes the rigour and style of Sells’ work, Shawkat Toorawa evinces a degree of impatience for this line of argument (1997), p. 761: “The weakness … is that descriptions of the beloved are sometimes nothing else than just that, descriptions of the beloved.” 175. Evans-Pritchard (1956), pp. 140–142. 176. See, for example, Montgomery (1997), p. 112, on the physiological epithets of the oryx, and, ibid., n. 184, indicating the brilliant whiteness commonly associated with it in the poetry.

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the conceit of being a pearl surrendered by its thread (niẓām). Reaching immediately to ‘archetypal’, transhistorical or transcultural associations of the pearl will not offer a transparent or grounded reason in the first instance;177 but, as we saw, by locating poetic conceits that relate to group cohesion and, ultimately, to covenant, one can identify an observable, culturally-specific solution. This is not to say that, in the broader scheme of things, there may not also exist discernible parallels with wider symbolic associations of the pearl; but these should be independently demonstrated, and, in a case of this type, any culturally-specific, ideal associations that can definitely be identified for the oryx, too, should be taken into account. These observations inform the handling of all figures and similes treated in this study, not only in order to ground the details, but also to identify their broader intra-cultural associations, and, thereby, the ideal inter-relations invoked in different movements of a given qaṣīda, just as discussed above in the overview of Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII. This is essentially to pursue an observable system of ideal, ethical constructs. As we shall see, even the extensive and apparently amorphous body of liquid-imagery which Sells, also, importantly, highlights, may ultimately be sourced to a net of visible constructs that relate to covenant and vital, moral force.178 Art of the Ternary Archetype For Jaroslav Stetkevych, the issue of system in structure is very much the issue. He, too, discusses “matrices of meaning”,179 but, unlike Sells, who sees in all the evident variety of shape and experimentation “almost unlimited play of associated fields”, Stetkevych presents the ancient qaṣīda as consisting in an archetypally determined “radical triadism”,180 manifest in the ‘axiomatic paradigm’ of a tripartite structure: nasīb, raḥīl and madīḥ or fakhr; “a triptych of the knowledge of the self on yet entirely pre-psychological levels, a kind of primal anthropology”.181 His explorations through this idea leads him to support - beyond other ternary analogies for this

177.

178.

179. 180. 181.

The luminous ‘oryx-pearl’ – also ‘unstrung’ – is famously carried in Labīd’s muʿallaqa, v. 63 in the edition of al-Tibrīzī: Lyall (1894), p. 78. Suzanne Stetkevych – (1993), p. 32, and n. 51 – interprets the bereaved ‘she-oryx-pearl’ of Labid’s muʿallaqa, shining in the dark (see previous note) as one of the “subtle signs that point in a hopeful direction”, for this indicates an object “that appears elsewhere in Arabic poetry and the Qurʾan among the symbols of purity, fertility, and immortality”, and can be linked to the image of the Virgin Mary as a symbol of feminine purity and fecundity “whose offspring is a victim or sacrifice.” These are identified progressively through this study and reviewed in the General Conclusion; but they have already been set forth, in part, in Jamil (1999) and (2004), where the constructs of the celestial sphere, the rotary well-pulley and the arrow-pouch of maysir-gambling, their mutual relationship to covenant and water are illustrated. This study goes further, and includes the micro-level of the man, his intellect, moral and physical force. Stetkevych (2002), p. 85. Stetkevych (1993b), p. 41. Ibid., p. 28.

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posited axiom, musical, mythological, social, or other – a “deep structure” which is that of Arnold van Gennep’s behavioural ‘rites of passage’ paradigm (pioneered in Arabic criticism by Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych), wherewith nasīb, raḥīl and third thematic frame correspond, respectively, to the phases of ‘separation’, ‘liminality’ and ‘reaggregation’, but the absence of any of these three parts poses no obstacle to maintaining that the same ‘deep structure’ is necessarily implied.182 This paradigmatic triptych displays three concomitant levels of time, which, he says, presents as the “formal justification” for the “jarring parataxis” of structure.183 The nasīb, elegiac-nostalgic, is a “time of loss”, the projection of memory toward the past, and the realisation of lost time and happiness. It is essentially ‘pre-liminal’, anticipating movement toward a “passage”, manifest in raḥīl. The raḥīl is the “time … of breaking away, of a desire to change, and … the inevitability of change.”184 What seems to be a journey to nowhere – until the ascendance of the tripartite panegyric, where the raḥīl evolves into a passage toward the patron – is explained by its being, in fact, a ‘journey’ of “the poet’s self-view in a moment of crisis – of his undoing and of his becoming.”185 The she-camel of this panel commands a high symbolic valency, supported by the allusive force of multiple epithets.186 She represents the poet’s anima,187 projected in a drama of “agonistic individuation”,188 which is further mediated through the typical transformations into oryx, onager and ostrich – all figures liable to become quarry to hunter and dogs, but bound to survive unless subject to the theme of elegy.189 These mediations are “transpositions of persona” where the poetic ‘I’ disappears and the poet reveals himself obliquely,190 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187.

Ibid., p. 40 ff. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 29. Stetkevych (1986). Stetkevych (1996b), p. 104; (2002), p. 90. How precisely anima and ‘individuation’ are meant to conform to the Jungian model of psychological growth is not discussed. 188. Stetkevych (1993b), p. 29; cf. Stetkevych (1999), p. 113. 189. Stetkevych (1999), pp. 112–113, n. 12 refers to the significant observations of al-Jāḥiẓ in this regard ((1965), vol. 2, p. 20): “Since al-Jāḥiẓ discusses his subject in his volume predominantly dedicated to hunting dogs, he logically limits his theoretical argument as it pertains to the panel of the oryx and its hunt. His formulation is therefore as follows: ‘It is the custom of the poets that, when the poem is an elegy (marthiyah) or an admonition (mawʿiẓah), the dogs be the ones that kill the oryx, but when the poem is a eulogy (‘And he said: As though my she-camel were an oryx-cow, with her properties being such and such ...’), that the dogs be the ones killed.’” This is an observation undeniably reflected in the celebrated elegy of Abū Dhuʾayb (see Lyall, (1918–1921), CXXVI, vol. 1, pp. 849–884, vol. 2, pp. 356–362), a poem to which we have recourse below, Part 2, in the extended commentary on maysir-gambling that follows analysis of Poem 5.2, s.v. The Universal Paradigm of Maysir. 190. Stetkevych (2002), p. 89.

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encoding extreme experience “in terms in which he may not speak of himself ”.191 They constitute “nothing less than allegories of life and death”, and, as such, cannot in any way be considered ‘purpose free’ exercises in ‘description’.192 ‘Individuation’ once effected, the next radical change is manifest in the ‘reintegrative’ stage that is the final component of the poetic triptych: the ‘post-liminal’ madīḥ or fakhr; a “time of arrival” and a counter-stasis to that of the nasīb, where the poet lives his ‘now’ “in the presence … of what is found”.193 Typical to the final phase, it is noted, is an alternative hunt to that of the raḥīl where, instead of quarry, the poetic persona may appear as protagonist-hunter on horseback in a foray from which he is expected to emerge as victor. Horse and hunt in this scheme, he asserts, constitutes, paradigmatically, a component where the mount is not mediated by another creature (i.e., as it is paradigmatically driven to be in the camel-borne ‘journey’), and the poet-protagonist will not be associated with quarry, but ought, necessarily, to effect a kill. However, these last strictures that he imposes reveal excessive rigidity to the paradigm proposed. Although a small degree of flexibility is discussed, any deviation from the ‘canon’ precisely as described is said either to ‘strain the paradigm’ or ‘break the code’.194 But, such proposed ‘deviations’ may rather better be considered as poetic play - with associative choices that are inherently available in the discourse - on ‘norms’ that are simply alternative, non-structurally restrictive possibilities that happen to have been favoured (or just survived), and have coalesced into broadly repeating patterns. Other possibilities are still in evidence, and tell a different story. I will illustrate this briefly by returning, first, to a poem of Zuhayr, discussed earlier in this Section. ***** Plasticity of the Poetic Discourse and the Mechanics of the Saddle I recall here Zuhayr b. Abī Sulmā’s qaṣīda, rhyming in kāf,195 cited earlier in this Section to illustrate the ‘tattered rope’ motif: a figure, as discussed, that signals the betrayal or dissolution of a compact, a ‘departure’ from the expectations of covenant, which can distress and endanger co-covenantees. In this qaṣīda, Zuhayr deploys the motif (verses 25–26 in Ahlwardt’s reading) with furious irony to chastise the Banū al-Ṣaydāʾ for treachery, and to demand immediate restitution if they do not want their reputations destroyed by his satire. His fury emerges at the end of an episode where, having projected himself on horseback, ostensibly bent on hunting onager, 191. 192. 193. 194. 195.

Stetkevych (1993b), p. 29. Stetkevych (1999), pp. 112–113. Stetkevych (1993b), p. 29. Stetkevych (1996b), pp. 110–113. Ahlwardt (1870), Zuhayr, no. 10.

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he thwarts expectations by evolving, rather, into hunted quarry: he becomes a lonely ‘sandgrouse’, savagely pursued by a determined ‘hawk’ from which, by virtue of speed and skill, he nonetheless escapes alive. This would-be hunt appears directly after an opening nasīb that depicts the distressing departure of those with whom he shared a camp, hinting heavily at their being embroiled in a weighty matter that risks leading them off the right course (verses 2–3). Because of the structural placement of this episode (coming not in a third, ‘reaggregative’ phase of the poem, but directly after the nasīb, thus occupying the second, ‘liminal’, phase, which should be that of shecamel), and because Zuhayr introduces, instead of an unmediated theme of hunterhorse, the simile of the hunted sandgrouse (such mediation supposedly being the paradigmatic preserve of the she-camel), Stetkevych sees that it both reflects and breaks “a structural and thematic code”:196 Altogether it is a ‘clash’ between the two faces of two stubborn paradigms: of the liminal hunt panel of a raḥīl and of the structurally implied celebratory hunt on horseback – for in the latter the function of the horse is an aggressive-active one: that of the hunter and not of the hunted. Zuhayr’s horse has thus been replaced, implicitly, by the classicalcanonic she-camel/nāqah, and formally, by the dictate of the canon, according to which it must bear the consequences.

Yet, in fact, the material with which Zuhayr plays here, albeit certainly breaking expectation, is not only all well within the associative net of horse-borne forays – whether hunting, raiding, or trespassing into implicitly protected meadows – but it also conforms to a perfectly well-attested possibility of structural placement: In the wider poetry an equine foray can very well ensue, without raḥīl, in response to negative chemistry in the nasīb;197 and Zuhayr himself demonstrates this elsewhere with a more conventional onager-hunt where, taking straight to his mount, he dons the role of aggressor and slayer.198 As it happens, this particular episode involves no mediation through another creature; but that is something that can certainly happen, and, then, with similes that align poet and horse with both predators and potential quarry. As to the alignment of a horseback foray with a predator, when this happens, the overwhelming choice is eagle or hawk. The symbolic logic of this comparison is – to borrow Evans-Pritchard’s formulation, as noted above – that the horse (A) equals the eagle/hawk (B) because both of them share, for one thing, an ideal association with C: hunting/raiding.199 This may take the form of a simple comparison such as we 196. Stetkevych (1996b), p. 112. 197. See, for example, below in Part 2, Poem 2.2, which offers an explicit, economical indication that recalling such a foray – the hunt of wildings and women alike – is summoned to counter the disintegrative effects of paralysing grief. 198. Ahlwardt (1870), Zuhayr, no. 15, vv. 8–29. 199. Borg (1994), p. 8, looking for ‘reality’ in the equation, finds such a comparison “far-fetched, their only point in common being ‘swiftness’”. On the other, hand, it is precisely this

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find in Mufaḍḍalīya VI of Salāma b. al-Khurshub (also a hunting episode that follows directly counter to the grief of a nasīb);200 or short extended similes: Imruʾ al-Qays, for example, hunting oryx, likens his mount to an eagle (liqwa) bent on snatching hares as the foxes elude her, while the hearts of lesser birds lie desiccated in her nest.201 Then again, approaching a raid, his horse becomes a questing eagle (liqwa ṭalūb) who feeds her dependent chicks on the hearts of hares.202 But the simile may well develop into a whole panel where the bird of prey takes over entirely: Participating in a major raid, the poet’s horse evolves into a she-eagle (ṣaqʿāʾ) that attacks and savages another would-be hunter – a ‘wolf ’ – in an episode that closes with the latter cowering in a shelter while the ‘eagle’ remains a threat, above.203 Thus, the magnificent qaṣīda rhyming in bāʾ of ʿAbīd b. al-Abraṣ – where the poet’s hunt is entirely overtaken by the horse’s evolution into a questing eagle (liqwa ṭalūb) in whose nest are the desiccated hearts of lesser birds, and which ultimately claims an unfortunate ‘fox’ - does not strain any paradigm, as Stetkevych would have it.204 It offsets the negative chemistry of destruction and arousal evinced in the foregoing nasīb and raḥīl in a development which utilises associations, specific to the horse, that are eminently available in the wider conceptual discourse. As to the alignment of horse and rider with potential quarry, this, too, is quite discernible as an available proposition. Again, this may simply bud in the form of a modest simile: Imruʾ al-Qays offers a succinct illustration when he compares attributes of his hunter, for its own swiftness, power and resources, to those of ostrich, oryx and onager.205 In this particular scheme, the virtue of a racing hunter/raider, able to elude danger when trespassing into a protected precinct, can more specifically be that of an escaping oryx, fleeing, in fact, from an ‘eagle’;206 and this possibility, in turn, can give rise to an entire panel where such a horse going forth of a morning is, with a kick from his rider, wholly transformed into an ‘oryx’ that is easily able to elude an ambush of ‘hunter and dogs’. This is also illustrated by ʿAbīd – and, once again, in direct contraposition to the grief of a nasīb.207 To return to Zuhayr’s onager-hunt in kāf, with its unexpected evolution of hunter and horse into a sandgrouse, we can say, first, that comparison with the wider discourse shows there to be nothing structurally unrepresentative about its “feebleness of connection” that leads him to wonder if we are not, in fact, witnessing a lifedeath allegory, albeit one where he suggests the poet – despite his ‘riding the eagle-horse’ – be aligned with the victim. 200. Lyall (1918–1921), VI, vv. 12–13. 201. Ahlwardt (1870), Imruʾ al-Qays, no. 52, vv. 54–56. 202. Ibid., Imruʾ al-Qays, no. 55, vv. 13–15. 203. This bāʾīya is analysed below in Part 2, as the key poem of Chapter 5:1. 204. Stetkevych (1996b), pp. 110–111. 205. Ahlwardt (1870), Imruʾ al-Qays, no. 4, v. 27. 206. Ibid., Imruʾ al-Qays, no. 65, vv. 10–12. This piece is analysed below, Part 2, as Poem 2.5. 207. ʿAbīd (1980), VIII, vv. 7–11.

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placement. Neither is it stretched between “two stubborn paradigms” whereby the horse is implicitly “replaced … by the … camel”, for the raw material of this episode falls, in every respect, within the wider associative net of the horse-borne foray. What is arresting is the immediate evolution of the would-be hunter, not into the expected questing eagle moving to take out the heart of a lesser-bird, or even - like the above-mentioned raider of Imruʾ al-Qays  –  into an ‘eagle’ dominating the sky over a resourceful, cowering ‘wolf ’, but, rather, into precisely one of those lesser birds whose desiccated hearts fill eagles’ nests, which is then taken unawares by a questing ‘hawk’ and forced itself to cower under cover while the ‘hawk’ takes off to a promontory. It is, nonetheless, an equal competitor with its speed, resources, and ability to survive – and in this case, in making its escape, poetically, not unlike the escaping oryx with which the horse, too, can be associated. Thus, albeit uniquely, this episode synthesises perfectly precedented, available possibilities to underline that something in the normal order of things is shockingly wrong: Rather than evincing an expected control of initiative in offsetting the negative mood of the nasīb where a stinging ‘departure’, a controversial ‘matter’, and a certain lack of direction are hinted, it serves to elaborate that conflict with an oblique illustration of being subject to a surprising abuse the exact nature of which is finally identified, in the poet’s later open outrage, as a misdemeanour within the tie of compact (ḥabl jiwār), which has deathly-sinful implications. The sum of this limited survey indicates that we are dealing with a perfectly plastic conceptual network that easily generates structural as well as thematic variation. At the same time, this network seems invariably to reflect moral and physical virtue – or the lack of it – and, with that, necessarily to imply competing chemistries, disintegrative and integrative. Significantly, we find open crystallisations of thought that endow the poet’s mount – camel and horse alike – with a very central place in this regard. These point to a clear understanding that the quality of the mount, how it proceeds under the saddle and so forth, are all poetic fodder for an exploration of virtue in terms that relate, precisely, to competing dynamics; specifically, those of ḥilm and jahl. In the overview of Goldziher’s work, above in Part 1:1, where the ḥilm-jahl interplay was first discussed, we saw already how a poet’s claim to the virtue of being able move, at will, between ḥilm and (appropriate) jahl was conceptualised as having a steed awaiting, ready-saddled for each. In complement to this – referencing now both steeds and camels – we find, opening a lāmīya in the dīwān of Zuhayr:208 ‫واحلُ ْه‬ َ ‫َو ُع ّر‬ ِ ‫ي أَ ْفراسُ الصِّ بَا َو َر‬ ُ‫َّـبيل َمعا ِدل ْه‬ َّ َ‫َعل‬ ِ ‫ي ِس َوى قَصْ ِد الس‬

‫باطلُ ْه‬ َ ‫صحا القَلبُ عن َس ْلمى َوأَق‬ َ ِ ‫ص َر‬ ْ‫ت عَـ ّمـا تَـعْـلَـمـيـنَ َو ُس ِّددَت‬ ُ ْ‫صر‬ َ ‫َوأَ ْق‬

The heart has recovered (ṣaḥā) from Salmā, its vanity stemmed (aqṣara). The steeds and riding-camels of folly (ṣibā) now stand bare without their saddles. 208. Ahlwardt (1870), Zuhayr, no. 15, vv. 1–2.

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I abstain (aqṣartu) from [the futilities] you know [I indulged in], never turning now from the straight middle road (qaṣdi l-sabīl).

This, we see echoed in the dīwān of Ṭufayl b. ʿAwf al-Ghanawī:209 ... ‫َوأَ ْن َك َرهُ ِم َّما ا ْستَفا َد َحالئِلُ ْه‬ ‫واحلُ ْه‬ َ ِّ‫َو ُعر‬ ِ ‫ي أَ ْفراسُ الصِّ بَا َو َر‬

‫باطلُ ْه‬ َ ‫صحا قَ ْلبُهُ وأَ ْق‬ ِ ‫ص َر اليَوْ َم‬ ُ ‫ت قَ ْد َعنَّ ْف‬ ُ ْ‫َوأَصْ بَح‬ ‫ت بِال َجه ِْل أَ ْهلَ ُه‬

His heart is recovered (ṣaḥā), its vanity stemmed (aqṣara); and his wives disavow him for the hoar in his locks … I have come to berate those who cultivate jahl. The steeds and riding-camels of folly (ṣibā) now stand bare without their saddles

One can infer from these extracts, for one thing, that following or deviating from the ethic of murūwa implies – poetically speaking – travelling or deviating from an appropriate road. This is perhaps not surprising when we see how the very course of life and death is conceived as a consecutively travelled path, the dead ‘saddling up’ and going ahead. In the words of ʿAbīd:210 ‫اضي ْالبَتَاتَ لِيَ ْغتَ ِدي‬ ِ َ‫يَ ُرو ُح َوكَالق‬

‫فَإنّا َو َم ْن قَ ْد بَا َد ِمنَّا فَكَالَّ ِذي‬

We men who live and the dead of us are but as travellers twain: – one starts at night, and one packs his gear for to-morrow’s morn

Second, we see here that negotiating that ‘road’ implies controlling a heart prone to youthful folly (ṣibā) and inappropriate jahl, and deciding to ‘unsaddle’ – or retire – the ‘mounts’ for those. We can infer, then, conversely, that proceeding with appropriate ethical resolve is to ‘saddle up’ mounts of maturity that access ḥilm; ‘camels’ and ‘horses’ that reflect, and enact, as appropriate to their roles, the virtuous resilience and ‘fight-back’ of a steadfast heart; a heart that is to be ‘reined in’, or muqṣir. It should not be difficult in this light to see how a poet might discuss irresilience of heart, conflictedness, or else steadfast virtue - the competing dynamics of ḥilm and jahl – obliquely, with recourse to whole episodes of diverse experience ‘in the saddle’. We shall see all these ideas gradually played out as we discuss sample representations of the mount in Part 2. Here, we may simply say that, rather than insist from the start on a stubborn, canonical order of structure and meta-structure for the qaṣīda, one might look first to the ethic as an observable rationale that can inspire any of the structural variations arising in the poetry and the changing chemistries these 209. Ṭufayl (1927), no. 8, vv, 1, 4. Jaroslav Stetkevych (1986), p. 101, n. 52, discusses the nature of the relationship between these extracts from Zuhayr and Ṭufayl. 210. ʿAbīd (1980), XXX, v. 36 (Lyall’s translation).

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involve.211 And if one wishes then to return to the question of metanarrative, one might query whether, overall, it is the sociological model of the ‘rites of passage’ paradigm that is the one most suited to this material. This point is revisited in the General Conclusion. ***** Ritual Triad Here we turn lastly to the related work of Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, who has been the principal proponent of the thesis that the ‘rites of passage’ paradigm, as proposed by van Gennep and developed by Victor Turner, is the ruling principle of content and structure in the early Arabic qaṣīda. Having investigated and criticised diverse structuralist experiments such as those of Kamal Abu Deeb, and Adnan Haydar,212 she devoted a number of studies to illustrating her contention that the ‘rites of passage’, with its stages of ‘separation, ‘liminality’ and ‘aggregation’ generates three thematic frames – nasīb, raḥīl and madīḥ/fakhr  –  and thus offers its own rationale of coherence for what she sees as non-narrative paratactic juxtaposition.213 With all the close, culture-specific analysis undertaken, these frames are thus deemed to be profoundly ‘ritually determined’, representing “the repetition of an ordered series of symbolic actions whose logic or connection lies at a deeper, nonnarrative structural level.”214 She has employed, at one and the same time, the additional prisms of the ‘seasonal pattern’ of Theodor Gaster’s Thespis, and Marcel Mauss’ theory of gift exchange as a ‘total’ social and moral paradigm, set forth in his 1950 essay, The Gift.215 Neither has she hesitated, in the quest to elucidate details arising, to draw on a much wider spectrum of symbols relating to myth and archetype, which reinforce the ritual dimensions she perceives. The product is powerful and stimulating, and highlights many social and ideological concerns that deserve attention. At the same time, such a kaleidoscope of interpretative tools 211. Geert Jan van Gelder’s review of Stetkevych (1993b) finds the emphasis on a rigid, paradigmatic triadism problematic (van Gelder (1995)): “Perhaps the author [viz., Jaroslav Stetkevych] lays too much stress here on the tripartite qaṣīda, at the expense of the very common bipartite structure; moreover, he seems to take it for granted at times that the second part of the tripartite poem is always a raḥīl, “travelling section,” although elsewhere he shows himself to be aware of the fact that often only “description” (waṣf) is found.” 212. Stetkevych (1983), which is generally dismissive of such pioneering experimentation as exemplified by Abu Deeb (1975) and (1976), and Haydar (1977–1978). 213. This was presented in Stetkevych (1985), and developed thereafter in Stetkevych (1991), and (1993), amongst others. 214. Stetkevych (1993), p. 6. 215. Stetkevych (1994b), where the author goes well beyond Hamori’s flexible use (see above, n. 25) of Gaster’s conception of kenosis and plerosis  –  ‘emptying’ and ‘filling’  –  to propose the agricultural seasonal pattern of ‘mortification’, ‘purgation’, and ‘invigoration’/‘jubilation’ for the same tripartite paradigm.

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simultaneously brought to bear on a body of material for which no independent system of ideas is clearly presented, and for which few other controls, historical or linguistic, are in place, is problematic; and some critical discomfort has resulted.216 One cannot ignore that scholars like Mauss were fastidious in the matter of constructing theory only out of material for which cultural lines had been carefully drawn and independent systems delineated:217 We have followed the method of exact comparison. First, as always, we have studied our subject only in relation to specific selected areas: Polynesia, Melanesia, the American Northwest, and a few great legal systems. Next, we have naturally only chosen those systems of law in which we could gain access, through documents and philological studies, to the consciousness of the societies themselves, for here we are dealing in words and ideas. This again has restricted the scope of our comparisons. Finally, each study focused on systems that we have striven to describe each in turn and in its entirety. Thus we have renounced that continuous comparison in which everything is mixed up together, and in which institutions lose all local colour and documents their savour.

A theory, after all, is just that: something which is there to be tested, a work in progress, not a finished model:218 We have no wish to put forward this study as a model to be followed. It only sets out bare indications. It is not sufficiently complete and the analysis might be pushed still further. We are really posing questions to historians and ethnographers, and putting forward subjects for enquiry rather than resolving a problem and giving a definitive answer.

Lévi-Strauss’ strong reservations about structuralist ideas being used in literary criticism without independent controls in place may equally well be applied to the similar such use of any theoretical construct:219 One thus becomes locked into a reciprocal relativism, which can be subjectively attractive but which does not seem to refer to any type of external evidence. This criticism – visionary and spell-binding – is structural to the extent that it makes use of a combinative system to support its reconstructions. But in so doing, it obviously presents structural analysis with raw material rather than a finished contribution. As a particular manifestation of the mythology of our time, it lends itself very well to analysis, but in the same way as one could, for example, structurally interpret the reading of tarot cards, tea leaves, or palms, i.e., to the extent that these are coherent deliriums.

216. See, e.g., Toorawa (1997); Montgomery (1997), pp. 26–32 and notes; Meisami (1994). Sells (1995) is broadly sympathetic to the product whilst presenting some pithy counter-arguments in point of approach and the interpretation of detail. 217. Mauss (1990), pp. 4–5 (W. D. Halls’ translation). 218. Ibid., p. 78. 219. Lévi-Strauss (1978), p. 275 (Monique Layton’s translation).

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Taking the view, then, first, that theory aspiring to a certain general validity cannot be tested with proper integrity if the material under analysis is not prepared in such a way as to produce something like an independent system, and, second, that the ethics of murūwa are central to the whole question of the poetic discourse and its very varied structural crystallisations, I shall only return to the question of these theories – and the reservations I have already flagged concerning a rigid tripartite structure, ‘ritually determined’ in accordance with the sociological model of the ‘rites of passage’ paradigm - after attempting to prepare a representative sample of material thus, while having particular regard for the ethic, and according to the method I explain in Part 1:3 that follows.

1:3. Approach and Trajectory of the Study

Method In what goes before, I essentially offer that jāhilī poetry is a shared, stylised discourse steeped in what one might call the ‘idiom of murūwa’;1 a generative and allusive discourse in which poets manipulate a rich kaleidoscope of common figures and constructs to discuss ideals which remain substantially unexplored. I have suggested that, suitably approached, and without recourse to metanarrative, the elements of this discourse can be ‘decoded’ to reveal together an integral network of theme and idea, which will enable us to perceive a coherence and unity to poems, regardless of their formal structure; that the characteristic composition by parataxis is an aesthetic choice, with analogies to montage, which demands that the audience mediate meaning on the basis of cultural assumption and understanding; and that what will emerge from this poetic network is a universalist vision of the world, which is clearly distinct from that of Qurʾanic Islam. Here, I submit that just such a suitable approach is available in a method adapted from the semantic analysis pioneered by Toshihiko Izutsu as a tool for understanding early Arabian ethics. Izutsu’s own assumptions and principal procedures may be summarised as follows.2 Izutsu’s Semantic Analysis Izutsu sought to demonstrate how his method could elucidate the structure of a culture as lived and consciously experienced in the conception of a people; what he called their Semantic Weltanschauung. His conviction that this could be achieved was based in the belief that language must, in its connotative aspect, manifest the crystallisations of mental activities of evaluating, interpreting, and reporting experiences of the surrounding world; that to identify those features of the environment, and those extra-verbal conditions, that elicit the verbal categorisations of a given speechcommunity, is to enter the heart of its ‘social reality’ and the ‘objective facts’ of its world. Semantic analysis was, for Izutsu, effectively a cultural science: a method of exploring, principally by empirical and inductive means, those connotative aspects of a particular language, at a specific period in history, that reflect such ‘objective realities’, so enabling a reconstruction of the conceptual frame in which they are ordered, without recourse to prepared theoretical positions, or to the potentially 1. Here, I borrow Paul Friedrich’s neat denotation, ‘the idiom of honour’, for those Homeric conceits and figures that reference honour or its defilement: Friedrich (1977), pp. 286–290. 2. What follows is a synthesis of salient points arising in Izutsu (1959), chaps. I–IV, VII, XIV, Izutsu (1964), chaps. I–III, VIII.

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distorting influence of words and values that have been formed in different cultural or historical contexts. Izutsu proposed that a framework for this type of study be created by attempting first to identify key terms for analysis through reading the chosen material without preconceptions, and, as far as possible, using secondary sources only as “valuable auxiliaries”. A survey of Qurʾanic language in this way convinced him of the presence of a critical series of conceptual oppositions intimating ‘the good’ and ‘the bad’. These oppositions were to be analysed in the various situations in which they occurred, then sifted and compared according to criteria which included: (i) ‘contextual definition’: the text’s explicit elaboration on the implications of key words and concepts; (ii) the identification of near-synonymous expressions (which may each have a wider or narrower extension, or range of application): X is substituted in a similar passage or context by Y; (iii) elucidation by contrast: (a) the identification of verbal oppositions and the different degrees to which they participate concurrently in the general connotations of ‘the good’ or ‘the bad’; (b) how, when X and Y are opposed to Z, and X and Z are known, a clue to the property of Y may be achieved; (iv) negative oppositions: identification of the semantic category of an obscure word, X, through comparison with terms defined as ‘not-X’; (v) the identification of semantic ‘fields’: which words tend to combine in clusters in observable patterns of related connotations; (vi) the elucidation of semantic relations between two or more words through rhetorical devices such as parallelism, e. g: if ‘nothing makes for X (where X = either something good or bad) except Y’, and ‘nothing makes for X (ditto) except Z’, then Y and Z must obtain concurrently in a similar valuational realm. Izutsu also insisted that words and concepts thus examined could not be interpreted faithfully simply by being studied in their immediate contexts: an approximation of their concrete meanings could only be inferred through identifying their overlapping relations in a complex network of conceptual associations, which would ultimately constitute an organised totality, or system. As to how such a complex network of ideas is to be grasped, he suggests that this can only be achieved through ‘synchronic’ study: creating a ‘cross-section’ across the progressive development of ideas and concepts embodied in a given language, which starts and stops at a specific period in time. While this has the disadvantage of creating an artificial environment which does not represent the rate at which words and concepts first occur, develop, and drop out of usage, and may create a false impression of stasis, this is the only means to create a ‘surface’ upon which words and concepts become observable as a system. The long-term value of this approach emerges when ‘historical semantics’ is undertaken, i.e. when a successive series of synchronic studies is brought together, each of which will ideally reveal what he calls the ‘dominant note’ of its time. In this way, the progressive impact of new historical contexts upon the ‘mould’ that shapes the prevailing structures of a culture’s ideas, and the embodiment of those structures in language, can be mapped with reasonable accuracy, at least in terms of major trends.

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Izutsu emphasised that his work was a preliminary study; that it was meant to illustrate the utility of his method, not simply to offer an exposition of the specific ‘world of Being’ he inferred from his study of the Qurʾan. Yet, the potential of his method has largely been ignored in favour of using his work as an occasional handbook of evaluational terms. The pity of this is twofold: not only has the basic worth of his approach been underrated, but his results have scarcely been challenged. While his exposition of a Qurʾanic value-system is often illuminating and persuasive, his analysis of jāhilī values prompts him to sketch a poor caricature of the jāhilī conceptual world and its peoples; and this, in turn, has an impact upon his assessment of the transformation of ideas that proceeded from the Qurʾan’s introduction of a new scheme of values. How this happened is not difficult to ascertain: Izutsu did not adhere to his own methodological principles when he came to consider jāhilī values. He relied too heavily on secondary sources to help him explain quite crucial ideas: he largely followed Goldziher for an identification of jahl and ḥilm (respectively, ‘the violent impetuosity of a barbarian’ and ‘the calm deliberation of a civilised man’), between which he supposed there to be an absolute opposition, despite signs to the contrary.3 Following Montgomery Watt,4 he accepted that moral degeneration, particularly in Mecca, served as a spur for Islam to revive certain Bedouin ideals, which, he asserted, had had no firm moral grounding before. With Aḥmad Amīn,5 he found that the ‘Arab mind’ was incapable of the deep reflection required to formulate greater truths that related to a universalist scheme. His consideration of jāhilī poetry was atomistic: ‘pagan’ virtues are considered only through analysis of a number of key concepts in the individual contexts in which they occur; and his assessment of the meanings of jāhilī values is largely constructed out of his interpretation of what they mean in the Qurʾan (i.e., as seen through an Islamic filter). Furthermore, having warned of the potential for futile discussion to ensue from assuming direct equivalence, for example, between the Greek arete and English ‘virtue’, without considering the intrinsic connotations of each in relation to their respective conceptual worlds, he permits himself to go through Greek to explain ḥilm: this, he implies, is somehow to be equated with the ataraxia of the Greeks – ‘tranquility of the soul’ – the most difficult thing, he thinks, for the Arabs to achieve, and which, if ever achieved, could not be sustained, for it lacked the “firm basis” that Islam gave it. Izutsu finds generosity (jūd; karam) to be an act of “chivalry”, which is not so much a virtue as a “blind, irresistible impulse deeply rooted in the ... heart” of the “true dandy of the desert”. Karīm was “just an old Arabic word” combining ideals of lavish generosity and nobility; a concept to which Muḥammad dealt a blow when he 3. The positions of Goldziher and Izutsu in this regard were discussed and illustrated above in Part 1:1. 4. Watt (1953), pp. 74–75. 5. Amīn (1955), pp. 41–44.

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redefined karam in terms of fear and piety (of and to God, to be observed upon pain of eternal death). Generosity then becomes a concept of spending in God’s way, implying faith and reward in the Hereafter, i.e., the reward of eternal life. We shall see that pre-Islamic karam also implies good faith, and is a self-sacrificial virtue designed not only to create good fame, but to enhance the immediate and long-term good of kin, dependents, and successors, i.e., that karam operates in the interests of life in this world, even if not for the sake of any Hereafter. Nor did Izutsu take any more seriously the pre-Islamic idea of bukhl (‘niggardliness’). Not until after Islam, he offers, did bukhl become a malignant ‘disease’ that implied treachery to covenant, and a conceptual act of ‘turning away’ which leads to the threat of death (i.e., to punishment and eternal damnation). Our conclusions, however, suggest that bukhl in the Qurʾanic world view is a transformation of an older relationship of bukhl with ‘sickness’ – also implying treacherous ‘departure’ and faithlessness to covenant – which was thought to be conducive to the encroachment of Death; only, again, in this world, not in a Hereafter. As to the pre-Islamic ideal of courage (shajāʿa), Izutsu suggests that this had been little more than “barbarous cruelty and inhuman ferocity”; it was “a matter of unrestrained and unrestrainable impulse”, displayed “only to gratify an irresistible desire”. It was “groundless” until Muḥammad gave it direction and transformed it into a “genuine ... virtue”. Nor was ṣabr (a combative quality of ‘endurance’) a ‘genuine virtue’ before Islam; as a subset of ‘courage’, it was needed “if only for mere existence and the subsistence of a tribe”. This entirely undermines the ideal value of ṣabr as a component of good faith, consistently illustrated in the poetry, relegating it somehow, rather, to primitive ‘instinct’. With regard to wafāʾ (‘fidelity’, ‘good faith’), he notes that this had been based on blood-covenant and could imply a sacred contract between different peoples, confirmed by sacrifice to a deity. Not till Islam, however, does wafāʾ become “truly human”, when it is transferred, in the new religious sphere, into a “characteristically Semitic [i.e., Judeo-Christian] conception of covenant”, and a two-way contract between God and man. Thus, despite mentioning the sacred nature of the pre-Islamic covenant, and the implication of divine sanction in confirming an alliance, Izutsu does not permit the possibility that that covenant, too, might have implied some mutual contract between men and their deities. This also leads him to neglect the possibility that the pre-Islamic virtues and vices he touches on – karam, bukhl, shajāʿa and ṣabr – are to be assessed in relation to wafāʾ, and, ultimately, in terms of some connection between men and their gods. All these assessments are coloured by Izutsu’s inclination to compare pre-Islamic virtues with Greek ethics, whereby he always finds the former wanting, owing to his avowed “impression” of the “particularist” nature of the ancient Arab intellect (ʿaql). This, he finds, “explains both the defect and beauty of Arabic literature ... In short, the Greek mind, if it looks at something, looks at it as a whole, examines it, and analyses it, while the Arab mind goes around it, and discovers there beautiful pearls of various

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kinds, which however are not strung together into a necklace”.6 He could not have picked a less apposite metaphor: the pre-Islamic construct of ʿaql, which operates at many levels, is conceived, for one thing, precisely as pearls strung upon a thread; it is a principle which, in its widest poetic conception, reflects a wholly universalist vision to the poets’ projection of the world and their place within it.7 Izutsu’s Semantic Analysis Adapted I have said that Izutsu’s method serves as the basis for the analytical approach in this study. I should now explain how this approach has been adapted to tackle the specifics of early Arabic poetry, to accommodate the question of authenticity, and to help elucidate what is demonstrably the deep logic underlying the very varied structures into which poems coalesce. If it is true that the question of authenticity has generally been so “improperly articulated” as to be “marginal to the study of pre- and early Islamic poetry”,8 it still deserves a more robust response than it has received till now if one is to persuade more researchers to tap “the riches that lie before them in the corpus of pre- and early-Islamic poetry”;9 to see how the ancient qaṣīda “is as fundamental to a fully contextualised understanding of Islamic origins as are vociferously promoted forms of Late Antique monotheism or intonations of Revelation as miracle”.10 I hope that this present study will contribute to the growing body of work that demonstrates the importance of the early qaṣīda in this context, by offering visible and verifiable criteria in support of that. On Treatment of ‘Authenticity’, Poet Identities, and Published Editions Two principal stratagems have been adopted to offset the ‘authenticity’ question. The first of these has been simply to take it as a working hypothesis, all preconceptions aside, that the material studied may incorporate, in essence, the spirit, ideas, and modes of expression of the pre-Qurʾanic period. The body of material covered, which constitutes the wider contextual field against which the analysis is weighed, includes a representative portion of poetry attributed to the jāhilīya and early mukhaḍrim-period, of which collections of composite poems have been given priority. While, for convenience, individual poets are named, all assumptions as to related historical, biographical and geographical data have been suspended, and the poems taken as the multifarious voices of a greater ‘text’ the linguistic connotations and relations of which are given primary emphasis. I have, in particular, suspended all regard for the legendary persona 6. A direct quote from Aḥmad Amīn (see previous note). 7. See the final assessment of ʿaql in the General Conclusion, s.v. ‘Projecting Microcosm and Macrocosm’. 8. Montgomery (1997), p. 1 and n. 2 9. Bauer (2011), p. 703. 10. Montgomery (2006b), p. 43.

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of Imruʾ al-Qays – from whose dīwān all the key poems of Part 2 are drawn – and all the additional characters and stories attached to that myth: As with the figure of Homer, about whom, despite his association with the greatest literary production of a culture, we are certain of nothing, Imruʾ al-Qays remains quite elusive. Indeed, as we shall see, parts of his legend appear to have been generated by ill-understood allusions arising in the poems.11 The study is essentially synchronic, not only for the reasons set forth by Izutsu, outlined above, but also to avoid, as far as possible, formulating arguments based on conjecture as to the provenance or antiquity of a given poem. The second principal stratagem adopted has been to consider variant readings for the key poems, and give each consideration while seeking to identify the ‘dominant note’ of the period, each poem discussed being considered as a whole. This is done not only to offer a confined focus for study, but also to insist on the analysis of poems as individual, more or less complex, statements, which represent some of the many possibilities into which the wider poetic ‘language’ may crystallise. Thus, the second working hypothesis is that poems may systematically constitute verifiably integral wholes. If this hypothesis can be sustained, one can begin to understand how the elements of the wider poetic ‘language’ may logically come together as coherent unities, the possible variations of which need not even be limited to the models represented in the extant poetic corpus. The editions I have relied on most are those of Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm and Wilhelm Ahlwardt. I have also availed myself of the composites published by Dār Ṣādir, which, though not a scholarly work of the same kind, synthesises variants (mostly apparent in the recensions of Abū Sahl, Ibn al-Naḥḥās and al-Sukkarī, as detailed in Ibrāhīm’s edition) that, together with the others, make up a representative picture of the cross-source conceptual boundaries of the poems discussed.12 More than this, though, because my approach involves a gradual process of building on shorter, less complex statements to longer, composite ones, it has been useful – especially in the first four chapters  –  to front the sometimes condensed or curtailed versions of Dār Ṣādir, and then add to, qualify, and build on these (or sometimes simply amend them), using the editions. Where Dār Ṣādir’s readings coincide with those in one or other of the readings offered in the two scholarly editions, I have left them as they are. Where both the scholarly editions privilege the same reading against Dār Ṣādir, I have fronted that reading, instead. I have referenced other variants detailed by Ibrāhīm and Ahlwardt, and have considered some of these, also, where they extend the boundaries of discussion (along with occasional variants from other sources), but not where they are close conceptual alternatives, or mere metrical adjustments. When quoting odd verses for comparison from other poems in the same dīwān, I have generally simply quoted 11. For an informative overview of the legend(s) of Imruʾ al-Qays, see Lyall’s elegant introduction to the dīwān of his apparent contemporary and foe, ʿAbīd b. al-Abraṣ of Asad: ʿAbīd (1980), pp. 1–8. On this ‘biography’ as mythopoesis, and its complete integration, in the Muslim tradition, into the Late Antique World, see Montgomery (2006b), pp. 59–69. 12. For brevity, these three readings are referred to, respectively, as Ibr., Ahl., and D. Ṣ (see the key to abbreviations in the Bibliography).

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Ibrāhīm. I should underline that even poems consulted from the wider poetical corpus have always been considered as wholes, and in terms of their own individual structures, in an attempt to avoid misusing, or misrepresenting the meaning of, elements drawn from them for the purposes of comparison and interpretation. Reconstructing a Pre-Islamic Conceptual Language By proposing an exploration of poems as integral wholes which draw on a wider poetic ‘bank’ to manipulate possible modes of expression in individual ways, one is obliged to undertake something far more complex than the identification of conceptual oppositions embodied in obvious value-words so as to ascertain the conditions that elicit these words and, thereby, their narrower and broader connotative extensions. It is to posit that intimate relations exist between such value-words and the wealth of images and themes to which the poetry has recourse. If this is true, one must aim to penetrate to the heart of those relations by seeking, equally, the conditions that elicit recourse to those images and themes, and their narrower and broader connotative extensions; by considering their recurrence in the wider poetry, in whatever context they may arise, and with whatever length or brevity they are mentioned, giving attention to the impact exerted on them by the shape and development of the poems in which they occur. Indeed, one must consider all elements of poetic expression, techniques of development and conjunction (takhalluṣ – discussed above, Part 1:2), without preconceptions as to structural modes; and one must do so seeking to cut into and across those various developed frames of reference typically manipulated in a composite qaṣīda: the so-called nasīb (‘elegiac’ episode, invoking deserted camps, phantoms, departing communities, and loved ones), raḥīl (mounted ‘journey’), waṣf (‘descriptions’ of mounts and natural phenomena), madīḥ (praise), fakhr (vaunting) and hijāʾ (invective). This, then, is to conduct an experiment in building a conceptual vocabulary the proper identification of which may reveal how and why the individual elements that can fall within the said frames of reference come together, or, indeed, fall apart; how and why the concatenation of such frames in a polythematic qaṣīda may be meaningful whatever the order they assume. This implies that the poetry will be discussed in terms of a coherent network of theme and image; one that can generate multifarious discussions, conducted on the basis of commonly assumed associative and analogous connections, which are more or less fragmentarily reflected in individual poems. I have considered that attempting to build such a conceptual vocabulary according to all the conditions mentioned could not begin with a study of the most complex and, arguably, allusive poetic forms – i.e., with a study of qaṣīdas constructed from developed, ostensibly discrete episodes. What was required was to begin with far simpler poetic statements in order to formulate the basic structures and associative connections of key individual words and concepts, before attempting to understand how these might relate to the images, similes and metaphors invoked in more developed contexts. Beyond the principles of semantic analysis outlined above, the most fundamental rule observed has been always to take what a poet says seriously, and dismiss nothing

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as descriptive stuffing. I have always attempted to understand the culturally-specific subtext of, and perhaps unspoken assumptions behind, any poetic equation between distinct images or concepts – similes and metaphors – whether or not a relationship between these seems obvious – indeed, especially when one does not. Bearing in mind Evans-Pritchard’s instructive caution against sponsoring misguided explanations of the psychology of ‘primitives’ through failure to understand the ideal sense of statements that draw ostensibly implausible relations between things,13 I shall attempt always to understand the wider conceptual basis on which poetic equations rest: What do these equations assume that poets need not specify because, to them and their audience, this should be obvious? Organisation of the Study With the proposal to illustrate that everything in the poetry is to be understood in relation to everything else  –  circumscribed by the condition that a conceptual vocabulary is to be built always considering poems as integral wholes – a considerable strain is imposed on the organisation of the study. Individual chapters are designed to force a focus on one particular topic, and within each chapter emphasis is given to those ideas and themes that are most immediately relevant to the topic in hand; but their relations with ‘secondary’ features arising are noted for later discussion where they are progressively brought to the fore, developed, and used to help interpret ever more complex poems. This has entailed that poems studied in earlier chapters have initially received a lighter treatment than those studied later, and that, overall, certain aspects of the poetry that, no doubt, deserve more appreciation are not thoroughly treated, or even, perhaps, treated at all; but I hope that the recurrent use to which earlier poems are put will redress the imbalance somewhat, and do emphasise that, here, it has been with the study of ideas that I have been most concerned. This, in turn, has had an impact on translation: While I have endeavoured to convey meaning  –  within the restrictions imposed by necessary concision  –  as truly as possible without jarring, I have consciously remained close to the syntax and semantics in order to be able smoothly to highlight key concepts; and I have done this by systematically transliterating these concepts within the translation in order to make the analysis as accessible and transparent as possible even for non-Arabic readers. I have also kept translations of critical concepts within eye’s-reach on the page throughout the analysis both to maintain focus and to spare non-Arabic readers the annoyance of flipping back and forth to a glossary which would, anyway, have its serious limitations. The index should assist where an overview of the compass of a concept is required. Translations are mine where no other attribution is offered. 13. Evans-Pritchard (1956), pp. 140–142. As discussed above in Part 1:1 (s.v. ‘Generative Cross-nets of Association’), Evans-Pritchard explains here how an ox (A) ‘equals’ a wild-cucumber (B) because both share a relationship with C: God, in that God may accept the wild cucumber as a sacrifice in place of the ox.

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Note on the Use of Dictionaries I should say something, lastly, here, about use of the Classical dictionaries in this study. My approach has been broadly akin to explication of the Qurʾan by reference to the Qurʾan what one could call tafsir al-shiʿr bi-l-shiʿr: isolating a given concept, or nexus of words, or figures, examining them in context, and adducing comparable examples from the poetry itself; and all my primary work was undertaken substantially on this basis. As time went on, it became clear that a powerful interplay could be observed between the results of this approach and the polyvalencies observable for given items in the dictionaries.14 In other words, the impression was forming that the ancient poetry, in no little part, explains the dictionaries, not the other way around. There should probably be no surprise in this, given that the lexicographers base their explanations of denotation and nuance, to no little degree, on the early poetical corpus. This encouraged me, in the long run, to spend a good deal of time pursuing the possibilities of this interplay, a process evident in the final product. I am, at the same time, acutely aware that one cannot simply presume that all the data thus drawn from the classical dictionaries was necessarily available to the poets; but I feel that the cogency of my results suggests that such conceptual equivalences were in place, or developing, to a significant degree. One could, of course, infer a certain circularity to this argument, so I will only conclude by saying that, while I have often padded my analysis with the lexical interest of the dictionaries, I rest all my major arguments on criteria supported by comparative, poetical data. Direction of the Chapters and the General Conclusion Chapter 1: Time The aim of Chapter 1 is to isolate prevailing views on the qualities of al-Dahr (Time/Fate/ Death), the dominant conceptions of how its force operates and affects lives, and the position of the ethic (murūwa) in response to this (the proper understanding of murūwa, itself, being a matter for progressive discussion through the study). Al-Dahr emerges as a treacherous force of changeability and chance to which all forms of betrayal and destruction are ultimately attributed. Its assaults are broadly conceived as ‘sickness’ which undermines the moral and physical integrity of individuals, and communitybodies in covenant. All inimical activity or individual moral failing, whether from 14. To give one striking example from among many, we see converging in the verb, ʿaqqa, the senses of: lightning in a state of commotion among clouds becoming rent with water; the severing of a tie of relationship; a bucket rising full from the well, or turning around as it ascends thus burdened, or rising swiftly, cleaving the air; and an eagle hastening or circling up a thermal as it prepares to stoop on a victim (Qamus, Taj, Lane, s.v. ʿ-q-q). A logic for this convergence emerges when one realises the poetical equivalence between a raiding warrior loosing the reins to give his horse its head with (i) a lightning storm that heralds a deluge; (ii) an eagle risen and poised to break wing over its prey; and (iii) a water-laden well-pail, raised and poised to crash, it’s rope and security ties on the point of being severed - these ties, in their turn, being the conceptual equivalent of ties of relationship and compact: see especially the analysis of Poem 5.1, in Part 2.

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within or without a communal unit, is thus effectively rendered party to the agency of ‘sickness’ and Death. ‘Betrayal’ is not confined to malignance, but extends to nonreprehensible failure, as when a man, despite his best efforts, succumbs to death. Both malignant and ‘benign’ betrayal can be figured by bayn, a concept of separation that has moral and physical dimensions: Bayn implies intellectual and bodily ‘infection’ by the ‘sickness’ of Time: The initiators of bayn are the principal hosts, and the abandoned party, an afflicted victim. The lives of men and all they protect are perceived as pledges (rihān), which they aim to preserve and redeem from the ultimate collector, Death, by adherence to a covenant based on mutual redemption (fidāʾ – implying both protection and blood-vengeance). The manly ethic, devoted to supporting this covenant, stands in direct antithesis to al-Dahr. It is a combative code applied in the interests of life. Chapter 2: Camps Chapter 2 concentrates on community-abodes (diyār, s. dār). Initiated here is a breakdown of some of the typical elements that come together in the so-called nasīb, of which desolate diyār are one. Avoiding a ‘horizontal’ comparison of nasīb-episodes, I seek to identify the wider functional possibilities of poetic abodes, and, thereby, pave the way for understanding the relationship of deserted diyār to other typical nasīb-elements such as departing communities, phantoms, and faithless lovers. To this end, I begin by studying poems that reflect the connotations of thriving, not deserted, diyār; what these abodes afford their members, and what is entailed by exclusion from them. Community-abodes speak principally of kinship and ethical institutions in opposition to Time; of the benefits that can be reaped from faithful communion in covenant; of the moral and physical succour that is ‘antidotal’ to Time’s returning ‘disease’. Exile is associated with the concomitants of bayn: intellectual and physical exposure to the worst effects of al-Dahr. The condition of any abode stands as testament to the qualities of its residents. In their various states of poetic desolation, diyār are images that speak in signs of peoples’ histories, and the moral consequences of their actions. They serve as foils for ethical elaboration. Where females feature in any of these contexts, they appear to do so as subsets of a given community, and as representatives of a party’s moral condition, or history, in relation to Time. Chapter 3: Principles of Kinship and Alliance Chapter 3 concentrates more closely on key moral values and the vices that negate them; on the perceived consequences of following, or deviating from, the manly ethic; and on the ideal preconditions for union in covenant (waṣl). The positive qualities of ṣabr (principled endeavour) and karam (generosity) imply wafāʾ (fidelity to covenant); they build ḥasab (esteem), which grows or diminishes in direct relation to degrees in wafāʾ. Virtue is intrinsically ‘healthy’ and ‘healing’; it promotes strength (ʿizz), and contributes to ‘the good’ (khayr), i.e., all that is conducive to the interests of life and continuity, to intrinsic purity, to the formation of positive qualities that are inherited from generation to generation. Failure to apply virtue promotes moral and

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physical ‘sickness’, of which the loaded concept of bukhl (niggardliness) is a despicable manifestation. Moral weakness and treachery are conducive to ‘the bad’ (sharr), i.e., all that prejudices life and continuity. There follows an extended discussion on the poetic construct of ʿaql (‘intellect’ – s.v. ‘ʿAql, Baʿth, Shades and Phantoms’), a concept relating both to the integration of the individual intellect, and to the cohesion of a community in covenant. This discussion takes in an assessment of the functions of the phantom (ṭayf al-khayāl) and the balīya-camel which, in the jāhilīya, was tied to a dead man’s grave and left to die. ʿAql emerges as a critical concept implying the primary barrier by which individuals and communities seek to protect themselves from the impetus of ‘sickness’ and Death. The prerequisites of ʿaql, at any level, are adherence to covenant and the application of murūwa. True love (ḥubb/wadd) emerges, not as sentiment, but a principle of good faith, upheld in the interests of health, purity and continuity. Where love and good faith are in question, or in any way betrayed, an appropriate moral response must be found for the sake of self-preservation – where necessary, involving an active break with faulty covenantal ties. The language of sexual passion is inferred to be an integral and inseparable part of ethical discourse and social attitudes toward covenantal relations. Chapter 4: ‘Women’ in the Context of Kinship and Alliance With Chapter 4, the focus shifts to female figures and the manipulation of gender, as these relate to the ethic and union in covenant (waṣl). After first establishing that waṣl, and its antithesis, ṣarm (a sundering of relations), invoked in regard of female figures, carry the quite technical connotations of union in, and divorce from, covenant, we concentrate on nasīb-elements that essentially highlight ‘female’ treachery, and the impact that these exert on subsequent verses centring on the preconditions for confirming a brotherhood in compact. Considerations on women and the opposition of gender appear to be wholly integral to a wider debate on waṣl and the communal ethic: The broad contraposition of life-enhancing attributes to Death, of manly virtue to influences that ‘sicken’ and demand a ‘cure’, emerges as a gendered equation. It is noted, however, that while these observations help us to understand how gender constructs are manipulated, they await an essential refinement of perspective; namely, that poets play with the very same conceits of ‘sickness’ and ‘healing’ that relate to communion in waṣl in order to discuss both benign and antipathetic relations, as well as intrinsic integration, conflict and balance. This is a feature better appreciated once the integrality of the poets’ ‘mounted’ endeavours is recognised. Chapter 5: The Mount Chapter 5 is divided into three parts. Chapters 5:1 and 5:2  –  ‘The Wheel and the Storm’, the ‘The Gambler and the Storm’  –  focus on the horse in raiding, hunting and war; Chapter 5:3 – ‘Intoxicated Excursions’ – looks at the camel-borne ‘journey’ (raḥīl), concentrating closely on developed episodes ‘in the saddle’ – each, a window into the poet’s integrity of mind, and ethical conviction. The chapter takes in a

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number of ubiquitous poetic figures: the eagle and wolf, the lizard, the ostrich, the oryx and onager; projections of landscape and storms; the manipulation of natural lore relating to rainstars and plant-chemistry; the variety of inter-referential levels at which ‘sickness’ and its subset, ‘intoxication’, operate; the poet’s tears; and the poetical conception of ʿirḍ (‘sacred honour’). Widespread personal identifications with the behaviour of these creatures, with the competing forces and properties of nature, indicate that the moral and physical trials of men were perceived to be symptomatic of, and integral to, a combative dynamic of universal proportions. An extended discussion of the wider connotations of maysir-gambling (Chapter 5:2: ‘The Universal Paradigm of Maysir’), a conceit that infuses every poetical frame of reference, finds that the said universal, combative dynamic obtains in a cosmic system of chance where Time is construed as the ultimate ‘player’. Adherence to the ethic and the covenant of mutual fidāʾ are conceived as a commitment to sacrifice and hazard oneself to provide for one’s people; to protect and redeem the ‘pledges’ (rihān) that are their lives, as if in gambling. Poem 5.3.3 finds that the conceit of maysir, which plays on ideas of fleshdistribution, has an analogue in the equally combative reference-frame of wine, where the quasi-organic unity of a community finds expression with the focus, instead, on shared blood and vital waters. The wine-frame also serves as a forum for discussing relative states in purity and defilement (or ‘health’ and ‘sickness’), which seem to carry implications of divine sanction, and are directly related to faith and betrayal in respect of the covenant. The complementary ways in which maysir and wine are turned to discuss combative virtue in intra- and inter-personal contexts reveal how benign and inimical relations are projected as two contrary faces of waṣl; how there is a ‘curative’ covenant equally for death as for life. A collective conclusion for Chapters 5:1–5:3 finds that the struggle for life in contraposition to Death emerges systematically as a gendered opposition where the combative initiative for Life is aligned with the male principle, and the ‘arousal’ to that combat, with the female. Murūwa implies every sense of manhood, not least sexual potency. Arousal in the male, and the ability to channel this ‘fever’ into an effective ‘coupling’, are concrete analogies for treating all disorienting influences on the intellect (defined by jahl, and implying ‘sickness’ or ‘intoxication’); for summoning the ‘healing’ attitude (informed by ḥilm) that harnesses the ‘fever’ of disorientation, and uses it to consummate a ‘compact’, or ‘coupling’ (waṣl) that results in intellectual equilibrium (ʿaql), and a ‘healthy’ balance, defined by ḥilm. The return of a balanced state of ʿaql and ḥilm, which may thus imply the expenditure and self-replenishment of a conquering male’s seminal resources, is figured, for one thing, by the self-replenishment of waters drawn by the bakra (the rotary well-pulley, discussed at some length in Chapter 5:1). The bakra is one poetical construct for the communal compact. At the micro-level, it represents the cohesion (or dissolution) of faculties that can summon ‘liquid’ resources of a virtuous heritage and wield them to benign or malignant effect. It has a greater analogue in the ‘wheel’

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of the celestial sphere and the rainstars (anwāʾ), the properties of which are also identified with virtue, with the ability to provide life-giving resources, or else cause death with a punishing ‘storm’. The place of the celestial sphere in this scheme, along with all the competing actors of nature, is the strongest indicator of the universality of the poets’ respective visions. The prevailing, global combative process composes a totality of cause and effect – implying alternating states of ‘health’ and ‘sickness’, purity and defilement – which is described by dīn (‘religion’). Thus comprehensively embracing the duality of the Life–Death competition, it is dīn which dictates that the responsibility to compete, hazard, and sacrifice for the sake of survival is not to be avoided, for to do so would actively be to choose death. This implies that murūwa is the practice of a law for life that is impelled by dīn. General Conclusion The General Conclusion finds that the early Arabic poetic discourse is a generative, symbolic ‘language’, which projects a reasonably coherent picture of higher ‘realities’. Decoding this ‘language’ and piecing together its elements reveals the inter-referentiality and coherence of thematic frames within the polythematic qaṣīda, without recourse to narratives of determined ‘laws’ of form and content. The picture that emerges is clearly not the vision of Qurʾanic Islam, and defies explanation in terms of Islamic fabrication. Final observations on the ethic and the relationship of jahl to ḥilm, on the contrary faces of waṣl and ṣarm (‘coupling’ ‘splitting’), and on the manipulation of gender, lead to a summary exposition of the plasticity of the poetic nasīb. Results on the interplay of jahl and ḥilm are employed to pick up the discussion above, Part 1:1, on the place of murūwa within the broader dynamics of dīn; and a comparison of analogous constructs for the covenant is undertaken to create a model of the relationship of man to the divine. An assessment is offered, in this light, of the status and conceptual properties of poetry prior to Islam, and the transformation of the tribal covenant thereafter. We pick up also the earlier discussion on islām as a quasi-commercial concept, and consider different faces of the covenant transformed with the introduction of the Qurʾanic revelation. Lastly, we return to those aspects of social theory that were highlighted earlier to address, specifically, the ‘rites of passage’ theory of structure (see Part 1:1, ‘Art of the Ternary Archetype’, ‘Ritual Triad’). For those interested in the paradigm, I submit that there exists a fascinating content- and formsensitive variation, which accommodates, without strain, the ethical chemistry of the poetry, as well as its multiple structural modes. Lastly, here, I readily acknowledge that this study imposes significant demands on the reader, and heartily recommend that anyone interested begin with the General Conclusion and take it from there.

Part 2 Ethics and Poetry: The Inseparable Equation

Chapter 1 Time

This chapter focuses on al-Dahr – Time/Fate/Death – its poetic qualities, and the position of the manly ethic (murūwa) in relation to it.1 We trace the conception of al-Dahr, broadly, as the ultimate mover of ‘doubt’ (rayb) and ‘change’ (tabaddul); as a source of greater ‘sickness’ that undermines the moral and physical integrity of communities, brings recurrent ‘separation’ (bayn), and drains the resources that sustain them. We see it as a multi-faceted hunter-predator, locked in a quasi-contractual relationship with the living, to collect the ‘pledges’ (rihān) that constitute their lives. Murūwa, by contrast, emerges as a counter-force to these principles: a combative, moral code, applied in the interests of communal integrity. We begin to delineate the substantial virtue of ṣabr – principled resistance to the initiatives of al-Dahr – and to detect the underlying rationale for this: Moral and physical qualities are inherited, and play a significant role in ensuring – or undermining – communal strength and longevity, the preservation – or wastage – of resources variously figured in terms of a liquid preserve. Such intimacy between the heritage of the forebears and their living descendants dictates a moral responsibility to deploy virtue to maintain the resources conducive to life and continuity.

1. Ample material on al-Dahr and its related terms have been collected in: Caskel (1926); Ringgren (1955), Ch. 1, ‘Pre-Islamic Fatalism: Terminology and Ideas’, pp. 5–60, Ch. 2, ‘Pre-Islamic Fatalism: The Poets and the Historical Evolution of the Ideas’, pp. 61–85; Arazi (1989), pp. 49–103; Dmitriev (2008), Ch. 4, ‘Das Schicksal’, pp. 105–128, Ch. 5, ‘Die Zeit’, pp. 129–148.

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Poem 1.1:2 ‫َختُو ُر ْال َعهْـ ِد يَ ْـلـتَ ِهـ ُم الـرِّ جاال‬ 4 ‫الجباال‬ َ َ‫َوقَـ ْد َمل‬ ِ ‫ك السُّـهولَةَ َو‬ ‫شارقِها ال ِّرعاال‬ َ ‫َوسا‬ ِ ‫ق إلى َم‬ 5 ‫الجباال‬ ِ‫ل‬ ِ ‫ـياجوج َو مـاجو َج‬ ٍ 6 َّ ‫فَسيري‬ ‫إن في َغسّـانَ خاال‬ 7 ‫ك مـا أنـاال‬ َ ‫فَـ ُذ لُّـ ُكـ ُم أنـا لَـ‬

‫ أَ َّن الـ َّد ْه َر ُغـو ٌل‬3‫ك‬ َ ْ‫أَلَ ْم أُ ْخبِر‬ ‫ش‬ ٍ ‫أَزا َل ِمـنَ الـ َمصانِ ِع ذا ريـا‬ ً ‫ق َوحْ يـا‬ َ ‫هُـما ٌم طَحْ طَ َح اآلفا‬ ً‫ْث تَرْ قى ال َّشمسُ َس ّدا‬ ُ ‫َو َس َّد بِ َحي‬ َ ْ َ‫ف‬ ْ‫إن تَ ْهلِ ْك شَنوء ةُ أ وْ تَبَدَّل‬ ‫هم َع َز ْز تَ فَإن يَ ِذ لّوا‬ ِ ‫بِ ِع ِّز‬

1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Did I/Did he not tell you/Does it not grieve you that al-Dahr is a shape-changing demon (ghūl); a man-eater, constitutionally treacherous to know?3 2. It ousted Dhū Riyāsh/Dhū Nuwās from his lands and holdings after sovereign ascendance over mountains and plains.4 3. An aspiring potentate (humām), it wasted horizons, sweeping cavalries to their farthermost reach.5 4. And with mountains dammed up the sun’s place of rising quite entirely to Gog and Magog.6 5. So, should Shanūʾa corrupt or ‘change’ (tabaddal), then leave: in Ghassān is a maternal uncle.7 2. Metre: wāfir. D.Ṣ., p. 158. Ahl. offers a version under “other attributions”, p. 204, no. 25. Ibr. offers an extended form of this poem: no. 75, pp. 308–311, the latter part of which is overviewed in n. 5, below. Preceding the verses above (Ibr., vv. 1–8) is a sequence that sets the scene as a response to the aspersions of a female figure – one Ibnat al-Bakrī (or Ibnat alKindī in the reading of Abū Sahl: Ibr., p. 450) – who, upon his betraying ‘youthful folly’ (ṣibā), indicates that he is perhaps a king who can no longer provide for people’s needs, dispense wealth, entertain boon-companions, bear burdens, drive hard in raiding and battle; that, in sum, he has ‘changed’ (tabaddal) and lost his lustre. His virility and commitment to covenant is undermined (v. 7) by the suggestion that his compact-bond (ḥabl) is tattered and degraded (khalaq, mudhāl – an important conceit for the insecure covenant, introduced above, Part 1:2, s.v. Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin). Thus, Ibnat al-Bakrī/al-Kindī emerges as an elaborate ‘blamer’ (ʿādhila), a familiar poetical figure who exemplifies, for one thing, the peculiarly stinging female role of pricking men to demonstrate or justify their virtue. (For an example of such an ʿādhila, see below, Poem 1.4, v. 4). 3. Ibr., v. 9: a-lam yaḥzun-ki &c. Ahl: a-lam yukhbir-ka &c. 4. Ibr., v. 10: ... dhā nuwāsin/wa-qad malaka l-ḥuzūnata wa-l-rimālā. 5. Verses 3–4 are noted in Ibr. p. 450 (taken from Ahl.). Ibr., vv. 11–15 pack the message with legendary details: al-Dahr likewise (v. 11) ‘sank its talons’ (anshaba fī l-makhālib …) into a certain king of Yemen (following one suggestion of the sharḥ – Ibr., pp. 309–310, n. 11 – though this is clearly uncertain); and ‘set snares’ (naṣaba l-ḥibālā) for one al-Zarrād (importantly, showing that al-Dahr is, poetically, a variable predator-hunter); it shook Kinda (v. 12) with the deaths of ʿAmr and Ḥujr (the poet’s grandfather and father), striking the latter (v. 13) from anear, amidst his people; with the demise of Shanūʾa (a Yemeni tribe) the poet holds no hope (v. 14) of evasion or respite; and if the house of Azd (taken as Azd Shanūʾa) has waned (v. 15), that is simply a fate that inevitably awaits. 6. Ahl. omits v. 5. 7. Verses 5–6 appear in Ibr. as vv. 16–17.

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6. Through their noble power (ʿizz) have you risen to might (ʿazazta); and if they, too, are humbled (in yadhillū), your mutual fall (dhullu-kum) only brings you what it will.

Verses 1–4: The comparison of al-Dahr to the ghūl epitomises the multiple guises it takes in the poetry. Ghūl and its related verb conjure a variety of shapes: a creature appearing to men in the desert, able to assume different forms and cause them to lose their way; any jinni, devil, or animal of prey that destroys a man; a terrible, changeable beast with tusks and fangs; anything that unexpectedly destroys things, causes the intellect to depart and ḥilm to dissolve, including the effects of anger and wine; the decree of death, death itself, and general calamity.8 This spectrum reflects some of the key poetical frames used to discuss the physical and demoralising aggressions that are all conceptually traceable to Time. One can begin to anticipate the greater context in which to view a poet’s struggle to maintain a straight course when he journeys; his confrontation with predators, with aggressions that unbalance his mind (ʿaql) and undermine his ḥilm, or, indeed, with any treachery that threatens.9 One can infer an intimate relationship between ʿaql and ḥilm; and that a man’s murūwa – dependent as it is on these qualities – stands counter to the effects of al-Dahr, a code for selfpreservation. There is also a strong association of femaleness that accrues to what is called ghūl – reflected, for example, in sayings where the feminine verb is used: ghālathu ghūlun, “A ghūl beguiled him/destroyed him”; taghawwalat-humu l-ghūlu, “they were swayed by a ghūl”.10 This indicates that, as much as true manhood is equated with the honourable endeavour invoked by murūwa, the potential to undermine such endeavour may, poetically, be gendered female. As we shall see, the struggle for life against Death is, ultimately, a quasi-erotic equation. Verses 5–6: Verses 1–4 project al-Dahr as a universal force, the ultimate source of all destruction. By virtue of juxtaposition, verse 5 indicates that Shanūʾa’s potential destruction or ‘change’ (for the worse) would, likewise, be attributed to Time’s malignance – a suggestion heightened by use of tabaddala (‘alteration’), apparently very much associated with al-Dahr.11 That the poet’s solution is to seek the alternative protection of Ghassān reflects the philosophy, of which we shall see more, that where a protector or ally shows inferior worth, they should be abandoned. This endows Ghassān with a 8. Tāj, s.v. gh-w-l; Lane, arts ghāla, ghūlun. 9. The complex concepts of ʿaql and ḥilm are explored progressively. The basic dynamic of ḥilm within the structure of the ethic has been set forth above, Part 1:1. 10. Tāj, Qāmūs, s.v. gh-w-l; Lane, arts ghāla, taghawwala; cf. below in this chapter, n. 58, the verses of Mutammim: Death calls men to perdition as a she-ghūl. 11. See, e.g., Muḥkam, s.v. b-d-l; Lane, s.v. b-d-l, V: fa-buddilat wa-l-dahru dhū tabaddulin, “she was altered, for Time has the property of change”; cf. Arazi (1989), p. 50, n. 4.

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superior virtue that precludes treachery and renders them, perhaps, less susceptible to decline. It also implies that the tribal institution stands in direct antithesis to Time’s aggression. The full proposition, then, tells us that the semantic fields of ʿizz and dhull (respectively, ‘might’ and ‘abasement’, verse 6) must each have moral and physical dimensions: ʿizz would imply soundness of body and intellect, fidelity, and the capacity to withstand corruption and aggression; and dhull would imply bodily and intellectual weakness, a certain baseness, and susceptibility to destruction.12 The ideological corollary is that virtue promotes distinction and might, while perfidy leads to ignominy, impotence and physical ruin.13 That the poet claims (verse 6) to place his trust in the protection of Ghassān – suggesting that he will likely stand by them whatever – stands as a laudatory appeal to their virtue, and an implicit assurance of his own. The message could be that, if they fall, it will not be for lack of faith, just an event in the natural way of things; or, that if they are all brought down, they will only have themselves to blame; but, in any case, it must imply that giving up is not an option: the battle should be fought in solidarity to the last.14 Poem 1.2:15 ‫َّـوام‬ ‫بِـتَـ ْف‬ ِ ‫ـر والس‬ ِ ِ ِ‫ـريـق ال َعشـائ‬ ُ ْ ‫ُذام‬ ‫ج‬ ‫َن‬ ‫ع‬ ‫ة‬ ‫م‬ ‫ذي‬ ‫ج‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ر‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ص‬ ‫كَما‬ َ َ َ َ ِ َ

ٌ‫أَلَ ْم تَ َرنا َو َريْبُ ال َّد ْه ِر َرهْن‬ ‫صبَرْ نا ع َْن عَشي َرتِنا فَبانوا‬ َ

1 2

12. This is, of course, reflected in the dictionaries: Miṣbāḥ, Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. ʿ-z-z, dh-l-l; See Lane, arts ʿazza, ʿizzun, ʿazīzun, dhalla, dhullun. 13. The interpenetration of the moral and physical dimensions of ʿizz and dhull is discussed in Farès (1932), esp. Chapter 3, though very much in the functionalist terms outlined in Part 1:1. The ideological perspective of the poetry indicates, rather, that applying virtue promotes power. 14. Cf. al-Aṣmaʿī (1955), no. 28, of Durayd b. al-Ṣimma, v. 8: wa-mā ana illā min ghazīyata in ghawat/ ghawaytu wa-in tarshud ghazīyatu arshudī, “Consider me ever a man of Ghazīya; whether they go wrong or right, I am always with them”. 15. Metre: wāfir. Ibr., p. 421. These verses occur in Ibn an-Naḥḥāṣ’ recension as a prelude to four mīmīya verses appearing in isolation in D.Ṣ., p. 166 and Ahl., 60, which are overviewed below in Chapter 3, n. 98. The couplet above appears alone with minor variations in the appendix of alṬūsī (Ibr., p. 278): a-lam tarayā &c. … /…//ṣabarnā ʿan ʿashīrati-nā fa-bātū/ka-mā ṣabarat khuzaymatu ʿan judhāmī. This reading, with Khuzayma (rather than Jadhīma) and Judhām reflects what Lyall considers to be the Arab commentators’ misunderstanding of a mufaḍḍalīya of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim in which Khuzayma and Judhām are mentioned together (Lyall (1918–1921), XCVII, vv. 33–38). Lyall rejects that Bishr alludes to a split between the two latter parties on the grounds that the relationship could not have existed (ibid., vol. 2, p. 277, n. 33). As to the reading, Jadhīma, this could refer to the famous Jadhīma al-Abrash, the first known king of al-Ḥīra before the Lakhmids (see Kawar (1965)), though there is no obvious strong link either between him and Judhām. This reading does, of course, have the added attraction of paranomastic play on root j-dh-m, which might have been a driving factor behind its construction.

1. Time

97

1. Do you not see – Time’s doubtful doings (raybu l-dahr) are pledged to (rahn bi-) separate (tafrīq) clans (ʿashāʾir) and herds (sawām) – 2. How we endured (ṣabarnā ʿan) the loss of our kin (ʿashīra) – they departed (bānū) – just as Jadhīma (?) endured the loss of Judhām

Verse 1: The reference to Time being ‘pledged’ to the activity described here in relation to clans and herds indicates that al-Dahr and men are intimately bound by a kind of antagonistic contract: the former bound to dissever the integrity of communities and their interests, the latter, bound to resist, to lose, and endure. This is alternately reflected in such sayings as: al-khalqu rahāʾinu l-mawt, “created beings are the pledges of Death”; huwa rahnu yadi l-manīya, “he is a pledge in the hand of Fate” (said of one who has courted death).16 As we shall see, these ideas fall ultimately within a universal scheme of credit and debt, encompassed by the wider conceptual parameters of maysir-gambling. At this stage, the poet’s allusion to a ‘pledge’ may be confined to a sense of competition between life and death.17 As to rayb al-dahr, the dictionaries show that this encompasses a spectrum of malign activities covered by the concept of ‘accidents’, rayb denoting not only the experience, but the active cause of, uncertainty and alarm. In this way, rayb al-dahr would imply all that the ghūl of Poem 1.1 entailed: something treacherous and physically destructive that assails both ʿaql and ḥilm (mind and balance). According to the poet’s formulation, this also has a bearing on what tafrīq implies (verse 1b): Verse 1a stands in relation to 1b as a recognition of responsibility to oppose the baleful initiatives of al-Dahr. This suggests a certain equivalence between rayb al-dahr and tafrīq; an implication supported by the broader nuances of tafrīq, which denotes causation of separation and dissolution, as well as moral division and fear.18 As a corollary, someone guilty of the tafrīq of kinsmen would effectively stand as agent of al-Dahr, a party exposing them to the effects of rayb. This, in turn, indicates that virtue stands counter to Time; that it preserves the united body of a kin community – a body that includes its moveable wealth, as implied by the detail of sawām (‘pasturing herds’) – and offers surety both physical and psychological. These observations will inform our further reading of the arousal of rayb, as well as the semantically related shakk and rawʿ, both loaded concepts of ‘doubt’ and ‘fear’ that have negative effects on the heart and mind. 16. Tāj, s.v. r-h-n; Lane, art. rahnun. 17. Cf. ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), VI, v. 7: ya-bnata l-khayri innamā naḥnu rahnun/li-ṣurūfi l-ayyāmi baʿda l-layālī, “Daughter of the Good, we are but a pledge subject to the successive whims of the Days and Nights”; Lyall (1918–1921), XLIV, of al-Aswad b. Yaʿfur. vv. 6–7: Death and Destruction (almanīya, al-ḥatūf) will accept no wealth of the poet – whether old or newly-got – only his life, as ransom for the ‘pledge’ they hold of him: lan yarḍayā min-nī wafāʾa rahīnatin/min dūni nafs-ī ṭārif-ī wa-tilād-ī. 18. Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. f-r-q, II.

98

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Verse 2: Verse 2 evokes antagonism from erstwhile kinsmen, in a continuation of the opening statement. There is, therefore, clear semantic interpenetration between verses 1 and 2: Bāna – ‘to part/become separated’ is effectively nuanced with a certain correspondence to tafrīq; i.e., it connotes a quality of separation and dissolution that entails physical division and emotional alarm; something that upsets the balance of ʿaql and ḥilm; something treacherous arousing the spectre of rayb al-dahr with all the risk to life and wealth that that implies.19 Meanwhile, the concept of ṣabr (‘endurance’) stands in direct antithesis to all that bayn, tafrīq and rayb al-dahr represent: It connotes an active virtue intimately connected to the preservation of ʿaql and ḥilm; to hardy pursuit of the communal ethic, unflinching commitment to clan solidarity, devotion to promoting physical and psychological well-being – and to protecting moveable wealth. This is no ‘simple’ attitude of resilience: it emerges as an ethical quality of weight. One detects the sense, further, that a fraternity in covenant, such as that called ʿashīra, is conceived as one integral unit the product of whose activities – benign or malignant – impacts its constituent members, inducing emotional and corporeal effects, as if through material conjoining.20 Thus, the separation, distancing, and arousal of alarm, signified by the ‘departure’ of bayn, would announce the severance of a quasi-corporeal bond. Ṣabr is part of the armoury deployed to combat this, a quality of resolve that fights intellectual and corporeal dissolution, and is activated to promote cohesion and self-preservation. The paranomasia of the reading, jadhīmatu wa-judhām (verse 2b), not only lends a certain rhetorical force, but, perhaps, also, capitalises on the prevailing concept of separation: The primary association of the root, j-dh-m, is ‘severance’ – used for example, of the ties of compact (wiṣāl).21 The total equation of this piece is a statement on how a fraternity should behave in opposition to rayb al-dahr. Ṣabr is a quality that stands in opposition to Time’s ‘doubtful effects’. Virtue counters the dissolution that stems from the impulses of Time. Ethical failure implies a constitutional weakness that negatively impacts associates in covenant, rendering them prey to the effects of Time. The protagonist of a serious misdeed effectively stands in relation to the injured party as Time stands generally in relation to men. 19. This is entirely complemented by the associations of bayn in the dictionaries. The semantics cover qualities of separation, disunity, and distancing among kinspeople that entail fear, enmity, and inherent corruption, whilst fateful associations attach to impending ‘separation’ of this type: Muḥkam, Miṣbāḥ, Qāmūs, s.v. b-y-n, II. 20. Tāj, arts ʿazāʾun, jalalun, each citing from al-Tibrīzī’s Ḥamāsa, and explicitly conveying the idea of kinsmen as one organic body. The first finds the poet enjoining himself to patience when faced with retaliating against a brother for slaying his son, saying that one of his own two hands has assailed him. The second finds the poet faced with the dilemma of forgiving, or retaliating against, kinsmen for killing his brother. To forgive is a distressing option; to retaliate is to strike himself. 21. Miṣbāḥ, Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. j-dh-m. Whether this was the original reading remains unresolvable, of course: see above, n. 15.

99

1. Time Poem 1.3:22 ‫َعلَ ْي ِه عَـقـيـقَـتُـهُ أَ حْ َســبَا‬ ‫بِـ ِه عَـ َسـ ٌم يَ ْبتَغي أَ رْ نـبا‬ ‫ِحـذا َر الـ َمـنـيَّـ ِة أَن يَ ْعطَبا‬ ُ ‫َو لَـس‬ ‫ْـت بِـطيّاخـ ٍة أَ ْخـ َد با‬ ‫إذا قِي َد ُمسْـتَـ ْك َرها ً أَصْ َحبا‬ 26 ‫َولِ َّمتُهُ قَـبْـ َل أن يَ ْشـ َجـبـا‬ ‫ب وال َم ْن ِكبا‬ َ ِ‫ ال َمطان‬28‫تُ َغ ّشي‬

ً‫ ال تَـ ْنـ ِكحي بُـوهَـة‬23‫يـا ِهن ُد‬ ‫ُم َر سَّـ َعـةٌ بَـيْـنَ أَ رْ سـا ِغــ ِه‬ ‫ كَـعْـبَهـا‬24‫لِيَ ْع َج َل في كَــفِّـ ِه‬ ُ ‫َولَس‬ ‫ في قُعُـو ٍد‬25‫ْـت بِ ِخ ْزرافَ ٍة‬ ُ ‫َو لَـس‬ ‫ـر‬ ٍ ‫ْـت بِـذي َر ْثـيَ ٍة إ َّم‬ ْ َ‫َوقـال‬ ُ‫ت بِـنَـ ْفـسي شَــبـابٌ لَه‬ 27 ‫َو ْإذ ِه َي سَوْ دا ُء ِم ْث ُل الفُ َحي ِْم‬

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Hind! Do not wed a feckless grave-shade (būha lit: ‘owl’), still capped in his baby-tufts (ʿaqīqa), lepers’-skin fluff, sickly strawberry-white (aḥsab),23,24,25,26 2. Joints draped in charms against the ‘eye’, limbs rigor-struck, desirous of a hare,27 3. To make of its ankle a charm to clutch, ever-fearful of Death (al-manīya), lest he should perish, 28 4. While I am no idle, cowering ninny (khizrāfa),29 no aberrant no-good, (ṭayyākha); no careless fool (akhdab). 5. I suffer no quasi-arthritic inertia (rathya), no such deficit as only to comply (immar), tractable, obsequious (aṣḥaba), when ‘led by the nose’ (qīda mustakrahan). 22. Metre: mutaqārib. D.Ṣ., p. 74; Ibr., pp. 128–129. Ahl., 3, and Ibr., p. 414, ll. 4–6 (additions of al-Sukkarī) offer three additional verses that appear to be an undeveloped, or unresolved she-camel episode, for which reason we do not include them for commentary here. According to the results of Chapter 5, one may read them as the beginnings of a development on the poet’s emotional disturbance. 23. Reading so, with Ibr. and Ahl. D.Ṣ: a-yā hindu. 24. Ahl: ... fī sāqi-hi &c. 25. Reading so, with Ibr. and Ahl. D.Ṣ: wa-lastu bi-khudhrāfatin &c. 26. Reading so, with Ibr. and Ahl. D.Ṣ: … an yashjubā. 27. Ibr. … mithlu l-faḥīmi; Ahl: mithlu l-janāḥi &c. 28. Ahl: tughaṭṭī &c. 29. Despite reading khudhrāfa, D.Ṣ. glosses this (p. 74, n. 3) as ‘a tattler’ (al-kathīru l-kalāmi l-ḍaʿīfi) precisely Ibn al-Sikkīt’s interpretation of khizrāfa in this verse (see Lisān, s.v. kh-z-r-f, which also aligns this with more general ideas of effeteness, as well as a lack of appropriate gravitas seated in council). Ibr., p. 129, n. 4, offers that khizrāfa fī l-quʿūd connotes, rather, one too feeble to rise from sitting - also, noting, however, (p. 414, l. 2) the variant: wa-lastu bi-ṭayyākhatin fī l-rijāli/ wa-lastu bi-khizrāfatin akhdabā, where the first hemistich (‘no fool amongst men’) is more in line with the thrust of the interpretation in Lisān. Modified to khidhrāfa, the D.Ṣ. reading would still be meaningful in the wider poetic scheme: Khidhrāfa is a salty plant (ḥamḍ), thought to be a spring-pasture which shrivels in the summer-heat (Lisān, s.v. kh-dh-r-f); Poem 5.2 illustrates the equation of distressing situations with summer-heat, and of hostility with the sun’s ardour; Poem 5.3.2 discusses how the juices of ḥamḍ are a ‘curative’ not necessarily pleasant. In the language of plant-culture, then, identifying the būha here with a khidhrāfa would read as an alternative suggestion of weakness and/or that he is a ‘pasture’ Hind would better avoid.

100

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia 6. “My soul be a ransom for such a youth before he ‘croaks’,” she said, “and his ample crown of hair: 7. See how it sweeps his neck and shoulders, black as charred coal (mithlu l-fuḥaym/l-faḥīm)/black as the [raven’s] wing (mithlu l-janāḥ).”

Verses 1–3: These verses introduce a lampoon of comparative virtue, which presents the poet’s rival-victim as an inauspicious fool with one foot in the grave. This is indirectly announced (verse 1) by allusion to him as būha, ‘owl’: Proverbially applied to worthless persons of no intellect, this figure - by association with its conceptual synonyms, būma (owl), ṣadā (shade/echo/owl), hāma (skull/owl) – conjures the spectre of the unredeemed dead whose ‘owls’ (shades/souls) emerge to demand the liquid ‘drink’ (isqāʾ) of vengeance.30 The būha is effectively a corpse of unredeemed honour. His susceptibility to disaster and unmanly fragility are compounded (verse 1) by allusion to the ʿaqīqa of the newborn infant, and to the talismans (verse 2a) that a child might wear whilst yet to attain to virility, still being dependent on his mother and charms for protection against sickness and misfortune.31 And while others might seek magical remedies and protection from talismans made from the paws of wolf or hyena, this fool looks for a hare (verse 2b), an animal that cannot defend itself, so weak that even a lark is said to seek it as prey, and proverbially associated with the mean and abject.32 Proper wisdom would say, of course, that no such trinkets assist when Death decides to ‘sink its talons’.33 The poet’s derision of the būha’s craven attitude to Death (al-manīya),34 and his lack of the intellectual and physical attributes of manhood, is indissolubly linked to ideas of physical infirmity and morbidity. This draws a clear, conceptual line of relation between failure to apply virtue in confrontation with Time, and between bodily sickness and failure. That virtue is, indeed, at issue, the poet confirms, indirectly, in the verses that follow. Verses 4–5: The negative qualities that the poet disowns are evidently to be ascribed to his adversary. The būha has not the qualities of mind or reason that belong to the man 30. Ibr., p. 128, n. 1; Lisān, s.v. b-w-h, h-w-m, ṣ-d-w/y; Homerin (1985). 31. Tāj, arts ʿaqqa, ʿaqīqatun, ʿādha. 32. Tāj, art. arnabu; Ibr., p. 128, n. 3, notes the use of wolf and hyena bones as curative and protective talismans; Tāj, arts ḍabuʿun, dhiʾbun, show a proverbial collocation of the wolf and hyena with disaster. 33. Lyall (1918–1921), CXXVI, of Abū Dhuʾayb, v. 9: wa-idhā l-manīyatu anshabat aẓfāra-hā/alfayta kulla tamīmatin lā tanfaʿū “When Death (al-manīya) sinks its claws [into its prey] every protecting talisman is useless”. 34. Cf. al-Tibrīzī (1969), Zuhayr, v. 49: the poet’s philosophical derision of any right-thinking man’s ambition to avoid the Fates (al-manāyā).

1. Time

101

who eschews servitude and abasement. Otherwise stated, he has neither the intellect (ʿaql) nor the combative endurance (ṣabr) to prevent the ghūl of Time from corrupting him. His moral and physical dissolution are equated as one, and he is effectively host to the ‘sickness’ of rayb al-dahr (Time’s ‘doubtful doings’). Raising this spectre of contagious disaster, the poet hopes to dissuade Hind from pledging herself in marriage (nikāḥ). Nikāḥ is an act of ‘coupling’ that extends to the generative permeation of rain into the land, and also the infusion of disease into the body.35 These nuances allowed, they would render the prospect of nikāḥ with such a ‘disease’-ridden Death-pawn all the more repellant. In any case, the theme of a wedding to Death is underlined in the irony of the following verses. Verses 6–7: The poet perfects an image of looming calamity: The verbs yashjab/yashjub – both attested in the variant readings (verse 6) – imply death and mourning. Yashjub extends to the croaking of the raven (ghurāb), which is ominous of misfortune and separation (bayn – discussed above in the commentary to Poem 1.2).36 A definite allusion to the ghurāb is anyway teased out by reference (verse 7) to the youthful black locks with which the raven is proverbially associated.37 The ‘owl’ effectively becomes a ‘raven’ – both herald and, apparently, imminent victim of, doom. The poet thus subverts the positive associations of the ghurāb in relation to the black locks of youth. For Hind to pledge herself ransom (fidāʾ) to such a creature just before he ‘croaks’/‘perishes’ – implied by her oath, bi-nafs-ī, “with myself I would ransom [him]” – is to contract herself to the redemption of one who is all but dead and promising bayn: the frightful and morbid betrayal of ‘departure’. It is a pledge of willing suicide to a union destined to prove the philosophy, raybu l-dahri rahnun &c. (see above, Poem 1.2). At the same time, Hind’s choice reflects a recurring perception that the inability to see beyond youth (and wealth) is a typical female trait that makes women liable to fickleness in allegiance: The other face of the poet’s satire is, of course, that Hind sees him as the 35. Miṣbāḥ, s.v. n-k-ḥ. 36. Miṣbāḥ, Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. sh-j-b. 37. The reference is more open in Ahlwardt’s reading, al-janāḥ, ‘the wing’, than in that of D.Ṣ or Ibr. - respectively, al-fuḥaym, al-faḥīm, ‘charcoal’/‘intensest black’; but, in the current context, these last two also read as epithetic encodings of intense black, connoting the raven to which the colour is proverbially related: Tāj, s.v. f-ḥ-m; cf. Miṣbāḥ Qāmūs, art. suḥmatun, Tāj, arts sukhmatun, askhamu, i.e., blackness the colour of the raven to which the epithet asḥamu is applied; Qāmūs, Tāj, art. ḥalakun: aswadu mithlu ḥalaki l-ghurāb, “black as the intense black of the raven” (amongst other sayings). On the ‘raven’ within the locks of youth, see, e.g., Lyall (1918–1921), LIII, of al-Muraqqish al-Akbar, v. 3: fa-in yaẓʿini l-shaybu l-shabāba fa-qad turā/bi-hī limmat-ī lam yurma ʿan-hā ghurābu-hā, “And if hoariness causes Youth to take its departure, yet time was when my locks were to be seen [black and glossy], before the raven was cast out therefrom.” (Lyall’s translation); cf. Tāj, art. ghurābun: the expressions ṭāra ghurābu fulānin/shāba ghurābu-hu, “his raven has flown/his raven has grayed”, indicative of dark locks turning to hoar.

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one who is ‘croaking’. This is noted for later consideration of gendered interactions within the broader frame of kinship and ethos in relation to Time. Poem 1.4:38

‫ب‬ ِ ‫عام َو بِال َّشرا‬ ِ َّ‫َو نُـ ْس َح ُر بِالط‬ ِّ ِّ ‫ب‬ ِ ‫َو أَ جْ َر أُ ِمن ُم َجل َح ِة الـذ ئا‬ 41 ‫إلَ ْي ِه ِه َّمتـي َوبِ ِه ا ْكـتِسـابي‬ ‫جاربُ وا ْنتِسـابي‬ ِ َّ‫َسـتَكفيني الت‬ ُ ُ ْ‫َو هذا ال َمو‬ ْ ‫ت يَسلبُني شَبابي‬ ً ُّ ‫ب‬ ‫ـرا‬ ‫ت‬ ‫بـالـ‬ ‫ا‬ ‫شـيك‬ ‫و‬ ِ َ ‫فَـي ُْـل ِحـقُـني‬ ُّ ‫ق‬ َ ِّ ‫أَ َمـ‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ّـرا‬ ‫س‬ ‫ال‬ ‫ـاع‬ ‫م‬ ‫ــ‬ ‫ل‬ ِ ِ ‫الط‬ ِ ّ ‫ول‬ ‫ب‬ ِ ‫أَنـا َل مـآ ِك َل الـقُـ َح ِـم الـ ِّرغا‬ ُ ‫ب‬ ‫َر‬ ِ ‫ضيت ِمـنَ الغَني َم ِة بـاإليـا‬ ‫ب‬ ِ ‫َوبَ ْع َد ال َخي ِْر حُجْ ٍر ذي القِبا‬ ‫ب‬ ِ ‫َولَ ْم تَ ْغفُلْ ع َِن الصُّ ِّم ال ِهضـا‬ ‫ب‬ ِ ‫ َونا‬45‫َسأ َ ْن َشبُ فـي شَبـا ظُ ْف ٍر‬ ‫ب‬ ِ ‫َوال أ ْنـسـى قَـتـيـالً بِـالـ ُكال‬

‫ب‬ ٍ ‫ـر غَـيْـ‬ ِ ‫أَرانـا ُم‬ ِ ‫ـوضعينَ ِل ْم‬ ٌ‫ َو دو د‬40 ٌ‫عَـصـافــيـ ٌر َو ِذ بَّـان‬ ‫الق صا َر ت‬ ِ ‫كار ِم األَ ْخ‬ ِ ‫َو ُكلُّ َم‬ ‫ْـض اللَّوْ ِم عا ِذ لَتي فَـإ نّـي‬ َ ‫فَـبَـع‬ َّ ْ َ ُ ‫ق الث َرى َوش َجت ع ُروقي‬ ِ ْ‫إلى ِعر‬ ‫ َو ِجرْ مي‬42‫َونَ ْفسـي سَوْ فَ يَسْـلُبُها‬ ُ ‫ق‬ َّ ‫نض ال َمط‬ ٍ ‫ي بِـ ُكـ ّل خَر‬ ِ ‫أَ لَـ ْم أ‬ ُّ ْ‫َب‬ ‫هام ال َمجْ ِر َحتّى‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ال‬ ‫في‬ ‫َوأَرْ ك‬ ِ 43 ْ َ ْ َ ُ ‫َوقد‬ ‫اآلفاق َحتّى‬ ‫في‬ ‫ـت‬ ‫ف‬ ‫و‬ ‫ط‬ َّ ِ ‫َمرو‬ ‫د‬ ‫أَبَ ْع‬ َ ِ ‫الحار‬ ِ ‫ث الـ َملِ ِك‬ ٍ ‫بن ع‬ ِ ً ‫هر لينا‬ ‫أُ َرجّي ِمن ص‬ ِ ِ ‫ُروف ال َّد‬ 44 ‫ـلـيـل‬ ٍ َ‫َو أَ ْعـلـ َ ُم أَ نَّـنـي عَــ ّمـا ق‬ ‫كَـمـا القى أَبي حُـجْ ـ ٌر َو َجـ ّدي‬ 39

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

1. I see us hastening to oblivion (li-amri ghayb), lulled, the while, with meal and drink (wa-nusḥaru bi-l-ṭaʿāmi wa-bi-l-sharābī): 2. Little ‘birds’ and ‘flies’ and ‘grubs’; yet bolder than wolves in the assault. 3. My noble ambition (himma) and acquisition (iktisāb) rest on excellent, innate moral virtues (makārim al-akhlāq). 4. Therefore, censuress (ʿādhila), stay your blame: experience (tajārib) and heritage (intisāb) will suffice me:39 5. My radical qualities (ʿurūq) twist deep in the moist, ancestral earth (ʿirq al-tharā), though this death (hādhā l-mawt) despoils me of the sap of my youth;40,41,42 6. My own body and soul would it also despoil, to speed me into the dusty ground.43,44,45 7. Have I not taken my riding-camel through countless windswept desert-tracts; distance never-ending, glistening, [deceitful], with the midday mirage;46 8. And pressed on with a swollen, ‘craving’ army (luhām) till its onslaughts yielded spoils ample to the desire? 38. Metre: wāfir. D.Ṣ. pp. 72–73; Ibr., pp. 97–100; Ahl., 5. Ibr., pp. 402–404 detail additional verses and alternatives from the various recensions. 39. Ahl: ... li-ḥatmi ghaybin &c. 40. Reading so with Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: wa-dhubbānun &c. 41. Ahl., v. 8, where 8b concludes: … wa-namā ktisāb-ī. 42. Ahl., v. 5: … sawfa yaslubu-nī &c. 43. Ahl: fa-qad. &c. 44. Reading so with Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: …ʿammā qarībin &c. 45. Ibr. … ẓufurin &c. 46. Asās, art. sarābun: akhdaʿu min sarābin, “more deceptive than the midday mirage”.

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1. Time 9. And have I not journeyed the broad horizons before returning, satisfied, with plunder? 10. How, after al-Ḥārith b. ʿAmr – the King – and Man of Pavilions – the virtuous Ḥujr – 11. Should I hope for respite from the doings of Time, which have neglected not even the solid mountains (al-ṣumm al-hiḍāb)? 12. And I know that, before long, I too will be stuck (anshab) on the razor-point of ‘dog-tooth’ (nāb) and ‘claw’ (ẓufr), 13. As was my father, Ḥujr, and my grandfather before; nor do I forget one slain (qatīl) at al-Kulāb.

Verses 1–2: The poet’s allusion to ‘lulling’ with meal and drink’ (wa-nusḥaru bi-l-ṭaʿāmi wa-bi-lsharāb) on a ‘journey’ of ‘little birds’ and other small creatures is elliptical, but can be understood as the existential problem of facing oncoming oblivion: This expression of ‘lulling’ (built on root s-ḥ-r, evocative of diverting people from want as children are lulled by treats, or of captivating and spell-binding, or of making the false seem true),47 is echoed in two poems of Labīd, which are helpful in grounding the meaning here. The most expressive of these two examples occurs toward the end of a mīmīya composed as an elegy on the death of Labīd’s kinsman, Arbad. The death of Arbad is a catastrophic blow that renders the surviving tribe equivalent to the ‘thirsting’, unavenged dead: they are corpse-owls (hām), and shades/echoes/owls (aṣdāʾ), shapes said to rise from the nasal cavities of the fallen to demand drink (isqāʾ), typically implying revenge.48 This state, in turn, is defined as a ‘lulling’ with meal and drink (wa-nusḥaru bi-l-sharābi wa-bi-l-ṭaʿām), boding a catastrophe comparable to that which, in legend, struck Iram and ʿĀd – civilisations apparently, also, ‘lulled’ this way (suḥirat) prior to sudden demise.49 ُ ‫َوكانَ ال َج ْز‬ ‫ظام‬ ِ ِّ‫ع يُحْ فَظُ بِالن‬ ‫هـام‬ ِ ‫َوال هُـ ْم غَـيْـ ُرأصْ دا ٍء َو‬ ‫عام‬ ِ ‫َونُ ْس َح ُر بِال َّشرا‬ ِ َّ‫ب َوبِالط‬ ‫الم النِّيام‬ ِ ْ‫فَـأضْ حَـوْ ا ِم ْث َل أح‬

ً ‫َو ُكـ ْنـتَ إما َمـنـا َولَـنا نِـظاما‬ ‫َقير‬ َ ‫ْس الـنَّاسُ بَ ْع َد‬ َ ‫َولَي‬ ٍ ‫ك في ن‬ ‫َوإنَّا قَـ ْد يُ َرى مـا نَحْ نُ فِـي ِه‬ ْ ‫كَـمـا س ُِحـ َر‬ ‫ت بِـ ِه إ َر ٌم َوعا ٌد‬

You were our leader, our binding thread (niẓām); the gems were indeed preserved by that thread. Folk, without you, exist not in the groove of a datestone; are nothing but corpse-owls (hām) and thirsting shades (aṣdāʾ). How we are now – all lulled with drink and meal (wa-nusḥaru bi-lsharābi wa-bi-l-ṭaʿāmī) – could be compared 47. Tāj, s.v. s-ḥ-r. 48. Homerin (1985). 49. Labīd (1962), pp. 208–209, vv. 28–31. The expression of these verses suggests a traditional currency of legend independent of that which exists for Iram and ʿĀd in the telling of the Qurʾan: see, e.g., Cobb (2002a) on the prophet, Hūd, and ʿĀd; Cobb (2002b) for Iram; Tottoli (2001) on ʿĀd; Buhl (1960), also on ʿĀd.

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Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia To the case of Iram and ʿĀd: lulled thus (suḥirat) to wake as substantial as the visions of dreamers.

The second example of this trope from Labīd occurs toward the end of a rāʾīya in which the poet adopts the stock attitude of countering a ‘blamer’ (ʿādhila) for suggesting that he stint on spending resources that ‘purchase’ good fame, as if this, or any other timorous defence-stratagem, could possibly protect from the inevitable end that so many kinsmen and heroes have met before – on which he then elaborates at some length.50 He moves to assert that the condition in which he sees them all is as that of ‘little birds’ (ʿaṣāfīr) being ‘lulled’ (musaḥḥar); that they merely walk a well-trodden path, the inevitable end-destination of which is once more epitomised by the demise of ʿĀd – this time accompanied by ancient Ḥimyar:51 ‫َّر‬ ‫عَصافِي ُر ِم ْن هذا‬ ِ ِ ‫األنام ال ُم َسح‬ ‫َونَرْ جُو الفَال َح بَ ْع َد عَا ٍد َو ِح ْميَ ِر‬

ْ َ‫ف‬ ‫ـإن تَسْـأَلِينا فِي َم نَحْ نُ فَـإنَّنا‬ ‫نَحُلُّ بِـالداً ُكـلُّها ُح َّل قَـبْـلَنا‬

If you ask us what case it is we are in, it is that of ‘little birds’ (ʿaṣāfīr) from created things, lulled (musaḥḥar); We put down in lands all stopped on before; Should we hope for better fortune after ʿĀd and Ḥimyar?

These two examples indicate together that the concept of ‘lulling’ relates to a material diversion of body and mind prior to an imminent collision with the end of experience; that the end-destination and the ongoing human condition are, however, un-ignorable, given the evidence and experience of past heroes and great communities that have gone before. At the same time, despite men’s status as relatively puny players in the theatre of life – they are ʿaṣāfīr, ‘little birds’ – there is no question of adopting a cowardly or unworthy stance vis-à-vis Time; and any ‘blamer’ who suggests otherwise will be countered by virtuous men who understand ‘the facts’. More specifically, the first of these two examples indicates – in complement to discussion above – that a community may experience the demise of a valued member in terms of shared, quasicorporeal damage; or, indeed, equate that damage with the absolute imminence of the appointment with oblivion that generally awaits: Arbad’s death somehow places Labīd’s tribe at the very threshold of that appointment. These points have a resonance here, in Poem 1.4, with the allusions to poet and company as ʿaṣāfīr (verse 1); to the confrontation with the ‘blamer’ (verse 4); to the sense of quasi-corporeal connection to an ancient communal body, and the cryptic reference (verse 5) to hādha l-mawt, ‘this death’ (verses 5–6); to the combative attitude adopted in full knowledge of ‘life’s 50. Labīd (1962), pp. 46–57. 51. Ibid., pp. 56–57, vv. 35–36, where the commentary to v. 35 shows no doubt that musaḥḥar connotes plying with ‘meal and drink’ (al-ṭaʿām wa-l-sharāb). On Ḥimyar, see now the bold, economic contribution of Glen Bowersock (2013), based in the pioneering studies of Christian Julien Robin and colleagues.

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facts’ (verse 7–9); and the philosophical recollection of the past experience of worthy forebears (verses 10–13). To return, then, to Poem 1.4, the reference to nutritional ‘lulling’ (verse 1), reads, at least, as an identification with the normal human condition in its collision course with non-being; and the ‘flies’ (dhibbān) and ‘grubs’ (dūd) that compound the poet’s vision (verse 2) present themselves as alternative ‘swarming’, diminutive creatures to the ‘little birds’ (ʿaṣāfīr). Lest one doubt, though, the fighting spirit of such ‘little creatures’, the poet aligns them with the axiomatic vigour of hunting wolves.52 In the ideal capacity of ‘wolves’, they may now also be linked with the conceptual ‘sickness’ (dāʾ) of hunger with which the wolf is proverbially associated, its only other ‘sickness’ being that of death, for it is otherwise considered constitutionally healthy. Hence the saying, aṣaḥḥ mina l-dhiʾb, “more sound than the wolf ’.53 In this way, the poet asserts the moral and physical constitution to face off the ghūl that is Time, ready to succumb to his ultimate ‘sickness’ – death – only in active confrontation. (As discussed below, it may be that, beyond generalities, the poet intimates by this ravening confrontation a very particular ‘sickness’ he aims to ‘heal’.) Verses 3–4: The implicit self-justification of the opening verses is rendered explicit with the introduction of the ‘blamer’ (ʿādhila), whose aspersions the poet rebuffs with a claim to inherited, innate virtue, sustained by his personal, ongoing ambition (himma). In affirming his moral and physical strength this way, he suggests that the virtue of his fathers is something upon which he continues, somehow palpably, to draw. This indicates a perception that there exists a most intimate relationship between the forces of the dead and those of the living, which succours the living in their endeavours. In this case, it is possible to expand on the earlier observation that virtue builds power and success: The suggestion is that moral and physical qualities are inherited and significantly influence the capacity of descendants to negotiate a healthy and honourable survival. This would put an onus on men always to apply virtue to maintain their heritage and ensure that any damage or ‘sickness’ incurred in the line should never go unremedied. Verses 5–6: The sense of connection between living community and dead forefathers is compounded by the poet’s allusion to his heritage in terms of a deep-rooted treestructure in which he obtains, body and substance. His body and substance – and thus, implicitly, also, the entire ‘tree’ – are under attack: the ‘sap’ of his vigour is being ‘despoiled’. The cause of this is hādhā l-mawt, “this death”, and here we encounter a 52. Asās, Tāj, s.v. j-l-ḥ, II. The figure of the wolf is discussed in the wider, developed scheme of ‘sickness’ and ‘health’ in the commentary to Poems 5.1 and 5.2. 53. Muḥkam, Qāmūs, art. dāʾun; Tāj, art. dhiʾbun.

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slight problem, for, inasmuch as this reference has been addressed, the inclination has been to infer that mawt is ‘death’ personified, and that the demonstrative, hādhā, is ‘derogatory’ rather than specific.54 Against this, it should be said that – unlike alDahr, al-manīya, al-manūn and so forth – there is generally very little sense that mawt, in the earliest poetry, is a term for death personified, so much as the act of dying or the fact of death.55 Meanwhile, the mīmīya verses of Labīd cited shortly above (in the commentary to verses 1–2) illustrate how a specific death – that of a close kinsman – can precipitate a crisis expressed in near-identical terms to those arising here, rendering the community a company of drained and ‘thirsty’ conceptual-dead. In other words, hādhā l-mawt may relate, rather, to the death of a particular kinsman, which finds the community body similarly ‘despoiled’ of vital liquid, and threatened with radical devastation. One may conclude, at least, then, from these verses that a quasi-organic intimacy between the heritage of the dead and the living descendants involves the living conceptually drawing on inherited resources as if from a liquid bank; that the deathprinciple – which is ultimately to be traced to Time – is an aggression (or, as we have seen, a ‘sickness’) that violates and depletes those ‘liquid’ resources; and that this potentially fatal depletion explains the conceit of brinking on death. More particularly, however, if we take hādhā l-mawt to allude to the specific death of a kinsman – a murder, even – then the conceit of rushing, ravening, toward awaiting doom could allude to an enterprise designed to stem the ‘sapping’ of this aggression by redeeming the loss of that soul, and thus ‘healing’ and replenishing the communal body. In this case, one could allow that the predatory ‘wolves’ of verse 2 go forth with the hungering ‘sickness’ of a blood-suit, with a view to achieving the ‘healing’ (shifāʾ) of revenge.56 An important additional implication attaches to the liquid-conceit arising here; namely, that if the ‘bank’ of community power is a heritage that affords the living ‘waters’ upon which to draw to preserve or assert themselves, and if maintaining this vital resource requires virtue, then actions may be conceptualised as the drawing and wielding of ‘liquid force’, whilst virtue should serve as guarantor of the life-supply.57 In 54. Following Bravmann’s translation for this demonstrative in terms of ḍamīr li-l-dhamm, “derogatory pronoun”: Bravmann (1972), p. 4, the continuation of n. 2 from p. 3. 55. The data presented in Ringgren (1955), esp. pp. 61–85 is a testament to this, albeit also showing mawt as an abstract. 56. Explicit reference to vengeance as ‘healing’ is carried, for example, in a bāʾīya (Ibr., pp. 138–139) where the poet laments the escape of those who would have served as his ‘cure’ (shifāʾ) had they not been protected from punishment by their fortune (jadd) through the sons of their father and other wretches (vv. 1–2): a-lā yā lahfa hindin ithra qawmin/humū kānū l-shifāʾa fa-lam yuṣābū//waqā-hum jaddu-hum bi-banī abī-him/wa-bi-l-ashqayni mā kāna l-ʿiqābū. 57. See again v. 2 of the bāʾīya cited above, n. 56. The force of the Arabic is that what has protected the escapees is the assistance of allies who are living executors of a virtue that emanates directly from their jadd. The roots of jadd are associated not only with fortune, ancestry and subsistence, but also with abundant source-water. This is a detail addressed in Fahd (1968), p. 78 ff. From this last association, he argues, jadd came early to denote the local deity, or jinnī,

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their context, verses 5–6 imply that the poet’s recollection of ‘roots’ struck deep into the liquid resource of the ‘[ancestral] root of the earth’ (ʿirq al-tharā) is a recognition of responsibility to a living legacy; it also suggests his heightened awareness of Time’s passage and the ongoing mortality of successive generations.58 These points are noted for progressive discussion of the conceits of ‘thirsting’ and ‘drinking’; of the liquid succouring (isqāʾ) of the dead man’s ṣadā (his ‘echo’ or ‘ghost-owl’); of how actions are habitually expressed in terms of drawing or wielding water, coming to, or going from, water. The seminal resonance of ʿirq (‘root’, ‘stock’) may also be noted: We shall see how seed, as well as soul and action, are integrally linked in a net of liquid conceits. Thus heavily stricken, and in full recognition of his mortality, the poet proceeds to illustrate the unimpeachable, hereditary constitution that sustains him. Verses 6–9: Reminding himself of past exertions, the poet steels himself for what he must face, ‘fleshing out’ the experiences (tajārib – claimed in verse 4) that render him immune to the censurer’s blame. What he describes is symptomatic of iblāʾ: the valorous exertion that manifests a man’s ‘excuse’ (ʿudhr). These are trials and wasting journeys that have proven his worth in the face of deceit and danger (trials called balāyā). So, he demonstrates noble ambition (himma, claimed in verse 3), and virtuous endurance (ṣabr).59 Recourse to luhām (verse 8) to express a great army that ‘gluts’ on what it takes, finds a certain resonance with the ‘meal’ (ṭaʿām) of verse 1, which lent edibility to the negotiation of trial.60 This is enhanced by the reference to spoils as maʾākil (synonyms: which protected watering holes that were the rallying centres of nomads, and that the ancestor who sank or managed the well came to be identified with it; cf. al-Samawʾal (1909), p. 9, ll. 1–3: how the moral and physical power of a people of exemplary, inherited virtue, are figured as an impregnable mountain-fort with ‘roots’ struck deep into the moist earth (al-tharā), and an unattainable ‘branch’ that has been raised to touch the Pleiades (la-nā jabalun yaḥtallu-hū man nuḥillu-hū/munīfun yaruddu l-ṭarfa wa-hwa kalīlū//rasā aṣlu-hū taḥta l-tharā wa-samā bi-hī/ ilā l-najmi farʿun lā yurāmu ṭawīlū). This heritage is built on daring in war, unsullied seed, and the perpetual redemption of dead men’s souls; cf. ibid., pp. 15–17. In defence of his moral integrity, the poet figures his inheritance as a towering fort and a ‘spring’ upon which to draw at need – an inheritance that relates to his power to ward off any oppression; one which his jadd established, counselling him never to squander it (banā lī ʿādiyā ḥiṣnan ḥaṣīnan/wa-ʿaynan kullamā shiʾtu staqaytū//ṭimirran tazliqu l-ʿiqbānu ʿan-hū/idhā mā ḍāma-nī shayʾun abaytū//wa-awṣā ʿādīyā jadd-ī bi-an lā/tuḍayyiʿa yā samawʾalu mā banaytū). The remainder of the poem illustrates that it is the application of virtue that fulfils this counsel. 58. Cf. Lyall (1918–1921), IX, of Mutammim, vv. 42–43: Manfully refusing to weep at the inevitability of Fate, the poet counts his ancestors back to the ‘root of the earth’ (ʿirq al-tharā), knowing they cannot hear when he calls; they have responded to the call of the [she]-ghūl [of Death] and gone the wide way that all must tread: fa-ʿadadtu ābāʾ-ī ilā ʿirqi l-tharā/fa-daʿawtu-hum fa-ʿalimtu an lam yasmaʿū//dhahabū fa-lam udrik-humū wa-daʿat-humū/ghūlun ataw-hā wa-l-ṭarīqu l-mahyaʿū. 59. Mughnī, s.v. b-l-w, IV; cf. Bravmann (1972), pp. 32–33: his analysis of the virtue of one called baʿīd al-himma, which he relates in origin to the negotiation of local distance. 60. This nuance of luhām is picked up by Ibr., p. 99, n. 8.

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ṭuʿam and ākāl, ‘edibles’). Mention of maʾākil in the context of military leadership might also indicate a claim to the lordly status of those called dhawū l-ākāl, whose right in the jāhilīya it was to take the mirbāʿ – or fourth part – of the spoil, all of this serving to indicate the proven worth and efficacy of the poet’s intisāb, the ancestral pedigree that he claimed (verse 4) should suffice him as defence against blame. Verses 10–13: Now openly articulating his expectation of an encounter with Death, the poet equates inherited, manly virtue with the quality of the solid rock of the mountains (al-ṣumm alhiḍāb). The force of this is, of course, to strengthen the sense of inexorable supremacy attributed to al-Dahr, to which the quality, aṣammu (‘deaf ’/‘solid’), is also applied; but it suggests, too, that the poet perceives his virtuous forebears to be the closest mortal contenders for comparison with the relative strength and permanence of the mountains.61 (The D.Ṣ. gloss simply asserts that al-ṣumm al-hiḍāb are his forefathers). This recalls the concluding verses of Poem 1.1, above, and the implication that virtue promotes a people’s best long-term hope of distinction and survival; a perception informing the numerous conceits that equate virtue to rock.62 Time’s imminent onslaught is figured allusively (verse 12) as an irresistible, predatory beast with claws and fangs. This resonates at one level with al-Dahr’s status as ghūl, whilst the force of anshab (‘I will be stuck/seized by’) renders the poet the equivalent of hunted prey.63 And the resonance of Time’s predation carries through to the subsequent verse: al-Dahr, with its ‘dog tooth’ and ‘claw’, is the primary culprit behind the death of all three figures to whom the poet alludes (verse 13). The conceptual ‘canine’ associations that accrue to al-Dahr, are intriguing in the context of tradition and a battle known by the name of al-Kulāb, to which, it seems, the poet alludes. Traditionally, al-Kulāb here is taken to relate to a water of Taghlib in North Arabia where a battle took place that ended the supremacy of the kings of Kinda 61. See, for example, Lyall (1918–1921), LIV, of al-Muraqqish al-Akbar, v. 9: Nothing abides forever but Shāba and Adam (said to be mountains whose everlasting duration is often contrasted to the transient lives of men). 62. See Tāj, arts aṣammu, ṣafan: aṣammu (‘deaf ’), is applied not only to solid rock unblemished by cracks, but also to a man unyielding in pursuing his objectives, or one who is generous and graced by ḥilm, ‘deaf ’ to what is false or base. Smooth stone is also proverbially related to karam (‘generous nobility’) and ʿirḍ (‘sacred honour’), as evidenced, e.g., in the saying: mā yabiḍḍu ḥajaru-hu, “his rock gives no water” (applied to the niggardly: Tāj, art. baḍḍa), and qaraʿa ṣafātahu, “he cracked the ‘smooth stone’ of another” (impugned his honour: Mughnī s.v. gh-m-z); cf. Lyall (1918–1921), XL, of Suwayd, vv. 83–84: the poet identifies his unassailable virtue with an unapproachable smooth rock (ṣafāt) at the top of a mountain; similarly, al-Tibrīzī (1969), al-Ḥārith, vv. 25–26. 63. Tāj, s.v. n-sh-b, IV; Lane arts nashiba, anshaba; cf. above, n. 5: al-Dahr ‘sinks its talons’ (anshaba fī-l-makhālib) into its victim; cf. above, n. 33: Death (al-manīya) sinks its claws (anshabat aẓfārahā) into its prey. The proverbial conceptualisation of al-Dahr as a force with anyāb (‘canines’) is attested, e.g., Asās, art. nābun: ʿaḍḍat-hu anyābu l-dahr, “the dog-teeth of Fortune bit him”.

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over the Arab tribes of Central Arabia, and resulted in the death of one Shuraḥbīl, to whom the anonymous qatīl is said to refer.64 Kulāb is a synonym of kalab, implying something like ‘rabies’; and it is an affliction proverbially related to the virulence of al-Dahr. It connotes straitness, conceptual drought, the state of a parched and rabid man who abstains from water until he dies.65 It is a condition for which the blood of kings is said to be the cure: dimāʾu l-mulūki ashfā mina l-kalab/dimāʾu l-mulūki shifāʾu l-kalab. Some have taken it, literally, that royal blood is medicine; others, that this relates to a desire for blood-vengeance, which, once achieved, will heal the avenger’s rage, the blood being a ‘cure’ (shifāʾ) that is not actually drunk. One could see, in this case, how coining a battle, where scores were settled with the blood of kings, by the name of al-Kulāb, would be entirely complementary to a conceptual world where al-Dahr is a ‘rabid’ creature possessed of ‘dog-teeth’.66 64. For a summary of tradition on the First Day of al-Kulāb, see Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 2, pp. 157–158, n. 22. The commentators say that the poet means Shuraḥbīl b. ʿAmr, whom they refer to as his ʿamm, or paternal uncle. This follows one line of tradition relating to the Ḥujrid rulers from which Imruʾ al-Qays is said to descend. El-Sakkout (1994), ch. 5, pp. 97–101, tackles the confusing accounts concerning the Ḥujrid Kindīs, and offers (ibid., p. 98) a simplified picture of the family line that complements this identification. 65. Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. k-l-b: the sayings, kaliba ʿalay-hi l-dahru, dahrun kalibun (for Fortune pressing injuriously on men), dafaʿta ʿan-ka kalaba fulān, “I have averted from you the evil/injurious conduct of such a one”; cf. Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. ḥ-r-b: The verb, ḥariba, and the adjective, ḥaribun, which are semantically tied to ‘despoliation’, can connote a vehement rage, or an affliction with canine madness, considered synonymous with kaliba and kalibun. 66. Cf. Lyall (1918–1921), XXX, attributed ʿAbd Yaghūth b. Waqqāṣ, chief of the Banū al-Ḥārith b. Kaʿb. This is said to relate to a battle known as al-Kulāb the Second, but which apparently took place circa AD 611, at a different location from the First Day of al-Kulāb, suggested by Lyall to be Qiḍah/Qiḍḍa in al-Yamāma. This battle resulted in the slaying of ʿAbd Yaghūth in revenge for al-Nuʿmān b. Jisās, leader of the Tamīmī confederates. The captured poet claims distinction (vv. 4–5) as the boon companion of chiefs including Qays al-Yaman, a king of Kinda, and calls down the shame of God on his allies for [the events of] al-Kulāb whereby he was left to his fate. Alluding again to his status (vv. 9–10), he disclaims responsibility for the death of al-Nuʿmān in words suggestive, as Lyall has noted (ibid., vol. 2, p. 113, n. 9), of his being too elevated to rate as an appropriate bawāʾ (equal ransom) for the latter. The question might, thus, be raised, again, as to whether it was not the specific nature of certain fateful events, and the particular blood-price in question (a royal one), that gave rise to the name al-Kulāb here, too; cf., in complement, ibid., XXXV, of ʿAwf b. al-Aḥwaṣ: The poet makes a forensic plea to his brother-tribe in respect of bloodshed for which he accepts responsibility on behalf of his own. His appeal for camels and herdsmen to be accepted as appropriate bloodwit is ironically argued on the basis that neither tribe can claim the price of kings whose blood is the cure for kalab. On the fusion of royal blood as real and conceptual ‘cure’, see the legend of King Jadhīma al-Abrash in al-Iṣfahānī (1927–1961), pt. 15, pp. 315–318. Here, the conceptual value of royal blood, and its shedding to avenge an equal, are inseparable from its perceived capacity to heal a vitiating ‘sickness’: Queen al-Zabbāʾ wants Jadhīma’s life for the death of her father. She suffers [as a consequence] khabl (lit: a corrupting malady, or severance of the limbs). She invites Jadhīma to ‘donate’ blood to ‘cure’ her, and ensures that a drop spills from the waiting receptacle. A soothsayer has advised her this will result in his death, and it does. The narrator is prompted

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An overview of this poem presents a picture that recalls especially the substance of Poem 1.2: The kin-unit to which the poet is responsible suffers an aggression inflicting damage that is ultimately attributable to Time and its ‘sickness’. This obliges the poet to counter with applied virtue to effect a ‘healing’. The ‘healing’ implies self-expenditure to equalise the damage incurred – perhaps, in this case, through retribution. In any event, that the poet bears the burden of ‘sickness’, and assumes responsibility for ‘counter-remedy’, suggests that corruption would otherwise diminish or destroy his line. In this case, the ethic emerges as a code for ensuring the continued wellbeing of a line, both in name and in substance. Poem 1.5:6768 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 ‫ كَـفَّـ ْي ِه في قُـتـ َ ِر ْه‬68 ‫ـج‬ ٍ ِ‫ُمـ ْتـل‬ ‫ بـانـا ٍة عَــلـى َو ت َِر ْه‬69‫َغي ِْر‬ ‫ النَّ ْز َع في يَ َس ِر ْه‬70‫فَـتَـنَـحَّـى‬ 72 ُ ‫ أَوْ عُـق ِر ْه‬71‫ض‬ ِ ْ‫بِـإزا ِء الحَو‬ ‫كَــتَـلَـظّـي الـ َج ْم ِر في شَـ َر ِر ْه‬ ‫ثُـ َّم أ ْنـها هُ عَــلـى َح َج ِر ْه‬ ‫ـر ْه‬ ِ َ‫مـا لَـهُ ال عُـ َّد ِمن نَـف‬ ‫َغ ْي َر ها َكسْـبٌ عَــلـى ِكبَ ِر ْه‬ ‫ـر ْه‬ ِ َ‫ثُـ َّم ال أَبْــكـي عَــلـى أَث‬ ‫َر ْه‬ َ ِ ‫ض عن َكد‬ ِ ْ‫ص ْف َو ما ِء الحَو‬ ٌ ‫َو َح‬ ‫ص ِر ْه‬ َ ِ‫ـديث ما عَـلـى ق‬ 76 ‫ِم ْث ِل ضَوْ ِء البَ ْد ِر في ُغ َر ِر ْه‬

َّ‫ُرب‬ ‫ـل‬ ٍ ‫رام ِمن بَـني ثُ َع‬ ٍ ‫ض َزوْ را َء ِمن نَش ٍَـم‬ ِ ٍ ‫عار‬ ً‫وار َدة‬ ُ‫قَـ ْد أَتَـ ْتـهُ الـ َوحْ ـش‬ ِ َ‫فَـ َر مـا هَـا في ف‬ ‫رائصها‬ ِ ‫ش ِم ْن ِكـنـا نَـتِـ ِه‬ ٍ ‫بِ َر هـيـ‬ ‫ضـ ٍة‬ ‫راشَـهُ ِمن‬ َ ‫ريش نا ِه‬ ِ ُ‫ ال تَـنـمي َرمـيَّـتُـه‬73‫فَهْـ َو‬ ْ ‫ُم‬ َّ ‫ـطـ َعـ ٌم لِل‬ ُ‫يس لَـه‬ َ َ‫ص ْي ِد ل‬ 74 ُ ُ‫َـلـيـل قَـ ْد أ‬ ُ‫فـار قـه‬ ٍ ‫َو خ‬ ِ ُ ‫ابـن عَـ ٍّم قَـ ْد تَ َر ْك‬ ُ‫ت لَـه‬ ِ ‫َو‬ 75 ُ ‫َو َح‬ ‫ب يَوْ َم هُـنَا‬ ِ ‫ديث ال َر ْك‬ ُ ‫َو ا ب ِْن َع ٍّم قَ ْد فُ ِجع‬ ‫ْت بِـ ِه‬

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

1. I think of an archer (rubba rāmin) of Banū Thuʿal,77 inserting/ withdrawing his hands from the screen of his covert

to note that the blood of kings is the cure (shifāʾ) for khabl, citing a verse of al-Mutalammis to this effect. 67. Metre: madīd. D.Ṣ., pp. 102–103; Ibr., pp. 123–127; Ahl., 29. Ibr., pp. 412–413 details variants, most of which are covered in Ahl. 68. Ahl: mukhrijin kaffay-hi min sutari-h. 69. Ibr.’s vocalisation. Ahl: ghayra &c. D.Ṣ. is unvocalised. 70. Ahl: fa-tamannā &c. 71. Ahl: min izāʾi l-ḥawḍi &c. 72. Here, following Ibr. & Ahl., which seems correct. D.Ṣ: ʿuqari-h. 73. Ibr: fa-huwa. 74. Ahl: … qad uṣāḥibu-hū &c. 75. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … yawma hunan &c. 76. Verse 12 is carried in Ibr.’s variant details, p. 413. 77. Glossed, Ibr., p. 123, n. 1, as a tribe of Ṭayyiʾ with a pedigree of archers.

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111

2. Presenting the broadside of a nasham-wood bow,78 refraining from leaning over the bowstring.79 3. Wild creatures (waḥsh) coming to water approach; and he aims to shoot before the face. 4. He pierces them in their mortal spots (farāʾiṣ) before the pool (ḥawḍ) or by its hinter parts, 5. With fine-chiselled arrows, brought from the quiver, that fly with the spark of blazing coals, 6. Feathered with the delicate plumes of a bird just ready to fly, then pared upon his whetting stone. 7. Never does his quarry escape – what ails him? – may he be lost to his people!80 8. With a prosperous livelihood in the chase, he looks for no gain besides, for all his great age. 9. I think of the true companion (wa-khalīlin) whom I might forsake (qad ufāriqu-hū)/with whom I might consort (qad uṣāḥibu-hū) – then shed no tears at his farewell; 10. Of the paternal cousin (wa-bni ʿamm) to whom I would concede unsullied drink at the watering-pool (ḥawḍ); 11. And a company of riders and their convivial talk for a period that was all too short; 12. Of a cousin (wa-bni ʿamm) suddenly torn from me, his virtue as bright as the waxen moon (al-badr).

Verses 1–8: This poem is a beautiful example of indirect poetic development through the manipulation of rubba structures (discussed at some length in Part 1:2, s.v. Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin); that is to say, through the manipulation of juxtaposed ‘building-blocks’ of verse, introduced by the minimalist device of rubba, or wāw rubba, wherewith the poet thinks of topics in succession, requiring the hearer to mediate the meaning and construe a resultant ‘product’. Verses 1–8 constitute together one integral, aggregrate block that develops the image of a hunter – ostensibly a man of Thuʿal – of unfathomably prodigious talent. However, the poet gives successive clues that he does not praise the skill of the Thuʿal hunter gratuitously; that he figures, rather, the relentless efficiency with which Time takes men. Major clues to this effect arise in the details of verses 7–8: (i) that this hunter’s quarry never escapes; (ii) that the hunter has no other occupation than the pursuit of flesh-meat; (iii) that he is very advanced in years. The first of these statements echoes a common wisdom relating to the Fates, whose arrows are said never to miss when they aim to hit;81 the second, 78. Identified in Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 2, p. 381, s.v. ‘Bow’, as Grewia velutina. 79. Ibr., pp. 123–124, n. 2. Variant vocalisations (v. 2), and the possibility for bānātun to mean either ‘cleaving’ (bāniya) or ‘widely divergent’ (bāʾina), complicate the message here. In all events, the sense is that the archer’s technique is faultless. 80. An imprecation of admiration that is carried in proverb: Lane, art. nafarun. 81. Neatly expressed by Labīd: innā l-manāyā lā taṭīshu sihāmu-hā (al-Tibrīzī (1969), Labīd, v. 39b).

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Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

in the context, is resonant of the predatory, flesh-hunting propensities of al-Dahr (see verse 1 of Poem 1.1) in whose hands all lives are held in pledge; the third then rings with the sense of a hostile force of eternity.82 By a process of backward reflection, these statements lend force to the indication, verse 6, that the hunter’s prodigious technique implies a supreme capacity for profit and mischief: The details here – that the hunter ‘feathers’ and ‘pares’ – are inversely reflected in a proverb applied to those who can neither profit nor harm.83 The imprecation that concludes verse 7, which might otherwise express admiration, would thus, ultimately, be subverted into a sublimated curse. Verses 9–12: The paratactical overlay, beginning in verse 9, introduces an apparent disconnect, which, however, verse by verse, confirms the identity of this supreme hunter. The poet thinks – via a sequence of rubba formulae – of past associations of good faith, which culminate in a final statement of understated grief at enforced separation through death. Clearly indicative of stoicism (ṣabr) applied through recurring rifts that are brought by Time, this sequence also opens another window onto the poetical net of liquid conceits: The allusion to the ḥawḍ (verse 10) reflects, for one thing, the shared source (discussed above in the commentary to verse 5 of Poem 1.4) to which kinsmen figuratively attain, and which is identified with a virtuous heritage, the purity and repleteness of which all are obliged to guard by the mutual application of virtue.84 Thus, referring here to his concession of un-muddied waters to his kinsman at a shared source, the poet not only evokes his respect for the virtue and standing of a brother (tribesmen went to water in strict order of status),85 but also his own absolute good faith. Furthermore, this ḥawḍ stands in stark contrast to the ḥawḍ mentioned earlier in verse 4, a place of predatory entrapment, evoking, rather, ḥawḍ al-mawt, the ‘drink’ 82. Cf., by reflection, Lyall (1918–1921), XL, of Suwayd b. Abī Kāhil, esp. vv. 93–96. The poet alludes to an age-old dispute, conducted through ancestral lines, in terms of the mutual discharge of arrows, long-infused with poison, of workmanship beyond that of all but the most skilful, which came forth from patent hatred when al-Dahr was still a lively youth. 83. Tāj, s.v. r-y-sh, I: the saying, fulānun lā yarīshu wa-lā yabrī, “Such a one neither feathers nor pares”, i.e., neither profits nor injures. 84. The importance of the communal ḥawḍ as a figure for the life of a people informs the wisdom of Zuhayr (1969), p. 88, l. 2 (v. 53 in the edition of al-Tibrīzī): wa-man lam yadhud ʿan ḥawḍi-hi bi-silāḥi-hi/yuhaddam … “Those who defend not their water with their weapons [will see it] destroyed …”; cf. Lyall (1918–1921), XII, of al-Ḥuṣayn b. al-Ḥumām, v. 17: a-thaʿlaba law kuntum mawāliya mithli-hā/idhan la-manaʿnā ḥawḍa-kum an yuhaddamā, “O men of Thaʿlabah! If ye had been our comrades in a war like this, then would we have defended your cistern from being broken down” (Lyall’s translation) – prompting Lyall to comment (ibid., vol. 2, p. 39, n. 17): “The breaking-down of a man’s (or tribe’s) cistern is a proverbial phrase for bringing disaster upon him” – by which he had in mind the previous citation. 85. Al-Tibrīzī (1879), pt. 1, p. 118.

1. Time

113

of death.86 The contrast indicates the poet’s self-dissociation from any such treachery. (The fact of the verbal repetition is also worth noting, for it illustrates what appears to be a recurrent device of the composite qaṣīda, which binds the ear and inner eye to essential features of development, attesting to the intra-referentiality of the parts). The good faith of the kinsman he has in mind is encoded in the allusion to ghurra (verse 12): the ‘shining’ virtue associated with stellar and lunar light, here referenced by comparison to the fully waxed moon (badr) – on which, more later. By the time the poet concludes his sequence of remembered losses, the ulterior message of the hunter-scene has become clear: The ideal archer of Thuʿal is the ideal hunter, Death. The mood is one of coping with separation and loss, the poet permitting the blow of bereavement finally to emerge at the end. The further ‘product’ of this juxtaposition is an indirect statement of commitment to ethical endeavour and good faith in covenant, despite – or, perhaps, especially because of – the calamities that Time inevitably brings. The poet has articulated a harnessing of strength that benefits his state of mind whilst honouring the memory of a kinsman; and he has claimed virtue by creating a montage that conveys his message by a process of collateral semantic reflection. It follows that the waḥsh of verse 3 figure human lives - specifically, here, the life of a kinsman; and this recalls the poet’s implicit identification of self and kinsmen with the ‘hunted quarry’ of al-Dahr in verses 12–13 of the preceding poem. The term waḥsh is applied to animals such as the wild ass and oryx, which might visit such waters as the ḥawḍ of verse 4 in ‘natural’ poetic episodes. This is notable, for these creatures hold a special place in the poets’ discussion of their own endeavours. It is especially the wild ass and oryx with which poets identify when elaborating a confrontation with initiatives from Death, which are typically figured in the form of hunters – whether waterside archers, as here, or else hunters with dogs.87 Inasmuch as the poets also, typically, single out the heart as the prime focus of predatory aggressions, the specification (verse 4) of the mortal spots (farāʾiṣ, s. farīṣa) is worth noting: The farīṣa relates specifically to an area between the shoulder and ribs, which, when struck, permits access to the heart.88 Lastly here, in light of earlier discussion on the appropriate response to the ‘departure’ (bayn) of kinsmen (i.e., essentially, to their betrayal of faith), the poet’s expression of fortitude in the face of loss (verse 9) is of interest. His response is mufāraqa and the conscious suppression of tears. Mufāraqa (synonymous with mubāyana) is an act of separation or abandonment in response to being oneself forsaken. As noted above (in relation to verses 5–6 of Poem 1.1), this is one prescribed solution to injury 86. Tāj, art. ḥawḍun. 87. Famously illustrated in an extraordinary elegy of Abū Dhuʾayb (Lyall (1918–1921), CXXVI) who, in the course of illustrating the inevitable conquest of al-Dahr over all living things, figures its onslaught, for one thing (vv. 14–34), as a waterside hunter slaughtering a troop of onager coming to the pool, and, for another (vv. 35–48), a hunter and dogs bringing down a dazzling bull-oryx. 88. Muḥkam, s.v. f-r-ṣ; Ibr., p. 124, n. 4, picks up this point.

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through an affiliate’s moral failure, malignant betrayal, or demise. What we appear to see here is a concept of guiltless ‘betrayal’ in the form of a ‘departure’ to death, discussed as an analogy of a break in kin-ties, which demands a similar, sanguine moral response. This would also be to say that succumbing to death somehow equates to a break, or switch of, affiliation, which burdens the abandoned party with morbid affliction – attributable to the malignance of Time – and obliges him to summon the virtue required to effect a ‘healing’. There is no suggestion, in this instance, that ‘healing’ must be sought through vengeance. In his final verses, the poet intimates, rather, a harnessing of ṣabr and related virtues, indicating his ability to find a stoic response to any aggression of Time that might otherwise threaten his mind and person.89 The poem as a whole may be viewed as an expression of mourning of such containment that it attests to the poet’s exemplary virtue. Conclusion This chapter finds al-Dahr to be a negative force of change and chance to which all destruction is ultimately traced. It is the collector of the ‘pledges’ (rihān) of life, a formidable predator, beast, or hunter. It steals moral and physical force. Its aggressions are construed as ‘sickness’, wont to ‘infect’ individuals and the communal bodies that unite them in covenant. The ethic of murūwa stands in antithesis to Time’s effects. It is the moral resort of men who would prevent al-Dahr from encroaching too far on the communal body, from threatening those they protect, their resources, and the long-term survival of their line. Murūwa demands faithful provision, generous and combative action, the redemption of souls, the ‘healing’ of moral and physical corruption. It stands, in short, as a code for life in contradistinction to the initiative of Death.

89. Cf. below, Poem 2.5: how, checking himself after tears (v. 4), the poet disparages such incontinence as an incapacity promising ill for the management of any affair.

Chapter 2 Camps

This chapter focuses on community abodes (diyār s. dār) and their conceptual values. In order to identify these values, the associations and functions of ‘live’ diyār are examined before those of the deserted – and always in relation to each poem as a whole. Here, we revisit the clear, ideological message of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim’s Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII (discussed in Part 1:2) that ethical failure, or sin (ithm), have ritual implications for relations within compact, which extend to the divine; and that a people’s relative virtue is reflected in the state and security of its abodes. We develop, also, our acquaintance with those protected liquid resources that sustain and empower moral endeavour to include now not only ground- and sky-water, but also seed. We see something, too, of man as microcosm of the kin-clan and its integrity; how the body and heart figure, respectively, the host-community (ahl) and its protected neighbour (jār); how the spirit and vital faculties of youth, which abandon us with time, are figured as departing kinsmen and wives, inspiring the demoralising terrors of rayb al-dahr. And we shall see repeated examples of how the moral imperative always to resist these disempowering effects is reflected in the economic, structural device of dialectical layering: the employment of incantational rubba formulae (also discussed first in Part 1:2) to achieve the ‘product’ of moral resurrection. Poem 2.1:12345

‫ي ال َحديدا‬ َ ‫َو أَ ْبلِ ْغ ذل‬ َّ ‫ك ْال َح‬ ‫يار ُك ُم بَعيدا‬ ‫د‬ ‫ن‬ ‫م‬ ِ ِ 3ً ‫َسـحيقـا‬ ِ ُ ْ‫ت ْالمو‬ ُ ‫لَقُ ْل‬ ٌّ ‫ت َح‬ ‫ق ال ُخلودا‬ 2

4

‫َمرو‬ ِ ‫أال أ ْبلِ ْغ بَني حُجْ ِر‬ ٍ ‫بن ع‬ ُ ‫بِأنّي قَ ْد هَلَ ْك‬ ‫ض قَوْ ٍم‬ ِ ْ‫ت بِأر‬ 5 َ ُ ‫َولَوأَنّي هَلَ ْك‬ ْ‫ر‬ ‫ض قَوْ مي‬ ‫أ‬ ‫ب‬ ِ ‫ت‬ ِ

1 2 3

1. Metre: wāfir. D.Ṣ., p. 87; Ibr., pp. 213–214; Ahl., 13. Ibr., pp. 436–437 identifies the details of most variants appearing in D.Ṣ and Ahlwardt here. 2. Ibr: … al-ḥarīdā. 3. Ahl: … /baʿīdan &c. 4. Ibr. replaces v. 2 with: bi-annī qad baqītu baqāʾa nafsin/wa-lam ukhlaq silāman aw ḥadīdā, “that I am to live the span of a mortal soul, for I was not created of rock or iron”. Verse 2 appears, modified, as v. 4 in Ibr: wa-lākinnī halaktu bi-arḍi qawmin/baʿīdin &c. 5. Ibr: fa-law annī halaktu bi-dāri qawm-ī &c.

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

116

‫َوأَجْ ِدرْ بِـال َمـنـيَّـ ِة أن تَقودا‬ ‫شـاف فَيُسْـنَـ َد أوْ يَعودا‬ ‫َوال‬ ٍ 8 ‫َوحاقَةَ ْإذ َو َر ْدنَ بِنا ُورودا‬ ‫عـودا‬10 َ‫ مـا يَ ْع ِد ْفـن‬9‫أَ ِز َّمتُه َُّن‬ 6

‫ص َر ُكـ َّل يَوْ ٍم‬ َ ‫أُعالِ ُج ُم ْل‬ َ ‫ك قَـ ْي‬ 7 ٌ‫ض ال ّش ِأم ال نَ َسبٌ قَريب‬ ِ ْ‫بِأَر‬ ‫س‬ ٍ ‫َو لَوْ وا فَ ْقتُه َُّن على أُ َس ْي‬ ‫ت‬ ٍ ‫ص تَظَلُّ ُمقَلَّدا‬ ٍ ُ‫عـلى قُل‬

4 5 6 7

1. Let it reach the Banū Ḥujr b. ʿAmr; let it reach those, our near next-neighbours (al-ḥayy al-ḥadīd)/that distinguished, mighty folk (al-ḥayy al-ḥarīd)678910 2. I die in the land of a people far removed from your abodes. 3. Were I to die in my kinsmen’s land (arḍ)/abode (dār), I would say: death’s fair, there’s no forever.11 4. Each day I strive with (uʿālij) Caesar’s dominion; and how fit is Death to lead (an taqūdā)/how well I know Death’s calling card (an taʿūdā). 5. No kindred soul in Syrian land; no prop, no ‘healer’ (shāfin) to attend. 6. Would that it were Usays and Ḥāqa where we would meet them when they bring us to water (idh waradna bi-nā wurūdā)/ or that they would take us to water at Zarūd (aw waradna bi-nā zarūdā) 7. Upon long-limbed, hardy camel-mares, their leading-ropes about them as they take slight feed on ligneous sprigs.

Verses 1–5: The dominant mood here is ghurba: the condition or experience of feeling a stranger far from the native abode; and this intensifies the poet’s gloom as he contemplates imminent crisis and death. Alternatively, one could say that the poet suffers a heightened experience of the ‘separation’ called bayn. As discussed in Chapter 1, an immediate concomitant of bayn is ‘sickness’: fear, psychological and physical malaise; exposure to the fearful effects of Time (rayb al-dahr). Desire for the moral and physical succour that faithful kinsmen can offer is brought into relief in verses 4–5. The poet’s choice of ʿālaja (verse 4) to express his trial, indeed, suggests conflict with what he construes as disease: Beyond striving with an adversary, ʿālaja evokes combat against bodily sickness and intellectual confusion.12 Verse 4b shows that, while the focus of his contention is ‘Caesar’s dominion’, the poet has abstracted the root of his trouble and traced it to the workings of Death. That the aggression he confronts is conceptual ‘sickness’ is underlined in al-Aṣmaʿī’s reading of this verse (Ibr., verse  5), which 6. Ibr. (v. 5): … an taʿūdā. 7. Ibr: bi-arḍi l-rūmi &c. 8. Ibr. (v. 7): wa-law wāfaqtu-hunna ʿalā usaysin/ḍuḥayyan aw waradna bi-nā zarūdā. 9. Reading so with Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … azimmata-hunna. 10. Ahl: … mā yaʿdiqna &c. 11. The poet’s mortality is enhanced in the reading of Ibr. (see above, n. 4) 12. Lisān, s.v. ʿ-l-j, III.

2.  Camps

117

concludes: an taʿūdā, evoking here the quality of a returning illness. The variant, an taqūdā (Ahl., D.Ṣ., verse 4), evokes the idea of force that will easily bring the weak to heel (recall, in this light, the discussion of verses 4–5 of Poem 1.3: the ignominy of the būha who was, allegedly, ‘tractable’). Verse 5, meanwhile, openly signals a struggle with sickness: ʿāda is specifically used of visiting the sick, and the poet expresses the need for a healer (shāfin). That shāfin extends both to bodily healing and the relief of mental doubt, complements a context where both the intellectual and physical assaults of rayb al-dahr are at issue; and that the desire for relief is so intimately related to a wish for the presence of consanguine relations, indicates that close kin would have been expected to visit at such times, and provide the best assistance.13 This attests to a perception that the mutual support of kinsmen affords surety against Time’s accidents; and it is the figure of the tribal abode that emerges as the most powerful and succinct sign to this effect. Verses 6–7: The precise meaning of verses 6–7 is unclear; but the suggestion is that an encounter with Death remains uppermost in the poet’s mind, and that he has a preferred vision of how to meet the Fates if and when he is forced to succumb. Verse 6b illustrates a conceit noted earlier: an encounter with Death will typically be a ‘coming to water’. As far as one can have confidence in the ostensible place-names – and they cannot be certainly identified  –  the theme of ‘death by drink’ finds a certain resonance in these also: Usays has been identified, for one thing, as a water (māʾ) in eastern Damascus;14 and the variant, Zarūd, is constructed on a root that evokes drinking and swallowing – as, indeed, Yāqūt notes in his entry on the name. Yāqūt offers more than one identification for Zarūd, but one is credited with having a watering-hole (birka) and cistern (ḥawḍ).15 With regard to ḍuḥayyan, which would locate the encounter shortly after dawn, we shall later see how the relationship of the sun’s emergence and hostile engagements is so strong as to suggest a certain ritual relationship between them. Ḍuḥayyan may imply, then, a preference for meeting Fate in battle in time-honoured fashion. The importance placed on a mount’s compliance with the designs of its rider is examined later. Here, it may simply be suggested that the projection (verse 7) of the

13. Cf. Abu-Lughod (1999), p. 65, who comments on the modern Rwala Bedouin experience of extreme unease in unfamiliar territories; ibid., pp. 66–67, on the social imperative of visiting kin, especially in times of trouble, death and illness. 14. Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 1, pp. 271–272, s.v. usays: Ibn al-Sikkīt’s identification of Usays as a water (māʾ) in eastern Damascus suggests itself as a perfect foil for elaborating on a deadly ‘drink’, if this is not, itself, influenced by Imruʾ al-Qaysʾ poem, from which Yāqūt cites (though with the word Khāfa, rather than Ḥāqa, in v. 6, neither of which seem to be identifiable). 15. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 928, s.v. zarūd. Yāqūt also notes here an ancient Battle of Zarūd between the Taghlib and Yarbūʿ.

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Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

camels’ leading-reins remaining on them is not ‘stuffing’, but a sign of their readiness for a forthcoming venture in accordance with the rider’s will.16 To sum up, the key associations of the dār in this poem are the benefits afforded by communion in kinship; the moral and physical succour that is ‘antidotal’ to the returning ‘disease’ of Time. Exile is associated with the concomitants of bayn: intellectual and bodily exposure to the morbid corruption of rayb al-dahr. Poem 2.2:17

ُ ‫َو ُكـ ْن‬ ‫ك واثِـقَـا‬ َ ‫ قَـبْـلَهَـا بِـ‬19‫ـت أَ َراني‬ ‫وارقـا‬ ٍ ‫ َع َربيَّا‬20‫قُ َرى‬ ِ َ‫ت يَ ِشـمْنَ الـب‬ ‫فَـقَـ ْد أَ ْغـتَـدي أَقـو ُد أَجْ ـ َر َد تـائِـقـا‬ 21 ‫ُورالرَّوائِقا‬ َ ِ‫َوقَ ْد أَجْ تَلي ب‬ ِ ‫يض ْال ُخد‬ ‫جاسداً أَوْ شَـقـائِـقا‬ ِ ً ‫عَـبـيـراً َو َريْطا‬

‫ لِه ِذ ِه‬18‫ال تُسْـلِـ َمـنّـي يـا َربـيـ ُع‬ َ‫ُمـخالِـفَـةٌ نَـ َوى أ‬ ‫سـيـر بِـقَـرْ يَ ٍة‬ ٍ ْ ‫ق‬ ‫ه‬ ‫شا‬ ‫س‬ ‫رأ‬ ‫في‬ ‫فَإ ّما تَريْني ْاليَو َم‬ ٍ ِ ِ ‫الرتا َع بِ ِغ َّر ٍة‬ ‫ـش‬ ِ َ ْ‫َوقَـ ْد أَ ْذ َع ُر ْال َوح‬ ‫تون نَـقـيَّـ ٍة‬ ٍ ‫ تَجْ لو عَن ُم‬22‫نَـوا ِعـ َم‬

1 2 3 4 5

1. Rabīʿa! Do not abandon me to this when I knew once to rely on you,1819 2. Like a prisoner (asīr) removed from the settlements of maids now searching the lightning-flash for rain (yashimna l-bawāriqā).20 3. Though today you see me (immā taray-nī) atop a dizzy rise, yet, I see myself, as before, of a morning, on a short-haired steed, hastening, impassioned to his goal (tāʾiq); 4. And startling the wildings that graze unmindful (bi-ghirratin)/ that graze in the dry, desert-land (bi-qafratin); or else beholding cloistered maids in all fair splendour, goodly and pure as clarified wine (al-rawāʾiq),21 5. Sleek, exhibiting flawless backs spread over with compound perfume; and one-piece robes tinged saffron-red, or the colour of blood-anemone.22

Verses 1–2: The poet projects himself in a state of exile, cut off from a community whose patronage is now in fearful doubt. We may infer that he suffers the consequences of bayn: 16. See, e.g., below, Poem 5.3.1, vv. 6–8: The poet details the strength, experience and obedience of his camel, emphasising her lack of waywardness in the rein; al-Tibrīzī (1969), Imruʾ al-Qays, v. 69: The poet’s horse stands through the night (before an encounter), saddle and bridle upon him, not loose to his will; vv. 25–27 of Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim (overviewed, above, Part 1:2, s.v. Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin): The tribe’s horses are accustomed to standing, ready-bridled, through the night, before charging the enemy. 17. Metre: ṭawīl. D.Ṣ., p. 138; Ibr., pp. 195–196; Ahl., 39. Ibr., p. 431 details variants. 18. Reading this opening with Ibr. and Ahl. Ahl: lā tusliman-nī yā rabīʿa &c. D.Ṣ: fa-lā tusliman-nī &c. 19. Reading arā-nī with Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: urā-nī. 20. Ibr: …/nawā ʿarabīyātin &c. 21. Ibr: wa-qad adhʿaru l-waḥsha l-ritāʿa bi-qafratin/wa-qad ajtalī bīḍa l-khudūdi l-rawāʾiqā. 22. Ibr: nawāʿimu.

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119

distance and separation from the native abode and communal body, which is liable to expose a person to the demoralizing effects of rayb al-dahr. Suffering is severally in the language: Aslama li (verse 1), is used of surrendering another to any evil or affliction, or to death itself.23 This is enhanced (verse 2) by his identification with the state of a distant captive: asīr is metaphorically used of anyone afflicted in body or mind;24 and comparison with a prisoner also conveys the idea of someone whose life-‘stake’ (rahn) is effectively held in the receivership of Death, requiring redemption (fidāʾ, as discussed in Chapter 1). This is a conceit subtly enhanced (verse 2b) by the detail of distant women engaged in shaym (examining the lightning to see where rain will fall): Shaym is typically invoked in relation to bayn in the wider poetry, lightning serving, for one thing, as a reminder of the distance that separates loved ones, pains and sickens wounded hearts.25 Shaym is also associated with the call for isqāʾ, the watering of a distant kinsperson’s abode/a dead kinsperson’s grave.26 The corollary of these associations, together, is that the condition of enforced distance, or distant captivity, relates conceptually to the ‘thirsting’ of the dead man’s ṣadā (the ‘owl’, or grave-shade which communicates its need from the separating bayn of perdition), and an absent soul’s need for isqāʾ, or ‘liquid’ redemption.27 Verses 3–5: Verse 3a finds the poet fī raʾsi shāhiqin, which would locate him on a mountain peak. The context of affliction set forth in verses 1–2, and the poet’s subsequent statements, which are evidently designed to counter the negativity of an experience somehow epitomized by this expression, indicate, in themselves, that ‘being on a mountain peak’ is poetic encoding for isolation and distress. Compounding this – as illustrated twice more below in this chapter - the introductory phrase (verse 3) immā taray-nī, “though you see me [now]”, is a formula absolutely designed to summarise a critical condition, before introducing positive, combative recollections that will neutralize negative chemistry.28 The subsequent details of the poet’s counteractive, intellectual initiative equate hunting and sexual conquest as acts that can redress his imbalance and promote his ‘healing’.The suggestion is that positive memory of proven, manly endeavours serves to offset disempowerment and promote an ethical attitude conducive to strength.Thus, if the poet’s initial distress, or ‘sickness’, indicates a certain dissolution of intellect (ʿaql), the corrosion of his equilibrium and ability to act with ḥilm, then his recalling the successes of verses 3–5 connotes, rather, the virtuous 23. Qāmūs, Tāj, Muḥkam, s.v. s-l-m, IV. This is picked up in D.Ṣ., p. 138, n. 1. 24. Qāmūs, Muḥkam, art. asīrun. 25. See, e.g., ʿAbīd (1980), X, vv. 5–6, XXI, vv. 9–11. 26. See, e.g., Lyall (1918–1921), LXVII, of Mutammim b. Nuwayra, vv. 23–28. 27. Cf. below, Poem 5.2, where redemption, or requital, is equated with the effects of a rainstorm, and anticipated by shaym. 28. See below in this chapter, Poem 2.5, v. 6 ff., Poem 2.6, v. 6 ff.

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resistance of ṣabr, his will to protect his mental integrity, apply ḥilm, and re-establish a healthy moral and physical balance. The sensual undercurrent operating in verses 4–5 indicates that the ethical negotiation of adversity is somehow erotically charged; a suggestion we witness again below.29 The image of community abodes here evokes a sanctuary of ‘healing’ and protection, exclusion from which threatens disabling exposure to rayb al-dahr. Women in this context are an important element: their presence heightens the exile’s sense of distance and isolation; but they feature as a subset of communion in kinship; an emotive concomitant of the poet’s concern, not the primary object of his desire. Poem 2.3:303132333435363738394041

‫َـلـي َو لَـ ْم تَــرْ قُــ ِد‬ ُّ ‫َو نـا َم الـخ‬ ‫كَـلَـيْـلَـ ِة ذي العـائـِ ِر األَرْ َمــ ِد‬ ‫ عَن أَبي األَس َو ِد‬32 ُ‫َوأُ ْنـبـ ْئـتُـه‬ ‫ح الـيَـ ِد‬ ِ ِّ‫َوجُرْ ُح الل‬ ِ ْ‫سـان كَـجُر‬ ‫ُل ي ُْـؤثَـ ُر عَـنِّـي يَـ َد الـ ُمـسْـنَـ ِد‬ ْ ‫أَع‬ ‫َمرو عَـلـى َمـرْ ثَـ ِد‬ ٍ ‫َـن د َِم ع‬ ْ ْ ‫َو‬ ‫رب ال نَـق ُع ِد‬ َ ‫إن تَـ ْب َعـثوا الـ َح‬ ‫ـصـ ِد‬ ِ ‫ـصـدوا لِـد ٍَم نَـ ْق‬ ِ ‫َوإن تَـ ْق‬ 37 ‫ والسُّـو َد ِد‬36‫ِة َوال َحم ِد وال َمجْ ِد‬ 38 َ ْ ‫ب الـ ُمـفـأ ِد‬ ِ َ‫ار وال َحط‬ ِ ّ‫ِن والـن‬ 39 ‫َجـوا َد الـ َمـ َحـثَّـ ِة َو ْال ُمرْ َو ِد‬ ‫ـف ْال ُمـو قَـ ِد‬ ِ ‫كَـ َمعْـ َمـ َع ِة الـسَّـ َع‬ 40 ‫تَضا َء ُل في الطَّ ِّي كَـال ِم ْب َر ِد‬ ‫ْـض األَت ِّي عَلى ال َج ْد َجـ ِد‬ ِ ‫كَـفَـي‬ ‫ب الـنَّ ْخلَ ِة األَجْ َر ِد‬ ِ ‫ِر ِمن ُخـلُـ‬ ْ ‫صاب بِـال َع‬ ‫ـظ ِـم لَم يَـ ْنأ َ ِد‬ ‫إذا‬ َ

31 ْ ِ‫ك ب‬ ‫ـاإلثـ ِمـ ِد‬ َ ‫تَـطــا َو َل لَـيْـلُـ‬ ٌ‫َو بـاتَ َو بـا تَـت لَـهُ لَـيْـلَة‬ ‫ك ِمـن نَـبَـإٍ جـا َء نـي‬ َ ‫َو ذ لِـ‬ ‫َولَوْ عَن نَثا َغي ِْر ِه جا َءني‬ ُ ‫لَقُ ْل‬ ‫ت ِمـنَ القَوْ ِل مـا ال يَزا‬ ِّ َ ‫بِأ‬ َ‫ي عَـال قَـتـِنا تَـرْ َغـبـون‬ 33 ْ ْ َ‫ف‬ ‫إن تَ ْدفِنوا ال ّدا َء ال نَخفِه‬ 35 ‫ تَـ ْقـتُـلونا نُـقَـتِّ ْـلكـ ُ ُم‬34‫َو إن‬ ‫عان الـ ُكما‬ ِ ‫َمـتـى َع ْهدُنـا بِ ِط‬ ْ ‫ب َو‬ ‫الـجـفـا‬ ِ ‫ني الـقِبا‬ ِ ‫مل ِئ‬ ِ َ‫َوب‬ ْ ً‫ب َوثّـابَـة‬ ُ ْ‫ـر‬ ‫ح‬ ‫ـل‬ ‫ل‬ ‫َدت‬ ‫د‬ ‫ــ‬ ‫َوأ ْع‬ ِ َ ِ ‫َسبوحا ً َجموحا ً َوإحْ ضا ُرها‬ ً‫ك َموْ ضونَة‬ ِّ ‫َو َم ْشـدو َدةَ السَّـ‬ ‫تَفيضُ على ال َمرْ ِء أَردانُهـا‬ ‫َـرشـا ِء الـ َجـرو‬ ِ ‫ـرداً ك‬ ِ َّ‫َو ُمـط‬ 41 َ ُ ْ ً ُ‫ب غا ِمضا كَـل ُمه‬ ٍ ‫َوذا شـط‬

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

29. Cf. below in this chapter, Poem 2.6, vv. 4–8, where, once more following the formula, immā taray-nī, battle and sexual conquest are similarly equated. 30. Metre: mutaqārib. D.Ṣ., pp. 84–86; Ibr., pp. 185–188; Ahl., 14. On the uncertain attribution of this poem see Ibr., p. 429, which also details variants material among which are included here. 31. Ibr: … bi-l-athmudī; Ahl: bi-l-ithmadī &c. 32. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … wa-khubbirtu-hu &c. 33. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … lā nukhfi-hi &c. 34. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: fa-in &c. 35. Ahl: … nuqattilu-kum. 36. Ahl: … wa-l-majdi wa-l-ḥamdi &c. 37. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … wa-l-suʾdudī. 38. Ahl: … wa-l-ḥaṭabi l-mūqadī. 39. Ibr: … wa-l-marwadī. 40. Ahl: This recension exchanges vv. 13–14 of the reading above for vv. 15–16. 41. Ahl. (v. 14): … wa-dhā shuṭubin &c.

2.  Camps

121

1. Your night at al-Ithmid was prolonged; one carefree (al-khalīy) slept while you could not. 2. And what a night he did endure – as if with eyes inflamed by motes. 3. And all from word which came to me, passed on from Abū l-Aswad. 4. Had anyone other disgorged such smears – the tongue’s injury is like that of the hand – 5. I would have found the words to strike and sound throughout eternity. 6. What disputed blood would you relinquish; that of ʿAmr which rests as a debt upon Marthad? 7. If you bury the ‘sickness’ (dāʾ) that brews between us, we will not then bring it to light;42 but if you choose to stir a war, we shall not then sit down idle. 8. Murder our kin, we will slaughter yours; Press for blood, we will prosecute, too. 9. When will be the mail-clad war of lances; the glory, praise and exaltation? 10. The raised pavilions and porringers filled; the fire, the ignition of wood for the roast? 11. For I have accoutred a springing charger, swift to respond when spurred and impelled, 12. The briskest of ‘swimmers’ whose oncoming charge resounds with the crack of flaming palm. 13. And [I have readied] a compact, jewelled mail-coat, neat as a file, its creases cinched; 14. Over its wearer it flows, as a torrent, downward to the level ground (ka-fayḍi l-atīy); 15. And a spear that is even and regular as the rope that draws pails from deep in the well (ka-rishāʾi l-jarūr); 16. And a ridge-backed sword to cut a deep wound and strike, unbending, to the bone.

Verses 1–5: The poet’s response to a verbal attack that impugns his honour is expressed in terms of a malady the nature of which is reflected in the name of his night-abode: Al-ithmid (verse 1), taken in the glosses to denote ‘a place’, and it seems, perhaps, to

42. Khafā and akhfā can also denote the act of concealing. The opposite sense has been chosen above to complement the poet’s intimation (v. 4) that he would have responded with worse had the insult come from someone else [from whom he would not have ‘pulled his punches’]. This invitation to back down, even as the poet nurses a ‘malady of the eye’ which might inflame war, is comparable to al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza’s invitation to antagonists to desist rather than go to war (al-Tibrīzī (1969), al-Ḥārith, v. 30), wherewith he will ‘close his eye’ over the ‘motes’ that figure the injury he suffers; an injury he also refers to as dāʾ, ‘sickness’ (ibid., v. 40).

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have been one;43 but it is also readily understood as antimony or collyrium, which is proverbially associated with men who remain wakeful or toil through the night. Hence, for example: yajʿalu l-layla ithmidan, “he makes [the blackness of] night a collyrium [for his eyes]”.44 Collyrium is also used as a salve for the eye,45 and it is ocular affliction that the poet first details (verse 2) as a physical manifestation of his ‘malady’. The shifts from second person to third, and then first, through verses 1–3 perhaps reflect unsettledness: the poet’s wavering alternately through self-absorption and distancing; and further malaise may be inferred from his reference to the khalīy (verse 1), with whom the unspoken antithesis, al-shajīy – here, the poet – is proverbially compared:46 Al-shajīy evokes grief and anxiety, physical choking, emotional entrapment, suffering unendurable injury. Verse 4, meanwhile, openly conflates moral and physical malaise: an insult is like a corporeal blow. Thus, the condition of the sleepless shajīy (the poet) emerges as ‘sickness’ resulting from an iniquitous assault, which will require a ‘curative’ response. Inasmuch as his condition is reflected in the name of his night abode (al-ithmid), the opening hemistich might equally tolerate the approximate translation, “Your night prolonged itself with [the blackness of a] ‘collyrium’ [for your eyes]”, the poet’s night-labours in the agony of insult being understood as the cause of his local ‘situation’. These verses also illustrate the intimate association of night with the most virulent onslaught of flocking anxieties (humūm), the active aggression of Time’s ‘returning disease’.47 The verses that follow now render the poet’s discussion of ‘sickness’, as it relates to his outrage, quite open. Verses 6–16: The explicit allusion (verse 7) to the state of mutual antipathy as ‘sickness’ (dāʾ) recalls especially our observations on Poems 1.2 and 1.4: An iniquity – here verbal, but quasi-physical – constitutes ‘infection’. The protagonists are invited to ‘heal’ themselves; but, failing this, an equalising initiative will be taken to effect a ‘cure’ 43. Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 1, p. 119 records an al-Ithmid. He gives no location, however, his sole point of reference being the opening of this poem. He is also prompted to remark that the word denotes “the collyrium with which one blackens the eye”: wa-huwa lladhī yuktaḥalu bi-hi. However, he also notes the occurrence of something similar in Mufaḍḍalīya 107, of ʿĀmir b. al-Ṭufayl – in this case, al-Athmud – in a verse that Lyall finds problematic: Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 1, p. 302, n. 11. 44. Lisān, art. ithmidun; cf. Tāj, s.v. ḥ-l-s: istakḥala l-sahara, i.e., he became sleepless, as though he took wakefulness [and the dark of night] as his collyrium. 45. Because it is believed to defend and strengthen the eye, it acquires the status of ʿiṣām, ‘a protector’/‘a preserver’ (Tāj, art. ʿiṣāmun). 46. Such poetic shifts of person are discussed by van Gelder (1983), pp. 24–25. On the shajīy and the khalīy, See Tāj, Lane, s.v. kh-l-w: waylun li-l-shajīyi mina l-khalīy, “woe to him who is occupied by anxiety from him who is free of it”, mā yalqā l-shajīyu mina l-khalīy, “What will he who is occupied by anxiety experience from him who is free of it” – apparently referring to the carelessness or censure the careworn may receive from those not so afflicted. 47. This theme is rendered quite explicit in vv. 4–5 of Poem 2.6, below; cf. Arazi (1989), pp. 68–74.

123

2.  Camps

at source, and ensure that both parties are ‘healed’. Obviously, mutual ‘healing’ here implies vanquishing the iniquitous party. That such a mutual ‘cure’ may typically be expressed as ‘drinking’ and ‘giving to drink’, leads to the next main point of interest: how exerting force is conceptualized here as drawing and wielding water. The suggestion (verse 14) that the iron-clad warrior somehow embodies the torrential dynamic imputed to his armour (and an army, therefore, the amplification of that dynamic), is marked for future discussion.48 As to the image of a spear as a well-rope (verse 15), this has a certain prominence in battle-contexts.49 The full structure implied by rishāʾ al-jarūr (verse 15) is a rope and bucket drawn up from a deep well by a pulley, either by hand or by a camel to whose saddle the rope is attached.50 This image is to be related to the figure of a people’s protected ancestral cistern (ḥawḍ), and the conceptual ‘bank’ of inherited virtue that succours and empowers them (discussed above: the commentary to verses 5–6 of Poem 1.4, vv. 9–12 of Poem 1.5). It was earlier inferred that to damage a kin-unit must implicitly be to strike at such a ‘source’; and this is openly confirmed in the wider poetry.51 Thus, these verses make a concise allusion to harnessing force from one communal source of ‘liquid’ virtue, in order to strike at another. The poet’s night-abode in this poem serves as a sign that relates to his suffering the sting of tainted honour; its name reflects the poet’s condition, and heralds a discussion of how he proposes to remedy it. The next poem shows how degrees in honour are reflected in the relative merits of contrasting abodes. Poem 2.4:5253

‫ـر يَـوْ مـا ً فَـيَأْ تيَني بِقُ ّْر‬ ِ ‫َو ال ُمـ ْق‬ ٍ ‫ـص‬ ‫ويم بِ ُم ْستَ ِم ّْر‬ ْ ‫ْـس على ش‬ َ ‫َولـَي‬ ٍ َ‫َي ٍء ق‬

53

‫ك مـا قَ ْـلـبـي إلـى أَ ْهـلِـ ِه بِـ ُح ّْر‬ َ ‫لَـ َعـ ْمـ ُر‬ ‫ص ٌر‬ ُ ‫ـيال َو أَ ْع‬ ٍ َ‫أال إ نّــمـا الـ َّد ه ُر ل‬

1 2

48. It may be noted here, however, that the comparison of mail-clad warriors to water-pools is frequently attested. See, e.g., Lyall (1918–1921), VII, of al-Jumayḥ v. 9, LXXIV, of Thaʿlaba b. ʿAmr, v. 7, LXXV, of Abū al-Qays b. al-Aslat, v. 6, CXVII, of ʿAbd Qays b. Khufāf, vv. 6–7. 49. See, e.g., al-Tibrīzī (1969), ʿAntara, v. 71: enemy lances are well-ropes thrust into the breast of the poet’s horse (cited below, Chapter 5: 1, n. 50); Lyall (1918–1921), XXII, of Salāma b. Jandal, v. 21: the corporate plying of lances is a combined drawing of ropes at the well. The figure of the well-pulley is examined in more detail in Chapter 5:1, ‘The Wheel and the Storm’. 50. Qāmūs, Asās, Lisān, art. jarūrun. 51. See, e.g., al-Tibrīzī (1969), al-Ḥārith, v. 78: poet and allies repulse the enemy with lance-thrusts like buckets plunged deep into the waters of a stone-cased well; cf. Lyall (1918–1921), XII, of al-Ḥuṣayn b. al-Ḥumām, v. 17: the reproach for failure to protect a communal ḥawḍ, which prompts Lyall to note that destruction of the ḥawḍ is a proverbial conceit for the onset of disaster, adducing v. 53 of Zuhayr’s muʿallaqa (al-Tibrīzī’s edition) for comparison (both cited above, Chapter 1, n. 84) 52. Metre: ṭawīl. D.Ṣ., pp. 99–101; Ibr., pp. 109–113; Ahl., 17. Ibr., pp. 406–409 details legendary traditions on the background to the poem with variants of which those not represented here are close conceptual alternatives. 53. Ahl: a-lā innamā dhā l-dahru yawmun wa-laylatun/wa-laysa ʿalā shayʾin qawīyin bi-mustamirr.

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ْ‫ـيـال عَـلـى أُقـُر‬ ٍ َ‫أَ َحـبُّ إلَـيْـنـا ِمن ل‬ ْ‫َولـيـداً َوهلْ أَ ْفـنى شَـبـابـ َي َغ ْي ُر ِه ّر‬ ْ‫ بـِ ِه الـتُّجُر‬55 ‫ُمـ َعـتَّـقَـ ٍة ِمـ ّما يَجي ُء‬ 56 ْ‫ْض دُمى هَ ِكر‬ ِ ‫لَدى ج ُْؤ َذ َري ِْن أَوْ َكبَع‬ 57 ُ ُ ْ‫ريح ِمنَ القطر‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ء‬ ‫جا‬ ‫َّبا‬ ‫ص‬ ‫ال‬ ‫نَسـي َم‬ َ ٍ ِ ْ‫ َحتّى أَ ْن َزلوها على يُسُر‬58 ِّ‫ِمنَ ال ُخص‬ 59 ْ ْ‫ق َوال َك ِدر‬ ‫َو ُشـج‬ ٍ ْ‫َّـت بِـما ٍء َغي ِْر طَر‬ 60 ْ ُ ْ َ ُ ْ‫َصر‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ط‬ ‫خ‬ ‫ها‬ ‫ؤ‬ ‫ما‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ي‬ ‫ط‬ ‫رى‬ ‫خ‬ ‫أ‬ ِّ ٍ ِ ِ َ‫إلى ب‬ ْ‫ ّإل الـ َمـخـيـلَـةُ َوالسُّـ ُكر‬61‫َوأَ ْقـوالِـهـا‬ ‫ـجـ ّْر‬ ِ ‫أَ َجـ َّر لِـسـاني يَـوْ َم ذلـِ ُكـ ُم ُم‬ ْ‫ـصر‬ ‫َوال نَأْنَإٍ يَـوْ َم‬ ِ ‫فاظ َوال َح‬ ِ ‫الـح‬ ِ ْ‫َـر الـ َّد ثـِر‬ ‫ك‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ع‬ ‫الـ‬ ‫و‬ ‫هار‬ َ َ ِ ‫َمرا بِطَ لِأل ْم‬ ِ ْ‫آثار شـائِـ ِهـ ُم النَّ ِمر‬ ‫يَـرو ُح عَـلـى‬ ِ ْ‫ت َوبِال ُج ُزر‬ ِ ‫قاق ال ُم ْت َرعا‬ ِ ‫بِ َم ْثنى ال ِّز‬ ْ َ ْ‫س َح ِمر‬ َ ‫أَ َحبُّ إ لَيْنا ِمن‬ ٍ ‫ك فـا فـ َر‬ ْ‫َو ِمن خالِ ِه َو ِمن يَـزيـ َد َو ِمن ُحجُر‬ ْ‫صحا َو إذا َسـ ِكر‬ َ ‫َو نا ئِ َل ذا إذا‬ 54

َّ ‫ـلـح ِعـ ْنـ َد ُمـ َحـجّـ َ ٍر‬ ِ ‫ـيـال بِـذا‬ ٍ َ‫ل‬ ِ ‫ت الـط‬ ‫أُغادي الصَّبو َح ِعـ ْنـ َد ِهـرٍّ َوفَـرْ تَـنـى‬ ‫إذا ُذ ْقـتَ فـاهـا قُ ْـلـتَ طَعْـ ُم ُمـدا َم ٍة‬ ‫ـعـاج تَـبـال ٍة‬ ِ‫ـتـان ِمن ن‬ ِ ‫هُـمـا نَـعْـ َج‬ ِ ُ ‫ضـ َّو َع ال ِمسـ‬ ‫ك ِمـ ْنهُـما‬ َ ‫إذا قـا َمـتـا تَـ‬ ‫كَـأ َ َّن الـتِّـجـا َر أَ صْ ـ َعـدوا بِـ َسـبـيئـ َ ٍة‬ ُ‫فَـلَ ّما استَطابوا صُبَّ في الصَّحْ ِن نِصْ فُه‬ ْ ‫ص‬ ‫ـخ َر ٍة‬ ٍ ‫بِـمـا ِء َسـحا‬ َ ‫ب َز َّل عَن َم ْت ِن‬ َ ْ ‫ـر‬ ‫ي‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫م‬ ‫ح‬ ‫ط‬ ‫ْـ‬ ‫س‬ ‫و‬ ‫َّني‬ ‫ر‬ ‫ض‬ ‫إن‬ ‫ك مـا‬ َ ‫لَـ َعـ ْمـ ُر‬ َ ْ َ ِ َ ٍ ُ‫َوغَـيْـ ُر ال َّشـقـا ِء ال ُمـسْـت‬ ‫ـبـيـن فَـلَـيْـتَـني‬ ِ ‫ك مـا َســعْــ ٌد بِـ ُخـلَّـ ِة آثـِ ٍم‬ َ ‫لَـ َعـ ْمـ ُر‬ 62 َ َ َ َ ْ ‫ـس فـي ِهـ ُم‬ ‫م‬ ‫أ‬ ‫َـرى‬ ‫ن‬ ‫د‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ق‬ ‫م‬ ‫ق‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ـري‬ ‫لَـ َعـ ْم‬ ْ‫ـو‬ ْ ٌ ِ ‫س بِـقُـنَّـ ٍة‬ ٍ ‫أَ َحـبُّ إ لَـيْـنـا ِمن أُ نـا‬ 63 ‫يُـفـا ِكـهُـنـا َســعْـ ٌد َويَـ ْغـدو لِـ َج ْم ِعنـا‬ 64 ُ ‫لَـ َعـ ْمري لَـ َسـعْـ ٌد َحـي‬ ْ َّ‫ْـث َحـل‬ ُ‫ـت ِديا ُره‬ ً‫ْـر فُ فـيـ ِه ِمن أَ بـيـ ِه شَـمـا ئِـال‬ ِ ‫َو تَـع‬ ‫َســمـا َحـةَ ذا َو بِـ َّر ذا َو َو فـا َء ذا‬

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

1. By your life, my heart is averse and ungenerous (mā … bi-ḥurr) to its host (ahl) [myself], nor desists (wa-lā muqṣir) even a day to bring me peace (qurr).5455 2. Time is nothing but turning nights and days; nothing that is remains the same.5657 3. Nights in Muḥajjar of the shady acacias are preferable, for us, to nights spent at Uqur/Wuqur.5859 4. There, as a youth, would I take the morning draught (al-ṣabūḥ) with Hirr and Fartanā. Was it not Hirr who extinguished my youth?6061626364 5. When you taste her kiss, you would think it the flavour of fine old wine, long-mellowed in the jar, unviolated, of the kind that the merchants bring. 54. Ahl: la-laylun…/…ʿalā wuqur. 55. So, with Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … mimmā tajīʾu &c. (Ahl., 5a, reads: dhuqtu … qultu, “when I taste her kiss I think it …”). 56. Ahl: ka-nāʿimatayni min ẓibāʾi tabālatin/ʿalā &c. 57. Ahl: …/wa-rāyiḥatun mina l-laṭīmati wa-l-qutur. 58. Reading so here with Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … mina l-khaṣṣi &c. Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 1, p. 449, cites al-Khuṣṣ as a place associated, in a verse of ʿAdī b. Zayd, with wine. Lisān, s.v. kh-ṣ-ṣ, asserts khuṣṣ to mean a wine-merchant’s shop (ḥānūt al-khammār), citing this verse as the evidence. 59. Ahl: wa-wāfā &c. 60. Ahl: … ilā jawfi &c. This reading adds (v. 11): ḥidābin jarat bayna l-liwā fa-ṣarīmatin/wa-bayna ṣuwā l-adḥāli fa-l-rimthi wa-l-sidar. The verse-ordering hereafter is altered, concluding with vv. 14–15 of the reading above, but with only the internal variations indicated in the following notes. 61. Ibr: … wa-aqyāli-hā &c. 62. Ahl. (v. 19): … la-qawmun qad narā fī diyāri-him &c. 63. Ahl. (v. 15): yufakkihu-nā saʿdun wa-yaghdū ʿalay-himū &c. 64. Ibr: … ḥaythu ḥullat diyāru-hu &c; Ahl. (v. 14): la-ʿamr-ī la-saʿdu bnu l-ḍabābi idhā ghadā &c.

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6. They were two wild oryx-does of Tabāla, each with calf; or like the statuesque idols of Hakir. 7. When they rose, the scent of musk diffused itself, sweet as aloes brought on the breath of an easterly wind/an aroma of laṭīma-musk and aloes, 8. As though the merchants had raised up their own, exclusive wine of al-Khuṣṣ, and finally set it down at Yusur, 9. So that when they drank, a great cup was filled to half, and the wine mixed with water from a rainpool in which no creature had staled (ghayr ṭarq), and which nothing had muddied (wa-lā kadir), 10. [Wine mixed] with the water of a raincloud, slipped from the back of one rock to the belly of another, the water of which was pure and cool (ṭayyib; khaṣir) [Ahlwardt addition:] Swelling with voluminous torrents, coursing between the winding sand (al-liwā) and silt (ṣarīma), between the guiding stone-piles of rain-collecting hollows with their sweet, cool waters (ṣuwā l-adḥāl), as far as the lands of the rimth and sidar trees. 11. By your life, with Ḥimyar and her petty kings, I endured nothing but pride and inebriate passion (al-sukur), 12. Nothing but manifest grief and torment. Would one had slit my tongue [like a new-weaned calf before I spoke so to Saʿd] that fateful day. 13. By your life, Saʿd does not abuse true brotherly love with sin (āthim); is not infirm of purpose (naʾnaʾ) when called to stand and defend (yawm al-ḥifāẓ), nor stingy when imbibing, or at maysir (ḥaṣir). 14. Truly, a people among whom yesterday we found a station for abundant camels and colts 15. Are more beloved by us than a hill-top folk whose flocks the leopard stalks by night. 16. Saʿd delights us, anticipating our provision with full wineskins and camels divided at maysir (juzur) 17. By my life, wherever Saʿd sets up camp, he is preferable to me than you, you stinking, barley-gorged horse-mouth (fā farasin ḥamir). 18. You see in him his father’s virtue; that of his mother’s brother, of Yazīd and of Ḥujr: 19. The same benevolence (samāḥa), the same pious regard for kin (birr); the same good faith (wafāʾ) and bountiful favour (nāʾil) – whether sober or sated with wine.

Verses 1–2: Verse 1 projects a disturbing lack of coordination between the poet’s mind and his heart, which he endows with the characteristics of a deserting kinsman. The faithful conduct that would give him peace is denied. He is a microcosm of a kin-unit in moral conflict. His heart effectively ‘betrays’ him, evincing a ‘sickness’ that undermines his

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ḥilm, and demands the counteractive force of ṣabr. That Time is the ultimate mover behind his predicament is indicated by the complaint of verse 2, which stands as an indirect ascription of cause. But, as the poet subsequently concedes, he bears responsibility in this: he committed a verbal iniquity, which seems to have resulted in his exile from the abodes of an ideal, former patron. We can infer, in light of Poems 2.1 and 2.2, above, that this exposes him to the ‘sickness’ of ghurba (the condition of ‘strangerhood’) – the theme he next, indeed, elaborates; and, as illustrated in the preceding poem, both the act and effect of, a verbal injury can be conceptualised as a ‘sickness’ damaging to both aggressor and victim. What we may understand, then, in broadest terms, is that the poet, having rendered himself susceptible to Time’s machinations through moral weakness, became host to its ‘disease’, and so wayward as to injure his patron. This has resulted in painful repercussions that include a conscience-crisis conceptualised as the internal ‘kinsman’ of his own heart making to abandon him (as if for ill-treatment to itself). His ‘sickness’ will presumably persist until he redeems himself, and thereby his heart. Just as the verbal antagonists of the last poem were invited to quell their ‘disease’ to avoid disaster, so must the poet now ‘cure’ himself. This he will attempt to do, in due course, by apologizing: verbal restitution for ill-timed words. Verses 3–10: The poet considers (verse 3) the relative merits of abodes no longer accessible to him, and abodes into which he affiliated thereafter. He focuses on the night to highlight the contrasting experience of their inhabitants. As noted, there is a peculiar intimacy between the night and Time’s returning anxieties. In this light, the poet’s preferred abodes seem especially propitious: Muḥajjar evokes a secure enclosure that prohibits unlawful intrusion, i.e., some sort of ḥimā (an inviolable, protected zone). The ṭalḥ are huge, shady trees with pleasantly odorous fruits, good resorts for men and their camels. All this implies adequate security for a community and its husbanded wealth – something we have already seen linked with ideal commitment to covenant (recall especially verse 1 of Poem 1.2, which specifies kinsmen and their movable wealth – al-ʿashāʾiru wa-l-sawām – as a corporate body). The obscurity of the word, uqur, confounded by the variant, wuqur – though they look like dialectal variants - prevents us from inferring any specific intrinsic contrast just here, i.e., from inferring a resort that is insecure owing to the inhabitants’ relative inferiority; but in his subsequent elaboration on these different abodes (verses 14–15), the poet is quite explicit in drawing such a contrast.65 In light, then, of our earlier consideration of the exile’s aspiration to return to familiar abodes (see above, Poem 2.2), one can infer that the poet recalls, at Muḥajjar, an ideal communion where his nights were entirely free 65. The identification of Uqur as a mountain (Ibr., p. 109, ult., Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 1, p. 335, s.v. uqurun) is interesting: As we see below (v. 15), Ḥimyar are identified with a mountainresidence (qunna), the kind of resort typically associated with security, which is nonetheless more susceptible to attack than any place where Saʿd sets up camp.

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from such anxiety as he experienced later. The further corollary is that communion in Muḥajjar was, unlike the other, essentially ‘healing’. This inference is amplified in the development on sense-gratification that follows. Verse 4 introduces a conceit that seamlessly translates sexual communion into the blending and drinking of purest wine. The catharsis of erotic tension is expressed in the imagery of mingling waters (verse 10). An indirect allusion to seminal fluid is achieved by reference to water slipping from the back of a rock (verse 10a). This is unmistakably resonant of māʾ al-ẓahr (‘water of the back’), reflecting the belief that that was where a man’s semen rose. A reference to female sexual fluids becomes, then, also perceptible in the allusion to the ‘belly’ into whose waters the ‘rock-water’ spills. Rock and water together connote the virtue of karam, which is expressed, for one thing, as stone that gives water (see Chapter 1, note 62). The question of virtue is, anyway, arguably intrinsic to the purity of these waters, which are neither ṭarq nor kadir (verse 9). Ṭarq connotes taint through staling and dunging; the ḥibāla, or snare, which traps wild game; intellectual weakness. Kadir denotes a muddying which we earlier saw (Poem 1.5) was entirely absent from the water (ḥawḍ) of a man boasting the purest integrity in respect of his kin; a water that stood in direct antithesis to a parallel ḥawḍ where the treacherous ‘huntsman’ of Time lurked in wait for the ‘game’. The female waters here, meanwhile, are ṭayyib (verse 10b): of a purity associated with nobility and chastity. They are also khaṣir: of a freshness that resonates with the semantic ‘coolness’ of qurr, the ‘peace’ to which the poet aspires in verse 1, but cannot attain. Ahlwardt’s addition (Ahl., verse 11) is clearly complementary to this, relaying, also, the idea of a ‘marital’ coupling (nikāḥ) of the rain to the land. This conveys a sense that is at once life-enhancing and irrigational, and is in harmony with the concept of an appropriately maintained, communal ḥawḍ that affords mutual isqāʾ for those united by the oath of redemption (fidāʾ). These images enhance our earlier observations on the ‘communal waters’ of inherited virtue. They now introduce the properties of sky-water and sexual water into the scheme of liquids that may be harnessed, circulated, wielded and ‘drunk’ for mutual succour, ‘healing’, redemption and requital; liquids maintained and purified through a process of sustained moral commitment.66 In this case, the figure of the craving lover must be added to the list of ‘ailing’ parties – the avenger, the ‘thirsty’ dead, and the prisoner – who require the liquid ‘healing’ of isqāʾ. This net of ideas also 66. Cf. al-Samawʾal (1909), p. 9, l. 8–p. 10, l. 2: ṣafawnā fa-lam nakdur wa-akhlaṣa sirra-nā/ināthun aṭābat ḥamla-nā wa-fuḥūlū//ʿalawnā ilā khayri l-ẓuhūri wa-ḥaṭṭa-nā/li-waqtin ilā khayri l-buṭūni nuzūlū//fa-naḥnu ka-māʾi l-muzni mā fī niṣābi-nā/kahāmun wa-lā fī-nā yuʿaddu bakhīlū, “We made ourselves pure and did not defile ourselves, our essence kept pristine by females who begat well with stallions//[As seed] we rose up the best of backs to be brought down, in time, to the best of bellies//Thus we are as the water of the rain-clouds; nothing blunts our blades; there is no miser to be counted among us”. These verses echo the language of vv. 9–10 of the rāʾīya above, but bring into relief the idea of bequeathing power via the seed following a systematic process of self-purification through applied virtue. The concepts of karam (nobility/generosity) and bukhl (miserliness) in this regard are discussed below in Chapter 3.

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puts us in mind of the conclusion to Poem 2.2, above, where the activity of moving toward a ‘cure’ was expressed in terms that fused the idea of hunting, and erotic conquest (each of these activities, in their turn, being equatable with ‘coming to, or wielding, water’). In that poem, however, the opposing parties stood in a combative relationship: ‘healing’ for the poet essentially involved vanquishing another. Here, the relationship is mutually positive: both parties are intrinsically pure and ‘healthy’ by reason of virtue; the ‘cure’ is mutual gratification of sympathetic desire. They are equally ‘vanquished’, and equally ‘redeemed’. Importantly, this tells us that the poetry can manipulate precisely the same conceits and image-networks to discuss relative virtue in the contexts of both benign and antipathetic relations. Lastly here, we note that amid the imagery relating to the purity, and purifactory potential of, Hirr and Fartanā, is the specific impression of yellowish-red or blood-red upon white, reinforced by the comparison to effigies (dumā, verse 6), the whiteness of which is associated with an overspreading of blood-redness, or the shedding of blood itself for propitiation.67 This would link the scheme of communion in the tribal abode, and the related imagery here, to the sphere of the sacred. It suggests that the quality of relations within the ḥaram, and their relative purity, are somehow connected with the realm of dīn, a point to which we return below. Verses 11–15: The poet’s implicit apology (verse 12) is embedded in a comparison between the unequal virtue of past and present patrons, which is directly reflected in the condition of their respective abodes. Ḥimyar’s faults are characterised (verse 11) by intellectual weakness, which is resonant of a certain susceptibility to the ghūl (see Chapter 1: the commentary to verse 1 of Poem 1.1); susceptibility that must prejudice them and all they are bound to protect, allies and herds alike. Verse 13 implies that they are nefarious in every respect that Saʿd is not. The discrepancy (verses 14–15) between their respective circumstances follows as the implied proof of this: The unworthy and sinful are abject; their abodes and flocks are threatened by the leopard that comes at night (an incarnation of night-returning ‘sickness’ and the rapacious propensities of Time). The worthy and faithful offer ease and dependability for jīrān and their husbanded wealth. As we shall see, the image of a mountain-residence like that of Ḥimyar (verse 15) is generally indicative, rather, of the impregnable security that follows virtue. That such security is wanting here, despite the loftiness of the abode, may be intended to enhance the allegation of vain pretension, this in turn reinforcing the poet’s subsequent assertion (verse 17) that Saʿd’s patronage is preferable wherever he sets up camp.68 67. Qāmūs, Tāj, art. dumyatun. 68. Cf. Lyall (1918–1921), XCIV, of ʿAwf b. ʿAṭīya, v. 7: the formidable virtue of the poet’s people is such that whole tribes pitch camp behind them for protection, even when they reside in the unsheltered plain.

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The discourse, here, on what Saʿd is not, offers a clear indication of what constitutes sin (ithm), and what, love and truth. These are determined by the qualities of mind and action that either fail or succeed in meeting the expectations of covenant.69 That the respective corollaries – shame and honour – extend to performance in partaking of wine and gaming at maysir, locates these two activities squarely within the ethical scheme. The context suggests that these institutions imply the same virtues of mind and material self-expenditure as other acts invoked by the honour-code to repel the ‘diseased’ hand of Time.70 The following elaboration on the virtues of Saʿd and his abodes complements these perceptions. Verses 16–19: Verse 16 suggests that the poet sees himself once more in Saʿd’s abode. His praise is inferrably designed to elicit an honour-driven return of favour. The identity of the derided party (verse 17) is unstated, but it seems likely that a pun on Ḥimyar is intended in the reference to the stinking, barley-breath horse (it is ḥamir). One reading could then be that the poet refers to himself by association with Ḥimyar, and to the malodorous words that have rendered him abject. Otherwise, more simply, he derides Ḥimyar, dissociating himself from the corruption that they evince because of their intrinsic demerits. The force of this is enhanced by comparison with the virtues of Saʿd. Saʿd’s qualities are traced to merits of birth, as well as an ongoing commitment to covenant. This complements earlier observations on inherited, radical qualities that inform the intrinsic worth of men, but that must, nonetheless, be maintained through applied virtue to obviate the intrusion of ‘sickness’. In direct antithesis to Ḥimyar, Saʿd has the intellectual and physical capacities, inherited and sustained, to stay the influence of the ghūl; no intoxication undermines his ḥilm, and his abodes prosper in direct proportion to his virtue, wheresoever they may be.71 The abodes in this poem amount, concretely, to the sum of their inhabitants’ virtues. In themselves, they represent the moral and physical dimensions that accrue to ʿizz and dhulla (greatness and meanness). They figure the potential benefits of communion in kinship among which women appear as a subset. As such, they also figure the relative ‘health’ and prosperity of their inhabitants in relation to the hand of Time. 69. Cf. above, Part 1:2: the discussion of vv. 15–38 of Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim; Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 1, p. 99, l. 6: Abū Dhuʾayb succinctly illustrates ithm to be betrayal (khiyāna) of a covenant (ʿahd) by an ally (ḥalīf). 70. Qāmūs, Tāj, Lisān, s.v. ḥ-ṣ-r: disease is among the impediments that render a man ḥaṣir – a quality that connotes a wealth of moral, physical and intellectual shortcomings, and finally epitomises all that Saʿd is not (v. 13). 71. Cf. the boast of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim in Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII, vv. 15–38 (overviewed in Part 1:2, s.v. Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin): how virtue and fidelity to covenant are aligned with the power to resist the worst effects of Fate, and promote provision and plenty within secure abodes.

130 Poem 2.5:72

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

ْ َ‫سـم عَـف‬ ‫مـان‬ ٍ ‫َو َر‬ ِ ‫ـت آيا تُهُ ُم ْن ُذ أَ ْز‬ ِّ ‫َك َخ‬ ْ َ ‫بان‬ ‫ه‬ ‫ر‬ ‫ف‬ ‫اح‬ ‫ص‬ ‫م‬ ‫في‬ ‫بور‬ ‫ز‬ ‫ط‬ ُ َ ِ ِ َ ِ ٍ ‫ـجـان‬ ‫مير َوأَ ْش‬ َ ‫عَقابي َل سُـ ْق ٍم ِمن‬ ِ ٍ ‫ض‬ ُ ‫ْتان‬ ‫ب‬ ٍ ‫ُكل ًى ِمن شَعي‬ ِ ‫ذات َسحٍّ َوتَه‬ ّ َ ‫ان‬ ‫ز‬ ‫خ‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ه‬ ‫ـوا‬ ‫س‬ ‫ء‬ ‫َـي‬ َ ‫فَلَي‬ ِ ِ ُ ِ ٍ ْ ‫ْس عَـلى ش‬ ُ ِ‫ج كَالقَ ِّر ت َْخف‬ ‫ق أَ ْكـفـانـي‬ ‫ر‬ ‫ح‬ ‫َـلى‬ ‫ع‬ َ َ ٍ ُ ‫عـان فَ َك ْك‬ ‫ َع ْنهُ فَفَ ّدانـي‬73‫ت ال ُغ َّل‬ ٍ ‫َو‬ 74 ‫وان‬ ٍ ‫فَقاموا َجميعـا ً بَيْنَ عا‬ ِ ‫ث َونَـ ْش‬ ْ ْ ‫عان‬ ‫ذ‬ ‫م‬ ‫ي‬ ‫ش‬ ‫م‬ ٍ ْ‫ت لَو‬ ِ ِ َ ‫ث َس ْه َو ِة ال‬ ِ ‫عَلى ذا‬ ِ َ ّ َ ُ ُّ‫ل‬ ‫ان‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ح‬ ‫ط‬ ‫أ‬ ‫ك‬ ‫ه‬ ‫في‬ ‫تَعا َو َر‬ َ‫ف‬ ْ‫و‬ َ ِ ِ ٍّ ‫ ك‬75‫ي َغ ْي َر‬ ‫ان‬ ِ ‫َـز َوال َو‬ ٍ ْ‫أَفـانينَ َجـر‬ ْ َّ‫عُقابٌ تَ َد ل‬ ‫ْالن‬ ‫ت ِمن ش‬ ِ ‫َـاريخ ثَه‬ ِ ُ ‫قَطَع‬ ْ‫ج‬ ‫َّـان‬ ‫س‬ ‫ح‬ ‫ه‬ ‫و‬ ‫ال‬ ‫م‬ ‫ه‬ ‫سا‬ ‫سام‬ ُ ِ َ ِِ ٍ ِ‫ْـت ب‬ ِ 78 َ ْ ٌ‫ن‬ ْ‫َص‬ ‫صان‬ ‫غ‬ ‫أ‬ ‫ي‬ ‫ب‬ ‫م‬ ‫ع‬ ‫نـا‬ ‫غ‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ما‬ ‫كَـما‬ َ‫ْن‬ َ َ ٌ ِ ِ َ‫ديا َر الـ َعـد ِّو ذي ُزهـا ٍء َوأ‬ ‫ركـان‬ ِ ْ‫الجيا ُد مـا يَقُ ْدنَ بِـأَر‬ ‫سـان‬ ِ ‫َو َحتّى‬ ِ ْ ُ ‫ـبـان‬ ‫ق‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ع‬ ‫و‬ ‫سـور‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫م‬ ‫َواف‬ ِ َ ٍ ِ ٍ ‫َعلَ ْي ِه ع‬ ِ

‫فان‬ ٍ ‫ْك ِمن ِذك َرى َحبي‬ ِ ‫قِفا نَب‬ ِ ْ‫ب َو ِعـر‬ ْ ‫َت ِح َج ٌج بَعْدي َعلَيْها فَأَصْ بَ َح‬ ْ ‫أَت‬ ‫ت‬ ْ ‫ي ال َجمي َع فَهَيَّ َج‬ ُ ْ‫َذكَر‬ ‫ت‬ َّ ‫ت بِ ِه ال َح‬ ْ ‫فَ َسح‬ ‫َّت دُموعي في ال ِّردا ِء كَأَنَّها‬ ُ‫إذا ال َمرْ ُء لَ ْم يَ ْخ ُز ْن َعلَ ْي ِه لِسانَه‬ ‫ـر‬ ٍ ِ‫فَإ ّما تَ َر يْني في ِر حا لَ ِة جـا ب‬ ُ ْ‫ب َك َرر‬ ٍ ‫فَيا ُربَّ َم ْكرو‬ ُ‫ت َورا َءه‬ ُ ‫ق قَـ ْد بَ َع ْث‬ ‫ت بِسُحْ َر ٍة‬ ِ ‫يان‬ ٍ ‫ص ْد‬ ِ ‫َوفِ ْت‬ ُ ‫ق بَعي ٍد قَـ ْد قَطَع‬ ُ‫ْت نِيا تَه‬ ٍ ْ‫َو خَر‬ ْ َ ‫ل‬ ‫َأ‬ ‫ك‬ ‫ث‬ ُ‫وان الفَنا قَد هَبَطتُه‬ ٍ ‫َو َغ ْي‬ ِ ‫ك قَـبْـ َل سُؤالِ ِه‬ َ ‫َـل يُعْطي‬ ٍ ‫على هَـ ْيك‬ ْ ‫ض َر َج‬ ُ‫ت لَه‬ َ ‫الظبا ِء األَ ْعفَ ِر ا ْن‬ ِ ‫ْس‬ ِ ‫َكتَي‬ 76 َّ ‫ضل ٍة‬ ‫م‬ ِ َ ‫ف ال َعي ِْر قَ ْف ٍر‬ ِ ْ‫ق َكجَو‬ ٍ ْ‫َوخَر‬ ‫ ال َمطايا بِ ُر ْكنِ ِه‬77 َ‫يُدا فِ ُع أَ ْعطاف‬ ‫َو َمجْ ٍر َك ُغ ّل ِن األُ نَ ْي ِع ِم با لِ ٍغ‬ 79 ُ ْ‫َمطَو‬ ‫ت بِ ِه ْم َحتّى تَ ِكلُّ َمطيُّهُ ْم‬ ً ‫َو َحتّى تَ َرى الـجَوْ نَ الذي كانَ با ِدنا‬

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

1. Stop you, both; let us weep for the memory of a loved one and a rankling re-cognition (ʿirfān); for a trace (rasm) whose tokens were [ostensibly] erased (ʿafat) long since.73 2. Years have wreaked their havoc since last I came; so that they have become like the recondite hand of monkish scripts.74 3. They reminded me of the gathered tribal body, rousing the latent residues of disease (suqm): sorrows and secrets concealed deep in the heart.75 4. Tears welled to soak my cloak/my sword (al-ridāʾ), as if [my eyes were] patches [on the loops] of a worn-out, leathern bag, leaking successively in showers.76 5. If a man has not the capacity to hold his tongue, he will have capacity for nothing else besides.777879 6. Yet, though you may view me (immā taray-nī) laid on the saddle of a ministering attendant (riḥālāt jābir), suffering straitness (ʿalā ḥaraj) like that of a winter chill (ka-l-qarr), death-shrouds about me, quivering, 7. Still do I recall the many a man distressed (rubba makrūbin), behind whom I wheeled to assist; and the prisoner whom I 72. Metre: ṭawīl. D.Ṣ., pp. 173–175; Ibr., pp. 89–93; Ahl., 65. Ibr., pp. 400–401 details variants, those of which not represented here are conceptually close. 73. Ahl: … fakaktu l-kabla &c. 74. Ahl: … bayna ghāthin &c. 75. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: ... ghayri kazzin &c. 76. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: maḍallatin &c. 77. Ahl: … arkāna &c. 78. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … fawqa. 79. Ahl: … takillu ghuzātu-hum &c.

2.  Camps

8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

131

redeemed from his bonds (al-ghull/al-kabl), who then pledged to me his own life ransom (faddā-nī); I think of the true companions (wa-fityāni ṣidq) whom I urged forth before dawn, who rose as one, some groping [in the gloom], some [as if] drunk … Of the boundless, windswept deserts (wa-kharqin baʿīd) whose tracts I traversed on a tractable camel-mare, taking a slow and easy pace … Of the rain-fed meadows (wa-ghaythin) into which I have descended, sprayed with the colours of the red-berried fanā, showered on in turns by countless, heavy-hung clouds that rumbled with the tenor of camels that yearn (ḥannān), On an imposing steed that, without being asked, would anticipate the pace, never shrinking or remiss, Like a red-white bull-oryx upon which plummeted (inḍarajat) an eagle descending (tadallat) from the heights of Mount Thahlān; I think of the dry deserts (wa-kharqin), empty as the belly of an ass, misleading (maḍilla), which I have crossed with a lofty, lean-faced, comely steed, Pushing sideways at the necks of the riding camels, bending like one pliant branch amid/over others … Of the army (wa-majrin) like the depressed torrent-beds that are filled with trees of the ṭalḥ and salam (ghullān) – approaching populous and redoubtable enemy camps (diyār) – Which I have urged on until their camels (maṭīy)/their champions (ghuzāt) were weary and their chargers would not be led by the halter … Until you would see vultures and eagles hovering over black mounts that had shed their bulk.

Verses 1–5: Verses 1 to 3 so fuse the poet’s perceptions of the external and the internal, that the trace (rasm) of which he speaks is as much an imprint on his heart as on the landscape. Abodes were ravaged in the course of events, but, nonetheless, the vestiges endure; the poet’s past afflictions were treated and banished, but a susceptible residue still remains. This parallel play teases out the intrinsic equivocation of ʿafā, which connotes both what is perceptible and what is imperceptible; and, inasmuch as the signs (āyāt) are perceptible, they translate here principally as tokens of what the poet is forced to recognise remains in the ‘landscape’ of his heart. What he recognises is, he says unequivocally, a residual ‘sickness’ (suqm) Again, this is traced to the hand of Time – underlined (verse 2) by atat ḥijajun ʿalay-hā (‘years have aggressed on them’) – which compounds his allusion to the passage of time in verse 1, and evokes all the rapacious propensities of al-Dahr.80 The ‘sickness’ works at two levels: first, at the level of bayn, i.e., a morbid separation of kinsmen some time in the past 80. Qāmūs, s.v. ʾ-t-y: atā ʿalay-hi l-dahr, “Time, destroyed/devoured it/him.

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(the catalyst of the poet’s original ‘disease’); second, at the level of moral weakness – a state precipitated by external reminders, which has opened the door to Time’s returning afflictions (the residual ‘disease’ revivified). Turning to the dictionaries, ʿirfān is identified as the perception of something upon reflection  –  specifically, the perception of what has been absent from the mind; requital for good or evil; summoning patience in response to trial; succumbing to an affliction of purulent pustules.81 This entirely complements the poetic case in point: renewed awareness brings the poet into direct confrontation with rayb al-dahr, an intellectually and physically corrupting affair that demands the active response of ṣabr to combat it. The question of virtue has a resonance in the comparison of campsite-vestiges to the intricacies of a pious ascetic’s scriptures (verse 2). The poet effectively contemplates, and experiences anew, the consequences of rayb al-dahr; penalties disregarded at one’s peril. A correspondence with pondering scriptures resides in the contemplation of universal laws that summon the ethical rigour of observant men.82 The corollary suggestion is that there is a certain religio-ethical parity between the two sides of the comparison; a parity entailing that the institutions of virtue, reflected in the poetry, fall within the scope of the sacred. As regards the poet’s tears (verse 4), these are, demonstrably, integral to the network of liquid conceits that relate to the resources of virtue (recall the discussion of verses 5–6 of Poem 1.4; verses 14–15 of Poem 2.3, and verse 10 of Poem 2.4). We have seen how the poet expressed affliction as a sapping of communal, ‘liquid’ vigour, which implicitly weakened those who drew on its source. The language here (saḥḥ, tahtān) is peculiarly suggestive of an emission of sky-waters,83 which, as we have also 81. Qāmūs, s.v. ʿ-r-f, I; Tāj, s.v. ʿ-l-m, I. There seems little to support the D.Ṣ. comment (p. 173, n. 1) that ʿirfān is ‘a place’ (Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 3, p. 647, offers only ʿiriffān, or ʿuruffān) – perhaps inspired by the opening of Imruʾ al-Qays’ famous muʿallaqa, which is very similar, and shows manzilī – “an [erstwhile] abode” – in the slot of ʿirfān: al-Tibrīzī (1969), Imruʾ al-Qays, v. 1. On this and similar such echoes in the dīwān of Imruʾ al-Qays, see al-Ṭūfī (1994), pp. 129–157. 82. For an analogous allusion in Imruʾ al-Qays’ dīwān to contractual ordinances ‘written’ in the landscape, see the nūnīya cited in Ibr., pp. 85–88, Ahl., pp. 159–160, which opens comparing the vestiges of an abode to writings on Yemeni palm-papyri, interpreted in the glosses as material upon which contracts (ṣikāk), and covenants (ʿuhūd) were recorded: li-man ṭalalun abṣartu-hu fa-shajā-nī/ka-khaṭṭi zabūrin fī ʿasībin yamānī; cf. Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 1, p. 64, l. 8–p. 65, l. 8, where Abū Dhuʾayb equates the recognition of desolate abodes with the contemplation of a Ḥimyarī contract between creditor and debtor; al-Tibrīzī (1969), al-Ḥārith, vv. 40–42, which illustrates the use of inscribed materials (mahāriq) for recording covenants the fact of which cannot be effaced by treacherous whims (ahwāʾ), and the transgression of which is ‘sickness’ (dāʾ): “So have done with your stupid aggressiveness, or you will blind yourselves, that’s a sore sickness; and recollect the oath at Dhul Majáz, and wherefore the pledges and the sureties were then proffered in fear of injustice and aggression; caprice can never annul what’s inscribed on the parchments.” (Arberry’s translation (1957), p. 224); Montgomery (1995), pp. 284–299 collects and discusses similar citations. 83. Asās, Tāj, art. saḥḥa; Lisān, art. hatana; cf. ʿAbīd (1980), XVI, vv. 2–3, where the Time-ravaged abodes of dead and distant kinsmen inspire an explicit comparison of the poet’s tears to a cloudburst.

2.  Camps

133

seen, have a conceptual relationship with those vital liquids drawn from the communal ‘water’, or ‘cistern’ (ḥawḍ) that a people are obliged to protect and, conceptually, purify by their deeds. That shaʿīb means, specifically, a leather water-bag which has been mended only to leak again, suggests itself as an analogy of the allusion (verse 3) to the revived outburst of a ‘disease’ formerly quelled, and therefore also finds a sympathetic resonance with the residual tokens of a near-effaced abode (verse 1) and all they signify. Verse 4 thus reads as an allusive reference to the poet’s share of vital, inherited ‘waters’, which, squandered, betoken a diminishment of virtue, and the intrusion of a ‘pollution’ that must be contained and cleansed to avoid incurring the fate of the very abode at which he weeps. (Compare, in this light, verses 9–12 of Poem 1.5: the poet’s virtuous stance in the face of the blameless ‘betrayal’ of a departed kinsman; he insists that he does not weep, and attains, meanwhile, to a source of pure water with which he succours his true associates.84) This would entail his dissipation of the ‘liquid’ force required not only to preserve the ‘pledge’ of his own life, but also that of those whom he is bound to redeem. Hence, arguably, his words of verse 5: “If a man has not the capacity to contain his tongue, he will never contain anything else besides”. Rather than emote and weep, he must, necessarily, recover himself; and this means recovering his integrity of mind (ʿaql).85 Verses 6–7: At this point, the poet projects an ethically conformist decision to recover his morale and integrity, and obviate incipient blame. Adopting the formula immā taray-nī, “though you see me [now]” (last discussed in the commentary to verses 3–4 of Poem 84. The tears of a man are often explicitly related to waters showering from a leather water-bag - or bucket – drawn from a well. See, e.g., Lyall (1918–1921), LXVIII, of Mutammim, vv. 1–5, an elegy for one Mālik whom he calls ḥabīb (v. 6), the language of which echoes that of the poem above. The poet experiences affliction in a long night of care (hamm) in which Mālik’s memory aroused (hayyaja) grief in a heart that was tortured and stricken (wajīʿ, marūʿ). Unrestrainable tears gush (vv. 4–5): ka-mā fāḍa gharbun bayna aqruni qāmatin/yurawwī dibāran māʾu-hū wa-zarūʿū// jadīdu l-kulā wāhī l-adīmi tubīnu-hū/ʿani l-ʿibri zawrāʾu l-maqāmi nazūʿū, “Like the overflowing of a great water-bag between the side-pieces that confine the pulley, the water of which irrigates the small channels, and the crops [drink it in] – A water-bag with patches [over the loops] lately sewn on, with its leather full of holes, kept off from the side of the well-shaft by a protuberance in the barrel of the shallow well” (Lyall’s translation); cf. ibid., XCVI, of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim, vv. 3–5, CXX, of ʿAlqama b. ʿAbada, vv. 8–12, Zuhayr (1964), pp. 39–43, vv. 10–16. The poet’s tears are explored more fully in Chapter 5:2 and 5:3. 85. Abu-Lughod (1999), p. 90, sets forth an interesting comparison in the network of honour values amongst Awlad ʿAli, where self-mastery and tears are linked to the social concept of developing ʿaql: “The stoic acceptance of emotional pain is another aspect of self-mastery. To weep is a sign of weakness, so men of aṣl [ancestry/origin/nobility] do not cry, regardless of the intensity of their grief ... Mastery of needs for and passions toward others – the true sources of that dependency so antithetical to honour – seems to be related to the development of ʿagl, a complex concept, fundamental in most Muslim cultures, from Morocco to Afghanistan, that can be glossed as reason or social sense.”

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2.2), he gets ready to epitomise his current state, whilst setting up the expectation that he will move to extract himself from the clutch of ‘sickness’ and re-empower himself. The glosses on verse 6 incline to read the details here to fit with Imruʾ al-Qays’ legend: riḥāla and ḥaraj are both taken to refer to a ‘bier’ – the one on which the poet was supposedly carried, when sick; and this, then, is likened to a qarr, interpreted as a domed litter (hawdaj); jābir is taken as the name of certain man of Taghlib who was helped by another poet, ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa, to carry the carry the sick poet on this bier; the ‘shrouds’ quiver, it is suggested, perhaps, because it was windy.86 However, without the prejudice of legend, and quite in accordance with context, ḥaraj may simply be read according to its primary meaning: a condition of ‘straitness’ – intended, here, perhaps, to express not only trial, but the poet’s implicit acknowledgment of his (temporary) ethical failure: ḥaraj is related to trial that arises in consequence of a crime or sin. Qarr, meanwhile, implies a condition of chill, which would account for the shivering shrouds. Jābir may be rendered according to its semantics; that is, an attendant who assists another to recover a sound physical state; a mender of broken bones.87 A verse of ʿĀmir b. Ṣaʿṣaʿa attests to the poetical currency of jābir as metaphor: the virtues of the Sons of ʿĀmir render them “the menders of the broken bones, when the breakings give no hope of mending”: humu l-jābirūna ʿiẓāma l-kasīri/idhā mā l-kasāʾiru lam tujbarī, i.e., as the scholion interprets, they are benefactors of those whom al-Dahr has ‘crippled’ in the management of their affairs.88 The ‘cripple’, in this case, is our poet. Accordingly, verse 6 reads as a perfectly coherent epitome of the crisis he describes in the foregoing verses: a certain human ‘infirmity’ has led him into an ignominious predicament, which so disempowers him as to render him, conceptually, a patient on his death-bed, subject to the ministrations of a healer. As the framing formula immā taray-nī, tells us, though, this predicament is about to be corrected; and, in this case, the poet will make repetitive, quasi-incantational use of rubba and wāw rubba formulae (verses 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15) to think of combative successes that indicate, cumulatively, moral reintegration as the poet fights to re-empower himself. Verses 7–9: The poet initiates his reversal of the negative intellectual chemistry that renders him useless to himself, and anyone else, with three consecutive recollections that resurrect his sense of ṣabr, or combative endurance. With memories of rallying in battle (verse 7), he expresses self-sacrificial good faith to his compact, the commitment to protect and to redeem. In banishing disorientation/intoxication (verse 8), he indicates the virtue of his intellectual resources vis-à-vis the sense-stealing ghūl of al-Dahr; virtue antidotal to moral corrosion and consequent physical failure. That he 86. Ibr., p. 90, n. 6; D.Ṣ., p. 173, n. 5. For an overview of ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa, and his disputed, legendary association with Imruʾ al-Qays, see ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), pp. 1–7 (Lyall’s introduction); Pellat (1960), Montgomery (1998). 87. Tāj, Qāmūs, Asās, art. ḥarajun; Lisān, s.v. q-r-r; Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. j-b-r; Asās, art. jābirun. 88. ʿĀmir (1980), XIII, v. 3 (Lyall’s translation).

2.  Camps

135

invokes comrades whom he describes by ṣidq (truth) speaks not only of his own good faith, but his expectation that the commitment should be mutual: ṣidq, too, connotes resolution of heart, physical soundness and concomitant strength.89 The boast (verse 9) of successfully negotiating vast local distance conveys the proven qualities of one who is baʿīd al-himma, practised in accessing the innate resources required to endure and conquer trial (see the commentary to verses 6–9 of Poem 1.4). Verses 10–12: This dense verse sequence is no less expressive of combative virtue. The poet’s descent (verse 10) into a rain-fed meadow reads as a violation of another party’s guarded precinct (ḥimā) to hunt or raid. As illustrated above (Poem 2.2), this is an act of assertion that can, of itself, imply ‘healing’ and the redemption of honour. It also necessarily exposes a man to danger from the ḥimā’s protectors.90 This implicit danger is obliquely confirmed in verse 12, which stands as a parallel complement to verse 10: man and mount are translated into an oryx (ẓaby) fleeing an aggressing eagle. The emergent poetic scheme of ‘sickness’ and ‘healing’ offers a window onto the sense of the poet’s recourse to this image: He is boasting his intrinsic virtue, and therefore his ‘health’, or self-healing potential, where he seeks, in opposing the influence of Time, to absolve himself from ‘disease’ and the risk of sin. The oryx is proverbially a creature free from sickness; its flight linked with liberation from darkness or taint; with recovery from disease, and purgation from sin. For the poet-oryx, therefore, the eagle connotes his ‘sickness’ – ultimately, a manifestation of the predator, Time.91 This shows that the flight of the oryx is intrinsically a combative and virtuous exertion, as combative, indeed, as evading the consequences of infringing a ḥimā, to which this flight stands parallel. From the opposite perspective – inasmuch as he has aroused the ‘lust’ of the eagle – the oryx figures the latter’s ‘healing’, the potential ‘remedy’ (dawāʾ) of food.92 89. Qāmūs, Tāj, art. ṣidqun. 90. These implications of the recurrent image of the rain-fed meadow are picked up in Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 2, p. 13, n. 3, p. 165, n. 28, p. 276, n. 21; cf. Ibr., p. 37, v. 43, Ahl, p. 154, v. 48: an allusion to descent into a rain-fed meadow, which openly remarks on the danger of approaching such a place: taḥāmā-hu aṭrāfu l-rimāḥi taḥāmiyan/wa-jāda ʿalay-hi kullu asḥama haṭṭālī, “[a meadow (ghayth)] strictly shunned by lancemen, upon which multiple, laden clouds have spilled”. 91. Tāj, art. dāʾun; Lane, art. ẓabyun: the sayings, dāʾu l-ẓaby – “the ‘sickness’ of the oryx” – i.e., soundness/briskness/lack of disease, bi-hi dāʾu l-ẓaby, – “he has the ‘sickness’ of the oryx”, i.e., he has no intrinsic disease/evil; Tāj, s.v. m-ḥ-ṣ, I, V; cf. al-Tibrīzī (1969), Labīd, v. 47, where what the poet’s oryx hears and flees – the hunter, man – is called its ‘disease’ (saqām); Poem 5.3.1, below, where the purity of the poet-ẓaby is conveyed in a chase where the hunter’s dogs tear at his flesh (v. 12): ka-mā shabraqa l-wildānu thawba l-muqaddasī, “as children tear at the robe of a holy man [to derive benediction]”. 92. In complement, see Muḥkam, Tāj, art. dawāʾun, which indicates currency for the conceptualisation of food as a ‘cure’.

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Verses 13–17: The poet concludes with further scenes of the experience that attests to his virtue, culminating (verse 17) in an image of unrelenting, self-sacrificial commitment. Persevering (verse 13) through desolation and drought tells again of his mettle and noble purpose (ṣabr, himma), his intellectual integrity confirmed in the ability to maintain his course in the face of misleading deception (maḍilla) – suggesting the everlurking presence of the ghūl. Verse 15 complements his earlier allusion to invading a protected ḥimā (verse 10), now bringing into relief the idea of a direct confrontation. The comparison of the aggressing army to ghullān suggests organic connectedness and contained, torrential capacity, so reflecting and fulfilling the poet’s earlier desire for the ‘liquid-continence’ that enables effectual action.93 It also recalls the detail of ṭalḥ-filled abodes in verse 3 of Poem 2.4, which were the poet’s preferred resort. In a sense, it appears that the poet’s very abode (dār) is on the move, bent on confrontation with the diyār of the enemy. The focus on competitive virtue is somehow narrowed to a battle of conflicting abodes. This enhances our earlier conclusion that camps are indicators of relative moral worth in opposition to Time: we may infer that their fates stand as testament to the yields of unequal virtues in conflict with each other (albeit ultimately with Time). The image of camps in a state of desolation, therefore, is potentially one where moral histories, and the consequences of specific communal and inter-communal conflicts, are encoded (on which, see the discussion of Poem 2.7, below). The identification of an army with the trees and landscape is also noted for further reference, for it illustrates how readily the poetry utilises land and nature to figure human forces in conflict. Here ends the poet’s exercise in self-empowerment; a willed re-binding of his intellect to recollect physical force, reverse the initiative of rayb al-dahr, and confirm his ‘excuse’ (ʿudhr) to any would-be blamer. This is achieved against the foil of contemplating deserted abodes, and is substantially the ‘product’ of a powerful verbal tool of his mental armoury: the paratactic rubba structure. The abodes suggest Death, the loss of kin, the ever-present potential for Time’s ‘disease’ to resurrect itself and overtake. It is a prospect of cryptic signs that brings crisis, but finally translates as an incitement to moral combat that can enable self-redemption, the redemption of others, and effective, all-round endeavour. The gender of the ḥabīb (‘beloved’ – verse 1) associated with the abodes is not specified, and the focus, clearly, on the absent vitality of a whole community. The occasion for the poem is unclear. It may be a general lesson in moral combat; but the emphasis on confrontation in the final three verses might indicate the projection of a desire, or commitment to undertake such a confrontation because of a quite specific burden of redemption: that of liberating or avenging such a ḥabīb, as part of a greater struggle, in fact, to ensure the endurance of such a community – all points to which we shall return. 93. Cf. Lyall (1918–1921), LIV, of al-Muraqqish al-Akbar, v. 22b & scholion, where the poet’s warhost, which ‘devours’ all things in its way, is compared to valley-bottoms filled with ṭalḥ (the roots of which glut on available waters): jayshun ka-ghullāni l-shurayfi lihamm.

137

2.  Camps Poem 2.6:94

‫كَـأ نّـي أُنـادي أَ وْ أُكَـلِّـ ُم أَ ْخــ َر سـا‬ ُ ‫َو َج‬ ‫ـدت َمـقـيـالً ِعـ ْنـ َدهُـ ْم َو ُم َعـرَّسـا‬ ‫لَيال َي َحـ َّل ال َح ُّي َغوْ الً فَـأ َ ْل َعـسـا‬ ‫ِمـنَ اللَّي ِْل ّإل أَ ْن أكـبَّ فَـأ َ ْنـ َعـسـا‬ ‫أُحـا ِذ ُر أَ ن يَـرْ تَـ َّد دائـي فَـأ ُ ْنـكَسـا‬ ُ ‫َوطا َع ْن‬ ‫ت عَـ ْنـهُ الخَـيْـ َل َحتّى تَـنَـفَّـسا‬ ً ‫َحـبـيـبا‬ ‫ب أَ ْمـلَسـا‬ ‫إلـى‬ ِ ‫البيض الكَوا ِع‬ ِ ‫ت أَ ْعيَسا‬ ِ ْ‫ ِعيطٌ إلـى صَو‬98‫كَما تَرْ عَوي‬ ‫ْـب في ِه َوقَ َّوسـا‬ َ ‫َوال َمن َرأَيْنَ ال َّشـي‬ ُ ‫تَضي‬ ‫ق ِذراعـي أَ ْن أَقـو َم فَـأ َ ْلـبَـسـا‬ ‫َو لـ ِكـنَّـهـا نَـ ْفـسٌ تَـســا قَـطُ أَ ْنـفُـســا‬ 101 ‫لَـ َعــ َّل َمـنَـايـانـا تَ َح َّو ْلنَ أَبْـ ُؤســا‬ ‫لِـي ُْـلـبِـ َسـنـي ِمن دا ئِـ ِه مـا تَـلَـبَّـسـا‬ ‫ب طُو َل ُع ْم ٍر َو َم ْـلبَـســا‬ ِ ‫َوبَ ْع َد ال َمـشـيـ‬

َ ‫ديم بِ َعسْـ َعسـا‬ ِ َ‫َّبع الق‬ ِ ‫ألِ ّما عَـلى الر‬ َ َ َ َ ْ ّ َّ ‫ار فيها َك َعه ِدنـا‬ ‫د‬ ‫ال‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ه‬ ‫أ‬ ‫ن‬ ‫أ‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ف‬ ْ‫و‬ َ ِ 96 ُ ‫فَال تُـ ْن ِكروني إ نَّني أَنـا ذا ك ُم‬ ً‫فَإ ّما تَ َر يْني ال أُ َغ ِّمضُ سـا عَـة‬ ‫تَـأ َ َّو بَـني دائي القَدي ُم فَ َغلَّسـا‬ ُ ْ‫ب َك َرر‬ ٍ ‫فَـيـا ُربَّ َم ْكرو‬ ُ‫ت َورا َءه‬ ً‫َويـا ُربَّ يَوْ ٍم قَـ ْد أَرو ُح ُمـ َر َّجال‬ ُ‫إلى صَوْ تي إذا ما َسـ ِمـ ْعنَه‬97 َ‫يَ ِر ْعن‬ ُ‫أَراه َُّن ال يُـحْ ـبِـبْـنَ َمن قَ َّل مـالُـه‬ ُ ‫َوما ِخ ْف‬ ‫ تَبْري َح ال َحيا ِة كَما أَرى‬99‫ت‬ 100ً ُ ‫فَـلَـوْ أَنَّها نَـ ْفسٌ ت‬ ‫َموت َجمي َعة‬ ُ ‫َوبُد ِّْل‬ ‫صـحّـ َ ٍة‬ ِ ‫ت قَرْ حا ً داميا ً بَ ْع َد‬ َ َّ ْ‫ر‬ ْ ‫ض ِه‬ ‫أ‬ ‫د‬ ‫ع‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ن‬ ‫م‬ ‫ح‬ ‫ا‬ ‫م‬ ‫الط‬ ‫ح‬ ‫م‬ ُ ُ َ َ َ‫لَقَ ْد ط‬ ّ ِ ِ ِ ً‫إن بَ ْع َد ال ُع ْد ِم لِل َمرْ ِء قِـ ْنـ َو ة‬ َّ ‫أَال‬ 95

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

1. Alight, you two, at the old Spring camp of ʿAsʿas – where I call or speak to the like of the dumb (akhras).95 96 2. Had the people of the abode been here as we knew them, I should have found a resting place with them and a night-resort (muʿarras).9798 3. Do not deny me! I was of you/your protected neighbor (jār), those nights the tribe camped at Ghawl and Alʿas.99100 4. Though, plain to see (immā taray-nī), I sleep not an hour of the night, prone on my face in a wakeful slumber,101 5. My old sickness coming to sap me at dusk, and then again before darkness’ end, and I, fearful lest my sickness return and I relapse still unrecovered, 6. Yet, I recall the many a man distressed (rubba makrūbin), behind whom I turned and rallied, thrusting (ṭāʿantu) the [enemy] cavalry back from him until he breathed again; 7. And I do recall days (rubba yawmin) I would go, hair combed and smooth, a lover, to ivory, swell-breasted women, 8. Turning back, in response to my voice, like long-necked shecamels heeding the call of a rose-white, pedigree stallion. 94. Metre: ṭawīl. D.Ṣ., pp. 117–118; Ibr., pp. 105–108; Ahl., 30. Verse 5 of the recension above opens Ahlwardt’s reading, followed by vv. 1–3 with the minor variations noted below. Ibr., pp. 405–406 details variants, of which those not represented here are close conceptual alternatives. 95. Ahl. (v. 2): wa-lam tarimi l-dāru l-kathība fa-ʿasʿasā &c. – “the abode at the dune and ʿAsʿas did not stir”. 96. Ahl. (v. 4): … inna-nī anā jāru-kum &c. 97. Reading so, with Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ yaruʿna does not match the explanation of its gloss (p. 117, n. 6): yarjiʿna, “they returned”. 98. Ahl: … yarʿawī. 99. Ahl: wa-mā khiltu &c. 100. Ahl: … nafsun tajīʾu jamīʿatan &c. 101. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D. Ṣ: … /fa-yā la-ki min nuʿmā taḥawwalna abʾusā.

138

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia 9. I find they love not impecunious men, nor those whom they see greying and stooped; 10. And never before did I fear/know life’s affliction the way I quail now, lacking power to stand and dress myself. 11. Would that body and soul would perish at once; but they fail and disintegrate by degrees, 12. And in place of health, I have bloody ‘ulcering’ (qarḥ) – so that my Fates are, instead, ‘transferred’ for grief/what benediction ‘transferred’ in exchange for grief. 13. From his distant land al-Ṭammāḥ [the Great Pretender] has aspired to cloak me (li-yulbisa-nī) in the very disease he dons (talabbas). 14. Indeed, after ‘destitution’, there is, for a man, a ‘permanent acquisition’ (qinwa); after greying, extended age, and ‘profit’ (malbas).

Verses 1–3: The mute abodes speak of the past luxury of a night resort (muʿarras) within the protection of covenant: the poet thinks of past integration as a protected neighbour (jār). The stamp of Time on the desolation is simply asserted (verse 1) by use of qadīm (old). As to Time’s concomitant ‘disease’, this is implied by a compound allusion to the night, the favoured theatre for flocking ‘ills’ in the form of anxiety and cares (humūm). The first allusion to night comes embedded in the ‘place-name’, ʿAsʿas, the semantics of which imply the fact of darkness drawing on. This temporal placement is reinforced (verse 2) with the poet’s seeking a muʿarras – a night resort – and, again, by reference (verse 3) to idealised nights of the past, which, recalled here, evoke a current condition of nocturnal distress. Here we may recall the poet’s comparison (verse 3 of Poem 2.4) between nights spent in the ‘healing’ repose of ṭalḥ-filled abodes with an ideal protector, as opposed to insecure nights with inferior others. (The semantics of the place-names, Ghawl and Alʿas, may be intended to evoke similar past luxury: the former can indicate a collection of ṭalḥ, whilst the latter relates to abundant herbage.) Clearly, such comfort is not now forthcoming. The scene is even resonant of death: akhras (verse 1) evokes constitutional dumbness; the sign of a place where no echo is heard; silence that contradicts ‘articulation’ (naṭq), implying that which does not live.102 Thus, if, at one level, the poet’s desperate plea for assistance from an abode that cannot afford it speaks of distress at what cannot be retrieved, it also carries the potential to translate as an appeal for entry into the preserve of Death.103 This would imply that the poet contemplates an alternative exchange of the oath of fidāʾ – with the dead, not the living – and therefore the voluntary renunciation of the ‘pledge’ (rahn) of his life (an idea ironically reflected in Poem 1.3).104 Thus, these 102. Cf. Qāmūs, art. akhrasu; Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. s-k-t, I; Muḥkam, Asās, art. ṣāmitun. 103. ʿAbīd (1980), I, v. 5a, offers an explicit conception of deserted abodes as the heritage of Death (arḍun tawāratha-hā shaʿūbū). 104. Cf. below, Poem 4.1: the poet flirts with death by ‘courting’ a jāra who lies beyond the grave.

2.  Camps

139

opening verses may equally evoke a desire for the ‘healing’ rest that a covenant with the dead would bring. This sets the tone for a poem that finally expresses a covert preference for death in the face of relentless decrepitude. Verses 4–8: Night-affliction and ‘sickness (dāʾ) are now brought into full relief (verses 4–5). Significantly, taʾawwaba and ghallasa – both defining the activity of this ‘sickness’ – relate to the concept of coming to water. This attests, once more, to the idea that affliction is conceptually a sapping of vital, ‘liquid’ resources. The element of caution that attaches to the fear defined by ḥādhara, and the idea of latent susceptibility to a re-arousal of sickness, are together reminiscent of how rayb al-dahr was conceptualised in verses 1–3 of the preceding poem, where moral caution was also enhanced by reference to an ascetic’s scriptures. This anticipates the poet’s move to apply himself to reversing the hostile initiative. Once again (see above in this chapter: the commentary to Poem 2.2, verse 3 onward; Poem 2.5, verse 6 onward), this is anticipated by the self-justificatory formula: immā taray-nī, “though you see me [now]” (verse 4), which heralds a series of rubba formulae (verses 6–8), where the poet summons positive recollections projecting the ethical commitment needed to fight and effect a ‘healing’. These recollections demonstrate, again, an equivalence between battle-success and erotic conquest, as well as the poetic potential for exploring human passion through animal figures (recall especially the commentary to verses 3–5 of Poem 2.2). In complement, too, the verb ṭāʿana – ‘to pierce’, ‘to thrust’ – (verse 5) has metonymical application to mujāmaʿa (coupling).105 Unfortunately, while demonstrating an appropriate attitude, these rehearsed formulae for self-resurrection cannot bring about an entirely happy result on this occasion. Verses 9–10: The poet finally articulates the specific nature of his ‘sickness’ here: the concomitant of Time in its simple, historical dimension: encroaching age and the horror it entails. His allusion to the adverse reaction of females (verse 9) reflects the common poetic philosophy that women do not value men who are old or destitute (compare the portrayal of Hind in Poem 1.3). At one level, this is a sign that forces the poet to accept that, this time, there will be no easy ‘healing’, for all the intellectual resources he might muster. At another, the allusion to abandonment by females strikes a chord with the wider conceptual permutations of bayn (‘departure’ implying bad faith and corruption): the living souls of men (nufūs) are, themselves, poetically conceived as spouses (qarāʾin) that depart like treacherous jīrān.106 His horror, illustrated (verse 10) in the detail of inability to dress, anticipates the subsequent play on root l-b-s 105. Lane, s.v. ṭ-ʿ-n, III. 106. See, for example, Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 1, p. 156, l. 9, where Abū Dhuʾayb asserts: wa-mā anfusu l-fityāni illā qarāʾinun/tabīnu wa-yabqā hāmu-hā wa-qubūru-hā, “The souls of men are like wives that depart; and only their ghost-owls and graves remain”; Kaʿb (1950), no. 5, vv. 1–5, which the poet opens with bāna l-shabābu, “Youth has departed”, lamenting this in terms of

140

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

(centred on the concept of ‘dressing’), and the allusion to another energy that ‘attires’ him as part of an ongoing, quasi-commercial process of ‘transference’ (taḥawwul). Verses 11–14: Here, we collide once more with legend, and a scenario which – as above, verse 6 of Poem 2.5 – seems more likely to have evolved from the verses than to have inspired them. As noted in the glosses, al-Ṭammāḥ has been identified as an enemy of Imruʾ al-Qays who maligned him to Caesar, and was responsible for his receiving a poisoned robe that killed him by ulcering his skin; and this alleged incident has been taken as the occasion for verse 13, wherewith the ulcering (qarḥ) of verse 12 is literally understood. In the context of a poem devoted to contending with the fear of old age and decrepitude, these legendary details have no place, unless one assumes incoherence. Assuming coherence, the ready connotation of al-Ṭammāḥ, in accordance with its semantics, is that of a vehemently desirous aspirant; and a ready culprit, in the context, would be the greatest aspirant (humām) of all; namely, al-Dahr (see verses 1–3 of Poem 1.1). The idea that al-Dahr would be the ultimate source of the poet’s sickness naturally follows, also, the prevailing wisdom. The detail (verse 13) min buʿdi arḍi-hi, “from the distance of his land”, would, in this case, indicate the ultimate distance (buʿd) that denotes perdition, and, thus, the resort of Death: What the poet laments is an ongoing exchange of his healthy faculties for ill, and this is, as he says, his ‘bloody ulcering’.107 This exchange is conceptualised as commercial conveyance (indicated by taḥawwala, verse 12b), the product of which entails the poet’s acquisition of ‘garments’ he does not desire. His preferred ‘profit’ would appear to be death, as highlighted, particularly, in the versions of Ibrāhīm and Ahlwardt (verse 12b), which indicates that his anticipation of meeting the Fates (al-manāyā – swiftly, presumably, in battle) has been thwarted:108 An appointment with Death has been ‘transferred’, leaving him, instead, in receipt of affliction. The combined conceits of commerce and material attire inform the poet’s final wisdom: He says (verse 14a) that after destitution (ʿudm) there is, for a man a ‘permanent acquisition’ (qinwa); literally, wealth that is kept for oneself and not to be traded. In this context of ongoing transference – where ‘trading’ is with the ‘garments’ of youth and vigour, in exchange for “bloody ulcering” – ‘destitution’ suggests the exhaustion of commodities for ‘trade’, the depletion of vital faculties. Acquiring the ‘permanent acquisition’, in that case – the final ‘profit’ – would be to a deserting ally (ḥalīf), and the lack of love and kindness he receives from treacherous locks, now turned to hoar. 107. Cf. Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 1, p. 161, l. 6: the conceptualisation of progressive aging as a deadly ‘disease’ for which there is no cure: wa-l-shaybu dāʾun najīsun lā shifāʾa la-hū. 108. Cf. Labīd (1962), no. 36, v. 2: when the Fates fail to strike, long life and decrepitude follow; ʿAbīd (1980) IX, v. 16: men yearn for long life, but this only amounts to burden and pain; also, the wisdom of Zuhayr: Ahlwardt (1870), Zuhayr, 16, v. 48. On the ‘altered-attire-of-age’ conceit, cf. ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), IX, vv. 2–4, where “hoariness has worn out … the garment of fresh youth” (Lyall’s translation).

141

2.  Camps

reach the end of the road: vital ‘bankruptcy’, or death. That there was wider currency for qinwa – the not-to-be-traded acquisition – as a conceit for the final exchange of life to death – or a corpse – is carried in the equally black irony of Abū al-Muthallam al-Hudhalī in an elegy for Ṣakhr al-Ghayy: Here, he expresses the preciousness of the life now surrendered forever to al-Dahr, something never to be ‘traded’ back, saying: law kāna li-l-dahri mālun ʿinda mutladi-hī/la-kāna li-l-dahri ṣakhrun māla qinyānī: “Had Death [prized] wealth among its long-held possessions, Ṣakhr would be, for Death, a wealth never to sell” – the poet using a synonym of qinwa in māl qinyān.109 In this light, returning to verse 14b of the poem in hand, we can conclude that the poet sublimates his aversion to life in old age, commending it as an opportunity, contrary to the condition of death, for continued transactions that bring ‘profit’. He chooses to define this ‘profit’ as malbas. This unmistakable pun on the root-concept of clothing (libās) announces his ‘profit’ to be the ongoing product of an inevitable trade of his faculties for alternative ‘attire’ – the ‘attire’, indeed, which he fears, and which prevents him from actually dressing himself (verse 10). Thus, while he cannot consummate a ‘healing’, his sublimation of fear to the force of his satire indicates an intrinsically ‘healthy’ commitment to self-containment, thereby achieving his exemption from blame (ʿudhr).110 The conclusion of this poem throws into relief the ambiguity of the poet’s opening plea to an old abode. Without contradicting any anticipation that the dār is conceptually antiposed to the effects of Time and associated with the concept of kinship – despite its desolation - he tailors his discourse with it to face off fear, and articulate his suppressed desire: redemption from the intellectual and physical affliction of journeying through relentless decrepitude; deliverance through the morbid ‘healing’ that union in covenant (waṣl) with the departed would bring. Poem 2.7:111112 113

112 ‫ـل‬ ِ ‫فَال َّس ْه‬ ِ ِ‫ْـن ِمن عـاق‬ ِ ‫ب فَالخَـبْـتَـي‬ ْ ْ ‫ق السّائِ ِل‬ ‫ط‬ ‫ن‬ ‫م‬ ‫َن‬ ‫ع‬ ‫ت‬ ‫م‬ ‫ج‬ ِ َ َ ‫َوا ْستَ ْع‬ ِ َ ‫ـل‬ ‫مـا غَـرُّ ُكـ ْم بِـاألَ َسـ ِد‬ ِ ِ ‫الـبـاس‬

113

‫ـل‬ ِ ِ‫يا د ا َر ما و يَّةَ بِا لحا ئ‬ ‫صداها َوعَـفـا َر ْس ُمهـا‬ َ ‫ص َّم‬ َ ‫قُوال لِدودانَ عَبي ِد ال َعصا‬

1 2 3

109. See Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 2, pp. 238–240, and commentary; cf. Lisān, s.v. q-n-w, which cites Abū al-Muthallam’s verse with a slight variation, and comments. 110. Accordingly, whilst certainly conceding gnomic eloquence to the concluding verse, one would not agree with the view (reflected in Ibr., p. 108, n. 14; D.Ṣ., p. 118, n. 4) that the poet here simply praises the merits of aging as an opportunity to acquire wealth and live in comfort. On the honourable imperative of never giving into despair, cf. the poet’s wisdom (Ibr., p. 39, v. 54; Ahl., p. 154, v. 59) that as long as the breath of life remains in his body, a true man is never remiss in his endeavours, nor one to clutch at the skirts of calamity: wa-mā l-marʾu mā dāmat ḥushāshatu nafsi-hī/bi-mudriki aṭrāfi l-khuṭūbi wa-lā ālī. 111. Metre: sarīʿ. D.Ṣ. pp. 148–149; Ibr., pp. 119–122; Ahl., 51. Ibr., pp. 411–412, details variants. 112. Ahl: … fa-l-fardi &c. 113. Ahl: ṣamma ṣadā-hā wa-ʿafā rasma-hā/baʿda-ka ṣawbu l-musbili l-hāṭilī.

142

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia ‫ـل‬ ِ ‫َو ِمـن بَـني َع ْم ٍرو َومـِن كا ِه‬ ‫ـل‬ ِ ِ‫ أَ ْعالهُـ ْم عَلى الـسّاف‬115 ُ‫نَـ ْقـ ِذف‬ ْ 116 ‫ك‬ ‫ـل‬ َ ‫كَـ َّر‬ ِ ِ‫أل مي ِْن عَـلـى نـا ب‬ ‫كـاظـ َمـةَ الـنّا ِه ِل‬ ‫أَ وْ كَـقَـطـا‬ ِ ‫ـل‬ ِ ‫أَ رْ جُـلُـهُـ ْم كَـالـخَـشَـ‬ ِ ِ‫ب ال ّشا ئ‬ ‫ـل‬ ٍ ‫عَن ُشـرْ بِـهـا في ُشـ ُغ‬ ِ ‫ـل شا ِغ‬ ‫ـل‬ ِ ‫إ ْثما ً ِمنَ هللاِ َو ال و ا ِغ‬

‫ْنان ِمن ما لِ ٍك‬ ِ ‫قَ ْد قَ َّر‬ ِ ‫ت ال َعي‬ 114 ‫بن ُدودانَ ْإذ‬ ‫َنم‬ ِ ‫َو ِمن بَني غ‬ ِ ْ ‫ن‬ ً‫َط َعنُهُ ْم س ُْـلكى َو َم ْخلو َجة‬ َ ٌ ْ َّ ‫َرجْ ِل ال َّدبى‬ ‫ك‬ ‫سـاط‬ ‫ق‬ ‫أ‬ ‫ُن‬ ‫ه‬ ‫ْإذ‬ ِ ‫َحتّى تَ َر ْكنا هُ ْم لَدى َم ْع َر ٍك‬ ً‫ت ا ْم َرأ‬ ْ َّ‫َحـل‬ ُ ‫ـت لي ال َخ ْم ُر َو ُك ْن‬ 117 ُ َ َ ‫ب‬ ٍ ِ‫فَاليَوْ َم أ ْسقى غ ْي َر ُم ْستَحْ ق‬

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1. Abode of Māwīya at al-Ḥāʾil, al-Sahb/al-Fard and the two fertile valleys of ʿĀqil! 2. Its echoing shade (ṣadā) is dumb; its trace (rasm) effaced (ʿafā), mute of (istaʿjamat ʿan) the utterance (manṭiq) of the one who asks (al-sāʾil)/its trace effaced since last you knew it by the showers sent forth from a pouring cloud.114115116117 3. Say, you two, to Dūdān, ‘slaves of the beating stick’ (ʿabīdu l-ʿaṣā): what deluded you to act, as if immune from the Courageous Lion?118 4. The eyes cease to burn (qad qarrati l-ʿaynān) on account of Mālik, Banū ʿAmr, Kāhil; 5. of Banū Ghanm b. Dūdān:119 We throw their most eminent down in abasement; 6. We pierce you, face-forward, the plunge dragged back, as though to return/divert two shots at the archer. 7. [Our cavalry went] in droves (aqsāṭ), like locust swarms, or the thirsty sandgrouse of Kāẓima, 8. Till we left them on the field of battle, legs piled up like timbers, stacked. 9. Wine has become allowed for me, a man who was at pains to refrain from imbibing. 10. Today I drink without ‘saddling up’ (mustaḥqib) a burden of sin (ithm) in regard of Allāh, or presuming illegitimate licence (wāghil).120

Verses 1–2: The translation for verses 1–2 runs counter to another interpretation for the phrase, istaʿjamat ʿan manṭiqi l-sāʾilī (verse 2b), which may have evolved from a false 114. Reading so, with Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … banī ghunmi &c. 115. Ahl: … yaqdhifu &c. 116. Ibr: … lafta-ka laʾmayni &c. 117. Ahl: fa-l-yawma ashrab ghayru &c. 118. Ibr., p. 119, n. 3 notes Dūdān as a tribe (qabīla) of Asad, and the Lion as a reference to the poet’s father, or the poet himself. ʿAbīdu l-ʿaṣā, is glossed as a reference to those who can only be induced to comply through force. On Dūdān, see al-Kalbī (1966), vol. 1, table 50. 119. All glossed, Ibr., p. 120, n. 4, as divisions (aḥyāʾ) of Asad. 120. Technically, wāghil connotes coming uninvited to a people when drinking. Its roots are associated with self-abandonment to sin, vileness, and false claims to noble origin: Lisān, s.v. w-gh-l.

2.  Camps

143

assumption that deserted abodes are all exactly the same. As the dictionaries show, a historical understanding of this phrase assumes that jawāb (answer) is meant by manṭiq; and that al-sāʾil (the asker) is a beseeching visitor, the preposition ʿan being taken to render istaʿjamat transitive, by analogy with sakata ʿan. 121 The latter analogy falls down except on the assumption that jawāb is, indeed, meant by manṭiq, and that naṭaqa (to articulate) can, by itself, translate as kallama (to speak to), which it cannot, properly, do. On the assumption that the poet means what he appears to say, this phrase reads as a perfect complement to the allusion to a mute ṣadā (ghost-owl) immediately before. The reference to silence connotes, at one level, a sense of perdition comparable to that of the silent abode in the previous poem; but, more specifically, it suggests the silence of the once-‘thirsty’ dead: the abstention of a shade (ṣadā) from asking for drink after receiving the isqāʾ of vengeance (as noted in the commentary to verses 1–3 of Poem 1.3, and verses 1–2 of Poem 1.4). Thus, verse 2b would bring a sated ṣadā into relief and imply that isqāʾ – vengeance – has, indeed, been effected. Ahlwardt’s variant on verse 2 is especially complementary: A ‘cloud’ (which can connote the harnessed, ‘liquid’ force of men  –  as discussed in the commentary to verses 3–10 of Poem 2.4)  –  has effected isqāʾ to offer redemptive ‘healing’. Both readings would thus explain why this particular rasm – or trace – is unequivocally effaced (ʿafā): While the still-apparent trace of Poem 2.5 related to a ‘sickness’ that threatened selfresurrection and the concomitant dissipation of the poet’s intellect, the no-longer visible trace in this poem appears to relate to a circumstance where the wounds of ‘sickness’ have been effectively sealed. With the themes of sound intellect and successful retribution in mind, it is quite interesting to look at the semantics of the proper names that occur in verse 1. The aqueous resonance of Māwīya complements the concept of isqāʾ.122 The last ostensible location in the list, ʿĀqil, is precisely indicative of an integrated intellect. In the context, one could venture that al-Ḥāʾil, which can evoke ‘changing’, may be intended to imply a reversal of initiative with a move to retribution. 123 AlSahb raises the concept of a waterless desert, or a deep, confounding well whose waters can be accessed only by great effort. This might evoke the endurance of conceptual thirst through the demanding process of seeking and accessing the ‘waters’ of isqāʾ. The alternative, al-Fard, evokes singular excellence, which could relate to distinctive action in the same respect. The thrust of these ideas accepted, the double occurrence of fa that finally leads to ʿĀqil might evoke stages in a quest to achieve a ‘healing’ that relates to Māwīya’s abode, the prerequisite attitude, or resultant composure, being finally announced in the semantics of ʿĀqil. It may not 121. Tāj, s.v. ʿ-j-m. 122. Lisān, s.v. m-w-w, underlines this connection, stating that the name was originally built on ‘water’: māwīya kānat fī l-aṣl māʾīya. 123. Cf. Poem 5.3.1, v. 18, where the detailing of a place called al-Ḥāʾil coincides precisely with a turning point in the poem when a move is made to deal out a punishing ‘healing’.

144

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

be a coincidence that the locations technically number four (counting 2 for the dual khabtān of ʿĀqil): The poet subsequently enumerates four parties (verses 4–5) on account of whom he has prosecuted for blood, before boasting unequivocally of achieving vengeance and ‘healing’. Verses 3–8: Following a direct address to the deserted abode, the poet’s command, qūlā (verse 3), assumes a sense of moral instruction, holding the abode up as testament to the consequences of misguided action. The lesson appears to be that misguidance results in disaster returning two-fold upon the iniquitous. Alternatively stated, this scene tells us that iniquity – or, indeed, sin, for the perpetrators appear to be erstwhile jīrān – is the contraction and breeding of an ‘infection’ dangerous to both aggressor and victim; an ‘infection’ that demands a mutual ‘cure’, the responsibility for effecting this ‘cure’ necessarily falling on the injured party. The poet’s ‘healing’ is encoded (verse 4) in his statement qad qarrati l-ʿaynāni (an inverse reflection of the poet’s ‘sickness’ – the stinging ‘motes’ in his eye – in verse 2 of Poem 2.3). His antagonists’ ‘cure’ is, inferrably, conveyed in the image of enemy deaths on the battlefield (verse 8). And this mutual ‘cure’, which effects the poet’s justice, is also, in a sense, a mutual ‘watering’. This is implied in verse 7, first, by use of aqsāṭ, (the ‘droves’ of cavalry), which is a concept of measure that has specific (according to some, exclusive) application to quantities of water.124 That is to say, the poet’s troops would be the embodiment of liquid force, or ‘pools of death’ for the enemy. At the same time, they are thirsty, water-glutting sandgrouse - suggesting, poetically, a determined rush to ‘pools’ of potential death to slake ‘thirst’ at a ‘source’ embodied by the enemy. (The resonances of swarming creatures, hunger and thirst, that emanate from the combined image of locusts and sandgrouse put us in mind of the ‘little creatures’ in verses 1–2 of Poem 1.4, which were mirrored in the ‘glutting’ army (luhām) in verse 8 of the same poem, voracious for the yields of war). Kāẓima may lastly be considered in this light. This is glossed as a town adjacent to al-Baḥrayn/a place near al-Baṣra, next to the sea; and the reference might reflect the wildlife of an area that seems to be traceable as a place full of accessible waters, inspiring a number of verses. At the same time, the root k-ẓ-m, on its own, relates to repressed rage, water-conduits and water-skins. Semantically speaking, then, Kāẓima would, of itself, complement the condition and nature of the hordes associated with it here: forces of a depleted ‘resource’ raging to replenish itself.125

124. Qāmūs, Tāj, art. qisṭun. 125. Ibr., p. 121, n. 7; Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 4, p. 228, s.v. kāẓima; Tāj, s.v. k-ẓ-m, which quotes this verse, amongst others.

2.  Camps

145

Verses 9–10: The isqāʾ of redemption is mirrored by the isqāʾ of drinking wine. Importantly, these verses indicate clearly that, prior to taking his vengeance and curing his ‘sickness’, the poet was in a state of ritual impurity, which not only implied his communion with kin, but extended to his relationship to the divine. The further ramification of this, in complement to earlier indications, is that ‘sickness’ and ‘healing’ – adherence to the ethic, or its neglect; the consequences of action; punishment and reward – are perceived to extend beyond the worldly sphere, and ultimately to relate to divine sanction.126 This is noted for progressive development, along with the conceit of ‘saddling’ oneself with [the ‘baggage’ of] sin (mustaḥqiban ithman), for this is integral to a whole poetical apparatus related to the nature of the ‘mount one rides’ (a topic first broached above, Part 1:2: Plasticity of the Poetic Discourse and the Mechanics of the Saddle). This poem’s opening verses may now be reconsidered in light of the final outcome. Māwīya’s abode serves as a sign of the poet’s victory, of the positive consequences of his virtue. Its condition reflects the poet’s condition: the trace of ‘disease’ has been wiped clean. Inasmuch as it is held up as a moral lesson for the enemy, it is also implicitly a sign of the negative consequences of iniquity. It tells an unstated history: damage to the poet’s rootstock, which has subsequently been repaired; the sapping of resources subsequently stoppered and replenished through applied virtue. Thus, as much as it is a symbol of death, it also reflects the virtue of a house that has sired a son of sufficient merit to perpetuate its continuity. The name, Māwīya, as it occurs here, indicates again that female figures in such a context are subordinate to the frame of ethical concerns. Conclusion This chapter finds the community abode to be an embodiment of, and testament to, the qualities of its residents. Its primary associations are kinship and ethical institutions in opposition to Time. Ethical commitment makes for security of the house and its duration; and iniquity lends for insecurity and destruction. The image of the abode in desolation is one of signs, histories and moral consequences, serving as a foil for ethical elaboration. Where the female appears in this context, she does so as a subset, or an associated representative of, a people’s moral potential, history and condition in relation to Time.

126. This was already the message projected in Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII, of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim, as discussed above in Part 1:2, s.v. Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin.

Chapter 3 Principles of Kinship & Alliance

In this chapter, we undertake a closer analysis of the semantic fields and poetic associations of key moral values and vices. This is to enhance and develop observations in the last two chapters on the perceived consequences of adhering to the ethic, or failing to do so, and the ideal preconditions for tying, or maintaining, the ties of union. We will see here the conditional nature of ḥasab (‘worth’); how it is not only something that can be inherited, but can also be lost. The condition for maintaining ḥasab is sustained good faith (wafāʾ) through principled ‘endurance’ (ṣabr). Loss of ḥasab can also be inherited – entailing that moral and physical weakness will descend through the line. We shall see, how ‘generous nobility’ (karam) and its counter-face, ‘niggardliness’ (bukhl), are highly loaded terms assuming, respectively, good faith or falsehood in regard of compact. We explore contrary faces of the covenant: the covenant of life, and the covenant of death. In this context, we pursue the critical, polyvalent concepts of ʿaql and baʿth – ‘binding’ and ‘releasing’ – lastly moving to investigate the poetical world of shades and phantoms, the conceptual extensions of the grave-camel (balīya), and more on the quasi-commercial relationship of living beings with al-Dahr, wherewith the ‘pledges’ (rihān) that are their lives must always, finally, be surrendered. Poem 3.1:123456

‫ضـيَّـ َعهُ الـد ُّْخـلُـلونَ ْإذ َغدَروا‬ َ 3 ‫صروا‬ َ َ‫ب َمن ن‬ ِ ‫ض ْع بِال َمغي‬ ِ َ‫َولَ ْم ي‬ 4 ‫بئس ما ائـتـ َ َمروا‬ ‫إنَّهُم َجي ِْر‬ َ ُ ‫است َعي ٍْر يَحُـ ُّكها الثَّفَـ ُر‬ ‫َوال‬ ‫ص ُر‬ َ ِ‫ َو ال ق‬6ُ‫ال عَـ َو ٌر شـا نَـه‬

ً ‫ َحـ َسـبـا‬2‫ف ابْـتَـنَـوْ ا‬ َّ ٍ ْ‫إن بـني عَو‬ ‫إلـى‬ ‫ا‬ ‫أ َّد‬ ُ‫جـار ِهـم ُخـفـا َرتَـه‬ ْ‫و‬ ِ ‫آل َحـ ْنظَـلَـ ٍة‬ ِ ‫لَ ْم يَـ ْفـ َعـلوا فِ ْع َل‬ 5 ٌ‫ي َوفَـى َوال عُـدَس‬ ٌّ ‫ال ِحـمـيَـر‬ ‫لـ ِكـن عُـ َو يْـ ٌر َو فَـى بِـ ِذ َّمـتِـ ِه‬

1 2 3 4 5

1. Metre: munsariḥ. D.Ṣ., p. 104; Ibr., pp. 132–133; Ahl., 27. Ibr., p. 417, notes variants of Ibn alAnbārī, some of which are matched in Ahl. 2. Ahl: … athbatū &c. Ibn al-Anbārī: … aththalū &c. 3. Ahl: … idh naṣarū. Ibn al-Anbārī: addaw ilā jāri-him dhimāma-humū/wa-lam yuḍīʿū bi-l-ghaybi man naṣarū. 4. Ibn al-Anbārī: lam yafʿalū fiʿla ḥanẓalin bi-himū/biʾsa la-ʿamr-ī bi-l-ghaybi mā ʾtamarū. 5. Reading so, with Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … wa-lā ʿadasun, for which there appears to be no support, as a proper name, at least. See further below, n. 8. 6. Ahl: …ʿāba-hū &c. Ibn al-Anbārī: … ḍarra-hū &c.

148

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia ْ ‫الالب ُْخ ُل‬ ‫ص ُر‬ َ ‫أزرى بِ ِه َوال الـ َح‬ ‫عَيبٌ َوال في عـيدانِ ِهم َخ َو ُر‬ ‫ُخان َو القُـتُـ ُر‬ ِ ‫تُرْ ِو َح ري ُح الد‬ 7

ٌ ‫كالبَ ْد ِر طَ ْـلـ‬ ُ‫ق حُـلـْ ٌو شَـمـائِـلُـه‬ ‫ْس في نِـصابِـهـم‬ َ ‫َـر لَي‬ ٍ ‫ِمـن َمـعْـش‬ ‫حول إذا اسـ‬ ‫م‬ ‫ال‬ ‫في‬ ‫م‬ ‫بيضٌ َمطاعي‬ ُ ُ ِ

6 7 8

1. The Banū ʿAwf built/established/founded a stock of worth (ḥasab), squandered through perfidy by lower inclusions (aldukhlulūn). 2. They discharged the duty to protect their neighbour (jār); he whom they helped was not forfeit by his absence. 3. They did not do as Ḥanẓala did: a house that purposed wanton evil. 4. Neither Ḥimyar nor ʿUdas8 served with more faith (wafā) than a crupper-grated ass’s arse. 5. But ʿUwayr was true (wafā) to contractual dues (dhimma); no frail disgrace (ʿawar) dishonours him (shāna-hū)/disgraces him (ʿāba-hū)/mars him (ḍarra-hū) – nor any weak deficiency (qiṣar). 6. Bright as the waxen moon (badr), with fine dispositions, undiminished by ‘stinginess’ (bukhl) or debility (ḥaṣar). 7. From a kin-group (maʿshar) in whose origin (niṣāb) is no defect (ʿayb), in whose ‘branches’ (ʿīdān) no frailty or fault (khawar). 8. Unsullied (bīḍ), they provide well during drought, when the winds of dearth blow and the regions shake. 7

Verses 1–4: These verses indicate clearly that ḥasab (worth) is something that can be lost: it is predicated upon fulfilling covenantal obligations – specifically, here, offering protection and assistance – i.e., upon wafāʾ (good faith, fidelity). Like a capital source, it can be built up, or diminished (muḍayyaʿ); it grows in direct proportion to virtue.9 Failure to demonstrate wafāʾ results here in an imputation of baseness, graphically enhanced (verse 4b), by reference to an ass’s arse (ist).10 The allusion to the (loose and) irritating 7. Verses 6–8 occur as additions in the recension of Ibn al-Anbārī. 8. Tāj, s.v. ʿ-d-s, notes only ʿudas as proper name, with variant ʿudus. ʿAdas is noted as an interjection to spur a mule (li-zajri l-bighāl), and, apparently, a name for one, also (ismun li-l-baghl ayḍan). In this case, if not simply an error, it may have been the proximity of ‘ass’ in verse 4 that influenced the reading, ʿadas, in D.Ṣ, which, after all (p. 104, n. 4), takes all three allusions here – ‘ass’s arse’ included – as “men of the Banū Ḥanẓala”. 9. Cf. Lila Abu-Lughod’s analysis of the “moral basis of hierarchy” among the Awlad ʿAli: “Hierarchy is legitimated through beliefs about the disparate possession of certain virtues or moral attributes. Furthermore, Bedouins act as though authority must be earned. Because authority is achieved, it can also be lost … Individuals must earn the respect on which their positions rest through the embodiment of their society’s moral ideals. Although the regularities of status distinction expressed in principles of the precedence of genealogy, greater age and wealth, and gender might seem to contradict any notion of achievement, Awlad ʿAli view these principles as being generally associated with, and hence rough indices of, the moral virtues [composing the code of honour]”: Abu-Lughod (1999), pp. 85–86. 10. Ibr., p. 133, n. 4, picks up this point.

3.  Principles of Kinship & Alliance

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crupper (that incites the ass’s disobedience) may be taken as a precise disparagement of bad faith: As we shall see more, this is consonant with a broader scheme of saddleimagery in which ethical rigour and good faith are figured in terms of the soundness of a mount’s appurtenances, its obedience, and the type of saddle-pack it carries (last noted in the commentary to verse 8 of Poem 2.7). These verses also show that affiliates of a greater brotherhood, and their protected neighbours (jīrān), are bound in a compact of mutual rights which extend, in some degree, to all within that compact, and that the actions of the few influence the overall status of the many. This is conveyed, first, in verse 1: the dukhlulūn (presumably members of Ḥanẓala) shame not only themselves in their entirety, but prejudice the status of ʿAwf among whom they have entered. Furthermore, the poet, whose near affiliates have been endangered, announces his personal injury, apparently on the grounds that covenantal dues owed to himself extended equally to them, even in his absence. The implication is that all members of such a federation must be considered in terms of degrees in kinship, whether or not historical consanguine relations have been established, their relationship being predicated on fidelity to covenant. The issue of nearer blood comes into relief in the poet’s exoneration of ʿAwf (verses 5–8), on moral grounds, and in terms of a blameless pedigree. This teases out an intrinsically dissociative value for dukhlulūn (applied to Ḥanẓala), and all its negative connotations.11 As the poet next relates, all of ʿAwf share the moral redemption that the virtue of one of their closer number brings. Verses 5–8: The poet lists qualities that essentially fall under the opposing rubrics of wafāʾ (good faith) and ghadr (treachery) and, therefore, also, of ḥasab (worth) and luʾm (blame): All that ʿUwayr has shown he is not  –  heightened by the pun on his name with ʿawar, ‘defect’ (verse 5) – is stigma that attaches to Ḥanẓala. Treachery is disgraceful, disfiguring and self-injurious. It demonstrates intellectual and physical weakness; it connotes confusion, insecurity, and lack of endurance (i.e., ṣabr). In short, it proves susceptibility to all that is associated with Time’s ‘disease’. Prominent amongst these censurable qualities is the concept of ‘miserliness’ (bukhl). This should therefore be noted as a vice that is antithetical to good faith (wafāʾ), and associated with concomitants of rayb al-dahr. By reflection, wafāʾ must not only imply every contrary virtue, but also constitute a prerequisite for any claim to ‘generosity’ (karam), a quality discussed below. Verses 6 and 7 indicate the inherited nature of ʿUwayr’s innate virtues. The allusion to his people’s ‘branches’ (ʿīdān, v. 7b) recalls the idea of a community with shared radical qualities reflected in Poem 1.4, and offers a complementary picture of how a people’s intisāb (pedigree), which is perceived to be built on, and to imply, virtue, promotes their qualities of mind and action, and, ultimately, their life-potential. The corollary implication is that failure to adhere to the ethic is to undermine the inherited advantages of birth and permit the intrusion of lineal defects – intellectual 11. See Tāj, art. dukhluluna, a term which, while susceptible of being interpreted in terms of purity and love, can also imply the basest sorts who have entered among a people.

150

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

and physical – that would threaten the well-being of a communal body (recall Poem 2.4, especially the commentary to verses 16–19).12 In this light, verse 8 suggests itself as a proof of the benefits that follow solidarity and the maintenance of inherited virtue: In the harshest conditions, the virtuous, and those to whom their generosity extends, continue to survive and flourish. Poem 3.2:1314 15

ُ‫َوأبْـلِ ْغ بَني لُبْنى َوأ ْبلِ ْغ ت‬ ‫ـماضرا‬ ِ 14 ‫أُ فَـقِّـ ُر هُـم إنـّي أُ فَـقّـِ ُر خا بِـرا‬ ‫ميمي صابِرا‬ ُّ َّ‫الت‬15‫َوحُطتُم َوال ي ُْلقَى‬

‫أ ْبلِ ْغ بَني َز ْي ٍد إذا ما لَقيتَهُم‬ ْ ‫َوأ ْبلِ ْغ وال تَ ْتر‬ ‫ُك بَني ابنَ ِة ِم ْنقَ ٍر‬ ً ُ‫صبَرْ تم‬ َ ‫أ َحنظ َل لَوْ ُكنتُم ِكراما‬

1 2 3

1. Tell Banū Zayd whenever you see them; tell Banū Lubnā and Tumāḍir, 2. And fail not to say to Banū Ibnat Minqar: I score them all with utter opprobrium. 3. Were you noble (kirām), Ḥanẓal, you’d have endured (ṣabartumū) and defended (ḥuṭtum); Tamīmīs cannot be deemed/found resolute (ṣābir).

Verses 1–3: Verse 3 makes a two-fold allusion to ṣabr (combative endurance); First, it stands as a prerequisite for karam (generosity), which is associated with the virtues of defence and protection (as implied by ḥuṭtum, verse 3b); second, it summarises the antithesis of the iniquities of which the poet complains. Thus, ṣabr emerges as an assertion of good faith that promotes effectual action. It is an act of fidelity (wafāʾ), which – in light of our observations on wafāʾ above – would connote intellectual and physical health, purity, potency, and esteem. (This entirely complements and enhances the analysis of ṣabr as it occurred in verse 2 of Poem 1.2.) If ṣabr is a prerequisite for karam, then karam may 12. Cf., again, the case of the Awlad ʿAli on the matter of illustrious lineage (aṣl or mabdā): “nobility of origin is believed to confer moral qualities and character”; but “[i]f individuals fail to embody the honor-linked values … they lose the standing appropriate to their age, level of wealth, gender, or even genealogical precedence … Specifically, they lose the respect on which their authority is based. Acts of cowardice, inability to stand up to opponents, failure to reciprocate gifts, succumbing to pain, miserliness – all are dishonorable and lead to loss of respect. Inability to control desire for women is particularly threatening to a man’s honor. Conversely, exemplary behavior on the part of any individual, of whatever age, level of wealth, or gender, is recognized and rewarded with respect”: Abu-Lughod (1999), pp. 45, 92. 13. Metre: tawīl. D.Ṣ., p. 114; Ibr., p. 348; Ahl., 21. Ibr., p. 453 draws attention to the extended variant of Ibn al-Anbārī in his commentary to the Mufaḍḍalīyāt (Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 1, p. 435). In complement to our wider analysis, these mark Ḥanẓala, for their ingratitude and treachery to the protected neighbour (jār), with an evil (sharr) that un-mans them and reduces them to bondmaids (imāʾ). 14. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … nābirā. 15. Ibr: … wa-lā yulfā &c.

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3.  Principles of Kinship & Alliance

be defined as a virtue, built on the self-same qualities, which implies not only fidelity to covenant, but also sustained ethical application. The poet’s outrage indicates that failure to demonstrate karam, when required, diminishes ḥasab (worth). Karam may therefore be taken as a prerequisite for ḥasab, and, like ḥasab, a heritage belonging to those who have historically ensured their health, power, purity and good fame through sustained adherence to the ethic (see again the dimensions of al-Samawʾal’s karam, Chapter 2, note 66). As with the preceding poem, a demonstration of bad faith by one group within a confederacy is considered a vice that affects that confederacy in its entirety: all of Tamīm is tarnished here. This again suggests that an onus of good faith rests on every individual within a covenant, lest damage result for all. These observations open a window onto the full sense of the poet’s emphasis, in the next poem, on the desirability of karam in both protectors and those whom they protect. Poem 3.3:1617 18 19

ْ 17‫إن الكَري َم‬ َّ ْ‫َريم َم َحـل‬ ِ ‫لـلك‬ ْ‫جاراً َوأوْ فاهُـم أبا َحـ ْنـبَـل‬ 19 ْ‫َش ّراً َوأسْخاهُـم فَال يَ ْبخَل‬

ُ ‫أحْ ْلل‬ ‫ت َرحْ لي في بَني ثُ َع ٍل‬ 18 َّ ُ َ ْ ‫اس ُكلِّ ِه ِـم‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ال‬ ‫ر‬ ‫ي‬ ‫خ‬ ‫دت‬ ‫َو َج‬ َ ِ ‫أ ْقـ َر بُهُـم َخيْر اً َو أ ْب َعـ ُد هُـم‬

1 2 3

1. I set down my saddle with Banū Thuʿal: the noble (al-karīm) are a resort for the man of honour (al-karīm/al-kirām). 2. Abū Ḥanbal I found the best (khayr) of men, the most faithful (awfā-hum) to his protected neighbour (jār),20 3. The most near to the good (khayr) and the farthest from ill (sharr,); the most generous (askhā-hum), for he does not stint (lā yabkhal/in bakhul)/the most giving in times when folk are niggards (awāna bakhal).

Verses 1–3: Weighed against the value of karam in what precedes, the allusion here to the mutual karam of the poet and Thuʿal (verse 1) implies the existence of an ideal precondition both for protection and affiliation; namely, that no co-covenantee should arouse doubt as to his intrinsic worth and good faith (wafāʾ). By the same token, this allusion also translates as an expression of the poet’s satisfaction concerning Thuʿal’s good faith, and a promise of his own. That the question of good faith is central here is clearly indicated in verse 2 where the open reference to wafāʾ defines a principle that qualifies 16. Metre: sarīʿ. D.Ṣ., p. 154; Ibr., p. 199; Ahl., 42. Ibr., p. 432, notes two more slight variants to those covered here, neither of which change the information. 17. Ibr: … inna l-kirāma &c. 18. Ahl: … kulli-himū &c. 19. Ibr: aqraba-hum khayran wa-abʿada-hum/sharran wa-ajwada-hum awāna bakhal; Ahl: …/sharran wa-ajwadu-humū in bakhul. 20. There is an ambiguity here: poems below use jār of the protector (properly, mujīr) as well the protected (see Poem 3.6, v. 4, Poem 3.7, v. 7).

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the karam of verse 1, and also serves as a semantic umbrella that embraces the nearsynonym of karam – sakhāʾ – in verse 3. As in Poem 3.1, wafāʾ occurs in contraposition to bukhl (stinginess). It also qualifies Abū Ḥanbal’s condition and situation: wafāʾ is a fundamental premise on which his status rests so near to the good (khayr) and so far from evil (sharr). Both khayr and sharr have moral and physical implications. The dictionaries indicate that khayr connotes intelligence, justice, wealth, good fortune, and a sound condition; sharr, the antithesis of all these. These associations only complement the corollaries of wafāʾ and ghadr (faith and treachery) noted thus far on the basis of poetic information. The message, again, is that communal observance of covenant promotes all that enhances life – health, good fame and prosperity – whilst treachery invites the opposite. The conclusion to verse 3 need not therefore be taken as tautological stuffing: Abū Ḥanbal achieves the means to be generous, and the nearest state to perfection on account of his unfailing virtue, even in times and situations where others may be tempted or forced to withhold (recall verse 8 of Poem 3.1).21 By the same token, verse 3 also reflects the conditional nature of karam and ḥasab (generosity and worth): Proximity to, or removal from, the qualities and conditions that enhance life must depend on how satisfactorily a covenant, once in force, is sustained. This is alternatively reflected in the following qiṭʿa where a poet berates another man for having vitiated his status as karīm by ungenerously pointing up benefits previously conferred:22 ‫ان‬ َ ‫لَي‬ ِ ّ‫ْس الكَري ُم إذا أسْدى بِ َمن‬

‫أ ْفسدتَ بال َمنِّ ما أوْ لَيتَ من نِ َع ٍم‬

You have spoiled (afsadta), with [this demeaning] recapitulation (mann), the gifts of good (niʿam) you conferred [before]; A noble man (al-karīm), having given, is not such as to indulge in mean reminders (mannān).

The dominant concept here is mann, which, being of the aḍdād (‘antagonyms’: words with two contrary meanings), might alternatively have been used to convey the conferral of benefits (inʿām), rather than their effective revocation. Mannān, in this case, equates to the quality of a ‘miser’ (bakhīl), not one who is karīm: The verb, afsada, which defines the concomitants of mann here, connotes rendering a thing evil and inefficacious; corrupting and infecting; consuming and destroying – all the qualities that accrue to al-Dahr. Conceptually, this would imply condemnation for a corruption of karam through susceptibility to Time’s ‘sickness’, and all that negates wafāʾ (good faith). In view of the powerful rhetorical effect of the poet’s manipulation of this bivalency in mann in Poem 3.6, below, the negation here of karam by mann may be taken 21. Cf. Abu-Lughod (1999), pp. 45–46, which notes the moral and social implications of demonstrating or failing to demonstrate “the most highly prized Arab virtue”: generosity (kurama). 22. D.Ṣ., p. 176. Perhaps out of place in the dīwān of Imruʾ al-Qays: Ahl. cites this, p. 207, no. 41, in his appendix of “other attributions”. Ibr. does not carry this piece.

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3.  Principles of Kinship & Alliance

as a deliberately shocking linguistic tactic: rather than being a benevolent mannān, this man manifests the proclivities of the great ‘spoiler’ of all life’s advantages, al-Dahr, in its capacity as al-Manūn.23 All this indicates that niʿam here must imply ‘benefits’ generally conducive to life and wellbeing, to health and prosperity, in antithesis to calamity (compare Poem 2.6, verse 12: the poet’s use of nuʿmā to epitomise the faculties of his life and health, successively revoked by Time).24 In sum, this man has, through bad faith, diminished his karam (generosity/nobility), and therefore his ḥasab (worth), thus placing himself closer to sharr (evil) – or everything that diminishes life – and threatening all he is bound to protect. Poem 3.4:2526 27 28 29

‫دارما‬ ِ ‫َو َج َّد َع يَرْ بوعـا ً َو َعفَّ َر‬ 27 ‫ـفارما‬ َ ‫ِر‬ ِ ‫قـاب إما ٍء يَ ْقتَنينَ الـ َم‬ 28 ْ ً َ ‫َوال آ َذنوا جارا فيَظعَنَ سالِما‬ ‫ب ِهـ ْن ٍد ْإذ تَ َج َّر َد قـائمـا‬ ِ ‫لَدى با‬

26

‫ـراجـ َم ُكـلَّها‬ ِ َ‫أال قَـبَّ َح هللاُ الـب‬ ‫ـع‬ ‫ـجـاش‬ ‫م‬ ُ ‫َوآثَـ َر بِـال َم ْلحا ِة آ َل‬ ٍ ِ ‫فَما قاتَلوا عَن َربِّ ِهم َو َربيبِ ِهـم‬ 29 ‫جار ِه‬ ِ ِ‫َوما فَ َعـلوا فِ ْع َل ال ُع َوي ِْر ب‬

1 2 3 4

1. May Allāh disfigure the whole of Barājim; mutilate Yarbūʿ, cover Dārim in dust, 2. And desire for Mujāshiʿ all dispraise (milḥāt); bondsmen of bondmaids who keep to (yaqtanīna)/stuff their [flaccid] vulvas with (yaʿtabiʾna) the mafārim [in order to make them contract];30

23. Ringgren (1955), p. 25 ff., discusses the etymology and properties of al-manūn; Lisān, s.v. m-n-n offers ample illustration of the bivalency of mann; its correlation, in its negative sense, with bukhl (the concept of al-bakhīl al-mannān), with corruption (ifsād), treachery (khiyāna), and the proclivities of al-Dahr in its capacity as al-Manūn. This entry also illustrates received wisdom on how mann – demeaning the beneficiary of one’s generosity by holding them, boastfully, to account for it – is a reprehensible act that voids the original good, citing the Qurʾan in this regard: see Qurʾān, 2: 262, 264. 24. This is complemented by the semantic range of niʿma in the dictionaries: Lisān, art. niʿmatun. 25. Metre: ṭawīl. D.Ṣ., p. 165; Ibr., pp. 130–131; Ahl., 57. Ibr., pp. 414–416 details variants, as well as additional verses carried by al-Ṭusī, Abū Sahl, and Ibn al-Naḥḥās, which amplify the story and the moral outrage. Significantly, contrasting treachery and good faith are epitomised (ibid., p. 416) in a concluding verse contrasting a bond of compact (ḥabl) that is “weak and fractured” (ḍaʿīfan muqaṣṣaran), with one that is “strong and protective” (ḥablan matīnan … ʿāṣiman). 26. Ahl: …/wa-ʿaqqara yarbūʿan wa-jaddaʿa dārimā (“may He hamstring Yarbūʿ and mutilate Dārim”). The reading, ʿaqqara complements the universal maysir-paradigm discussed in Chapter 5:2. 27. Ahl: ... yaʿtabiʾna &c. 28. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … fa-yaẓfara &c. 29. Ahl: wa-lā &c. 30. The mafārim were rags that could be used during menstruation, but were apparently also used by women to apply an astringent, made from grape-stones and the like, to contract their vaginas: Lisān, s.v. f-r-m; Ibr., p. 130, n. 2, explains with alacrity.

154

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia 3. For they did not fight for their lord (rabb) and ally (rabīb); nor did they alert their protected neighbour (jār), that he might safely depart/overcome. 4. They did not act like ʿUwayr with his ‘neighbour’ (jār), when he strove (tajarrada) by Hind’s door [to deny the way].

Verses 1–4: Verse 3 indicates concisely the scope of covenantal dues: Even the technically passive failure to alert confederates to danger is an active betrayal – a manifestation of bukhl and all it entails (see the commentary to verses 5–8 of Poem 3.1).31 Ambiguity as to the precise meaning of rabīb causes no major problem, allowing that the rights of kinship extend, in differing degrees, to all members of a brotherly compact, covering everything they protect, including their husbanded wealth (as shown, Poem 1.2; verses 11–15 of Poem 2.4; verses 1–4 of Poem 3.1).32 ʿUwayr’s unswerving devotion to duty – carried in tajarrada (verse 4) – implies the virtue of ṣabr. This locates the combative endurance that is ṣabr, once more, in the camp of good faith (wafāʾ), and defines it by sustained physical, as well as intellectual, resistance, summoned to meet covenantal demands.33 The defence of Hind’s chamber is glossed as an allusion to ʿUwayr’s protection of the poet’s sister, which we cannot comment on. However, as an emotive epitome of Uwayr’s defence of the poet’s interests, it is worth noting: The penetration of protected chambers evokes unsanctioned trespass into the heart of a communal ḥaram (sanctum), which shames the protectors, and has the potential, poetically, to be elaborated in erotic terms. Verse 4 may be viewed as the reverseperspective of an initiative such as the poet himself boasts (recall verses 3–5 of Poem 2.2) when he equates his prowess in the battle and hunt with his violation of women’s curtained chambers.34 The Tamīmī treachery, or sin,35 invites the poet’s censure of a host of sub-tribes, which would render them closer to the moral and physical ignominy of sharr (evil), so entirely undermining their ḥasab (worth). This is most forcefully expressed (verse 2) by the translation of their birthright into the ultimate baseness of bondsmanship to 31. The inexcusability of failing to warn is alternatively reflected in the proverb: aʿdhara man andhara, “he who warns has an excuse” (Lisān, s.v. ʿ-dh-r, IV). 32. Cf. below, Poem 3.7, where protection of the jār is focused on the safekeeping of the poet’s camels. 33. Cf. v. 1 of Poem 3.5 that follows: how the quality of ṣabr, compounded by ḥimāya (protection), together add up to the value of tajarrada here. 34. Cf. below, the commentary to v. 2 of Poem 3.5. 35. Sin, constituting the contravention of covenant, was previously discussed in Chapter 2: the commentary to vv. 11–15 of Poem 2.4, vv. 5–7 of Poem 2.5, vv. 9–10 of Poem 2.7, where sin was related to divine sanction; cf. the concluding section of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim’s Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII – overviewed in Part 1:2, s.v. Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin – where ‘sin’ (ithm) was implicated by the betrayal of compact, and divine sanction was explicitly invoked in that regard.

155

3.  Principles of Kinship & Alliance

female slaves.36 This stands as an inverse reflection of the impeccable heritage and healthy status imputed (verses 6–7 of Poem 3.1) to ʿUwayr for his good faith. That the poet’s imprecations invoke Allāh suggests, in complement to earlier indications, that sinful breaches of covenant entail ritual defilement that is subject to divine sanction. This is conversely reflected in the following poem, where the observance of covenant is, rather, a matter that relates to divine approval. Poem 3.5:3738 39 40 41

ُ ‫َل ْثنَي‬ ‫ْت َخيْراً صالِحا ً َو َلرْ ضاني‬ 39 ُ ُ ‫ران‬ ِ ‫هُـ ُم َمـنَعـوا جاراتِـكم آ َل غـ ْد‬ ُ‫ص ْفوان‬ َ ‫يل البَالبِ ِل‬ ِ َ‫َوأ ْس َعـ َد في ل‬ ُ ُ‫َو أوْ َجهُهـُم ِعن َد ال َمشا ِه ِد غ َّر ان‬ ‫ران‬ ِ ْ‫راق َونَج‬ ِ ‫َوساروا بِ ِهم بَيْنَ ال ِع‬ 41 ‫ـجيـران‬ ٍ ‫أبَـ َّر بِـمـيثا‬ ِ ِ‫ق َوأوْ فَى ب‬ 38

‫صبَرْ تُـ ُم‬ َ ‫أ َح ْنظَ َل لَوْ َحام ْيتُ ُم َو‬ َّ ‫أال‬ ‫س دُونَهُم‬ ِ ‫إن قَوْ ما ً ُك ْنتُ ُم أ ْم‬ ‫ُع َو ْي ٌر َومن ِم ْث ُل ال ُع َوي ِْر َو َر ْه ِط ِه‬ ٌ‫ف طَها َرى نَقيَّة‬ ٍ ْ‫ثِيابُ بَني عَو‬ 40 َ ْ ‫ضلَّ َل أهلهُم‬ َ ‫ي ال ُم‬ َّ ‫هُ ُم أ ْبلَغوا ال َح‬ ‫فَقَد أصْ بَحوا وهللاُ أصْ فاهُ ُم بِـ ِه‬

1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Ḥanẓala! Had you stood to protect (ḥāmaytumū), and persisted (ṣabartumū), I should have been pleased and praised you for perfect good (khayr ṣāliḥ). 2. A people who, yesterday  –  clan of the faithless! (āla ghudrān) – were less near, protected (manaʿū) your own neighbour (jār)/women (jārāt). 3. ʿUwayr, and one like ʿUwayr and his kin, who, the night of anxieties, assisted (fī layli l-balābil): Ṣafwān! 4. The robes of Banū ʿAwf are spotless, pure (ṭahārā, naqīya); their faces, to see, a moon-like white (ghurrān). 5. Sending the errant tribe (al-ḥayy al-muḍallal) to where it belonged (ahla-hum), they drove it out through al-ʿIrāq and Najrān. 6. So they have emerged  –  and Allāh distinguish them for it (aṣfā-humū bi-hī) – most pious to compact/most faithful to oath, and most faithful to their charge (jīrān).

36. Cf. the noble heritage of women and men, alike, invoked in relation to the sustained virtue and strength claimed by al-Samawʾal: above, Chapter 2, n. 66. 37. Metre: ṭawīl. D.Ṣ., p. 169; Ibr., pp. 83–84; Ahl., 66. Ibr., pp. 397–398 details alternatives, and an extended variant of Ibn al-Anbārī’s commentary to the Mufaḍḍalīyāt, the force of which is all complementary to the keynotes of this chapter. 38. Absent in Ahl. Ibr., p. 397, details this as the opening verse of Ibn al-Anbārī’s variant: Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 1, p. 436. 39. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. (v. 1). D.Ṣ: …/humū manaʿū jāran la-kum &c. 40. Ahl. (v. 4): humū ballaghū l-ḥayya l-muḍallala ahlu-hū &c. 41. Ahl. (v. 5): …/abarra bi-aymānin &c. Ibr., p. 398 notes, instead, bi-īmān (‘in faith’) as variant in the readings of al-Sukkarī, Ibn al-Naḥḥās, and Ibn al-Anbārī.

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Verses 1–2: The quality of combative endurance, ṣabr (verse 1), is characterised as a virtue antithetical to treachery, which is applied in defence of confederate welfare, and is the predicate and proof of a sound constitution. Together with ḥāmā (to defend), it makes up the value of tajarrada in verse 4 of the preceding poem. Thus, ṣabr emerges again as an endeavour that opposes the corruption of the individual and the federal body. The indirect claim to rights of protection, even when absent (verse 2), reflects the poet’s words of verse 2 in Poem 3.1. This indicates that while covenantal relations may be characterised by ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘nearness’ (mujāwara, qarāba), they remain in force despite local distance; that the contrary conditions of buʿd (distance) and ghurba (strangerhood) are only ‘truly’ and finally in force with the rupture or noncurrency of, covenantal bonds, irrespective of local distance.42 The concomitants of this are that buʿd and ghurba, like bayn (morbid ‘separation’), may implicitly allude to a rupture or a negation of, covenantal bonds, or to a denial of the obligations of a compact, or of access to the benefits of a compact; and that buʿd and ghurba may allude to situations conducive to the encroachment of Time’s ‘disease’. As an act antithetical to treachery (ghadr, verse 2), manʿ (protection) must be identified here with good faith (wafāʾ). How it should mean this, given its semantic connotations, only makes sense if it is viewed as an act only to be directed at the enemy:43 Manʿ is essentially to withhold, or deny access to, a benefit. It is considered the antithesis of iʿṭāʾ: giving, or offering by hand  –  a quality of tractability and manageableness.44 This suggests that, directed at a kinsman, manʿ would equate to bukhl – a ‘withholding’ that is morbid treachery – contradicting a quality of open ease which is incumbent on kinsmen, and which emanates from karam (generosity) and wafāʾ (fidelity).45 In turn, this implies that manʿ is a ‘refusal’ that prohibits an enemy the ‘gift’ of what one is bound to protect; a ‘refusal’ which, far from being bukhl and active treachery, may be defined not only by wafāʾ, but by karam (recall especially our considerations on karam in Poems 3.2 and 3.3: how it constituted wafāʾ, implying active protection). These perceptions are confirmed below, in verses 1–2 of Poem 3.6, where a two-fold allusion to manʿ defines it, first, as an act of impeding the enemy in defence of the poet, and secondly, as an act of ‘benefaction’ (mann) to him. The allusion to jārāt/jār (wives/protected neighbour, verse 2), invites comparison with verse 4 of the preceding poem, and the emphasis on ‘Uwayr’s protection of Hind’s chamber, which epitomized his faithful defence of the poet’s interests. As noted, this evoked unsanctioned trespass into a ḥaram (sanctum), which may play out poetically 42. This point is creatively reflected in the poet’s play on the concepts of qarāba and ghurba below in Poem 4.1; cf. the concept of al-jāru dhū l-qurbā (Qurʾān, 4: 36), indicating a title to the rights of near-relations, even in the event of distant residency: Tāj, art. jārun. 43. As, e.g., below, n. 46: the verses of ʿAmr b. Kulthūm. 44. Lisān, s.v. m-n-ʿ, I. 45. Regarding this quality of ‘easiness’, cf. below, v. 17 of Poem 4.3: the definition of ideal brotherhood, which includes the demand for a kinsman to be sahl al-khalīqa, “easy in manner”.

3.  Principles of Kinship & Alliance

157

in a variety of gendered confrontations. Without denying that reference is perhaps being made here to the protection of a specific neighbour, or of specific wives, it is worth noting that an abominable defilement of honour, achieved by assaulting a man’s protected interests, is so readily epitomised as sexual invasion of protected recesses, for it sensitizes us both to the urgency of protecting such spaces, and to the force of boasting their infiltration where an antagonist or non-kin are concerned.46 Verse 3: There is no internal evidence for the identity of Ṣafwān, if this is the name of an actor in the story.47 Whatever the case, recalling the poetry’s propensity for comparing manly virtue to rock (see the commentary to Poem 1.4, verse 11; Poem 2.4, verse 10, and especially the saying qaraʿa ṣafāta-hu, ‘he impugned the man’s honour’, lit: ‘he smote his smooth stone’), and in view of the adulatory use to which the root, ṣ-f-w, is put in verse 6 – (wa-llāhu aṣfā-hum &c.), the semantic force of the word could be relevant here: ṣafwān (as a plural of ṣafāt) could register at the level of a complement to the unimpeachable honour and worth that accompany good faith. The relationship of the roots of ṣafwān to the quality of purity (ṣafw) might not, then, go unnoticed, purity being openly referenced in the following verse. As to the threatened disaster, expressed here as layl al-balābil (the night of calamities), this raises the ubiquitous association of Time’s afflictions with the night, and effectively makes the enemy invasion an incarnation of the poet’s night-returning ‘sickness’. Thus, the force of virtue that repels it must embody the purest ‘antidote’. Verse 4: The context indicates that the purity associated with ʿAwf ’s garments reflects their wearers’ intrinsic nature and, specifically, their virtue in respect of compact. The dictionaries complement these observations, offering that thiyāb can relate to the body or the self, to covenant (dhimma) and, when qualifed by ṭāhir, to the antithesis of innate habits (khuluq) that are base.48 When associated with honour, ṭāhir indicates purity from vice; when related to water, pureness and purificatory potential. Thiyāb ṭahārā (pure garments), of themselves, figure garments free of stain or menstrual discharge, 46. The intensity with which the protection of women in covenant is related to maintaining the honour is articulated by ʿAmr b. Kulthūm – also making strong use of manʿ: al-Tibrīzī (1969), ʿAmr, vv. 83–90, which conclude: “They provender our horses, saying, ‘You are not our husbands, if you do not protect us (idhā lam tamnaʿū-nā).’ If we defend them not (idhā lam naḥmi-hinna), may we survive not nor live on for anything after them! Nothing protects (manaʿa) women like a smiting that sends the forearms flying like play-chucks”: Arberry’s translation, (1957), p. 209. 47. Ibr., p. 83, n. 2: al-Sukkarī glosses this as Ṣafwān b. Karib b. Ṣafwān b. Shijna. Without preconceptions as to the story and its actors, though, one could equally read ṣafwān as complementary, rather than appositional to, ʿUwayr and those who helped. 48. Illustrated, e.g., by Rāshid b. Shihāb: see Lyall (1918–1921), LXXXVI, v. 3 and the comparanda offered in the Arabic commentary.

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and thus, by extension, freedom from moral taint.49 The sum of this, in its context, is that ʿAwf ’s virtue renders them entirely removed from defilement or censure, and facilitates self-preserving, purificatory action. That is to say, the sustained purity of their inherited (‘liquid’) resources can translate, as here, into a force that repels and cleanses the enemy ‘disease’ (recall again al-Samawʾal’s verses cited in Chapter 2, note 66: how self-purification through virtue results in an inherited substance like the purest waters of a raincloud, which imply no ‘bluntness in their blades’, or weakness in their origin).50 This sense of manifest virtue is enhanced (verse 4b) by allusion to their ‘shining faces’: Ghurra is a whiteness associated with the stars and moon; and the context shows that this ‘light’ is essentially a product of faithful action, which implies every quality that has enabled ʿAwf to perform as they have. This recalls an earlier reference (Poem 3.1, verses 6–8) to the white, moon-like aspect of ʿAwf, which testified to their sustained, inherited virtue. (In complement to this, the dictionaries offer that ghurra is a quality signifying nobility, eminence and generous action).51 Following the allusion to layl al-balābil (verse 3), verse 4 emerges as a testament to the formidable virtue of a people that can dispel both the ‘disease’ and the darkness of the thickest ‘night’.52 Verse 5: Some interpret this verse in the light of legend, offering that al-ḥayy al-muḍallal are the poet’s people: muḍallal because, in their confusion, they do not know where to turn;53 and the rest of the verse is then taken to imply that they were escorted to protecting relations (ahla-hū).54 Yet, the moral connotations of muḍallal appear to be generally negative. Like ḍillīl, it conveys an intrinsic inclination against pursuing a proper course; refusal to desist from vain and wrongful action. ‘The erring tribe’ seems more susceptible of being interpreted as a hostile enemy; the passive force of muḍallal then, poetically, suggesting that they have been misled (by the ghūl that disposes them to error). Ahla-hū could then simply follow as ‘where they belong’; i.e., giving them their just deserts. As for sāra bi, this – like sayyara – is strongly associated with a quality of forcing; with causing something to go as a beast is driven; with

49. Tāj, arts thawbun, ṭāhirun. 50. Cf. n. 98, this chapter: how an aggressive initiative, or a hostile army, are figured by storm cumuli. 51. Tāj, Lisān, arts ghurratun, agharru. 52. Cf. Ibr., p. 141, v. 4: how, for their defence, the poet’s protectors earn the title maṣābīḥu l-ẓalām, “lamps in the darkness”. 53. As, e.g., Ibr., p. 84, n. 4. Ahl.’s variant here, al-ḥayya l-muḍallala ahlu-hū, is perhaps more supportive of the gloss; but the verse is altogether problematic, in any case, as Lyall’s notes on Ibn al-Anbārī’s rendition show: Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 1 p. 437, v. 9, and notes. 54. D.Ṣ., p. 169, n. 5, glosses al-ḥayy al-muḍallal as Banū Shuraḥbīl, and their ahl as the Banū Kinda.

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banishing and expelling.55 If one cannot prove the glosses wrong, one can argue that their interpretation is less natural. Verse 6: The glosses take the masculine-singular pronoun in aṣfā-humū bi-hī as a referent to ʿUwayr. This reading seems strained, owing to the distance from here to the last mention of ʿUwayr in verse 3. The poet has, meanwhile, focused on the virtue of ʿAwf as a whole, concisely stated their combined worth (verse 4), and specifically illustrated it (verse 5). This being immediately followed by fa-qad aṣbaḥū (they have thus become/they thus enter upon day), one is perhaps, rather, invited to infer that the immediate point at issue is ʿAwf ’s corporate demonstration of supreme fidelity. It would not be unreasonable, then, to argue that bi-hī entails ‘by reason of it’ (i.e., of their having done what they did) as part of an optative formula: ‘may Allāh distinguish them for it’. This would then simply suggest, in complement to earlier indications, that fidelity to covenant, and the maintenance of honour, are perceived to invite divine satisfaction by virtue of a certain connection between man and deity. Such fidelity is projected as purificatory and productive of the highest esteem – as openly articulated in verse 4. We may recall here, though, our perception that the seeds of open allusion to the purity in virtue might already have been planted earlier in the allusion to Ṣafwān/ṣafwān. The poet’s recourse here to root, ṣ-f-w (in allāhu aṣfā-humu bi-hī), which resonates with ṣafwān, is suggestive: Ṣafwān (verse 3) emerges from the successful negotiation of the ‘night of afflictions’, which was the salvation of persons protected by covenant. Recourse to the same root, invoking the divine, (verse 6) accompanies another allusion to emergence from darkness, carried in the verb aṣbaḥū, an act of ‘coming to be’, which is rooted in the sense of ‘entering upon morning’, and which can imply dissolution of the ‘long night’ of distress.56 Here, it finds people ‘entering upon morning’ as the most pious and faithful in respect of their covenant. This offers mutually supportive internal evidence that the poet’s discussion of how moral rectitude overcomes evil, consummates honour, and promotes purity, does, indeed, begin in verse 3; and, further, that the entire matter is perceived to relate to divine favour, the central issue conditioning that favour being the sustained and responsible pursuit of an ethic that aims to achieve such purification.

55. Tāj, Asās, s.v. s-y-r. 56. This is the verb invoked by Bishr b. Abī Khāzim’s distressed, anthropomorphic bull-oryx when willing the ‘long night’ to turn to day: Lyall (1918–1921), XCVII, v. 13 – overviewed in Part 1:2, s.v. Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin.

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Poem 3.6:5758 59 60 61

ُ ‫َوكا َد اللَّي‬ ‫ْث يُـو ِدي بـاب ِْن حُجْ ِر‬ 59 ُ ْ ‫ب بِ َحيْث نَدري‬ ِّ ‫ي ابْنَ ال‬ َّ َ‫َعل‬ ِ ‫ضبا‬ 60 ّ ْ ُ ‫ك مـِني َغ ْي ُر شـكري‬ َ ‫َومـا يَجْ زي‬ 61 ُّ ‫ك ْللـفَـري ِد أع‬ ‫َـز نَصْ ِر‬ َ ‫َونَصْ ُر‬

َ ‫َمنَعْتَ اللَّي‬ ‫ْث ِمن أ ْك ِل اب ِْن حُجْ ٍر‬ 58 ُ ٍّ‫ـن‬ ‫َمنَعْتَ فَـأ ْنـتَ ذو َم َون ْع َمى‬ ‫ك الذي دافَعْـتَ عَـنّي‬ َ ‫َسأ َ ْش ُك ُر‬ ً‫ك جـارا‬ ْ َ َ ‫ق ِمن‬ َ ‫فَـ َمـا جـا ٌر بِأوْ ثـ‬

1 2 3 4

1. You denied (manaʿta) the lion a feast on the son of Ḥujr when the lion had all but done for him. 2. You denied (manaʿta), Son of Ḥujr; so, as far as we see, you do grant and confer on us benefaction (dhū mannin wa- nuʿmā). 3. You will have my thanks for defending me, though I’ve only my gratitude to return … 4. No protector (jār) is truer than you to his charge (jār)/to his compact-oath (ʿahd); no assistance more powerful for the solitary soul (farīd)/for the ‘quarry pursued’ (al-ṭarīd).

Verses 1–4: The threat to the poet embodied by the man-eating ‘lion’ (verse 1) is expressed as īdāʾ, a quality of destruction linked with age and Death in the abstract.62 Conceptually, this verse recalls the poet’s praise of the virtues of Saʿd (Poem 2.4, verses 14–15), which rendered his camps insusceptible to the ‘leopard’s’ predation. That this confrontation reduces to a matter of life or death in discharging covenantal dues, defines the quality of those virtues praised in verse 2, and enhances our analysis of manʿ, mann and nuʿmā earlier in this chapter. Manʿ was defined as a quality of prohibition contradicting benefaction and tractability (iʿṭāʾ); one which, exercised to the detriment of confederates, would be a censurable manifestation of bukhl: ‘miserliness’ equating to treachery. Exercised in their interest, it amounts to solidly faithful defence and self-expending beneficence. The word-play in verse 2 complements this: The repetition of manaʿta reprises the senses of combat and refusal that it commands in verse 1 (you firmly defended/refused [the enemy] your gift) and then abruptly re-loads it, qualified by mann and nuʿmā, with the ceding generosity desired of kinsmen (you restrained/refused your gift, and therefore you are beneficent). Here, too, the bivalency of mann works to powerful rhetorical effect: Its potential to register as a quality of bukhl (stinginess), rather than karam (generosity), is teased out by the initial ambivalence of the second ‘manaʿta’, and is only finally overturned by the announcement of nuʿmā (benefaction). This now 57. Metre: wāfir. D.Ṣ., p. 114; Ibr., p. 260; Ahl., 24. Ibr., pp. 444–445 details variants covered between these readings. 58. Ibr: … wa-anta &c. 59. Reading so, with Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … bna l-ḍabābi &c. 60. Ibr., ʿannī &c. 61. Ibr: fa-lā jārun bi-awthaqa min-ka ʿahdan/fa-naṣru-ka li-l-ṭarīdi aʿazzu naṣrī. 62. Lisān, art. awdā bi-hi: awdā bi-hi l-manūnu/l-ʿumuru.

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corroborates earlier conclusions on the nature of mann (in its positive sense) and nuʿmā: These entail not merely material favours, but voluntary self-expenditure in arms, every advantage that preserves a beneficiary from misery and death. One may anticipate, then, how concepts of ‘generosity’ and ‘niggardliness’ may be used as poetic ‘short-hand’ implying, respectively, all faithful conduct that advantages life and honour, or any malignant behaviour that endangers these. The poet’s gratitude is defined (verse 3) as (insufficient) compensation for a debt (jazāʾ). (This is symptomatic of an ethos conceived within a system of credit and debt, and may be compared with the poet’s boast – Poem 2.5, verse 7 – of releasing the prisoner from his bonds to receive, in return, the oath of ransom, or redemption (fidāʾ)). Inasmuch as his gratitude takes the incorporeal form of verse, the payment for this debt translates as ‘humble praise’ – a little false modesty, perhaps, if compared with his boast (Poem 2.3, verse 5) that an insult from him will resound for all time: What that boast implied was that poetry is comparable to the essence and substance of virtue corporeally manifest, with the additional advantage of overriding Death through the vehicle memory. One may infer here, then, that the poet really supposes he repays his debt with interest.63 The quality of trusty steadfastness (wathāqa) attributed to Saʿd in the superlative (verse 4a) evokes every constituent of wafāʾ (good faith). It indicates a stability, sureness and strength equated with iḥkām and istiḥkām.64 The former implies the restraint of corrupt action; the latter, something compact and closely knit; freedom from defect through applied skill; the emergence of a quality, or of an affair, in a state that is perfectly sound. Detectable here are the qualities of ʿaql and ṣabr (‘intellectual integrity’ and ‘endeavour’); but the fact that this verse summarises the practical achievement of Saʿd’s ‘prevention’ and ‘generosity’ – manʿ, mann and nuʿmā, all constituents of wafāʾ – suggests their presence here, also. Once again, one infers that virtue promotes health and might. That Saʿd’s assistance (naṣr) is of the most powerful order (verse 4b) therefore follows quite naturally. The implication that this is indissolubly linked to his commitment to covenant is perhaps enhanced in Ibrāhīm’s edition: His rigorous observance of the inviolable contract (ʿahd) is unsurpassed and, as a result (fa), his is the most mighty assistance. This brings us to consider the quality of the assistance called naṣr in context. The surrounding details indicate that this is a virtue expected of, and a benefit derived from, the mutual sureties of covenant; that it emanates from karam and wafāʾ (generosity and good faith), and therefore prohibits evil and serves just cause or need. As a manifestation of karam which pertains to a covenant of mutual commitment, it follows, however, that naṣr is also conditional upon good faith, and may not be 63. Cf. a rāʾīya of Zuhayr (1964), p. 36, where the poet leaves his benefactor in no doubt that his grateful praise has an eternal quality superior to the perishability of material benefits received in this life: wa-inna-ka in aʿṭayta-nī thamana l-ghinā/ḥamidta lladhī uʿṭī-ka min thamani l-shukrī// wa-in yafna mā tuʿṭī-hi fī l-yawmi aw ghadin/fa-inna lladhī uʿṭī-ka yabqā ʿalā l-dahrī. 64. Qāmūs, Lisān, s.v. w-th-q.

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expected by those who renege on their contract or come otherwise to be thought insufficiently worthy. The corollary of this, in the light of all that precedes, is that naṣr may ultimately be construed as an extension of the ‘liquid’ resources of virtue that offer ‘curative’ ‘drink’ (isqāʾ); and the dictionaries supply complementary support: Naṣr entails aid in the case of injury and the cause of vengeance; compliance with moral dictates; the prevention of wrongful action; the supply of want; the assistance of the rain to the land, which makes it flourish.65 Lastly, here, we consider the poet’s self-identification (verse 4) with al-farīd (the solitary soul)/al-ṭarīd (the ‘quarry’ pursued). Farīd is not limited to ‘a solitary man’; it can evoke a lonely bull-oryx or cow; it can convey the idea of pearls or gems that intersperse other beads on a thread. Ṭarīd implies one who has been driven away from a community, its related verb evoking also the condition of hunted game (waḥsh).66 We saw earlier (in Poem 1.5) how a man of ‘shining’ virtue (agharr), ‘hunted’ by Death, could be identified with the waḥsh; how (in Poem 2.5, verses 10–12) a man of noble aspiration, combating the ‘diseased’ pursuit of Death could evolve into a hunted oryx. We have also seen how communal cohesion may conceptually be rendered the stringing of gems upon a thread that can be damaged or severed by Time’s ‘disease’: The idea of a communal unit as gems on a thread is openly reflected in a rithāʾ of Labīd for Arbad, who was, he says, their leader (imām) and mainstay/coordinating thread (niẓām); that the communal ‘beads’ were preserved by that ‘thread’ (niẓām). After Arbad’s death, the people are nothing; they are [like the unavenged dead] no more than grave-shades (aṣdāʾ) and [thirsting] skulls (hām).67 Returning, then, to verse 4 of the poem in hand, it may be offered that while Saʿd’s supreme naṣr for the farīd/ṭarīd must first evoke the power of virtue to succour stranded individuals, the wider associations of this allusion are highly suggestive: one can fully see the potential for a poet to allude to strong protectors and allies as an ultimate refuge after elaborating his abandonment to morbid Fortune, for example, in terms of a lonely oryx who is also a shining (virtuous) ‘pearl’, fallen from the niẓām of similar ‘gems’, and exposed to the predatory assault of death’s sickness – rather as we saw, indeed, in verses 9–14 of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim’s Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII (discussed above, Part 1:2).68 Verse 65. Tāj, s.v. n-ṣ-r. 66. Lisān, Qāmūs, s.v. f-r-d, ṭ-r-d. 67. Labīd (1962), p. 209, vv. 28–29: wa-kunta imāma-nā wa-la-nā niẓāman/wa-kāna l-jazʿu yuḥfaẓu bil-niẓāmī//wa-laysa l-nāsu baʿda-ka fī naqīrin/wa-lā hum ghayru aṣdāʾin wa-hāmī – discussed in the commentary to verses 1–2 of Poem 1.4. 68. Cf., again, in this light, al-Tibrīzī (1969), Labīd, esp. vv. 36–54, where the poet compares his mounted self to a lonely oryx who has lost her calf to the arrows of Death (v. 39), and passes a ‘long night’ of distress (v. 40). She illumines the dark (43) like a lustrous pearl that has slipped from its thread (niẓām). After days of wandering torment, she is set upon by man and dogs whom she recognizes (v. 47) as her haunting ‘sickness’ (saqām) – one that she must repel or die (v. 51).

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4 may be taken to imply how one who represents the acme of virtue can offset the ‘sickness’ of rayb al-dahr for the entire body of his co-covenantees. Poem 3.7:6970 71 72

ُ ‫ ما َح‬70ً ‫َو ل ِكن َحديثا‬ ‫واح ِل‬ ِ ‫ديث ال َّر‬ ‫ـل‬ ِ ‫عُقابُ تـَنو فَى ال عُقابُ القَـوا ِع‬ ‫ب األوائِ ِل‬ ِ ‫في ال ُخطو‬71‫َوأوْ دى ِعصا ٌم‬ ْ ‫أتان ُحلِّئ‬ ‫ـل‬ ‫كَـ َمـ ْش ِي‬ ِ ‫َت بِالـ َمـنا ِه‬ ٍ ْ ْ َ َ ‫فَ َمن شا َء فليَنهَضْ لها ِمن ُمقا تِ ِل‬ ‫ـنـاف حـائـِ ِل‬ ‫َو أ سْـ َر حُهـا ِغـبّا ً بِـأ ْك‬ ِ ‫ َسـعـ ٍد َو نائـِ ِل‬72 ‫َو تُـ ْمنَ ُع ِمن ُر ماة‬ ‫وس ال َمجا ِد ِل‬ ِ ‫ُد َويْنَ السَّما ِء في ُر ُؤ‬ ٌ ‫لَها حُـبُـ‬ ‫ـل‬ ِ ِ‫ك كَأ نَّها ِمن َو صا ئ‬

‫ك نَهْبا ً صي َح في َح َجراتِ ِه‬ َ ‫َد ْع َع ْن‬ َّ ً ْ َّ ‫ك‬ ‫َـأن ِدثـارا َحـلـقَــت بِـلـَبـونِ ِه‬ ٌ ‫َّـب بَا ِع‬ ‫ـث بـِ ِذ َّم ِة خا لِ ٍد‬ َ ‫تَـلَـع‬ ‫َوأ ْع َجبَني َم ْش ُي ال ُح ُزقَّ ِة خالِ ٍد‬ ْ َ‫أ ب‬ ْ ٌ ‫ت أ َجأ‬ ‫أن تُ ْسلِ َم العا َم جا َرها‬ ً ‫َـبـيـت لَـبوني بِالقُـ َر يَّ ِة أُ َّمنا‬ ُ ‫ت‬ ‫بَنُـو ثُ َع ٍل جيرا نُها َو حُـما تُها‬ ‫ُول ِرباعُـها‬ ِ ‫تُال ِعبُ أوْ ال َد ال ُوع‬ ‫أسـ َّر ٍة‬ ِ َ‫ُمـكَلَّلَةً َحـمـرا َء ذات‬

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1. Forget the cries for spoils plundered; rather, a story: where did the ‘riding-camels’ (al-rawāḥil) go? 2. As if an eagle of the soaring heights (tanūfā), not the lower hills (al-qawāʿil) had wrested the milkers (labūn) of Dithār. 3. A ‘stirrer’ (bāʿith) toyed with the tie of Khālid’s compact (dhimma)/with Khālid’s protected neighbours (jīrān); and a preserving bond (ʿiṣām)/a ‘protecting garment’ (dithār) perished with Time’s age-old afflictions (al-khuṭūb al-awāʾil) 4. A fine figure he cast, Khālid, and his pygmy-trot, tripping like a she-ass driven back from the springs. 5. Ajaʾ73 has refused to surrender her neighbour (jār) this [lean?] year; let who will, then, rise to her. 6. At al-Qurayya, my milkers (labūn) enjoy safe nights; and, each second day, I send them to water in Ḥāʾil’s surrounds (aknāf). 7. Banū Thuʿal are their protectors (jīrān) and defenders (ḥumāt)/ their iron-clad champions (kumāt); and they, secure from (tumnaʿ min) the archers/the men of Saʿd and Nāʾil. 8. Their spring-foals frolick with the young of the ibex, all but touching the sky (duwayna l-samāʾ), on fast, mountain pavilions (al-majādil), 9. Crowned in [cloud of] rose-white, cloaked in truffle-filled earth (asirra)74, streaked over (la-hā ḥubuk) like bolts of Yamanī cloth (waṣāʾil).

69. Metre: ṭawīl. D.Ṣ., pp. 146–147; Ibr., pp. 94–96; Ahl., 49. Ibr., pp. 401–402, details further minor variants. 70. Ahl: … ḥadīthun &c. 71. Ahl: … bi-jīrāni khālidin/wa-awdā dithārun &c. 72. Ahl: … wa-kumātu-hā/wa-tumnaʿu min rijāli &c. 73. Glossed as a mountain of Ṭayyiʾ. 74. So, following the attestation of sarīr as an alternative for sirar: Tāj, s.v. s-r-r.

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Verses 1–4: The glosses relate this poem to the legendary narrative of the poet’s disappointment in Khālid b. Aṣmaʿ al-Nabhānī’s protection. The poet’s milch-camels (labūn), watched over by Dithār (their shepherd), were allegedly raided by Jadīla. Khālid asked for the poet’s riding camels (rawāḥil) in order to pursue them. Overtaking them, he demanded the return of the milch-camels, revealing that the poet was his protected neighbour (jār), and the mounts beneath him, his neighbour’s property. The raiders then made off with these, too. Disgusted, the poet broke with Khālid and took up residence, instead, with Murr b. Ḥanbal, a brother of Thuʿal. Not least to be discussed here is the assumption that the rawāḥil of verse 1 refer to riding camels taken subsequent to the milkers. Verse 1 is elliptical. These words apparently became proverbial for a situation where a man loses part of his property, then loses something of greater value. Lane translates: “Then let thou alone spoil by the sides of which a shouting was raised: but relate to me a story. What is the story of the riding camels?”75 This sheds little light on the sense of 1a, but perhaps means to convey an occasion for clamour (ṣiyāḥ). The expression ṣīḥa fī-him, though, can evoke an occasion called ṣayḥa: a deadly event, a surprise assault, or raid (ghāra).76 Ḥajra relates to the side-regions of an abode where camels can lie down or pasture. Verse 1a may therefore allude to the invasion of an area that should have been secure, a situation that would seriously undermine any protector’s honour. (This compares unfavourably with secure pasturing “in the side-regions (aknāf) of Ḥāʾil” (verse 6), which brings honour to Thuʿal, as discussed below). As to 1b, one can note that mashat rawāḥilu-hu (“his riding camels moved off”) is a figure used to express the quiescence that accompanies old age and weakness; that is to say, the departure of youthful vigour.77 In this light, the question arising – “where did the riding-camels go?” – would read as an ironic allusion to Khālid’s unmanly failure to fulfil his role as protector: Never mind wailing about plundered milkers (the labūn of verse 2a); tell the real story, and let us know where Khālid’s ‘camels’ wandered off to. The allusion (verse 2b) to eagles, and the unequal mountain-heights to which they belong, reinforces the poet’s disgust. While this verse has been glossed to mean that reclaiming the raided camels is no more possible than attaining the spoils of an eagle from the higher mountains (tanūfā),78 this interpretation does not address the clear 75. Lane, art. ḥajratun. 76. Lisān, s. v. ṣ-y-ḥ. 77. Tāj, s.v. r-ḥ-l: mashat rawāḥilu-hu: shāba wa-ḍaʿufa. Such ‘riding camels of vigour gone astray’ would appear to be conceptual relations of the rawāḥil (and steeds) of youthful folly (ṣibā), discussed above, Part 1:2, s.v. Plasticity of the Poetic Discourse and the Mechanics of the Saddle – rawāḥil that were foregone by Zuhayr and Ṭufayl once having recovered a composure appropriate to manhood: Ahlwardt (1870), Zuhayr, no. 15, vv. 1–2; Ṭufayl (1927), no. 8, vv. 1–4. 78. Ibr., pp. 94–95, n. 2. While tanūfā is offered here as one of the Ṭayyiʾ mountains, the fact of its height [suggested by the roots of the name] is understood as the key issue here, in contrast to the

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suggestion that had the ‘eagle’ in question emerged from the higher mountains, and not the lower, Khālid’s failure might have more excuse: The poet suggests that the raid was undertaken by a folk whose power and esteem he denies, this, in turn, compounding his censure of Khālid, who has proved himself to be of even less consequence (see further on this image shortly below). The further corollaries are that the eagle is a well-understood poetical figure that can relate specifically to ghāra, to adeptness at attaining the material requirements that ghāra achieves; and that the height of a mountain is an indicator of relative worth or vulnerability. Verse 3 shifts our focus to the dissolution of a sacred compact (dhimma), epitomised in Ibrāhīm’s fronted reading, as the destruction of an ʿiṣām. As noted, ʿiṣām is used of anything that protects or preserves; and we detailed earlier in this chapter (see above, note 25) how the virtue of ideal co-covenantees can, accordingly, be epitomised by a “strong, protective compact-bond” (ḥablan matīnan … ʿāṣiman). This is a concept that relates principally to a tie bound around the head of a water-skin (qirba) to confine its contents; to a strap used for carrying such a skin; to a cord that binds a leather bucket or water-bag; to the loop-shaped handle used to suspend a receptacle for travelling-provisions (wiʿāʾ, which also connotes retention of the intellect (ʿaql) or heart).79 This puts us in mind of various images belonging to the network of liquid conceits that were discussed earlier in relation to covenant, and, particularly, verses 1–5 of Poem 2.5. There, the poet’s ‘sickness’ and tears were the leaking of an old and worn-out water-bag (shaʿīb) from beneath its loops, indicating the dissipation of his conceptual share of inherited vital waters, owing to a ‘pollution’ that had to be cleansed. Failure to contain those waters and repair the damage would have implied his inability to contain the force required to manage his obligations - his sin, indeed, in respect of a covenant of mutual fidāʾ. Thus, in consideration of the explicit reference to dhimma (covenant) in verse 3, the ʿiṣām may be taken to relate to a crucial tie belonging to such a quasi-organic ‘container’, and to the intrusion of some malignant influence, or ‘sickness’, that undermines the soundness of Khālid’s commitment such that a ‘binding tie’ of his covenant is ‘wasted’, and the force that is meant to ensure it, ‘outpoured’.80 lower heights of al-qawāʿil, glossed (ibid.) as mountains that are not lofty (laysat bi-shawāmikh). ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Baghdādī (1983), p. 184, sees a natural-world rationale for this figure; namely, that the higher the distance from which the eagle stoops, the more powerful the attack. 79. Lisān, s.v. w-ʿ-w/y. 80. Tāj, Qāmūs, art. ʿinājun: the strap that is tied to the lower part of a leathern bucket (dalw) as extra security for the bucket’s supporting auxiliaries, which prevents it from being lost should other supports fail. This entry illustrates the conceptual equation between the bucket’s security, the lack of disease in an organic body, and the security of a kin-unit’s covenantal ties: lā budda li-l-dāʾi min ʿilājin wa-li-l-dilāʾi min ʿināj, “it is necessary for a disease to be treated, and for buckets to have an ʿināj”; qawmun idhā ʿaqadū ʿaqdan li-jāri-himū/shaddū l-ʿināja wa-shaddū fawqa-hu l-karabā, “a people who, when they conclude a covenant with their neighbour, tie the ʿināj, and tie above it the karab (a further safety tie)”, i.e., make it doubly sure.

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The alternative reading for verse 3, fronted by Ahlwardt – supplying a dithār in place of an ʿiṣām – is entirely complementary, only exhibiting, in addition, the rhetorical flourish of punning on the name, Dithār, in verse 2. That dithār, in this slot, would also imply the preservation of a compact, is not undermined by the variant, jīrān (protected neighbour), in place of dhimma, since jīrān presuppose covenantal obligations. If we look to investigate dithār in terms of covenant and protection, the evidence is there: The dictionaries tell us that dithār relates principally to an outer garment worn over the shiʿār (‘inner garment’), which is immediately next to the body. It is associated, concretely, with protection (e.g., from the cold and stinging insects); and used metaphorically, with the shiʿār, to figure close relations and ties within compact.81 Inasmuch as the dissolution of compact is centred on the disappearance of camels, the further semantic resonance of dithār is also suggestive: tadaththara has metonymical application to ‘cloaking’ a person in wealth – specifically, camels (māl); a conceit reflected in the expression, dithru māl, ‘a good manager of property/camels’.82 The sum of this suggests that Dithār (verse 2) – a very apt name for a camel-herd in the context – has inspired a punning variant on the ‘preserving bond’ (ʿiṣām) in verse 3: A protecting ‘outer-garment’ (dithār), rather, is destroyed, implying the dissolution and removal of the poet’s part, or interest, in a pact of mutual fidāʾ; a dissolution which would, further, imply Khālid’s divestment of a ‘garment’ figuring the integrity of his preserve, and erstwhile lack of exposure to evil (or lack of susceptibility to the evil impetus that brought this about: the bāʿith, discussed below).83 This cloaking conceit is noted for comparison with verse 9 where the impregnable security enjoyed in compact with Thuʿal is figured by a lofty mountain that is, on the contrary, positively mudaththar (cloaked in a dithār). Inasmuch as verses 2–3 may be reduced to the principal co-ordinates of an ‘eagle’ that makes off with, and destroys (awdā), Khālid’s dhimma, so exposing him to censure for failure 81. Reflected, e.g., in Tāj, art. shiʿārun: antumu l-shiʿāru wa-l-nāsu l-dithār, “you together are the inner robe; and the people are the outer one” – from a Prophetic tradition where the shiʿār, apparently, emphasises the Anṣār who are nearest in friendship to Muḥammad’s person; and the saying as a whole clearly relates to the totality of the Muslim compact. Cf., more broadly, Qāmūs, Tāj, Asās, art. thawbun on ‘two garments’, as: fī thawbay ab-ī an afī-hi, “on the two robes of my father it rests that I pay it” - ‘two robes’ equating to the responsibility of one’s dhimma; the saying, uslul thiyāba-ka min thiyāb-ī, “withdraw your robes from mine”, i.e., ‘separate yourself from me’; cf., further, on clothing metaphors and compact, below, n. 120. 82. Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. d-th-r. The possibility of reading jīrān (‘neighbours’) in Ahlwardt’s version as a precise reference to the protected camels is enhanced by a variant for verse 2 (Ibr., p. 401) where the ‘eagles’ lift away the ‘protected neighbour of [Nabhān]’: alwat bi-jāri-him. This is, anyway, complemented in verse 7, where Thuʿal are called the ‘protecting neighbours’ (jīrān) of the camels themselves. ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Baghdādī (1983), p. 180, identifies Dithār as Dithār b. Faqʿas b. Ṭarīf of the Banū Asad. 83. The cleaving of evil and anxiety can constitute a person’s ‘inner garment’: Asās, s.v. sh-ʿ-r: labisa shiʿāra l-hamm; Tāj, s.v. d-r-ʿ: jaʿala l-khawfa shiʿāra-hu.

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to prove good faith (wafāʾ), we find here an elaborate reflection of al-Musayyab b. ʿAlas’ words when he commends a Tamīmī chief saying: “Thou art the faith-keeper beyond all blame: but some there be with whose duty to their plighted word the clutching eagle flies away” (anta l-wafīyu fa-mā tudhammu wa-baʿḍu-hum/tūdī bidhimmati-hi ʿuqābu malāʿī).84 This brings us to the malignant actor that has engineered the failure of the pact: what the poet refers to by bāʿith, connoting a ‘sender’ or ‘stirrer’. While it is obviously reasonable to suppose that that the agent of misfortune would be a human raider,85 the neighbouring associations in verse 3 point to al-Dahr as the motivating source, and, in this context, the connotations of bāʿith are suggestive. That the current misfortune is included among al-khuṭūbu l-awāʾil, ‘the age-old calamities’, is the strongest pointer to the agency of al-Dahr: The ready association of khuṭūb is Time’s affliction (hence khuṭūb al-dahr, ‘the calamities of Time’); and, as severally shown above, a ready corollary of Time is ‘age’.86 Talaʿʿaba, which defines the activity of the bāʿith (‘stirrer’), describes an intensive sense of teasing that contradicts jidd (earnestness, truth);87 and, as noted, awdā, which defines the destruction wrought by this bāʿith’s interference, may readily be linked to the activity of Death. What has ‘perished’ is the compact tie that, in a sense, confined the poet’s camels. It is interesting, then, that, with all else that baʿatha conveys, it has the principal sense of removing that which restrains something – extending, for example, to releasing the cord (ʿiqāl) that binds a camel’s shank to her forearm, before dismissing her.88 In this sense, it describes the antithesis of ʿaqala: an act of ‘tying’ or ‘restraining’ – synonymous with manaʿa  –  which is also to bind a camel’s shank to the forearm. ʿAqala is also used of leaguing together for mutual defence and for paying the bloodwit; of the intellectual mettle that constrains blameworthy action; of a defensive recourse to mountain-heights, strongly associated with the ibex that seek to avoid the hunter. The bāʿith of verse 3 may thus be taken to emote a malignant agent, moved by Time, which unpicks the fabric of a covenantal commitment meant to preserve certain vital interests. This stands in direct contrast to the description of protection enjoyed in covenant with Thuʿal (verses 5–9): By contrast, Thuʿal are immovably committed to defence, impregnable (manīʿ) high in the mountains where the ibex dwell, and inaccessible to any hunter. Khālid’s failure to avert the damage earns him his transmogrification into a she-ass driven away from the waters (verse 4). This image may be related to other onager-scenes that are manipulated to discuss relative virtue in the face of trial, the 84. Lyall (1918–1921), XI, v. 24 (Lyall’s translation). Further, on this correspondence, it is interesting that a variant noted by al-Baghdādī replaces ʿuqābu tanūfā (verse 2b), with ʿuqābu malāʿin: (1983), p. 183, and commentary. 85. Abd al-Qādir al-Baghdādī (1983), p. 178 identifies the actor in verse 3 as Bāʿith b. Ḥuwayṣ al-Ṭāʾī. 86. Asās, Lisān, art. khaṭbun; Lisān, s.v. w-ʾ-l. 87. Qāmūs, arts laʿiba, jiddun. 88. Tāj, s.v. b-ʿ-th, I.

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ultimate stakes being survival or death. An overview of such scenes suggests that comparisons with the onager stem from the idea that they are social creatures whose own survival-endeavours evoke those of kinsmen in covenant. Mutammim illustrates this suggestively when he tells how his male ass, having taken the female to water where a hunter awaits, plunges forward to shield her like a warrior in defence of his kin.89 Alternatively, when moving to claim virtue in the face of affliction, his ability to undertake dangerous forays, or to stand his ground where others might fail, a poet may identify with a male ass guiding his female(s) and wisely deliberating as to the appropriate place and moment to go to water. Where the poet’s purpose is to confirm his virtue, these asses typically drink and survive, often escaping a hunter. When the issue is the inevitable victory of Death, these creatures will survive no better than the bravest warrior whose time is come (recall the fate of the waḥsh/the poet’s noble kinsman in Poem 1.5, where Death, figured by an ideal hunter of Thuʿal, lurked by the water).90 The superior sense and virtue of the male ass, and his earthy dominance of the female, is generally in evidence. In this light, we may infer that, in verse 4, the poet pointedly denies Khālid’s ḥasab (his ‘worth’): he emasculates him by rendering him an effete, lonely she-ass (in need of masculine management); and he implies that, beaten back so from the enemy ‘source’, Khālid has fallen short of his kinsman’s duty: he must remain ‘thirsty’ (nāhil), his own ‘waters’ depleted, with no prospect of equalising the loss. The clear implication in context is that this is due to constitutional failing. He has insufficient ʿaql (the preservative ‘binding’ of intellect). Moral weakness makes for ‘effeminate’ vulnerability, for moral and physical dhilla (‘abasement’). Verses 5–9: The personalisation of Mount Ajaʾ (verse 5) extends the quality of her peaks to the nature of Thuʿal’s protection. The use of abā (‘it refused’) neatly encapsulates this: Ibāʾ is a quality of ‘refusal’ defined by imtināʿ, manāʿa, or ḥaṣāna: concepts of inaccessibility and self-defence that are associated with high and fortified resorts. Verse 8 brings these concepts into relief; Thuʿal’s resort is a hair’s breadth beneath the sky, and described by majādil: properly, ‘stone castles’. The image of inaccessible height recalls the distinction between the capacities of higher- and lower-nesting ‘eagles’ in verse 2. Indeed, fa-l-yanhaḍ (verse 5) – which dares anyone to rise against

89. Lyall (1918–1921), IX, v. 17; cf., conversely, ibid., XX, of al-Shanfarā, v. 23: a warrior is, rather, like a wild ass guarding his mates. 90. Lyall (1918–1921), IX, of Mutammim, vv. 4–19, XVI, of al-Marrār, vv. 31–37, XXXVIII, of Rabīʿa b. Maqrūm, vv. 6–23; XXXIX, of the same, vv. 16–31, CXXVI, of Abū Dhuʾayb; Bauer (1992) gives a detailed study of language, style and variation in such episodes; cf. below, Poem 5.3.2, for an extended discussion of one variation on this theme, the results of which argue against the contention (ibid., vol. 1, p. 263) that such episodes are not purposeful or distinctly meaningful, even when there is no explicit announcement of an occasion for the poem.

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these high reaches – is relatable to the nuance of spreading the wings to fly.91 This registered, the message would be that not even an ‘eagle’ of tanūfā, ‘the higher reaches’, (see the commentary to verse 2) can prevail over the towering merit of Thuʿal. The interpretation of al-ʿām (verse 5a) is tentative, adopting the possibility that ‘year’ is intended here; that al-ʿām, in this sense can, of itself, imply drought (jadb/qaḥṭ).92 In this case, it would be an elliptical commendation of virtue for providing even in harsh conditions (see above, the commentary to verse 8 of Poem 3.1).93 That Thuʿal’s manāʿa (‘impregnability’, ‘immunity’) is so strongly linked to the security of the poet’s milch-camels, is another sign that protection of the jār includes all his interests. A startling indicator of this is how Thuʿal are called (verse 7) the camels’ jīrān (their ‘protecting neighbours’). The security enjoyed by the camels (and therefore the poet) occasions an allusion to nights spent free from care (tabītu  … ummanan, verse 6a) at al-Qurayya and Ḥāʾil (both are identified as areas in Ṭayyiʾ mountain-territory).94 The allusion to Ḥāʾil’s neighbouring pastures (aknāf ḥāʾil) recalls the plundered side-regions (ḥajarāt) of Khālid (verse 1), reflecting Thuʿal’s protection in a highly favourable light. This is enhanced by reference (verse 7) to a state of security against the “archers of Saʿd and Nāʾil”. These archers are glossed simply as men of Nabhān, Khālid’s people; but we may recall how, when the poet identified archers of Thuʿal to epitomise the ‘hunter’, Death (in Poem 1.5), he defined their skill in terms of prosperity and great gain. Noting the nuances of fortune and gain intrinsic, respectively, to the names Saʿd and Nāʾil, one may infer that the salient issue here is the value of Saʿd and Nāʾil as ‘ideal’ hunters; i.e., as the predators most to be feared. This would then project Thuʿal as superior still, and their patronage as the strongest obstacle to predation and death. The discrepancy between the insecurity of Khālid’s protection – which appears to be indissolubly linked to his inferior virtue – and the security of Thuʿal’s, with its carefree nights, and days of ample provision, recalls once more the poet’s distinction (Poem 2.4) between fearful nights spent with Ḥimyar  –  a people of execrable virtue, whose abodes were exposed to predation – as opposed to ideal nights with Saʿd b. al-Ḍibāb, a man of exemplary good faith, who offered security and ample provision for the poet along with his camels and colts. That Thuʿal’s power and security are also linked to their virtue, emerges from their identification with a ‘cloaked’ mountain (verse 9). The cumulative suggestion of clothing begins with 91. Qāmūs, s.v. n-h-ḍ, I; cf. Chapter 1, n. 57: the tāʾīya verses of al-Samawʾal whose lofty ‘fort’ of virtue is an edifice “from which the eagles slip away”. 92. See, e.g., Lisān, s.v. ʿ- w- m: the discussion of the adjective, ʿāmīyun. 93. Cf. Lisān, s.v. q-s-w/y: the three rajaz verses rhyming in yāʾ that praise an ancient tribal virtue of feeding (dependents) with (the best) fatty meat-cuts in a drought year (al-ʿām al-qasīy). 94. See Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 2, p. 191, where these verses of Imruʾ al-Qays are cited as evidence for one of several Ḥāʾils being a river-valley in the Ṭayyiʾ mountains; ibid., vol. 4, p. 85, where one of several Qurayyas is identified as Ṭayyiʾ territory, these verses being cited again as the proof.

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the asirra: coats of earth that overlay truffles. This is enhanced by the projection of mountain-streaks as ḥubuk, a term based in the idea of something well woven, and extending to the rimples of a belted garment.95 The clothing metaphor is consummated in the allusion to waṣāʾil, which creates a general impression of striped Yamanī garments, or burūd.96 The context invites us to notice the proverbial associations of burūd with secure ties, with unity and dissent: To be together with one burd figures unity; rending the burd figures separation.97 The sum of this evokes ‘enshrouded’ inaccessibility, enduring integrity, which contrasts starkly against the vulnerability and fracture figured by the destruction of the ‘preservativebinding’/‘outer-garment’ (ʿiṣām/dithār) of Khālid’s covenant (verse 3). Thuʿal, identified wholly with the mountain, are impermeable to any ‘elemental’, or other, assault of Time. They are ʿāqil in every sense, the embodiment of invulnerability, as inaccessible to the hunter as the mountain-goats with which they dwell, the camels in their covenant, safely secured. They are sound of mind and action. Their covenantal ‘cover’, or ‘binding’, contains their wealth and waters, and impedes the encroachment of Death. They have karam, ḥasab, and ʿizz – generosity, worth and might – all related to their moral tenacity.98 *****

95. Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. ḥ-b-k. 96. Lisān, s.v. w-ṣ-l, defines waṣāʾil as bolts of Yamanī cloth, or striped, red Yamanī garments. 97. Qāmūs, s.v. b-r-d, kh-m-s: the sayings humā fī burdati akhmāsin, “they are [as one] in a burda of Yamanī cloth”; i.e., they are alike, or in a state of agreement; waqaʿa bayna-humā qaddu burūdin yumnatin “there occurred between the two the rending of burūd of Yamanī cloth”; i.e., they arrived at a serious disagreement. 98. Cf. a mīmīya of this poet cited in Ibr., p. 149; Ahl. 60. The unattainable and impregnable protection of al-Muʿallā renders him resident of the loftiest mountain peaks (v. 1): ka-annī idh nazaltu ʿalā l-muʿallā/nazaltu ʿalā l-bawādhikhi min shamāmī. ‘Elemental’ evil comes in the form of Dhū al-Qarnayn’s army, a ‘lofty cloud’ (nashāṣ) and an overspreading ‘cumulus’ (ʿāriḍ), which is repelled by the superior strength of this ‘mountain’ (v. 3): aṣadda nashāṣa dhī l-qarnayni ḥattā/ tawallā ʿāriḍu l-maliki l-humāmī. By poetic association, the latter reference to al-humām evokes the concept of al-Dahr, the ultimate humām that lays waste to peoples, lands and mountains (see Poem 1.1). The association of al-Dahr is highlighted in Ibn al-Naḥḥāṣ’ recension of this poem where these verses are introduced by the mīmīya couplet on rayb al-dahr discussed as Poem 1.2; cf. al-Tibrīzī (1969), al-Ḥārith, vv. 25–26, where, impelled to respond to hostility, the poet alludes to the nobility and power of his people in terms of a lofty mountain against which the artillery of Fate and Death, in the form of the elements, can make no impression: wa-ka-anna l-manūna tardī bi-nā ar/ʿana jawnan yanjābu ʿan-hu l-ʿamāʾū//mukfahirran ʿalā l-ḥawādithi mā tar/tūhu li-l-dahri muʾyidun ṣammāʾū, “Fate, battering us, might be stoning a black towering mountain, its summit the clouds unshrouding, ruggedly firm against fortune’s artillery, unweakened by destiny’s inexorable hammering.” (Arberry’s translation: (1957), p. 223); in complement, see Lyall (1918–1921), CIX, v. 7, XCVI, v. 11, respectively of al-Jumayḥ and Bishr b. Abī Khāzim, each of whom explicitly compares his army to a lofty storm cloud (nashāṣ).

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ʿAql, Baʿth, Shades and Phantoms The distinction, above, between Khālid’s susceptibility to a malignant, disintegrative impulse (bāʿith) and the comparative insusceptibility of Thuʿal, which was defined by ʿaql, presents an opposition that is intriguing to explore. This opposition indicates that baʿth permits ‘sickness’ – or the death-principle – to enter the sphere of life, while ʿaql prohibits its encroachment on the individual or corporate body; that baʿth defines a disjuncture of union that can dissipate vital faculties and resources, while ʿaql defines a covenantal bonding that contains them. A noted detail of this opposition was the contrast between unbinding a camel’s shank from its forearm (the act of baʿth), and binding its shank to its forearm (the act of ʿaql). Such an act of ʿaql evokes both the institution of the bloodwit, and the binding of the balīya-camel, which was blinded and tethered at her master’s grave, then left to die; and the association with the balīya centres the opposition of baʿth and ʿaql directly between the worlds of the living and the dead. By analogy with the effect of baʿth in Poem 3.7 above, the suggestion is that to unbind a balīya-camel and release it from the grave is to sever a union in death conceptually akin to union in covenant, so breaking a barrier between the sphere of life and the death-principle; a barrier which the act of ʿaql is intended to create. (Poem 4.1, below, indicates unequivocally how permanent residence in the abode of death is conceived in terms of binding covenantal bonds (waṣl)).99 A careful reading of the sparse information on the balīya suggests that a misunderstanding has arisen regarding this institution, leading some to assert that it illustrates that the doctrine of bodily resurrection – interestingly, called baʿth in Islam – existed among the jāhilī Arabs.100 In view of much evidence to the contrary, one may conclude, rather, that this practice, properly executed, was intended to permit the balīya to be taken by Death (al-manūn) precisely to prohibit the dead from rising or walking amongst the living (i.e., from being ‘untied’ by virtue of baʿth, or the failure to effect ʿaql): “… for they used to assert that men would be raised from the dead riding upon the balāyā … or walking if their beasts whereon they rode were not bound with their heads turned backwards, at their graves”.101 Verses of al-Ṭirimmāḥ, announcing his arrival at deserted abodes that are clearly those of Muslim Arabs, and not people of the jāhilīya, attribute a very 99. Recall also Poem 2.6: the poet’s plea for covenant within a deserted abode in a situation where it seems he would prefer to die. 100. Lisān, s.v. b-l-w/y. 101. Lane, art. balīyatun (Lane’s translation, my emphasis); cf. Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 2 pp. 307–308, n. 13: “When a man was buried, his riding-camel was tethered by his grave, her eyes were plucked out, her rein fastened to the cushion [called walīya] under the saddle, and her foreshank bound to the upper arm [the act of ʿaql], so that she might not attempt to leave the place; and there she was left to starve to death. Muslim commentators suggest that she was intended for the dead man to ride upon to the place of gathering on the Resurrection Day: but Marzūqī justly expresses skepticism as to any such idea being held in the time of paganism.” As to Lyall’s further speculation (ibid., p. 308) that, in line with “burial usages in all countries and all ages”, the balīya was “intended for the use of the dead in the World of Shadows”, the poetic record is silent.

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significant difference to the Muslim abodes: they lack the indicators of idolatry and death-rites specific to the jāhilīya, which include the pits of balīya-camels that are, unequivocally, left for (eternal) Death (al-manūn)102 – implying, perhaps, by a process of reflection, that Death does not ‘tie down’ the good Muslim forever in a world where baʿth has, startlingly, become transformed into a positive concept: the ‘release’ of the saved on the Day of ‘the Sending Out [of the dead]’, yawm al-baʿth. The only poetic indications as to the influence of the dead, or unearthly shapes, relate to the ṣadā/hāma – the shades/owls which demand the liquid succour of redemption, or vengeance – and to the phantoms called ṭayf or khayāl, which plague the memory or materialise as visions.103 Turning again to a rithāʾ of Labīd to which we had recourse earlier (see the commentary to verses 1–2 of Poem 1.4; verse 4 of Poem 3.6), we note that it suggests a certain relationship between the ṣadā, hāma, and the vision of khayāl: Arbad was his people’s leader and mainstay whose demise has robbed them of the binding thread (niẓām) that secures the ‘beads’ of their constituent members; the people now are just [calling] shades (aṣdāʾ) and [thirsting] skulls/owls (hām); their plight is like that of Iram and ʿĀd who were ‘lulled on drink and meal’ to enter the time of the morning sun (as insubstantial) as the visions of dreamers (aḥlāmu l-niyām).104 In other words, the disaster and grief caused by Arbad’s loss not only leaves his people like the unavenged dead in need of ‘liquid’ redemption (isqāʾ/fidāʾ), but, apparently, also, like walking phantoms. Read against all that precedes, these verses may be taken to indicate, firstly, that firm-strung gems on their niẓām connote what is ʿāqil, i.e., what is integrally bound in opposition to Death: Fracture of the niẓām implies affliction by Time’s ‘disease’, which leads to the dispersal of such ‘gems’, the spillage of vital ‘waters’, and, at worst, as here, to the utter destruction of a people’s conceptual ḥawḍ (their communal ‘water’). Notably, this conceit of strung gems arises also at the individual level: A man whose intellect (ʿaql) is assaulted by some manifestation of ‘sickness’ weeps tears – i.e., dissipates personal resources he ought to contain in the interests of his duty to mutual ransom (fidāʾ) – that are pearls falling from a broken thread,105 suggesting, by analogy, the scattering of his intellectual faculties, the fracture of his personal integrity. Secondly, these verses indicate that, if there is an analogy between ṣadā and khayāl, it ought to relate to debt and redemption in the context 102. Ṭirimmāḥ (1927), no. 49, vv. 2–3. 103. The current major study on the ṭayf and khayāl is that of Ezz El-Din (1988); see also, Jacobi (1990). These studies indicate strongly that the earliest khayāl was a phenomenon perceived to be external to the living, and an essentially terrifying, not romantic, figure. 104. Labīd (1962), p. 209, vv. 28–31. Cited above in the commentary to verses 1–2 of Poem 1.4. Verse 31b – fa-aḍḥaw mithla aḥlāmi l-niyāmī, “and they entered upon daylight as [substantial as] the visions of dreamers” – is echoed in the saying ḍaḥā ẓillu-hu lit: his shadow became sun, i.e., he died to become bodily naught (Tāj, s.v. ḍ-ḥ-y). 105. See, e.g., Ibr., p. 156, v.10; al-Aṣmaʿī (1955), no. 69, of al-Mufaḍḍal al-Nukrī, v. 2; Lyall (1918– 1921), XXI, of al-Mukhabbal, v. 3 (overviewed below in this chapter).

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of covenantal ties and duties; to the onslaught and repulsion of Time’s predatory initiatives against the heart and mind, against the individual and the communal body; to the self-containment that defies censure, and informs a proper response to any treacherous rupture of ties, including the benign ‘betrayal’ of a kinsman or true friend (khalīl) who is taken by Death.106 An overview of the Mufaḍḍalīya Qāfīya of Taʾabbaṭa Sharrā serves as a convenient case-study for exploring the khayāl in this light:107 An ever-returning memory that accompanies visitation by a phantom (ṭayf), and arouses passion and sleeplessness (verse 1), is called ʿīd: a returning anxiety, desire, grief or disease. Poetically, this reads as Time’s returning night-‘sickness’; the heartfelt affliction and intellectual disturbance from which a true man must redeem himself. Indeed, the terror aroused by this scene prompts the poet to utter the oath of ransom (verse 2), apparently on his own behalf: nafs-ī fidāʾu-ka min sārin ʿalā sāqī, “my soul be your ransom against one who travels by night on foot” – i.e., he is bent on preserving himself. He elaborates on the reason for his horror (verse 3) in language that indicates his subjection to morbid treachery in the form of bukhl (stinginess) by one to whom he has been bound by compact (waṣl): A figure of supposed ‘true friendship’ (khulla – sex ambiguous, but suggestive of female) is ‘niggardly’ (ḍannat) with their favour (i.e., has become a treacherous source of ‘sickness’ to him), holding him by a [covenantal] bond that is weak and torn – bi-ḍaʿīfi l-waṣli aḥdāqī – the tattered rope being, as we have seen, poetic encoding for a treacherous and dangerous kin-tie. He escapes from such an association (verses 4–8) as he has escaped before, as if possessed (wālih),108 from an enemy who could not seize his spoils. (In the context, this ‘departure of reason’ is suggestive of ṭayf: possession of the mind, madness,109 or, essentially, the effect of the ghūl). The poet reiterates the theme of a figure of ‘true friendship’ (khulla, sex still ambiguous) who has cut their [compact]-tie (ṣaramat verse 9); he insists that, in such a case, he does not grieve from passion and longing (i.e., he knows how to make a healthy, ethical response to disorienting betrayal, this second allusion to khulla serving both to illustrate his practised ability to do as he claims, and to render the first khulla a conceptual equivalent, at least, to the second). Verses 20 onward bring another lacerating ‘sickness’ into relief: the intolerable burning of censure (recall Poem 2.3: how verbal assault inflicts ‘sickness’  –  dāʾ – which brings the threat of 106. As articulated in v. 9 of Poem 1.5: The poet thinks of a true friend whom he might forsake, himself being forsaken (qad ufāriqu-hū), and after whose traces he sheds no tears. 107. Lyall (1918–1921), I; Jones (1992) offers a translation and general commentary to this poem; see also Stetkevych (1993), p. 104 ff., from which my understanding departs in several points of detail. 108. Jones (1992), p. 213, discusses the force of bi-wālihin here. I incline, with the commentators, to read this as referring to the poet himself: bi-ʿadwi wālihin, i.e., ‘running like one possessed’. Cf. the use of wālih, in v. 3 of Mufaḍḍalīya XXIII, by ʿAmr b. al-Ahtam, outlined shortly below in the main text. 109. Lisān, s.v. ṭ-y-f.

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war), and it emanates from his own people. He warns them that if they do not desist from reproaching him they will never see him again, and be left to grieve when they remember his innate good qualities. His allusion to himself by the name of Thābit (verse 24) has a particularly apt resonance since, of a man, it connotes firmness of intellect and understanding, steadiness of heart in war, and a character that seldom errs (i.e., it connotes ʿaql, ṣabr, and wafāʾ  – integrity of mind, combative endurance and good faith). The entire episode – a coherent ‘product’ of parataxis – reads, thus, as an integral discussion of faithless behaviour within covenant. Consequently, what remains of the compact-bond becomes a treacherous tie, equivalent to compact with an affiliate of Death; a compact from which the poet is ready to break completely to save himself if the ties are not reciprocally firm. Apart from illustrating the integral nature of gender relations in ethical discussion (a theme left for development in the chapters that follow), this casestudy fulfils the basic criteria set forth above for positing a conceptual relationship between a grave-shade and a phantom (ṣadā and khayāl): one that implies the death-principle  –  or ‘sickness’  –  and that has a specific connection with the idea of a fractured compact-tie. An overview of other early poems shows how the same criteria are alternatively played out in instances where the khayāl appears. Below is a précis of some of these. (Salama b. al-Khurshub)110 A phantom (v. 1) visits at night with the importunity of a creditor calling in his debt: taʾawwaba-hū khayālun min sulaymā/ka-mā yaʿtādu dhā l-dayni l-gharīmū. (That this is ‘sickness’ is voiced by taʾawwaba, implying the draining activity of a night-returning ‘disease’: recall Poem 2.6, v. 5. This is enhanced by yaʿtādu: the betiding of anxiety and grief; the visitation of a sick person. Dayn thus registers essentially as the ‘debt’ of life called in by Death, and gharīm, in complement, as a litigant for blood: Tāj, s.v. d-y-n, gh-r-m). If the phantom brings (v. 2) what she knows [to be right: a return of love, then well and good]; the poet is equally expert in binding or breaking the [covenantal] bond: fa-innī … waṣṣālun ṣarūmū. He proceeds (vv. 3–13) to articulate the implementation of his ‘healing’, and becomes the ‘hunter’, not the ‘prey’ (a conceit for ‘healing’ discussed in Chapter 2). (Bashāma b. ʿAmr)111 The poet abandons Umāma (vv. 1–9), heavily burdened. Her phantom returns to know what is wrong. She has been disdainful – she made a promise – she pleads empty words and a feeble excuse. It is as if his and her people never dwelt together. He praises himself upon his mount (vv. 10–27), strong as a man who tramples the foe, swifter and steadier than others, running like one whom Death has all but overtaken. His contention (vv. 28–33) is with his people. They are not facing the choice of two evils: a life of shame, or war with friends – both ‘noxious foods’ (or ‘sickness’). He incites them to action to face death with honour while they still have strength, implying that not to do so is equivalent to inviting annihilation at the hands of the ghūl which Time, anyway, sends for men (… kafā bi-l-ḥawādithi li-l-marʾi ghūlā). The parallel with the phantom is 110. Lyall (1918–1921), VI. 111. Lyall (1918–1921), X.

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evident, and renders her, and the wrong-minded attitude of his kin, the deathly ghūl from which the poet ‘departs’. (al-Mukhabbal al-Saʿdī)112 The poet (v. 1) remembers al-Rabāb. Her memory is ‘sickness’ (suqm). He succumbs to youthful passion (ṣibā), necessarily entailing the departure of his ḥilm (i.e., his ʿaql is dissipated by the influence of the ghūl, destroyer of the intellect and ḥilm: see the commentary to v. 1 of Poem 1.1). Her phantom alights (alamma – vv. 2–3) and he spills tears that are heedlessly-strung pearls, failed by their thread (niẓām); their ‘stringing’ (naẓm) betrayed them (khāna-hu – i.e., he expresses a blameworthy dissolution of intellect (ʿaql) and the dissipation of vital resources he is morally bound to contain). He seeks freedom (v. 21) from a yearning that cleaves to him like the severed [covenantal] bond of a wife/a she-devil: …ʿaliqat ʿalaqa l-qarīnati ḥablu-hā jidhmū. (Here ʿaliqa suggests the act of an antagonist as much as the arousal of vehement passion: Tāj, s.v. ʿ-l-q, I). His ‘sickness’ transpires (vv. 35–40) to be rage at censure that enjoins him to be less generous with his wealth for fear of Death. He defies this  – Death will anyway track him down. (But he will not willingly succumb to ‘death’ by the treacherous tie that presently assails him). (ʿAmr b. al-Ahtam)113 A phantom (vv. 1–3) visits relentlessly by night (ṭaraqat – ṭarq being also the visitation of Time’s calamities, and anxiety: Tāj, s.v. ṭ-r-q, I). His heart is damaged, his reason, challenged (wālih – cf. the state of Taʾabbaṭa Sharrā in Mufaḍḍalīya I, outlined above). His preoccupation (v. 4) is with being incited to ‘ungenerosity’ (bukhl – i.e., evil mean-spiritedness, connoting bad blood and dishonour). He demands (vv. 4–23) that this stop: bukhl is a great thief (sarūq) of man’s morals (akhlāq). He aspires to remain on the lofty heights of karam to which his ancestral blood has raised him (i.e., his point of departure from kin is being beguiled to ways that lead to sharr: all that is morally and physically detrimental to life and heritage. The phantom equates with Time’s ghūl and the bedevilling source of his censure). (Suwayd b. Abī Kāhil)114 A night-phantom (vv. 45–50) tortures the poet during his slumber (i.e., brings ‘sickness’). His people and hers are far apart. When she left [the ‘pledge/rahn’ of a noble man‘s life] went forfeit with her (ghaliqun) like a fettered slave (muktabal – i.e., as a ‘prisoner’, he must effect self-redemption (iftidāʾ)). He compares the situation (vv. 51–60, introduced by ka-ann-ī, “as if I were”) to being hunted prey – specifically, to the flight of an oryx from hunter and dogs, and leaves them behind (i.e., escapes the kiss of ‘sickness’, sin and Death that the phantom portends, by applying his pure and noble faculties – see the commentary to vv. 10–12 of Poem 2.5). There follow (vv. 61–66) reminders of divine injunctions to bear hardship and resist base things; allusions to entrapment and subjection to voracious and deadly ‘hounding’; and a statement as to the impossibility of a free man, remote from home, abiding in a land where he is constrained. The lens of what preoccupies him opens up, thereafter (v. 67 ff.) to find him vaunting his mature, assured ability to face off any ‘deadly’ verbal initiative in a virtuoso boast of peerless poetical prowess (i.e., in sum, his successful flight from the treacherous, predatory ‘lock’ of the phantom demonstrates, obliquely, a superior, self-redeeming virtue which he then claims openly in response to fierce antagonists). 112. Lyall (1918–1921), XXI. 113. Lyall (1918–1921), XXIII. 114. Lyall (1918–1921), XL.

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Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia (Al-Muraqqish al-Akbar)115 A night-phantom (vv. 1–7) keeps the poet awake. His people and hers are far apart – all their covenants and oaths (al-mawāthiq wa-l-ʿuhūd) have been broken. Why be faithful (v. 8) when the covenant has been betrayed – he is ‘hunted prey’ and not a ‘hunter’ (i.e., a bad covenant is a covenant with Death/with a phantom) He becomes, instead, the ‘hunter’ (vv. 9–12), boasting of his many women (he recollects the initiative, his health and senses). Where one bond of union (waṣl) ‘wears out’ (is no longer tenable, being equivalent to a treacherous tie with the phantom), he replaces it with a new one: unāsun kullamā akhlaqtu waṣlan/ʿanā-nī min-humū waṣlun jadīdū. (Al-Muraqqish al-Aṣghar) 116 A transformation of unadulterated pessimism in contemplation of al-Dahr. The poet (vv. 1–4) witnesses a razed abode that he remembers from not long since. He remembers Bint ʿAjlān; al-Dahr lets nothing remain the same. Lords of wealth have perished leaving him behind feeling [hopelessly] eternal. He has no comrade (v. 9) to help bear his burden. Who will aid him (v. 10) against a phantom that oppresses him in the night and makes anxiety cleave to him like his innermost garment (shiʿār), till his heart is sick? (man li-khayālin tasaddā mawhinan/ashʿara-nī l-hamma fa-lqalbu saqīm – i.e., he does not enjoy a secure sense of communal life, but is subject to an alternative compact with ‘sickness’: see above in this chapter, the commentary to v. 3 of Poem 3.7 regarding the compact of dithār and shiʿār). He acknowledges openly (v. 13) that it is al-Dahr that makes him weep. His tears stream like a worn out water-skin full of holes (ka-l-shanni l-hazīm, i.e., ‘sickness’ drains resources vital to his life and virtue). He rejects censure for indulging his passion on the grounds that the tyranny of al-Dahr systematically wreaks change, and thwarts the desires of those who wish to journey or abide (so intimating that, in his present state, he himself might wish to join those who have ‘journeyed’ to permanent rest – cf. Poem 2.6). Thus, his final, aphoristic statement (v. 20) as to the inevitable arrival of the ghūl that Death sends to all – with all its rightminded composure - contains the all-but-optimistic suggestion that this phantom may be that ghūl for him. (Muʿāwiya b. Mālik)117 An ingenious transformation in defence of unremitting generosity. A phantom (vv. 1–2) walks a vast distance to reach the poet’s abode. How did she find her way when she was never strong of foot and has no beast to carry her? Having boasted (vv. 5–8) the inherited tribal virtue that draws on every resource to effect justice and defeat foes, he answers his own question (vv. 9–10): Unlike the abodes of other people, access to his own abode is not made toilsome to those seeking shelter (jīra) at night; and where others forbid the stranger the path to their tents, the way to his is clearly marked. He rejects censure (vv. 11–12) for extravagance: if it is erring, he will do it till all his stores are spent (i.e., even such a jār as the phantom, who must claim the ultimate drain on his every resource, may assume that she is not denied).

It may be offered, then, that the common factor between a grave-shade and a phantom is the death-principle: ‘sickness’ that makes a claim on a man, or a people, via the route of a covenantal bond, somehow betrayed; ‘sickness’ the passage of which must be countered by the binding force of ʿaql, and by self-expenditure that effects some 115. Lyall (1918–1921), XLVI. 116. Lyall (1918–1921), LVII. 117. Lyall (1918–1921), CIV.

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form of fidāʾ (redemption/ransom). This would indicate that failure to harness the resources to repel such ‘sickness’ is to remain as a jār (neighbour/spouse) in the covenantal bond of Death, or voluntarily to renounce the ‘pledge’ (rahn) of one’s life. These observations assist us in understanding the wider dimensions of ʿaql – specifically, how ʿaql relates to the balīya-camel, and the creative uses to which the figure of the balīya is put. The muʿallaqa of al-Ḥārith provides one interesting case in point: Here, the poet contends with the criminal slander of the brother-tribe of al-Arāqim to which he explicitly refers (verse 40 in al-Tibrīzī’s edition) as sickness (dāʾ). He compares it (verses 22–26) to hatred that emanates from an enemy, and to the inexorable aggression of Death (al-Dahr/al-manūn) against a people whose supreme capacity for self-defence is illustrated by an image similar to Thuʿal’s resort in Poem 3.7, above: a mountain firm against Time’s elemental artillery, towering upwards and enshrouded by clouds (see note 98, this chapter). They are, in other words, resolutely ʿāqil (their constituent faculties and resources integrally bound and immune to assault). He calls for arbitration or silence, with a lightly veiled threat, if not, of war, enjoining them to remember their mutual oaths of non-aggression. Notably, he introduces his open outrage with verses of intense grief; the imminent departure of a beloved with whom he shared an abode; a mounted flight, compared to an escape, from the hunter, that leaves no tell-tale traces behind. Thus, he proposes (verse 14) to dispel cleaving ‘sickness’ (hamm) in a situation that finds him like a blind, tombtethered balīya-camel (atalahhā bi-hā l-hawājira idh kul-/lu bni hammin balīyatun ʿamyāʾū). This being his condition as he opens his case to describe covenantal union with a brotherhood that assaults him with the ‘disease’ of Death itself, and from which he is ready to redeem himself, if necessary, in the bloodiest fashion, we may conclude that – as with the hold of the phantom – the tethering of the balīya is a morbid covenantal tie; a binding, in fact, of jār to jār (recall verse 7 of Poem 3.7: how Thuʿal are the jīrān of the camels themselves), but in a mutual compact of death. This, in turn, indicates that the balīya itself is a form of fidāʾ (ransom) for the dead, and iftidā’ (self-ransom) paid off by the responsible living; that this tethering-act of ʿaql renders two parties united in a compact of death that is an inverse-analogy of the ʿāqil-unit of a living community, which seeks, by the balīya, to seal off an immediate claim of Death on their lives.118 Mufaḍḍalīya CIX, of al-Jumayḥ assists us in seeing this pattern with a wider perspective. Railing against men of ʿAbs – apparently for slaying Naḍla b. al-Ashtar, a chief of Asad, despite a covenant of protection – he concludes his lament asking (verses 12–13): who there is now for the stranger-guest, the protected neighbour 118. The analogy with payment of the bloodwit – also called ʿaql – is evident here (Tāj, s.v. ʿ-q-l). This was also done with camels that had their shanks bound to their forearms and were taken to the abode of the slain; cf. Brunschvig (1960) on the origins of the bloodwit: “the original meaning is perhaps to be found in the classical expression ʿaqala l-qatīla [he ‘bound’ the murdered one], … which possibly meant first ‘to prevent the victim [from avenging] himself ’.”

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(jār) who has been wronged, the one burdened with a heavy debt, the one with dust-defiled head, battered and unanointed (ashʿath), his widow like a balīya camel, all ragged tatters (samlati l-hidmī):119 ‫ض ِيم َوحا ِم ِل ال ُغرْ ِم‬ ِ ‫جار ال َم‬ ِ ‫ِم ْث ِل الـبَـليَّ ِة َسـ ْمـلَـ ِة ال ِه ْد ِم‬

َّ ‫يا نَضْ َل لِل‬ ‫ب ولِلـ‬ ِ ‫ْف الغَري‬ ِ ‫ضي‬ َ ‫أوْ َمن ِل ْشـ َع‬ ‫ـث بَع ِْل أرْ َملَ ٍة‬

12 13

Until such a widow as this is ransomed, she is locked by ʿaql, a jār to her jār, in a covenant of death; it is as if a true balīya, or an analogous offering of fidāʾ (‘ransom’) should redeem her. But, recalling the thrust of al-Ḥārith’s complaint, immediately above, there would appear to be more people implicated in this: the morbid status of balīya could be said to apply also, now, to the poet and his people; first, because the treachery emanates from those to whom they are bound in covenant; second, because until they redeem themselves of the debt to their dead kinsman, the draining touch of Death will remain upon all of them. Indeed, there is here a triangle of morbidity (the dead Naḍla, ʿAbs, al-Jumayḥ) from which the poet can only make a final break (of self-redemption, or iftidāʾ) by fulfilling redemption (i.e., the fidāʾ of vengeance) for Naḍla. Rightly, the metaphorical balīya that can supply this fidāʾ must be ʿAbs; and this is arguably what the poet has already suggested earlier in this poem, to which we shall come very shortly. Let us just, first, observe that the syntax of verse 13 of al-Jumayḥ’s Mufaḍḍalīya loads the image of the widow (samlati l-hidm) with a sense that characterises the balīya itself; a sense enhanced both by the fact that samal is related not only to cloth, but to ragged wool, and that the nuance of what is worn out is absolutely intrinsic to the semantics of balīya.120 The triple colocation of one locked by ‘neighbourhood’ to the drain of death, the balīya, and garments that are ahdām (‘rags’, s. hidm), is also attested by Labīd,121 which strongly suggests that these three concepts are mutually 119. Lyall (1918–1921), CIX. Lyall prefers a different reading, which he explains, ibid., vol. 2, p. 307, n. 13. The Arabic makes it very difficult to draw a clear distinction between the quality of the widow and that of the balīya, for which reason I do not translate this as the widow wearing tattered rags. The same can be said for the balīya-like widow of Labīd’s muʿallaqa, cited in note 121 below 120. Cf. Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 1, p. 720, n. f: the Mz reading … samlatin hidmī, where, by virtue of apposition, each word has an individual quality that equally defines the condition of the widow/balīya; cf. Tāj, s.v. l-b-s, I, b-l-w, II, IV, for similar equivalences of ‘worn’/‘worn out’ people and garments, especially the verses of Ibn Aḥmar cited in the latter: how one ‘dons’ and ‘wears out’ a ‘garment’ that is a kinsman; how tabliya, in this case, is a concept of ‘wearing out’ that expresses, equally, one’s compact with – or ‘donning’ of – such a kinsman-‘garment’ until their demise, and the act of tethering a balīya to her master’s grave before leaving her to die – indicating, incidentally, again, that the balīya tied to her master’s grave is a morbid analogy of a covenantal compact. 121. See al-Tibrīzī (1969), Labīd, v. 76 – how, in times of hardship, “every indigent woman seeks refuge at the tent-ropes; like the balīya, all shrunken rags (ahdām)”: taʾwī ilā l-aṭnābi kullu

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associative. This noted, we may return to examine the opening of al-Jumayḥ’s poem. Introducing his commitment to blood-vengeance, he informs the murderer, ‘neighbour’ (jār) of Naḍla – who is also emphatically called the murderers’ ‘protected neighbour’ (jār) (verses 1–2) – that the time has come to redress the affair of the Banū Hidm (my emphasis, for reasons perhaps obvious). He remarks on the inauspicious faces of those ranged before him, the ‘protecting neighbours’ of Naḍla (jiwāra naḍla), in terms immediately evocative of pearls strung upon a thread (niẓām): mutanaẓẓimīna … dhālika l-naẓm:122 ‫ك في بَني ِه ْد ِم‬ َ ‫جار‬ ِ ِ‫تَ ْس َعى ب‬ ْ َّ‫ك الن‬ ‫ظ ِم‬ َ ِ‫شـا هَ ال ُو جُو هُ لِـذ ل‬

ْ ‫ك‬ ‫أن‬ َ ‫يا جا َر نَضْ لَةَ قَ ْد أنَى لَـ‬ ِّ َ‫ُمـتَـن‬ ‫ظمينَ ِجـوا َر نَـضْ لَـةَ يا‬

1 2

In this case, he projects the murderers taking Naḍla with them to ‘bind’ with Hidm in a formation that connotes ʿaql (in the form of gems strung upon their niẓām, as illustrated above), the ‘protecting’ jīrān of the dead. As such, he necessarily makes them the ‘ransom’ of Naḍla (his fidāʾ – as implied in the pledge of self-sacrifice to kinsmen), effectively promising them an imminent doom (to which they have contracted themselves), and anticipating his own freedom from the death-triangle with the self-redemption (iftidāʾ) that will follow his vengeance. In view of the conceptual relationship of balīya and hidm, the poet’s reference to the Banū Hidm (‘sons of a ragged cloth’) suggests that the ʿaql (‘binding’) he projects onto his prospective victims, is an ʿaql that renders them the appropriate balīya for Naḍla.123 These observations, in their turn, help to fathom the cryptic conclusion to an elegy of Mutammim on his brother Mālik.124 He rails against one al-Muḥill, a fellowtribesman, for his malignant joy in announcing Mālik’s death, and his failure to arrange an appropriate burial. This, he effectively defines (verse 46) as a destructive breach of radhīyatin/mithli l-balīyati qāliṣin ahdāmu-hā. Again, the Arabic effects a seamless equivalence of balīya to female indigent in the allusion to rags. 122. Lyall translates (1918–1921), vol. 2, p. 306: “O thou protector of Naḍlah, the time, truly, has come for thee to bestir thyself in defence of thy friends among the sons of Hidm//Ye that range yourselves one to another to shelter Naḍlah – ugly your faces in that chain of protecting hands.” 123. On this Banū Hidm, see Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 2, p. 307, n. 1: Wüstenfeld records a family called the Harim b. ʿAwdh b. Ghālib b. Quṭayʿa b. ʿAbs, which Lyall deems a mistake, quoting al-Marzūqī who asserts the family to be that of Hidm b. ʿAwn b. Ghālib b. Ṣaʿṣaʿa b. ʿAbs. If Wüstenfeld is correct, this would suggest that al-Jumayḥ’s allusion to Hidm is wholly metaphorical; if not, this allusion may yet be read as a creative conflation of the name Hidm with a ‘garment’ that connotes the balīya. An alternative reading for hidmī (noted ibid., vol. I, p. 717, n. 1) is hadmī, i.e. ‘blood shed without retaliation’, which would suggest that the verse certainly was understood metaphorically by some. 124. Lyall (1918–1921), LXVII. Jones (1992) translates and discusses this poem (pp. 102–125), commenting (p. 125) on the evident challenge of the final verse, finding Lyall’s rendition of the closing waddaʿā, – “and left the dead lying there” – sensitive but unconvincing.

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covenant, or treachery (he uses the verb ḍayyaʿa).125 He continues (verses 47–51): “Have you, then, chosen a worn out, ragged cloth (hidman bāliyan) and a stuffed, ring-shaped camel-cushion (sawīya), and come with them, running (taʿdū) like a messenger put to haste? Do not exult in yourself for one day; I see imminent Death waiting to pounce on the one who affects to be brave (tashajjaʿa). [I am optimistic that] perhaps any day, [a misfortune] will alight on you (an tulimma mulimma); [a calamity] that will leave you mutilated in the head (ajdaʿu). You announce the death of a man who, had it been your flesh before him, would have given it a refuge in which to rest (la-āwā-hu), whether it had been whole or cut to pieces. Let not the slaughter of Mālik bring joy to his slanderers, for the one who hated him has come straight home only to bid a firm farewell (waddaʿā)”. ‫َو ِج ْئتَ بِـهـا تَـعْدو بَريداً ُوقَـ َّزعا‬ ‫أ َرى ال َموْ تَ َوقَّاعا ً َعلَى َمن تَ َشجَّعا‬ ‫ك أجْ دَعا‬ َ َ‫ك ِمـنَ الالئي يَ َد ْعن‬ َ ‫َعلَ ْي‬ ‫َلواهُ َمـجْ ـموعا ً لَهُ أوْ ُمـ َمـ َّزعـا‬ ‫آب شـانِـيـ ِه إيـابـا ً فَـ َو َّدعـا‬ َ ‫فَـقَـد‬

ً‫أآثـَرْ تَ ِه ْدما ً بالـِيا ً َو َسـويَّة‬ ‫ك إنَّني‬ َ ‫فَال تَ ْف َر َح ْن يَوْ ما ً بِنَ ْف ِسـ‬ ٌ‫أن تُـلِـ َّم ُملِ َّمة‬ ْ ً ‫ك يَـوْ ما‬ َ َّ‫لَعل‬ ً َ ‫نَ َعيْتَ ا ْم َرأ لَوْ كانَ لَحْ ُم‬ ُ‫ك ِع ْن َده‬ ‫فَال يَ ْهن َِئ الواشينَ َم ْقتَ ُل مالِ ٍك‬

47 48 49 50 51

That the poet qualifies hidm with bālin (verse 47) is significant in such an elliptical passage. If the former does not immediately evoke the balīya, the second one does, since the verb from which it derives connotes not only the decay of a garment and the ruin of a reputation, but also the fact of a camel being tied to her master’s grave to remain there until she dies. The camel-connection is heightened by mention of the sawīya-cushion, this having a special association with the mounts of female slaves and indigents – serving, perhaps, to enhance the insult. That al-Muḥill comes sent “as a messenger” (bearing bad news), is also significant. Sending a message evokes the concept of baʿth (‘to send’, ‘stir forth’), and in the context, baʿth as the (inappropriate) unbinding of a she-camel’s ʿiqāl registers. Otherwise stated, a malignant ‘stirrer’ (bāʿith) could be said to have toyed with the covenantal tie of al-Muḥill (recall verse 3 of Poem 3.7: talaʿʿaba bāʿithun bi-dhimmati khālidin/wa-awdā ʿiṣāmun fī-l-khuṭūbi l-awāʾilī), and now he comes bearing the disasterous burden of a debt to the dead. This would make perfect sense of Mutammim’s vision of Death looming over al-Muḥill (verse 48). The verb tashajjaʿa, furthermore, carries radical associations not only with feigned courage, but also possession: the activity of the ghūl of Time, or, indeed, as we have seen, the phantom. Closely followed (verse 49) by the expression an tulimma mulimma, so strongly evocative as this is of the phantom’s haunting (see, for example the overview of Mufaḍḍalīya XXI of al-Mukhabbal al-Saʿdī shortly above), this tashajjuʿ would, then, be tinted with the possession called ṭayf, or walah (discussed earlier in respect of Taʾabbaṭa Sharrā’s Mufaḍḍalīya Qāfīya).126 This would be to say that a debt to 125. Tāj, Lane, s.v. ḍ-y-ʿ: ḍayyaʿa ʿahda-hu, “he broke his compact”; cf. above, v.1 of Poem 3.1 (where ḍayyaʿa is a ‘wastage’ that describes the destruction of ḥasab through treachery), v.3 of Poem 3.4 where passive neglect is active treachery. 126. Tāj, s.v. ṭ-w-f, ṭ-y-f; Qāmūs, Tāj, arts tashajjaʿa, shajiʿun, ashjaʿu.

3.  Principles of Kinship & Alliance

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the dead has not been paid, nor a claim of the dead sealed off with ʿaql at the grave; that this permits the passage of a tortuous haunting into the faulty, personal ʿaql (the mental integrity) of al-Muḥill in demand of ‘payment’. The anticipation of seeing this debt paid by a humbling mutilation (jadʿ) recalls the invocation of Imruʾ al-Qays (verse 1 of Poem 3.4) for disaster to fall on Tamīm – also on account of treachery to their neighbour (jār). Mutammim’s implicit accusation of gross treachery is also strongly linked to the fact that Mālik was not properly buried (verse 50). This strikes a chord with allusions to non-burial in the wider poetry, which suggest that it is a theme powerfully associated with the duty to undertake blood-vengeance. Al-Aʿshā, for example, condemns a people for failing to retaliate when their prostrate dead were not pillowed [in graves] (lam yuwassad);127 ʿĀmir b. al-Ṭufayl makes a promise of vengeance for a kinsman whose head was not cushioned [in a grave] (lam yuwassad).128 The same association, registered in relation to Mutammim’s condemnation of al-Muḥill, would render the latter’s debt to the dead a matter of fidāʾ related to the ‘payment’ of blood-vengeance. This, in turn, would find Mutammim’s projection of al-Muḥill as the analogue of the bloodwit that the balīya suggests wholly to the point. Even the name of this al-Muḥill denotes one who makes the unlawful lawful to himself, who causes a deserved punishment to fall on his head. And, as the final verse unfolds, the additional associations of his name with one who pronounces another (i.e. Mutammim) quit of the obligation he has to him, and one who causes another to lodge or settle in an abode (i.e., Mālik, in his grave, after his ʿaql – or ‘binding’ – with this conceptual balīya is effected) could perhaps also be said to find an ironic resonance:129 al-Muḥill returns only to say farewell (verse 51), for he has already sealed his doom; and, in a context where the issue of debt and requital, in accordance with compact, is to be perceived in terms of an exchange of deposits or pledges (rihān), the poet’s use of waddaʿa has a double value, for it denotes not only ‘to bid farewell’, but also the act of depositing: Al-Muḥill returns only to leave again, because he has effectively pledged (the wadīʿa, or ‘deposit’ of) his life to the grave.130 ***** 127. See Tāj, s.v. s-w-d, which cites and clarifies. 128. ʿĀmir (1980), XXIX, v. 5. 129. Qāmūs, s.v. ḥ-l-l, IV. 130. Note that v. 22 of this same rithāʾ of Mutammim clearly has waddaʿa defining (Mālik’s) departure to death: fa-in takuni l-ayyāmu farraqna bayna-nā/fa-qad bāna maḥmūdan akh-ī ḥīna waddaʿā, “And if now between us Fate has set up the wall of Death, at least, when my brother went, he carried with him fair fame!” (Lyall’s translation); cf. Labīd (1962), p. 170 v. 8, which expresses the ‘deposits’ of life in terms of wadīʿa: wa-mā l-mālu wa-l-ahlūna illā wadīʿatun/wa-lā budda yawman an turadda l-wadāʾiʿū, “Wealth and people are only a deposit, and deposits must, inevitably, one day be returned”; cf. Tāj, s.v. r-h-n: inna-hu la-rahīnu qabrin, “Indeed, he is the ‘pledge’ of a grave”; cf., ibid., s.v. w-d-ʾ: the verses of Zuhayr b. Masʿūd al-Ḍabbī, and the concept rahīnu muwaddaʾin, lit: the deposit of a place covered with earth (a grave), i.e., a corpse.

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Conclusion To sum up here, this chapter finds that every virtue that builds honour and power is meant to promote a compact that seeks to shut itself against the impetus of Death; that ethical failure invites, instead, a quasi-contractual relationship with the ghūl that steals the forces of life. True love is for the health, purification and perpetuity of a corporate body, a virtue applied to support a systematic process of mutual redemption. Where faith is in question, or in any way betrayed, an appropriate remedy, or a break of covenantal ties, must be effected in the interests of self-preservation. The language of sexual passion appears to be an integral and inseparable part of ethical debate and the discussion of covenantal relations. The burden for establishing this is placed upon the following chapter.

Chapter 4 ‘Women’ in the Context of Kinship and Alliance

This chapter looks at aspects of gender-play, and the female of the nasīb, in the context of covenant and the ethic. The opening qiṭʿa is used to establish, first, that the concepts of waṣl and ṣarm carry the technical connotations, respectively, of union in, and divorce from, the ties of kinship, equally with women as with men. Thereafter, we pick up the concept of ‘love’ (ḥubb/wudd) as a virtue based on constancy within compact, which conditions the imperatives of waṣl and ṣarm: binding or breaking a pact. We pick up, too, the concepts of dīn and ithm (‘religion’, ‘sin’), and see how inconstancy and faithless ‘withholding’ (bukhl) can, typically, be epitomised by the female gender and the evocation of ‘arousal’ by ‘intoxication’. We then examine how all this informs the impact of introductory nasīb-episodes (so-called ‘amatory preludes’) upon a body of verses that follow. Poem 4.1:123

ُ‫وإنّي ُمـقـيـ ٌم مـا أقـا َم عَـسـيـب‬ ُ‫ب نَســيـب‬ ٍ ‫َو ُكلُّ غَـري‬ ِ ‫ب لِلغَري‬ 3 ْ ‫َو‬ ُ‫إن تَصْ ِرمينا فَالغَريبُ غَـريـب‬ ُ‫مـان قَـريـب‬ ٍ ‫َوما هُ َو آ‬ ِ ‫ت في الـ َّز‬ ُ‫َول ِك َّن َم ْن وا َرى التُّرابُ غَـريـب‬

َّ ‫أجا َرتَـنـا‬ ُ‫وب تَـنـوب‬ َ ُ‫إن ال ُخط‬ ‫َريـبـان هَـهُـنـا‬ ‫أجا َرتَـنـا إنّا غ‬ ِ ْ ‫َصلـينا فَالـقَرا بَـةُ بَـ ْينَنا‬ ِ ‫فإن ت‬ ُ‫ْس يَ ُؤوب‬ َ ‫أجا َرتَنا ما فاتَ لَي‬ ْ ‫ْس غَريبا ً َمن تَنا َء‬ َ ‫َولَي‬ ُ‫ت ديا ُره‬ 2

1 2 3 4 5

1. Wife of ours (jārata-nā), Time’s afflictions (al-khuṭūb) betide/ the time to visit (al-mazār) is come; and I shall abide here as long as Mount ʿAsīb.4 2. Wife of ours, we here are two strangers (gharībān); and every stranger is related (nasīb) to another stranger. 3. Should you tie with us (taṣilī-nā) the compact-bond, a nearrelationship (qarāba) will be ours; but should you sever us 1. Metre: ṭawīl. D.Ṣ., p. 79; Ibr., p. 357 (vv. 1–2) & 454 (vv. 3–5); Ahl., p. 196, no. 3 of “other attributions”, where vv. 4–5 are absent. 2. Ibr: … inna l-mazāra qarībū &c. 3. Ibr: … fa-l-qarību gharībū. 4. Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 3, p. 678, notes ʿAsīb, on the authority of al-Aṣmaʿī, as a mountain of Hudhayl, and cites these verses.

184

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia that tie (taṣrimī-nā), the stranger will remain a stranger/the near-related will be a stranger. 4. Wife of ours, what is gone will not return; and what approaches in time is all too near (qarīb). 5. One whose abodes (diyār) are distant is not a stranger: a stranger is one whom the earth enshrouds.

Verses 1–5: The portentousness of the poet’s ‘court’ here is clear from the outset: The reading inna l-khuṭūba tanūbū, “afflictions betide” (Ahl., D.Ṣ., verse 1a), fronts this message with a reminder of Time’s misfortunes (khuṭūb al-dahr); and the confident allusion (verse 1b) to an everlasting abiding (iqāma)  –  with the permanence of Mount ʿAsīb, itself  –  provokes an uncomfortable realisation that the usual comment on life’s transience is being reversed (recall, for example, Ibrāhīm’s reading for verse 2 of Poem 2.1: how the poet defines his impermanence in terms of not having been created from rock or iron). As to the variant inna l-mazāra qarībū (Ibr., verse 1a), this, combined with the allusion to iqāma (abiding) with a jāra (neighbour/wife), raises anticipation for some kind of marriage: The verbs zāra and aqāma connote, at one level, the acts of visiting, and abiding with, a spouse.5 The poet’s assurance, in this case, of the imminence and duration of his visit is somewhat foreboding: The idea burgeoning now is of the ‘visitation’ of the Separator, Death, and the graveʾs perpetual iqāma (its eternal ‘abiding’).6 This sets the tone for a discussion of covenant that gradually reveals itself as a contemplation on reaffiliating from this world to one far further. In the process, the normative concepts of ‘union’ and ‘severance’ (waṣl, ṣarm), ‘nearness’ and ‘distance’ (qurb, buʿd), relatedness and strangerhood (qarāba, ghurba), are turned on their heads. The statement (verse 2b – a much quoted wisdom) that every stranger (gharīb) is the kinsman/the relation by marriage (nasīb) of a stranger, develops the sense of movement toward a new affiliation. The suggestion that poet and jāra are an appropriate match reads, ostensibly, as a consideration on the ideal criteria for a compact. (Elsewhere, for example, the poet declares his unshakeable allegiance to a kinsman who satisfies him, matches his excellence, and shares ties of lineage

5. Economically illustrated by Zuhayr (1964), p. 35. An outraged wife insists she will not receive the poet: qālat ummu kaʿbin lā tazur-nī/fa-lā wa-llāhi mā la-ka min mazārī, “Umm Kaʿb said ‘Do not visit me, for no, by God, there’s no visiting for you’”, while the husband moves to convince her to remain in their auspicious abode: aqīmī umma kaʿbin wa-ṭmaʾinnī/fa-inna-ki mā aqamti bi-khayri dārī, “Abide, Umm Kaʿb, and be reassured; for, as long as you stay, you are in the best abode.” 6. Tāj, s.v. z-w-r, I, IV: zāra shaʿūba, “he visited [Death], the Separator, i.e., he died; azartu-hu shaʿūba, “I made him visit the Separator”, i.e., I killed him. Bravmann (1972), pp. 288–289, discusses the currency of muqīm as an epithet of the grave, though some of his arguments in this respect are debatable.

4.  ‘Women’ in the Context of Kinship and Alliance

185

through parentage and marriage);7 but, here, the ideology is inverted: it is ghurba (strangerhood), not qarāba (relatedness) that makes for nasab (shared lineage/kinship). This inversion now signals very clearly that the relationship under discussion is not ordinary. We are invited to reconsider what constitutes ‘strangerhood’. Ordinarily, a man is gharīb by virtue of his distance and isolation from homeland and tribe, his longing for the ‘healing’ prospect that the support and security of union affords.8 It is the gharīb who knocks at the door of refuge when he is abroad and unprotected. The poet may qualify for the status of gharīb on these grounds, but whether physically distant from his people or not, the suggestion, in light of verse 1, is that his ghurba here entails conceptual proximity to the grave, to removal and ‘strangerhood’ in the furthest possible buʿd (distance) of perdition. This suggestion is subsequently rendered open in his redefinition of ‘true’ ghurba in verse 5. By the same token, his jāra is a ‘stranger’, for her ‘residence’ finally equates with the ‘distant abode’ of perpetuity. Furthermore, she and the poet are ‘strangers’ to one another because their compact is not yet sealed, and he still resides in the ‘near’ world. Yet, he has said that they are intimately connected, which implies that he has all but made the transition that will render him gharīb in the same way as she, united with her in an abode where ‘distant strangers’ are brought mutually ‘close’, and thus ‘near related’ by condition of death. The poet’s discussion of union in waṣl (verse 3) brings the prospect of sealing a compact nearer. Notably, he tells us explicitly that waṣl with this woman will constitute qarāba: properly, kinship by consanguinity or marriage; it also tells us that ṣarm, the severance of this connection, will negate that ‘kinship-tie’. In this light, both the Ahlwardt/D.Ṣ reading (‘the stranger will remain a stranger’) and Ibrāhīm’s (‘the related [stranger] will be a [distant] stranger’) make good sense, the latter more openly picking up the dichotomous nature of the relationship implied by the word-play on ‘relatedness’ and ‘strangerhood’. At the same time, both readings suggest something more: The poet is effectively ‘courting’ death, and waṣl will seal his affiliation into the abode of ghurabāʾ (strangers) of the ‘farther side’, making him their kinsman. If he is rejected, no such affiliation will occur. If the shelter of kinship is denied, he will be ‘condemned’ to life: a total reversal of the concept of community protection in the ‘neighbourhood’ of jiwār. Verse 4 brings Time into focus once more. That something momentous in its advance is now qarīb (near), compounds the play on ‘nearness’ and ‘distance’, heightening the sense of separation from the ‘near’ world of life and proximity to the ‘faraway’ place of perdition. That the jāra remains a foil for this discussion enhances the fusion of ideas between an affiliation to Death and the covenantal qarāba of 7. See below in this chapter, vv. 10–11 of Poem 4.2. 8. As, e.g., in Poem 2.1: the poet’s distress at his (potentially) imminent demise far from his people’s abodes; in Syria he has no near kinsman or ‘healer’ to support or visit him (v. 5): biarḍi l-shāmi lā nasabun qarībun/wa-lā shāfin fa-yusnida aw yaʿūdā.

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marriage, and thus permits qarīb here, too, to resonate at the level of an imminent, morbid kin-tie. Verse 5 renders the implied inversion of qarāba, ghurba and buʿd explicit. This is achieved through the poet’s denial of the norm that one far distant from his abodes and kinsmen will be regarded a stranger,9 and his assertion that it is the person whom the earth enshrouds who is truly gharīb. Thus, he finally reveals, without equivocation, that his discourse on ‘strangerhood’ is focused squarely on an imminent encounter with Death; and this makes pure poetic logic of his solicitation for union in a negative reflection of covenant. Having redefined nasab on the basis of ghurba, he contemplates a consummation of the ‘healing’ that ghurba requires in terms of an alternative qarāba: a ‘marriage’ that will afford him the ‘neighbourly protection’ (jiwār) of the ‘tribe of the dead’. This poem illustrates how the manipulation of critical concepts to discuss the shape of the extraordinary can instruct us in the structure of the norm. As much as the poem redefines qarāba, ghurba and buʿd by a process of inversion, it reinforces  –  by a process of reflection  –  the normative perception of these concepts in relation to the ethic and to Time. There is no internal indication of an occasion for the poem. The idea of a compact of death, sealed by covenant, recalls verses discussed earlier, where poets were sufficiently distressed as to intimate something bordering on desire for such a compact (see above, Poem 2.6; the overview to Mufaḍḍalīya LVII, of al-Muraqqish al-Aṣghar, in Chapter 3). It may be that this poem relates to a similar moment of crisis. Yet, given that it does not reveal a distinct desire to die, it could relate to any situation where the poet anticipates a confrontation with Death, and faces off fear with eloquence (as in Poems 1.4, and 2.1). Importantly, the decision as to whether covenantal affiliation will take place is left, overtly, to the choice of a woman. This offers explicit reason to regard gender relations as integral to ethical debate, and in terms of the ties and principles of kinship. The poetic rationale for focusing on women to discuss waṣl (the compact-tie) may stem from the fact that jiwār was established when a woman was contracted to a man, she becoming his jāra, and her father the jār of her husband; but, as we have already intimated, the intricacies of gender-play and waṣl are not to be explained simply on these grounds. This noted, the poems that follow will be discussed in light of the results of preceding analysis. The lāmīya below appears in Dār Ṣādir’s reading without the nasīb carried by Ibrāhīm and Ahlwardt. The opportunity is therefore taken to analyse the body of the poem before looking at the nasīb to examine the relevance and impact of its juxtaposition. The verse numbering anticipates the superimposition of this nasīb.

9. A norm reflected in the muʿallaqa of Zuhayr: Ahlwardt (1870), Zuhayr, no. 16, v. 57a: “Whoso goes far from his abode (yaghtarib) will consider his friend a foe.

4.  ‘Women’ in the Context of Kinship and Alliance Poem 4.2:10

‫ـل األَ ُو ِّد بِـها َوذي ال َّذحْ ِل‬ ِ ‫أَ ْه‬ ‫َميس ِه َر جْ لي‬ ِ ‫ت َو ْسطَ خ‬ ِ ‫َو ْليأ‬ ‫ـل‬ ِ ‫ديم َمـ َسـ َّمةَ ال َّد ْخ‬ ِ َ‫ال ُو ِّد الق‬ ‫أ ْع ِد لْ إلى بَ َد ٍل َو ال ِم ْثـلي‬ ‫ّهار والفَضْ ِل‬ ِ ‫األ ْنسـا‬ ِ ‫ب َواألص‬ ْ ‫ق َو ِم ْن‬ َ َ ْ ‫أز ِل‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ق‬ ‫ن‬ ‫م‬ ِ َ‫يَ ْمنَعْن‬ ٍ ُ ‫بال قـ ُ ْل‬ ‫ فِدا ُؤ هُ أ ْهـلي‬: ‫ت‬ ِ ْ‫أج‬ ‫ظَنّي بِ ِه َسـيَـنـا ُل أوْ يُـبْـلـي‬ ‫ـل‬ ِ ْ‫هـاربٌ ُمـج‬ ِ ‫دينٌ يَـجي ُء َو‬ ‫َريف فَأجْ َم َعت تَ ْغلي‬ ِ ‫بِغَضا الغ‬

‫ي ِم ْن‬ َ ‫َم ْن كانَ يَأ ُم ُل َع ْق َردار‬ 11 ‫ت َو ْسطَ قِـبابِ ِه َخيْلي‬ ِ ْ‫فَ ْـليأ‬ ُ ‫ك َوقَـ ْد يُ َحد‬ ‫ِّث ذو‬ َ ‫يا هَلْ أتا‬ ُ ‫ ما ا ْنتَ َمي‬12‫أنّي لَ َع ْمري‬ ‫ْت فَلَ ْم‬ ُ ‫ك في‬ ‫خ َر‬ َ ‫ضيت بِ ِه َوشا َر‬ ٍ ‫ِل‬ ُ ‫ب عَـلِ ْق‬ ‫ت بِها‬ ٍ ‫َولَ ِم ْثـ ُل أسْـبا‬ ‫لَ ّما َسما ِم ْن بَي ِْن أ ْقرُنَ فَالـ‬ ‫هَـ ٌّم َسـيَـبْـلُ ُغـهُ الـتَّما ُم فَـذا‬ ْ ‫فـاختَلَفوا‬ َ‫َوأتَى عَـلى َغطَفان‬ ‫َويَحُـشُّ تَحْ تَ القِ ْد ِر يُوقِدُهـا‬

187

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

6. Whoso aspires to the heart of my home (ʿaqra dār-ī) of those harbouring love for it (al-awudd), ready to prosecute for retaliation (dhū l-dhaḥl),11 7. Let my horses/tents come unto his tents; and let my footmen join his troops.12 8. Has it not reached you  –  a person of long-standing love (wudd) might speak so to kin and intimates close to the heart (masammat al-dakhl) – 9. That neither I nor my like, by my life and heritage, is prone to be fickleness (badal) in allegiance 10. With an excellent brother who satisfies me (raḍītu bi-hi), sharing kinship by blood and marriage (al-ansāb wa-l-aṣhār). 11. Ties (asbāb) like those to which I adhere (ʿaliqtu bi-hā) repel (yamnaʿna) anxiety (qalaq) and grief (azl): 12. When such a man rises (samā min) amid Aqrun and The Mountains (aqrun wa-l-ajbāl), I say: my people be his ransom (fidāʾ). 13. A burning obsession (hamm) will reach consummation; it will overtake him upon whom my [ill-]regard falls (dhā ẓann-ī bihi), or otherwise manifest [my ‘excuse’ (ʿudhr)] (sa-yanālu aw yublī). 14. It is here to wreak havoc (atā ʿalā) on Ghaṭafān for their dissent (ikhtalafū). A requital (dīn) is coming, a fugitive flees. 15. The pot (qidr) stands on kindling ignited with wood of the ghaḍā.13 The water rages at full boil.

10. Metre: kāmil. D.Ṣ., pp. 155–156, where these verses are numbered 1–9; Ibr., pp. 203–205; Ahl. 46. Ibr., pp. 433–434, carries further minor variations. 11. Ibr: … balaq-ī; Ahl: … khaym-ī &c. 12. Reading here with Ahlwardt. Ibr: innī li-ʿamrin &c., interpreted (Ibr., p. 205, n. 9 cont.) as an assertion of lineage to ʿAmr, which seems difficult. 13. The wood of the ghaḍā is extremely hard, providing the hardest charcoal and a fire of long endurance: Lane, art. ghaḍan, which identifies it as one of the genus Euphorbia peculiar to the Arabian Peninsula.

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Verses 6–12: These verses express an assurance of, and a demand for, integrity in compact, fidelity to the pledge of ransom (fidāʾ) that is incumbent on brothers in covenant. Prominent here is the concept of love (wudd), which attaches (verses 6 and 8) to both poet and addressee. Awudd and dhū wudd connote loving/belovedness and friendship, appropriate to the ḥabīb (lover/loved one) and ṣadīq (true friend). The context shows this love to be predicated on two things: kinship by blood-descent or marriage, and constancy within compact. The element of kinship is most openly addressed (verse 10) by reference to ansāb and aṣhār, but is also intrinsic to masamma (verse 8), which implies intimates of distinction (al-khāṣṣa), friends and choice relations (aqārib).14 That such an association involves intimate access to a man’s abode and person, is pointed up in the allusions to ʿaqr al-dār (verse 1) and masammat al-dakhl (verse 8): The first relates to the principal part (aṣl) of an abode, the central ‘heart’ on which reliance is placed, the vulnerable point to which an assault would be aimed; the second mirrors this by reference to the concept of dakhl, which implies a man’s inner self, his heart and mind, or ‘secret’ (sirr).15 All this would suggest a certain urgency to the demand for constancy implied by the love here at issue. The poet guarantees his own good faith, first, by boasting that he is not prone to badal (verse 9). As we have seen, badal connotes a quality of inconstancy peculiar to, and inspired by, alDahr (see the commentary to verse 5 of Poem 1.1). The boast, then, succinctly asserts lack of susceptibility to such corrupting influence as would threaten himself and his co-affiliates - an assertion enhanced (verse 11) by his allusion to the ties (asbāb) with which he secures his relations: The context shows that these asbāb equate to the bonds of waṣl, i.e. to the ḥibāl (‘ropes’, s. ḥabl) that secure kinship (qarāba). This is supported by the dictionaries, which identify sabab as a tie of relation secured through marriage. Principally, though, sabab is a rope by which one gains access (by the bucket) to water. Poetically, this would render it a line of access to a people’s conceptual ḥawḍ (water, cistern), or communal life-source. These associations are heightened by the poet’s use, in the same verse, of ʿaliqa: ʿAliqa has a principal sense of suspending a well-rope and bucket to the bakra (the rotary water-pulley); it relates also to the suspension of a water-skin (qirba), and, conceptually, to the cleaving attachment of love.16 This recalls our earlier observations on the crucial place of the pulley and water-skin in the poetic discussion of covenantal ties and the relative ‘health’ or ‘sickness’ of a communal body (see especially the commentary to verse 3 of Poem 3.7). It permits us to draw a relationship between the security of the said asbāb (kin-ties/[well-]ropes) and the fastness with which the straps of the bakra, and suspensory binding of the qirba, are secured. That is to say that for such ties to break or fray entails ‘sickness’

14. Qāmūs, Muḥkam, Tāj, s.v. s-m-m. 15. Qāmūs, Mughnī, s.v. ʿ-q-r; Qāmūs, s.v. d-kh-l. 16. Tāj, s.v. s-b-b, ʿ-l-q.

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encroaching on the communal body, the trial and separation of members of a shared abode, treachery in respect of the covenant.17 It is in this light that we should read the poet’s denial that any connection with him is susceptible to qalaq or azl (verse 11). Qalaq connotes looseness, disquiet and agitation; azl, a crisis relating to death, drought and sterility, to straitness resulting from grief or fear. Synonymity between the said asbāb and ties of waṣl entails that the potential crisis resulting from their insecurity or failure would equate to the distress, or ‘sickness’, evinced in poems of the previous chapter where the fastness of the bonds of waṣl was in doubt (epitomised in the ‘tattered rope’ motif), and where the bad covenant that this implied was effectively a contract with Death. The poet’s use of yamnaʿna in respect of these ropes (verse 11) may thus be read with the full force of the verb manaʿa identified in Chapter 3: defence of confederates; ‘beneficence’ involving self-expenditure in combat; a quality of restraint emotive of ʿaql, i.e., intellectual soundness that prohibits blameworthy behaviour and enables effectual action; self-protection associated with the inaccessibility and impregnability of the loftiest mountains; commitment to covenant that preserves every vital interest. In short, verse 11 translates as a weighty assertion of constancy and solidarity against the intellectual and physical assaults of rayb al-dahr. A demand for reciprocal virtue and constancy may be inferred from the conditions that the poet imposes upon his extending his covenant. Raḍītu bi-hī (verse 10) reads as a loaded statement in this regard when we recall the censure of Ḥanẓala in Poem 3.5.18 That poem showed that riḍāʾ (satisfaction) is predicated upon sustained endeavour in defending a kinsman’s interests; upon active proof of fidelity, generous action, and an intrinsic lack of corruption. The impeccable conduct of ʿUwayr and his folk which, by implication, achieved the poet’s riḍāʾ, was a mark of their purity, piety, and good faith. Accordingly, riḍāʾ here, too, may be taken to imply the qualities of ṣabr, wafāʾ, karam and ḥasab (combative endurance, good faith, noble generosity and worth). This inference is enhanced by the additional requirements of pedigree (nasab) and superior excellence (faḍl), which accompany the demand for riḍāʾ in verse 10. Verse 12 implies a similar sub-text: The loftiness indicated by samā min (to rise from) relates explicitly to ḥasab and sharaf (worth and nobility); and the last chapter showed how the maintenance of inherited, corporate virtue inspires identification with the height and fastness of mountain ‘forts’. Accordingly, the reference to The Mountains (ajbāl) from which an ideal brother ‘rises’ (samā min) has all the resonance of those qualities of hereditary moral esteem and tenacity that ‘build’ a people’s glorious ‘rock edifice’: the soundness of mind and action, of commitment to covenant, that make for impregnable strength, and protect from hostile incursions – in other words, ʿaql, ḥaṣāna, 17. See Chapter 3, n. 80. Tāj, Qāmūs, art. sababun illustrate that the concept of severing such ties is used both of dividing affinities and abodes, and sundering people’s connection with life. 18. See above, Poem 3.5: the commentary to vv. 1–2: a-ḥanẓala law ḥāmaytumū wa-ṣabartumū/laathnaytu khayran ṣāliḥan wa-la-arḍā-nī//a-lā inna qawman kuntumū amsi dūna-hum/humū manaʿū jārāti-kum āla ghudrānī.

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manāʿa, karam, ḥasab and ʿizz.19 In the context, Aqrun, too, could be read as an allusive enhancement of the analogy between inherited virtue and durable mountain rock.20 Importantly, verses 6–12 demonstrate, again, the essentially ethical nature of ‘love’ (ḥubb/wudd):21 Love entails resolute constancy in waṣl, implying every virtue that is predicated on good faith and conducive to life and power. In light of the allusion (verse 6) to dhū al-dhaḥl (one with cause for retaliation), the reference to the oath of fidāʾ (verse 12), which is to be extended upon the poet’s riḍāʾ (satisfaction), conveys a distinct sense of preparation to muster the kind of armed assistance that this oath guarantees; and it is to an armed engagement that the poet next alludes. Verses 13–15: The poet refers to his burning obsession as hamm (verse 13). As previously discussed, hamm typically evokes ‘sickness’ that plagues the mind, unfinished business that requires appropriate, ethical resolution. The case in point here appears to be some cause for retaliation (dhaḥl, verse 1) – ‘sickness’ that requires the ‘cure’ of revenge. The source of the trouble is obliquely identified as the person or persons inspiring the poet’s antagonism (dhū ẓann-ī bi-hi). If this is ‘sickness’ and incipient jahl, it is not a variety that diminishes him or incurs blame. On the contrary, his hamm, in this case, is a contained, incubating ‘fever’, headed for climax, and – strikingly - the active agent, or vehicle, of his imminent endeavour: It is this hamm which will overtake the prospective victim, or else achieve the poet’s exoneration (ʿudhr) through total self-expenditure (sa-yanālu aw yublī). It is this hamm which is coming to destroy (atā ʿalā) Ghaṭafān (verse 14) – finally identified as the criminal culprit - with the full force of Death and Misfortune. The poet presents 19. See the commentary to vv. 5–9 of Poem 3.7; cf. Chapter 1, n. 57: the verses of al-Samawʾal on the ‘mountain’ of heritage (jabal) upraised (samā bi-hī) by successive generations; al-Tibrīzī (1969), Labīd, vv. 81–84: Alluding to the ancestors whose code of high ideals his people follow, and to the efficacious action to which their virtue gives rise, the poet describes the towering house which has been ‘built’ for them, and to which young and old alike have ‘ascended’ (samā ilay-hi); ibid., al-Ḥārith, v. 71, where Qays follow a Qaraẓī chieftain identified with a hard, white, rock-eminence (ʿablāʾu). It is surely a product of such poetical associations that gives rise to the term jabal for a lord or chief. 20. Ibr., p. 533, lists both Aqrun and al-Ajbāl as place-names. Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 1, p. 336, notes Aqrun as a place-name, though with no further information than this very verse (and with the variant aḥyāl for ajbāl). Tāj, s.v. q-r-n, goes further, stating that Aqrun is a place “in Byzantium” (al-Rūm) – also, on the basis, apparently, of this verse. At the same time, this entry makes the relationship between the singular, qarn (and qurna) and the concept of mountains, as well as a number of identifiable place-names, quite clear – albeit not reading aqrun anywhere as a plural for these. Ibid., s.v. j-b-l, notes many places built on the basis of ‘mountains’, though none that can be linked directly to this poem. Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 1, p. 131, lists only Ajbāl Ṣubḥ in the territory of al-Jināb, linked with the Banū Ḥiṣn b. Ḥudhayfa, and Harim b. Quṭba – Ṣubḥ apparently being a man of ʿĀd who lived there of old. 21. ‘Love’ (wudd/ḥubb) as an ethical commitment to covenant was already observed as intrinsic to Bishr b. Abī Khāzim’s Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII, discussed above, Part 1:2, s.v. Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin.

4.  ‘Women’ in the Context of Kinship and Alliance

191

himself as the very manifestation of Time’s ‘returning sickness’ – hamm – from the enemy perspective, coming to deal out retribution and thus ‘cure’ the disease at source.22 It is in this light that the force of dīn (verse 14) should be considered. Dīn emerges here laden with multiple senses: An activity undertaken in obedience to the ancestral ethic; an embodiment of the harnessed virtues of the poet; retribution in response to transgression; a ‘curative’ from the poet’s perspective, and an oncoming ‘sickness’ from that of his prospective victims. These senses number among the many significations for dīn in the dictionaries, which suggests that, for all their variety, these meanings are not mutually exclusive, but mirror different perspectives of a coherent discussion of life and the ethic that the poetry embodies – all of which we note for further discussion. The kindling of firewood (verse 15) is a poetical declaration that the flame of war is ignited: ḥashsha and its near-synonyms are readily used of the outbreak of hostilities.23 As to the cooking-pot (qidr) brought to the boil, this complements the sense of a burgeoning fever coming to climax, and reads as an indirect threat of the ardency of the poet’s oncoming army: the qidr images a thriving community which ‘boils’ when moved to action, its supporting stones (athāfin) a powerful poetical figure for such a community’s most solid and durable supports.24 To sum up so far, these verses promise the ethically-guided retribution that must follow as a consequence of Ghaṭafān’s misdemeanor, the equalisation of the poet’s conceptual ‘infection’ by Time’s ‘disease’ through the agency of Ghaṭafān, the consummation of his craving for a ‘cure’ that will be his death if not theirs. What relevance, now, does the nasīb have viewed against this? َّ ‫ت َو َر‬ ْ َ ‫َونَأ‬ ‫ث َمعاقِ ُد ال َحب ِْل‬ ْ ْ َ ‫تاع فـض َُّن بِالـبَذ ِل‬ ِ ‫بَذ َل ال َم‬ ْ ‫ـراغ َمعـابـِ ٍل طُحْ ِل‬ ‫ف‬ ‫ق‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ـل‬ ِ ِ ٍ ِ‫ف‬ ‫روم البَها ِء َوقِـلَّ ِة األس ِْل‬ ِ ‫ب النَّحْ ِل‬ ِ ‫الل بِذائِـ‬ ِ ِ‫بَرْ ُد الق‬

ْ ‫تَنَ َّك َر‬ ‫ـل‬ ِ ْ‫ت لَ ْيلَى ع َِن ال َو ص‬ ‫َو لَ َو وْ ا َمتا َعهُ ُم َو قَ ْد سُـئِلُوا‬ ْ ‫ت لَـهُ ع َْن‬ ْ ‫َو نَ َح‬ ‫أز ِر تأْلـَبَ ٍة‬ ْ ‫وافت بِأصْ لَتَ َغي ِْرأ ْكلَفَ َمحْ ـ‬ ْ ‫ـر ع‬ ُ‫ب َمـذا قَــتُـه‬ ٍ ‫َـذ‬ ٍ ‫َو ُمـ َؤ َّش‬

1 2 3 4 5

1. Laylā’s disposition toward the tie of union (waṣl) altered (tanakkarat); she removed to afar (naʾat); the knots securing the bond (maʿāqid al-ḥabl) wore out (raththa). 22. Cf. below, the commentary to v. 15 of Poem 5.3.3: The poet warns his antagonists that he will be as their worst fear (hamm) once he looks to his target: abligh subayʿan in ʿaraḍta risālatan/ innī ka-hammi-ka in ʿashawtu amām-ī. If the formula ka-hammi-ka here only implies that the poet embodies Time’s ‘returning sickness’, one reading for v. 17 of the same poem (beginning wa-anā l-manīyatu, “I am Death” supplements this with a direct reference to the poet as Death personified. 23. Tāj, s.v. ḥ-sh-sh. 24. See Tāj, s.v. ḥ-m-y: qidru l-qawmi ḥāmiyatun tafūru, “the people’s ‘cooking-pot’ is hot and boiling”, i.e., they are strong, courageous, invincible; cf. Qāmūs, art. uthfīyatun; Lyall (1918–1921), XCVII, of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim, v. 37: virtue and steadfastness render the poet’s people athāfin rāsiyāt (discussed above in the commentary to this poem in Part 1:2, s.v. Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin).

192

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia 2. They denied their substance (lawaw matāʿa-hum) when asked for it; what should have been offered was meanly withheld (ḍunna bi-l-badhl). 3. With a ‘bow’-pair cut from a single taʾlaba-branch, she let fly at him a great, grey-green dart. 4. She revealed a cheek exceedingly smooth and fair, unmarred by any discolouration; 5. And a row of fine, sharp teeth, sweet to the taste, cool as water from mountain peaks, mingled with honey.

The shifts (verses 1–3) between third person feminine-singular and third person masculine-plural indicate that the personal injury the poet attributes to Laylā is inseparable from his experience at the hands of her people as a whole. This reflects a symptom of the poetry noted earlier: female figures typically appear as a focus for wider discussion of the community to which they belong. We infer that the poet’s connection with Laylā figures his relationship with her people. This connection is defined by kinship through the allusion (verse 1) to union by ties of covenant (waṣl, maʿāqidu l-ḥabl). Accordingly, these verses may be discussed in terms of the ethic as it relates to kinship. The quality of tanakkur exhibited by Laylā (verse 1) as she withdraws her allegiance implies extreme alteration from the familiar and pleasing to what is unrecognisable and abhorrent, nuanced with evil.25 In the context of kin-loyalties, then, it can be related to the negative quality of ‘change’ denoted by badal: a treacherous inconstancy, peculiar to Time, that has no place within a committed compact. Thus, understandably, the poet denies it (verse 9) as a quality to which he is susceptible. In the same verse, naʾā  –  denoting removal to a distance  –  registers as a near-synonym of baʿuda, so implying the fateful separation of bayn: an injurious split, broadly identified with rayb al-Dahr, which, with the fracture of the bond of waṣl, negates the sacred commitments of kinship, and brings dissolution. The message is betrayal; and this is emotively reinforced by the now-familiar ‘tattered rope’ motif (rathha maʿāqid al-ḥabl), which immediately evokes a treacherous compact – a compact with the morbid – and therefore typically features as the quality of the phantom’s bond (illustrated in the preceding chapter). Correspondences between our metamorphosing Laylā and the phantom are, in fact, not insubstantial. To recapitulate: The hold of the phantom centres on the idea of an unreliable covenantal bonding that is effectively a pact with Death. Broadly, the phantom-theme manipulates the conceit of an erstwhile lover to discuss neglect of the duties of kinship, and the true love that promotes communal life. Subjected to the consequences of such an association, a man is rendered prey to a ‘hunter’, the victim of importunate visitations by a maddening ‘debtor’ who comes to call in the ‘pledge’ of ransom in the form of his life force. This behaviour is poetically reducible to bukhl (base illiberality) – ‘shorthand’ for unjust denial, for wilful failure to assist kinsmen, equivalent to an active assault. It is an injury that arouses ‘sickness’, and challenges a man to effect his ‘healing’. 25. Qāmūs, art. tanakkara.

4.  ‘Women’ in the Context of Kinship and Alliance

193

All these elements are reflected in verses 1–5. The idea that a mutually binding covenant is, through treachery, reduced to tatters (and thus susceptible to morbid intrusion), is the dominant idea of verse 1; and the expansion of focus from beloved to clan (verse 2) demonstrates that the centrality of the female has wider implications: her singular treachery epitomises that of all. Corporate betrayal is communicated, first, in terms of a communal failure to pay mutual dues (a negation of the oath of fidāʾ)  –  conveyed in lawaw matāʿa-hum (verse 2)  –  for lawā implies denial of a debt. Otherwise rendered, they demonstrate bukhl – openly reinforced by ḍunna bi-l-badhl.26 The intrinsically aggressive implications of bukhl are developed further in verse 3 with the focus, once more, on the female: She becomes a ‘hunter’, and the poet her ‘prey’, subject to the ‘fatal’ shot of her eyes’ ‘arrows’. The predatory theme evolves erotically (verses 4–5) in the elaboration on her physical allure: an assault on the mind’s eye and the mind itself as the poet dwells on the now distant flash of her smile and imagines the unattainable, cooling ‘drink’ of her kiss. Access to such promised gratification – either within the faithful security of a kin-community, or by virtue of a successful initiative into protected recesses – is, as we have seen, a mutual ‘drinking’ or ‘intoxication’ that is essentially ‘healing’; exile and ‘sickness’ are evoked by preclusion from this (recall especially verses 3–10 of Poem 2.4). Verses 4–5 read as an elaboration on the theme of bukhl: a denial that constitutes a confounding assault on the poet’s senses, a sexual ‘hunt’ that arouses his passion but denies him legitimate satisfaction, an assault that foments his thirsty ‘sickness’, but withholds the ‘water’ of a ‘cure’. In the context of trial and ‘intoxication’, the name, Laylā, is quietly complementary, being related, not only to excessive darkness, but also, apparently, to the effects of wine.27 Inasmuch as Laylā’s person is inseparable from her people, all of them are implicated in this; and if we accept that what is figured here is essentially treachery, we may conclude that the conceit of a woman’s departure arousing unrequited sexual passion can allude to ‘sickness’ engendered not only by one person’s, but a whole community’s, aggression or betrayal; ‘sickness’ that may equate to the effects of wine in the mind and body, and communicate to its victim an ‘infection’ that could translate not only as grief or confusion, but also as moral outrage. The further suggestion would be that all moral combat – which may ultimately be considered a struggle for Life over Death – might typically be played out as gendered interactions where morbid and ‘intoxicating’ effects are evoked.28

26. This synonymity with bukhl is picked up in Ibr., p. 203, n. 2. 27. Tāj, s.v. l-y-l, offers the view that the woman’s name, Laylā, derives from the concept, Umm Laylā, denoting ‘darkest wine’ (al-khamr al-sawdāʾ); and notes that Ibn al-Aʿrābī (d. 231/845) did not restrict the meaning to colour, stating that laylā denotes [the wine’s] incipient intoxication (wa-laylā nashwatu-hā). 28. Cf. further, below in this chapter, the commentary to vv. 16–22 of Poem 4.3: the conceptual relationship between negotiating the ‘intoxicating’ effects of the treacherous beloved, and the essentially moral brotherly ‘combat’ involving wine; an exertion poetically extended to striving in battle.

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What has been poetically contrived is a situation that anticipates a response which could, poetically, be played out with one or more of the combat/hunting/ sexual conquest options of counter-initiative identified in Chapter 2; a response that may figure a mutual ‘cure’ that will equalise the ‘debt’ owed to the poet, requite his injury, and allow him to reassert his intellectual and physical equilibrium, or ḥilm. The inter-referentiality of combat, hunting, and sexual conquest, as moral counterinitiatives against injury, entails that the poem’s progression to a promise of war is profoundly logical, and that that declaration may therefore be regarded as the specification and contextualisation of a generalised expression of outrage at injury, which this nasīb articulates. The main body of the poem may now be reviewed; and we see, once more, how the verbal and visual montage of juxtaposed parts creates a new chemistry, a ‘product’, not a ‘sum’. Against the nasīb’s backdrop of betrayal where resolution is wanting – prior even to the poet’s revealing his specific grievance – verses 6–7 read unequivocally as a move to muster partisans to effect retribution. At a general level, the desire to remove to the camps of “loved ones” evokes a standard response to feeling the tyranny of a connection which, broadly, translates as a compact with Death; i.e., an active break with treacherous ties as a first step to self-redemption, and a realignment with folk whose love – contrary to that of the nasīb – is true, and whose covenant, therefore, is conducive to life. But, more precisely, this alternative pact, and the poet’s own love, appear to be predicated on receiving a commitment to assist him in his projected, armed endeavour. The subtle suggestion, then, is that those who are not prepared to support him need not aspire to the heart of his abode, or his own good faith as a brother in arms, but can count themselves, instead, like Laylā and her ‘niggardly’ folk. (This, again, bears comparison with Poem 3.5 where Ḥanẓala, having failed to assist their kinsman’s interests, were shamed by bukhl: active treachery and intrinsic corruption, which effectively rendered them party to a sin). Verses 8–12 constitute a development on comparative virtue where the poet compounds these same ideas. His assertion (verse 9) that he and his like are not prone to the treacherous changeability of badal, contrasts favourably against the fickle tanakkur evinced by Laylā (verse 1). Whereas the rope of Laylā’s covenant (verse 1) is worn and unreliable, the ropes of the poet’s covenant (verse 11) are prohibitive of such ‘wear’: they provide strong and dependable access to the resources of life. And whereas those like Laylā and her folk fail to fulfil their ‘debt’ where it is owed (verse 2), the poet is sure to extend [and fulfil] his oath of redemption (verse 12) to affiliates whose virtue corresponds to his own. In the newly unfolding context, the issue of corresponding virtue becomes hugely suggestive. Following the intimacy of the poet’s aside (verse 8) to “choice intimates and relations near to his heart” the emphasis on mutual virtue evokes something little short of moral blackmail that defies the poet’s addressees not to assist him if they aspire to his continued good faith, and count their honour for anything at all. Against the nasīb, also, the poet’s overt focus on his own supreme virtue assumes the

195

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function of a verbal initiative of self-resurrection that promises a potent response to injury, and exonerates him from potential blame. Verses 13–15 make an open declaration of the response to unspecified treachery anticipated by the nasīb; but the nasīb anticipates also the poet’s announcement of a counter-initiative that will ride the contained force of his hamm, for it epitomises a condition of ‘sickness’ and ‘care’ that is typically defined by hamm (The embedded nature of the ‘sickness’ of hamm  –  pl. humūm  –  in this kind of context was first underlined in the commentary to verses 1–5 of Poem 2.3). Ghaṭafān now emerge as culprits comparable to Laylā and her folk: hosts of rayb al-dahr, who, having aroused the poet’s ‘passion’ through misdemeanour and then eluded him, oblige him now to seek his ‘cure’ by mustering for armed retribution, apparently tinged with no little erotic charge - a dynamic the totality of which is defined by dīn. The female figure emerges here with a complex poetic function: First, a tool for discussing connectedness and disunity in a kin-union (waṣl); second, a counterforce to male virtue, an arousing principle of mental and corporeal dissolution that must necessarily be contained and countered with a response that motivates for purity, health and Life. This indicates that ethical application and, ultimately, dīn, are conceived in an ideological matrix where combat in the interests of Life implies a conceptual conflict of gender. Identifying these functional layers helps to reveal a clear logic and unity to the following poem. The double rhyme of verse 10, and the typicality of its topoi as opening themes, suggests that this qaṣīda may be a concatenation of two poems. Even if this is the case, there is considered art in their juxtaposition; and since this is not a unique example of such a feature in the early poetry,29 it may represent a habit of poetic development as integral as any other to the repertoire of the ancient, polythematic qaṣīda. Poem 4.3:3031323334

ْ ‫إذ ال يُال ئِـ ُم شَـ ْكـلُها شَـ ْكـلي‬ 32 ْ َّ ُ ّ ‫ـل‬ ‫ق‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ع‬ ‫الـ‬ ‫ة‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ـل‬ ‫ق‬ ‫و‬ ‫ك‬ ‫با‬ ‫ص‬ ‫إل‬ َ ِ َ ِ ِ َ ‫ت كَـأ سْـ َو إ الب ُْخ ِل‬ ِ ‫َحتَّى بَ ِخ ْل‬ ُ ‫َو َمشَـي‬ ‫ْت َمتَّئِد اً عَلى ِر سْلي‬ ‫ـل‬ ِ ‫قَسْـر اً َو ال أُ صطا ُد بِالخَـ ْت‬ ‫ـل‬ ٍ ‫جـا َو ْز تُـهـا بِـنَجا ئِـ‬ ِ ‫ب فُــ ْت‬

‫ب ال َع ْز ِل‬ ِ ِ‫ الـ ُح ُمو َل بِجان‬31‫َح ِّي‬ ُّ ‫ماذا يَ ُش‬ ‫ك ِم ْن ظُع ٍُن‬ َ ‫ق َعلَ ْي‬ ‫َمـنَّـيْـتِـنـا بِـغَـ ٍد َو بَـعْـ َد َغ ٍد‬ 33 ُ ُ ‫ص َر ْم‬ ‫ت ِحـبالها‬ َ ‫يا رُبَّ غاني ٍة‬ ً ‫ـصبـا‬ ِ ِ‫ال أ سْـتَقِي ُد لِ َم ْن َد عـا ل‬ 34 ‫َو تَـنـو فَـ ٍة َجـرْ دا َء َم ْهلِـكَـ ٍة‬

1 2 3 4 5 6

29. See, e.g., Lyall (1918–1921), XVI of al-Marrār b. Munqidh, XL of Suwayd b. Abī Kāhil; Ahlwardt (1870), Zuhayr, no. 15. 30. Metre: kāmil. D.Ṣ., pp. 151–153; Ibr., pp. 236–239; Ahl. 45. Ibr., p. 441, notes variants, those of which not covered here are complementary. 31. Reading here with Ahl. Ibr. does not vocalise. 32. Reading so, with Ahlwardt. Ibr: …ʿalay-ki …/… ṣibā-ki &c. 33. Ahl: … lahawtu bi-hā &c. 34. So, with Ibr. Ahl: … jadbāʾa mahlikatin &c. D.Ṣ: ... muhlikatin.

196

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia ُ ِ‫َوأب‬ ‫ عَلى َرحْ لي‬35ً ‫ـيـت ُمرْ تَـفِـقا‬ ‫ـل‬ ِ ‫في َمـ ْتـنِـ ِه كَـ َمـ َد بَّـ ِة الـنَ ْم‬ ‫ص ْق ِل‬ ‫عَـهْـ ٌد بِـتَـمـْويـ ٍه َو ال‬ َ ْ ‫َولَ َو‬ ‫ت َشموسُ بَشاشَـةَ الـبَ ْذ ِل‬ ‫ـل‬ ِ ‫حَـوْ را َء حـانيَ ٍة عَلى ِط ْف‬ ‫َو لَـهـا َعلَ ْي ِه َسـرا َو ةُ الفَضْ ِل‬ ‫ فِـعْـلـي‬36‫ِح ْـلمي َوسُــ ِّد َد لِلنَّدَى‬ ‫َو البِرُّ َخ ْي ُر َحـقـيبـ ِة ال َّر حْ ِل‬ ‫َّـبيل َو ِم ْنهُ ُذ و د َْخ ِل‬ ِ ‫قَصْ ُد الس‬ ‫َوأُ ِجـ ُّد َوصْ َل َم ِن ا ْبتَغَى َوصْ لي‬ ‫مـاجـ ِد األصْ ِل‬ ‫َسه ِْل الخَليقَ ِة‬ ِ ‫أ ْنتَ َو َم ْن ِز ِل ال َّسه ِْل‬40‫ب‬ ِ ْ‫في الرُّ ح‬ 41 ‫ـل‬ ِ ْ‫ـجـ َّدةَ ِع ْذ َر ِة الـرَّج‬ ِ ‫أجْ هَـلْ ُم‬ ‫ك را ئِـشٌ نَـبْـلي‬ َ ِ‫ريش نَ ْبل‬ ِ‫َو ب‬ ِ َّ َ‫يَ ْقرو َمـق‬ ‫ قَـبْـلي‬42 ٌ‫ك قَـاِئف‬ َ ‫ص‬ ْ ‫نَبَ َح‬ ‫طـار قـا ً ِم ْثلي‬ ‫ك‬ َ ‫ت ِكال بُـ‬ ِ

‫ـبـوب بِـهـا‬ ‫فَيَبِ ْتنَ يَ ْنهَسْـنَ الـ َج‬ َ ُ‫ُمتَ َو ّسـِد اً عَضْ با ً َمـضا ِر بُـه‬ ُ‫ْـس لَـه‬ َ ‫صقيالً َو ْه َو لَـي‬ َ ‫يُ ْدعى‬ ‫ت ال ّد يا ُر فَما بِها أ ْهـلي‬ ِ َ‫َعف‬ ْ َ ‫جاز ئَ ٍة‬ ‫ْن‬ ‫ي‬ ‫ع‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ك‬ ‫ْـ‬ ‫ي‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ل‬ ‫إ‬ ‫ت‬ ‫نَظَ َر‬ َ َ ِ ِ ِ ‫فَـلَـهـا ُمـقَـلَّـ ُد هـا َو ُمـ ْقـلَـتُـهـا‬ ُ ‫أ ْقـبَ ْـل‬ ‫َصد اً ورا َج َعـني‬ ِ ‫ـت ُم ْقت‬ ُ ‫ أ ْن َج ُح مـا طَـلَـب‬37ُ‫َوهللا‬ ‫ بِ ِه‬38‫ْـت‬ ‫َو ِمـنَ الطَّريقَ ِة جـائِـ ٌر َوهُـدًى‬ ‫ُصار ُمني‬ ‫إ نّي َل صْ ِر ُم َم ْن ي‬ ِ َ َ ‫َو أخـي إخـا ٍء ذي ُمـحا فـظـ ٍة‬ ُ ‫ح ُْل ٍو إذا ما ِجـ ْئ‬ ‫ قا َل أال‬39‫ـت‬ ‫َّبوح َو لَـ ْم‬ ‫ص‬ ‫س ال‬ َ ْ‫نا َز ْعتُهُ كأ‬ ِ ‫واص ٌل َحبْلي‬ ‫ك‬ َ ‫إ نّي بِـ َحـبْـلِـ‬ ِ َ‫ك عَلى هُدَى أ ث ٍر‬ َ ‫أج ْد‬ ِ ‫ما لَ ْم‬ ‫َو شَما ئِلي ما قَ ْد َعلِ ْمتَ َو ما‬

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

1. Greet the camel-borne loads (ḥumūl) by al-ʿAzl! How illreconciled (lā yulāʾim) is their way (shakl) with my own.35 2. What is it grieves you seeing the litters depart (ẓuʿun) but unmanly folly (ṣibā) and insufficient mind (ʿaql)?36 37 38 3. You tested us saying: tomorrow and after; but, at last, with avarice most vicious (aswaʾ bukhl), withheld (bakhilti). 39 40 41 42 4. I think of the beauties, unassailable, seductive (rubba ghāniya),43 whose ties I’ve severed (ṣaramtu ḥibāla-hā), then, calmly, gone my way. 5. I’ll not be led (astaqīd) by any who would urge me, perforce, to folly (ṣibā), nor accept to be quarry (uṣṭād) to stealthful deceit (khatl). 6. I think of the perilous wastes I’ve crossed on noble-bred camels, forelegs wide-separate from their flanks; 7. They spent their nights snapping at hard, rocky earth; I, mine, reclining upon my saddle, 8. Taking, for a pillow, a cutting sword, [the water] on its spine, an ant-track, well-trodden; 35. Ahl: … murtaqiqan, which we set aside. 36. So, with Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … li-l-tuqā &c. 37. Ibr: allāhu &c. 38. Ahl: … mā ṭalabta &c. 39. Ibr: … idhā mā jiʾta &c. 40. Ahl: … fī l-raḥbi &c. 41. Following Ahl. here. Ibr: … wa-lam/uʿmil majiddata ʿidhrati l-rajlī; D.Ṣ: wa-lam/ajhal majaddata ʿidhrati l-rajlī. 42. Ibr: qāʾifu &c. 43. Lyall (1918–1921, vol. 2, p. 275: the notes to XCVII, v. 2) insists that the “only true interpretation” of ghāniya is an unwanton woman whose charm gives her power (ghinā) over men.

4.  ‘Women’ in the Context of Kinship and Alliance

197

9. [a sword] you’d call ṣaqīl  –  or ‘polished’  –  though not lately exposed to a watering (tamwīh) or a shine (ṣaql) … ***** 10. The abodes have been razed (ʿafati l-diyār), no folk of mine there: Shamūs withdrew (lawat) the loving communion of grace (bashāshata l-badhl). 11. She looked at you, a dark-eyed [doe], quenched on lush pasture (jāziʾa), responsive only to her young (ḥāniya ʿalā ṭifl): 12. Hers was its [lovely] neck and eye, yet she possessed, therewith, the superior merit. 13. I have recovered to follow a balanced course (aqbaltu muqtaṣidan); my ḥilm is returned me, my actions disposed to the ‘water’ of generosity (li-l-nadā)/to pious caution (li-l-tuqā) 14. Allāh is the best guarantor of the aims I pursue, and piety (birr), the best pack (ḥaqība) to attach to my saddle. 15. On the road (ṭarīqa), there is deviation (jāʾir) and guidance (hudā); the straight, middle path (qaṣd al-sabīl), or innate corruption (dhū dakhl). 16. I split (aṣrim) with those who sever from me (yuṣārimu-nī), and reaffirm the tie (waṣl) with those who seek my bond (waṣl-ī) in earnest. 17. I think of my brother in fraternity: sedulous defender of the inviolable (dhū muḥāfaẓa), easy in manner (sahl al-khalīqa), of noble stock (mājid al-aṣl), 18. Sweet in aspect (ḥulw); when you approach him he says: you have come to ampleness and ease; 19. One with whom I’ve contested (nāzaʿtu-hu) the morning cup (kaʾs al-ṣabūḥ), awake to the will to enforce the man’s ‘excuse’. 20. To the ‘rope’ (ḥabl) of one such as you do I bind (wāṣil) my tie; with a plume from your arrow will I feather my own, 21. As long as I see no tell-tale signs of a tracker (qāʾif) before me pursuing your trail (yaqrū maqaṣṣa-ka). 22. My innate good traits are as you know; your dogs never clamoured at my like coming by night.

Verses 1–3: Verse 1 announces a divergence of ethical hue that permeates the entire poem: An emphatic distinction is made between the ‘orientation’ (shakl) of the litter-borne camel-loads (ẓuʿun) and that of the poet. Shakl (primarily ‘shape’, or ‘likeness’) relates to a person’s choice of course, according to innate disposition. The poet thus evokes a moral point of ‘departure’ of such dimensions that a physical breach of union has ensued. His use of lā yulāʾim (verse 1b), negates the prospect of reconciliation. Here, it is hard to ignore the complementary semantics of al-ʿAzl, which also evoke removal and separation. We find here another suggestion of a kind of meta-geography where ‘locale’ and ‘landscape’ complement the subjective parameters of a poem’s

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Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

purpose – in this case, a discussion of the necessary conditions for abiding in compact (waṣl) with a given individual or group. The theme of departure is sustained through verses 2–3, evoking morbid bayn: ‘separation’ that implies betrayal, and subjects an abandoned party to the perishing influence of Time. The poet admits to ‘sickness’ (verse 2) by allusion to grief that compromises his ʿaql: the mental integrity, or ‘binding’, that constitutes the protecting container of a man’s forces. This weakness, instigated ostensibly by desertion in love, is chastised as ṣibā: ‘juvenile folly’, and a manifestation of jahl. It must be countered by a moral initiative, informed by ḥilm, to re-establish ‘health’ and equilibrium.44 The betrayal that has fomented this ‘sickness’ is epitomised (verse 3) as exquisite ‘miserliness’ (bukhl), a vice that connotes treachery, bad blood and dishonour (as illustrated in Chapter 3). As with the preceding poem, this treachery takes the form of a woman’s wilful arousal of a passion that she ultimately will not satisfy: the poet accuses her saying mannayti-nā, “you made us hope/awakened our desire”, highlighting thus the vain wishes (munan, amānin) to which he has fallen prey. Such hopeless desire raises the spectre of al-hawā: capricious passion, a corollary of ṣibā, and another vice that is liable to lead men astray and destroy them.45 That this aggression is essentially equivalent to Laylā’s ‘hunt’ of the previous poem, is indicated in the predatory implications of verse 5 (discussed below). This being so, the semantic link between the verb mannā and the ‘she’-bringers of death – al-manāyā – does not seem

44. As first flagged in the discussion of jahl and ḥilm in Part 1: 1, s.v. Izutsu, the antithesis of ṣibā to ḥilm, and its equation with ‘sickness’ (suqm), is most economically stated by al-Mukhabbal al-Saʿdī (Lyall 1918–1921, XXI, v. 1): dhakara l-rabāba wa-dhikru-hā suqmū/fa-ṣabā wa-laysa li-man ṣabā ḥilmū, “He thought of al-Rabāb, and her memory was sickness; he succumbed to juvenile passion; and he who does so has no balance of being.” The tears that follow are rendered (ibid., verse 3) a signal as to the dissipation of his intellectual integrity (ʿaql) by virtue of being projected as pearls that slip from a failing thread (niẓām – a conceit treated above in Chapter 3). 45. See, e.g., vv. 35–36 of the lāmīya cited in Ibr., pp. 27–39: The poet remembers soft, cossetted women who arouse the passion (hawā) of those who aspire to ḥilm, and entice them to error (ḍull) on the roads of perdition (subul al-radā); he turned his passion (hawā) away from them for fear of destruction (al-radā), even if not for reason of mutual despite; cf. al-Tibrīzī (1969), Labīd, v. 83, where the incompatibility of hawā with ḥilm, and the efficacy, the moral and physical power, that follow adherence to an ancestral code (sunna) are more directly articulated: lā yaṭbaʿūna wa-lā yabūru faʿālu-hum/idh lā tamīlu maʿa l-hawā aḥlāmu-hā, “their honour is untainted, their deeds are not futile, for their powers of manly control are not unbalanced by passion”. In this light, the conceptualisation of amānin (hopes) as autonomous night-travellers that seek men out, possess them, but give them no glory is interesting: see the ‘duel’ attributed to Imruʾ alQays and ʿAbīd in ʿAbīd, (1980), Fragment 10, vv. 13–14: mā l-qāṭiʿātu li-arḍi l-jawwi fī ṭalaqin/qabla l-ṣabāḥi wa-mā yasrīna qirṭāsā//tilka l-amānīyu yatrukna l-fatā malikan/dūna l-samāʾi wa-lam tarfaʿ bi-hī rāsā, “What are those that with one bound leap over valley and hill before day dawns – yet they go no step on their way by night? These are the Hopes that possess man’s heart and make him a king beneath heaven, and yet they lift not at all his head.” (Lyall’s translation).

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fortuitous, for this is wholly in keeping with a scheme that finds Life and Death, virtue and evil, true love and false, conceived in terms of a conflict of gender.46 In this latter regard, the departing ẓuʿun (camel-borne womens’ litters, verse 2) bear closer examination. As with the last poem, the beloved’s falseness is the principal focus of a communal parting of the ways. The communal implication is carried in the corporate departure of ḥumūl (suggesting, by poetic association, the fracture of a group in covenant; a suggestion confirmed by the subsequent allusion to the break of covenantal ties in verse 4). This indicates that the motif of departing ẓuʿun is inextricably linked to wider discussions of bad faith, of capitulation to erroneous directives, where the female gender accompanies the focus of censure. More than viewing women depart with their men, the poet contrives here to see only women’s litters depart. The significance of this is startlingly illustrated in Mufaḍḍalīya LXX of Bishr b. ʿAmr, which apparently opens with an ironic address to someone called the “the striver after his contractual duty to defend” (al-sāʿī bi-dhimmati-hi) – so fronting the issue of (an absence of) ethical commitment. The poet urges his addressee to greet the imminent arrival of war. He satirises this adversary’s army (verse 3) by projecting it as an over-cautious caravan (ʿīr) associated with a place called al-Mafārīq  –  not a place described in any geographical dictionary, but allusive, amongst other things, of separation and deviation from a proper course.47 The insult is developed (verses 4–6) as the poet claims to see, not an army, but slow and sheepish ẓuʿun, sneaking through mountain side-routes, hiding in litters, disobedient to their leaders, and, thus, untrustworthy in their faith (dīn). As Lyall inclines to interpret, this means warriors who “may be compared to women in litters, showing no eagerness to advance … that they are ready, in order to escape from facing the enemy, to take a side-road to avoid them … that they flatly refuse to obey when ordered to attack.”48 46. See Ringgren (1955), p. 14 ff. for a discussion on the etymology and senses of manīya/manāyā, which, however, plays down the intrinsic resonances of ‘testing’ desire in favour of more deterministic nuances. 47. Tāj, art. mufriqun (pl. mafārīqu). 48. Lyall (1918–1921), LXX, vol. 1, pp. 551–553; vol. 2, pp. 216–218. The poet says, vv. 4–6: bal hal tarā ẓuʿunan tuḥdā muqaffiyatan/la-hā tawālin wa-ḥādin ghayru masbūqī//yaʾkhudhna min muʿẓamin fajjan bi-mushilatin/li-zahwi-hi min aʿālī l-busri zuḥlūqī//ḥārabna fī-hā maʿaddan wa-ʿtaṣamna bi-hā/ idh aṣbaḥa l-dīnu dīnan ghayra mawthūqī, “Nay, but seest thou ladies camel-borne, led along in a string, one following another, with some lagging behind, and a driver not outstripped by any?// They take a side way [between mountains] from the main road, with evenly-coloured [coverings to their litters], [ruddy] like the upper sides of ripening clusters of dates, smooth.//They are disobedient therein to Maʿadd, and fortify themselves therein, since faith has become a faith not to be depended on.” (Lyall’s translation); cf. Zuhayr (1964), pp. 7–15, for an alternative, summary feminisation of those who contravene their covenant (dhimma). Satirising Āl Ḥiṣn for bad faith – which he explicitly refers to (vv. 55–56) as a ‘sickness’ (dāʾ) that they have in their power to ‘cure’ – he affects (vv. 34–35) to happen upon them, apparently so suffused by wine that they seem near-mortally wounded, though no blood has been drawn (a common simile for the languorous stance of women, and a condemnation of ‘sickness’ and jahl in the male intellect). He cannot tell, though he would love to know, whether Āl Ḥiṣn are, indeed,

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This poem demonstrates the full potential for the motif of ẓuʿun, in frames like the nasīb above, to manipulate gender, as well as the theme of departure, to discuss faith and betrayal in respect of the ethic, adherence to or divergence from, a moral course.49 The potential for this motif to serve as a natural accompaniment to other typical features of the nasīb as we have discussed them – deserted encampments, for example, or phantoms – thus also becomes clear. To sum up here: the poet has conceded unmanly susceptibility to a morally deplorable assault, his jahl in the face of rayb al-dahr. That this assault relates to a betrayed kin-tie – which, by poetic association, must threaten evil if he fails to redeem himself – is relayed in what follows. Verses 4–5: With what we may now immediately recognise as a move toward self-empowerment by recourse to the rubba formula, the poet summons his resources by thinking into effect an appropriate, psychological counter-initiative – in this case, reminding himself of his practiced ability to resist ‘fatal attraction’ and effect a severance of ties (ṣarm). His direct allusion to ṣarm and ḥibāl (‘ropes’ of covenant, verse 4) confirms that it is a treacherous connection of waṣl and qarāba (union and kinship) with which he takes issue in the opening verses. His claim to be familiar with ṣarm resonates with a widespread poetic cliché of resorting to rupture when the bond of a once true friend (khulla) becomes ‘tattered and worn’ – a ‘friend’ who might typically appear as ṭayf al-khayāl (the phantom). The poet’s walking away from this connection with calm deliberation (verse 4b) is reminiscent, too, of his recollection (verse 9 of Poem 1.5 – also couched in the rubba format) of a tearless goodbye even to the true friend(s) (khalīl) who effectively ‘betrayed’ him by dying (reaffiliating, as it were, into the abode of the dead). But if the urgency to effect self-redemption from a morbid, humiliating and men, or a body of women: tamashshā bayna qatlā qad uṣībat/nufūsu-humū wa-lam tuhraq dimāʾū// wa-mā adrī wa-sawfa ikhālu adrī/a-qawmun ālu ḥiṣnin am nisāʾū. If they are women (vv. 36–39), they should be conducted to husbands, and if they are honourable men, they should be true to their covenant; recall, also, v. 4 of Poem 3.7: Khālid’s transubstantiation into a faltering she-ass for his failure to fulfil his dhimma. 49. This picks up our earlier observations on ẓaʿn – in Part 1:2 – as it occurs in Mufaḍdalīya XCVII of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim, where ẓaʿn emerged, first and foremost, as a ‘departure’ from the bonds of sacred obligation (dhimām), implying sin (ithm) that was subject to divine sanction, and, ultimately, the ‘departure’ of a people from existence. As mentioned there, too, in regard of the important contribution of Ezz El-Din (1994), we would conclude that the possibilities for thematic and structural development that the theme of ẓaʿn offers are not to be restricted to the paradigms he sets forth, but permit of wider possibilities for discussing ethical endeavour and the consequences of bad faith. Whilst war may arise as a natural consequence of breaches of faith – explaining the frequency with which war and the ẓaʿn motif occur together – this does not render ẓaʿn, itself, a direct indicator of war. The lāmīya under discussion above conforms to none of these paradigms, and resolves itself in a clear assertion of the demands that a kinsman must, necessarily, meet if a fracture of relations is to be avoided.

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potentially deadly tie only resonates by association here, it is clearly brought out, in the following verse, in the conceits of being forcibly ‘led’ and ‘hunted’. Verse 5 broadens the discussion of a break with treacherous ties from the particular to the general by use of man: The poet will not remain tied to anyone who undermines him thus - incidentally, underscoring the idea that, if the epitome of treachery has a gender, it is female. His emphatic resistance to being dragged into folly (lā astaqīdu … li-ṣiban qasran – verse 5a) may be weighed against his lampoon on the būha whose compliancy was such that he could be ‘led by the nose’ (qīda mustakrahan – verse 5 of Poem 1.3). What characterised the būha was intellectual weakness, bodily infirmity, unrestrained folly in word and deed, cowering fear in the face of Time. These were the qualities that rendered him the conceptual captive of Death and an unredeemed corpse. The poet resists the humiliation of such a creature, which would ensue from unwitting surrender to deadly influence through ṣibā, or jahl. This is reinforced by his refusal to be ‘hunted’ by deceit (lā uṣṭādu bi-l-khatl – verse 5b). In other words, treacherous guile – that of the beloved or anyone else – equates to the stealth of a lurking hunter; and unrestrained ṣibā, or jahl, is a witlessness that facilitates Death’s incursions. Verses 4–5 thus complement the poet’s opening announcement of moral and physical departure from a deviant influence; but they do so with an added passion that asserts his will to achieve his ‘excuse’ (ʿudhr), having conceded the jahl that must expose him to censure. In this moral context, both the deviant influence that he resists, and his emphatic rejection of inappropriate jahl, may be related to the concept of sin (ithm). We have encountered ithm as ‘departure’ from the sacred obligations (dhimām) of true love (wudd/ḥubb) within compact, which is subject to divine sanction (as discussed, Part 1:2 in the commentary to vv. 15–38 of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim’s Mufaḍḍalīya XCVII). Ithm emerged (verse 13 of Poem 2.4) as the antithesis of true love and friendship (khulla), of perseverance in defending what the covenant renders inviolable (ḥifāẓ). Ithm there was inferred to be a quality of ‘niggardliness’ (ḥaṣar), which implied failure to share wine with protected neighbours, or to gamble at maysir to provide for them. Ithm appeared to be intrinsic (verses 1–6 of Poem 2.5) to a moral failing that held the poet in a ‘deathly fever’ – described by ḥaraj, a quality of ‘straitness’ evocative of punishment for a sin - which translated as a lack of continence threatening his vital interests. And ithm would have accompanied drinking wine in the state of ritual impurity with which the poet was implicitly tainted (verses 9–10 of Poem 2.7) prior to achieving blood vengeance – a responsibility to kin, which clearly, also, involved divine sanction. In this light, just as the betrayal relayed in verses 1–3 of the poem in hand could be deemed a morbid aggression equivalent to a sin, so might the poet’s incapacity to recover himself and counter it; and just as the same betrayal might be described as antithetical to dīn (as is its analogue in the verses of Bishr b. ʿAmr’s Mufaḍḍalīya LXX, cited above in note 48 of this chapter), so might the poet’s ethical response be defined by dīn (as in verse 14 of the previous poem).50 50. Inasmuch as the poet’s response here is to counter the ṣibā, or jahl, that threatens his moral demise, ‘hunted’ by the art of a misguided woman, this passage may be compared with the

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These considerations find a resonance in the will to oppose dissolution evinced in verses 6–9; but their major relevance emerges in the second phase of this poem where, having affirmed his recovery from trial, and renounced waywardness – which he relates explicitly to divine sanction – the poet promises abiding faith only to the kinsman he deems to be true precisely according to the moral criteria outlined above in opposition to sin. In the meantime, and still with the paratactic rubba format, the poet pursues his move toward self-redemption and the affirmation of his ‘excuse’ (ʿudhr) in the frame of a taxing desert-journey. We will see, though, that this particular journey only goes so far as to expand on the poet’s experience from this point, without achieving resolution. Verses 6–9: With the poet now resorting again to the device of wāw rubba to think of the arduous trials he has endured, one might expect to be taken to the same general destination as that of previous examples of the recollected desert journey (see the commentary to verses 6–9 of Poem 1.4; verses 8–12 and 13–17 of Poem 2.5). Certainly, the poet’s stamina for traversing vast local distance, and surviving deadly travail undeterred from his course, may be read as evidence of his moral orientation, of his himma (noble ambition) and iblāʾ (courageous exertion in confronting trial). This, in turn, would indicate his pursuit of ʿudhr (the affirmation of his ‘excuse’ and exoneration from blame), and attest to his virtue – principally ṣabr: fortitude in combating rayb al-dahr, which is built on fidelity (wafāʾ) to the moral ideal. Yet, if these verses attest to the poet’s ethical commitment in the face of aspiring Death (suggesting again, by proximity, that the treacherous covenant he renounces is precisely that), they also suggest strongly a state of suspension in which he does not finally convey his victory over affliction, or indeed, confirm the act of severance (ṣarm) from the deadly bond. The suggestion of unresolved purpose reveals itself (verses 8–9) through the close attention paid to the sword that accompanies the poet during his desert night-trials, through his insistence that, albeit an instrument called ṣaqīl, ‘bright’/‘polished’, this sword has recently seen neither a polishing (ṣaql) nor a watering (tamwīh). Casting about the wider corpus, one finds that the ‘polished sword’ appears to live as a figure for vital acuity which helps us to understand the ‘dull’ variety better. Ṭufayl offers two complementary examples: one, made in satire: law kunta sayfan kāna athru-ka juʿratan/wa-kunta dadānan lā yughayyiru-ka l-ṣaqlū, “Were you a sword, you would

Qurʾanic story of Joseph where the structural relation of ideas – now in the context of Islamic dīn – are, up to a point, strikingly semblant: Joseph piously resists (istaʿṣama) seduction into sin by Pharaoh’s wife and her women; he prays to avoid their ‘snare’ (kayd), and counter ṣibā, lest he be accounted jāhil (Qurʾān, 12: 32–33). How these sūras diverge from the jāhilī ethical scheme was discussed in Part 1:1, s.v. Izutsu.

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be one with the cut of a waist-rope,51 a blunt one that could not be changed with a polish and grind”;52 and another, lamenting his own diminishment with age: wakuntu ka-mā yaʿlamna wa-l-dahru ṣāliḥun/ka-ṣadri l-yamānī akhlaṣat-hu ṣayāqilu-h, “And I was, as they know, when Time was more kind, as bright as the blade of a Yemeni sword, well-refined by the smiths who polish and grind”.53 Meanwhile, elsewhere in the dīwān of Imruʾ al-Qays, we find capacity for victory projected onto the image of quite another sword: a bright one (he uses the common epithet, abyaḍ, ‘white’), so lightning-keen that it tests to wasting-point slicing shank and neck.54 It might be added that ṣaql also has metaphorical application to the ‘polishing’ that implies a good striking or a beating.55 The sum of this indicates that what the poet recalls in a sword that has “no recent acquaintance with a polishing or a shine”, is not a sword of pride, or a sword that cuts, or a sword that has seen any recent action. It is not the trenchant sword (ṣārim – another common epithet) that could imply the fulfilment of severance (ṣarm) from the faulty bond. Thus, albeit a context where the poet signals his will to transcend trial as he has done before, the final effect is a sense of suspended frustration, of endurance with hope for a good deal better. It is left to the subsequent phase to supply the spirit of transcendence. ***** Verses 10–12: As mentioned, verse 10 has the appearance of a new opening. Yet, against what precedes, it emerges not so much as an independent initiative, but, rather, a radical demarcation signalling a new phase of experience. Till here, the poet has aspired to effect ṣarm from a deviant community that harmed him, and embarked on a testing ‘journey’ from which he seeks to emerge rid of ‘sickness’, and absolved of any residual jahl. Recalling the relative ambivalence of ʿafā (to be razed) in one allusion to deserted abodes (Poem 2.5, verse 1), as opposed to its unequivocal value in regard of others (Poem 2.7, verse 2); and recalling, too, how landscape reflected ‘mindscape’, the emphatic, unadorned entry, ʿafati l-diyār (verse 10) indicates no ambivalence toward what the poet now sees after his ‘journey’. Though he remembers loss and rejection (verses 10–12), he betrays no residual ‘sickness’; his historical connection with the 51. The reference is to a rope called jiʿār, worn for safety about the waist by water-drawers descending into a well – i.e., not liable to break the flesh: Tāj, art. jiʿārun. 52. Ṭufayl (1927), no. 31, v. 3. 53. Ibid., no. 8, v. 3. On the term, saqīl, for a sharp, bright sword, achieved through the process of grinding and polishing implied by ṣaql – to which a sword had to be subjected repeatedly when in use, amongst other processes – see Friedrich Schwarzlose’s valuable work on Arab swords, based on his study of early Arabic poetry: Hoyland (2006), pp. 83–143, esp. pp. 112–115. 54. Ibr., pp. 78–82: The poet concludes (v. 15): wa-abyḍa ka-l-mikhrāqi ballaytu ḥadda-hū/wa-hibbatahū fī l-sāqi wa-l-qaṣarātī. 55. Tāj, s.v. ṣ-q-l.

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scene prompts no counteractive measure. Indeed, the battle seems already to have been waged and won, for verse 13 is an unequivocal announcement of recovery. That his former experience with these abodes involved a kin-union, is indicated by the poet’s allusion to his ahl, a people with whom, clearly, he no longer associates. The reason for their dissociation appears to be inseparable from – indeed to hinge on – the behaviour of one Shamūs. Her behaviour is essentially bukhl – morbid ‘denial’, the betrayal of true love, and a renouncement of the mutual debt of fidāʾ: The phrase lawat … bashāshata l-badhl echoes the expression of corporate treachery, ‘denial of a debt’, that implicated a whole community in Laylā’s contrariness and betrayal of waṣl in verses 1–2 of the previous poem (wa-lawaw matāʿahum … fa-ḍunna bi-l-badhlī). ‘Intoxicating’ connotations, too, are paralleled in this Shamūs: shamūs  –  a woman who keeps to herself – has a key sense of the mount that refuses to be ridden, takes fright and rebels against its rider. (This is a point we mark for future reference when the poet, mastering a recalcitrant mount that threatens to throw him, demonstrates how he deals with his own weakness as well as the sinful aggression of others). And shamūs extends, in this meaning, not only to opposition in people, but also to wine, for wine, as they say, can overpower, and ‘run away’ with, the drinker.56 The sum of this indicates that the bukhl of Shamūs figures a disorienting aggression and breach of compact that warranted a break of relations with a whole community, and that this has engendered an act of mutual ‘severance’ (ṣarm). This might have involved crisis, or ‘sickness’, for the poet; but his opening phrase, ʿafati l-diyār (the abodes are razed), in this case appears to imply that it has already been transcended. What follows, thus, suggests itself as an elaboration on the experience from which he redeemed himself, and on the betrayal that engendered the break of relations, i.e., layy bashāshati l-badhl (the withdrawal of loving communion). This expresses a denial of true love that could relate to any infringement of rights, but which, with the focus on a female figure, suggests rebuttal in sexual love. Verse 11 brings this out indirectly: Shamūs was jāziʾa: a ‘doe-oryx’ enjoying sufficient fresh herbage as not to need water – a concept apparently extending to lack of need for conjugal relations.57 This idea is enhanced by her depiction also (verse 11b) as ḥāniya ʿalā ṭifl – devoted to a child to the exclusion of taking a partner after the loss of the father.58 This would suggest, again, rebuttal of the poet’s desire. For Shamūs to gaze at the poet with such a countenance, unattainable, therefore speaks profoundly of injury. Compounded with the elaboration on superior beauty in verse 12, this display recalls once more the bukhl of Laylā in verses 3–5 of the previous poem: Her beauty was a confounding testament to the inaccessibility of the sweetest waters, her glance like arrows released from a bow, like the very hunt of Fate. The difference between Shamūs and Laylā, as also between Shamūs and the ‘hunter’-female of this poem’s first phase, is defined by context: The suggestion here 56. Qāmūs, Tāj, art. shamūsun. 57. Tāj, s.v. j-z-ʾ; Muḥkam, s.v. ʾ-b-l. 58. Tāj, ḥ-n-w/y, I.

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is that the malignance of the poet’s experience with Shamūs is relegated to the past tense. For the poet to have transcended that experience is to have effected ṣarm and redeemed himself; to have faced trial and recovered his course, so finally dispelling the grip of ‘sickness’. Verses 10–12 thus amount to an indirect declaration of his blameless emergence from jahl. The poet next proceeds to state this openly. Verses 13–15: That aqbala extends to the concept of recovering health,59 neatly imbues the poet’s declaration of having recovered a proper course (aqbaltu muqtaṣidan – verse 13) with shades of an emergence from sickness. That this necessarily implies ascendance over jahl, is reflected in his allusion to the return of his ḥilm. That all of this is predicated on resolute adherence to the ethic, is encapsulated in both variants for verse 13b: The reading li-l-nadā (… to the ‘water’ of generosity …) conveys this by simple allusion to the ‘liqueous’ bounty of karam: As we have seen, this virtue is built on behaviour that opposes sin, so preserving and replenishing the pure ‘cistern’ (ḥawḍ) that figures a people’s health, honour and might, and, therewith, the quality and degree of their karam. The reading li-l-tuqā (… to pious caution …) achieves something similar by evoking adherence to a course of self-preservation, the desire to avoid punishment. This complements the wider emphasis on achieving ʿudhr, the ‘excuse’ that implies purificatory and corrective exertion (or dīn), faithful commitment to the ethic, exoneration from sin and the liability to be punished. Verse 13 thus epitomises the poet’s equalisation of ‘sickness’ (or jahl) and his adherence to a proper course despite trials that might have deflected and destroyed him. It announces his departure and self-redemption from a treacherous and deviant path - one which, by virtue of juxtaposition, can be related to the influence of the people with whom he sought, morally and physically, to sever relations in the first phase of this poem. This makes verses 14–15 largely redundant, since, with the exception of their direct allusion to Allāh, and their implicit reference to divine sanction, they merely re-articulate, in aphoristic fashion, the intrinsically didactic connotations of verse 13. The substantial redundancy of verses 14–15 is fortunate. Assuming their jāhilī provenance requires a little caution, as verse 15 so closely resembles a Qurʾanic sūra.60 But, given the essential convergence of meaning with verse 13, demonstrating that an ethical resolution of crisis constitutes guidance, and not deviance, does not depend on their inclusion. Nor, considering what next follows, do they disrupt the poem’s movement toward what is effectively an exposition of ‘guidance’ as the absolute honouring of covenant with kin. What these verses do suggest is that this covenant extends to the divine, which has, anyway, been indicated in earlier poems; and even were they suspect of accretion, the putative editor saw no conflict between their 59. Qāmūs, s.v. th-w-b: the use of aqbala to explain thāba jismu-hu, “his body recovered”. 60. See Qurʾān, 16: 9: wa-ʿalā llāhi qaṣdu l-sabīli wa-min-hā jāʾirun wa-law shāʾa la-hadā-kum ajmaʿīna, “It is for God to set the way – though some will stray from it. But if He had wished, He could have guided you all aright”: Jones’ translation (2007), p. 250.

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insertion and the subsequent emphasis (verse 19) on the brotherly merits of partaking of wine, an institution proscribed by Islam, though not in this scheme, as we have already seen – also in a context where Allāh is invoked – provided that the drinker be not tainted or have failed to purify himself by effecting the necessary ‘healing’. This was discussed in the commentary to verses 9–10 of Poem 2.7, where the poet announces that wine is once more permissible to him now that he has taken his vengeance; and, in relaying how it would have been sinful to do so before, he uses an expression that echoes another detail here: He drinks, he says, ghayra mustaḥqibin ithman mina llāh, literally: “without saddling myself with the ‘baggage’ (implicitly, the ḥaqība) of sin in respect of Allāh”. This clearly belongs to the same structure of ideas reflected in verse 14 of the poem in hand, where proper piety (birr) is “the best saddle-pack” (ḥaqība), only, evidently, without inviting suspicion of possible Islamic interference. In sum, then, the inclusion of verses 14–15 does not distort, or diminish, the perceptions that have emerged hitherto on the dynamics of dīn and ithm.61 Having successfully emerged from a ‘journey’ of moral guidance that aimed to effect ṣarm from a treacherous union, the poet elaborates directly now on this very matter. Verses 16–22: The emphatic declaration (verse 16) of ṣarm in response to muṣārama confirms that the poem is conceived as a discussion of fidelity to compact, of the preconditions for abiding in, or departing from, a kin-connection of union in waṣl. Muṣārama (‘cutting off’ a co-affiliate) emerges as a sinful, hostile initiative that reduces to the morbid removal of bayn. It is a betrayal of true love through ‘avarice’ (bukhl), an act aligned with rayb al-dahr, which motivates on behalf of Death. Its impetus is somehow female in essence, capable of inducing disequilibrium, misguidance and the potential dominion of jahl. Ṣarm here emerges as a necessary, ethical response of ‘cutting’: a counter-initiative of self-redemption that motivates for health and Life. It is a move to separate from treachery and misguidance and effect the ascendancy of ḥilm. Thus, in verse 16, the poet declares allegiance to a fraternity which we understand to be, on the contrary, morally immovable in its opposition to the ghūl of al-Dahr. The comparison continues with the elaboration on ideal brotherhood that follows. The poet’s ideal brother represents all that the women of this poem  –  and, by extension, their people – are not. That he is dhū muḥāfaẓa (verse 17) implies sinlessness 61. An uncomplicated announcement of recovery from vanity and ṣibā in terms of adherence to the ‘straight middle path’ (qaṣd al-sabīl) is also attested by Zuhayr: Ahlwardt (1870), Zuhayr, no. 15, vv. 1–2 – cited above, Part 1:2, s.v. Plasticity of the Poetic Discourse and the Mechanics of the Saddle. It is not impossible that the Qurʾan reworks an aphorism current before Islam. There is a discernible distinction between the wisdom of verse 15, in its context, and its Qurʾanic parallel, one that hinges on the question of personal responsibility: guidance, or the lack of it, in Qurʾān 16: 9 (see above, n. 60) is a matter entirely dictated by Allāh. A variant of al-Sukkarī (Ibr., p. 441), which reads al-maḥajj for al-sabīl maintains the message without the same direct correspondence with this Qurʾanic sūra.

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in observing his compact. That he is sahl al-khalīqa (of easy disposition) conveys a praiseworthy tractability that contradicts inappropriate manʿ (‘denial’ – discussed in the commentary to Poems 3.5 and 3.6). That is to say, it negates bukhl, ‘sickness’ and treachery, and connotes karam, ‘health’ and fidelity. It also contradicts the refractory, hostile, and, therewith, ‘intoxicating’, connotations of Shamūs (verse 10). As to being mājid al-aṣl (of noble stock), this indicates the karam, ḥasab and nasab (‘generosity’, ‘worth’, ‘lineage’) of a blameless heritage that make for purity and might, for precisely those resources of body and mind drawn on by men to fulfil their duty and, thereby, preserve that heritage. Verse 17 describes a man who has every inherited virtue, and strives always to manifest and maintain that. Verse 18 describes the aspect of one who is so wholly karīm: The show of ḥulw (sweetness, a goodly mien), accompanied by welcoming generosity, stands in direct contrast to the bukhl of Shamūs (verse 10), expressed by lawat bashāshata l-badhl (verse 10b): The bashāsha she denies entails the friendly, sociable behaviour expected of loving communion.62 This would indicate, again, that the true brother opposes all that shamūs represents. Yet another contraposition to Shamūs is evinced (verse 19) in the brotherly winecontest: To contain and transcend the effects of wine – a quasi-erotic negotiation of the influence of the ghūl – is precisely to prohibit the ascendancy of that which is shamūs – specifically here, that which intoxicates and ‘runs away with’ the drinker. This implication is heightened by the metaphorical range of kaʾs (the wine-cup), which can figure not only a ‘drink’ of love, but also a ‘draught’ of abasement, separation or Death’.63 The ethical merit of a ‘contest’ with wine is based in the idea that zealous resistance to, and containment of, intoxication manifests a man’s ʿudhr (excuse). That is to say, this ‘contest’ equates, conceptually, to all faithful combat for kinsmen and heritage against the seductive, somehow female, impetus of misguidance and Death. In its own way, this reflects the response of the poet, in the previous poem, to a feminised embodiment of treachery and intoxication, who denies the return of the pledge of ransom with an act that wastes the ties of waṣl: He resolved that injury with the promise of an ethical requital (dīn) in battle at the peril of sustaining a blameless death with the manifestation of his ‘excuse’ (ʿudhr).64 62. Qāmūs s.v. b-sh-sh, I. 63. Qāmūs, Taj, art. kaʾsun; Ringgren (1955), p. 17, n. 1; cf. v. 16 of the rāʾīya discussed below, in n. 64, where the influence of the treacherous beloved is explicitly likened to the effect of kaʾs al-ṣabūḥ. 64. The structural relationship of these ideas is alternatively reflected in the rāʾīya cited in Ibr., pp. 56–71 – a poem with a central theme of associates’ persistent treachery (the poet says, v. 49: ka-dhālika jadd-ī mā uṣāḥibu ṣāḥiban/mina l-nāsi illā khāna-nī wa-taghayyarā, “such is my fortune, never to have taken a person to friend except that he betrayed me and ‘changed’”). The poem opens with the arousal of the poet’s passion at the ‘departure’ (ẓaʿn) of a tribe. The women take as forfeit the ‘pledge’ (rahn) of the poet’s life; one Sulaymā has claimed it upon the dissolution of her bond of waṣl when she denies a true friend (khulla, i.e., the poet). Her glance strikes fear into his heart; it is likened to a morning wine-cup (kaʾs al-ṣabūḥ, – grammatically feminine), which

208

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

Verse 19 carries an additional sense of combat – a benign one between the poet and his ideal boon-companion - indicated by use of the verb, nāzaʿa (to contest). This implies that boon companionship is an institution of competitive virtue that tests and confirms the mutual trust of compact, that it demonstrates each man’s potential to acquit himself with honour, and to manifest his ʿudhr in defence of kinsmen and heritage, even in the field of battle (as reflected in verses 53–54 of the rāʾīya of Imruʾ al-Qays outlined in note 64 of this chapter). Recalling, again, that a man commits a sin, subject to divine sanction, if he drinks wine when, prior to fulfilling a purificatory duty of compact, he is unclean, we can also infer that this institution assumes the purity of all participants, achieved through their mutual fulfilment of trust - otherwise the communion becomes somehow inimical. It is left for later discussion to illustrate how ‘passing the cup’ can be the circulation of poison within a corporate body. Here, we conclude that boon-companionship is a quasi-competitive institution, associated with confirmation of trust through the sinless observance of compact; an institution where, at best, a man can manifest all the virtue of a noble heritage.65 This, then, articulates the poet’s formal requirements for joining, or remaining in, waṣl with a brother, as he openly states in verse 20. His only qualification is the cryptic condition (verse 21) that he never find his brother being followed by a certain ‘tracker’ going before himself (mā lam ajid-ka ʿalā hudā atharin/yaqrū maqaṣṣa-ka qāʾifun qabl-ī). The immediate impression might be that the poet will not tolerate any fickleness of allegiance that would see another party occupying a place that the poet would himself expect to fill; but the conceit of being ‘tracked’ this way in the wider poetry permits us to refine this observation: The suggestion is essentially that an ideal kinsman arouses panic in the intoxicated man. She directs herself with the swaying stance of a drunkard/ one weakened by blood-loss, attempting to reconcile her intellect to fighting off confusion (v. 14–17): ghaliqna bi-rahnin min ḥabībin bi-hi ddaʿat/sulaymā fa-amsā ḥablu-hā qad tabattarā// wa-kāna la-hā fī sālifi l-dahri khullatun/yusāriqu bi-l-ṭarfi l-khibāʾa l-musattarā//idhā nāla min-hā naẓratan rīʿa qalbu-hū/ka-mā dhaʿarat kaʾsu l-ṣabūḥi l-mukhammarā//nazīfun idhā qāmat li-wajhin tamāyalat/turāshī l-fuʾāda l-rakhṣa allā takhattarā (i.e., Sulaymā’s act is a disorienting betrayal of compact, which renders her an embodiment of ‘intoxication’ – of jahl, or ‘sickness’ – that ‘inebriates’ the poet, obliging him to find a moral response. Her wayward direction assumes a sense of blind misguidance; cf. the discussion of Zuhayr’s hamzīya, n. 48 in this chapter: how a betrayal of compact is a ‘sickness’ and ‘intoxication’ that renders a people ‘women’; cf., also Tāj, art. salīmun (pl. salmā – of which Sulaymā is a diminutive): how this can imply a poisoned state. The nuance allowed here would clearly complement the context). Fortifying himself with assertions of inherited glory (vv. 50 ff.), he recalls the courageous companionship in arms that proved it, and  –  in an inverse reflection of v. 19 of the lāmīya under discussion in the main text – compares the adrenalous rush of battle to a sustained consumption of drink that made them reckon the horses around them sheep, and see black steeds as sorrels (vv. 53–54): wa-lā mithla yawmin fī qudhārāna ẓiltu-hū/ka-annī wa-aṣḥāb-ī ʿalā qarni aʿfarā//wa-nashrabu ḥattā naḥsibu l-khayla ḥawla-nā/niqādan wa-ḥattā naḥsiba l-jawna ashqarā. 65. Recall, in this light, vv. 18–19 of Poem 2.4: the praise of of Saʿd b. al-Ḍibāb who, sinless in honouring his compact, manifested every inherited virtue, whether sober or intoxicated (idhā ṣaḥā wa-idhā sakir).

4.  ‘Women’ in the Context of Kinship and Alliance

209

should not render himself open to a rearward stealth-assault by Death – or its agent. This is reflected, for example, in the comparable language of Thaʿlaba b. ʿAmr who, acknowledging the inevitability with which his fate will reach him, portrays Death being led to him by just such a leisurely tracker: idhan la-atat-nī ḥaythu kuntu manīyat-ī/ yakhubbu bi-hā hādin li-ithr-iya qāʾifū.66 Failure to observe the demand of verse 21 would imply, then, a certain inadvertence that makes a man overly susceptible to a predatory initiative, and endangers his co-affiliates. This, in turn, echoes the thrust of verse 5: that lack of ethical tenacity is inadvertence, and renders a man easy prey to Death. This is a something the poet forbids himself, and will clearly not accept in a kinsman. The message is reinforced (verse 22) with an open statement of the poet’s good credentials, followed by an allusion to benign intent and, perhaps, good guidance: … wa-mā/nabaḥat kilābu-ka ṭāriqan mithl-ī, “your dogs never clamoured at my like coming by night”. This suggests, on the one hand, that he will never come as a threat to his brother’s camps. At another level, it may imply that he will never do anything to ‘cause his brother’s dogs to bark’, i.e., to make him angry and hostile. Nor, one supposes, would he be the kind of traveller called mustanbiḥ (dog-rouser), liable to lose his way by night and have to resort to encouraging dogs nearby to bark to find his way to refuge.67 Such an appeal of the worthy to the worthy reflects the poet’s statement of trust in, and assurance to, the Banū Thuʿal (Poem 3.3), neighbours “nearest to the good, and the furthest from evil”: inna l-karīma li-l-karīmi maḥall, “the noble are a resort for a man of honour”. This, then, seals a message as to the imperative of mutual responsibility and absolute good faith within compact for the sake of communal well-being and survival. Conclusion This chapter finds that gender-opposition is integral to the wider discourse on waṣl and the communal ethic; that the contraposition of Life to Death, of every manly virtue to every ‘contagious’ impetus that demands a ‘cure’, may ultimately be viewed as an erotic equation. It should be added, though, that while the discussion, up to this point, goes some way to elucidating the interplay of gender, it waits an essential refinement of focus. This relates to a detail already noted (in the commentary to verses 3–10 of Poem 2.4); namely, that the poetry manipulates exactly the same gendered conceits that relate to the ethic and communion in kinship – centring on ḥilm, jahl and waṣl – to discuss benign and antipathetic relations; but, importantly, this is a conceptual dynamic that obtains both within the constitution of a man and without. It is this perception that is brought to bear on our final considerations of gender. The onus for illustrating it is left to the following chapter. 66. Lyall (1918–1921), LXXIV, v. 11. Lyall translates (ibid., vol. 2, p. 223): “Even then, wheresoever I might be, my destined death would reach me, a guide tracking out my footsteps and ambling along with my doom”; cf. Ringgren (1955), p. 21, and notes, for a discussion of this image. 67. Lisān, s.v. n-b-ḥ, indicates some of the metaphorical usages of ‘barking’; for the mustanbiḥ, see Lyall (1918–1921), XXIII, of ʿAmr b. al-Ahtam, v. 7, XXXVI, of ʿAwf b. al-Aḥwaṣ, v. 1, and scholion.

Chapter 5 The Mount 5:1. The Wheel and the Storm

This section begins a detailed consideration of the mount and natural description, beginning with the example of a narrative, monothematic qaṣīda before entering upon composite poems. The projection here of a major raid permits us to concentrate on the virtues of the horse and warrior – in particular as these relate, conceptually, to rock, to ground- and sky-resources, and to sun – as well as poetical extensions of warrior figures, in the shape of eagle and wolf.1 We focus, especially, on the combined potential of horse and warrior conceived as a bakra (rotary well-pulley). This is a figure we have already encountered as one construct for the community covenant. Here, we explore its ethical dimensions, with reference, specifically, to the balance of jahl and ḥilm. We uncover, too, a universal analogue of the bakra, embodied in the structure of the anwāʾ – the ‘rain-bringing’ asterisms – and we broach the poetical language of weather. Broader conclusions drawn from this Section are reserved for a final summary at the end of Chapter 5:3. Poem 5.1:234

ُ‫َجرْ دا ُء َمـعْروقَـةُ اللَحْ يَي ِْن سُـرْ حـوب‬ ُ‫َم ْغـ ٌد عَلى بَـ ْك َر ٍة َز وْ را َء َم ْنصوب‬ ْ ‫ال َح‬ ُ‫ـت لَـهُ ْم ُغـ َّر ةٌ ِمـ ْنهـا َو تَـجْ بيب‬

3

‫قَ ْد أ ْشـهَ ُد الغَارةَ ال َشعْوا َء تَحْ ِملُني‬ ْ ‫صاحـبَها‬ َّ ‫ك‬ ‫إذ قا َم ي ُْـل ِجـ ُمـهـا‬ ‫َأن‬ ِ 4ً َ ْ ُ َّ َ‫إذا تـَب‬ ‫ص َرهـا الـ ّراؤونَ ُمـقـبـِلـة‬

1 2 3

1. This study does not deal directly, however, with the poetic phenomenon of ‘speaking with the wolf ’, on which the current major work remains that of Ullmann (1981). 2. Metre: basīṭ. D.Ṣ., pp. 76–78; Ibr., pp. 225–229; Ahl., 8, offers two verses of this poem as an isolated couplet (v. 19, and a close variant of v. 10), as does D.Ṣ., p. 75. Ahl., no. 4 of “other attributions”, p. 197, offers vv. 1–7 of the reading above, with a variant for verse 7, as noted. The verse order above follows the Ahl./D.Ṣ. reading. Ibr., pp. 437–439, offers a close variant of verse 19, followed by an extended reading of the poem as it occurs in the recension of Abū Sahl, most of which is not treated here. The poem is also attributed to Ibrāhīm b. Bashīr al-Anṣārī. 3. Ibr., v. 3: ka-anna hādiya-hā idh qāma muljimu-hā/qaʿwun &c. 4. Ibr., p. 225, n. 4 notes for muqbilatan the alternative, sābiqatan, ‘outstripping [others]’, in the recension of Abū Sahl.

212

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia ْ َ‫َو لَـحْ ـ ُمـهـا ِز يَـ ٌم َو الـب‬ ُ‫طنُ َم ْقـبوب‬ ُ‫وال َعـيْـنُ قا ِد َحةٌ وال َم ْتنُ َم ْـلحـوب‬ 7 ُ‫والقُصْ بُ ُمـضطَ ِم ٌر َواللَّوْ نُ ِغـرْ بِيب‬ 8 ّ ‫ب‬ ُ‫الذيب‬ ِ َ‫ص ْقعا ُء ال َح لَها في ال َمرْ ق‬ ُ‫َو ُد ونَ َمـوْ قِـعـِهـا ِم ْنهُ َشـنـاخـيـب‬ 10 ُ‫يح تَصْ ويـب‬ ِ ‫يَ ُحثُّها ِم ْن هُويِّ ال ِّر‬ َ َّ ُ‫إن ال َّشـقـا َء عَلـى األ ْشقيْن َمصْ بوب‬ 11 ُ‫ْإذ خـانَهـا َو َذ ٌم ِمـ ْنـهـا َوتَـ ْكـريـب‬ 12 ْ ‫َوال كَهذا الذي فـي األرْ ض َم‬ ُ‫طلوب‬ ِ 13 ُ‫رار تَ ْعيِيب‬ ِ ْ‫ما في اجْ تِها ٍد عَلـى اإلص‬ 14 ْ ‫فا ْن َسـ َّل ِم‬ ُ‫ـن تَحْ تِها َوالدَّفُّ َمعْقوب‬ 15 ُ‫ِم ْنهـا َو ِمـ ْنهُ عَـلى الص َّْخ ِر ال َّشـآبـيب‬ 16 ُ‫ـريـب‬ ِ ‫سـان َوبِـال ِّشــ ْدقَـي‬ ِ ِ‫َوبِـالـلّـ‬ ِ ‫ْـن تـ َ ْت‬ 17 ّ ‫َو ال تَـ َحـ َّر َز‬ ُ‫إل َو ْه َو َمـ ْكـتـوب‬ 18 َّ ‫َويَرْ قُبُ اللَّـيْـ َل‬ ُ‫إن اللَّـيْـ َل َمحْ جوب‬ 19 ‫ي‬ ‫َـ‬ ‫خ‬ ‫ال‬ ‫ُمطَلَّبٌ بِـنَواصي‬ ُ‫ْـل َمعْصوب‬ ِ 5 6

‫ـر ٌم َو َجـرْ يُـهـا َجـ ِذ ٌم‬ َ ‫ِو قا فُـهـا‬ ِ ‫ض‬ ٌ‫ضار َحة‬ ‫َو الـيَ ُد سـا بِ َحةٌ وال ِّر جْ ُل‬ ِ ‫والـما ُء ُمـ ْنهَـ ِمـ ٌر وال َّش ُّد ُم ْن َح ِد ٌر‬ ْ َ‫فاض الما ُء واحْ تَفَل‬ ‫ت‬ َ‫كَأنَّها ِحين‬ َ 9 َ ْ ْ ‫ص َر‬ َ ْ ‫ق َمرْ قبَ ٍة‬ ‫ف‬ ‫ن‬ ‫م‬ ‫ه‬ ‫ص‬ ‫َـخ‬ ‫ش‬ ‫ت‬ ُ ْ‫و‬ َ َ ‫فَأ ْب‬ ِ ِ ْ َ‫فَأ ْقـبَـل‬ ً‫كاسـ َرة‬ ‫ـت نَحْ َوهُ في ال َج ِّو‬ ِ ْ ‫صب‬ ‫صبُّ ِم ْن أ َم ٍم‬ ُ َ ‫َّت عَـلَ ْي ِه َومـا تَ ْن‬ ٌ‫ْـت عُراها َو ْه َي ُم ْـثـقَـلَة‬ ٌ ‫كَال َّد ْل ِو ثَـب‬ ٌ‫ال كَالتي في هَـوا ِء ال َج ِّو طالِبَة‬ ٌ‫يح في َمرْ آهُما َع َجب‬ ِ ْ‫كالـبَر‬ ِ ‫ق َوال ِّر‬ ‫فَأ ْد َر كَـ ْتـهُ فَـنا لَـ ْتـهُ َمـخا لِـبُـهــا‬ ْ ‫يَلو ُذ بِالص َّْخ ِر ِم ْنها بَ ْع َد ما فَتَ َر‬ ‫ت‬ ْ َ‫ثُ َّم ا ْستَغاث‬ ُ‫ض تَ ْعفِ ُره‬ ِ ْ‫ت بِ َم ْت ِن األر‬ ْ َ‫ف‬ ‫يس أُ ْنـ ُمـلَـ ٍة‬ َ ِ‫أخطَأ َ ْتهُ الـ َمنايـا ق‬ ً ْ ْ ‫يَظَلُّ ُمن َج ِحـر ا ِمنهـا يُـرا قِـبـُها‬ ْ َ‫ت َش ْمسٌ َوما َغ َرب‬ ْ ‫َوال َخ ْي ُر َما طَلَ َع‬ ‫ت‬

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

1. I witness the branching raid on a short-haired steed (jardāʾ), slimcheeked (maʿrūqatu l-laḥyayn), swift, of generous stock (surḥūb) 2. As if, when her rider brings her to bridle, she were a great [pail] (maghd) raised up (manṣūb) on a sloping sheave (bakra zawrāʾ)/As if her neck (hādiya-hā), when her bridler sets to, were the chape (qaʿw) set up (manṣūb) on a sloping sheave. 3. When she charges, onlookers see looming toward them (lāḥat la-hum) her blaze (ghurra), and the rolling white of her legs (tajbīb).5678910111213141516171819 5. Ibr., v. 5: raqāqu-hā ḍarimun wa jaryu-hā khadhimun/&c. 6. Ibr., v. 6: wa-l-ʿaynu qādiḥatun wa-l-yadu sābiḥatun/wa-l-rijlu ṭāmiḥatun wa-l-lawnu ghirbībū. 7. Ibr., v. 7: wa-l-māʾu munhamirun wa-l-shaddu munḥadirun/wa-l-quṣbu muḍṭamirun wa-l-matnu malḥūbū; Ahl: …/wa-l-qaṣbu &c. 8. Ibr., v. 8b: …/ṣaqʿāʾu lāḥa la-hā bi-l-sarḥati l-dhībū. 9. Ibr., v. 9: … min raʾsi marqabatin/&c. 10. Ibr., [no corresponding verse]. 11. Ibr., v. 11: ka-l-dalwi buttat ʿurā-hā wa-hya muthqalatun/&c. 12. Ibr., v. 12: waylummi-hā min hawāʾi l-jawwi ṭālibatan/&c. 13. Reading ka-l-barqi wa-l-rīḥi here, with Ibr., rather than D.Ṣ. ka-l-bazzi wa-l-rayḥi &c. Ibr., v. 13: ka-l-barqi wa-l-rīḥi shaddan min-humā ʿajaban/mā fī jtihādin ʿani l-isrāʿi taghbībū. Abū Sahl’s reading murran min-humā for shaddan min-humā is noted ibid., p. 228, n. 13. 14. Ibr., v. 14b: …/fa-nsalla min taḥti-hā wa l-daffu manqūbū. 15. Ibr., v. 15b: .../min-hā wa min-hu ʿalā l-ʿaqbi l-shaʾābībū. 16. Ibr., v, 16: thumma staghātha bi-daḥlin wa-hya taʿfiru-hu/&c. 17. Ibr., v. 17: mā akhṭaʾat-hu l-manāyā qīsa unmulatin/wa-lā taḥarraza illā wa-hwa makrūbū. 18. Reading munjaḥiran here with Ibr., rather than D.Ṣ. munḥajiran. Ibr., v. 18: fa-ẓalla munjaḥiran min-hā yurāqibu-hā/wa-yarqubu l-ʿaysha inna l-ʿaysha maḥbūbū. Abu Sahl’s variant: yurāṣidu-hā/ wa yarqubu l-layla inna l-ʿaysha maḥbūbū is noted, ibid., p. 229, n. 17. 19. Verse 1 in Ibr: al-khayru … &c.

5:1. The Wheel and the Storm

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4. Her stand in battle is flame (wiqāfu-hā ḍarim)/her ‘sand-tract’ is fire (raqāqu-hā ḍarim), her sprint (jaryu-hā), cutting and swift (jadhim/khadhim); her flesh is compact (ziyam), her belly, lean (maqbūb). 5. Foreleg ‘swimming’ (sābiḥa), hind-leg kicking (ḍāriḥa)/rising (ṭāmiḥa),20 her eyes hollow-sunk (qādiḥa), her spine, sloping and smooth (al-matnu malḥūb). 6. Her force, a torrent (al-māʾu munhamir), she courses down (alshaddu munḥadir), midriff slender (al-quṣbu muḍṭamir),21 hue, intensest black (ghirbīb). 7. As her ‘waters’ brim (ḥīna fāḍa l-māʾ), and she races with strength to spare (wa-ḥtafalat), she is a crested [eagle], a wolf presenting itself to her on a peak (marqab)/by a [great, shady] sarḥa. 8. She spies his shape from a station [loftier still] (marqaba); beneath her and between them, towering summits (shanākhīb). 9. She approaches him, making ready to stoop (kāsiratan), hastened (yaḥuththu-hā) by the thrust (taṣwīb) of a down-surge of wind (huwīyu l-rīḥ). 10. She is brought cascading (ṣubbat ʿalay-hi) from on high – the fated ones now in a deluge of trial (al-shaqāʾ … maṣbūb) – 11. Like a pail heavy-filled (muthqala), its loops hold good till (thabtun ʿurā-hā idh)/its loops cut free when (buttat ʿurā-hā idh) it is failed (khāna-hā) by a strap (wadhamun-min-hā) and safety-tie (takrīb). 12. Nothing compares to (lā ka-llatī)/Fortune take the dam of (waylummi-hā)22 the seeker in the sky; and who is like him that is sought on the ground? 13. Like lightning (barq) and wind (rīḥ),23 a dual wonder to behold; no fault diminishes the drive/no remissness slackens the pace. 14. She overtakes, clutching at him with her talons (makhālib); but he slips from beneath her, pursued side-on (al-daff maʿqūb)24/ his lateral gored (al-daff manqūb)

20. The dictionaries suggest that ṭamaḥa only applies to a horse in the sense of raising the forelegs (or head and eyes) in running: Tāj, Lisān, s.v. ṭ-m-ḥ, I. 21. Properly, the horse has been prepared for racing by being fed barely enough to sustain it after having first become fat: Tāj, s.v. ḍ-m-r, VIII. 22. An equally admirative alternative, applied to the courageous: Lisān, s.v. w-y-l. 23. Following Ibr.’s reading, ‘lightning’ and ‘wind’, rather than D.Ṣ.’s bazz and rayḥ. Whilst bazz can be related to weaponry and mail (Tāj, art. bazzun), which would fit the context and imply a visual awe complementary to barq, rayḥ seems nowhere attested, and, likely, corrupt, as the D.Ṣ. sharḥ (p. 77, n. 5) admits. 24. This interpretation of the D.Ṣ. reading, maʿqūb, takes ʿaqaba more generally than the D.Ṣ. gloss (p. 77, n. 6), which offers ‘wounded in the heel’ (ʿaqib); but that interpretation is confounded by the focus, here, on the side (daff) of the wolf ’s body; i.e., a lateral portion of the body that is above the foot: Muḥkam, Tāj, art. daffun.

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Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia 15. He shelters from her by a rock-mass after their efforts (shaʾābīb) over the stones (ʿalā l-ṣakhr)/one after the other (ʿalā l-ʿaqb) have flagged. 16. Then she takes to the flats/he looks for a bolt (daḥl) as she casts him down (taʿfiru-hū), defiling his tongue and jaws in the dust. 17. The Fates miss by the degree/by not the span of a finger’s tip; but there’s no sanctuary if it be not inscribed (maktūb)/ he seeks sanctuary only to be met by distress (makrūb). 18. Denned up in his hole (munjaḥiran min-hā),25 he watches her, and looks for a night that will not shed its veil (maḥjūb)/ regarding the life he holds so dear (maḥbūb). 19. As long as a sun/Shams (?) will rise and set, Good (al-khayr) can be sought from the forelocks (nawāṣī) of horses wherein it is bound (maʿṣūb).

Verses 1–3: Projected here is an image of external, intrinsic, and inherited virtue, consonant with those qualities that the poet elsewhere deems prerequisites for union with a brother in waṣl (the union of compact). Comprehensive virtue is concisely announced (verse 1) in the epithet jardāʾ. The immediate connotation is short, fine hair; but this is a sign of generous origin and speed – strongly reinforced by surḥūb (generous stock – verse 1b). Jardāʾ also connotes smooth rock, besides qualities of limpidity and perfection that include innate moral purity.26 We noted earlier the poetic habit of conceiving honour, virtue, and consequent might, in terms of smooth stone (ṣafā) and the resilience of mountains. These conceits are used, too, of excellent mounts, which can equally constitute ‘smooth rock’, ‘rock-forts’, or even ‘descending boulders’ when they attack.27 There is indeed a near-synonymous correspondence between the semantic fields of roots j-r-d and ṣ-f-w. Like the latter, the first covers purity and limpidity, sincerity of mind, love and brotherly affection, stone that is smooth and hard. The wider echoes of jardāʾ, then, would equate the horse, allusively, to the stuff of true and noble kin.28 This is only an equivalence that is openly declaimed elsewhere, such as when the poet praises his steed as “a true beloved (ḥabīb) to comrades, never meriting a curse; worthy 25. D.Ṣ munḥajiran min-hā has been set aside as ḥ-j-r, VII, is not explicitly attested in the dictionaries. Following ḥ-j-r, VIII, however, could yield something similar, along the lines of ‘closed up in the rock’. 26. Tāj, Lisān, art. ajradu. 27. See Ibr., p. 166, v. 39: the powerful backside of a war-horse renders it a flawless boulder called uthfīya (a support-stone for the cooking-pot (qidr) which is identified with the body of a kingroup, as noted, Chapter 4, n. 24), proverbially associated with calamity descending from a mountain (Qāmūs, art. uthfīyatun); Ibr., p. 47, v. 25: sure, solid hooves are rock-like ṣumm ṣilāb and the stones on a valley-bed (ḥijāratu ghayl); cf., also, the references below, n. 71; Ibr., p. 169, v. 6, where the true, sturdy riding-camel is a ‘secure stronghold’. 28. Cf. the commentary to verses 10 and 20 of Poem 4.3: how, conversely, the sin of kinsmen, and the antithesis of an ideal brother’s nobility and faith can be figured by the ‘refractory mount’ (shamūs).

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to ransomed with father and mothers”. The horse belongs, in effect, to the covenant of mutual redemption (fidāʾ), which kinsmen all are bound to uphold.29 The intrinsic virtue of the horse is also implied by its blaze (ghurra – verse 3). Ghurra, a brilliant whiteness associated with the stars and moon, is an attribute connected with excellent horses and camels, as well as nobles amongst men. We saw it related to the khalīl, or sinless friend (verse 12 of Poem 1.5). We saw it also (verses 3–6 of Poem 3.5) as a blazon of innate morality, of remoteness from defilement and censure, benevolence and piety to kin – every quality, indeed, that enables effective action in upholding the covenant.30 It could be anticipated, then, that a horse’s virtue might translate not only as the substance of rock, but also as the harnessed force of ground- and sky-water from which, conceptually, the virtuous draw inherited power. And, at this point, it is useful to understand another association of the astral quality implied by ghurra, before tackling the comparison of this horse to a rotary well-pulley (bakra, verse 2), and then considering the bearing all this has on a mounted assault that culminates (verses 10–13) in the descent of a ‘lightning storm’ equated to the deadly drop of a ‘pail’. ***** Astral Light and Water The astral association implied here is the ancient Arab belief that rains were brought by the stars – specifically, by the asterisms called anwāʾ (s. nawʾ). These asterisms, which came to be identified with the twenty-eight Mansions of the moon, were thought to bring rain with their auroral setting as their ruqabāʾ (s. raqīb), or ‘watcher-asterisms’ (also anwāʾ), rose on the opposite horizon.31 We still have residual indications of how men identified with these asterisms, how they saw mirrored in their movement their own life-cycles, the sequence of sons coming after fathers being compared to the succession of the anwāʾ as they circled the horizon.32 In this way, the innate potential of men could be discussed as astral attributes: If a man was ineffectual and devoid of good, he could be ridiculed for having no nawʾ, no influence to bring rain;33 or, if he failed to achieve 29. Ahl., 4, v. 66: ḥabībun ilā l-aṣḥābi ghayru mulaʿʿanin/yufaddūna-hū bi-l-ummahāti wa-bi-l-abī. 30. Lisān, arts ghurratun, agharru, also align ghurra with illustrious action and remoteness from evil. 31. See Tāj, art. nawʾun (summarising the debate on the proper meaning of nawʾ); Ibn Qutayba (1956), pp. 6–9 (where the author answers the question), p. 17 ff. (where the anwāʾ are listed and discussed); Varisco (1991), gives a comprehensive bibliography and a reevaluation of the origin of the anwāʾ in Arab tradition. 32. Asās, art. raqībun. 33. See Ibn Qutayba (1956), pp. 146–147: the mīmīya verse insulting a people by denying them nawʾ; they are, rather, like Banāt Naʿsh (roughly, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor): wa-ulāʾika maʿsharun kabanāti naʿshin/khawālifa lā tanūʾu maʿa l-nujūmī. As explained here, Banāt Naʿsh are not Mansions of the moon, have no meteorological properties, and merely circle the North Celestial Pole. The insult is centred in khawālif. In a people, this indicates absence of intellect, generosity, or intrinsic good, and connotes failure to fulfil a promise. Extended to stars, this indicates failure to rain: Tāj, arts khālifun, akhlafa.

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his goal, his nawʾ could be said to have ‘missed its mark’.34 This gives us a proper insight into poetic figures that enable men to afford benign rain, or else descend like hostile storms: We may understand that it is astral rain-potential that underlies those conceits attributing to noble, generous, powerful men the ability to ‘shower’ from the sky. Quality horses are included in this scheme. A perfect logic operates in the development of a mufaḍḍalīya of al-Muraqqish al-Akbar,35 which describes a mighty host going forth like stars of the dawn-hours, mounted on horses with emblazoned heads, helmets gleaming over these blazes, which leaves behind many an enemy corpse, swollen like the bark of the tragacanth after rain: One infers that an ‘asterism’ composed of the ‘brilliant’ virtues of men and their mounts, brings a ‘rain’ with its ‘auroral setting’ that leaves death and destruction in its wake. Bishr b. Abī Khāzim renders inference unnecessary when he compares such a glittering host explicitly to high-reaching rainclouds brought by al-Thurayyā (nashāṣ al-thurayyā – roughly, the Pleiades).36 In this light, and in anticipation of the verses that follow, with their cumulative sense of harnessed ‘waters’ gathering to burst in a ‘lightning-storm’, one may take it that the focus placed on the horse’s blaze (verse 3), combined with the rolling white of its pounding hooves (tajbīb), is the first allusion to the ‘storm-flood potential’ of a blood-mount of consummate virtue – an allusion heightened by the use of the verb lāḥa, which relates to the glistening emergence of stars, as well as the lightning-flash.37 Groundwater: Well-pulley, Rope and Bucket The sense of a gathering storm runs concurrent with allusions to another vehicle for collected waters that can, conceptually, be wielded in battle: the bakra, or rotary wellpulley, to which horse and rider are compared in verse 2. A proper understanding of this figure requires us, first, to know something of its structure. The pulley is supported at the well-head by two pillar-like posts, called zurnūqān, across which a piece of wood called naʿāma (‘ostrich’) is placed. From this, a sheave - or grooved wheel - can be 34. Tāj, s.v. kh-ṭ-ʾ, IV: the saying, akhṭaʾa nawʾu-hu. 35. Lyall (1918–1921), LII. 36. Lyall (1918–1921), XCVI, vv. 10–11: ʿaṭafnā la-hum ʿaṭfa l-ḍarūsi mina l-malā/bi-shahbāʾa lā yamshī l-ḍarāʾa raqību-hā//fa-lammā raʾaw-nā bi-l-nisāri ka-anna-nā/nashāṣu l-thurayyā hayyajat-hā janūbuhā. It may be noted – in view of the image of the bakra running concurrent with the horse’s ‘astral storm-potential’ in the main poem above – that Bishr’s army here also evolves into a ‘well-pulley’ (vv. 16–17 of this qaṣīda, cited below, n. 112); cf. ibid., CIX, of al-Jumayḥ, v. 7, where the nawʾ of al-mirzam is invoked as the influence behind the ‘cloudburst’ of the poet’s army. It is perhaps unsurprising, in this light, that kawkab (‘asterism’) becomes a common epithet for armoured troops. Kunitzsch (1992) discusses astronomical and meteorological aspects of the Pleiades, setting forth the range of inspiration sourced by al-Thurayyā in the similes of the poetry. See, also, in this connection, though, Montgomery (2006b), esp. p. 93, on the sometimes “univocal” approach of the authors to sophisticated image-complexes such that “they do not allow room for the wider semantic and conceptual universe of which the similes are part”. 37. Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. l-w-ḥ, I.

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suspended, on which to draw water.38 That this structure is associated with the figure of an ostrich is reflected in dictionary entries for ʿamūd, a term for ‘pillar’ that is used both of the well-pulley’s supports, and the legs of an ostrich. The concept of naʿāma extends, in the expression ibn al-naʿāma (son of the ostrich), to a brisk horse, as well as to the water-drawer (sāqī) at a well-head.39 This indicates a pervasive conceptual nexus between the bakra, the ostrich, and the sprightly mount – one which might explain, for example, how both a horse’s breast and the sheave of a well-pulley should converge as dictionary meanings of ḥamāma (‘pigeon’).40 The pulley consists of the said sheave (also called bakra, or maḥāla, which is larger), which turns on an axis secured within a piece of perforated wood (qabb). The axis can be confined at either end by a hooked chape, each side of which is called khuṭṭāf, when of iron, or qaʿw, when of wood. The main well-rope (rishāʾ/ḥabl/sabab/manīn), from which the bucket (dalw) is suspended, is passed over the groove of the sheave, and attached to two wooden cross-pieces (ʿarquwatān) that are placed athwart the opening of the bucket to stop it collapsing. A safety-rope (karab) is tied to the bucket after the main rope, so that if the latter should break, the karab will save it. Thongs called awdhām (s. wadham) are used to bind the wooden cross-pieces to loops (ʿurā, s. ʿurwa) on the bucket. A safety strap called ʿināj can be passed beneath the bucket, then tied to the cross-pieces and loops in case the awdhām break. Otherwise, the ʿināj is looped in the bottom-interior of the bucket and tied with cord to the upper part of the karab, so that even if the karab should break, the bucket will not be lost.41 As discussed earlier (in the commentary to verse 15 of Poem 2.3), the bakra is integral to the net of poetic, ‘liquid’ conceits that figure the inherited resources on which communities draw from their conceptual ‘source’ (ḥawḍ). It is a construct, which, in the context of battle, translates weaponry into ropes and buckets that are plied by communal ‘pullies’, and thrust into enemy ‘waters’. Conversely (see the commentary to verse 4 of Poem 2.5), the image is negatively projected when Time’s ‘sickness’ results in a man’s moral failure to suppress the dissipation of these ‘waters’. As a representation of intellectual and physical continence, the well-pulley also serves to figure the relative ‘health’ of a kin-unit and the security of its covenantal ties: Healthy kin-ties translate as a sound bakra, its bucket secured by firm ropes and auxiliary straps

38. See Tāj, art. zurnūqun, which also offers that the supporting pillars, if made of wood, can be called daʿāmatān (‘two props’), or naʿāmatān (‘two ostriches’), whilst the cross-piece to which the sheave is suspended can also be called ʿajalatun (‘wheel’ – perhaps, though, rather, referring to the sheave on which the rope and bucket would be suspended). 39. Qāmūs, art. ʿamūdun; Tāj, s.v. b-n-y. 40. Qāmūs, art. ḥamāmatun. 41. Qāmūs, Tāj, arts bakratun, maḥālatun, qabbun, thināyatun, khuṭṭāfun, karabun, ʿinājun, ʿarquwatu l-dalwi, ʿurwatun, rishāʾun. For a fuller statement on forms of the well, their accessories and uses – which relies largely on the ancient poetry – see Bräunlich (1924), pp. 41–76, 288–343, 444–528.

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(see the commentary to verse 3 of Poem 3.7).42 Thus, the poet’s recourse here, in verse 2, to the image of a sound and functional bakra signals good faith, generosity, and power (wafāʾ, karam and ʿizz); two parties, bound by a secure compact, who have the qualities to access inherited ‘force-waters’ that will strike hard into the enemy ḥawḍ.43 The variants for verse 2 are mutually complementary, giving alternative perspectives on the same structure. The sense of likening the bridled neck of the horse to the wooden chape (qaʿw) of a pulley (Ibrāhīm’s variant, verse 2) is perhaps to be sought by comparison with the horse’s headstall and reins (lijām). These include the bit (shakīma), which lies cross-wise between the horse’s jaws and has a raised piece of iron (called faʾs), which stands upward in the mouth. Rings of iron called misḥal are fixed to both sides of the shakīma to act as a curb-chain hanging beneath the lower jaw. Like the axis on which the bakra turns, the transverse shakīma and misḥal pieces are held between bent pieces of iron called khuṭṭāf.44 And, as with the complex of ropes and straps with which the bucket is rendered secure, shakīma extends conceptually to intellectual and bodily strength, as well as to compact.45 The bakra’s technical function with water finds a resonance in the misḥal rings upon which the horse’s blood and foam flow forth: misḥal relates also to the mouth of the leathern water-bag (mizāda). And, in light of the conceptual nexus of water, power and generosity, it is perhaps not surprising to find that misḥal extends to rain, flooding, munificence, and a courageous attack.46 All this offers a certain added logic for the comparison of man and mount to the structure of the bakra.47 It also fully complements a conceptual scheme that translates harnessed virtue into contained waters – whether raised from the ground 42. Recall especially here: lā budda li-l-dāʾi min ʿilājin wa-li-l-dilāʾi min ʿināj, “It is essential for disease to be treated, and for buckets to have an ʿināj”; qawmun idhā ʿaqadū ʿaqdan li-jāri-himū/shaddū l-ʿināja wa-shaddū fawqa-hu l-karabā, “A people who, when they conclude a covenant with their neighbour tie the ʿināj, and tie above it the karab”, i.e., render it extra sure. (Tāj, arts ʿinājun, karabun). 43. Cf., conversely, Tāj, s.v. n-sh-b, art. nāshibatu l-maḥāl: a poet’s deprecation of a people’s failure to fulfil their dues in terms of a pulley that sticks fast and will not run: wa-tilka banū ʿadīyin qad taʾallaw/fa-yā ʿajaban li-nāshibati l-maḥālī. 44. Qāmūs, Tāj, arts khuṭṭāfun, misḥalun, lijāmun. 45. Qāmūs, Tāj, art. shakīmatun. 46. Qāmūs, art. misḥalun. 47. The comparison extends also to the stalwart travelling-camel, as in Lyall (1918–1921), XXI, of al-Mukhabbal, v. 26: qaliqat idhā nḥadara l-ṭarīqu la-hā/qalaqa l-maḥālati ḍamma-hā l-daʿmū “She hurries along when the road descends before her, like the incessant plying of the pulley enclosed between the [two] props [that support it at the well]”; cf. ibid., CXXII, of Bashāma, vv. 10–12: the description of camels that pace “... with the hands of a deaf man [that hears nothing to distract him from his work,] striving against time to fill troughs for thirsty camels: his pulley moves to and fro as he pulls [on the well-rope that lifts the bucket]” (Lyall’s translations). Recalling the relationship indicated above between the figures of bakra and ostrich, one may note that the first image with which Bashāma’s camels are compared (ibid., v. 8), and which next immediately evolves into the ‘well-pulley’, is an ostrich (niqniqa, syn: naʿāma). As with the headstall of the horse, the appurtenances of the camel find a parallel in the bakra: ʿirān, the

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or collected in clouds – that can be unleashed to deadly effect.48 The general equation of virtuous creature-force with harnessed ground- and sky-waters offers a window onto the conceptual logic, furthermore, of the culmination of the charge (verses 11 and 13), which is, at once, a plummeting pail, and the descent of a lightning-storm. Polysemy in the Charge In light of the multiple layers into which comparisons and metaphors in the poetry coalesce, it is worth just lastly considering here the poetical harmonies that accrue to the participle manṣūb (‘erected’ – verse 2), which qualifies maghd/qaʿw (pail/chape) and brings the verse to a close, thus endowing the thing upraised with a certain heightened portent. Nuances of manṣūb worth regarding in this context include: (i) something erected or elevated; (ii) something raised with which one goes to encounter something else; (iii) something made to engage in unusual exertion; (iv) something implying the motivation of hostilities; (v) something raised like a standard (ʿalam); (vi) something exceptionally conspicuous to the eye; (vii) something connoting evil, affliction and disease; (viii) something set up as an obstacle to something else, such as the butt of archers; (ix) the erection of stone idols (anṣāb) upon which sacrificial blood is poured.49 Of these, (i)–(v) are consonant with the idea of horse and rider as a war-machine in a conspicuous state of preparation for engagement; (vi) is a nuance that resonates with the next-immediate allusion (verse 3) to the horse’s brilliant attributes – its ghurra and tajbīb - so conspicuous to those who behold the charge; (vii) would indicate, in complement, that this war-machine promises an imminent trial which, poetically, would be the oncoming ‘disease’ of calamity – an idea thrown into relief in verse 17, where horse and rider become the very agents of Death. As to (viii), this brings to mind the muʿallaqa of ʿAntara: Wheeling blamelessly, the poet likens the enemy’s lances to well-ropes sinking into his horse’s breast. It is with the blaze and breast of the horse that he charges them until its breast streams with blood.50 Like ʿAntara’s steed, the poet’s horse here figures a ‘source’ at which enemy spears might ‘drink’; wooden pin inserted through the camel’s nostrils, also defines the axis of the sheave to which each khuṭṭāf (the hooked iron chape holding the axis) is secured (Qāmūs, Tāj, art. ʿirānun). 48. Cf. Lyall (1918–1921), LXXIII, of ʿAbd al-Masīḥ b. ʿAsala, vv. 4–5, where a horse in the chase is described, at once, in terms of a mobile pulley and a driving torrent: lā yanfaʿu l-waḥsha min-hu an taḥadhdhara-hū/ka-anna-hū muʿlaqun min-hā bi-khuṭṭāfī//idhā uwāḍiʿu min-hū marra muntaḥiyan/ marra l-atīyi ʿalā bardīyati l-ṭāfī, “But it helps not the wildings that they have warning of his coming: he is as it were suspended over them with a grapnel … When I endeavour to restrain him, he pushes on, making for them, like the pushing-on of a torrent over the papyrus-stems standing in the way of the flood” (Lyall’s translation). 49. Lane, arts naṣaba, naṣbun, nuṣubun. 50. al-Tibrīzī (1969), ʿAntara, vv. 71–73: yadʿūna ʿantara wa-l-rimāḥu ka-anna-hā/ashṭānu biʾrin fī labāni l-adhamī//mā ziltu armī-him bi-ghurrati wajhi-hī/wa-labāni-hī ḥattā tasarbala bi-l-damī//fazwarra min waqʿi l-qanā bi-labāni-hī//wa-shakā ilay-ya bi-ʿabratin wa-taḥamḥumī, “‘Antara!’ they were calling, and the lances were like well-ropes sinking into the breast of my black steed. Continuously I charged them with his white-blazoned face and his breast, until his body

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and the comparable focus on the blaze and neck of the horse shows similar interest in their prominence. Thus one might think here of a neck and breast ready to serve as a ‘butt’ to enemy lances, heralded by its brilliant blaze. This brings us to (ix). With special reference to Ibrāhīm’s reading (verse 2) where it is the neck of the horse that is somehow manṣūb, Salāma b. Jandal illustrates the potential of the neck to equate to sacrificial stones: In a poem where he, too, has recourse (verse 21) to the figure of the bakra when describing his cavalry, he recalls his return from one victorious encounter (verses 4–6), comparing the blood-streaked necks and breasts of the horses with the stones (anṣāb) upon which sacrificial blood is spilled in the holy month of Rajab.51 At one level, this comparison illustrates the poetic propensity to translate the virtues of mounts, as well as men, into rock; at another, it points, importantly, to the integrality of war and the honour-ethic to dīn (‘religion’) with all its ritual implications. This point is picked up at the end of Section 3 in this chapter, and developed in the General Conclusion where the bakra is discussed in relation to its poetic analogues. There follow verses the emphatic rhythm of which builds a cumulative sense of torrential momentum before the horse is transformed into a questing eagle. ***** Verses 4–8:52 Dār Ṣādir’s wiqāfu-hā ḍarim (her stand in battle is flame – verse 4) is an uncomplicated allusion to coordinated effort in a joint stand.53 At this level, ḍarim, with its primary sense of ‘becoming kindled’, registers as vehement ardency in the racing horse. Ḍarim is also used of a lusting predator, and apparently, eagle young.54 This potential is realised in verse 7, when the horse evolves into just such a predator. Ibrāhīm’s reading, raqāqu-hā ḍarim (her ‘sand-tract’ burns), is far more convoluted, resting on its own nexus of allusion. As the opening verses indicate, the rising momentum of a coursing mount will typically take the form of a cumulative gathering of water.55 The effort of a careering horse, its ability to recover from exertion and perform with renewed effort, is described, for example, in terms of jumūm. Jumūm has a principal sense of abundant waters collecting, of a well-source replenishing was caparisoned in blood, and he twisted round to the spears’ impact upon his breast and complained to me, sobbing and whimpering” (Arberry’s translation: (1957), p. 183). 51. Lyall (1918–1921), XXII, v. 6: wa-l-ʿādiyātu asābīyu l-dimāʾi bi-hā/ka-anna aʿnāqa-hā anṣābu tarjībī, “And the galloping steeds came home with streaks of blood on their breasts, as though their necks were the stones where victims in Rajab are slain” (Lyall’s translation). 52. For simplicity, Ibr.’s variations, verses 4–6, noted above with the Arabic text, are inserted here with their equivalents in the Ahl./D.Ṣ. verse-ordering. 53. Qāmūs, s.v. w-q-f, III. 54. Tāj, art. ḍarimun. 55. A point underlined in Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 2, p. 309, n. 1, re. the horse’s name, Thādiq, which connotes both a heavy cloudburst, and the rush of a valley-torrent.

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itself after its waters are drawn. Jamma extends to the gathering of a horse’s pace, the recovery of a horse after fatigue, as well the recollection of its seminal fluid (māʾ).56 Thus, Ḥājib b. Ḥabīb describes his steed’s racing prowess, its ability to renew its efforts after each bout of running, as an abundant recollection of water (yajimm … jumūman).57 A more informative example of this is given by al-Muraqqish al-Aṣghar when describing his horse in the raid: Elaborating on the conceit of jumūm, he defines the exact nature of the ground-waters he has in mind: those of the ḥisy.58 The ḥisy is water that is imbibed into ground of a specific constitution: sand that has accumulated over hard rock. When the sand receives rain, it ‘drinks’ in the water, which is then arrested by the rock beneath. The surface soil prevents the sun from drying it up. At times of intense heat, the upper sand can be dug out from over the water, which will then well up. The implied dynamic is that, whenever a bucketful is drawn forth, another quantity collects.59 This last detail - implicit bucket and all surfaces in an allusion to the horse’s jumūm that occurs in a poem of Imruʾ al-Qays: yajummu ʿalā l-sāqayni baʿda kalāli-hī/jumūma ʿuyūni l-ḥisyi baʿda l-makhīḍī, “He recovers his strength after exhaustion when urged on by the [rider’s] legs, as the sources of the ḥisy replenish themselves after a pail is dashed in to draw forth water”.60 This brings us back to raqāqu-hā ḍarim. Raqāq defines precisely the type of land in which a ḥisy collects: a tract of soft desert-soil beneath which is hardness; a tract from which water sinks into the ground below.61 Thus, raqāqu-hā ḍarim may be taken as an allusion to the constitution of a prime racer in terms of a tract within which the ḥisy collects; a ‘tract’ which, when ‘burning’ (ḍarim),62 may have its internal ‘waters’ accessed by the rider – whether as if by the action of valley-bed gravel and bushes (as in the said poem of al-Muraqqish al-Aṣghar),63 or as if with the pail (as in the said poem of Imruʾ 56. Qāmūs, Tāj, art. jamma. 57. Lyall (1918–1921), CX, v. 10: yajimmu ʿalā l-sāqi baʿda l-mitāni/jumūman wa-yublaghu imkānu-hā, “He abounds in copious power to gallop when stirred by the rider’s leg after an exhausting run, and it (i.e., the leg) gains the utmost of its desires from the stimulus” (Lyall’s translation). 58. Lyall (1918–1921), LV, v. 19: yajummu jumūma l-ḥisyi jāsha maḍīqu-hū/wa-jarrada-hū min taḥtu ghīlun wa-abṭaḥū, “He gushes, as forth spouts fast the flow of a pent-up fount beneath the sand, where gravel and bushes lay bare the spring” (Lyall’s translation). Cf., in this light, the equation (above in this Section, n. 27) of a horse’s hooves with the stones of a valley-bed (ḥijāratu ghayl). 59. Tāj, art. ḥisyun. 60. Ibr., pp. 72–77, v. 16. This ḍādīya is analysed in full, below, as Poem 5.2. 61. Tāj, art. raqāqun. 62. Cf. the use of jāsha in al-Muraqqish al-Aṣghar’s verse cited above, n. 58; this connotes, principally, ‘boiling’, suggesting the comparable idea that the ‘waters’ of the horse’s constitution are hot with the ardour of the pace. 63. Recalling v. 15 of Poem 2.5, which found the poet’s army, itself, a mobile, torrent-bed filled with trees, it could be that the pebbles and trees of the valley-bed that lay bare the ‘ḥisy-water’ of al-Muraqqish al-Aṣghar’s horse (above, n. 58) equate to the poet’s army summoning the steeds’ potential, just as the ḥisy equates to the horse’s power.

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al-Qays) – these being resources that will consistently replenish themselves and enable the horse to undertake one running-heat after another.64 An equation between the horse’s racing-power and the impetus of water is simply conveyed in jaryu-hā (verse 4), jarā relating principally to the flow of water; and this equation is sustained through verses 6–7. As to al-māʾu munhamir (verse 6), Ibrāhīm concedes that this implies a vehement torrent,65 but suggests that the sweat of the horse is intended, and then notes that this is a fault (wa-hādhā khaṭaʾ).66 This might be a fault if sweat were intended: an approved attribute of the prime racer is its ability to charge and scarcely sweat at all, as attested in the muʿallaqa of Imruʾ al-Qays;67 but one may conclude, rather, consonant with the wider conceptual scheme, that al-māʾu munhamir renders the horse an ‘oncoming torrent’.68 The force of the charge is sustained with al-shaddu munḥadir (verse 6), suggesting here a downhill rush – typical of the raid – owing to the downward nuance of the verb inḥadara.69 In the context, this rush may be construed as somehow ‘liquid’; but, against the wider scheme, the strongest resonance of inḥadara here is perhaps one which picks up the potential for the horse’s constitution to translate into rock: ḥadara is illustrated, for one thing, by the act of rolling a boulder down from a mountain;70 and, as noted above, an attacking horse may well evolve into a downcoming mountainboulder, brought, in fact, by the rush of the ‘torrent’.71 Verse 7a (ka-anna-hā ḥīna fāḍa l-māʾu wa-ḥtafalat) brings the cumulative sense of gathering liquid to a head: Fāḍa is used of abundant waters collecting, pouring forth fiercely, or overflowing like the torrents of a valley. (These meanings are also contained in afāḍa (f-y-ḍ IV) which conveys, too, the transitive sense of a rider spurring a mount with his legs till it reaches just less than its maximum pace). Wholly in complement, iḥtafala indicates the gathering of abundant waters; the brimming of capacious 64. This interpretation, which takes raqāqu-hā and ḍarim to be as intrinsic to the horse’s constitution as the D.Ṣ. variant, contradicts Ibr.’s gloss, which reads raqāqu-hā as the ground beneath the horse, ‘kindled’ (ḍarim) by its pounding hooves. Ground ‘set alight’ by coursing horses is certainly a familiar feature in movements to battle (as v. 12 of Poem 2.3; cf. Ibr., p. 154, v. 4); but to assume this meaning here strains the grammar of raqāqu-hā, and denies any specific intention in the choice of raqāq. Tāj, s.v. ḍ-r-m, simply notes ḍarimu l-raqāq as a figure for a horse’s coursing on soft ground. 65. Cf. Qurʾān, 54: 11: fa-fataḥnā abwāba l-samāʾi bi-māʾin munhamirin; Ibr., p. 166, v. 41: a crack of the whip has the poet’s horse coursing like a pouring hail-cloud (dhū baradin munhamir). 66. Ibr., p. 226, n. 7. 67. al-Tibrīzī (1969), Imruʾ al-Qays, v. 67: fa-ʿādā ʿidāʾan bayna thawrin wa-naʿjatin/dirākan wa-lam yunḍaḥ bi-māʾin fa-yughsalī. 68. Cf. Tāj, s.v. h-m-r: the linguistic correspondence of the concepts of pouring rain and a horse’s running, mentioned explicitly in regard of forms I and VIII. 69. Tāj, arts ḥadara, inḥadara: The movement is explained precisely as one from high to low (min ʿulwin ilā suflin). 70. Tāj, s.v. ḥ-d-r: ḥadara l-ḥajara mina l-jabali. 71. al-Tibrīzī (1969), Imruʾ al-Qays, v. 53; cf. Ibr., p. 164, v. 30.

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valley-torrents; a horse’s reaching its utmost speed, though still retaining reserves of power.72 Thus, in sum, poet and rider (and by extension their allies) constitute a raging flood. This makes sense of the allusion to the mount as a ‘swimmer’ (verse 5), a recurrent epithet of the fleet and sturdy horse: If armies effectively confront each other as surging flood-waters,73 only the best ‘swimmers’ can negotiate the rush.74 (This perception also offers a context for the insistence with which mail-clad armies are compared to torrents and pools, as noted in the commentary to verse 14 of Poem 2.3). Poised for the final assault, the horse next evolves (verse 7b) into a questing sheeagle (ṣaqʿāʾ), so fulfilling another intrinsic promise of ḍarim (noted in the commentary to verse 4): a hungry eagle lusting for prey. This evolution illustrates the point (see the commentary to verse 2 of Poem 3.7) that the eagle has a specific poetic association with ghāra (raiding) and the aptitude for gaining the material exigencies that the raid fulfils. The specific choice of ṣaqʿāʾ, does, though, merit more consideration: The quality aṣqaʿu denotes whiteness in the middle, or top, of the head, and is applied to both horses and birds. Thus, the horse’s identity is linguistically preserved, notwithstanding her poetic transformation. Aṣqaʿu is also used of the forelock (or white forelock) of the horse. In view of the poet’s declamation (Ibr., verse 1; D.Ṣ., verse 19), that the Good (al-khayr) is bound up in the forelocks (nawāṣī) of horses, the idea suggests itself that an allusion to head and forelocks is provided at precisely the moment when the horse is about to prove its potential. Al-ṣaqʿāʾ is also an epithet of the sun. This is noted for further comment, first, in respect of Ibrāhīm’s reading (verse 7), which locates the eagle-horse’s prospective victim, the ‘wolf ’, by a sarḥa-tree; second, in regard of the allusion to the sun itself in the closing verses. The clearly ideal value of the eagle here indicates that the value of the ‘wolf’ is equally ideal: that the wolf figures certain qualities of the enemy that the poet is poised to confront. Here, we may recall that the poet compared himself and his company to the boldest wolves when advancing toward death (verses 1–2 of Poem 1.4).75 Khidāsh b. 72. Tāj, s.v. f-y-ḍ, I, IV (where further correspondences with the swift-running horse are identified), ḥ-f-l, I, VIII. 73. Simply stated, e.g., by ʿAwf b. ʿAṭīya (Lyall (1918–1921), XCV, v. 4): a-lam tara anna-nā mirdā ḥurūbin/nasīlu ka-anna-nā duffāʿu baḥrī, “Do you not see how we are the crushing stone of the wars/of the foe? Torrentially we pour [on the enemy] like the foremost propulsion of a great river-flood”. 74. Dramatically reflected by Suwayd b. Abī Kāhil. Describing a poetic battle as physical warfare, he says of his inspirational demon (Lyall 1918–1921, XL, vv. 106–107): dhū ʿubābin zabidin ādhīyu-hū/ khamiṭu l-tayyāri yarmī bi-l-qalaʿ/zaghrabīyun mustaʿizzun baḥru-hū/laysa li-l-māhiri fī-hi muṭṭalaʿ, “He is the forefront of a billowing torrent with foaming rollers, with a raging current that flings forth rocks; its ample flood-waters overwhelm all; the most skilful swimmer caught up in it cannot escape”. 75. A ‘company of wolves’ also composed of ‘little birds’, ‘flies’ and ‘worms’. Cf. Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 2, LXXXIX, v. 21 and n. 21: how al-Ḥārith b. Ẓālim keeps ‘flies’ (dhubāb) away from his people’s waters - also read as ‘wolves’ (dhiʾāb) – both readings being interpreted as ‘enemies’.

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Zuhayr explicitly designates enemy cavalry ‘a wolf’.76 We have also noted that, besides having an ideal connection with aggression,77 the wolf is associated with two kinds of ‘sickness’: that of hunger – to which it is said ever to be subject – and that of death. These apart, the wolf is deemed to have a perfectly sound constitution.78 In the conceptual scheme of sickness and health, the ‘eagle’ would thus stand in relation to the ‘wolf’ as one formidable, hungering, predator to another; a predator seeking the ‘cure’ (dawāʾ) of her own ‘hunger’, whilst embodying the wolf’s other proverbial ‘sickness’: Death. The ‘wolf ’s’ location (verse 7) is also thick with allusion. Dār Ṣādir offers ‘on an elevated promontory’ (fī l-marqab). A marqab is a resort either for those who intend to attack, or else anticipate an assault on themselves. This reading suggests that the ‘wolf ’ is waiting to undertake, or guarding against, a hostile incursion. Ibrāhīm’s reading, ‘by the sarḥa tree’, may be read as a more elliptical indication of the same: The sarḥa is of the large, thorny ʿiḍāh (a species of acacia), great in stature, with widespreading branches, and noted for the shelter it affords from the sun. Both the stature and cover of trees like this are identified with the honour and power of men:79 ʿAntara describes a formidable opponent whom he encounters in the heat of the day as one whose clothes [and/or weapons] (thiyāb s. thawb) were draped on a sarḥa tree.80 The implication is that such a tree, (with all the shade it affords) figures ḥasab (‘worth’) and the capacity to lend protection (‘protection’, indeed, being another attribute of thawb).81 The inverse of this is reflected by Rāshid b. Shihāb when he condemns The third reading, “I count at their waters the buckets (dhināb) drawn”, may be taken as a complementary conceit expressing concern that vital resources should not be plundered. 76. Lyall (1918–1921), CVIII, vv. 1–2: lammā danawnā li-l-qibābi wa-ahli-hā/utīḥa la-nā dhiʾbun maʿa l-layli fājirū//utīḥat la-nā bakrun wa-taḥta liwāʾi-hā/katāʾibu yarḍā-hā l-ʿazīzu l-mufākhirū, “When we drew near to the leather tents and their folk, there was ordained to us a wolf, crafty and dangerous when night comes on: Bakr were ordained to us, and under their banner were troops of horse which the strong, glorying in his strength, would look upon well pleased” (Lyall’s translation). 77. Asās, s.v. j-l-ḥ, II: jallaḥa … tajlīḥa l-dhiʾb, “He attacked as does the wolf ”; cf. the language of Poem 1.4, v. 2, built on the same root: … ajraʾu min mujalliḥāti l-dhiʾābī, “bolder than wolves in the assault”. 78. See Tāj, s.v. dh-ʾ-b: dāʾu l-dhiʾb (“the wolf ’s sickness”, i.e., hunger or death), ajwaʿu mina l-dhiʾb (“more hungry than the wolf ”), aṣaḥḥu mina l-dhiʾb (“sounder than the wolf ”). 79. Recall how the poet’s mighty troops were ghullān in verse 15 of Poem 2.5: valley beds giving growth to abundant ṭalḥ and salam (which are also large, thorny ʿiḍāh); cf. Tāj, art. ʿarīnun, which defines a collection of thorny ʿiḍāh and extends, conceptually, to the eminence, might and resilience of men. 80. al-Tibrīzī (1969), ʿAntara, v. 58: baṭalin ka-anna thiyāba-hū fī sarḥatin/yuḥdhā niʿāla l-sabti laysa bi-tawʾamī, “a true hero, as if he were a clothed sarha-tree, shod in shoes of tanned leather, no weakling twin” (Arberry’s translation: (1957), p. 182); cf. Ibr., p. 46, v. 22: the horse poised on a watching-post prior to a raid, whose formidable physique renders it sarḥat marqab: ‘the sarḥa-tree of a promontory’. 81. Lane, art. thawbun: “A thing [of any kind] that veils, covers, or protects”; cf. Muḥkam, Qāmūs, Tāj, art. ẓillun, shade from the sun that is conceptually applied to anything that veils or protects,

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neighbours for a treachery which, he says, may cloak them in censure that will find them gathered beneath a sarḥa whose [shade can offer no respite as its] branches are slender and mean.82 The location of our ‘wolf ’ by the sarḥa may thus be taken to indicate an enemy of no little stature, who stands in contraposition to a threat that equates to the heat of the sun. In this way, the nuance of ṣaqʿāʾ as an epithet of the sun could also be deemed to operate here, defining the incursion of the eagle-horse (saqʿāʾ) as an aggression aligned with the sun’s ardour.83 Lastly, here, we can note the vastly superior height of the ‘eagle’ in relation to the ‘wolf ’ (verse 8). It will be recalled how the poet compounded his blame of an erstwhile protector (verse 2 of Poem 3.7) by suggesting that the ‘eagles’ that raided his camels had descended from the lower mountains (qawāʿil), not the loftier heights (tanūfā); i.e., that they were relatively inferior, and his protector’s failure to ward them off, therefore, inexcusable. Against this, our eagle here, perched higher even than the lofty summits (shanākhīb), promises the incursion of a very estimable aggressor. All told, the wolf ’s prospects are inpropitious. Verses 9–13: The descent of a ‘storm-torrent’ in the shape of this ‘eagle’ realises the potential for the incursion to be both the mobilisation of a deadly ‘well-pulley’, and a [star-induced] ‘lightning-storm’ without obscuring the identities of horse and rider: The rider’s identity is implicit to the ‘downward surge of wind’ (huwīy al-rīḥ) that propels the ‘eagle’, the impetus of which is defined by ḥaththa (verse 9). Ḥaththa is used of spurring a mount with the foot or the whip. This act of incitement is ruled by taṣwīb, the meaning of which extends from the sky’s bringing rain, to the idea of urging a horse to run.84 The suggestion is that the rider adopts the rôle of the wind, which is to bring forth a downpour from including the capacity of the great to safeguard others, just as shade wards off heat from the sun. 82. See Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 1, LXXXVI, v. 12 and sharḥ: bi-dhammin yughashshī l-marʾa khizyan wa-rahṭa-hū/ladā l-sarḥati l-ʿashshāʾi fī ẓilli-hā l-adam, “Blame that will cover with shame the man and his family, by the sarḥah-tree with slender branches, in the shade of which is pitched the tent of leather” (Lyall’s translation). The sharḥ here compares this with Jarīr’s words: wa-mā shajarātu ʿīṣi-ka fī luʾayyin/bi-ʿashshāti l-furūʿi wa-lā ḍawāḥī, “The ‘trees’ of your stock in Luʾayy do not have branches that are slender and mean with no capacity to offer shade”  –  which became a proverbial expression for ḥasab and karam (worth and generosity); cf. Tāj, arts dawḥun, dawḥatun, defining any great tree with spreading branches (or great tents of the type miẓalla), and extending to the concept of generous stock; Muḥkam, Tāj, s.v. dh-r-w/y, V, which extends seeking shelter – in this case, from the cold – under trees of the ʿiḍāh, to seeking protection from the like of a king. 83. Cf., in this light, Tāj, art. shamasa, evoking both the sun’s blaze and a person’s unconcealed hostility. 84. Tāj, s.v. ṣ-w-b, I, II; Ibr., pp. 173–174, vv. 24–28: The poet commands a young hunter on a horse ‘like a soaring falcon’: ṣawwib!, whereon the boy rides down his quarry ‘like a powerful evening rainstorm’.

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harnessed cloud-waters,85 thus giving the eagle-horse its head, and stimulating it to a downward rush, equivalent to a heavy shower.86 That the ‘eagle’s’ plummeting is the embodiment of driven rain is suggested, also (verse 10), in ṣubba, inṣabba, and maṣbūb, the root of which (ṣ-b-b) has a key association with heavily pouring water. These allusions to man and mount as the storm are brought into relief in verse 13, where the identity of the two is picked out by the dual pronoun. Ibrāhīm’s shaddan min-humā ʿajaban renders it especially clear that the allusion here to lightning and wind – which accompanies admirable effort in urging the pace – is wholly identified with the incursion of horse and rider. A fuller sense of the ‘wonderment’ (ʿajab) they inspire may be divined from the wider poetic reach of barq and rīḥ: Barq evokes a lightning-gleam associated with the flash of weaponry, the glinting of a cloud, and the rise of an asterism; with menace, and a stupefying display of beauty.87 Rīḥ is associated with prevalent force and aggression, with attacking, or assisting against, an adversary.88 Horse and rider are, together, herald and instigator of a confounding 85. As in the verses of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim, cited in n. 36 of this chapter; cf. a dālīya attributed to Imruʾ al-Qays, Ibr., pp. 251–254, v. 15: abassat bi-hi l-rīḥu fa-stāqa-hā/wa-ḥallat ʿazāliya-hū wa-ljulūdā, “The wind gathers together [the cumulus of clouds], then drives them on and looses the retaining straps [that tie the mouths of their ‘leathern water-bags’], along with their encasing ‘skins’”; Ibr., p. 145, v. 6: rāḥa tamrī-hi l-ṣabā thumma ntaḥā/fī-hi shuʾbūbu janūbin munfajir, “[The heavy raincloud] goes forth in the evening, the east wind urging it on [pressing its ‘camelteats’] to bring forth the rain. Then, at its fore, obliquely, drops an explosive shower brought on by a southern wind”; Lyall (1918–1921), CXII, of Subayʿ b. al-Khaṭīm, vv. 20–21: ḥallat bi-hī baʿda l-hudūwi niṭāqa-hā/misʿun musahhalatu l-nitāji zaḥūfū//tazaʿu l-ṣabā rayʿāna-hū wa-danat la-hū/duluḥun yanuʾna ʿiṣāmu-hunna ḍaʿīfū, “The south wind, while men slumber, has loosened its girdle, and, easily brought to birth, [has cast thereon its rain] with a thunder-clap; While the east wind holds back the firstling of its rain, and clouds rising up, heavy with water, their retaining strap weak [and ready to give way], draw near” (Lyall’s translation, following the Bm. reading, ʿiṣām (‘retaining-strap’), v. 21. Regarding the equal plausibility of the variant ʿiẓāmuhunna, ‘their bones’, see below, Chapter 5:2: the commentary to vv. 1–8 of the main poem, and n. 44). 86. Cf. a bāʾīya of Imruʾ al-Qays (Ibr., pp. 41–55), where an open comparison is made between a storm and the act of giving a horse its head. Here, a young rider’s consecutive efforts in the hunt (vv. 37–39) find him borne on the sturdy, compact back of a horse that courses with the rush of an evening rainburst, driving hunted cows out of the moist, piled-up earth of their pastures. A kick of the shank provokes a burning tread; the whip inspires a liqueous coursing, and the rider’s chiding, the onset of a racing fury that finds the horse charging, heedless of the bridle (minʿab), and, to all appearances, bereft of reason (ahwaj): fa-laʾyan bi-laʾyin mā ḥamalnā walīda-nā/ʿalā ẓahri maḥbūki l-sarāti muḥannabī//wa-wallā ka-shuʾbūbi l-ʿashīyi bi-wābilin/ wa-yakhrujna min jaʿdin tharā-hu munaṣṣabī//fa-li-l-sāqi ulhūbun wa-li-l-sawṭi dirratun/wa-li-l-zajri min-hu waqʿu ahwaja minʿabī. 87. Tāj, s.v. b-r-q, r-ʿ-d, b-h-r. 88. Tāj s.v. r-w-ḥ; cf. an elaborate development of this idea in Ahlwardt (1870), Ṭarafa, no. 12, where the betrayal of the poetʾs confidence (vv. 10–11) is an assault equal to hostile, rain-inducing, winds: fa-anta ʿalā l-adnā shamālun ʿarīyatun/shaʾāmīyatun tazwī l-wujūha balīlū//wa-anta ʿalā l-aqṣā ṣaban ghayru qarratin/tadhāʾabu min-hā murzighun wa-musīlū, “You are, therefore, from anear, a cold and vaporous, northern wind which contracts the faces; and you are, from afar, an eastern

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aggression of mutual assistance, a star-induced storm in aspect and effect, a looming promise of conquest. At the same time, this ‘elemental’ aggression is described as the plummeting of a bucket (dalw) and the (essentially planned) lurch of its contents, thus picking up, also, the earlier allusion to the horse as a well-pulley (bakra). The explicit allusion to this image in verse 11 is arguably anticipated by huwīy (verse 9) and ṣubba (verse 10), both of which are also associated with the descent of a well-rope.89 This would reinforce the sense of fusion between a star-induced storm and a mobile bakra, carried on the ‘wings’ of the horse. How this fusion might have arisen may be traced through reference, again, to the rain-bringing anwāʾ (see above: Astral Light and Water), and a certain constellation in particular: al-dalw (‘The Bucket’). Al-dalw consists of four bright stars in Pegasus, which form a square; two of them came to be considered the twentysixth Mansion of the moon, and two, the twenty-seventh Mansion. (These stars are ‘The “Back” of the Horse’ – matn al-faras: α of Pegasus – at the extremity of the neck; ‘The Shoulder of the Horse’ – mankib al-faras: β of Pegasus; ‘The Wing/Upper Arm of the Horse’ – janāḥ al-faras: γ of Pegasus; and a star belonging to both Pegasus and Andromeda: α of Andromeda.)90 Like the earthly model of the bakra’s leather bucket, these four stars are conceived as a unit with two cross-pieces (ʿarquwatān), so that their status as the source of a downpour has them defined: ‘the place from which the waters of a bucket are poured forth’ (fargh al-dalw), ‘the place where waters flow from between the cross-pieces’ (maṣabb al-māʾi bayna l-ʿarquwatayn). Hence, the twenty-sixth Mansion of the moon is called ‘The First Place of Outpouring’ (al-fargh al-awwal), and the two stars that belong to it, ‘The Higher Cross-piece of the Bucket’ (ʿarquwat al-dalw al-ʿulyā); and the twenty-seventh Mansion is called ‘The Second Place of Outpouring’ (al-fargh al-thānī), and its own two stars, ‘The Lower Cross-piece of the Bucket’ (ʿarquwat al-dalw al-suflā).91 The analogy with the bakra appears to continue in ‘The Rope’ (al-rishāʾ), which apparently composes the next neighbouring, twenty-eighth Mansion. There is also a stellar ‘source’ available toward the celestial Pole (the conceptual axis on which the stars were perceived to revolve) in the form of al-ḥawḍ, composed of seven stars in banāt naʿsh al-kubrā (The Greater Daughters of the Bier/Ursa Major). It is possibly pure coincidence that we find a link here with Pegasus. Were it intended, one could infer that the typical flood-like incursion of a horse is here represented as the potential of al-dalw, compounded by allusion to a winged horse that perfectly complements the ‘eagle-horse’ of the poem. This aside, a straightforward comparison of a coursing horse to an outpour from al-dalw seems to be Salāma b. Jandal’s intention when he asserts that his steed races to the hunt like a torrential wind with no cool, bringing with it, by turns, from every quarter, a rain inducing slime and mire, and a torrent that causes the valleys to flood”. 89. Tāj, s.v. h-w-y: a verse of Zuhayr, cited below in n. 99 of this chapter; Muḥkam, s.v. t-l-l: ṣabba l-ḥabla fī l-biʾr, “he lowered the rope into the well”. 90. Lane, arts janāḥun, farghun. 91. Ibn Qutayba (1956), pp. 82–84.

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flow (uthʿūb) from the ‘outlet of the bucket’ (fargh al-dalw).92 The allusion here, in verse 11, to al-dalw may thus be taken as a creative synthesis between the earthly ‘pulley’ that the poet conceptually brings to combat, and the potential of al-dalw, the asterism, to deal out a torrential ‘downpour’. This being the conceptual force with which misfortune (al-shaqāʾ) descends (verse 10), we can also see a rationale for how al-dalw – ‘the bucket’ – and dhāt al-ʿarāqī – ‘the possessor of cross-pieces’ – came to be proverbial terms for the descent of calamity.93 It may be added, as a point of interest, that the poetic sequence in hand  –  which creates a conceptual equation between the elevated commotion of lightning and wind that induces the rain, the ascent of a swollen bucket, and the flight of an eagle poised to descend  – suggests itself as a model illustration of how all the latter activities can coalesce to nuance a single Arabic verb: ʿaqqa;94 that is to say, it indicates that it is inter-referential tropes from the ancient poetry that generate such coalescence. At a deeper level, the context permits us to discuss the details of the bucket’s suspensory devices in specific, ethical terms for we have here a visible entry into the chemistry between jahl and ḥilm that was earlier outlined (Part 1:1). As recalled in the commentary to verse 2, the bakra figures the moral and physical soundness of individuals and communities, and the security of their covenantal ties. An absence of Time’s ‘disease’ (dāʾ) – of the ‘sickness’ that assaults a man’s defensive intellectual ‘binding’ (ʿaql), inducing the ‘fever’ of jahl, infirmness of purpose, and the betrayal of compact - is imaged as a sound and mobile well-pulley of which the ropes and straps that secure the bucket and its contents are bound, for extra security, with auxiliary fasteners. The allusion (verse 11) to the failure of a safety strap (wadham) and security rope (karab) would, then, indicate the presence of jahl and some manifestation of ‘sickness’ that influences the intellectual restraint of ʿaql and the security of compactties. This indication is enhanced by the accompanying details: Beyond denoting the loops of a leather bucket, the ʿurā (s. ʿurwa) indicated here imply anything that renders a thing fast, and upon which reliance is placed.95 This, of course, is one of the primary functions of the compact-tie (as most expressively conveyed in verses 92. Lyall (1918–1921), XXII, v. 9: fī kulli qāʾimatin min-hū idhā ndafaʿat/min-hu asāwin ka-farghi l-dalwi uthʿūbī, “Each leg apart in its gallop seems to stream with a rush of speed as though from a bucket water poured o’er the field” (Lyall’s translation). Lyall’s translation and notes to this verse (ibid., vol. 2, p. 81, n. 9), show that he sees a comparison to the flow from a material bucket; but cf. the Arabic scholion (ibid., vol. 1, p. 232, ll. 15–20), where the overwhelming bias of interpretation inclines to the conceptual rainburst (shuʾbūb) of a horse’s gallop. In this case, ‘The Bucket’ should be the translation. 93. Tāj, art. ʿarquwatu l-dalwi. 94. See Tāj, Lane, art. ʿaqqa, including the words of a poet who says of a bucket: ʿaqqat ka-mā ʿaqqat dalūfu l-ʿiqbān, “It clave [the air of] the well, rising swiftly, like the hastening of the swift eagle in its flight towards the prey” (Lane’s translation); cf. Tāj, art. ʿaqqā, which relates both to a bird rising high in its flight (circling up a thermal current), and the movement of a bucket rising in the well while turning around. 95. Tāj, art. ʿurwatun.

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9–11 of Poem 4.2). The idea of an allusion to covenant is underlined by the presence of khāna: In addition to evoking the fracture of a rope – though clearly here relating only to the failure of certain suspensory auxiliaries – khāna expresses treachery and the fracture of compact. Muthqala, used here of the weight of the harnessed waters, defines a sense of burden and heavy oppression that is also related to the presence of sickness.96 But, note: it is only at a specific point in the charge that these ‘loops’ break loose. Dār Ṣādir’s thabtun ʿurā-hā … idh indicates their endurance until this point with a word (thabt) that connotes steadiness of heart, courage, earnestness in the assault, the possession of intelligence and self-restraint (i.e., ʿaql). Ibrāhīm’s fronted reading, buttat ʿurā-hā … idh, uses a verb of ‘cutting’ that extends to the severance of matrimonial ties, and to the capacity for decision.97 That is to say that, in either case, there is a sense of considered purpose that qualifies the nature of the jahl at issue in this ‘parting of the ways’, and therefore qualifies, also, the nature of ‘loosened’ ʿaql (intellect) and ‘sickness’. Furthermore, the bucket itself is clearly not lost: only one of the awdhām snaps; and, while the secondary rope (karab) is broken, no mention is made of the failure of the main rope or any other auxiliary. The partial ‘betrayal’ of the bucket’s appurtenances is therefore, in sum, one of purposed fracture where the ‘waters’ of covenant are guided to burst with considered effect.98 That no shame attaches to this operation is evident from the message of verse 12, which forces our attention back to the blameless momentum of horse and rider. Recalling, then, the parallel drawn above (in the commentary to verse 2) between the appurtenances of the bucket and the horse’s bridle and reins, and in consideration of the fact that the force of taṣwīb (verse 9) is to have the horse go coursing forth, this episode must be identified with the act of giving the horse its head: no longer checking it with the bridle at the culmination of the charge. The presence of jahl and ‘sickness’, the release of ʿaql, must be considered blameless in, and intrinsic to, the context, a necessary component, indeed, of the essentially managed fury of the assault.99 96. Tāj, s.v. th-q-l, IV. 97. Muḥkam, Tāj, Qāmūs, art. batta. 98. Cf. the references above, n. 85, to the wind fracturing the ‘retaining straps’ (ʿazālī, ʿiṣām) that make leathern water-bags of the clouds: In view of the integral place of the water-bag in the poetry’s scheme of liquid conceits, and the allusions to covenant that can be inferred from depictions of its continence and the security of its straps, those references suggest a high degree of analogy to the image in hand. This suggestion is supported by the fact that the rāʾīya of Imruʾ al-Qays, also referenced in n. 85, ultimately defines the storm it describes, and the wind that brings its final downpour, as the horse and rider, rather than the other way around. (A fuller overview of that rāʾīya is given in the main commentary below). 99. Cf. verse 39 of the bāʾīya cited above, n. 86 of this Section: the details of disregarding the bridle, and the ‘absence of reason’ (frenzy), inherent in minʿab and ahwaj – on which, see Lisān, art. ahwaju, and Tāj, Qāmūs, art. minʿabun; Ibr., p. 51, n. 39, which defines ahwaj as alladhī lā ʿaqla maʿa-hu, ‘someone whose reason has flown’. This episode of the fracture of bucket and rope can profitably be compared with an alternative occurrence of the fractured well-rope image in a hamzīya of Zuhayr (1964, pp. 7–15 – cited in part, above, Chapter 4, n. 48, where

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This tells us quite a bit more about the relationship between ḥilm and jahl: that while, in absolute terms, they fall in the antithetical realms of ‘health’ and ‘sickness’, they are not exactly mutually exclusive; that ḥilm is as much an attitude as a state, and that whilst jahl can, at worst, so undermine the body and intellect as to thwart effectual moral action, it can also be an inevitable condition which, appropriately guided by one who is practised in the attitude of a ḥalīm, one who knows how to effect his ‘healing’, constitutes precisely the internal ‘fever’ that will fuel the act of achieving that ‘cure’.100 Here, such a ‘fever’ fuels the purposed craze of the incursion, defined in this case, by the state of going furious and ‘ravening’ (ḍarim, verse 3) to the fray. The ‘cure’ (dawāʾ) will, no doubt, be achieved when the goal of the incursion is realised: for the ‘eagle’, this will be the dawāʾ of ‘food’; for the horse and rider, the acquisition of spoils.101 The context shows us, too, a positive face to jahl in the poetic scheme of liquid conceits. ‘Wielding water’ here is informed by a guided, essentially blameless jahl, and a certain inevitable and necessary loosening of the ʿaql. The subsequent recollection and equilibrium of such ‘waters’ would, thus, logically, relate to the recovery of ʿaql and an unadulterated state of ḥilm.102 the focus was on gender). Zuhayr uses the same structure of ideas in an entirely different way, whilst perfectly illustrating the proverb lā budda li-l-dāʾi min ʿilājin wa-li-l-dilāʾi min ʿināj, “sickness must have a treatment, as buckets need a saving-strap”: The poet first points to the betrayal of a kinship-bond by reference (vv. 1–13) to ‘wasted camps’, to a ‘fracture of ties’ and a show of enmity on the part of a certain beloved. What we can infer is a hinted allusion to a people’s un-manful betrayal of their compact, is brought into relief (vv. 36–63) when the poet takes issue with Āl Ḥiṣn, who have broken their faith with their neighbour, and whom he affects to mistake for women. Theirs is a ‘sickness’ (dāʾ) that demands a ‘cure’ (vv. 55–56), failing which their well-being and reputations are at stake. The poet introduces his approach to the affair (vv. 17–30) – his view as to their misguidance and need to be ‘husbanded’ if they will not behave as men (vv. 36–39) – by taking to a mount which, under the saddle, becomes a superior male onager obliged to vie with his recalcitrant female as he attempts to bring her to water. As he tries to direct her over difficult terrain, she courses away (verse 21) “like a plummeting bucket whose rope has surrendered her”: fa-shajja bi-hā l-amāʿiza fa-hya tahwī/ huwīya l-dalwi aslama-hā l-rishāʾū. The poet offers a ‘natural’ scene that illustrates his own contention with recalcitrant ‘women’, the fracture of whose covenant, intrinsic ‘sickness’, lack of reason, and need for guidance, are conveyed in the image of a ‘bucket’ whose faulty rope threatens its loss. For Bauer’s statement on this onager-episode, see: Bauer (1992), vol. 2, p. 49, l. 28 ff. 100. Acknowledging a synergy between jahl and ḥilm makes perfect sense of Maʿbad b. ʿAlqama’s words: wa-tajhulu aydī-nā wa-taḥlumu raʾyu-nā, “Our hands operate with jahl, whilst our judgement has ḥilm”. As discussed in Part 1: 1, s.v. Izutsu, Toshihiko Izutsu doubted the possibility of this assertion in the real world because he assumed jahl to be an influence so wholly violent as to make it mutually incompatible with ḥilm. 101. Again, note Tāj, art. dawāʾun, a ‘cure’ that extends to food; cf. the concept of maʾākil, lit: ‘comestibles’, a prominent term for spoils. 102. Cf., in this light, Asās, Tāj, Muḥkam, s.v. th-w-b, I: how thāba defines a concept of ‘returning’, or of ‘recollection’ after dispersal, which is applied to the return of a state of health, to the recovery of a body after extenuation, to the return of the intellect (ʿaql), the return of

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With the absolute synthesis they create between the potentials of horse and rider, wind and storm, verses 9–13 teach us the clear possibility of conducting the same discussion with the focus wholly upon the storm, the idea of a horse-borne incursion being left to inference by poetic association. Such a possibility is beautifully demonstrated in one qiṭʿa rāʾīya of Imruʾ al-Qays.103 This piece devotes the first seven of its eight verses to the depiction of a rainstorm’s descent. It opens (verses 1–2) with a weighty, continuous downpour (dīma haṭlāʾ) emanating from heavy, spreading clouds that trail low toward the ground, alternately pouring or containing themselves as they race along. We witness the lizard (verse 3) forced to apply all its skill to swim in the waters’ wake, its pummelling paws failing to find ground. With the first of the rain (verse 4), the trees, curiously, appear to be severed, beturbaned heads. Then (verse 5), they are hit by a heavy spill (wābil) that erupts torrentially (munhamir) from pendulous clouds. At evening (verse 6), these clouds are urged first by the east wind, then by a southern wind that causes a fierce shower to burst forth. It pours vehemently (verse 7) until the breadth of the territory called Tented Abodes (khaym), Aridity (jufāf), and Opulent Ease (yusur) are sorely beset by its torrential rollers (ḍāqa ʿan ādhīyi-hi). Not until verse 8 does the poet reveal his purpose: the morning finds him borne at the forefront of this ‘torrent’ on a horse that is slender in the flanks, and of sturdy, compact make (qad ghadā yaḥmilu-nī fī anfi-hī/lāḥiqu l-iṭlayni maḥbūkun mumarr).104 This abrupt recourse to narrative juxtaposition once again creates a product, not a ‘sum’: It calls into relief well-understood, implicit associations between rain and wind, horse and rider; the very opening, dīma haṭlāʾ, is finally identified with, and transformed into, a crushing horse-borne assault.105 (It seems not to be a coincidence that the root h-ṭ-l extends to the concept of marauding).106 Rather than compare his attack to a rainstorm, the poet - with breath-taking economy – chooses to define the activity of a rainstorm sweeping the lands as his own mounted incursion. Lastly here, we can note that the concatenation of images in verses 9–13 project the incursion of horse and rider in terms evocative of the figure of aspiring Death that haunted the poet in verses 10–12 of Poem 2.5, in the form of a questing ‘eagle’ an ‘eagle’, incidentally, that also ‘dangled’ (tadallat) over rain-hung lands with the clemency (ḥilm), and the recollection of the waters of a well, or tank, after they have been accessed; Lyall (1918–1921), CV, of Muʿāwiya b. Mālik, v. 24, CVIII, of ʿAwf b. al-Aḥwaṣ, v. 6, where thāba conveys, in the context of battle, respectively, the successive recollection of the horses’ energies, and the successive re-grouping of warriors; cf., also, the concepts of jūlun and zajrun, signifying, respectively, the inner wall, and the interior casing of, a well: both are metaphorically used of a man’s ʿaql, his capacity for self-restraint and self-protection: Lisān, s.v. j-w-l, and z-j-r. 103. Ibr., pp. 144–146. 104. Cf. the verses of ʿAwf b. ʿAṭīya and Suwayd, cited above in nn. 73 and 74, which had the poets at the forefront of their respective ‘torrential waters’. 105. Cf., in this light, Tāj, art. haṭala, which connotes both pouring water, and the careering of a horse. 106. See Tāj, s.v. h-ṭ-l: hayṭalun, which defines a raiding-party.

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semantic promise - d-l-w - of a ‘bucket’ poised to descend. There, however, the poet’s identification with the figure of the oryx, in which there is no ‘sickness’ at all, signalled a hope of escape that is far less certain for the ‘wolf ’ of this poem. Verses 14–18: For all that the ‘wolf ’ puts up a stiff resistance (verse 12), earlier suggestions that this is a conflict between creatures of disparate virtue are, perhaps, enhanced in the detail (verse 16) of the wolf ’s face and jaws being defiled in the dust (taʿfiru-hu).107 In light of the marauders’ aggression being identified with a storm-torrent, it is interesting that the exertions of both wolf and eagle are called shaʾābīb (verse 15). Shaʾābīb suggests, first and foremost, ‘rainbursts’, which would render the conflict, at one level, a clash of antithetical ‘storm-potentials’; but, recalling the nuance of solar aggression also intrinsic to the mounted initiative (verse 7), the extension of shuʾbūb to the diffusion of the sun’s rays, too, is interesting. Indeed, the poetic fusion of fierce solar ardour with cascading water – specifically with the ‘star-induced’ fargh al-dalw (the ‘Outpouring of the Bucket’) – is illustrated by Abū Khirāsh al-Hudhalī.108 This is noted for reference below where the relationship of the horse’s potential with the force of the sun as well as the rain is discussed. Perhaps the most powerful idea here, though, is that the marauders are harbingers of Death. This is openly indicated in verse 17 where the eagle’s aggression is identified with the menace of the Fates (al-manāyā), the eagle figuring the descent of Time’s ‘sickness’, or, as anticipated, the wolf ’s only ‘sickness’ other than hunger: Death. Here, Dār Ṣādir’s illā wa-hwa maktūb (‘except that it be written’) epitomises the sentiment that nothing escapes the Fates when they truly aim, or are destined to, hit. Ibrāhīm’s illā wa-hwa makrūb (‘except that he meets distress’) simply leaves us in little doubt that the wolf ’s life-prognosis is poor. His attempts to take refuge amid rocks (verse 15), and effect taḥarruz, (i.e., to secure himself in the like of a ḥirz, a fortified stronghold), compares unfavourably to the recurrent topos of the ‘rock-fort’ that renders men sublimely secure from attack, and figures the acme of self-defence, nobility and might (ʿaql, karam and ʿizz). The wolf here is implicitly lowly and insecure. And, in consideration of the explicit reference to a confrontation with Death, the idea also suggests itself that the wolf seeks a refuge that is all but his tomb: Ibrāhīm’s daḥl (verse 16) describes a cavity that can connote the lateral hollow of a grave.109 In this context, the focus on the aggressor’s talons (verse 14) taps into the conception of 107. See Tāj, art. ʿafara, which extends from the dispatch of a predator’s quarry to rendering another base and abject (cf. the poet’s imprecation, Poem 3.4, v.1); ibid., art. dhaqanun (which defines the place where the two lateral portions of the lower jaw combine): how proximity of the lower jaw to the ground, or difficulty in raising it, figures baseness and the inability to defend oneself. 108. Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 2, p. 119, l. 7. 109. Tāj, s.v. d-ḥ-l, t-w-w.

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Death (al-manīya, al-Dahr) as a rapacious creature with talons (makhālib), or else, with ‘dog-tooth’ and claw (nāb, ẓufr)110 – thus giving a face, as it were, to a faceless raptor. The identification of the eagle as Death to the wolf, in contraposition to Life, is also discernible in verse 18. Dār Ṣādir’s reading conveys this subtly, with a stronger emphasis than Ibrāhīm’s on the idea that this is a daytime encounter. The wolf waits out the day (ẓalla), anticipating the fall of night, which remains ‘veiled’ (maḥjūb). Here, the ḥijāb (veil) in question is, of course, the light of the sun.111 The suggestion is that the fall of night will signal respite from immediate danger. This has a general, sympathetic resonance with the recurrent identification of battle with the blaze of day; but we may note that Bishr b. Abī Khāzim illustrates, quite precisely, how a people’s ‘well-pulley’, or ‘star-induced storm’, engages an enemy until a ‘barrier’ finally comes between them; namely, night.112 Thus, Dār Ṣādir’s reference here would allude to a respite offering hope of continued life, in contradistinction to the eagle’s aggression, aligned with the blaze of the sun, which promises Death. Ibrāhīm’s reading offers a complementary distinction: the wolf sees out the day (ẓalla) guarding against the eagle’s initiative, and contemplating beloved Life. While night is not explicitly mentioned, the eagle’s attack is aligned with the day, and her status as Death implied by the value placed on her desirable opposite, Life. The third alternative appears to be a complementary synthesis of the same ideas:113 The wolf sees out the day watching the eagle and waiting for night, Life being so beloved by him. The distinction that obtains, once more, is between the eagle, aligned with daylight and Death, and the onset of night that brings some hope of survival. The narrative thus ends on an interesting note of suspension, the dominance of the predatory ‘eagle-horse’ established, though without a definitive ‘kill’, or resolution – a scenario we find also elsewhere, as we shall see later in this chapter. The association between the immediate threat of hostilities and the light of the sun is worth noting, not least because it offers a rationale for explaining the recurrent cliché of a poet’s taking to his mount in the early hours before making an incursion that might also be identified with an auroral ‘storm’ (or its poetic analogue).114 It seems possible, 110. Discussed in the commentary and notes to verse 12 of Poem 1.4; cf. a rithāʾ of Umayma b. ʿAbd Shams al-Hāshimī, where the colocation, nāb and mikhlab, is attested, rather, in relation to Time (Cheikho 1888, p. 129, v. 5): aḥāla ʿalay-himī dahrun/ḥadīdu l-nābi wa-l-mikhlab “A deadly impetus of Time set upon them with its sharp-edged tooth and talon”. 111. See Tāj, art. ḥijābun. 112. Lyall (1918–1921), XCVI, vv. 16–17: ladun ghudwatan ḥattā atā l-laylu dūna-hum/wa-adraka jarya l-mubqiyāti lughūbu-hā//jaʿalna qushayran ghāyatan yuhtadā bi-hā/ka-mā madda ashṭāna l-dilāʾi qalību-hā, “From early morning until the night came between us and them, and weariness overtook the running of our most enduring steeds. Our cavalry singled out Qushair, and went straight for them, as the well straightens out the ropes of the buckets that ply therein” (Lyall’s translation). The additional analogue of the poet’s army as rainclouds brought by the Pleiades (v. 11 of this qaṣīda), was cited above, n. 36. 113. Abū Sahl’s reading, cited above, n. 18. 114. Note that the culmination of the ‘storm’ in v. 8 of Imruʾ al-Qays’ rāʾīya (Ibr., pp. 144–146), overviewed in the latter part of the commentary to vv. 9–13 of the key poem above, is identified

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too, that a ritual significance attaches to this identification of hostilities with the sun’s blaze, given the emphatic frequency with which raiding and battle are related to the hours of sun, particularly when we bear in mind the old formula for the ritual ghāra which was apparently not undertaken until the rays of the sun lit up Mount Thabīr.115 As regards the poem in hand, the alignment of the aggression with the hours of the sun may have a bearing on the poet’s choice of ṣaqʿāʾ in verse 7. There, we found that the semantic range of this epithet facilitated developments in such a way that the figure of the she-eagle was brought to the fore without losing sight of the horse’s identity – or its forelocks. Al-ṣaqʿāʾ being also an epithet of the sun, and the wolf having resorted, in one reading, to the [shade of the] great sarḥa tree, it was inferred that the eagle-horse’s incursion, qualified by ṣaqʿāʾ, rendered it somehow, perhaps, a threat to be equated with the sun’s ardour – an equation underlined in that the continued threat of the incursion is contingent on the sun’s presence. And, given that aṣqaʿ also denotes a horse’s forelock, it was proposed that the choice of ṣaqʿāʾ for the ‘eagle-horse’ might be intended to point to the horse’s forelocks at precisely the moment it is to prove its worth. If the horse’s potential is to be aligned with the force of the sun, and if an allusion to the forelocks is intended by ṣaqʿāʾ, and relates to the same potential, then the further suggestion would be that the forelocks, in and of themselves, signify every virtue illustrated in the assault, including those qualities aligned with solar force. In this way, the aphoristic sentiment of verse 19, which throws the forelocks of the horse into full relief, and also alludes to the portent of the sun, would follow, perhaps, as a logical summary of the horse’s composite value and virtue. Read as the first verse (as Ibrāhīm), it would be announcing this to illustrate. Horse, Hair, Sun and Rain Verse 19: The value of al-khayr (the Good) should be weighed against the sum of the horse’s virtue in all that precedes. Al-khayr would thus imply the commitment and cooperation within compact that demonstrate a noble constitution; physical soundness and strength; the capacity to access, and effectively wield, inherited ‘waters’ to attain material benefit. This points to karam, wafāʾ and ʿizz (generosity, fidelity, power), the principal qualities that benefit life  –  all fully in harmony with the breadth of associations identified earlier in relation to al-khayr. Meanwhile, the clear suggestion with the early morning hours (ghadan); cf. v. 16 of the bāʾīya of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim, cited above, n. 112, where the beginning of the incursion is identified with the same (ghudwatan). 115. This ghāra being the pilgrimage rite of descending to course between Muzdalifa and Minā, and the formula in question: ashriq thabīr kaymā nughīr, “Enter upon the time of sunrise, Thabīr, so that we may press down”. (Lane, s.v. gh-w-r, IV, notes this with variant interpretations); Fahd, (1968), p. 242, l. 4 ff., and n. 3, discusses the significance of the timing of such rites. He supports his case for attaching ritual significance to this choice of hour by noting (ibid., and n. 4) the changes the Prophet is reported to have made to the timing of pilgrimage rites, according to the rise and set of the sun, precisely in order to mark a departure from pre-Islamic practice; cf. Ryckmans (1951), p. 8, ll. 24–34.

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of verse 19 is that an intimate relationship obtains between this Good and horses’ forelocks – or, at least, between this Good and their generous forelocks: A comparable elaboration on the virtue of horses by Salāma b. Jandal indicates that forelocks have a primary importance, but, where positive virtue is concerned, it is an abundance of hair that is to be understood.116 If we follow the root-sense of maʿṣūb – used here to indicate the conceptual binding of this Good to the forelocks – we walk into a wider world where responsibility for behaviour relating to compact – both praiseworthy and disgraceful – is conceptually ‘bound’ thus to the head. The relationship drawn here between virtue and the hair of the head – specifically the forelocks – seems to belong to a broad scheme that encompasses also the virtues of men.117 What, though, of the portent of the sun? What is the force here of the formula, ‘as long as a sun should rise and set’? (The poet says shamsun, indefinite). To infer that this indicates ‘for all time’, cannot be controversial; but in light of a similar saying, attributed to the Prophet, which closely resembles verse 19 – though with a very notable distinction – and in consideration, also, of the Qurʾan’s treatment of the portent of the sun – its rising and setting – it seems worth considering if this does not invoke a pre-Islamic perception of time with no specified end, and, perhaps, to the sun with cult status. The Prophetic tradition in question states: al-khaylu maʿqūdun fī nawāṣī-hā l-khayru ilā yawmi l-qiyāma, “the Good is firmly knotted in the forelocks of horses until the Day of Resurrection”.118 As with maʿṣūb in verse 19, the ‘firm binding’ described by 116. Lyall (1918–1921), XXII. Elaborating the past and present glories of his people, the poet stresses the virtues embodied in, and the attention lavished upon, their horses. Notably (v. 9), they career with the force of fargh al-dalw (see above, n. 92), and implicitly participate (v. 21) in wielding a ‘well-pulley’. Early in the poem (v. 8) the poet asserts their perfect physical constitution, referring to a forelock that is not thin: laysa bi-asfā wa-lā aqnā wa-lā saghilin/yuʿṭā dawāʾa qafīyi l-sakni marbūbī, “Not thin his forelock, nor humped his nose, no weakling of limb: preferred is he in the dealing of milk, well nurtured at home” (Lyall’s translation); cf. ibid., I, of Taʾabbaṭa Sharrā, whose self-praise (v. 7) qualifies an apparently general perception of the superior quality of horses with abundant forelocks: lā shayʾa asraʿu min-nī laysa dhā ʿudharin/ wa-dhā janāḥin bi-janbi l-raydi khaffāqī, “Nothing is faster than I – not the [horse] possessed of forelocks, nor the winged [bird of prey] that flutters by the mountain-ledge”. 117. See Tāj, Lane, art. ʿaṣaba: ʿaṣaba bi-raʾsi qawmi-hi l-ʿāra, “He bound disgrace to the head of his people”; cf., ibid., attributed to ʿUtba b. Rabīʿa at the Battle of Badr: irjiʿū wa-lā-tuqātilū wa-ʿṣibūhā bi-raʾsī, “Turn back, fight not, and bind [the disgrace that will accrue] to my head; cf. Lyall (1918–1921), I, vv. 14–15, where Taʾabbaṭa Sharrā defines his ideal ally and source of succour as one with the most abundant [fore-]locks (ḍāfī l-raʾs); ibid, XCVI, of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim, v. 7 and sharḥ, which indicate how the loss of the forelock (dhuʾāba, syn. nāṣiya) by one held to ransom is a momentous matter of disgrace; Qurʾān, 96: 15–16, where the sinner’s disgrace is identified with his “sinful, lying forelock”; Tāj, Asās, art. dhuʾābatun: how forelocks figure the most elevated among people, and thus the resort from which protection and alliance are sought; Tāj, s.v. dh-r-w, V, tazawwaja min-hum fī l-dhirwati wa-l-nāṣiya, “He wed from among their forelocks”, i.e., their most noble. 118. Noted by Fahd (1966), p. 502, n. 5, in relation to augury from the physique of horses; Wensinck (1936–1988), vol. 2, p. 96, final entry, lists references for this tradition.

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maʿqūd relates to ideas of being bound (‘knotted’) by oath and covenant. It also carries associations of intrinsic strength, and, in certain contexts, knotting the forelocks seems to have connoted readiness for war: The forelocks of horses were, apparently, knotted prior to battle.119 Unlike verse 19, this tradition does not allude to an ongoing cycle of time, marked by the rise and set of a sun; it refers to a definite end-time with the Day of Resurrection. The stark comparison suggests the possibility that the tradition represents a transformation of ideas, which renders any unspoken function that might be attributed to the portent of sun subject to the Islamic temporal scheme, and which redefines the special place of the horse to imply a role for it in assisting the Islamic Good up to – and perhaps including – the Day of Resurrection.120 These perceptions can be weighed against the details relating to the rising and setting of the sun that occur in the Qurʾanic account of Dhū al-Qarnayn, who features as an agent of Allāh’s justice.121 Invested with power over every reach of the Earth, he arrives at the setting-place of the sun. He finds it setting on a people located by a muddy spring. Here, respite from punishment is given to those who have acted righteously. As for those whom he finds at the sun’s place of rising, punishment is, we may infer, not to be avoided: he finds it rising on a people to whom Allāh had appointed no shelter therefrom. Moving on to assist another people against Gog and Magog, he dams the two up; but this is a mercy only to endure until the Final Gathering. In this narrative, the setting of the sun is associated with a certain respite, its rising with inevitable punishment, and its portent subject entirely to the moral and temporal scheme of Islam. How, then, is the particularisation of the sun in verse 19 to be regarded, and how should its absence from the said Prophetic tradition be viewed? It could be argued that verse 19 alludes to the sun as a portent of divine force for all time [until the Final Day], a reference to the Resurrection being implicit, but not mentioned. (This might strengthen the case for ascribing the poem, as composite, to Ibrāhīm b. Bashīr al-Anṣārī).122 At the same time – along with the lack of any strong indication in the poem of anything specifically Islamic – we have the reference to shams in an indefinite capacity. This may, of course, just be a product of idiom, which easily resorts to such indefinite usage; but it can also be noted that there are no references in the Qurʾan to the sun, either as a heavenly body subject to Allāh’s will and a portent of His power, or as a false object of worship, without the article.123 The indefinite, shamsun, is, though, attested as name of a sun-deity, variant of shamsu, an object of idol worship 119. Lisān, s.v. ʿ-q-d, I, II. 120. See Qurʾān, 100, which opens with the image of horses raising fire underfoot as they career at the foe. A reference to the sun is implicit (āya 3) in the temporal location of their raid after the break of dawn (ṣubḥan). The sūra is wholly directed toward a reminder of the Judgement on the Day of Resurrection. 121. Qurʾān, 18: 83–106. 122. As noted in Ibr., p. 225, l. 2. 123. See Qurʾān, 6: 78, 10: 5–6, 27: 24, 41: 37, 91: 1.

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(ṣanam);124 and there are also individual clues in the poetry, and in the Qurʾan, that such a ṣanam was identified with the sun itself. An important poetic clue, ascribed to Āmina b. ʿUtayba al-Yarbūʿī, illustrates the divinity of a sun whose setting delivers respite from toil, but does not undermine her godly status.125 In the Qurʾan, however,126 it is precisely the fact of the sun’s removal and setting that proves its deific status as false: such celestial bodies are to be viewed as signs of the One God’s power. To conclude that verse 19 is ideologically Islamic would thus require assuming its unspoken allusion to Time as a period that ends with the Day of Resurrection, through reference to the sun as a portent of Allāh’s power, by a term (shamsun) that is not used in the Qurʾan (though is perhaps simply a product of idiom), and does not appear in the Prophetic tradition cited above. Otherwise, the verse may allude to Time without end, through reference to the sun as an ongoing diurnal force, and in a form that bears interpretation as a pre-Islamic divinity, which might explain its absence from (or being supplanted in?) the said Prophetic tradition. In this light, the sentiment of the verse could be taken as the precursor of an Islamic transformation of ideas, whereby a pre-Islamic symbol of ritualistic dimensions is absorbed into the design of Islam, and becomes subject to the power of Allāh.127 The clear subjection, in the Prophetic tradition, of the Good imputed to the horse and its forelocks to the Islamic moral and temporal scheme may represent the modification of an older idea, embodied in this verse, that attributed Good to the horse and its forelocks, in a nonrestricted time-frame wherein the sun exemplified a power to which this Good was subject, or with which it could be aligned. Would this have a bearing on the connection, discussed, between the portent of the horse’s forelocks and the sun itself? If so, what is the relevance of this connection to the overall sequence of the poem? This is a difficult question to pursue on the basis only of poetic material, but there is linguistic evidence of an equation between the radiation of sunlight and fire (carried, for example, in the verb ṣaṭaʿa), and the diffusion 124. Tāj, art. shamsun, which summarises opinions on why reference to ‘sun’ as deity is alternately perfectly or imperfectly declined. 125. Discussed by Fahd (1968), p. 152, n. 2 (arguing, however, that the moon is intended): tarawwaḥnā mina l-laʿbāʾi ʿaṣran fa-aʿjalnā l-ilāhata an taʾūbā, “We required respite from the heat of the day and urged the deity to return [to her setting-place]”. 126. Qurʾān, 6: 74–79. 127. Cf. the story of Gog and Magog in Poem 1.1, on the one hand, and its place in the narrative on Dhū al-Qarnayn in the Qurʾan, on the other (Qurʾān 18: 83–106). The former relates the damming up of Gog and Magog at the place of the sun’s rising by force of al-Dahr, and constitutes a moral lesson in the need to adhere to the ethic in covenant with faithful kinsmen in order to ensure the best chances for earthly survival in the context of Time with no specified end. The latter, where al-Dahr has no independent function, holds the story testament to the mercy and prevalence of Allāh, and constitutes a moral lesson in rightguidance for the purpose of achieving eternal salvation in a temporal scheme ending with the Day of Resurrection.

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of hair from the upper-head: fire, like hair, radiates out in the form of ‘forelocks’.128 There is also evidence of a conceptual connection between the sun’s radiation, and the impetus of a ‘star-induced’ torrent: As mentioned (in the commentary to verses 14–18), this is embodied, broadly, in the concept of shuʾbūb, ‘rainburst’/‘sunburst’ – a bivalency complemented in a verse of Abū Khirāsh al-Hudhalī, which describes the punishing force of solar rays by comparing this to the cascading force of the waters of fargh al-dalw, ‘the Outpouring of the Bucket’ – precisely the force to be discerned in this poem. The concept of shuʾbūb has clear currency as an expression of equine coursing (as in verse 15), and must, by virtue of verse 19, be considered a potential of the Good ‘bound into’ the horse’s forelock. The sum of this points to an interpenetration of ideas relating to sun, rain, and the potential of the forelocks, that is wholly complementary to the collage of nuances accumulating in verses 7–18. This is a collage in which the gathering ‘storm-force’ of the horse’s incursion is suddenly translated (verse 7) into the figure of a she-eagle called ṣaqʿāʾ – an epithet carrying nuances of the sun and of equine forelocks. The sense of alignment between the onset of the raid and solar force (Ibrāhīm’s reading, verse 7), where the ‘wolf ’ is located by the great sarḥa tree, is temporarily thrown out of focus during the elaborate description of the descent of the ‘storm’ (verses 10–13); but it resurfaces again (verse 18) in the suggestion that night will signal respite from the aggression. The praise of forelocks (verse 19) effectively embraces the total potential ascribed to the horse in the poem, whether read as the first verse (with Ibrāhīm) or the last (with Dār Ṣādir). Read as the last verse, following the more emphatic alignment of the raid with the hours of the sun, this praise renders the sense of relationship between the horse’s ‘proven’ powers and the portent of the sun especially close. The ‘headlining’ of the verse, though, neatly announces the key concept of equine virtue that the body of the poem will illustrate. The least that could be inferred, then, in any case, is that the forelocks of horses are the conceptual seat of a force somehow equated with both the sun and the rain. If a ritualistic, or even deific, status attaches to the figure of the sun, the Good incarnate in horses’ forelocks may also be supposed to have a very special relationship with the sun’s power; and this is a perception which may relate, in turn, to the ritualistic emphasis with which raiding and war are generally allied with the hours of the sun.

128. See Asās, art. dhuʾābatun: the expression, nārun ṣāṭiʿatu l-dhawāʾib, “a fire of radiating forelocks” i.e., a fire that rises and spreads.

5:2. The Gambler and the Storm

Whilst developing critical elements of the preceding section, we concentrate here on one polythematic qaṣīda, considered in four parts, which, we will argue, constitute the development of one, sustained train of thought, couched in the pervasive paradigm of maysir-gambling. Maysir was an institution generally portrayed as a charitable game of chance where persons of means provided for guests, the poor and destitute, in times of hardship. Maysir was condemned by the Qurʾan – along with wine (khamr), idols (anṣāb) and divining arrows (azlām)  –  as a satanic abomination that would foment enmity and distract from worship of the One God.1 And yet, though proscribed for reason of the great sin (ithm) it implied, maysir was also openly credited with affording certain social benefits (manāfiʿ):2 What was intended precisely by the ‘sin’ and ‘benefit’ mentioned in these Qurʾanic injunctions, or even how, exactly, maysir was played, seems to have become something of a mystery already by the time of al-Aṣmaʿī (740–828?),3 some two to three generations before Ibn Qutayba (828–889) became so intrigued as to take up the problem in his Kitāb al-maysir wa-l-qidāḥ (the Book of Maysir and Arrow-shafts).4 Ibn Qutayba regarded the early poetic corpus as the obvious place to turn for enlightenment on these issues, but was baffled, when he did so, not to find the information that he wanted:5 I have not found any subject as important and useful to Arab poets less well represented in their poetry; even the most productive poets have maybe only two or three verses on it, and most of them do not mention it at all, in contrast to their method of (constantly) describing camels, horses, donkeys, ostriches, gazelles, grouse, deserts, and reptiles.

He supposed that the Qurʾanic proscription against maysir had caused disinterest in the topic on the part of Muslim poets;6 but he determined, nonetheless to examine

1. Qurʾān, 5: 90–91, cited in n. 36 of the General Conclusion. 2. Qurʾān, 2: 219, cited in n. 36 of the General Conclusion. 3. Rosenthal (1975), p. 74 and note 31; Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām al-Harawī (d. 837) claimed in his Gharīb al-Muṣannaf to have learned little from the Bedouin whom he questioned on the topic: Fahd (1966), p. 208. 4. Ibn Qutayba (1924). 5. Ibid., p. 31. The translation is Franz Rosenthal’s (1975), p. 4. 6. Ibn Qutayba (1924), p. 30. This has scarcely been challenged; but see Rosenthal, (1975), pp. 4–5, who, unconvinced, offers an alternative socio-psychological explanation.

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what early Arabic verses he could gather – both pre- and early-Islamic – in an attempt to understand how it was played and what was its cultural significance. lbn Qutayba saw maysir as a prestigious, charitable means of providing food for the poor when famine struck. It was played by casting untipped and unfeathered arrows (qidāḥ), seven of which had value (al-anṣibāʾ/al-maghāliq), whilst three did not (al-aghfāl). Notches (furūḍ) on the seven arrows of value, descending in number from seven to one (thus totalling twenty-eight), represented the numbers by which the game was played (like dots on a die), as well as the stakes (rihān) which would be redeemed or lost. The arrows of value were pre-selected by a maximum of seven players to gamble for portions of a she-camel that would undergo hocking (ʿaqr) prior to slaughter. All the arrows were collected in a cloth, or pouch, called the ribāba. This was made over for shuffling (ijāla or ifāḍa) to someone called the ḥurḍa or baram, a proverbially despised character - supposedly because he would receive a portion of the slaughter-meat having himself risked nothing. Precautions were taken to see that he could not cheat: he was blindfolded and overseen by a participant called the raqīb, or ‘watcher’. The ribāba was shaken and thrust so that the arrow-shafts would emerge only one at a time. As often as they emerged, the aghfāl (the unnotched arrows without value) would be returned to the ribāba. The first shafts with value to emerge would win, from the ten portions (aʿshār) of the slaughter-camel (jazūr), shares commensurate with the notches they bore. (lbn Qutayba rejected al-Aṣmaʿī’s view that the jazūr would have been divided into twenty-eight parts – equalling the total number of notches upon the arrow-shafts – on the grounds that this would have reduced the game to a straightforward process of division, thus defeating the object of gambling where there should be winners and losers).7 A game ended after all the aʿshār (the ten divisions) had been allocated to their respective winners. Those whose chosen arrow-shafts remained in the pouch at the end of the game paid between themselves for the value of the camel - apparently in direct proportion to the value of the shafts which they had initially selected. However, this is only one theory. How maysir would have been played, in fact, is difficult to ascertain: there are conflicting views on the matter;8 and there is little in lbn Qutayba’s reconstruction – or indeed any alternative source outside the Arabic poetic tradition  –  that offers compelling insight into its origins, or convincing reasons for the Qurʾanic injunction against it.9 What remains of the early poetry does not resolve all these controversies. It does, however, reveal much about the function and meaning of the game. We find, therefore – against the assumption of Ibn Qutayba – that maysir belongs to, and can only be properly perceived as part of, an integral network of ideas that includes all the familiar themes of the pre-Islamic poetical canon. 7. Ibn Qutayba (1924), 120–121. 8. See the discussions and literature cited in Fahd (1966), pp. 207–213; Rosenthal (1975), pp. 74–76. 9. Rosenthal (1975), pp. 67–74, gives an informative account of the colourful, though ultimately unhelpful, nature of the Arabic literary tradition as a factual source on pre-Islamic maysir and gambling in general.

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5:2. The Gambler and the Storm Poem 5.2:10111213141516171819202122

‫بيض‬ ‫يُـضي ُء َحـبـيّـا ً في شَـمـاري َخ‬ ِ ‫هيض‬ ‫م‬ ‫ب الك‬ ِ ‫يَـنُـو ُء كَـتَـعْـتـا‬ َ ‫َســيـرالـ‬ ِ ِ ْ َ‫أ ُكفٌّ تَلَقَّى الـف‬ َ ‫فيض‬ ‫م‬ ‫ال‬ ‫د‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ع‬ ‫ز‬ َ ْ‫و‬ ِ ُ ِ ‫ريض‬ ‫ فَال َع‬11 ‫ث‬ ٍ َ ‫ـالع يَ ْـثـلـ‬ ِ ِ ِ‫َو بَـيْـنَ ت‬ 12 ‫ألريض‬ ِّ ‫فَـوادي الـبَد‬ ِ‫ي فَا ْنتَ َحى ل‬ ِ ‫َريض‬ ‫ث في فَضا ٍء ع‬ ٍ ‫َمدا فِـ ُع غَـ ْي‬ ِ ‫بـيض‬ ‫فاص‬ ‫ص‬ ‫في‬ ‫باب‬ َ‫ف‬ َ َ ‫الـض‬ ِ ِ ‫يَحو ُز‬ ِ ْ ‫َو‬ َ‫إذ بَ ُع َد الـ َمزا ُر َغ ْي َر الق‬ ‫ريض‬ ِ َ َ ْ‫ر‬ ‫َريض‬ ‫ع‬ ‫ء‬ ‫ضا‬ ‫ف‬ ‫في‬ ‫في‬ ‫ط‬ ‫ـ‬ ُ‫ب‬ ٍ ِ ّ‫أُقَـل‬ ِ ُ ّ‫كَأ ن‬ ّ ‫هيض‬ ‫م‬ ‫ـنـاح‬ ‫ج‬ ‫َن‬ ‫ع‬ ‫ي‬ ‫د‬ ‫ع‬ ‫أ‬ ‫ـي‬ َ َ َ ٍ ِ ْ ً َ ُ ‫ضيض‬ ‫ح‬ ‫ال‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ا‬ ‫ـمـ‬ ‫ئ‬ ‫قـا‬ ‫ه‬ ‫ْـ‬ ‫ي‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ل‬ ‫إ‬ ‫ـت‬ ‫ل‬ ‫نَـ َز‬ َ ِ ِ ِ ِ ‫َحيض‬ ‫ِّـنـان الـصُّ لَّب ِّي الـن‬ َ ‫كَـ‬ ِ ‫ح الس‬ ِ ِ ‫ص ْف‬ ‫َضيض‬ ‫خاف غ‬ ‫ويَـرْ فَـ ُع طَرفا ً غَـيْـ َر‬ ٍ ِ َ ‫ـبـيض‬ ‫ق‬ ‫ْـن‬ ‫ي‬ ‫د‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ي‬ ‫الـ‬ ‫ْـل‬ َ َ ِ ‫ـر ٍد عَـب‬ ِ ِ ‫بِـ ُمـ ْن َج‬ ِ 19 ْ ْ ‫ضيض‬ ‫ع‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ل‬ ‫َحـي‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ي‬ ‫جـان‬ ‫ه‬ ‫الـ‬ ‫كَـفَحْ ِل‬ َ َ ِ ِ ِ ِ ‫خيض‬ ‫ْي بَ ْع َد ال َم‬ ِ ‫ُون‬ ِ ‫جُـمو َم ُعي‬ ِ ‫الـحس‬ ِ 21 ‫َّبيض‬ ‫ب الر‬ َ ‫كَما َذ َع َر السِّـرْ حانُ َج ْن‬ ِ 22 َّ ‫فيض‬ ‫ر‬ ‫ة‬ ‫َو غا َد َر أُ ْخرى في قَـنا‬ ٍ ِ ْ ‫َو‬ َ‫أخلَفَ مـا ًء بَ ْع َد مـا ٍء ف‬ ‫ضيض‬ ِ

‫مـيض‬ ‫ق أرا هُ َو‬ ٍ ْ‫أ ِعـنّـي عَـلـی بَـر‬ ِ ً‫ت َســنـا هُ َو تـا ر ة‬ ٍ ‫َو يَـهْـ َد أُ تـا ر ا‬ ْ ‫َو ت‬ ٌ ‫ـعـات كَـأ َ نَّـهـا‬ ‫َـخـ ُر ُج ِمـ ْنـهُ ال ِم‬ ُ ‫قَ َع‬ ‫ج‬ َ‫دت لَـهُ َو صُحْ بَتي بَـيْـن‬ ِ ٍ ‫ضـار‬ ‫ْـن فَـسـا َل لِـوا هُـمـا‬ َ ِ ‫أصاب قَـطـا تَـي‬ ٌ‫ضـة‬ َ ‫ضـةٌ َو أرضٌ أريـ‬ َ ‫بِـال ٌد عَـري‬ ‫ ُكلِّ فيقَ ٍة‬13‫فَأضْ حى يَسُـحُّ المـا َء ِم ْن‬ ْ َ‫ضعيفَة‬ ْ َ ‫إذ نَأ‬ ‫ت‬ َ ‫ بِـ ِه أُ ْختي‬14‫فَأ َ ْسقَى‬ 15 َ ُّ ‫َو َمرْ قَـبَ ٍة ك‬ ُ ‫َـالز ِّج أ ْشـ َر ْف‬ ‫ـت فَـوْ قـها‬ ُ ‫ـظ ْل‬ ‫ بِلِ ْب ِد ِه‬16‫ت َوظَـ َّل الجَوْ نُ ِع ْندي‬ ِ َ‫ف‬ 17 ‫س عَـنّي ُغـ ُؤو ُرهـا‬ َ ‫فَـلَ ّما أ َج َّن ال ّشـ َ ْم‬ ٌ ‫ـح َخ ٌّد ُمـ َذ لَّـ‬ ‫ق‬ ِ ‫يُـبـاري شَـبـا ةَ الـرُّ ْم‬ ُ‫ـر لَـ ّمـا عَـلَـوْ تُـه‬ ُ ‫أُ خَـفِّـ‬ ِ ‫ضهُ بِـا لـنَّـ ْق‬ 18 ‫َو قَ ْد أ ْغتَدي َو الطَ ْي ُر في ُو ُكنا تِها‬ ‫لَـهُ قُـصْ َر يا َعي ٍْر َو سـاقـا نَـعـا َمـ ٍة‬ ‫ْـن بَ ْع َد كَال لِ ِه‬ ِ ‫يَـجُـ ُّم عَـلـى السـا قَـي‬ ُ ْ‫َذعَر‬ ‫ ِسـربا ً نَـقـيّـا ً جُـلـو ُد ُه‬20 ‫ت بِـه‬ ْ ً ‫ْـن َو أرْ بَـ َعــا‬ ً َ َ‫َو َو ا ل‬ ‫ي‬ ‫َـ‬ ‫ت‬ ‫َـ‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫اث‬ ‫و‬ ‫ا‬ ‫ـالثـ‬ ‫ث‬ ‫ى‬ َ ِ ‫ـل‬ َ َ‫ف‬ ٍ ‫ـآب إيـابـا ً غَـيْـ َر نَـ ْكـ ٍد ُمـوا ِك‬

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

10. Metre: ṭawīl. D.Ṣ., pp. 126–128; Ibr., pp. 72–77; Ahl., 35; Hussein (2009), passim, discusses vv. 1–8 of this poem, in Ibrāhīm’s version – classed as IQ2 – offering a different general breakdown of the poem (ibid., p. 158) and different readings. Ibr., pp. 394–396 compiles variants of which those not represented here are close conceptual alternatives. 11. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ:/… yathlatha &c. Carried both in Yāqūt (1866–1873, vol. 4, p. 1011) and al-Bakrī (1983, vol. 1, p. 233, s.v. al-Badī) as yathlatha. 12. Ahl., vv. 5–6: asāla quṭayyātin fa-sāla l-liwā la-hū/fa-wādī l-badīyi fa-ntaḥā li-l-yarīḍī//bi-mīthin dimāthin fī riyāḍin anīthatin/tuḥīlu sawāqī-hā bi-māʾin faḍīḍī. Yāqūt offers only Qaṭātān in relation to Imruʾ al-Qays, noting it as dual of al-qaṭātu; but he offers no location other than its existence in this poem, citing vv. 4–5, above: Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 4, p. 131. He enters Quṭayyāt – noting it plural diminutive of qaṭātun – as hills in the territory of Banū Jaʿfar b. Kilāb, citing verses from an Asadī poet: ibid., vol. 4, p. 140. Al-Bakrī (1983), vol. 1, p. 233, carries Quṭayyāt s.v. al-Badī (identified, alternately, as a wādī of the Banū ʿĀmir, citing Labīd, and of the Banū Saʿd, citing al-Rāʿī), quoting a variant of v. 5, above; also, ibid., vol. 3, p. 1084, with a verse from an Asadī poet, variant of that cited by Yāqūt. 13. Ibr: wa-aḍḥā yasuḥḥu l-māʾa ʿan &c. 14. So, with Ibr. and Ahl. Ahl., v. 9: fa-asqā bi-hi ukhtay ḍaʿīfata &c.; D.Ṣ: fa-usqī &c. 15. Ahl. v. 10: … ashraftu raʾsa-hā/&c. 16. Reading fa-ẓiltu with Ibr. and Ahl. Ahl., v. 11: fa-ẓiltu wa-ẓalla l-jawnu ʿan-nī &c.; D.Ṣ: fa-ẓaltu &c. 17. Ibr: … ghiyāru-hā &c. 18. Ibr: … fī wukurāti-hā &c. 19. Ahl., v. 16: …/ka-faḥli l-hijāni l-qaysarīyi l-ʿaḍīḍī. 20. So, in Ibr. & Ahl., v. 18; D.Ṣ: … bi-hā &c. 21. Ahl. adds, v. 19: fa-aqṣada naʿjatan fa-aʿraḍa thawru-hā/ka-faḥli l-hijāni yantaḥī li-l-ʿaḍīḍī. 22. So, in Ibr. & Ahl., v. 20; D.Ṣ:/… fī qanāti l-rafīḍī.

242

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia ُ ْ‫َذ عَر‬ ‫َهـوض‬ ‫جير ن‬ ِ َ‫الج الـه‬ ِ ِ ‫ت بِـ ِمـ ْد‬ ْ‫كَـإح‬ ‫ريض‬ ‫ِّيار َم‬ ٍ ‫راض بَـ ْك‬ ِ ‫ـر في الد‬ ِ ِ ْ ‫إذا‬ ‫ريض‬ ‫يان ِع ْن َد ال َج‬ ِ ْ‫اختَلَفَ اللِّـح‬ ِ

23 24 25

ً ‫ق َســنــا ًء َوسُــنَّـمــا‬ ٍ ‫َو ِسـنٍّ كَـسُـنَّـيْـ‬ ْ ‫أ َرى ال َمرْ َء ذا‬ ً ‫األذوا ِد يُصْ بِ ُح ُمحْ َرضا‬ 25ً َّ ‫ك‬ ‫اس سـا َعة‬ ِ َّ‫َـأن الفَتَى لَـ ْم يَـ ْغنَ في الن‬ 23 24

20 21 22

1. Assist me in the face of (aʿinnī ʿalā) lightning I see amid the white towers of a creeping cumulus (ḥabīy), flashing!26 2. By turns it abates, then rises again (yanūʾu), [a camel that has] fractured one of his limbs, limping, heavy, upon three legs (ka-l-kasīri l-mahīḍ) 3. Glancing threads of light shoot high: [a gambler’s] hands [upraised] at a win (al-fawz) from the dealer of arrows (almufīḍ). 4. With my company, I sat down for [what] it [would bring], between Ḍārij, the water-courses (tilāʿ) of Yathlath, and alʿArīḍ. 5. Then, [the] Qaṭātān [-twins] and their great winding dune (liwā-humā), then the vale of al-Badīy, and, with a down-swing (intaḥā li …), al-Arīḍ, were struck 6. – extensive terrains and luxuriant pastures – by flood-channels rushing a vast expanse (fī faḍāʾ ʿariḍ). [Ahlwardt alternative: (5) First, Quṭayyāt was made to flow, the winding dune brought spilling down; then the vale of alBadīy, then, with a down-swing (intaḥā li …), al-Yarīḍ (6), By plunging torrents (mīth dimāth) carving through ceding (lit: ‘female’) meadows (riyāḍ anītha), bloating their rivulets with coursing streams (māʾ faḍīḍ)]. 7. After dawn came showers stabbing (yasuḥḥ) from every cloud‘udder’ (fīqa), the lizards corralled onto bald hill-ridges (ṣafāṣif bīḍ). 8. Let the waters give drink to my sister, Ḍaʿīfa/to the two sisters of Ḍaʿīfa, now gone so far (naʾat) that verse alone (al-qarīḍ) may make the visit (al-mazār). ***** 9. I think of a watch-post (wa-marqaba)  –  the point of a spear (zujj) – where I’ve stood to survey the spacious surrounds (fī faḍāʾ ʿarīḍ). 10. I waited the day, my steed with his saddle-cloth on, as though parrying (uʿaddī ʿan) [the commotion of] fractured wing (janāḥ mahīḍ). 23. Ahl., v. 22: … wa-sunnamin/&c. 24. Reading so, with Ibr. & Ahl., v. 23, as perhaps the better reading, and the one followed below. D.Ṣ: … muḥriḍan &c., 25. Ahl., v. 24: … laylatan/&c. 26. The Arabic also suggests: “a cumulus high amid bare mountain peaks”. The translation above follows the model of white, mountain-like storm-cumuli attested, e.g., in ʿAbīd (1980), XXVIII, v. 6.

5:2. The Gambler and the Storm

243

11. Shielded at last from the rays of the sun when it set, I descended the mountain to where he stood. 12. A spearhead, sharpened (mudhallaq) and smoothed on the whetstone, his tapered cheek rivals the blade of a lance. 13. I calm him, as I mount, with a click of the tongue; he lifts a compliant and faithful eye. ***** 14. I am wont of an early morning (wa-qad aghtadī), the birds still in their nests, to go out on a racer of sturdy foot. 15. With the ribs of an ass and the shanks of an ostrich, he comes on like a stallion blood-camel, poised to swing down his head and bite (ka-faḥli l-hijāni yantaḥī li l-ʿaḍīḍ)/a great stallioncamel, the equal of all (ka-faḥli l-hijāni l-qasarīyi l-ʿaḍīḍ). 16. He recovers his force (yajumm) when the [rider’s] legs urge, recharged as (jumūm) the ḥisy-waters replenish each time the bucket is dashed in and drawn (baʿda l-makhīḍ). 17. So did I put to fright (dhaʿartu) a troupe [of doe-oryx], pure of skin (naqīyan julūdu-hū), like a wolf approaching sheep in the pen (al-rabīḍ). [Ahlwardt addition v. 19: He went for a doe; her bull intervened, a stallion blood-camel, poised to swing down his head and bite (ka-faḥli l-hijāni yantaḥī li l-ʿaḍīḍ)]. 18. Three does he took; and then two, and then four; one last left pierced through with a broken spear. 19. His return was neither straitened (nakd) nor slack (muwākil), his liquids restored after waters dispersed (māʾ faḍīḍ). ***** 20. I think of the bull (wa-sinn)  –  imposing, luminous, poised (nahūḍ) – I have put to fright (dhaʿartu) in the midday heat. 21. I see the defender of she-camels aplenty (dhā l-adhwād) mortify (yuṣbiḥu muḥraḍan), pressed by disease like (ka-iḥrāḍ) a sick calf amid the abodes. 22. When the jaws of the youth in his death-throes shudder (ʿinda l-jarīḍ), what will even an hour/one night among men have availed?

Verse 1: Detailing lightning that flickers and dies by turns (verses 1–3), the poet indicates that he is undertaking a very particular act of ruqūb (watching) – that of shaym: observing the lighting and clouds to see where rain might fall.27 His response to what he sees is not dispassionate: He says aʿin-nī ʿalā barqin – a call for assistance that implies some awe 27. Tāj, arts awmaḍa, wamḍatun, shāma (shayman). The lexicographers emphasise that shaym is practised only when lightning flashes and immediately disappears.

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Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

at what the lightning portends, and brings into question the limp interpretation that he simply invites others to ‘help him watch’.28 Such a reading assumes the ellipsis, after ʿalā, of a reference to ‘watching’, and that ʿalā functions to introduce the performance of that act.29 If one assumes no such ellipsis, ʿalā reads, rather, as something akin to ‘against’.30 This is certainly what the poet intends by aʿin-nī ʿalā in a poem, rhyming in tāʾ, which offers a verse-based inroad to understanding the same phrase in the main poem here. In that poem, he affects (verses 1–2) to pass by deserted camps where he is impelled (verse 3) to crouch, enshrouded, his cloak over his head, and cast [divination] stones whilst he weeps. Saying aʿin-nī, “help me” (verse 4), he cries for assistance in warding off  – ʿalā – the relentless onslaught of memories and cares that flock to him by night till, racked by affliction, he feels (verse 5) his night-hours to be like the longest night, and his days equally distressing.31 Here, it is a series of camps – not a storm-cumulus – that moves the poet, and divination stones – not the lightning-flash – that serve as tools for ‘reading’ consequences. One may infer that these camps serve as reminders of Time’s fearful havoc, the changes that rupture relations and extinguish lives, and that the poet falls prey to the ‘sickness’ of returning cares (humūm), which typically crowd by night to ‘sap’ a man’s resources (as with the poet’s ‘old sickness’ – dāʾ qadīm – in verses 4–5 of Poem 2.6), or to stress the ‘receptacle’ of his continence till it bursts and he weeps (as with the revived ‘hidden residues of disease’ – ʿaqābīl suqm – in verses 3–4 of Poem 2.5) – a situation demanding an ethical response to manage a potentially destructive crisis. This is the ‘sickness’ of rayb aldahr. By enshrouding himself in his cloak in a way that could be called muzammal, or mudaththar, the poet adopts an attitude of sheltering from malignance.32 Aʿin-nī ʿalā reads as a perception of, and response to, deadly force, and as an invocation for succour in facing off debilitation. If a similar meaning is to be read into aʿin-nī ʿalā in the main poem in hand, one should, of course, show how the latter scene can translate into the idiom of nature and the elements; and this can be done as follows: In his muʿallaqa, al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza rebuffs an antagonist, asserting his people’s resilience and honour in terms of towering strongholds (ḥuṣūn) possessed of ibāʾ  –  unyielding refusal to submit to injury – a concept discussed in the commentary to verses 5–9 of Poem 3.7, in regard of the impregnable ‘mountain-forts’ of the Banū Thuʿal. These were secure heights 28. As Ibr., p. 72, n. 1. 29. As in the saying aʿāna-hu ʿalā l-amr, “he helped him perform the affair”: Lane, s.v. ʿ-w-n, IV. 30. As in the prayer (ibid.): rabb-ī aʿin-nī wa-lā tuʿin ʿalay-ya, “Lord, aid me and aid not against me”. 31. Ibr. 78–82, vv. 3–5: ẓaliltu ridāʾ-ī fawqa raʾsiya qāʿidan/aʿuddu l-ḥaṣā mā tanqaḍī ʿabarāt-ī//aʿin-nī ʿalā t-tahmāmi wa-l-dhikarātī /yabitna ʿalā dhī-l-hammi muʿtakirātī//bi-layli l-timāmi aw wuṣilnā bimithli-hī/muqāyasatan ayyāmu-hā nakirātī. 32. Cf. al-Bukhārī (1895), Pt. 1, 1:3: the terror ascribed to the Prophet after first receiving the Revelation, prompting him to cry for a covering in which to enshroud himself till it passes: fa-qāla zammilū-nī zammilū-nī fa-zammalū-hu ḥattā dhahaba ʿan-hu l-rawʿu, “He cried, ‘Cover me, cover me!’ – whereon they covered him until the fear had departed”.

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‘cloaked’ in a striped ‘burd’ in a way that could be called mudaththar, or muzammal.33 Al-Ḥārith develops this image into a lofty mountain against which the artillery of the elements can make no impression; artillery the ultimate mover of which he explicitly identifies as al-Dahr.34 He does not ascribe an enshrouding ‘garment’ to this ‘mountain’ such as that of the said heights of Thuʿal. Had he done so, he would have projected a figure of corporate sheltering from the ‘elemental’ assault of al-Dahr entirely analogous to the image of the cloak-enshrouded poet in the tāʾīya verses cited in the last paragraph. It is the muʿallaqa of Imruʾ al-Qays that realises the potential to beget such an analogous figure: With the onslaught of a cataclysmic storm, Mount Thabīr, pitched against the forefront of a flood that demolishes everything but the firmest rock-edifice, is projected as a great chieftain enshrouded in a striped cloak (kabīru unāsin fī bijādin muzammalī).35 As in verses 1–8 of the main poem above, the devastation of the storm in Imruʾ al-Qays’ muʿallaqa is anticipated by the watchful scrutiny of shaym (‘reading’ the lightning); flashes within a cumulus (ḥabīy) are a pair of hands flying up; and the poet invokes the assistance of another party as he watches what he describes. In one recension, this invocation for assistance is expressed by: aʿin-nī ʿalā barqin urī-ka wamīḍa-hu, “assist me in the face of lightning, [the sign of which] – its flash – I reveal to you”.36 Accepting that the image of Thabīr beset by the storm of Imruʾ al-Qays’ muʿallaqa is an analogy of the poet’s own sheltering figure in the tāʾīya discussed above, it is reasonable to posit that aʿin-nī ʿalā carries similar associations in both poems: that it is a response to the certain knowledge of Time’s destruction. This, in turn, informs the interpretation of aʿin-nī ʿalā barqin in our main poem here: The lightning and mountainous stormcloud presage distress and destruction, the looming ‘sickness’ of rayb al-dahr.37 33. Al-Tibrīzī (1969), al-Ḥārith, vv. 23–24; cf. the use of ibāʾ in respect of the ḥiṣn (‘fort’) of alSamawʾal’s heritage, in the tāʾīya verses cited in Chapter 1, n. 57. 34. Al-Tibrīzī (1969), al-Ḥārith, vv. 25–26 (cited in Chapter 3, n. 98). 35. Al-Tibrīzī (1969), Imruʾ al-Qays, v. 77. 36. The variants are listed, ibid., in the commentary to v. 70. 37. It should be noted that there are self-evidently metaphorical allusions to shaym that express the same ideas. See, e.g., a lāmīya attributed to Imruʾ al-Qays (Ibr., p. 362, no. 100) where, reasserting his manly integrity, the poet recalls (v. 5) how he roused an exhausted party to undertake an arduous journey (a variation on self-resurrection after succumbing to rayb al-dahr, discussed in the commentary to vv. 8–12 of Poem 2.5). Recounting their fight against exhaustion, and their anticipation of distress, he says (v. 6): fa-qāmū nashāwā yalmasūna thiyāba-hum/yashīmūna abrāqa l-mashaqqati min ajl-ī, “So they rose, ‘intoxicated’, touching at their robes, examining the ‘lightning-flashes’ [that told] of forthcoming trials [they would experience] because of me”. (‘Touching the robe’ – mass al-thawb – is, in itself, explicitly attested as an expression of rayb in a couplet of Khālid b. Zuhayr: Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 1, p. 165); cf. a qiṭʿa attributed to ʿAbīd b. al-Abraṣ (ʿAbīd (1980), Frag. 11): “The King of evil intent on his evil Day gave me choice of cases to choose, each of which flashed death full sure to mine eyes (arā fī kulli-hā l-mawta qad baraq): As once of old was the choice offered the Children of ʿĀd – yea, clouds wherein no delight or joy to the choosers was hid: Clouds fraught with tempest of wind, which, once let loose on a land, leave all therein like the night that comes before thirst quenched” (Lyall’s

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Verse 2: The influence of al-Dahr is also discernible in the development of the lightning-play (verse 2), which the poet affects to see as the burdened movement of a camel limping on three legs after the fourth is injured (ka-taʿtābi l-kasīri l-mahīḍī). One can suppose that it is a camel intended here (i.e., a nāqa kasīr), on the grounds that only camels, and specifically she-camels, are associated with cloud-activity in the build-up to a storm, before the first rain breaks.38 Thunder can be ‘sky-camels’ groaning for their young.39 The wind teases rain from these ‘camels’, either by loosing the retaining straps on the spouts (ʿazālī) of their ‘water-bags’ (mazād), or else by stroking their ‘teats’, causing rain to accumulate in their ‘udders’.40 Such ‘camels’ as these are represented (verse 7) by allusion to each pocket of water that accumulates and showers as a fīqa: properly, milk that collects in the udder between two milkings.41 Broadly, the laborious rise and fall, the sense of fracture and collapse in verse 2, connotes a pent-up burden of accumulating waters that will, when their pressure becomes too great, burst through their cloud-containers and onto the lands below.42 The use of yanūʾ hints at the influence of the rainstars (anwāʾ) behind the progress of the storm.43 The crippling motivation of al-Dahr is strongly implied through the use of mahīḍ: The primary sense of hāḍa is translation); cf. Qurʾān, 24: 43, where the same images appear, instead, as signs of Allāh’s power and the destruction only He can wreak. 38. A camel of unspecified gender (baʿīr) is suggested by the glosses (Ibr., p. 72, n. 2; D.Ṣ., p. 126, n. 2) Note, however, ʿAbīd (1980), XXVIII, v. 9, where the storm-play after the first rain breaks is like a sprightly horse in the fight. 39. See v. 10 of Poem 2.5; ʿAbīd (1980), XXVIII, vv. 12–13: ka-anna fī-hi ʿishāran jillatan shurufan/ shuʿthan lahāmīma qad hammat bi-irshāḥī//buḥḥan ḥanājiru-hā hudlan mashāfiru-hā//tusīmu awlādahā fī qarqarin ḍāḥī, “The thunder rolls, as if there she-camels great, of full age, rough-haired, their dugs full of milk, yearned crying after their young;//Hoarse-throated, moaning their cry – trembling their pendulous lips – they lead their younglings to feed some stretch of plain in the sun” (Lyall’s translation); Ibr., p. 148, ll. 6, 8. 40. Examples were cited above, n. 85 of Chapter 5:1; cf. the beautifully developed example of ʿAbīd (1980), VI, vv. 2–7: jawnun tukarkiru-hu l-ṣabā/wahnan wa-tamrī-hi kharīqu-h//maryā l-ʿasīfi ʿishārahū/ḥattā idhā darrat ʿurūqu-h//wa-danā yuḍīʾu ṣibābu-hū/ghāban yuḍarrimu-hū ḥarīqu-h//ḥattā idhā mā dharʿu-hū/bi-l-māʾi ḍāqa fa-mā yuṭīqu-h//habbat la-hū min khalfi-hī/rīḥun yamāniyatun tasūqu-h// ḥallat ʿazāliya-hū l-janū/bu fa-thajja wāhiyatan khurūqu-h, “Black is its mass by the Eastwind rolled, in the early night, and the strong gusts stroke it,//As the herdsman strokes his shecamel’s dugs, till the gathered rain fills all the udders,//And it draws anigh with its fringe of white lightning the scrub which its flashes kindle;//Until no more can its strength uphold the abounding burthen of pent-up waters,//There blows behind it a gentle breeze from al-Yaman, thrusting the mass before it;//Then loosed the South all its water-spouts [i.e., the spouts of its ‘water-skins’] and it pours the flood from its rifts wide-opened” (Lyall’s translation). 41. Tāj, s.v. f-w-q, I. 42. As in ʿAbīd (1980), VI, vv. 5–7 (see above, n. 40), XXVIII, v. 10: fa-ltajja aʿlā-hu thumma rtajja asfalu-hū/wa-ḍāqa dharʿan bi-ḥamli l-māʾi munṣāḥī, “The roar begins at the top; then all below quakes again, and straightway loosed is the flood – no more can the burthen be borne” (Lyall’s translation). 43. ʿAbīd (1980), XXIII, vv. 6–7, explicitly mentions the influence of the anwāʾ in the storm-play.

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to fracture a bone or a wing that has already once been mended. It extends to causing a relapse into disease, to the affliction of a heart, time and again, with grief, to the return of passionate desire, and to injurious treatment that demands requital.44 As we have seen, these are all senses poetically identified with Time’s returning ‘disease’. Such an allusion to renewed affliction that anticipates a dangerous cloudburst, puts us in mind of the ‘residues of disease’ (ʿaqābīl suqm) reawakened in the poet in Poem 2.5. There, it was not lightning, but, rather, the never wholly-effaced traces of camps that were the tokens that stimulated a revival of ‘sickness’ – specifically, the remembrance of a lost loved one and kinsmen. It was not a new fracture in a ‘patched-up’ leg that expressed an ‘ailment’ that must give way to a flood, but a new fracture in a patched-up ‘water-bag’ (shaʿīb), which gave way to an alternative cascade: the poet’s tears – whose showering, incidentally, was conveyed in language evocative of rain (saḥḥ, tahtān). These comparisons suggest that just as, there, the poet appeared to project, onto the surrounding landscape, features from the ‘landscape’ of his mind, disturbed as it was by discernible traces of bayn (morbid separation instigated by Time), so might the poet here be projecting onto the skies the activity of a ‘storm’ that brews equally in his heart, and that also relates in some way to bayn. The further suggestion is that a conceptual relationship exists between tears and the rain. These last two points are picked up below in the commentary to verse 8, in specific regard of the poet’s invocation for isqāʾ, a ‘giving to drink’. But the incorporation, into the poet’s vision, of a celestial game of maysir-gambling in the next-immediate verse, suggests a more particular relevance to the choice of a hobbling sky-camel here: the hocking (ʿaqr) of a slaughter-camel (nāqa jazūr), wherewith a maysir-match would normally commence, and after which, general consensus says, its flesh would be divided into ten portions (aʿshār).45 Verses 3–7: Verse 3 presents maysir as the wider context that frames the storm, and the wider vision within which the poet’s involvement in its progress is to be considered. Let us first examine the progress of the storm before returning to the issue of the poet’s involvement. What ensues, broadly, is the unforgiving downward sweep of torrents across lands that are carefully listed by name. The poet ostensibly places himself (verse 4) in the way of the lowering stormcloud between a place called Ḍārij, and between the Yathlath water-courses (tilāʿ) and al-ʿArīḍ. He connects the two latter locations with the phrase fa-l-ʿarīḍ. It is his allusion to water-courses called tilāʿ which first implies that a flood from the imminent storm will take a descending route: Tilāʿ are channels 44. Tāj, s.v. h-y-ḍ, I. We may now understand how, in verse 21 of Subayʿ b. al-Khaṭīm’s Mufaḍḍalīya CXII (discussed above, Chapter 5:1, n. 85) the cloudburst anticipated by the nawʾ of heavily burdened rainclouds can be expressed, equally, as the strain placed on the retaining strap (ʿiṣām) of their ‘water-bags’, or on their weakened ‘bones’ (ʿiẓām) - pace Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 1, p. 731, n. y. 45. Cf. Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 2, p. 212, l. 8, where Sāʿida b. Juʾayya explicitly identifies the rise and fall of lightning with the movement of an ʿaqīr: a camel hocked for slaughter at maysir.

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in which waters cascade from high ground to a valley-bed.46 This, coupled with the sequential force of fa in fa-l-ʿarīḍ, suggests that al-ʿArīḍ is an area located along the route that the oncoming torrents will take, and at a lower point than Yathlath. Ḍārij suggests itself in this sequence as a critical location identified with the point where the waters will break before swelling the awaiting water-channels. The implicit promise of a downward flood is enhanced by the allusion to madāfiʿ (verse 6) in their capacity as critical coordinates on the torrent-route: Madāfiʿ are the lower ends, or ‘tails’ (dhunūb), of consecutive tilāʿ, i.e., connector-channels between one talʿa and the next below.47 It follows that the areas listed in verse 5 mark descending points on a flood-path through tilāʿ and madāfiʿ whose waters first bring down the sands of Qaṭātān/Quṭayyāt, then forge through the Valley of al-Badīy, and finally emerge upon al-Arīḍ, the semantics of which indicate productive pastures where waters collect. (Ahlwardt’s alternative, al-Yarīḍ, is perhaps only a dialectal variant. It might otherwise be a non-classical deverbal, loosely based on arāḍa (r-w-ḍ IV) which, brought into relation with land, would convey a similar sense).48 Within this sequence, bilādun ʿarīḍatun wa-arḍun arīḍatun (verse 6) is, perhaps, best taken as an extraordinary parenthesis that picks up the semantics of the areas called al-ʿArīḍ and al-Arīḍ – connoting, respectively, ‘the wide expanse’, and ‘the soft, luxuriant pasture’ – to convey the massive scope of the waters’ sweep, and imply, elliptically, the unstoppable force with which these lands are successively taken. Certainly, the idea of vast scope is underlined at the close of this verse (with fī faḍāʾin ʿarīḍ).49 These effects are only enhanced with the interpolation of Ahlwardt’s edition (between verses 5 and 6 of the reading of Ibrāhīm and Dār Ṣādir). This verse alludes to lands that are mīth (s. maythāʾ), indicating massive moat-like excavations, which are forged by tilāʿ-torrents descending heavily from leagues above.50 The allusion to these tracts as ceding and non-cohering (dimāth), and to the soft and herbaceous ‘female’ meadows (riyāḍ anītha) that collect and spill forth waters, heightens the sense of compliance and lack of resistance. These effects of ceding ‘femininity’ also nuance the cloudwaters’ aggression with a certain erotic undercurrent – one not difficult to allow since, as we have seen, the poetry is apt to make unmistakable comparisons between coupling and the descent of (male) cloudwaters into (female) hollows (see the commentary to vv. 3–9 of Poem 2.4). While the readings of Ibrāhīm and Dār Ṣādir do not allude directly to the forging of moat-like mīth, or offer such suggestive indications of erotic dynamism in the sky-waters, these nuances could, nonetheless, 46. Tāj, art. talʿatun. 47. Qāmūs, arts dāfiʿatun, madfaʿun. 48. Qāmūs, arts aruḍati l-arḍu, arīḍun; Asās, Muḥkam, s.v. r-w-ḍ, IV, imperfect: yurīḍu  –  to become abundant with riyāḍ, i.e., moist and verdant tracts of land. 49. This sequence might thus be read as an elaborate variation on ʿAbīd (1980), XXVIII, v. 8, commenting on the scope of a storm-flood: “Before the rush of its rain high ground and low are all one, and he who crouches at home as he who wades through the plain” (Lyall’s translation). 50. Tāj, arts talʿatun, maythāʾu.

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be seen as intrinsic to yaḥūz (verse 7), which defines how the unfortunate lizards (ḍibāb) are herded together: Ḥāza carries key nuances of gathering, or corralling, and driving to water, that are consonant with the encompassing pattern described by mīth-formations; and it is also strongly associated with conquest and domination, extending to erotic ‘compression’ of the female.51 So far, then, we find that verses 4–7 convey a fulfilment of the deadly promise of the poem’s opening. This is figured by a quasi-erotic conquest of the lands, and is bounded between two conceptual co-ordinates: (i) the unstoppable flow of tilāʿ water-courses and their intermediary channels (madāfiʿ/dhunūb); (ii) the fate of ḍibāb (lizards) corralled to face a watery demise. The choice of these co-ordinates seems quite considered: it reflects proverbial associations of tilāʿ and ḍibāb that relate to the theme of death by water. With regard to tilāʿ, this is evidenced, for example, in a tradition promising: fayajīʾu maṭarun lā yamtaniʿu min-hu dhanabu talʿatin, “A rain will come, in consequence of which the ‘tail’ of a water-course will not be impeded’, i.e., a rain so forceful that none will escape it.52 As to ḍibāb, they feature in aphorisms that revolve principally about two concepts: endurance – the ḍabb is perceived to be the longest-lived of creatures, and the best able to survive drought – and a decided incompatibility with water, which ḍibāb are said never to drink or voluntarily approach, and by which they are flushed from their coverts into hunters’ snares. They are also proverbially associated with guile and a sinful neglect of duty. Thus, the ḍabb would present itself as a suitable exemplar for discussing the onset, or inevitability of, death.53 A poem attributed to Ṭarafa manipulates these possibilities to moral advantage. It opens with lizards (ḍibāb) that have been flushed from their coverts, floating dead amid scum swept about by a torrent. The clear message, in the context, is how death was relentlessly visited on past generations: The poet juxtaposes this image with a statement of allegiance to a people of consummate virtue – sinless in their noble endeavours, their generosity and resolute ḥilm – which, the poet is optimistic (verse 6), has a future beyond the present: … min jurthūmatin/tatruku l-dunyā wa-tanmī li-l-baʿad, “… from a root-stock that leaves the here and now, and progresses to what is beyond.”54 The product of this juxtaposition is to define the lizards’ fate as a statement on how death became a finality for communities not possessed of the radical virtues that the poet ascribes to his own. To return to our main poem, the combination of tilāʿ and ḍibāb, respectively, as the agents and victims of Death, arguably implies a similar message: Contemptible individuals are said to be unable to impede the ‘tail’ of a tal ʿa (lā yamnaʿu dhanaba 51. Tāj, art. ḥ-w-z, I. 52. Tāj, art. talʿatun. 53. Lisān, s.v. ḍ-b-b; Lane, art. ḍabbun; cf. Tāj, art. al-fiṭaḥlu: Ruʾba’s verses rhyming in lām, and explanation: Were the poet to live as long as the life of a new-born ḍabb (allegedly 700 yrs), or the life of Noah in the days when the Earth was mire, he would, nonetheless, finally become the ‘pledge of a grave’ (rahīna jadathin – on which, see Chapter 3, n. 130, and related discussion), or of slaughter. 54. Ahlwardt (1870), Ṭarafa, no. 3. On al-baʿad, see, further, El Masri (2015).

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talʿatin)55 – an inability that could obviously be applied to the ḍibāb of this poem, and would not be undermined by the fact that abject meanness is another proverbial attribute of the ḍabb. Thus, a poet deprecates a people whom he calls ‘stinking’ (manātīn), and irredeemably ‘mean’ (abrām), by comparing them to ḍibāb ensnared in Death’s coils.56 In sum, it seems not unreasonable to infer that the image, in our poem, of lizards caught in a mortal trap figures the fate of creatures of little intrinsic worth, and may even imply a statement of just deserts. In addition, given the suggestion that the storm in our poem is cast in the frame of maysir-gambling, the fact that ḍibāb in a deadly predicament can be compared specifically to abrām has a special interest: The meanness and ignominy implied by baram relate to his being the type of ‘parasite’ who would not participate in maysir except, perhaps, to deal the arrows; who, though content to eat from the slaughter-meat, did not contribute to the stakes. If, then, the predicament of our ḍibāb connotes the imminent demise of creatures equivalent to the most ignoble of those associated with maysir, might not the lizards’ nemesis – the tilāʿ, madāfiʿ, and floodwaters they channel – be forces conceptually identified with the antithesis of such lizards: worthy and successful ‘maysir-players’? ***** A Short Geographic Diversion If a maysir-match is in play in which the tilāʿ and madāfiʿ equate to the winning parties, one might ask whether there could not be some indication as to the rihān, or ‘stakes’, for which they play: the aʿshār, or ‘tenths’, apportioned to them. Because of the clear numerical details emerging hereafter in the episode of the ‘hunt’ (verse 18), equalling ten, and beginning with the figures, three, and then two, I take the liberty of a slight detour to investigate the possibility of a similar such trail here, among the lands. I believe there is poetical interest in this, in any case; but readers unsympathetic to speculation can skip to the next set of asterisks. The precise numerical configuration indicated later, in verse 18, is three, two, four, and then one. In the language of maysir-arrow distributions – so far as we are given to understand – these values would translate, respectively, as those of arrows called raqīb (‘watcher’ – value 3 tenths), tawʾam (‘twin’ – value 2 tenths), ḥils (‘villous-pile saddle-cloth’ – value 4 tenths), and fadhdh (‘single’ – value 1 tenth). If we return to verses 4–5, it seems that some kind of numerical configuration is, perhaps, suggested in the territorial sectors engulfed. The first indication presents itself (verse 4) in Yathlath, which appears to be based on thalatha, and thus readily evokes some kind of ‘threeness’. The possible interpretations of making up, or destroying, three would

55. Tāj, art. talʿatun. 56. Lisān, s.v. ḍ-b-b: manātīnu abrāmun ka-anna akuffa-hum/akuffu ḍibābin unshiqat fī l-ḥabāʾilī.

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suit the context,57 indicating that a land-division defined by a value of three has been staked out, corresponding to the value of the raqīb, or ‘watcher’-arrow. The next suggestion of numerical division occurs in the first of the areas that the madāfiʿ engulf: Qaṭātān (verse 5 in the reading of Ibrāhīm). This reads literally as ‘two sandgrouse’; and the sense of ‘twoness’ is emphasised by the dual pronoun of liwāhumā. Qaṭātān might, then, be an area corresponding to the tawʾam, or ‘twin’-arrow, worth two ʿushrs (‘tenths’). In this case, the choice of name may be taking advantage of an association, which seems to have had some currency, between sandgrouse, or, properly, sandgrouse chicks, and the concept of tawāʾim (twins). This association is evidenced, for example, in a poem of Kaʿb b. Zuhayr, where chicks waiting for parents to bring them water are called firākh tawāʾim  –  ‘twin chicks’  –  and tawāʾim ashbāh  –  ‘identical twins’. (They are also called ḥumr al-ḥawāṣil, ‘without crops and feathers’, an intriguing detail when compared to maysir-arrows, which have neither tips nor feathers).58 Tawāʾim ashbāh is later repeated verbatim by al-Akhṭal, alluding to sandgrouse chicks awaiting water.59 The variant, Quṭayyāt, or ‘little sandgrouse’ (Ahl., verse 5), does not directly indicate a twofold value; but if an association between sandgrouse chicks and the concept of tawāʾim had currency, then the idea of ‘twinship’ might equally well attach itself to an area with this name once the theme of maysir is registered. Thus, both Qaṭātān and Quṭayyāt (‘sandgrouse twin-chicks’) could be taken to signal a value corresponding to the win of a tawʾam arrow. The next area engulfed is the Valley of al-Badīy. Badīy shares some synonymity with badʾ. The context of maysir stated, it might not be unnatural to extend this synonymity to one other particular meaning of badʾ; namely, ‘one portion’, or ‘the best portion’, of a slaughter-camel divided in gambling.60 This could account for another ʿushr, a portion equivalent to the value of the fadhdh, or ‘single’-arrow. This leaves the area called al-Arīḍ/al-Yarīḍ. If a numerical significance is implied here, and if the computation above (totalling six aʿshār) is valid, then this area should account for a final four aʿshār, which would make it equivalent to the value of the ḥils-arrow. A principal meaning of ḥils is any thing, or, more specifically, any woolhair cloth (kisāʾ) which is placed on a riding-animal under the saddle (raḥl). One may recall here the observation above on the semantics of al-Arīḍ/al-Yarīḍ, how they evoke land that collects water and gives growth to luxurious herbage. Such land has a ready connection with the ḥils: it is liable to be called arḍ muḥlisa, or mustaḥlisa, and the dictionaries are quite explicit in explaining this in terms of the appearance of something clad in a ḥils-cloth.61 Ideally, one would like to see evidence of this perception in the poetry, i.e., a direct comparison of herbaceous, rain-fed lands to 57. Tāj, s.v. th-l-th, I. 58. Kaʿb (1950), no. 6, vv. 15–16. 59. Al-Akhṭal (1970–1971), vol. 1, no. 2, v. 7. 60. Qāmūs, s.v. b-d-ʾ; Lane, art. badʾun. 61. Tāj, s.v. ḥ-l-s, I, IV, X.

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saddle-cloths. A model example, in fact, appears in a lāmīya of Imruʾ al-Qays, which describes the effects of a copious rabīʿ (spring-rain) thus: ṣāba ʿalay-hi rabīʿun bākirun/ ka-anna quryāna-hu l-riḥālū, “[A lowland] upon which an early rabīʿ-rain had poured; the places where the waters poured into the meadows seemed like ‘saddles’”.62 Riḥāl here cannot mean ‘saddles’ as such; and, indeed, raḥl can connote any or all of the elements comprised by the saddle-gear, the ḥils being isolated as a specific example.63 The glosses on the said lāmīya indicate that riḥāl should be understood as ṭanāfis.64 The ṭinfisa is a kind of soft woollen cloth (kisāʾ) with a pile (khaml), which is placed on a mount’s back, beneath the saddle (raḥl); or, it is a cloth placed, some say, over the saddle.65 In this capacity, it would come under the rubric of ḥils. As with the ḥils, the correspondence between ṭanāfis and herbaceous land lies in a perceived resemblance between the villous pile (khaml) of the cloth, and the luxuriant growth of soft, plain land that collects water (khamīla),66 land that could equally be described as muḥlisa, or arīḍa. In sum, the context of maysir registered, it could be that the semantic connections between ‘ḥils’ and land that is arīḍ would have been such as to permit al-Arīḍ/al-Yarīḍ to evoke a final four ‘tenths’ of lands that are ‘won’ by the torrents, making a clean sweep. The degree of devastation, is, in any case, rendered absolute. ***** Verse 8: Let us return, then, to the question of the poet’s involvement, and the earlier conjecture that he may be responding to a manifestation of Time’s ‘sickness’ in the form of bayn: morbid separation that might have moved him to tears, but inspires, rather, a personal projection onto the activity of the storm. Verse 8 permits us to pick up these points. Here, the poet makes an invocation for isqāʾ: for the waters to irrigate an abode associated with Ḍaʿīfa – ‘infirm’, ‘incapacitated’ – or “the two sisters of Ḍaʿīfa”, too far (naʾat) to be visited (baʿuda l-mazār) by anything but verse (al-qarīḍ). This confirms that a question of bayn is at issue, and that the poet is personally involved with the storm’s progress to the degree that he wills it to result in isqāʾ, a ‘giving to drink’, or ‘irrigation’. We should therefore consider what kind of bayn is intended and what are the farther implications of the poet’s shaym (his reading the lightning), and his call for isqāʾ. As discussed earlier (in the commentary to verses 1–2 of Poem 2.2), shaym and bayn are intimately linked in the poetry. Studying the lightning to see where rain 62. Ibr., p. 191, v. 10. Borg’s dismissal of riḥāl here (1994, p. 13, n. 17) has no legitimate, textual basis. 63. Miṣbāḥ, art. raḥlun. 64. Ibr., p. 191, n. 10. 65. Qāmūs, s.v. ṭ-n-f-s; Tāj, Lisān, s.v. kh-m-l. 66. Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. kh-m-l.

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might fall may imply measurable distance that separates erstwhile jīrān; but shaym followed by an all-engulfing torrent is strongly associated with another type of bayn: the immeasurable distance (buʿd, naʾy) that separates kinsmen when Death intervenes. A pertinent example is illustrated in a famous elegy of Mutammim: Having watched the lightning and a subsequent deluge, he calls for torrents to quicken the land over his brother’s grave. This he does, he says, not for love of the land, but as a greeting (taḥīya) to one who is all too distant (nāʾin).67 (His words are consonant with the understanding that graves might lie by water-courses where life-giving rains would ensure a continued luxuriance of herbage).68 His use of taḥīya for this liqueous greeting is engaging: the word is derived from the same roots as al-ḥayā, ie., rain that brings life to the land. Thus, he imputes to the rains’ isqāʾ the quality of a life-quickening substitute for mazār (visitation), and the ability somehow to span the untraversable distance that prohibits his making a visit in person. The comparable scope of the storm in our main poem here, coupled with the poet’s emphasis (verse 8) on the untraversable distance (buʿd, naʾy) that separates him from Ḍaʿīfa and prohibits mazār, may indicate that the bayn in question here is separation by Death, whereby mazār can only take place with the death of the poet. (Recall here Poem 4.1, and its conceptual reversal of buʿd and qurb  –  distance and proximity: The mazār of a departed jāra (‘wife’/‘neighbour’), located at the ultimate ‘distance’, was only rendered ‘near’ by the poet’s affecting to be at Death’s door. A transformation of buʿd to qurb would take place upon his ‘traversal’ into the abode of the dead; and ‘union’ (waṣl) within that ‘abode’ would transform ‘strangerhood’ (gharāba) into ‘near-relatedness’ (qarāba)). In this case, the first thing that could be said of the poet’s call for isqāʾ is that it wills two opposite dimensions onto the deluge: on the one hand, a drink of death for certain entities; on the other, a life-giving drink that substitutes for mazār to one whom he suggests, perhaps, by the name Ḍaʿīfa, is somehow incapacitated. At the same time, this isqāʾ would appear to stand as an analogue for the vitalising, or ‘healing’, visitation of close kin in worldly life (see the commentary to verses 1–5 of Poem 2.1). As such, the call for isqāʾ would also imply commitment to the mutual support and ransom (fidāʾ) of protected neighbours (jīrān). It is in this light that we should consider the poet’s choice of al-qarīḍ for the ‘poetry’ that he suggests can reach Ḍaʿīfa’s abode. The context, as we read it, endows this ‘poetry’ with the capacity to traverse the distance into the abode of the dead, and associates it with mazār and the reciprocal obligations of jīrān. These are all nuances into which the roots of al-qarīḍ have tapped: The root q-r-ḍ has a principal association with a concept of ‘cutting’ that includes the ideas of traversing land, and moving from one locale to another. It also relates to the severance of the bond of life, the fact of verging on death, and dying. The sense of ‘passage’ that the root implies extends to reciprocal visitation (mazār), to the lending and receiving of loans (qurūḍ), 67. Lyall (1918–1921), LXVII, vv. 23–28. 68. ʿAbīd (1980), XXVIII, v. 5, and Lyall’s notes.

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and, thereby, to compensation and requital (jazāʾ).69 The moral force of the reciprocal ‘loaning’ implied is reflected in its correlation with the absolute obligation to fulfil a duty called farḍ, as in: mā aṣabtu min-hu farḍan wa-lā qarḍan, “I obtained from him neither an assigned share, nor a gift/a loan [to be requited]”.70 The poetry couples qarḍ and farḍ together to express the reciprocal responsibility of jīrān in waṣl (‘neighbours’ in a kin-compact): what is ‘loaned’ or ‘borrowed’ should receive a just requital (jazāʾ).71 Now, the duty called farḍ, so intimately associated with qarḍ, is explicitly defined by some lexicographers as an obligation inextricably attached to a person the way that the farḍ – or notch of a maysir-arrow – is imprinted. This offers one perspective onto how the kinship-ethic, and the obligation of jīrān to commit themselves to mutual ransom, are embraced by a wider paradigm of gambling. That the moral responsibility to requite the ‘loan’ defined by qarḍ extends to undertaking ‘requital’ in its most extreme form – blood-vengeance – is indicated in a tāʾīya of al-Shanfarā. Here, the qarḍ, or loan, in question equates precisely to the life of a kinsman whom an assassin’s hands have ‘transferred’ (azalla – zalla itself embodying a concept of ‘passage’ that extends to the transfer of a loan, which renders it highly consonant with the wider implications of qarḍ). The poet’s vengeance is effectively a jazāʾ, or requital, that redeems the ‘transfer’ of a ‘loan’ – or, rather, equalises a debt incurred by the assassin.72 To return to verse 8 of our main poem, the sum of the above suggests that the poet’s qarīḍ may be the verbal expression of his commitment to offer an appropriate requital to Ḍaʿīfa, even in death – a requital identified with both the deadly and lifegiving potentials of the isqāʾ invoked, which can conceptually be related to the act of blood-vengeance, and which is embraced by the paradigm of maysir-gambling. To argue that the poet’s intention may, indeed, be to express a commitment to undertake vengeance requires us to illustrate how vengeance, and the poet’s part in fulfilling it, could be equated with the effects of this storm. Such an equation can be traced as follows. 69. Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. q-r-ḍ. 70. Tāj, art. farḍun. 71. Another ḍādīya attributed to Imruʾ al-Qays (Ibr., p. 291, no. 71, v. 1) illustrates this in the thematic frame of betrayed love with a woman: ḍannat ʿalay-ka lamīsu bi-l-farḍī/wa-abat fa-mā tajzī-ka bi-lqarḍī, “Lamīs meanly withheld the due she owed; she denied you and requited not the ‘loan.’”; cf. ʿAbīd (1980), X, v. 4: The ‘loan’ is a token of true love (wudd) which deserves requital (jazāʾ), though the poet acknowledges that even the righteous can find this duty hard to fulfil; ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), II, v. 4: The exchange of ‘loans’ with his fellows is an act of mutual fidelity: uqāriḍu aqwāman wa-ūfī qurūḍa-hum/&c “I ‘loan’ to comrades and repay their ‘loans’ to me in good faith”; Lyall (1918–1921), XXXVIII, of Rabīʿa b. Maqrūm, v. 23: wa-ajzī l-qurūḍa wafāʾan bihā/bi-buʾsā baʿīsī wa-nuʿmā naʿīmā, “And I pay my debts faithfully and fully – my evil for evil, my good for good” (Lyall’s translation). 72. Lyall (1918–1921), XX, vv. 27–28. The Arabic scholion notes that dayn (debt) is read for qarḍ in v. 28.

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First, the concept of isqāʾ is widely related to the fulfilment of vengeance; to bloodshed that, as it were, ‘gives drink’ to ‘thirsting’ shades of the unredeemed dead. Second, taking blood in vengeance appears to be an equalisation of life-loss, which conceptually replaces that loss; that is to say, it is somehow life-giving in respect of the dead. This is illustrated in the words of a poet who says: bi-ḍarbin yukhaffitu fawwāra-hū/ wa-ṭaʿnin tarā l-dama min-hu rashīshā//idhā qatalū min-kumū fārisan/ḍaminnā la-hū khalfahū an yaʿīshā, “… with a smiting that inflicts a deadly, gushing wound, and a piercing spear-thrust in consequence of which you see the blood sprinkled about. When they slay one of your horsemen, we are thereafter responsible for him, that he shall live”. This has been explained to mean that blood will be avenged so that it will be as if the person in question had not been slain.73 This bivalent dynamic of the deadly and the vitalising is wholly consonant with the effects of the storm in our poem here: The storm brings both destruction and life to the lands. Third, we have seen (Poem 1.4) how the poet conceives the loss of a kinsman as something which, by inflicting him with a potentially mortal wound, and obliging him to battle the ‘claws and teeth’ of Time, places him ‘on the verge of death’. The concept of being on the point of death is, in fact, also within the semantic compass of al-qarīḍ, for it connotes also the voice of a dying man. It is possible therefore to posit, in sum, that verse 8 is an allusive expression of the poet’s commitment to undertake a life-threatening requital, which will mirror the dual effect of the storm, and which may constitute a projection of vengeance. Accepting the unspoken resonance of farḍ – a duty so intimately linked to the obligation of qarḍ with which the poet’s qarīḍ is imbued, as also to maysir – we can posit something further: namely, that the poet conceives his fulfilment of this requital  –  in complement to the maysir-conceit introduced in verse 3  –  as the isqāʾ of a ‘storm’ that will involve his taking part in a ‘maysir-match’ and emulating the comprehensive torrential conquest of territorial divisions listed in verses 4–5. It is, indeed, arguable that the poet means to claim the whole activity of the storm as his own. Section 1 of this chapter illustrated a widely-attested equation between the break of a storm and a racing war-horse, how a mounted incursion can translate as the showers of a star-induced lightning-storm. For our purposes here, the most pertinent example to recall from there is a rāʾīya of Imruʾ al-Qays (outlined in the latter part of the commentary to verses 9–13 of Poem 5.1),74 which shows how the common comparison of ghāra (raiding) to a storm can be so wholly reversed that the storm constitutes, instead, the poet’s ghāra. Thus, the poet found himself ‘riding the forefront of its flood’. The essential elements of that ‘storm’ are strikingly similar to those of our main poem here: they include lightning and a lowering cumulus, the ‘milking’ of camel-rainclouds, incessant showers, a lizard’s struggle against a watery demise, and a final assault defined by intiḥāʾ  –  a downward swing  –  which we find specified, once more, here (verse 5). By poetic association, one might anticipate from 73. Lisān, s.v. f-w- r. 74. Ibr., pp. 144–146.

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the break of the storm here, too, the possible imminence of a horse-borne incursion that will once again find the poet ‘riding the forefront of a storm-torrent’.75 The latter possibility is perhaps embedded in the poet’s affecting to locate himself (verse 4) between a place called Ḍārij and the tilāʿ-channels of Yathlath. As mentioned, Ḍārij presents as a location aligned with the break of the storm-flood. The semantic and poetic implications of Ḍārij are complementary: Ḍārij is technically the active participle of ḍaraja, which denotes, principally, cleaving a thing, opening it, or throwing it down, so that that thing is defined by inḍaraja, i.e., what is cleft, opened, or falls.76 Inḍaraja is associated with the act of an eagle when it stoops, or plummets ‘on broken wing’ (kāsiratan);77 and, as witnessed earlier, the stooping eagle is another image associated with the hostile descent of a ‘storm’: We saw this in verses 1–2 of Poem 2.5, where the poet used inḍaraja of an eagle that ‘dangled’ (tadallat) with the semantic promise (root d-l-w) of the ‘eagle-storm-pail’ (dalw) of 5.1; and we saw this, also, in the main poem of the previous Section, where the ‘eagle-horse’, ‘on broken wing’ (kāsiratan – verse 9), was a conceptual analogue of the descent of a ‘storm’ that was the poet’s ghāra (‘raid’). The sum of these recurring associations complements a context where a ‘fracture’ of the clouds is expected, and raises the possibility – in harmony with the fearful nuances of his opening verses  –  that the poet envisages from Ḍārij the thrust of a deadly force that might equate equally to a stooping eagle as to a storm. (This, we note especially for the second phase of this poem). He appears, indeed, to locate himself in the very path of this force: He says (verse 4) qaʿadtu la-hū wa-ṣuḥbatī, literally: “I and my companions sat down for it”. This indicates, ostensibly, that they lie in the way of the approaching storm, prepare for its arrival with a stoic attitude, and ready themselves for what it will bring.78 In this case, they are conceptually poised either to ‘weather’ it, or to be borne down, propelled, as it were, by the flood - an idea that the poet elsewhere expresses openly, more than once, when he describes his descent on a battle-horse as a boulder swept down from on high by a torrent.79 Accordingly, poet and company may be identified with the force of waters that will course down through the tilāʿ and madāfiʿ (the descending channels and their connectors). This is not a fantastic idea unique to this poet: the conceptual parity between tilāʿ-channels and hostile incursions, or the potential treachery of affiliates, has proverbial dimensions.80 Thus, the vast scope of the lands 75. Here it is worth noting again how ʿAbīd b. al-Abraṣ is inspired to liken the play of a storm after the first rain breaks to a sprightly horse in the fight: ʿAbīd (1980), XXVIII, v. 9. 76. Tāj, s.v. ḍ-r-j. Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 3, p. 460, points up these semantics in the introduction to his entry on Ḍārij (identified as more than one possible location). 77. Ibid. 78. Tāj, s.v. q-ʿ-d, I: the entries with the preposition, li, which presage confrontation. 79. Al-Tibrīzī (1969), Imruʾ al-Qays, v. 53; cf. Ibr., p. 164, v. 30. 80. Qāmūs, art. talʿatun offers examples; cf. Kaʿb (1950), no. 6, v. 12. The poet advises against remaining in covenant (waṣl) with one the flow of whose ‘watercourse’ is not to be trusted: idhā mā khalīlun lam yaṣil-ka fa-lā tuqim/bi- talʿati-hī wa-ʿmid li-ākhara wāṣilī, “If a friend will not

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below – al-ʿArīḍ and all that follows – may be taken to figure resisting forces that the poet intends himself to encounter.81 The poet’s involvement with the storm may also be related to the influence of the anwāʾ (the rainstars – implied, as discussed, in verse 2) by virtue of the act of shaym that effectively renders him a raqīb, or ‘watcher’.82 As illustrated above in Section 1 of this chapter (under Astral Light and Water), the potent force of men and armies are conceived as rains that ensue – typically in the early hours – when one rain-asterism sets in the west, as another, its raqīb, or ‘watcher’, rises in the east. One striking example of this is attested by Bishr b. Abī Khāzim when he projects his army as a stormcloud brought by the influence of al-Thurayyā. Notably, the attack is heralded by an allusion to his army’s herald (or ‘scout’, as Lyall interprets) as a raqīb coming into open view.83 If Bishr’s army is a stormcloud of al-Thurayyā, the appearance of their raqīb surely constitutes the rise of the ‘rainstar-watcher’ that anticipates the break of their ‘storm’. By association, the figure of the poet-raqīb may be taken, in its context, as a similar announcement of the rise of a ‘rainstar-raqīb’ that could presage a ‘storm’. The poet’s status as raqīb also complements the theme of maysir-gambling: In the context of maysir, the raqīb is a participant who stands behind the dealer of arrows (the ḥurḍa, ḍārib, or, as in verse 3, the mufīḍ) to ensure that proceedings are properly conducted. The further implication of these combined associations is that maysir has a very particular relationship to the stars and rain – a topic picked up and developed below. Verses 1–8 of our main poem may, then, be deemed to operate at three interreferential levels: We are invited to register, at once, a star-induced storm, an epic maysir-match, and the potential for a horse-borne incursion, together composing a polyvalent projection of the poet’s intent to effect the isqāʾ to which he alludes in verse 8. It is perhaps a thoroughly artful device of the poet – arguably manipulating the natural product of inter-referential discourse-frames – to call his elemental dealer of arrows (verse 3) a mufīḍ: Wholly in complement to the three levels of discourse mentioned, ifāḍa connotes, equally, the act of dealing arrows, causing water to rush, and spurring a mount to race.84 In sum, these verses indicate the poet’s identification with a quasi-erotic conquest of nature that projects an ethically-guided initiative to enact an isqāʾ – perhaps an isqāʾ of requital – that is conceived in terms of gambling at maysir. Lastly, here, one might ask why, if the poet might have been moved to tears in response to the morbid influence of bayn, he chooses, rather, to project his isqāʾ as tie the bond with you, do not abide in the course of his talʿa; find another, instead, and bind with him”. 81. Interestingly, al-Akhṭal comes to deprecate a people by defining them in terms of peripheral outskirts of the earth, not the ʿarīḍ with which they might be identified were they protectors able to defend all they own: akāriʿu laysū bi-l-ʿarīḍi maḥallu-hum/wa-lā bi-l-ḥumāti l-dhāʾidīna ʿani l-sarbī: Al-Akhṭal (1970–1971), vol. 1, no. 2, v. 49. 82. Shaym is explicitly defined by the act of ruqūb in ʿAbīd (1980), XXI, v. 9, XXVIII, v. 6). 83. Lyall (1918–1921), XCVI, v. 11, cited above in this Chapter 5:1, n. 36. 84. Tāj, s.v. f-y-ḍ, IV.

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the equivalent of a storm-flood. This takes us back to the conceptual relationship that seems to exist between tears and the storm, and invites us to identify what is their point of convergence and what is their essential point of departure. Linguistic correspondences between expressions for tears and the rains have been noted, and we have seen their mutual relationship with the fractured water-bag and the rotary well-pulley (the bakra, discussed at length above, Chapter 5:1). Poetic elaborations on these conceits – often invoked with tearful responses to bayn – indicate that the conceptual convergence of tears with the storm centres on ‘irrigation’, or isqāʾ. Thus, for example, Mutammim’s response to a kinsman’s ‘departure’ to death is to project his inability to contain his tears as a patched and leaking water-bag, hauled up by a pulley, whose waters give abundant irrigation for crops.85 The toil that produces such an extravagant, essentially wasteful, isqāʾ, is, however, ṣibā, or ‘youthful folly’, a manifestation of uncontrolled ‘sickness’, or jahl. This is perfectly illustrated by ʿAbīd b. al-Abraṣ: Haunted at the sight of abodes to which “Death has become the heir” (arḍun tawāratha-hā shaʿūbū), he is moved to an outburst which he compares, at once, to an old and leaking waterskin, a descending hill-torrent, rushing valley-water, and a bubbling brook that irrigates palms. He checks himself. How is he so light-headed, when the hoar on his head should have taught him to accept the fearful fact of mortality? – taṣbū fa-annā la-ka l-taṣābī/annā wa-qad rāʿa-ka l-mashībū.86 We know the rationale for continence (expressed by our poet in Poem 2.5): the ethical implications of failure to quell such an outburst are far-reaching, implying, as they do, ‘leakage’ of the moral and physical force required to fulfil the central demands of mutual assistance, provision and ransom, to which a community in covenant is contracted. Now recalling, also, the moral implications of the poet’s ‘storm’ in Poem 5.1, we can say that while tears and storms may converge, poetically, in the concept of isqāʾ (irrigation), they depart from one another in respect of their relationship with the ethic. Contrary to the isqāʾ of tears, the conquering irrigation of a storm, aligned with a poet’s efforts, can express the antithesis of ṣibā and uncontrolled jahl; it can connote the guiding force of ḥilm that contains the disorienting and debilitating ‘fever’ of jahl and re-directs it to deadly effect. One might, then, offer that, if the poet’s opening words aʿin-nī ʿalā imply an inclination to weep, they express a suppression of tears – or perhaps the ellipsis of an allusion to tears  –  at a point when he has asserted his commitment to an appropriate course in order to effect an isqāʾ of redemption that only a ‘storm’, and not tears, can achieve. Here we move to the second phase of the poem. The poet opens this movement with the wāw rubba formula – a developmental device, which, as we have seen, can announce an elaboration on the experience of rayb, or a counter-initiative of positive thought against its crippling influence. Here, the poet rehearses a subtly transformed 85. Lyall (1918–1921), LXVIII, vv. 4–5, cited with other examples of extravagant ‘irrigation’ in Chapter 2, n. 84. 86. ʿAbīd (1980), I, v. 11; cf. Lyall (1918–1921), CXX, of ʿAlqama, the irrigational ‘water-bags’ of whose eyes (vv. 8–12) also explicitly betray folly (safāh, in this case).

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reprisal of his opening themes in a bid to move on from the commotion that might undermine his purpose: the enactment of his incursion and his stated wish for isqāʾ. ***** Verses 9–13: If, until this point, the poet has only implicitly been a raqīb (‘watcher’), he openly announces himself in that role in verse 9, which locates him on a lofty watch-point (marqaba), surveying the panorama. He expresses his position in the vastness around as being fī faḍāʾ ʿarīḍ; and this, just a mere three verses after using the exact-same phrase (verse 6) to convey the land-expanse that stood in the path of the storm-flood. This serves as a powerful aural binder to the verses before; one that stimulates the available sense of potential for the storm-flood to metamorphose into a horse-borne incursion, for the act of ruqūb he describes immediately evokes a prelude to ghāra (raiding). An instructive comparative example of this  –  particularly in respect of the mood  –  is found in a short poem of Imruʾ al-Qays rhyming in bāʾ.87 Here, the poet, recalling lost love and youth, concedes a rebellion of the heart and the fearful experience of rayb (verse 1–3). He counters this with the familiar, paratactic initiative of wāw rubba that will typically disrupt the chemistry of disempowerment: He faces off rayb by thinking himself onto a high watchpoint (marqab, verse 4), as here. He recalls how he has positioned himself so, up with the eagles, at dawn (musfiran), his heart adread (wa-lnafsu muhtāba) – deliberately, he says (verse 5), to spy out the flocks grazing and moving about below (ʿamdan li-arquba mā li-l-jawwi min naʿamin …); and he remembers how he then descended (nazaltu – verse 6) to a shock-haired party, ready with their tethered mounts, prior to undertaking an incursion to sweep away the herds staked out. The critical elements of that bāʾīya are replicated here in verses 9–13: The poet stands at a tapering height, casting his eyes about (verse 9). His horse is ready for action, standing (verse 10) with his saddle-felt still on his back.88 At the appropriate juncture (verse 11), the poet descends to him (nazaltu ilay-hi), calms him (verse 13), and mounts him for action. An actual engagement, however, is left for the next phase of the poem. As to mood, a certain contention with dread - or at least some inner commotion – is encoded into verse 10: Alone with his horse, the poet waits out the daylight hours (faẓiltu wa-ẓalla l-jawnu …) – hours typically associated with the onset of hostilities (see the commentary to verses 14–18 of Poem 5.1) – “as if parrying [the commotion of] a [bird’s] fractured wing” (ka-annī uʿaddī ʿan janāḥin mahīḍī). That this figure relates to inner turmoil is conveyed more clearly by ʿAmr b. al-Ahtam who says of himself with pent-up heart at a phantom’s haunting: … ka-anna fuʾāda-hū/janāḥun wahā ʿaẓmā-hu fa-hwa khafūqū, “as if his heart were, perforce, beating hard like the wing [of a bird] 87. Ibr., p. 346. 88. Ibr., p. 74, n. 10, picks up the significance of this; cf. al-Tibrīzī (1969), Imruʾ al-Qays, v. 69; cf. also v. 7 of Poem 2.1.

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with fractured bones”.89 Returning to our janāḥ mahīḍ of verse 10b, we might infer that the poet contends with the stifled commotion of his own heart as he prepares for a dangerous undertaking (corresponding to his nafs muhtāba in the bāʾīya adduced in the paragraph above), or with anticipatory excitement on the part of his horse –as might be implied by its proximity in 10a, and the fact that he later calms it (verse 13) – or both. In this case, the janāḥ mahīḍ, or ‘broken wing’, of emotional disquiet may be identified with the fearful commotion (or khafq – following ʿAmr b. al-Ahtam’s choice of diction above) of rayb, or hamm; and the poet’s choice of uʿaddī ʿan becomes clearer: he forces himself to master anxiety, as one might convey much more simply by ʿaddaytu ʿan-hu, “I turned [my thoughts] from that”. But in the sequence of this poem, the implications of a janāḥ mahīḍ, or ‘broken wing’ seem not to stop here. In mahīḍ we have another aural reminder of the poem’s previous phase. There, the sense of an imminent cloudburst was implied by the quasi-limping progress of the lightning – a ‘camel’ suffering a fractured leg (verse 2: ka-taʿtābi l-kasīri l-mahīḍī). It was suggested that that looming sense of fracture picked out the nuances of cleaving and downward propulsion intrinsic to Ḍārij, where the poet waited for a storm-break that might poetically express itself as inḍirāj – evoking the descent of an eagle ‘on broken wing’ – kāsiratan – i.e., in a stoop. The poet’s use of janāḥ mahīḍ might thus suggest itself, also, in the context, as an allusion to the imminence of such a stoop (manipulating the synecdochal use of janāḥ for the bird as a whole, and intimating a very deliberate khafq, or commotion)90  –  one that, in actually replicating mahīḍ, picks up and promises a conceptual replication of the storm that breaks from the celestial ‘fracture’. Thus, just as the poet intimated he was equal to a confrontation with rayb before, so does he here in verse 10; and just as he invests hope in the product of the flood that follows the storm-break, so does he here evoke a burgeoning ‘wing-break’ that may give way to a ‘torrent’ he will ride on the ‘pinions’ of his horse. Inasmuch as verse 10b is an act of mastering, or warding off, morbid anxiety, it may be read as an elaborate variation on the theme of pregnant poetic formulae like ʿaddi ʿan dhālik, “turn [your anxiety] from that”, which can serve as axes of transition from moral debilitation to a recovery of the initiative. That is to say, it may be read as a most dramatic insight into the extended process of summoning moral force to 89. Lyall (1918–1921), XXIII, v. 2. 90. A beautiful example of such synecdoche, using janāḥ (wing) to refer to what the commentators assert must be an eagle  –  and, also, the intensive adjective khaffāq to convey its soaring power –  is illustrated in a mufaḍḍalīya of Taʾabbaṭa Sharrā when he says (Lyall 1918–1921, I, v. 7): lā shayʾa asraʿu min-nī laysa dhā ʿudharin/wa-dhā janāḥin bi-janbi l-raydi khaffāqī, “There is nothing swifter than I – not the [horse] with ample forelocks, nor the [eagle] with powerfully beating wings by the mountain ledge”. Jones (1992), p. 212 suggests three possibilities for the picture intended: “the bird using thermal currents to get to a high stalking position; or, having reached the right height, getting up a speed prior to diving toward its prey; or of flying close to its nesting place on a rocky ledge.”

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counter the enervating effect of rayb.91 This accepted, it gives further reason not to underestimate the implications of minimalist techniques of takhalluṣ (transition) in polythematic poems. The poet’s situation here also evokes the predicament of the ‘wolf ’ in Poem 5.1, only with happier results. There, the ‘wolf ’ was perched on a marqaba upon which the ‘storm-force’ of the poet’s incursion descended as a ‘broken-winged’ (stooping) she-eagle from a higher marqab. That ‘wolf ’ was later waiting out the sunlight hours (yaẓillu), hoping for night, which would offer respite from the threat of Death. The poet here seems better placed: the sun sets (verse 11), and he survives – unassailed by any other ‘eagle-storm’ – to descend to his horse, ready for his next initiative. This will constitute, for one thing, the successful foray of a predatory wolf. The elaborate comparison of the horse to a sharpened spear-point (verse 12) encodes the ḥidda (the acuity, quality, spirit and mettle) of this mount. The sharpness defined by shabāt extends to intellectual acumen, the refinements of generosity and nobility, and incisive attack or defence.92 ‘Sharpened’ by mudhallaq, the horse has the perfect constitution for action: it is well prepared to race, lean from rationing after first being fattened.93 The rider’s clicking his tongue to calm the horse and bring it to compliance (verse 13) is another allusion to its quality: the poet might otherwise have said dāraytu-hu, “I coaxed and cajoled him [to quiet and control him]”.94 The suggestion is that this is the type of spirited horse that is only compliant to a very skilful rider; a theme reprised in Imruʾ al-Qays’ muʿallaqa: yazillu l-ghulāmu l-khiffu ʿan ṣahawāti-hī/wa-yulwī bi-athwābi l-ʿanīfi l-muthaqqalī “The lightweight boy slips from his back, and the ‘garments’ of the rough, heavy [rider] are thrown off”.95 The further implication is, of course, that the poet praises himself and indicates that he and his mount together are a formidable team. Thus composed and synchronised, poet and mount are ready to undertake and fulfil the promise of a horse-borne isqāʾ (irrigation, giving to drink). One ‘taster’ of what is to come is embedded in the elaborate comparison of the horse to a spear. This will have the ‘throw-back’ effect of teasing out the underlying nuances of saḥḥa (verse 7), which describes how the dawn showers beset the lands: More than pouring showers, saḥḥa connotes, precisely, the idea of thrusting with a spear.96 To complete the parallel with the previous phase, it remains for the poet to develop this potential into a deadly, liqueous assault that comes at dawn, and that echoes his earlier allusions

91. Jacobi (1972), pp. 49–53, classes ʿaddi ʿan under Verbindungsmotiv A. 92. Tāj, s.v. sh-b-w. 93. Qāmūs, s.v. dh-l-q, II; cf. ibid., s.v. ḍ-m-r, II, relating to the same process of preparation, only focusing on the leanness of the horse’s belly. 94. Ibr., p. 75, n. 13, picks up this point. 95. Al-Tibrīzī (1969), Imruʾ al-Qays, v. 57: the gloss, which alludes to dirāya. 96. Tāj, s.v. s-ḥ-ḥ, I.

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to a conquest both quasi-erotic and resonant of a win at maysir. This task is delegated to the third phase of the poem. ***** Verses 14–19: Wa-qad aghtadī (‘I might go of an early morning’ – verse 14) signals the expected dawn initiative with a stock poetic joiner that is turned to the poet’s immediate purpose: He ‘switches the frame’ to express a new phase of his initiative in the form of a hunt, rather than ghāra or war; but this merely makes use of what, in ideal terms, he has shown to be an available analogue: As illustrated earlier, ghāra, war, and, indeed, sexual conquest, are mutually inter-referential frames for ethically-guided moves to effect shifāʾ (healing) in response to affliction. We saw this, for example, in verses 3–5 of Poem 2.2, where the poet’s suppression of his ‘sickness’ moved him to recall how he was wont to take to his horse in the early morning hours and ‘put to fright’ wild animals grazing unawares (wa-qad adhʿaru l-waḥsha l-ritāʿa bi-ghirratin); how he has penetrated the abodes of soft, arousing, women displaying the ‘purest backs/skins’ (wa-qad ajtalī bīḍa l-khudūri l-rawāʾiqā//nawāʿima tajlū ʿan mutūnin naqīyatin). In verses 4–8 of Poem 2.6, he quelled moral and physical debilitation recalling, successively, his salvation of a partner-in-arms; his success with women who responded like she-camels heeding the call of a rosish-white stallion-camel (yariʿna ilā ṣawt-ī idhā mā samiʿna-hū/ka-mā tarʿawī ʿīṭun ilā ṣawti aʿyasā). The linguistic parallels between these examples and the hunt in our ḍādīya here – the sense of conquest with erotic undercurrent – are clear: setting out in the early hours, the poet undertakes a foray he likens to the approach of a noble stallion-camel (verse 15), and in which he ‘puts to fright’ (dhaʿartu bi-hī … verse 17) a flock of female oryx-does with ‘pure skins’ (sirban naqīyan julūdu-hū). These parallels, with all their erotic nuance, are heightened in the detail of the stallion-camel moving to bite (al-ʿaḍīḍ – verse 15 in the reading of Ibrāhīm and Dār Ṣādir; verse 19 in that of Ahlwardt). This may, of course, also imply an attack on another male; but ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa illustrates how the stallion’s biting the female is intrinsic to coupling.97 A sense of analogy with bypassing a people’s defences to reach their protected recesses is especially powerfully evoked in Ahlwardt’s reading (verse 19), where a (protecting) bull-oryx is implicitly outflanked. This verse sequence also throws up figures that render the energy of the assault an attack that ‘wields water’. A nuance of this type may be intended in the comparison of the [powerful legs of the] horse to a naʿāma  –  a term for ‘ostrich’ evocative of the bakra (the well-pulley: see the commentary to verses 1–3 of Poem 5.1), which warriors metaphorically ply when summoning the resources of their ‘water’ and 97. ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), X, v. 16, and Arabic commentary, which expands on the biting as part of the coupling process: yahabu l-makhāḍa ʿalā ghawāribi-hā/zabadu l-fuḥūli maʿānu-hā baqilū, “Thou givest away newly pregnant camels, with the froth from the camels’ mouths still on their fore-humps: their places of abode are rich in herbage” (Lyall’s translation); cf. GauthierPilters (1981), pp. 90–92, on camel-courtship and coupling.

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‘pulley’ to strike at an enemy ‘source’. But, rider and mount are, in any case, endowed with ‘ground-sources’, and ‘pail’ in verse 16, where the poet conveys his horse’s ability to race in successive bouts by comparing its energies to the ground-waters of the ḥisy (discussed in the commentary to verses 4–8 of Poem 5.1), that is to say, with sources that replenish themselves each time a pail is dashed in and drawn. An erotic undercurrent to the energy is also perceptible here, for jamma evokes, also, the recollection of a stallion’s seminal ‘water’ (māʾ) after covering;98 and this nuance is further enhanced when the poet compounds the sense of ease with which his horse recovers from effort  –  or, rather, from ‘dispersing water’ (baʿda māʾin faḍīḍ, verse 19) – with the details that he is thereby neither nakd (straitened/deficient in water), nor muwākil (sluggish/impotent).99 The parallels between this third phase of the poem and the activity of the storm, one can say now, are thick: Like the storm, this aggression begins at dawn and effects an analogous, erotic dispersal of waters. All three readings include one overt linguistic binder that confirms the comparison: the ‘downward lunge’ – or intiḥāʾ – by which the ‘stallion-camel’ strikes his goal (Ibr. & D.Ṣ. verse 15; Ahl. verse 19), thus imitating the storm-waters ‘downward lunge’ – intiḥāʾ – on the lands (verse 5). Ahlwardt’s reading offers another overt linguistic binder: the māʾ faḍīḍ of the mounted aggression (verse 19) echoes the māʾ faḍīḍ with which the (‘female’) lands spill with the storm-torrents (Ahl. verse 6). More subtly, the recollection (jumūm) of the mount’s ‘force-waters’ (verse 16) echoes the sense of recollecting water intrinsic to each fīqa of the ‘cloududders’ (verse 7). Conquest with the spear (verse 18) picks up the ‘lance-lunging’ potential of the mount (verse 12), and finally fulfils the promise of ‘spear-thrusts’ intrinsic to the saḥḥ of the storm-waters (verse 7). In this phase, also, the poet offers a parallel for the ḍibāb that were corralled, in all their relative meanness, toward a watery death (verse 7): He projects his victims – ostensibly oryx-does – as sheep that are rounded up in the fold (al-rabīḍ) and stalked by a predatory wolf (verse 17). As discussed earlier, the oryx (ẓaby) is noted as a conceptually pure creature, which is adept at combating or evading Death’s initiatives, and with which poets are wont to align their endeavours. Al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza offers an important perspective on how worthy ẓibāʾ are not normally to be confused with penned sheep: Responding to a tyrannous call for blood-mulct for a sin for which his people are not responsible, he condemns the demand as a sinful aggression in breach of the covenant. It is equivalent to sacrificing ẓibāʾ (i.e., himself and his people) [in fulfilment of a vow] in place of what is owed by [‘sheep’ of] the fold (al-rabīḍ).100 One may infer that ‘sheep of the fold’ are relatively inferior to the 98. Tāj, art. jamma; cf. ibid., art. sammala: how tasmīl extends from a cistern (ḥawḍ) or bucket (dalw) that yields little water, to sexual impotence. 99. Lisān, arts nakida, nakidun; Tāj, s.v. w-k-l, III. 100. Al-Tibrīzī (1969), al-Ḥārith, v. 51: ʿananan bāṭilan wa-ẓulman ka-mā tuʿ/taru ʿan ḥajrati l-rabīḍi l-ẓibāʾū, “False intervention! Injustice! It’s just like antelopes slaughtered in the stead of folded sheep.” (The translation is Arberry’s (1957), p. 225).

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ẓaby, and that had al-Ḥārith’s people been legitimate victims of retribution, they might well have qualified as ‘penned sheep’, but were not, and did not. Bringing these observations to bear on the [oryx]-sheep of verse 17, it would seem that the poet demotes the creatures he hunts to the status of legitimate sacrifices to his purpose, sacrifices that equate to proper victims of retribution, their flesh a ‘cure’ for a ‘sick’ avenger. In his capacity as ‘wolf ’, on this occasion, whose only ‘malady’ aside from death is hunger, the poet effectively manifests the ravening ‘sickness’ of rayb al-dahr descending on these ‘sheep’. His ‘cure’ will be to devour their bodies. Rayb is reflected in the evocation of dhaʿr (‘putting to fright’ – verse 17), and the ‘cure’ is played out in the reference-frame of the hunt with which ‘wolf ’ and ‘sheep’ are inextricably fused. In this way, the poet finally projects his enactment of the isqāʾ that will confirm his virtue; and he does so using conceits that accommodate the idea of achieving bloodvengeance, which may be his ambition. The one detail that remains, for the parallels between this phase of the poem and the first to be complete, is the matter of an isqāʾ expressed in terms of the maysir-paradigm that framed the storm. If a numerical configuration of ten aʿshār to the lands taken by the storm-flood is debatable, there is no such ambiguity in the hunt: the poet counts out his victims (verse 18): three, two, four and then one. The total is ten  –  a clear, clean sweep  –  the distribution replicating, at least, the first two suggested territorial ‘tenths’ (verses 4–5). Having donned the ‘frightful’ robe of Death (with his act of dhaʿr), and projected his ability to fulfil the isqāʾ that he invokes in verse 8 – mirroring the activity of the storm at every level – the poet moves to conclude his qaṣīda in the elliptical manner that follows. ***** Verses 20–22: The description of the bull-oryx standing (verse 20) strong, erect and ready to fight (nahūḍ),101 is thick with nuances of rock-like eminence and elevation, conspicuous whiteness or light,102 all enhanced by the penetrating alliteration in sīn. It is a description which recalls some of the most ubiquitous conceits for the virtue and might that men claim for themselves. It invokes a creature proverbially free of ‘sickness’ (dāʾ), one with which the poet elsewhere aligns his own efforts to combat and evade ‘disease’ and Death. This bull-oryx thus amounts to an epitome of worthy opposition. Of pursuing this bull, the poet says dhaʿartu (‘I put to fright’), echoing the same expression he used of chasing down the oryx-cows (verse 17)  –  cows explicitly accompanied, in Ahlwardt’s reading (verse 19), by a protecting bull that the poet 101. Tāj, s.v. n-h-ḍ, I, III, VI, demonstrates a strong association with confrontation and war. 102. See Qāmūs, Tāj, art. sunnayqun, which covers the ideas of a hill, a white star, a gypsum-plastered (i.e., white) edifice; Tāj, art. sanāʾun, which suggests height and exaltation, and is associated with the rise of lightning and fire; Tāj, Qāmūs, s.v. s-n-n, showing that sunnamun, too, has a strong association with height.

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bypasses to make his conquest. In light of these echoes, we can posit that the poet’s dhaʿr in attacking the bull, here in verse 20, is meant to pick up and reinforce his earlier projection of conquest. And, accepting that his dhaʿr of the previous phase expressed his visiting rayb and ‘sickness’ on the oryx-herd, his dhaʿr of this bull would read as his visiting ‘sickness’ upon a being as constitutionally adept and inclined to resist it as the man of most practised virtue.103 If this act confirms a conquest that will constitute the poet’s isqāʾ – a visitation of Death’s ‘disease’ that will confirm his moral commitment through a retributive response to an aggression against himself, or against another for whom he is responsible  –  then this must be the context in which the final ḥikma couplet (verses 21–22) is to be read. Out of context, this couplet might simply be taken to acknowledge the susceptibility of even the worthiest men to Time’s onslaught.104 But weighed against all that precedes, one may, rather, understand this as a final revelation that it is the human equivalent of a virtuous bull-oryx, wont to protect his wards, whom the poet pursues, and on whom he would visit ‘disease’; another man committed by covenant to the protection of troupes of female livestock, to whom the poet refers (verse 21) as dhū l-adhwād, “possessed of companies of camelcows” (dhawd being applied only to females, and based on a root linked to the defence of rights and honour, and to the banishment of grief and anxiety (hamm), or – in the poetic language – the repulsion of ‘sickness’). It seems, furthermore, quite calculated that the duty of defence invoked by dhawd is as strongly associated with the horn of a bull-oryx as it is with an armed protector.105 In short, verse 21 may be read as a lightly veiled promise of retribution against a fierce protector of his covenantal interests  –  a promise that the poet will usurp the rôle of rayb al-Dahr, and ‘put to fright’ his victim and all he protects, so visiting upon him the ‘disease’ with which he will be ‘corrupted’ (yuṣbiḥu muḥraḍan), just like (ka-iḥrāḍ) “a sick young camel within the abodes”. Verse 22 would, then, follow less as a simple, aphoristic statement so much as a final threat of the unavoidable ‘appointment’. In this light, the very last phase of the poem may also be linked more intimately to the scheme of maysir-gambling: Here, we recall a mīmīya-couplet, cited as Poem 1.2, where the tafrīq (‘putting to fright’/‘separation’) of close kin and their protected livestock (al-ʿashāʾir wa-l-sawām) is identified with the intrigues of rayb al-dahr, which is ‘pledged’ (rahnun bi …) to bring inevitable separations between them. The maysir paradigm offers a frame within which this conceit of being ‘pledged’ may be viewed, 103. Here it may be recalled again how the oryx of Labīd’s muʿallaqa recognises the sound of the hunter, man, as her haunting ‘sickness’ (saqām): Al-Tibrīzī (1969), Labīd, v. 47, as discussed in Chapter 2, the commentary to vv. 13–17 of Poem 2.5 and n. 91, and Chapter 3, the commentary to v. 4 of Poem 3.6 and n. 68. 104. This is precisely the message of Abu Dhuʾayb’s famous elegy  –  Lyall (1918–1921), CXXVI, overviewed shortly below in the developed discussion on maysir – one noble epitome of which (vv. 35–48) is the ultimately fated struggle of a most perfect bull-oryx against his hunter. 105. Asās, s.v. dh-w-d, esp. the saying: al-thawru yadhūdu ʿan nafsi-hi bi-midhwadi-hi, “the bull defends himself with his horn”. Note, too, the analogue which translates this into horseman and spear.

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essentially, as an unavoidable contract demanding that living things ‘gamble’ against Death for their interests and ‘life-stakes’ (rihān). Indeed, in the reading of Ibn al-Naḥḥās, the same mīmīya-couplet introduces a statement of gratitude to one al-Muʿallā, who saved the poet from the ‘storm-like’ threat of an aggressor.106 Al-muʿallā being a name for the maysir-arrow that wins the highest portion of flesh-stakes (worth seven rihān),107 the strong suggestion of this juxtaposition is that al-Muʿallā’s defence was an ethically committed act of ‘gambling’ that won a major battle-success, redeemed the rahn of the poet’s life, and quelled the fear he experienced - what could be called dhaʿr, or the threat of tafrīq – as conveyed in his words: aqarra ḥashā mriʾi l-qaysi bni ḥujr, “He settled the liver and lights of Imruʾ al-Qays b. Ḥujr”. By association, we may align the concept of rahn with the life at risk in the final verse of the main poem above, and – given the open reference to maysir-gambling that frames the poem – posit that the loss of this rahn, like all that precedes, is to be viewed within the very same frame. It hardly seems a coincidence here that the contagion of ‘sickness’ by which the man of status (verse 21) must perish is called iḥrāḍ, this being based in the same root as ḥurḍa, which (as noted in respect of the fated ḍibāb, verse 7) evokes the lowest of maysir-players. To sum up here: if this poem is to be viewed as an elaborate projection of the poet’s desire for, and fulfilment of, blood-vengeance, the last phase may be read as a final statement of his ḥilm: a promise to requite a sin that has ‘infected’ him, and, having donned the robe of rayb al-dahr, to ‘gamble’ to return that ‘sickness’ onto his antagonist; to ‘win’ a life-stake (rahn) that compensates and redeems the loss of a life-stake that was taken from him; to achieve by his own ‘cure’, and the ‘cure’ of the ‘thirst’ of his dead, an isqāʾ of the life-giving and deadly dimensions that he invokes from a storm he proposes to emulate. If the poem is only a complex statement of the practised ability to summon ḥilm and counter ‘sickness’ in any situation, we may infer that the universe is a gambling arena where Life is forever pitched against Death, and in which men are obliged always to ‘play’ for the rihān of their life-interests. Some ‘games’ they win, and others they lose, but Death will always win the match. ***** The Universal Paradigm of Maysir The perspective on maysir projected here is at odds with the notion that this type of gambling was ‘charity’, as we understand it. If we cast about the wider poetry, taking the main points arising above, this discrepancy can be resolved, and a universal paradigm of gambling emerges that appears to mirror the facts of death and survival as the poets seem to have understood these – just as the poem above suggests.

106. Ibr., pp. 140–141, no. 24, overviewed above in Chapter 3, n. 98. 107. Not a unique instance of a maysir-epithet: cf., e.g., Mutammim, i.e., one who risks the burden of several portions when there are too few players: Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 2, p. 20.

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First, there is a clear corollary to the ideas that covenantal obligations are ‘impressed’ on men as maysir-arrows are impressed by notches (furūḍ) that mark their value, and that lives are equated with the stakes (rihān) for which maysir is played; namely, that the corporate body of the covenant is represented by the ten maysirarrows of the ribāba. It does not seem fortuitous that key meanings for ribāba include ‘covenant’, ‘compact’, and ‘confederacy’.108 This is reflected in the account that the Prophet, considering the execution of al-Walīd b. ʿUqba b. Abī Muʿayṭ, hesitated as to whether one from his blood-group, Quraysh, should be killed. ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb is said to have uttered what became a proverbial expression for strangerhood within a community: qad ḥanna qidḥun laysa min-nā, “a [maysir]-arrow has sounded which is not of us”.109 In Labīd’s dīwān, a man’s life is explicitly defined as a stake (rahn) that is risked in gambling: … wa-nafsu l-fatā rahnun bi-qamrati muʾribī.110 And, in complement to the observation that this kind of ‘play’ is ultimately a gamble against al-Dahr, Abū Qays b. Aslat al-Anṣārī says: … inna l-fatā/rahnun bi-dhī lawnayni khaddāʿī, “a man[’s life] is a ‘pawn’ at the mercy of a lurking, two-faced [Fate]”.111 This degree of personal identification with gaming-arrows indicates that, as an institution meant to provide for the poor in times of hardship, maysir is less a charity of simple giving so much as a covenantal duty of competitive risk to redeem their lives.112 Indeed, it presents as a piece of theatre where those who ‘survive’ do not technically pay, but contribute to the greater good by risking; and those who ‘fall’ pay with their wealth – their own flesh, as it were, represented in the meat of the jazūr (the slaughter-camel) – to ‘ransom’ the lives of indigents who are metaphorically ‘tied’ to Death by hostile circumstance.113 Bishr b. Abī Khāzim demonstrates the parity between good faith (wafāʾ) and playing maysir when he says of his people’s merits:

108. 109. 110. 111.

Qāmūs, art. ribābatun. Ibn Qutayba (1924), p. 105; cf. al-Maydānī (1838–1843), vol. 1, p. 341. Labīd (1962), no. 2, v. 9. Lyall (1918–1921), LXXV, v. 24. The Arabic Scholion interprets: al-fatā rahnun bi-ḥawādithi l-dahri; cf. ibid., XLIV, of al-Aswad b. Yaʿfur, vv. 6–7: Death and Destruction hold a pledge (rahīna) of the poet which ultimately only the surrender of his life will redeem. 112. I have elsewhere examined previous work on the origins of maysir and its possible relation to other belomantic and cultic procedures based on the principal of chance – including that of Toufic Fahd, Alfred Beeston, Franz Rosenthal, and Suzanne Stetkevych – where I find maysir to be a very distinct form of gambling, not to be conflated or confused with istiqsām (divining with arrows) and qurʿa (lot-casting); and I do not repeat those details here: see Jamil (2004), pp. 50–62. 113. The condition of indigents ‘tied’ to Death without close kin to support them, is highlighted in Labīd’s muʿallaqa (v. 76 in the edition of al-Tibrīzī) in the image of the ragged widow who, if not ‘ransomed’ by the generous is “like the balīya-camel”, tied to her master’s grave and left without food and water to die (a figure discussed above, Chapter 3, s.v. ʿAql, Baʿth, Shades and Phantoms).

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min-hunna l-wafāʾu idhā ʿaqadnā/wa-aysārun idhā ḥubba l-qutārū, “Faithful to the word when pledged, straight to the gaming arrows when roast meat is required”.114 Such, then, is the benign and familiar face of maysir. Its hostile, and less familiar, reverse-face  –  elaborately illustrated in the main poem above  –  is a paradigm for discussing not only intra-tribal, but inter-tribal, competition. Good faith consists in kinsmen and allies making a reciprocal pledge of their life-stakes (rihān) to gamble for their mutual interests, the ultimate penalty – the conceptual meat of a slaughtercamel – being their own flesh. This is summed up in the pledge: anā rahnun la-ka bikadhā, “I am surety to you for that”.115 Alternatively, bad faith, or betrayal, like simple enmity, is to abandon, or ‘play against’, the interests of co-covenantees, so reducing them to conceptual flesh for the slaughter.116 In the language of maysir, betrayal or loss can be simply epitomised in the formula, ghaliqa l-rahn, “the pledge became ‘locked’” - an expression semantically related to the term maghāliq for maysir-arrows, which, as it were, ‘lock’ their win. A person subjected to such betrayal, or ‘locking’, is effectively a prisoner, trapped and in need of ransom – a concept very liable to appear in the frame of betrayed love.117 Zuhayr illustrates how the promise of a maysir-match can be a clear declaration of war when he commands an antagonist to desist from aggression, saying:118 ‫َوتَ ْمنَ ُع ُكم أرْ ماحُنا أوْ َسنَ ْع َذ ُر‬ ‫باع َونَي ِْسـ ُر‬ ِ ‫نُ َعقّـِ ُر أُ ّما‬ ِ ِّ‫ت الـر‬

‫عَلى ِرسلِ ُكم إنّا َسنَ ْع ِدي َورا َء ُكم‬ ‫َو ّإل فَـإنّـا بِال ّشـ َ َربَّـ ِة فَـالـلـ ِّ َوى‬

Go easy! We will surely pursue you. Our spears will obstruct you, or we will go down blameless. If you do not, then at al-Sharabba and al-Liwā, we will hock the mothers of the spring-born calves, and then we are going to ‘play maysir’.

Accordingly, ʿAbd Qays b. Khufāf exhorts to self-sacrificial solidarity with words that invoke the maysir-conceit: fa-aʿin-humū wa-ysir bi-mā yasarū bi-hī/wa-idhāhumū nazalū bi-ḍankin fa-nzilī, “Assist them and play maysir for the stakes for which they play, and if they descend into a dangerous strait, then do you go down [with 114. Lyall (1918–1921), XCVIII, v. 35c acc. to Lyall’s numbering in vol. 2. 115. Tāj, art. rahnun. 116. As in a verse of Suḥaym b. Wathīl al-Yarbūʿī, who boasts, confronting would-be assassins: aqūlu la-hum fī l-shiʿbi idh yaysirūna-nī /a-lam tayʾasū annī bnu fārisi zahdamī, “I say to them in the pass, as they ‘play’ for my flesh: Do you not despair that I am the son of the Rider of Zahdam?”: see Ibn Qutayba (1924), p. 33. 117. Neatly expressed, for example, by Zuhayr (1964, v. 2 of the qāfīya beginning p. 39): wa-fāraqatka bi-rahnin lā fakāka la-hū/fa-amsā l-rahnu qad ghaliqā, “She departed with a ‘pledge’ for which there was no release; thus, the ‘pledge’ has been quite ‘locked’. 118. Zuhayr (1964), p. 32, ll. 2–3; cf. al-Tibrīzī (1969), ʿAmr b. Kulthūm, v. 42b: ʿAmr boasts superior force when others come ‘wagering their sons’ against his (muqāraʿatan banī-him ʿan banī-nā).

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them]”.119 This has been compared to ʿAlqama’s affirmation of commitment to comrades: law yaysirūna bi-khaylin qad yasartu bi-hā/wa-kullu mā yasara l-aqwāmu maghrūmū, “The moment they gamble with horses, I will assuredly do the same - every debt the warriors incur when they ‘gamble’ is discharged”.120 The use of maghrūm here  –  strongly nuanced as it is with the concept of discharging the bloodwit – offers further insight into the fusion between maysir-gambling and duty to a covenant centred on blood-relations. The conceit of gambling with horses is also telling: At one level, it is clearly hyperbole, since horses are not slaughtered, in fact, when maysir is played; at another, it taps into the conceptual world of the maysirparadigm, where one does, as it were, gamble with horses, or horsemen, in battle. This is neatly illustrated by Aws b. Ḥajar when he evokes the sustained revolution of cavalry-raiders by rendering them blank arrows returned to the ribāba each time they emerge: fa-jaljala-hā ṭawrayni thumma ajāla-hā/ka-mā ursilat makhshūbatan lam tuqawwamī, “he ‘shuffled’ them a couple of times and sent them to course about, as unpolished and unmarked [gambling-arrows] are cast out [of the pouch]”.121 This last verse also taps into a recurrent poetic equation between the battle-tactic of mikarr, or ʿaṭf  –  wheeling back on the enemy after first wheeling away  –  and the movement of blank arrows which, when they emerge, must be returned to the pouch before the next cast. ʿĀmir b. al-Ṭufayl uses this topos to convey the relentlessness of his battle-assaults;122 ʿUrwa b. al-Ward manipulates it to highlight the annoyance he causes his enemies, ‘popping up’ to stake them out for an incursion.123 That the ultimate stakes for which maysir is played – whether truly or metaphorically – are those of survival, and that engaging in maysir is essentially to stake one’s resources against Death, is also perfectly illustrated by ʿUrwa as he prepares to risk himself to provide for dependents by embarking on a raid:124 ‫ك ِم ْن ُمتَأ َ َّخ ِر‬ َ ‫َج ُزوعا ً َوهَلْ ع َْن ذا‬ ‫ت َو َم ْنظَ ِر‬ ِ ‫بار البُيُو‬ ِ ‫لَ ُك ْم خ َْلفَ أ ْد‬

ْ ‫َو‬ ‫إن فَا َز َسـهْـ ٌم لً ْل َمنيَّ ِة لَـ ْم أ ُك ْن‬ ْ ‫َو‬ ‫إن فَا َز َسه ِمي َكفَّ ُكم عَن َمعاقِ ٍد‬

119. Lyall (1918–1921), CXVI, v. 18; cf. ʿUrwa (1926), no. 3, v. 22: a-yahliku muʿtammun wa-zaydun wa-lam uqim/ʿalā nadabin yawman wa-lī nafsu mukhṭirī, “Shall Muʿtamm and Zayd perish without my ever hazarding, when I have a soul that would stake itself [for them against Death]. 120. Lyall (1918–1921), CXVI, v. 18 and Arabic scholion; ibid., CXX, v. 48. 121. Ibn Qutayba (1924), p. 135. 122. ʿĀmir (1980), XI, v. 2 (al-Maznūq is glossed as the poet’s horse): Wa-qad ʿalima l-maznūqu annī akurru-hū/ʿashīyata fayfi l-rīḥi karra l-mushahharī, “And al-Maznūq knows well that I urged him again and again, on the evening of Faif ar-Rīḥ, to face the foe, as the blank arrow, denounced by the gamers, is put back again and again into the bag” (Lyall’s translation). 123. ʿUrwa (1926), no. 3, v. 19: muṭillan ʿalā aʿdāʾi-hī yazjurūna-hū/bi-sāḥati-him zajra l-manīḥi l-mushahharī, “One who surveys his enemies from on high, while they heckle him in their camp, as one chides the notorious, blank manīḥ”. Contradictions about the manīḥ-arrow are discussed by Ibn Qutayba (1924), pp. 56–58; cf., in the latter regard, ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), p. 68: Lyall’s notes. 124. ʿUrwa (1926), no. 3, vv. 6–7.

270

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia If an arrow of Death should come out winning I shall not grieve, for can there be any respite from that? But if my arrow wins, it will save you from the ignominy of sitting and watching behind the backs of the tents.

The tenor of ʿUrwa’s moral resolution here, his expression of ṣabr and ḥilm in his readiness to confront whatever Fate will cast out, shows certain philosophical or ‘wisdom’ dimensions to the maysir paradigm. Conversely, ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa, expressing an emotional ‘crash’ as he contemplates the signs of Time’s destruction, betrays a lapse into jahl that is cast in the mould of the same paradigm:125 ‫ب‬ ِ ‫ين الحُبا‬ ِ ‫ـح ع َْن يَ ِم‬ ِ ‫َح ِّي بِالسَّـ ْف‬ َ ْ ‫ب‬ ِ ‫ضي َم في األندا‬ ِ ‫را َح قَصْ راً َو‬ َّ َ ‫ب‬ ‫با‬ ‫ش‬ ‫ال‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ث‬ ‫ك ال َم ِش‬ ُ‫يـب‬ ْ‫و‬ َ ‫ق ِم ْن‬ َ َ‫ل‬ َ ِ

ُ ‫َوكَأَنّي لَـ ّمـا عَـ َر ْف‬ ‫ـت ِديا َر الــ‬ ّ َ ‫ص الرَّبـابَـة َحـتى‬ َ ‫يَـ َسـ ٌر َحا َر‬ ْ ‫ك يَابْنَ َس ْع ٍد َوقَد‬ ‫أخــ‬ َ ‫َج َزعا ً ِم ْن‬

When I recognised the place where the tribe had dwelt, in the low ground at the foot of the mountain, to the right of al[Ḥubāb],126 I seemed to myself like a gambler who cleaves steadfastly to the bag in which the gaming arrows are kept, until at the day’s end he is ruined and has lost heavily in all his wagers, In grief over thee, O Son of Saʿd; and already hoariness has worn out in thee the garment of fresh youth.

In this light, it seems not out of order at all to interpret even the closing wisdom verses of the main poem above according to the paradigm of maysir, for this is clearly in step with its wider conceptual parameters. The analysis of the main poem suggests, indeed, that the net of the maysirparadigm is cast so wide over the poetic projection of the world as to have universal parameters; that it accommodates even the rainstars and elements, the camel-clouds that grumble and feel bereft, produce ‘milk’, or find the straps of their water-bags loosed. In fact, the wider poetry indicates a critical relationship between maysir and the rain: There is a recurrent idea that when no fresh milk (risl/laban/maḥlūb) is available – i.e., when there is a dearth of provision – maysir is played to redress the lack. The idea of maysir as a compensation for milk-production is complemented by allusions to the shuffling of maysir-arrows themselves as a

125. ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), IX, vv. 2–4 (Lyall’s translation). The clothing metaphor arising here in respect of the poet’s youth complements the altered-‘attire’-of-age conceit that laces Poem 2.6. 126. Lyall (ibid., p. 38) explains that he chooses to replace the Arabic, al-Ḥubāb, here with al-ʿUnāb “because the former name (the reading of Bakrī) is found in the Geographers, and the latter is not.”

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conceptual act of milking, or mary,127 mary being a term also used of the wind’s teasing the ‘camel-teats’ of the clouds to bring rain. The presence of milk depends first on the rain, and then on the herbage, produced by rain, which milk-producing herds depasture. In other words, maysir is ultimately to be viewed as an equivalent of the ‘milk’ that comes from the clouds: the rain that the stars were thought to induce.128 A succinct confirmation of this survives in an astonishing relic of al-Rāʿī al-Numayrī:129 ‫ب‬ ِ ‫ـط الـ ُمتُقَ ِّو‬ ِ ‫َم َريْنا لَـهُـ ْم بِال َّشـوْ َح‬ ‫ب‬ َ ‫ُمتُونُ الـ َح‬ ِ َّ‫صى ِم ْن ُم ْعلَ ٍم َو ُم َعق‬ ْ َ َ ‫ب‬ ‫ك‬ ‫ك‬ ‫ة‬ ‫س‬ ‫ما‬ ‫ت‬ ‫غ‬ ‫ا‬ ‫في‬ ‫ب‬ ْ‫و‬ ٍ ‫عَزالِي َسحا‬ ِ ِ َ ِ

‫إذا لَـ ْم يَ ُك ْن ِرسْـ ٌل يَعُو ُد َعلَ ْي ِه ُم‬ ‫ْض شانَ ُمتُونَها‬ ِ ‫بِ َم ْكنُونَ ٍة كَالبَي‬ ‫بَقايا ال ُذ َرى َحتَّى يَعُو َد َعلَ ْي ِه ُم‬

When they suffer a dearth of fresh milk, we press the ‘teats’ of the blackened [shafts of] notched shawḥaṭ-wood – carefully kept, like eggs, their shells scored by stones  –  [which are] repeatedly thrown and returned [to the pouch]; and we ‘milk’ for them the choice meat of the humps, that they may receive [a bounty like rain loosed from] the spouts of the clouds when a [rain-] star sets.

In a scheme where men are poetically identified with stars and elements, and skies are populated with cloud-camels and calves, where maysir is a conceptual rain-bringer with the potential to be turned to the theme of war, it need not occasion surprise that the ‘lightning-hands’ of a maysir-gambler,130 and the hocking of a sky-camel that heralds 127. As, e.g., Ibr., p. 145, v. 6 – cited above, n. 85 of Chapter 5:1; ʿAbīd (1980), VI, vv. 2–7, cited above, n. 40 of this section; cf. one version of a verse of al-Munakhkhal al-Yashkurī, Tāj, s.v. sh-j-r: alfayti-nī hashsha l-yaday/ni bi-maryi qidḥ-ī aw shajīr-ī. Note that the variation in al-Aṣmaʿī (1955), no. 14, v. 4, explicitly indicates ‘dew’ (nadā), rather than ‘milk’ as the essence of generosity extracted from the arrow: alfayti-nī hashsha l-nadā/bi-sharīji qidḥ-ī aw shajīr-ī. 128. See Lyall (1918–1921), LXII, of al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza, vv. 9–10; ibid., CXVI, of ‘Abd Qays b. Khufāf, vv. 17–18; ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), II, vv. 11–15, incl. vv. 14a–14b. In each case, drought is indicated as the factor leading to the dearth that maysir equalises; cf. Tāj, art. rislun: ‘milk’ implying abundant provision that is dependent on the presence of herbage, and contraposed with the concept of drought; cf. also al-Aṣmaʿī (1955) no. 14, of al-Munakhkhal al-Yashkurī, v. 4 (cited in the preceding note). 129. Al-Rāʿī (1980), no. 5, vv. 2–4. 130. The comparison of lightning to the hands of maysir-gamblers is not unique to the main ḍādīya above: see ʿAbīd (1980), Frag. 7; the fāʾīya of Ṣakhr al-Ghayy, Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 2, p. 68 ff., v. 4, and notes. It seems likely, therefore, that the ‘lightning-hands’ of Imruʾ al-Qays’ muʿallaqa (v. 70, al-Tibrīzī’s edition) are meant to be those of a gambler; and this might be a more productive, culturally specific starting point for interpretation than investing it first with “all the archetypal significations of Zeus’s thunderbolt”: Stetkevych (1993), p. 281, ll. 6–12; cf., also, Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 1, p. 53, where lightning in the clouds is associated with the guessing game of kharīj (on which, see Rosenthal (1975), pp. 31–32, 173). This suggests,

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a celestial maysir-match and produces the ‘milk’ of a fatal storm should be turned – as in the main poem above – to the oblique projection of a warrior’s conquest. And this, indeed, provides us with a key to the problematical storm-section of ʿAlqama’s famous plea on behalf of his kinsman Shaʾs – thought to be addressed to the Ghassānid king, alḤārith b. Jabala. ʿAlqama’s comparison of al-Ḥārith’s formidable attack to the onslaught of a storm is quite open. On the demise of his victims, the poet says:131 ُ‫ـشـ َّكـتِـ ِه لَـ ْم يُسْـتَـلَـبْ َو َسـلِـيـب‬ ِ ِ‫ب‬ ُ‫ْـر ِه َّن َدبِـيـب‬ َ ِ ‫صـوا ِعـقُـهـا لِـطَـي‬

ٌ‫َاحص‬ ِ ‫َرغَى فَوْ قَهُ ْم َس ْقبُ السَّما ِء فَد‬ ٌ‫ـت عَـلَـيْـ ِهـ ْم َسـحابَـة‬ ْ َ ‫صا ب‬ َ ‫كَـأنَّـهُـ ْم‬

The sky’s camel-calf grumbled above them; an armed warrior fell, leg thrashing, like an animal prepared for slaughter, still undespoiled. Another lay stripped It seemed as if they were assailed by floods from a storm-cloud, the flare of whose lightning-bolts crept steadily on

By poetic association, the lightning bolts are easily understood as swords,132 and the grumbling of the camel-calf as thunder (in complement to the typically ‘yearning mothers’). But this particular groan – the poet says raghā – is specifically associated, not only with burden, but with a calf ’s being separated from the mother; a sound that one could expect to hear in the abodes of generous men when the mothers are hocked for slaughter.133 Now also recalling the words of Zuhayr  –  cited shortly perhaps, that maysir was just the game of chance most frequently invoked to figure views on an arbitrary world. 131. ʿAlqama (1925), no. 1, vv. 33–34; ibid., p. 36, n. 1, which observes, importantly: wa-l-ẓāhiru anna l-ḍamīra fī ṭayri-hinna rājiʿun ilā l-ṣawāʿiq, “The (feminine plural) possessive pronoun in ‘their ṭayr’ apparently refers to the lightning-bolts”. The grammatically unsustainable reading, put forward in some Arabic scholions, of v. 34 as a depiction of birds (ṭayr) beaten down by the thunderbolts, has encouraged Suzanne Stetkevych to see here “the recurrent image of the carrion-sated vultures”, which can be nothing less than the image of reincarnation, in a rather literal sense of spirits filled with flesh”: Stetkevych (1994b), pp. 14–15. The translation above takes ṭayr as a verbal noun of ṭāra, ‘to fly’. While the use of root ṭ-y-r, I, seems unusual in relation to lightning (we do not know, of course, how much poetry we have lost), it is famously attested in a rithāʾ of Mutammim, introducing an invocation for rain (isqāʾ): aqūlu wa-qad ṭāra l-sanā fī rabābi-hī/&c., “I say, seeing the tip of the lightning soar in the clouds …”: Lyall (1918–1921), LXVII, v. 23. 132. Cf. Taʾabbaṭa Sharrā’s comparison of swords to the flash of lightning (v. 15 of this lāmīya as carried in Jones (1992), pp. 229–242). The equation of ṣawāʿiq to swords is often far more openly expressed in early Umayyad poetry: see, e.g., al-Akhṭal (1970), vol. 2, p. 414, vv. 17–18 (cited below, n. 22 of the General Conclusion), pp. 444–445, vv. 39–44; cf. al-Maydānī (1838–1843), vol. 2, p. 326, ll. 6–9. 133. Tāj, s.v. r-gh-w, esp. the words of a poet of the Banū Faqʿas: a-yabghī ālu shaddādin ʿalay-nā/wamā yurghā li-shaddādin faṣīlū, “Do Āl Shaddād exalt themselves against us, when never the cry of a calf is made to go up by them [for the want of its mother]” – interpreted to mean they are a clan too niggardly to separate the calf from its mother by slaughtering or gifting it.

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above – who threatens war with the words, “we’ll hock the mothers of the springborn camel-calves and then we are going to ‘play maysir’”, we can posit that the raghwa (grumbling) of ʿAlqama’s ‘camel-calf of the sky’ signals the hocking (ʿaqr) of a [sky-] jazūr,134 – its mother – and the start of a storm-like war-game of maysir.135 This is immediately followed up by an allusion to one fallen enemy as dāḥiṣ, an adjective used of an animal thrashing its leg(s) at the point of slaughter.136 The variant, dāḥiḍ, is also interesting. The root d-ḥ-ḍ occurs in the Qurʾanic story of Jonah, who drew lots and lost, to be thrown to the sea: fa-kāna mina l-mudḥaḍīna.137 This has been glossed: kāna mina l-maqmūrīn, or mina l-mashūmīna l-maghlūbīn, “he was overcome in gambling/in casting lots”.138 Both readings, then, complement the idea that a cosmic gambling-match – heralded by the cry of the ‘sky’s camel-calf ’ – is in play, the loser to be ‘consumed’ (despoiled) by the agent of his death, the king. Beyond the rain and elements, the main poem above projects a theatre for maysir that embraces even the celestial sphere among the wealth of natural actors employed. Again, the wider poetry shows a breadth and common currency to this vision. A startling illustration of this occurs in an elegy of Abū Dhuʾayb, thought to have been composed on the death of his five sons in battle.139 The poem is a sustained statement on the inescapability of death when Time  –  al-Dahr  –  decides the moment. This is achieved through the juxtaposition of three familiar scenes, each introduced by the formula, wa-l-Dahru lā yabqā ʿalā ḥadathāni-hī ..., “Time, there survives not against its accidents …”, thus leaving the hearer in no doubt that they are inter-referential: (i) wild onagers make a foray to water, but fail to evade the hunter, Death; (ii) a bulloryx faces Death, the hunter, and his dogs; (iii) two superlative warriors succumb to Death when they meet their match in one other. The onager-scene (verses 14–34) is played out as another maysir-match of cosmic proportions; the stars themselves are taking part. Capella (al-ʿayyūq) is figured, standing above Orion’s belt (al-naẓm), as a raqīb overseeing a game of maysir. 134. Recall, again, that Sāʿida b. Juʾayya explicitly identifies the rise and fall of lightning with an ʿaqīr, a camel hocked for slaughter at maysir: Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 2, p. 212, l. 8. 135. Lyall notes (1918–1921), vol. 2, p. 332, n. 31, that these verses of ʿAlqama were associated, in the early Islamic period, with the hocking of Allāh’s she-camel (nāqat allāh), and the calamity that befell Thamūd when they gave the lie to the Prophet Ṣāliḥ (Qurʾān, 7: 73–79, 11: 61–68, 26: 141–158, 51: 43–45, 54: 23–31, 91: 11–14; al-Thaʿlabī (1955), pp. 66–72). This offers parallel evidence for the strong association that existed between the camel-calf ’s raghwa and the hocking (ʿaqr) of a she-camel, for no she-camel is mentioned by ʿAlqama, nor is any grumbling calf mentioned in the Qurʾan. This suggests that early Muslims ‘heard’ the groan of the calf of Allāh’s she-camel, despite its absence; and proof of this is given by al-Farazdaq (1936, vol. 1, p. 327, ll. 5–7), who unhesitatingly supplies the raghwa of an orphaned calf when alluding to the disaster that befell Thamūd after they hocked its mother. 136. Tāj, s.v. d-ḥ-ṣ. 137. Qurʾān, 37: 141. 138. Ibn Qutayba (1924), p. 39, and n. 2; Rosenthal (1975), Chapter 1, p. 33, and n. 128. 139. Lyall (1918–1921), CXXVI.

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Below the stars, a game of maysir is, indeed, in progress: a male ass is attempting to shepherd his females to water at the height of summer, when most drinking holes are dry (a repetitive scene of competitive virtue that figures dangerous initiatives, where a hunter typically lurks in wait  – as noted in the commentary to verse 4 of Poem 3.7). In this particular instance, he is an arrow-caster at maysir, ‘playing’ for all their lives; and the females, are, themselves, the arrows successively thrown from the ribāba.140 (This is an obvious analogue of the conceit of close kin as the arrow-shafts within a ribāba, the stakes they use to ‘gamble’ for their life-interests; and it is also a variation, tailored to context, of the typical violence with which the male ass thrusts at the female during the ordeal). The episode is another ingenious variation on the theme of maysir and the rain. The poet says:141 ْ َّ‫ق الن‬ ‫ظ ِم ال يَتَتَلَّ ُع‬ ُ َ ْ‫ض َربا ِء فَو‬

ُ ‫فَ َو َر ْدنَ َو ْال َعيُّو‬ ‫رابئ الـ‬ ‫ق َم ْق َع َد‬ ِ

They arrived at the water when Capella was above Orion’s belt [sitting there] as a watcher sits over the maysir players, not moving.

Capella was conceived as the constant companion of al-Thurayyā (roughly, the Pleiades), which is therefore, implicitly, part of the picture;142 but, as such, it stands in a non-rain-indicating position: drought is implied when it would have been visible, as here, during the fierce summer heat, just before dawn.143 This initiative toward 140. Ibid., v. 23: wa-ka-anna-hunna ribābatun wa-ka-anna-hū yasarun yufīḍu ʿalā l-qidāḥi wa-yaṣdaʿū, “It is as though they are a sheaf of arrows and as though he is a maysir player shuffling them and drawing them out in turn” (the translation is Jones’ (1996), p. 217). 141. Lyall (1918–1921), CXXVI, v. 25 (the translation is Jones’ (1996), pp. 217–218, where the linguistic challenges and the stellar configuration are also discussed). 142. Awareness of how Capella moves with the Pleiades is illustrated by Bishr b. Abī Khāzim, who calls it the ‘neighbour’ – jār – of al-Thurayyā: Lyall (1918–1921), XCVIII, v. 16; Ibn Qutayba (1956), pp. 35–36, discusses this relationship. It is perhaps because the Pleiades are implicit to the mention of Capella that the variant fawqa l-najm (over The Star; i.e., al-Thurayyā) has arisen for fawq al-naẓm (over Orion), presenting a problem of positioning discussed by Jones (1996), p. 218. Another variant carried by Ibn Qutayba (1956), p. 35, avoids the problem with khalfa l-najm (behind/beyond al-Thurayyā) 143. Ibn Qutayba (1956), pp. 29–30; cf. Dhū al-Rumma – d. 117/735? – (1995), p. 321, v. 29, where, in another ass-episode of this general type the poet specifically indicates the very end of the night, just before the first rays of dawn (bi-sudfatin), as the time when al-Thurayyā is visible during the worst summer drought: fa-lammā raʾā l-rāʿī l-thurayyā bi-sudfatin/wa-nashshat niṭāfu l-mubqiyāti l-waqāʾiʿī … Professor Emilie Savage-Smith was kind enough to help confirm that the general position of al-Thurayyā relative to the horizon, just before dawn at the hottest time of the year (mid-August), in the seventh century, when Abū Dhuʾayb might have seen it, was as implied here. She did this using a medieval Islamic celestial globe from Oxford’s Museum of the History of Science (inv. no. 2900 Lewis Evans Coll.), made in 1362–1363 by Jaʿfar b. ʿUmar b. Dawlatshāh al-Kirmānī. The globe was rectified for a latitude that corresponded roughly to the Hudhayl territory in the highlands between Mecca and al-Tāʾif: approximately twenty-one degrees. As it only allows adjustments for latitude by intervals of five degrees,

5:2. The Gambler and the Storm

275

water is then, effectively, another ‘gamble’ at maysir, aimed at accessing a boon that will offset the lack of ‘star-induced’ rain.144 But, of course, this will not succeed, as the poet has signaled from the start. In this particular ‘game’, the onagers must die. The expected happens: a hunter appears, and, in this case, they all go down, the male valiantly attempting to protect them to the last. In its very particular way, this scene reflects the wisdom of ʿAbd Qays b. Khufāf, which was cited above: “Assist them and play maysir for the stakes for which they play; and if they descend into a dangerous strait, then do you go down with them”. Projecting the stars as leading actors thus, the poet offers an explicit sign of the universal proportions of the maysir-conceit as a frame in which to figure the competition for life against the arbitrary workings of Fate. As mentioned, the second scene in the latter elegy of Abū Dhuʾayb is the equally ill-fated struggle of a bull-oryx against hunter and hounds. But successful human initiative is, conversely, projected as the victorious endeavours of such an oryx taking up a similar challenge from Death to win; and al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī shows how a scene like this, too, can be framed by the paradigm of maysir.145 The poet confronts the treacheries and rigours of a harsh desert journey, which he compares to the fate of a bull-oryx forced to confront Death in the shape of hunter and dogs. In fact, the waterless, trackless desert  –  the mafāza (or the larger mahmaha)  –  always has the potential to evolve into a stage for maysir: One poet describes such a treacherous desert-route as a place where the way-signs, sometimes apparent, sometimes not, are like the hands of a gambling-party, sometimes rising, sometimes disappearing;146 another describes the relentless commitment with which his mount pursues its journey as the obsession of a gambler pursuing his game.147 Hazardous travels entail loss – the emaciation of the mount, for example, conceived as flesh that has been ‘won’ it was set for twenty-five degrees. To allow for the precession of the equinoxes, the position of the equinoxes and solstices was shifted back by eleven degrees to approximate their position in about 600 AD; and the point along the ecliptic where the sun would have been in mid-August was placed approximately twenty-six degrees below the eastern horizon, where the last stars are visible before dawn breaks. The globe was then twice readjusted to approximate the constellations visible before dawn at the same time of year in about 700 AD (to approximate how Dhū al-Rumma might have seen them), and 800 AD (to approximate how Ibn Qutayba might have seen them). In all these settings, the Pleiades and areas including Perseus and Cassiopeia were visible in the East, high in the sky, though they appeared to be highest – i.e., closest to the north geographical pole - in about 600 AD. (On the globe used, see E. Savage-Smith (1985), pp. 221–222, no. 7). 144. Cf. ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), II, vv. 12–15, where the drought for which maysir compensates is also betokened by the non-rain-indicating position of the Pleiades. 145. Al-Nābigha (1971), p. 238 ff., s.v. mashhadu l-ṣayd. 146. Ibn Qutayba (1924), p. 62: two dālīya verses ascribed to Ṭarafa, though lost to his dīwān if this is correct. The first of them does appear in the poetry of al-Ṭirimmāḥ: al-Ṭirimmāḥ (1927), no. 18, v. 18. 147. A ḥāʾīya verse carried in the Lisān, s.v. kh-l-ʿ: yaʿuzzu ʿalā l-ṭarīqi bi-mankibay-hī/ka-mā btaraka l-khalīʿu ʿalā l-qidāḥī. This appears in Jarīr (1935), p. 97, l. 4.

276

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

from its body by the maysir-shafts of an invisible opponent.148 Little surprise, then, that mafāza – a term coined, some say, optimistically to define a place from where one emerges alive, precisely to offset its deadly ill-omen – is built on the same roots as fawz, which is used (as in verse 3 of the key poem above) to signify a winning throw at maysir.149 To return, then, to al-Nābigha’s mounted desert-journey on ‘oryx’, his boast of principled fortitude (ṣabr) in surviving the ordeal is also cast in the mould of maysir, but, in this case, purely by allusion. Once forced to confront the hunter’s hounds, the ‘oryx’ wheels on them to slaughter the first and scythe through them. This, he does, the poet says, “like the carpenter who cuts ten maysir-arrows from a block of wood”: … ka-l-mushāʿibi aʿshāran bi-aʿshārī.150 The hounds then, represent together a bunched body of ‘maysir-shafts’, and the stakes that have been put into play for the life of the oryx. This being so, should they lose to the oryx, they might, rather, become the conceptual ten aʿshār of a slaughter-camel. This is effectively what transpires: The oryx begins a relentless sequence of wheeling (mikarr), of idbār and iqbāl, the familiar back and forth of cavalry at war  – also poetically identified, as noted, with the revolution of arrows in and out of the ribāba. He takes a second hound, a third, and then seven more. The total is ten - another clean sweep. Then, in a final, ‘celestial’, revolution, the oryx hastens away and disappears – ‘descends’, as it were, to ‘set’ with the morning, like a “pearly star” (inqaḍḍa ka-l-kawkabi l-durrīyi munṣalitan/yahwī ...), thus embodying the similar life-giving potentials of two ‘rainbringers’: a victorious maysir-player and a star. It will be clear that this scene presents one possible reverse-perspective on the interaction between hunter and hunted - the ‘shining’ bull-oryx, and the does picked off one to ten  –  in the concluding phases of the main poem above; a reverse-perspective where the hunted is victor and the hunter picked off as the ten aʿshār of a conceptual jazūr.151 The sum of this survey of maysir in early Arabic poems reveals that the uniqueness of the main poem above lies in the synthesis and coordination of the elements taken in by the vast panorama of the poet’s vision, not in the presentation of those elements in and of themselves. The broader conclusions to be drawn from this analysis are reserved, once more, for comment at the end of Chapter 5:3. 148. The ʿaynīya verse attributed to Kuthayyir, Ibn Qutayba (1924), p. 121. 149. Tāj, s.v. f-w-z. 150. Al-Nābigha (1971), p. 239, n. 4. Philip Kennedy’s argument (1991, pp. 74–89) that al-Akhṭal may have taken direct inspiration from this oryx-scene of al-Nābigha when composing a qaṣīda rāʾiya of his own (al-Akhṭal 1970–1971, vol. 1, pp. 161–172), is very much enhanced by the fact that al-Akhṭal also refers to the maysir conceit at the point that the oryx wheels (karra) on the hunter’s dogs: fa-ʿaffara l-ḍāriyāti l-lāḥiqāti bi-hi/ʿafra l-gharībi qidāḥan bayna aysārī, “He cast the dogs that had reached him into the dust, like a stranger casting arrow-shafts amid gamblers at maysir”. 151. Cf. a dālīya of ʿAbd Manāf b. Ribʿ: Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 2, p. 38 ff., esp. v. 5, who offers a configuration of six and then four to a group of abodes ‘rained’ on by a hostile force: ṣābū bi-sittati abyātin fa-arbaʿatin/ḥattā ka-anna ʿalay-him jābiyan labidā.

5:3. Intoxicated Excursions

This section now draws on all that goes before to tackle three composite qaṣīdas which include developed projections of the camel-borne riḥla. Offering tastes of the oryx, the onager and ostrich, the poet relays in detail what it is that he ‘saddles’, confessing his mind in the form of familiar, but quite individual, tableaux. Here, we pick up and examine more closely the critical, polyvalent concepts of waṣl and ṣarm: respectively, bonding in, or severance from, a union in compact. We see how these, quite typically, imply gendered oppositions, benign and inimical, which take place not only between distinct bodies, but within the heart and mind of the poet, himself. We treat further, also, of the ethical implications of iqāma and ẓaʿn – ‘abiding’ and ‘departing’ – and their equally gendered poetical dynamics; and we offer an overview of the distinct place of palm imagery – similarly gendered – in poetical projections of sacred honour (ʿirḍ). We develop our discussion of the place of the poet’s tears in the unfolding network of liquid conceits, of the wider extensions of wine and intoxication, and of the very seminal resonance of ḥilm. Poem 5.3.1:12345678

‫س‬ ِ َ ‫تارينَ بِال َوصْ ِل نَـيْأ‬ ِ ‫ِأم الصَّرْ َم ت َْخ‬ ُ ْ َ َ ‫ِّس‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ت‬ ‫م‬ ‫ال‬ ‫ة‬ ‫ج‬ ‫و‬ ‫ل‬ ‫خ‬ ‫م‬ ‫ال‬ ‫ِمنَ الـ َّشكِّ ِذي‬ َ ِ ُ َ ِ ‫س‬ ِ ‫ بِـ ِعـرْ نانَ ُم‬3‫ أوْ طا ٍو‬2َ‫بـِ ُشـرْ بَة‬ ِ ‫وج‬ ْ ‫راب ع‬ ‫س‬ ٍ ‫َـن َمـبِي‬ َ ُّ‫يُـثِـيـ ُر الت‬ ِ ِ‫ت َو َمـ ْكن‬ ْ ‫س‬ ‫م‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫خ‬ ‫م‬ ‫ـر‬ ‫ـواج‬ ‫ه‬ ‫الـ‬ ‫ث‬ ‫إثـا َر ةَ نَـبّـا‬ َ ِ ِ ُ ِ ِ ِ ْ ْ‫َر‬ ‫َس‬ ‫د‬ ‫ك‬ ‫م‬ ‫الـ‬ ‫ـيـر‬ ‫األس‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ث‬ ‫م‬ ُ ُ‫ضجْ َعـتُه‬ ِ ِ ِ ‫َو‬ ُ ِ ِ ُ ‫إذا ْألـثَـقَـ ْتـهـا غَـبْـيَـةٌ بَـي‬ ‫س‬ ِ ‫ْر‬ ِ ‫ْـت ُمع‬ ‫س‬ ِ ‫ِكـالبُ اب‬ ِ ِ‫ْـن ُمرٍّ أوْ ِكالبُ اب ِْن ِس ْنب‬ 6 5 ‫س‬ ِ ‫ِمـنَ ال َّذ ْم ِر َواإليحا ِء نُوّا ُر عَضْ َر‬ 8 َّ ‫عَلى ال‬ ‫س‬ ‫ َو‬7‫ص ْمـ ِد‬ ِ ِ ِ‫اآلكـام ِج ْذ َوةُ ُم ْقب‬ ُ ْ ْ ْ ‫ث‬ ‫س‬ ِ ‫بِ ِذي ال ِّر ْم‬ ِ ‫إن ما َوتـنَـهُ يَـوْ ُم أنف‬

َّ ‫أماو‬ ‫س‬ ٍ ‫ي هَلْ لي ِع ْن َد ُك ْم ِم ْن ُم َع َّر‬ ِ ٌ‫إن الصَّري َمةَ را َحة‬ َّ ‫أبِينِي لَـنا‬ ‫ح‬ َ ْ‫كَـأنّي َو َرحْ لي فَو‬ َ َ‫ق أحْ ق‬ ِ َ‫ب ق‬ ٍ ‫ار‬ َُ‫تَـ َعـ َّشى قَليالً ثُ َّم أ ْن َحى ظُلُو فه‬ ُ‫يَهـِيـ ُل َويَ ْـذ ِري تُـرْ بَها َويُـثِـيـ ُره‬ ‫ب‬ ٍ ‫فَـباتَ عَلى خَـ ٍّد أ َحـ َّم َو َم ْن ِك‬ ‫ف كَأنَّها‬ ٍ ‫َوباتَ إلَى أرْ طا ِة ِح ْق‬ 4 ً‫وق ُغـ َديَّـة‬ َ َ‫ف‬ ِ ‫صبَّ َحهُ ِعـ ْنـ َد ال ُّش ُر‬ َّ ‫ُمـغَـ َّرثَةً ُزرْ قـا ً ك‬ ‫َـأن عُـيُـونَـهـا‬ ُ‫فَـأ ْدبَ َر يَـكـْســوها الـرَّغا َم كَـأنَّـه‬ ْ َ‫َوأيْـقَـن‬ َّ ُ‫إن القَـيْـنَـه‬ ُ‫أن يَـوْ َمـه‬

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

1. Metre: ṭawīl. D.Ṣ., pp. 115–116; Ibr., pp. 101–104; Ahl., 31. Ibr., pp. 404–405 details further minor variants, which diverge little from the conceptual scope represented here. 2. Ibr: sharbata. 3. So, with Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: ṭāfin &c. 4. Ahl: ṣabbaḥna-hu &c. 5. Ahl: wa-l-īsādi &c. 6. Ibr: ʿiḍrasī. 7. Ahl: ʿalā l-qūri &c. 8. Ibr: jadhwatu muqbisī; Ahl: jidhwatu miqbasī.

278

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia ‫ِّس‬ َ ‫كَـما َش ْب َر‬ َ ْ‫الو ْلدانُ ثَو‬ ِ ‫ب ال ُمقَد‬ ِ ‫ق‬ ‫ـس‬ ِ ‫كَـقَرْ ِم ال ِه‬ ِ ‫جان الـفَا ِد ِر ال ُمـتَـشَـ ِّم‬

ْ ‫َّـاق َوالنَّسا‬ ِ ‫فَـأ ْد َر ْكنَهُ يَأ ُخ ْذنَ بِالس‬ ْ ُ‫َو َغ َّورْ نَ في ِظلِّ الغَضا َوتَ َركنَه‬

12 13

1. Māwīya! Will there be a resort (muʿarras) for me tonight among you; or will you choose severance (al-ṣarm) that we should despair of the bond (al-waṣl)? 2. Be frank with us: a clean decision (al-ṣarīma) would be release from the doubt (shakk) that pulls (dhī l-makhlūja) and cleaves (al-mutalabbis); 3. As if, with my saddle (ka-annī wa-raḥl-ī), I were on a whitebellied [onager] (aḥqab), full-grown (qāriḥ), at Shurba/Sharba; or a bow-necked, recumbent (ṭāwin)/a racing (ṭāfin) [oryx]9 at ʿIrnān, listening, fearful, for danger imagined (mūjis); 4. Who, after a meagre evening-feed, had ploughed the soil with his hooves to create a moist night-covert, 5. Sending up dust, like the digger at noon, desperate to bring his camels, the fifth day, to water (mukhmis).10 6. He slept on hardy cheek and shoulder, like a prisoner (asīr) fettered, hand and foot (mukardas), 7. His refuge, the arṭāh11 of a winding sand-tract, [fragrant] after a rain-burst, as a bridegroom’s chamber (bayt muʿris). 8. Then, at sunrise (al-shurūq), he is brought the ‘morning cup’ (ṣabbaḥa-hu) by the dogs of Ibn Murr, or those of Ibn Sinbis, 9. Ravening, goggling, from incitement and chiding, their eyes [shot red] like ʿaḍras blooms.12 10. So he turned to cloak them with dust as he fled, a firebrand on the rough and hilly terrain (al-ṣamd wa-l-ākām), 11. Knowing for sure (ayqana) that, if they engaged him face-toface (in māwatna-hu), his day at Dhū al-Rimth would be one that cost blood: 12. They had seized him by the shank and thigh-vein to tear him as do children the robe of a holy man (al-muqaddis);13 9. In fact, the Arabic reads as if this should be the same animal, the problem being – as the glosses pick up – that while aḥqab is normally an epithet of the wild onager, the rest of the passage from this point on makes it clear that an oryx is the main protagonist. It may be a curtailed version of two ‘nature-panels’; but a variation on vv. 3–5, attributed to Bishr b. Abī Khāzim (Yāqūt 1866–1873, vol. 3, p. 656, s.v. ʿirnān) does not present the same discrepancy. 10. This is generally deemed a process where camels drink one day, pasture for three, and are brought to water again on the fifth; but some account it differently: Tāj, s.v. kh-m-s, IV. 11. Jaroslav Stetkevych (2002), pp. 103–108 offers an overview of the intimacy of the arṭāh to the oryx panel and its poetic connotations; see also, ibid., pp. 111–120 for his very personal, broader exploration of its “real, latent, or potential meanings”. 12. Ibr.’s gloss (p. 103, n. 9) describes this as a shrub with red blossom; see also, Lisān, ʿ-ḍ-r-s. 13. The lexicographers incline to see muqaddis as a Christian (monk or other), or Jew (ḥibr) who makes, or has made, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem (bayt al-maqdis). There is no hesitatation in interpreting the tearing of the garment as a desire for holy blessing (tabarrukan bi-hi): see Tāj, art. muqaddisun, which cites the verse as here; Lisān, s.v. q-d-s, however, cites this verse ending al-muqaddasī, and assumes a Christian monk from Jerusalem is meant.

5:3. Intoxicated Excursions

279

13. But, at noon they collapsed in the shade of the ghaḍā, leaving him like a blood-camel stallion, faded, having covered (fādir), and exposed to the sun (mutashammis).

Verses 1–2: The poet projects a critical moment at the threshold of despair (verse 1), his fate ostensibly in the balance, hanging on the decision of one Māwīya as to whether he will have entry into her community - he references the plural ‘with you’  –  and a ‘night resort’ (muʿarras). A positive decision entails qarāba (near-relatedness) in waṣl (union in compact), which offers hope, company, provision, sense-gratification, freedom from exposure and the anxieties of the night (‘sickness’). The alternative is ṣarm (categorical severance from compact), entailing ghurba (strangerhood), which implies conceptual, if not local, distance (buʿd), distress, exposure, the metaphorical status of a prisoner ‘entrapped’ and need of ransom, and the concomitant ‘thirst’ that requires isqāʾ (a giving to drink – perhaps enhanced in the liqueous connotations of Māwīya’s name) – in short, the malignant effects of rayb al-Dahr that are liable to inspire ṣibā (‘youthful folly’) and jahl. Precisely the effects of rayb are implied (verse 2) with the expansion on the poet’s distress. Much as he seems not to desire ṣarm (‘severance’), he needs clarity, an incisive decision (ṣarīma – notably based on the same root as ṣarm) that will offer relief (rāḥa) – all of which clearly reflects dis-ease. This dis-ease is defined by three key qualities: (i) shakk – ‘doubt’, which is considered to be the opposite of yaqīn, ‘certainty’, and implies confusion, distress and the experience of rayb;14 (ii) talabbus – a concept of ‘attiring’ that can be turned to express ideas of clinging and emotional intrusion,15 last encountered (verse 13 of Poem 2.6) figuring the ‘cloak’ of Death’s progressive influence, which aspired to ‘enrobe’ the aging poet in morbidity; (iii) khalj – which articulates the ‘pervasion’ and ‘pull’ of a distracting and disorienting force. It is conspicuously associated with the ‘pull’ of Death, with the rending changes wrought by Time, with the toil of hamm, shakk and rayb, the anxieties, doubts and fears that unsettle the mind.16 There are ample possibilities for poetic elaboration on khalj, examples of which arise in the course of what follows. This, in sum, is a picture of poisonous entrapment that presents a moral challenge. The poet must rise to it and redeem himself; he must pre-empt incipient blame by attempting to shed dis-ease and thereby achieve his ‘excuse’ (ʿudhr). His nextimmediate move, however, is to take us directly into the experience by telling us what kind of ‘camel’ he currently ‘rides’, and what ‘baggage’ he carries while ‘in the saddle’. (This is to recall the conceit of ‘saddled baggage’ – ḥaqībat al-raḥl – as a figure for relative moral integrity, last discussed in the commentary to verses 13–15 of Poem 4.3). In so doing, he brings into relief a number of conceits we have seen would 14. Miṣbāḥ, Tāj, s.v. sh-k-k, ẓ-n-n, which illustrate rayb, shakk and ẓann as a nexus. 15. Tāj, art. talabbasa. 16. Tāj, s.v. kh-l-j, I, III, VIII.

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be ready poetical concomitants of his vulnerability here to the whim of Māwīya, in all but a state of ghurba (strangerhood): namely, the condition of a conceptual ‘prisoner’, the experience of fear, distress and raging ‘thirst’, of being rendered ‘hunted game’. Verses 3–7: The poet continues, ka-annī wa-raḥl-ī fawqa, “It is as if I, with my saddle, were on …”. Unless one insists that the only thing to do is entirely ignore what the poet could not be saying more clearly, this is obviously an elaboration on the preceding verses. Given that we cannot step across time to ask the poet what he thinks, this is a remarkable gift: He tells us, by a process of allegorical self-projection, how he sees himself in this situation and exactly what it feels like. That the poet aligns himself first with a grown wild onager (verse 3) – if aḥqab is, indeed, that here – speaks of alignment with a lusty, warrior-like creature that will likely be beleaguered by thirst, and find himself obliged to risk a foray to water where a hunter might lurk. The detail qāriḥ, which confirms his adulthood, is explained as the equivalent in an onager of the stage called bāzil in the camel.17 Applied to a man – and the poet is essentially speaking of himself – this stage indicates a coming of age that implies full acquisition of intellect, experience and judgement.18 One may therefore infer here an indirect claim to such ʿaql and tajriba (‘integral intellect’ and ‘experience’) as equip him to acquit himself without blame (as, for example, he claimed in verse 4 of Poem 1.4). That he is located at Shurba/Sharba suggests perhaps, his proximity to a source that would be the object of his quest: The former implies a quantity of water that satisfies the thirst; the latter, a single draught, being content with which, points to the merit of self-sufficiency.19 As to the mounted poet’s identification, rather, with an oryx, this implies intrinsic worth in and of itself: As we have seen, this is a creature proverbially free from ‘sickness’, inclined and able to flee it or fight it when it comes - as it is bound to do - in the form of a hunter. The reading of Ibrāhīm and Ahlwardt (ṭāwin) conveys a stoop-necked recumbency that complements the oryx’s excavation of a resting place in the following verse. Its powerful flight is implied in the reading of Dār Ṣādir, which has it fiercely running (ṭāfin). In both cases, the fearful imaginings to which he is acutely attuned – he is mūjis – pick up the onslaught of shakk and rayb (‘doubt’ and ‘fear’) that plagues the poet in his opening verses, so underscoring that it is that condition which he now elaborates. The scant feed and solitary improvisation of a night-shelter (verse 4) picks up the poet’s earlier predicament (verse 1), where he stands outside the shelter and provision that would come with a night-resort (muʿarras) in the communion of waṣl, whilst the 17. Qāmūs, s.v. q-r-ḥ, I. 18. Tāj, art. bāzilun. 19. Tāj, art. sharbatun; Qāmūs, art. shurbatun; Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 3, p. 273, offers no identification for Shurba beyond its occurrence in this verse, which he quotes, and one other.

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conceptual thirst of ghurba (‘strangerhood’) – a concomitant of exclusion from waṣl – is realised in the frantic digging that the poet compares to the blistering race of a herder to access water (verse 5). The conceptual condition of being a prisoner  –  another concomitant of ghurba - is realised in the projection of the lonely ‘oryx’, recumbent, ‘shackled’ hand and foot (verse 6). Most evocative of all (verse 7), the ‘oryx’ takes refuge by an arṭāh tree, the fragrance of which – possibly also implying the fragrance of the oryx’s dung20 – is implicitly teased out by the rain, so rendering it a moistened ‘bridal chamber’ (bayt muʿris); and this now realises, in the negative, using the same linguistic root, the desired ‘night-resort’ – muʿarras – of verse 1, with all its implied appeal to the senses, and its promise of a ‘watering’ or ‘drink’ (isqāʾ). This quasi-erotic, perfumed appeal reflects what would essentially be a ‘healing’ experience within the communion he first sought;21 but, of course, being a negative variation, it only enhances the experience of dis-ease by evoking what is sadly absent. To sum up here, the poet has, to this point, offered a close analogue for the state of painful suspension that he describes in his opening verses. By virtue of the inevitable association of a hunter with the poetic tableaux of both onager and oryx, he has also heightened the anticipation that the ‘predatory’ potential of Māwīya’s vacillation will also be realised; and this is, indeed, where he takes us next. Verses 8–9: The negative variation on waṣl (communion in compact) continues: Having spent the night in his ‘bridal-chamber’ the poet-oryx might expect to wake to imbibe the ṣabūḥ: the morning-draught of kinship (whether in the sensual form described, for example, in verses 4–10 of Poem 2.4; or with the competitive virtue of a faithful brother, as in verse 19 of Poem 4.3) – such a draught of communion implying, properly, perfect good faith (wafāʾ), and commitment to mutual redemption (fidāʾ).22 What he receives  –  signalled by an allusion to dawn (al-shurūq) – so evocative of a morning attack  –  is quite the opposite: it is the onslaught of a hunt that is a ‘poison-cup’

20. As glossed, Ibr., p. 102, n. 7. 21. Cf. Ibr., p. 171, v. 16, where, in another moment of ghurba during a mounted ‘journey’, the poet is prompted to recall an antithesis of his predicament in the form of uncurtained, muskdiffusing women’s chambers, which he perceives to be “far from blight”: wa-baytin yafūḥu l-misku fī ḥajarāti-hī/baʿīdin mina l-āfāti ghayri murawwiqī &c. 22. ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa explicitly alludes to the isqāʾ of wine as a demonstration of faith in kinsmen who warrant the oath of fidāʾ (redemption): fa-in kunti sāqiyatan maʿsharan/kirāma l-ḍarāʾibi fī kulli ḥālī//ʿalā karamin wa-ʿalā najdatin/raḥīqan bi-māʾi niṭāfin zulālī//fa-kūnī ulāʾiki tasqīna-hā/ fidan li-ulāʾiki ʿamm-ī wa-khāl-ī, “Now if thou hast a mind to reach, to a clan of noble nature in every condition of things,/Having regard to generosity and courage, far-brought wine mixed with pure cool water,/Then let thy hands bear the cup to these! may my father’s and mother’s brothers be a sacrifice for these!”: ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), V, vv. 8–10 (Lyall’s translation).

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(the poet says of the hounds ṣabbaḥa-hū, “they brought him the ṣabūḥ”), an inversion of true communion, and a ‘drink’ of Death.23 The drama is high, and the poet, well inside this ‘oryx’s’ head: Now finally locating a real threat of the type for which he has been listening, he recognises (verse 8) “either the hounds of Ibn Murr, or those of Ibn Sinbis” – suggesting, for one thing, the intellectual turmoil of instinctively seeking to make sense of sound out of former experience with aggressors whose names he knows. The anthropomorphism also suggests that the poet is projecting ideal figures: Ibn Murr and Ibn Sinbis have been identified as skilful hunters of Ṭayyiʾ;24 but it will be recalled how – in Poem 1.5 – the unmistakable character of Death was figured by another ostensibly known tribal hunter; namely, the unrivalled archer of Thuʿal. At the same time, the names of these hunters appear to be tailored to the context of a ‘distasteful’ oncoming calamity and ravening pursuit: Murr indicates what is bitter to the palate and is strongly associated with affliction and disaster;25 and Sinbis connotes great speed and emaciation.26 One may infer here, again, the ideal hunter – and, in this case, also, the ideal hounds – of Death, all ʿsickʾ with hunger for their prey, and the very embodiment of the poet-oryxʾs ʿreturning diseaseʾ. This brings to mind, again, the words of Labīd where, in a similar predicament, the oryx he ‘rides’ recognises the sound of the hunter as her ‘disease’ (saqām) of old.27 It also suggests itself as a developed poetic picture for the conception of al-Dahr – with its ‘dog tooth’ and ‘claw’ – as a ‘rabid’ thing (kalib: see the commentary to verses 10–13 of Poem 1.4). Verses 10–11: If the poet-oryx has been suspended in the ‘limbo’ of shakk and rayb, subject to forces outside his own, caught between decision and inaction, the fog and paralysis now evaporate. The ‘clear decision’ (ṣarīma) he sought is made for him. He realises for sure what he must do (ayqana – the diametrical opposite of his shakk in verse 2), and opts to make a vehement break from the cynical waṣl, or ‘union’, that can only kill him. And, if one can infer, by poetic association, that the flight of this ‘firebrand’ is a virtuous, not ignoble, endeavour (as discussed in the commentary to verses 10–12 of Poem 2.5), an endeavour of superior integrity with the application of ʿaql (intellect), this inference is enhanced by details in verse 10: The figure of covering an antagonist 23. Cf. ibid., II, vv. 17–18 for a clustering of the same concepts whereby the onslaught of the poet’s army is a ‘morning draught’ (ṣabūḥ) that is poison (samm), brought by ‘shapes of death’ (ḍabāʾir mawt): tasīru wa-tuzjī l-samma taḥta nuḥūri-hā/karīhun ilā man fājaʾat-hu ṣabūḥu-hā//ʿalā muqdhaḥirrātin wa-hunna ʿawābisun/ḍabāʾiru mawtin lā yurāḥu murīḥu-hā, “It moves along, driving poison before the breasts of it steeds – dreadful the morning draught thereof to those on whom it falls unawares –//Mounted on grim-faced horses, with lips drawn back for the fight, are all possible shapes of death, the sender-forth of which cannot be turned back” (Lyall’s translation). 24. Ibr., p. 103, n. 8. 25. Tāj, art. murrun. 26. Freytag, arts sanbasa, sinbisun; Tāj, s.v. s-n-b-s. 27. Al-Tibrīzī (1969), Labīd, v. 47.

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in dust suggests a certain claim to superiority through an act of abasement;28 and the allusion to negotiating a way over al-ṣamd wa-l-ākām – both relating to land that is rugged and hilly – is reflected in the proverbial qualities of one called ṭallāʿ al-anjud, or ṭallāʿ al-thanāyā (one who ascends the hilly roads); i.e., one able to surmount hardship by virtue of knowledge, experience and judgement.29 With the view in mind that this externalised contest is the poetical incarnation of an internal ‘battle’ aroused in the poet by Māwīya’s vacillation in the opening verses, that what she has generated equates to an initiative of Death, is also perhaps intentionally enhanced by the shift to the feminine plural here for the hounds: as we have seen (verse 6 of Poem 2.1, verse 13 of Poem 2.6) the poet is liable to allude to the Fates (al-manāyā) in the feminine plural, without even explicitly mentioning them, these being ‘females’, furthermore, that are inclined to ‘bring a man to water’. The sum of these associations would suggest that, Māwīya, with all her ‘watery’, semantic promise, is once and for all exposed as a covenantee whose ‘giving to drink’ (isqāʾ) is Death. This initiative is, in any case, something to which the poet-oryx cannot allow himself willingly to succumb. Hence, the singularly manful recollection of body and mind, and the concerted endeavour now to ‘split’ (effect ṣarm). Verses 12–13: The intrinsic virtue of the oryx in flight, its pure integrity of mind and body – indeed, its sacred inner self – is sustained in the figuring of the hounds’ initiative (verse 12) as the will to tear at a holy man’s robe. This projects the feverish bid to take him as an analogy of taking spiritual benefit from something innately pure, which is the act of those in a state less pure, or of ritual taint (what one might call dāʾ, or sickness), to achieve their ritual purification. Recalling again the words of al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza (discussed in the commentary to verses 14–19 of Poem 5.2),30 who, conceding no sin on the part of his people, compares an illegitimate prosecution for blood with the improper sacrifice of oryxes (ẓibāʾ), one may infer that the poet hereby concedes no sin, denies the legitimacy of the pursuit of his blood, and confirms his maintenance of the intrinsic purity that naturally accrues to him by virtue of his alignment with the oryx.31 The poet rewards this projection of virtue (verse 13) with the failure of the dogs to bring him down. They cannot, as it were, take the heat. Yet, there is ambiguity in this outcome: He compares himself, in the end, to a noble camel-stallion that is fādir 28. Tāj, s.v. r-gh-m, I: raghima l-anf; ibid., s.v. ʿ-f-r, I. 29. Tāj, s.v. ṭ-l-ʿ: tallāʿ al-anjud; Qāmūs, Lisān, s.v. n-j-d; cf. below, v. 23 of Poem 5.3.2. 30. For the quote and reference, see above, Chapter 5:2, n. 100. 31. We find here a beautiful complement to the perception of Hubert and Mauss as to the conceptual equivalence of sickness, death and sin (all embodied in the aggressors here) that permits curative sacrifices to be treated together with the purely expiatory, both of which “have it as their purpose to communicate to the victim, by the sacrificial continuity, the sacrificer’s religious impurity and with that victim to eliminate it”: Hubert and Mauss (1964), p. 53. The translation is that of W. D. Halls.

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and mutashammis. Fādir indicates flagging and lack of potency after covering. While this has the ‘throw-back’ effect of implying that he has summoned the attitude of a ḥalīm, and all his masculine resources, to engage in a quasi-gendered battle with Death and survive, his final, impotent state is far-removed, for example, from that of the mount in Poem 5.2, whose ‘seminal force-waters’, after conquest (verse 19), effortlessly replenished themselves. And while mutashammis indicates the virtue of a man with strength to sustain himself and defend his back, it signifies, principally, exposure to the sun, which we know to be shining fiercely (ghawwara, verse 13, implies the midday heat). Here, the poet indicates no such respite from the blaze as he was given in the main poem of the preceding section (verse 11) before collecting his resources to take the offensive. His situation is more like the ambiguous predicament of the ‘wolf ’ at the end of Poem 5.1: Night would not set for him, and the threat of Death, in the form of the poet-horse-eagle, remained. No more here have the dogs been definitively conquered. If their resorting to the ghaḍā is a lowly bid for respite, it also evokes, perhaps, unquelled, lurking rancour: The ghaḍā is proverbially the resort of a stalking wolf deemed to be the most malignant and noxious.32 The sum of this suggests that the brooding ‘sickness’ of predatory hunger may have abated, but nonetheless remains in the air. There are different ways to look at this poem with its final stasis, deprived of unambiguous resolution. It may be that it lacks the announcement of a specific cause or issue, which could be provided by a subsequent movement where the poet reveals his purpose and contextualises the allegory. In this case, it could be a poem that takes issue with dealings in a treacherous covenant rather like the kāfīya of Zuhayr, discussed in Part 1:2.33 There, the poet allegorised a treachery that rendered him a sandgrouse, suddenly attacked and relentlessly chased by a hawk. That story, so far as we saw it, ended with the ‘sandgrouse’ – albeit alive – cowering in the undergrowth while the hawk flew up to dominate the panorama on a promontory curiously reminiscent of a sacrificial stone  –  a scene that offers an alternative example of an aggression of sacral dimensions that seeks to make an illegitimate sacrifice of the poet-prey, and which ends without unequivocal resolution. Zuhayr then brought out his message and contextualised that allegory as a vicious betrayal in a final tirade with instructions to desist – a revelation of purpose that we do not find here. Without further, undisguised revelation, our poem here could fit a host of issues broadly defined by contention with the predatory afflictions of rayb al-Dahr: any unresolved betrayal; or the post’s own unconsummated desire for blood-mulct, which will continue to ‘pursue’ or ‘mortify’ him till he succeeds; or simply an ethically-guided expression of commitment to combat Time’s malignance for as long as there is power to do so – a commitment to fighting the ‘sin of despair’ which, carries with it, of course, the sure knowledge of the hopelessness of ever finally vanquishing that malignance. 32. Qāmūs, s.v. gh-ḍ-w: dhiʾbu ghaḍan. 33. Ahlwardt (1870), Zuhayr, no. 10, v. 10 ff. This was discussed, Part 1:2, s.v. Plasticity of the Poetic Discourse and the Mechanics of the Saddle.

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Now, we have already dealt with poems that complement these perspectives with details that have a resonance here: We last saw the decision of waṣl or ṣarm being left entirely to a female figure in Poem 4.1, where the poet was apparently addressing the dead and contemplating a covenant that offered the qarāba (nearness, kinship) of oblivion. The name Māwīya was invoked in Poem 1.7 in relation to an abode that told of death and the isqāʾ of the dead (the ‘giving to drink’ that comes with the attainment of vengeance). And the last occasion we witnessed the poet unable finally to project a definitive win against the initiative of Time was in Poem 2.6, for there he was losing the self-evidently unwinnable battle against the march of decrepitude. There too, as in verse 1 above, he begged for a muʿarras – expressing a wish for resort with long-lost kin, which, in the context, fell little short of a wish for death. The major battle to be won was with his own fear and despair. In the light of all these factors, Poem 5.3.1, above, may be read as an elaborate exercise in negotiating a coming confrontation with Death, or fighting with a desire for death, or with the fear of death, and winning one round of a battle that will not cease until the poet, necessarily, loses. That the oryx resists, all the same,  –  that, broadly, he chooses life, and survives - would then nonetheless read as an assertion of murūwa and the poet’s claim to ʿudhr (his ‘excuse’ from blame). As he articulates openly, elsewhere, a true man, with still a breath of life in his body, is not one to grasp for the skirts of calamity, or ever remiss in his endeavours: wa-mā l-marʾu mā dāmat ḥushāshatu nafsi-hī/bi-mudriki aṭrāfi l-khuṭūbi wa-lā ālī.34 But, whatever the poem’s occasion and intent, it indicates, in complement to all that precedes, that the evasion or purgation of Time’s affliction is an unavoidable, quasi-gendered contest, which is powered, on the man’s side, by the ethos of murūwa, and carries with it certain implications of ritual purity and taint. It also indicates that perhaps the widest window into the poet’s mind is via his ‘saddle’ and what exactly it is that he ‘rides’. Poem 5.3.2:3536373839

ْ ‫ عَـ ْنهـا ُخ‬36‫ص ُر‬ ُ‫ط َوةً أوْ تَبُوص‬ ُ ‫فَتَ ْق‬ ْ‫أر‬ ‫َو َك ْم‬ ُ‫ب دُونَها َولُـصُوص‬ ٍ ‫ض َجـ ْد‬ ِ ُ‫َو قَ ْد حانَ ِم ْنها ِر حْ لَةٌ فَـقُـلُوص‬ ُ‫ـر تَـ ُشـو فُـهـا َو تَـ ُشـوص‬ ٍ ‫َو ِذ ي أُ ُش‬ 39 ْ ‫َّيال فَ ْه َو ع‬ ُ‫َـذبٌ يَفيص‬ ِ ‫َك َشوْ ِك الس‬ 37

ْ ‫أ ِم ْن ِذ ْك ِر َس ْـلمى‬ ُ‫ك تَنُوص‬ َ ‫أن نَـأ َ ْتـ‬ ‫َو َك ْم ُد و نَها ِم ْن َمهـْ َمـ ٍه َو َمفا َز ٍة‬ 38 ْ ‫تَرا َء‬ ‫ب ُعنَ ْي َز ٍة‬ ِ ‫ت لَنا يَوْ ما ً بِ َج ْن‬ ‫ار ٍد‬ ِ ‫ـر َو‬ ِ ِ‫بِـأ سْـ َو َد ُم ْـلـتَـفِّ الـغَـدا ئ‬ ُ‫وس َو لَـوْ نُه‬ ِ ‫َمـنابـِتُـهُ ِم ْـثـ ُل السُّـ ُد‬

1 2 3 4 5

34. Ibr., p. 39, v. 54. 35. Metre: ṭawīl. D.Ṣ., pp. 122–125; Ibr., pp. 177–184; Ahl., 34; vv. 12–25 are discussed in Bauer, 1992, vol. 2, pp. 19–26. Ibr., pp. 427–428, details variants, the broad scope of which are represented here. 36. Ahl: fa-tuqṣiru &c. 37. Ahl: tabūṣu wa-kam min dūni-hā min mafāzatin/wa-min arḍi jadbin dūna-hā wa-luṣūṣū. 38. Ahl: bi-safḥi ʿunayzatin &c. 39. Ibr. reads yufīḍū (!), glossed as yabruqu.

‫‪Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia‬‬ ‫‪6‬‬ ‫‪7‬‬ ‫‪8‬‬ ‫‪9‬‬ ‫‪10‬‬ ‫‪11‬‬ ‫‪12‬‬ ‫‪13‬‬ ‫‪14‬‬ ‫‪15‬‬ ‫‪16‬‬ ‫‪17‬‬ ‫‪18‬‬ ‫‪19‬‬ ‫‪20‬‬ ‫‪21‬‬ ‫‪22‬‬ ‫‪23‬‬ ‫‪24‬‬ ‫‪25‬‬

‫ك ِش ِملَّةٌ‬ ‫فَهَلْ تُسْـلِـيَ َّ‬ ‫ـن ا لهَـ َّم َع ْن َ‬ ‫تَـظاهَـ َر فـيها النَّ ُّي‪ 41‬ال ِه َي بَ ْك َرةٌ‬ ‫أَ ُؤ وبٌ نَعُوبٌ ال يُـوا ِكـ ُل نَ ْه ُز ها‬ ‫راب َو نُ ْم ُر قي‬ ‫كَـأ نّي َو َر حْ لي َو القِ َ‬ ‫ق لَـهُ َو لِـ ِعرْ ِسـ ِه‬ ‫ق هَـيْـ ٍ‬ ‫عَلى نِـ ْقـنِـ ٍ‬ ‫ـي أَوْ بـا ً يَـفُـنُّـهــا‬ ‫إذا را َح لِألُضْ ِح ِّ‬ ‫ُـطـار ُد آ تُـنـا ً‬ ‫ك أ ْم جَـوْ نٌ ي‬ ‫أذ لِـ َ‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫ْ ‪43‬‬ ‫اضطما ُر ال َّش ِّد فَ‬ ‫نُ‬ ‫شازبٌ‬ ‫ط‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ال‬ ‫َ‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫طَواهُ‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫َ‬ ‫َّ‬ ‫َ‬ ‫ْـر ِه‬ ‫ه‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ظ‬ ‫ة‬ ‫د‬ ‫ُـ‬ ‫ج‬ ‫و‬ ‫ه‬ ‫َـ‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ا‬ ‫ـر‬ ‫س‬ ‫كَـأ َّن‬ ‫ُ‬ ‫َ‬ ‫َ‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫ب جالِبٌ‬ ‫ـحاجـبِـ ِه َك ْد ٌح ِمنَ الضَّرْ ِ‬ ‫بِ ِ‬ ‫َو يـأْ ُك ْـلـنَ ِم ْن قَ ٍّو لُـعاعـا ً َو ِر بَّةً‬ ‫ـيـل كَـأ نَّـهُ‬ ‫تُ ِ‬ ‫ـطـيـ ُر ِعـفـا ًء ِم ْن ن َِس ٍ‬ ‫صيَّفَهـا َحـتّى إذا لَ ْم يَـسُــ ْغ لَـهـا‬ ‫تَ َ‬ ‫َـواجـ ٌر‬ ‫تَغالَبْنَ ‪ 47‬فِـي ِه ال َج ْز َء لوْ ال ه ِ‬ ‫قار با ً َو انـْتَـ َح ْ‬ ‫ـت لهَُ‬ ‫أ َر َّن َعلَيْهـا‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫َّ‬ ‫ْـل َمـ ْشـ َربا ً‬ ‫ْ‬ ‫ي‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫الل‬ ‫ر‬ ‫آخ‬ ‫ن‬ ‫فَـأوْ َردَهـا ِم‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫فَـيَـ ْشـ َربْـنَ أ ْنـفـاسـا ً َوه َّ‬ ‫ُـن خَـوائِـفٌ‬ ‫َـشـيَّـةً‬ ‫فَـأصْ َد َرهـا تَـعْـلُـو النِّـجا َد ع ِ‬ ‫بـار ِه َّن ُمـ َخلَّـفٌ‬ ‫فَـ َجـحْ ـشٌ عَلى أ ْد ِ‬ ‫قار ٌح‬ ‫ذ‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ـواج‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫َو أصْ َد َر هـا بادي النَّ ِ‬ ‫ِ‬

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‫ـظـام أَصُوصُ‬ ‫ُمدا َخلَةٌ ‪ُ 40‬‬ ‫ص ُّم الـ ِع ِ‬ ‫َوال َذ ُ‬ ‫مام قَ ُموصُ‬ ‫ات ِ‬ ‫ض ْغ ٍن في ال ِّز ِ‬ ‫َصيصُ‬ ‫إذا قِي َل َسـيْـ ُر الـ ُم ْدلِجـِيـنَ ن ِ‬ ‫غار َوبِـيصُ‬ ‫إذا ُشـبَّ لِـل َمرْ ِو الـ ِّ‬ ‫ص ِ‬ ‫صيصُ‬ ‫ج ال َو ْعسا ِء بَيْضٌ َر ِ‬ ‫بِـ ُمـ ْن َعـ َر ِ‬ ‫تُـحـا ِذ ُر ِم ْ‬ ‫َـحـيـصُ‬ ‫ـن إ ْد را ِكـ ِه َو ت ِ‬ ‫َح َم ْلنَ فَـأرْ بَى ‪َ 42‬ح ْملِ ِه َّن ُد ُر وصُ‬ ‫ُمعال ًى إلَـى‪ 44‬الـ َم ْتنَي ِْن فَـ ْه َو َخ ِميصُ‬ ‫‪45‬‬ ‫كَـنـائِـنُ يَـجْ ِري بـَيْـنَـه َّ‬ ‫ُـن َدلِـيـصُ‬ ‫َو‬ ‫ـصيصُ‬ ‫ـدام َح ِ‬ ‫حـار ُكـهُ ِمـنَ الـ ِك ِ‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫ْ‬ ‫ـل فَه َو نَـمـيـصُ‬ ‫تَـ َجـبَّـ َر بَـعْـ َد األ ْك ِ‬ ‫سُـدُوسٌ أطـا َر ْتـهُ الـرِّ يـا ُح َو ُخـوصُ‬ ‫ـصيصُ‬ ‫َحـلـ ٌّي‪ 46‬بِـأ ْعـلَـى حا ئِ ٍل َو قَ ِ‬ ‫‪48‬‬ ‫صيصُ‬ ‫َجـنـا ِدبُـها َ‬ ‫صرْ عَـى لَه َُّن فَ ِ‬ ‫طُـوا لَةُ أرْ‬ ‫ْـن نَـحُوصُ‬ ‫سـاغ الـيَـ َد ي ِ‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫ق ُخضْ ر اً مـا ُؤ ه َّ‬ ‫بَـال ثِـ ُ‬ ‫ُـن قَـلِيصُ‬ ‫َو تَرْ َع ُد ِمـ ْنه َُّن ال ُكـلَـى َو الفَ ِر يصُ‬ ‫‪49‬‬ ‫َـخيصُ‬ ‫الع ال َو لِيـ ِد ش ِ‬ ‫أ قَبُّ كَـ ِم ْق ِ‬ ‫‪50‬‬ ‫َ‬ ‫َّ‬ ‫َ‬ ‫ق‬ ‫و‬ ‫ـن‬ ‫ه‬ ‫ك‬ ‫م‬ ‫َى‬ ‫َو َجـحْ ـشٌ لَـد‬ ‫َ يصُ‬ ‫َ رِّ ِ‬ ‫‪51‬‬ ‫ـحيـصُ‬ ‫أ قَـبُّ كَـكَـ ِّر األ ْنـ َد ر ِّ‬ ‫ي َم ِ‬ ‫‪40 4142434445464748495051‬‬

‫‪1. Is it for memory of Salmā’s removal from you (naʾat-ka) that‬‬ ‫‪you defer (tanūṣ)? Will you step back from her, or yet advance‬‬ ‫‪(tabūṣ)?52‬‬ ‫‪2. Yet, how many perilous, desert wastes now lie before her; how‬‬ ‫?‪many bandit-ridden tracts‬‬ ‫‪3. She presented herself to your gaze one day by ʿUnayza (bi-janbi‬‬ ‫‪ʿunayza)/at the hill-foot of ʿUnayza (bi-safḥi ʿunayza) when the‬‬ ‫‪time was come for her journey and withdrawal (qulūṣ),‬‬

‫‪40. Reading so, with Ibr. D.Ṣ: mudākhilatun. Ahl: fa-daʿ-hā wa-salli l-hamma ʿan-ka bi-jasratin/‬‬ ‫‪mudākhalatin &c.‬‬ ‫‪41. Reading here, with Ibr. & Ahl., nayy (‘fat’) for D.Ṣ.’ niyy (‘milk just drawn from the udder’), as‬‬ ‫‪the consensus on aṣūṣ is ‘a camel that is not pregnant/has not given birth’.‬‬ ‫‪42. Ahl: … fa-adnā ḥamli-hinna &c.‬‬ ‫‪43. Ibr: … wa-l-baṭnu &c.‬‬ ‫‪44. Ibr: … ʿalā &c.‬‬ ‫‪45. Ahl: …/kanāʾinu yajrī fawqa-hunna dalīṣū. Ibr. reverses vv. 14–15 here.‬‬ ‫‪46. Ahl: … ḥattā idhā lam yasugh la-hū/naṣīyun &c.‬‬ ‫‪47. Ahl: yughālīna &c.‬‬ ‫‪48. Reading here, with Ibr., faṣīṣū for D.Ṣ.’ qaṣīṣū. Ahl: naṣīṣū.‬‬ ‫‪49. Ahl: … khamīṣū.‬‬ ‫‪50. Ahl: fa-jaḥshun ʿalā āthāri-hinna mukhallafun/wa-jaḥshun ladā makrūhi-hinna waqīṣū.‬‬ ‫‪51. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … ka-ʿaqdi l-andarīyi &c.‬‬ ‫‪52. Lisān, s.v. b-w-ṣ, cites this verse, reading wa-tabūṣū, taking Salmā as the subject, and bāṣa as‬‬ ‫‪‘fleeing’, which also makes good sense in the poem’s overall shape.‬‬

5:3. Intoxicated Excursions

287

4. Displaying thick, black flowing locks, and a set of sharp white teeth that she would polish and cleanse, 5. Emerging from gums the [dusky] colour of sudūs;53 [teeth] like the thorns of the sayāl-tree, [replete with] sweet [juices] (ʿadhb), glistening [white] (yafīṣ).54 6. Will your care (hamm) be dispelled on/Desist and dispel your care on a she-camel, agile (shimilla)/large and bold (jasra), compact, solid-framed, not yet having conceived (aṣūṣ)?/; 7. One whose fat is apparent, not young and untried (bakra); neither wayward in the rein, nor wont to throw her rider (qamūṣ). 8. With swift-shifting legs, striding head forward, she flags not (lā yuwākilu nahzu-hā) when called to journey in haste with travellers going to water by night (al-mudlijīn). 9. It is as if I, with my saddle (ka-annī wa-raḥlī), with cushion and scabbard, as shards of flint [underfoot] give flame, 10. Were on a tall, lean ostrich who, with his mate (ʿirs), has a clutch of eggs in a twist of the soft, sandy trail. 11. Returning by night (rāḥa … awban) to their hatching place, he chases her this way and that (yafunnu-hā), while she veers (taḥīṣ), chary (tuḥādhir) of his overtaking. 12. Is it so? Or [am I not rather] an onager-stallion driving on (yutāriḍ) mares who have birthed – their greater conceptions (arbā ḥamli-hinna)/their nearest conceptions (adnā ḥamlihinna), ‘little rats’ (durūṣ); 13. One whose belly, reduced by the chase, is so lean (khamīṣ) as to rise to the sinewy flesh of his back, 14. The stripe that stands out on his spine, quivers (kanāʾin), intercalated with lustrous gold. 15. His brow bears the scabs of laceration; his withers are shorn from the grappling of jaws. 16. [The females] eat, from Qaww, tender plants (luʿāʿ) and summer-ribba - herbage recovered from being depastured, till leaves just sufficient to eat have sprung (fa-hwa namīṣ). 17. They let fly moulting tufts like [dusky] sudūs-robes raised up by the winds, or the cloaking foliage of khūṣ. 18. He passes the summer with them so, until, when, on the heights of Ḥāʾil, they find it/he finds it hard to swallow the ḥalīy/naṣīy or the herbage of qaṣīṣ, 19. The [remaining] moisture of which they might have fought one another to eat (taghālabna fī-hi l-jazʾa)/laboured to eat (yughālīna fī-hi l-jazʾa) were it not for the noonday heats that saw locusts prostrate (ṣarʿā), creaking in crazed commotion (la-hunna faṣīṣ/naṣīṣ). 53. Taking sudūs here in the sense of nīlanj, a collyrium for gums: Muḥkam, art. sudūsun, Ibr., p. 178, note 5, reads [dusky] sudūs[-garments], otherwise called ṭaylasān, perhaps in view of the recurrence of sudūs later in verse 17. In any case, it would seem to be the colour that is at issue. 54. So, following the explanation in Tāj, s.v. f-y-ṣ, I.

288

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia 20. Then, he brayed at them, making to water (qāriban), and one long in the foreleg (ṭuwālatu arsāghi l-yadayn) inclined to him, her milk now quite dry (naḥūṣ). 21. Toward night’s end, he takes them down to drink of abundantly risen, greenish waters (balāthiqa khuḍran). 22. Though fearful, they gulp it down, trembling in the flanks and mortal spots (al-farīṣ). 23. Late in the night, one of masterful proportion, belly as slender as a young boy’s beating-stick (miqlāʿ),55 takes them from water over the rises (taʿlū l-nijād). 24. Then, here, a foal abandoned behind (ʿalā adbāri-hinna)/in the tracks of (ladā āthāri-hinna) [the mothers]; and, there, upon their wheeling back (ladā makarri-hinna)/to their despite (ladā makrūhi-hinna), a foal [he tramples], neck crushed. 25. There leads them from water one lean in the girth; rear-molars apparent (bādī l-nawājidh), and fully mature (qāriḥ); one fast as the knit of an Andarī rope, hale and whole in constitution (maḥīṣ).

Verses 1–5: The poet opens with a statement of negative memory and loss that is not brought about, on this occasion, by obvious external stimuli  –  illustrating the eminent separability of deserted camps and departing female figures. That Salmā has ‘distanced herself ’ (naʾat, verse 1) implies a fracture of relations and bayn: morbid ‘separation’ that is conceptually rooted in, and causative of, ‘sickness’ (dāʾ). The poet implicitly suffers the ‘sickness’ of hamm: a ‘flocking’ variety of anxiety that disempowers and disorients. Just such disempowerment is indicated (verses 1 and 2) in his inability to shake off the dominant ‘pull’ of memory, in his apparent hesitation at the perceived obstacles and dangers that now intervene, and in his confessed paralysis – or ambivalence – whether or not to move toward Salmā or else step back. That he frames his opening statement as a question implies a certain self-chastisement, supplying a question-mark as to his mettle which a ‘blamer’ (ʿādhila) might otherwise have delivered; and this, in turn, indicates a latent will to shift his chemistry toward intellectual reintegration (ʿaql), and balance with ḥilm. That his ‘sickness’ emanates from the source of his sorrow and the instigator of bayn, could be encoded, for one thing, in the very name, Salmā: Technically the plural of salīm, Salmā connotes good omen, persons in a state of health and safety; but it is also used of the wounded, of those poisoned and verging on death  –  salīm then being either positive augury for a person’s recovery, or a synonym for muslam: one abandoned to his bane.56 In this case  – in complement to the results of Chapters 3 and 4 – Salmā, with all her plurality, might figure a whole people who have harboured and revealed some treacherous, mortal ‘sickness’. As we have seen (for example in 55. A ubiquitous image in connection with the wild ass, explained in Lisān, s.v. q-l-w/y. 56. Muḥkam, Qāmūs, art. salīmun.

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Poem 2.3), a relationship of mutual sickness is liable to imply antipathy – sometimes of bellicose proportions  –  and, in any case, requires a mutual ‘cure’. The theme of mutual ‘sickness’ is sustained in verses 3–5, now adding disorientation and ‘thirst’. Salmā’s display of beauty, with the focus on her flashing teeth, evokes the conceit of barq – ‘lightning’ – by virtue of the glinting yafīṣ (verse 5), which is its synonym.57 This flash – a signal which might promise rain – extends to the gleam of a woman’s smile that holds the liquid-promise of her kiss. Barq is also turned to express a woman’s deliberate exhibition of her beauty – precisely what Salmā is about here.58 That this flashing promise is withheld speaks of bukhl and ikhlāf: treacherous ‘denial’ and the ‘failure to rain’. It constitutes thus a quality of barq that is menace,59 an active aggression on the poet’s senses. And that Salmā is a liquid source denied is enhanced by what appears to be a considered use of qulūṣ (verse 3) to describe her departure: qalaṣa carries a principal sense of shrinkage and withdrawal which – applied to pools and wells – indicates their exhaustion and disappearance. Salmā’s qulūṣ would, then, imply the disappearance of the ‘drink’ (isqāʾ) that conceptually accompanies qarāba (near-relatedness in compact), subjecting the poet to the ‘sickness’ of ‘thirst’ that follows ghurba (strangerhood). The quality of the poet’s thirst is refined by the alignment of Salmā’s image with the sweet and thorny sayāl – a poetical variation on the ‘wine-laced’ juices and ‘honeyed’ liquids of other beloveds  –  which renders her a source of sweet ‘intoxication’ that also enhances the ambiguity of ‘health’ and ‘sickness’ intrinsic to her name: The sayāl, an acacia, and one of the thorny ʿiḍāh, is a sweet pasture of the kind broadly called khulla.60 Proverbially associated with ease and tranquillity, khulla is also notorious for arousing raging thirst in creatures that love to feed on it. This requires them to seek a salt-cure from pasture of the type called ḥamḍ, failing which, they become weak and thin.61 Land defined by khulla – and therefore Salmā  – contains no ḥamḍ. Furthermore, the antithesis of sickness and healing associated with khulla and ḥamḍ is metaphorically applied to situations of hostility and war. Someone who threatens might be told: inna-ka mukhtallun fa-taḥammaḍ, “you are disordered (on khulla), so cure yourself (on ḥamḍ)”, potentially meaning: “submit to death!” To those who have 57. Tāj, s.v. f-y-ṣ, I. 58. Asās, Tāj, arts baraqa, raʿada; cf., on this nexus of associations, e.g., ʿAbīd (1980), XXIII, vv. 6–7: The lightning before a storm is the smile of the anwāʾ, and compared to the flash of maidens’ teeth; Lyall (1918–1921), XLVI, of al-Muraqqish al-Akbar, v. 10: teeth that signal the promise of a mouth coursing with sweet, cooling liquid (barūd) are barrāq, ‘lightning bright’. 59. Qāmūs, s.v. b-r-q, r-ʿ-d, which illustrate how idioms of ‘lightning’ and ‘thundering’ are used both for unequivocal menace, and for a powerful display of beauty. For an example of such ‘thundering’, see below, Poem 5.3.3, and n. 119. 60. Tāj, art. khullatun. The habitat, properties and uses of Acacia Sayāl, and the confusion regarding its nomenclature, are discussed in Hall (1993), where the unsuitability of saline soils is indicated, p. 28. 61. Gauthier-Pilters (1981), pp. 33–34, summarises scientific studies on this topic as it relates to camel-culture.

290

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

looked for mischief and lost, a poet says: kānū mukhillīna fa-lāqaw ḥamḍan, “they were pasturing on khulla, but then they found ḥamḍ”, i.e., they found what ‘cured’ them with a mischief that was worse.62 In this light, both Salmā and the poet are mukhtall; she, by embodying a desired, quasi-pastural source of sweet, disorienting juice; and he, by virtue of his ‘intoxicated’ preoccupation with those juices.63 This, then, is a scene of reciprocal disorder, which must, if the poet is true to his ethic, invite him to pursue a ‘curative’ encounter where both he and the source of his ‘sickness’ will sate their ‘thirst’ on the ḥamḍ they respectively merit. This, he will do ‘in the saddle’, as we shall see. We may just, lastly, consider here the locations janb ʿunayza/safḥ ʿunayza (verse 3). The root ʿ-n-z, suggests, principally, ‘turning away’ and ‘retiring to a distance’; and, brought into relation with land, it can connote a rocky eminence (ʿanz) – all of which would appear to complement the context.64 Safḥ ʿunayza is perhaps the more suggestive of the two readings: safḥ can denote the bottom of a hill where water pours down from high above. Ecologically, this would fit Salmā’s equation with the sayāl, which, typically, grows in areas that are periodically subject to torrential flows.65 Metaphorically, it might also suggest that the poet stands in the wake of a ‘talʿa watercourse’ (discussed above in the commentary to verses 3–7 of Poem 5.2), an image which, in a context of antipathetic relations, bodes treachery, and must prompt the threatened party to move to preserve himself. In this case, Salmā’s location would enhance the themes of bayn and betrayal that lace these opening verses. What we have till here, then, is a picture of disempowerment, disorientation and affliction with ‘thirst’, a picture that speaks of diminished ʿaql (intellectual integrity) and a crisis of ṣibā (juvenile folly). This is expressed as paralysis, the poet caught between the competing pulls of desire and fear. He must – as he indicates he knows – recover himself and re-appropriate the initiative. Verses 6–8: The poet confirms (verse 6) that it is hamm (care, anxiety) that debilitates him. The formulation fa-hal tusliyanna l-hamma – “will your care not be dispelled by …” – implies a move to realise the incipient resolve to correct himself, which was embedded in the poem’s opening question. The alternative, daʿ hā,  –  “leave her/it”  –  is a more simple, formulaic assertion of conscious resolve to shift states. However, the poet is not simply about to abandon his contention with the female principle that foments his care – as could be understood by daʿ hā – but, rather, to go through a process of engaging and mastering it. 62. Tāj, Lisān, s.v. ḥ-m-ḍ, kh-l-l. 63. Cf. al-Aʿshā (1928), no. 1, vv. 15–16; ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), XI, vv. 12–13, where the intoxication aroused by the beloved’s juices flowing amid ‘sayāl thorns’ renders them wine. 64. Qāmūs, arts ʿanaza, ʿanzun; Ibr. p. 177, n. 3, indicates that ‘hill’ is read here by some for ʿunayza. 65. Hall (1993), pp. 4, 28.

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That the poet projects himself as an imminent mudlij (verse 8) complements both the idea of contending with hamm and that of seeking isqāʾ (drink): Idlāj indicates travel by night  –  the time when forces of ‘sickness’ are most virulent  –  and also implies a journey to pasture or water.66 This initiative contrasts starkly against his former paralysis. He now evinces the will to go forward with energy, and without balking at the need to negotiate distance and predatory danger. He effectively moves to translate al-hamm mina l-buʿd (anxiety for reason of ‘distance’) into the buʿd al-himma (far-reaching ambition) that can claim his ‘excuse’ (ʿudhr.) But perhaps the most telling expression of the poet’s will to counter hamm lies in the qualities that he grafts onto the camel to which he would wed his purpose. Perfect compliance, experience and endurance are epitomised in a performance where, says the poet (verse 8), “her reaching forth/her drawing of water (nahz) does not flag” (lā yuwākilu nahzu-hā). We have already seen muwākala (flagging) as a quality negated in the poet’s mount of Section 2 in this chapter (verse 19 of Poem 5.2), which spoke of unwaning potency in summoning ‘liquid resources’ that enabled a quasi-erotic ‘hunting’-conquest, and, thereby, a mutual isqāʾ. Nahz conveys the idea of approaching something to seize it, of seizing an opportunity (nuhza), and  –  perhaps the most immediate sense here – of drawing water by the pail. This would render the poet’s she-camel another quality ‘water-pulley’ that can access the necessary resources to carry him to his goal, or, indeed, to overtake what he would pursue.67 But, importantly, active control of such a ‘pulley’ would, in itself, imply a re-appropriation of initiative against hamm, for hamm and succumbing to emotional toil might otherwise find the poet, instead, passively wrenched (makhlūj) by unseen hands at a ‘pulley and pail’ that is himself – khalj being a quality peculiarly expressive of the draining and disorienting forces of rayb,68 as illustrated in the previous poem (see there the commentary to verses 1–2). The sum of this projection of ideal transport is a marriage of mutually reined-in integrity, with the available resources  –  under the poet’s guidance  –  to overcome challenge and attain the desired waters of isqāʾ. If, however, this ‘marriage’ is the poet’s will and wish, he has yet to translate it into a successful outcome.

66. Tāj, s.v. d-l-j, notes al-mudlij is an epithet of the hedgehog because it goes by night to find drink and provender. 67. Tāj, s.v. n-h-z; cf. Lyall (1918–1921), CXXII, of Bashāma b. al-Ghadīr, vv. 10–12. The speed and endurance of his she-camel are explicitly compared to hasty, sustained activity at the pulley and pail. 68. See Lisān, s.v. kh-l-j: wa-abītu takhliju-nī l-humūmu ka-anna-nī/dalwu l-suqāti tumaddu bi-l-ashṭānī, “I spend the night, cares tugging me this way and that, as though I were the pail of waterdrawers drawn by ropes”. This offers a visual conception for the pervasive ‘tug’  –  khalj – of evil doubt that tormented the poet in Poem 5.3.1, above: see the commentary to verses 1–2 of that poem; cf. the literature cited in Chapter 2, n. 84, on the body of conceits to which this example broadly belongs.

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Verses 9–11: Indicating that his projected journey has begun, the poet injects speed and earnestness into the endeavour with a ‘close-up’ of feet striking flint; but, rather than a coordinated marriage of mind and purpose, he depicts a panicked, gendered split. As in the previous poem, he introduces this with ka-annī wa-raḥl-ī … ʿalā, “It is as if I, with my saddle … were on”, announcing clearly that he is about to tell us what the experience is that he is undergoing. The transition is smooth in that, at one level, there is some re-conceptualisation of what has gone before: The metamorphosis into a creature poetically identified with the structure of a well-pulley indirectly picks up the allusion to the she-camel’s nahz (verse 8);69 and the ostrich’s ‘way of going’ is defined by awb (verse 11), which conveys both a night-return to a family abode (in this case his nest), and an approach to water – nuances that pick up and complement the projected journey of a mudlij (‘night-traveller to water’ – verse 8), as well as the overarching theme of a need for isqāʾ. But, infused here – with the concentration on the nest – is an extension of the poet’s overriding hamm, which implies now some concern with the kin-unit and progeny. Indeed, the figure of the coursing male ostrich is typically associated with hamm – sometimes focused, as here, on a preoccupation with the fate of his eggs.70 And here we see cracks in the ideal integrity of poet and mount, projected in verses 6–8: Unlike that image of the she-camel, synchronised with her male rider, whose nahz evoked an attitude opposed to that of being subject to the pervasion and pull (khalj) of hamm, poet and mount are here constellated into an unsynchronised duality: a male ostrich positively ‘tugged’ (makhlūj/mukhtalaj) by the defiant flight of a female actor currently outside his control. His pursuit of her is rough: yafunnu-hā (verse 11) implies a chase (ṭard) that afflicts her with distress and suffering (ʿanāʾ).71 And, in complement, his fervour to overtake her is thwarted by a timorous recalcitrance defined by ḥayṣ and muḥādhara (verse 11). Ḥayṣ connotes 69. The conceptual fusion of ostrich and water-pulley was discussed in the commentary to vv. 1–3 of the Poem 5.1, s.v. Groundwater: Well-pulley, Rope and Bucket. Note the same nexus of ideas in a poem of Umayya b. Abī ʿĀʾidh, who seeks to ‘dispel cares’ (humūm) on a she-camel that runs like a male ostrich, moving like a rope drawn on the pulley, before evolving – like the she-camel of the poem under discussion above – into a male ass seeking to shepherd his mates to water: Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 2, pp. 174–175. 70. A qāfīya of Imruʾ al-Qays, which finds the poet stricken by the departure of beloved and jīrān, has him ‘riding a male ostrich’, coursing the lands, obsessed by the thought of a distant clutch of eggs cracked open: tarawwaḥa min arḍin li-arḍin naṭīyatin/li-dhikrati qayḍin ḥawla bayḍin mufallaqī (Ibr., p. 170, v. 12). Anxiety expressed so suggests fear that the sirr, or heart of, an ʿashīra (a close kin-group) will be exposed: see Tāj, s.v. b-y-ḍ: art. afrakha bayḍatu l-qawmi, “the people’s egg cracked open”, indicating the exposure of what they guard; ibid., art. bayḍatu l-dār, the ‘egg’ that constitutes the heart of an abode; ibid., art. bayḍatu l-balad, i.e., the ‘abandoned ostrich egg’, generally negative, i.e., someone without close kin to assist, who can claim no heritage (nasab), his family wasted by rayb al-manūn. Cf. Lyall (1918–1921), XXIV, of Thaʿlaba b. Ṣuʿayr, vv. 9–14, CXX of ʿAlqama b. ʿAbada, vv. 18–30. 71. Lisān, s.v. f-n-n.

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avoidance of an enemy, escape from the truth, a creature’s fearful, random flight from what its master desires; also, a quality of straitness in a female that defies sexual mastery. Muḥādhara is a vigilance inspired by fear.72 The sum of this is a perpetuation of the poem’s opening theme: the removal and inaccessibility of a female, which engenders ‘sickness’ and a crisis tinged with aggression; but this is now transposed and developed into a projection – within himself, via the medium of the ‘saddle’ – of how he would, after all, move forward and assert control. This is a gendered competition: male purpose versus female insubordination that threatens sabotage; a gendered competition apparently as indicative of his own inner integrity as it may be of his will and ability to dominate events outside himself. But it is a competition he is currently failing to win. This is not, it would seem, the mount-analogy he wishes to ride. A different scenario is required; and this the poet provides by a shape-change involving the male onager, a warrior-like creature renowned for his valiant forays to water and his will not only to protect his females, but to dominate and herd them by chasing aggressively from every direction  –  a translation of the ostrich’s fann (distressing chase) into the onager’s iftinān (multi-directional herding).73 Verses 12–25: With his transitional third question, a-dhālika am, “Is it that [I ride]? Or not, rather, …” The poet indirectly acknowledges that ‘riding’ this ‘ostrich’ will not achieve the desired resolution; that his will and integrity, albeit now ‘harnessed’, are still subject to the ‘pull’ of a dangerous, somehow female, chaos; and so he decides to project a better alternative. He translates his ‘saddle’ onto the back of a male onager to present us with a scenario the elements of which are familiar  –  one that is inevitably driven by hamm and the need for a curative satiation of thirst. Scenes of this type typically describe the desperation that ensues when pastures and drinking-holes dry up as the summer season progresses; desperation that moves an experienced, judicious warrior-male to assert himself over recalcitrant, often foolhardy mates in order to bring them to water. He will drive them hither and thither, violently if necessary, to the sources he deems safest - those that appear to be unfrequented - and at the safest time: by night. If necessary, he keeps them thirsty for days until he thinks the time is right, or until there is no alternative but death.74 The ‘supertext’ of these scenes is the superior intellectual and physical capacity of the male to assert himself for their mutual benefit, and implies his ability finally always to bend his mates to his sexual will.75 The ‘subtext’ is hidden danger: often entailed is an encounter with Death in the form of a lurking hunter. Developments are subject to a poet’s individual agenda. 72. Lisān, s.v. ḥ-y-ṣ; Qāmūs, ḥ-dh-r, III. 73. Lisān, s.v. f-n-n, VIII. 74. After approximately 4 days in the fiercest heat, according to Mutammim and Labīd: Lyall (1918–1921), IX, v. 12; Labīd (1962), p. 83, v. 34. 75. Most explicitly articulated by Mutammim: Lyall (1918–1921), IX, v. 19.

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Here, the poet manipulates and embroiders the standard details to create a quite unique variation tailored to resolving his purpose. Once again, there is an element of continuity: Not only is this still a gendered contention, but the attentions and control of the male will, to begin with, also inevitably be thwarted: the females  –  which can give birth only once every two years – have only recently produced, and are therefore certain to keep their distance.76 It is the subsequent need for drink, when they are too dry even to manage what remains of moist pasture (verse 19), that marks the moment when relations between them change, and the females are ultimately brought violently to heel. The poet gives clues from the outset that they are marked by calamity: He calls their young ‘little rats’ (durūṣ, verse 12). That they are so small suggests that these females are essentially mughziyāt: they have conceived late in the season, apparently making it likely that their offspring will be inferior and weak.77 Furthermore, they are rendered ummahāt adrāṣ (rat-ling mothers), umm adrāṣ being a proverbial term for misfortune.78 In the normal course of events, we anticipate potential calamity in the form of a hunter that will threaten both the male and his mate(s). In this particular vignette, whilst sensing lurking danger, we never see a human bowman. The only bowman we are invited to see is the male ass himself: In addition to the scars of a jealous protector (verse 15),79 he is endowed with a powerful (hairy) spine that the poet affects to see as quivers (verse 14)  –  all suggesting, perhaps, that, this time  –  albeit perhaps for reasons of greater good – calamity will come from him. With verse 17, the poet resurrects the shadow of the inimically recalcitrant, and essentially pluralistic, Salmā. Like her, these females have abundant hair - moulting now with the change of the season (after they have become fat on spring pasture).80 Like, her, they are associated with the dusty colour (khuḍra) of sudūs, and rendered a conceptual pasture, for they bear the ‘foliage’ of khūṣ (sheath-like leaves). It is even possible that the poet alludes here to the sweet pasture of khulla that was associated with Salmā: One shrub, for example, prominently associated with the dusty khuḍra that describes sudūs, which has khūṣ-leaves and foliage that sprouts yellowish hairs – thus complementing the nasīl, or moulting hair, of the she-asses – is the ʿarfaj; and the ʿarfaj is considered khulla.81 This notwithstanding, the she-asses are conceptually mukhtalla 76. The same will be the case if they are pregnant: see Lyall (1918–1921), IX, of Mutammim, vv. 9–10 (which also illustrates the harshness with which the male treats the foals); al-Tibrīzī (1969), Labīd, v. 26; cf. Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 2, p. 117, l. 9, p. 177, l. 9, from ass-vignettes, respectively, of Abū Khirāsh and Umayya b. Abī ʿĀʾidh. 77. Lisān, s.v. gh-z-w/y; Umayya b. Abī ʿĀʾidh explicitly alludes to mughziyāt: see Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 2, l. 4, and notes. 78. Lisān, s.v. d-r-ṣ, expands. 79. Cf. al-Tibrīzī (1969), Labīd, vv. 25–26; ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), XIII, v. 19: the fearful battles that arise. 80. Cf. Lyall (1918–1921), XXXIX, of Rabīʿa b. Maqrūm, v. 23, and Lyall’s notes, vol. 2, p. 139, n. 23. 81. Tāj, arts khullatun, al-ʿarfaju

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owing to the raging thirst that finally afflicts them (verses 18–19).82 Their thirst is such that they are unable to eat precisely the pasture that might ‘cure’ them.83 Uniquely, the poet specifies what they would eat were it not for the overriding need for water: the qaṣīṣ, a plant so juicy it is apparently used for washing;84 and the ḥalīy, or naṣīy, both of which are traceable to the rubric of ḥamḍ (salt pasture).85 The stage is set for the male to change the balance of relations. The females require water and ḥamḍ. The metaphorical corollaries of this (detailed above in the commentary to verses 1–5) spell disaster. The locusts’ creaking, also, is ominous: this became proverbial for the onset of calamity.86 It may not be an accident that the poet locates them now at Ḥāʾil (verse 18): This has a primary resonance of ‘becoming altered’ that, in the context, might suggest imminent iḥmāḍ, for iḥmāḍ – ‘curing’ by salt pasture – and taḥammuḍ – being ‘cured’ by salt pasture - are explicitly defined by taḥwīl and taḥawwul: actively ‘altering’, and ‘becoming changed’.87 The male makes his move now (verse 20) to take them to water (qāriban). A mutual ‘going to water’ is, of course, multi-valent: we have seen how it can entail going to a ‘water’ (ḥawḍ) of death  –  a lurking possibility here  –  and how it can have sexual connotations  –  a nuance of which is perhaps contained here in the ‘generosity’ implied in the semantics of a ceding female being ṭuwālat al-yadayn.88 But the strongest expectation in the current tableau is ‘cure’ by a watering that has been set up as iḥmāḍ; i.e., a ‘salt cure’ that can soothe raging thirst on the one hand, but that may imply death or disaster on the other – in line with the metaphorical extensions of the concept. And this is where the poet takes us next. Once at the water (verse 22), the females are stricken with fear, and shudder in their mortal spots (farīṣ), the area where the hunter typically seeks to penetrate the heart (as verse 4 of Poem 1.5). No hunter appears to our eyes; but this, it appears, is the cue to run – perhaps implying their panicked reaction to a sound or haunting suspicion. The urgency of the escape is of such an order that the male entirely overrides the natural instinct of the females to lag with their young or to turn around for them, to the extent not only of forcing them to leave foals behind, but of breaking the necks of their foals as he sees fit

82. Qāmūs, art. mukhtallun. 83. Inability to eat owing to the need for water is directly mentioned by Umayya b. Abī ʿĀʾidh, Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 2, p. 177, l. 11. 84. Lisān, s.v. q-ṣ-ṣ. 85. The ḥalīy and naṣīy are, respectively, drier and fresher versions of sabaṭ, a plant known as the ‘flesh-meat’ or khabīṣ of the camel, an epithet for ḥamḍ (as opposed to the ‘fruit’ of the camel, which denotes khulla): Tāj, arts ḥamḍun, sabaṭun; cf. Lisān, s.v. n-ṣ-w/y, where the naṣīy’s place of growth is called manbit al-ḥamḍ, “salt-pasture land”. 86. Tāj, Qāmūs, art. jundabun: ṣarra l-jundab, amongst other sayings. 87. Lisān, s.v. ḥ-m-ḍ. 88. Tāj, s.v. ṭ-w-l, where an example of ṭūl al-yad is explicitly mentioned.

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(verse  24).89 Here, then, realised as anticipated, is a ‘cure’ for thirst that involves calamity; a ‘cure’ construed as strategic husbanding, which plays out as a punishing, inimical confrontation, ‘won’ by the male. And it is this analogy of inimical conflict which, perhaps, explains how, if this is iḥmāḍ (a ‘salt cure’), the waters that the poet describes (verse 21) are not ostensibly salty, but pure (khuḍr):90 As al-Ṭirimmāḥ would have it, his enemies can find themselves drinking the waters of death with such alacrity when he deals out the iḥmāḍ that ‘cures’ them of raging takhallul (the ‘disorder of pasturing on khulla’) that it is as if they were going to sweet water.91 Thus the poet overtakes and tames a force of disturbance first teased into life by Salmā, projecting his ‘cure’ through the vehicle of the onager he finally ‘rides’, and a brutal assertion of will over female actors, which is judged to be in the greater interests of the kin-unit. That his victory accompanies intellectual integrity (ʿaql) and access to the resources of ḥilm, is encoded in the qualities that he ascribes to his ‘ass’ in the final verses. Driving his females over land-rises (verse 23), he renders himself ṭallāʿ alnijād, one who surmounts all difficulties by virtue of superior knowledge, experience and judgement.92 He has his rearmost molars (nawājidh, verse 25). These are the last teeth to emerge after puberty, and imply maturity of the adult faculties, for which reason nawājidh are also called aḍrāṣ al-ḥulum and aḍrās al-ʿaql (the molars of virility and intellect).93 He is also qāriḥ, the equivalent adult state of a camel that is bāzil, which, again, references an intellect that is whole; the firmness of judgement that comes with age and experience.94 The precise formula bādī l-nawājidh is also interesting in a context that evokes a bellicose confrontation: this can suggest laughter, but also the display of an angry grimace,95 and is a detail replicated in ʿAntara’s muʿallaqa when 89. This is identifiable as a ‘real world’ behavioural pattern in wild equidae of the type that live in harem groups of one to several mares led by a dominant stallion, of which the Asiatic wild ass (Equus hemionus) is one. “If a mare with foal falls behind during an escape attempt the stud may kill the foal by breaking its neck or he may force the mare to abandon it”: see Zarn et al. (1977), p. 30. 90. So, according to the scholion on the khuḍr waters of Rabīʿa b. Maqrūm’s onagers: Lyall (1918– 1921), vol. 1, XXXVIII, v. 15; Ibr., p. 182, n. 21, offers that ājinan (stagnant water) is also read for mashraban (v. 21). This can indicate saline waters conducive to the growth of halophytes (ḥamḍ) such as the najīl that Abū Khirāsh al-Hudhalī highlights (Hudhalīyūn 1945–1950, vol. 2, p. 121, l. 3) in an elegy elaborating the inescapability of death, and in which his ass therefore has to die, an arrow piercing his heart (khalla fuʾāda-hū – ibid., l. 9). 91. Al-Ṭirimmāḥ (1927), no. 2, vv. 40–41; cf. Imruʾ al-Qays’ tāʾīya, Ibr., pp. 81–82, vv. 13–15: At the waterside climax of another unique ass-episode, when the initiative of Death is expected, the poet abruptly switches his frame of reference to conclude, instead, by projecting his successful negotiation of emaciating journeys, and, ultimately, his sword being wasted on neck and shank. 92. Cf. above, the commentary to vv. 10–11 of Poem 5.3.1, and n. 29. Ibr., p. 183, n. 23, notes yaʿlū l-nijād is also read. 93. Lisān, art. nājidhun. 94. Cf. above, the commentary to vv. 3–7 of Poem 5.3.1. 95. Lisān, art. nājidhun.

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he confronts a hero in war who, he says, bares his teeth, ‘but not in a smile’.96 This returns the favour of Salmā’s smile in verses 4–5. The claim to constitutional perfection culminates in the comparison to a firm-bound rope, which the poet, lastly, defines as maḥīṣ. While the first function of maḥīṣ here is to affirm the perfect physical makeup of a smooth, tightly twisted ‘rope’, it is based in a root linked with the death-escaping efforts of the pure, male oryx; with qualities of tested experience, and with an absence of disease or sin.97 The scope of these nuances allowed, the poet would conclude with an assertion of equilibrium and perfection – both moral and physical – that stands in direct contrast to the chaos of his opening verses, so finally announcing his ‘excuse’ (ʿudhr) in terms resonant of self-purification. This poem emerges as a concerted, ethical exploration of the banishment of ‘disorder’, conducted entirely in terms of gender relations that are substantially antipathetic. It is an elaborate illustration of how applying murūwa – striving in the greater interests of Life and ‘health’ against Death and ‘sickness’  –  implies a quasi-erotic dynamic, the assertion of male virtue over the impetus of chaos that is rendered somehow female. It is a unique illustration of an important symptom of the poetry noted earlier: that both benign and antipathetic relations may be explored in similar terms; that the language and culture of waṣl and isqāʾ (‘compact’ and ‘giving to drink’) in a faithful, loving communion may be turned to express the arousal and consummation of contention. Again, we have no precise occasion or context for this poem such as might have been revealed had an additional component been provided. By the time the poet takes to his mount, the contention he explores is so internalised that it could be read simply as his management of his own integral faculties, which, out of control, would render him more woman than man, himself in need of ‘husbanding’. At the same time, given the initial, external stimulus of Salmā, this might, equally – or even also – read as a projection of how the ‘disordered’, ‘female’ propensities of some treacherous party is in need of, or imminently to be subjected to, a ‘husbanding’, or punishment. In this case, this poem would broadly be comparable to the hamzīya of Zuhayr, overviewed above (Chapter 4, note 48, Chapter 5:1, note 99), when he takes issue with Āl Ḥiṣn for an abuse of covenant. That his onager-episode there – the male aggressively chasing a ‘disordered’, out-of-control female to water  – illustrates the precariousness of Āl Ḥiṣn’s position; and, that they must assert their true gender and ‘cure themselves’, is contextualised by later developments: Affecting to mistake them for women, he advises that, if they are, indeed, women, they should be taken to husbands; if men of honour, they should be true to their covenant; that what they suffer is ‘sickness (dāʾ), which it is in their power to ‘cure’; and if they do not, 96. Al-Tibrīzī (1969), ʿAntara, v. 55. 97. Cf. Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. ḥ-k-m, I, X, which show a wider currency to the relationship between a compact knit and intrinsic perfection. Inasmuch as this concept centres on rope, it complements entirely the implications of ‘health’ and ‘sickness’ intrinsic to the rope and ties of the bakra-construct, as last discussed in Chapter 5:1, and especially as it features in the onager-episode of Zuhayr’s hamzīya, overviewed above, Chapter 4, n. 48, Chapter 5.1, n. 99.

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Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

their reputations are dead. Although we cannot make a precise judgement on how to contextualise our poem here - whether it is mainly a question of internal or external ‘husbanding’ – or both – the following poem, with its final, open contention, demonstrates how the second can naturally follow the first. Poem 5.3.3:9899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113 ‫ـدام‬ ِ ْ‫ْـن فَهَض‬ ِ ‫ب ِذ ي أ ْق‬ ِ ‫فَـ َعـما يَـتـَي‬ ‫تَ ْمشي النِّعا ُج بِهـا َم َع األرْ ِآم‬ ‫َّـام‬ ‫َو لَـ ِم‬ َ ِ ‫ـيــس قَ ْب َل َحـوا ِد‬ ِ ‫ث األ ي‬ ُ‫ْـن‬ ‫ذام‬ ‫خ‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ا‬ ‫ـكى‬ ‫ب‬ ‫َـما‬ ‫ك‬ ‫ر‬ ‫ِّيا‬ ‫د‬ ‫ال‬ ‫ْكي‬ ‫نَب‬ َ َ ِ ِ ‫رام‬ ِ َ‫ـل ِم ْن َشـوْ كانَ ِحين‬ ِ ‫ص‬ ِ ‫كَالنَّ ْخ‬ 104 ‫سـام‬ ِ ْ‫بِيضُ الـ ُوجُو ِه نَوا ِعـ َم األج‬ ‫ـدام‬ ِ ‫نَـ ْشـوانُ بَـا كَـ َر هُ صـَبُو ُح ُم‬ 105 ‫ـبام‬ ِ ‫وم ِش‬ ِ ‫ِم ْن َخ ْم ِر عانَةَ أوْ ُكـ ُر‬ 106 ‫ــقــام‬ ‫ُمو ٌم يُـخَالِـطُ ِجـسْـ َمـهُ بِـ َس‬ ِ ‫حـام‬ ‫ق‬ َ ‫َر ْتـ‬ ِ ٍ ‫ك الـنَّعـمـ ِة في طَري‬ 110 109 ْ ‫َروْ عا َء‬ ‫دام‬ ِ ‫َمـن‬ ِ ‫ـسـ ُمـهـا َرثِي ٌم‬ 111 ‫ك َحرا ُم‬ َ ‫صرْ عـي َعلَ ْي‬ َ ‫إنّي ا ْم ُر ٌؤ‬ ‫الم‬ ِ ‫َو َر َجـعْـ‬ ِ ‫ت َسـالِـ َمـةَ القَ َرا بِـ َس‬ ْ ‫َو كَــأ نَّـمـا ِم‬ ‫ــل أرْ ما ُم‬ ٍ ِ‫ـن عَــا ق‬ 113 ُ ْ‫إن عَـ َشـو‬ ْ ‫ك‬ ‫ت أَ َمامي‬ َ ‫إنّي َكهَ ِّم‬ ‫ِمـ ّمـا أُال قِـي ال أ ُشــ ُّد ِحـزامـي‬ 100

‫ُـحـام‬ ِ ‫ـن الـ ِّد يا ُر غ‬ ِ ‫َـشـيـتُـهـا بِـس‬ ِ ‫لِـ َم‬ 99 ‫غاض ٍر‬ ‫صفا‬ َ َ‫ف‬ ِ َ‫يط فَصا َحتَي ِْن ف‬ ِ ‫األط‬ ِ ‫ب َو فَـرْ تـَنَى‬ ِ ‫ َو الـ َّر بـا‬101‫دَا ٌر لِ ِهـ ْنـ ٍد‬ 102 َّ َ ‫يل لننا‬ ِ ‫عُو َجا عَلى الطَّلَ ِل ال ُم ِح‬ 103ً ْ ‫أ َوما تَـ َرى‬ َّ ‫أظـعـانَـه‬ ‫ُـن بَــواكـِرا‬ ‫ـبـيـر جُـلُـو دُها‬ ‫حُو ٌر تُـ َعـلَّـ ُل بِـالـ َع‬ ِ ُ ‫فَـظَـلِ ْـل‬ ‫ِّيـار كَـأنَّـنـي‬ ِ ‫ـت في ِد َم ِن الـد‬ َ ٌ ‫ال ُمـ َعـتَّـ‬ َ ‫ق‬ ‫ز‬ ‫َـ‬ ‫غ‬ ‫الـ‬ ‫َم‬ ‫د‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ل‬ ْ‫ـو‬ ِ ِ ِ ‫أُنُـفٌ كَـ‬ َّ ‫َو ك‬ ُ‫اب لِـسـا نَـه‬ َ ‫ص‬ َ ‫َـار بَـها أ‬ ِ ‫َـأن ش‬ ْ ‫ فَـتَـكَـ َّمـش‬108‫ نَـسَّـأْتُـهـا‬107‫َو ُم ِجـ َّد ٍة‬ ‫َـت‬ ْ ‫ت‬ ‫سـام َر ْأسُـهـا‬ ‫ت‬ ِ ‫َـخـدي عَـلى ال ِع ّل‬ ٍ ْ ْ ُ ْ َ َ ُ َ ْ‫َص‬ ‫صري‬ ‫ق‬ ‫ا‬ ‫ها‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ق‬ ‫ف‬ ‫َني‬ ‫ع‬ ‫ر‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ل‬ ‫َجا‬ ِ ِ ِ ‫اح ٍد‬ ‫ج‬ ِ ‫ت خَـيْـ َر َجزا ِء نَـا قَـ ِة َو‬ ِ ‫ُز ي‬ ِ َ‫ف‬ ‫صي ُل ُكـتَـيْـفَـ ٍة‬ ِ ‫ بَـ ْد ٌر َو‬112 ‫َو كَـأ نَّـمـا‬ ً‫إن َع َرضتَ ِرسـاَلة‬ ْ ً ‫أَبْـلِـ ْغ سُـبَـيْـعـا‬ ‫ك ِمنَ ال َو ِعي ِد فَـإ نَّني‬ َ ‫ـصرْ إ لَـيْـ‬ ِ ‫أ ْق‬

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

98. Metre: kāmil. D.Ṣ., pp. 162–164; Ibr., pp. 114–118; Ahl., 59. Ibr., pp. 409–411, details variants the conceptual range of which is broadly represented here. 99. Ahl: fa-ʿāsimin &c. 100. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: … maʿa l-ārāmī. 101. Ahl: dārun li-hirrin &c. 102. Ahl: … laʿalla-nā &c. Interpolated in this reading, between vv. 4–5 of the reading above, are: dārun la-hum idh hum li-ahli-ka jīratun/idh tastabī-ka bi-wāḍiḥin bassamī//azmāna fū-hā kullamā nabbahtu-hā/ka-l-miski bāta wa-ẓalla fī l-faddāmī. 103. Ahl. (v. 7): a-fa-lā tarā aẓʿāna-hunna bi-ʿāqilin &c. 104. So, with Ibr. & Ahl.’s opening. D.Ṣ: ḥūran …/bīḍa &c.; Ahl., (v. 8): hūrun taʿallalna l-ʿabīra rawāʿidan/ ka-mahā l-shaqāʾiqi aw ẓibāʾi salāmī. 105. So, with Ibr. & Ahl. (v. 10). D.Ṣ: unufin ka-lawni dami l-ghazāli muʿattaqin/min khamri ʿānata aw kurūmi shabāmī. 106. Ahl. (v. 11): … mūmun yukhāliṭu khabla-hū bi-ʿiẓāmī. 107. Reading so, with Ibr. & Ahl. D.Ṣ: wa-mujiddatun &c. 108. Ahl. (v. 12) … aʿlamtu-hā &c. 109. Ibr: rawʿāʾu &c. 110. Ahl. (v. 13): yaʾtī ʿalay-hā l-qawmu wāhin khuffu-hā/ʿawjāʾa mansimu-hā rathīmun dāmī. 111. Ahl. (v. 14) does not show iqwāʾ. 112. Ahl. (v. 16): … fa-ka-anna-mā &c. 113. Ibr. … annī ka-hammi-ka in ʿashawtu uḥāmī; Ahl., (v. 17): …innī ka-ẓanni-ka &c.

299

5:3. Intoxicated Excursions ‫َّام‬ َ ُ‫َوأنَـا ال ُمـ َعـالِـن‬ ِ ‫صـ ْف َحـةَ الـنُـو‬ ُ ‫َونُ ِش‬ ‫ـدت عَن حُجْ ر ب ِْن أُ ِّم قَـطَ ِام‬ 116 ‫نـاض ُل ال ت َِطيشُ ِسهَامي‬ ِ ُ‫َوإذا أ‬ 117 ‫ـزيـ َد َو َرهطُهُ أ ْع َمامي‬ ِ َ‫َوأبُو ي‬ 118 َ ‫ام‬ ‫د‬ ‫ْـر‬ ‫ي‬ ‫َـ‬ ‫غ‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ب‬ ‫م‬ َ ُ ِ ‫ار ُمـق‬ ِ ‫َو ال أُقِـيـ‬ ِ ِ 114 115

‫َو أنـا ال ُمـنَـبِّـهُ بَـعْـ َد َمـا قَـ ْد نَ َّو ُموا‬ ْ َ‫َو أنـا ا لَّذي عَـ َر ف‬ ُ‫ـت َمـ َعـ ٌّد فَـضْ لَه‬ ُ ُُ‫َـر يهَ نِـ َز ا له‬ ِ ‫نـاز ُل الـبَـطَـ َل الـك‬ ِ ‫َو أ‬ ُ‫خَالي ابْنُ كَـبْـشَـةَ قَ ْد َعلِ ْمتَ َمكانَه‬ ُ ‫َو إ ذ ا أ ِذ‬ ‫يـت بِــبَ ْـلـ َد ٍة َو َّد ْعـتُـهـا‬

17 18 19 20 21

1. Whose were the abodes (diyār) I passed at Suḥām, then ʿAmāyatān, then the hill (haḍb) of Dhū Aqdām …114115116117118 2. Then Ṣafā l-Aṭīṭ, Ṣāḥatān and Ghāḍir/ʿĀsim, where the white doe-oryx roam with the bucks? 3. An abode (dār) of Hind/Hirr, of al-Rabāb, Fartanā and Lamīs, before the Accidents of the Days [took their toll]. 4. Turn off, you both, at the remains of a year since gone (al-ṭalal al-muḥīl); we would weep for these abodes as wept [before us] Ibn Khidhām. [Ahlwardt addition: (5) An abode of theirs (la-hum) when they (hum) were affiliate-neighbours (jīra) of your folk (ahl); when she would captivate (tastabī-ka) you with a brilliant white smile (bi-wāḍiḥin bassām) (6) Those times when her mouth, when I awoke her from sleep, was fragrant as residual musk on the [wine-ewer’s] gauze (faddām). 5. Can you not still see women’s-litters (aẓʿān) hasten early (bawākiran)/at ʿĀqil, like Shawkān palms, the time when their fruit is for cutting (ḥīna ṣirām)? 6. Doe-eyed ones (ḥūr), white faces, soft frames, skins severally rubbed over with saffron-laced scent (ʿabīr). [Ahlwardt variation: (8) Dark-eyed (ḥūr), indulged in saffronlaced scent, striking in their display of beauty (rawāʿid)119 as the does of al-Shaqāʾiq or the oryx of Salām]. 7. There I remained in the dung-blackened abodes, as though drunk (nashwān), served a dawn-cup (ṣabūḥ) of long-kept wine (mudām),

114. So, in Ibr. & Ahl. (v. 20). D.Ṣ: … wa-anā l-muʿālī ṣafḥata l-nūwāmī. 115. Ibr: … /wa-nashadtu &c.; Ahl., (v. 22): …/wa-ab-ī abū ḥujri &c. Reading here with the authography of Ibr. & Ahl. 116. Ibr., v. 21. 117. Ibr., v. 19; Ahl., v. 21. 118. Ibr., v. 20; Ahl., v. 23. 119. As with the concept of barq (‘lightning’ – discussed above in the commentary to vv. 1–5 of Poem 5.3.2), the idea of ‘thundering’ (raʿd) is related to the stupefying force of a deliberate exhibition of female beauty. Thus, the saying, baraqat wa-raʿadat, ‘she beautified and adorned herself ’, ‘she exhibited her beauty intentionally’. The fatal potential in this is reflected in the fact that baraqa wa-raʿada is extended to mean ‘he threatened and menaced’, whilst alrawāʿid can connote ‘calamities’, or otherwise empty words, and bukhl, where ‘failure to rain’ is involved: Tāj, s.v. b-r-q, r-ʿ-d.

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Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia 8. A virgin draught (unuf), gazelle’s blood in hue; matured, unbroached (muʿattaq), of the wines of ʿĀna, or the vines of Shibām;120 9. As if the tongue of her drinker were seized by relapse into mūm,121 invading his body with disease (yukhāliṭu jisma-hū bisaqāmī)/infusing his mind with grievous [dis-ease] (yukhāliṭu khabla-hū bi-ʿiẓāmī).122 10. I think of the swift she-camel (wa-mujidda) I have urged on, an ostrich (naʿāma) as she canters a blistering route (bi-ṭarīqin ḥāmī). 11. Hasty in every circumstance (ʿalā l-ʿillāt); neck strained high, heart astir, (rawʿāʾ), her foot pads broken and bloodied by stones. [Ahlwardt variation: (13) Fleeing an oncoming [hunting] troupe (yaʾtī alay-hā l-qawm); with brittle soles, and back bent (ʿawjāʾ), her foot pads broken and bloodied by stones]. 12. She wheels to throw me (li-taṣraʿa-nī); I say: “Desist! (aqṣirī) I am a man forbidden for you to fell! (ṣarʿ-ī ʿalay-ki ḥarām). 13. You have been served as well as anyone’s mare, home safely always, your rear secured (sālimat al-qarā).” 14. It was as though, then, Badr was the close-conjoined (waṣīl) of Kutayfa; as though from ʿĀqil [was] Armām.123 15. Tell Subayʿ, if you would submit a message: I am as your most morbid care/suspicion (hamm/ẓann) when I look to my destination at night (in ʿashawtu amām-ī)/; when I go by night, I defend myself (in ʿashawtu uḥāmī). 16. Desist from your threats! (aqṣir ilay-ka mina l-waʿīd); I do not [need to] tighten the girth [of my mind] (ḥizām-ī) for what I encounter. 17. I am the waker (wa-anā l-munabbih) [of comrades] from stupor [when need occasions]124; I alert the foe to face me awake (wa-anā l-muʿālinu ṣafḥata l-nūwām)/I rise over the face of the sleeping [foe] (wa-anā l-muʿālī ṣafḥata l-nūwām).

120. Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 3, pp. 248–249, offers only Shibām in association with vines. 121. Lisān, s.v. m-w-m; Tāj, art. al-birsāmu. A returning fever is perhaps the likelier interpretation; but mūm does come to mean pleurisy and a ‘hot’ abdominal tumour, which induces delirium. 122. Taking khabl, in this case, as equivalent to khabāl, a troubled state of mind, and ʿiẓām as an allusion to humūm (cares) as in: khālaṭa qalba-hu hammun ʿaẓīmun: Tāj, arts khabālun, khālaṭa. 123. This is glossed as an act of ‘cutting’ (qaṭʿ), cross-country, so swift that wide-separate locations are, as it were, ‘conjoined’. As al-Zabīdī puts it: yaqūlu qaṭaʿtu hādhayni l-mawḍiʿayni … ʿalā buʿdi mā bayna-humā qaṭʿan sarīʿan ḥattā ka-anna kulla wāḥidin muṭṭaṣilun bi-ṣāḥibi-hi, wa-ʿāqilun waarmāmun mawḍiʿāni baʿīdāni, “He says: I ‘cut’ [the distance] between these [first] two locations, for all the distance between them, so swiftly that it was as if each became conjoined with its mate. And ʿĀqil and Armām are two, wide-distant locations”. 124. Ibr., p. 117, note 17, flags also the variant reading: wa-anā l-manīyatu, “I am Death” &c., which would render the plural sleepers, rather, enemies awoken when he undertakes a morning attack.

5:3. Intoxicated Excursions

301

18. I am him whose worth Maʿadd acknowledge; I am invoked by the name/I call in the name of Ḥujr, Son of Umm Qaṭām. 19. I face off the redoubtable champion (unāzilu l-baṭala l-karīha nizālu-hū); when I shoot, my arrows do not miss (lā taṭīshu sihām-ī). 20. The status of Kabsha, my maternal uncle, you know; the uncles on the side of my father are of Abū Yazīd and his nearer kin. 21. If, any place, I am wounded, I leave; I will not abide (lā uqīm) except within the enduring abode [of constant faith] (bi-ghayri dāri muqāmī).

Verses 1–4: In Chapter 2, it was found that the primary associations of deserted camps (diyār) were kinship and ethical institutions in opposition to Time; and that these could serve as foils for elaboration on the history, condition, and moral potential of, the peoples associated with them. One cannot judge what topical allusions their place-names may have carried, but their semantic connotations in context are often compelling. For this reason we begin, for interest, with a perusal of the semantics of locations invoked. The poet first mentions Suḥām (verse 1). Suḥām connotes ‘blackness’ like that of the raven (ghurāb, sometimes called al-asḥam, ‘the black one’). It is resonant also of the black of night, associated with the virulence of ‘sickness’ and cares (humūm). Attached to a former community-abode – with which one supposes the poet implies he was once connected – the first association with the ghurāb (the proverbial announcer of separation) suggests ‘parting’ (bayn) and the ‘sickness’ that follows that, while the second has more general, immediate associations of dis-ease. But suḥām is also invoked in relation to the ‘blackness’ of sacrificial blood by which oaths of allegiance are sworn; a ritual meant to guarantee a cohesive pact of good faith, as illustrated by al-Aʿshā Maymūn when he alludes to the dark blood (asḥam) into which two parties have dipped their hands and sworn thereby never to separate: raḍīʿay libānin thadya ummin taḥālafā/bi-asḥama dājin ʿawḍu lā natafarraqū.125 Yet, as Thaʿlaba b. Ṣuʿayr indicates, there are those so faithless as to ignore such an oath: He renounces his commitment to iqāma  –  abiding, ‘tied’ in association  –  with one who cannot be trusted to fulfil her promises and pledges, even were she to swear by the blood (asḥam) poured [to confirm a pact]: saʾima l-iqāmata baʿda ṭūli thawāʾi-hī/wa-qaḍā lubānata-hū fa-laysa bināẓirī //li-ʿidāti dhī irbin wa-lā li-mawāʿidin/khulufin wa-law ḥalafat bi-asḥama māʾirī.126 Contextualised by the desolation of a communal abode, this ritual association of suḥām would carry, perhaps, specific suggestions of Time’s treacherous changes: the demise or collapse of a union in which good faith should have been guaranteed by a blood-sealed compact – thus encouraging the poet’s iqāma (his abiding within it) – but was not. The second abode  –  the apparently dual ʿAmāyatān  –  suggests the impact of a two-fold ʿamāya. Like suḥām, this is nuanced with the darkness of night; but, also, 125. Al-Aʿshā (1928), no. 33, v. 53. 126. Lyall (1918–1921), XXIV, vv. 2–3.

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with the dimness of tear-filled eyes – both associations that evoke hamm (‘care’). A corollary of hamm in this context is jahl – a resonance evoked more strongly still if a confluence of meaning with ʿamāʾa is registered,127 for ʿamāʾa connotes persistently false and vain behaviour. This is certainly the sense in which ʿamāya is used in Imruʾ al-Qays’ muʿallaqa, where it is defined by ṣibā (‘juvenile’ folly’), a clear expression of jahl: tasallat ʿamāyātu l-rijāli ʿani l-ṣibā/wa-laysa fuʾād-ī ʿan hawā-hu bi-munsalī, “The follies of other men have been diverted from ṣibā, but my heart is not such as to relinquish its passion”.128 And, in the muʿallaqa, this state of suffering is accompanied by the flood of manifold humūm in a tortuous, long night, which chimes with the tears he sheds at the poem’s outset. Thus, ʿAmāyatān may, perhaps, at least, register as an emphatic sign, ‘locating’ a situation linked to past relations, which afflicts the poet with hamm – perhaps inviting tears; at most, as an emphatic, indirect indication of susceptibility to ṣibā and jahl, owing to an aggression that might poetically be figured by the ‘departure’ of erstwhile jīrān. In any case, the story would be brooding ‘sickness’. The allusion to the haḍb (mountain) of Dhū Aqdām may be considered in light of the wider associations that accrue to the mountains, and that inevitably return to a confrontation with Time. As we have seen, honour and virtue are typically identified with the quality of rock; and building a virtuous heritage that can withstand the predations of al-Dahr translates into the resistance of the mountains. Meanwhile, the attribute of aqdām might equally belong to an established ancestral house as to a mountain (Dhū Aqdām is glossed as a mountain):129 The singular, qadam, (‘foot’) can define a foundation on which something is built, and extends to express filial succession;130 it can be related to rusūkh, a quality of ‘steadfastness’ applied both to mountains and to men.131 Rock embodies the ultimate capacity for ‘abiding’ – iqāma – which the poet is only truly able to promise one jāra, in an ironic pledge of faith, when anticipating an appointment with eternity (Poem 4.1, verse 1: … wa-innī muqīmun mā aqāma ʿasībū). Yet, even mountains are wasted by Time, just like their nearest approximations in men - an equation the poet succinctly conveys when remarking (Poem 1.4, verse 11) that he need expect no leniency from al-Dahr when alṣumm al-hiḍāb – the solid mountains/his virtuously resilient ancestral ‘hills’ – received no respite. Thus, the haḍb of Dhū Aqdām may, broadly, imply endurance through the long passage of Time; but the context announces change: the ruin of a past community’s relics. Perhaps true rock remains, but the conceptual does not. The associations that might otherwise serve to assert the presence of applied virtue, and 127. 128. 129. 130.

Tāj, arts ʿamāʾatun, ʿamāyatun; Lane, art. ʿamāyatun. Al-Tibrīzī (1969), Imruʾ al-Qays, v. 42 Ibr., p. 114, n. 1. Tāj, s.v. q-d-m, illustrates qadam as a concept of solid foundation, built by virtue, and a quality of distinction: rajulun qadamun, “a man of precedence/high station”; dhawū l-qadam, “those possessed of precedence”. In complement, Lane, art. qadamun, relays a concept of filial foundation and succession: fulānun ʿalā qadami fulānin, “so-and-so is the successor of so-and-so”. 131. Asās, Miṣbāḥ, arts rasakha, rāsikhun.

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the dutiful maintenance of a heritage equivalent to rock-like iqāma, serve, rather, to broadcast their absence and a state of abandonment to Time’s assaults. The poet next lights on Ṣafā l-Aṭīṭ. As noted earlier (Chapter 1, note 62), ṣafā, which defines smooth, hard stones, is another quality of rock conceptually conferred on virtue and honour. It has, then, ample potential to denote a location that is both concrete and conceptually imprinted with a sense of noble community. Aṭīṭ suggests a variety of sounds and senses relating principally to camels. It can figure the creaking of their saddles, the repletion of their udders with milk, or their bellies with water. It connotes their moaning with the weight of loads and riders, and the yearning cries made to their young. In the latter sense, aṭīṭ extends to the stirring of sympathetic feelings in people for blood-relations.132 Ṣafā l-Aṭīṭ would then evoke a location echoing with the life of a community and its husbanded wealth, which the context announces as history, and deprives of sympathy, life and good. In Ṣāḥatān, the poet encounters a two-fold ṣāḥa: perpetually unproductive land, bereft of good.133 If this was the site for a communal abode, we might infer, perhaps, that relations came to an unproductive pass. As to Ghāḍir, this has ambivalent tensions. It can suggest good growth and wealthy abundance. It connotes manʿ: a positive virtue of defence when exercised for the mutual benefit and protection of jīrān, but betrayal when applied against them (see the commentary to Poems 3.5 and 3.6). Thus, it would also perhaps evoke deviation from a proper course, the act of turning on a comrade.134 The balance of these associations, in a past-tense context of kinship and alliance, points to the propensity for bukhl: an improper denial of benefit equivalent to treacherous aggression. Ahlwardt’s alternative, ʿĀsim, is less ambivalent: ʿAsama has a primary sense of physical distortion; it can suggest jealous contention and heedless aggression; or, alternatively, it can evoke the presence of foul matter in the eyes, the provocation of tears.135 This last association recalls the ocular ‘disease’ that the poet suffered in Poem 2.3; an affliction that was a manifestation of his outrage at a verbal injury, which amounted to a cause for war, in a situation defined by mutual sickness (dāʾ). Thus, in sum, as a former ‘location’ for communal relations, ʿĀsim may be taken, at the level of ‘physical distortion’, to connote a general state of dāʾ (recall how the epitome of ‘sickness’ and the antithesis of virtue, figured by the būha of Poem 1.3, came with a plethora of handicaps, including ʿasam). Registered as ‘contention’ or ‘heedless aggression’, it evokes a situation liable to incite moral outrage and, perhaps, a battle. At the level of the ‘leaking eye’, it could imply a response to aggression - perhaps a verbal assault - that might lead to conflict. In any case, it would suggest, in context, a situation of moral and physical disharmony that demands a ‘cure’, or resolution. 132. 133. 134. 135.

Tāj, arts aṭṭa, aṭīṭun. Asās, Qāmūs, s.v. ṣ-w-ḥ. Tāj, s.v. gh-ḍ-r. Tāj, s.v. ʿ-s-m.

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Taken together, then, the list of camps that the poet enumerates has the tenor of a sustained statement on strained relations that, while ascribing the ultimate responsibility to Time, could imply the moral indictment of erstwhile jīrān (neighbours, co-affiliates). This scenario is enhanced (verse 2) by the poet’s affecting to witness, as he roams the desolation, a community of male and female oryx, the wild acme of purity with which free tribesmen and women are poetically identified (… tamshī l-niʿāju bi-hā maʿa l-arʾāmī). The presence of these creatures where a community once was reinforces the sense of change wrought by Time; and, set against the brooding rancour nuancing the deserted abodes, their own close communion will, perhaps, suggest what was, but is no more, between the human counterparts who occupied these sites. These resonances are brought into relief in verse 3, where the poet openly acknowledges the ravages of Time (ḥawādith al-ayyām); and he admits that he recognises the former abode of Hind/Hirr, al-Rabāb, Fartanā and Lamīs, figures which would readily evoke the human ‘does’ (niʿāj) that might be associated with a harmonious dwelling: Recall how Hirr and Fartanā in the ideal abodes of Saʿd b. al-Ḍibāb – Poem 2.4 – were naʿjatāni min niʿāji tabāla, “two does of Tabāla”. The sense of Time’s transformative aggression is reinforced again in the allusion to iḥāla (‘alteration by time’ – verse 4). Specifically, the poet defines the desolation by ṭalal: remains that are not entirely effaced. Accordingly (following conclusions on vv. 1–4 of Poem 2.5, vv. 1–2 of Poem 2.7, and vv. 10–12 of Poem 4.3), one may understand that they tell a story that is not over for the poet: What still stands in this ruin is paralleled in the poet’s remaining compulsion to grieve – poetically, ‘to relapse into ‘disease’ – in response to an unresolved aggression, or betrayal, of which the deserted camps remind him. That he is inclined to weep is a testament to his ‘sickness’, and, perhaps, a materialisation of the tearful grief that nuances ʿAmāyatān (Ibr./D.Ṣ., verse 1), and ʿĀsim (Ahl., verse 2). The desire to weep indicates a wayward heart, an affliction of intellect (ʿaql) and the potential dissipation of vital resources that ought to be harnessed to enable a powerful, ‘curative’ response. But, if this intimates jahl, the poet suggests the latent burgeoning of his ḥilm, for he tells us how he would weep: namely, “like Ibn Khidhām”. The roots of Khidhām connote cutting something quickly to pieces; smiting with a sword, a talon or claw.136 Ibn Ḥidhām and Ibn Ḥimām are sometimes also read here.137 The roots of Ḥidhām, too, connote hasty cutting. Meanwhile, Ḥimām suggests violent confrontation; the sharpness of a spearhead; deadly venom; an inevitable case of separation or death.138 That these variant readings converge in a sense of acute aggression indicates that the semantics of the name are an issue; that The Son of Khidhām/Ḥidhām/Ḥimām was not just a tragic, mythical bard who wept before Imruʾ al-Qays; and that it is not simple elegy or 136. Tāj, Qāmūs, s.v. kh-dh-m. 137. Ibr., p. 114, n. 4. 138. Qāmūs, s.v. ḥ-dh-m, ḥ-m-m.

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nostalgia that speaks here. Rather, the poet suggests his readiness to recover himself and respond appropriately to an aggression or betrayal – perhaps by ṣarm (‘cutting’; the severance of ties), or even trenchant retribution. This would indirectly affirm a blameless commitment to murūwa, and suggest that tears even brimming in a man like himself can be a warning of danger.139 The poet next elaborates on his grief in a historical ‘flash-back’ of which the additional verses in Ahlwardt’s recension (between verses 4–5) may be considered a part. Ahlwardt’s additions: The placement of these verses complements our earlier conclusion that the principal association of diyār in the early poetry are the institutions of kinship; that women, and the corollaries of womanhood, feature, in this context, as an emotive subset: A whole people is implied by the allusion to jīra (‘neighbours’, plural) and the use of the masculine-plural pronoun, hum. It is within this broader frame of waṣl (‘union in compact’) that the beloved is recalled, and this is therefore the frame within which we are invited to view her. The poet dwells on a memory that makes her the captivating embodiment of clarified, scented wine, drawn from its pitcher. This is a vision of ideal relations that typically evokes temporary freedom from anxiety, and usually follows, or anticipates, an allusion to affliction and a break in loving relations.140 It operates as a sexual analogue of communion with faithful boon companions who share a wine-cup that banishes their troubles and ‘heals’ their ills in an act that affirms their mutual commitment to fidāʾ.141 Confined to the context of faithful relations, the predatory nuance of istibāʾ (captivation), has a positive face:142 it indicates the willing, safe surrender of a man to the power of one who, by poetic association, is, herself, sabīʾa - a ‘captive’ wine ‘brought from afar’ and completely 139. One could be put in mind here of the figure of MacDuff in Shakespeare’s Macbeth upon learning (Act 4, Scene 3) that his wife and children are dead: Malcolm  –  who would turn their revenge to “med’cines … to cure this deadly grief ” - urges the weeping Macduff to “[d]ispute it like a man.” Macduff will, he says; “But I must also feel it as a man”. Thereafter, following Malcolm’s insistence – “Be this the whetstone of your sword; let grief/Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it” – Macduff, indeed, turns from tears to the sword: “O, I could play the woman with mine eyes/And braggart with my tongue! But, gentle heavens, /Cut short all intermission; front to front/Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;/ Within my sword’s length set him; if he ‘scape, /Heaven forgive him too!” – music, at last, to Malcolm’s ears: “This tune goes manly”. Stetkevych (1993b), p.54, (1994c), pp. 58–59, 75–76, discussing the unknown figure of Ibn Khidhām in a broader scheme of loss and nostalgia, presents a different picture. 140. See, e.g., Lyall (1918–1921), XI, of al-Musayyab, vv. 3–5, LV, of al-Muraqqish al-Aṣghar, vv. 8–11, CXXV, of al-Aswad b. Yaʿfur, vv. 6–9. 141. Lyall (1918–1921), IX, of Mutammim, vv. 28–30; ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), V, vv. 8–10 explicitly alludes to fidāʾ in this context – quoted above in n. 22 of this section. 142. Cf. Lyall (1918–1921), XI, v. 3: the istibāʾ of al-Musayyab.

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possessed (as in Poem 2.4, where Hirr and Fartanā were a conceptual sabīʾa, ‘mixed and drunk’ with the waters of sexual coupling).143 In such a positive situation, the brilliant smile (wāḍiḥ bassām) that connotes, poetically, the barq (lightning-flash) that might offer isqāʾ (curative ‘drink’), would be a promise fulfilled;144 it would stand in direct contrast to Salmā’s flashing smile of verse 4 in the previous poem, which – by her withholding her boon – amounted to a disorienting assault (or bukhl) that inspired a certain reciprocal aggression. In such a situation, both parties offer themselves up for a mutual conquest that provides a mutually benign ‘cure’. In sum, this memory describes a sexual expression of ‘healing’ communion, which epitomises the idea of a reciprocal, self-sacrificial commitment to waṣl with the said jīra, as a whole. But it relates now to a situation set squarely in the past. As we saw in Chapter 4, the breakdown of reciprocal good faith, which manifests itself in ẓaʿn (‘departure’) and ṣirām (‘severance’), and which may also be epitomised by the actions of ‘intoxicated’ and ‘intoxicating’ women, renders such a connection a somehow diseased and inimical ‘cup’, equivalent to a deadly, predatory initiative, which a man must combat if he values his life and honour. This is the light in which we consider the following verses where the poet affects to relive a fracture of waṣl that is defined by ẓaʿn and ṣirām, and ultimately conceived as a ‘poison-cup’. Verses 5–9: If alternative examples of aẓʿān (departing litters) compared to fruiting palms oblige us to infer that an allusion to ṣirām is intended,145 the poet leaves us no doubt of this here (verse 5), as he mentions ṣirām explicitly; and this opens a window onto the poetic logic behind the convergence of the principal sense of ṣirām – cutting the fruit from a palm – with that of severing a bond of love (or waṣl). To understand this better, however, we should consider the wider net of palm-imagery as it relates to people and the ethic. Honour and the Protected Grove A grove of palms flourishing in a suitable bed of growth can epitomise the sustained good in a people’s heritage and status, as Zuhayr b. Abī Sulmā illustrates in an extended madīḥ (praise poem) on one whose folk are virtuous, numerous, powerful, generous, just and brave - all a testament to their inherited worth.146 In complement, 143. Cf. the elaboration on female sabīʾa-wine in the closer poetic parallel of al-Muraqqish alAṣghar: Lyall (1918–1921), LV, vv. 8–11. 144. Cf. Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 1, p. 69, l. 3–p. 70, l. 4: Abū Dhuʾayb’s beloved’s kiss, sweeter than a scented night-draught from a sealed ewer, mixed with water from a cloud with a lightning-flash (barq). 145. As, e.g., Imruʾ al-Qays’ bāʾīya, Ibr., pp. 41–55, vv. 9–10. 146. Zuhayr (1964), p. 63, ll. 2–4: wa-mā yaku min khayrin ataw-hu fa-innamā/tawāratha-hum ābāʾu ābāʾi-him qablū//wa-hal yunbitu l-khaṭṭīya illā washīju-hū/wa-tughrasu illā fī manābiti-hā l-nakhlū, “All the good they evince they inherit from their fathers’ fathers before//and does any but

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the greatness and generosity of a mamdūḥ of ʿAbīd b. al-Abraṣ are conceptualised as fruit-laden palms irrigated by replete runnels.147 Conversely, the solitary, the weak and ignominious, those without family, offspring, or assistants, can be epitomised by the ṣunbūr (pl. ṣanābir): a solitary palm, or a palm that shoots from the base of the mother tree, which it weakens if it is not stripped off (an epithet apparently applied to the Prophet Muḥammad by the unbelievers).148 The complete degree to which the condition of palms is identified with folk is graphically illustrated by al-Mutanakhkhil in an elegy for one who, he recalls, left his battle-adversary struck down, “his skin drenched in blood, like the trunk of a palm that oozes when it is chopped”.149 Women are integral to these equations; a feature that is naturally accommodated, for palms, too, are divided into male and female. It is the female palm that bears the fruit, and beautiful women, protected and nurtured within the abode, are liable, therefore, to be identified with extravagantly fruiting palms – famously witnessed, for example, by Imruʾ al-Qays when focusing on the hair of one beloved.150 It follows that, just as an intrusion into women’s quarters may be considered a criminal assault on their guardians, so may the reach of an uninvited hand to pluck the ‘fruit’ of a people’s ‘palms’ figure an act that damages the greater ‘grove’. This is a conceit manipulated, for example, to enhance the merit of warriors: Labīd goes to the raid upon a mare who stands erect like the trunk [of a female palm], stripped of [superfluous] branches (jardāʾ), and so imposingly high (munīfa) as to thwart the efforts of those seeking to pluck her fruit (jurrāmu-hā).151 The jurrām feature here as inimical hands that would damage a ‘palm’ united with, and subject to, the will of her rider; and the inaccessibility of her fruit connotes an undefiled, sacrosanct body, which, by poetic association, figures the microcosm of a virtuous, flourishing, protected ‘grove’.152 Similarly, ʿAbīd b. al-Abraṣ, apparently boasting the assassination of Imruʾ al-Qayṣ’ father, Ḥujr, recalls how his horsemen stood over the corpse “like tall [female] palms whose fruit was far

147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152.

the right wood give growth to the Khaṭṭī spear; and does one cultivate palms in any but the appropriate grove?” ʿAbīd (1980), XIX, v. 16: wa-ilā sharāḥīla l-humāmi bi-naṣri-hī/naṣra l-ashāʾi sarīyu-hū mustarghadū, “To the Lord Sharāḥīl, great in bounty to all who come, like palms fruit-laden, with runnels flowing about their stems” (Lyall’s translation). Tāj, art. ṣunbūrun. Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 2, p. 34, l. 13: mujaddalan yatalaqqa jildu-hū dama-hū/ka-mā yuqaṭṭaru jidʿu l-nakhlati l-quṭulū. Al-Tibrīzī (1969), Imruʾ al-Qays, v. 34: wa-farʿin yazīnu l-matna aswada fāḥimin/athīthin ka-qinwi-lnakhlati l-mutaʿathkilī, “she shows me her thick black tresses, a dark embellishment clustering down her back like bunches of a laden date-tree”. (Arberry’s translation (1957), p. 63). Al-Tibrīzī (1969), Labīd, v. 66. We would, in this light, disagree with Stetkevych (1993), p. 36, when she suggests that Labīd’s ‘palm’, being jardāʾ, is of itself symbolic of “male potency” and a “circumcised penis”. Bearing fruit, it is, like the mare, self-evidently female. Jardāʾ would perhaps suggest, rather, that the cultivated generosity of a short-haired mare is comparable to the health and strength of a palm stripped of weakening offshoots (ṣanābir).

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beyond the reach of those who would gather it (al-jurrām)”.153 Again, the jurrām figure inimical hands that would wish to grasp the ‘fruit’ of an adversarial ‘grove’ whose palms are, this time, wholly equated with the warriors. The inaccessibility of their fruit speaks, specifically, of the impunity with which they undertake their purpose, and, implicitly, of their virtuous preservation of a sacrosanct, united body. These illustrations suggest themselves as an explanation for how sacrosanct honour comes to be conceived as ʿirḍ (pl. aʿrāḍ) one of the primary meanings of which is an irrigated palm-valley:154 Just as jarm (‘to gather fruit’) can connote an inimical assault on a palm-grove, so can it define a criminal defilation of honour; and, if jarm is not to be tolerated by an enemy, it must constitute a positive sin if perpetrated by a kinsman or ally. The semantic convergence, in jarm, of cutting fruit from a palm, defiling the honour, and propagating or acquiring the consequences of, a sin (dhanb/ ithm) is clearly not fortuitous.155 ***** It is in this light that the ṣirām of verse 5, here, in Poem 5.3.3 may be viewed: As one synonym of jarm, ṣirām may be read, in the context, as a sinful act that damages the poet’s constitution in his capacity as a former member of this once united ‘grove’; an act which also acquires for the ‘departing’ body the responsibility for answering for that sin. This complements our earlier reading of ṣirām (in the commentary to vv. 16–22 of Poem 4.3). There, it was found to be a sinful, treacherous initiative, and a betrayal of true love that could be reduced to the ‘departure’ called bayn, with all its negative corollaries. It was also found to be fuelled by a conceptually female impetus, aligned with rayb al-Dahr, which induced disequilibrium and the potential ascendancy of jahl. Here, disarmed by the effects of al-Dahr that he witnesses in the deserted camps, and conceding a degree of jahl in his inclination to weep, the poet affects to remember only females ‘departing’ with the imminence of ṣirām (‘cutting’/‘plucking’ the fruit). One could infer that he describes a community stripped of its manhood as it implicitly denies the poet the ‘fruit’ of its sacrosanct good, for, inasmuch as this communal removal effectively elaborates the act of ẓaʿn (departure), the details enhance our earlier analysis of ‘departing litters’ (aẓʿān) when they appear in this type of context (see the commentary to verses 1–3 of Poem 4.3). We found these to figure a moral departure, which, for its sinful antithesis to ethical demands, is liable to divest a people of their manhood. It is worth recalling, especially, the verses of Bishr b. ʿAmr, where 153. ʿAbīd (1980), IV, v. 10. 154. Qāmūs, Tāj, s.v. ʿ-r-ḍ. 155. Qāmūs, art. jarama; cf. Tāj, art. janā: how janā ʿalā, which comes to mean ‘to commit a crime’, is based on, and explicitly related to, a verb that means ‘to pluck fruit from a tree’ (as root j-r-m, also); cf. al-Tibrīzī (1969), Zuhayr, v. 35b, which brings the active participles of both verbs together – al-jārim al-jānī – to describe a criminal.

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the cowardice and ignominy of warriors who were faithless to their dīn inspired the poet to see them only as aẓʿān, sneaking through side-roads and incompliant to their guide. One can note that those aẓʿān of Bishr b. ʿAmr are also conceived as departing palms whose dates are just coming into fruition (busr).156 If, from all this, one may only infer that verse 5 is a general imputation, to erstwhile jīrān, of a sin as yet unspecified, it may be offered that this sin can broadly be defined by a failure to demonstrate iqāma (‘abiding’). Being the antithesis of ẓaʿn that is often explicitly invoked beside it, iqāma suggests its presence here despite remaining unspoken.157 As neatly illustrated by al-Ḥādira, iqāma, in antithesis to ẓaʿn, epitomises the virtue of a people who are never treacherous, never give their confederates cause to fear (lā nurību ḥalīfa-nā), always shield their honour by sacrificing their precious possessions, and are never afraid to stand in the way of a breach where ‘poison’[terror] (saqim) must be confronted. Then, they shout the names of forebears (whose merits inform their own virtue, and whose memory is implicitly therewith upheld).158 Allowing, then, that the allusion to ẓaʿn here in verse 5 is an implicit negation of iqāma, one finds another perspective from which to see how the aẓʿān may figure what can broadly be defined as betrayal: the failure to make such sacrifices as preserve honour; the weakness of ceding to errant impulses defined by ‘sickness’; the sin of becoming host to rayb, injecting fear into abandoned confederates, and potentially shaming the names of the forebears. This plethora of negative association enhances every contradiction of good, every sense of Time’s ‘disease’, embedded in the semantics of the deserted abodes (verses 1–2), including the absence of iqāma that is a testament to durability and ancestral worth. And it is precisely the failure to demonstrate iqāma (‘abiding’) that finally also defines the poet’s later stated point of departure. Although the specific grievance of the poet is not openly declared until the third phase of this poem, it is possible that the ‘palms’ of verse 5 are pointed with an allusion as to what that is. Their named provenance is Shawkān – not, apparently, a location famed for its palms.159 The roots of Shawkān suggest thorns (shawk), the vehement cut of weaponry, or a venomous sting. Read as an epithet of the form faʿlānu, Shawkān could suggest what is piercing, poisonous and highly injurious, and what is not necessarily an unlikely conceptual provenance for palms inasmuch as palms can have (sometimes formidable) shawk.160 How this might translate, poetically, as a particular 156. Lyall (1918–1921), LXX. Lyall translates (v. 4): “They take a side way [between mountains] from the main road, with evenly-coloured [coverings to their litters], [ruddy] like the upper sides of ripening clusters of dates, smooth”. 157. The antithesis of ẓaʿn and iqāma is well documented in Ezz El-Din (1994). This opposition was earlier discussed in Part 1:2, s.v. Unities of Structural Typology, and was illustrated in Mufadḍalīya XCVII of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim, discussed, also Part 1:2, s.v. Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin. 158. Lyall (1918–1921), VIII, vv. 9–15. 159. Yāqūt (1866–1873), vol. 3, p. 337. 160. Lisān, s.v. sh-w-k.

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grievance is illustrated by Khālid b. Zuhayr b. al-Muḥarrith: Counter-threatening to some verbal belligerence, he insists his antagonist back down saying: wa-lā tabduranna l-qawma min-nī bi-ḥazratin/ṭawīlati ḥaddi l-shawki murrin janātu-hā, “Do not compete for a choice measure [of trees] possessed of long, sharp thorns, the harvest of which [with my venom] will be most bitter”.161 This, then, describes a wounding ‘crop’, a threat in response to a threat, which promises to translate into armed warfare. By poetic association, the Shawkān palms of verse 5 could evoke an aggressive verbal initiative that invites a bellicose response. And, as we shall see, it is, indeed, a threat that foments the poet’s grievance, prompting him to demand that his antagonist desist or else expect an armed encounter. Lastly here, one might consider Ahlwardt’s variant on bawākiran: namely, bi-ʿāqilin. If ʿāqil is a concrete location, it may nonetheless meaningfully be read in line with its semantics and wider associations (as discussed in Chapter 3). To recap, in communal life, ʿāqil connotes – at a greater level – a unit of close kin that renders itself, through virtue, self-sacrifice, and constant allegiance to compact, a conceptual rock-fort impregnable (manīʿ) to Time’s predations. It can constitute a unity of communal ‘pearls’ closely strung on their niẓām (the ‘binding thread’ of its compact), the security of which is damaged by betrayal and the intrusion of ‘sickness’. At the micro-level, ʿāqil connotes the inner integrity of the man, the firm-strung pearls of whose intellect are bound by virtues that combat his susceptibility to ‘sickness’ – to his manifesting jahl, for example, in the form of tears that are ‘pearls’ slipping from the niẓām of his individual ʿaql (the coordinating thread of his intellect). These two levels of meaning are intimately connected: The intrusion of ‘sickness’ into the greater ʿāqil unit by some kind of betrayal, ‘infects’ the ʿaql of each individual member- ‘pearl’, and may prompt a worthy man to detach himself from an insecure connection that promises death, not life. Thus, in a context where the themes of bayn and betrayal are clearly set forth, the poet’s recollection (verse 5) of ʿāqil may be taken to ‘locate’, or relegate to the past tense, the strength and worth of a united community now threatened by dissolution because of their treacherous acquisition of ‘sickness’. In the poet’s case, this has already manifested itself in his desire to weep (verse 4). His necessary, ethical response – to retain his own ʿaql and redeem himself from the influence of a deadly compact – has arguably been anticipated by his chosen manner of grieving: He has not conceded the dissolution of his ʿaql by weeping unstrung pearls.162 Nor, in response to an aggression of ‘palms’, does he weep tears that irrigate the ‘palms’ of himself

161. Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 1, p. 162, l. 3. 162. As he does in a situation where he admits he did not acquit himself well in response to a predatory assault on his heart, Ibr., p. 155–156, vv. 9–10: ramat-nī bi-sahmin aṣāba l-fuʾāda/ ghadāta l-raḥīli fa-lam antaṣir//fa-asbala damʿ-ī ka-faḍḍi l-jumāni/awi l-durri raqrāqi-hi l-munḥadir, “she shot me with an arrow that struck my heart the morning she left, and I did not rally; my tears spilled like silver beads [from the thread] or pearls, in a glistening cascade”.

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(what we may understand as his wounded ʿirḍ – his ‘grove’/his sacred honour).163 He has not admitted to shedding tears at all. He has simply expressed a desire to weep like Ibn Khidhām, the dangerous and cutting connotations of whose name embodies the potential to make an appropriate response to the cutting injury of these Shawkān ‘palms’, to reclaim the integrity of his ʿaql, and to effect self-redemption by the absolute severance (ṣarm) of dangerous ties. As we shall see, reclaiming mastery of the ʿaql in this way is the principal concern of verses 10–14. The Arterial Vein of Faith and Sin The allusion (verse 6) to these aẓʿān as ḥūr (creatures possessed of very white, dark-pupilled eyes like those of oryx and gazelles), brings into relief the unspoken association between such women and the doe-oryx (niʿāj) – invoked in verse 2. This comparison also generates an allusive introduction into how these women are the embodiment of the powerful ṣabūḥ (‘morning cup’) that the poet ‘drinks’ (verses 7–9), for, along with the erotic power conceded to women, the doe is poetically intercalated into the net of wine-conceits: It is part of the currency of the wider poetic language to identify these creatures with wine-ewers of the type described in the Ahlwardt additions to this poem (occurring between verses 4–5). A useful example is attested by ʿAlqama when he describes the glorious wine that he shares with boon companions. This has the capacity to ‘fell’ them (taṣraʿu-hum). It is long-kept (muʿattaq), from ʿĀna (as the wine in verse 8), which stands in a sealed wine-jug (ibrīq), bound round with linen (mafdūm). This is compared to a white oryx (ẓaby) brought forth by its guardian into the sunlight (li-l-ḍiḥḥ – i.e., it is a ṣabūḥ, or ‘morning draught’).164 Unlike the aged and long-kept wine (muʿattaq, mudām) of verse 9, ʿAlqama’s ṣabūḥ is pure and healing. It cures megrim, its heat does not inflict fever, and it does not infuse the head with dizziness: tashfī l-ṣudāʿa wa-lā yuʾdhī-ka ṣālibu-hā/wa-lā yukhāliṭu-hā fī l-raʾsi tadwīmū. Translated into a female ‘cup’, this wine of ʿAlqama might rather be the mutually healing ‘draught’ afforded by Imruʾ al-Qays’ once untainted communion with Hirr and Fartanā (in verses 4–10 of Poem 2.4) who were, equally, naʿjatān (two does), and a ṣabūḥ that was mudāma, muʿattaqa. The identification of doe-eyed ḥūr with the wine-pitcher of communion – whether that of boon-companions, or sexual mates – also offers a poetic logic for the equation of the contents of such a pitcher with, for example, the blood of a gazelle, as in verse 163. As he does when he contemplates the unattainability of one Laylā, Ibr., p. 189, vv. 1–3: ʿaynā-ka damʿu-humā sijālū/ka-anna shaʾnay-himā awshālū//aw jadwalun fī ẓilāli nakhlin//li-l-māʾi min taḥtihī majālū//min āli laylā wa-ayna laylā/wa-khayru mā rumta mā yunālū, “Tears from your two eyes overflow, as if their ducts were mountain streams//or a brook in the shade of palms beneath which are channels where water whirls around //for Laylā’s folk; and where is Laylā? The good you sought is out of reach”; cf. ʿAbīd (1980), I, vv. 7–16, responding to the aggression of Time and Death. He admonishes himself (v. 11) for ṣibā. This was discussed above in the concluding commentary to vv. 1–8 of Poem 5.2. 164. Lyall (1918–1921), CXX, vv. 39–45; cf. ʿAbīd (1980), XI, v. 7, where, conversely, ẓibāʾ (oryxes) are like silver ewers (abārīq lujayn).

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8. The wider poetry lets us understand this as an allusion to an analogue of sacrificial blood, or that of a creature that is called dhabīḥ (‘a sacrifice’) – a concept which, of itself, applies both to a broached wine-jug and a penetrated maiden (as also to the expressed musk with which maiden and wine are typically associated).165 It follows that the mutual isqāʾ of wine - both that of boon-companionship and sexual coupling – is conceptually to imbibe the product of such processes of dhabḥ (‘sacrifice’) as ‘heal’, and maintain the purity of, the conceptual ẓibāʾ and niʿāj (the ‘oryx’ and ‘does’) of an ideal community, these being processes that assume fidāʾ (mutual ransom), sinlessness in offering reciprocal assistance, and the mutual sacrifice of the ‘pledges’ (arhān) of life. So much for ideal relations within the communal body. We have also seen how inimical combat may equate with the mutual isqāʾ (giving to drink) of an aggressive waṣl (‘conjoining in compact’). Thus, an aggressor might ‘drink’ his ‘healing’ from the white-skinned ‘quarry’ of protected abodes who are the embodiment of clarified wine (or expressed musk, as in verse 4 of Poem 2.2), so visiting upon the enemy a ‘curative’ ṣabūḥ that must be poison.166 It follows that sin within the communal body, or a treacherous waṣl – a compact equating to the kiss of Death - may be conceived in the same terms: an inimical isqāʾ: the ‘poisoning’, ‘hunt’ and ‘captivation’ of conceptual ẓibāʾ who must surrender the pledge of their lives if they submit to the aggression of such a compact. This is, in fact, succinctly illustrated by Abū Dhuʾayb,167 who – faced with the faithlessness of one Umm al-Rahīn, who is undeserving of his piety (birr), and the memory of whose captivating, wine-like kiss (raḥīq) he fights to resist – asserts that he knows his connection with her is like that of a ẓaby (the ‘oryx’ of himself) driven into a treacherous trap. Notably, he defines the trap by ḥabl (readily received as the compact-bond of waṣl), rather than ḥibāla (typically used of the hunter’s snare). Indeed, Abū Dhuʾayb realises here the potential to fuse together the antagonistic faces both of the conceit of dealing round wine, and of the conceit of maysir-gambling, another frame of reference where conceptual combat within, and concrete combat without, the communal body, may find people either demonstrating fidāʾ with the sacrifice of their wealth, or else risking themselves by ‘playing’ for the arhān (pledges) of the ‘juzur’ (‘slaughter-camels’) of enemy lives – something which may poetically be figured as the hunt and slaughter of a maʿshar of ẓibāʾ (a ‘ten-fold’ oryx kin-unit – as demonstrated in Poem 5.2, above). Not only does Abū Dhuʾayb name his faithless beloved Umm al-Rahīn  – which suggests here a supreme potential for (illegitimately) ensnaring the rahn of his life – but he goes on to flee the connection 165. For the wine of boon-companions as slaughter-blood, see Lyall (1918–1921), VIII, of al-Ḥādira, v. 18, IX, of Mutammim, v. 29; al-Aʿshā (1928), no. 36, v. 40; cf. Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 1, p. 69, l. 9, for the ‘slaughter-blood-wine’ of Abū Dhuʾayb’s beloved; Lisān, s.v. dh-b-ḥ; Kennedy (1997), chap. 1, discusses the fusion of wine and love in early Arabic poetry. 166. Recall, again, ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), II, vv. 16–18: the ṣabūḥ dealt out by his army is explicitly poison (samm) brought by companies of Death (ḍabāʾiru mawt)  –  cited above, n. 23 of this Section. 167. See his rāʾīya in Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 1, pp. 145–151.

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reminding himself that men are the favourite slaughter-camels (juzur) of Time’s Accidents (al-ḥādithāt). Thus fusing the two frames of wine and maysir, he refuses, at once, to be ‘felled’ – ṣarīʿ al-khamr (victim of intoxication)/ṣarīʿ al-hawā (victim of passion)/ṣarīʿ al-qatl (victim of slaughter) – by the ‘wine’, the seduction, or the deadly gambler’s ‘arrow-lock’, of one who is to him the agent of Death. It is in the light of this thick network of interlacing and inter-referential poetic frames that we may view Imruʾ al-Qays’ intoxication in verses 7–9. The ‘wine’ he imbibes ought to be the healing juices that circulate within a communal body that is committed to mutual redemption, and untainted by betrayal – juices of which (as implied in vv. 9–10 of Poem 2.7) it is a sin, subject to divine sanction, for any one member of that community to partake when he has yet to banish a ‘sickness’ that afflicts him (suggesting that his communion extends to a quasi-organic connection with the divine).168 The ‘wine’ he ‘imbibes’ is, rather, a ‘cup’ which – in direct antithesis to the ṣabūḥ of ʿAlqama’s verses last cited above – mortifies, dizzies and induces fever. It is the ‘cup’ of a communal body that is poisoned by treachery, and sinfully passed on to the poet who shares the quasi-organic circulation of its juices by virtue of his connection in waṣl. It is a ‘cup’ that illegitimately ‘hunts’, wages war on, and ‘infects’ him, thus constituting the arterial vein for the mukhālaṭa (infusion) of a mūm (fever) that threatens the rahn – or pledge – of his life.169 In this way, the poet gives the lie to the ostensible purity that would attach to the departing aẓʿān by virtue of the proverbial taintlessness of doe-eyed ḥūr, and the wider associations of the saffron-laced perfume with which their white skins are overwashed (verse 6): Like the conceptual wine that such ḥūr embody, saffroncompounds are commonly identified with the sacrificial blood by which oaths are sworn; with the slaughter-blood of dhabḥā (sacrificial creatures) consisting of both hunted quarry and enemies taken in battle.170 Thus, Abū Dhuʾayb, alluding to one near-related ‘flock of does’ compares the saffron-infused ʿabīr with which they are perfumed to the sacrificial blood of oryx (wa-sirbin yuṭallā bi-l-ʿabīri ka-anna-hū/dimāʾu ẓibāʾin bi-l-nuḥūri dhabīḥū). And, in light of these ritual associations, there is clear poetic logic to the identification of such ḥūr, also, with the white idols called dumā, whose 168. Cf. Qurʾān, 83: 25–28, which, in this light, presents as a transformation where pure, musksealed wine (raḥīq), mixed with paradisical waters, becomes the eternal communion of the muqarrabūn (those brought near to Allāh). 169. Lisān art. m-w-m: the verses of Dhū al-Rumma that preserve a conception of the excited hunter as a host of mūm, and those of Mulayḥ showing a hopeless lover ‘infected’ by mūm; Tāj, s.v. kh-l-ṭ, illustrates that khālaṭa connotes not only the pervasion of disease, wine or hamm in a body, but also intimate relations within a confederacy, and carnal intercourse. 170. Lyall (1918–1921), XVIII, v. 17, XIX, v. 10 (both of ʿAbd Allāh b. Salima): the blood of quarry is ʿabīr and bride’s saffron; al-Aṣmaʿī (1955), no. 53, of Muhalhil, v. 5: enemy blood is ʿabīr; Lyall (1918–1921), XXII, of Salāma b. Jandal, v. 6: the horses’ necks after battle are anṣāb stained with the blood of ‘Rajab-sacrifices’; Ahlwardt (1870), al-Nābigha, no. 5, v. 37: sacrificial blood poured over anṣāb is called jasad, which also defines saffron; al-Ālūsī (n.d.), vol. 1, pp. 238–239 reflects the mutual equivalence of perfume and blood for swearing pacts.

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semantics find them related to the colour of blood (dam) and the blood of sacrifice.171 (Recall that in verse 6 of Poem 2.4, the white, perfumed, wine-embodying ‘does’, Hirr and Fartanā, also evoked the dumā of Hakir). If the image of Imruʾ al-Qays’ aẓʿān in verse 6 were truly an expression of purity, the ‘blood’ with which they are anointed could assume only blameless sacrifice – whether the faithful mutual self-sacrifice of their community’s conceptual ẓibāʾ (oryxes), or the legitimate sacrifice of such other ẓibāʾ as are not off-limits to them. Since, by verse 9, the poet has effectively defined himself as illegitimately hunted quarry, we may infer that what he sees is finally to be equated with the blood of a ‘ẓaby’ such as himself. That is to say, he translates an image of the pure product of faithful fidāʾ into the stain of sin. (Recall again how in verse 17 of Poem 5.2, the poet’s legitimate assault on a troupe of ‘oryx’ found him reducing them poetically to ‘sheep and goats of the pen’; conversely, how al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza insists on the gross sin of attempting illegitimately to sacrifice ‘oryx’ (his near folk) when the appropriate victims were the ‘sheep and goats’ who were properly responsible).172 This sense of purity that is not what it seems is perhaps enhanced by the poet’s affecting, finally, to locate the memory on which he ‘drinks’ (verse 7) within dungblackened abodes (fī dimani l-diyār). Whether the traces of animals of the departed community, or else the leavings of bull-oryx and cows more lately moved in, the diman are nuanced, contextually, by the treacherous working of Time, and the ‘sickness’ of bayn. Treachery and putrefaction are intrinsic, anyway, to their semantics: damina connotes long-harboured rancour and malevolence. Applied to palms, it indicates their having become rotten and black. And, if diman are conducive to growth, tradition preserves the perception that theirs is a pasture, equatable to women of inviting appearance, which is absolutely to be avoided. The proverb īyā-kum wa-khaḍrāʾa l-diman  –  “avoid the pasture that grows amid the dung”  –  invokes circumspection in regard of women who are ‘unwholesome food’ of a stinking provenance.173 Thus, prior even to discussing the ‘poison-cup’ of his ṣabūḥ, the poet reinforces the morbid corollaries of bayn that accrue to the removal of fruitful ‘palms’, and to the departure of ostensibly pure ḥūr, with an allusion to intrinsic taint. This accepted, the projection of these diyār, blackened with dung  –  which compounds the sense of a betrayed blood-compact evoked by his elaboration on a poisoned ṣabūḥ – may be seen to tease into relief the negative nuances that accrue to Suḥām in its context (verse 1) and to confirm the prevalence of negativity in the ambivalent semantics of Ghāḍir (Ibr. and D.Ṣ., verse 2), which include a sense of flourishing growth. It should be noted that the poet singles out his tongue as a principal victim of his ‘relapse’ into mūm (verse 9). As mentioned, the root of the ‘infection’ lies in a sinful 171. Qāmūs, Tāj, art. dumyatun. 172. This is cited in n. 100 of Chapter 5:2. 173. Tāj, Muḥkam, s.v. d-m-n. The diman are otherwise discussed by Jaroslav Stetkevych in terms of a highly suggestive, lyrical phenomenon: (1994c), pp. 74–78.

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threat. A verbal assault, equating to disease, must challenge a man to respond and quell it. When the poet finally declares his grievance, he also finds his tongue to reply. He has, however, yet to recollect himself and recover his ʿaql. ***** Verses 10–14: The poet resorts to the wāw rubba formula (wa-mujidda – verse 10), a device, which, as we have now seen many times, typically injects thought, or ‘recollection’ with the resolution of counter-initiative; and, once again, he takes to ‘the saddle’. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that he selects the epithet mujidda for his ‘she-camel’ this time. Ajadda connotes swiftness and earnest endeavour; palms reaching the time for their fruit to be cut (ṣarm); a person’s opting to forsake a connection; the origination or renewal of a compact.174 The choice to ‘ride’ a mujidda may, then, be read as a polyvalent expression of the will to effect the ṣarm required to respond to the palms’ ṣirām in verse 3; one that echoes, in essence, the poet’s declaration (in verse 16 of Poem 4.3): innī la-aṣrimu man yuṣārimu-nī wa-ujiddu waṣla mani btaghā waṣl-ī, “ I split with those who sever me and reaffirm (ujiddu) the tie with those who seek in earnest to have my bond.” If, however, this is his will, there are still psychological and constitutional hurdles to jump. And if there is another compact to be confirmed, it is first within the poet himself. It may be recalled that the latter declaration of dissociation marked the poet’s transition from jahl to ḥilm, his concession only to brother, and only to share the benign ‘combat’ (munāzaʿa) of boon-companionship with, an ideal kinsman, sedulously committed to compact, who stood in direct antithesis to one sinful Shamūs from whom a break was effected. It was noted that the name of Shamūs – used of a woman who shies from men  –  carries the principal quality of a mount that rebels against its rider; that it extends to the vehemently refractory nature of a man, and to the propensity for wine to run away with the drinker. The one condition imposed on the ideal kinsman was that he would never be found being tracked from behind by one other than the poet himself (mā lam ajid-ka ʿalā hudā atharin/yaqrū maqaṣṣa-ka qāʾifun qabl-ī). It was inferred that this entailed that a kinsman should never imperil a cocovenantee by rendering himself unduly susceptible, through a lapse of virtue, to the pursuit of one tracking him from the rear (i.e., from his qarā) to Death’s advantage – a perception complemented by Thaʿlaba b. ʿAmr’s use of language when, asserting how he must inevitably die, he projects Death on his trail, a leisurely tracker: idhan la-atat-nī ḥaythu kuntu manīyat-ī/yakhubbu bi-hā hādin li-ithr-iya qāʾifū.175 The structure of these ideas is essentially replicated in verses 10–13, but with one important modification, 174. Tāj, Lisān, s.v. j-d-d. 175. Lyall (1918–1921), LXXIV, v. 11: “Even then, wheresoever I might be, my destined death would reach me, a guide tracking out my footsteps and ambling along with my doom” (Lyall’s translation).

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namely, that both the propensity of a sinful shamūs (the she-camel’s act, verse 12, is ḥarām, ‘forbidden’)  –  who, just as wine can ‘fell’ a drinker, threatens this riderʾs ‘felling’ (ṣarʿ  –  doubly emphasised, verse 12)  –  and the duty of a partner exhorted not to engage in a betrayal that renders the rear (qarā) susceptible to attack, are imposed upon one figure: the mount. She is both the potentially deadly, and the potentially ideal, co-covenantee. Indeed, inasmuch as she is a she-ostrich, we could infer, by comparison with the ostrich episode in the previous poem (verses 9–11), that she is, in some sense, in need of ‘husbanding’. In that poem, however, the poet translated his she-camel into the male partner, with which he was wholly fused, and which was reaching to control a female escaping beyond him. Here, contrary to both previous poems, the rider retains his identity, although he is evidently so connected with his she-camel-turned-ostrich that he can take us into her mind and reveal her own experience and responses. This is another gendered split, but one that involves his bringing the female strictly ‘into tow’ to prevent her from ‘throwing him’ through fear. She bloodies herself negotiating hardships enhanced by exposure to blistering heat (typically associated with hostilities and exposure to Death  –  verse 10). Her hardships are broadly defined by conditions called ʿillāt. These speak profoundly of state-altering accidents – and, thus, ‘sickness’ – liable to divert one from a purposed course. The readings that find her rawʿāʾ (Ibr. and D.Ṣ, verse 11), focus her struggle clearly within the heart: rawʿāʾ implies the quality ruwāʿu l-fuʾād, “spirited of heart”, indicating such acute responses to everything seen and heard that it is as if fear (rawʿ) filled the heart. (It is said to be precisely because the seat of rawʿ is the heart and mind that the heart and mind are defined by rūʿ).176 One possible inference to be drawn from her state of arousal is that she anticipates or flees a hunter;177 and Ahlwardt’s variation on verse 11 supplies precisely that idea, invoking the onslaught of a [hunting] party (yaʾtī ʿalay-hā l-qawm). Broadly, then, one may say that verses 10–13 appear to develop the poet’s experience of, and response to, the aggression (verses 1–9) that has ‘hunted’, ‘intoxicated’, and ‘infected’ him, aroused his jahl and disturbed his intellectual integrity (ʿaql). His redemption would then be predicated upon managing the mount he ‘rides’ into full obedience, and the confirmation of their mutual good faith in compact (waṣl). But this analysis can be refined. It will be remembered that in Poem 2.4, the poet’s struggle with his rebellious conscience (verse 1), and the ‘sickness’ he incurred for his own sinful conduct, was conceived as an internal struggle with the ‘kinsman’ of his heart, his body being the ahl (the host ‘people’). There, his heart was not muqṣir; it would not ‘desist’ from, or curtail, its wayward unrest. (Note that aqṣirī – Desist! – is what he commands his mount here in verse 12). There, too, his own jahl, exacerbated by a union with worthless hosts, was defined by susceptibility to predation (their abodes were tracked by the 176. Qāmūs, Tāj, arts ruwāʿu l-fuʾādi, rūʿun. 177. Cf. v. 3 of Poem 5.3.1, above: the condition of the poet-ẓaby where the anticipation of predators finds him mūjis: listening in agitation for all the dangers he conceives in his mind. His fears are realised in the form of hunter and hounds.

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‘leopard’), and epitomised by the concept of intoxication (sukur). The structure of these ideas can be translated to make sense of the particularities of verses 10–13, outlined above: The poet struggles to oblige the ‘kinsperson’ of a refractory, ‘hunted’ heart to curtail its jahl, to stem the perilous intoxication that has proceeded from a poisonous waṣl (identified in verses 1–9), and to begin the transition to ‘soberness’ and ‘healthy’ balance (i.e., ṣaḥw – ‘recovery’ – and ḥilm). This may be achieved by uniting his faculties in an internal waṣl that prohibits ‘predation’ (i.e., that is ʿāqil). If, in this instance, the poet finds his (properly masculine) bleeding heart to be female, a charge to be reined in and ‘husbanded’, it is perhaps because this internal rebellion is a blameworthy eruption of the type of ‘sickness’ liable, poetically, to make women of men. (Here, we may recall again Zuhayr’s words - outlined in Chapter 4, note 48 - condemning Āl Ḥiṣn, who, if to be deemed quasi-inebriate ‘women’, should be conducted to husbands; if men, they should ‘recover’ and show good faith). Most importantly, though, this episode chimes precisely with those curious ‘steeds and riding camels of folly’ (afrās al-ṣibā wa-rawāḥilu-h), foregone by Zuhayr and Ṭufayl, which were discussed in Part 1:178 There, the heart had ‘recovered’ from ‘intoxication (ṣaḥā), its vanity reined in (aqṣara – i.e., it had become muqṣir) – entailing that the ‘mounts of folly’ had been ‘unsaddled’ and retired. Those poets told us, in a nutshell, how what one ‘saddles’ and ‘rides’ is a vista into the heart and mind. And the episode under discussion here illustrates how that which some poets might choose to express in the nutshell of a tidy metaphor, others may develop as an elaborate, allegorical panel. It is in this light that we may make sense of the culmination of this episode in verse 14 (see the gloss on this, above, note 123, with its strong reference to the umbrella concept of ‘cutting’ – qaṭʿ): The poet signals the concept of waṣl – integration after disintegration  –  by rendering the first two coordinates of his journey, each, the waṣīl – or close-conjoined – of the other. The ‘journey’ goes via ʿĀqil  – with its semantic signal of integration/waṣl achieved – to arrive, finally, at Armām – armām (meaning ‘ragged remains of sundered rope’) being one ubiquitous expression for the tattered bond of an erstwhile compact-tie. Alternatively rendered, one could say that, having achieved a state that is wholly ʿāqil, the poet wields the ‘cut’ of his reason (ʿaql) to fulfil the promise of ‘riding’ a mujidda that can enable ṣarm (‘severance’) and promote his ṣaḥw (‘recovery’), using it to sever the bonds of a dangerously intoxicating union – bonds that consequently become armām.179 (ʿAql conceived as a cutting sword is explicitly articulated by Ṣakhr al-Ghayy, apparently responding to a call for his 178. Ahlwardt (1870), Zuhayr, no. 15, vv. 1–2, Ṭufayl (1927), no. 8, vv. 1, 4. These were cited and discussed in Part 1:2, s.v. Plasticity of the Poetic Discourse and the Mechanics of the Saddle. 179. Inasmuch as the serial elements of this phase are reducible to: intoxication (jahl) > unrest (ruwāʿ) > intellectual application (ʿaql) > tattered ties (armām) > recovery from intoxication (ṣaḥw), the structure of these ideas is replicated by al-Musayyab (see Lyall 1918–1921, XI, vv. 1–6, and scholion): Bonds with the beloved are not armām (tattered), but must be broken; he recalls her ‘captivating wine’; he applies wisdom (ḥukm, i.e., ʿaql) against ṣibā (youthful folly, i.e., jahl), and leaves. His move is ṣaḥw (recovery) after yearning and ruwāʿ (agitation).

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death: He lets his aggressor know that his [masculine] ʿaql is a sharp sword (jurāz) the mettle of which is neither prone to fracture, nor [wont to bend like] ‘female’ iron.180) In sum, the poet articulates his chosen desire to express grief in the manner of Ibn Khidhām, with all the swift and cutting sword-like promise that that name entails. He now proceeds to address his antagonists directly. Verses 15–21: The poet demonstrates that he has recovered the use of his tongue  –  formerly paralysed by nashwa and mūm (intoxication and fever)  –  revealing (verse 16) that the quasi-organic affliction from which he suffered stemmed from a threat. Spitting out: aqṣir ilay-ka mina l-waʿīd, he echoes directly the command he gave his unruly ‘she-camel’ (verse 12), suggesting that the threats of Subayʿ are equally illegitimate and sinful (ḥarām)  –  or, rather, perhaps, that they constitute the sinful source of that ‘poison’ which, had he succumbed to its influence ‘in the saddle’, would have caused him to commit a sinful betrayal against himself. Now, in complement to his personal ‘journey’, where he demonstrated his ethical commitment by refusing to be diverted or ‘thrown’, he asserts (verse 16) that the ‘girth’ (of his resolve) is not liable to slip, distress and thwart him (by reason of being burdened with the influence of such a sin when he ‘rides’).181 If he suffered the returning ‘sickness’ of a conceptual night, and the blinding darkness of brimming tears (as embedded in the semantics of Suḥām and ʿAmāyatān, verse 1), his ‘night-sight’ now  –  to which he alludes by ʿashawtu (verse 15)  –  is clear. On the contrary, he contrives  –  by innī ka-hammi-ka/ka-ẓanni-ka, “I am as your worst care/suspicion” (verse 15) – to project himself as the very embodiment of his antagonist’s night-returning ‘sickness’, and a ‘poison’ capable of engendering death. And, inasmuch as his erstwhile ‘sickness’ was blameworthy nashwa (‘intoxication’, verse 7), he allusively declares his noble ṣaḥwa (‘recovery’, ‘sobriety’) by recourse to the conceits of the waker and sleeper (verse 17), thereby answering – in his own favour – the unspoken question as to who can better contend with any metaphorical night or poison wine-cup: As illustrated in Poem 2.5 (verse 8), to fight off sleep when necessity occasions is a conceptual conquest of nashwa and a demonstration of virtue.182 The poet here is the wakeful arouser, his enemies, effectively, the ignoble ṣarʿā (the multiple-‘fallen’) of ‘intoxicated sleep’. His allusion to munāzala and munāḍala (verse 19) may thus be considered a realisation of the potential for the munāzaʿa (‘contest’) of imbibing wine to translate as physical contest. The poet’s further claim that, when he competes, his arrows never stray (lā 180. Hudhalīyūn (1945–1950), vol. 2, p. 223, l. 5. The sharḥ offers that the surface meaning of ʿaql in this instance is ‘bloodwit’. 181. Lisān, s.v. ḥ-z-m; recall Poem 2.7, v. 10: how carrying the burden of a sin was ‘saddling up baggage’ (istiḥqāb); cf. Poem 4.3, v. 14: piety (birr) is the best ḥaqība (saddlebag); Poem 3.1, v. 4: treachery is epitomised by the behaviour of a recalcitrant ass irritated by a loose and scratching saddle-strap. 182. Cf. Tāj, art. sakratun, a concept extending to the insensibility of sleep.

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taṭīshu sihām-ī) underlines his superior ethical merit, his perfect command of ʿaql and ḥilm: The ‘straying’ nuances of ṭāsha are associated with inconstancy, with an absence of reason, and a lightness (khiffa) antithetical to ḥilm.183 By the same token, the poet enhances the effect of returning on his antagonists as Death’s agent: These words, which are resonant of Death’s proverbial rôle as a hunter of unerring aim (witnessed, for example, in verse 7 of Poem 1.5), find a close echo in the muʿallaqa of Labīd when he says: inna l-manāyā lā taṭīshu sihāmu-hā, “The arrows of Fate never miss their mark”.184 Thus, the variant wa-anā l-manīyatu baʿda mā qad nawwamū, “I am Death to them once they sleep” (verse 17a), is wholly consonant with the thrust of these verses. In the light of all that precedes, it may be offered that, from the enemy perspective, the poet’s adoption of the role of al-manāyā, the ‘female’ bringers of death, might poetically be rendered as the arrows emanating from beauteous, doe-like eyes that smite the heart; the munā (desires) of sexual arousal by a teasing ‘beloved’; the ‘wine-ewer’ that captivates and conquers the sexual partner in a ‘night-embrace’. Like confederates, the manāyā are possessed of ḥibāl (or ḥabāʾil): ‘ropes’ (or snares), as also the ropes (asbāb) that access the waters of life. Like the attachment of true love, they can be bound with a tie of ʿalāqa (fond attachment) – only one that might, with a ‘kiss’, hurt or kill, arousing a ‘passion’ for requital (jazāʾ). Just as there is a covenant for life, so is there one with the Fates in death – a waṣl that permits the passage of the ghūl to intoxicate and steal the senses, offering an isqāʾ that poisons, mortifies and kills. It is the ‘passionate attachment’ of such as these that the poet’s antagonists have invited, the true and faithful jazāʾ for which he promises them, and  –  like an honourable man – is determined to keep. This, then, is the poet’s moral response to a moral departure. As the protagonists of a sin that is summed up by ẓaʿn (‘departure’) in the first phase of the poem, his antagonists invite condemnation in the form of the implicit accusation (verse 21) of a failure to demonstrate the antithesis of ẓaʿn: namely, iqāma – as suggested perhaps from the first by allusion to Suḥām and the haḍb of Dhū Aqdām (verse 1). They have, therefore, no rock-like virtue that renders them muqīm (‘abiding’), or appropriately manīʿ (‘unassailable’), and ʿāqil (integrally bonded and sealed off from the ghūl). They are, rather, a community whom the poet must, in all good faith, abandon, a liability to their kin and allies, and implicitly a shame to their forebears. Conversely, the poet speaks (verses 18–20) with the voice of personal virtue and that of formidable forebears whose honour he upholds. In the context of a poem framed by the conceit of dealing forth and combating the wine-cup, these final declamations reflect the praise heaped on the ideal mujīr (protector), Saʿd b. al-Ḍibāb (verses 18–19 of Poem 2.4), who manifested always every virtue, “whether sober or sated with wine” (idhā ṣaḥā wa-idhā sakir). And, inasmuch as the poet’s response here is the conceptual return of a deadly ‘cup’, he effectively realises the full promise of opting to weep like Ibn 183. Lisān, art. ṭ-y-sh. 184. Al-Tibrīzī (1969), Labīd, v. 39.

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Khidhām, translating what would have been the morally dissipating isqāʾ of tears into an isqāʾ that is the final cut of the ‘sword’ that he recovered in verses 10–14; an isqāʾ that he might, alternatively, have chosen to project as a deadly storm, or a lethal ‘morning cup’ (ṣabūḥ). It may be offered, lastly, that this retributive response is dīn: a process implying a genuinely curative solution for the poet, and a cynically ‘curative’ one for his enemy. (Recall especially the discussion on verse 14 of Poem 4.2, where dīn, carrying these connotations, was explicitly identified as the response to a treachery described by the ‘intoxicating’ bad faith of one Laylā). Further, in view of the ritual implications of the segue into the poet’s ‘journey’ (see the commentary to verses 5–9), it may also be offered that dīn, in this case, must be understood in terms of a totality of cause and effect; a reciprocal process of inter-personal or inter-tribal relations that carries inevitable implications of ritual purity and taint, or – as the poetry would have it – of ‘health’ and ‘sickness’. Conclusion to Chapter 5, Sections 1–3: This chapter illustrates the integrality of episodes featuring the mount – the horse, ostensibly, for raiding/warring and hunting, the camel, for ‘travelling’  –  to other elements of the polythematic qaṣīda. What they share in common is a ‘saddle’, the precise burden of which informs the poet’s projection, essentially, of his relative chemistry: where he is on the ‘litmus scale’ of jahl and ḥilm, ‘sickness’ and ‘health’, ‘intoxication’ and ‘sobriety’. Through the vehicle of the mount, the poet is able to project highly expressive abstractions of purpose, of what plays in his heart, body and mind, to project his resolve and intentions as he negotiates his way through scenarios familiar enough to inspire basic anticipations, but subject to such precise, individual turns that they nonetheless surprise, delight or shock. What they appear invariably to do is return to the ethical negotiation of Time’s Accidents (ḥawādith al-Dahr). Within and around these panels, the wide, personal identification with the creatures, competing forces, and contrasting properties of, nature indicate that the moral and physical trials of men are deemed symptomatic of a universal, combative dynamic. Chapter 5:2 indicates that this dynamic is circumscribed by a cosmic system of chance where Time – a transcendent and amoral force – may be construed as the ultimate ḥurḍa, the ‘sickly’ caster of maysir-arrows; that adherence to the ethic, and to the covenant of mutual sacrifice and ransom, may be conceived as commitment to hazard not only one’s wealth, but also one’s self, to redeem the common flesh of the community in gambling. Poem 5.3.3 illustrates how the conceit of maysir, which focuses on flesh-distribution, finds an analogue in the equally combative frame of sharing wine, where the quasiorganic unity of a community finds expression with the focus, instead, on blood and vital waters. The conceptual frame of wine also serves as a primary indicator of relative states of purity and defilement that follow faith or betrayal in regard of the covenant. The contrasting purposes to which both maysir and wine are turned are

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potent signs that benign and inimical relations are conceived as two contrary faces of waṣl; that there is a ‘curative’ isqāʾ ‘in covenant’ equally for death as for life. The combat for life in contraposition to Death systematically emerges as a dualistic gender-opposition of erotic dimensions where gender is relative, and the major responsibility or initiative for managing life-interests is aligned with the male principle. Erotic arousal in the male, his physical capacity and practised ability to channel this into an effective ‘coupling’, are analogies for all expressions of the effects of jahl on the intellect; for the application of ṣabr and the attitude of a ḥalīm to rechannel the aggression of the resulting ‘disorder’ – ‘sickness’/‘intoxication’ – so as to consummate a waṣl (‘compact-tie’) and a mutual isqāʾ (‘giving to drink’) – whether within himself or without – that will reassert the integrity of ʿaql, and a healthy state of balance (ḥilm). It does not seem accidental that the root ḥ-l-m embraces the meanings of attaining to virility and experiencing an emission of seminal fluid.185 Murūwa would appear to imply the fullest sense of manhood, including sexual potency. As illustrated in Poem 5.1, the return of a balanced ʿaql and state of ḥilm that thus implies the subsequent self-replenishment of a conquering male’s seminal resources, can be figured by the self-replenishment of waters drawn and expelled by the bakra, the rotary well-pulley  –  a structure that, on the greater scale, figures the relative ‘health’ and security of corporate binding in compact. At the micro-level, it thus represents the relative ‘health’ and cohesion of faculties that can summon the ‘liquid’ resources of life and virtue, and wield them to benign or malignant effect. This bakra finds a greater analogue in the wheeling of the celestial sphere and the anwāʾ that bring the rain and storm. The mirroring of all these processes in the movement and properties of the celestial sphere attests to the universality of the poets’ respective visions. In this light, if, as proposed, the combative interactions between individuals and communities constitute a totality of cause and effect implying alternating states of ‘health’ and ‘sickness’ (or purity and defilement), which is described by dīn, then one may infer that it is dīn, embracing the whole duality of a universal Life-Death dynamic, framed by chance, which implies that the responsibility to compete, risk and sacrifice in the interests of survival is an inevitable duty: The alternative would be actively to choose death. This accepted, the ethic must effectively be the necessary practice of a law for life that is embraced and driven by dīn. These observations may now be refined in the course of the General Conclusion that follows.

185. Tāj, s.v. ḥ-l-m, I, VIII.

Part 3 General Conclusion

General Conclusion

I have sought to demonstrate the viability of interpreting early Arabic verse using a method of semantic analysis that is thoroughly based in the language of the poetry, and begins simply with two working hypotheses: that the greater portion of the corpus designated to the jāhilīya and the early days of Islam may, in essence, encode the beliefs and mores of that time; and that the constituent parts of composite poems may consistently have been designed to contribute to their integral sense. The results are positive, and point to the presence of a widely established and sophisticated network of common conceits and idea-clusters, all inter-related in that they invariably revert to the poets’ ethical ‘realities’. Shattered about the early poetic corpus like the pieces of a jigsaw, these ideas are referenced often only by the most glancing allusion, with knowing metaphorical concision, because poets assume that their auditors are familiar with a broader picture, and versed in the terms used to discuss it. Pieced together, these offer a reasonably coherent, skeleton-projection of ethical commitment, man’s place in his universe and all its workings, which self-evidently contradicts Qurʾanic vision. To suggest that this shattered projection, this ‘jigsaw-network’ with all its assumptions, consists of an invention proceeding after the rise of Islam, is to propose a conspiracy of such intrigue, such temporal and geographic dimensions, that it is simply unsustainable. The extensive repertoire of theme, image, conceit and diction that the poets share is all, apparently, embedded in daily experience, minute observation, and a profound repository of natural lore; and a proper regard for these factors should clearly be one essential tool of interpretation. But this is also a highly generative scheme, consistently tailored, re-tailored, and subordinated to, integral and subjective elaborations that inevitably reflect a system of higher ideals. By recognising the intimacy with which every aspect of the poetic discourse relates to a broadly shared conception of ethical values, one may perceive how each frame of expression within a qaṣīda can be related to the other, follow a perfect logic to often abruptly managed developments, and identify a visible structure of ideas that is ‘deeper’ than the structure of any one poem, so permitting us to eschew rigid and reductionist arguments as to ‘laws’ of compositional form. The very varied structural combinations one encounters are managed largely by means of creative juxtaposition, comparable to the technique of visual montage wherewith synthetic products, not simple additions, are achieved.1 The sometimes extraordinary abstraction of thought and feeling that 1. This was originally discussed at some length in Part 1:2, s.v. Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin.

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emerges thus, actualised in no little part by a host of natural actors, permits us also categorically to reject the putative existence of Homo jahilensis living a ‘prior state of consciousness’, devoid of self-knowledge or the capacity to project and reflect, hermetically sealed from the processes of evolution, and waiting to develop, in a mere matter of decades, into something ‘truly human’; and this should be a factor in evaluating – or re-evaluating – the poetical transformations and developments that occur with the introduction of the Qurʾanic vision. When considering the variant readings and verse-orders, one is struck by the reasonable consistency with which the overall integrity of poems appears to be maintained, especially when read in the light of the wider conceptual system posited here. This suggests that the memory of the ancients was largely faithful and that oral transmission did not involve radical departure from a poet’s original intent. Indeed, it would seem that, despite whatever editorial interventions or compositional accretions may have been included when poems consigned to the jāhilīya and the early years of Islam were committed to writing, these poems demonstrate sufficient integrity in what they reflect of early Arabian mores to make a cautious study of their contents as a source of social history a valid endeavour. This said, I do emphasise that, albeit with substantial reference to the wider repertoire, my conclusions here rest on a study that fronts the contents and spirit of one dīwān: The results indicate tremendous flexibility and scope for variation, and I do not pretend to represent here the breadth and depth of individual vision and expression. That would require subjecting many more dīwāns to similar, intensive study. What follows, then, is offered on the understanding that this remains, essentially, a work in progress. Conception of the Ethic Emerging from this study is an organicist scheme of ethics: the heart, mind and potency of the individual man are envisioned as the microcosm of a communal unit; a unit that seeks, by the application of virtue, and the self-sacrificial commitment to covenant that preserves it from taint, to guard its inner recesses, translate its flesh into an enduring heritage of rock-like iqāma (permanent abiding), and maintain protected waters that equate to the inherited source (ḥawḍ) of its life and power. Each frame of reference in the poetry reflects the degrees to which ‘actors’ possess karam, ʿaql, and ḥilm as, with the quasi-commercial transference of the ‘pledges’ (arhān) of their property and lives, they ‘gamble’ their resources against Time/Fate/Death. In this scheme, every institution of kinship in waṣl – wine, maysir, love, sacrifice and self-sacrifice at home, in the raid, or at war – may subtly be manipulated, reversed, inverted, or subverted, in diverse ways that reflect this Life–Death opposition. In the final analysis, this is a struggle where the principles and properties of male virtue, aligned with the initiative for health and Life, are engaged in the erotic negotiation of Death, the source of all affectivity, or ‘sickness’, which is typically cast in the female gender. This struggle may broadly be defined by the application of masculine ḥilm to

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encompass, contain, control and transcend the influence of jahl; and (as illustrated in Chapter 5:3) it is a gender-opposition as expressive of the alternating dislocations and couplings of heart and mind within the individual man as it is of disunities and harmonies between distinct individuals and communal bodies. Flexibility of Gender and the Nasīb That the response of ḥilm to jahl is effectively the exertion and domination of the masculine principle over the female, provides an appropriate inroad for a last discussion on the manipulation of gender, with particular reference to the nasīb and its typical, initial position in the composite qaṣīda. It has progressively been argued that female figures and the other elements with which they may be related in a nasīb are to be viewed in terms of the institutions of kinship; that if these elements point to any one concept, it is dāʾ: the ever-aggressing ‘sickness’ of Time. Initially, these observations made reasonable sense of the use of these elements in poems that related variously to personal disappointment, desire for revenge, the conceptual betrayal of youth, and proximity to death. They did not, however, explain how such elements could suitably be used to introduce any scenario a poet might choose to develop. Nor did they fully explain why it might be suitable, in any event, to cast the principal ‘kinsperson’ in a female role. We considered the idea that the confirmation of a man’s place within a social unit was commonly by way of marriage; and we noted how women are so often perceived to possess the weaker moral resolve. These observations would make some sense of why female protagonists are held to account for abandonment that entails distress and the loss of the advantages of a social unit, and they could conceivably be relevant to any poetic discussion of malicious betrayal. But they do not offer a satisfactory explanation for the use of nasīb-elements in contexts where blameless ‘betrayal’ is at issue: the captivation or death of a kinsman whose life or ‘liquid-soul’ must be redeemed. Nor could it be supposed that every ‘female’ whose union the poet purports to seek is one with whom he has had past relations, or whose accession to his desire would result in a legitimate state of social comfort (as evidenced in the recurrent poetic equation of a ‘lover’s’ penetrating the protected recesses of women with conquest in raiding and war). It seems unsatisfactory to fall back on the excuse that the female of the nasīb is a cliché, no doubt reflecting the recurrent separations that occurred in the course of seasonal tribal movements. The results of this study enable us to venture an answer to these questions, and to shift the focus from kinship and dāʾ to their related corollaries: waṣl and shame. The poetic discourse approaches accord and loving communion, or disaccord, deadly conflict and death, in terms of the ethics and institutions of union in kinship. There is a ‘bonding’ (waṣl) for life, and one with the Fates in death. Gender is flexible and a matter of moral perspective: Femaleness contained – the variety that conforms to community expectations – is worthy, ‘healing’, empowering, a voice that incites to appropriate action or stimulates a defensive response. Femaleness unleashed

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can be wounding and dangerous: a force that is tyrannous and disempowering, or a weakness that is both shameful and communally shaming. The repetitive alignment of Death’s agents with the female gender follows as a natural corollary of the latter. Emasculation may thus be attributed to any man who demonstrates serious moral failure, or suffers such an assault on what he protects as to undermine his sacred honour (ʿirḍ). The language of sexual passion and the desire to ‘bond’ is a currency that underlies and fuses with every desire to repair such damage, to effect integration after disintegration, to achieve the masculine ascendancy of ḥilm, its conquest of jahl and, thereafter, its transcendence. And, as severally illustrated, the business of the composite qaṣīda is typically to explore and overturn some manifestation of jahl through recourse to the ‘healing’ resources of ḥilm. These factors offer a good explanation, first, of the sequential sense of the nasībconvention – typically in primary position – though the poetic discourse is evidently so subtle and plastic that this does not constitute conventional ‘law’: a poet may, equally, develop his train of thought with ‘flashbacks’. They also offer an insight into the insistent focus of introductory poetic frames on the institution of waṣl, and the multifarious purposes to which the female gender may be put in such a context: Whether he seeks assistance and protection, or, on the contrary, finds himself moved to confrontation, a poet may discuss his suit, intentions, hopes and fears for success, always in terms of waṣl. If he flirts with a desire for death, or anticipates an appointment therewith, he may allude to the waṣl of ghurba, the covenant of the ‘far side’. If he wishes to discuss a threat to himself, or any betrayal – his own failing, that of associates, or even the departure of ‘treacherous’ youth – he may allude to the fractured and tattered bonds of waṣl, sometimes by recourse to the female who ‘withholds’ her favour (displays bukhl), or who, unattainable, puts on a deliberate and confounding display of beauty; sometimes to departing litters (aẓʿān), or the phantom (ṭayf, khayāl), manipulating the female gender to imply, alternately, some kind of morbid weakness, or else a supreme aggression. According to these terms, even the blameless ‘betrayal’ of a departed kinsman – for example in death – might find him aligned with the female gender. By this, we could understand an allusion to the fracture of a waṣl that was for life, to a play on the typical relationship of the female gender with ‘betrayal’ of the love-bond and departure, but, also, perhaps, to a feminisation of the departed, owing to having suffered ‘conquest’ through a hostile waṣl – a feminisation that might also be experienced in the shame or visceral shock of the related living who must effect a response to this spillage of their masculine virtue and pay their way out of any claim on themselves by Death.2 This is certainly not an 2. Regard in this light the nasīb of al-Shanfarā – Lyall (1918–1921), XX, relating to the departure of one Umm ʿAmr – a paragon of modest virtue, attracting no blame – in a qaṣīda that concludes with the successful execution of blood-vengeance. She was (v. 4) a life-benefit (niʿma) of which the poet says zallat (she ‘slipped’/‘passed’), which defines the ‘slipping’, ‘passage’ or ‘transference’ of a benefit (niʿma) from one hand to another; the passage of a life (ʿumr) to death (Tāj, art. zalla). The poet’s revenge (v. 28) is the equalisation of a ‘loan’/‘debt’ (qarḍ)

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exhaustive summary of possibilities, but it does illustrate how the typical elements of the nasīb are equipped to tolerate any manifestation of, or allusion to, the poet’s jahl, and provide a suitable background against which to move to access the corrective resources required to contain it, and ‘cure’ it at the source – if necessary, sacrificing its host to his will. In this light, one would find wholly against the position that the jāhilī nasīb lacked pragmatic content and was merely an emotional prelude to the unrelated matter that followed.3 Murūwa and Dīn It was suggested in the conclusion to Chapter 5 that the chemistry between ḥilm and jahl, which expresses the application of murūwa, is circumscribed by dīn – a concept that will now tolerate closer inspection. If dīn comprises murūwa, it is clearly much more than this. Murūwa consists only of all the positive virtues that aim to assert the ascendancy of ḥilm over jahl. Yet a man’s activity in applying murūwa, and his reasons that murderous hands caused to ‘pass’/to be ‘transferred’ (azallat). In other words, a quasicommercial asset or life-benefit (ʿumr = Umm ʿAmr) is redeemed through blood-vengeance, the transitive verb azallat serving as a clear echo of zallat, which, in the nasīb, describes the wrongful ‘transference’ of that life-benefit into hostile ‘ownership’ prior to its redemption. (See further n. 28 below on the denouement of this poem). An immensely moving example of the temporary ‘unmanning’ of the person bereft – the flight of all reasoned self-composure – is offered by Durayd b. al-Ṣimma in an elegy where, running to his helpless son as enemy spears rain down, he evokes visceral pull and blinding denial by comparing himself to a she-camel coaxed into approaching the stuffed skin of her recently slaughtered calf to fool her into giving her milk nonetheless: wa-kuntu ka-dhāti l-bawwi rīʿat fa-aqbalat/ilā jaladin min maski saqbin muqaddadī, “And I was like the camel that has lost its foal and is terrified and has ventured forth to a hide stripped from the skin of a young one”: Jones (1992), pp. 74–75, v. 15 and notes (Jones’s translation). Marlé Hammond has taken up this symptom of gender flexibility with different emphasis: Hammond (2010), pp. 94–95 and notes. 3. A position noted, Part 1:1, s.v. The Purpose-free and the Purposeful. This scheme thus argues strongly against the theory of a fortuitous process of poetic development leading to the combination of nasīb and hijāʾ as “genres in collision”: van Gelder (1990). Such a nasīb may very well harbour intrinsically disparaging and erotically charged arousal (or rage). The range and variety of these poetic elements of conceptual gendering are highly complementary to the empirical data, historical and contemporary, marshalled in Joshua S. Goldstein’s War and Gender to illustrate his Hypothesis 6B – ‘Feminization of enemies as symbolic domination’ – and the varieties of male and female constructs arising in the context of war, used variously to figure conflict, the aspiration to dominate, conquest, inferiority, pollution and shame. (Goldstein 2006, pp 356–380). Similarly, a magnificent but essentially tyrannous beauty of Bashshār b. Burd (d. 167/783 or 168/784) in the ‘amorous prelude’ of a qaṣīda used to figure traits antithetical to the virtue of a ruler – the thematic unity of which is brilliantly set forth with a structuralist slant by Julie Scott Meisami (1985) – should not be accounted symptomatic of a whole new departure in the genre of ‘love’, but a transformation and development based on gender constructs well established in the jāhilī repertoire. All this also offers clear, cultural precedent for the gendered metaphors and constructs of sexual difference employed by the Abbasids, in their turn, to abase ‘the other’, whether jāhilī, Byzantine, or ‘heretic’ – on which, see now El Cheikh (2015).

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for doing so, necessitate his undergoing the total catalysis of the ‘arousal’. Technically antithetical, they represent together the necessarily inter-locked conflict of Life with Death that entails the sacrifices needed for life to regenerate and continue. The poetry demonstrates this at many levels, but the necessity of this conflict is here perhaps best illustrated by reference to its positive place within a communal unit. The ‘battle’ of sexually opposite bodies entails ‘fever’ and mutually ‘sacrificial’ expenditure to unite, ‘heal’, and procreate. If men were only ḥalīm, they would either cease to be, or else be self-generating and immortal. (No surprise then, perhaps, that ḥalīm is one ubiquitous quality of the One God of the Qurʾan, who was “unbegotten and did not beget”,4 while ḥilm is significantly absent as a virtue required of believers to emulate).5 If the wider implications of this process are circumscribed by dīn, then all that dīn entails ought to reflect the totality of the symbiotic Life-Death struggle. Here, we pick up our earlier discussion (Part 1:1) of dīn – religion – in terms of an ‘antagonymic’ polysemy which, weighed against the emergent world of jāhilī poetry, enables us to dispense with the view that dīn – religion – is a product of foreign accretion: The inter-locked conflicts of the world and nature are discussed in the poetry in terms of universal sickness and health, debt and loan, conquest and equalisation, according to need and to custom. If we go to the dictionaries, we find dīn entered as: a system of ancestral usage; the exercise of dominion, and rebellion; compensation, repayment and requital; a curative property and a disease. The degree of confluence it enjoys with dayn enhances its centrality in a holistic scheme of credit and debt. In this case, dīn may be said to consist in an inevitable system of universal ‘couplings’ that result in the ascendancy of the strongest competing bodies. It is both the experiential cause and consequence of efforts expended for the sake of health and survival. Accordingly, we find it also defined as a habit, a state or condition. It would appear, then, that dīn is inescapable, and that, for anyone proposing to ‘buy into’ life’ it is not, realistically, a choice so much as an obligation. Hence, perhaps, its principal meaning as a matter of ‘obedience’.6 In short, the ancient poetical universe offers an integral Arabic linguistic background against which to explain the polyvalence of the term reflected in the dictionaries. Prejudice as to what constitutes ‘true religion’ should not deflect our perception of that. All this offers a more developed frame to support the conclusion in Chapter 5 that the ethic is essentially a law for life that is driven by dīn. It was proposed there, too, as a corollary, that the application of the ethic must have systematic ritual ramifications: that the moral drive to repel or expunge every state of ‘sickness’ implies the will to maintain a state of ritual purity not only in relation to one’s community, but also in relation to the divine. The most concise indicator adduced in this regard was found 4. Qurʾān, 112: 3. 5. How the prized aḥlām of those who rejected the Revelation is derided in the Qurʾan, and how the ḥilm/jahl complex was destructured was discussed in some detail in Part 1:1, s.v. Izutsu. 6. Qāmūs, Tāj, arts. dāna, dīnun, daynun.

General Conclusion

331

in Poem 2.7, where for the poet to have imbibed wine prior to his self-purification by blood-vengeance would have been a sin subject to divine sanction.7 But the poetry offers us a startlingly visual perspective from which to view a relationship between the ethic and ritual practice linked to the divine: Amongst the variety of conceits that figure the cohesion and force of an individual’s faculties, as well as those of a greater community, is a critical series of analogical constructs that take us straight to the heart of ritual practice: circumambulation about a sacred centre, or dūwār, a movement that consciously mirrors the movement of the stars about a conceptual axis (quṭb). Projecting Microcosm and Macrocosm Here we recall the poetical projections of the integrity of ʿaql and what is ʿāqil (first discussed in Chapter 3). This may, in sum, amount to an impregnable ‘rock-fort’ of virtue, the elusive, self-defending ibex being its most emblematic actor; but the constituent elements are variously conceived, one important construct being the circle of pearls firmly strung on their binding thread (niẓām). At the level of the individual man, this image implies an intactness of intellectual faculties that repels ‘sickness’, as well as the continence of his heart’s passion, and, thereby, the vital ‘waters’ that he summons and wields in pursuit of his life-interests. It is extended to express the conceptual stringing of a community’s member-‘pearls’ upon another niẓām: that of a virtuous man who is crucial to their cohesion and self-preservation. One might infer that, at their centre, too, is a ‘heart’; and, notably, qalb is a concept applied to a man of pure lineage who holds a central place among his people.8 When they project the drawing and wielding of ‘seminal waters’ that pertain to what is ʿāqil, the poets have recourse to the image of the bakra (the rotary well-pulley, discussed in relation to Poem 5.1, and verses 6–8 of Poem 5.3.2). This is another conception of the covenant that operates both at the micro-level of the individual and at the level of the community. It is a construct that describes, not a circle of firm-strung ‘pearls’ about a ‘heart’, but a wheel upon a central qabb that secures it, and the pivot on which it turns, firmly bound with a well-rope and auxiliary-ties to a pail (so figuring integrity of the faculties and security from ‘sickness’), the concept of ʿaql being related to the safe-sealed waters of the communal ‘cistern’ (ḥawḍ). Unsurprisingly, qabb, too, is a concept applied to a chief or ruler about whom the 7. Cf. Lisān, s.v. ʿ-q-q: the description of the institution of the ʿaqīqa-arrow (sahmu l-iʿtidhār ‘the arrow of excuse’), which also reflects a perception of divine intimacy in the matter of bloodvengeance: If a weaker party was approached and pressed to accept blood-mulct rather than insist on a life for a life, they could, to save face, resort to shooting an arrow heavenward to receive a sign from the divine. If it came back stained with blood, they were commanded not to accept blood-mulct; but if it came back clean – which it always did – they were obliged to accept it. 8. Asās, Qāmūs, art. qalbun.

332

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

affairs of a people turn.9 Al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī graphically illustrates the centrality of a king to a covenant conceived as a bakra when he describes the ‘long hand’ of al-Nuʿmān Abū Qābūs as the inescapable hold of the ‘grapnel and rope’ that secure those in his dominion.10 The bakra finds a greater analogue (also illustrated in Chapter 5) in the wheeling of the anwāʾ, rainstar-‘pearls’ of the skies (kawākib durrīya) that figure both the light (ghurra) and ‘liquid’ force of virtue. The axis, in this context, is figured by al-Jady (the polestar, α of Ursa Minor, also loosely called the quṭb: the ‘pole’, or celestial axis), and the two Farqadān (the ‘two calves’, β and η of Ursa Minor), as illustrated in the verses of al-Muhalhil cited shortly below. There are clues that this axis, too, is related to chiefdom or kingship: ʿAlqama, for example, states that he is guided toward the Ghassānid king, al-Ḥārith b. Jabala, by the two Farqadān.11 Since the Farqadān do nothing but orbit the Pole,12 the king is implicitly identified with the celestial centre, or quṭb. The same two polestars are said to have been the boon-companions of the legendary King Jadhīma of al-Ḥīra.13 We have seen how, in their capacity as mutual analogues, the wheeling of the bakra and the rotation of the celestial anwāʾ can be fused together in poetic frames where a coordinated drawing on ‘liquid-force’ is in play. With these images, the poets have also fused an important conceit for communal cohesion that we have not discussed, and that is also a structure that wheels on a central pivot and finds a place in war: namely, the mill, or raḥā. The raḥā – a structure described by a stationary netherstone on a central pivot (quṭb) about which a top-stone grinds – is a term applied to family groups and tribal units.14 When a group goes to battle to defend its honour, or to fulfil the covenantal oath of mutual redemption (fidāʾ), the raḥā becomes a ‘mill of war’ (raḥā ḥarb).15 The leader, or, as in the following example, a prominent clan within a confederacy, is figured by the quṭb about which the top-stone revolves:16 ‫تَدو ُر َرحاهُم حَوْ لَهُم َوتَجو ُل‬

ْ ُ‫ّان ق‬ َّ َ‫ف‬ ‫طبٌ لِقَوْ ِم ِهم‬ ِ ‫إن بَني ال َّدي‬

The Banū al-Dayyān are a central axis (quṭb) for their folk whose ‘mill’ revolves and turns (tadūr) about them.

9. Muḥkam, Asās, art. qabbun. 10. Ahlwardt (1870), al-Nābigha, 17, vv. 28–29. 11. Ahlwardt (1870), ʿAlqama, 2, v. 19. 12. Ibn Qutayba (1956), pp. 145–147. 13. Discussed in Lyall (1918–1921), vol. 2, p. 211, n. 21. 14. Tāj s.v. r-ḥ-y. 15. See, e.g., Lyall (1918–1921), LX, of Muḥriz b. al-Mukaʿbir of Ḍabba, vv. 1–3, XXXVIII, of Rabīʿa b. Maqrūm, vv. 29–34; al-Tibrīzī (1969), ʿAmr b. Kulthūm, vv. 26–35, esp. vv. 26–27; al-Aṣmaʿī (1955), no. 53 of al-Muhalhil b. Rabīʿa, vv. 8–9; ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (1919), II, v. 22. 16. Freytag (1828–1847), vol. 1, p. 54, l. 9.

General Conclusion

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The combined force of an army wielding its weapons is the revolving top-stone that ‘grinds’ the enemy, cleaving their heads from their bodies. ʿAntara says:17 ‫جال الصَّفائِ ُح‬ ِ ‫هام ال ِّر‬ ِ ‫َودا َرت َعلَى‬

ْ ُ‫َودُرْ نا كَما دا َرت َعلَى ق‬ ‫طبِها ال َر َحى‬

We ‘turned’ (durnā) as a mill grinds about its axis (quṭb), and broadswords scythed on the skulls of men.

A relationship between this formation (which evokes the battle-tactic of mifarr and mikarr: wheeling away to return with force to the fray) and the circumambulation of a sacred axis (dūwār), which might anyway be inferred from the emphasis given to dāra (the verb ‘to turn’), is occasionally rendered explicit. ʿĀmir b. al-Ṭufayl says:18 ‫يح َك َّر ْال ُم َد ِّو ِر‬ ِ ‫عَشيَّةَ فَي‬ ِ ِّ‫ْف الر‬

‫َوقَد َعلِموا أَنّي أَ ُكرُّ َعلَ ْي ِه ُم‬

And sooth, they know full well that I dashed again and again (akurr) against them, on the evening of Faif ar-Rīḥ, as one circles time after time the standing Pillar (karra l-mudawwir)

That this process in battle is equated with dūwār, points to the inseparability of the causes of war, honour, and the fulfilment of fidāʾ (mutual redemption), from religious practice. And, that the mikarr (the forceful revolution) of ʿĀmir b. al-Ṭufayl about a sacred axis is, equally, that of a blank maysir-arrow revolving in and out of the ribāba (the arrow-pouch – another analogue of the communal covenant, discussed in Chapter 5:2), reminds us of the centrality of maysir to the covenant, of the sacrifice it entails in fulfilment of the oath of fidāʾ, and, ultimately, of its universal dimension, fused as it is, also, with the wheeling ‘rainstars’ (anwāʾ).19 This offers another perspective on how maysir is integral to dīn and all that that implies. At this point, we recall two verses of Bishr b. Abī Khāzim to which we had recourse earlier. Before alluding to his war-host as a body of men hauling pails at the pulley,20 Bishr defines them as the storm-cloud of the ‘rainstar’ al-Thurayyā, saying: ‫بِ َشهْبا َء ال يَ ْمشي الضَّرا َء َرقيبُهـا‬ ‫نَـشاصُ الـثُّـريّـا هَـيَّ َج ْتها َجنُوبُهـا‬

ْ ‫َعطَ ْفنا لَهُم ع‬ ‫َّروس َمنَ ْالمال‬ ‫َطفَ الض‬ ِ ّ ‫سـار كَــأ َنَّـنـا‬ ‫ـ‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ـالـ‬ ‫ب‬ ‫نـا‬ ْ‫فَـلَــ ّمـا َر أَ و‬ ِ ِ ِ

17. Ahlwardt (1870), ʿAntara, no. 7, v. 13. 18. Lyall (1918–1921), CVI, v. 9 (Lyall’s translation). 19. See ibid., CVI, v. 2: wa-qad ʿalima l-maznūqu annī akurru-hū/ʿashīyata fayfi l-rīḥi karra l-mushahharī, “And al-Maznūq knows well that I urged him again and again, on the evening of Faif ar-Rīḥ, to face the foe, as the blank arrow, denounced by the gamers, is put back again and again into the bag” (Lyall’s translation). 20. Lyall (1918–1921), XCVI, v. 17.

334

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia We wheeled on them (ʿaṭafnā la-hum) like a defensive milch-camel (ḍarūs) of the desert, a starry host whose scout does not hide in the coverts. When they saw us at al-Nisār, we were as the lofty clouds, brought by the Pleiades, the south wind stirring them [to rain].21

First to note here, the poet uses the concept ʿaṭf to define the wheeling motion of the attack. In a war-context, ʿaṭf is synonymous with mikarr – discussed above in relation to the raḥā. Second, this wheeling, biting ‘camel’, which is also, effectively, the ‘starinduced’ stormcloud – so capitalising on the wide poetic conceit of milch-camels as storm-clouds, illustrated in Chapter 5: 2 - is called ḍarūs. This focuses our attention on the camels’ molars (aḍrās), the synonyms of which are arḥāʾ (‘grinders’/‘mills’), and ṭawāḥin (‘grinders’, likened to a mill, or ṭāḥūn). The two verses therefore implicitly create a malignant ‘raincloud-mill’ (raḥā saḥāb) out of the poet’s army.22 Thus, in the course of the poem, Bishr creates an equation and synthesis between all three constructs, the raḥā, bakra and celestial sphere (falak). There is, however, no clearer sign of their inter-referentiality than one reading of a rāʾīya ascribed to al-Muhalhil b. Rabīʿa where the combined forces of kinsmen at war are, at once, the plying of a well-pulley, the grinding of a mill, and the revolution of the stars about their centre, figured by the rotation of the polestar, al-Jady: ‫ور‬ ِ ‫بَـعـي ٍد بَيْنُ جا لَيْها َج ُر‬ ‫ـدير‬ ِ ‫بِ َج ْن‬ ِ ‫ب سُـ َو ْيقَةَ َرحيا ُم‬ ْ َ ْ ُّ‫يَ ُكب‬ ‫َدير‬ ‫ت‬ ‫س‬ ‫م‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ْن‬ ‫ي‬ ‫د‬ ‫ي‬ ‫ال‬ ‫ى‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ع‬ َ َ َ ُ ِ ِ ِ

‫كَأ َ َّن ِرما َحهُم أَ ْشـطـانُ بِ ْئ ٍر‬ ‫غَـداةَ كَـأَنَّـنـا َوبَـنـي أَبـيـنـا‬ ‫ش‬ َ ‫ي َج ْد‬ َ ‫كَأ َ َّن ْال َج ْد‬ ِ ‫ي بَنا‬ ٍ ‫ت نَ ْع‬

Their spears were like ropes drawn [on a pulley] from a deep-dug, broad-mouthed well, the morning by Suwayqa when it seemed as if both we and the sons of our father were causing a mill to revolve; as if al-Jady, al-Jady of Banāt Naʿsh, threw its weight behind both hands as it turned.23 21. Ibid., vv. 10–11. 22. Asās, s.v. r-ḥ-y; Tāj, art. ṭāḥinatun. On the concept of raḥā as a round, heavy raincloud, see Asās, s.v. r-j-ḥ: the lāmīya verse cited there, attributed to al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī. The conceit of an army-raincloud-mill is quite straightforwardly expressed in the Umayyad repertoire: see, e.g., al-Akhṭal (1970–1971), vol. 2, p. 414, vv. 17–18: qawmun idhā baṣaṭa l-ilāhu rabīʿa-hum/jādat raḥāhu bi-musbilin darrārī//wa-idhā urīda bi-him ʿuqūbatu fājirin/maṭarat ṣawāʿiqu-hum ʿalay-hi bi-nārī, “A people who, when the Deity extends the bounty of their ‘spring rain’ (their leader) [the raincloud of] his ‘mill’ lets flow a copious shower; and when the punishment of a wrongdoer is required of them, [that mill] rains down upon him with the fiery lightning-bolts [of their swords]”. The same net of associations would appear to inform the more simply expressed, spinning ‘cloud-mill’ of Kuthayyir, which he compares to a camel leaning sideways and heavily dragging its feet round: Kuthayyir (1928–1930), vol. 1, pp. 218–219. 23. Cheikho (1890), vol. 1, p. 170, ll. 9–11 and n. 5.

General Conclusion

335

Furthermore, even the conceptual axis on which the stars ‘wheel’ equates, like the ‘pivot’ of an earthly ‘mill’, to a sacred stone of ritual circumambulation. Labīd says:24 ْ ‫مين‬ ‫از ِورا ُر‬ ِ َ‫ِل َوفيها ذاتَ ْالي‬ ‫ُر كَما يَصْ ِرفُ ْال ِهجانَ ال ُّد ّوا ُر‬

‫َو النُّجُو ُم ا لَّتي تَـتـا بَ ُع بِاللَّيْـ‬ ْ‫دائِبٌ َموْ ُرها َويَصْ ِرفُها ْال َغو‬

And the stars that succeed one another by night, inclining westward [as they sink], follow a steady beaten track, directed by [the law of] their setting, as the idol of circumambulation dictates the movement of [worshipping], milk-skinned women.

In short, early Arabic representations of corporate cohesion, virtue, and ritual, ultimately appear to be a conscious reflection of the patterns and perceived properties of the celestial sphere. The sum of the ʿāqil-raḥā-bakra-falak equation – which embraces, also, the construct of the maysir-pouch (ribāba) and arrows – is a picture of communal solidarity within covenant, centred upon a sacred centre (dūwār), represented by a temporal qalb/qabb/quṭb – a king, chief, or prominent clan – in a social structure that mirrors the skies and reduces, finally, to the microcosm of the heart, mind and bodily virtue of the individual man.25

God and Man The poetic image-network thus offers not only coherent evidence for placing the pre-Islamic ethic at the nuclear centre of ‘religion’, but also a clear frame in which to postulate the relationship of man to deity: This appears exactly to replicate the connection of allegiants to a family-, or tribal-patron. We are presented with an image of the allied-living as a circle-structure bonded ‘horizontally’ in a covenant of mutual commitment, there being to each constituent member of the circle a tie of allegiance to a central patron-icon who is, for his part, bound to fulfil obligations of protection. As long as this structure remains intact through the common maintenance of the ethic, they attain directly ‘downward’, via their central axes, to the ancestral ‘seed’, the ‘liquid-resource’ which continues to offer them life and power, then, directly ‘upward’ to their principal deities who serve as higher figurehead-axes, so conceptually accessing the ‘liquid-source’ of the heavens themselves. Thus, ancestors, clans and deities are intimately bonded in a structure that is a sacred living ‘machine’, alternately defensive, self-sufficient or aggressive, devoted to its own sustenance, protection, and continuity, according to a time-honoured code. The dūwār (ritual 24. Labīd (1962), p. 44, vv. 12–13 and notes. 25. Cf. Ibn Qutayba (1956), pp. 122–123, s.v. al-quṭb, where the relic of this equation and synthesis is clear as he notes how the stellar revolution is compared both to the rotation of a mill (raḥā) and the sheave of a well-pulley (bakra) about their respective axes. This nexus of complementary constructs and their transformations through the Umayyad era is set forth in Jamil (1999).

336

Ethics and Poetry in Sixth-Century Arabia

circumambulation) suggests itself both as a demonstration of faithful allegiance designed to reconfirm the purity of one’s commitment and thus encourage divine ‘assistance’ (iʿāna, naṣr), and as a ritual enactment, by living executors of an ancestral tradition, of accessing vital resources of power through the application of masculine ḥilm. The confluence of poetical constructs also suggests that the ritual was conceived as a conscious reflection of stellar revolutions about the pole (quṭb). It would seem futile to seek to undermine the importance of ‘religion’ in this context by pointing to the poetry’s insistence, not on divine, mythic, or cultish concerns, but on those of a personal and communal nature. There could scarcely be a more perfect complement to Durkheim’s idea that gods in such a pre-modern society would be integral to the community, and that the form they took would be a figurative expression of the very social structure. In this way, too, there should be no compulsion to dismiss the importance of ‘religion’ on the grounds of a general lack of evidence as to ‘spiritual relations’ with the divine. Relations with a patron-deity need be no more ‘spiritual’ than those with a living patron. Inasmuch as ‘spirituality’ is visible, it appears largely to take the form of an intense psychological and physical investment in the pursuit of maintaining intrinsic purity, and an omnipresent sense of the absolute responsibility of the living to preserve an ancestral heritage that continues palpably to pulse in their blood and waters. We have found that true love (ḥubb/wudd) between closer kinsmen is essentially to afford satisfaction (riḍāʾ) by upholding mutual obligations. Where these are not met, the appropriate action is to demand restitution, and, if necessary, to break the bond. Patrons who cannot fulfil their duties of provision and protection may be blamed or even summarily abandoned. (Recall the satire on Khālid (al-Nabhānī?), in Poem 3.7, whom the poet abandons for the much more satisfactory Thuʿal). In this case, finding fault with a deity or even abandoning one for another according to ‘performance’ should not occasion surprise, or be taken to undermine the seriousness with which covenant with the divine is viewed by allegiants for as long as the compact remains satisfactory.26 At the same time, given the apparently absolute nature of a man’s responsibility to heritage within covenant, and the intimacy of the relationship between the virtues of the dead, the living and the divine, all components of one sacred unit, conflicts between man and deity might be expected to arise where, for example, the duty of blood vengeance is at issue. Such cases need not be taken to indicate nonchalance toward a deity.27 They 26. Crone (1987), p. 231 ff. discusses this issue from a different perspective in response to W. M. Watt’s theory of spiritual crisis and decline in Mecca paving the way for the rise of Islam. 27. Consider now al-Iṣfahānī (1927–1961), pt. 9, p. 93: the tale of Imruʾ al-Qays’ taking an oracle from Dhū l-Khalaṣa as to whether or not to pursue his blood-suit against the tribe of Asad in revenge for his father’s assassination. Having received the interdictory arrow three times, he broke the arrows and admonished the idol: it would not be prohibiting him if the murder of its own father were at issue. He went forth to achieve a victory against Asad, and the idol was never consulted again. While the behaviour is certainly disrespectful and, seemingly, inauspicious, the story suggests (i) the question of divine sanction was a serious issue, or the consultation would not have taken place at all; (ii) the idol was viewed as analogous to, and accorded the

General Conclusion

337

might better be taken as occasional examples of an intractable dichotomy resolved by a man’s giving ethical priority to an action he knows will, necessarily, lead to his anathemisation.28 As to the matter of governing life and death, while, in the capacity of greater tribal patrons, deities might be accorded satisfaction or displeasure in respect of a compact, and certain powers of reward or punishment, they could not possibly be conceived as the systematic slayers of their allegiants. This is a role assigned to the constitutionally treacherous figure of al-Dahr. Such a deity could only be seen as the source or patron of life that lives for itself in a covenant of mutual commitment, constantly renewing and invigorating itself by a perennial process of communion, conflict, and sacrifice, in contraposition to al-Dahr, which is never finally conquered. Hence, arguably, the Qurʾanic assertion of the mushrikīn (those who conceded the ‘sharing’ of Allāh’s authority over human servants) that their sentient lives were of this near-world (al-dunyā); that they die and they live, and categorically deny that anything but al-Dahr could be their destroyer.29 The introduction of a dominant deity with sole powers over life and death, in a world where no afterlife as such is imagined,30 would be to suggest the castration responsibilities of, a tribesman; (iii) the idol was chastised and opposed on moral grounds, reflecting an unquestioned assumption of inextricable responsibility to blood on the part of the man; (iv) the victory having proven the idol erroneous in performance and judgement, it was abandoned; i.e., it was treated like any failed patron. 28. Regard in this light the vengeance of al-Shanfarā (Lyall 1918–1921, XX, v. 27 ff.): Obliged to redress the murder of a pilgrim-kinsman, he can only achieve proper requital – ‘pay what he owes’ – and ‘heal’ himself by assassinating the bawāʾ: the equivalent victim, i.e., another pilgrim (v. 30). Such a violation of sacred prohibition (iḥrām) is an unforgivable sin for which his tribe could surely not take responsibility, thus entailing his ostracisation and sole assumption of the burden of the ‘sickness’ of a sin for which he may likely be pursued. In other words, his ‘healing’ (shifāʾ) necessarily results in intractable ‘sickness’. Hence, arguably, the grief he has caused his people and his removal to another tribe (v. 29), his assertion (v. 31) that he cares not how he dies: no kinswoman will mourn his death; and his wish (v. 32) that no friend visit to tend him as he ails: his ‘cure’ (shifāʾ) will be to ‘race up on the heights’ - suggesting, poetically, his swift and solitary escape to the ‘hill-fort’ of his virtue, warding off the ‘sickness’ of any avenging ‘hunter’, like the self-protecting, ʿāqil ibex, or even the ‘hungering’, ‘death-haunted’ wolf; but not, in this case, like the pure, ‘disease’-fleeing ẓaby, for the poet is intrinsically tainted and must therefore remain in a kind of limbo. 29. Qurʾān, 45: 24 – wa-qālū mā hiya illā ḥayātu-nā l-dunyā namūtu wa-naḥyā wa-mā yuhliku-nā illā l-dahru, “They said: There is nothing but our life of this world; we die and we live, and nothing but al-Dahr destroys us.” 30. There exists nonetheless a certain tension with various indications (principally discussed in Chapter 4) as to the conception of a negative world, the ‘distant land’ of ‘covenant with the dead’, of shades and phantoms; but it is clearly nothing to do with this world or with happy immortality, and further details of what it might be like seem not to have been imagined at all. It may be that we are dealing with a scenario similar to that encountered by Evans-Pritchard during his time with the Nuer (1956, pp. 159–160): “When people ‘disappear’ … only one thing is certain, that they have departed for good. ‘They dwell apart, they have become ghosts.’ It

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of living, sacred units, and the invalidation of their patrons and ancestral heritage. It would be to deny any direct access, through ḥilm, to the sources of power, and to overturn any institution that recognised chance. It would be, in poetic terms, to suggest the hocking, assault and emasculation of a people – in short, everything that is ‘forbidden’ (ḥarām). It does not seem fortuitous, then, that the purported Qurashī response to Muḥammad’s preaching reflects semantically these very expressions of shame.31 Poetry and Dīn Where does this leave poetry (shiʿr)? Far from reflecting an absence of dīn, the poetry would appear to seethe with it. It mirrors the substance of a universal conflict into which lives engaged in surviving the revolutions of a competitive life–death cycle are inextricably woven. It is the verbal embodiment of passion compressed by intellect and will. It must be constitutionally ʿāqil: firm bound pearls on a secure ‘coordinating thread’ (niẓām). It must be a force that bespeaks degrees in karam and ḥilm, one that draws on the bank of a seminal inheritance replenished by the redeemed fluid virtue of dead men’s souls, able to ‘wheel’ like the raḥā (the mill), like the bakra (the wellpulley) and the stars themselves, wielding ‘weaponry’ and ‘water’ to deal out a benign ‘drink’ (isqāʾ) or a punishing ‘storm’. It must function as preserver and respondent of ḥasab and ʿirḍ (worth and honour), and act on their behalf as defender or avenger, as agent of redemption and expiation. It must have transformative effects on the mind and body, the force somehow to direct or neutralise virulent venom.32 And, albeit in this way quasi-organic, it defeats mortality through the vehicle of memory, so proving the ultimate combatant of Time, and perpetuator of the virtue that gave it ‘life’. Therein lies its status as siḥr (sympathetic ‘magic’) and its supreme capacity to persuade: Whatever poetry claims, it can, as it says, resonate ‘true’ for eternity, unless poetry – or another, powerful alternative – produce a potent response to combat it. This would make it a supreme regulator of a competitive ethos dictating that preservation from taint through right-guided, combative action is the way to promote the survival of self, and house, and progeny. Alternatively, one could say that shiʿr in the jāhilīya is the voice and incorporeal agent of dīn. It would follow that dīn is taken for granted that people have some sort of existence after death, though Nuer do not presume to know where they have it or what kind of life it is that they lead. Sometimes they say that they may be under the earth and live a life like that they lived when they were on earth amid their cattle and dung fires in villages and camps … However, no one supposes he can know where is the wec indit, the great community (of the departed) which all, each in his turn, must join, or what it is like.” 31. Ibn Hishām (1937), vol. 1, p. 277: yā abā ṭālibin inna bna akhī-ka qad sabba ālihata-nā wa-ʿāba dīnanā wa-saffaha aḥlāma-nā wa-ḍallala ābāʾa-nā. 32. See, in complement to this, Lyall (1918–1921): the properties of verse in XVI, of al-Marrār, vv. 38–42, XVII, of Muzarrid, vv. 53–62, XXVII, of ʿAbda b. al-Ṭabīb, vv. 20–22, and, most dramatically, XL, of Suwayd b. Abī Kāhil, vv. 92–108.

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al-islām would have a sufficiently potent verbal, as well as physical, force to confront the old adyān and, not least, poetry. It would also follow that that new verbal force might ‘well’ directly from a greater source of generative ḥilm. This is how the Qurʾan became manifest, a channel for the verbal seed of divine ḥilm that promised willing allegiants the ultimate ransom, the healing isqāʾ of an eternal soul. The stage is set for the semantic field of ḥilm to diminish, and for the dominant ḥilm-jahl contraposition to cede to that of ʿilm – ‘certain knowledge’ – and jahl – ‘ignorance’ – as Goldziher was at pains to show was the dominant opposition of a later period.33 Transformation of the Covenant and the Meaning of Redemption I. Ransom We are now in a position to return to the question of the Islamic covenant and what it entailed by comparison with what went before. Among the most expressive projections of the jāhilī commitment to covenant to emerge is the developed picture of maysirgambling. This permits us to pick up the argument in Part 1:1 that the commitment of islām is, substantially, a transformation of one quasi-commercial, universal paradigm for another: one that effects a dramatic fit with tawḥīd – ‘unification’ of the godhead – and the promise of eternal life. By recourse to the maysir theme, poets indicate a perception of their integral agency among all the competing actors and forces of nature, including the stars in their supposed capacity as progenitors of the rain.34 In so doing, they imply that their own moral and physical trials belong to a general combative dynamic within a dualistic universe of chance where Life is forever locked with Death, and there is no transcendent justice; a universe where al-Dahr is the consummate ‘player’ and serial ‘winner’. In this conception, maysir is intimately connected with a covenant based on common blood: Adherence to the ethical code and the obligation of mutual ransom (fidāʾ) involves the commitment to hazard and sacrifice oneself in the competition to effect a ‘win’ (fawz) to provide for kin – conceptually, to protect and redeem the ‘pledges’ (rihān) that are their lives, as if in gambling. There is clear conflict here with the vision of Qurʾanic Islam. The Qurʾan brings the message of a unified universe, where the One God prevails; where the life-giving 33. Goldziher (2008), pp. 201–208. See above, Part 1:1, s.v. Izutsu: the discussion of the place of jihād in the destructuring of a unified ḥilm/jahl complex into a mutually exclusive ʿilm/jahl opposition, evidenced, already, in the Qurʾan. 34. The anwāʾ of the pre-Islamic Arabia have traditionally been understood to number twentyeight, and equated with the so-called Lunar Stations (manāzil al-qamar). Against this, see Varisco, 1991, pp. 5–29. The clear relationship of maysir to the anwāʾ, and the configuration of a total twenty-eight notches on the arrow-shafts used to play it, perhaps argue for keeping the debate open as to what the number of the pre-Islamic anwāʾ was originally conceived to be. The celestial connection is, perhaps, also, an indication that the term qimār for ‘gambling’ was, after all, originally related to the use of the same root, q-m-r, for the moon. On this, see, further, Rosenthal (1975), pp. 130–137.

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rains, and the storms of requital, do not belong to the stars, but serve as perhaps the most potent symbols of His unique power over both life and death.35 This is a vision that disallows chance: Events are decided by the transcendent justice of one divine will. There is a new covenant, one which cuts across old blood-ties to compose a community united by common faith. It is perhaps because of maysir’s intimacy with the old blood-covenant in a dualistic universe, its association with intra- and intertribal competition to secure the lives of nearer kin and allies, that the Qurʾan dubs maysir a satanic institution more sinful than beneficial, aligned with idol-worship, and liable to threaten the nascent Islamic community with acrimony and dissent.36 More than this, the residual traces of maysir lend insight into how the Qurʾanic she-camel of Allāh’s compact with the people of Ṣāliḥ – Thamūd – should immediately have been comprehensible to the jāhilī Arabs as a dramatically transformed symbol of their covenant:37 The jazūr was ‘wealth’ (māl) that figured the flesh of their mortal, communal body, sacrificed and divided as compensation for the lack of milk caused by failing rains, in an act symbolic of their mutual commitment to redeem or equalise the loss of ‘pledges’ (rihān) that constituted the lives of co-affiliates; but the ‘she-camel of Allāh’ was a miraculous token to Thamūd that symbolised the presence of divine being and a covenant that promised the eternal redemption of each individual soul in return for faith and an alternative ‘expenditure’ of ‘wealth and soul’ to that end, i.e., jihād.38 Legends attaching to the story of Ṣāliḥ complement the transformation, for the miraculous camel – which was categorically not for slaughter – provided an endless supply of milk sufficient for all, so obviating any need to sacrifice her in compensation for dearth.39 One can also quite understand how the decision of Ṣāliḥ’s people to turn against him and slay the camel – severally referred to in terms of the ‘hocking’ (ʿaqr)40 that normally heralded the division of the jazūr at maysir – would effectively have registered as a declaration of war against the One God and a rejection 35. As, for example, Qurʾān, 7: 57, 24: 43. 36. Qurʾān, 5: 90–91: yā ayyuhā lladhīna āmanū innamā l-khamru wa-l-maysiru wa-l-anṣābu wa-l-azlāmu rijsun min ʿamali l-shayṭāni fa-jtanibū-hu la-ʿalla-kum tufliḥūna//innamā yurīdu l-shayṭānu an yūqiʿa bayna-kumu l-ʿadāwata wa-l-baghḍāʾa fī l-khamri wa-l-maysiri wa-yaṣudda-kum ʿan dhikri llāhi waʿani l-ṣalāti fa-hal antum muntahūna, “O you who believe, wine, maysir, idols and divining arrows are an abomination that is the work of Satan. Avoid it, so that you may prosper. Satan only desires to cause enmity and hatred among you through wine and maysir and to turn you from remembrance of God and from prayer. Are you going to desist?” (Jones’s translation (2007), p. 123); Qurʾān, 2: 219: yasʾalūna-ka ʿani l-khamri wa-l-maysiri qul fī-himā ithmun kabīrun wa-manāfiʿu li-l-nāsi wa-ithmu-humā akbaru min nafʿi-himā, “They ask you about wine and maysir. Say, ‘In both these is great sin, but some benefits to the people; but the sin in them is greater than the benefit” (Jones’s translation (2007), p. 51). 37. Qurʾān, 7: 73–79, 11: 61–68, 17: 59, 26: 141–158, 27: 45–51, 54: 27–31, 91: 13–14. 38. Jihād as a Qurʾanic antithesis to jahl was discussed in Part 1:1 in response to Izutsu’s thesis on the transformation of ḥilm. 39. Jaroslav Stetkevych (1996), pp. 17–28, offers a very fair overview of the legendary background. 40. Qurʾān, 7: 77, 11: 65, 26: 157, 54: 29, 91: 14.

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of all that Ṣāliḥ’s camel stood for. Even the cataclysmic disaster to which Thamūd were doomed as a result – variously called ‘the punishment’ (al-ʿadhāb),41 ‘the cry’ (al-ṣayḥa),42 ‘the earthquake’ (al-rajfa),43 the ‘thunderbolt’ (al-ṣāʿiqa)44 – emerges as a readily understandable transformation of the poetically catastrophic result of going to war with an indomitable opponent – as figured, for example, in ʿAlqama’s Mufaḍḍalīya CXIX where, following the ‘grumbling’ (raghwa) of his ‘camel-calf of the sky’, the deadly ‘thunderbolts’ of al-Ḥārith b. Jabala rained disaster upon his opponents. In this light, it seems hardly surprising that commentaries on that poem have wanted to see a reflection there of the camel of Ṣāliḥ and the disaster that befell Thamūd, or that the early Muslims ‘heard’ the absent cry of her calf (its raghwa) in the Qurʾanic account of her slaughter.45 There could be no possible accommodation: For all its benefits, maysir could not be reconciled with the Qurʾanic conception of redemption. According to the new covenant, men were no longer mutually responsible for redeeming the rihān, or ‘pledges’, of their kinsmen’s lives in a world where Death was the final winner, for the ‘stakes’ entailed had become those of divine redemption and eternal life, or eternal damnation in an afterworld. Each individual was now responsible for himor herself: kullu mriʾin bi-mā kasaba rahīnun, “every man is a ‘pledge’ for what he has earned”;46 kullu nafsin bi-mā kasabat rahīnatun, “every soul is a ‘pledge’ for what it has acquired”.47 Redemption had become a matter of the hereafter, and the prerogative of the One God to decide on the basis of what the ‘pledge’ of each man’s soul should be worth by virtue of his deeds in this world. It makes perfect integral sense, then, in this scheme (as set forth Part 1:1, ‘Islām: The Commercial Connection’), not only that a man’s life should be the undivided asset (salam) of one master, but that the commitment of his faith should be his ‘advance payment’ with that (his islām): his bearing witness and ‘expending’ his person and possessions (jihād) in the hope of a return with the ‘goods’ – immortality – in the hereafter. Trumping any redemptive ‘win’ (fawz) that could possibly be had from maysir, this is what now constitutes the ‘great sweep’ (al-fawz al-ʿaẓīm):48 ‘banking on’ the eternal reward of islām, or, one could say, opting for Pascal’s ‘wager’. 41. Ibid., 26: 158, 54: 30. 42. Ibid., 11: 67, 54: 31. 43. Ibid., 7: 78. 44. Ibid., 51: 44. 45. See the comments on this in n. 135 of Chapter 5:2. 46. Qurʾān 52: 21. 47. Ibid., 74: 38. 48. A most apposite example of this ‘great win’ – Qurʾān, 9: 111 – was cited in the main text in Part 1:1. A cursory look at the multiple other references to this concept in a concordance of the Qurʾan shows how powerfully represented it is. On the transformation of the “Bedouin ideal”, based on genealogy, into the Islamic ideal of personal piety, see now Neuwirth (2014), pp. 53–75.

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II. Rope and Bucket There is not only one way to construe a transformation of the covenant, or the concept of islām. As mentioned earlier (in note 95 of Part 1:1), the complementary conceit of the bakra permits us to resurrect Bravmann’s idea of islām as ‘self-betrayal’, but by an altogether different route. To take first the issue of a transformed conception of covenant, we need to remind ourselves especially of the complex of ropes and straps that suspend and secure the pail (detailed Chapter 5:1, the commentary to verses 1–3 and 9–13): how the main rope (ḥabl – also rishāʾ, sabab, or manīn), which suspends the bucket, is attached to cross-pieces set in the ‘mouth’ of the pail and strapped to it by loops (ʿurā, s. ʿurwa), while auxiliary ropes – the ʿināj and karab – are attached for extra security lest the loops come undone, or the main rope break; how that rope figures the bond of compact (ḥabl) wherewith the ‘protected neighbour’ (jār) is conceptually suspended, its soundness a mark of the goodness, ‘health’ and security of the compact. Conversely, the fracture of the rope and ties figures, broadly, the intrusion of ‘sickness’, which risks the ‘surrender’ or ‘betrayal’ – islām – of the ‘wellpail’, i.e., the potential loss or demise of the ‘suspended’ jār. Against this established conceit, one could infer from Qurʾanic allusions to the ‘rope of God’ (ḥabl allāh),49 and ‘the fastest loop/handle’ (al-ʿurwa al-wuthqā) securing those who reject all other supreme beings and commit to Allāh alone,50 that reference is being made to the bakra, only now figuring the covenant of Islam. But the elaborate transformations of this conceit in early Islamic poetry – particularly as they relate to competing claims to the caliphate, synthesising these very Qurʾanic allusions – confirm the story: I have elsewhere set forth in some detail how the bakra emerges, transformed, as a figure for the corporate body and vital resources of Islam, offering faithful allegiants, through covenant with the caliph, access to Allāh and the waters of eternal redemption. The rope of the caliph is effectively the Rope of God (ḥabl allāh). More than binding the faithful to ‘fast loops’, it binds them to ‘the fastest loop’ of all: al-ʿurwa al-wuthqā. It preserves them from perdition; only sinners will have their ties severed. It is a rope of covenant that attaches, expressly, to the cross-pieces of a ‘bucket’ (God’s faithful allegiant), tied doubly fast with the karab, and accesses waters that are the resources of the religion, securely sealed in its ‘cistern stones’ – what could be called ḥawḍ al-islām.51 This picture leaves one in no doubt that the early Muslims understood 49. Qurʾān, 3: 103: wa-ʿtaṣimū bi-ḥabli- llāhi jamīʿan wa-lā tafarraqū, “Hold fast to God’s rope, all together, and do not split up” (Jones’ translation (2007), p. 75); ibid., 3:112: ḍuribat ʿalay-himu l-dhillatu ayna mā thuqifū illā bi-ḥablin mina llāhi wa-ḥablin mina l-nāsi, “Humiliation will be stamped on them wherever they are found, unless [they grasp] a rope from God and a rope from the people” (Jones’ translation (2007), p. 76). 50. Qurʾān, 2: 256: fa-man yakfur bi-l-ṭāghūti wa-yuʾmin bi-llāhi fa-qadi stamsaka bi-l-ʿurwati l-wuthqā lā nfiṣāma la-hā, “Those who reject idols and believe in God have grasped the firmest handle which will never be broken” (Jones’ translation (2007), p. 58); ibid., 31: 22, cited shortly below in the main text. 51. See Jamil (1999), esp. pp. 32–37 and the literature there cited.

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references to the ‘rope of God’ and ‘the fastest loop’ as appurtenances of a conceptual bakra representing the ancient covenant transformed. To revisit, then, the idea of islām as ‘[self-]betrayal’, it will be clear that, in this frame of reference, islām – ‘surrender’/‘betrayal’ of the well-pail-jār with the fracture of the rope – could have only negative connotations unless it were being manipulated to express self-severance from a bond of allegiance to the older covenant and other gods before taking hold of ‘the fastest loop’ of an alternative ‘rope and tie’ (a switch of allegiance reflected in Qurʾān 2: 256).52 This makes it intriguing that the concept of islām (implying, for one thing, ‘severance’ of a well-rope) should have been brought directly together with that of becoming bound to the appurtenances of such an apparatus in the form of al-ʿurwa al-wuthqā, as we find in Qurʾān, 31: 22: wa-man yuslim wajha-hu ilā llāhi wa-huwa muḥsinun fa-qadi stamsaka bi-l-ʿurwati l-wuthqā, “Whoever surrenders his face to God and does good has grasped the firmest handle.”53 But we may see this as double entendre: The phrase ‘whoever surrenders (yuslim) his face’ is an expression of islām attested, largely, as a constituent of the quasi-commercial world of ‘selling’, or ‘squandering’ the face/self/soul, that Bravmann documented so well but was determined to override in favour of a concept of ‘self-betrayal’ equating to ‘defiance of death’.54 But colliding, as it does here, with an allusion to ‘loops’ of the covenant, it invites islām to register at another level – namely, the severance of such a ‘rope’ as would link to such a ‘loop’, and, indeed, the ‘surrender’ or ‘betrayal’ of the ‘pail’ attached, thus creating a delicious contradiction: whoso ‘surrenders’ or ‘betrays’ himself is not lost, but securely bound. Or, to put both levels of meaning together: whoso ‘transacts’ to ‘pay’ his self in advance of death to the One God/undertakes to ‘sever’ the rope of his compact [with alternative masters], will not fall to eternal perdition, but will, rather, effect a fast connection with a ‘rope’ of redemption that is forever.55 III. Wine and the Enduring Abode Sharing wine – unadulterated or with pure admixtures – in the old blood covenant emerged essentially as a benign ‘combat’ (munāzaʿa) that was a confirmation of 52. Cited above, n. 50. 53. Jones’ translation (2007), p. 378. 54. Bravmann (1972), pp. 8–18; (1977), pp. 440–444 – discussed in detail in Part 1:1. 55. It is intriguing, in this light, that one of the denotations for the leather bucket that would attach to such ties and cross-piece is, in fact, salm (Qāmūs, art. salmun); and all this perhaps offers an insight into the logic of a poet’s declaration: tabarraʾtu illā wajha man yamliku l-ṣabā/ wa-ahjuru-kum mā dāma mudlin wa-nāziʿū//wa-uslimu wajh–ī li-l-ilāhi wa-manṭiq-ī/wa-law rāʿa-nī mina l-ṣadīqi rawāʾiʿū “I renounce all but the face of Him who has the east wind, and break with you for as long as men lower and raise their pails; I surrender my face and speech to the One, even were I assailed by deterrents from a friend”: see Ringgren (1949), p. 24, where this verse and others are discussed in contraposition to Bravmann’s thesis. (In line with the usual reading in Ibn Hishām’s sīra, which he references, however, read rāʿa-nī, rather than rāma-nī: Ibn Hishām (1937), vol. 1, p. 209, where it is attributed to Ḥākim b. Umayya).

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mutual good faith, the communion of a quasi-organic, united body that somehow extended to the divine. Passing the cup when not in a state of purity according to ritual norms was harmful to the community – the ‘arterial’ circulation of poison – and sinful in respect of the divine. Inappropriate inebriate behaviour, or the passage of a cup that induces fever and headache, are signs of diminished virtue and sin, and the mark of an abode other than the enduring variety – the dār muqām – linked with unadulterated good faith (see especially the commentary to Poem 5.3.3). These figures of communion and community also emerge, transformed, in the Qurʾanic vision of eternal salvation: The redeemed – those ‘brought near [to God]’ (al-muqarrabūn) – are given to drink in His presence of pure, musk-sealed wine (raḥīq makhtūm khitāmu-hu misk),56 a cup variously blended with pleasing admixtures.57 Their place is the Abode of Eternity (dār al-muqāma),58 where the drink they pass around (yatanāzaʿūna) is one that engenders no unseemly speech (laghwun), and implies neither sin (taʾthīm),59 nor headache, nor loss of decorum through intoxication.60 This, then, is the ultimate communion of purity and faith, and the supreme realisation of ‘permanence’ (iqāma), ‘purchased’ with the currency of virtue. Lenses of Theory The rich world of relational meaning and moral gendering that emerges from this study evidently provides multiple foci for the lenses of theory, linguistic and other; but I do not believe that any theory or sign-system can provide the information-base that semantic analysis can achieve, and thus serve, unmodified, as a convincing, primary tool for interpretation. At this point, with something like a skeleton-ethnography in hand, I shall return to those theoretical perspectives earlier highlighted (Part 1:2, under Ritual Triad) and held in abeyance for later consideration. Projected in the poetry is a universe where covenant, faith, honour and religion manifest in terms of a scheme of obligatory, mutual expenditure – credit and debt, pledge and redemption – of which poetry appears to be an integral component. It seems very reasonable, therefore, to see here a dramatic complement to Mauss’ theory of “a regime embracing a large part of humanity over a long transitional phase, and persisting … among peoples other than those [he] described”; a regime of ‘total prestation’ – the mutual loan and return of things imbued with ‘spiritual mechanisms’ that engage the honour of giver and receiver and promote social cohesion – which he postulated would be a dominant mode in “societies … which have not yet reached the stage of pure individual contract, the money market, sale proper, fixed price, and 56. Qurʾān, 83: 25–28. 57. Ibid., 83: 27, 76: 5, 17–18. 58. Ibid., 35: 35. 59. Ibid., 52: 23–24. 60. Ibid., 37: 45–47, 56: 18–19.

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weighed and coined money”.61 In this case, on the understanding that the specifics of the socio-moral scheme involved be respected, whilst ensuring that it is, in fact, the theory that is being weighed, there seems no reason why the analytic discourse should not be enriched by recourse to the paradigm of ‘total prestation’, which appears to offer a net of social and moral possibilities that go well beyond enabling us, for example, to construe panegyric as a ‘gift’ demanding reciprocity.62 But the grand oppositional paradigm that drives the process of ‘credit and debt’, and that essentially subsumes all the multiple oppositions that ‘couple’ and hinge on complementary axes – life and death, male and female, ḥilm and jahl, virtue and sin, honour and shame, reward and punishment, plenty and dearth, liquid replenishment and liquid depletion – is that of ‘health’ and ‘sickness’, a chemistry relentlessly pursued in the poetry in psycho-physiological terms. In this case, the search for a grand theoretical fit for the poetical product and the multiple composite shapes it takes, ought to accommodate this chemistry without disregarding compositional variety. The lens of kenosis-plerosis – emptying and filling, degeneration and regeneration – first proposed for this material by Andras Hamori is well flexible enough to accommodate these dimensions, the moral and spiritual included, even if one might choose to differ on details of interpretation. And, given the general conventions and thematic repetitions that characterise the poetry, one can also see, with Hamori, how it might have been that “these poems, rather than myths or religious rituals, served as the vehicle for the conception that sorted out the emotionally incoherent facts of life and death”.63 It was the lack of specificity, though, in Hamori’s conception, combined with the desire to improve on structural studies that attempted to fill the gaps with sometimes random conceptual oppositions, that fuelled Suzanne Stetkevych’s debated quest to establish a theoretical frame that might better explain the conventions and form of the polythematic qaṣīda and, thus, to promote the ‘rites of passage’ paradigm (discussed above, Part 1:2, under The Art of the Ternary Archetype, and Ritual Triad) as a determining principle. There is, perhaps, a certain attraction to seeing a tri-partite qaṣīda that ends in a movement implying group-integration, such as praise or vaunting, as a calque on social rites of transition from immaturity to manhood, the nasīb, raḥīl, and madīḥ/fakhr (respectively, the so-called amatory prelude, the journey, and the panegyric/boast) implying stages of ‘separation’, ‘liminality’ and ‘re-aggregation’. Less attractive is the strait-jacket it would impose on the wider world of the jāhilī qaṣīda – albeit with the eloquent intervention, for example, that the ‘vagabond’ poem will necessarily not involve ‘re-aggregation’, and may thus be described in terms of 61. Mauss (1954), p. 45 (Ian Cunnison’s translation). Especially engaging from our perspective are the sections, ‘Honour and Credit’ and ‘The Three Obligations: Giving, Receiving, Repaying’: ibid., pp. 31–41. 62. As set forth, for example, in Stetkevych (1994b). 63. Hamori (1974), p. 22.

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a suspended liminality or “passage manqué”.64 The fact is that, for the most part, one does not appear to be dealing with the transitional ‘crises’ of societal life – boyhood to manhood and so on – but, rather, with repeated entries into and departures from, crises expressed in terms of affliction or ‘sickness’, and explored by poets who generally present as having attained maturity and propose to confront and manage any crisis evincing a lack thereof by harnessing developed resources of mind and body to reestablish integral ‘health’ and equilibrium. In this case, if one wishes to pursue the rites of passage paradigm, one might do better to follow the route of those who have used it – with particular reference to the liminal phase – as a lens through which to view the management of psycho-physiological dis-ease; a route, indeed, which Turner himself pointed up, in a further development of van Gennep’s paradigm, when he drew the distinction between life-crisis rituals (such as those for birth, puberty and death), and rituals of affliction which, among the Ndembu, he found to be mechanisms without the ‘social field’, and designed to redress the intermittent effects of invasive ‘shades’ thought to induce failure and sickness.65 Adaptations of the ‘rites of passage’ paradigm, and, especially, the conceptual space of ‘liminality’, have been synthesised in multiple modern disciplines, including those concerned with the management of psycho-physiological affliction – trauma, spiritual crisis, terminal illness and so forth – where sufferers are encouraged to construct and reconstruct the narrative of their experience in an attempt to transition out of conceptual fragmentation and flux, and into a state of renewed psychological integration. One apposite contribution in this regard is that of Jan O. Stein and Murray Stein who are among those proposing psychotherapy as a ‘modern initiation ritual’ (or mechanism of management and redress) for identity crisis during the so-called mid-life transition (what could be compared, for example, to managing the crisis of encroaching decrepitude in the jāhilī scheme).66 This, they conceive in three phases, “transformations of consciousness … clearly mirrored in the external actions of primitive rites of passage”: The first two, following van Gennep, they term ‘separation’ and ‘liminality’ - respectively, the processes of a “psychological destructuring”, and transition into a mood of alienation characterised by loss, confusion, and images like “wandering alone in the desert … The mind is homeless, and persons feel themselves drifting in perilous waters”. However, taking account of the fact that the phenomenon they discuss is a psychological one, they conceive the third phase, not as van Gennep’s sociologically slanted ‘reincorporation’, but as the ‘reintegration’ or ‘reconstitution’ of a ‘dominant pattern of self-organisation’, facilitated by the therapist, which follows the patient’s ‘liminal’ wandering:67 64. Stetkevych (1993), pp. 87–157. 65. Turner (1981), pp. 15–16, 52–58. 66. Stein and Stein (1994). 67. Ibid., p. 293. Their term “dominant pattern of self-organization” is carefully explained (ibid., pp. 289–290), emerging, in their conception, as the “basic, archetypally derived form that shapes the [conscious] self ”.

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In itself, this essentially cyclical model of psychological dissociation, conflict-laden transition, and reconstitution, maps readily onto the ubiquitous chemistry of intellectual dissolution, redressive self-searching, and reintegration that infuses the poetry, and is described by the transformative interactions of ḥilm and jahl and the implications of these for psycho-physiological wholeness and balance. But what is so particularly suggestive in Stein and Stein’s contribution, from our point of view, is its synthesis also of the Jungian theory of psychological growth and transformation: This is an additional dimension that not only maps equally readily onto the same cyclical model in broadest terms – being another paradigm “that implicates liminality, initiation, transformation, and transcendence”68 – but also throws up fascinating analogues of the patterns that figure the poetry’s ethical chemistry in point of detail. In order to show this, I shall outline the key notes of Jung’s model of psychological growth, with special reference to the so-called ‘transcendent function’, and then bring this into relation with the ethico-poetical constructs set forth in what precedes. I should stress that my purpose is not to use Jung’s conception to ‘explain’ the poetry. It is, rather, to demonstrate that this particular – undoubtedly poetical – paradigm, especially as dressed in its ‘alchemical’ habit (see below), offers a better-adjusted, form-sensitive lens through which to regard the poetical samples treated above than that of the sociological ‘rites of passage’. 69 ***** Jung’s Paradigm of Psychological Growth: The Fluxes and Transitions of Being I. The Transcendent Function Jung conceived the mind in terms of a dynamic balancing of opposite functions, conscious and unconscious. More than serving as a mere repository of repressed desires and old wounds, the unconscious exerted a purposeful pull on a person, informed both by experience and inherited behaviour. He conceived it to work as an autonomous counterweight – compensatory, complementary, oppositional – to the conscious, implying an ever-present tension between the two that needs to be managed: psychological disturbance or disorder is liable arise “if the tension increases as a result of too great one-sidedness”, wherewith “the counter-tendency breaks 68. Miller (2004), p. 5. 69. This is by no means the only psychotherapeutic paradigm that could usefully serve: See, for example, Sperl (2013), esp. p. 35, n. 23, which evinces a preference for reading the ancient qaṣīda in light of insights derived from trauma therapy over those of the ‘rites of passage’ as proposed by Suzanne Stetkevych. As noted earlier (Part 1:2, n. 187), Jaroslav Stetkevych has hinted very strongly at inspiration from the Jungian paradigm of psychological growth with his equation of the poet’s she-camel of the raḥīl with the anima, and the characterisation of this ‘liminal’ journey with the so-called process of ‘individuation’; but my intention here is different; namely, to relate the entire psycho-ethical process centred on ḥilm and jahl, and the poetical inspirations that flow from this, to the said Jungian paradigm as a whole.

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through into consciousness, usually just … when it is most important to maintain the conscious direction”.70 Psychological growth – incremental movement toward wholeness, or ‘individuation’ – hinges on exchange between the two, ‘dialogue’ where both are allowed to confront each other with an equal ‘voice’, and thus generate an energy-charged tension that “creates a living, third thing – not a logical stillbirth … but a movement out of the suspension between opposites, a living birth that leads to a new level of being, a new situation”.71 The conceptual mechanism for achieving this is Jung’s so-called ‘transcendent function’ – ‘transcendent’, not for any metaphysical quality, but precisely by virtue of facilitating transition, the ‘birth’ of a new state generated through the ‘coupling’, or integration, of opposing conscious and unconscious components.72 How to capture the dimensions of this ‘transcendent function’ is a challenge, to say the least: It appears to be both an innate psychic process, and one that demands development through work, through mental and moral fortitude. That is to say, it can be enhanced or stunted, depending on personal courage and effort.73 It emerges, variously, as a quasi-mathematical function by virtue of reflecting a dialectal relationship between opposites; as a process by virtue of what flows from that relationship; as a method by virtue of implying conscious practice; and also an effect, namely, the result of the said process, function and method, or the very transformation that is ‘born’ of the union of conflicting principles.74 Unsurprisingly, perhaps, then, the entire conception is gendered, for Jung encapsulates the ‘generative’ potential of the reconciliation of conscious and unconscious as a ‘marriage’, respectively, of masculine and female principles.75 This process, then, describes the ongoing regulation of sequential imbalances and transitions, or intrapersonal accommodations, which leads to ever-greater degrees of wholeness. “For Jung, it is in the activation of the transcendent function that true maturity lies”.76 For a patient whose conscious mind and functions are undermined by his ailment, learning to activate this can be facilitated through the mediation of an analyst by a process of “constructive transference”: essentially, his entering into a psychological rapport with his doctor to partner him in carrying the burden of ‘psychic infection’, and assist him in accessing and integrating unconscious material to produce the desired transformation of attitude, and, ultimately, renewed independence.77 The doctor lends him “moral strength to combat the tyranny of uncontrolled emotion. In 70. Miller (2004), p. 16, citing Jung (1960), p. 71. 71. Ibid., p. 27, citing Jung (1960), p. 90. 72. Ibid., p. 52, citing Jung (1971), p. 480. 73. Ibid., pp 29, 59. 74. Ibid., pp. 55–56. 75. Ibid., p. 61. 76. Ibid., p. 4, citing Humbert (1988), p. 25. 77. Miller (2004), p. 20.

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this way, the integrative powers of his conscious mind are reinforced until he is able once more to bring the rebellious affect under control”.78 An objective understanding of his malady, based on a fundamental change of vision, eventually renders the patient, armed now with a healthy attitude, “independent of the doctor and sets up a counterinfluence to the transference.”79 Through suggestion, the analyst encourages the necessary change of vision by stimulating the patient to utilise active imagination: to produce “conscious representations (pictures, symbols, images or associations) of unconscious contents that underlie the mood … Active imagination is used to coax material from the unconscious toward the threshold of consciousness and, in a sense, catalyze the transcendent function. The transcendent function, in turn, can act as a mediator to bring unconscious imagery into dialogue with consciousness.”80 II. Transcendent Function, Narrow and Expansive, Mediator of the Archetypes Thus actively plumbing the depths of concealed realisation, one enters the developed world of Jung’s theory of the unconscious. As Jeffrey C. Miller has shown, the phenomenon of the transcendent function is also “inextricably intertwined with most, if not all, of Jung’s seminal ideas”, notably his archetypes – constructs he supposes to be rooted in the shared human heritage – emanating from what he terms a “collective unconscious”. Miller discerns the transcendent function to be “the core process and the archetypes a reification of the unconscious part of the dialogue Jung was describing between consciousness and the unconscious ... Jung’s attempts to give voice to or personify the operation of the transcendent function”.81 Indeed, he goes so far as to say: The idea of archetypes ... for which Jung is perhaps most identified in the world of psychology, is fundamentally dependent on the transcendent function since no communication or settlement is possible with the energies, images, and messages they represent without the mediation of the transcendent function. Individuation, Jung’s seminal idea about a purposive psyche pulling us forward in a teleological way, cannot occur without the constant and repeated operation of the transcendent function ... If the Jungian paradigm is pictured as a web of intertwined concepts, each of which somehow implicates the others, it would be no exaggeration to say that the transcendent function lies at or near the center of that web. Indeed, it may very well be the core concept from which the others flow.82

What doctor and patient might typically encounter in these so-called archetypes when they follow the disintegrative effect of the malady as figured in dreams, fantasies 78. Jung (1993), p. 132. 79. Ibid., p. 138. 80. Miller (2004), pp 23–24. 81. Ibid., p. 66 (my italics). 82. Ibid., p. 77.

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and projections, are articulated by Jung in terms of: shadow – a construct embodying repressed and discarded aspects of the character, or ‘phantoms’ of the past; as anima or animus – a contrasexual figure embodying perceived opposite-sex elements of the personality; and as self – often symbolised as a united duality within the personality. In Miller’s epitome, the relation of these figures to the ‘transcendent function’ is as follows: Shadow Although Miller concedes that Jung never explicitly mentions the transcendent function in connection with the ‘shadow’, he finds shadow to be clearly implicated by it, being, after all, that which is “inherently foreign or opposite to one’s conscious nature” – perhaps simply Jung’s general construct for “how the energies and images of the unconscious are voiced” – and thus necessarily to be accessed, digested and integrated.83 Anima/Animus The more differentiated constellation of so-called anima/animus has an explicit connection with the transcendent function in its capacity as mediator: Objectivising the effects of the anima, projecting them outward in order to understand what underlies these effects and to reflect on the conflict between inner and outer worlds, provides the conscious bridge between those worlds and energises the mediating principle that can catalyse integration and thus transition.84 That is to say, anima/ animus and the transcendent function are both “integrally involved in establishing a relationship or dialogue between consciousness and the unconscious; each plays a part in fostering an interaction between conscious and the unconscious to potentiate individuation. Indeed, from this perspective, it might be difficult to exactly identify the difference between them.”85 Self As to the ‘self ’, this emerges in Miller’s synthesis as an archetype of unity which is both “instigator of the process of individuation” to which the transcendent function is integral, and, conversely, “the goal to which individuation and the transcendent function are striving.”86 Narrow and Expansive Function Thus, in sum, and most importantly, Miller distinguishes two principal expressions of the transcendent function: the “narrow” – i.e., the function, or process, which lies at 83. Ibid., pp. 73–74. 84. Ibid., pp. 68–69 and the literature there cited. 85. Ibid., p. 68. 86. Ibid., p. 71 and the literature there cited.

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the heart of Jung’s net of psychological structures, and which describes, generally, the uniting of the opposites of the conscious and unconscious, engendering transition to a new attitude; and the “expansive” – i.e., the “root metaphor for exchanges between conscious and unconscious”, which is the “wellspring from whence flows other key Jungian structures such as the archetypes and the self ”, and thus constitutes the very “core of the individuation process”.87 But the most nuanced ‘expansive’ configuration of Jung’s transcendent function – and the most suggestive for the purposes of our own analysis – is that which he projects through the lens of alchemy, wherein he perceived “often in the most astonishing detail, the same psychological phenomenology which can be observed in the analysis of unconscious processes”,88 alchemy being, to his mind, in essence, an endeavour that “projected the unconscious psyche upon chemical substances.”89 III. Transcendent Function and the Drama of the Alchemical Process This remarkable capacity for change, expressed in the transcendent function, is the principal object of late medieval alchemical philosophy, where it was expressed in terms of alchemical symbolism ... The secret of alchemy was in fact the transcendent function, the transformation of personality through the blending and fusion of the noble with the base components, of the differentiated with the inferior functions, of the conscious with the unconscious.90

Jung perceived in the alchemical process an analogical enactment of the ‘journey’ of analyst and analysand to explore, observe and, indeed, experience the wounded self; to unveil and confront its ‘shadow’-side; to endure dissolution before effecting a quasi-gendered, transformational conjoining of the two, which will generate a conceptual ‘third’ - the reintegrated self now healed and whole – and, thence, an alchemical ‘fourth’: transformed experience. This is a paradigm mediated by an elliptical principle that is capable of traversing the boundary of the unconscious into the conscious, and that serves equally as catalyst of ‘creative chaos’, as principal agent in a managed drama of confrontation and coupling, and, finally, as the very product of that coupling – namely, the ‘transcendent function’ in its various capacities of function, process, method and effect. More precisely, Jung regarded the magnum opus – the great alchemical endeavour to create the lapis philosophorum, or elixir, that could transmute base metals such as lead into gold or silver – as an observable, concretised expression of his paradigm of the quest for individuation, a symbolic model of the psychological principles he sought to externalise and objectivise through the analytical process. The vessel in which 87. Ibid., pp. 141–142. 88. Jung (1993), p. 198 89. Ibid., p. 197. 90. Miller (2004), p. 69, citing Jung (1953).

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the experiment was conducted corresponded to the ‘space’ in which the observation and aloof engagement of the analytical relationship takes place, the ‘womb’ in which the lapis or elixir would be ‘born’, the external changes undergone by the alchemical substances corresponding to the transformations materialising in the psyche. Exposed to the alchemist’s art and the sequential raising of the heat of the fire, the mysterious prima materia – allegedly a universal substance comprising all the qualities of elementary things – would undergo a cycle of changes:91 First, dissolution resulting in a blackening, or nigredo, a conceptual chaos; then, a ‘washing’ of the product, implying a whitening, or albedo, wherewith it evolves into two, clearly defined, opposing principles – conceptually, ‘spirit and matter’, the ‘soul’, as it were, having been drawn out. Jung saw in these opening stages, first, the creation of a conceptual prima materia – the ‘transference’ between doctor and analysand having once been established – and the psychological dissolution that follows recognition and experience of the ‘shadow’ within; second, the subsequent unveiling of a duality with the emergence of the contrasexual other (the anima or animus), a revelation that might be compounded by further dualistic constellations as the process unfolds: So long as the patient can think that somebody else ... is responsible for his difficulties, he can save some semblance of unity ... But once he realizes that he himself has a shadow, that his enemy is in his own heart, then the conflict begins and one becomes two. Since the “other” will eventually prove to be another duality, a compound of opposites, the ego soon becomes a shuttlecock tossed between a multitude of “velleities,” with the result that there is an “obfuscation of the light,” i.e., consciousness is depotentiated and the patient is at a loss to know where his personality begins or ends. It is like passing through the valley of the shadow, and sometimes the patient has to cling to the doctor as the last remaining shred of reality.92

The next phase of the alchemical process must be to effect a unified compound out of the resultant duality: In the final stages, with a further raising of the heat, the socalled rubedo emerges. Fiery red infuses purified white, and fusion occurs in what is conceived as the ‘chemical marriage’. This ‘marriage’ results, at once, in death and conception: the compound lies inert, its ‘soul’ having fled, vaporised by the heat; but this fugitive essence is also the vital conception that, guarded and condensed, will resuscitate the compound and give birth to a new, transformed product, the filius philosophorum, ‘child’ of the opus, or philosopher’s stone. 91. Primal matter, a substance of universal nature, the ‘true name’ of which is supposedly concealed in the qualities of elementary things, and which thus has many names, is epitomised by Theobald de Hoghelande in the 17th Century Theatrum Chemicum, the most comprehensive collected work on alchemy, thus: “They have compared the “prima materia” to everything, to male and female, to the hermaphroditic monster, to heaven and earth, to body and spirit, chaos, microcosm, and the confused mass; it contains in itself all colors and potentially all metals; there is nothing more wonderful in the world, for it begets itself, conceives itself, and gives birth to itself.” See Kugler (2002), p. 112 and the literature there cited. 92. Jung (1993), pp. 198–199. The italics are mine.

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This, then, epitomises for Jung the quasi-gendered conflict and ‘coupling’ of progressive individuation, the union of the conscious mind and the unconscious personified as anima – matter and spirit, male and female – that produces a transformed attitude of mind compounded of both, “a wholeness that resolves all opposition and puts an end to conflict, or at least draws its sting”.93 He sees it as an ‘opus’ that begins and ends with the individual, microcosm of the creative, unifying spirit of the divine, and that thus constitutes, to his mind, “not only a possibility but an ethical duty”.94 IV. Chemical Flux: Transcendent Function as Mercurius Where, in this paradigm, is the objectivised chemical flux, the personification of the multi-valent transcendent function in its narrower sense (see shortly above), the active principle that mediates and flows through the cycle of fusion, implying function, method, process and effect? Jung imputes this role to the alchemical figure of Mercurius. A composite of reconciled dualities – masculine/feminine, poison/cure, liquid/solid, heat/cold, spirit/matter, devil/divine, and countless others – Mercurius has all the requisites to mediate and effectively figure the dissolution, constellation and quasi-gendered reconciliation of the substances of the opus, and to embody the ultimate, hermaphroditic transformation. He is “the prima materia of the lowly beginning as well as the lapis as the highest goal, ... the process which lies between, and the means by which it is effected. He is the “beginning, middle and end of the work”, a mediator, preserver and healer.95 At the same time, he reflects the transformational experience of the alchemist who undertakes the opus, and, as such, “represents on the one hand the self and on the other the individuation process, and, because of the limitless number of his names, also the collective unconscious”.96 V. The ‘Opus’ of Individuation in Sum Jung thus offers with his alchemical paradigm a dramatic model of the chemistry and experience of a transformative, gendered reaction process, which he recognises as a useful analogy for the dynamics of analysis as he perceived it: a process implying, first, an imbalance, or ‘psychic wound’, that activates the fire of intellectual dissolution, and descent into the ‘dark night of the soul’; then, the active investigation of the words and symbols that might give shape to the ‘shadow in the dark’ and permit it to be seen for what it is, namely, a disabling antagonist within the self; thereafter, the constellation, out of the dark, by that same active effort, of an apparent duality, namely the self and its dissociated contrasexual counterpart; therewith, the inner mind’s detached but engaged observation of the pair in confrontation or conflict, 93. Ibid., p. 319. 94. Ibid., p. 320. The italics are mine. 95. Jung (1970), p. 235, quoting from the Theatricum Chemicum. 96. Ibid., p. 237.

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possibly constellating into alternative oppositions as the process of guided discovery and revisualisation toward the goal of orientation and wholeness proceeds; and, ultimately, the catalysis of a resolution to the conflict with a ‘coupling’, a quasi-erotic embrace, or ‘marriage’, that integrates and reconstitutes the dissociated pair – the conscious and unconscious – or, as Jung alternatively observes, the man and his heart.97 Thence ensues the ‘death’ of an ailing state and the ‘conception’ of a new and healthy one, a conception, or ‘child’ that is one and the same with the united partners, now mutually transformed into a renewed, whole self. ***** Transcendent Function, Ḥilm, Jahl and Waṣl: The Gendered Alchemy of the Jāhilī Qaṣīda Jeffrey C. Miller’s incisive placement of the ‘transcendent function’ at the core of Jung’s developed theory of individuation – the ongoing, purposive interactions between outer and inner worlds, between the man and his ‘heart’ – provides a compelling framework for comparison of our own placement of the ḥilm-jahl complex at the centre of the developed processes and image-networks of the poems, the multi-layered, gendered ‘dance’ of opposing principles that are typically choreographed toward a ‘marriage’ that can ‘birth’ healing and wholeness; that is to say, in the language of the poetry, toward some kind of waṣl. Like the ‘transcendent function’ pared down to its ‘narrower’ guise, the ḥilm-jahl complex implies a gendered function, or dialectical relationship between opposing principles of healing and sickness; a process that flows from that function, the ‘chemistry’ of interaction; a method of intrapersonal accommodations that comes with, and is perfected by, maturity, conscious practice that opposes ṣibā (juvenile ‘slippage’); and the effect that results from the activation of said function, process and method – indeed, as Jung too would have it, of an ethical duty – namely, the reintegration of ‘heart’ and mind, psycho-physiological balance (ʿaql and the prevalence of ḥilm), renewed orientation on an appropriate ‘middle path’ (or qaṣd al-sabīl),98 and, ideally, transition/transcendence via an appropriate act, though the conditions for complete transcendence may not always be present. 97. Jung is well attuned, in his discursus on the Rosarium Philosophorum, to the pre-modern conception of the ‘heart’ “as the real seat of the soul”: (1993), pp. 283–284. 98. See the commentary on vv. 13–15 of Poem 4.3 on the concept of qaṣd al-sabīl in the poetry. Jung in fact explicitly conceives the union of the complementary opposites of conscious and unconscious in terms of adopting a ‘middle road’: “From a consideration of the claims of the inner and outer worlds, or rather, from the conflict between them, the possible and the necessary follows. Unfortunately, our Western mind, lacking all culture in this respect, has never yet devised a concept, nor even a name for the union of opposites through the middle path, that most fundamental item of inward experience, which could respectably be set against the Chinese concept of Tao.” (Miller 2004, p. 69, citing Jung 1953, p. 205).

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The doctor’s confessional, or alchemist’s alembic, is the public-private space of the poem where it is the ‘active imagination’ of the poet that coaxes out the imagery that will externalise inner disturbance and conflict, and so permit first the recognition, and then the revisualisation and integration of rebellious affect, the eruption of grief that may alternately be projected onto ‘landscapes’ of the mind, or figured in the various phantoms of the poet’s past, the suppressed actors of his interior ‘shadow’world, the invasion of his mind by ‘intoxication’ and so forth, while the phases of ‘chemical synthesis’, revisualisations of the nature of the ‘wound’, may be explored and managed through such layering techniques as the rubba formula, or dramatic shifts in the poetical frames of reference.99 A very major difference, of course, lies in the fact that the poet does not wait on rapport with a doctor, through a process of ‘transference’, to prompt him into abstracting or revisualising his lot. Rather, he takes himself (or his ‘self ’) by the hand – and ourselves, through his eyes – his own ‘doctor’, ‘prima materia’ and ‘Mercurius’, already mature and practised in the art of activating the process that can synthesise a healing. He is supported, nonetheless, by a whole tradition, the germs of his ‘active imagination’ seeded and flourishing in the familiar techniques and figures of the poetical corpus, which he will, however, manipulate with unique inspiration to achieve his specific goals, sometimes through extended and highly elaborate tableaux. It is in the extended elaborations (most fully illustrated, in our samples, by those poems treated in Chapter 5, especially those of 5:3) that one can also discern analogues of the ‘expansive’ transcendent function at the centre of its ‘archetypal’ or ‘alchemical’ reifications; that is to say, protracted and detailed explorations of the ḥilm-jahl process, the movement through darkness, dissolution and gendered, binary opposites, toward integration through ‘coupling’ (waṣl): A descent into darkness and confrontation with ‘shadow’ once catalysed, the poet may objectivise his weakness and disorientation, the relative disconnect between outer and inner self – or ‘heart’ – for one thing, by defining his state in the saddle, and asking himself what kind of mount it is that he ‘rides’. In this case, if he wishes to project a ‘heart’ predominantly influenced by (essentially female) jahl, in danger of betraying him and threatening his enterprise, he may navigate the ‘desert’ of his personal nigredo, for example, on a she-camel that evolves into a hunted creature guaranteed death if it loses its wits and fails to activate, or respond to, the (implicitly masculine) counterforce of ḥilm. Alternatively, the poet’s disturbance, or failing ‘heart’, ‘washed’ in an albedo of the poetic process, might find the poet ‘on mount’ constellated into an explicitly malefemale duality, the female party (manifest jahl) out of control, resistant to the guidance of the male partner who strains to control her. In such cases, he may win or escape outright (losing or failing at least to hold assailants at bay is scarcely an option for a creature identified with the poet unless the poet wishes to concede power); or else, the chemistry has to change with the poet projecting an alternative vision: another 99. Manipulation of the rubba formula has been discussed first, in some detail, in Part 1:2, s.v. Perambulation around Parataxis, True Love and Sin, and illustrated thereafter passim.

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gendered duality, perhaps, where he might wonder if he does not rather ‘ride’ such a creature as compares with a male that can guide and master his female(s), with violent salvational force if necessary (illustrated with excruciating brutality in Poem 5.3.2) – a ‘rise in temperature’, or poetic rubedo, conducive to a reconciliation of opposites, a ‘chemical marriage’ (waṣl), that can figure or presage multifarious and compound expressions of ‘death and conception’, integration and ‘healing’, both internal and external (recall especially the developed play on waṣl in Poem 5.3.3). Otherwise, remaining with the figure of the mount, a shift in chemistry may simply be effected through self-projection on the kind of steed – war-horse, raider or hunter – that evinces integral partnership (intrinsic waṣl, the build-up and unleashed fury of inevitable jahl perfectly managed by the experienced rider, as exemplified in Poem 5.1), and that holds the promise of an alternative ‘coupling’, ‘death’ and ‘conception’; namely, ‘waṣl’ with sword and spear, and the ‘healing’ generated by conquest. Final: What Implications for Poetic Structure? Outlined above are merely a few of the representative patterns thrown up in the course of earlier analysis, which exhaust neither the line-up of, nor the variations and turns that may be played out by, poetic actors. The point to be underlined is that, generally speaking, such poems, with their multiple formations, are contingent on a personal, and sometimes deeply psychological expression of the ethos – the kernel of which is constituted in the ḥilm-jahl complex – and are better to be related to a psycho-physiological variation of the ‘rites of passage’ paradigm than to its sociological expression. If one accepts this, it becomes difficult to maintain the existence of a normative, ‘ritually determined’, tri-partite ur-pattern for the qaṣīda, which will manifest most perfectly in the form of nasīb/separation – raḥīl/liminality – madīḥ or fakhr/ aggregation – all at the cost of diminishing the representativeness of other patterns. One cannot even maintain, following the psycho-physiological variation, that one is, rather, dealing with a tri-partite ur-structure of nasīb/dissolution – raḥīl/liminality – madīḥ or fakhr (with threat, petition, complaint etc.)/integration + transcendence: A certain integration tends to be pursued, and is usually claimed in the course of a poem; but final transcendence is rarely indicated except in those cases where the poet boasts of this having been achieved (and then not necessarily within a third structural component),100 rather than it remaining contingent on a further act – promised, threatened, wished for, or demanded – which can definitively ‘heal the 100. As, for example, Poem 2.7, where the poet announces achievement of the ‘healing’ act of vengeance first, indirectly, through the opening campsite motif (vv. 1–2), and then, unequivocally, through the remainder of the poem; Poem 4.3, where transition from ‘limbo’ on a ‘journey’ that follows debilitating ṣibā, induced by bad faith (vv. 6–9), is signalled, indirectly again, through the next-juxtaposed campsite motif (v. 10), then explicitly announced in the subsequent paean to the recovery of ḥilm and the ‘healing’ waṣl of ideal brotherhood.

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wound’ – if, that is, circumstances permit.101 The one composite poem among the key samples of our analysis that conforms to such a tri-partite pattern – namely Poem 5.3.3, with nasīb, raḥīl, and a fakhr that demands and threatens – is a case in point. Following an extravagant prelude of psycho-physiological dissolution, and then a ‘journey’ culminating in the incisive re-establishment of his intellectual integrity, the poet reveals the case at issue by producing a counter-threat to what we finally may infer is the threat that humiliated and incensed him to the point of ‘melt-down’. That is to say, integration was basically re-asserted at the end of his ‘journey’ with an internal ‘coupling’ (waṣl) that accompanied a break (ṣarm) with the influence of the ‘poison’; but while the construction and delivery of the poem might offer the relief of a certain, face-saving self-resurrection and catharsis, complete transition, transcendence, or definitive ‘healing’ is nonetheless contingent on whether or not this will bring about the desired result: his antagonist’s capitulation. In this case, one might, instead, simply concede the prevalence of an essentially ternary chemistry – rooted in the ethical complex, and thus no doubt carrying ritual implications – but not such as always to manifest in its entirety, or necessarily determine the emergence of three structural poetic components that represent each stage of the cycle, one to three. Rather, poems emerge with as many structural components as the poet chooses, each with whatever colouring he chooses, draped, certainly on the ‘hanger’ of this ternary cycle, but according to the individual ‘cut’ of his circumstances and purpose; and, since the full transition to which he aspires may often as not, be elicited or projected, but not actually achieved, transcendence will, quite normally, remain contingent on a final act or response that lies beyond the parameters of the poem, tri-partite or otherwise. The trick then lies in weaving the ‘spell’ best designed, at least, to induce it or offset its elusion. It is with all these conclusions in mind that I will look finally to analyse that most enigmatic elephant in this room: the qaṣīda rhyming in lām, celebrated muʿallaqa of Imruʾ al-Qays, with all its structural and thematic singularities; but resting, as that does, on everything that emerges from this study and more, I consign it now to a forthcoming project.

101. This is not possible, for example in cases such as that of Poem 2.6, where the poet must come to terms with the irreversible march of decrepitude, and effectively concede that the only ‘cure’ ahead of him now is waṣl with the ‘far side’ in the transition to death. An alternative case is that of the ‘limbo’ of Shanfarā outlined shortly above in n. 28.

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General Index

Abbasid collectors, 31 ʿabd, ‘servant’, ‘slave’, 11, 12, 24 ʿAbda b. al-Ṭabīb (poet), 338 n32 ʿAbd Allāh b. Salima (poet), 313 n170 ʿAbd Manāf b. Ribʿ (poet), 276 n151 ʿAbd al-Masīḥ b. ʿAsala (poet), 219 n48 ʿAbd Qays b. Khufāf (poet), 123 n48, 268, 275 ʿAbd Yaghūth b. Waqqāṣ (poet), 109 n66 ʿAbīd b. al-Abraṣ (poet), 71, 73, 82 n11, 119 n25, 132 n83, 138 n103, 140 n108, 198 n45, 242 n26, 245 n37, 246 nn38–40 & nn42–43, 248 n49, 253 n68, 254 n71, 256 n75, 257 n82, 258, 271 n127 & n130, 289 n58, 307 & n147, 308 n153, 311 nn163–164, 360 Abraham (Qurʾanic prophet), 11 n32, 22 ʿAbs (tribe), 177, 178, 179 Abū Dhuʾayb (poet), 68 n189, 100 n33, 113 n87, 129 n69, 132 n82, 139 n106, 168 n90, 265 n104, 273, 274 n143, 275, 306 n144, 312 &n165, 313 Abu Deeb, Kamal, 74 & n212, 360 Abū Khirāsh al-Hudhalī, 232, 238, 294 n76, 296 n90 Abu-Lughod, Lila, 117 n13, 133 n85, 148 n9, 150 n12, 152 n21, 360 Abū al-Muthallam al-Hudhalī (poet), 141 Abū Qays b. al-Aslat al-Anṣārī (poet), 123 n48, 267 Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām al-Harawī, 239 n3 ʿĀd (legendary lost tribe), 103 &n49, 104, 172, 190 n20, 245 n37 aḍdād, ‘antagonyms’, 17, 18, 19, 28, 152, 330 ʿādhila, ‘blamer’ challenges virtue, 94 n2, 102, 105, 288 urges dishonourable thrift, 104 ʿAdī b. Zayd (poet), 124 n58 ʿadl, ‘justice’, 11 aghrāḍ al-shiʿr, the classical poetic divisions, 63. See also qaṣīda, thematic units

ʿahd (pl. ʿuhūd), ‘inviolable contract’, ‘oath’, 129 n69, 132 n82, 160, 161, 176, 180 n125 Ahlwardt, Wilhelm, 9 n27, 43 n53 & n57, 45 n62, 47, 59, 69, 70 n198, 71 n201 & n205, 72 n208, 82, 101 n37, 125, 127, 140 & n108, 143, 166, 185, 186, 195 n29, 206 n61, 226 n88, 242, 243, 248, 249 n54, 263, 264, 280, 299, 300, 303, 305, 310, 311, 313 n170, 316, 317 n178, 332 nn10–11, 333 n17, 359 & passim ajr, ‘wage’ as a ‘commercial theological term’, 26 al-Akhṭal (poet), 251, 257 n81, 272 n132, 276 n150, 334 n22, 360 Alʿas (place-name), 137, 138 Alden Maureen, 51 n94 & n96, 360 ʿAlqama b. ʿAbada (poet), 133 n84, 258 n86, 269, 272, 273, 292 n70, 311, 313, 332 & n11, 341, 360 al-Ālūsī, Maḥmūd Shukrī, 313, 360 ʿAmāyatān (place-name), 299, 301, 302, 304 Amīn, Aḥmad, 79, 81 n6, 360 Āmina b. ʿUtayba al-Yarbūʿī (poet), 237 ʿĀmir b. al-Ṭufayl (poet), 122 n43, 181, 269, 333, 360 ʿAmr b. al-Ahtam (poet), 173 n108, 175, 209 n67, 259, 260 ʿAmr b. Kulthūm (poet), 156 n43, 157 n46, 268 n118, 332 n15 ʿAmr b. Qamīʾa (poet), 97 n17, 134 & n86, 140 n108, 254 n71, 262 & n97, 269 n123, 270 & n125, 271 n128, 275 n144, 281 n22, 290 n63, 294 n79, 305 n141, 312 n166, 332 n15, 360 ʿĀna (place-name), 300, 311 ʿAntara b. Shaddād (poet), 123 n49, 219 & n50, 224 & n80, 296, 297 n96, 333 & n17 anthropomorphism, 39, 46, 159 n56, 282 ʿĀqil (place-name), 142, 143, 144, 299, 300, 310 ʿaql (# baʿth), ‘binding’. See also moral virtues; niẓām

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as ‘intellectual binding’ 80, 88, 228 faculties of reason, strung gems, 81 & n7, 172, 310, 331 as compact, figured by strung gems, 44, 67, 103, 162, 172, 179, 310, 331 supported by ḥilm, murūwa, 9, 10, 88, 89, 95, 119–20, 133, 161, 168, 189, 198, 280, 296, 310, 319, 321 dissolved by rayb, jahl, ‘sickness’, 9, 53, 89, 97, 98, 101, 119, 172, 175, 181, 198, 229, 230, 288, 290, 316 dissolution of, ‘gems’ slipping from their ‘thread’ (niẓām), 172, 175, 198 n44, 310 creates a barrier between spheres of Life and Death, 88, 171, 172 reintegration of, 288, 296, 354 ‘binding’ the balīya-camel in a compact against Death, 65 n164, 171, 177, 178 as bloodwit, ‘binding’ the dead, 177 & n118 figured by ‘cloaked’, inaccessible mountain, 170, 177, 232 emblemized by the mountain-ibex, 167, 331, 337 n28 as protective inner-casing of a well, 229–30 n102, 331 recovery of, and the recollection of drawn water, 89, 229–30 & n102 as a cutting sword (jurāz), 317–18 analogous constructs for compact. See bakra; raḥā; maysir-gambling, ribāba universal analogue. See falak, star-mill Aqrun (place-name?), 187, 190 Arabian Peninsula, 31, 187 n13 Arazi, Albert, 28 n94, 93 n1, 95 n11, 122 n47, 360 Arberry, Arthur J., 132 n82, 157 n46, 170 n98, 219–20 n50, 224 n80, 263 n100, 307 n150, 360 archetype, 39, 43 n56, 64, 66, 67, 74, 90, 271 n130, 345, 346 n67, 349, 350, 351, 355 arete, 79 al-Arīḍ (place-name), 242, 247, 248, 251, 252 al-ʿArīḍ (place-name), 242, 247, 248, 257 armām, tattered bonds of compact, 317 & n179. See also rimām; ‘tattered rope’ motif Armām (place-name), 300, 317 arrow feathering one’s arrow with the feather of another’s, symbolizes brotherhood, 54, 197

arrows pared and feathered with young birds’ feathers, 111 skilfully worked, poison-arrows figure enduring dispute, 112 n82 not to pare or feather, neither to profit nor injure, 112 n83 arrows of Death, 162, 296 n90 arrows of the treacherous beloved’s gaze, 192, 193, 204, 310 n162 divining arrows (azlām). See divination ‘arrows that do not miss’, evoke the hand of Death, 318–19 untipped, un-feathered arrows for gambling (qidāḥ). See maysir-gambling ‘arrow of excuse’. See divination oracle arrow. See divination aṣamm (pl. ṣumm), ‘deaf ’, ‘solid’ of virtuous men and the mountains, 108 & n62, 302 of al-Dahr, 108 ʿAsʿas (place-name), 137, 138 al-Aʿshā Maymūn b. Qays (poet), 290 n63, 301 & n125, 312 n165, 360 ʿashīra (pl. ʿashāʾir), close kin-group, 44 n60, 96 n15, 97, 98, 126, 265, 292 n70 ʿĀsim (place-name), 298 n99, 299, 303, 304 aslafa, vb. IV, ‘to pay for goods in advance’. See also aslama; salaf; salam as a ‘commercial theological term’, 26, 27 aslama, vb. IV. See also bakra; credit and debt; islām; salaf; salam as ‘self-betrayal’/ ‘defiance of death’, 20–24 ‘to render sthg the exclusive property’ of s.o. (hypothetical), 23 as a quasi-commercial concept, 27–28 synonym of sallafa (vb. II) and aslafa (vb. IV), ‘to pay for goods in advance’, 27 & n92 al-Aṣmaʿī, ʿAbd al-Malik b. Qurayb, 96 n14, 116, 172 n105, 183 n4, 239, 240, 271 nn127–128, 313 n170, 332 n15, 360 ass, wild. See onager al-Aswad b. Yaʿfur (poet), 97 n17, 267 n111, 305 n140 ataraxia, 10, 79 athām, ‘punishment for a sin’. See ithm authenticity, question of, 32, 39, 81 Avestan dēn. See dīn ʿAwf b. al-Aḥwaṣ (poet), 109 n66, 209 n67 ʿAwf b. ʿAṭīya (poet), 128 n68, 223 n73, 231 n104

General Index Awlad ʿAli, on the imperative of visiting kin in times of sickness and trouble, 117 n13 on tears and ʿagl, 133 n85 on earning moral authority, 148 n9 on lineage and honour-linked values, 150 n12 on generosity (kurama), 152 n21 Aws b. Ḥajar (poet), 59, 269 al-ʿAzl (place-name), 196, 197 bāʿa, vb. I, ‘to sell’ as a ‘commercial theological term’, 26 al-Badī (place-name), 241, 242, 248, 251 Badr (place-name), 235, 300 badr, ‘full moon’. See also ghurra figures virtue with the light called ghurra, 111, 113, 148 al-Baghdādī, ʿAbd al-Qādir b. ʿUmar, 165 n78, 166 n82, 167 n85 bakhs, ‘loss’ as a ‘commercial theological term’, 26 bakra, ‘rotary well-pulley’. See also waterimagery and covenant, 28, 53, 89 figures the ‘sickness’ or ‘health’ of community, 165 n80, 188, 217, 218 & nn41–43, 228, 297 n97, 321 figures physical and moral resources of an individual, 217, 218–219 & n47, 219 figures the ‘tug’ (khalj) of evil doubt (hamm), 291 n68, 292 & n69 the parts and structure thereof, 216, 217 & nn38–41, 218–19 & n47, 227–29 as battle-machine, 89, 211, 216 & n36, 217, 220, 233 n112, 235 n116, 262 figures endeavour of a camel in travel, 218 n47, 291 & n67, 292. See also ostrich figures raiding horse and warrior, 211–30 suspensory devices of, and the ḥilm/ jahl process, 228–29, 258, 321 the fractured well-rope, ‘sickness’, ‘betrayal’, 229–30 & n99 synthesis of, with ‘pulley’ of the skies, 227, 321. See also nawʾ central pin securing the axle (qabb), a figure for chief or ruler, 331–32 analogous constructs. See ʿaql; raḥā; maysirgambling, ribāba universal analogue. See falak, ‘star-mill’

371

and Qurʾanic covenant, islām, al-ʿurwa al-wuthqā, 342–43 Qurʾanic transformation and a well-pail called salm, 343 n55 early Islamic transformations of, 342–43 & n51 al-Bakrī, 241 nn11–12, 270 n126, 360 balīya, ‘grave-camel’, 64, 88, 147 ritual of, 65 n164, 171 & n101, 172 bound at the grave (by ʿaql) to seal off the dead, 171 figures a tie of jār to jār in a compact of death, 171, 177, 178 & n120 figures the helpless widow, hostage to Death, 178–79 & n121, 267 n113 metaphorical state of those bound to ‘pay’ for blood, 178–81 bāna, vb. I, ‘separate’ (intrans.), ‘part’, a matter of distress, rayb of kin, 98 of souls, and youth, figured as kin, 139–40 & n106 of a kinsman leaving to death, 181 n130. See also bayn Baneth, David, Z. H., 23, 25, 361 Banū ʿĀmir, 241 n12 Banū Asad, 40 n40, 142 nn118–119, 166 n82, 177, 241 n12, 336 Banū ʿAwf, 148, 149, 155, 157, 158, 159 Banū al-Dayyān, 332 Banū Faqʿas, 272 n133 Banū Ḥanẓala, 148, 149, 150 & n13, 155, 189, 194 Banū Ḥujr b. ʿAmr, 94 n5, 116, 109 n64 Banū Saʿd, 40 Banū al-Ṣaydāʾ , 43, 44, 69 Banū Shuraḥbīl, 158 n54 Banū Thuʿal. See Thuʿal Barājim (tribe), 153 Bashāma b. ʿAmr (poet), 65, 174, 218 n47 Bashāma b. al-Ghadīr (poet), 291 n67 Bashshār b. Burd (poet), 329 n3 baʿth (# ʿaql), ‘releasing’, ‘sending’ tampering with a protective binding of compact, 167, 171, 180 unbinding a camel’s shank and releasing it, 167, 171, 180 release of the balīya-camel from the grave, 171 release of the death-principle into the living world, 171

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Qurʾanic transformation of, sending out the dead (resurrection), 172 ‘battle-ode’. See ẓaʿn baʿuda, vb. I, ‘to remove to a distance’ implies fateful separation (bayn) and strangerhood (ghurba), 192, 252. See also buʿd Bauer, Thomas 31 n1, 33 n8, 55 nn108–109, 56 & nn110–112 & n116, 57, 59, 62, 81 n9, 168 n90, 230 n99, 285 n35, 361 bawāʾ, ‘equal ransom’, 109 n66, 337 n28 bayʿ, ‘sale’, ‘bargain’ as a ‘commercial theological term’ to ‘purchase’ immortality, 25, 26, 27 as a jāhilī ethico-commercial concept for ‘purchasing’ immortal fame, 28 n94 bāyaʿa, vb. III, ‘to contract a bargain’ contracting to the covenant of Islam (‘commercial theological term’), 25, 26 pledging the oath of allegiance in Islam, 26 bayn, ‘separation’ between kinsmen and neighbours (jīrān) See also bāna instigated by al-Dahr, 93, 247 announced by the raven, 101, 301 linked with shaym (studying the lightning for rain), 119, 252 implies rayb, ‘sickness’, betrayal, death, 87, 101, 113, 116, 118, 119, 131, 139, 156, 192, 198, 206, 247, 252, 253, 257, 258, 288, 290, 308, 310, 314 figures ‘departure’ of youth and vital faculties, 139–40 & n106 bedouin, 5 n9, 36, 79, 117 n13, 148 n9, 239 n3, 341 n48 Beeston, Alfred, 267 n112 Bettini, Lidia, 9 n27, 361 betrayal. See ghadr; bukhl birr, ‘piety’ in compact, 125, 197, 206, 312, 318 n181. See also moral virtues. Bishr b. Abī Khāzim (poet), 39–46, 60–61, 62, 66, 96 n15, 115, 118 n16, 129 n69 & n71, 133 n84, 145 n126, 154 n35, 159 n56, 162, 170 n98, 190 n21, 191 n24, 200 n49, 201, 216, 226 n85, 233–34 n114, 235 n116, 257, 267–68, 274 n142, 278 n9, 309 n157, 333–34 Bishr b. ʿAmr (poet), 61–62, 199–200, 308–9 blamer. See ʿādhila blood, sacrificial. See religion blood of kings. See kalab

blood price. See bawāʾ blood vengeance, 6, 87, 100, 143, 144, 162, 172, 264, 266, 285, 336–37 & nn27–28 as ‘healing’, 106 & n56, 109, 114, 143, 145, 356 n100 given ethical priority, ‘healing’ becomes sinful ‘sickness’, 337 n28 and ‘giving to drink’. See isqāʾ redemptive of life, 178, 179, 181, 254, 255, 328–29 n2 wine permissible after, implying divine sanction, 201, 206, 331 bond of union: see waṣl; wiṣāl; ḥabl Booth, Wayne C., 52 n100, 361 Borg, Gert, 70–71 n199, 252 n62, 361 bow. See also hunting of the archer, Death, made of nasham-wood (Grewia velutina), 111 of the treacherous beloved’s eyes, 192 Bowersock, Glen, 104 n51, 361 Bräunlich, Erich, 217 n41, 361 Bravmann, Meir M., 3, 8, 18–24, 28, 106 n54, 107 n59, 184 n6, 342, 343, 361 Brodeur, Patrice, 3 n3, 361 Brunschvig, Robert, 177 n118, 361 buʿd, ‘distance’. See also naʾy and the concept/ land of perdition, 140, 185, 253, 337 n30 implying separation (bayn), ‘sickness’, strangerhood, 156, 253, 279, 291 rendered ‘near’ the in context of a compact in death, 184, 186, 253 būha, ‘owl’. See also hām; ṣadā epitomizing the inverse of murūwa, 99, 100, 117, 201, 303 Buhl, Frants, 103 n49, 361 al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, 244 n32, 361 bukhl, ‘niggardliness’ implies treachery and ‘sickness’, evil (sharr) 80, 88, 127n66, 147, 148, 149, 152, 153, 154, 156, 160, 175, 207, 303 as failure to act in the interests of the jār, 148, 149, 154, 194 typically epitomised by female gender, 173, 183, 206, 207, 289, 299 n119, 328 of the worst kind, having given to hope, 196, 198 emblemized by female, implies communal weakness and dishonour, 204

General Index poetic ‘shorthand’ for malign acts, 161, 192, 193 intrinsic aggression of, 193, 289, 306 Caesar, 116, 140 Camel. See also raḥīl; rāḥila; mount; saddleimagery proposed as symbol of the poet’s self and cosmos, 64, 65 debated as concomitant of the ‘liminal hunt’, 68–70 stallion figures virility, 137, 243, 262, 283–84 riding camel compared to a water-drawer at the pulley. See bakra ‘riding camels’ (rawāḥil) of the faculties, 164 & n77 riding camels of the ḥilm/ jahl process. See mount care of milch-camels emblematic of the protection of interests, 140, 164, 169 ‘milch-camel clouds’. See weather, language of slaughter camel (jazūr). See maysirgambling Allāh’s she-camel (nāqat Allāh), 340–41 camel-theme. See raḥīl camps. See dār Cantwell Smith, Wilfred, 17 n45 Caskel, Werner, 93, n1, 361 celestial sphere. See falak Cheikho, Louis, 233 n110, 334 n23, 361 clothing-imagery youth as a ‘garment’, 140 n108, 270 & n125 progressive aging as ‘altered garments’, 140 & n108 ‘pure garments’ symbolise pure good faith and honour, 155, 157–58 decayed garment, and ruined reputation, 180 Yamanī garments (waṣāʾil) figure tight-knit unity, 170 & n97 ‘cloaked’ mountain figures secure, protective compact, 170, 245 ‘enshrouding’, and sheltering from evil, 244 & n31, 245 shiʿār and dithār (inner and outer garments), and compact, 166 & n81

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dithār as protective cover of a compact, 163, 166 shiʿār as a figure for cloying anxiety (hamm), 166 n83, 176 talabbus, ‘attiring’, figures clinging cares, 279 garments (thiyāb), armour, weapons, any protection, 224 & n81 ‘ragged tatters’, a widow, analogy of the balīya, 178–79 & n121, 267 n113 ‘donning’/ ‘wearing out’ ‘garments’ that are kinspeople, 178 n120 ‘two garments’, figure a compact, 166 n81 separating the robes, dissolving a compact, 166 n81 ‘touching the robe’ (mass al-thawb) expresses rayb, 245 n37 tearing at a holy man’s robe, and seeking benediction, 278, 283 wind-raised sudūs-garments evoked from moulting onagers, 287, 294 clouds. See weather, language of Cobb, Paul M., 103 n49, 361 collyrium as salve for ocular affliction, 122 metaphorical of night as ‘unguent’ of the wakeful eye, 122 & n44 used cosmetically on the gums, 287 & n53 commercial theological terms of the Qurʾan. See credit and debt covenant (pre-Islamic). See also ʿahd; dhimām; dhimma; jār; waṣl sacred, 40, 41, 42, 80, 132, 165, 192, 200, 201, 331, 333, 335, 336 as kinship involving human and divine, 6, 20, 145, 154, 335–38 community quasi-organically connected, 89, 98 & n20, 105–6, 313, 320, 344 a ‘commercial’ transaction of mutual redemption. See fidāʾ; maysir-gambling redemption and betrayal expressed in gambling. See maysir-gambling covenant for life. See waṣl, benign covenant of death. See waṣl, negative ‘cutting the bond’. See ṣarm poetical constructs for. See ʿaql; bakra; raḥā; maysir-gambling, ribāba universal analogue. See falak, star-mill

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man as microcosm of the universal construct of compact, 331–35 Qurʾanic transformation of, 339–44 credit and debt universal scheme of. See maysir-gambling ‘commercial theological terms’ of the Qurʾan, 22, 24–28, 339–41 jāhilī ethico-commercial concepts. See bawāʾ; bayʿ; fidāʾ; ḥasab; jazāʾ; qarḍ; rahn and the commitment to redemption. See fidāʾ commercial exchange and the progressively revoked benedictions (niʿam) of life, 138, 140 permanent ‘acquisit​ion’ (qinwa) not for trading, figures state of death, 140–41 and Mauss’ theory of ‘total prestation’, 344–45 Crone, Patricia, 336 n26, 361 Cunnison, Ian, 345 n61 dāʾ, ‘sickness’, 53, 105, 121, 122, 132, 135 n91, 139, 140, 177, 199, 218 n42, 224 n78, 228, 230 n99, 244, 264, 283, 288, 297, 303, 327. See also sickness al-Dahr, ‘Time’, ‘Fate’, ‘Death’. See also manīya; al-Manūn key qualities, 93–114 and rayb, source of ‘doubt’, fear, demoralisation, 97, 98, 115, 116, 119, 120, 132, 138–39, 140, 141, 189, 194, 195, 244, 258, 259, 260, 266, 279, 284, 285, 309. See also shakk; rawʿ instigator of ‘separation’, 40, 98, 113, 131, 192. See also bayn as ghūl, 94, 95, 108 as ultimate bringer of ‘change’ and destruction (tabaddul, iḥālā), 94, 126, 131, 167, 170, 176, 177, 188, 189, 245, 304 as archer, 110–14, 273 as hunter and dogs, 108, 273 as predator with ‘talons’, ‘dog-teeth’, and ‘claws’ (makhālib, anyāb, aẓfār), 108, 109, 233, 282 as ‘rabid’. See kalab its effects are ‘sickness’ (dāʾ, suqm), 93, 101, 109, 114, 116, 117, 118, 126, 128, 131, 132, 140, 152 as a ‘crippler’ 134, 246–47

personified, commands the ‘trade’ in life, ‘prizing’ the most virtuous, 141 contracted to collect the ‘pledges’ (rihān) of life, 97, 147, 265–66. See also maysirgambling and time with no specified end, 237 n127 only al-Dahr acknowledged as taker of life, 337 as universal ‘gambler’. See maysir-gambling dār (pl. diyār), ‘community-abode’, ‘camp’ key associations, 93–145 implies ‘healing’ kinship in opposition to Time (al-Dahr), 87, 118, 126–27 136, 138, 141, 301, 305 attests to the inhabitants’ qualities, 87, 115, 129 exile from, implies ‘sickness’, 87, 118 abodes of the virtuous secure, irrespective of location, 126–28 & n68 abodes of the abject are insecure, irrespective of location, 126 n65, 128 traces of, evoke scriptures, legal ordinances, 132 & n82 traces, and the ambivalence of ʿafā (to be perceptible/ imperceptible), 131 still-visible traces arouse ‘sickness’, imply a story in play, 131, 304, 244 fully-effaced traces imply a story’s end, 143, 203–4 deserted, resonant of Death’s preserve, 138 as element of naṣīb, foil for ethical elaboration/ moral combat, 87, 131, 145 as blackened by dung (diman), 314 & n173 dār muqām, establishing the enduring abode of faith, 301, 309, 319, 344 Qurʾanic transformation of dār muqām to dār al-muqāma, the Abode of Eternity, 344 Ḍārij (place-name), 242, 247, 248, 256, 260 Dārim (tribe), 153 Darwinian evolutionary theory, 50 dawāʾ, ‘cure’, 135 & n92, 224, 230 & n101. See also healing; shifāʾ dawn as liberation from the ‘long night’, 45 and hostilities, 117, 259, 281 and the horses of the end-times, 236 n120 in transitional sequences, 131, 262 and auroral showers, 216, 242, 261

General Index and failed rains, 274–75 & n143. See also nawʾ dead souls veneration of, 6 as travellers packed up and gone ahead, 73 and a parallel ‘covenant’ of ‘strangerhood’ (ghurba) and ‘distance’ (buʿd), 138–39, 183–86, 200, 253, 337–38 n30 as ‘ghost-owls’, 44–45 & n61, 100, 103, 107, 119, 139–40 n106, 143, 172 imperative of proper burial, 179–81. See also balīya; ʿaql intimacy of the heritage of the dead with the living, 105–7 & n57, 335–38 departure. See bāna; bayn; ẓaʿn ‘derogatory pronoun’ (ḍamīr li-l-dhamm), 106 & n54 description, 32, 46–47, 52 n100, 56 & n116, 59, 64, 65, 66 & n174, 69, 74 n211, 83, 211, 218 n47, 238, 264, 325–26. See also raḥīl; waṣf; mentality; metaphor; mount; simile dhimām, ‘covenantal bonding’. See also covenant; waṣl as figure for sacred pledge of fidelity, 40, 42, 43, 147 n3, 200, 201 dhimma, ‘covenant’ See also covenant; waṣl as contractual duty, 61–62, 148, 157, 163, 165, 180 as ‘preserving bond’ (ʿiṣām), 163, 165 as ‘protecting outer-garment’ (dithār), 166 ‘plundered’ by the ‘eagle’, 167 contravention of, a ‘sickness’ (dāʾ), 199 n48 failure to fulfil, emasculating, 199–200 & n48 Dhū Aqdām, hill of (place-name), 299, 302, 319 Dhū al-Khalaṣa (oracle), 336 n27 Dhū al-Majāz, site of a fair during sacred months, 41 & n43, 132 n82 Dhū Nuwās (Yemenite king), 94 Dhū al-Qarnayn, 170, 236, 237 Dhū al-Rimth (place-name), 278 Dhū Riyāsh (Yemenite king), 94 Dhū al-Rumma, 274–75 n143, 313 n169, 361 dhubāb (pl. dhibbān), ‘flies’ figuring a collective fighting body, 105 figuring enemies, 223 n75 dhull (# ʿizz), abasement implies moral and physical susceptibility, 95, 96, 129

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dīn. See also religion; murūwa allegedly a foreign loan word, 3 & n3, 330 as ‘local variety’ of an ‘international term’, 17 n45 as a ‘reified’, communal expression in the jāhilīya, 16 as polyvalent, antagonymic, Arabic denotation, 17–18, 28, 330 as complementary with murūwa, 19–20, 29 implies multiple opposing perspectives of ethical discussion and the Life-Death struggle, 191, 320, 321, 330–31 drives murūwa as the practice of a law for life, 90, 321, 329–31 as requital, 187, 201, 207 as ‘sickness’, 191 curative, 191, 195, 320 dīn of a traitor to compact, deemed untrustworthy, 199, 309 as corrective, purificatory exertion, 201–2, 205, 320 integrality of war and the honour-ethic to, 220 & n51, 333 maysir-gambling integral to, 333 poetry the voice of, 338 confluence with dayn (‘debt’), and the holistic ‘commercial’ paradigm, 330 divination divination by arrow-casting (istiqsām), 267 n112, 336 n27 with stones, 244 for rain (shaym). See lightning with the ‘arrow of excuse’ (sahm al-iʿtidhār) in regard of blood-mulct, 331 n7 by oracle, 336 n27 divining arrows (azlām), 239, 340 n36 Dmitriev, Kirill, 57, 58, 59 n125, 93 n1, 361 Dozy, Reinhart, P. A., 6 dūd, ‘grubs’, ‘worms’ figuring a collective community, 105 Dūdān (tribal affiliate of Asad), 142 Durayd b. al-Ṣimma (poet), 96 n14, 329 n2 Durkheim, Emile, 7, 8, 336, 361 eagle collocation with ghāra (raiding), 70, 223–34 as extension of mounted warrior, 71, 72, 223–34

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figures prey’s ‘sickness’, manifests the predator, Time, 135, 232–33 focus on talons (makhālib) evokes the ‘raptor’, Death (see al-Dahr), 233 figures relative virtue and power, according to relative height from which it descends, 164–65, 168–69, 225 attack of, figures a despoliation of covenant (dhimma), 166–67 stooping, analogue of a descending storm, 256 stooping ‘on broken wing’, equates to the descent of a loaded pail when ties fracture, 85, 227–28, 231–32, 256 concept of descending ‘on broken wing’ (equating to storm, and horse-borne incursion), heralded by celestial, and internal, ‘fracture’, 260 Eisenstein, Sergei, 38 El Cheikh, Nadia Maria, 329 n3, 361 elegy, 68, 103, 113 n87, 133 n84, 141, 179, 253, 265 n104, 273, 275, 296 n90, 304, 307, 328–29 n2 El Masri, Ghassan, 249 n54, 361 epithets, 56, 65, 66 n176, 68, 101 n37, 184 n6, 203, 214, 216, 223, 225, 234, 238, 266 n107, 278 n9, 291, 295, 307, 315 ethic of the jāhilīya. See murūwa Evans-Pritchard, Edward E., 66, 70, 84, 337–38 n30, 361 evolutionary theory, 33, 50, 58 Ezz El-Din, Hassan El-Banna, 42 n51, 59, 60–62, 172 n103, 200 n49, 309 n157, 361–62 Fabian, Johannes, 58, 362 Fahd, Toufic, 106 n57, 234 n115, 235 n118, 237 n125, 239 n3, 240 n8, 267 n112, 362 fakhr, ‘praise’, ‘self-praise’, 32, 35, 41, 60, 67, 69, 74, 83, 345, 356, 357 falak, ‘celestial sphere’ and the rain. See nawʾ (rainstars) Banāt Naʿsh, ‘Daughters of the Bier’, 215 n33, 227, 334 North Celestial Pole, 215 n33 north geographical pole, 275 n143 Capella (al-ʿAyyūq), ‘neighbour’ (jār) of al-Thurayyā, 273, 274 & n142 Orion (al-naẓm), 273, 274 & n142

Pleiades, 107 n57, 216, 233 n112, 274–75 & nn142–143, 275 n144, 334. See also nawʾ, al-Thurayyā Perseus, 275 n143 Cassiopeia, 275 n143 Pegasus, 227 Mansions of the Moon. See nawʾ Farqadān, ‘the two calves’ (β, η, Ursa Minor), 332 al-Jady, Polestar, celestial axis (quṭb - α, Ursa Minor), 332, 334 ‘star-mill’: central axis (quṭb) and fixed stars, universal construct for the covenant, analogue of ʿaql, bakra, raḥā, 331–35 central axis (quṭb) related to chiefdom, kingship, 332 and ritual circumambulation (dūwār), 331, 335, 336 al-Farazdaq, Tammām b. Ghālib, 273 n135, 362 al-Fard (place-name), 142, 143 Farès, Bichr, 4, 7, 8 & n23, 10, 18, 96 n13, 362 farīṣa (pl. farāʾis)/ farīṣ, mortal spots, 111 113, 288 295. See also heart fatā (pl. fityān), young brave, 8, 28, 131, 139 n106, 198 n45, 267 Fate(s). See manīya fawz, a win at gambling. See maysir-gambling al-fawz al-ʿaẓīm, the Great Sweep (contracting to Islam), 26, 341 fidāʾ, ‘ransom’, ‘redemption’. See also bawāʾ; credit and debt; isqāʾ implies a pledge of reciprocal, selfsacrificial endeavour, 87, 138, 161, 165, 172, 187, 188, 190, 193, 258, 281, 312, 332, 333 intrinsic to the maysir-paradigm, 89, 254, 255, 267, 312, 320, 333, 339 ironically turned, 101 ransom of the prisoner, 119, 161, 268, 279 in love, 204, 207, 268, 305–6, 314 includes the horse, 215 and the hold of the phantom, 173, 177, 192 and Death, 97 n17 balīya-camel as ransom/ self-ransom, 177–79 of the dead, 107 n57, 114, 179, 181, 253–55 Qurʾanic transformation of, 27 n90, 339–41

General Index focalization, 51 fox, 71 Freytag, Georg, W. F., 8 n22, 10 n30, 282 n26, 332 n16, 362 Friedrich, Paul, 4, 77 n1, 362 Gardet, Louis, 3 n3, 362 Gaster, Theodor, 74 Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Maurice, 3 n3 Gauthier-Pilters, Hilde, 262 n97, 289n61, 362 van Gelder, Geert Jan H., 31 n2, 63 n151, 74 n211, 122 n46, 329 n3, 362 gender flexible, relative, 321, 327–29 & nn2–3 un-manning, and ethico-religious failure, 62, 95, 183, 199–200 & n48, 201, 207, 209, 230 n99, 297–98, 308–9, 317, 328 disempowerment and un-manning, 328–29 & n2 erotic charge in the resolution to conflict, 119–20, 127–28, 195, 207, 262, 291, 319, 329 n3 sexual teasing figures aggression, 193, 195, 289 in negotiating conflict, and banishing ‘disorder’, 55, 62, 88, 89, 95, 130, 150, 156–57, 174, 193, 209, 262–63, 285, 292–98, 297–98, 328–29 & n3 and Life-Death combat, 89, 95, 193, 195, 199, 209, 284, 297–98, 321, 326–28 quasi-erotic dynamics in nature, 248–49, 257, 281 and waṣl and ṣarm (bonding in, severance from, compact), 88, 90, 183, 186, 209, 277, 297, 321, 328–29, 355–56 and iqāma and ẓaʿn (abiding, departing), See ẓaʿāʾin and the ḥilm/ jahl process, 89, 90, 321, 326–29, 355–56 and sacred honour (ʿirḍ). See palm-imagery gendered creature-oppositions of the poetical journey, 230 n48, 292–98 gendered constellations of persona, mediated via the saddle, 292–98, 316–18, 355–56 femaleness contained and unleashed, 327–28 and al-manāyā (female), 198, 283, 319, 328 and the nasīb. See nasīb

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van Gennep, Arnold, 68, 74, 346 Ghāḍir (place-name), 299, 303, 314 ghadr (# wafāʾ) ‘treachery’ poetic spectrum of, 43, 44, 69, 80, 88, 95, 96, 113, 149, 150, 152, 153 n23 & n25, 154, 156, 160, 173, 178, 180, 181, 189, 193, 194, 195, 198, 201, 204, 206, 207, 225, 229, 256, 284, 290, 313, 314, 318 n181, 320 and the binding of compact. See ‘tattered rope’ motif implies dishonour and weakness, 44, 88, 96, 149, 152, 153 n25 un-mans the treacherous, 62, 150 n13, 199–200 & n48, 201, 207, 209, 230 n99, 297–98, 308–9 destroys pedigree, 149–50 &n13, 154–55 promotes what contradicts ‘good’ (i.e., sharr, ‘evil’), 150 n13, 152, 153 n23, 154 perceived as sin deserving punishment, 41–45, 128–29, 145, 154 & n194 blameless ‘betrayal’, 114, 133, 229, 327, 328 ghāra, raid ‘wide-spreading’ variety, 211–38, as destructive storm-flood. See horse; weather, language of ritual ghara, 234 & n115 evoked by allusion to an elevated watchpoint (marqab), 224, 242, 259 gharīb (pl. ghurabāʾ), stranger, non-relation inverted in context of compact in death, 183–86 gharāba (# qarāba) ‘strangerhood’, 253 Ghassān (tribe), 94, 95, 96 Ghaṭafān (tribe), 187, 190, 191, 195 ghazal, ‘love poetry’, 48, 49, 54, 55 & nn108–109. See also nasīb Ghazīya (tribe), 96 n14 Ghawl (place-name), 137, 138 ghūl, shape-changing demon conceptual, 64, 66 equated with al-Dahr, Death, 94, 95, 97, 101, 105, 108, 174, 176, 182, 319 dissolves the intellect, 95, 97, 128, 129, 134, 173, 175, 180, 207 femaleness of, 95 & n10, 107 n58 ghurāb, ‘raven’ and bayn (separation), 101, 301 and the black locks of youth, 101 & n37

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ghurba, the state of feeling strangerhood and distance (buʿd) from the native abode, implying ‘sickness’, 116, 126, 156, 184–86, 279, 280, 281, 289, 328 inverted for covenant with the ‘far side’, 184–86, 328. See also waṣl, inverted ghurra, ‘blaze’ light of the stars and moon, figuring virtue in men, 113, 155, 158, 215, 332 horse’s blaze, figuring generosity, 212, 215, 216, 219 Gog and Magog, 94, 236, 237 n127 Goitein, Shelomo Dov, 19, 23, 362 Goldstein, Joshua S., 329 n3, 362 Goldziher, Ignác, 3–7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 72, 79, 339, 362 Gombrich, Ernst H., 57, 362 ḥabl (pl. ḥibāl), ‘rope of covenant’, 43, 49, 52, 54, 72, 94, 153 n25, 165, 175, 188, 191, 192, 197, 208 n64, 312, 342. See also bakra; waṣl; ṣarm; ‘tattered rope’ motif al-Ḥādira (poet), 309, 312 n165 Ḥāʾil (place-name), 142, 143, 163, 164, 169, 287, 295 hair (and virtue) forelocks of horses, 214, 223, 234, 235 & n116, 236, 237, 238, 260 n90 forelocks of men 235 & n117 Ḥājib b. Ḥabīb (poet), 221 & n57 Ḥākim b. Umayya (poet), 343 n55 ḥalīm, adj., implying developed, masculine virtue. See also ḥilm spectrum of assessments on, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 15, 20, 230, 284, 321, 330 of God in the Qurʾan, 9, 11, of prophets in the Qurʾan, 11 n32 Hall J. B., 289 n60, 290 n65, 362 hām, ‘skulls’, ‘ghost-owls’. See also, ṣadā and the dead, 28 n94, 44, 139 n106, 172 and the unavenged, requiring redemptive ‘drink’ (isqāʾ), 100, 103, 162 ḥamḍ (# khulla), ‘salt pasture’, halophytes known as ‘flesh-meat’ of the camel, 295 n85 as a ‘cure’ for ‘intoxication’ by ‘sweet pasture’ (khulla), 99 n29, 289–90, 294–96 hamm (pl. humūm), ‘cares’. See also sickness

as ‘sickness’ that flocks by night, 133, 176, 244 & n31, 288, 290 implies obsessive preoccupation, 166 n83, 187, 190, 195, 287, 292, 293, 300 ‘tugs’ (khalj), like hands at the waterpulley, 279, 291 & n68, 292. See also bakra renders a man a balīya, locked to Death, 177. See also balīya as an active agent of vengeance, ‘sickness’ flocking the enemy, 190–91, 318 Hammond, Marlé, 329 n2, 362 Hamori, Andras, 36, 37, 38, 74 n215, 345, 362 Ḥāqa (place-name), 116, 117 n14 Ḥarba (place-name), 40 hare as quarry, 71 paw ironically invoked as talisman, 99, 100 al-Ḥārith b. ʿAmr (Kindite king), 103 al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza (poet), 108 n62, 121 n42, 123 n51, 132 n82, 170 n98, 177, 178, 190 n19, 244–45, 263 & n100, 264, 271 n128, 283, 314 al-Ḥārith b. Jabala (Ghassānid king), 272, 332, 341 al-Ḥārith b. Ẓālim (poet), 223 n75 ḥasab, ‘worth’. See also moral virtues built up like a capital source, 148 predicated on good faith (wafāʾ), 87, 147, 149, 155, 170, 207 lost through failure to fulfil compact, 147, 151, 153, 154, 168, 180 n125 and lofty, mountain heights, 189–90 and the tree that gives shade, 224–25 & nn81–82 ḥaṣar, ‘shortfall’ (in compact) connotes ‘niggardliness’ (bukhl), 148, 201 implies ‘sin’ (ithm), failure to offer wine or slaughter-camels to kin, 125, 201 hawā (pl. ahwāʾ), ‘passion’ distinct from ethical love (ḥubb, wudd), 45–46, 48, 52, 54, 55 aligned with treachery and ‘sickness’ (dāʾ), 132 n82, 46, 52, 53 equates to juvenile folly (ṣibā), jahl, 14, 198, 46 destructive, incompatible with ḥilm and honour, 54–55, 198 & n45 may imply quasi-gendered antipathy, 62, 182, 193, 195, 313, 319, 328

General Index ḥawḍ, ‘cistern’, protected water symbol of a thriving community, 106–7 n57, 112 n84, 123, 132–33, 188, 217, 218, 326 breakage of the cistern and disaster 112 n84, 172 as ‘water of death’, 111, 112, 295 of the celestial Pole, 227 Islamic transformation of, 342 hawk, 43, 70, 72, 284 Haydar, Adnan, 74, 362 healing/ health. See also sickness and virtue, 4, 87, 88, 89, 90, 105, 110, 114, 120, 134, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 161, 173, 182, 188, 192, 198, 205, 207, 217, 230, 297, 317, 321, 326, 328, 329, 330, 342, 345, 346, 354, 355, 357 of the wolf, 105 avoidance/ equalisation of corruption, 110, 114 and vengeance, 106 & n56, 109 & n66, 143–44, 190, 194, 195, 206, 264, 266, 337 n28 and ritual purity, 89, 90, 145, 155, 206, 283, 313, 320, 321 and sacrifice, 283 & n31, 312, 330 as dissipation of fear and anxiety, 117 and relief of the eyes from burning, 144 promoted by proximity to kin, 117, 120, 127, 138, 185 & n8, 193, 253, 281 as hunting/ raiding, 119, 135, 174, 176, 262 as appeasement of hunger, 135 & n92, 224, 230 as sexual gratification, 119, 128, 193, 262, 305, 306, 311, 327 as gratification of the senses (perfume, good wine), 281 & n21, 305–06, 311, 313 ‘healing’ verbal abuse, 122, 126, 357 concept inverted with compact (waṣl) in death, 186 as ‘communion’ (waṣl) in death, in preference to old age, 139, 141, 357 n101. See also waṣl, inverted as conquest in combat 123, 191, 262, 356, 357 See also waṣl, negative as the ‘cure’ of salt pasture, 289–90, 295–96. See also ḥamḍ as ‘drinking’/ ‘giving to drink’. See isqāʾ; water-imagery heart. See also farīṣa; saddle-imagery

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receptacle of ethical love (wudd, hubb), 40, 119, 133 n84 prime focus of the hunter/predator, 71, 72, 295, 296 n90, 317 hunter aims for it via the mortal spot (farīṣa), 111, 113, 295 as object of ‘hunt’ by the ‘beloved’, 207 n64, 310 n162, 319 microcosm of the kinsperson (jār) in the host-body, 124, 125, 126, 316 poetic focus for rayb (Time’s doings), and care, 97, 175, 176, 259, 300, 302, 316 commotion of, figured by fluttering, ‘fractured’ wing, 246–47, 259–60 recalcitrant (not muqṣir) by reason of host’s guilt, 124, 316 in tow, equated to a mount reined in (muqṣir), 72, 73, 317 recalcitrant (not muqṣir), figured by refractory ‘mount’, 316–17 exposure of the ‘heart’ of an abode. See ostrich, egg ‘heart’ as central figure within a community, 331 heart, mind, potency of the man, microcosm of the communal unit, 115, 188, 326–27 as microcosm of the universal epicentre. See falak, star-mill Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegelian evolutionary theory, 50, 57 Hegel’s Aesthetic 58 n124 van der Heijden, Jeroen, P. J., 51, 362 hijāʾ, ‘invective’, 32, 60, 83, 329 n3 Hijaz, 20, 40 n41 ḥilm (pl. aḥlām) as counterpoise to jahl, 4 as mutually exclusive to jahl, 5, 10–11, 36 complementary, rather, with jahl, part of a process, 11, 14, 15–16, 29, 45, 72, 73, 90, 228, 230 & n100, 258, 266, 304, 320, 329–30, 347 & n69 hypothesized element of ʿirḍ exclusive to the sayyid, 7 hypothesized ‘pre-religious precursor’ of islām, 5, 9, 11–13 as Qurʾanic hubris, located with ‘ignorance’ (jahl) and ‘unbelief ’ (kufr), 12, 14 semantic field of, diminished in Islam, 16, 330 & n5, 339 & n33

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superseded by ʿilm as counterpoint to Qurʾanic jahl, 15, 339 & n33 superseded by jihād as intellectual and behavioural counterforce to Qurʾanic jahl, 14–15 of the Prophet Muḥammad, 15 n41 of the One God, 11–12, 330 supports ʿaql (intellectual integration), 10, 95,97, 98, 119, 120, 129, 175, 194, 198, 288, 319, 321 accompanies recovery of moral balance, 37, 89, 197, 198, 205, 206, 230, 317, 321 seminal, 277, 321 aligned with the masculine principle, 326–28, 336 ḥilm/ jahl process and ‘transcendent function’, 354–56 ḥimā, sanctum, protected zone, 126, 135, 136 himma, ‘noble ambition’, 102, 105, 107, 135, 136, 202, 291 Ḥimyar (kingdom of ancient Yemen), 104 Ḥimyar (tribe), 125, 126 n65, 128, 129, 148, 169 Ḥimyarī commercial contract evoked from camp traces, 132 n82 de Hoghelande, Theobald, 352 n91 Homer Homeric simile, conceits and figures, 47, 64, 77 n1 Homeric persona, 48, 82 Homeric epic, 49 ‘naïve Homer’, 49, 50, 58 dogma of naïve Homer conclusively refuted, 51–52 Homerin, Thomas E., 45 n61, 100 n30, 103 n48, 362 honour, sacred. See ʿirḍ horse as metaphorical ‘vehicle’ of ḥilm and jahl. See mount and hunting (oryx, onager, ‘curative’). See hunting evolves into hunted quarry, 43, 70, 71, 72 as questing eagle, or hawk, 71, 220, 223–37 horse, eagle and raiding, 70–71 & n199, 85 n14, 223, 224, 225, 227, 230, 231–32, 233, 234, 256, 284 equated to the bakra (rotary well-pulley), 85 n14, 211, 215, 216, 217, 218, 220, 227–29, 231–32

overfed on barley, has stinking breath (pun), 125, 129 epithet jardāʾ (short-haired) and generous stock, 212, 214, 307 & n152 blaze, a mark of generosity and virtue. See ghurra not sweating after exertion, a sign of quality, 222 & n71 as ‘rock’ and ‘stone’ in a wider scheme of purity and virtue, 211, 214, 215, 220, 222 & nn69–70 as a boulder swept down by a torrent, 222, 256 as ḥabīb (true beloved), and partner in the covenant, 214–15 & n27 fury of the charge implies loss of reason (ʿaql), and blameless jahl, 226 n86, 229 & n99 its energy as collecting sky- and groundwaters. See water-imagery as ‘swimmer’ in combat. See waterimagery horse and rider as agents of Death (al-manīya), 219, 231, 232 fattened, then rationed, in preparation for exertion, 213 n21, 261 quality steed only managed by the most skilful rider, 261 forelock as repository of ‘the good’ (khayr), 214, 223, 234–35 & n116, 237–38, 260 n90 and the sun, 211, 223, 225, 234, 235, 237–38, 284 and the rain/ storm, 222 n65 & n68, 225 & n84, 226 & n86, 227, 228 n92, 231–32, 238, 246 n38, 255, 256, 261 mounted raider is wind, his steed, lightning and rain, 225–26, 227 rainburst/ sunburst (shuʾbūb) describes the forces of mounted raider and victim, 232 and the Day of Resurrection, 235 & n118, 236 & n120 and the maysir-paradigm, 269 & n122 and sacrosanct honour (ʿirḍ). See palm-imagery neck of, compared to sacrificial stone (nuṣb, pl. anṣāb), 313 n170 Hoyland, Robert G., 203 n53, 362

General Index ḥubb, ethical love, implying fidelity to compact (wafāʾ). See love, ethical Hubert, Henri, 283 n31, 362 Hūd (Qurʾanic prophet), 103 n49 Ḥujr b. al-Ḥārith (Kindite king), 94, 103, 116, 160, 299, 307 Ḥujrid Kindīs, 109 n64 ḥukm, ‘judgement’ of al-Musayyab, 317 n179 of the Prophet Muḥammad, 15 n41 Humbert, Elie G., 348 n76, 362 hunting with dogs, the onslaught of ‘sickness’, aspiring Death, 108 & n63, 113 & n87, 135 n91, 162 & n68, 175, 273–75, 282–284 waterside archer, and the ideal hunter, Death, 111–13, 127, 162, 168, 273, 293–94, 296 n90 poet as ‘hunted quarry’ of the ‘beloved’, 176, 177, 192, 193, 198, 201, 204, 280 poet as ‘hunter’ of women, 119, 128, 154, 174, 176 hunting equated to erotic conquest and combat (all ‘curative’), 119, 128, 154, 194, 262–63. See also gender moral shortfall/ inadvertence, facilitates ‘tracking’ by Death (al-manīya), 209, 315–16 poet as quarry mediated through the mount (horse and camel), 70, 71–72, 175, 275–76, 281–84, 316–17, 355–56 poet as mounted hunter of onager, 43, 70–71 poet as mounted hunter of oryx, 44 n60, 71, 262–64 al-Ḥurāqa, War of, 65 n169 al-Ḥuṣayn b. al-Ḥumām (poet), 112 n84, 123 n51 Hussein, Ali Ahmad, 59, 62, 63, 241 n10, 362–63 ibex, inaccessible in the mountain, 163, 167 and ʿaql, 167, 331, 337 n28 Ibn al-Anbārī, 45 n62, 147 nn1–4 & n6, 148 n53, 150 n13, 155 nn37–38 & n41, 158 n53 Ibn Hishām, 338 n31, 343 n55, 363 Ibn Khidhām (poetical persona, also Ibn Ḥidhām/ Ibn Ḥimām), weeping of, 299, 304–5 & n139, 311, 318, 319–20

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Ibn Qutayba, 32, 215 n31 & n33, 227 n91, 239 & n4 & n6, 240, 267 n109, 268 n116, 269 n121 & n123, 273 n138, 274, 275 n143 & n146, 276 n148, 332 n12, 335 n25, 363 Ibrāhīm, Abū al-Faḍl, 82, 83, 140, 161, 165, 184, 185, 186, 218, 220, 222, 223, 224, 226, 229, 232, 233, 234, 238, 241, 248, 251, 262, 280, 359 & passim Ibrāhīm b. Bashīr al-Anṣārī (poet), 211 n2, 236 iḥsān, ‘kindness’ hypothesized as superceding ḥilm in opposition to jahl iktisāb n. vb. VIII, ‘accumulation’ as a ‘commercial theological term’, 26 as a sum of acquired virtue, 102 ʿilm, ‘knowledge’ as counterpoise to Quranic jahl, 4, 10, 15, 339 as complement to ‘judgement’ (ḥukm), and redefined ḥilm, 15 n41 ‘image-families’, 65 īmān, n. vb. IV, ‘belief ’, 14 & n41, 15, 16 Imhof, Agnes, 15 n41, 22 n67, 363 immortality, Islam pearl proposed as symbol of, 67 n177 ‘purchased’ with life and deeds. See islām as a ‘commercial theological term’ immortal fame, jāhilīya ‘purchased’ with life and deeds, 28 n94 cemented by praise-poetry, 27 n92, 161 & n63 Imruʾ al-Qays (poet) poetic comparanda, 44 n60, 45, 53 n105, 54, 71, 72, 118 n16, 132 nn81–82, 198 n45, 203, 222, 226 nn85–86, 229, 231, 233 n114, 245 n35 & n37, 252, 254 n71, 255, 256 n79, 259 & n88, 261, 266, 271 n130, 292 n70, 296 n91, 302, 306 n145, 307 & n150, 357 legend of, 82 & n11, 109 n64, 134 & n86, 140, 336 n27 individuation, 68, 69, 347 n69, 348, 349, 350, 351, 353, 354 intentional fallacy, 39 intertextuality, 62, 65 intisāb, pedigree. See also ḥasab; nasab; jadd is built on, and implies, virtue, 108, 149–50 intoxication multivalent construct of arousal, ‘sickness’, ‘thirst’, 89, 193, 207, 313, 320, 321 as contesting stupor, 134, 245 n37, 318

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induced by sexual passion, 42, 53, 183, 193 & n28, 207–8 & n64, 289, 290 n63 implied by dishonour and sin, 129, 208 n64, 313, 317, 318, 344 experience of, may translate as grief, confusion, moral outrage, 193, 329 n3 and the rush of battle, 208 n64 expressed as overfeeding on ‘sweet’ pasture, thirst. See khulla intoxication, ‘hunt’, infection, a nexus, 313 & n169, 316–17 recovery from (ṣaḥw), implies ʿaql and ḥilm, 317 & n179, 318 never undermines the most virtuous, 125, 129, 208 & n65, 319 iqāma (# ẓaʿn), ‘abiding’. See also dār, dār muqām implies good faith, resilience, ancestral worth, 42, 277, 309, 319 antithetical to rayb, ‘sickness’, 309 of the mountains. See mountains of abiding heritage compared to the mountains. See mountains abiding with a spouse, 184 & n5, 301 eternal ‘abiding’ of the grave, 184 & n6 Qurʾanic transformation of, 344 Iram (ancient lost city), 103 & n49, 104, 172 ʿirḍ, ‘sacred honour’ structure of, 4, 7 idiom of, 77 & n1 invested with the moral values of murūwa, 4, 8, 9 dissociated from murūwa, 7–8 as complementary with murūwa and dīn, 18–20 conception, and relative state of. See palmimagery ʿirq (pl. ʿurūq), ‘roots’. See also trees figuring living heritage, 102, 107 & n58 Isaac (Qurʾanic prophet), 11 n32 al-Iṣfahānī, Abū al-Faraj ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn, 109 n66, 336 n27, 363 ishtarā, vb. VIII, to ‘purchase’ as a ‘commercial theological term’, 25, 26 Islam religion of, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 27, 28, 29, 77, 79, 80, 90, 171, 206, 236, 237, 325, 336 n26, 339, 340, 341 n48, 342. See also dīn the One God of, 11, 12, 13, 15 & n41, 16, 17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 80,

236, 237, 245–46 n37, 239, 273 n135, 313 n168, 330, 337, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344 islām (concept) hypothesized as transformation of ḥilm, 5, 9, 11–13, 20 as ‘surrender’ to the One God, 20 as ‘salvation through purification’, 20 linked to the false prophet, Musaylima, 20 as ‘state of salvation’ (salām), 20 as ‘defiance of death’, ‘self-betrayal’, 20–23, 24, 28 n95, 342–43 as hypothetical noun, ‘to make the exclusive property’ (of s.o.), 23–24, 25 as equated to jihād, 23, 28 as a ‘commercial theological term’, 24–28 and constructs of the Qurʾanic covenant, 339–41, 342–43 isqāʾ, ‘giving to drink’/ ‘being given to drink’. See also shaym; water-imagery; wine as rain for the dead, 119, 252–54, 272 n131 as rain invoked for distant kin, 119, 252, 253 isqāʾ of the rain ‘life-quickening’ and deadly, 253, 254, 265, 266 invocation for, implies commitment to mutual fidāʾ, 127, 253 naṣr (‘assistance’) as a variety of isqāʾ, 162 and vengeance, 45 n61, 100, 103, 107, 143, 145, 172, 254, 255, 257, 264, 285 isqāʾ of the ‘storm’ in contradistinction to tears. See water-imagery and antipathetic relations (cynical ‘cure’), 264, 265, 283, 291, 297, 312, 319, 320, 321, 338 istaʿtaba, vb. X, ‘seek amends’/ ‘seek the cancellation of a bargain’ as ‘commercial’ religious conceit, 27 n91 ithm, ‘sin’ the opposite of rashād (righteousness), 42 the antithesis of wudd (ethical love), 42, 125, 201 demands punishment (athām), 41 & n43, 42 implies divine sanction, 42, 115, 142, 145, 154 n35, 155, 201, 206, 208, 331, 344 implies abuse of covenant, 42, 45, 72, 125, 129 & n69, 144, 154 & n35, 165, 183, 194, 201, 205, 208, 249, 263, 312, 313, 314, 315–16, 318 as ‘saddled baggage’. See saddle-imagery

General Index as failure to counter sinful aggression, 201–2 sin of despair, 141 n110, 284, 285 and the honour-construct of palms. See palm-imagery implied by ‘departure’. See ẓaʿn gross, acquired through conflicting, sacred priorities, 337 n28 Qurʾan ascribes ithm to maysir, 239, 340 & n36 al-Ithmid (place-name), 121, 122 Ivanov, Vjaceslav, 38 n31, 363 Izutsu, Toshihiko, 8–18, 19, 20, 77–81, 82, 198 n44, 230 n100, 330 n5, 339 n33, 340 n38, 363 ʿizz (# dhull), ‘might’, implying moral virtue, 87, 95, 96, 129, 170, 190, 218, 232, 234 jābir, mender of ‘broken bones’ (those ‘crippled’ by Time), 130, 134 Jacobi, Renate, 31–37, 46–49, 52–55, 57, 59, 64, 172 n103, 261 n91, 363 jadd, ‘fortune’, ‘ancestor’ protective, 106 n56 and the preservation of inherited, vital resources, 106–7 & n57 ill-fated, 207 n64 Jadhīma al-Abrash (legendary king of al-Ḥīra), 96 n15, 109 n66, 332 Jadīla (tribe), 164 jāhil, adj., prone to the affectivity of jahl, 5, 10, 13, 15. See also jahl jāhilīya as opposed to Islam, temporal and ethical world of, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 14 n39, 16, 18, 28 n94, 31, 32, 50, 81, 88, 108, 171–72, 325, 326, 338 ḥamīyat al-jāhilīya, and the conceptual world of the Qurʾan, 9 al-Jāḥiẓ, Abū ʿUthmān ʿAmr b. Baḥr, 68 n189, 363 jahl, n. vb. I, implying a spectrum of affectivity as counterpoise to ḥilm, 4, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 79 dubbed barbaric, 4, 5 identified with ‘violent resistance’, 9 identified with ‘mental blindness’, 10

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identified with kufr in opposition to islām, 12–13, 14, 15 as ‘ignorance’, counterpoise to ʿilm, ‘knowledge’, 15, 339 & n33 complementary with ḥilm, part of a process, 11, 14, 15–16, 29, 45, 72, 73, 90, 209, 211, 228, 230 & n100, 258, 266, 304, 320, 329–30, 345, 347 & n69 as blameworthy ṣibā (juvenile folly), 13–14, 36, 43, 49, 52, 198, 228–29, 279, 302, 317 n179 non-blameworthy variety, 4, 5, 16, 45, 46, 62, 190, 228–29, 230 & n100, 258 implying incursions of ‘sickness’, or Death, 89, 199–200, n48, 201, 203, 205, 206, 208 n64, 228–29, 230, 258, 270, 310, 316, 317 aligned with the female principle, 206, 208, 308, 321, 327, 328 and the nasīb, 327–29 ḥilm/ jahl process and ‘transcendent function’, 354–56 Qurʾanic transformation of, 11–16, 339 Jamil, Nadia, 28 n95, 53 n103, 67 n178, 267 n112, 335 n25, 342 n51, 363 jār, (pl. jīrān), ‘protected neighbour’, 115, 137, 138, 148, 150 n13, 151 & n20, 154, 155, 160, 163, 164, 165 n80, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 186, 218 n42, 253, 254, 274, 292 n70, 302, 303, 304, 309, 342, 343. See also covenant; waṣl implies kinship in varying degrees, 149, 154 obligations of, not contingent on local distance, 149, 156 & n42 covers husbanded wealth 97, 126, 154, 166 n82, 169, 177 heart figured as jār of the host body, 115 youth figured as kinsman that departs, 115, 139–40 n106, 328 al-ʿAyyūq (Capella) known as the jār of al-Thurayyā, 274 & n142 as grave-camel. See balīya as phantom. See khayāl jāra (pl. jārāt), ‘wife’, ‘kinswoman’. 138 n104, 155, 156, 183, 184, 185, 186, 189 n18, 253, 302. See also women and female figures as a foil to discuss the inverse compact (waṣl) of ‘strangers’, 183–86, 253, 302

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life-souls figured as ‘wives’ that depart, 139 & n106 Jarīr (poet), 225 n82, 275 n147, 363 jazāʾ, ‘payment’ as a ‘commercial theological term’, 26 as just requital, 161, 254 & n71, 319 Jerusalem, 278 n13 jihād, ‘striving’ with one’s soul/self and worldly means role in the restructuring of the ḥilm/ jahl process, 14–15 & n41, 16, 339 n33 supercedes ḥilm as counter-force to newly dominant jahl (‘ignorance’), 14–15 appearance in the poetry of Kaʿb b. Mālik, 15 n41 complementarity with ṣabr, 14–15 & n41 inappropriate jihād, 15 distinct from islām, 14–15 & n41, 25, 28 as equated to islām, 20, 23 replaces maysir as ‘expenditure of means and self ’, 340, 341 jinn, 40, 45, 95, 106–7 n57 jiwār, institution of the ‘protected neighbour’, 43, 52, 72, 179, 185, 186. See also jār; qarāba; waṣl Johnstone, Thomas M., 56 n111, 363 Jones, Alan, 12 n34, 13 n37, 15 n42, 17 n46, 22 nn65–66, 24 n76, 25 n79, 27 n91, 28 n94, 31 n1, 43 n56, 173 nn107–108, 179 n124, 205 n60, 260 n90, 272 n132, 274 nn140–142, 329 n2, 340 n36, 342 nn49–50, 343 n53, 363 de Jong, Irene, J. F., 50–52, 363 Joseph (Qurʾanic prophet), 13, 14 journey. See also raḥīl; saddle-imagery life to death as a consecutively travelled path, 73, 176 directional orientation and moral orientation, 197, 202, 354 error (ḍull), caprice (hawā), and the ‘roads’ to perdition, 198 n45 keeping a proper course (muqtaṣid) implies ḥilm and dīn, 205 the ‘straight middle path’ and moral compass. See qaṣd al-sabīl jūd ‘generosity’, 79 Judhām (tribe), 40, 96 n15, 97, 98 al-Jumayḥ (poet), 123 n48, 170 n98, 177–79, 216 n36 Jung, Carl G., 346–56, 363

and ‘liminality’, 346–47 ‘transcendent function’, narrow and expansive, 347–51 and ‘transference’ with a doctor, 348–49, 352, 355 ‘active imagination’, 349, 355 growth as ‘alchemy’, enemy in the ‘heart’, and ‘chemical marriage’, 351–54 paraphrase of ‘the unconscious’ by ‘heart’, 354 & n97 ‘transcendent function’, an ethical duty, 354 ‘transcendent function’ and the ḥilm/ jahl complex, 354–56 ‘chemical marriage’, reintegration of man and ‘heart’ (waṣl), 354–56 reorientation on a ‘middle path’, and qaṣd al-sabīl, 354 & n98 ‘active imagination’, poetic visualisation and revisualisation, 355–56 expansive ‘transcendent function’ and poetical reifications of the ḥilm/ jahl complex, 355–56 Kaʿb b. Mālik (poet), 15 n41, 16 n43, 22–23 & n67 Kaʿb b. Zuhayr (poet), 139–40 n106, 251, 256–57 n80, 363 kāfir, ‘ingrate’, ‘non-believer’ as equated to jāhil in opposition to muslim, 12–13, 15 kalab, ‘rabies’ said to be carried by al-Dahr, 109 & n65, 282 ‘sickness’ connoting desire for bloodvengeance 109–10 &n66 blood of kings said to be the cure, 109–10 & n66 al-Kalbī, Hishām b. Muḥammad, 142 n118, 363 karam, ‘generosity’, ‘nobility’. See also moral virtues caricatured for the jāhilīya, 79–80 a component of good faith (wafāʾ), 80, 87, 147, 149, 150, 152, 156, 161, 218, 281 n22 implies ṣabr, 87, 150, 170 figured by smooth rock/ rock that gives water, 108 n62, 127, 190 a pre-requisite of ḥasab (‘worth’), 151, 153, 225 n82

General Index expected of both protector and protected, 151, 161, 189 conditional on sustained virtue, 151, 152–53, 161, 175, 189, 205, 207 poetic ‘shorthand’ for faithful conduct that benefits life and honour, 161 kasb, ‘accumulation’ as a ‘commercial theological term’, 26 Kaster, Robert, A., 4, 364 Kawar, Irfan, 96 n15, 364 Kāẓima (place-name), 142, 144 Kennedy, Philip F., 37 n30, 276 n150, 312n165, 364 Khālid b. Zuhayr b. al-Muḥarrith (poet), 245 n37, 310 khalīy (# shajīy), the carefree sleeper, 121, 122 & n46 khasar, ‘loss’ as a ‘commercial theological term’, 26 khayāl, ‘phantom’ (also ṭayf al-khayāl). See also ‘tattered rope’ motif phantom theme, 88, 172–77, 192, 200, 328 conceptual relationship of khayāl to ghostowl (ṣadā/ hāma), 172–74, 176–77 implies a treacherous tie (waṣl) with ‘sickness’, Death, demands self-ransom 173–77 implies ‘possession’, dissolves intellect (ʿaql), 173 & n108, 175, 180–81 khayr, ‘goodness’. See also moral virtues moral and physical implications of, 87–88, 151, 152, 155, 189 & n18 as emblemized in the horse, 214, 223, 234–38 khulla (# ḥamḍ), ‘sweet pasture’, and the juices of Acacia Sayāl, 289 and the ʿarfaj-plant, 294 ‘intoxication’ by, figures ‘sickness’, thirst, 289–90, 294–96 known as ‘fruit’ of the camel, 295 n85 Khidāsh b. Zuhayr (poet) 223–24 & n76 Khuzayma (tribe), 40, 96 n15 Kinda (tribe), 94 n5, 108–9 & n64 & n66, 158 n54 Kister, Meir J., 5 n9 kitāb, ‘book’ as a commercial ledger, 26 kufr, ‘unbelief ’, 12, 14, 15 al-Kulāb (place-name), 103, 109

385

two battles of, 109 & n64, 109 n66 semantic synonym of kalab, 109 Kugler, Paul, 352 n91, 364 Kunitzsch, Paul, 216 n36, 364 Kuntze, Simon, 55n109, 364 Kuthayyir b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, 276 n148, 334 n22, 364 Labid b. Rabīʿa, 44, 67 n176, 103, 104, 106, 111 n81, 135 n91, 140 n108, 162 & nn67–68, 172 & n104, 178–79 & n119 & n121, 181 n130, 190 n19, 198 n45, 241 n12, 265 n103, 267 & n113, 282, 293 n74, 294 & n76 & n79, 307 & n152, 319, 335, 364 Lakhmids, 96 n15 landscape reading the signs of, 89, 131, 132 & n82, 136, 197–98, 203, 247, 355 figures resisting forces, 256–57 Lecker, Michael, 20 n56, 364 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 75, 364 lightning. See also isqāʾ; weather, language of spectrum of references to, 63, 85 n14, 118, 119, 213, 215, 216, 219, 225, 226, 228, 242–47, 252–53, 255, 260, 264 n102, 271, 272, 273 n134, 289, 299, 306 & n144, 334 n22 and shaym, reading the lightning for rain, 118, 119, 243 & n27, 244 evoking the advance of a mounted raider, 213, 215, 216, 219, 225, 226, 255–56 shaym and ‘reading’ the ‘sickness’ of rayb al-dahr, 244–45 & n37 as a sign of the One God’s power, 246 n37 and invoking isqāʾ (‘drink’, ‘redemption’) for a distant dead soul, 119 & n26, 253 evoking bayn (‘separation’) from distant kin (jīrān), 119 & n25, 252–53 figuring swords, the creep of an army, 272 & nn131–132, 334 n22 evoking a hobbled camel (ʿaqīr) in the clouds. See maysir-gambling evoking the upraised hands of a gambler. See maysir-gambling lightning (barq) evokes weaponry, menace, confounding beauty, 226 signalling a promise of ‘rain’ from the beloved 289 & n58, 306 & n144

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with thunder, turned to evoke the ‘flash’ of erotic power, 226, 289 & nn58–59, 299 n119 figuring bukhl/ aggression after erotic ‘flash’ and failure to ‘rain’, 289 & n59, 299 n119 ‘liminality’ and the ‘rites of passage’ theory of structure, 68, 69, 70, 74, 345–46 and ‘rituals of affliction’, 346 and psychotherapy, 346–47 & n69 lizard (ḍabb, pl. ḍibāb) proverbial characteristics of, 249 & n53 and death by water, 249–50 locusts swarming, figure an army, 142, 144 crazed by heat, 287 creaking of, proverbial for calamity, 295 & n86 ‘lost garden’, 64, 66 lot-casting (qurʿa), 267 n112 love, ethical (ḥubb, wudd). See also ghazal; moral virtues; nasīb; ‘tattered rope’ motif as a communal ethic, predicated on kinship and good faith (wafāʾ) 40, 42–46, 54, 55, 88, 125, 129 & n69, 174, 182, 183, 187, 188, 190, 192, 194, 199, 201, 204, 206, 254 n71, 308, 319, 326, 336 caricatured for the jāhilīya, 6, 48–49, 52, 54 extended to the horse, 214–15 in contrast to passion. See passion luhām, ‘glutting army’, 102, 107, 144 ‘lulling’ with food and drink (existential state preceding Death), 102, 103, 104, 105, 172 Lyall, Charles J., 14 n39, 39 n39, 40 nn40–42, 62, 82 n11, 96 n15, 112 n84, 122 n43, 123 n51, 135 n90, 171 n101, 178 n119, 196 n43, 199, 228 n92, 257, 269 n123, 332 n13, 364 & passim Maʿadd (tribal collective), 199 n48, 301 Maʿbad b. ʿAlqama (poet), 10, 230 n100 Macdonald, Michael C. A., 65 n164, 364 madīḥ, ‘panegyric’, 32, 60, 67, 69, 74, 83, 306, 345, 356 Makin, Al, 20 n56, 364 manʿ, ‘protection’ and wafāʾ, 156, 157 n46, 160, 161, 189, 207, 303

and bukhl, 156, 160 and karam, 156, 160, 189, 207, 303 manīya (pl. manāyā), ‘Death’ ‘Fates’ man is a ‘pledge’ in the ‘hand’ of, 97 & n17 appropriate attitude towards, 100 & nn33–34, 209 elliptical reference to by female pl., 116, 283 preference to meeting manāyā in battle over old age, 140 & n108 rapacious, with ‘talon’, ‘dog-tooth’ and ‘claw’, 108 n63, 233 etymology of, and the awakening of vain wishes (munan, amānin), 198–99 & nn45–46, 319 as a leisurely ‘tracker’ (qāʾif) of men, 209, 315 Fates never miss when they truly aim to hit, 111 & n81, 214, 232, 319 ‘passionate attachment’ of, 319 poet in the role of, 191 & n22, 232–33, 300 n124, 319 mann, ‘bestowing’/ ‘revoking’ play on the bivalency of, 152–53 & n23, 156, 160–61 mansöngr (of Icelandic poetry), 56 n111 al-Manūn, ‘the Revoker’, Death, 106, 153, 160 n62, 170 n98, 171, 172, 177, 292 n70 marʾ, ‘(developed) man’, 4 n4, 8 & n22, 54, 141 n110, 174, 225 n82, 285 al-Marrār b. Munqidh (poet), 168 n90, 195 n29, 338 n32 Mauss, Marcel, 74, 75, 283n31, 344, 345 n61, 364 al-Maydānī, , 267 n109, 272 n132, 364 maysir-gambling an ethico-commercial, universal paradigm, 266–76, 320 a covenantal duty to risk for dependents, 267–70, 333 implies the blood covenant of mutual redemption (fidāʾ), 254, 265–66, 267–70 Ibn Qutayba’s reconstruction of, 239–40 ribāba, ‘arrow-pouch’, figuring also the body of the covenant, 67 n178, 240, 267, 269, 274, 276, 333 dealing the arrows (ijāla, ifāḍa), 240 mufīḍ ‘dealer’, also called ḥurḍa, baram, proverbially despised, 240, 257, 266, 320

General Index triple valency of ifāḍa (‘dealing’), poetic logic in action, 257 double valency of ijāla, spurring cavalry, 269 raqīb, ‘watcher’, assigned to monitor the match, 240, 257 qidḥ (pl. qidāḥ), ‘arrow-shafts’, ten, figuring also community-members, human and other, 239, 240, 267, 274 n140, 275 n147, 276 & n150 farḍ (pl. furūḍ), ‘arrow-notches’, marking stakes (rihān), and figuring the burden of duty in compact, 240, 254 & nn70–71, 255 rahn (pl. rihān), ‘stakes’, twenty-eight, figuring also lives lost or redeemed, 89, 97, 240, 265–66, 267 & n111, 268 jazūr (pl. juzur), ‘slaughter-camel’, also community flesh, human and other, 240, 247, 267, 276, 312, 313, 340 ʿushr (pl. aʿshār) ‘tenths’, the divisions of the jazūr, real and conceptual, 240, 247, 250, 251, 264, 276 fawz, a win at gambling, 242, 276, 339, 241 maysir, generosity, and sinlessness, 125, 129, 201 grumbling (raghwa) of orphaned calves, signalling the hocking (ʿaqr) of juzur before maysir, emblemizes generosity, 272 n133 extension to conflict and combat, 268–69, 333 & n19 promise to orphan calves by hocking juẓur equates to a threat of war, 268 ultimately implies combat with al-Dahr, the universal gambler, 89, 267–70, 320 extension to betrayed love (ghaliqa al-rahn), 175, 207–8 n64, 268 & n117 expressing jahl, 270 extension to hazardous travels, 275–76 & nn146–148 extension to the rainstars (anwāʾ) and elements, 241–59, 270–75 ultimately compensates drought, the lack of ‘star-induced’ rain, 271, 274–75, 276, 333, 339 storm-lightning equated to the hands of a winning gambler, 242, 271–72 & n130

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lightning, a ‘limping camel’ (mahīḍ, ʿaqīr), evokes hocking (ʿaqr) of a ‘sky-jazūr’ before a ‘storm’, 246–47 & nn44–45 grumbling (raghwa) of an (orphaned) ‘skycalf ’ signals a ‘storm-match’, 272–73 & nn134–135, 341 al-ʿAyyūq (Capella) as cosmic raqīb (‘watcher’) over a fatal ‘match’, pointed by drought, 273–75 extension to life-death combat in the ‘natural world’, 274–76 integrality to dīn (‘religion’) imaged, 333 Qurʾanic proscription of, 239–40, 339–40 & n36 and Ṣāliḥ’s camel (nāqat Allāh), 340–41 Qurʾanic transformation, voluntary ‘prepledging’ of the soul, and the ‘Great Sweep’ of islām (al-fawz al-ʿaẓīm), 28 & n95, 339–41. See also bakra, and Qurʾanic covenant maysir, ‘hunt’ of passion, wine, a nexus. See wine mazār, ‘visitation’ of a spouse (jāra), 183, 184 & n5 of Death, the Separator, 184 & n6, 253 of a ‘sister’ (ukht) at an untraversable distance (naʾy), 242, 252–53 McDonnell, Myles, 4 n4, 364 meadow marks a guarded precinct (ḥimā), 70, 131, 135 trespass of, invites danger, 135 & n90 ‘female’, conquered by torrents, 242, 248 compared to ‘saddles’, meaning saddlecloths of a soft, villous pile, 251–52 Mecca, 23, 79, 274 n143, 336 n26 Meisami, Julie Scott, 75 n216, 329 n3, 364 mentality on jāhilī religious sentiment, 5–6 and murūwa, 8–9 on the ‘Arab mind’ 10, 79 the jāhilī Arab allegedly living a ‘prior state of consciousness’, 46–55 and perception of ‘reality’, 46–48 and temporal perception, 48–49, 54–55 & n109 and spatial perception, 57–59 metanarrative, 59, 63–76, 77

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metaphor, 47, 51, 81, 83, 84, 119, 134, 166, 170, 178, 179 n123, 203, 207, 209 n, 219, 231 n102, 245 n37, 262, 267, 269, 270 n125, 279, 289, 290, 295, 317, 318, 325, 329 n3 mill. See raḥā Miller, Jeffrey C., 347 n68, 348 nn70–77, 349 & nn80–82, 350, 351 n87 & nn89–90, 354 & n98, 364 mirage, 40, 45, 102 Monroe, James T., 33, 364 Montgomery, James E., 28 n94, 31 n1, 32 n5, 59–60, 65, 66 n176, 75 n176, 81 n8 & n10, 82 n11, 132 n82, 134 n86, 216 n36, 364–65 moon light of, symbolizes virtue. See badr; ghurra Mansions of the Moon, 215 & n33, 227. See also nawʾ semantics of q-m-r and ‘gambling’, 339 n34 moral virtues. See also ʿaql; birr; ḥasab; ḥubb; ʿizz; karam; khayr; ṣabr; ṣidq; wafāʾ; wudd promote ‘health’, power, longevity, 42, 46, 80, 87, 93, 96, 97, 100, 105, 106–7 & n57, 108, 129, 150, 161, 182, 249, 302 preserve the integrity of the community, 98, 128 & n68, 150, 163, 165, 169–70, 182, 319 inherited, build pedigree, 125, 105, 128, 129, 207, 319 purificatory, 158, 182 metaphorically bound to the forelocks, 235 & n117 radiate the light of the stars and moon. See ghurra; badr and the sacred. See wafāʾ; ghadr moral vices. See also ṣibā; bukhl; sharr; ithm promote ‘sickness’, radical weakness, evanescence 46, 87–88, 105, 145, 149–50 mount. See also camel; horse; raḥīl as window into the poet’s ‘heart’, litmus of the ḥilm/ jahl spectrum 72–73, 316–17, 355–56, 320 construct of the refractory mount, and sin, 148–49, 204–5, 207, 315–16, 318 & n181. See also saddle-imagery refractory mount, wine, recalcitrant passion, a nexus, 315–16 mountains. See also rock figure virtuous heritage and forebears, 106–7 n57, 189–90 & n19, 302

figure resilience to the doings of al-Dahr, 108, 169–70, 177, 245 durability contrasted to the transience of life 108 n61, 183, 302 implies security, ʿaql (invulnerability to the predator), 128, 166, 167, 169–70, 177, 189–90 implying iqāma (‘abiding’, durability), 183–4, 302–3, 326 being ‘on a peak’, a conceit for distress, 119 height of, encodes relative power and esteem, 106–7 n57, 164–65, 225 ‘cloaked’ mountain. See clothing-imagery Mount Thabīr and ritual ghāra, 234 & n115 Muʿāwiya b. Mālik (poet), 176, 231 n102 Mueller, Martin, 50, 365 al-Mufaḍḍal b. Muḥammad, 39 n38 al-Mufaḍḍal al-Nukrī (poet), 172 n105 mufākhara, ‘self-praise’, ‘boasting’. See fakhr Muḥajjar (place-name), 124, 126, 127 al-Muhalhil b. Rabīʿa (poet), 313 n170, 332 & n15, 334 Muḥriz b. al-Mukaʿbir of Ḍabba (poet), 332 n15 Mujāshiʿ (tribe), 153 Mukařovský, Jan, 34 al-Mukhabbal al-Saʿdī (poet) 14, 172 n105, 175, 180, 198, 218 n47 mukhaḍrim (of the period straddling the jāhilīya and Islam), 81 al-Munakhkhal al-Yashkurī (poet), 271 nn127–128 al-Muraqqish al-Akbar (poet), 101 n37, 108 n61, 136 n93, 176, 216, 289 n58 al-Muraqqish al-Aṣghar (poet), 176, 186, 221 & n58 & n62, 305 n140, 306 n143 murūwa, ‘manly virtue’. See also ʿirḍ; dīn as composite virtue equated with virtus, 3–4 as divorced from ʿirḍ (honour) and moral virtue, 7–8 as divorced from dīn and the divine, 33–4, 6–7 as complementary to ʿirḍ and dīn, 16, 18–20, 22 n67, 29 the idiom of, 66–67, 76–77, 83–84 a moral code for life, antithetical to al-Dahr, 87, 88, 90, 93, 95, 110, 114, 145, 182, 297. See also moral virtues

General Index and the ḥilm/jahl process, 29, 36–37, 45, 52–54, 89, 90, 95, 119–20, 205, 228–30, 321, 329–30 an organicist scheme, 326–27 driven by dīn (‘religion’, multivalent), 90, 132, 191, 201, 205, 220, 320, 321, 329–31 ritual ramifications of, 115, 145, 159, 220, 285, 297, 320, 330–31. See also health; sickness; wine muṣārama, ‘cutting off’ (a co-affiliate). See ṣarm; ṣirām al-Musayyab b. ʿAlas (poet), 167, 305 n140 & n142, 317 n179 mushrik, ‘associator’ (of other deities with the One God of Islam), subscribes to being a ‘divided asset’, 24 denies that anything but al-Dahr destroys life, 337 & n29 muslim, in opposition to kāfir, 12, 15 Mutammim b. Nuwayra (poet), 95 n10, 107 n58, 119 n, 133 n26, 168, 179, 180, 181 & n130, 253, 258, 266 n107, 272 n131, 293 nn74–75, 294 n76, 305 n141, 312 n165 Muzarrid (poet), 338 n32 naʾā, vb. I, ‘to remove to a distance’. See also baʿuda; buʿd implies separation (bayn) and strangerhood, 191, 192, 242, 252, 253, 286, 288 al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī (poet), 47, 59, 275, 276, 313 n170, 332, 334 n22, 365 nafs (pl. nufūs), ‘self ’, ‘soul’, ‘life-essence’, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28 n94, 97 n17, 101, 115 n4, 138, 141 n110, 173, 259, 260, 267, 269 n119, 285, 341 naqṣ, ‘diminishment’ as a ‘commercial theological term’, 26 narratology, 51–52 nasab, ‘lineage’ ‘kin-connection’. See also intisāb expected support from, 185 & n8, 186 assumes inherited virtue, 189, 207, 292 n70 nasīb, ‘nostalgic prelude’ spectrum of references, 32, 33, 35, 36, 39, 41, 43, 45, 46, 48, 49, 52–56, 59, 60, 61 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69 70, 72, 74, 83, 87, 88, 90, 183, 184, 186, 191, 194, 195, 200, 327, 328, 329, 345, 356, 357

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allegedly emerges from an independent love-genre, 33, 35, 47 allegedly lacks complex emotion, 48–49, 52–55 allegedly lacks pragmatic intent, 56, 61, 329 ethical connotations of ‘love’ (ḥubb, wudd) within. See love, ethical ethical connotations of passion (hawā) within. See passion; gender in contrast to ghazal 48–49, 54–55 & nn108–109 elements of (mutually separable), imply kinship and ‘sickness’, 131–33, 138–39, 144, 191–94, 197–202, 279–80, 288–90, 301–311, 327. See also dār; khayāl; ẓaʿāʾin sample ‘products’ of nasīb juxtaposed, 41–46, 194–95, 206–9, 284–85, 296–98, 319–20 flexible pragmatism of, 327–29 nasīb and hijāʾ, 329 n3 later transformations of, 329 n3 naṣr ‘assistance’ of the divine, 14 n41, 19, 336 of man to man, 19, 20, 27, 161–62, 307 & n147 of the rain to the land, 162 an act of good faith, conditional on good faith, 161–62 nawʾ (pl. anwāʾ), ‘rainstars’. See also falak; maysir-gambling ancient belief in their influence on the rain, 215 & n31 and ‘watcher stars’ (ruqabāʾ, s. raqīb), 215, 257 and Mansions of the Moon, 227–28, 339 n34 identified with human power and virtue, 90, 215 & n33, 216 & n36 poet as raqīb (watcher-star) of an oncoming ‘cumulus’, 257 al- Thurayya (roughly, the Pleiades), 216 & n36, 257, 274, 333 al-Thurayyā in non-rain-indicating position, signals drought, 274–75 & nn142–144 rainclouds of al-Thurayya figure an oncoming army, 216 & n36 nawʾ of al-mirzam brings an army, 216, n36

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nawʾ of al-dalw (The Bucket), structure and properties of, 227–28 stars of al-dalw continued with The Rope (al-rishā) and Cistern (al-ḥawḍ) poetic synthesis of al-dalw with earthly bakra (well-pulley), 227–28 and the tribal covenant and ritual, 333–35 Qurʾanic disempowerment of, 339–40 Neuwirth, Angelika, 341 n48, 365 niggardliness. See bukhl; ḥaṣar night the ‘long night’, 40, 45, 49, 121, 122, 133 n84, 137 and flocking cares, ‘sickness’, 122, 126, 128, 137, 138, 139, 155, 157, 158, 159, 162 n68, 173, 174, 175, 176, 196, 202, 244, 261, 279, 284, 302, 318. See also hamm and respite from hostilities, 214, 233 & n112, 238 nikāḥ, ‘marriage’, ‘coupling’ with a spouse, 99 of rain and the land, 101, 127 of disease and the body 101 niʿma (pl. niʿam), ‘benefits’ connote what is generally conducive to life, 153, 328 n2 niẓām, coordinating ‘gemstring’. See also ʿaql and the familial or communal group, 44 & n60, 179, 310, 331 broken, figures a fracture of union 44–45 & n61, 67, 103–4, 162 & nn67–68, 172 broken, disintegration of the rational faculties, tears, 172 & n105, 175, 198 n44, 310 &n162, 331 and poetry, 80–81, 338 Nöldeke, Theodor, 3 Nuer, 66, 337–38 n30 nuʿmā, ‘benefaction’, 137 n101, 153, 160, 161, 254 n71 oaths. See religion Old Testament, 28 n96 onager. See also gender broad lines of the onager episode, 56, 167–68, 293–94 going to water, and the waterside hunter, 113 & n87, 168, 273, 293 male figures a social, warrior-like creature, 168 & n89, 280, 293

male manages, dominates females, 168 & n90, 229–30 n99, 293–98 female driven away from water figures failure in the protecting jār, 167–68 as quarry hunted on horseback, 43–44, 69–70, 71–72 in a life-death allegory, an unsuccessful maysir-player, 273–75 dies when the mode is elegy, 113 n87, 273–75, 296 n90 females that have recently produced avoid the male, 294 & n76 pregnant females avoid the male, 294 n76 offspring of females delivering late in the season (mughzīyāt) are weak, 294 & n77 unable to eat when overly parched, 295 & n83 when escaping, male abandons and kills foals, 296 & n89 fully adult (qāriḥ), evokes developed propensities of murūwa 280, 296 maturity of, evidenced by rearmost molars (nawājidh), 296 male a fast rope of Andar, designated maḥīṣ, implying perfect wholeness and purity, 297 & n97 Ong, Walter J., 34 n13 & n15, 52 n101, 365 orality, 33 & n10, 34–35, 52 n101 oryx (ẓaby, pl. ẓibāʾ) spectrum of references, 39, 40, 44–45, 47, 59, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 89, 113, 125, 131, 135, 159, 162, 175, 204, 232, 243, 262–65, 273, 275–85, 297, 299, 304, 311–14, 337 n28 anthropomorphised, 39, 45, 159 n56, 278, 280–85 bull-oryx equated to warrior, 264–65 & n105 doe-oryx equated to women, 40, 44, 125, 204, 299, 304, 311–12, 313–14 purity of, 135 & n91, 232, 263, 264, 283, 297, 304, 314 community of, compared to strung gems, 44 n60 individual, compared to an unstrung pearl, 40, 44–45, 66–67 & n176, 162 & n68 flight of, combative and worthy, 71, 72, 131, 135, 175, 283–85

General Index escaping hunter and dogs, flight from ‘sickness’, Death, 135, 162, 175, 282 bereaved doe recognises hunter as recurring ‘sickness’ (saqām), 135 n91, 162 n68, 265 n103, 282 dies when the mode is elegy, 68 n189, 113 n87, 265 n104, 273 hunted by poet on horseback, 40, 45, 71, 243, 262, 263 figures legitimate victim of poet’s quest, 264 figures illegitimate target of blood litigation/ aggression, 263–64 & n100, 283, 314 bull driven into a trap, figures experience of impiety, 312 bull compared to a holy man sought for benediction 135 n91, 278 & n13, 283 hunt of, couched in the maysir-paradigm. See maysir-gambling bull compared to a winning maysir-player and rainstar, 275–76 & n150. See also maysir-gambling and the arṭāh-tree, 40 n42, 278 & n11, 281 ostrich spectrum of references, 43 n56, 47, 68, 71, 89, 216, 217, 218, 239, 243, 262, 277, 287, 292, 293, 300, 316 nexus of association with the bakra and the mount, 216–217 & n38, 218 n47, 262, 292 & n69, 316 mediated via the saddle, emblemizing anxiety (hamm), 292 & nn69–70, 316 eggs of, figure the protected heart of an abode, 292 n70 abandoned/cracked eggs of, figure ignominy, exposure to al-Dahr, 292 n70 owl. See būha; hām; ṣadā palm-imagery crack of blazing palm, the sound of a charging war-horse, 121 Yemeni palm-papyri contracts invoked from desert traces, 132 n82 and sacred honour (ʿirḍ), 306–8 and ẓaʿn (injurious ‘departure’), 299, 306, 308–9 poetical convergence of ṣirām (cutting the fruit) with the severance of compactties, 306, 308–9. See also sarm; ṣirām

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flourishing grove figures heritage and status, 306–7 & n146 replete, irrigated grove, figures noble generosity, 307 & n147 solitary palm/ offshoot, figures weakness, ignominy, 307 chopped, oozing palm, figures wounding, 307 & n149 luxuriant, female palm, and the protected woman, 307 & n150 stripped female palm (jardāʾ), a generous (short-haired) mare, 307 & nn151–152 untouchability of ‘female palms’ (warriors’ mounts), convey power and impunity, 307–8 ‘plucking the fruit’ (jarm, jināya) equates to aggression/ sin, 307–8 & n155 ‘irrigation of palms’ (tears), figures personal wounding, 258, 311 & n163 Panofsky, Erwin, 57, 365 Paradise, 24, 25, 26 parataxis. See also takhalluṣ as a considered strategy of linkage, mediated by the audience, 36–46, 77 and dialectical montage, creation of a quasi-narrative ‘product’, 38, 45–46, 54, 111, 113, 115, 136, 174, 194, 231, 249, 325–26 suppression of the authorial ‘I’, space and time, 37, 38, 39 and the rites of passage theory of structure, 68–69 rubba formula and counter-initiative/ moral resurrection, 39, 40, 46, 54, 115, 134, 136, 139, 200, 202, 258–59, 315, 355 Parry/ Lord theory of oral composition, 33 passion in contra-distinction to ethical love (ḥubb, wudd), 42, 45–46, 48, 52, 54 equates to ‘sickness’, jahl, 13–14, 40, 46, 49, 52, 53, 55, 173, 175, 176, 193, 198 & nn44–45, 207–8 n64, 302, 313, 319, 331 and constructs of gender, 62, 88, 139, 175, 176, 182, 195, 207–8 n64, 328, 319. See also gender pearl and the construct of ʿaql. See ʿaql and the ‘gemstring’ of the covenant. See niẓām as constituent of a compact. See niẓām

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as constituent of the rational faculties. See ʿaql; niẓām ‘unstrung’ pearls and tears. See ʿaql; niẓām and the oryx. See oryx rainstar-‘pearl’ and oryx, 276 rainstar-‘pearls’ and celestial sphere, universal construct for compact, 332 and poetry, 338 Pellat, Charles, 4 n6, 7, 10 n29, 12, 16 n43, 18, 134 n86, 365 perfume, 118, 281, 313, 314 See also healing; religion Petráček, Karel, 34 phantom. See khayāl plant-culture. See ḥamḍ; khulla plerosis and kenosis, 36 n25, 74 n215, 345 poetic equation, 47, 64, 66–67, 70 n199, 83–84. See also metaphor; simile poetry. See also qaṣīda excoriation as infinite redress, 151 praise as infinite reward, 161 n63 called al-qarīḍ, evoking requital, endowed with a supra-human quality of passage, 253–55 conceptual structure and substance of, 338 and ‘magic’ (siḥr), 338 and jāhilī dīn, 338–39 prayer, 6, 19, 244 n30, 340 n36 prisoner (asīr), conceptual and other, implying need for ransom (fidāʾ) and ‘thirst’, 118, 119, 127, 130, 161, 175, 268, 278, 279, 280, 281 Prophet, Muḥammad, 12, 13, 15 n41, 16 n43, 17, 20, 22 n67, 23, 28, 234 n115, 235, 244 n32, 267, 307, 338 Prophetic tradition, 166 n81, 235, 236, 237 qarāba, ‘nearness’, ‘relatedness’, emotive of succour, 116–17, 279 obligations of, remain in force even at a distance, 156 established through consanguinity or marriage, 185, 188–89 inverted in the context of proximity to death, 183–86, 253, 285 qarḍ (pl. qurūḍ) ‘loan’ as an ethico-commercial concept of the jāhilīya, 253, 254 & nn71–72, 255, 328–29 n2

as a ‘commercial theological term’ of the Qurʾan, 26 qarḥ, ‘ulcering’. See ‘sickness’ qarīb (pl. aqribāʾ) ‘near one’, ‘kinsperson’. See qarāba qaṣd al-sabīl, ‘the straight middle road’ and moral compass, balance, 73, 197, 205–6 & nn60–61, 354 & n98 qaṣīda, extended/ polythematic poem transmitters, 31 ‘tribal ode’, 33–34, 47 and the Umayyad panegyric model, 32 & n5 and variant readings, 60, 82, 326 and ‘molecular’ structure, 31 and symbolic meaning (debated), 31, 46–47, 59–60, 63, 64–67, 68, 70, 74, 90 traditional units of. See fakhr; hijāʾ; madīḥ; nasīb; raḥīl; waṣf evolution of thematic combination (debated), 31–37 sustained pragmatic intent (debated). See parataxis thematic linkage/ transitional mechanisms. See parataxis; takhalluṣ proposed matrices of, 63–67 as non-narrative, tri-partite unity. See rites of passage theory of structure inter-referentiality of theme and thematic frames, 45–46, 46–47, 89, 90, 194, 228, 257, 262, 273, 312–13, 334 verbal repetition as aural binder between the parts, 113, 259, 260, 263, 264, 280–81, 294, 318, 328–29 n2 apparent concatenation of poems, 195 & n29 second nasīb-like opening demarcates new phase in context, 203–4 as therapy, 36, 345, 346–47 & n69, 354–57 structure, ethical process, and Jung’s alchemical paradigm, 354–57 Qaṭātān (place-name), 241 & n12, 242, 248, 251 Qaww (place-name), 287 Qays (tribal grouping), 190 n19 Qays al-Yaman (Kindite king), 109 n66 qidr, ‘cooking pot’. See also uthfīya figures a thriving community, 191 & n24 supports of (athāfī, s. uthfīya), figure a people’s most durable props, 191 & n24

General Index qiṭʿa (pl. qiṭaʿ), short/ monothematic poem, 31, 152, 183, 231, 245 n37 Qurʾan ethical world of, 3, 8–29, 77, 79–81, 90, 153 n23, 206 n61, 235, 236–37, 239, 240, 325, 326, 330 & n5, 337, 340, 341, 342, 344 ‘commercial theological terms’ of, 22–28, 90, 339–41, 343 and stories from, 13–14, 237 n127, 340–41 Quraysh (tribe), 267 al-Qurayya (place-name), 163, 169 & n94 qurb, ‘nearness’. See also qarāba implying the living world, 184, 253 conceptually reversed, 184–86, 253 Quṭayyāt (place-name), 241 & n12, 242, 248, 251 Rabīʿa b. Maqrūm (poet), 168 n90, 254 n71, 294 n80, 296 n90, 332 n15 raḥā, ‘mill’ as figure for covenant, 332 as war-machine, 332–33 central axis (quṭb) related to chiefs and kings, 332 and circumambulation of a sacred axis (dūwār), 333 ‘cloud-mill’, armies at war, 334 & n22 analogous constructs. See ʿaql, bakra; raḥā; maysir-gambling, ribāba universal analogue. See falak, star-mill raḥīl, camel-borne journey, 277–321. See also journey; saddle-imagery as semantically independent unit of ‘boasting’ in the ‘tribal ode’ (debated), 33, 35–37, 46–47 as self-standing episode geared primarily to artistic ingenuity (debated), 56 as symbolic of poet’s self and cosmos, 64–65 as ‘agonistic individuation’ and ‘transposition of persona’, 68–69, 347 n69 as part two of an archetypally determined, ‘radical triadism’ (debated), 43 n56, 67–69, 70–76 broadly, a ‘journey’ toward moral integration, ‘healing’ 46, 134–36, 202–3, 280–84, 290–298, 315–320

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and the ḥilm-jahl process, the mechanics of internal waṣl and ṣarm, 209, 290–298, 315–320, 355–56 rāḥila (pl. rawāḥil), female riding-camel metaphorical ‘vehicles’ of ḥilm and jahl, 72–73, 317 ‘riding-camels’ of the vital faculties, 164 & n77 rahn, (pl. rihān, arhān); rahīn, rahīna, ‘pledge’. See also credit and debt; wadīʿa as a quasi-commercial concept for ‘a life’ in the jāhilīya. See maysir-gambling the stakes played for in maysir. See maysirgambling lost and won in the frame of sensual love. See maysir-gambling transformed, a Qurʾanic ‘commercial theological’ term. See maysir-gambling al-Rāʿī al-Numayrī (poet), 241 n12, 271, 365 raiding. See ghāra rainstars. See nawʾ; falak ransom. See fidāʾ rashād, ‘righteousness’ implying fidelity to the tribal covenant, contingent on ethical love (wudd), 40, 42 Rāshid b. Shihāb (poet), 157 n48, 224–25 & n82 raven. See ghurāb rawʿ, heartfelt ‘fear’. See also al-Dahr, and rayb; shakk rayb/ rayb al-dahr, doubt/doubtful doings of Time. See al-Dahr, and rayb; shakk; rawʿ; sickness redemption. See fidāʾ religion. See also dīn; ithm; murūwa the question of jāhilī religious sense, ‘true’ religion, 3, 5–8, 9, 12–13, 16–20, 28–29, 90, 330 on gods and men, 6–7, 19–20, 336–38 veneration of the dead. See dead souls; jadd sharer-gods. See sharīk and social structure, 7, 335–36 oaths and curses, 6, 41, 42, 44, 45, 101, 127, 132 n82, 138, 153, 155, 160, 161, 173, 176, 177, 190, 193, 194, 214, 236, 281 n22, 301, 313, 332 and sacred months, 41, 220, 313 n170

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sacrifice/ self-sacrifice, 3, 19, 21, 25, 28, 66, 80, 84 n13, 89, 90, 179, 264, 268, 281 n22, 283 & n31, 284, 309, 310, 312, 313 n170, 314, 320, 321, 326, 330, 333, 337, 339, 340. See also fidāʾ anṣāb, sacrificial stones, 219, 220, 223, 313 n170, 340 n36 manṣib al-ʿiṭr, ceremonial stone of sacrifice, 43 n56, 284 sacrificial blood, 43 & n56, 219, 220, 284, 313 & n170 perfume equates to sacrificial blood, 313 & n170 idols/ idolatry, 125, 172, 219, 236, 239, 313, 335, 336–37 n12, 340, 342 n50 ritual purity and taint (‘health’ and ‘sickness’), 90, 115, 145, 155, 158–59, 201, 220, 283, 285, 313, 320, 321, 330–31, 336 circumambulation about a sacred centre (dūwār), 331, 333, 335–36 relationship of man to god, and conflicts of ethical priority, 335–38 & nn27–28 ribāba, ‘arrow-pouch’. See maysir-gambling ribḥ, ‘profit’ as a ‘commercial theological term’, 26 riḍāʾ, ‘satisfaction’ achieved by true love (ḥubb, wudd) and faith (wafāʾ), 189, 190, 336 Riedel, Dagmar, 31 n2, 38–39, 41, 52 n100, 56 n116, 365 rimām, ‘tatters’ of the bond of union (ḥabl jiwār), a figure of treachery, 40, 43–44. See also armām; ‘tattered rope’ motif Ringgren, Helmer, 25, 27 n92, 93 n1, 106 n55, 153 n23, 199 n46, 207 n63, 209 n66, 343 n55, 365 ‘rites of passage’ theory of structure sociological model of, proposed as determinant of tri-partite structure, nasīb, raḥīl, and other, 68–69, 73–74, 74–76, 90, 345–46 adaptations of the sociological model for psycho-physiological affliction, 346–47 psychotherapeutic paradigm proposed as alternative to, 347 n69 Jungian variation proposed as a fit for the ethical chemistry and structural variety of the jāhilīya, 345–56

sociological model of, rejected as determinant of a tri-partitite, jāhilī poetical structure 356–57 Robin, Christian Julien, 104 n51 rock. See also mountains smooth (ṣafā), figures karam and unblemished honour (ʿirḍ), 108 & n62, 157 gives water – said of the generous, 108 n62, 127 as figure for durability, 115 & n4, 184 rock, virtue and horse. See horse rope of the covenant. See bakra; ḥabl; sabab; waṣl Rosenthal, Franz, 239 n3 & nn5–6, 240 nn8–9, 267 n112, 271 n130, 273 n138, 339 n34, 365 Ruʾba b. al-ʿAjjāj, 249 n53 rubba formula. See parataxis; takhalluṣ Rwala Bedouin. See Awlad ʿAli Ryckmans, Gonzague, 234 n115, 365 ṣabā, vb. I, to evince ‘juvenile folly’, 13–14. See also ṣibā sabab (pl. asbāb). See also bakra; ḥabl; waṣl; ‘tattered rope’ motif ropes of compact/ ropes that access water, 43, 187, 188–89 & n17 and the bakra, 188–89, 217, 342 and the security of compact, 188–89, 342 and the ‘tattered rope’ motif, 43–44, 189 and the Fates, 319 ṣabr, ‘endurance’. See also moral virtues spectrum of references, 14–15 & n41, 80, 87, 93, 101, 107, 112, 114, 120, 126, 132, 134, 136, 147, 149, 150, 154, 156, 161, 174, 189, 202, 270, 276, 321 caricatured for the jāhilīya, 80 a component of good faith (wafāʾ), 80, 87, 134, 147, 149, 150, 154, 156, 161, 174, 189, 202, 276 a prerequisite of karam (‘generosity’), 87, 150 combats moral dissolution and the effects of rayb al-Dahr, 93, 98, 101, 112, 114, 120, 126, 132, 136, 156, 202, 270, 276, 321 ṣadā (pl. aṣdāʾ), ‘shade’, ‘ghost-owl’. See also hām and the call for ‘drink’/ vengeance (isqāʾ), 44–45, 100, 103, 162, 172

General Index falls silent after isqāʾ, 142, 143 and the phantom, 172–74 saddle-imagery. See also journey; mount; raḥīl saddle and reins worn through the night anticipate morning engagement, 40, 118 & n16, 259 & n88 saddle as window into the poet’s ‘heart’, 72–73, 277, 280, 292, 317, 320, 355 sin and the scraping crupper, 148–49, 318 n181 ‘saddling’ sin for baggage, 142, 145, 206, 318 & n181 piety (birr) as the best ‘saddle-pack’, 197, 206, 279 moral failure and the ‘sliding girth’, 318 ka-annī, ‘it is as if I (with my saddle were)’, announces self-revelation, 47 & n66, 278, 280, 287, 292 a-dhālika am, ‘is it that [I ride]? Or not, rather …’, signals reformulation of the poetic predicament, 293 constellations of persona via the saddle, 292–98, 315–18. See also gender ṣafā, ‘unblemished rock’, and virtue. See rock Ṣafā l-Aṭīṭ (place-name), 299, 303 Ṣāḥa (place-name), 40, 44 Ṣāḥatān (place-name), 299, 303 al-Sahb (place-name), 142, 143 Sāʿida b. Juʾayya (poet), 247 n45, 273 n134 Ṣakhr al-Ghayy (poet), 141, 271 n130, 317 El-Sakkout, Ihab Hamdi, 109 n64, 365 salaf, payment in advance of receipt of the goods. See also aslafa as ‘commercial theological term’, 27 synonymity with salam, 27 salam. See also aslama; islām as an ‘undivided asset’, 24–25 a pre-paid asset, synonymous with salaf, 27 Salām (place-name), 299 Salāma b. Jandal (poet), 123 n49, 220, 227, 235, 313 n170 Salāma b. al-Khurshub (poet), 71, 174 Ṣāliḥ (Qurʾanic prophet), 273 n135 salima vb. I, ‘to belong exclusively to’ (hypothetical, rejected), 23–24, 25 sallama, vb. II, See aslama al-Samawʾal b. ʿĀdiyāʾ (poet), 106–7 n57, 127 n66, 151, 155 n36, 158, 169 n91, 190 n19, 245 n33, 365

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sandgrouse as quarry, mediated via the saddle, 43 & n56, 70, 71, 284 flocking to water, figuring warriors going to battle, 142, 144 and the concept of ‘twinship’, 251 saqām, ‘sickness’, in a nexus with ‘hunting’, 135 & n91, 162 & n68, 265 n103, 282, 300, 316. See also hunting; intoxication; sickness ṣarm, (# waṣl) ‘severance’. See also ṣirām; khayāl; ‘tattered rope’ motif divorce from compact, implying ‘strangerhood’, ‘distance’ (ghurba, buʿd), 88, 90, 183, 184, 185 effected when compact-ties are treacherous, 183, 200, 202, 203, 204, 206, 256–57 n80, 277, 279, 285, 305, 311 implies self-redemption from the ‘bind’ of ‘sickness’ and jahl, 204, 205, 206, 279, 283, 317, 357 proper response to a sinful, unilateral split (muṣārama/ ṣirām), 197, 206, 311 internal, implying a break with negative intellectual chemistry, 315–17, 357 Savage-Smith, Emilie, 274–75 n143, 365 Schiller, Friedrich, 49, 50, 52 n100 Schoeler, Gregor, 33 n10, 34–35 & n20, 365 Schwarzlose, Friedrich, 203 n53 Seidensticker, Tilman, 31 n1, 365 Sells, Michael, 63, 64–67, 75 n216, 365 semantic analysis theory of, 77–78 ‘historical semantics’, 78 Izutsu’s semantic analysis of jahilī values, 79–81 as adapted for the current study, 81–84 shajāʿa, ‘courage’ caricatured for the jāhilīya, 80 shajīy (# khalīy), ‘the wakeful care-ridden’, 122 & n46 Shakespeare, William, 3, 305 n139 shakk, evil ‘doubt’, 278, 279, 280, 282. See also al-Dahr; rawʿ; sickness’; tafrīq al-Shanfarā (poet), 168 n89, 254, 328–29 n2, 337 n28, 357 n101 Shanūʾa (branch of the Azd), 94, 95 al-Shaqāʾiq (place-name), 299 sharā, vb. I, to ‘sell’ (the face/ life/ soul) as a ‘commercial theological’ term, 24, 26

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sharīk (pl. shurakāʾ), ‘associate’, ‘partner’ as ‘sharer-god’, 13 conceived as co-owner of ‘assets’ constituted in the lives of servants, 24–25 sharr, ‘evil’ moral and physical implications of, 88, 150 n13, 152, 153, 154 promoted by ghadr (treachery), 152, 154 Shawkān (place-name), 299, 309, 310, 311 shaym. See lightning sheep of the fold (as distinct from oryx) figure legitimate target of blood litigation/ aggression, 263–64 & n100 shifāʾ, ‘healing’, ‘cure’, 106, 109–10 & n66, 140 n107, 262, 337 n28. See also dawāʾ; healing shirk as ‘association’ (of other powers with the One God of Islam), 15 as a shared commercial asset/ bondman’s life (pl. ashrāk), 24 & n76. See also mushrik; sharīk Shuʿayb (Qurʾanic prophet), 11 n32 Shuraḥbīl b. ʿAmr (Kindite royalty), 109 & n64 Shurba/ Sharba (place-name), 278, 280 & n19 ṣibā, ‘juvenile folly’. See also jahl; passion a form of jahl, 13, 14, 43, 49, 52, 94 n2, 175, 258 implies the intrusion of ‘sickness’, 175, 196, 198 & n44, 258, 279, 290, 302, 311 & n163, 317 n179, 354, 356 n100 renders one ‘hunted prey’, 196, 198, 201–2 & n50 ‘steeds’ and ‘riding–camels’ of, 72–73, 164 n77, 317. See also rāḥila sickness (dāʾ, saqām, suqm). See also al-Dahr typically aggressive at night. See night experienced as inflammation of the eye, sleeplessness, 121 & n42, 122, 142, 144, 303 implies sapping, ‘thirst’, 119, 137, 139, 145, 193, 279–80, 281, 289, 290, 293. See also isqāʾ; wine as ‘leakage’. See bakra; water-imagery as khalj (pervasive pull) of an external force of ‘care’, 279, 291 & n68, 292. See also bakra as ‘intoxication’. See intoxication as over-feeding on sweet pasture. See khulla

as being ‘crippled’ (by Time), 134 as progressive aging and ‘ulcering’, 138–39, 140 as fear, despair. See al-Dahr, and rayb figured by the ‘prisoner’ (asīr), 118–19, 127, 175, 268 & n117, 278, 279 sickness, rayb, figured by hunting/ being hunted, 93, 114, 135, 174, 175, 176, 177, 192, 193, 198, 280, 282, 264–65, 265 n103, 313 & n169, 316, 317, 337 n28. See also hunting; intoxication; saqām figured as hunger, 105, 106, 224, 232, 264, 284, 337 n28, 280, 281 caused by verbal assault, 121, 122, 126, 173, 303, 310, 315 describes a state of conflict, 121, 122 of a blood-suit, 106 & n56, 109 & n66, 143, 190, 264, 266, 337 n28 as treachery within compact, 80, 88, 132 n82, 152, 173, 189, 193, 195, 198, 199 n48, 204, 229, 313, 230 n99 implies ritual impurity, 145, 283, 285 equates conceptually to sin and death, 283 n31 intractable by reason of an unforgivable sin, 337 n28 ṣidq, ‘truth’, 131, 135. See also moral virtues simile spectrum of debate on, 47, 51, 64, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71, 83, 84, 216 n36 ‘similie-families’, 65 ka–anna/ ka-annī, ‘it is as if/ as if I (were)’, introducing a window into the poet’s mind. See saddle-imagery ka–anna/ ka-annī/ ka-anna-nā etc., introducing a range of dramatic poetical constructs, 170 & n98, 208 n64, 212, 216 n36, 219 n48 & n50, 220 n51, 222, 223 n73, 224 n80, 246 n39, 250 n56, 252, 259–60, 274 n140, 276, 291 n68, 300 & n123, 311 n163, 313 sin. See ithm ṣirām, ‘severance’. See also ṣarm as injurious severance of compact-ties, 197, 206, 306, 308, 315 convergence with ‘cutting fruit from the palm’. See palm-imagery Smith, G. Rex, 20, 365 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, 17 n45

General Index Smith, William Robertson, 6, 7, 20, 365 Snyder, Joel, 57, 365 Sperl, Stefan, 347 n69, 365–66 spoils expressed as the ‘edibles’ (maʾākil) of a ‘glutting’ army (luhām), 107 figured as eagles’ prey, 163, 164–65, 230 ‘denial of spoils’ to the phantom, and preservation of the vital faculties, 173 Stein, Jan O., 346–47, 366 Stein, Murray, 346–47, 366 Stern, Samuel, 5 n9 Stetkevych, Jaroslav, 5 n9, 42 n50, 43 n56, 63, 67–69, 70, 71, 73 n209, 74 n211, 278 n11, 305 n139, 314 n173, 340 n39, 347 n69, 366 Stetkevych, Suzanne Pinckney, 31 n2, 63, 67 n177, 68, 74–75, 173 n107, 267 n112, 271 n130, 272 n131, 307 n152, 345–46, 347 n69, 366 structuralism, 74, 75, 329 n3 Suḥām (place-name), 299, 301, 314, 318, 319 Suḥaym b. Wathīl al-Yarbūʿī (poet), 268 n116 al-Sulamī, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, 5 n9, 366 suqm, ‘sickness’, 14, 53, 54, 130, 131, 175, 198, 244, 247. See also al-Dahr; sickness sun hours of, and hostile engagements, 117, 233–34 & nn112–114, 238, 259 ritual aspect of. See ghara, ritual solar force equates to aggression, punishment, 225 n83, 236, 238 shade from, equates to respite, 233 & n112, 236, 238 standing exposed to, implies resilience to hostility, 284 ‘affording shade from’, equates to worth and generosity (ḥasab, karam), 224–25 & nn81–82 inability to ‘afford shade from’, connotes lowliness, 225 n82 sunlight as veil (ḥijāb) that blocks the night, gives respite, 233 and the horse, 238 radiation and rain-torrent, confluence of ‘sunburst’/ ‘rainburst’ (shuʾbūb), 232, 238 portent of, its rising and setting, 235–37 cult status of, 235, 236–37 & nn124–125

397

sun, horse, eagle, 211, 223, 225, 232, 233, 234, 238 sun and forelocks/ hair, 223, 234, 235 & nn116–117, 237–38 Suwayd b. Abī Kāhil (poet), 108 n62, 112 n82, 175, 195 n29, 223 n74, 231 n104, 338 n32 swords ridge-backed, 121 tear-soaked prior to moral resurrection, 130 ‘watered’, 196 dull, figuring age and inefficacity, 202–3 polished and whetted, figuring vitality and efficacity, 203 manufacture of, 203 n53 tears as the ‘whetstone’ of, 304–5 & n139, 320. See also water-imagery cutting, ‘male’ sword (jurāz) figures acuity of the intellect (ʿaql), 317–18 figured by/ compared to lightning bolts. See lightning figured by the upper-stone of a ‘mill’. See raḥā Taʾabbaṭa Sharrā (poet), 173 & n108, 175, 180, 235 nn116–117, 260 n90, 272 n132 tafrīq, occasioning division and fear as propensity of al-Dahr, 97–98, 265–66 echoed in the aggressing poet-hunter, 264–66 Taghlib (tribe), 108, 117 n15, 134 takhalluṣ, transitional mechanisms between the parts of a poem. See also parataxis wāw rubba, a one-letter connective, ‘I think of ’, 32, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 46, 54, 111, 134, 202, 258, 259, 315. See also qaṣīda, rubba formula qad/ wa-qad plus imperfect verb, ‘and (oft) I might’, 32, 43, 118 & n21, 243, 262 daʿ dhā, ‘leave this’, 32, 286 n40, 290 hādhā, ‘enough of this’, 32 fa-hal tusliyanna l-hamma, ‘will your care not be dispelled by’, 290 a-dhālika am, ‘is it that [I ride]? Or not, rather …’. See saddle-imagery immā taray-nī, ‘though you see me now’, prelude to moral resurrection, 118, 119–20 & n29, 130, 133–34, 137, 139 ʿaddi ʿan dhālik, ‘turn from that’, articulated as a developed episode, 259–61

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talʿa (pl. tilāʿ), descending water-channels, 248–50. See also water-imagery talabbus. See clothing-imagery talismans, 99, 100 & nn32–33 Tamīm (tribe), 109 n66, 150, 151, 154, 167, 181 Ṭarafa b. al-ʿAbd (poet), 226 n88, 249, 275 n146 ‘tattered rope’ motif (implies treachery in waṣl, ‘sickness’, Death). See also armām; khayāl; rimām and the treacherous/ unreliable kinsman, 43–45, 53, 69, 94 n2, 189, 200, 317 & n179 and the faithless beloved as emblem of compact, 40, 192–93, 317 n179, 328 and the phantom, 173–74, 175, 176 tawḥīd, ‘monotheism’, 15, 339 ṭayf al-khayāl, ‘phantom’. See khayāl Ṭayyiʾ (tribe), 110 n77, 163 n73, 164 n78, 169 & n94, 282 tears. See water-imagery Thaʿlaba (tribe), 112 n84 Thaʿlaba b. ʿAmr (poet), 123 n48, 209, 315 Thaʿlaba b. Ṣuʿayr (poet), 292 n70, 301 al-Thaʿlabī, 273 n135, 366 thaman, ‘price’ as a ‘commercial theological term’, 26 as praise-poetry in return for favour, 161 & n63 Thamūd (ancient civilization of the Hijaz), 273 n135, 340, 341 thawāb, ‘return’ as a ‘commercial theological term’, 26 thirst. See hām; intoxication; isqāʾ; khulla; prisoner; ṣadā; sickness Thuʿal (tribe) archer of, figures ideal hunter, Death, 110–13, 282 tribe of, ideal protectors, 151, 209, 244, 245 mountain archers of, untouchable protectors, 163, 164, 166–70, 171, 177, 336 al-Tibrīzī, Yaḥyā b. ʿAlī, 10 n30, 44 n60, 53 n105, 67 n176, 98 n20, 100 n34, 108 n62, 111 n81, 112 nn84–85, 118 n16, 121 n42, 123 n49 & n51, 132 nn81–82, 135 n91, 157 n46, 162 n68, 170 n98, 177, 178 n121, 190 n19, 198 n45, 219 n50, 222 n67 & n71, 224 n80, 245 nn33–35, 256 n79, 259 n88, 261

n95, 263 n100, 265 n103, 267 n113, 268 n118, 271 n130, 282 n27, 294 n76 & n79, 297 n96, 302 n128, 307 nn150–151, 308 n155, 319 n184, 332 n15, 366 al-Ṭirimmāḥ b. Ḥākim b. Nafr (poet), 171–72, 275 n146, 296, 366 Toorawa, Shawkat, 66 n174, 75 n216, 366 Torah, 25 Torrey, Charles C., 24, 25, 26, 27 n90, 28 n96, 366 Tottoli, Roberto, 103 n49, 366 treachery. See ghadr trees figure living heritage, 105 synthesised with mountain-construct, 107 n57. See also mountains strong branches (ʿīdān, s. ʿūd) a mark of sustained virtue, power, 148, 149 spare branches figure inferior virtue, 225 & n82 deep-struck roots and heritage 102, 107 & nn57–58 stature and shade of the thorny ʿiḍāh figure relative power, resilience, honour, 224–25 & n79 & n81, 234 sarḥa-tree, and the armed warrior, 224 & n80 sarḥa-tree, a battle-horse on a promontory, 224 n80 ṭalḥ-trees, shelter, eminence, might, 126, 136, 224 n79 ṭalḥ and salam, figure an army, 131, 136 n93, 221 n63, 224 n79 palm-trees and sacred honour (ʿirḍ). See palm-imagery Acacia Sayāl and the intoxicating ‘sweetness’ of the beloved, 287, 289–90 ‘harvesting’ thorns of, the upshot of belligerence, 310 arṭāh-tree. See oryx Ṭufayl b. ʿAwf al-Ghanawī, 73, 164 n77, 202–3, 317, 366 al-Ṭūfī, Najm al-Dīn Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Qawī, 132 n81, 366 Turner, Victor, 74, 346, 366 ʿudhr, ‘excuse’ as a man’s exoneration from blame, 107, 136, 141, 187, 190, 201, 202, 205, 207,

General Index 208, 268, 279, 285, 291, 297. See also ʿādhila tajriba (pl. tajārib), ‘experience’, as a claim, with pedigree (intisāb), to ʿudhr, 102, 107 Ullmann, Manfred, 211 n1, 366 Umayma b. ʿAbd Shams al-Hāshimī (poet), 233 n110 Umayya b. Abī ʿĀʾidh (poet), 292 n69, 294 nn76–77, 295 n83 Umayyad poetry, 32, 272 n132, 334 n22, 335 n25 ʿUnayza (place-name), 286, 290 & n64 Uqur (place-name), 124, 126, 366 ʿUrwa b. al-Ward (poet), 28 n94, 269 & n119 & nn123–124, 270, 366 Usays (place-name), 116, 117 & n14 ʿuṣfūr (pl. ʿaṣāfīr), ‘little birds’ as collective community in the theatre of life, 102, 103, 104, 105. See also dhubāb; dūd ʿUtba b. Rabīʿa (poet), 235 n117 uthfīya (pl. athāfī), ‘hearthstones’. See also qidr live, implying survival and continuity, 40, 42, 191 & n24 abandoned, implying Time’s desolation, 42 & n50 Varisco, Daniel, 215 n31, 339 n34, 367 Vergil, 49 virtus, 3, 4 n4, 8, 18, 19 vultures, 131, 272 n131 waddaʿa, vb. II, to say farewell/ render the wadīʿa (pledge) of a life to the grave, 179 n124, 180–81 & n130 wadīʿa (pl. wadāʾiʿ), ‘deposit’ as lives to be returned, 181 & n130. See also rahn wafāʾ, ‘good faith’ (# ghadr, ithm). See also moral virtues spectrum of references to, 80, 87, 97, 125, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 156, 161, 167, 174, 189, 202, 218, 234, 254, 267, 268, 281 caricatured for the jāhilīya, 80 implies a sacred contract that includes the divine, 42 implies communal purity and strength, promotes ‘good’ (khayr), 87 147, 149, 150, 155, 152, 161

399

implies divine approval, 155, 159, 202, 205, 336, 344 acquires the light of ghurra. See ghurra waffā, vb. II, ‘to pay in full’ as a ‘commercial theological term’, 26 Wagner, Ewald, 31 n2, 367 al-Walīd b. ʿUqba b. Abī Muʿayṭ, 267 waṣāʾil, ‘striped Yamanī garments’. See clothing-imagery waṣf. See description waṣl (# ṣarm), n. vb. I, ‘bonding’ in covenant benign, implies kinship, security, ‘nearness’ (qarāba), 52–53, 184–86, 279, 280–81, 305–6, 321 as marriage, 88, 183, 184–86 the secure, protecting ‘bond’ of. See ḥabl, sabab, bakra expectations of/ conditions for waṣl in ideal brotherhood, 87, 183, 190, 197–98, 206–9, 214, 254 & n71 ‘change’ within (tabaddul, badal, tanakkur, taghayyur), encodes inconstancy, 94 & n2, 187, 188, 191–2, 194, 207 n64 the ‘tattered rope’ of treachery. See ‘tattered rope’ motif; armām; rimām ‘rope’ of, to be severed (by ṣarm) if treacherous. See ṣarm inverted, compact with the dead in ‘strangerhood’ (ghurba), 138 & n104, 141, 171, 184–86, 253, 285 negative, figures the ‘coupling’ of antipathetic relations, 89, 206, 281–83, 297, 319, 321, 356 internal (of heart and mind), implies intellectual integration (ʿaql), 89, 206, 277, 315–18, 317, 321, 327, 355–56 benign and inimical faces of, each imply a ‘curative drink’ (isqāʾ), 89, 297, 305–6, 311–13, 319, 321. See also isqāʾ; wine, ṣabūḥ, benign/ aggressive institutions of, all reflect life-death oppositions, 326 water-imagery. See also bakra; falak; ḥawḍ; horse; nawʾ; weather, language of communal cistern as figure for the life of a people. See ḥawḍ safeguarding the communal water, and commitment to compact, 106–7 & n57, 112 & n84. See also ḥawḍ and vital, moral force, 67, 106–7, 139, 165, 172, 176, 223–24 n75, 331–32, 336

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water-purity (sky- / ground-/ seminal-), and virtue, 112, 127 & n66, 158 sexual coupling equated to rainwaters on the land, 125, 127 & n66 rainwaters on the land evoke erotic coupling, 248–49 drawn ground- and seminal water equated, 221, 263, 284, 321 water-bag (shaʿīb, shann) as figure for relative ‘health’ and continence, 130, 132–33 & n84, 165, 176, 258 protective tie (ʿiṣām) of the water-skin, and security of covenant, 165, 188–89 tears and liquid wastage, dissipation of vital resources, capacity, 54, 114 n89, 130, 132–33 & n84, 165, 172–73 & n106, 176, 258 tears and the fracture of ʿaql (pearls slipping from a damaged thread). See ʿaql; niẓām tears in contradistinction to storm, an ethical disparity, 247, 252, 257–58, 258–60, 320 burgeoning tears of a man can signal danger, 305 & n139 wielding water, and the ḥilm-jahl process, 230–31 & n102 recollection of, and the return of the intellect and ḥilm. See ʿaql sound intellect, and the inner casing of a well. See ʿaql battle as drawing and wielding water, spears as well-ropes, 123 & n49 & n51, 217, 219 & n50, 233 n112, 262–63 & n98. See also bakra battle as surging flood-waters, 223 & nn73–74 mail-coats as pools and torrents, 123 & n48, 223 ‘rushing to water’, a figure for battle, 142, 144 ‘going to water’, a figure for death, 113, 117, 283, 295 ‘going to water’ equates to ‘salt cure’ (ḥamḍ) for ‘intoxication’ by khullapasture, 295–96 conceptual extensions of tilāʿ (descending water-channels), 249–50, 256–57 & n80, 290

horse’s energy as collecting sky- and ground-waters, 218–19, 220 & n55, 221 & nn57–63, 222 & nn64–66 & 68, 223 & n72, 263 horses as ‘swimmers’, 121, 223 ‘giving to drink’. See isqāʾ; waṣl storm-water. See weather, language of and the rainstars. See maysir-gambling; nawʾ Watt, William Montgomery, 20 n56, 22 n67, 79, 336 n26, 367 wāw rubba formula. See takhalluṣ; parataxis weather, language of. See also falak; lightning; nawʾ; sun; water-imagery rainclouds as camel-udders, 226 n85, 246 & n40, 255, 263, 270, 271 rainclouds as leather water-bags, 226 n85, 229 n98, 246 & n40, 270, 271 thunder-clouds figured as groaning camels, 131, 246 & n39, 270 thunder as grumbling (raghwa) of (an orphaned) calf. See maysir-gambling lightning reminiscent of a hocked slaughter-camel. See maysir-gambling storm-clouds describe armies, 170 n98, 216, 333–34 ‘cloud-mill’ (raḥā saḥāb). See raḥā hostile elements figure the artillery of al-Dahr/ aggressing armies, 170 n98 hot and rainy winds describe treacherous aggression, 226–27 & n88 storm-flood figures a mounted incursion, 231 & n104, 259 lightning, rain, and storm-slung boulders describe mounted raider. See horse; lightning rainstars (anwāʾ) figuring human virtue. See nawʾ; falak rainstars, storm and the maysir-paridigm. See maysir-gambling Weipert, Reinhard, 59 n129, 367 Wensinck, Arent J., 235 n118, 367 Willcock, Malcolm M., 51 n93, 367 wine. See also intoxication water-mixed wine figures sexual communion, 125, 127 benign ṣabūḥ (‘morning cup’) of kinship (waṣl), 124–25, 197, 281, 305–6, 311. See also waṣl

General Index aggressive ṣabūḥ of conflict, 207–8 & nn63–64, 281–82 & n23, 299–300, 311, 312 & n166, 313, 320. See also waṣl the ‘wine-cup’ (kaʾs), metaphorical range of, 207–8 and quasi-organic unity of the communion, 89, 313 & n169, 320 sharing of, assumes the purity produced of good faith, 203, 208, 312–13 and brotherly ‘combat’, affirmation of faith (wafāʾ), commitment to fidāʾ, 89, 207–8, 281 n22, 315, 318 and the adrenalin of war, 208 n64 provision of, a measure of faith and generosity, 125, 201 ‘poison-cup’ implies treachery, sin, 312, 313 death as a ‘poison-cup’, 282 & n23, 312 & n166 tolerance to, and ethical gravitas, 95, 125, 207–8 & n65, 319 intoxication by, figures jahl, ‘sickness’, 199 n48, 207–8 & n64 permissibility of, after blood vengeance, 6, 142, 145, 201, 206, 331 and extension of communion to the divine, 145, 201, 206, 313, 331 cloistered women as receptacles of pure wine, 118, 311 and the beloved’s kiss/ erotic power, 40, 124–25, 207, 289, 290 n63, 299, 306 n144, 317 n179 equates to sacrificial blood, 312 & n165, 313 wine-receptacle, doe-oryx, women, a nexus, 311–12 wine, ‘hunt’ of passion, maysir-gambling, a nexus, 311–313 wine, recalcitrant passion, refractory mount, a nexus. See mount wine-frame a combative analogue of the maysir paradigm, 129, 320–21 wine-frame indicator of degrees in purity and defilement, 320 Qurʾanic transformation of ‘winecommunion’, 313 n168, 343–44 wiṣāl, n. vb. III, ‘uniting in covenant’, 40, 43, 49, 52, 98. See also waṣl

401

wolf spectrum of references, 71, 72, 89, 100, 105, 211 & n1, 213 & n24, 223, 224, 225, 232, 233, 234, 238, 243, 261, 263, 264, 284, 337 n28 only ‘sicknesses’ are hunger and death, 105, 224 & n78, 232, 264, 337 n28 axiomatic of aggression, 224 & n77, 284 as extension of a warrior-foe, 223–24 & nn75–76, 225, 232–33, 234, 238, 264 wolf ’s ‘sickness’ of death, figured by eagle, 224, 232–33 wolf figures eagle’s ‘cure’ (dawāʾ) for hunger, 224 as extension of the aggressing poet, 102, 105, 106, 223 & n75, 243, 261, 263–64 wolf stands as ‘sickness’/ rayb to quarry; quarry figures ‘cure’ for hunger, 264 women and female figures. See also gender; khayāl; nasīb, female of, ẓaʿāʾin subset of the discourse on communion in kinship, 62, 87, 88, 120, 129, 186, 192, 193, 195, 199, 145, 206–7, 305, 306, 307, 327–28 compared to oryx-does, 40, 44, 125, 204, 311–14 compared to idols, 125, 313–14 as wine-receptacles. See wine. typically care not for elderly/ impecunious men, 101, 138, 139 as emotive focus for trespass into a sanctum, 154, 155, 157 & n46, 327 challenge men to fulfil duties of compact, 157 n46. See also ʿādhila challenge honour by urging thrift. See ʿādhila inaccessible allure of, an assault on the senses, 193, 204 deliberate display of beauty, an aggression, 286–87, 289. See also lightning Wood, Christopher S., 57 n118 Wright, William, 37 n28, 367 wudd, ethical love, implying fidelity to compact (wafāʾ). See love, ethical Wuqur (place-name), 124, 126 Yāqūt b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Baghdādī, 117 & nn14–15, 122 n43, 124 n58, 126 n65, 132

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n81, 144 n125, 169 n94, 183 n4, 190 n20, 241 nn11–12, 256 n76, 278 n9, 280 n19, 300 n120, 309 n159, 367 Yarbūʿ (tribe), 117 n15, 153 & n26 al-Yarīḍ (place-name), 241, 242, 248, 251, 252 Yathlath (place-name), 241 & n11, 242, 247, 248, 250, 256 yawm al-ḥisāb, the Day of Accounting, 27 ẓaʿn (# iqama), ‘departure’. See also ẓaʿāʾin proposed as semantic marker for a ‘battleode’, 42 n51, 60–61 permits of wider discussions on betrayal and the ethic, 61–62, 200 & n49 implies fracture of compact, and sin (ithm), 42, 61–62, 199–200 & nn48–49, 308–9 causes ‘sickness’ (ṣibā, jahl), dissolves intellect (ʿaql), 42–43, 196, 207 n64, 306 implies evanescence, 42, 309, 319 ẓaʿāʾin (also aẓʿān, ẓuʿun), camel-borne women’s litters. See also ẓaʿn motif of, figures betrayal of compact, of dīn, 61–62, 199–200 & n48, 201, 308–9 utilises a significant moral construct of gender, 62, 199–200 & n48, 277, 308–9, 328. See also gender

and ṣirām (severance of compact/ severance of palm-fruit). See palmimagery al-Zabbāʾ (legendary queen linked with Jadhīma al-Abrash), 109 n66 ẓaby (pl. ẓibāʾ). See oryx Zarn, Mark, 296 n89, 367 Zarūd (place-name), 116–17 Battle of, 117 n15 al-Ziriklī, Khayr al-Dīn, 10 n30, 367 Zuhayr b. Abī Sulmā (poet), 9 & n27, 27 n92, 43, 44, 53, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73 n209, 100 n34, 112 n84, 123 n51, 133 n84, 140 n108, 161 n63, 164 n77, 181 n130, 184 n5, 186 n9, 195 n29, 199 n48, 206 n61, 208 n64, 227 n89, 229–30 n99, 268, 272, 284, 297 & n97, 306–7 & n146, 308 n155, 317, 367 Zuhayr b. Masʿūd al-Ḍabbī (poet), 181 n130 ẓulm, ‘oppression’, ‘harm’ as a jāhilī concept of self-assertion, 9 as a jāhilī concept of gross tyranny, 263 & n100 as a Qurʾanic demerit of unbelief, 9, 11 as a Qurʾanic concept of ‘defrauding’ the soul, a ‘commercial theological term’, 26 Zwettler, Michael, 33 n11, 367