Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic Islamic Culture: The Making of a Tradition 9781474471497

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Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Culture

Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Culture

The Making of a Tradition WEN-CHIN OUYANG

E D IN B U R G H U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS

In memory of my father, Chi-chang Ouyang

(1929-95)

© Wen-chin Ouyang, 1997

Transferred to digital print 2009 Edinburgh University Press 22 G eorge Square, Edinburgh Typeset in Baskerville by Koinonia, Bury, and

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7486 0897 4 ISBN 978 1 4744 7149 7 (EPDF) The right o f Wen-chin Ouyang to be identified as author o f this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act (1988).

Contents

Acknowledgements Note on Transliterations, Translations and Dates Introduction

vii viii 1

1 Knowledge and Cultural Dialectics The Aristotelian Framework (al-Fārābī, al-'Āmirī and Avicenna) The Religious Framework (Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Ghazzālī) An Eclectic Framework (Ikhwān al-Safā) The Encyclopaedic and adab Frameworks (Ibn al-Nadīm, Ibn Farīghūn, al-Khwārazmī and al-Tawḥ ïdī)

38

2 Functions of Poetry in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Society Ancient Poetry as Source of Knowledge The New Role of Poets and Poetry

55 61 66

3 Beginnings The Early Meanings and Practices of Literary Criticism ( 'ilm al-shi'r, n aq d a l-sh i'r an d ṣ in ā'a t al-shi'r) Dialectics of Culture and Politics Authentication of a Poetic Heritage (Ibn Sallām) The Question of Literary Value (al-Jāḥ iẓ ) The Authority of Tradition (Ibn Qutayba) The Role of Literary Tradition (Ibn al-Mu'tazz) Laying the Theoretical Foundation (Ibn Ṭ abāṭabā, Qudāma and al-Ḥ ātimī)

22 25 31 35

90

94 102 105 110 112

4 Fanfare of Controversy: Abū Tammām and al-Mutanabbī 130 The Controversy over Abū Tammām (al-Ṣ ūlī and al-Āmidī) 131 The Controversy over al-Mutanabbī (al-Ṣ āhib b. 'Abbād, al-Ḥ ātimī, Ibn Wakī' and al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī) 146 The Calm after the Storm (Ibn Rashīq, al-Marzūqī and Ibn Sharaf) 154

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5 Against All Odds: The Making of a Tradition Definition of the Field and Its Specialist The Literary Critic Exclusion of Non-specialists The Problem of the Poet Definition of the Critic The Problem of Talent and Training Emergence of a Critical Tradition al-Marzubānī Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī

166 170 171 171 172 175 178 179 185 188

Conclusion

200

Appendix I

Accounts of Critics in Biographical Dictionaries

213

Appendix II Attributes o f Critics in Biographical Dictionaries

220

Appendix III al-'Āmirī's Classification of the Sciences

232

Appendix IV al-Ghazzālī’s Classification of the Sciences

233

Appendix V Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā’s Classification of the Sciences

234

Appendix VI Recognition of Literary Criticism in Non-critical Writings

237

Bibliography

249

Index

252

Acknowledgements

This book is an attempt at expressing in a language that is not my own the always exhilarating but often chaotic strands of my intellectual explorations into culture and literature. As in any intellectual journey, those who have touched my life and influenced my thinking are too numerous for me to acknowledge here. Family, friends and colleagues have all wittingly or unwittingly participated in this journey. I cannot thank my family and friends enough for encouraging and supporting me unfailingly and unconditionally throughout my academic career. I would like to thank George Saliba, Jeanette Wakin and Ehsan Yarshater for reading and commenting on my work when it was still a dissertation. I would also like to thank Jane Feore and Ivor Normand at Edinburgh University Press for being patient, supportive and helpful, and Kenny Morrata for going through the manuscript with a fine-tooth comb and smoothing out my writing. I am grateful to Wolfhart Heinrichs for recommending this book for publication and for making invaluable suggestions for the improvement of this work. I owe a special debt to Wadad al-Qadi, who is the elder sister I never had, a role model and mentor. She came into my life when I most needed someone like her, and has since been one of my guiding lights. Above all, I am grateful to Pierre Cachia, who has been a father, mentor, teacher and friend to me ever since I arrived at Columbia University as a first-year graduate student in 1982. I would not have been able to write this book without his guidance and support. He patiently and meticulously read and edited my various manuscripts, and, more importantly, he urged and encouraged me to submit it for publication. Without his ‘whipping’, to borrow his own word, my work would perhaps still be hibernating in the cosy inner belly of my computer.

Note on Transliterations, Translations and Dates

The system adopted for rendering Arabic names and terms in Latin characters is the same as that now used in many English-language publications, such as the International Journal of Middle East Studies or the second edition of Encyclopaedia of Islam. I have followed this system consistently in the case of titles of works cited, technical terms, personal names and passages quoted. Arabic declension is not observed except on the rare occasions when it is crucial to the understanding of the passage. In the case of place-names, however, I have followed a double system. Littleknown localities have been given in strict transliterations, but wellestablished ones have been designated by their common names, for example, Damascus rather than Dimashq. In addition to passages quoted, titles of works and technical terms have been provided with English translations. These translations, however, appear only once in the body of the text. In the case of titles and technical terms, they appear when these titles and terms are mentioned for the first time. Arabic titles and terms are extremely difficult to render into English, as their implications and nuances are often lost in translation. In most cases, I have given literal translations, and in some cases I have added explan­ ations. When they are not central to the arguments presented, some technical terms, especially those dealing with narrow technicalities peculiar to the Arabic language, are quoted without translation simply because they are untranslatable. For those who are interested in these terms, they many consult Pierre Cachia’s The Arch Rhetorician or The Schemer's Schema (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997). Dates are provided in parentheses for literary and political figures mentioned at least once where they appear for the first time in the text. Some of these dates are repeated in each chapter when the time-frame of the figures discussed is significant to the clarity of the arguments presented.

Introduction

When I was being interviewed for the position I currently occupy at the University of Virginia, one of the members of the search committee asked me what the main area of my research was. When he heard that it was ‘medieval (third/ninth to fifth/eleventh centuries) Arabic literary criticism’, he cocked one eyebrow and retorted: ‘There was no medieval Arabic literary criticism, was there?’ This was not the first time I received such a response. My interviewer’s response is not atypical among scholars of the classical period, whether or not their field is the Middle East. In fact, very few people in the West outside the very small circle of scholars who specialise in classical Arabic literature have heard of, or are willing to acknowledge, something called medieval Arabic literary criticism. Their scepticism is explicable and understandable in light of the emergence o f literary criticism in what is commonly perceived as the West (mainly Europe and the United States) in the modern period, which culminated in the twentieth century in its establishment as an independent discipline of intellectual inquiry dealing with knowledge and requiring specialised skills. More problematic, however, is documentation, or the lack thereof, of such a discipline in classical Arabic writings. Literary criticism, which I take to mean ‘not only judgments of individual books and authors, "judicial” criticism, judgment, practical criticism, evidences of literary taste, but mainly what has been thought about the principles and theory of literature, its nature, its creation, its function, its effects, its relations to the other activities of man, its kinds, devices and techniques, its origins and history’,1 is designated in the Arabic language today by the term al-naqd al-adabī. However, al-naqd al-adabī as a term delineating the general area of literary study is a very recent phenomenon in the history of Arabic literature; it is a twentieth-century concoction that has gained wide currency in the last few decades, but was not known as such in classical Arabic writings. Without a name to define it, any assertion of its existence in the classical period is understandably suspect. Yet it would be an error to dismiss the possibility of such a discipline in medieval Arabic writing, nameless though it may have been, especially

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considering the complicated history of the emergence of literary criticism, its theoretical frameworks and methodology in the West. Widely practised at present in four major forms – book review and literary journalism, academic history of literature, literary appreciation and interpretation as found principally but not solely in academic writings, and literary theory2– literary criticism has until very recently had to struggle to establish itself as an independent, cohesive and legitimate discipline of intellectual inquiry. In fact, as late as the 1980s, literary criticism was still deemed by some to be in crisis because of ‘theory’s inability to justify itself as a knowledge of texts and their meanings’.3 The causes o f such a crisis are many, as Edward Said efficiently sums it up: criticism is considered essentially as defined once and for all by its secondariness, by its temporal misfortune in having come after the texts and occasions it is supposed to be treating. Just as it is all too often true that texts are thought o f as monolithic objects o f the past to which criticism despondently appends itself in the present, then the very conception of criticism symbolizes being outdated, being dated from the past rather than by the present.4 Criticism, literary or otherwise, therefore, is often viewed as a kind of second creation which must necessarily be supported by literature, the first creation, for its raison d’être, its purpose being to explain literature and expose the intricate workings of art. Appreciation for art, however, has always been precariously subjective, making any regulated, objective and systematic approach to it virtually impossible. ‘The problem is one of how, intellectually, to deal with art and with literary art specifically. Can it be done? And how can it be done?’5 In an age where the methodology o f exact sciences reigns supreme in any kind of intellectual inquiry, literary criticism must necessarily argue for its integrity by grounding itself in the methodology of exact sciences, as Warren and Austin propose when faced with the question: O n e answer has been: it can be done with the methods developed by the natural sciences, which need only be transferred to the study of literature’.6 This line of argument, needless to say, has its own share of problems. While critics argue that literary criticism is a kind of science, they are also aware that it is not. Wellek and Warren, acknowledging that literary study is ‘not precisely a science’, settle for the notion that it ‘is a species of knowledge or learning’7 and that its practitioner, the critic, ‘translates his experience of literature into intellectual terms, assimilates it to a coherent scheme which must be rational if it is to be knowledge’.8 Further, borrow­ ing methodology from disciplines such as linguistics, psychoanalysis,

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anthropology and philosophy has resulted in the interdisciplinary nature of the field which, while making the field assume the appearances of a science, creates another problem: the divergent purposes of the field, necessarily derived from the sources of its methodology. It is next to impossible to get readers, much less professional critics, to agree about the purpose of criticism or its effectiveness. Still more problematic is the distinction often made between critical theory and practical criticism, or between theory of something and criticism of or about it.9 What divides theories further, according to Catherine Belsey, ‘is centrally a debate about meaning; and this debate cannot be resolved because what is at stake is a contest between the different theoretical frameworks within which each group conceptualises language, subjectivity, and the world’ .10 Mikhail Bakhtin’s discussion of literary theory – the underpinning of any literary criticism – suggests that its limitations derive from sources deeper than the variety of disciplines from which its methodologies are borrowed. Literary theory, according to Bakhtin, emerges from two conditions or modes: heteroglossia and dialogism. Heteroglossia describes a basic condition governing the operation of meaning in any utterance. At any given time, in any given place, there will be a set of conditions – social, historical meteorological, physiological – that will insure that a word uttered in that place and at that time will have a meaning different than it would have under any other conditions; all utterances are heteroglot in that they are functions of a matrix of forces practically impossible to recoup, and therefore impossible to resolve. A world dominated by heteroglossia expresses itself in the epistemological mode of dialogism. ‘Everything means, is understood, as a part of a great whole – there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning others’. This dialogic heteroglossia creates a universe of voices or perspectives with which we inter­ weave our own voice, our word with the alien word. Theory is therefore in a state of being ‘always already’, so that to enter it is really to be already into it and therefore ‘beginnings’ have a suspect validity. To achieve an ‘ending’, a sense of closure, is an equally suspect task. And in the very midst of saying something about theory we are equally in the midst of a still-operant theorizing. Thus theory itself inevitably discloses a fissure, an opening in any

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attempt to create a smooth, polished narrative surface for theory, one with an unproblematic origin, middle and ending.11 Nevertheless, despite these problems, there is a general understanding, or agreement, that at present literary criticism is emerging as an independent, specialised and self-confident discipline of intellectual inquiry, and the critic as a specialist possessing authority. In his preface to Literature and Society, a collection of selected papers presented at the English Institute’s 1978 meeting, Edward Said asserts that Anyone who has attended the English Institute over the past decade will agree that an important intellectual shift took place during that period ... The simplest way of describing this change is to say that many people became interested in criticism, not as a kind of literate, discriminatory gloss on a ‘primary’ text, but as an activity that, in drawing on such disciplines as linguistics, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and philosophy, made much of itself as a highly specialised, often tendentious theoretical mode of discourse. One result is that the accepted reliance on the work of literature as coming before criticism not only in time but also in value was given up. A critic now seemed to draw many of his or her insights from another critic, and looked to other criticism rather than to poetry, say, for his or her best thought. Certainly this has often been the case with criticism since Coleridge, but rarely before has criticism seemed so self-sufficient.12 The efforts of critics, their ‘attempt[s] to turn the textual problems of the human sciences into descriptions of the processes of textual know­ ledge’,13 have not been futile. Their intention ‘not only to describe but to produce knowledge’, even as it is ‘of the sort that will fall neither into the prepared molds provided by the dominant culture nor into the wholly predictive forms manufactured by a quasi-scientific method’,14 has generated the self-interest that Terry Eagleton considers essential in the emergence of a discipline of knowledge. ‘The moment when a material or intellectual practice begins to “think itself", to take itself as an object of intellectual inquiry’, when this practice is thrust into such self-reflexiveness by both an internal pressure and the complex unity which it forms with adjacent discourses, as Eagleton tells us, ‘is clearly of dominant significance in the development of that practice; it will certainly never be the same again’.15 Said and Eagleton suggest that, despite its divergent backgrounds and the necessary limits of its claim to scientific objectivity, literary criticism has

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become an acknowledged area of intellectual inquiry. This fact is more simply evidenced by the increasing use of the terms ‘literary criticism’ or ‘literary theory’ as subject headings in library catalogues, bookshop arrangements and the classification of books, leading to the compilation of encyclopaedic works devoted exclusively to the subject, such as Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms (1993) and The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism (1994). If medieval Arabic literary criticism has been relatively invisible, the causes of that invisibility are at least parallel to if not identical with the problems that have led some writers to challenge the legitimacy of contemporary literary criticism in the West: the unwillingness of the culture around it to recognise it as a science; the various and sometimes contradictory areas of intellectual inquiry from which it grew; the undeniable ways in which the tendentious purposes o f its writers undermined any pretence to objectivity. But unlike contemporary criticism which, despite all challenges, has gained an authority to which Said and Eagleton and those countless titles speak, medieval Arabic criticism never attained such authority in its time. That failure to become an acknowledged, independent discipline is important, and one purpose of this book will be to explore and analyse that failure. There is no need, however, to perpetuate that failure in our own time, and to allow that invisibility to persist. In fact, at the end o f the nineteenth century, Arab intellectuals, scholars and critics began to found a modern discipline of intellectual inquiry concerned with criticism, and to ground that discipline in a historical tradition that could provide it with legitimacy and therefore authority. Their mission was made more urgent by the cross-cultural encounter between the Europeans and the Arabs during the colonial intrusion into the region. Like the development of many genres of writing in Arabic, literary criticism was and continues to be inspired by its counterpart in the West. While traditionalists continued to comment on poetry in accordance with principles which they inherited from their predecessors, modernised Arab intellectuals began translating works on literary criticism from European languages into Arabic, and later incorporated the notions and ideas found in western works into their works on Arabic literature. However, the rapid penetration of western ideas into Arabic culture and literature during the contentious period of European colonisation of the Arab world, as well as the postcolonial period during which western ‘cultural imperialism’ is still being deeply felt, created a paradoxical situation for Arabic literature and literary criticism. While thriving under the enriching western influence, Arab intellectuals were pressed to

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decolonise, to produce indigenous traditions rooted in their cultural heritage and relevant to their immediate concerns. Interest in classical Arabic literary criticism began in the early twentieth century, and many of the major Arab writers of the first half of the twentieth century dabbled in the subject. Their efforts were almost parallel to those of critics in the West. The relatively recent development of literary criticism in the West into an autonomous area of intellectual inquiry has led western scholars to turn to classical writings to discover, uncover and trace the matrix of such an area of intellectual activity. Locating a history of literary criticism, for those who believe firmly in the legitimacy of such an endeavour, can help us to understand its present developments and conditions. Wellek announces unabashedly: ‘The history of criticism should not be a purely antiquarian subject but should, I believe, illuminate and interpret our present situation. It will, in turn, become comprehensible only in the light of a modern literary theory.’16 Taking a cue from the movement towards consolidating literary criticism as an area of literary study with a history of its own in the West, Arab intellectuals, scholars and critics have been keenly involved in discovering a tradition of Arabic literary criticism. Modern scholarship, both Arabic and western, has brought out abundant material on medieval Arabic literary criticism. It has documented this rich tradition in three ways: providing a history for the development of this tradition; placing the achievements of individual critics within the context of the history of this tradition; and analysing, at times in depth and at others not, the technical/artistic issues raised by medieval critics. A systematic approach to this critical tradition, however, did not take off until the publication of Muḥ ammad Mandūr’s Al-naqd al-manhajī 'ind al-'arab ([methodical criticism among Arabs], 1960s), which set the tone for the numerous subsequent histories of classical Arabic literary criticism. The scope of these works varied according to the periods and topics which they covered. Most notable of these works is Iḥ sān 'Abbās’s Tārīkh al-naqd aladabī 'ind al-'arab ( [history of literary criticism among Arabs], 1971),17which remains the authoritative work on the subject up to this date. In this book, 'Abbās provides us with the history of the development of critical issues in relation to the various areas influencing critical thinking in general and literary criticism in particular. Subsequently, Arabic literary scholarship witnessed a surge of studies on individual critics. Arab and western scholars alike have contributed to identifying individual critics and placing them in the history of the development of this tradition. Virtually all medieval critics, from al-Aṣ ma'ī (second/eighth century) and Ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥ ī (third/ninth century) to Ḥ ā zim al-Qarṭājannī and al-Sijilmāsī (seventh/

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thirteenth century), have been the subjects of independent studies. These studies discuss in detail each critic’s view of literature in general and poetry in particular, their presentation of critical issues, and their opinions of criticism. More specifically, still extant works known to contain critical comments have been analysed and related to the larger context of classical literary criticism. A notable example of this genre is Wolfhart Heinrichs’ work on Hāzim al-Qarṭājannī, Arabische Dichtung und griechische Poetik, Ḥ ā zim al-Qarṭāǧ annīs Grundlegung der Poetik mit Hilfe aristotelischer Begriffe (1969). No less important, however, is that scholars have written works exclu­ sively on specific technical issues raised in the classical critical tradition, such as Gustav von Grunebaum’s ‘The concept of plagiarism in Arabic theory’ (1944), Badawī Ṭ abāna’s Al-sariqāt al-adabiyya ( [literary plagiarism], 1969), Jābir 'Uṣ fūr’s Al-ṣ ūra al-fanniyya ([artistic representation], 1974) and Mafhūm al-shi‘r ([the concept of poetry], 1978), Wolfhart Heinrichs’ The Hand of the Northwind, Opinions on Metaphor and the Early Meaning of Isti‘āra in Arabic Poetic (1977), Kamal Abu Deeb’s Al-Jurjānī’s Theory of Poetic Imagery 1979), Muḥ ammad Muṣ ṭ afā Haddāra’s Mushkilat al-sariqātf ī al-naqd al-‘arabī ([the problem of plagiarism in Arabic criticism], 1979), G. J. H. van Gelder’s Beyond the Line: Classical Arabic Literary Critics on the Coherence and Unity of the Poem (1982), Mansur Ajami’s study of 'amūd al-shi‘r in The Neckveins of Winter (1984) and the dialectic of truthfulness and untruth­ fulness in The Alchemy of Glory (1989), G. Kanazi’s Studies in the Kitāb alṣ inā‘tayn of Abū Hilāl al-Askarī (1989), and Margaret Larkin’s study of the influence of theology on the works of 'Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī in The Theology of Meaning (1996). The efforts o f modern scholars have, to a certain extent, defined the scope of this tradition; it is possible to see now that medieval Arabic literary criticism included the four major areas of what modern critics and theorists, such as René Wellek in Concepts of Criticism (1963), have delineated. First, literary history, as in the compilations of biographies of poets and men of letters, as well as anthologies of their works, both poetry and prose: we have works of this nature from as early as the third/ninth century. Second, textual analysis, as in the works compiled on issues related to literary composition. These works are the product o f heated debates over the poetry of major Arab poets – Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī (third/ ninth century), and al-Mutanabbī (fourth/tenth century). Third, literary theory, as in the works of Ḥ ā zim al-Qarṭājannī (sixth/twelfth century) and al-Sijilmāsī (seventh/thirteenth century). And fourth, an area that may be described as theory on theory. The approaches of these scholars to this area of study range from surveys dealing with the history of concepts and ideas to theoretical and

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structural analyses of specific technical issues. The scholars have employed frameworks put forth by modern literary theories in much of their work. This use of modern literary theories has created a paradoxical situation; on the one hand it has helped to define medieval Arabic literary criticism and identify the critics, and on the other it has distracted scholars from placing this literary activity in its cultural context, resulting in yet another paradox. While some scholars have focused on unearthing the native critical tradition, and on explicating its accomplishments, others have concentrated on identifying its deficiencies. The discrepancy between these two approaches is due in part to the problematic place of literary criticism in medieval Arabic-Islamic writings. Resorting to modern theories to explain and interpret this tradition is understandable in the light of one’s eagerness to make sense of one’s literary heritage, not to mention that it is also an inevitable part of the modern individual’s broader pursuit of knowledge. However, the comparative neglect of the medieval Arabic-Islamic cultural context leads to misunderstanding of its purpose, function, achievements and deficiencies. One such misunderstanding is viewing medieval Arabic literary criticism as an independent, specialised discipline of intellectual inquiry, and the literary critic as a specialist of this discipline. While this status has been attained by the field in modern times, both in western and Arabic cultures, in medieval Arabic-Islamic culture literary criticism never became known as an independent area of knowledge, and critics were not recognised as specialists in medieval Arabic writings, whether or not these deal directly with criticism. In works on the classification of the sciences, there were no terms designating literary criticism and literary critics. Furthermore, there is no evidence that this area of intellectual inquiry was ever considered an area of specialised knowledge. No biographical dictionary dealing exclusively with those whom we now identify as literary critics is known to have been compiled; rather, their biographies are dispersed in various sources. Most of them are included in the biographical dictionaries of grammarians and lexicographers in particular, of men of letters and notables in general,18 and occasionally of poets. Yet, while contemporaries did not recognise literary criticism as a specialised field – and while this fact is itself an important part of the story of medieval Arabic literary criticism – we cannot avoid the question of specialisation. This question must be addressed in any discussion of any discipline of learning because it is the foundation for an authoritative voice in the field. Finding this authoritative voice for medieval Arabic literary criticism, if it is possible at all, will help us to understand and determine its true nature, its subsequent development, and above all its integrity as a

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discipline of intellectual inquiry; this in turn is a necessary step towards an overall evaluation of it and of its influence on the development of literature itself. Discussing the issue of specialisation in literary criticism in medieval Islam, however, may rouse scepticism for the following two reasons. First, it is generally acknowledged that medieval Arabic-Islamic culture was a humanistic one, and that any person who was considered learned had to know almost everything. Arabic abounds with works of encyclopaedic proportions produced by a single individual. How do we categorise al-Jāḥ iz’s work on Al-ḥ ayawān (the animal), for example? I need not argue the humanistic character of medieval Arabic-Islamic culture, however, for scholars such as George Makdisi in The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West (1990) and J. Kraemer in Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam (1986) have already done so at length. The second reservation is that specialisation in literary criticism, as well as its profess­ ionalisation, did not take place until the twentieth century; in the classical period everybody was a critic, but in the modern period one has to possess certain skills to qualify as a literary critic. If so, what right do we have to expect specialisation in literary criticism in medieval Arabic-Islamic culture? Yet the validity of interpreting classical material – literary or critical – in a modern light is made plain in the first place by Terry Eagleton when he states: the fact that we always interpret literary works to some extent in the light of our own concerns – indeed that in one sense o f ‘our own concerns’ we are incapable of doing anything else – might be one reason why certain works of literature seem to retain their values across centuries.19 In the second place, the concept of specialisation in a particular area of knowledge did exist within the broader humanistic context of medieval Arabic-Islamic culture. Indeed, the works on the classification of the sciences reveal many areas of specialisation relevant to literary activities: grammar, lexicography, the ‘sciences’ ( 'ulūm) of prosody, rhymes, morphology and the like. Although literary criticism was not one of these areas, an effort to locate and map this field in medieval writing – and to explain why it apparently went unnoticed in its own time – must begin with a look at the areas of specialisation in literary activity that were acknowledged at the time. There are two sets of evidence for this acknowledgement: the formal set consists of the books of ṭabaqāt (biographical dictionaries);20 and the textual is in the form of attributes used by the biographers to qualify the person whose biography is being compiled, and statements made by the critics themselves.

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Let us survey the formal evidence first. Arabic-Islamic culture has known biographical dictionaries from as early as the third/ninth century. We have Al-ṭabaqāt al-kubrā by Ibn Sa‘d (d. 230/844), a biographical dictionary of the companions of the Prophet and the narrators of the prophetic tradition, and Ṭ abaqāt fu ḥ ūl al-shu‘arā’, a dictionary of poets by Ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥ ī (d. 232/846). The tradition of biographical dictionaries would later be continued in two major forms: those which contain biographies of persons known for a specialised area of knowledge, and those which contain biographies of notable personalities in general. Examples of the first category are many. In the field of religious studies in addition to the Ṭ abaqāt of Ibn Sa‘d, we have, for example, Ṭ abaqāt alfuqahā ’ (classes of jurisconsults), Ṭ abaqāt al-shāfi ‘ iyya (classes of Shāfi‘ite legal scholars), Ṭ abaqāt al-Ḥ anābila (classes of Hanbalite legal scholars), Ṭ abaqāt al-mufassirīn (classes of Qur’anic exegetes), Ṭ abaqāt al-qurrā’ (classes of Qur’anic reciters), Ṭ abaqāt al-sūfiyya (classes of mystics) and Ṭ abaqāt al-muḥ addithīn (classes of transmitters of the Prophetic Tradition). In the realm of philosophical studies, we have Ikhbār al-'ulamā’ bi akhbār alḥ ukamā (informing scholars of accounts of physicians/philosophers) by alQifṭ ī, 'Uyūn al-anbā’ f ī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā (selected accounts of classes of physicians) by Ibn Abī Uṣ aybi‘a (d. 668/1270), Tā rīkh al-ḥ ukamā’ (history of the physicians/philosophers) by al-Bayhaqī, and Ṣ iwān al-ḥ ikma (repository of philosophy, the word ṣ iwān meaning chest or coffin in Arabic) and its supplements. In literary scholarship, there are two major trends. For the poets, we have a long tradition of ṭabaqāt al-shu‘ara such as Ṭ abaqāt al­ shu‘arā’ (classes of poets) by Di‘bil al-Khuzā‘ī (d. 235/850), Al-sh‘ir wa alshu‘arā’ ([poetry and poets], also known as Ṭ abaqāt al-shu'arā) by Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), Ṭ abaqāt al-shu'arā al-muḥ dathīn (classes of modern poets) by Ibn al-Mu‘tazz (d. 296/908), Mu‘jam al-shu‘arā’ (dictionary of poets) by al-Marzubānī (d. 371/981),21 Al-aghānī (the book of songs) by alIṣ bahānī (d. 356/994),22 and Al-muḥ ammadūn min al-shu‘arā ’ (the poets whose first name is Muḥ ammad) by al-Qifṭī (d. 646/1248). As for grammarians and lexicographers, there is extant Marātib al-lughawiyyīn wa al-naḥ wiyyīn (hierarchy of lexicographers and grammarians) by Abū alṬ ayyib (‘Abd al-Wāḥ id b. ‘Alī) al-Lughawī (d. 381/991), Akhbār al-naḥ wiyyīn al-baṣ riyyīn (accounts of Basran grammarians) by Abū Sa‘īd al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/978), Ṭ abaqāt al-naḥ wiyyīn wa al-lughawiyyīn (classes of grammarians and lexicographers) by Abū Bakr al-Zubaydī (d. 371/981), Nuzhat al-alibbā’ īf ṭabaqāt al-udabā’ (intelligent [scholars’] promenade in the classes of men of letters) by Abū al-Barakāt (‘Abd al-Raḥ mān b. Muḥ ammad) Ibn al-Anbārī (d. 577/1172), Inbāh al-ruwāh bi anbāh al-nuḥ āh (informing the transmitters [of language] of the notable grammarians) by al-Qifṭ ī, Al-bulgha fī tārīkh

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a ’immat al-lugha (sufficient [accounts] of the history of masters of language) by Fīrūzābādī (d. 817/1415), Ṭ abaqāt al-lughawiyyīn (classes of lexicographers) by Aḥ mad b. Qāḍ ī Shuhba (d. 851/1448), and Bughyat alwu‘āh f ī ṭabaqāt al-lughawiyyīn wa al-nuḥ āh (conscientious [scholars’] object of search in the classes of lexicographers and grammarians) by al-Suyūṭī (d.

909/1495)· There are other biographical dictionaries of grammarians and lexico­ graphers that did not survive the vicissitudes of time but are mentioned in the sources: Akhbār al-naḥ wiyyīn (accounts o f grammarians) by Muḥ ammad b. 'Abd al-Malik b. al-Sarrāj al-Tārīkhī, Ṭ abaqāt al-naḥ wiyyīn al-baṣ riyyīn wa akhbāruhum (classes o f Basran grammarians and their accounts) by alMubarrad (d. 285/898), Al-muqtabas fī akhbār al-nahwiyyīn al-baṣ riyyīn wa awwal man takallama fī al-naḥ w wa akhbār al-qurrā ’ wa al-ruwāh min ahl albaṣ ra wa al-kūfa (summary of accounts of Basran grammarians and the first [scholars] who discussed language and accounts of Qur’ān reciters and transmitters [of language] from Basra and Kufa) by al-Marzubānī,23 a book by Abū ‘Abdallāh Muhammad b. al-Ḥ usayn al-Yamānī, a student of Aḥ mad b. Muḥ ammad b. Wallād (d. 332/944), and Shajarat al-durr fī ma‘rifat a ’immat al-adab (inexhaustible source [or tree of pearls] of the recognition of masters of adab) by Abū al-Ḥ asan ‘Alī b. Fiḍ āl al-Mujāshi‘ī (d. 379/989). It is obvious that specialisation was known in medieval Arabic-Islamic culture. This is not to say that there did not exist tension between two views with regard to knowledge, between the broad humanistic approach and the necessity to specialise in an area of knowledge. In fact, medieval Muslim scholars did not limit themselves to only a specific area of knowledge. It is p e r h a p s p o ssib le , o r b e tte r, to say th a t w ith in th e g e n e ra l h u m a n istic

cultural framework a certain scholar possessed specialised knowledge or was known for his expertise in a particular area of knowledge. The boundaries of specialisation were not always strictly observed. Al-QiftI, for example, includes al-Marzubānī’s biography in Inbāh, but says: ‘Although he [meaning al-Marzubānī] did not specialise (lam yatakhaṣ ṣ aṣ ) in grammar or lexicography, he is considered one of them because he had compiled biographical dictionaries on grammarians and lexicographers’.24 As for textual evidence, in addition to the kind of statements found in the above example (affirmation by negation), it is found mainly in the statements of intention in the prefaces o f these dictionaries, the attributes which their authors use to qualify the subjects of their biographies, and statements by critics themselves. First, there are the statements by the biographers. The reasons that motivated the biographers to compile a biographical dictionary vary, but the underlying concern is the same: love for the field and concern for its welfare.

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Abū al-Tayyib al-Lughawi, for example, said that he compiled Mamtib alnahwiyyin because there was too much confusion in the fields of grammar and lexicography. The affairs of these two fields were in such a state of chaos that people could no longer distinguish between Ibn Sallām al-Jumahi, author o f Ṭ abaqāt al-shu'ara (classes of poets), and Abū 'Ubayd b. Sallām (d. 224/838), author of Al-ghanbal-musannaf (categorised obscure language). Abū Sa'īd al-Sīrāfi, although he did not explicitly discuss his purpose in compiling his book Akhbär al-nahwiyym al-basnyym, reveals it in his descrip­ tion of the book as one ‘in which mention is made of the famous grammarians, some of the accounts concerning them, their learning from one another, and who from among them made advances in the science of grammar ( rilm al-nahw)\25 By separating grammar from other fields relevant to language studies, he implies that grammar is a specialised area of literary studies. Abū Bakr al-Zubaydl, on the other hand, compiled Ṭ abaqāt al-nahwiyyin wa al-lughaxviyyīn (biographies of grammarians and lexicographers) in response to a special commission from al-Hakam al-Mustansir bi Alläh, who specifically asked him to ‘compile a book on the grammarians and lexicographers’ .26 Grammar and lexicography, based on evidence found in this book by alZubaydl, who was the first scholar to distinguish between these two disci­ plines in the tofø^literatu re, were considered two separate areas of study. The title of Ibn al-Anbārī’s work, Nuzhat al-alibbā’ f i tabaqāt al-udabā\ makes it appear that it is a biographical dictionary of men of letters in general. A closer scrutiny, however, reveals that his focus was fUrn al'arabiyya (knowledge, or science, of the Arabic language), which may be interpreted to mean grammar and lexicography; for the first section of this work relates the story of the founding of grammar by 'Alī b. Abī Tālib and its continuation by Abū al-Aswad al-Du’all (d. 69/688). The content of the text further supports this interpretation; for although it covers a wider spectrum than merely the grammarians and lexicographers, the bulk of the biographies contained in it is concerned with these two groups of scholars. Al-Suyūtī compiled Bughyat al-wurāh because, in his own words, T have been yearning for a book that contains accounts of all the grammarians, because of my intensive specialisation or engagement in (mazid ikhtisâsí)21 this science ( rilm)\28 Not being able to find one, he proceeded to compile one himself: he first studied all the extant biographical dictionaries, and then he wrote down ‘the biography of every grammarian’ he could find, collecting all in one book.29 Second, there are the attributes - nisba adjectives - used by the biographers to qualify their subjects. They appear immediately following the subject’s name in a biography, and they designate his area of

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specialisation.30 These attributes appear most commonly in the biographical dictionaries of men of letters or notable men in general. For example, Abū Hilāl al-'Askarī (d. 395/1004) was called al-lughawī (lexico­ grapher), and Tha'lab (d. 291/905) al-lughawī al-naḥ awī (lexicographer and grammarian). These attributes do not occur haphazardly, but were carefully selected to reflect reality as the biographer saw it. Ibn Qutayba was characterised by Ibn Khallikān (d. 681/1283)31 as a grammarian and lexicographer (naḥ wī wa lughawī), as was al-Ḥ ātimī (d. 388/998); and Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī (d. 456/1063) was known as a lexicographer and grammarian. When a scholar is included in a biographical dictionary, he is being marked as a specialist in a specific area of knowledge unless otherwise noted, as in the case of al-Marzubānī and al-Qifṭ ī. The appear­ ance of these attributes in the dictionaries o f litterateurs or notables is thus significant, as it shows the biographers’ keen awareness that within the realm of literary pursuits there were specialised subdivisions. Third, there are the statements made by medieval critics themselves. Some critics wrote explicitly on the necessity of specialisation in literary criticism. Al-Āmidī’s work, Al-muwāzana bayn shi‘r A bī Tammām wa al-Buḥ turī ([balanced] comparison between the poetry of Abū Tammām and alBuḥ turī), is a good example. Most eye-catching in this work are the few pages32 in which the author expresses his outrage at the state o f affairs in what the moderns would call the activities of literary criticism. He observes that poetic criticism, which he calls al-‘ilm bi al-shi‘r, ought to be a specialised skill that not everyone should claim to possess, and that not everyone has a right to practise.33 In other areas, al-Āmidī argues, special­ ised expertise was required to judge, to mention but a few examples, a horse, a slave, gold or silver. The conditions, it is clear, were ripe for the emergence of literary criticism as a specialised area o f knowledge requiring qualified experts. However, that was not exactly what happened. The question is why, when those who participated in the discussion of poetry argued vehemently for this necessity, literary criticism did not become a specialised area of knowledge and was not recognised as such. By examining the history of the development of literary criticism within the context of medieval ArabicIslamic culture, I will attempt to answer this question and explain the paradox of medieval Arabic literary criticism: that despite its widespread practice it was not recognised as a specialised area of knowledge. Answer­ ing this question – why literary criticism was not recognised – as well as unearthing the history of that criticism, the ways in which the field gradually defined itself despite this non-recognition, entails an exploration of the cultural context in which medieval Arabic literary criticism was

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written. For this reason, this book will discuss not only works of Arabic literary criticism, but also non-literary works that in some way touch on the field. Throughout, both types of works will be examined from the perspective of Arabic-Islamic culture. It is necessary to examine these writings from the perspective of ArabicIslamic culture because ‘criticism is part of the history of culture in general and is thus set in a historical and social context’ .34 History of criticism, whether viewed in relation to the history of the practice of writing or not, ‘is simply a branch of history of ideas’ that is ’clearly ... influenced by the general changes of intellectual climate, the history of ideas, and even by definite philosophies, though they may not have produced systematic aesthetics themselves’ .35 I agree with Wellek that ‘the causal explanation, in an ultimate sense, is impossible in matters of mind: cause and effect are incommensurable, the effect of specific causes unpredictable’,36 I also espouse the notion that ‘there is an inner logic in the evolution of ideas: a dialectic of concepts’.37 However, the evolution of ideas necessarily occurs within a specific culture, and culture, as Foucault sees it, is an institutionalised process by which what is considered appropriate to it is kept appropriate.38 In other words, literary criticism operates under and responds, willynilly, to the pressures which culture exerts on it. Whether we like it or not, texts, literary or critical, are never divorced from the realities of power and authority. ‘The realities of power and authority – as well as the resistances offered by men, women, and social movements to institutions, authorities, and orthodoxies – are the realities that make texts possible, that deliver them to their readers, that solicit the attention of critics’.39 Therefore, expertise derived from specialisation, a very precise division of intellectual labour among the intellectual class including critics, has always been a service rendered, and sold, to the central authority of society,40making literary criticism a specialised, often tendentious, theoretical mode of discourse;41 ‘criticism is not an innocent discipline, and never has been’ .42 What I propose to do here is akin to what Eagleton does in Criticism and Ideology. to inquire into the history of criticism itself: to pose the question of under what conditions, and for what ends, a literary criticism comes about. For criticism had a history, which is more than a random collection of critical acts. If literature is its object, it is not its sole point of genesis; a criticism does not arise as a spontaneous riposte to the existential fact it illuminates. It has its own relatively autonomous life, its own laws and structures: it forms an internally complex system articulated with the literary system rather than

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merely reflexive of it. It emerges into existence, and passes out if it again, on the basis of determinate conditions ... In constructing the history of criticism we are not tracing the exfoliation through history of linear, if irregular, process: it is the history of criticism which is at issue.43 By the same token, anyone writing under the pressures of culture, its power and authority, cannot but be part and participant of its dialectics; ‘there’s no possibility of a wholly disinterested statement’ .44 No writer can escape a certain ideological framework, and here I use Terry Eagleton’s definition of ideology which implies ‘the largely concealed structure of values which informs and underlies our factual statements’.45 Ideology, as Eagleton further expounds, means roughly the ways in which what we say and believe connects with the power structure and power-relations of the society we live in. It follows from such a rough definition of ideology that not all of our underlying judgments and categories can usefully be said to be ideological. It is deeply ingrained in us to imagine ourselves moving forward into the future (at least one other society sees itself as moving backwards into it), but though this way of seeing may connect significantly with the power structure of our society, it need not always and everywhere do so. I don’t mean by ‘ideology’ simply the deeply entrenched, or unconscious beliefs which people hold; I mean more particularly those modes of feeling, valuing, perceiving and believing which have some kind of relation to the maintenance and reproduction of social power.46 Considerations such as these – the cultural contingency of the critical enterprise, the inescapability of ideology – are the source o f some o f the challenges to the authority of modern literary criticism. So it should not surprise us if, as I will show, similar problems hindered the recognition and sometimes hampered the development of literary criticism as a selfconfident, independent discipline in medieval Arabic writings. Still, as the works of Bakhtin, Wellek, Said and Eagleton suggest, these problems have not prevented modern literary criticism from becoming a strong, selfsufficient field. Similarly, I will argue that the cultural context that sometimes constrained or denied the existence of medieval Arabic literary criticism did not prevent it from taking on a life of its own. In fact, I hope that this tracing of the story of medieval Arabic literary criticism in its cultural context can offer a perspective from which to understand the field of literary criticism in general, both its achievements and its deficiencies.

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With these goals in mind, I will explain the paradox of literary criticism in medieval Arabic-Islamic culture, which is a result of a combination of factors: the priorities of the culture, the functions of poetry – the primary subject of medieval Arabic literary criticism – in culture and society, and the practices of literary critics. For my purposes, I will examine how the culture, as manifest in non-critical writings, dealt with poetry and literary criticism, how the functions of poetry in medieval Arabic-Islamic culture played a role in shaping the view of literary criticism, how the critics themselves played a role in creating this paradox, and how despite this paradox a self-referential literary critical tradition emerged in the fifth/ eleventh century. This book is thus divided into five chapters. In Chapter 1, I attempt to determine the place of poetry, and therefore literary criticism, in medieval Arabic-Islamic culture by examining the writings of those who were concerned with documenting the various aspects of knowledge, namely the works on the classification of the sciences, be they by philosophers, religious scholars and men of letters47 or bio-bibliographers. Special attention is paid to the theoretical, as well as ideological, framework within which each author operated. In addition to the theoretical framework which the authors of these works espoused, be it philosophical – specifically Aristotelian – religious, or a combination of both, or neither, their ideological priorities, which were the product of the cultural dialectics of the period, dictated their view of poetry and literary criticism. It may seem that what I do in this chapter is irrelevant, for literary criticism as such is not recognised in any of these classificatory works, as I have already stated. Poetry itself, when addressed in these works, is generally marginalised, rendered invisible, sometimes even condemned – all the more paradoxi­ cally, since its medium, the Arabic language, was given a heightened significance by Arabic-Islamic culture, and since poetry in fact had an important place in the daily lives of the people of that culture. However, the reasons why poetry is marginalised and literary criticism absent from these works are important in the explanation of the paradox of medieval Arabic literary criticism. In Chapter 2, I look at the ambivalent place of poetry, which is evident in the works on the classification of the sciences, and the relevant functions of poetry in medieval Arabic-Islamic culture and society, and how these affected the failure of literary criticism to develop into an independent, legitimate discipline of intellectual inquiry. This chapter consists mainly of two parts, one dealing with ancient poetry and the second with muhḍ ath (new) poetry. This bipartite division of Arabic poetry is – as I shall demonstrate – determined by two sets of distinctive functions assigned to it.

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I discuss in detail the functions of poetry in medieval Arabic-Islamic culture and society, for I believe, as T. S. Eliot did, that our purpose in studying criticism can be more than sociological and, more importantly, that the development of literary criticism and its function in society and course of development are very much related to the function of poetry. I have not made this brief review of the progress of criticism in order to lead up to associating myself with any particular tendency of modern criticism, least of all sociological. I suggest that we may learn a good deal about criticism and about poetry by examining the history of criticism, not merely as a catalogue of successive notions about poetry, but as a process of readjustment between poetry and the world in and for which it is produced. We can learn something about poetry simply by studying what people have thought about it at one period after another; without coming to the stultifying conclusion that there is nothing to be said but that opinion changes. Second, the study of criticism, not as a sequence of random conjectures, but as a readaptation, may also help us to draw some conclusions as to what is permanent or eternal in poetry, and what is merely the expression o f the spirit o f an age; and by discovering what does change, and how, and why, we may become able to apprehend what does not change. And by investigating the problems of what has seemed to one age and another to matter, by examining differences and identities, we may somewhat hope to extend our own limitations and liberate ourselves from some of our prejudices.48 The focus of Chapter 3 and 4 is on how the functions assigned to poetry in culture and society determined the direction of medieval literary criticism. In Chapter 3, I analyse works on poetry by scholars who, operating under the pressures of a culture that was in the process of defining itself, made attempts to establish literary criticism as an independent field of learning devoted to the discussion of poetry. Their attempts are manifest in the efforts which they made to create precise terminology to designate literary criticism and literary critics. I explore the meanings and the development of the use of terms such as naqd al-shī‘r, ‘ilm al-shi‘r, al-‘ilm bi al-shi‘r and sinā‘at al-shi‘r and their derivatives in major Arabic critical works, with special attention to how their use is reflected in the critical tradition itself and to the activities which they imply. The terms naqd and intiqād are examined first, then their alternatives as suggested and used by the critics, namely ‘ilm al-shi‘r, al-‘ilm bi al-shi‘r and sinā‘at al-shi‘r. Finally, I look at al-Tawhīdī’s use of al-kalām ‘alā al-kalām. Here, I relate the efforts of

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the critics to the peculiar circumstances, both cultural and personal, out of which they thought and wrote about poetry and literary criticism. ‘On e has to leave something to the initiative of the individual, the luck of the gifted man devoting his thought to a particular matter at a given time’.49Also, ‘the individual critic himself will be motivated by his personal history: his education, the demands of his calling, the requirements of his audience’.50 Chapter 4 deals with the ways in which the function of poetry in society inadvertently undermined the efforts that the critics made to establish literary criticism as an independent area of intellectual inquiry, and with the reasons why the terms which the critics worked so hard to coin and develop did not obtain the status of technical terms used to designate the field. The purpose of this analysis is to show how the critics’ practice – a manifestation of the difficulty which the critics, being circumstantial realities,51 faced in grappling with conflicting views with regard to poetry and its function in society, especially in the controversy surrounding Abū Tammām and al-Mutanabbī – produced negative effects on the rise of literary criticism as an identifiable area of knowledge, and consequently of critics as an identifiable group of specialists. This is further to demonstrate how, despite the various non-aesthetic purposes which motivated writing about poetry during these controversies, the major terms developed by early critics continued to be kept alive, and certain more objectively useful aesthetic criteria gradually became defined. In Chapter 5, I trace the matrix of the development of the critical thinking that led to the definition of the literary critic – albeit on a theoretical level only – and above all the emergence of a self-referential critical tradition. With an eye to the historical development of the notions and debates about the qualifications of the literary critic, the focus is placed on these qualifications and the problems that the critics themselves had to solve, especially the issues of whether the artist can be the critic and whether criticism is an innate talent or acquired skill. Finally, I discuss how the efforts of the early critics, despite their divergent purposes and methods, contributed to the delineation, albeit preliminary and tentative, of literary study as an area of intellectual inquiry which would be regarded as literary criticism today, and the later critics’ attempts, especially those of al-Marzubānī and Ibn Rashīq, in consolidating the efforts o f their predecessors and outlining a tradition which was eventually recognised by contemporaneous and later writers working outside and inside the immediate area of literary criticism. Another goal of this book is to convey in their fullness the attitudes towards poetry and its study that are either explicit or implicit in medieval Arabic writings, as well as to identify and discuss the major writings that we

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might today name literary criticism. My purpose is not only to explain the causes contributing to the development of literary criticism in medieval Arabic-Islamic culture, but also to offer an intellectual history of that development. No study in Arabic or European languages has attempted to make a coherent intellectual history of medieval Arabic literary criticism from these materials, tangential to the critical enterprise as they often seem to be. Such a history is a necessary first step to a deeper understanding of the development o f Arabic poetry and literary criticism in medieval ArabicIslamic culture, and to an overall interpretation of Arabic-Islamic culture. My work is inspired by my readings in contemporary works on literary criticism. I am indebted to Arab and non-Arab scholars and critics for many o f the ideas and notions contained in this book; in fact, it is often difficult for me to tell where my ideas begin and theirs end. More importantly, my theoretical framework, approach and methodology are derived from their works. Scholars of Arabic literary criticism taught me that there is a tradition o f Arabic literary criticism with a history of its own, and Arab critics drew my attention to the importance of this tradition in contemporary Arab culture. Literary theorists and historians of literary criticism convinced me that knowledge must be the subject matter of literary criticism. Cultural critics, like Edward Said and Mikhail Bakhtin, proved to me that it is impossible to ignore the cultural context in discussions of any text. Marxist critics, like Terry Eagleton, persuaded me that ideologies necessarily play a role in how an author views the subject of his study. Said, Eagleton, Bakhtin and Foucault intensified my perception that knowledge and power are intricately connected and that any discipline of intellectual inquiry dealing with knowledge necessarily participates in cultural dialectics relevant to negotiations over power. T. S. Eliot assured me that I am on the right track in thinking that the function of literary criticism is dependent on the function of the literature which it studies. There are also many others, too many to acknowledge here, to whom I owe what I know. I borrow from them eclectically many general principles, tacitly or explicitly, for my purposes. As I have stated, however, my book is not a work of literary theory or literary criticism; rather, it is a kind of intellectual history dealing with an aspect of medieval Arabic-Islamic culture, and as far as possible I let the primary materials guide me to my conclusions.

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1 . René Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism 1750–1g5 o, vol. 1 (Cam bridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1981), v. 2. Edward Said, The World, the Text and the Critic (Cam bridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 1 . 3. Catherine Belsey, ‘Problem s o f literary theory: the problem o f m eaning’ , New Literary History 14 (1982), 175. 4. Said, World, 51. 5. René Wellek and Austin W arren, Theory of Literature (San Diego: H arcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1942), 16. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Said, World, 140. 10. Belsey, ‘Problem ’ , 175. 1 1 . Jo sep h Natoli, ‘Preface’ , in idem (ed.), Tracing Literary Theory (U rbana and Chicago: University o f Illinois Press, 1987), 1 : ix. 12. Edward Said, ‘Preface’ , Literature and Society (Baltim ore and London: Jo h n s H opkins University Press, 1980), vii. 13. Said, World, 182. 14. Ibid. 15. Terry Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology (London: New Left Books,

1976), 18. 16. Wellek, History, v. 17. A revised version was published in 1993. 18. These are: Yāqūt al-Ḥ amawī (d. 626/1228), M u ‘j am al-udabā (Irshād alarīb ila ma‘rifat al-adīb), ed. D. S. M argoliouth (Beirut: Dār Iḥ yā’ alT u rāth al-‘A rabī , 1979); Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-a‘yān, ed. Iḥ sān ‘A bbās (Beirut: Dār Ṣ ādir, 1968-72). 19. Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (M inneapolis: Univer­ sity o f M innesota Press, 1983), 12. 20. For a definition o f this genre, see Wadad al-Qadi, ‘Biographical dictionaries: inner structure and cultural significance’ , The Book in the Islamic World (Washington DC: The Library o f Congress, 1995), 93– 122. The word ṭabaqāt cannot be adequately translated into English. The criteria used in the books o f tabaqāt vary from one to another; they may be based on chronology alone or may involve other criteria implicit in the structure o f the book. 21. It is reported in Yāqūt’s M u ‘j am al-udabā’ that al-Marzubānī has two other biographical dictionaries o f poets, Al-mufīd and Al-mūniq, but they are no longer extant. 22. Although Kitāb al-aghānī may be considered a biographical dictionary o f poets, it is in fact an encyclopaedia o f Arabic poetry and culture o f sorts, and it documents aspects o f life especially in urban centres where poetry played an important role, whether in politics or entertainment. 23. Selections from this work have survived in the form o f mukhtaṣ ar under the title o f N ūr al-qabas, ed. R u d olf Sellheim (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1964). 24. Jam āl al-Dīn ‘Alī b. Yūsuf al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh al-ruwāh f ī anbāh al-nuḥ āh, ed. M uḥ ammad Abū al-Faḍ l Ibrāhīm (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣ riyya,

1950–73),3: 180. 25.

al-Sīrāfi, Akhbār, 13.

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26. Abū Bakr al-Zubaydī, Ṭ abaqāt al-naḥ wiyyīn wa al-lughawiyyīn, ed. M uḥ ammad Abū al-Faḍ l Ibrāhīm (Cairo: Dār al-M a'ārif, 1973), 17. 27. This phrase may also be interpreted to m ean ‘extrem e involvem ent’ . 28. ‘Abd al-Raḥ mān Ja lā l al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, Bughyat al-wu‘āh īf ṭabaqāt allughawiyyīn, ed. M uḥ ammad Abū al-Faḍ l Ibrāhīm, 2nd edn (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr, 1979), 1 : 3. 29. al-Suyūṭī, Bughya, 1 : 3. 30. Using attributes (nisba adjectives in this case) to identify a person is not peculiar to biographical dictionaries, nor is it necessarily dictated by a specialisation in a particular field o f learning. 31. Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, 3: 42. 32. Abū al-Qāsim al-Ḥ asan b. Bishr al-Āmidī, Al-muwāzana bayn shi‘r Abī Tammām wa al-Buḥ turī, ed. al-Sayyid Ahm ad Ṣ aqr (Cairo: Dār alM a‘ ārif, 1961), 1 : 389-96. 33. al-Āmidī, Al-muwāzana, 1 : 389. 34. Wellek, History, 1 : 8. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Said, World, 12.

39. Ibid. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

Ibid. Edward Said, ‘P reface’ , Literature and Society, vii. Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology, 17. Ibid. Eagleton, Literary Theory, 13 Ibid., p. 15. Ibid. In Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam (Leiden: E. J . Brill, 1970), Franz Rosenthal draws our attention to the fact that adab literature contains much inform ation on the notions o f knowledge in m edieval Islam. Adab has been the subject o f many studies: see S. A. Bonebakker, ‘Adab and the concept o f belleslettres’ , in The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, vol. 2, ‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres (Cam bridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1989), 16– 30; Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Structure of Avance: The Bukhalā ’ in Medieval Arabic Literature (Leiden: E. J . Brill, 1985), 7– 16; Ilse Lichtenstadter, ‘O n the conception o f A d ab’ , The Moslem World 33 (1943), 33– 8; C. A. Nallino, Tārīkh al-adāb al-'arabiyya min al-jāhiliyya ḥ attā ‘aṣ r banī umayya (Cairo: Dār al-Ma‘ārif, 1954); and Charles Pellat, ‘Variations sur le thème de l ’adab’ , Correspondence d ’Orient Etude (Brussels, 1964), 5-6. 48. T. S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (Cam bridge: Harvard University Press, 1933 [1961]), 18. 49. Wellek, History, 8. 50. Ibid. 51. Said, World, 34-5.

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I

Knowledge and Cultural Dialectics [K] nowledge is conceived as the ongoing process of reflective adjustment between various cultural needs and interests. Christopher Norris In Al-imtā‘ wa al-mu’ānasa (regalement and companionship),1 al-Tawḥ īdī (d. 414/1024) reports in detail the debate that took place in 320/932 at the court of the vizier to the Caliph al-Muqtadir, Ibn al-Furāt, between the renowned Basran grammarian Abu Sa‘īd al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/978) and the leading philosopher and translator Mattā b. Yūnus (d. 328/940).2 At the urging of the vizier,3 al-Sīrāfi debated with Mattā on the superiority of grammar over logic. Al-Tawḥ īdī tells us that Mattā was not able to rebut alSīrāfī’s arguments and that he was practically stunned into silence. The headlong clash between Arabic grammar and Greek logic was preceded by at least a quarter of a century of tension. Aḥ mad b. al-Ṭ ayyib al-Sarakhsī (d. 285/899), al-Kindī’s student, had already written ‘on the difference between the grammar of the Arabs and logic’, reportedly the first essay of its kind.4 Although this treatise is no longer extant, we are told that al-Sarakhsī, as well as Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (c. 251/865-313/925 or 320/932), considered logic to be a universal grammar and as such superior to Arabic grammar.5 The triumph of al-Sīrāfi in this debate, which would become the ‘talk’ of the fourth/tenth century 'Abbasid intellectual community, signalled that three centuries after the spread of Islam, the rising culture that was struggling for self-identity had finally sunk its roots in Arabic – the language of the Qur’ān – and Islam. It also demolished completely the notion that language is merely a medium of expression; it linked language to the system of thinking in a manner that made the former an integral part of the latter. Al-Sīrāfi asserted on more than one occasion that ‘grammar is logic, but it is derived from Arabic, and logic is grammar, but it is understood by language’.6 He refuted Mattā’s claim that grammar was concerned only with the formal aspects of the language, not its content.7 This debate was not merely about logic and grammar, but about two

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world-views, one based on Arabic and Islam, and the other derived from the Greek heritage, with which the Arab Muslims came into contact during the Islamic conquests of the former Byzantine empire, home of the centres of Greek learning in present-day Syria and Egypt, in the first/seventh and second/eighth centuries, and subsequently translated into Arabic in the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries. The contrast between the two personalities involved in the debate is perhaps of some significance. At the time of the debate, al-Tawḥ ldi relates, al-Sīrāfī was a man of 40 whose ‘temples were slightly touched by grey and who was (characterised) by uprightness (samt), dignity (waqār), piety (dīn) and seriousness (jidd)". These traits, al-Tawḥ ldi says, were those of ‘ahl al-faḍ l wa al-taqaddum (people of virtue and seniority)’, and those who possessed them were respected, loved and praised.8 Mattā, on the other hand, was old (in his sixties) and sold himself cheap. He would dictate a ‘ waraqa (leaf)’ for a muqtadirī dirham. Furthermore, he would practise medicine while drunk. Al-Tawḥ īdī adds that ‘he thinks he is a winner, but he really is ineffectual in his deeds and mean in his condition (wa huwa min al-akhsarīn a ‘mālan, alasfalīn aḥ wālan'.9To al-Tawḥ īdī, this contrast must have been as significant as it seems to us now. The image conveyed in this contrast is one of al-Sīrāfī, representing the young and vibrant Arabic-Islamic culture, and Mattā, the outdated Greek culture, and it foreshadowed the rise of a new world-view. What al-Tawḥ īdī does not explicitly state in this anecdote is the implications of the triumph of the Islamic world-view. Embedded in this debate is in fact the dispute about the source of knowledge, and the means to attain it, that would serve as the foundation for this world-view. The triumph of the Islamic world-view meant that revelation, the Qur’ān and the Prophetic Tradition, was becoming the source of knowledge funda­ mental to the vision of the civilisation that was taking shape, and that religious scholars were becoming the cultural elite o f the new society; for as experts in the religious sciences they alone were qualified to understand, interpret and maintain revelation, and by extension to define and shape their culture and society. The philosophers’ self-proclaimed superiority was consequently brought into question;10 their claim to knowledge, which was based on reason and a philosophical tradition rooted in the Greek culture, became suspect, and their role in defining the culture became undermined. The philosophers were challenged to defend their position and role in both culture and society, and to find a place for themselves and their practices in the new Islamic world-view. The importance of the subject of language to these disputes makes the writings of the philosophers and religious scholars of this time an important source for study of the role of poetry – and therefore of the role

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of literary critical discussion of poetry – in medieval Arabic-Islamic culture. In their efforts to define knowledge and to classify its component parts, these writers were compelled to take a position on the importance of the study of language, and sometimes on the function of poetry itself. Thus, the series of dialogues between exponents of philosophy and religion, conducted in the century or two following the debate of al-Sīrāfi and Mattā, focused on the relative claims of logic and of grammar.11 This period witnessed the emergence of writings on the classification of the sciences, a predictable phenomenon as activities in all areas of knowledge, foreign or Arabic, gained momentum. Information available on this genre of writing is abundant and diverse,12 reflecting the various thinkers’ efforts in trying to make sense of it as they attempted to fit all these disciplines of knowledge, conceived as distinct categories, into a cohesive theoretical framework and to show how the various disciplines of knowledge were conceived of in relation to one another.13 The authors of these works, while working out a scheme for the classification of sciences according to personal preferences and intellectual influences, were at the same time participating in the cultural dialectics taking place during their times, the dialectics in which Arabic-Islamic civilisation was to find its identity, and ‘by which what [was] considered appropriate to [this culture would be] kept appropriate’ .14These works are a fertile source for scholars of Arabic-Islamic culture to gain an understanding of the cultural dialectics that accompanied the process of self-identification, as well as the emerging self-vision of a new culture and civilisation. I will focus particularly on the place which these works allot to language and poetry, in order to clarify the intellectual context in which literary critics were working. Other medieval Arabic writings engage the question o f poetry’s function from a perspective within the poetic enterprise itself; Chapter 2 will discuss these works. But there is much to learn by examining how thinkers who were not poets and critics assessed poetry and its function in culture and society. The works on the classification of the sciences, which I will analyse in this chapter, provide clues, albeit indirectly, as to how the poet and the literary critic and their particular area of intellectual inquiry were understood and appreciated. One purpose of my discussion is simply to point out the parts that poetry and literary criticism played or failed to play in all these classificatory works. Another purpose will be to analyse these works from the perspective which I employ throughout this book: in examining the reasons for the inclusion or exclusion of poetry and literary criticism in these works, I will show how the dialectics of the emerging Arabic-Islamic culture negotiated for the place of poetry the newly ‘imagined’ Arabic-Islamic civilisation.

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The authors of these classificatory works each write within what Terry Eagleton would call an ideological framework – ‘the largely concealed structure of values which forms and underlies factual statements’15 – which manifest at the same time the response of their authors to the cultural dialectics surrounding knowledge. These frameworks prescribe the authors’ view of poetry, impelling them to include or exclude poetry, and therefore any discussion of it, in or from their works accordingly. Thus, the principles of selection and categorisation which the authors o f these works16 adopted determine and embody their perspectives on the place of literary criticism and its function in medieval Arabic-Islamic culture. Motivated by their genuine desires to assimilate various areas of knowledge into a broader Arabic-Islamic framework, Muslim thinkers attempted to integrate ancient sciences (primarily Greek) and the emerging Islamic sciences. Despite their common concern for synthesis, it is nevertheless possible to detect diverse theoretical impulses, each further coloured by the author’s ideological contemplation. As in any survey of cultural materials, there are always exceptions. Although generalisation is impossible, it is perhaps practical for the sake of clarity and convenience to categorise Arabic-Islamic works on the classification of the sciences into three large groups, based on the perspectives from which each author pondered the areas of knowledge and their function in medieval ArabicIslamic culture and civilisation. Except for the Rasā’il (epistles or treatises) of Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā (Brethren of Purity), which need to be discussed separately, these works roughly fall within the Aristotelian, religious, encyclopaedic and generalist (adab) frameworks. Each coincides with and departs from its overarching structure in a particular way. T H E A R IS T O T E L IA N F R A M E W O R K ( A L - F Ā R Ā B Ī, A L - 'Ā M I R Ī A N D A V IC E N N A )

In the aftermath of the debate between Abū Sa'īd al-Sīrāfī and Mattā b. Yūnus, an approach from a singular perspective to knowledge was no longer reasonable or plausible. Philosophers now had to account for the two main branches of knowledge, Arabic/Islamic and Greek/foreign, and attempt to give a synthesis of them; they were now in urgent need of this synthesis, for only upon their success in assimilating their disciplines of knowledge into the now predominant Arabic-Islamic ones would they be able to ensure the legitimacy of their existence, and the existence of their sciences. Al-Fārābī (d. 339/950) was working under tremendous pressures to integrate philosophy, as a discipline of knowledge, and a superior one in his estimate, into a comprehensive system that included all sciences. He was a student and colleague of Mattā b. Yūnus,17 and his knowledge of Mattā’s debate with and subsequent ‘defeat’ by al-Sīrāfī may have played a

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role in shaping the direction of some of his writings. Having become aware of the deficiencies of the Aristotelian scheme for Arab purposes – for ‘it takes account o f neither the arts and crafts nor the areas thought by the Muslims to qualify as “science” and to be traditionally Arab’18– al-Fārābī took upon himself the task of defending logic, and by extension philosophy, and of responding to al-Sīrāfī ’s arguments in Kitāb al-ḥ urūf (the book of letters)19 and part of Al-tanbīh ‘alā sabīl al-sa‘āda (direction to the path of happiness). Al-Fārābī was aware that his predecessor al-Kindī’s (d. 250/864) onetrack approach to Aristotelian works, in view of this new development, could not be continued. In Risāla f ī kamiyyāt kutub arisṭū wa mā yuḥ tāj ilayhi fī taḥ ṣ īl al-falsafa (treatise on the number of the books by Aristotle and what is necessary for the attainment of philosophy) ,20 al-Kindī makes it clear that the ultimate science is philosophy,21 which he describes as the intellectual/ rational acme (nikāyat al-sharaf al-‘aqlī).22 His approach is determined by three factors: the Aristotelian classification of sciences transmitted to the Arabs through the Alexandrian school; the books extant in his own library; and the educational purpose which he has in mind for this work, to have it serve as a guide for students of philosophy. He divides Aristotle’s works into four categories: the logical sciences (al-manṭiqiyyāt); the natural sciences/ physics (al-ṭabī’iyyāt); sciences o f that which is not dependent on nature, but exists on its own and does not need physical bodies, although having some connection with them;23 and finally sciences of that which does not need a body and is not connected with one at all.24Under the third section of this scheme he mentions, almost reluctantly, knowledge by divine revelation, such as that of the prophets. Al-Kindī makes no mention of any of the Arabic sciences. Significantly, in the light of the centrality of questions of language to Arabic-Islamic culture, he feels no need to discuss the particular sciences which will recur in the works of later writers: grammar and lexicography. Less than a century later, al-Fārābī presented a revised version of the classification o f the sciences. Iḥ ṣ ā al-‘ulūm (enumeration o f the sciences) is more comprehensive than al-Kindī’s Risāla; in other words, it is not restricted to the framework imposed by the Aristotelian tradition.25 Pur­ porting to give a summary of the sciences extant during his time as a concise guide for students of philosophy, this work gives the reader a clear, though general, idea of the subject of each science and its theoretical and practical use.26 This work of al-Fārābī’s, in addition to being based on his ‘theory of the division of sciences’, which he summarises in Al-tanbīh 'alā sabīl al-sa‘āda, 27 is inspired by his overall concern with the welfare of his society as well. For al-Fārābī, author of many works of a political nature

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including the well-known Arā’ ahl al-madīna al-fāḍ ila (opinions of the people of the virtuous city) and Al-siyāsa al-madaniyya (the political regime), ‘the problem of philosophy was inseparable from the problem o f political philosophy’ .28 His classification of the sciences is guided by an underlying ideological, and perhaps even political, purpose relevant to his vision of human civilisation as well. Knowledge should serve society, and therefore each of the disciplines included in his classification of sciences must have a specific and useful function to qualify for having a place in his scheme. Informed by what he deemed to be the necessary components of the society which he envisaged, al-Fārābī in Iḥ ṣ ā ’ al-‘ulūm29 expanded the Aristotelian classification to include the Arabic sciences, departing from the two separate types of classification of the sciences that were extant in the Islamic community then:30 the known Aristotelian scheme o f dividing philosophical sciences into theoretical (mathematics, physics and meta­ physics) and practical sciences (ethics, politics and economics); and the more comprehensive classification of all the sciences into philosophic and non-philosophic, or foreign sciences/sciences o f the ancients and ArabicIslamic sciences. His ‘generally known’ sciences encompass, in addition to the Greek philosophical sciences, jurisprudence and language. The arrange­ ment of the Iḥ ṣ ā ’ forms a kind of curriculum in which each discipline or science is presented in the order in which it needs to be studied, each discipline presupposing the preceding one. It delineates at the same time the evolution of the sciences as it might or should unfold within each nation regardless of its origin, Arabic or Greek, or its customary frame­ work, religious or philosophic. In this curriculum, language was the very first discipline to be studied. Al-Fārābī’s attempt to incorporate all sciences, Arabic and Greek, into an integral system was not unique; for before him, Abū Zayd al-Balkhī (d. c. 322/934), al-Kindī’s student, had also made the attempt to reconcile philosophy with religion31 in a reportedly lost treatise on the division of the sciences (Kitāb aqsām al-'ulūm).32 His student, Abū al-Ḥ asan Muḥ ammad b. Yūsuf al-'Āmirī (d. 381/991), inherited his mission. Al-Tawḥ īdī reports in Akhlāq al-wazīrayn (ethics of the two viziers) that during his visit to Baghdad in 364/974 al-'Āmirī tried to initiate a debate with al-Sīrāfī by asking the latter about the meaning of the preposition bā ’ in the phrase ‘ bi ’smi ’llāhi ’r-rahmāni ’r-raḥ īm (in the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful) ’33 at the court of the famous Buyid vizier Ibn al-'Amīd (d. 366/976). The meeting, according to al-Tawḥ īdī, was attended by the notables of Baghdad society. Al-Sīrāfi, however, evaded the question and responded to al-‘Āmirī with a witticism. Ibn al-'Amīd laughed heartily and stopped al-'Āmirī from pursuing the matter by saying: ‘Talk about something else! We have

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despaired of this!’34 No-one in the crowd, it seems, was in sympathy with al'Āmirī , who, in al-Tawḥ īdī’s account, was curtly dismissed. The intellectual community was no longer in need of debating the place of philosophy or logic; the dispute had obviously been decisively won to the advantage of grammar, or rather the Arabic sciences. Al-'Āmirī , however, would continue for the duration of his life to carry the torch for philosophy and to fight for a place for it in the Arabic-Islamic culture. Al-'Āmirī ’s career35 – a series of attempts at reconciling philosophy with religion – crystallised in Al-īlām bi manāqib al-Islām (informing [others] of the feats of Islam),36 a work dedicated to the Samanid vizier Abū Naṣ r b. Abū Zayd37 and completed before 375/985.38 For the purpose of showing that philosophy is not in contradiction with religion, al-'Ām irī divides the sciences into two major categories: the sciences pertaining to a religious community, which include jurisprudence (fiqh), theology (kalām), tradition (ḥ adīth) and their instrument language (lugha) ; and philosophical sciences, which include natural, mathematical and metaphysical branches, with logic functioning as their instrument.39By juxtaposing40 the two sets o f disciplines, al-'Āmirī shows that the basic principles underlying these two separate sets of sciences are in essence the same, and hence there is no contradiction between them. Even though al'Āmirī tries sincerely to reconcile religious sciences with philosophical sciences, his approach in this work is a purely philosophical one. He classifies the religious sciences based on principles borrowed from the classification of the philosophical sciences, dividing them into three categories – sensory, rational and sensory-rational – and making no room for revelation as the ultimate source o f knowledge.41 Al-Sijistānī points out later in his vehement criticism of al-'Āmirī , and his teacher Abū Zayd alBalkhī,42 that the subtext of al-'Āmirī ’s work, as well as the works of his predecessors who made the same integrative attempts, seems to imply that he advocates the superiority of philosophy over religion: ‘one of them is the mother and the other is the wet nurse’.43 In the generation immediately following al-'Āmirī , Avicenna (370/980428/1037)44 methodically adopted an entirely different strategy to blend philosophy into the Arabic-Islamic system of knowledge. He avoided any explicit treatment of the central question of the relation between philosophy and religion,45 even though his works do reveal his awareness of the contemporary dialectics between philosophy and religion. He resisted being drawn into these dialectics and took several steps towards assuring his neutrality. He asserted his independence from any school of philosophy, including the Aristotelian. When his student, Abū 'Ubayd alJ ūzjānī, asked him to write a commentary on Aristotle’s works, Avicenna

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chose to write his own version of the Aristotelian philosophy instead. Moreover, he carefully portrayed himself as a Muslim scholar whose pursuit happened to be philosophy. He linked himself with al-Fārābī, and together they would become known as the philosophers of Islam or Muslim philosophers (ḥ ukamā’ al-Islām46 and falāsifat al-muslimīn). 47 He cautiously stated that his education began with the study of the Qur’ān, and literature (adab) ,48 leading on to the study of law (fiqh).49 He made sure that he was in the ‘garb of a lawyer’ when he was appointed at the Samanid court for the first time.50 He also judiciously conveyed that he sought Allah’s help in his studies of philosophy and logic.51 When he was challenged, unlike his predecessor Mattā b. Yūnus, he took it upon himself to learn the sciences of the Arabic language, in which he excelled and surpassed his challenger. He further steered philosophy away from any kind of political ideology52 by concerning himself mainly with the theoretical sciences, the practical sciences receiving no treatment from him. His confessional writings, including his autobiography53 and certain prologues or epilogues in his larger works, were all punctiliously constructed to reveal only the ‘curriculum vitae’ of his studies.54 Significantly, al-Fārābī, al-Āmirī and Avicenna provide a place for language and its derivatives in their conception of the sciences, acknow­ ledging that the Arabic language had in effect become an essential component in the identity of Arabic-Islamic civilisation. However, they all regard language and logic as counterparts55 in the same conceptual process, and affirm ‘the dual character of language as both a commun­ icative tool and a vehicle for the acquisition of knowledge’.56 Al-Fārābī, alĀmirī and Avicenna all assign to language and logic specific functions in the linguistic-based thought process. Al-Fārābī’s treatise begins with a chapter on the science of language ( ‘ilm al-lisān),57 which is immediately followed by a chapter on the science of logic (‘ ilm al-manṭiq).58 ‘Ilm al-lisān deals with the linguistic aspect of this process, whereas ‘ilm al-manṭiq attends to the conceptual or structural aspect. Al-Āmirī, like Avicenna, tackles language59 under the rubric of logic, and offsets the function of logic in the philosophical sciences with that of language in the religious sciences. Logic and language, including grammar and prosody, are con­ sidered instruments and are not pursued for their own sake. To al-Fārābī, This science [logic, which he calls a sinā‘a] is like the science of grammar. That is because the relationship between logic, intellect and concepts is like the relationship between grammar, language (lisān), and linguistic units, or utterances (alfāẓ ). Insofar as grammar gives us rules with regard to linguistic units, logic gives us their equivalent with regard to concepts.60

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Al-Fārābī further likens the role of logic in thought processes to how prosody operates to provide structure for a poem. Like the way in which prosody provides a poem with form and prevents errors in poetic metres, logic gives structure to thinking and deflects flaws in thought processes. It [logic] is also similar to prosody ( 'ilm al-'arūḍ ) ; for the relationship between logic and concepts, or the intelligibles (ma'qūlāt), is like the relationship between prosody and poetic metres. In the same way that prosody provides rules governing poetic metres, logic provides the equivalent with regard to concepts.61 The understanding of language as a manifestation of the thought process by al-Fārābī, as well as al-Āmirī and Avicenna, proves useful when they deliberate the function of logic. Any human discourse involves two processes, the conceptual one, which al-Fārābī calls al-nuṭq al-dākhilī (internal formulation), and its manifestation in a linguistic form, which he calls alnuṭq al-khārij ī (external formulation). Grammar governs the linguistic aspect of the human discourse, whereas logic is concerned with the conceptual. Logic prevents the mind from making mistakes on the conceptual level, while grammar and prosody do the same on the formal level by regulating language and poetry.62 But since language is the external manifestation of thought processes, logic can and must deal with some of the aspects of language. Logic, therefore, is superior to grammar because grammar is limited to a specific language of a certain nation, whereas logic transcends this particularity. To al-Āmirī, logic further helps a person to distinguish between right and wrong on the theoretical level, and good and evil on the practical level.63 To Avicenna, logic is indispensable with regard to thought (rawiyya), whereas grammar and prosody may be displaced by innate talent (al-fiṭra al-insāniyya) .64 This bilateral view of human discourse can help us understand why Muslim philsophers deal with literary pursuits in two separate places. AlFārābī enumerates sciences dealing with poetry, an important component of the substance of which is language, in 'ilm al-lisān and 'ilm al-manṭiq. Under the former heading, he identifies memorisation and transmission of poetry, and the rules of poetic composition ( ‘ilm qawānīn al-ash'ār),65 including metres, rhymes, and poetic licence,66 and lists under the latter poetic composition as one o f the logical arts.67 In al-Āmirī’s thinking, lugha, which is replaced by adab in one instance,68 comprises ṣ inā‘at al-naḥ w (gram­ mar), ṣ inā 'at al-'arūd (prosody), ṣ inā 'at al-taṣ rīf (morphology) and ṣ inā 'at altaqfiya (rhymes).69 Literary compositions, such as poetry (al-shi‘r), speech (al-khiṭāb), epistles (al-rasā’il) and proverbs (al-amthāl), on the other hand, are understood to be the manifestations of the logical thinking process.70

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Although these works provide a place for poetry among the sciences – thus exemplifying the uniform efforts to synthesise the Greek-defined ‘philosophy’ to the Arabic-Islamic system of knowledge – that place is undeniably a subordinate one. Each of the sciences is worthy of pursuit in itself, but they differ greatly in their value and they thus fall into a hierarchy. At the top of this hierarchy is the pursuit of the Truth, whether it is by means of a purely philosophical approach, or through religion. Prosody and grammar are useful, but jurisprudence and theology are more important because jurisprudence provides a haven for worship, and theology a place for the defence of religion.71 Language, grammar and prosody, therefore, occupy a place at the bottom of this hierarchy. Given the Aristotelian framework by which these Muslim philosophers abide, and their ‘ideological’ priorities, it is not surprising that their commentaries on Poetics and Rhetoric are found in their exposition of logic. Al -Kindī, al-Fārābī and Avicenna72 did not depart at all from the practice of Aristotle in Organon. The continued inclusion o f Rhetoric and Poetics among the logical sciences by Muslim philosophers73 is considered a ‘problem’ that predated the Muslim philosophers – it was the cause of disagreement among the Alexandrian philosophers themselves74 – by modern philoso­ phers like Madkūr, to whom Rhetoric and Poetics belong together with the sciences of language.75 In the works of Muslim philosophers, the case seems reversed; language and poetry belong with the logical sciences. Al-Fārābī, for example, deals with poetry mainly in terms of its power of persuasion through imaginative representation (takhyīl).76 The purpose of learning language, for al-Āmirī, is to attain, first, fa ṣ āḥ a (clarity of expression resulting from correct use of the Arabic language), and, second, al-bayān (eloquence resulting from clarity of speech), which is highly praised in both the Qur’ān and the Prophetic Tradition.77 Al-bayān’s primary value, whether it appears in poetry or prose, is its power to persuade people to do good deeds. The separation between the form and the content of poetry in al-Fārābī and al-Āmirī’s thinking – their concern with poetry not as a source of knowledge but as an expression of a process of conceptualisation – which becomes clear here,78 is indicative of their priorities: they were more interested in language, including that of poetry, as a form of discourse involving logic. For Muslim philosophers, aspects of poetry, be they its artistry, history or subject matter, were of no concern. Poetry as an art and a source of knowledge is poignantly negated. T H E R E L IG IO U S FR A M EW O R K ( I BN Ḥ AZM AND A L -G H A Z Z Ā L I )

The efforts which Muslim philosophers made to incorporate Greek sciences into the Islamic system of knowledge were not entirely in vain; in fact, they

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succeeded in making logic part and parcel of the education of any Muslim. The success of their endeavour is reflected in the works of Muslim thinkers like Ibn Ḥ azm (384/994-456/1064) and al-Ghazzālī (450/1058-505/11 1 1 ) who made room for some of the philosophical sciences, especially logic, on which they both wrote separate treatises: Al-taqrīb li ḥ add al-manṭiq (bringing closer the definition of logic)79 by the former and M i‘yār al-‘ilm f ī fann almanṭiq (the measure of knowledge in the art of logic)80 by the latter. Their outlook elsewhere was, however, unabashedly Islamic, particularly in their works on the classification of the sciences, which externalise not only this outlook but also their priorities, intellectual impulses and deeply personal concerns. Ibn Ḥ azm, a ‘renaissance man’ whose intellectual career escapes delimitation – a poet, prose writer, historian, genealogist, jurist, scholar of comparative religion, and thinker versed in theology, living in the ‘most tragic moments of Muslim Spain’ , who witnessed ‘the decisive crisis of Islam in Andalus’81 – was affected by the turbulent political circumstances that led to his many exiles, and finally to the burning of his books by alMu'taḍ id (between 440/1048 and 456/1064).82 Al-Ghazzālī faced crises of other kinds. As an intellectual who lost perspective on his endeavour at an early stage of his life, he embarked on a journey in search for the ultimate truth, which took him through all the disciplines of learning that were available in his days, and finally resulted in the attainment of his own view of knowledge. His initial confusion was the result of the chaotic state of affairs among the leading intellectuals of his time: the theologians (mutakallimūn), the Ismā'īlis (ahl al-ta‘līm), the philosophers, the sufis, the jurisconsults (fuqahā ),83 the Qur’ānic interpreters (mufassirūn) and the transmitters of the Prophetic Tradition (muḥ addithūn),84 His confusion led to his abandonment of his post at al-Niẓ āmiyya in the year 488/1095, and to his subsequently spending about ten years (488/1095-499/1106) contemplating and meditating on the purpose of knowledge and, above all, of life. Regardless of the nature of their respective crises, both Ibn Hazm and al-Ghazzālī came to the same conclusion: that salvation lay in the knowledge of God to be obtained by means of proper Islamic education, which included the study of language and poetry. Ibn Hazm’s Risāla f ī marātib al-‘ulūm (treatise on the hierarchy o f the sciences)85is a treatise intended to serve as a comprehensive curriculum for a devout Muslim student whose goal is salvation. To attain knowledge of God, one must necessarily attain the knowledge of the Law (sharī 'a), a gift bestowed upon the faithful by God through the prophets and the only guarantee against evil. And to know Law, one must have an inclusive basic education. Ibn Ḥ azm’s classification of the sciences is thus arranged in a hierarchical order incorporating selectively both Islamic and Greek

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sciences. He provides a synthesis of both Arabic sciences and Greek sciences for the first time in Islamic history,86 and incorporates both sets of sciences into one cohesive system,87 each having a positive function in the hierarchy of knowledge. The seven major disciplines of knowledge – which fall into two main categories, one peculiar to the Islamic umma (‘nation’)88 and the other general among all nations,89 in addition to other miscellaneous sciences and crafts90– deserve special attention because cultivating them, especially if taken one step at a time in the hierarchical order prescribed by the author, leads to salvation. The place of each of the sciences is determined by its function in the service of this ultimate goal: the knowledge of God. The sciences peculiar to the Islamic umma, therefore, are superior to all sciences because they pave the way to the knowledge of God. The areas of knowledge relating to practical aspects of mundane, daily living, such as crafts, are inferior because their goal is the preservation of life in this world, not the attainment of happiness in the hereafter. Like Ibn Ḥ azm, al-Ghazzālī stresses the notion that knowledge of God, the Truth, is the ultimate purpose of all knowledge,91 and that this life is but the means to attain this knowledge,92 but unlike Ibn Ḥ azm he provides no room for philosophy or theology.93 Therefore, while describing the prescriptions of the sharī 'a in some detail, he tries to show how the religious sciences all contribute to man’s final salvation. Intended as a ‘complete guide for the devout Muslim to every aspect o f religious life, including worship, devotional practices and advancing along the mystic path’,94 alGhazzālī’s Iḥ ya' 'ulūm al-dīn (revival of the religious sciences), the product of the period of meditation during his crisis,95 is in four volumes (quarters – arbā‘), treating ‘ibādāt (acts of religious observance), 'ādāt (social customs), muhlikāt (vices or faults of character leading to perdition), and munjiyāt (virtues or qualities leading to salvation) ,96His classification of the sciences appears in the introductory part, Kitāb al-'ilm (book of knowledge), of Iḥ ya' devoted to the discussion of knowledge. Knowledge, according to al-Ghazzālī, is of two kinds: that which is incumbent upon all Muslims – faith, and that which is incumbent upon those who are able, which include religious and non-religious sciences, each further divided into subcategories. Religious sciences are divided into fundamental,97 derivative,98 preliminary99 and supplementary100 sciences, and non-religious sciences into praiseworthy,101 permissible102 and blameworthy103 sciences.104 The study of grammar and lexicography, considered sciences peculiar to the Islamic umma by Ibn Hazm and preliminary religious sciences by alGhazzālī, should be subordinated to the ultimate purpose of the knowledge of God; they may not be religious sciences (al-‘ulūm al-shar‘iyya)

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proper, but they should be cultivated because they are tools essential in the study of the Qur’ān105and al-sha‘ (the divine law), which are revealed in the language of the Arabs. The cultivation of these two sciences, however, should be regulated, according to Ibn Ḥ azm, because ‘excessive pursuit of them will result in idle curiosity (fuḍ ūl)106 that will distract one from the search for the truth’; in fact, competency in these two areas of knowledge should suffice. In terms of grammar, it suffices that one learn Kitāb Sībawayhi (book of Sībawayhi [d. 180/793]), the ‘classic’ on Arabic grammar), and as for lexicography, one should learn only Abū 'Ubayd’s Algharīb al-muṣ annaf and al-Zubaydī’s Mukhtaṣ ar al-‘ayn (summary of [the book] of ‘ayn – Kitāb al-'ayn being the first Arabic lexicon compiled by alKhalīl b. Aḥ mad [d. 175/788]). These two sciences, therefore, occupy a place at the bottom of his hierarchy, for their real purpose is to enable one to read and understand the Qur’ān, the source o f the Law.107 Both Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Ghazzālī view poetry with scepticism, though their reasons are not identical. Poetry is mentioned under the heading of language in Marātib; for learning language necessitates the memorisation of poetry (riwāyat al-sh‘ r),108 and is under the rubric of blameworthy but permissible non-religious sciences in Iḥ yā’. Poetry is blameworthy, according to al-Ghazzālī, because the Qur’ān explicitly condemns it, as in the verses, ‘As for poets, the erring follow them. Hast thou not seen how they stray in every valley, and how they say that which they do not?’ (26:224–5) and ‘We did not teach him [the Prophet] poetry; it is not seemly for him’ (36:69). For both Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Ghazzālī, poetry embodies evils that may distract Muslims from the right path. Excessive pursuit of poetry may lead to ‘earning a living by means of poetry (al-takassub bi al-shi'r)', Ibn Ḥ azm tells us.109 He also agrees with al-Ghazzālī that much of poetry deals with love and that it excites passions detrimental to one’s religious life.110 This is what Ibn Ḥ azm calls evil (sharr) poetry. Evil poetry, in Ibn Ḥ azm’s view, includes also poetry like that o f 'Antara, 'Urwa b. al-Ward and Sa'd b. Nāshib, which leads to unnecessary nomadism (al-taṣ a ‘luk), war (al-ḥ urūb), death and loss of the hereafter; or like that of nomadism (al-tagharrub) and description of the deserts (waṣf al-saḥ ā rī), which incites meaningless alienation and wander­ ing; or like that of satire, the most corrupt kind of poetry, which encourages corrupt character traits and leads to exposure to shame and humiliation. However, both Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Ghazzālī allow poetry into the life of devout Muslims. Ibn Ḥ azm makes room in Marātib for what he calls good poetry, like that of Ḥ assān b. Thābit, Ka'b b. Mālik, 'Abdallāh b. Rawāha, and Ṣ āliḥ b. 'Abd al-Quddūs, which contains wisdom and goodness (alḥ ikma wa al-khayr), and permissible poetry, like panegyrics and eulogies, which encourages the cultivation of virtues. Al-Ghazzālī admits poetry into

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the life of devout Muslims in two cases as well: when it embraces religious exhortation and wisdom (maw‘īẓ a wa ḥ ikma) in accordance with the Prophetic Tradition, ' inna min al-shi‘r la ḥ ikma (indeed there is wisdom in poetry)’; and when it is recited in the midst of the incorruptible elite.111 Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Ghazzālī’s condemnation of poetry, as al-Ghazzālī alludes to in Iḥ yā,’ is to some extent inspired by the religious framework which they espoused in these two works; for poetry is denounced in some parts of the Qur’ān and the Prophetic Tradition. Ambivalence towards poetry was further complicated by the cultural politics of the first two centuries of ArabicIslamic culture. This ambivalence is especially poignant in Marātib, for Ibn Ḥ azm does not censure poetry elsewhere. In fact, he read and composed non-religious poetry and wrote on profane love. Ṭ awq al-ḥ amāma (the ring o f the dove), well known throughout history as a treatise on notions o f love, paradoxically betrays his familiarity with the practices relevant to the study of poetry. The reasons for such a dichotomy in his works are not clear. Perhaps the structure of Marātib superposes certain restrictions because of its self-imposed ideological framework. Or perhaps they are relevant to the author’s peculiar way of dealing with his life: his disillusionment with his life, which was at best chaotic, made him turn towards God for a refuge from the turmoil of his worldly life, seeking a straightforward path to salvation, and consequently rejecting certain activities, especially those designed to secure this life alone. Whatever his reasons, it is clear that the religious framework adopted here is partially responsible for the author’s denunciation of poetry, for no such strong statements regarding poetry are found elsewhere, especially in works free of this religious framework. AN E C L E C T IC FR A M EW O R K ( I KHW Ā N A L -Ṣ A F Ā )

Like the other Muslim thinkers who wrote on the classification of the sciences, Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā (Brethren o f Purity), a group of closely associated thinkers active in the fourth/tenth century,112 looked at knowledge in relationship to power. Even though they adopted frameworks that are significantly different from those o f others, choosing not to follow either of the two prevalent frameworks but borrowing eclectically from each, their priorities coincided with those of other philosophers whose frame of reference was the Aristotelian tradition, as well as those of Muslim thinkers whose perspective was religious. Like al-Fārābī and al-'Āmirī, they took part in the cultural debates of their time and attempted to reconcile logic with grammar, treating them as two aspects of human discourse.113 Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā’s incorporation of all areas of knowledge into a cohesive framework, however, goes beyond the scope o f the attempts made by both Muslim philosophers and thinkers. The sciences which they include in

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their scheme are far more numerous and comprehensive than those of alFārābī, al-Āmirī and Avicenna, or those of Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Ghazzālī. Their attempt in the fifty or fifty-two epistles,114 which already existed as a comprehensive body of work by the second half of the fourth/tenth century115 under the guise of a paedagogical purpose, had a far more ambitious political purpose.116 As they lament the disappearance o f 'the dominion of the virtuous’ (dawlat ahl al-khayr) and its replacement by ‘the dominion of the evil-doers’ (dawlat ahl al-sharr),117 they, calling themselves ‘people of justice and praise’ (ahl al-'adl wa abnā al-ḥ amd), claim that their taking over leadership is awaited and desired [by Muslims] (wa kulluhum muntaẓ irūn amranā musta ‘j ilūn li-majī’ ayyāmina mushtahūn nuṣ rat amrinā).118 They argue for the legitimacy of their leadership and the necessity of replacing the existing ruling class with philosophers, elevating the philosophers to a status equal to that of the prophets in the hierarchy of societal classes in their vision for the ideal society. The superiority of philosophers, or their own superiority among people, the Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā propose, is determined by knowledge of the ultimate truth – God. They suggest, however, that the means to the Truth must be ascribed to the power of intellect, especially in the absence of revelation, which had ended with the death of the Prophet Muḥ ammad, the seal of the prophets. Now that the gate of prophecy has been closed, the source of knowledge must be reason. They claim that knowledge of God through revelation is essentially the same as the knowledge of God through intellectual contemplation; in other words, religion and philosophy are compatible, bearing no contradiction between them.119 Besides defending philosophers,120 whom they credited with founding all sciences,121 they explicitly equate them with the prophets, like al-Fārābī in Al-madīna al-fāḍ ila. They often mention prophets and philosophers in the same breath, as in the epistle no. 6 on numerical and geometrical relations, where their assertions are introduced by ‘the prophets and the philosophers agreed’.122 This notion, for obvious reasons, had dangerous political implications. By equating philosophers with prophets, Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā implied that philosophers were the most suitable to rule, while maintaining the premise on which the religious society rested: that the knowledge of the Law (sharī 'a), which stems from knowledge of God, was what enabled the prophets to rule. The subversive nature of their writings was obvious to many, and their writings were considered dangerous to the Muslim community, were attacked by alSijistānī,123 al-Tawḥ īdī124 and al-Ghazzālī,125 and were burnt when found in the houses of Qāḍ ī Ibn al-Markhān126 (in 555/1170, during the reign of alMustanjid bi Allāh) and Rukn al-Dawla.127 Because of their political purpose, their works, while reflecting the

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divergent influences on their thinking, were intended to gain wide intellec­ tual and popular support. The epistles o f Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā, written under this ideological pretext, incorporate, as they explicitly state,128 all schools of thinking, Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Gnostic, Pythagorean and Islamic. Their priority is the appropriation of only the sciences that fit into the function-oriented political ‘ideology’ that they were proposing. Any art or knowledge that did not suit this political framework was ignored. Even as the sources of their knowledge and writing include all books composed by philosophers, as well as revealed scriptures and books on all natural sciences, or on metaphysics,129 so do they lay emphasis on a tradition founded on philosophy rather than the religious tradition inherited from the Prophet. Two other factors contributed to the determination of the direction of their works: the customary classification of philosophical sciences common in their contemporaneous philosophical circles and the desire to include every member of society in their plan in order to gain wider popular support. Within the Aristotelian framework o f dividing sciences either into mathematical, logical, natural and metaphysical,130 or into a hierarchy of mathematical, natural and metaphysical,131 they try to find a place for astrologers and magicians, whose arts and crafts were rejected by the mainstream Muslim thinkers.132 The political design intrinsic in their scheme does affect Ikhwān alṢ afā’s treatment of literary activities; the classification of the sciences produced in the dialectics aiming at a political change could not have provided a place for aesthetics-based activities, including poetry. Although they state in one instance that ‘reading, writing, poetry, rhetoric, grammar, le x ic o g ra p h y , a rith m e tic, a stro lo g y /a stro n o m y a n d g e o m e try are all essen tial

to the education of kings’,133 poetry as a source of knowledge and an artistic and literary activity is not discussed anywhere in their treatment of the sciences and their respective functions in the society. Their acknowledge­ ment of poetry as a source of knowledge of the Arabic language, which in fact reflected the reality of fourth/tenth-century Arabic-Islamic civilisation, is a significant departure from the prevalent treatment of poetry in the classificatory works by Muslim philosophers who regarded poetry as merely a linguistic manifestation of a logical process, and by Muslim thinkers who censured poetry. Yet in the hierarchy of things as envisaged by Ikhwān alṢ afā, poetry is left outside the realm of what really mattered. Elsewhere, poetry is more readily acknowledged, both as a kind of knowledge and art, and accorded a more prominent place than that which is found in the classificatory works by the above-mentioned authors. However, the classificatory schemes employed by Muslim philosophers and thinkers would find their way into works by other Muslim authors.

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T H E E N C Y C L O P A E D IC A N D

ADAB

F R A M E W O R K S ( I B N A L - N A D ĪM , IB N F A R Ī G H Ū N ,

A L -K H W Ā R A Z M Ī A N D A L -T A W Ḥ Ī D Ī )

In the fourth/tenth century, Ibn al-Nadīm (?d. 380/990)134 provided in Alīf hrist (the catalogue)135 a comprehensive framework for the sciences extant in the Arabic-Islamic culture during his lifetime.136As a bookseller who was familiar with the intellectual activities of his society and with the books in circulation then, Ibn al-Nadīm chose to record, and classify, all these cultural achievements in the form o f a catalogue. Ibn al-Nadīm’s catalogue, hence classification of the sciences, encompasses quantitatively and qualitatively all the intellectual activities which were taking place in fourthcentury Islam. What he produced is a catalogue of the books of all peoples, Arab and foreign, existing in the language of the Arabs, as well as of their scripts, dealing with various sciences, with accounts of those who composed them and the categories of their authors, together with their relationships and records of their times of birth, length of life, and times of death, and also of the localities of their cities, their virtues and faults from the beginning of the formations of each science to this our own time, which is the year three hundred and seventyseven after the Hijra.137 His scheme, while echoing the classification of sciences prevalent in both religious and philosophical circles, includes additionally a section on magical arts, upon which religious institutions frowned, not to mention pornography. Out of the ten chapters of Al-fīhrist, three are on fields related to literary activities: chapter two on grammarians and lexico­ graphers,138 chapter three on historical traditions, literary pursuits, biographies and genealogies,139 and chapter four on poets and poetry.140 Literary criticism as an identified field of knowledge, and critics as a specialised group of scholars, were not known to Ibn al-Nadīm. The critics as of this date whom modern scholarship has identified, and the relevant works of literary criticism, consequently fall within the above three categories, dependent on the field o f literary activity for which the author was known. This treatment of literary criticism and critics is found in works by other authors who compiled encyclopaedic works on the classification of the sciences, like Ibn Farīghūn (c. mid fourth/tenth century), al-Khwārazmī (d. 387/997) and al-Tawḥ īdī as well, their views reflecting and confirming the notions regarding the various areas of knowledge found in adab works. Adab, about the origin of which little is known, means in addition to belleslettres ‘the total educational system of a cultured Muslim who took the

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whole world for his object of curiosity and knowledge’.141 Adab according to this definition given by al-Jāḥ iẓ in the third/ninth century ‘appears to be the equivalent of the Greek notion of Paideia, where education becomes part of the moral character of man’. Here, adab is total in two senses: that only total knowledge can achieve this moral and educational transformation in the soul of the student; and that adab avoids specialisation. Adab works since the third/ninth century have reflected al-Jāḥ iẓ ’s notions: works such as Al-ma'ārif and 'Uyūn al-akhbār (the gems of accounts) by Ibn Qutayba, and Al-'iqd al-farīd (the unique necklace) by Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi (d. 328/940), are compendia of the necessary components in the basic education of a Muslim. The works on the classification of the sciences by adab proponents are, not surprisingly, more comprehensive than those of Muslim philo­ sophers and religious thinkers. Ibn Farīghūn, another student of Abū Zayd al-Balkhī,142 wrote Kitāb jawāmi' al-'ulūm (summaries of the sciences) in which he uses what is known as the tashjīr system in his arrangement of the sciences – that of ‘trees’ and ‘branches’ for the groups and subgroups.143 In this work, he does not follow the framework adopted by other Muslim philosophers even though he was a student of philosophy; rather, he enumerates the sciences in two maqāla, the first devoted to the sciences o f the Arabic language (jawāmi’ 'ulūm al-lugha al-'arabiyya) and the second to what is pertinent to mainten­ ance of communal and individual living (al-siyāsiyya). Ibn Farīghūn seems more interested in describing the sciences essential to secretaries.144 The first maqāla, for example, deals with the various aspects of the secretarial profession, including the kinds of writing that a secretary must master (such as those written on behalf of the head of the state (sulṭān), or for tax (kharāj) or the army (jund), and his qualifications, such as mastery of language, writing, etiquette and sound thinking. Under these broad headings, there does not seem to be any specific treatment of poetry or its discussion. Poetry is mentioned in the section on history (' i lm al-ta’rī khāt) which he classifies under the notions o f ‘wisdom’ (' ilm al-ḥ ikma). Here, preIslamic poetry is considered a source of Bedouin, or pre-Islamic, history.145 Al-Khwārazmī, a man o f letters, showed all the signs of interest in the various disciplines of knowledge, and documented them in his well-known Mafātīḥ al-ulūm146 (keys to the sciences).147 Al-Khwārazmī, himself a kātib (secretary), compiled this work, not to enumerate or to evaluate the various disciplines of knowledge, but to provide the necessary equipment, including knowledge of technical terms, for a secretary.148The main part of a secretary’s job ‘was to indite letters on his master’s behalf in an elegant, euphuistic style, and for this paperwork a wide background knowledge was necessary’.149The purpose of Mafātīḥ al-'ulūm, according to the author, is to

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record and define the more problematic terms of the various sciences, which by the fourth/tenth century were abundant. Like his contemporaries, al-Khwārazmī divides the sciences into two main groups: sciences o f sharī'a (religious sciences), and sciences of the Greeks and other nations (foreign or philosophical sciences).150 But unlike al-Fārābī, the Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā and al-'Āmirī, al-Khwārazmī’s intention was rather to give a survey of the extant sciences and provide his readers with a guide to their most essential and difficult technical terms (muwāḍ a'āt).151 The first essay (maqāla)152 contains six chapters on jurisprudence (fiqh), theology (kalām), grammar (naḥ w), secretaries (kuttāb), poetry (shi‘r) and prosody ('arūḍ ), and history (akhbār). The second maqāla comprises nine chapters on philosophy, logic, medicine, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, mechanics and chemistry. Despite the author’s familiarity with the literary discussions of Arabic prose and poetry surrounding him, Rhetoric and Poetics153 remain listed within the realm of logic in accordance with the Aristotelian scheme. His view of poetry further echoes the prevalent view of the function o f poetry as understood by the philosophers, especially al-Fārābī in Iḥ ṣ ā ’ al-'ulūm.154The purpose of poetry, in his view, is ‘to urge the soul of the audience to seek something or run away from it even though he does not believe it is the truth (inhāḍ nafs al-sāmi’ 'alā ṭalab al-shay’ aw al-harab minhu wa in lamyuṣ addiq bihi) '. As for al-Tawḥ īdī’s epistle on the sciences (risāla f ī ' al-'ulūm),155 it was composed under circumstances that have not become clear to us yet. From the introduction of the epistle itself, we learn that the author was angered156 by the claim, made perhaps in a certain circle outside Iraq,157 ‘that logic has nothing to do with jurisprudence ( fi qh), philosophy has no connection with religion, and philosophy (al-ḥ ikma) bears no relation to legal rulings (al-aḥ kām) ',158 that this epistle was meant as a response to this presumption.159 Al-Tawḥ īdī was a student of Abū Sulaymān al-Sijistānī (nicknamed al-manṭiqī, the logician), a leading philosopher of fourth/ tenth-century Baghdad and a proponent of logic.160 Abū Ḥ ayyān defends logic, asserting that no science is superior to others. On the contrary, all sciences are equal because they all concern one and the same thing, knowledge;161 hence, talk about their hierarchy is moot.162 In his brief survey of the sciences, he includes naḥ w (grammar), lugha (language), poetry and balāgha (rhetoric). Among specialists – those who mastered sciences – he includes grammarians and poets.163 The author did not put poetry in a separate category in Risāla f ī al-'ulūm. This is so perhaps because the section on balāgha contains a discussion of poetry and poetic features or skills. Al-balāgha, according to al-Tawḥ īdī, is concerned with the art of discourse (ṣ inā'at al-kalām), which may be poetry or prose.

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In all these writings, poetry and literary criticism, insofar as they are addressed at all, are discussed only as part of each author’s vision of ArabicIslamic civilisation. For the philosophers such as al-Fārābī, al-Āmirī and Avicenna, who overtly or covertly participated in the dialectics between religion and philosophy, language is shown to be subordinate to logic; for Muslim thinkers such as Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Ghazzālī, who shaped and were shaped by the Islamic world-view, poetry is subordinate to revelation; and for Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā, poetry served their political ideology, as a study appro­ priate to the training of the philosopher-ruler. Only encyclopaedists such as Ibn al-Nadīm, Ibn Farīghūn, al-Tawḥ īdī and al-Kh wārazmī, lacking the ideological slant of the other writers, include poetry among the major sciences. Yet even in these works, literary criticism is not allowed a separate category. It is clear that in the dialectics of Arabic-Islamic culture as it embarked on a journey towards a definition of its identity, poetry and literary activities were not viewed as playing a crucial role in this process and were quite often left out by authors of works on the classification of the sciences for the sake of a more important, cohesive vision of their own culture, as in the case of al-Fārābī, the Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā and al-'Āmirī; or condemned because they distracted good Muslims from finding their way to the final salvation, as in the case of Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Ghazzālī. But these works are important to our study, for three reasons. The first reason is that these works set the tone for later scholars to discuss the place of sciences in Arabic-Islamic civilisation, and to categorise them. Even in the seventh/thirteenth century, by which time literary criticism had developed a specialised vocabulary and tools of analysis that are still employed today, classifications of sciences continued to relegate poetry to a minor role, as we can see in the writing of the historian Ibn Khaldūm (723/1332-808/1406). He experienced at first hand the turbulent events that befell Islamdom during the seventh/thirteenth century, and tackles the subject of knowledge in the stupendous Muqaddima to his history of Islam, Kitāb al-'ibar. Knowledge, whether in the form of sciences ('ulūm) or crafts (sanā'i'), is essential in the construction and maintenance o f any civilisation. Like his predecessors, he deals with poetry under the rubric of the sciences of the Arabic language, but he does not include the sciences of Arabic language in his bipartite division of sciences ('ulūm) and crafts (ṣ anā’i '), a common division in the writings of Muslim philosophers; rather, he discusses them in a separate section. Ibn Khaldūn ’s conception of the function of poetry, inherent in his conception of the function o f the sciences of the Arabic language, does not

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differ from the views of his predecessors. He considers poetry a source of information for the sciences of the Arabic language, which were deemed prerequisites for the pursuit of a loftier science, namely Islamic law ('film alsharī‘a).164 Ibn Khaldūn divides the sciences of the Arabic language into four main disciplines, namely grammar (naḥ w), lexicography (lugha), eloquence (bayān) and ādāb (prose and poetry). He states that these sciences are essential to the education of jurisconsults (ahl al-sharī 'a). He argues for this notion by asserting that jurisconsults had to derive legal rules from the Qur’ān and the Sunna, both of which were in the Arabic language. The functional role of the various disciplines of language vis-à-vis Islamic law determined a hierarchical arrangement of these four disciplines as well, dependent on the necessity o f each science to the understanding of the religious tradition. Whereas grammar occupies the first position and lexicography the second,165 ādāb occupy a place at the bottom of this hierarchy because it only provides the information needed for grammar, lexicography and rhetoric.166 The second reason why these classificatory works are important to an intellectual history of Arabic literary criticism is that they exemplify the paradoxical invisibility of criticism, and sometimes of poetry itself, in the intellectual framework of the time. For the exclusion of poetry and related literary activities from these works does not mean that they did not exist or were not a priority in the culture. On the contrary, all these works show an awareness of the literary activities that were taking place, despite the casualness or brevity of these references. All felt compelled, as well, to define the proper role of poetry, according to their own position o f the dialectics of their time. Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Ghazzālī’s vehement opposition to poetry itself can be interpreted only as an objection to a widely practised activity. Perhaps explanation for the apparent slighting of literary activities is that despite the seeming glamour of poetry, its practitioners had no real place in political life, even though many statesmen and members of the elite considered themselves poets as well as connoisseurs of poetry. Poetry, it seems, was not considered an essential component of the knowledge that was the heart of Arabic-Islamic civilisation. In the ‘ongoing process of reflective adjustment between various cultural needs and interests’ – which is knowledge, according to Christopher Norris167 – poetry was not considered necessary. The seeming marginalisation of poetry in the Arabic-Islamic culture, as exemplified by the works on the classification of the sciences, cannot be taken at face value, however; for indeed poetry has remained the most beloved literary art of the Arabs until today. The mystery, it seems, is how poetry can be so beloved and marginalised at the same time – or is it? This brings us to

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the third reason why these works illuminate the study of Arabic literary criticism: that the philosophical, religious and social preoccupations o f the writers of these works o f classification impinge upon their writing in ways that defined and sometimes constrained the works of literary critics themselves. The divergent, at times confusing views of poetry expressed in these classificatory works convey an ambivalence which is apparent in discussions o f the poetic enterprise, as a source of knowledge and as an artistic practice, even by those engaged in it. As we will see, medieval Arabic literary criticism itself – the emergence of which is undoubtedly connected with the place of poetry in both culture and society – fully partakes o f these paradoxes. NO TES

1 . A bū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥ īdī, Al-imtā ‘ wa al-mu ’ā nasa, ed. A ḥ mad Am īn and A ḥ m ad al-Zayn (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-'Aṣ riyya, n.d.), 1 : 107– 28. 2. See also D. S. M argoliouth, ‘The discussion between Abū Bishr Mattā b. Yūnus and A bū S a'īd al-Sīrāfī on the merits o f logic and gram m ar’ , J RAS (1905), 79-129. 3. al-Tawḥ īdī, Al-imtā ‘, 1 : 108 and 119. 4. See S. 'Abed, ‘al-Sarakhsī ' , paper delivered at the 24th annual m eeting o f the Middle East Studies Association, San Antonio, Texas, Novem ber 1990, 1 ; and Gerhard Endress, ‘The debate between gram m ar and Greek logic’ , Journal fo r the History o f Arabic Sciences 2: 2

(1977): 106-18. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

'Abed, ‘al-Sarakhsī ' , 1 . al-Tawḥ īdī, Al-imtā', 1: 115. Ibid., 1 19. Ibid., 129. Ibid., 107. Muhsin M ahdi, ‘Science, philosophy, and religion in al-Fārābī’s enum eration o f the sciences’ , in The Cultural Context o f M edieval Learning , Proceedings o f the 1st International Colloquium on Philosophy, Science, and Theology in the Middle Ages, ed. J . E. M urdoch and E. D. Sylla (Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1975): 113-47, p. 113. n . Yaḥ yā b. 'A dī (d. 364/974), a student o f Mattā b. Yūnus, for exam ple, wrote an essay (maqāla) on ‘ Tabyīn a lfa ṣ i bayn ṣin ā 'atay al-mantiq alfalsafī wa al-naḥ w al-'arab ī (elucidation o f the difference between philosophical logic and Arabic gram m ar)’ in defence o f logic (ed. Gerhard Endress, Journal fo r the History o f Arabic Sciences 4 [1978] : 38-50). 12. For a com prehensive survey o f this material, see Khālid al-Ḥ adīdī , Falsafat 'ilm taṣ nīf al-kutub kamadkhal li falsafat taṣ nīf al-'ulū m (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍ a al-Miṣ riyya, 1969); al-Khafājī, ‘T aṣ n if al-'ulūm ’ and 'M uqaddim a’ ; M. M. Yev, 'M as’alat taṣ nīf al-m a'rifa al-'ilmiyya fī alsharqayn al-adnā wa al-aqṣ ā fī al-qurūn al-wusṭā (al-Fārābī, alKhwārizmī and Ibn S īn ā)’ , Al-turāth al-'arab ī 5:26 (1981): 193-203; and Ahm ad A bdulla al-Rabe, Muslim Philosophers' Classification o f the Sciences: al-Kindī, al-Fārābī, al-Ghazālī, Ibn Khaldū n (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1984).

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13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

For further details, see M uḥ amm ad Ḥ asan Kāẓ im al-Khafājī, ‘T aṣ nīf al-'ulūm 'ind al-'arab’ , Al-mawrid 12:3 (1983): 13-56; and ‘M uqaddim a fi al-turāth al-ḥ aḍ ārī li tasnīf al-'ulūm ’ , Al-mawrid 6:4 (1977): 208– 16. Said, World, 12. Eagleton, Literary Theory, 15. My purpose is not served by al-Khafājī’s categorisation o f these works as consisting mainly o f two kinds: those which enum erate the various branches o f sciences and define each o f them; and those which concern themselves with the description o f books and o f their authors, such as the books o f ṭabaqāt (see al-Khafājī, ‘T a ṣ n īf al-'ulūm ’ : 13, and ‘M uqaddim a’ )· Ibn Abī U ṣ aybi'a, 'Uyūn al-anbā’ fī ṭ abaqāt al-aṭibbā’, ed. Nizār R iḍ ā (Beirut: Dār Maktabat al-Ḥ ayāh, n.d.), 2: 135; Muhsin M ahdi, Introduction to al-Fārābī’s Kītāb al-ḥ u rūf (Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1970), 48; Ṣ ā iḥ Kh. al-Ḥ amm ārina, ‘Kitāb iḥ sā’ al-'ulūm li al-Fārābī wa al-manhaj al-'ilm ī’ , al-Fārābī wa al-ḥ aḍ āra al-insāniyya, proceedings o f the conference on al-Fārābī (Baghdad, 29 O ctober to 1 N ovem ber 1975) ; 54-61, P· 55· Frank Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam (New York: New York University Press, 1985), 108. Muhsin Mahdi, Introduction to Kitāb al-ḥ urūf 48– 9. al-Kindī, Risāla f i kamiyyat kutub arisṭū wa mā y u ḥ tāj ilayhi fī taḥ ṣ īl alfalsafa, ed. M uham m ad 'Abd al-Hādī Abū Rīda (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr al'Arabī, 1950). Ibid., 372. Ibid., 363.

21. 22. 23. fī mā kāna m ustaghaniyan 'an al-ṭabī'a qā iman bidhātih ghayr muḥ tāj ilā

al-ajsām muwāṣilan lahā bi aḥ ad anw ā' al-muwāṣala. 24. īf mā la yaḥ tāj ilā al-ajsām wa la yuw āṣiluhā al-batta. 25. al-Fārābī, Iḥ ṣ ā al-'ulūm, ed. 'U thm ān Am īn (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr al'Arabi, 1949). 26. Ibid., 1 1 . 27. 'U thm ān Am īn, Introduction to Iḥ ṣ ā', 12 . 28. Muhsin M ahdi, ‘Science’ , 113. 29. See also Peters, Aristotle, 108–9; and Mahdi, ‘Science’ , 11 6. 30. Peters, Aristotle, 109; Mahdi, ‘Science’ , 116-17; Am īn, Introduction to

Iḥ ṣ ā ’, 35.

31.

32.

33. 34. 35.

al-Tawḥ īdī, Al-imtā' 2: 14; M ichel Allard, ‘Un philosophe théologien M uḥ ammad b. Yūsuf al-'Ām irī’ , Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, 187 (January 1975): 57-69; and M oham m ed Arkoun, ‘Logocentrism e et vérité religieuse dans la pensée islam ique’ (an offprint): 6-51. See C. E. Bosworth, ‘Ibn Farīgh ūn ’ , The Encyclopaedia o f Islam: New Edition, Supplem ent, Fasc. 5– 6 (Leiden: E. J . Brill, 1982), 386; col. 2; and Fritz W. Zim m erm ann, ‘Al-Kindi’ , Religion, Learning, and Science in the 'A bbasid Period, ed. M. J . L. Young, J . D. Latham and R. B. Serjeant, The Cambridge History o f Arabic Literature, vol. 4 (Cam bridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1990), 368. al-Tawḥ īdī , Akhlāq al-wazīrayn, ed. Ibrāhīm al-Kīlānī (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1961), 271-3. Ibid. For a com prehensive survey o f al-'Ām irī ’s life and works, see M ichel Allard, ‘U n philosophe théologien M uḥ amm ad b. Yūsuf al-'Ām irī’ ; M oham m ed Arkoun, ‘Logocentrism e et vérité religieuse dans la

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36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

41. 42.

43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

pensée islam ique’ ; 'A bd al-Ḥ amīd G h urāb, ‘M afhūm al-thaqāfa alislāmiyya 'ind al-'Ām irī’ (an offprint) and Introduction to Al-i'l ām bi manāqib al-Islām (Cairo: Dār al-Kātib al-'A rabī, 1967); and Everett Rowson, A Muslim Philosopher on the Soul and Its Fate: al-'Āmirī ’s Kitāb alAmad 'alā al-Abad (American Oriental Society, 1988). For a list o f translations o f parts o f this work into western languages, see Rowson, A Muslim Philosopher, 8, footnote 19. This is 'Abd al-Ḥ amīd G h u rāb ’s conclusion. Everett Rowson, however, is o f the opinion that this work is dedicated to either Abū N aṣ r al-'Utbī, a kinsman to the vizier and him self Ṣ āhib al-Barīd, or to Abū N aṣ r A ḥ m ad b. 'A lī al-Mīkālī, the ra ’īs o f Nishapur. See Rowson, Introduction to A Muslim Philosopher, 8. See G h urāb, Introduction to Al-i'lām, and ‘M afhūm ’ ; an d J . Kraem er, Humanism in the R enaissance o f Islam (Leiden: E. J . Brill, 1986), 234. al-'Āmirī, Al-i'lām, 84-5. For the significance o f al-'Ām irī’s style and diction, see M oham m ed A rkou n’s structural analysis o f Al-' lām : ‘L ogocentrisme et vérité religieuse dans la pensée islam ique’ . See A ppendix III. Everett Rowson is o f the opinion that al-Sijistānī’s attack on al-'Āmirī stems from his view that philosophy should be reserved for the philosophers only, and that philosophy had nothing to do with religion (A Muslim Philosopher, 8). According to al-Tawḥ īdī in Almuqābasāt, al-Sijistānī held a conciliatory position toward gram m ar and logic ( muqābasa no. 22 in Al-muqābasāt, ed. M uham m ad Tawfīq Ḥ usayn [Baghdad: J ām i'at Baghdad, 1970], 21), a position which his student al-Tawḥ īdī inherited. Al-Tawhīdī is o f the opinion that logic is an im portant instrum ent for all the sciences, including the religious ones; sciences derived from philosophy may be used in the study o f religion. I discuss his treatise on the sciences later in this chapter. See al-Tawhīdī, Al-imtā', 2: 15. Works on Avicenna are num erous. I will only concern m yself with those relevant to his notions o f knowledge and the classification o f the sciences. M uhsin M ahdi, ‘A vicenna’ , Encyclopaedia Iranica (London and New York: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1987), 3: 66. Ẓ ahīr al-Dīn al-Bayhaqī (499/1607-565/1170), Tārīkh ḥ ukamā ’ al-islām, ed. M uḥ amm ad Kurd 'Ali (Damascus, 1976), 30. Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-A'yān, ed. Iḥ sān 'Abbās (Beirut: Dār Ṣ ādir, 1968-72), 1 : 160. William E. Gohlm an, The Life o f Ibn Sīn ā (Albany: State University o f New York Press, 1974), 18. Ibid., 20. This is Dimitri Gutas’s translation (Avicenna and the Aristotelian

Tradition: Introduction to R eading A vicenna’s Philosophical Works (Leiden: E. J . Brill, 1988), 29); Gohlm an, Life, 40. 51. Gohlm an, Life, 28 and 157. 52. Although his nam e has becom e linked with the Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā in Tatimmat siwān al-hikma, al-Bayhaqī ’s report merits little credence (see Dimitri Gutas, ‘Avicenna: biography’ , Encyclopaedia Iranica [London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987], 3: 67). In his autobiography, Avicenna him self was quick to dissociate him self from the Ism ā'īlis (see Gohlm an, Life, 18).

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53. A vicenna’s autobiography has been the subject o f many scholarly works. For a detailed survey o f these works, see Gutas, Avicenna. 54. His autobiography is a condensed version o f his classification o f the sciences, in addition to which he produced a num ber o f other versions, which may be found in the prologue ( madkhal) to his m ajor work Al-shifā ’ (cure), in his epistle on the divisions o f intellectual sciences (fī aqsām al-'ulūm al-'aqliyya) , and in the book which he com piled for Abū al-Ḥ asan al-'Arūḍ ī, Kitāb al-najāt ([book o f deliverance], Gutas, Avicenna , 87-90). Al-shifā ’, com posed between 406/1016 and 412/1022, is an extensive work on the theoretical sciences, with an additional part on Logic (Ibrāhīm M adkūr, Introduction to Al-shifā ’ [Cairo: al-Dār al-Miṣ riyya li al-Ta’līf wa alT arjam a, 1966], (4). A ccording to Gutas, Al-shifā ’ was com posed between 405 and 418 [Gutas, Avicenna , 10 1]). The nine parts that make up the first treatise o f Kitāb al-shifā ’ are devoted to logical matters. Madkhal, the first o f these parts, is an introduction to the other eight, each o f which corresponds to one o f the Aristotelian logical works, or ‘instrum ent o f the sciences’ , and corresponds to Porphyry’s Isagoge , a work that strongly influenced the writings o f Islamic logicians as well as those o f medieval Latin logicians. In the rest o f Al-shifā ’, Avicenna studies the three main sections o f theoretical sciences: physics, metaphysics and mathematics. In Fī aqsām al-'ulū m al-'aqliyya, sciences are divided into two main categories: theoretical and practical. Theoretical sciences fall within the following hierarchical order: the lower science o f physics, the m iddle science o f mathematics, and the higher science o f metaphysics. As for the practical sciences, they com prise ethics, household m anagem ent and politics. In a separate section, he also enum erates the works which fall within Aristotelian logic. In Al-najāt, the first part o f which is a summary o f his version o f Aristotelian logic, the sciences are o f three main categories: logic, physics and metaphysics (Gutas, ‘Avicenna: biography’ , Encyclopaedia Iranica , 3: 70). The introduction to Al-shifā ’ is the subject o f Michael E. M arm ura’s study, ‘Avicenna on the division o f the sciences in the Isagoge o f his Al-shifā ’, ’Journal fo r the History o f Arabic Sciences 4 (1980): 239– 51. 55. M ahdi, ‘Science’, 126. 56. Deborah L. Black, Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in M edieval Arabic Philosophy (Leiden: E. J . Brill, 1990), 58. 57. For the use o f the word 'ilm in this context, see M ahdi, ‘Science’ , 11 8. 58. Peters points out that to accept logic as a separate subdivision o f philosophy is in itself a departure from the com m on tradition o f the com m entators o f Aristotle’s works (Aristotle , 85). This issue is, however, not my concern here. 59. For A vicenna’s views on the relationship between logic and language, and a bibliography, see S. 'Abed, ‘Avicenna: logic’ , Encyclopaedia Iranica, 3: 70– 3. 60. al-Fārābī, Iḥ ṣ ā', 54. 61. Ibid. 62. See al-'Ām irī , Al-’i 'lām, 94; and Avicenna, Al-najāt (Cairo: M uḥ yi alDīn Ṣ abrī al-Kurdī , 1938), 3. 63. al-'Āmirī , Al-’i 'lām, 95. 64. Avicenna, Al-najāt, 5; and Al-shifā ’, 20; and 'Abed, ‘Avicenna: logic’ , Encyclopaedia Iranica, 3: 72.

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65. This section o f Iḥ ṣ ā’ was translated into English by Vincente Cantarino as ‘Treatise on the canons o f the art o f poetry’ , in Arabic Poetics in the Golden Age (Leiden: E .J . Brill, 1975), 110-17. 66. I' lm al-lisān in I ḥ ṣ ā ’ com prises two main categories: first, that which concerns itself with individual items, or m ore specifically with the mem orisation o f these individual items that convey a m eaning ( ma'n ā), nam ely lexical items; and second, that which concerns itself with the rules ( qawānīn ) governing these individual items when they are in a com pound. These two categories contain the following seven subcategories: 1) the science o f individual items, which comprises their m em orisation and transmission; 2) the science o f com pound items, which deals with the compositions o f poets and rhetoricians, including mem orisation and transmission o f these compositions; 3) the science o f the rules o f items when they are alone, including linguistic, phonetic aspects o f a letter or a word and m orphology; 4) the science o f the rules o f items when they are in a com pound; 5) the science o f writing correctly (taṣ ḥ īḥ al-kitāba); 6) the science o f reading correctly (taṣ ḥ īḥ al-qirā ’a ); and 7) the science o f the rules o f poetry ('ilm qawānīn al-ash 'ār), which deals with three aspects o f poetry – metres, rhymes and poetic licence (al-Fārābī, Iḥ ṣ ā', 45-52). 67. I' lm al-mantiq in Iḥ ṣ ā’ com prises eight categories, the three introductory arts o f logic that correspond to Categories, De interpretation and Prior Analytics, and the five types o f discourses that correspond to the demonstrative, dialectical, sophistical, rhetorical and poetic arts (al-Fārābī, Iḥ ṣ ā’, 63–9). For a detailed discussion o f the context, nuances, significance and problem s o f al-Fārābī’s classification o f the logical sciences in relation to his other works and to works by other philosophers, Greeks and Muslims alike, see Black, Logic, 52-102. 68. He says ‘ adab functions as an instrum ent with regard to religious sciences ( ṣinā 'at al-adab tanzil manzilat al-āla li al-'ulūm al-milliyya) ’ (al'Āmirī, Al-i'lām, 180). 69. al-'Āmirī, Al-i'lām, 182. 70. Ibid., 96. 71. Ibid., 99. 72. Avicenna’s com m entaries on Rhetoric and Poetics fall within his study o f logic in general, though these two titles would subsequently disappear from his work, Ishārāt, the first part o f which is yet another version o f his summary o f Aristotelian logic (Madkūr, Introduction to Al-shifā ’, 47). 73. For a full discussion o f this aspect in the works o f Muslim philosophers, see Black, Logic. 74. Madkūr, Introduction to Al-shifā ’, 46. 75. Ibid., 47. 76. For an analysis o f al-Fārābī ’s understanding o f Aristotle’s concept o f representation, see 'Abd al-Jabbār Dāwūd al-Baṣ rī, ‘Makānat al-Fārābī fī tārīkh naẓ ariyyat al-muḥ ākāh fī al-shi'r ', Al-Fārābī wa al-ḥ aḍ āra alinsāniyya , proceedings o f the conference on al-Fārābī (Baghdad, 29 O ctober to 1 Novem ber, 1975): 285-300; and Black, Logic. 77. al-'Āmirī, Al-’i 'lām, 96. 78. al-Fārābī, Risāla f ī qawānīn ṣinä ’at al-shu 'arā,’ in Arisṭu ṭālīs, fa n n al-shi 'r, ed. 'Abd al-Raḥ mān Badawī (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍ a al-Miṣ riyya, 1953)·

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79. Ed. Iḥ sān 'Abbās (Beirut: Dār Maktabat al-Hayāh, 1959). 80. Beirut: Dār al-Andalus, 1964. 81. In R. Arnaldez, 'Ibn Ḥ azm’ , Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden: E. J . Brill; London: Luzac & Co., 1971): 3: 790-9, p. 790. 82. M uḥ ammad A bū Zahra, Ibn Ḥ azm, ḥ ayātuhu wa 'aṣ ruhu wa arā ’uhu wa fiqhuhu (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr al-'Arabī, 1954), 50-1. 83. al-Ghazzālī, Al-munqidh min al-ḍ alāl (deliverance from error), ed. Rashīd Ahm ad al-Jalandahri (Lahore: H ay’at al-Awqāf bi Ḥ ukūmat Punjāb, 1971), 1-2; English tr. by W. M ontgomery Watt, The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazzālī (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1982), 19. 84. al-Ghazzālī, I ḥ ya 'ulūm al-dīn (Baghdad: Lajnat N ashr al-Thaqāfa alIslāmiyya, AH 1356, 1: 24 and 134. 85. In Rasā 'īl Ibn Ḥ azm, Part I, ed. Iḥ sān 'Abbās (Cairo: Maktabat alKhānjī and Baghdad: Maktabat al-Muthannā, 1st edn, n.d.); also in Ibn Ḥ azm, al-ḥ aqq ḥ aqq wa al-bāṭil bāṭil, ed. and tr. Anwar Chejne (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1982). 86. Chejne, Ibn Ḥ azm, 103. 87. His acceptance o f both is explicit, as evidenced by his open rejection o f those who were proponents o f either exclusively (Chejne, Ibn Ḥ azm, 148-9). 88. The sciences peculiar to the Islamic ‘nation’ are: reading and interpretation (qirā’a wa mā'anī) o f the Q ur’ān; knowledge o f the text and transmitters (mutūn wa ruwāh) o f the Ḥ adīth; ju risprudence, including rules derived from the Q ur’ān (aḥ kām al-qur’ān), rules derived from the prophetic tradition (aḥ kām al-ḥ adīth), and rules m ade by consensus o f the Muslim community (al-ijmā') ; knowledge o f evidence – what is valid and what is not – o f theology, and o f theological issues (maqālāt); history (akhbār), consisting o f dynasties and reigns (mamālik wa sunūn), geography (bilād), biographies (ṭabaqāt) and genealogies (nasab); and language, consisting o f gram m ar and lexicography. 89. The sciences general am ong all nations are: science o f the stars, consisting o f astrology (prohibited) and astronomy; mathematics; logic, including physics (sensory) and metaphysics (rational); and m edicine, including psychology, m edicine and surgery. 90. There are other sciences known in the human world. Som e do not fit into this framework neatly, such as ilm al-shi'r (science o f poetry), 'ilm al-balāgha (science o f rh eto ric), the purpose o f which is to enable one to make truth clear to and teach the ignorant, and 'ilm al-'ibāra (science o f interpretation o f dream s), which he mentions in an entirely separate section. A nd others deserve to be called sciences (' ulūm) only because they involve knowledge, and these include: com m erce; tailoring; sewing, navigation (of ships), animal husbandry; planting, m anagem ent and care o f trees; and construction. 91. al-Ghazzālī, Iḥ yā ’, 1 : 6, 34-5, 56 and 88. 92. Ibid., 1: 22. 93. Philosophy is excluded because it is not science and has nothing to do with knowledge, and theology is excluded because its subject matters are dealt with in the interpretation o f the Q u r’ān and the accounts o f the religious sciences - akhbār al- ulūm al-shar'iyya (alGhazzālī, Iḥ yā , 1: 38). 94. W. M ontgomery Watt, ‘al-Ghazzālī ’ , Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn

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(Leiden: E. J . Brill; London: Luzac & Co., 1965): 1,038-41, 1,040. 95. Ibid. 96. This stupendous undertaking arose from al-Ghazzālī ’s feeling that in the hands o f the 'ulamā’ religious knowledge had becom e a means for worldly advancem ent instead o f being one for the attainm ent o f salvation in the world to com e (Watt, ‘al-Ghazzālī ’ , 1,040). 97. These are Q u r’ān, Ḥ adīth, consensus o f the Muslim community (ijmā') , and biographies o f the com panions o f the Prophet (alGhazzālī, I ḥ yā ’, 29). 98. These are ju risprudence (fi qh) and knowledge o f the states o f the heart (aḥ wāl al-qalb), and their purpose is the attainm ent o f the hereafter (al-Ghazzālī, Iḥ yā ’, 29). 99. These are gram m ar and lexicography, and they function as instruments (al-Ghazzālī, I ḥ y ā ’, 29). 100. These are interpretation o f the words and m eanings o f the Q u r’ān and knowledge o f traditions and histories (al-Ghazzālī, Iḥ y ā ', 30). 10 1. These are m edicine and mathematics (al-Ghazzālī, I ḥ y ā ', 28). 102. These are poetry and chronicles and histories (al-Ghazzālī, I ḥ y ā ', 28). 103. These are magic and talismans (al-Ghazzālī, Iḥ yā', 28). 104. See A ppendix IV. 105. al-Ghazzālī, Iḥ yā', 1 : 29. 106. Chejne, Ibn Ḥ azm, 221-2. 107. Ibid., 241. 108. Ibid., 222. 109. Ibid., 224. 110 . Ibid.; and al-Ghazzālī, Iḥ yā', 60. 1 1 1 . al-Ghazzālī, Iḥ yā', 60. 1 12. Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā surrounded themselves with mystery from the very beginning o f their career. Even now, the question o f their identity has not been settled. Scholars, both Arabs and Orientalists who have dealt with the subject, are unable to agree on who they were, when they lived and were active, how many epistles they com posed, when they com posed them, and the nature o f their writing. Al-Tawḥ īdī identifies five o f their founders in Al-imtā': Zayd b. R ifā'a, Abū Sulaymān M uḥ amm ad b. M a'shar al-Busṭī (known as al-Maqdisī), Abū al-Ḥ asan 'A lī b. H ārūn al-Zanjānī, Abū A ḥ mad al-Mihrānī, and al-'Awfī (2: 3-5; see also 'Abbās Ḥ am dānī, ‘An early Fatimid source on the time and authorship o f Rasā'il Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā’ , Arabica 24 (1977): 233-57). The efforts o f the scholars in attem pting to sort out the identities o f Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā are neatly summarised and synthesised by M uham m ad Farid H ijāb in Al-falṣ afa al-siyāsiyya 'ind Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-Miṣ riyya al-'Ā m m a li al-Kitāb, 1982); Seyyed Hossein Nasr in An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (London: Tham es and Hudson, 1964 [1978], 25-6; and Ian Richard Netton, Muslim Neoplatonists: A n Introduction to the Thought of the Brethren o f Purity (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982), 1-8. 113. H um an discourse, according to Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā, manifests itself on two levels: the sensory and the intellectual. The discourse that is m anifest on the sensory level is speech including all its com ponents: letters, words, phrases and sentences. In order to understand this aspect o f human discourse, one must study 'ilm al-manṭiq al-lughawī (the science o f language, manṭiq being synonymous with nuṭq in this context), which includes the study o f m orphology, phonem es, letters

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in their written form, sentences and compositions (aqāwīl;), both prose and poetry. And in order to understandtheintellectual level of

thehumandiscourse, one must study 'ilmal-manṭiq al-fikrī oral-falsafī (the science of intellectual or philosophical logic), whichdeals with abstract discourse.

1 14. Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā, R asā’i l Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā wa Khillān al-Wafā, 4 vols, ed. Khayr al-Dīn al-Ziriklī (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Tijāriyya al-Kubrā, 1928); Germ an translation by Friedrich Dietrich (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1969), and by Suzanne Diwald, Arabische Philosophie und Wissenschaft in d er Enzyklopädie (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 19?); Italian translation by Alessandro Bausani, L'E nciclopedia dei fratelli della p u rita: rissunto,

con introduzione e breve commento dei 32 Tratti o Epistole degli Ikhwān asSafā’ (Napoli: Istituto universitario orientale, 1978). 1 15. 'U m ar al-Dusūqī places the date o f the epistles’ com position to be between 334/848 and 373/983 ('U m ar al-Dusūqī, Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā [Cairo: Dār N ahḍ at Miṣ r li al-Tab' wa al-Nashr, 1973], 82). M uḥ amm ad Farī d Ḥ ijāb is o f the opinion that they appeared gradually throughout the second, third and fourth centuries (Ḥ ijāb, Al-falsafa al-siyāsiyya, 63-79). However, by the year 373/983, Ḥ ijāb surmises, these epistles were already known as a com prehensive body o f work (Ḥ ijāb, Al-falsafa al-siyāsiyya, 63-79)· This is based on evidence found in al-Tawḥ īdī ’s Al-imtā' wa al-m u’ā nasa. In al-Tawḥ īd ī’s account o f a conversation he had with the Buyid vizier, he reports that previous to Ibn S a'd ā n ’s inquiry, he had given a body (jum la) o f their works to Abū Sulaymān al-Sijistānī (c. 375/985) for an opinion (alTawḥ īdī, Al-imta', 2: 6). Historical sources tell us that the vizierate o f Ibn Sa'dān ended in 375/985 (Ẓ ahīr al-Dīn al-Rūdhrāwarī, Dhayl tajārib al-umam , ed. H. F. Am edroz [Cairo: Sharikat al-Tamaddun alṢ inā'iyya, 1916], 102, 103 and 106-7). See also Yves Marquet, La philosophie des Ihwān al-Ṣ afā ’ (Alger: Etudes et Documents, 1973), 7-31. 116. al-Dusūqī, Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā, 91-106 and 1 1 1 ; 'U m ar Farrūkh, Ikhwān alṢ afā, dars, 'arḍ , taḥ līl (Beirut: M aṭba'at al-Munaiman, 1953), 20-1; and Ḥ ijāb, Al-falsafa , the entire work; and Ṭ āhā Ḥ usayn, Introduction to R asā’i l Ikhwān al-Ṣ af ā, 1:14. 1 17- See R asā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā , 4· 234–5 and 1: 130–1; al-Dusūqī, Ikhwān alṢ afā, 91-106; and Farrū kh, Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā, 21. 1 18. Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā, Rasā ’il, 4: 198. 119. Ibid., 10 1. 120. Ibid., 1: 47– 8. In defence o f the philosophers, Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā claim ed that they were m isunderstood because their works had been translated from one language to another by ignorant people (ibid., 1: 48), or that they were m isunderstood by ignorant people (ibid., 4: 69). 121. Ibid., 1: 134 and 4: 99. 122. Ibid., 4: 69. 123. See al-Tawḥ īdī, Al-imtā', 2: 7. 124. Al-Tawḥ īdī said: ‘They claim that when Greek philosophy and Islamic law have been incorporated into one order, perfection is reached. They com posed fifty epistles on all parts o f philosophy, theoretical and practical, and have set up a table o f contents (fihrist) for them. They nam ed them “the epistles o f the Brethren o f Purity and Friends o f Loyalty”. They concealed their names and spread their writings am ong the booksellers. They taught them (the epistles) to the

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125.

126. 127. 128.

129· 130. 131. 132. 133. 134.

135.

136.

137.

138.

139.

people. They claimed that they did that only to please God and to deliver people from corrupt opinions that harm the soul; from m alignant (khabī th) beliefs which harm whoever holds them; and from blameworthy deeds which bring misery to their doers. They filled these epistles with religious words and exam ples, ambivalent symbols and m isleading ways’ (al-Tawḥ īdī, Al-im tā', 2: 5). 'Abd al-Laṭīf M uḥ ammad al-'Abd, Al-Insān wa fik r Ikhwā n al-Ṣ afā (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anglū al-Miṣ riyya, 1976), 60; and al-Ghazzālī, Almunqidh, 114. Al-'Abd, A l-insān , 59 (from Ibn al-Athīr ’s al-Kāmil, vol. 9, p. 69). Ibid., 60. They say: ‘Generally speaking, our brethren must not hold a hostile attitude towards any o f the sciences nor disdain any book, nor hold prejudice against any school o f thinking ( madhhab ), for it is our opinion that our school o f thinking encom passes (yastaghriq) all others’ (Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā, R a s ā 'īl, 4: 105). Ibid., 4: 106. Ibid., 1: 49· Ibid., 4: 174. al-Tawhīdī , A l-im tā', 2: 6. Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā, R a s ā ’il, 4: 200. The year o f Ibn al-Nadīm’s death has not been determ ined yet. This date is, according to Bayard Dodge in his introduction to his English translation o f the text, found on the title page o f the Beatty Manuscript. R iḍ wān al-Sayyid, on the other hand, leaves the date open between 377/987 and 403/1007 (al-Sayyid, 'Alfiyyat Ibn al-Nadīm fī ta’amm ulāt M u 'āṣ ira’ , Al-fihnst 4 [Beirut, 1981]: 2-5, p. 2). For the problem atics o f dating Ibn al-Nadīm ’s death, see 'Abd al-Karīm alAmīn, 'Ibn al-Nadīm’ , A l-aqlām 5:6 (February 1969): 43-55, pp. 43-5. Despite the im portance o f Al-fihrist in the field o f Arabic-Islamic studies, its author Ibn al-Nadīm has attracted little attention from the scholars o f Arabic and Islam. Besides the introductions by Gustav Flügel to the first printed Arabic text and Bayard Dodge to the English translation o f the text, few scholarly works have been done on Ibn al-Nadīm. This is perhaps due to the lack o f material on him in classical writings. For a fuller discussion o f this, in addition to the above referenced, see 'Abd al-Karīm al-Amīn, Tbn al-Nadīm ’ ; Abū Bakr Maḥ mū d al-Hūsh, 'Ibn al-Nadīm’ , Al-fuṣ ū l al-arba'a 20 (Decem ber 1982): 9-16. The cultural significance o f Al-fihrist is fully discussed by al-Sayyid in 'Alfiyyat Ibn al-Nadīm ’ . See also Wadad al-Qadi, ‘M ulā ḥ aẓ āt ḥ awl ẓ āhirat al-fahrasa fī al-turāth al-'arabī’ , Al-fihris t 5 (1982): 2-9. Ibn al-Nadīm, Al-fihrist, ed. R iḍ ā al-Māzandarānī (Beirut: Dār alMasīra, 1988), 3; and English tr. Bayard Dodge (New York: Colum bia University Press, 1970), 1: 1-2. This chapter com prises three sections: first, on gram m arians and language scholars o f Basra; second, on gram m arians and languages scholars o f Kufa; and third, on gram m arians connected with both schools. This chapter is divided into three sections: first, on historians, narrators o f traditions, genealogists, and authors o f biographies and anecdotes; second, on kings, secretaries, writers o f correspondence, administrators o f the revenue, and keepers o f registers; and third, on

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52

140.

141. 142.

143.

court com panions, associates, singers, literary men, buffoons, persons who take slaps good-naturedly, and jesters. This chapter is divided into two sections: first, on poets who were preIslamic, or else Islamic surviving the pre-Islamic period, and the com pilers o f their anthologies; and second, on Islamic poets and poets contem poraneous to Ibn al-Nadīm. T a rif Khalidi, Classical Arab Islam: The Culture and Heritage o f the Golden Age (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1985), 57. See C. E. Bosworth, Tbn Farīgh ūn ’, The Encyclopaedia o f Islam: New Edition , Supplem ent, Fasc. 5-6 (Leiden: E. J . Brill, 1982), 386, col. 2; and Fritz W. Zim m erm ann, ‘Al-Kindi’ , Religion, Learning, and Science in the 'Abbasid Period , ed. M. J . L. Young, J . D. Latham and R. B. Serjeant, The Cambridge History o f Arabic Literature, vol. 4 (Cam bridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1990), 368. Bosworth, 'Ibn Farīghū n ’ , 386, col. 2; D. M. Dunlop, ‘The Gawūmi’ al'ulūm o f Ibn Farīgh ūn’ , Zeki Velidi T ogan’s armagan (Istanbul, 1950-5), 352; H. Ritter, Philologika X III, in Oriens 3 (1950), 83; and Franz Rosenthal, A History o f Muslim Historiography (Leiden: E .J. Brill, 1968), 34- 5 .

144. See especially Rosenthal, A History, 35. 145. See Rosenthal, A History, 35. 146. There are two extant editions o f this book: an Egyptian edition the editor o f which is unknown, published by Idārat al-Tibā'a alMunīriyya in a h 1342 , and another edition by G. van Floten, published by E . J . Brill, 1895. J . M. Unawalla has also translated an extract from this book, m ainly on the Persian, Turkish and Indian words, ‘The translation o f an extract from Mafātīh al-'ulūm o f al-Khwārazmī’ , an offprint from the Journal o f the K . R. Cama Oriental Institute 11 (1928). Much careful work, mainly on the scientific chapters in the second discourse o f the book, was done by the Germ an scholar Eilhard W iedemann. 147. This is C. E. Bosworth’s translation. 148. Manuals written for secretaries were quite popular by the time o f alKhwārazm ī, for exam ple, 'Abd al-Ḥ amīd al-Kātib’s Risāla ilā al-kuttāb (epistle to the secretaries), Ibn Thawāb a ’s epistle, Ibn Qutayba’s Adah al-kātib (education o f the secretary), al-Sūlī’s Adab alkuttāb (educa­ tion o f the secretaries), Ibn W ahb’s Al-burhān fī wujū h al-bayān (demonstration o f aspects o f clarity [of thought, speech and writing]), and Ibn al-Naḥ ḥ ā s’ Ṣ in ā 'a t a l -kuttāb (craft o f the secretaries). 149. C. E. Bosworth, ‘A pioneer Arabic encyclopaedia o f the sciences: alKhuwārizmī ’s Key o f the Sciences’ , Isis 54 (1963): 98. 150. M odern scholars tend to view this bipartite division as the traditional Islamic view o f the sciences. However, this is the first text in which such a classification appears. H ence I find it difficult to qualify it as traditional. When Goldziher speaks o f the opposition o f Islamic orthodoxy to Greek sciences, he is speaking o f the writings o f the late fifth/eleventh century, particularly al-Ghazzālī. Al-Khwārazmī’s text was written in the fou rth/tenth century (al-Khwarāzmī died in 387/ 997), in which period one can hardly speak o f an Islamic orthodoxy. Although al-Ash'arī (d. 324/935) contributed much to the dialectics between the two branches o f knowledge, Philosophy and Religion, to the benefit o f Religion, his teachings did not take root until alGhazzālī effectively produced a response to philosophy a century and

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a h alf later. 151. For the use o f the word muwāda'a to mean term inology in Arabic classical writings, see 'Abd al-Salām al-Masaddī, ‘Al-muwāḍ a 'a wa al'aqd fī al-naẓ ariyya al-lughawiyya 'ind al-'arab’ , Al-mawrid 14:1 (1985): 5- 27· 152. A l-Khwārazmī’s division o f his treatise into two maqālas seemingly resembles that o f Ibn Farīgh ūn; however, there is no evidence that alKhwārazmī had knowledge o f Ibn Farīgh ū n’s work (see Bosworth, ‘Ibn Farīgh ūn’ , 387, col. 1). More importantly, the arrangem ent o f the rest o f the material by the two authors is quite different. 153. Rhetoric, according to al-Khwārazmī, however, m eans the art o f persuasion, and poetics deals with imaginative representation (takhyīl ) , the purpose o f which is also persuasion (al-Khwārazmī, M afātīḥ , 92). 154. al-Fārābī, Iḥ ṣ ā', 68-9. 155. Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥ īdī , R asā’i l Abī Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥ īd ī, ed. Ibrāhīm alKīlānī (Cairo, 1st edn, n.d.). 156. al-Taw ḥ īd ī, R asā’il, 103. 157. 'fa innī lam and bilādakum min al-'irāq mubāhiyan lakum (al-Tawwḥ īdī, Rasā ’il, 104). See also Marc Berge, ‘Epître sur les sciences (Risālah fī al'Ulūm) d ’Abū Ḥ ayyān at-Taw ḥ īdī, introduction, traduction, glossaire technique, m anuscrit et édition critique’ , Bulletin de l ’I nstitut d ’E tudes Orientales de Damas 18 (1963-4): 241-64, p. 245. We know that al-Tawḥ īdī had been to many cities during his lifetime (see Wadad al-Qadi, M ujtama' al-qarn al-rābi'f ī m u ’a llāfat Abī Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥ īd ī, MA thesis, Am erican University in Beirut, 1969, 3 -15 ), but are unable to ascertain when and where exactly this epistle was written. 158. al-Tawhīdī, Rasā'il, 105. 159. Given the socioreligious dynamics o f that period, he may have been addressing the Hanbalites, who were the real opponents o f incorporating philosophical disciplines into the religious ones (Berge, ‘E p ître’ , 245). 160. Abū Ḥ ayyān ’s Risāla can be better understood in the light o f what he has written in Al-muqābasāt – a tribute to his m entor and an im portant docum entation o f the issues that were discussed in al-Sijistānī’s circles, for Al-muqābasāt echoes the notions found in Risāla. 161. al-Tawhīdī, R asā’il , ιο6; and m uqābasa no. 9 in Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawhīdī, Al-muqābasāt, ed. M uham m ad Tawfī q Ḥ usayn (Baghdad: Jā m i'a t Baghdad, 1970), 95. 162. al-Tawhīdī, Al-muqābasāt (muqābasa no. 9), 95. 163. His division o f the sciences is implicitly bipartite: 'ulūm and ṣinā 'at, equivalent to theoretical and practical sciences. His classification, however, does not coincide with any o f the classifications by the philosophers. It has features o f works by the philosophers, religious scholars and m en o f letters. He discusses the sciences with their derivative disciplines in the following order: fiqh (jurisprudence), Q u r’ān, Ḥ adīth or Sunna, qiyās (analogy), kalām (theology), naḥ w (gram m ar), lugha (language), m anṭiq (logic), then ṭibb (m edicine), nujūm (stars), which includes astrology (Rasā'il, 113), and astronomy, arithmetic, geom etry and finally balāgha (rhetoric) and taṣ aw w uf (mysticism). This list does not vary m uch from what we find elsewhere in his writings. In muqābasa no. 2, for exam ple, in the context o f the discussion o f astrology/astronom y, the following

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164.

165. 166. 167.

sciences are m entioned: m edicine, gram m ar, ju risprudence, poetry, arithmetic, rhetoric ( balāgha ), geom etry and astronomy ( hay’a ). A nd in muqābasa no. 9, the following specialists are m entioned as those who m astered sciences ('ulūm) : physicians, astrologers/astronom ers, gram m arians, jurisconsults, theologians, engineers, secretaries and poets. This indicates that these are the m ajor and better-known sciences in fourth/tenth-century Baghdad, for the latter two sets o f exam ples are given in a spontaneous m anner during a discussion. Ibn Khaldū n ’s views with regard to both the sciences o f the Arabic language and Arabic poetry were neither new nor unique. George Makdisi observes that adab was generally pursued as propaedeutic to the religious sciences ( The Rise of Colleges [Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981], 76). Ibn Khaldūn, Al-maqaddima, 545. Ibid, 553. Christopher Norris, The Contest of Faculties (London: M ethuen, 1985), 148.

2

Functions of Poetry in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Society I suggest that we may learn a good deal about criticism and about poetry by examining the history of criticism, not merely as a catalogue of successive notions about poetry, but as a process of readjustment between poetry and the world in and for which it is produced. T. S. Eliot Badī' al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (d. 398/1008), a keen observer of his society, is said to have written 400 maqāmāt (literally: assemblies),1 though only fiftyone of them have survived in Muḥ ammad 'Abduh’s edition.2 These maqāmāt had traditionally been considered exercises in ornate literary composition lacking in substance. In recent years, scholars of medieval Arabic literature and literary critics have contributed much to change this point of view. Having applied structural analyses to these maqāmāt, Abdelfattah Kilito and James Monroe argued convincingly that they represent a sardonic statement on the intellectual life of fourth/tenth-century Arabic-Islamic society. One of the themes explored by al-Hamadhānī is the status of men of letters, including poets. Al-Hamadhānī – a successful poet and courtier who travelled far and wide in the eastern parts of the Islamic empire in search of patronage3– was acutely aware of the trials of men o f letters in the fourth/tenth century. Men of letters had to endure these trials – depen­ dent as they were on the patrons’ perception of the value of belles-lettres in relation to other disciplines in general and of poetry in relation to prose in particular – in order to ensure their livelihood. The two maqāmāt on poetry by al-Hamadhānī are particularly revealing: Al-maqāma al-qarīḍ iyya reveals the predicament of the poet, and Al-maqāma al-shi'riyya reveals the func­ tions of poetry in fourth/tenth-century Arabic-Islamic culture and society. In Al-maqāma al-qarīḍ iyya, al-Hamadhānī makes an important statement – undoubtedly subjective – regarding the diminished status of poets and their art. He achieves this by contrasting the status of ancient poets with that of muḥ dath (modern) poets, and by contrasting the quality of ancient

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poetry with that of muḥ dath poetry. Al-Hamadhānī first discloses that the role of the poet in society has changed. This disclosure is not made directly, but by the structure within which poetry and poets are portrayed. According to al-Hamadhānī, the ancient poets, like Imru’ al-Qays, did not utilise poetry for the purpose of making a living (lam yaqul al-shi'r kāsiban) ,4 whereas the muḥ dath, exemplified by al-Iskandarī, the protagonist of his Maqāmāt, did. Al-Hamadhānī then observes that the quality of poetry has altered, and not necessarily for the better. Old poetry, like that of Imru’ alQays, al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī, Zuhayr b. Abī Sulmā, Ṭ arafa b. al-'Abd, Jarī r and al-Farazdaq, is excellent, but muḥ dath poetry is of a different calibre, as manifest in al-Iskandarī ’s composition. The notion that poetry has altered is further supported by an explicit statement by al-Iskandarī: ‘the language of the ancients is nobler and their themes are more abundant, whereas the conceits of the moderns are more refined and their style more elegant’.5 James Monroe points out that this statement is indicative of the views held by medieval scholars with regard to poetry: there had been a loss in ideas or substance, compensated for by a gain in verbal skill.6 More significant, however, is the poignant statement which alHamadhānī makes – through the mouth of the protagonist al-Iskandarī – regarding the inevitability of this change, and therefore of his activity as a poet/mendicant: times have changed and one must act accordingly. Abdelfattah Kilito notes that in al-Hamadhānī’s works adab is equated with dhahab (gold), and poet with mendicant;7 the experiences of 'Isā b. Hishīm and Abū al-Fath al-Iskandarī are comparable with those of the author Badī' al-Zamān and his fellow men of letters. Kilito explains that this view o f men of letters, a notion new to third/ninth- and fourth/tenth-century ArabicIslamic society, was a direct consequence of the change of social function assigned to literature. While the ancient poets were the keepers of tradition (including social and moral values, and history of the tribes), the muḥ dath poets were reduced to mendicants because, as they gradually became an inseparable aspect of life at the courts of the Muslim elite class in the recently Islamicised urban centres, the old function held by the poets was taken over by the kuttāb (civil servants).8Accordingly, the function of prose superseded that of poetry, and the status of kuttāb that of poets.9 Kilito’s is a perceptive interpretation of the change of attitude with regard to poetry and the poet. To support his argument, Kilito quotes a statement made by Ibn Rashīq. In his discussion of poetry, Ibn Rashīq states that the Arabs celebrated the birth of poets because poets ‘protected the honour of their tribes, documented their genealogies, and preserved for posterity their eminent qualities’.10 Ibn Rashīq’s statement – which represents the historical view of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry in relation to muḥ dath poetry –

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is the key to our understanding of the change in the perception o f poetry and its function in society that took place while an Arabic-Islamic society was emerging. In Tabaqāt fu ḥ ūl al-shu'arā'’ Ibn Sallām makes the following statement: ‘During pre-Islamic times, poetry was the repository (dīwān) of the knowledge of the Arabs and the ultimate manifestation (muntahā) of their wisdom. They learnt from it (poetry and its contents) and abided by it in their deeds.’11 To support his statement, Ibn Sallām quotes the following statement by 'Umar b. al-Khaṭṭāb: ‘Poetry was the knowledge of a people who had no sounder knowledge than it’.12 Two features o f the above two statements deserve closer examination. For one thing, both 'Umar b. al-Khaṭ ṭ āb and Ibn Sallām use the past tense of the verb kāna in their statements. This indicates that the notions contained in these statement were no longer true at the time – as early as the first century of Islam – when they were spoken. What was no longer true about poetry, according to both, was that it was the knowledge ('ilm) of the Arabs, a notion derived from the word designating poetry in Arabic. The Arabic term for poetry (shi'r) originally meant a certain kind o f knowledge, and its derivative (shā 'ir) meant someone who knew.13 This conception of pre-Islamic poetry implied by its ancient lexical meaning constituted an important factor in the perception of poetry in Islamic times as well, leading to the bipolar division of poetry into ancient and modern, each with a distinct function in society. Whereas ancient poetry – ending with the Umayyad Ja rīr, al-Farazdaq and al-Akhṭal – was viewed as the repository which preserved the history of the Arabs, their moral values, knowledge, wisdom and above all documentary proofs for language studies, muḥ dath poetry was perceived primarily as a craft pursued by every educated Arab; in both Al-maqāma al-qarīḍ iyya and al-sh'riyya poetry is discussed by the narrator, who is a merchant, the protagonist, who is a man of letters, and other laymen. In Al-maqāma al-shi'riyya, the narrator 'Ῑ sā b. Hishām and the protagonist Abū al-Fatḥ al-Iskandarī are engaged in a discussion of poetry in a literary circle (ḥ alqa) in Syria. In their discussion, they concentrate on isolating the meanings (ma'ānī) of poetry and compete in explaining ambiguous lines (mu'amma).14 When al-Iskandarī participates in these literary games, he presents riddles the solution of which is the identification of certain lines of poetry. The maqāma ends with the narrator realising that this kind of exercise is important and that people are ranked on the basis of their competency in these games.15 Al-Hamadhānī’s maqāma is a revealing statement about the function of poetry in fourth/tenth-century ArabicIslamic society. The function of poetry presented in this maqāma is radically different from what was familiar to the Arabs in pre-Islamic times. Al-Hamadhānī’s portrayal of the function of poetry and the status of

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poets is, however, exaggerated for satirical purposes and does not convey fully the complex dynamics surrounding the negotiations for the place of poetry in Arabic-Islamic culture. The change in the function of poetry in culture and the status of poets in society, according to al-Hamadhānī’s account, seemed to have taken place gradually but steadily; no violent polemics emerged in the process. Indeed, no articulation of the process in which these important changes befell poetry and poets may be found in classical sources; however, some pertinent observations were made by keen writers, comfirming this change, as well as expressing Arabic-Islamic culture’s ambivalence towards poetry. This ambivalence towards poetry in Arabic-Islamic culture is perhaps a result o f complex circumstances surrounding the rise o f Islam as a world­ view, a way of life, and of the Arabs as a new nation whose influence spread from the Arabian Peninsula to north Africa and Spain, and from the Middle East all the way to the borders of China. This vibrant new world­ view inevitably replaced those extant in the cradle of Islam and the lands which the Arab-Muslims conquered within a century and a half of the emergence of Islam. The conflicting notions regarding poetry reflected in the works on the classification of the sciences examined in Chapter 1 – that it is the repository of the knowledge of the Arabs and that it is a source of corruption – are perhaps best viewed as the product of the cultural dialectics that accompanied, first, the rise of Islam in Arabia in the first/ seventh century, and, later, the negotiations for Arabic-Islamic identity in the increasingly multicultural Arabic-Islamic society between the second/ eighth and third/ninth centuries. Several interconnected sources for the ambivalent attitudes to poetry in medieval Arabic-Islamic culture may be discerned in the history of Arabic poetry: the cultural dialectics surrounding the eventual definition of the character of Arabic-Islamic civilisation, the resulting religious tradition in which ancient poetry is viewed as a source o f knowledge o f the Arabic language, the professionali­ sation of the poet, and the incorporation of poetry into entertainment. Arabic poetry has its roots in the pre-Islamic culture o f the Arabs, the practices of whom have persisted although some of their original purposes had become obscure. The lexical meaning of the Arabic word for poetry, shi'r, based on which Ibn Rashīq argued that poetry was a source of knowledge of the Arabs, remains mysterious in its origin. Poetry is clearly a source of a kind of secular knowledge in the Arabic-Islamic literary tradition, but whether the word and the practice which it denotes had certain religious connotations or not is unclear. There are bits and pieces of information in both historical and literary sources that tantalisingly imply that perhaps sh'ir served some religious functions as well. There are

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reports, for example, that the seven to ten pre-Islamic odes, as the terms used to describe them (mu'allaqāt and mudhahhabāt) indicate, were written in gold and hung on the walls of the Ka'ba,16 sacred home of the Arab deities before Islam. Did the poets have access to, let us say, supernatural sources of knowledge, as the lexical meaning of the word or as the ‘myths’ of the muses (shayāṭ īn)17 who inspired the major Arab poets may suggest, even as we agree with the modern interpretation that the issue is concerned partly with the source of art, whether it is innate talent or thoughtful deliberation? And how do we make sense o f the condemnations of poetry found in the Qur’ān and the Prophetic Tradition? Was the early conflict between poetry and Islam rooted in religious outlook, whereby the world-view represented by pre-Islamic poetry was being threatened by the emerging Islamic world-view, or in political strife and tribal practices, whereby Arab poets attacked Muhammad because his rising community represented a threat to the power of their tribes? Against which context should the Qur’ānic verse ‘As for poets, the erring follow them. Hast thou not seen how they stray in every valley, and how they say that which they do not?’ (26:224-5)18be interpreted? The overt context? We know that the Prophet made no secret of his pursuing poets who publicly attacked him, the Muslims and Islam, as they would any rival tribe in accordance with their practices: Ibn Khaṭal and Ibn Ḥ ubaba were killed, Ibn al-Ziba'rī and Hubayra b. Abī Wahb had to flee for their lives, and Ka'b b. Zuhayr19 and Mutammim b. Nuwayra had to ‘repent’ and compose poems in praise of the Prophet to save their own lives. Or should we adduce the possible covert context, obscured by over 1,000 years of history? When Prophet Muhammad made known his revelation, the divine message from Allah, he was accused of being one of the following: soothsayer (k ā h in ), possessed by a genie, that is, insane (majnūn), poet (shā 'ir ), or sorcerer (ṣ āh ir ).20 All seem to have connections with the supernatural and, except for insanity, with pre-Islamic religious practices. Was poetry, then, a source o f religious knowledge as well? We simply do not know and perhaps have no way of knowing. Yet the condemnation o f poetry in Islam is not universal. The Prophet himself, as I shall demonstrate in the following pages, enjoyed poetry, cultivated his own poets, and encouraged the Muslims to recite poetry. The polarised position with regard to poetry which emerged during Islamic centuries, it seems, originated from the Prophet himself. The problem is that the Prophet knew clearly the targets of and reasons for his approval and disapproval, whereas later Muslims, like Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Ghazzālī, had to deal with more complicated issues. Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Ghazzālī’s ambivalence cannot be explained only in light of the Prophet’s attitude

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towards poetry; for between the time of the Prophet and the time of Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Ghazzālī, poetry, both as art and practice rooted in culture and society, evolved in a complex fashion having to do with, in addition to the Prophet’s ambivalence towards poetry, the cultural dialectics o f the first three Islamic centuries during which poetry, by force o f circumstance, participated in defining the Arabic-Islamic civilisation, and in the process redefining its functions in culture and society. Arabic poetry’s involvement in the cultural dialectics entailed constant negotiations for its place in this culture. Eventually an appropriate place, as Foucault would say, was found for it, and by the fourth/tenth century poetry occupied a paradoxical position in Arabic-Islamic culture; it was derided for its deviations from the Arabic-Islamic world-view, and coveted at the same time for its function as the hallmark of Arabic-Islamic identity. As the works on the classification of the sciences tell us, two opposing views of Arabic poetry were prevalent in Arabic-Islamic culture: that it was considered a source of knowledge of the Arabic language the study of which was necessary in the education of every Muslim; and that its notions were in sharp contradiction with the Islamic civilisational priorities. Treating Arabic poetry as a source o f knowledge for the Arabic language had to do with the needs of a society that constructed itself on the basis of the teachings o f the Qur’ān, which was revealed in the Arabic language, yet such treatment often led religious scholars, as al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013) in I'j āz al-qur’ān (the inimitability o f the Qur’ān), to attack Arabic poetry in order to accentuate the quality of the language of the Qur’ān, the inimitability in its use of the Arabic language being the miracle of Islam. The perceived contradiction between Arabic poetry and Islam, which may be attributed to the transformation from pre-Islamic world-view contained in the pre-Islamic Arabic poetry – secular, individualistic and nomadic – to the Islamic world-view – sacred, communal and sedentary,21 led thinkers like Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Ghazzālī to censure Arabic poetry. This dichotomy regarding Arabic poetry was further complicated by the cultural wars that took place during the process o f integration o f non-Arab Muslims into the Islamic community, the well-known shu'ūbiyya movement of the third/ninth century in which Arabic poetry was involved in the expression of one national sentiment over another, Arab versus PersianIndian, for example. Yet this controversy, even though it inevitably affected the development o f medieval Arabic literary criticism negatively at times, also helped Arabic poetry to retain its function as a source of knowledge of the Arabs and to keep the discussion of it alive and lively.

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Ibn Rashīq reports in Kitāb al-'umda (the pillar) that Ibn 'Abbās, the famous companion of the Prophet and an early religious scholar, said: ‘If you read anything in the book of God and you do not know it (its meaning), then seek its meaning in the poetry of the Arabs, for poetry is the register (dīwān) of the Arabs’. Ibn Rashīq then makes the following comment about Ibn 'Abbās: ‘whenever he was asked about something in the Qur’ān he cited examples from poetry to explain it’.22 Ibn 'Abbās’ view o f poetry – a view obviously held by many early Muslim scholars – was to set the tone for subsequent poetic studies (especially classical poetry) in Arabic-Islamic culture. Despite Qur’ānic condemnation, poetry, including pre-Islamic poetry, came to be considered a source of knowledge of everything related to the Arabs. Most importantly, poetry was considered the vehicle in which their language – the language of the revelation – was preserved in its purest form. Generally speaking, poetry was considered an important source of knowledge in general, and of the history of the Arabs and their language in particular. In Kitāb al-'arab (the book of Arabs), a book intended as a response to the shu'ūbiyya attacks on the Arabs,23 Ibn Qutayba presents a systematic documentation of the estimable qualities and moral values of the Arabs in pre-Islamic times. In his presentation, poetry constitutes a major part of his refutation. Although this part of Kitāb al-'arab is lost, the gist of the argument which it presents is summarised by the author in Kitāb al-shi'r wa al-shu'arā . In speaking o f what he should have included in this book, Ibn Qutayba states that he has recorded the accounts which show the great importance of poetry and poets, and those whom their poetry elevated or put down in Kitāb al-'arab already. More important, Ibn Qutayba contends, the content of poetry ‘would help a miser to become generous, a coward to turn brave in battles, and a lowly man to rise above him self.24 Ibn Qutayba’s view of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry was not new, for the notion that pre-Islamic poetry constituted the history of the Arabs’ glorious past was already known by the time of Ibn Sallām, who particularly mentions in Ṭ abaqāt fu ḥ ūl al-shu'arā’ that pre-Islamic poetry contained the estimable qualities (ma’āthir) of the Arabs and accounts concerning their battles (ayyām al-'arab).25 Pre-Islamic poetry served as the Arabs’ link to their glorious past, a past that made them a superior ‘nation’ (umma). Arabs invented poetry, Ibn Rashīq later affirms, ‘to celebrate their estimable qualities (makārim akhlāq), their pure descent, the memory of their great days (battles), their homelands, their courageous knights and their generous men of nobility’.26

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Ibn Khaldūn further affirms this notion in Al-muqaddima. Poetry, accor­ ding to Ibn Khaldūn, is the dīwān of the Arabs and it contains their sciences ( 'ulūm), historical accounts (akhbār) and wisdom (ḥ ikam).27 Moreover, poetry is a noble art to the pre-Islamic Arabs, attesting to their ideas o f right and wrong.28 Most important, however, is Ibn Khaldūn’s conception o f the function of poetry. In his division o f sciences, poetry falls under the rubric of the sciences of the Arabic language, more specifically the science of adab (' i lm al-adab).29 He considers poetry a source of information for the sciences of the Arabic language, which are deemed prerequisites for the pursuit of a loftier science, namely Islamic law (' ilm al-sharī 'a). The importance of the Arabic language in Qur’ān, Ḥ adīth and legal studies prompted the rise and maturity of several disciplines relevant to language studies (primarily grammar and lexicography). In fact, the preservation of the pre-Islamic Arabic poetic tradition owed a great deal to the early generations of grammarians and lexicographers, for it was their interest in poetry as an essential source of their information that helped first to preserve this poetry by transmission and eventually committing it to writing, leading to the rise of several professional groups who specialised in these areas of learning – grammarians, lexicographers, transmitters of language30 and transmitters of poetry.31 This view of pre-Islamic poetry was both a blessing and a curse. Although poetry was recorded as a matter of necessity, it was forced to assume a supporting role in the hierarchical order of Arabic sciences. Poetry was not studied for its own sake or its artistic achievements, but for the sake of learning grammar and lexicography. Consequently, quotations from the poetic tradition abound in the works of grammarians and lexicographers. In lexicography,32 examples from poetry are usually cited to support the definition of a word recorded in classical Arabic lexicons. Similarly, works on language are abundant in lines of poetry cited in the course of explaining obscure forms of the language. In Kitāb al-kāmil (the book of the perfect), for example, al-Mubarrad ‘compiled a collection o f various types of adab, ranging from prose, poetry, lines of poetry that had become proverbial (mathal sā’ir), eloquently rendered advice (maw'iẓ a balīgha), choice orations and eloquent epistles’,33 for the sole purpose of ‘explaining all the obscure forms of the language, ambiguous meanings and grammatical issues found in the Book (Qur’ān)’.34 Grammatical treatises commonly used poetry, albeit not exclusively, as documentary proof35 (shāhid) to support an argument on a grammatical point.36 The use of poetry could be so extensive that a book like Sharḥ shawāhid al-mughnī (explanation of the documentary proofs in Mughnī [al-labīb]), Al-mughnī being a treatise on Arabic grammar, was compiled. Poetry was also used as a

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vehicle to present grammatical material, albeit less commonly. Abū 'Alī alFārisī (288/901-377/987) constructed his presentation of grammar around poetry in Kitāb al-shi'r (the book of poetry). The purpose of this work, as its alternative title suggests, is to explain the lines of poetry containing ambiguous points of grammar (sharḥ al-abyāt al-mushkilat al-i'rāb).37 Because of their extensive dependence on poetry for evidence, gram­ marians and lexicographers found no escape from officially including the study of poetry in their disciplines. Al-Suyūṭī considers knowledge of poetry and poets an essential component o f the overall intellectual qualifications of a language scholar. However, poetry occupies only an insignificant part: one chapter out of fifty chapters, and twenty six out of a total of 663 pages of Al-muzhirf ī 'ulūm al-lugha wa anwā'ihā (luminous [guide] to the sciences of language and its kinds). Knowledge of poetry essential to the education of a language scholar does not exceed general familiarity with the traditional definition of poetry, the accounts concerning its beginning and transmission, and the famous poets and their ranks (ṭabaqāt). Relevant issues, such as the question of old and new (mutaqaddim wa muḥ dath) and the loss of some pre-Islamic poetry, are discussed but only briefly. Significantly, the poetic material used by grammarians is confined to preIslamic and early Islamic poetry, because the purity of the language – which was the original linguistic context of the language of the Qur’ān – would become polluted (laḥ n) as the non-native speakers of Arabic were assimilated into the Islamic society. Al-Baghdādī (1030/1620 [or 1621]– 1093/1682), who divides the adab disciplines into lexicography, grammar, morphology and the three branches o f balāgha (rhetoric): ma'ānī, bayān and badī , for example, is of the opinion that only the language of the preIslamic and early Islamic Arabs (kalām al-'arab)38 might be used to provide documentary proofs for the first three disciplines: lexicography, grammar and morphology. Thus, early Islamic students of language, although maintaining the preIslamic notion of poetry as a source of knowledge, severely qualified the meaning of that knowledge, redefining it as primarily linguistic. This redefinition relegated knowledge of poetry to a low status in the hierarchy of Arabic sciences. At the same time, other writers persisted in regarding poetry as an important source of knowledge, especially of wisdom of the Arabs, leading to the further proliferation o f poetry among the educated class and their writings. In his defence of the Arabs against the shu'ūbi attacks, al-Jāhiz, for example, organises his book Kitāb al-ḥ ayawān around the information found in the Arabic poetic tradition. At times, he even uses evidence found in this poetic tradition to refute Aristotle. Precisely because of its importance as a source of knowledge, poetry was

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officially incorporated into educational curricula for the Muslims from as early as the third/ninth century. In Kitāb al-ma'ārif (the book of know­ ledge [s]) – a book intended to provide the Muslims with the intellectual components deemed essential to an educated man – Ibn Qutayba lists the following topics: ‘accounts concerning the prophets, kings and scholars; their genealogies and ancestors; history of the Arabs (ayyām al-'arab)'. The study o f these topics further necessitates the following subtopics: ‘information concerning specific accounts (qiṣ ṣ a), locations of tribes, chronology of kings, status of religious scholars, and origins of famous proverbs’.39 Al-ma'ārif, therefore, contains a section on the transmitters of poetry (who were also transmitters of obscure forms of the language and grammar).40 Elsewhere, Ibn Qutayba devotes a whole book, Al-shi'r wa alshu'arā’ (the book of poetry and poets) – intended as complementary to Alma'ārif together with Al-ashriba (the book of drinks) and Ta’wīl al-ru’yā (the book of interpretation of visions) – to poetry, and together they encompass the basic components of the education of men of letters. Poetry, as a matter of fact, was considered an essential component of elementary education from as early as the first/seventh century. 'Ā ’isha reportedly told the Muslims to teach their sons poetry, ‘rawwū awlādakum ash-shi'ra ta'dhub alsinatuhum' (make your children recite poetry and their speech will flow);41 and 'Abd al-Malik b. Marwān instructed the royal tutor to teach his sons poetry as well, ‘ rawwihim ash-sh' r a yamjadū wa yanjadū' (make them recite poetry and they will attain nobleness and loftiness).42 Poetry was included in the curricula of the kuttāb and makta43 (schools for elementary education) from as early as the third/ninth century. In these educational institutions, poetry was taught side by side with writing, the Qur’ān and the Creed.44 Inclusion of poetry in the educational curricula o f three professional groups, religious scholars, language scholars (grammarians and lexicographers)45 and the kuttāb,46 facilitated their claim to authoritative knowledge of poetry, especially in view of the fact that the necessity of poetry in both the education and the professional practice of the kuttāb was quite specific. In Risāla ilā al-kuttāb (treatise to the secretaries), for example, 'Abd al-Ḥ amīd al-Kātib (first/eighth century) urges the kuttāb to ‘memorise poetry, learn the obscure forms of its language and its meaning’.47 Al-Shaybānī (d. 298/910), author of Al-risāla al-'adhrā’ (the ‘maiden’ treatise),48 also urges the kuttāb to study poetry because the know­ ledge o f it helps to refine the skills o f a kātib,49 a notion confirmed by alQalqashandī (d. 821/1418), who devotes his compendium, Subḥ al-a'shā (the morning [light] for the night-blind), to the discussion of the essential intellectual requirements for a kātib, listing knowledge of poetry as one of

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them. He identifies Al-ḥ amāsa, an anthology of pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry compiled by Abū Tammām, Al-mufaḍ ḍ aliyyāt, Al-aṣ ma'iyyāt and Dīwān ash'ār hudhaliyyīn as the primary sources of Arabic poetry to be pursued. He includes some poets of the early Islamic period, such as Ja rīr (c. 24-111/640-729), al-Farazdaq (d. c. 112/730) and al-Akhṭal (d. 92/710), and muḥ dath poets, such as Abū Tammām (d. 231 or 232/845-6), Muslim b. al-Walīd (d. 208/823), al-Buḥ turī (d. 284/897), Ibn al-Rūmī (d. 283/896) and al-Mutanabbī (d. 303/916-354/965).50 In addition to its educational value, poetry may be used to adorn official correspondence (ṣ inā 'at al-kitāba). Al-Qalqashandī, following the trend initiated by his predecessors, such as al-Shaybānī, author of Al-risāla al'adhrā’ ,51 articulates the ways in which poetry may be used in official correspondence, perhaps more than anyone who has written on the subject. Poetry may be used in supporting a point that the kātib has made (istishhād) ,52 This custom is prevalent even in the manuals for kuttāb. Ibn Qutayba and al-Ṣ ūlī (d. 335/946), for example, both cite examples from poetry to support an argument relevant to language or a point of view in Adab al-kātib (the education of the secretary) and Adab al-kuttāb (the education of secretaries), respectively. Poetry is also often used to adorn the main text into which the author incorporates a line or half a line of poetry (taḍ mīn) ;53 or an author might take the meaning of a line of poetry and blends it into the prose of the document (ḥ all).54 Yet the recognition of poetry’s educational value and its use as an adornment also diminished the special role of the poet, and limited the possibility of creating such a special role for the literary critic. With the incorporation o f poetry into their educational curricula, language scholars, religious scholars and kuttāb were at ease in discussing it, their knowledge o f the subject further consolidated, first, by the process of learning practised at the time – memorisation – and, second, by the vast recording movement that took place between the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries. Memorisation, whether retention of great quantities of materials55 or readiness to be called upon for instant retrieval,56 meant that any of the above professionals would be ready to cite a line of poetry and to provide an opinion on poetry, which had consequently become a property common among them. Moreover, by the third/ninth century, writing and written materials were gaining importance in Arabic-Islamic intellectual life: writing was not confined to recording the past tradition; rather, both book-making and writing had become arts. Al-J āḥ iẓ , for example, argues for the importance of writing57 and books, and considers the possession of books a sign of learnedness.58 High esteem given to learning led to rapid development of

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the arts o f writing and book-making, and by the fourth/tenth century book-making and bookselling were in full bloom. The booksellers’ market, located in the eastern section o f the city, for example, became an important site in fourth/tenth century Baghdad: From the Harrani Archway up to the New Bridge over the Sarat Canal both sides o f the roadway were occupied by the shops o f the paper-sellers and booksellers, whose market was in this quarter, as also on the bridge itself; and this market was called after them the Suk-al-Warrakin, more than one hundred booksellers’ shops being found here.59 At the booksellers’ market, books o f all kinds were available to the public as Ibn al-Nadīm, a bookseller himself, attests in his famous Al-fihrist, which is in effect a catalogue of the titles known to him and available for sale. Collections of poetry and accounts of poets constitute a significant part of these titles, the popularity of poetry among Arabs – a historical phenomenon that has maintained its vigour up to this date – making it a desirable commodity in the booksellers’ market. Paradoxically, as I shall analyse in detail in Chapter 4, the surplus o f goods found in these markets created an atmosphere of competition that in some way affected the discussion of poetry too, as sellers engaged in promoting their products. AlṢ ūlī, for example, tells us that the anthology which he made of Abū Nuwās’ poetry was so popular that he hoped it would edge out those of others.60 T H E N EW R O L E O F P O E T S A N D P O E T R Y

When Ḥ assān b. Thābit (d. 40/659, 50/669 or 54/673) became involved in the polemics of the Muslims against the ‘infidels’, both poet and poetry acquired a new function. Poets were indeed known in pre-Islamic times as spokesmen of their tribes and poetry as the register of their history and wisdom, but involving the poet and poetry in a situation where a largerscale political ideology – loyalty not confined to parent tribes – was concerned was something new. Despite its added new role, however, the poetic output during the first century of Islam declined. Medieval scholars usually explained this phenomenon by subscribing to the notion that early Muslims were preoccupied first with the Qur’ān, the language and mean­ ing of which were superior even to those of pre-Islamic poetry, and second with the conquests.61 However, they hastened to assert that the Arabs’ appreciation for poetry remained undiminished. The Prophet Muḥ ammad, the second Caliph 'Umar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, the wife of the prophet 'Ā ’isha and the early religious scholars like Ibn Sīrīn and Ibn 'Abbās were all reported to have been admirers of poetry.62 Major poets known from this period

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were, however, few. By the time the poet re-emerged as an active member of emerging Arabic-Islamic society during Umayyad times, though the characteristics of his art remained fairly similar to those of pre-Islamic poetry, his status and role in society may have changed. Classical sources provide us with virtually no direct commentary on the actual process of this change, but with ample information on the issues connected with poets and poetry in the emerging Arabic-Islamic society.63 We now know of the increasing involvement of poetry in politics, especially during the Umayyad period (661-749), and entertainment, particularly during the 'Abbasid period (749– 1258). In the sphere of politics, we are told that Umayyad poetry was heavily involved in state politics and ideology, such as sectarian polemics between Umayyads, Shi'ites, Zubayrids and Khawārij,64 and that the 'Abbasids cultivated court poets, who performed propagandist services for them. During what is known as the first 'Abbasid period (749-842), poets attached themselves to the courts o f caliphs (alRashīd, al-Amīn, al-Ma’mūn, al-Mu'taṣ im) and their viziers (the Barmakids, al-Faḍ ī b. Sahl, al-Fatḥ b. Khāqān), or to the various courts of the indepen­ dent – in practice, not in theory – states o f the period known as the second 'Abbasid period (842-1258), their viziers and the elite of important centres of power (Ḥ amdānids, Būyids, Ghaznavīds). In the sphere of entertain­ ment, we are told that poetry became closely associated with music and singing,65 and became the topic of conversations in the unofficial – at times festive – gatherings that the rulers (caliph or heads of states) held with their boon-companions (nudamā') and courtiers.66 Even as the courtly function overshadowed other roles o f poetry, poetry remained diverse and its purposes multifaceted, some utilised for expressions o f a personal nature, some devoted to education and some devoted to religious piety. However, even as citizens of the Arabic-Islamic world continued to enjoy every delight that poetry offered, the limelight inevitably fell on courtly poetry because it was part and parcel of the life of the elite who had the power and were in the position to set cultural, artistic and literary trends in society. With their affluence, they became the patrons of the arts, capable of paying high prices for whatever took their fancy, and rejecting that which did not appeal to their taste. They intentionally or unwittingly participated in defining the criteria for good art. Poetry was subject to their loves and hates and their intentions, political or otherwise, for poetry. Paradoxically, they also provided poets with a market, when necessary and desired, for their works, creating a situation where they become the judges of poetry, therefore promulgating to a great degree the direction of poetic development and, more importantly, the institutional conduct of poets.

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The increasing involvement o f poetry in courtly lifestyle gave rise to two important phenomena in the history of Arabic literature: the rise of the poets as a professional class whose livelihood depended on their craft and patronage; and the incorporation of poetry into the areas relevant to entertainment (music and boon-companionship). Institutionalisation of poetry and its role in entertainment necessarily dictated the direction of its artistic development, and consequently the artistic appreciation o f it – literary criticism. However, it also created two distinct, even contradictory problems for the development of literary criticism into a specialised area of knowledge and the rise of the literary critic as a specialist: on the one hand, the integration of poets as professionals into courtly life necessarily ascribed the authority on poetry to the professional poets (arbāb al-ṣ an'a), and on the other, the incorporation of poetry into the activities that comprised the ‘cultured’ entertainment of elite society made poetry a public commodity, not to say a common topic that any educated man, especially the courtier, had to discuss. Poets as Professionals in Urban Centres The assimilation o f poets as professionals into the urban courtly lifestyle was a subtle process that took place gradually over the second/eighth, third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries as poets became more closely associated with the courts of the ruling class, be they caliphs, viziers or influential kuttāb. It seems that by the fourth/tenth century al-takassub bi alshi'r (earning livelihood by means of poetry), as Ibn Ḥ azm and al-Āmirī allude to,67 had already become the most visible and prevalent function of poetry in the new Arabic-Islamic urban centres, the seats o f the elite. Authors like Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi and Ibn Rashīq, for example, discuss this phenomenon at length in Al-'iqd al-fa rīd and A l-'umda. Medieval scholars in general, including Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi and Ibn Rashīq, viewed this practice as a continuation of the practice of the Arabs, with its roots extending into the pre-Islamic past. Al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī, for example, was reportedly the first Arab poet who accepted rewards from al-Nu'mān b. al-Mundhir, and he became so rich that he ate and drank out of gold and silver bowls.68 Zuhayr b. Abī Sulmā was also known to have received gifts from Harim b. Sinān,69 as was al-A'shā, who reportedly travelled to far places (including Sassanian courts) and traded his poetry for money (literally: he made it into a trade ‘ matjai' ).70 Historical sources stop short of documenting com­ parable practices during the first half of the first Islamic century; we are told that this practice was suppressed during the early period of Islam (in the days of the Prophet Muḥ ammad, Abū Bakr, 'Umar, 'Uthmān and 'Alī).71 This practice, however, re-emerged during the Umayyad period, and this

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time to stay, setting the stage for a trend that would obscure other functions of poetry and poets known previously. On the basis of information found mainly in the biographies of the three major Umayyad poets namely, alAkhṭal, Ja rīr and al-Farazdaq, the onset of the development towards professionalisation – or rather institutionalisation – of poets was already recognisable during the Umayyad times. This phenomenon was prevalent during the 'Abbasid period; in fact, it became overwhelmingly widespread by the fourth/tenth century. Not only were the 'Abbasid caliphs surrounded by court poets (Abū Dulāmā, Ḥ ammād 'Ajrad, Bashshār b. Burd, Marwān b. Abī Ḥ afsa, Salm al-Khāsir, Abū Nuwās, Manṣ ūr al-Namarī and others), but their viziers (the Barmakids and al-Fatḥ b. Khāqān) also patronised their own poets (Abān b. 'Abd al-Ḥ amīd, Ibn Manādhir and al-Raqāshī).72 In the early fifth/eleventh century, a book of great importance to the students of Arabic literature of that period was compiled by Abū Manṣ ūr alTha'ālibī (d. 429/1037).73 Yatīmat al-dahr (the unique [or orphaned] book of the ages) is generally viewed as a history of literature in which only biographies of litterateurs contemporaneous and near-contemporaneous with al-Tha'ālibī are recorded. In Yatīmat al-dahr, even though it is primarily divided into four main parts, each construed mainly along geographical lines,74 many biographies are arranged according to the litterateurs’ (including poets’) association with a particular court. For example, the first part o f the book contains a large section on the Ḥ amdānid courts. It begins with the biography of Sayf al-Dawla (head of state and poet), followed by Abū Firās al-Ḥ amdāni (a prominent prince and a major poet) and other notable members of the Ḥ am dānid family, the administrative members of the Ḥ amdānid government (military commanders [quwwād and umarā], secretaries and judges), then al-Mutanabbī and other lesser-known poets who were also associated with the Ḥ am dānid courts. This feature is fairly consistent in Yatīmat al-dahr, al-Tha'ālibī maintains the arrangement in listing the biographies of litterateurs known to have been affiliated with the courts of the Būyids and the Ghaznavīds, and even the lesser-known courts of some Andalusian viziers. Thus, it seems that a litterateur’s affiliation with a certain court is an important criterion in the author’s decision on where his biography should be entered. A closer examination of these biographies also reveals that their subjects, including poets at times, were professionals who held a variety of official positions in these courts: viziers, commanders, kuttāb and judges. In confirmation, Hilāl al-Ṣ ābī (359/969-448/1055), in his discussion of etiquette of service (adāb al-khidma) at the court of the caliph in Rusūm dār al-khilāfa (protocols of the caliphal court),75 includes crown princes, sons of caliphs, members of the Hāshimite clan, judges, jurisconsults, ascetics,

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Qur’ān readers and poets. It seems that litterateurs in general and poets in particular constituted professional groups who were also assigned official functions at these courts, indicating the acculturation of poets into the courtly lifestyle of the elite. The phenomenon of al-takassub bi al-shi'r was understandably becoming more and more a way o f life for poets.76 In Ẓ āhirat al-takassub, Darwīsh alJundī cites Shawqī Ḍ a y f's observation on the development of the phenomenon of al-takassub between the Umayyad and 'Abbasid periods. Ḍ ayf notes that the number of poets who made a living out of their poetry increased from about fifty during Umayyad times to a virtually uncountable number during 'Abbasid times.77 To al-Jundī, al-Tha'ālibī’s Yatīmat al-dahr is a perfect proof of his charge, for all the poets included in Al-yatīma were affiliated with one court or another.78 The nature of the practices at the 'Abbasid courts, however, does not seem to have differed much from those of the Umayyad period, except perhaps the tribal function characteristic of poetry composed during the Umayyad period, which disappeared almost completely. Loyalty to a parent tribe came to be replaced above all by financial considerations, and in fact poets could praise any number of patrons at one time without feeling any conflict o f interest. Accounts of poets who travelled far and wide in search of a patron are abundant in classical sources. Al-Mutanabbī, for example, migrated from the court of Sayf al-Dawla al-Ḥ amdānī to that of Kāfūr al-Ikhshīdī, and then to 'Aḍ ud al-Dawla al-Buwayhi. In exchange for his poetry, he received sufficient money to ensure his livelihood. Early in his career, he was paid a dinar by a certain chamberlain known as Manṣ ūr al-Ḥ ājib for a poem that he composed in praise of the latter.79 However, when he became Sayf alDawla’s poet, the price of his poetry rose,80and later he reportedly received 200,000 dirhams from Adud al-Dawla al-Buwayhi.81 Al-Ṣ āḥ ib b. 'Abbād offered to share his fortune with al-Mutanabbī if the latter would accept his invitation to praise him.82 At the outset, all the reports show an increasing tendency for poets to become attached, even dependent on the ruling class. Although Ja rīr, alFarazdaq and al-Akhṭal were all known to have been affiliated to some Umayyad caliphs (Jarīr to 'Abd al-Malik b. Marwān and al-Walīd b. 'Abd alMalik;83 al-Farazdaq to al-Walīd b. 'Abd al-Malik and Hishām b. 'Abd alMalik and Sulaymān;84 and al-Akhṭal to Yazīd b. Mu'āwiya, 'Abd al-Malik b. Marwān and Hishām b. 'Abd al-Malik) ,85 al-Akhṭal was the court poet par excellence among them. He performed two functions for the Umayyads: he was a defender and propagandist. On behalf of the Umayyads and at the request of Mu'āwiya b. Yazīd, he satirised the Anṣ ār (specifically their poet 'Abd al-Raḥ mān b. Ḥ assān ), who were then opponents of the Umayyads.86

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He reportedly praised every Umayyad caliph during his lifetime.87 More important, he was officially named ‘Poet of the Umayyads’ by 'Abd al-Malik b. Marwān.88 Both Jarir and al-Farazdaq were known to have been associated with al-Ḥ ajjāj b. Yūsuf,89 and Al-Farazdaq was further known to have been the poet of the Umayyad governor to Iraq, Bishr b. Marwān.90 Consequently, many starting poets had to spend time and energy searching for recognition and approval by the court. Jarir, according to an anecdote preserved in al-Iṣ bahānī’s Kitāb al-aghānī (the book o f songs), started his career frequenting the court of Yazīd b. Mu‘āwiya. When I was still a young man, I came to the court o f Yazīd b. Mu'āwiya. I requested an audience with him together with a group of poets. The chamberlain approached me and said: ‘The Com­ mander o f the Faithful says to you that he will not receive any poet he does not know before hearing some o f his poems, and that as soon as he hears them he will give you permission’. I said, ‘tell the Commander of the Faithful that I am the composer of the following: I am chaste when I am poor, and generous when I am rich I move fast when discontented with my abode; When I put my fingers around the sword, My heart is brave and I do not fear death; My sword does not spare even bones, It is indeed more lethal than my tongue.’ The chamberlain went and recited the lines, then came out and gave me permission to enter. I entered, recited (poems) to him and received rewards with the other poets. It was the first reward I had ever received from any caliph. He (the caliph) said to me, ‘my father, who has passed away, would not have thought that the lines with which you sought my favour (tawaṣ ṣ alta bihi ilayya)91 were addressed to anyone but me’.92 This anecdote reveals some interesting features concerning the activities of poets in relation to the court. At the courts o f the caliphs, who customarily received poets there, poets sought permission for an audience together, and when it was granted, they presented themselves to the caliph in groups. More importantly, poetry was the means by which poets gained access to the court, and eventually a good life at court. Al-Akhṭal ‘kept close company with the caliphs and ate their food’.93 Poets, it seems, did not shy away from ‘soliciting in verse’ (al-su’āl bi al-shi'r); al-Ḥ uṭay’a (d. 59/678) was known for persisting in doing so (akthara min al-su’āl bi al-shi'r), making poetry a commodity for sale in something very similar to trade. Al-Thā'ālibī

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describes al-Mutanabbī’s success with Aḍ ud al-Dawla as ‘his journey yielded success and his trading was profitable (anjaḥ at safratuhu wa rabihat tijāratuhu) .’94 The monetary value of poetry could of course be arbitrary. Al-Farazdaq reportedly ran into Dhū al-Rumma (77/696-117/735) in the camel market reciting his poem ' adhabtahunna saydahu. When he saw al-Farazdaq, he asked: ‘What do you think of my poem?’ Al-Farazdaq replied, ‘your poem is excellent!’ Dhū al-Rumma then asked: ‘Why am I not counted among the great (f uḥ ūl) poets?!’ Dhū al-Rumma’s query to al-Farazdaq seems more like an expression o f his frustration. For indeed al-Farazdaq was considered by later authorities (including Ibn Sallām) superior to Dhū al-Rumma, but there is no evidence that this was the case during his time. There are many accounts in Kitāb al-aghānī that tell us that Dhū al-Rumma was at times considered equal to both al-Farazdaq and Ja rīr,95 forcing one to wonder whether there was another reason behind Dhū al-Rumma’s question. Dhū al-Rumma seems to have spent his life travelling from the desert to al-Basra, al-Kūfa, Damascus and Isbahän. He praised 'Umar b. Hubayra al-Fazārī, governor of Iraq, Bilāl b. Abī Burda al-Ash'arī, Khālid al-Qasrī’s deputy in al-Baṣ ra, Mālik b. al-Mundhir b. al-Jārūd, Khālid’s chief of police, Abān b. al-Walīd, governor of Fārs, and one Umayyad caliph, possibly Hishām b. 'Abd al-Malik.96 However, he never attained the status of Ja rīr, al-Farazdaq and al-Akhtal with the Umayyad caliphs, and the rewards that he had received from his patrons did not amount to much. His life was a series of long journeys; his poems are full of longing for his beloved and the hardship that he endured in travelling, not to mention his poverty. Is it possible that his frustration stemmed from his disappointed hopes? AlAkhṭal and Jarī r received generous gifts from the caliphs. At one time, Ja rīr received 4,000 dirhams because a bedouin guest of 'Abd al-Malik deemed him the best poet.97 Al-Akhṭal, upon recitation of his famous poem ‘khaffa 'l-qaṭīnu farāḥ ū minka aw bakarū to 'Abd al-Malik b. Marwān, was awarded a scabbardful of dirhams as well as garments. It seems that getting paid was taken for granted, and when a poet was displeased with his reward he could openly express his dissatisfaction. It is reported that at one time Hishām b. 'Abd al-Malik awarded al-Akhṭal 500 dirhams, which al-Akhṭal deemed insufficient, and subsequently he bought apples with it and distributed them among the servants.98 Awards from the government treasury were allotted for poets specifically. During a feast held by 'Abd al-Malik b. Marwān, poetry was mentioned and a bedouin from the 'Udhra tribe – having shown himself an eloquent man – was asked who had composed the best lines containing praises, boasting, satire, lyricism and simile. The bedouin responded with five lines from the poems of Jarir. Jarir, who was present, declared that he would gladly allow

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his reward to be given to the bedouin. Upon hearing this, 'Abd al-Malik said: ‘He will be given another equal amount from the government treasury (bayt al-māl), and you will have your full reward’ . By the end of the party, Ja rīr had received 4,000 dirhams and the 'Udhri youth 8,000 dirhams and a bundle of garments.99 In the fourth/tenth century, the money for awards and gifts was officially included in the central administration’s (the Caliphate’s) budget. In the budget plan made by 'Alī b. 'Ῑ sā for the Caliphate for the year 306/918, an allowance was made for awards and gifts which over a period o f three months averaged 21,000 dinars a month.100Sayf al-Dawla al-Ḥ amdānī reportedly had special gifts (ṣ ilāt) gold coins (dinars) minted, each of them ten times ( mithqāl) the weight of a regular gold coin.101 The practices of poets were necessarily, inevitably shaped by the rules of supply and demand of the market, and of course the decorum of patron­ age, yielding a set of requirements and qualifications pertinent to and necessary in the profession. The poets’ success in their career demanded preparation, perseverance, ambition and competency. These realities, which help us to sketch an outline of some of the aspects related to their profession, were known to and practised by the poets. As in any profession, the first step toward building a career is appro­ priately education and good training. Salm al-Khāsir (literally: the loser) reportedly inherited 100,000 dirhams from his father, which he subse­ quently spent on learning literary arts (ādāb) and poetry. As a result, his neighbours called him ‘the loser.’ When he was granted an audience by alMahdī, he received an award in the amount of 100,000 dirhams. He then went to his neighbours and told them: ‘Here is the 100,000 dirhams I spent on learning literary arts. I am the winner (al-rābiḥ ) not the loser!’102 Education alone does not guarantee success; it must be accompanied by ambition. It is clear from the sources that the highest honour a poet could attain was to be the poet of the caliph or head of state. Al-Buḥ turī, for example, was the poet of al-Fatḥ b. Khāqān first, but when he was presented to al-Mutawakkil and met with the latter’s approval, he became alMutawakkil’s poet.103 Al-Mutanabbī was known to have disdained praising anyone but the kings,104 although he started his career at lowlier courts and retained much contempt for those he called ‘rabbits who happen to be kings, their eyes wide open yet they are asleep’ . In addition, poets must possess professional competency, for they were often called upon to compose a poem for a particular occasion, impromptu or otherwise. Hārūn al-Rashīd once composed a line and requested Abū Nuwās to match it on the spot. Abū Nuwās promptly composed two lines and was given 20,000 dirhams.105 When Sayf al-Dawla was visiting Baghdad, he sent a messenger to Hilāl al-Ṣ ābī requesting a poem from him. When

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Hilāl al-Ṣ ābl delivered his poem, he was awarded 300 dinars.106 Not surprisingly, some poets prepared poems for various occasions before­ hand. Salm al-Khāsir was reportedly found with papers in his hand on which he had written elegies to Umm Ja'far, an otherwise unnamed slave-girl, and some other people who were still alive. When confronted, Salm said: Things happen and people will press us to say something for the occasion; we are then expected to excel. So we prepare for them beforehand. When things do happen, we will use these (previously composed poems) and pretend they are freshly composed.107 With their credibility established, poets could now enjoy earning their keep, their income dependent on the rewards they received from their patrons. Bashshār b. Burd reportedly received 4,000 dinars from the Barmakids, and from them alone Salm al-Khāsir got 20,000 dinars.108 It is reported that Bashshār b. Burd, upon his arrival in Baghdad, asked Yazīd b. Mazyad in vain to present him to al-Mahdī. When Bashshār b. Burd was finally presented to al-Mahdī by Rawḥ b. Ḥ ā tim and received 10,000 dirhams from the caliph, he composed a poem ridiculing Yazīd . 109 Abū Tammām received 3,000 dirhams from al-Ḥ asan b. Rajā’.110 Al-Buhturī received 5,000 dirhams from al-Fatḥ b. Khāqān for a single poem and 10,000 dirhams from al-Mutawakkil at their first meeting.111 Al-Mutanabbī, though he hoped for a governorship from Sayf al-Dawla al-Ḥ amdānī, was never granted any wish in this respect. However, he was paid handsomely.112 Paradoxically, because of the trade-like quality of their profession, poets did not pledge exclusive loyalty to their patrons; they went where recog­ nition was given. Abū Tammām, for example, praised all the following, some at the same time: al-Mu'taṣ im, al-Ḥ asan b. Rajā’, al-Ḥ asan b. Wahb, Muḥ ammad b. 'Abd al-Malik al-Zayyāt and al-Ṭ āhir b. al-Ḥ usayn. AlBuḥ turī praised al-Mutawakkil, al-Fatḥ b. Khāqān, al-Mu'tazz and many others. While he served as al-Mutawakkil’s poet, he maintained his relationship with al-Fath b. Khāqān, who had in fact introduced al-Buḥ turī to the caliph and who continued to advise him on matters related to protocol (that is, what kind of poetry to compose for al-Mutawakkil). Under extremely agreeable situations, poets sometimes took up residence at courts. Both Jarir and al-Akhṭal are known to have resided at the court because they were boon-companions to several Umayyad caliphs.113 It was also common for poets to reside at courts during the 'Abbasid period. However, it is not known whether they were only temporary or permanent residents at these courts. It is possible that they maintained independent households but resided at courts when their company was demanded. There are abundant reports in classical sources

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from which such a practice may be inferred. Al-Mutanabbī kept his patron Sayf al-Dawla constant company because the latter frequently requested that he recite his poems to him. There are also explicit reports to the effect that poets resided at the court of their patron for the duration of his service. For example, Abū Tammām was a resident at the court of al-Ḥ asan b. Rajā’ during their association (kāna muqīman 'ind al-Ḥ asan b. R ajā).114 Not surprisingly, poetry came to be conceived as craft requiring specialised skills, what may be termed professional qualifications, upon which the poets’ livelihood depended. As early as the third/ninth century, Ibn Sallām had already argued for the notion that poetry was in fact craft (ṣ inā 'a).115 Ibn Sallām compared the poet and poetic craft with the jeweller and precious stones, the money-changer and money, the slave merchant and slaves, the palm-tree expert and various types of palm trees, and the cattle expert and cattle.116 Starting in the fourth Islamic century, Ibn Sallām’s notion o f poetry became the norm.117 Linking poetry to kasb and ṣ inā 'a further confirms that poetry was regarded both as a specialised skill that ensured employment, and as merchandise for which money was paid, leading to the flourishing of books on ṣ inā'at al-sh'ir, many o f which were intended as manuals for poets. In Al-muqaddima, for example, Ibn Khaldūn lists poetry under ṣ a n ā 'i ' (plural of ṣ inā'a) in the chapter which he devotes to ‘the various aspects of making a living, such as profit (kasb) and crafts (ṣ anā’i ‘) .’118 This notion is corroborated by al-Tha'ālibī, who has recorded the following anecdote: On one occasion, Sayf al-Dawla asked al-Mutanabbī to recite to him the poem which began with: To the measure of decisive men come decisive deeds; And to the measure of noble men come noble deeds. He admired this poem and had it recited to him frequently. AlMutanabbī continued reciting until he came to the following two lines: You stood when Death left no one standing in any doubt, As if you were beneath the eyelid of Death as it slept; With heroes pouring by, the casualties of defeat, Yet your own mien resplendent, a smile upon your lips. He [Sayf al-Dawla] said: T find fault with these two lines in the same way that the following two lines by Imru’ al-Qays were criticised: It was as if I never had ridden a thoroughbred for pleasure, Or ever embraced a fair young damsel wearing anklets;

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Or forced a slaking draught out of a wineskin, or urged My horse to yet another charge after a panic flight. The two lines o f your poem, like the two lines of Imru’ al-Qays’ poem, are disconnected. Imru’ al-Qays should have said: It was as if I never had ridden a thoroughbred, or urged My horse to yet another charge after a panic flight; Or forced a slaking draught of a wineskin for pleasure, Or ever embraced a fair young damsel wearing anklets. and you should have said: You stood when Death left no one standing in any doubt, Yet your own mien resplendent, a smile upon your lips; With heroes passing by, the casualties of defeat; As if you were beneath the eyelid of Death as it slept.’ Al-Mutanabbī said: ‘May God support your majesty. If whoever emended Imru’ al-Qays’ poem were correct, he would have been more knowledgeable in poetry than Imru’ al-Qays. Should this be the case, both Imru’ al-Qays and I made a mistake. But your majesty knows that tailors know garments better than cloth merchants. Cloth merchants know general things, but tailors know both general and specific things because they are the ones who make cloth into garments. Imru’ al-Qays linked the pleasure of women to the pleasure of riding and hunting, and linked the generosity in buying wine for his friends to courage in battling his enemies. I mentioned death (radā) after the first death (mawt) because they are related. In what I said, I contrasted “your face is radiant and your lips are smiling” with the face of a defeated wounded man that must be grim, and his eyes tearful. I wanted the effect of the contrast. These meanings are not apparent from the diction.’ Sayf al-Dawla was pleased with al-Mutanabbī and rewarded him with fifty ṣ ila119 dinars, which were equivalent to 500 regular dinars.120 Al-Mutanabbī’s argument that poetry is a craft is similar to Ibn Sallām’s, as is his analogy of poetry with tailoring and of the poet with the tailor. More importantly, al-Mutanabbī emphasises that the ultimate knowledge of poetry has to be ascribed to the craftsman, arguing for the authority of the poet vis-à-vis his critic by making the following analogy: he compares the critics to cloth merchants and the poets to tailors. He quickly proves his

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point by explaining the subtleties conveyed in his lines, subtleties that even a fine connoisseur, such as Sayf al-Dawla, had not been able to detect. The rivalry of the critic and the poet over authority was known before alMutanabbī. Classical Arabic sources abound with reports of poets who presided over discussions of poetry. Al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī was known to sit in a special leather (adam) tent in Sūq 'Ukāẓ where major poets like alA'shā and Hassān b. Thābit came and sought his opinion on their compositions. Both al-Farazdaq and Ja rīr held assemblies (majālis) where their poems were studied and transmitted at al-Mirbad.121 Both Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī compiled anthologies of pre-Islamic poetry (Alhamāsa). Poets like Ibn Ṭ abātabā, Ibn Rashīq, Ibn Sharaf, Abū Hilāl al'Askarī and al-Ḥ ātimī, for example, all wrote on the subject. Complicating the issue is that major poets were often learned men of letters. Abū Tammām was renowned for his knowledge of poetry, a fact attested by al-Āmidī himself.122 Al-ḥ amāsa was considered the authoritative anthology of pre-Islamic poetry based on which the criteria of poetic excellence were derived from as early as the fourth/tenth century. AlMutanabbī reportedly presided over study assemblies where poetry – composed by him or other major poets (such as Abū Tammām) – was discussed.123 Abū al-'Alā’ al-Ma'arrī (363/974-449/1056) was a renowned scholar of Arabic124 whose tutelage was sought.125 Furthermore, with their experience and expert knowledge of the market, successful poets were more qualified to make judgements on poetry, especially those pertaining to its monetary value. Rising poets often sought the opinion o f a renowned poet for reasons relevant to the savoir-faire o f the court poets; for his familiarity with the patron’s taste could help to determine what kind of poetry would be successful. Marwān b. Abī Ḥ afsa came to Bashshār b. Burd in Basra and consulted him on an ode he had composed. Bashshār told him that it was an excellent poem and that if he went to Baghdad he would be rewarded with 10,000 dirhams for it. Indeed Marwān went to Baghdad, recited it to the caliph and received 10,000 dirhams. He went to Bashshār one more time and sought his opinion on yet another poem. This time Bashshār told him that it was worth 100,000 dirhams, and indeed Marwān received the amount Bashshār had predicted.126 Incorporation of Poetry into Entertainment The use of poetry as lyrics for songs was a phenomenon widely practised throughout the history of Arabic-Islamic culture. Scholars have long studied this aspect of Arabic literature and noted the influence of music on the development of Arabic poetry – ranging from classical love poems to the Andalusian muwashshaḥ – and on the consequent popularity of poetry

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among all classes of society and their familiarity with it. Kitāb al-aghānī attests this fact and further connects major poets to the musical scenes of medieval Arabic-Islamic society. Virtually all major poets provided – intentionally or otherwise – lyrics to musicians, as is demonstrated in this book, the core of which is the famous 100 tunes (ṣ awt – aṣ wāt) known up to al-Iṣ bahānī’s time. Modern scholars are of the opinion that poetry was already known to be associated with music during pre-Islamic times,127 and that this association flourished during Umayyad times. They further tell us that its extensive spread in Medina and Mecca was fraught with political nuances.128 Nevertheless, this phenomenon contributed to three things: the popularisation of poetry, its inclusion in the areas of entertainment, and finally the loss o f its political function.129 The incorporation of poetry into entertainment was not confined to the sphere of musical activities. The use of poetry for amusement may be divided into two main types, according to whether the audience was public or private. Poetic composition and recitation conducted in public provided a certain kind of entertainment for the early Muslims. The famous Naqā'iḍ o f Ja rīr and al-Farazdaq – in addition to their tribal political tenor – served as amusements for the public. For instance, the Naqā’iḍ were prepared in advance130 and were performed at previously arranged dates at Sūq alMirbad with a large audience in attendance. The famous event in which Ja rīr took on both al-Farazdaq and al-Rā'ī al-Numayrī was related by alIṣ bahānī as follows: Having learned on the morning of the day that people had taken their places at al-Mirbad – and his and al-Farazdaq’s places (where they held their assemblies) at al-Mirbad were known – Ja rīr called upon his servants to provide the necessary things for him to be anointed. He anointed himself, combed and gathered his hair – for he had fine hair – and said, ‘Boy (meaning the servant), saddle a horse for m e!’ A horse was saddled for him. He then set out for the assembly o f al-Farazdaq, where the latter sat with al-Rā'ī. When he reached the spot where greetings were usually given, Jarī r said to his servant, ‘Boy, tell al-Rā'ī the following: Did your women send you to Iraq to make money for their sake? By my life, you will bring them food that will annoy not please them.’ He then applied himself to reciting it (that is, naqīḍ a). Al-Farazdaq and al-Rā'ī bowed their heads and the audience kept silent. When Jarī r finished, he returned to his own assembly.131 Furthermore, these Naqā’iḍ were performed upon request and the partici­ pants usually made public exhibitions of them:

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Al-Ḥ ajjāj told Ja rīr and al-Farazdaq, ‘come to us (at Ḥ azīz alBaṣ ra)132 in the garments of your pre-Islamic ancestors’ . AlFarazdaq put on silk and brocade and sat in a domed pavilion. Ja rīr consulted some cunning members of his tribe, who told him, 'O u r ancestors wore only iron’. Ja rīr then put on an armour, adorned himself with a sword and a spear, and mounted a mare belonging to 'Abbād b. al-Ḥ usayn and known as al-Minḥ āz. He approached with forty knights from the Yarbu' tribe. He then recited: I wore my weapons while al-Farazdaq was a toy, wearing ornaments (wishāḥ ) and the bells (jalājil) of a hobby-horse; Prepare perfumes in addition to jewellery, For Ja rīr is the man and you are (lawful) women to him.133 Privately, as historical sources tell us, poets during the Umayyad period engaged in entertaining their patrons at their courts as well, especially Ja rīr, al-Farazdaq and al-Akhṭal. Their performance – as individuals and poets – provided amusement for the Umayyad caliphs, as the author of Alaghānī illustrates for us: Ja rīr joined 'Abd al-Malik b. Marwān when al-Akhṭal was present. They had satirised each other but had never met. When Ja rīr obtained permission, he entered, saluted and sat down. Al-Akhṭal recognised Ja rīr but the latter did not know who the former was. When he caught sight o f al-Akhtal, Ja rīr asked, ‘Who are you?’ He (al-Akhṭal) said, 'I am the one who prevented you from sleeping and censured your tribe’. Ja rīr said, ‘Whoever you are, you have to be the most miserable person on earth!’ He turned to 'Abd alMalik and said, Ό , Commander of the Faithful, who is this man?’ He ('Abd al-Malik) laughed and said, ‘This is al-Akhṭal, Abū Ḥ arza!’ Ja rīr looked at al-Akhṭal and said, ‘Damned bastard, son of a Christian (woman) ! You prevented me from sleeping! Let me tell you, you would have been better off if I had slept. You censured my tribe? How could you have when you are the one associated with humility and unworthiness and plagued with the white wrath of God? Permit me, Commander of the Faithful, to take care o f this son of a Christian woman!’ He ('Abd al-Malik) said, ‘This will not happen in my presence!’ Ja rīr leapt angrily and left. 'Abd al-Malik said, Ό , Akhṭal, go after your friend! He left in anger at us!’ AlAkhṭal got up and left. 'Abd al-Malik then said to a servant, ‘Go and see what they do when they confront each other!’ Ja rīr went out, and had his servant bring him his horse (adham), mounted it

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and thundered away, the horse shaking beneath him. Al-Akhṭal went out, made for a door and hid behind it. He remained hiding until Ja rīr had left. The servant then reported all this to 'Abd alMalik. Upon hearing what had happened, he laughed and said, ‘Damned bastard, how strong is Ja rīr! By God, if the Christian had confronted him, he would have eaten him alive!’134 How true this anecdote may be is not at issue here. It does, however, convey a sense o f Ja rīr and al-Akhṭal’s role at the courts of Umayyad caliphs. Elsewhere in Kitāb al-aghānī, we learn that both were booncompanions o f 'Abd al-Malik b. Marwān and other Umayyad caliphs. AlAkhṭal was a boon-companion o f Yazṭd b. Mu'āwiya, and he even accompanied the latter on a pilgrimage to Mecca.135Ja rīr was also known to be al-Walīd b. 'Abd al-Malik’s boon-companion.136 Boon-companionship (al-munādama) was known during the Umayyad times, but was not known to have become an institution. We know that 'Abd al-Malik b. Marwān not only cultivated the companionship of poets, but also o f al-Sha'bī,137who was a religious scholar. The institutionalisation of boon-companionship is important in the context of my discussion because with the institution­ alisation of boon-companionship, poetry was also institutionalised as ‘royal’ entertainment. In an article entitled ‘The boon-companion in early 'Abbasid times’, Anwar Chejne argues for the notion that boon-companionship was institutionalised by the early 'Abbasid period, and possibly by the time of alRashīd. In addition to the numerous books that have been written exclusively on boon-companionship and boon-companions, the subject received a separate treatment in major books (for example, Ibn al-Nadīm’s Al-fihrist), and specific treatment in books on government (such as Ibn Iskandar’s eleventh-century Qābūs nāmeh and Niẓ ām al-Mulk’s [d. AD 1092] Siyāsat nāmeh) not to mention that biographies were compiled o f the famous boon-companions, such as Abū Bakr al-Ṣ ūlī and Isḥ āq b. Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣ ilī (d. 235/850).138 The dress code of boon-companions was specified in manuals o f etiquette and protocols (for example, Hilāl alṢ ābī’s Rusūm dār al-khilāfa) , 139 and emoluments for them were included in the government budget; in Rusūm dār al-khilāfa, the budget for caliphal companions140– including boon-companions – was set at 123,075 dinars per thirty days.141 Chejne concludes that ‘in the light of the data available, it appears that the boon-companions constituted an important group at the court of the ruler, and that the office o f boon-companion formed a part of a well-organised institution with a set of rigorous requirements and protocol’.142

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More importantly, the intellectual qualifications of a boon-companion must include knowledge o f poetry; they are – among other things – ‘good knowledge of the Qur’ān, Prophetic Traditions, Arabic grammar, poetry, prosody, music and history’ .143 Chejne points out on the basis of information extracted from al-Ṣ ūlī’s Akhbār al-Abbās (accounts o f al'Abbās) that the activities of this ‘institution’ involved literary discussions.144 The discussion of poetry at unofficial meetings held at court was already commonly conducted by the Umayyad caliphs. 'Abd al-Malik b. Marwān, having feasted with a group of his boon-companions (including Ja rīr), courtiers and other guests, asked a bedouin to name the best lines of Arabic poetry involving praise, love, boasting, satire and simile.145 Hishām b. 'Abd al-Malik asked Shabbah b. 'Iqāl (who was not a poet) in the presence of al-Akhṭal, al-Farazdaq and Ja rīr to say which was the best.146AlWalīd b. 'Abd al-Malik on one occasion asked Ja rīr who was the best poet among all Arabs.147 The 'Abbasid caliphs did not fall behind either. AlRashīd was known to hold regular meetings where poetry and poets were discussed.148 Al-Ma’mūn reportedly discussed poetry and poets in a casual meeting with his boon-companions, al-Yazīdī, al-Thaqafī and Ismā'īl b. Nawbakht.149 Sayf al-Dawla al-Ḥ amdānī was known for his love for poetry and held regular sessions where poetry was recited and poets discussed.150 Al-Tha'ālibī, for example, observes that the number o f poets gathered at his court was phenomenal.151 In these gatherings, the caliph or head of state usually presided over any discussions of poetry, which were not confined to contemporary poetry but extended to include pre-Islamic poetry as well – for example, an insomniac al-Rashīd held an all-night discussion with al-Aṣ ma'ī on pre-Islamic and early Arabic poetry, and poets and accounts concerning them152 and anyone present might be asked to give an opinion on poetry, whether he was a poet or not. These discussions in general did not go beyond mentioning the best line o f a poem on a particular theme or technical issue, or naming the best poet; and they could take place any time. In fact, poetry served as an elegant, convenient topic of conversation in any social gathering. Arguing for the inclusion of ma'ārif – which encom­ passed the various topics of adab – in the basic curriculum of any educated Muslim, Ibn Qutayba reasons that ‘they [that is, ma'ārif] are indispensable at the assemblies held by the kings in whose company he (an educated man) may be, congregations held by the noble (members o f the society) with whom he may consort, or circles held by men of learning with whom he may confer’.153 Ibn Qutayba’s statement bespeaks the concerns of men of letters in medieval Arabic-Islamic society, and at the same time describes the intellectual milieu in which men of letters like Ibn Qutayba were active.

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In this milieu, adab, including poetry, served as the common topic for conversations held in circles of the elite; for poetry was learned and memorised by every layman who had received a basic education. Consequently, discussion of poetry proliferated into every class of society, and every educated man or member of the elite, be he caliph, prince, religious scholar, language scholar or even courtier, could claim knowledge of poetry. Participation was made open to all by the simple nature of these discussions: identifying the best line of poetry ever said by an Arab on a specific theme, or naming one poet as supreme. Al-Ḥ ātimī’s Ḥ ilyat al-muḥ āḍ ara (adornment of the assembly)154– its purport confined to enumerating the best lines composed by Arabs on hair-splittingly categorised themes and techniques – is but a reflection of these preoccupations in fourth/tenth-century elite circles. Clearly, many of these discussions lacked seriousness, for they were conducted at an assembly held for amusement, be it for the purpose of recess from serious learning sessions or for pure entertainment. Although Arabic poetry remained beloved from pre-Islamic through Islamic times, this regard was complicated and rendered ambivalent as the functions of poetry were transformed in the dialectics of an emerging Arabic-Islamic society. This ambivalence goes back as far as the founding of Islam itself, when the Prophet’s condemnation of poetry and poets coexisted with his own love and encouragement of poetry. Although early Islamic writers retained the pre-Islamic view of poetry as a source of knowledge, they sometimes severely qualified that status by redefining the knowledge which poetry offers as merely linguistic, thus giving the study of poetry a relatively low status in the hierarchy of Arabic sciences. Where the more elevated notion of the wisdom to be found in poetry persisted, this view, too, by mandating the spread of expertise in poetry, diminished the unique status of the poet and undermined the possible development of a specialised role for the literary critic. Social development also created an ambivalent position for the poet and the literary critic. With the professionalisation of the poet’s role, poets became rich – but also reliant on patronage. Consequently, by the fourth/ tenth century, poets – according to Badī' al-Zamān – were reduced to mendicants and poetry to a public commodity, if old, and merchandise, if new. The incorporation of poetry into entertainment ensured its popularity, but at the cost of reducing the significance of the content of poetry and, again, diminishing the special role of poetry. It seems inescapable that the art of appreciating poetry, or literary criticism, should have taken the course it has taken, reflecting the nature of the poetic enterprise on the one hand, and on the other the concerns and aspirations

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of the critics – made up of educated men from diverse backgrounds – who necessarily shared the common view that poetry was common property in spite of protests from the masters of the craft (arbāb al-ṣ an'a), namely poets. Poets contributed to this practice as well, for they subordinated their art – albeit by force of circumstance – to serving more immediate concerns relevant to their survival and securing a comfortable, sometimes pros­ perous life, all at the encouragement of the patrons of the arts and letters. The changing functions of poetry in culture shaped the views of medieval Arabic-speaking Muslims with regard to it, and these views – a product of the ‘process o f readjustment between poetry and the world in and for which it is produced’155 – had a tremendous impact on the discussion o f poetry held by medieval scholars, which in turn shaped the scope of medieval literary criticism and assigned authority to the specialist: the functions of poetry in culture and society determined what ought to be discussed, and who possessed the knowledge and expertise to discuss matters related to poetic compositions. However, poets and critics alike were able to rise above these trying situations and create works of great originality and insight. While poets continued to push artistic boundaries156 and assert their role in culture and society, critics made tremendous efforts to articulate, discuss and assess the experience, development and achievements of the poetic enterprise; however, their efforts remained hostage to the cultural dialectics surrounding poetry, as well as to their professional concerns. The history of medieval Arabic literary criticism is inextricably linked to the history of Arabic poetry. NO TES

1. A bū M anṣ ūr al-Tha'ālibī, Yatṭmat al-dahr, ed. M uḥ amm ad M uḥ yi alDīn 'A bd al-Ḥ amīd (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Tijāriyya al-Kubrā, 1956), 4: 257· 2. Maqāmāt Abī al-Faḍ l Badī ' al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī, ed. M uḥ ammad 'Abduh (Beirut: al-Maṭb 'a al-Kāthūlīkiyya li al-Ābā’ al-Yasū'iyyīn, 1889). 3. al-Tha'ālibī, Yatīma, 4: 258. 4. al-Hamadhānī, Maqāmāt, 2. 5. al-mutaqaddimūn ashrafu lafẓ an wa aktharu min al-ma'ānī ḥ aẓ ẓ an wa almuta’akhkhirū n alṭafu ṣ un'an wa arraqu nasjan (al-Hamadhānī, Maqāmāt, 4). 6. Jam es M onroe, The Art of B ad ī' al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (Beirut: Am erican University o f Beirut, 1983), 28. 7. Abdelfattah Kilito, Les Séances (Paris: Sindbad, 1983), 72. 8. Kilito, Les Séances, 75– 7· 9· There is abundant material on the superiority o f prose over poetry in classical Arabic writings. See, for exam ple, Risālat Ibn Thawāba in Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥ īdī, Al-imtā' wa al-mu’ānasa, 2: 137. 10. Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī, Al' umda f ī maḥ asin al-shi'r wa ādābihi wa

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11.

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

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

naqdihi, ed. M uḥ ammad M uḥ yi al-Dīn 'Abd al-Ḥ amīd (Beirut: Dār alJ īl, 1972), 1:6 5. kāna al-shi'r fī al-jāhiliyya 'ind al-'arab dīwān 'ilmihim wa muntakā ḥ ikamihim bihi ya 'khudūn wa 'alayhi yasīrūn (Ibn Sallām al-Jumahī, Ṭ abaqāt f u ḥ ūl al-shu'arā , ed. Maḥ mū d Muḥ amm ad Shākir [Cairo: Maḥ mūd M uḥ amm ad Shākir, 1st edn, n.d.], 1: 24). kāna al-shi'r 'ilm qawm lam yakun lahum 'ilm aṣ aḥ ḥ minhu (Ibn Sallām, Ṭ abaqāt, 1: 24). See Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant, 1 2. al-Hamadhānī, Maqāmāt, 222. Ibid., 226. Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi, A l-'iqd, 5: 269; and Ibn Khaldūn, Muqaddima, 580-1. 'Abbās, Tā rī kh, 20– 1 , and, for a com prehensive survey o f this issue in the history o f Arabic literature, 'A bd al-Razzāq Ḥ amīda, Shayāṭ īn alshu'arā’ (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anglū al-Miṣ riyya, n.d.). Translation by M arm aduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (New York: Dorset Press, n.d.), 271. Ibn Rashīq, A l-'umda, 1: 22-3. Abū Muḥ amm ad 'Abd al-Malik b. H ishām (d. 218/833 or 213/828), Alsīra al-nabawiyya (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-'Ilmiyya, n.d.), 1: 270. Khalidi, Classical Arab Islam, 56. Ibn Rashīq, A l-'umda, 1: 30. M uḥ ammad Kurd 'Alī , Rasā'il al-bulaghā ’ (Cairo: M uṣ ṭ afā al-Bābī alḤ alabī, 1913), 269. Ibn Qutayba, Al-shi'r wa al-shu'arā', ed. A ḥ mad M uḥ amm ad Shākir (Cairo: A ḥ m ad M uḥ amm ad Shākir, 1977), 1: 64. Ibn Sallām, Ṭ abaqāt, 1: 46. Ibn Rashīq, A l-'umda, 1: 20. Ibn Khaldūn, Al-muqaddima (Baghdad: Maktabat al-Muthannā, n.d.), 570 and 580. Ibid., 570. Ibid., 553. For details, see 'Abd al-Ḥ amīd al-Shalqānī, Riwāyat al-lugha (Cairo: Dār al-Ma' ārif bi Miṣ r, 1971) and al-Riwāya fī mā warā’ al-'Irāq (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-Miṣ riyya al-'Amma li al-Kitāb, 1975); and M uḥ amm ad 'Ῑ d, Al-riwāya wa al-istishhād bi al-lugha (Cairo: 'Ālam al-Kutub, 1972). In the first/seventh and second/eighth centuries, the transmitters o f poetry could hardly be distinguished from other scholars o f language, that is, gram m arians, lexicographers and transmitters o f language. A l-Aṣ m a'ī, for exam ple, was all o f the above. However, by the time o f Ibn Qutayba, the transmitters o f poetry were already known as a group o f professionals distinct from the rest o f the language scholars. In Al-ma'ārif for exam ple, an independent section was allocated to the transmitters o f poetry (ruwāt al-shi'r). See Ibn Qutayba, Al-ma'ārif ed. Tharwat 'A kāsha (Cairo, 1969), 540-6. Ibn Qutayba, however, also qualified them as the scholars o f obscure language and gram m ar (aṣ ḥ āb al-gharī b wa al-naḥ w). Although these early transmitters confined themselves to pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry, the precedent o f their practice and the techniques that they developed were what paved the way for the rise o f a specialised, or rather a professional group o f transmitters who not only refined the early collections but also collected the poetry com posed by their contem poraries. Al-Ṣ ūlī was the suprem e exam ple o f such a professional.

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32.

For a survey o f Arabic lexicography, see Jo h n A. Haywood, Arabic Lexicography (Leiden: E. J . Brill, 1965). Studies on Arabic lexicography are also found in Arabic: see Ahm ad M ukhtār 'U m ar, Al-baḥ th allughawī 'ind al-'arab (Cairo: 'Â lam al-Kutub, 1976), bibliography, 251–

9· 33. Al-Mubarrad, Al-kāmil, ed. M uḥ amm ad al-Faḍ l Ibrāhīm and al-Sayyid Shaḥ ḥ ā ta (Cairo: Maktabat N ahḍ at Miṣ r, 1956), 1: 1. 34. Ibid., 1: 1-2. 35. This is G eorge M akdisi’s translation. 36. For a com prehensive study o f this phenom enon in medieval gram m atical works, see 'Abd al-Jabbār 'Alwān al-Nāyila, Al-shawāhid wa al-istishhād f ī al-naḥ w (Baghdad: University o f Baghdad, 1976). 37. See also M ahm ūd Muḥ amm ad al-Ṭ annāḥ ī, introduction, K itāb al-shi'r (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, n.d.), 3-93 and 70 specifically. 38. 'Abd al-Qādir b. 'U m ar al-Baghdādī, Khizānat al-adab, ed. 'Abd alSalām H ārūn (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-'Arabī li al-Ṭ ibā'a wa al-Nashr, 1967-81), 1: 5. 39. Ibn Qutayba, Al-ma'ārif 1-7. 40. Ibid., 4 and 540-6. 41. Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi, A l-'iqd al-farīd, ed. A ḥ m ad Am īn, A ḥ m ad al-Zayn and Ibrāhīm al-Ibyārī (Cairo: Lajnat al-Ta'līf wa al-Tarjama wa alNashr, 1948), 5: 274. 42. Ibn 'A bd Rabbihi, Al-'iqd al-farīd, 5: 274. 43. For the difference between these two terms, see Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges, 19. 44. Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges, 19. 45. In The Rise of Colleges, George Makdisi discusses in detail the institutions o f religious learning in Islam, nam ely the masjid, the masjid khan com plex and the madrasa; and in The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam, he discusses in detail the study o f literary arts. In these works, the author docum ents every aspect o f the ‘hum anist’ (by which he means literary arts: gram m ar, m orphology, philology and poetry) and religious education in Islam, including their respective academic curricula. Poetry, George Makdisi concludes, was studied as part o f the ‘literary arts’ , which in turn were considered propaedeutic to the religious sciences. 46. In the Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam, G eorge Makdisi discusses – am ong other things – the inclusion o f the ‘literary arts’ (ādāb) as part o f the educational curriculum o f the secretaries at the chancery (school for secretaries). See The Rise of Humanism In Classical Islam, 283. 47. Kurd 'A lī, R asā’il al-bulaghā', 225. 48. This epistle was wrongly attributed to Ibrāhīm b. al-Mudabbir (d. 279/892). See al-Bashīr al-Bakkūsh, ‘Al-risāla al-'adhrā’ li al-Shaybānī wa laysat li Ibn al-M udabbir,’ Al-mawqif al-adabī 78 (Novem ber 1977): 118-27. 49. Ibrāhīm b. M uḥ amm ad al-Shaybānī (wrongly attributed to Ibn alM udabbir), Al-risāla al-'adhrā', ed. Zakī M ubārak (Cairo: n.d.), 7. 50. Abū al-'Abbās A ḥ m ad b. 'All al-Qalqashandī, Ṣ ubḥ al-a'shā f ī ṣ inā 'at alinshā (Cairo: Wizārat al-Thaqāfa wa al-Irshād al-Qawmī, n.d.), 1 : 271. 5 1 . al-Shaybānī, Al-risāla al- 'adhrā ’, 7. 52. al-Qalqashandī , Subh al-a’shā, 1: 274. 53. Ibid., 276.

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54.

55.

56.

57. 55.

Ibid., 281. Ḥ all, according to al-Qalqashandī, is o f three kinds: recasting the words o f the line without preserving the metre and rhyme (283); paraphrasing some words and replacing others with the writer’s own words (286); and rephrasing the m eaning o f the line in the writer’s own words (288). ‘Al-Aṣ m a’Ῑ is quoted as saying that he knew 10,000 rajaz poems, some containing between 100 and 200 verses. K halaf al-Aḥ m ar is said to have m em orized forty thousand verses for their value as evidential exam ples o f gram m ar. Al-Aṣ m a’ī cited six genealogists o f Arabian tribes, all illiterate, who knew by heart their vast materials. Al-Bakrī quoted poetry from seventy to eighty poets whose first nam es were 'Am r, whereas al-Aṣ m a'ī and K halaf together could only com e up with thirty’ (Makdisi, Humanism, 202). ‘Poets were also known to have had great retentive mem ories. Al-Mutanabbī and al-M a'arrī , for exam ple, are known to have m em orised lengthy texts from one reading or hearing. In one anecdote about al-M a'arrī, it is reported that the owner o f a work on lexicography had lost almost all hope o f having it identified when some suggested that he see al-M a'arrī . T he book’s title page was missing along with some o f its first folios. On hearing a passage read to him, al-M a'arrl identified it as the Dīwān aladab o f Iṣ hāq b. Ibrāhīm al-Fārābī (d. 350/961), then he proceeded to dictate the missing parts (203). Al-Ghazzālī’s story with the robbers is also telling. He is reported to have been robbed o f his books while travelling, and when he called out to the robber to take all his possessions but to leave him his books, the ro bber’s retort was still ringing in his ears long after the event: How can you claim the knowledge o f their contents when by dispossessing you o f them we dispossessed you o f their contents and deprived you o f their knowledge? Al-Ghazzālī is said to have taken the event as a warning from God, and, arriving in his native Tus, he applied him self for three years to m em orising the notes he had collected so that he would never again fear being despoiled o f his book’ (Makdisi, Colleges, 100). ‘Al-Aṣ m a'ī was reliable in matters o f lexicography, quick in replying to answers, and had the most retentive m ind capable o f instant retrieval. His biographer relates that H ārūn al-Rashīd, on one o f his nocturnal outings, saw a fire at a distance, and asked al-Kisā’ī, alYazīdī and al-Aṣ m a'ī, who had accom panied him, to recite some verses com posed for such occasions. Al-Kisā’ī and al-Yazīdī could not recall any verse on the spur o f the moment; but al-Aṣ m a'ī did. When al-Aṣ m a'ī had finished reciting, they said to al-Rashīd: 'In truth, Prince o f the Faithful, he did not recite any verse which we did not know; but he is m ore quick-witted than we’ . On another occasion, alḤ asan b. Sahl, vizier o f al-Ma’m ūn, while hosting a m eeting o f several m en o f letters, am ong them al-Aṣ m a'ī , received fifty petitions for financial aid, the texts o f which he read aloud and the decisions on which he signed for the treasury to pay out. In the ensuing conversation with his guests, it transpired that al-Aṣ m a'ī had m em orised the textual contents o f over forty petitions which he recited in answer to the vizier’s ch allenge’ (Makdisi, Humanism, 205). Al-Jāḥ iẓ , Kilāb al-ḥ ayawān, ed. 'Abd al-Salām Hārūn (Cairo: Dār al-Jīl, 1985). 1 : 69-73. Al-Jāḥ iẓ , Al-ḥ ayawān, 1: 60-1.

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59. 60. 61.

62. 63.

64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

Guy Le Strange, Baghdad During the 'Abbasid Caliphate (O xford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 92. Abu Bakr al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār A bī Tammām, ed. Khalīl Maḥ mūd et al. (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Tijārī li al-Ṭ ibā 'a wa al-Tawzī ', 1960), 55. See Ibn Khaldūn, Al-muqaddima, 581; 'A bd al-Raḥ m ān Ja lāl al-Dīn alSuyūṭī, Al-muzhir fī 'ulūm al-lugha wa anwā 'ihā, ed. M uḥ ammad A ḥ m ad Jā d al-Mawlā, 'Alī M uḥ ammad al-Bijāwī and M uḥ ammad A bū al-Faḍ l Ibrāhīm (Cairo: Dār Iḥ yā’ al-Kutub al-'Arabiyya, 1972), 2: 473; and Ibn Sallām, Ṭ abaqāt, 1:25. See Ibn Rashīq, A l-'umda, 1: 22-32. M odern studies o f Arabic literature have docum ented and analysed the developm ent o f Umayyad and 'Abbasid poetry in both form and content. The artistic achievements o f this poetry are, however, not central here. See, for exam ple, al-Nu'mān al-Qāḍ ī, Al-firaq al-islāmiyya fī al-shi'r alumawī (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'ārif, 1970); and Wadad al-Qadi, Al-kaysāniyya fī al-tārīkh wa al-adab (Beirut, Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1974). See, for exam ple, Shawqī Ḍ ayf, Al-shi'r wa al-ghinā’ fī al-madīna wa makka (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'ārif, n.d.). See Anwar Chejne, ‘The boon-com panion in early 'Abbasid times,’ Journal of American (Oriental Society 3 (July-Septem ber 1965): 327-5. Chejne, Ibn Hazm, 224; and al-Â mirī, I 'lām, 96. Ibn Rashīq, A l-'umada, 1 : 80. Ibid. Ibid., 1: 81. The question o f the influence o f Islam on poetry has been discussed extensively in Arabic literary scholarship. For a survey of this scholarship and relevant bibliography, see Sāmī Makkī al-'Â nī, Alisiām wa al-shi'r (Kuwait: al-Majlis al-Waṭ anī li al-Thaqāfa wa al-Funūn wa al-Â dāb, 1983). Ahm ad Farīd R ifā'ī, 'A ṣ r al-ma’mūn (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub, 1928), 185. al-Tha'ālibī is the subject o f study by Maḥ m ū d 'Abdallāh al-Jādir, A ltha'ālibī nāqidan wa adīban (Baghdad: University o f Baghdad, 1976). Wadad al-Qadi, ‘Biographical dictionaries: inner structure and cultural significance,’ The Book in the Islamic World (Washington, DC: The Library o f Congress, 1995): 93-122, 108-9. H ilāl al-ṣ ābī, Rusūm dār al-khilāfa , ed. Mīkhā ’īl 'Awwād (Baghdad: alMajm a' al-'Ilmī al-'Irāqī, 1964), 62. See Darwīsh al-Jundī, ẓ āhirat al-takassub wa atharuha fī al-shi'r al-'arabī wa naqdihi, (Cairo: Dār N ahḍ at M iṣ r, 1969) 6-32. Ibid., 64; Shawqī Ḍ ayf, Al-'aṣ r al-islāmī (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'ārif, n.d.), 205; and Al-'aṣ r al-'abbāsī al-awwal (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'ārif, n.d.), 292. al-Jundī , Al-takassub, 64. al-Tha'ālibī, Yatīma, 1: 132. Ibid., 1: 126. Ibid., 1: 238. Ibid., 1: 138. Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣ bahānī, Kitāb al-aghānī, ed. Ibrāhīm al-Ibyārī (Cairo: Dār al-Sha'b, 1969), 8: 2,818, 2,822 and 2,825. Shawqī Ḍ ayf, Al-taṭawwur wa al-tajdīd fī al-shi'r al-umawī (Cairo: Dār alM a'ārif, n.d.), 149-51. Ḍ ayf, Al-taṭawwur, 133. Ibn Qutayba, Al-shi'r wa al-shu 'arā 1: 491.

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87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 10 1. 102. 102. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110 . 111. 112. 113.

114. 1 1 5. 116. 117. 118. 1 19. 120. 121. 122. 123.

124. 125. 126. 127. 128.

Ibid., 490. al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī, 8: 3,033-4. Ibid., 2,822 and 3,052. Ḍ ayf, Al-taṭawwur, 145. Literally: you sought to bring yourself near to me, or to approach to me, to gain access to me, or to advance yourself in my favour by such a thing. al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī (Dār al-Sha'b), 8: 2,782. Ibn Qutayba, Al-shi'r wa al-shu'arā', 1 : 493. al-Tha'ālibī, Yatṭma, 1: 238. al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī, 19: 6,740, 6,744 and 6,764. Ḍ ayf, Al-taṭawwur, 244. al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī (Dār al-Sha'b), 8: 2,786. Ibid., 3,049. Ibid., 8: 2,786. H ilāl al-Ṣ ābī, Rusūm dār al-khilāfa, 25 al-Tha'ālibī, Yatīma, 1 : 20. al-Iṣ bahānī , Al-aghānī (Dār al-Sha'b), 22: 7,563. Abū Bakr al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār al-Buḥ turī, ed. Ṣ āliḥ al-Ashṭur (Damascus: alMajm a' al-'Ilmī , 1958), 84. al-Tha'ālibī , Yatīma, 1: 136. al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī (Dār al-Sh a'b), 22: 9,990. al-Tha'ālibī, Yatīma, 1: 35. al-Isbahānī, Al-aghānī (Dār a-Sha'b), 22: 7,578. Ibid., 3: 1,049. Ibid. al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār Abī Tammām, 171.). al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār al-Buḥ turī, 83. al-Tha'ālibī, Yatīma, 1: 20. See Ḍ ayf, Al-taṭawwur, 133; al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī, ed. M uḥ amm ad 'Abd al-Qādir Ḥ ā tim (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub, n.d.), 8: 803, and alIṣ bahānī , Al-aghānī, ed. al-Ibyārī, 8: 2,818, 2,822 and 2,825. Al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār Abī Tammām,, 171. Ibn Sallām, Ṭ abaqāt , 1: 5. Ibid., 1:6 . See, for exam ple, al-Ā m idī, Al-muwāzana, 1: 394. Ibn Khaldūn, Al-muqaddima, 380; tr. Franz Rosenthal, 297. A gold coin especially made by Sayf al-Dawla to be given away as a gift; its worth was ten times a regular gold coin (al-Tha'ālibī , Yatīma, 1: 20). al-Tha'ālibī, Yatīma, 1 : 33-4. al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī (Dār al-Kutub), 2: 30. al-Ā m idī, Al-muwāzana, 52; M uṣ ṭ afā al-Shak'a, Al-shi ' r a al-shu'arā’ f ī al-'aṣ r al-'abbāsī (Beirut: Dār al-'Ilm li al-Malāyīn, 1973), 637. Abū 'Alī M uḥ amm ad b. al-Ḥ ā san Al-Ḥ ā timī , Al-risāla al-mūḍ iḥ a f ī dhikr sariqāt Abī al-Ṭ ayyib al-Mutanabbī wa sāqiṭ shi'rihi, ed. M uḥ amm ad Yū suf Najm (Beirut: Dār Ṣ ādir and Dār Beirut, 1965), 8. Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-udabā', 3: 108. Ibid., 131. al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī (Dār al-Sha'b), 3: 1,067. N āṣ ir al-Dīn al-Asad, Al-qiyān wa al-ghinā ’f ī al-'aṣ r al-jāhilī (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'ārif, n.d.). See Shawqi Ḍ ayf, Al-shi'r wa al-ghinā ’f î al-Madīna wa Makka f ī 'aṣ r Banī Umayya (Cairo: Dār al-M a'ārif, n.d.).

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129. I am thinking specifically o f Kitāb al-aghānī, for I believe that it played an im portant role in releasing poetry o f its political function during the Umayyad times. 130. al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī (Dār al-Kutub), 2: 30; also cited is Ḍ ayf, Altaṭawwur, 192-5. 132. al-Iṣ bahānī , Al-aghānī (Dār al-Kutub), 2:30. 132. Ḥ azīz al-Baṣ ra is located between al-'Aqīq and upper al-Mirbad in alB aṣ ra, See al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī (Dār al-Sha'b), 8: 2,822, footnote 1. 133. al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī (Dār al-Sha'b), 8: 2,822 134. Ibid., 2,818. 135. Ibid., 30 1; and Ḍ ayf, Al-taṭawwur, 133. 136. al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī (Dār al-Sha'b), 8: 2,818, 2,822 and 2,825. 137. al-Mas'ūdī, M urūj al-dhahab, ed. Charles Pellat (Beirut: al-Jām i'a alLubnāniyya, 1970), 3: 292. 138. Anwar Chejne, ‘The boon-com panion in early 'Abbasid period ,’ JO A S 3 (July-Septem ber 1965), 327-9. 139. H ilāl al-Ṣ ābī, Rusūm, 96. 140. The word julasā ’ is used in the original Arabic text. However, it covers the boon-com panions as well; boon-com panionship (al-munādama) is discussed under the section on j u lūs al-khulafā '. 141. H ilāl al-Ṣ ābī, Rusūm, 23. 142. Chejne, ‘The boon-com panion,’ 329. 143. Ibid., 332. 144. Ibid., 329. 145. al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī (Dār al-Sha'b), 8: 2,786. 146. Ibid., 2,877. 147. Ibid., 2,799. 148. Ibid., 29: 10,118. 149. Ibid., 10,091 150. al-Tha'ālibī, Yatīma, 1: 20. 151. Ibid., 27. 152. Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi, Al-'iqd, 5: 309-17. 153. Ibn Qutayba, Al-ma'ārif , 1. 154. I discuss in detail the m eaning o f this title in Chapter 3. 155. T. S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticism, 18. 156. There is abundant material on the developm ent, accom plishments and characteristics o f Arabic poetry in literary scholarship in Arabic and European languages. Interested English readers may see, to mention but a few, the following studies: Andras H am ori, On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974) ; M agda Al-Nowaihi, The Poetry of Ibn Khafājah : A Literary Analysis (Leiden: E. J . Brill, 1993); Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Zephyrs o f Najd: The Poetics of Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasīb (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1993); and Suzanne Stetkevych, Abū Tammām and the Poetics of the Abbāsid Age (Leiden: E. J . Brill, 1991).

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3

Beginnings

T H E E A R L Y M E A N IN G S A N D P R A C T IC E S O F L I T E R A R Y C R IT IC IS M ('

I L M A L - S H I 'R , N A Q D A L - S H I 'R

AND

Ṣ I N Ā 'A T A L - S H I ' R )

Beginning is not only a kind o f action; it is also a frame of mind, a kind of work, an attitude, a consciousness. It is pragmatic ... And it is theoretic ... For any writer to begin is to embark upon something connected to a designated point of departure. Even when it is repressed, the beginning is always a first step from which (except on rare occasions) something follows. So beginnings play a role, if not always a very clearly understood one. Certainly they are formally useful: middles and ends, continuity, development all these imply beginnings before them. A complex form, however, has a logic of its own. Does a beginning? Edward Said In 1907 a book, now obscure and obsolete, appeared in two volumes in Egypt under the title Manhal al-wurrād f ī 'ilm al-intiqād1 (slaking of the quester’s thirst in the science2 o f criticism). Its author Qusṭākī al-Ḥ imṣ ī (1858-1941)3 makes two statements that are relevant to the present research. Al-Ḥ imsī claims that criticism, as the French and his contem­ poraries understood it, was ‘not among the sciences known to the Arabs’,4 for although a certain kind o f subjective criticism may be detected in classical Arabic writings, it lacked a cohesive theoretical framework.5 The Arab critics rather ‘hovered around it but did not unravel its riddles nor uncover its treasures (lam yaḥ ullū rumūzahu wa la aṣ ābū kunūzahu) ’.6 This off-track and less than perfect ‘critical tradition’, al-Ḥ imṣ ī tells us, served as a vehicle for personal attacks or sycophancy. What has come down of the heritage of the Arabs – such as what is found in Di'bil al-Khuzā'ī and Muslim b. al-Walīd’s debates with Abū Nuwās, Ibn Qutayba’s Adab al-kātib, Ibn al-Muqaffa'’s Al-durra al-yatīma (the unique pearl), Abū Firās alḤ amdānī’s debates with al-Mutanabbī, al-Khwārazmī’s Mafātīḥ al-'ulūm

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91

(the keys to the sciences), critical comments of Ibn al-'Amīd and al-Ṣ āḥ ib b. 'Abbād, al-Āmidī’s A l-m uw āzana (the balanced comparison), al-Qāḍ ī alJurjānī’s A l-w asāṭa (the mediation), al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍ ā(’s works),7 alḤ arīrī’s D urrat al-ghaww āṣ fī aw hā m al-khawāss (the diver’s pearl in the elusions of the elite), Ibn Rashīq’s A l-'um da (the pillar), Ibn al-Athīr’s A lm athal al-sā 'ir (the sayings that have become proverbs), Ibn Khaldūn’s A lm uqaddim a (the prolegomenon), and the works of those he called 'u la m ā ’ al-badī , such as al-'Askarī, al-Māwardī, Shihāb al-Dīn al-Ḥ alabī and Ibn Ḥ ujja al-Ḥ amawī – could hardly be described as criticism. In addition to its lack of cohesiveness, it focused on finding errors, shortcomings, untruthful state­ ments and plagiarism in poetry. It was precisely this state of affairs in the Arabic literary tradition that prompted him to compose a book in which he hoped to lay the foundations for a new discipline modelled on European – especially French – criticism, which he calls 'ilm al-intiqād or 'ilm al-naqd. Al-Ḥ imṣ ī’s contention with regard to classical Arabic literary criticism is both correct and wrong. He is correct in that the Arabic literary tradition in general does not identify such a discipline, but erroneous in his evaluation of the Arabic critical tradition, though his defective knowledge was excusable at his time. Al-Ḥ imṣ ī, like many of his contemporaries in the first decades of the twentieth century an ardent admirer of the French literary tradition, was eager to denounce a tradition that in his opinion was a major part of the cause of the backwardness of the Arab world, and to introduce to the public western perceptions, which he hoped would help to bring about a renaissance in Arab culture. Modern scholarship has since brought to light abundant material in classical Arabic literary criticism and has shown how rich and sophisticated this tradition is. However, two relevant issues that al-Ḥ imṣ ī raises remain unresolved: the absence o f the term 'ilm al-intiqād or 'ilm al-naqd , or other terms, to designate the field, and the absence of a term n āq id , or other terms, to designate the specialist in this field. This phenomenon was not peculiar to the Arabic literary culture, for al-Ḥ imṣ ī is quick to observe that at comparable times such a term did not exist in European culture either. When al-Ḥ imṣ ī coins his term 'ilm a l-in tiq ā d /al-naqd, he is exercising the age-old practice of the Arabs as manifest in Kateb Celebi’s (also known as Hājī khalīfa) K a s h f al-ẓ u n ū n – a source with which he was obviously familiar8 - of enumerating all the fields of knowledge known to the Arabs up to the author’s time, each field being preceded by the word 'ilm, such as 'ilm al'arūd, 'ilm al-n aḥ w, 'ilm al-kalām and so forth. Further, the words intiqād and naqd have been in use in the Arabic critical tradition from as early as the third/ninth century, as al-Ḥ imṣ ī himself points out,9 to designate the kind of critical activities that al-Ḥ im ṣ ī discusses. What is new is the marriage

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between the word 'ilm and the words intiqād or naqd , a venture that was long overdue. One of the points brought up by al-Ḥ imsī is that some lexical meanings of the words intiqād and naqd indeed imply the modern conception of criticism. The Arabs, however, were not known to have used it with the full meaning that it can convey. Al-Ḥ im sī quotes the following three definitions of naqd and intiqād from Ibn Manẓ ūr ’s (d. 711/1131) L is ā n al-'arab (the language of the Arabs) : ‘isolating a fake coin (dinar) ; examining a thing by tapping it; and discussing a matter with someone’. The latter two meanings do imply a certain perception of criticism. Al-Ḥ im sī’s argument, however, suffers from some major defects; for one thing, he fails to explain why these meanings remain significant in the lexical tradition. More important, however, is al-Ḥ im sī’s failure to place the development of this word in a historical context. The word n aqd was used in relation to discussions of poetry from as early as the second/eighth century, and has continuously been used throughout the centuries. However, its meaning changed as the impulses that dictated the direction of discussions of poetry developed. In classical Arabic literary sources, n aqd al-shi 'r as a term and practice was first mentioned in connection with al-Aṣ ma'ī (d. 216/831). In M arātib allughawiyyīn , one of the earliest biographical dictionaries of grammarians and lexicographers known to us, Abū al-Ṭ ayyib al-Lughawī relates in the biography of al-Aṣ ma'ī that al-Aṣ m a'ī learned naqd al-shi'r from Khalaf alAḥ mar (d. 180/793). The appearance of this term in this context seems so significant that Abū Ṭ ayyib interrupts his narrative on al-Aṣ ma'ī in order to incorporate a section on Khalaf al-Aḥ mar. Such sudden interruption compels linking the meaning o f this term with the practice o f Khalaf. Khalaf was known for his expertise in grammar, lexicography and knowledge of poetry and poets, al-'ilm bi al-shi'r wa al-shu'ar ā ’.10 However, there is no explicit mention o f n aq d al-shi'r in the Khalaf narrative. It is possible that Abū al-Ṭ ayyib is including in the activities of al-'ilm bi al-shi'r what he calls naqd al-shi'r ; for there is nothing else that indicates otherwise. A l-'ilm bi al-shi'r itself can mean many things, but in this context it primarily means memorisation and transmission of poetry, as well as naqd al-shi'r. By drawing Khalaf into the narrative, Abū al-Ṭ ayyib elaborates on the meaning of n aqd al-shi'r by giving examples from the practice of Khalaf. He produces a number of anecdotes about his knowledge of poetry from which we learn that Khalaf al-Aḥ mar’s expertise really lay in his ability to attribute poetry to its composer, that is, knowing which poem was composed by which poet. This of course requires in-depth knowledge of the artistic characteristics of a poet, not merely a retentive memory, for we are told that Khalaf was so good at it that he could compose poems and attribute them to major poets,

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and no-one was able to tell the difference. There are three anecdotes, all of them about how clever he was at it, and how in the end he repented. The most telling of these anecdotes is the one in which a certain king offered him a large sum of money so that he would give an opinion on a line of poetry that was suspect to him (meaning the king).11 It is possible to surmise from the above that naqd al-shi'r was used in the second/eighth and early third/ninth centuries to denote certain intellectual activities the subject of which was poetry as part of, if not equivalent to, what was known then as al-'ilm bi al-shi'r. It is further possible to conjecture that naqd al-shi'r implied a process of authentication of Arabic poetry. The emergence of these two terms, with what they connoted of practice, coincided with the changes that were taking place in ArabicIslamic culture. With regard to the beginning of literary criticism, two interrelated processes pertinent to poetry must be taken into consider­ ation. Arabic poetry, particularly pre-Islamic and early Islamic, as I have demonstrated in the previous chapter, had long been important. But now it reached beyond the tribe because it was considered the record, or registry, of the language and history of the Arabs, who had acquired world power only recently. The changing attitude towards Arabic poetry was part of the overall transformation of Arab culture from pre-Islamic to Islamic, of the development of urban centres, of the change in methods of transmitting Arabic-Islamic civilisation from the oral to the written, and of the transfer of political power from non-Arabs to Arabs.12 During this exciting but chaotic period, pressure was indeed great on the guardians of Arab traditions, who must strive to record that which was authentic from their heritage. The question of authenticity was understandably important, for only authentic and sound texts from the Qur’ān and Ḥ adīth could guarantee the correct understanding of their religion. The preoccupation with the authenticity of the Arabic poetic tradition was natural because of its function in the preservation of the language of the Qur’ān. However, because of the new power dynamics, Arabic poetry also became symbolic of the culture of the Arabs who must now contend and compete with other ethnic groups and cultures in their newly conquered territories for legitimacy of power. The definitions and practices of 'ilm al-shi'r, al-'ilm bi al­ shi'r and naqd al-shi'r, as Terry Eagle ton and Edward Said would argue, were inevitably affected by the pressures of the cultural transformation of this period, and by the initiatives of the critics and their ‘personal history: [their] education, the demands of [their] calling, the requirements of [their] audience’.13 The authors who dealt with poetry and its discussion after al-Aṣ ma'ī and Khalaf al-Aḥ mar could not escape the preoccupations of al-Aṣ ma'ī, Khalaf al-Aḥ mar and their biographers. Their inquiry into

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poetry, both as an art form and as a source of knowledge, was part of their discourses on culture; in other words, their discourse on poetry, as practice, was thrust ‘into self-reflexiveness’ by both an ‘internal pressure’ – the need to deal with poetry – and ‘the complex unity it forms with adjacent discourses’.14 Starting with Ibn Sallām, who was a student of alAṣ ma'ī, while participating in discourses on cultural power, the critics would also lay the foundation for a different kind of discussion of poetry by expanding and elaborating on the terms and practices associated with alAṣ ma'ī. In the meantime, poetry that continued to be composed began to take new directions artistically, and to be incorporated into the courtly life of the elite of the Arabic-Islamic urban centres, leading to the formulation of the discussion of poetry around two important issues: the validity of new poetry’s departures from the Arabic poetic tradition, and the increasing notion that poetry is a craft that may be taught and mastered with practice. In the first instance, the innovations in muḥ dath poetry compelled discussion of it in comparison with the conventions of the Arabic poetic tradition, and in the second, the notions implied by Ibn Sallām’s statement that ' li al-shi'r ṣ inā'a wa thaqāf a' paved the way for scholars of Arabic poetry to elaborate on ṣ inā'at al-shi'r, both as a term and a genre of commentary about poetry as craft. D I A L E C T I C S OF C U L T U R E AND P O L I T I C S

Authentication of a Poetic Heritage (Ibn Sallām) There is a consensus among the scholars of Arabic literature that Ibn Sallam (d. 232/846)15 was the first Arab-Muslim scholar to delineate the field of classical Arabic literary criticism. Modern scholars often draw our attention to the fact that the analogy which he uses in Ṭ abaqāt fu ḥ ūl al­ shu'arā’l6 to identify a specific literary activity related to judging poetry indeed approximates the essence of literary criticism. They point out that Ibn Sallām may well be considered the founder of classical Arabic criticism because of two things he did. For one thing, he insisted that poetry was a craft (sinā'a17and thaqāfa) and that only people of learning/knowledge (ahl al-'ilm) were capable and qualified to make ajudgement regarding its quality.18 He thus identified a group of specialists whose judgements with regard to poetry were normative.19And for the other, he called the activity in which poetry was discussed 'ilm al-shi'r (science of poetry) and defined its purpose. Ibn Sallām uses the word nāqid for the first time in Ṭ abaqāt in the context of defining the purpose of his proposed 'ilm al-shi'r. Ibn Sallām likens the skills required for distinguishing poetry to the art of the nāqid in picking out the sound dinar or dirham. To convey the sense of ‘picking out’, he uses the Persian word jahbadha (from jahbadh). An examination of

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this word is pertinent because its plural jahābidha came to be paired with the plural of the active participle nāqid in classical Arabic writings consistently, such as jahābidhat al-kalām wa nuqqād al-ma'ānī or nuqqād alkalām wa jahābidhat al-ma'ānī. The pairing of these two words implies that these terms were used to designate similar – not necessarily identical – concepts. The noun jahbadh is the arabicised form of the Persian word gah­ bad, a compound of Persian gah, meaning goldsmith’s crucible, and Sanskrit bad (pati), meaning master or manager. The compound noun in Persian – and seemingly in its arabicised form as well – denotes a person who picks out good coins from bad ones by testing them. During Sassanian times, it was used to designate a money-changer (naqqād, ṣ arrāf and ṣ ayrafī). Afterwards, it was also used to denote a tax-collector (ma'mūr kharāj) and a learned man ( 'ālim or dāneshmand). In general, it denotes a person who determines whether a thing is good or bad, right or wrong.20 In Ṭ abaqāt, Ibn SallṬ m argues that whether a coin is good or bad cannot be determined by its colour (lawn), touch (mass), weld (ṭirṬ z) or appearance (that is, the engraving or inscription (wasm) or description (ṣ ifa) that appear on the coin). Therefore, only the nāqid (the moneychanger) could achieve that, for by directly examining it (mu'āyana) he could recognise which one is made of corrupt silver (bahraj), forged (zā'if ), coated with silver or copper (sattūq, literally threefold) and moulded, but not coined or minted (mufragh). What is significant here is the consequence of the finding, which is that the money is rejected.21 The function ascribed to nāqid in this context, therefore, is determining whether a coin is genuine or forged, good or bad in the sense that it is of value or not. This meaning of the word jahbadha seems to correspond to the notion conveyed by the word nāqid as understood from the passage. This interpretation finds support in two anecdotes related by Ibn Sallām in the same context. In the first, it is reported that Khallād b. Yazīd al-Bāhilī – a poet and transmitter of poetry who possessed good knowledge of poetry (ḥ asan al-'ilm bi al-shi'r) – said to Khalaf al-Aḥ mar: ‘On what basis do you reject these poems that are being transmitted?’ Khalaf said: ‘Do you know of any that is fake and of no good use?’ Khallād said: ‘Yes’. Khalaf said: ‘Do you know people who know more about poetry than you do?’ Khallād said: ‘Yes’. Khalaf said: ‘Then do not deny that there is someone who knows more about it than you do in this regard also’.22In the second, it is reported that someone said to Khalaf: ‘If I hear poetry and I admire it, why would I care about what you and your colleagues say about it?’ Khalaf said: ‘If you took a dirham that you thought was good, and the money-changer told you it was bad, then did your liking it do you any good?’23 On the basis of the above anecdotes, it is possible to infer that naqd

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primarily means authentication in Ibn Sallām’s use of the word, namely, determining whether a poem is genuine or fabricated, or whether a poem is accurately attributed to its composer or misattributed. This interpretation of Ibn Sallām’s notion of naqd is supported by evidence found in writings of later periods. In the third/ninth century, al-Jāḥ iẓ makes the following statement about the Arabic oratorical tradition in Albayān wa al-tabyīn (clarity and clarification): Our good ancestors are credited with many wise sayings and orations, some of which are authentic (ṣ aḥ īḥ ) and others forged (madkhūl). They will not be concealed from the nuqqād al-alfāẓ wa jahābidhat al-ma'ānī, and will be picked out by honest (khullaṣ) transmitters. However, I have not heard that any oration attributed to the messenger of God is fabricated.24 And in the fourth/tenth century, al-Iṣ bahānī relates in Al-aghānī a revealing anecdote concerning Abū 'Ubayda and Bashshār b. Burd. It is reported that Bashshār b. Burd, upon hearing two lines of poetry attributed to al-A'shā, said: ‘These lines are forged (maṣ nū') even though they resemble the poetry of al-A'shā’. The narrator, Abū 'Ubayda, was surprised but made no comments at the time. Ten years later, as Abū 'Ubayda reported, he was told by Yūnus (b. Ḥ abīb) that Abū 'Amr b. al'Alā’ was the one who composed the very lines and attributed them to alA'shā. Thereupon, Abu 'Ubayda confessed his increasing admiration for Bashshār b. Burd, for Bashshār possessed perception (f iṭna), sound judge­ ment (ṣ iḥ ḥ at qarīḥ atihi) and excellence in authenticating poetry (jawdat naqdihi li al-shi'r).25 In addition to the above-mentioned textual evidence, the structure within which Ibn Sallām presents his arguments for the purpose of his work further supports the interpretation that naqd means authentication in his use of the word. In Ṭ abaqāt, he begins his discourse by discussing three things, one after the other without interruption. He first states that the subject of his work is Arabic poetry, he then adds that ‘much of poetry was forged (maṣ nū ' mufta'al mawḍ ū') and of no great value’, and finally he explains that poetry is a craft, and that only a man of learning, whom he likens to the nāqid who picks out genuine coins from forged, knows what it is. The tight structure within which Ibn Sallām presents his arguments confirms the notion that the main objective of his book is the authen­ tication of Arabic poetry. Ibn Sallām’s preoccupation with authentication of, and by extension the question of forgery in, pre-Islamic poetry,26which dictated to a large extent his approach to poetry and its evaluation, hence the structure and the

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purpose of his work on Arabic poetry, was a result, first, of the circumstances surrounding the massive movement taking place during the second/eighth and the early third/ninth centuries in recording the formerly orally transmitted materials; and second, of the dialectics of an emerging new society, specifically the shu'ūbiyya movement. Historians of Arabic literature tell us that the recording of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry was preceded by the writing-down of the Qur’ān and Ḥ adīth. The Qur’ān was the first Arabic document to be collected and consolidated in book form, followed by some Ḥ adīth, the recording of most of which did not begin until early in the second/eighth century, during which time many disciplines concerned with authenticating this tradition flourished.27These disciplines were designed to address specific issues related to the trans­ formation of an orally transmitted tradition to a written one. This transformation necessarily created a state of chaos out of which the available material had to be sorted out and recorded. One of these problems was the fabrication and/or mishandling of this material, excluding the Qur’ān, of course. In the area of Ḥ adīth scholarship, the scholars devised ingenious methods of authenticating their sources and consequently their material. One major discipline of interest in the context of our study of Ibn Sallām’s Ṭ abaqāt is the Rijāl (transmitters of Ḥ adīth) tradition, including both the ṭabaqāt and al-jarḥ wa al-ta'dīl (disparaging and declaring trustworthy transmitters of Ḥ adīth) genres. Although scholars of Arabic poetry were aware of and discussed misattributed and fabricated poetry, it was Ibn Sallām who gave the final and decisive word on the issue. Ibn Sallām was to become known as the ultimate historian and transmitter of poetry, for he was the one who composed a book with a specific goal and systematic methodology on the matter, namely Ṭ abaqāt al-shu'arā ’. In the articulation of his concept of naqd, Ibn Sallām appropriates both the terms and the structure of Ḥ adīth scholarship, particularly the scholarship on authentication. My contention finds support in the material available to us, be it circumstantial, contextual, textual or structural. Circumstantially, in the environment of learning during the second and third centuries of Islam, no definitive lines were drawn between religious studies, whether they dealt with the Qur’ān or Ḥ adīth, or language studies, including poetry, which was often studied for the purpose of mastering the language of the Qur’ān. More specifically, Ibn Sallām was familiar with the figures and names in the circles of religious studies. In the information which we have about him, we know that he was closely associated with the following scholars: al-Aṣ ma'ī, the famous grammarian and lexicographer, who was also known as a Ḥ adīth scholar and considered a trustworthy

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transmitter of Hadīth; Yūnus b. Ḥ abīb (d. 183/796), who was known for his knowledge in Siyar al-rijāl (biographies of the transmitters of Ḥ adīth); Abū 'Ubayda Ma'mar b. al-Muthannā (d. 114/732-210/826 or 211/827), who was a major Ḥ adīth scholar; and his brother 'Abd al-Raḥ mān b. Sallām, who was a major muḥ addith (Ḥ adīth scholar).28 More important, Ibn Sallām himself was a muḥ addith.29 Contextually, the reasons which Ibn Sallām gives for the fabrication of poetry are identical with some of the reasons which Ḥ adīth scholars give for the fabrication of Ḥ adīth.30These are: ignorance, the loss of most of the tradition because many of the transmitters died during the Islamic con­ quests, tribal and political affiliation, storytelling, and some transmitters’ need of a livelihood. Textually, the sense in which Ibn Sallām uses both the word nāqid and the relevant analogy has been known in Ḥ adīth scholarship. It is reported that al-Awzā'ī (d. 157/752) said: ‘When we heard ḥ adīths, we subjected them to the examination of our colleagues, in the same manner that a fake coin (dirham) would be subjected to the examination of the money-changer.31 Whatever they distinguished we took, and whatever they rejected we abandoned’.32In another anecdote, Abū Sa'īd 'Abd al-Raḥ mān b. Mahdī is reportedly challenged by a Khurāsānī man with regard to a ḥ adīth he was transmitting. The Khurāsānī man asks him: ‘How do you know?’ And Ibn Mahdī replies: ‘If you take a gold coin (dinar) to a money-changer and he tells you it is corrupt (bahraj), will you ask him how he knows?’33 This anecdote is almost identical to the anecdote which Ibn Sallām relates with regard to Khalaf al-Aḥ mar, except that dinar and bahraj in this anecdote are replaced by dirham and radī' in the anecdote concerning Khalaf.34It is related in yet another anecdote that when Ibn al-Mubārak was informed of some fabricated ḥ adīths he said: ‘May the jahābidha live for them’.35 And finally, in his criticism of Hammād al-Rāwiya, Ibn Sallām uses the phrase ghayr mawthūq bihi36to denote that Ḥ ammād was not a trustworthy trans­ mitter. The term mawthūq is of the same root as thiqa, a term used by Ḥ adīth scholars to designate trustworthy transmitters of Ḥ adīth. This does not necessarily prove that the word naqd and its derivatives, nāqid and nuqqād, were used by Ḥ adīth scholars exclusively at the time of Ibn Sallām. These words, however, became widely used technical terms in Ḥ adīth scholarship from as early as the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries. In Tawthīq al-sunna (authentication of the Prophetic Tradition) R if'at Fawīz 'Abd al-Muṭṭalib, a twentieth-century Ḥ adīth scholar, specifically states that naqd, a word common in the second/eighth century, was replaced by him with tawthīq because the original meaning of the word, namely to separate the accurate (ṣ aḥ īḥ ) from the inaccurate, had been

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obliterated, and the word naqd had come to mean ‘finding fault with’, the use of which term would defy the purpose for his book, for it was not his intention to find fault with the prophetic tradition.37 'Abd al-Muṭṭalib’s source for the original meaning of the term naqd is Taqdimat al-ma'rifa likitāb al-jarḥ wa al-ta'dīl by Abū Muhammad 'Abd al-Raḥ mān b. Abī Ḥ ātim Muḥ ammad b. Idrīs al-Rāzī (d. 327/939). The term nuqqād is used by al-Rāzī throughout his book, Al-jarḥ wa alta'dīl, to designate those scholars who were experts in the field of 'ilm al-rijāl (science [or knowledge] of the transmitters of Ḥ adīth), namely, those who were able to distinguish trustworthy transmitters from those who were not. Al-Rāzī’s purpose in learning about ruwāt (transmitters) was dictated by the need to know where they stood in terms of recognition as reliable Ḥ adīth scholars (al-intiqād, al-jahbadha, al-tanqīr wa al-baḥ th 'an al-rijāl wa al-ma'rifa bihim) .38 If any was trustworthy and accepted by the jahābidha nuqqād,then the ḥ adīths which they transmitted would be acceptable.39 As for the transmitters, they were ranked in a hierarchical order, the top rank being thabat ḥ āfiẓ wari' mutqin jahbadh nāqid – he who is trustworthy, has committed the Prophetic Tradition to memory, is pious, precise, and able to authenticate the ḥ adīths.4° The adjectives which he used to qualify Ḥ adīth scholars were derived from naqd: for example, Mālik b. Anas, Sufyān b. 'Uyayna in Hijāz, Sufyān al-Thawrī and Shu'ba b. al-Hajjāj and Ḥ ammād b. Zayd in Iraq, and al-Awzā'ī in Syria were described as al-'ulamā’ al-jahābidha al-nuqqād.41 Both intiqād42and muntaqid were also used.43These terms have been used continuously and consistently by rijāl scholars up to this date, as is found in Walī al-Dīn Muḥ ammad b. 'Abdallāh al-Khaṭ īb al'Umarī al-Tabrīzī’s (d. 516/1121) Mishkāt al-maṣ ābīḥ (the niche of lamps),44 Abū al-Faḍ l Iyās b. Mūsā al-Yaḥ subī al-Sabtī’s (known as al-nāqid –476/1084– 544/1147) Mashāriq al-anwār 'alā siḥ āḥ al-āthār (the sources of light[s] for what is sound in the ḥ adīths),45 Abū 'Abdalā l h Muḥ ammad b. Ahmad b. 'Uthmān al-Dhahabī’s (d. 748/1168) Mīzān al-i'tidāl f ī naqd al-rijāl (the scales of moderation in the critique of transmitters of Ḥ adīth),46Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalānī’s (d. 852/1348) Lisān al-mīzān (the language of balance),47 and Muḥ ammad Ṭ āhir b. 'Alī al-Hindī al-Fitnī’s (d. 986/1449) Tadhkirat almawḍ ū'āt (the reminder of fabricated ḥ adīths).48 And structurally, as Munīr Sulṭ ān remarks in his work on Ṭ abaqāt alshu'arā ’, Ibn Sallām’s book is influenced by the ṭabaqāt books in Ḥ adīth scholarship. This influence is specifically manifest in his use of the word ṭabaqāt as part of the title of his work, and in his use of the structure of ṭ abaqāt as the framework.49Sulṭ ān is on target in the sense that Ibn Sallām’s work is the first book on poetry and poets that bore the word ṭ abaqāt in its title. Works on the same subject by his predecessors, as Ibn al-Nadīm’s Al-

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fihrist tells us, bore the names of al-shi'r wa al-shu'arā', such as Abū Di'āma al-Qaysī 'Alī b. Yazīd’s Al-shi'r wa al-shu'arā ’ (poetry and poets),50 Abū 'Ubayda Ma'mar b. al-Muthannā’s Al-shi'r wa al-shu'arā’,51 and Abū al-Ḥ asan al-Madā'inī 'Ali b. Muḥ ammad’s (d. 215/830) Akhbār al-shu'arā’ (accounts of poets).52The ṭabaqāt genre, however, had already been known in Ḥ adīth circles before the time of Ibn Sallām. Ibn al-Nadīm records that the first scholar who wrote a book of ṭ abaqāt (no longer extant but renditions of its content may be found in Al-ṭ abaqāt al-kubrā) was Muḥ ammad b. 'Umar alWāqidī (d. 207/821).53This work served as the core of Ibn Sa'd’s Al-ṭ abaqāt al-kubrā,54 perhaps as well as other works which also bear the word ṭ abaqāt in their titles: Ṭ abaqāt man rawā 'an al-nabī (classes of those who transmitted from the Prophet) and Ṭ abaqāt al-fuqahā' wa al-muḥ addithīn (classes of jurisconsults and transmitters of Ḥ adīth) by yet another Ḥ adīth scholar, alHaytham b. 'Adī (d. 207/822).55 The term ṭabaqa in the Qur’ān signifies a level or stage. In alWāqd ī and Ibn Sa'd the term ṭabaqa denotes a human generation and becomes one of the earliest times divisions in Islamic historiography. These generations provide the continuity between the then and now and confer structure and meaning upon the material assembled. Structurally, the Ṭ abaqāt of Ibn Sa'd, whose nuclei are the Ṭ abaqāt of al-Wāqidī, are built upon a plan which lists distinguished companions and successors in order of seniority in Islam. Their descendants are also listed down to approximately the year 230/844. Each entry is provided with a biography commen­ surate with the importance of the figure. The Ṭ abaqāt then moves to the various urban centres of Islam, first of Arabia then of Iraq and further east and finally of Syria, following for each city a similar listing scheme in order of seniority. At the very end is a most valuable section devoted to the Ṭ abaqāt of women.56 Ibn Sallām follows the same scheme in Ṭ abaqāt fu ḥ ul al-shu'arā ’. He divides the poets into two main groups chronologically, the pre-Islamic poets and the Islamic poets. The pre-Islamic poets are in turn divided into ten Ṭ abaqāt, each containing accounts concerning four poets. In addition to these ten Ṭ abaqāt, there is a separate section on Ṭ abaqāt aṣ ḥ āb al-marāthī, containing accounts concerning four poets who were famous for their eulogies. Furthermore, Ibn Sallām devises yet another separate chapter in which he records the accounts concerning the poets of the cities of Medina (five poets), Mecca (nine poets), al-Ṭ a’if (five poets), al-Yamāma (none) and al-Baḥ rayn (three poets). To make matters even more confusing, he devises yet another separate section on the Jewish poets (eight). The

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Islamic poets are also divided into ten Ṭ abaqāt, with four poets in each category. No section in Ibn Sallām’s Ṭ abaqāt is devoted to women poets. Ibn Sallām’s appropriation of terms and methods used in Ḥ adīth scholarship, and his choice of the Ṭ abaqāt form to deal especially with the question of forgery in Arabic poetry, was a response to the cultural dialectics of his time, and must be examined in light of the circumstances surrounding the compilation of this work. The discussion of poetry had been conducted for at least a century, primarily in the form of dialogues among scholars, or teacher and students in the context of their study of the Arabic language – the sirocco material of the Qur’ān and Ḥ adīth studies. Ibn Sallām’s own teacher al-Aṣ ma'ī, as well as his contemporaries, had engaged in these discussions. So why did he devote a major work to the study of poetry? Furthermore, why did he avoid discussing the mḥ hdath poets who had already caused a stir during al-Aṣ ma'ī’s time? In Kitāb alaghānī, there are reports of both al-Aṣ ma'ī and Ibn Sallām’s familiarity with the muḥ dath poetry. In fact, there are reports that al-Aṣ ma'ī was an admirer of Bashshār,57and that Ibn Sallām had an encounter with Bashshār as well.58 Furthermore, he was a contemporary of Abū Tammām (190/805-230/844). Why did he single out Ḥ ammād al-Rāwiya for criticism when Khalaf alAḥ mar was also known for his forgeries? To call his outlook towards Arabic poetic tradition ‘backward’ or ‘con­ servative’ is not an answer to these questions; rather, the pressing issues of his time must be taken into consideration in any attempt to understand and interpret his work and the reasons for it. Historical sources tell us that Ḥ ammād al-Rāwiya was a shu'ūbi partisan and that he was one of several great forgers of Arabic poetry. He forged Arabic poems, 'Abd al-'Azīz alDūrī tells us, and attributed them to major Arab poets for a political reason: to attack what the Arabs held dearest, namely their poetic tradition. By so doing, Ḥ ammād attempted to discredit the Arabs on an issue capable of undermining their authority.59 Al-Dūrī’s allegation is not unfounded, for the problem of the three Ḥ ammāds – Ḥ ammād al-Rāwiya, Ḥ ammād 'Ajrad and Ḥ ammād b. al-Zibriqān60– is known in the history of Arabic literature, and in fact the whole modern controversy over the authenticity of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry is partially based on the historical allegations against these three Ḥ ammād. Kitāb al-aghānī has preserved the following anecdote for us: Al-Aṣ ma'ī said: Ḥ ammād would have been the most knowledge­ able of all people if he had been honest (naṣ aḥ a), I mean if he did not add to and deduct from the poetry and accounts concerning it. He was accused of composing poetry and attributing it to Arab poets. Al-Mufaḍ ḍ al al-Ḍ abbī said: ‘Ḥ ammād al-Rāwiya violated (sallaṭa) poetry and corrupted it to the extent that it cannot be

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repaired at all’. He was asked: ‘How is that? Does he err in his transmission or does he err in his language?’ He (al-Mufaḍ ḍ al) said: ‘I wish this was the case, for people of learning ( 'ilm) can correct errors. But he was a man versed in the languages of the Arabs and their poetry, in both styles and meanings (ma'ānī), and he would compose poems similar in style to that of a certain poet, insert them among his poems, and then broadcast them all over the world. As a result, accounts concerning the ancients are in such a muddle (takhtaliṭ) that authentic ones cannot be set apart from the corrupt except by an 'ālim nāqid, and where is that person?’61 Ibn Sallām’s work was – among other things – a response to their tampering, and a response to the threat that this tampering posed to the source of the Arabs’ identity and pride. Ibn Sallām set out to prove once and for all the authenticity of pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabic poetry. His concerns are revealed in the opening paragraph, which begins with ‘we mentioned the Arabs (dhakarnā al-'arab)' and ends with ‘we began with poetry (bada’nā bi al-shi'r). It was Ibn Sallām’s contention that Arabic poetry could be authenticated despite the chaos created by the forgers and compounded by the loss of this tradition as a result of the death of many of the holders of the Arabic poetic tradition during the Islamic conquests.62 By providing a structure similar to that which was used in the authenti­ cation of Ḥ adīth, Ibn Sallām sought to authenticate the Arabic poetic tradition through well-documented historical accounts concerning the poets and their poetry. What gave his work authority and credibility was both his credentials as a specialist/religious scholar and the structure of his work. The appropriation of the form of a religious genre gave it authoritativeness. This ‘political’ purpose of Ibn Sallām may explain why muḥ dath poetry is not discussed in his work, for it is irrelevant to his project. This view of Ibn Sallām’s work is supported by evidence found in the major works compiled by his contemporaries during the third/ninth century, particularly al-Jāḥ iẓ and Ibn Qutayba. The Question of Literary Value (al-Jāḥ iẓ )

If Ibn Sallām’s response to shu'ūbi attacks was the authentication of his poetic heritage, al-Jāḥ iẓ (d. 255/868)63 chose a different course and attempted a project that involved more than authentication of this tradition. Having lived in Baghdad for the latter half of his life, he was in touch with the thorny issues generated by the assimilation processes of Arab and non-Arab elements into Arabic-Islamic society, and the negotiations in the emerging Arabic-Islamic culture involving whether to

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assimilate or reject Greek, Persian, pre-Islamic Arabic and other influences – influences which manifested themselves in the conflict between the Mu'tazilites and the Hanbalites, the rival regard for foreign sciences and Arabic sciences, and the literary conflict between the pre-Islamic/early Islamic school of poetry and the new (muḥ dath) school of poetry. Al-Jḥ ḥ iẓ , in tune with these dialectics, discussed Arabic poetry within precisely this framework. He did not directly deal with poetry as a literary discourse; rather, his comments on poetry and the art of poetic composition – albeit insightful and at times influential – remained sporadic within his discussions of other issues more immediately involved in the cultural dialectics of the first century of the 'Abbasid rule, devoting his energies to prose, a genre that was gradually but steadily gaining importance. Al-Jḥ ḥ iẓ ’s discussion of poetry occurs mainly in Al-ḥ ayawān and Al-bayān wa al-tabyīn, which were in part written in response to the shu'ūbi attack on the literary and cultural heritage of the Arabs. Al-ḥ ayawān was intended to prove the intellectual superiority of the Arabs on the basis of information found in the Arabic poetic tradition on the one hand, and to record all that was known in the Arabic language relevant to what is today called zoology on the other. Arabic poetry in both its content and language, al-Jāḥ iẓ demon­ strates, contains much information and reflects such knowledge on the subject of animals that the books on the same subject by Greek philosophers pale by comparison.64 As for Al-bayān – compiled in response to the shu'ūbi attack on Arabic oratory (al-khaṭ āba),65 as stated by the author himself – its purpose was, first, to authenticate the oratorical tradition of the Arabs and, second, to prove Arab eloquence, which was under attack. This work bears some resemblance to the work of Ibn Sallām; whereas Ibn Sallām documents the Arabic poetic tradition, al-Jāḥ iẓ documents the Arabic oratorical tradition. Al-Jāḥ iẓ ’s approach, however, is radically different from that of Ibn Sallām, due to their philosophical differences. Ibn Sallām, a religious scholar, relies on isnād (chain of transmission) as his authority, whereas alJāḥ iẓ , a Mu'tazilite, relies on reason and dispenses with isnād in his works. Although al-Jāḥ iẓ z was aware of the problems related to the authen­ tication of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and he remained conscientious about pointing out the suspected misattributions in poetry, his main venture remained that of developing the concept of bayān (literally: clarity of speech), a literary quality which he associated especially with the Arabic language. Defending Arabs and their language by ascribing bayān to them involves questions of far-reaching consequences, for bayān is the literary quality attributed to the Qur’ān, denoting its inimitability. The literary issues raised by al-Jāḥ iẓ z in these two works have been discussed extensively,66even in terms of literary criticism, though the author does not

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deal specifically with the subject nor does he define the field. Al-Jāḥ iẓ z’s use of the term naqd or its derivatives, however, reflects the way in which this term was used by Ibn Sallām. In the already quoted statement, the terms nuqqad al-alfāẓ and jahābidhat al-ma'ānī are used to denote those who possessed the ability to set apart the authentic from the forged. The process of authentication, however, does not involve only the authenti­ cation of the texts as genuinely composed by the reputed poets, but also whether these texts were transmitted in their original form. Identifying a corrupt text is also part of the process practised in the authentication of the Ḥ adīth tradition. This is perhaps what the early scholars meant by ‘distinguishing between the good and the bad’, whereby good would mean uncorrupt texts and bad corrupt texts.67Even at this early stage of the use of the term naqd, a certain kind of critical judgement is implied, whether it is relevant to detecting counterfeit money or forged and misattributed poetry. Al-Jāḥ iẓ z, by qualifying the words ḥ ikam (wisdom) and khuṭab (public addresses, sermons) with mutamayyiza (distinguished), and by attributing the latter to the ruwāt khullaṣ (dedicated, faithful transmitters), namely, by linking naqd with tamyīz, implies that the matter entailed not merely identifying forged wise sayings and orations, but a process of discernment as well. The process of tamyīz, to borrow al-Jāḥ iẓ z’s own word, requires a closer inspection of the text. In the course of his discussion of the oratorical heritage of the Arabs, and while stating that the Arabs and the Persians were the only people known for their oratory, whereas the Indians possessed books, and the Greeks philosophy and logic, al-Jāḥ iẓ z observes of Aristotle that ‘the master of logic was himself a man of few words (bakī' al-lisān), not known for eloquence (al-bayān), even though he was versed in discernment of discourse, its divisions, meanings and characteristics (tamyīz al-kalām wa tafṣ lihi wa ma'ānīhi wa bi khaṣ a ’iṣ ihi)'.68 The phrase tamyīz al-kalām, used in this context, especially in the light of the author’s comment on Aristotle in connection with Poetics and Rhetoric, does not denote authentication; rather, it implies recognising characteristics of literary expressions. Elsewhere, in his discussion in Risālat al-mu'allimīn (treatise on school­ teachers) of the benefits of studying works by men known for their eloquence, al-Jāḥ iẓ z warns against the pitfalls of a student memorising, and consequently copying, their wording without heeding its appropriateness in the larger scheme of the content; for if this should happen, the student’s work would be no more than a composition of ‘inappropriate diction, affected meanings, disarranged order and disconnected organisation (la yakūnu illā mustakrahan f ī alfāẓ ihi mutakallifan li-ma'anīhi muḍ ṭ arib al-ta’lif munqaṭ i' al-niẓ am)'. Nuqqād al-alfāẓ and jahābidhat al-ma'ānī would

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consequently slight his intellect and reject his knowledge as corrupt ( bahraj).69 The function which al-Jāḥ iẓ ascribes to the nuqqād al-kalām and jahābidhat al-ma'ānī precisely that which he calls tamyīz al-kalām. Though the term naqd is not used in these instances, its derivative nuqqād is, and by inference it is possible to conclude that naqd, if used, would mean setting apart eloquent writing from ineloquent. Such a process, in addition to the initial recognition, necessarily requires knowledge of what constitutes good w riting: its literary and artistic aspects. This underlying conception of the term would serve as the foundation for later critics to expand the connotation of the term to denote literary activities in which judgements regarding poetic excellence were made. The Authority of Tradition (Ibn Qutayba) Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889),70writing in the ṭabaqāt genre originated by Ibn Sallām, abandoned Ibn Sallām’s complex structure.71 Although Ibn Sallām’s work may be viewed as a positive, even revolutionary, step towards a systematic approach to poetry as a literary phenomenon worthy of study in itself, his appropriation of the terms and methods o f Ḥ adīth scholarship, and the theoretical foundation inherent in the ṭ abaqāt genre, necessarily created problems for the technical terms used in the field, especially the term naqd, and the format for evaluating poets and poetry. Ibn Sallām combined the rigid discipline of a historian and Ḥ adīth scholar and the sensitivity (relatively speaking, of course) of an admirer of poetry. In his attempt to incorporate the concept of fu ḥ ūla which he inherited from alAṣ ma'ī, he created a scheme that was impractical and arbitrary, especially where and when aesthetic appreciation of poetry was concerned. Because of the arbitrariness of the criteria involved in his Ṭ abaqāt, Ibn Qutayba, although he was a muḥ addith himself, replaced Ibn Sallām’s scheme with a simpler one: a framework construed mainly along a chronological order. But like Ibn Sallām and al-Jāḥ iẓ , responding to antiArab allegations raised in the shu'ūbiyya movement remained a preoccu­ pation for him. In this controversy, he vigorously defended the Arabs while acknowledging his own Persian origins. To Ibn Qutayba, as he explicitly says in 'Uyūn al-akhbā r the introduction to Al-s h i'r wa al-s h u 'arā', poetry is a major source of knowledge for the Arabs. The Arab superiority in knowledge, as manifest in their poetic tradition, is only part of Ibn Qutayba’s response to the shu'ūbi claims that the Arabs were intellectually inferior. Al-Jāḥ iẓ ’s argument, ascribing al-bayān to the Arabs exclusively, was no longer valid, for the major poets were now Bashshar b. Burd (c. 95/ 714-167/783), Abū Nuwās (c. 198/813) and Abū al-'Atāhiya (d. c. 210/814), none of whom was Arab, and all of whom were accused of being shu'ūbi

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partisans. Ibn Qutayba’s strategy was to discredit the major muḥ dath poetsAbū Nuwās, Bashsā h r b. Burd and Abū al-'Atāhiya. Rather than judging their poetry on the basis of their juniority to pre-muḥ dath poets,72 he proposed to expose them on both religious and artistic grounds. In the biography of each, Ibn Qutayba makes a point of noting that they are zanādiqa, in the same manner that he points out that Ḥ ammād 'Ajrad73is a zandīq. He then proceeds to perform what he has proposed to do in the introduction: to document the defects which the 'ulamā' found in the compositions of these poets. A comparison between Ibn Qutayba’s approach to the pre-Islamic Imru’ al-Qays and that to Abū Nuwās serves to reveal his purport. Imru’ al-Qays, Ibn Qutayba states, was a poet of the first rank74 who originated poetic features that the Arabs admired and imitated.75 The poetry of Imru’ al-Qays ranged from what was found good (yustajād) 76 to what he excelled in (wa qad ajāda),77 elements of his poetry that were cited (ma yutamaththal bihi min shi'rihi) ,78 and his poetic compositions that were sung (yutaghannā bi shi'rihi). 79 Ibn Qutayba emphasises the consensus that Imru’ al-Qays composed the most delicate lines in the entire Arabic poetic tradition.80He quotes 'Umar b. al-Khaṭ ṭ āb’s evaluation of Imru’ al-Qays to support his claim: ‘he was the winner (sābiq) in the race among poets, and he eclipsed the moon (khasafa 'ayn al-qamar)'.81 In the whole of his entry on Imru’ al-Qays, there are three instances in which the word ya'īb (to find fault) is used. As for Abū Nuwās, though Ibn Qutayba considers him one of the maṭbu'ūn (the ‘born’ poets), he finds his poetry full of errors and short­ comings. His comments on Abū Nuwās’s poetry include: found faulty (mimmā, yughalliṭ al-nās f īhi min shi'rihi82 and mimma ukhidha 'alayhi f ī shi'rihi), 83censured for exaggeration (wa ukhidha 'alayhif ī al-ifrāṭ) ,84faulted on what he said of a she-camel (ukhidha 'alayhi f ī qawl al-nāqa) ,85 found flimsy and shallow (mimmā yustkhaff min shi'rihi) ,86obscure in meaning (min shi'rihi alladhī lā yu'raf ma'nāhu87 and yushkil ma'nāhu),88 found to express unbelief (mimmā kafara f īhi aw qaruba),89 ambiguous in wording (mimmā 'ammā min al-asmā') ,90and excessive satire (ifrāt al-hijā').91 In addition, there are pejorative remarks on his mujūn (immoral lifestyle), such as ‘there are elements of mujūn in this poetry that are considered strange and flimsy (wa f ī hādhā al-shi'r min mujūnihi ashyā ’ tustaghrab wa tustakhaff)'. Although Ibn Qutayba gives Abū Nuwās a favourable review in eighteen instances, he is quick to slight Abū Nuwās’ originality in these instances by claiming that he

had appropriated meanings from his predecessors like al-Namir b. Tawlab, al-Nābigha or Imru–al-Qays. To achieve his end demonstrating the superiority of old over muḥ dath

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poetry – Ibn Qutayba has to design a plausible theoretical framework, for the notion that the older the poet was the better his poetry, as was held by earlier scholars, had been invalidated by al-Jāḥ iẓ z. Ibn Qutayba’s theoretical framework for the evaluation of poetry, the concept of jawda,92 is used in conjunction with the following additional four criteria: naturalness (maṭbū '), absence of affectation (mutakallif ); freedom from errors in diction and meaning; minimal borrowing from the ancient poets; and popularity of the poetry.93 Basing himself on these criteria, he argues for the superiority of pre-muḥ dath poetry. His comments on the artistic achievements of both pre-muḥ dath and muḥ dath poetry give the impression that though muḥ dath poetry should not be discarded, pre-muḥ dath poetry remained superior, and thus it must remain the model for poetic composition.94 The superiority of pre-muḥ dath poetry may be supported by the fact that it is selected by those who possessed knowledge of poetry (al-'ulamā’ and dhawī al-'ilm) for preservation.95 Ibn Qutayba’s argument is based on the notion that the poetic tradition was too abundant to be preserved in its entirety, and accordingly a process of selecting the best of this tradition was necessary, which process would eliminate inferior compositions and retain superior ones. Ibn Qutayba’s notion of ‘selection’ is important; in fact, it is the main criterion of judging poetry, for the process of selection does not rely on instinct alone, but on a certain kind of knowledge of the quality of poetry. In one instance, he says the following about al-Aṣ ma'ī:96 ‘I am surprised that al-Aṣ ma'ī included this poetry in his selection (mutakhayyar), for this poetry is neither sound in metre, good in rhyme, choice in wording, or subtle in meaning’. The implication of Ibn Qutayba’s comment, especially with reference to the word mutakhayyar, is that poetry must be of excellent quality – sound metre, good rhyme, choice diction and fine meaning – to deserve to be chosen for perpetuation. By analogy, poetry that has already been selected for perpetuation must be of excellent quality. To know the criteria mentioned in these instances and elsewhere in the book, according to Ibn Qutayba, requires transmitted learning (samā'). This is particularly true of 'ilm al-dīn wa al-shi'r (knowledge of religion and poetry).97 Like his predecessors, Ibn Qutayba’s conception of ' ilm al-shi'r denotes the discussion of the critical issues which he has previously dealt with only by inference. For when he gives reasons for the need of this 'ilm, he argues from the perspective that poetry contained obscure language, variant dialects and odd diction, as well as names of trees, plants, places and water springs, and that one could not understand the poetry of Hudhayl – a well-known collection of the poetry of the tribe of Hudhayl

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from pre-Islamic and early Islamic times – unless one is versed in their place-names.98 Ibn Qutayba’s conception of 'ilm al-shi'r stems from his training as a religious scholar. As such, he seems unable to transcend the normative view of poetry, that it is primarily a source of knowledge in matters related to the Arabic language, as he explicitly states: my purpose in (learning about) the famous poets, whom most men of letters know, is that their poetry is used in supporting scholars’ arguments with regard to obscure forms of the language (gharīb), and grammar, the book of God and the tradition of the messenger of God.99 Ibn Qutayba’s marked difference from al-Jāḥ iẓ z’s school of thinking was no accident. His views reflect the dialectics of cultural and political change that was taking place during the third/ninth century. The 'Abbasid Caliphate, having adopted the Mu'tazilite creed as the ideological framework for their rule for three decades – under the reigns of al-Ma’mūn (reigned 198/813-218/833), al-Mu'taṣ im (reigned 218/833-227/842) a n d alWāthiq (reigned 227/842-232/847) – abandoned it at the time of alMutawakkil (reigned 232/847-246/861), who declared the end of al-Miḥ na (customarily translated as 'Inquisition’) in 234/849. Subsequently, religious scholars, represented by Aḥ mad b. Ḥ anbal (163/779-241/855), took over the leadership of ideology. The once powerful Mu'tazilites were now the target of persecution. Ibn Qutayba’s works, Al-radd 'alā almushabbiha (response to the Mushabbiha) and Al-radd 'alā man yaqūl bi khalq al-qur’ān (response to those who claim that the Qur’ān is created), must be viewed in the context of this change. The shift in the 'Abbasid policy was an indication that the Mu'tazilite project was unable to define a clear and acceptable direction for the dynamics of cultural transformation, political transition and racial reconfiguration of the new Arabic-Islamic society. The traditionalists, or ahl al-sunna, including Ibn Qutayba, were now in the position of leading the umma. The pressures of these changes made a great impact on creative works, literature in general and poetry in particular, and views of literature as well. The conflict between the old and new as articulated in classical writings100 may have been an embodiment of the political, social, religious and artistic dialectics generated by an evolving new culture, the lines of which were often difficult to draw.101 During the peak of the Mu'tazilite influence, alJāḥ iẓ z was able to assert the freedom of will even in terms of poetic composition, implicit in the conception of poetry as craft (al-shi'r sinā'a); that knowledge was attainable through rational thinking and that artistic creativity was a wilful human act. Ibn Qutayba, on the contrary, emphasised

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the notion of ṭab', for it not only implied that acts (including literary composition) were predestined, God-sent, but also ascribed the power to the Arabic tradition, a tradition that was deeply rooted in ṭab', natural, innate talent. This notion of ṭab' was what the traditionalists (anṣ ār alqadīm) used to develop the idea of madhhab al-awā'il (the way of the ancestors), 'amūd al-shi'r, and sahl al-kalām madhhab al-'arab (facile, smooth discourse is the way of the Arabs). Based on the principles developed from the notion of tab', they tried to discredit Abū Tammām, whom they accused of departing from the way of the Arabs, and whose diction they described as philosophical (falsafī al-kalām),102 philosophy being deemed in contra­ diction to tradition. Explaining poetic excellence in terms of maṭbū ' (passive participle derived from ṭab'), however, led Ibn Qutayba to contradictions in his treatment of Abū Nuwās. In the introduction to Al-sh'ir wa al-shu'arā’ Ibn Qutayba opposes takalluf (affectation) to ṭ ab' (naturalness). He cites Zuhayr b. Abī Sulmā as an example of a mutakallif (active participle derived from takalluf) poet because he was deliberate in the composition of his poetry and, in contrast, Ṭ arafa as a maṭbū ' poet because he was spontaneous in the composition of his poetry. When he applies the term maṭ bū' to Abū Nuwās, the meaning of maṭ bū' does not seem to coincide with the meaning of the term used in conjunction with Ṭ arafa; for Abū Nuwās was known to be deliberate in his compositions.103Ibn Qutayba’s use of maṭ bū' in relation to Abū Nuwās thus deserves more attention. Ibn Qutayba, it seems to me, attempted to provide the increasing popularity of muḥ dath even among traditionalists – al-Aṣ ma'ī greatly admired Bashshār b. Burd, for example – with authenticity by finding roots for it in the Arabic poetic tradition, as manifest in its ṭab' – characteristics of muḥ dath poetry – and heavy borrowing from the tradition, in order to validate it, and to justify the culture’s sanction of badi' – characteristic of muḥ dath poetry. The problem was that while it was possible to do this with the poetry of Bashshār and Abū Nuwās, it was not so with the poetry of Abū Tammām who, together with his contemporary al-Buḥ turī, were consequently excluded from the discussion. The issues relevant to the artistic development of Arabic poetry were more complex than merely establishing that Arabic poetic tradition was the source of knowledge, that the classical model was superior, or that muḥ dath poetry owed a great deal to the classical tradition. Critics had to deal with the changes that were taking place on the linguistic level as well. Ibn Qutayba attempted to deal with this question by separating the poets from their poetry, but this was accomplished in theory only; for when it came to actual application of his propositions, he failed, not only by excluding major poets like Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī, but also by

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arguing for the notion that the poetry of Bashshār and Abū Nuwās was rooted in the pre-muḥ dath poetic tradition. However, despite these drawbacks and the weakness in his work Al-shi'r wa al-shu'arā' – the poverty in technical terms104 – Ibn Qutayba indeed raises many critical issues for later discussions of poetry. The Role of Literary Tradition (Ibn al-Mu'tazz) Ibn al-Mu'tazz (d. 296/908) picked up the threads in Ibn Qutayba’s argument and used it as the theoretical framework for his work Ṭ abaqāt alshu'arā’ al-muḥ dathīn. This work and his other works are fraught with political messages rich in nuances. Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s political agenda – the validity of the rule of the house of 'Abbās – is well analysed and documented.105 The legitimacy of the rule of the 'Abbasids – according to Ibn al-Mu'tazz, who was a member of the ruling family and caliph for one night – was based on the authority of tradition, which in turn was associated with poetry. The direction of Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s work was not solely dictated by his political agenda, for his personal taste was such that it harmonised with traditional poetry. This is perhaps why he was not able to reconcile himself to the poetry of Abū Tammām at the beginning. His favourable stance towards classical poetry is explicit in his statement ‘how can the muḥ daths allow themselves such insanity (junūn) when they have studied and learnt the poetry of the ancients!’106However, Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s view of Abū Tammām’s poetry went through modification between his work Risāla fī maḥ āsin shi'r Abī Tammām wa masāwīhi (treatise on the merits of the poetry of Abū Tammām and its defects)107 and Ṭ abaqāt al-shu'arā.108 His changing attitude towards Abū Tammām in particular was representative of his changing stance towards muḥ dath poetry in general, leading to his attempt to legitimise muḥ dath poetry by looking for the features that would link it to the Arabic poetic tradition. This, then, is the context within which Kitāb al-badī109 must be examined. Al-badī' as a literary phenomenon began to attract attention in the third/ninth century. Al-Jāḥ iẓ z has observed that it grew out of an intrinsic feature of the Arabic language and that it was what made the Arabic language superior to all other languages.110 Ibn al-Mu'tazz takes this argument a step further in Kitāb al-badī' and provides a systematic argument for it. Kitāb al-badī' documents that the badī' devices – al-madhhab

al-kalāmī (argumentative discourse), al-jinās (paronomasia), al-ṭibāq (antithesis), al-tashbīh(simile) and a–isti'āra(metaphor)–are all features foundinpre-muḥdathliterarywritings, be they the Qur’ān, Ḥ adīthor preIslamic poetry. The implication of Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s success in the authentication (ta’ṣ īl) of muḥ dath poetry was paradoxically twofold, for it

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proved that badī' was nothing new, at the same time as it provided muḥ dath poetry with legitimacy in departing from the tradition. The polarised attitude towards muḥ dath poetry inadvertently led to the flourishing of the sariqāt genre beginning in the third/ninth century. His contemporary, Ibn Ṭ abṭ abā, asserted that poets of his time were in a crisis because ‘they were preceded by the ancients in every marvellous (badī') meaning, eloquent wording (lafẓ faṣ īḥ ), or fine piece of artistry (ḥ īla laṭīf a); if then what they compose falls short of what the ancients expressed and did not surpass it (la yurbī 'alayha), it should therefore not meet with acceptance, but be discarded and rejected (mamlūl)'.111 This statement implies that his predecessors and contemporaries had spent a great deal of energy to detect appropriations (sariqāt) – and, correspondingly, origins – of the ideas found in the muḥ dath poets, especially those who had been declared to be innovative and original. The question of sariqāt is yet another complex issue in the history of Arabic literary criticism, and cannot and should not be examined only in terms of the ta'ṣ īl agenda, though it may have started there. Assertions about sariqāt, however, derived not only from genuine questions about a poet’s creativity and versatility, but also from personal motives of the critic that are at times difficult to explain. It is true, nevertheless, that the attempts to ‘find the origin’ of later compositions were very much part of the works of this kind. The concept behind the notion of sariqa was already utilised by al-Aṣ ma'ī, who tried to discredit al-Farazdaq by claiming that most of his poetry was sariqa.112 Ibn Qutayba’s approach in Al-shi'r wa al­ shu'arā’ indicates that the practice was to trace any meaning to its earlier prototypes. Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s practice, from what has been preserved for us in various sources on the subject of sariqāt, seems to follow the line of Ibn Qutayba’s inquiry. Ibn al-Mu'tazz, however, added another criterion for judging appropriations, namely the artistic effect achieved. Al-Āmidī reports that Ibn al-Mu'tazz, having identified one of Abū Tammām’s appropriation from ancient poets, stated that he mismanaged the process, producing an outrageous metaphor.113 Abū Tammām’s metaphor was considered outrageous because he ascribed neckveins to Time – a recurring image in his poetry. The underlying principle of Abū Tammām’s metaphor – ascribing a physical attribute to an abstract concept – was familiar to the ancient poets. However, this kind of metaphor, while meaningful in the poems by the ancient poets, became meaningless in the poems of Abū Tammām. Both al-Āmidī and Ibn al-Mu'tazz, for example, deplored attributing neckveins to Time. Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s explicitly-stated view of sariqa, that what legitimised it was the ability of the sāriq (the appropriator) to surpass the masrūq minhu (the one from whom

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[meanings, metaphors, diction and so on] are appropriated), would become the norm in the critical thinking in later periods. This was the theoretical principle that directed the development of the questions of sariqāt into a technical issue, by which development the moral sting of what would otherwise be considered plagiarism was removed.114 Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s use of the term nuqqād occurs only once in the context of his discussion of the five badī' devices. The implication of his term, nuqqād al-muta’addibīn, is that naqd means recognising badī' features in poetry, and that the nuqqād are the outstanding among the muta ’addibūn – the educated men who are well read in literature. By implication, naqd must involve knowledge. These notions of naqd inherent in Ibn alMu'tazz’s work were recognised by later critics. When Usāma b. Munqidh wrote Al-badī' f ī naqd al-shi'r, Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s Kitāb al-badī' was the first to be mentioned as a source for Usāma’s work.115 Later critics would also recognise Ibn Mu'tazz’s other activities in discussing poetry. These went beyond picking out badī' devices in poetry: he was active in picking out sariqāt as well as participating in making critical judgements of sariqāt or the merits or shortcomings of poetry (ihsān wa isā 'a). Although there is no textual evidence to support the notion that these activities were considered naqd in the third/ninth century, there is more than ample evidence to support that these activities were considered naqd in the fourth/tenth century. Laying the Theoretical Foundation (Ibn Ṭ abātabā, Qudāma and al-Ḥ ātimī) Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā and 'Ilm al-shi'r In the biography of Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā (d. 323/934),116Yāqūt reports that Ibn alMu'tazz was an admirer of Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, who in turn was an admirer of Ibn al-Mu'tazz.117 The object of their mutual admiration, however, was their poetry. This fact is significant only because it reveals the similarity in their tastes for poetry. Both, as manifest in their own poetic composition and their commentary on poetry, preferred the classical poetic tradition as a model for poetic composition. It is reported that they never met, but that Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā was able to obtain Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s poetry shortly before he died (ākhir ayyāmihi).118Whether Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā had any knowledge of Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s Al-badī', Ṭ abaqāt al-shu'arā’ and Risāla f ī bayān maḥ āsin shi'r Abī Tammām wa masāwīhi is not revealed in this account. Moreover, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā makes no reference to Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s works in 'Iyār al-shi'r (the measure of poetry), the only work of Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā that has come down to us. Nevertheless, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā seems to have known of the content of Ibn Qutayba’s Al-shi'r wa al-shu'arā'19 and made use of it in his work. 'Iyār alshi'r120 was written in response to a certain Abū al-Qāsim Sa'd b. 'Abd al-

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Rahmān’s inquiry of 'ilm al-shi'r,121The meaning of 'ilm al-shi'r may possibly be determined by looking at the framework of the broader context of Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s works. Notwithstanding the loss of these works, Tahdhīb al-ṭab'

(the pruning of talent),122 Kitāb al-'arūḍ (the book of prosody) and Almadkhal fī ma'rifat al-mu'ammā min al-ash'ār (introduction to the recognition of obscure poetry),123it still is possible to learn about their nature from the reference that Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā makes to them in his extant work, 'Iyar al-shi'r. We collected our choice poetry in a book which we called Tahdhīb al-ṭab' so that those who are in the business of composing poetry may practise by studying it and by adopting the methods which the poets upheld. They should express fine meanings in the same way that they (the poets) did and should use the moulds in which they cast their words (ṣ arrafū aqwālahum fī hā). We have confined ourselves to what we have chosen, not because we disapprove of what we left out, rather because of a special appreciation that we have for it (the selected poetry) exclusively.124 Clearly, the author intends to provide a collection of what he deems good poetry to be used as models for composition. The same may be said of his work on prosody, as manifest in his discussion of rhymes in 'Iyār al-shi'r, and Al-mu'ammā, the former as a guide for techniques to be emulated, and the latter a guide for pitfalls to be avoided. Where 'Iyār al-shi'r is concerned, the author explicitly says that his purpose is to describe what 'ilm al-shi'r is and to explain and simplify techniques of poetic composition.125 Simply put, 'ilm al-shi'r in this context means knowing how to compose poetry. The primary audience addressed by the author is the poet, not the critic; thus the book is a manual of style, not a study of poetry. Within this framework, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā hints at the principles underlying the critic’s selection of poetry: the artistic merits of certain poetry that warrants appreciation (istiḥ sān) .126 Poetry, according to Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, is of two kinds. The first is well- and meticulously constructed (muḥ kam mutqan) poetry, the diction of which is elegant, the meanings wise and the composition wonderful, so that when it is made into prose its excellent meaning is not invalidated and its strong diction not lost. He likens this kind of poetry to well-constructed buildings that could not easily be demolished. The second is deceptively ornate (mumawwaha) and sweet poetry that appeals to the senses on the surface, but of which the diction is found to be corrupt and the meaning defective when it is exposed and examined (ḥ uṣ ṣ ilat wa untuqidat). Furthermore, it could not be reworked into prose. He likens this kind of poetry to tents that disintegrate easily.127

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Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s choice of the reflexive form of intaqād,128 a derivative of naqd, indicates the continuity in the line of thinking started by Ibn Sallām. It is perhaps of interest to note that the word which Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā uses for the title of his book, 'iyār, is also borrowed from an image associated with dinār, 'Īra al-dīnār is to weigh it against another. Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s use of the word intaqād, however, differs from Ibn Sallām’s concept of the function performed by the nāqid. Intaqād, as used by Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, means to examine the text for the purpose of distinguishing good compositions from meagre ones. The artistic principles underlying this critical judgement are the form, the content, the composition of both, and the pliability of poetry in being made into prose while maintaining its plausibility as a literary text. The opposite of this composition is what he calls zā'if (spurious) and bahraj (corrupt). The nuqqād are those who are experts in naqd, a process in which the zā'if and bahraj are set apart from the good (jayyid) .129 This is the primary sense associated with Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s use of nuqqād:13° they are al-baṣ īr bi naqdihi (those who possess penetrating insight into the naqd of poetry),131 al-buṣ arā' bi al-ma'ānī (those who possess penetrating insight into the meaning of poetry)132 and al-'ulamā ’ bi al-shi'r (those who possess knowledge of poetry).133The process, however, requires knowledge of the merits and defects of form, content or a combination of form and content.134 The defects are precisely what the nuqqād 135 could point out and the 'ulamā' bihā136 could help to correct. Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā likens the nuqqād and 'ulamā’ to the physicians who could cure an illness, but who are nonetheless liable to make mistakes.137 Needless to say, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s portrayal of nuqqād and 'ulamā' is based on his self-image. Just as he implicitly bestows upon himself the role of the guide for poets by writing 'Iyār al-shi'r, so he explicitly assigns the authority to identify the merits and defects of poetry to the nuqqād and 'ulamā'. However, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā does not explicitly discuss who these authorities were or what they did. These could only be inferred from the context of his discussion of the technical issues which he raises in the book. We know from the context that those who possess penetrating perception (al-fahm althāqib and al-fahm al-nāqid) are those who could recognise excellence in poetry when it is free from defects ( 'uyūb).138 By implication, it is the responsibility of the nuqqād and 'ulamā' to know both the strength and the weakness in a poetic composition. Furthermore, they should, and could, recognise the meanings that have been appropriated from others. The question of ‘appropriation of meanings’ initiated by his predecessors was what prompted Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā to write this work; he expresses this in the opening section of the book. Here, he addresses what he calls al-miḥ na (the crisis) of the muḥ dath poets. The crisis – caused by the richness of the

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Arabic poetic tradition – has reached a point where no muḥ dath poets could produce anything original, for they were preceded by their brilliant ancestors with regard to every meaning. Accordingly, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā suggests that appropriation in itself is not bad, but that the poet must be able to hoodwink the nuqqād and buṣ arā’ bi al-naqd.139 By extension, it is possible to say that it is also the responsibility of the nuqqād to pick out these appropriated meanings (ma'ānī ma’khūdha). The dual function inferred in Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s 'Iyār al-shi'r will be reflected in the works of the following generations of Arabic-Muslim scholars, some emphasising the appreciation of poetry based on its merits or absence of defects, and others stressing the compositional aspects. The first direction resulted in works that will eventually become known as naqd, starting with Qudāma b. Ja'far’s140Naqd al-shi'r, and the second in the works on the ṣ inā'a genre. Qudāma and Naqd al-shi'r In Tārīkh al-naqd, 'Abbās states that Qudāma’s (d. 337/948) claim that he was the first to write a book on naqd al-shi'r was based on the fact that Qudāma was not familiar with the work of al-Nāshī’ al-Akbar (d. 293/906), who, according to Abū Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥ īdī, was the author of a book of the same title, or with Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s 'Iyār al-shi'r. 'Abbās may be right if we look at the history of the development of Arabic literary criticism retro­ spectively. Both al-Nāshī’ and Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s works contain valuable information with regard to technical issues related to the evaluation and appreciation of poetry. However, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s work does not directly deal with the conception of an independent field, which Qudāma termed naqd al-shi'r. This of course does not mean that Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā was not aware of the underlying conception of Qudāma’s naqd al-shi'r. But criteria related to this conception are not directly expressed by Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, and must be interpreted from the texts or inferred from the structure of his work at large. As for al-Nāshī’s work, only some excerpts from it are preserved in alTawḥ īdī’s Al-baṣ a’ir wa al-dhakā h' ir (discernments and enrichments)141 and in Ibn Rashīq’s Al-'umda.142 These excerpts may contain valuable informa­ tion with regard to some technical issues, but they contain no conception of the field as Qudāma defines it. Abū Ḥ ayyān’s comment that al-Nāshīʽ ʼ s work is ‘far superior to Qudāma’s’ remains unsupported in the absence of a fuller context. Abū Ḥ ayyān sees a common thread in the works of alNāshī’ and Qudāma beside the obvious fact that these two works share the same title. What is significant, however, is that before Qudāma the word naqd was already used as a term to denote an evaluative process in which judgements – not merely authentication – are made with regard to poetic

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excellence; both al-Jāḥ īẓ and Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā used the word to denote such a process. Qudāma’s distinction between the various sciences ( 'ulūm) related to the study of poetry was new. Naqd al-shi'r to Qudāma was a discipline distinct from the mastery of prosody, metre, rhyme, maqāti' or obscure forms of language, grammar and meanings (aghrād al-ma'ānī), which together form what he called al-'ilm bi al-shi'r.143 Naqd al-shi'r, according to Qudāma’s definition of the term, specifically means distinguishing good from bad poetry (takhlīṣ jayyidihi min radī ’ihi), an important art that should not be neglected; as a matter of fact, it is more worthy of study than the other disciplines – grammar, obscure forms of the language and aghrāḍ alma'ānī – because these are shared by both prose and poetry. As for prosody, it is not essential as a discipline because feeling for rhyme and metre is an innate ability for some, and consequently prosody is dispensable. Distinguishing good from bad poetry is, however, a complex science (or field of knowledge) that ‘people have been fumbling in ever since they acquired competence in the science, and seldom are they accurate (fa inna al-nās yakhbutūn fī dhālika mundhu tafaqqahū fī al-'ilm fa qalīlan ma yuṣ ībūn) '.144 Naqd al-shi'r requires the knowledge of both the merits (nu'ūt) and shortcomings ( 'uyūb) of poetry, in addition to the technical terms used to designate them. These technical terms comprise eight elements of poetic compositions, four individual and four compound; the individual elements of poetry are wording, metre, rhyme and meaning, and the com­ pounds are combination of wording and metre, wording and meaning, meaning and metre, and meaning and rhyme. What is revealing in Qudāma’s work is an anecdote that he relates with regard to his practice of naqd al-shi'r. In the context of his discussion of fasād al-tafsīr – one of the defects ( 'uyūb) of meaning – he mentions that a poet came to him with two lines of poetry containing fasād al-tafsīr (inade­ quacy of the second line in elaborating the meaning of the first line) for advice. It is revealed that this poet had heard him discuss matters related to naqd al-shi'r, and that he had liked some of Qudāma’s arguments. He came to Qudāma with two lines of an ode he had composed – having detected their defects and having failed to solve the problem with the help of a number of poets – in the hope that the latter would provide him with a solution. Qudāma subsequently explained the problem to him and cor­ rected the defect.145 Although this is the only instance in which explicit reference is made to naqd al-sh'ir as a practice, it is of immense importance, for it reveals much about the practice during the time of Qudāma. For one thing, the poet had gone to the poets first. In the light of what I have discussed in Chapter 2, it

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seems that the poets – ahl al-ṣ an'a – were the dominant force in the field of poetic evaluation. The self-congratulatory tone of Qudāma is not difficult to detect here; for a poet to turn to him for advice must have been a triumph. However, this could not have been universal. Besides, naqd al-shi'r did not consist merely of passing judgement on poetry; rather, it involved active steps that the critic took in order to correct the errors. Most importantly, the reports surrounding Qudāma’s practice of naqd al-shi'r hint at some dialogue among the critics. Ibn al-Nadīm and Yāqūt have preserved the name of another work by Qudāma, Al-radd 'alā Ibn alMu'tazz fī mā 'āba bihi Abā Tammām (refutation of Ibn al-Mu'tazz in what he found fault with in Abū Tammām).146 Yāqūt further reports in his biographical notice on al-Āmidī that al-Āmidī composed a work in response to Qudāma’s Naqd al-shi'r.1 7 4 In the final analysis, Qudāma’s conception of naqd al-shi'r does not differ a great deal from Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s conception of 'ilm al-sh'ir. However, two things mark the difference between these two critics: while Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā is a poet and his concern is mainly the craft, Qudāma is not a poet, and his concern is the ‘objective’ evaluation of poetry; and while Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s conception is inherent in the structure or his work, Qudāma’s is clearly expounded in his work, largely because of his logical mind, and consequently he is more easily understood. al-Ḥ ātimī148and sinā'at al-shi'r During the chaotic period of the Crusades, Usāma b. Munqidh (448/1095– 584/1188) set out to collect the material which scholars had produced with regard to what he termed naqd al-shi'r. In the very brief introduction to his Al-badī' fī naqd al-shi'r, he states that his purpose is to collect what was dispersed (tafarraqa) – and I emphasise the word tafarraqa – in the books which his predecessors had compiled on naqd al-shi'r, a term which he expounds as concerned with merits (maḥ āsin) and defects ( 'uyūb). He then proceeds to name the sources:149Kitāb al-badī' by Ibn al-Mu'tazz; Kitāb al-ḥ ālī (wa al-'āṭ il fī ṣ an'at al-shi'r [the book of the adorned and unadorned in the poetic craft]) and Kitāb (ḥ ilyat) al-muḥ āḍ ara (fī ṣ inā'at al-shi'r [the book of the adornment of the assembly in the craft of poetry]) by al-Ḥ ātimī; Kitāb al-ṣ inā'atyan: al-shi'r wa al-nathr (the book of two crafts: poetry and prose)150 by Abū Hilāl al-'Askarī ; 151 Kitāb al-luma' (the book of glitters], or luma' alsan'a (the book of the glitters of the craft] by al-'Ajamī; and Kitāb al-'umda (fī sinā'at al-shi'r) by Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī. O f these works, five stand out as works on sinā'at al-shi'r, as their titles indicate. This specification may be of significance, especially in light of another statement by Ibn Ḥ azm. In the section on the Poetics in Al-taqrīb li ḥ add al-manṭiq, Ibn Ḥ azm mentions that

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there were works in Arabic that were similar to Aristotle’s Poetics in the sense that they all dealt with sinā'at al-shi'r’, making specific mentions of Qudāma’s Naqd al-shi'r and al-Ḥ ātimī's’s Al-ḥ ālī wa al-'āṭ il and Ḥ ilyat al-muḥ āḍ ara.152 It seems that by the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries the works quoted by both Ibn Ḥ azm and Usāma b. Munqidh were all considered to bear relevance to the activities loosely grouped by the term naqd al-shi'r. O f the six books that Usāma b. Munqidh mentions, four are extant, and of these, only two bear ṣ inā'at al-shi'r in their titles: Al-ḥ ilya by al-Ḥ ātimī (d. 388/998) and Al-ṣ inā'atayn by al-'Askarī. Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s Al-badī' does not feature the word in its title. As for Ibn Rashiq’s Al-'umda, textual evidence

from the book itself suggests that the subtitle is fī maḥ āsin al-shi'r wa ādābihi,153 not fī ṣinā'at al-shi'r as the biographical dictionaries have recorded it.154These works are grouped together because, besides what Ibn Ḥ azm observes in Al-taqrīb – that poetry is the subject of discussion – they all deal with the badī' features in Arabic poetry, albeit not necessarily exclusively,155 and are intended, explicitly or implicitly, to serve as guides for poets on the arts of poetic composition.156 The works on sinā'at al-shi'r do complement the works which I have discussed above, for while these concentrate on defects, the works on ṣ inā'at al-shi'r focus on merits. In the introduction to his edition of al-Ḥ ātimī’s Ḥ ilyat al-muḥ āḍ ara,157 Ja'far al-Kattānī comments that if Al-ḥ ilya had remained in constant circulation, Ibn Rashīq’s Al-'umda would have been a book of secondary importance.158Al-Kattānī’s opinion is challengeable, for Al-ḥ ilya is in no way a match for Al-'umda in either its scope or its depth. Al-Kattānī’s statement, however, indicates the position which Al-ḥ ilya occupies in the minds of many, including Ibn Ḥ azm and Usāma b. Munqidh. Al-ḥ ilya is not the only work by al-Ḥ ātimī in the ṣ inā'at al-shi'r genre. Historical sources have preserved the names of his other works, which are lost, all bearing one form or another of this term: Kitāb al-hilbāja fī san'at al-shi'r, Kitāb sirr alṣ inā'a fī al-shi'r, Kitāb al-ḥ ālī wa al-'āṭ il fī ṣ an'at al-shi'r. From the comments of al-Ḥ ātimī himself in Al-ḥ ilya, we know that Al-ḥ ālī wa al-'āṭ il deals with the various badī' artifices;159 and that Al-ḥ ilya is an abridged version of Al-ḥ ālī, retaining only the crême de la crême.160 His samples, he maintains, are those which the nuqqād al-kalām and al-'ulamā ’ bi sarā’ir al-shi'r have agreed to be the best of what has been said in each art. The anecdotes contained in Al-ḥ ilya are characterised by their brevity and by the absence of any lengthy analysis, a feature dictated by the author’s purpose for it: to provide a handbook of the best lines of poetry which the Arabs have said until then. These lines are to be readily called from memory, as the word in the title of this book, al-muḥ āḍ ara, implies. This word is the key to our understanding of the nature of this work.

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The title of this work consists of two parts: ḥ ilyat al-muḥ āḍ ara and f ī ṣ ina'at al-shi'r. The latter clearly implies the subject matter while the former indicates the purpose of the work, which in turn dictates its form. As in his earlier work, Al-ḥ ālī, al-Ḥ ātimī again borrows an image from jewellery for the title of his book (ḥ ilya means jewellery worn for adornment, al-ḥ ālī denotes that which is adorned and al-'ātil indicates that which is free of adornment). This implies that the content of the work is meant to be ornamentation for what he terms muḥ āḍ ara. The relevant lexical meanings of muḥ āḍ ara are three: eloquence as in rajul dhū ḥ aḍ ar, meaning, dhū bayān;161 argumentation in asserting and defending one’s right before a sultan;162countering another with an answer, or reply, that presents itself to one (in the presence of the patron); and giving such an answer or reply readily or presently in the context of an exchange between two or more people.163 The lexical meaning of the word muḥ āḍ ara therefore implies a setting in which the courtier is called upon, perhaps by his patron, to give an example of the best line of poetry that the Arabs have said on a certain theme, subject or motif. By further examining these terms against other works of the same title, its meaning becomes even clearer. The other word that is paired with muḥ āḍ ara is mudhākara,164as in tatanāwaluhu al-muḥ āḍ ara wa tatahāda jawāhirahu al-mudhākara. These two words are paired in exactly the same manner by al-Qādī al-Tanūkhī (d. 384/994), a contemporary and a fellow courtier of al-Ḥ ātimī, in his Nishwār al-muḥ āḍ ara fī akhbār almudhākara (the elegant talks of the assembly and the accounts of the palavar). In it, al-Tanūkhī makes a few statements that can help to shed light on the meanings of these words. In his statement of purpose, al-Tanūkhī reports that he began to compile the stories contained in Nishwār upon his return to Baghdad in 360/970 after a few years’ absence. He did this because he noticed the disappearance of the stories that used to be told in the scholarly circles (majālis) in Baghdad during brief pauses from studying (al-'ilm wa alḥ ikma). He believed that they contained much wisdom and wrote them down in order to preserve them for a kind of mudhākara and muḥ āḍ ara (fī ḥ ifẓ ī li-fann al-mudhākara wa naw' min nishwār al-muḥ āḍ ara).165 From the coupling of these words in al-Tanūkhī’s sentence – as well as in al-Ḥ ātimī's’s – it is safe to surmise that muḥ āḍ ara and mudhākara are at least near­ synonyms. Mudhākara in dictionaries means to call to mind, in an exchange with another, a story, a discourse or a thing. This may explain why the stories in Nishwār are short, for this feature facilitates their memorisation and recall at short notice. This may also explain why al-Ḥ ātimī's’s Al-ḥ ilya, as Bonebakker points out,166comprises no more than an anthology of the best that is said in a line or two on a specific theme or a badī' feature, for they

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can be easily memorised and recalled. Al-Ḥ ātimī’s work, in spite of its containing much information on technical issues, especially badī' and sariqāt, addresses a specific need of the courtiers who, as historical sources tell us, were often called upon to cite a line or two of poetry that they thought was the best said on a specific theme or motif. Otherwise, al-Ḥ ātimī's’s use of the terms naqd al-shi'r and ' ilm al-shi'r together with their derivatives does not differ from what has become the norm in the fourth/tenth century: distinguishing good poetry from bad,167 finding errors168or defects,169recognising sariqāt and judging the degree of their success.170The terms 'ulamā ’ al-shi'r,171 al-'ulamā' bi al-shi'r,172 nuqqād alkalām173 and arbāb al-sinā'a174 are used indiscriminately in the context of his discussion of sariqāt. In his assessment of the development of medieval Arabic literary criticism, Iḥ sān 'Abbās draws our attention to the fact that the issues central to the discussion of Arabic poetry have always been paradoxical. Early critics straddled the simultaneous needs to authenticate the Arabic poetic tradition and to identify any fabrication, to legitimise the creation of new poetry and to uphold the authority of tradition175– an issue that has proven inexhaustible even today – and the different claims of aesthetic appreciation and religious judgement, the efforts to find a place for a poet’s individual voice and the authority of the Arabic poetic tradition, and the competing authority of the poet and of the critic. The discussions surrounding these issues were responses to the needs of an emerging culture negotiating its identity. The importance of Arabic poetry in that culture – as an embodiment of Arabic tradition, as preserver of the language of the Qur’ān, as honoured craft, popular entertainment, source of wisdom and component of courtiers’ social exchange – made it inevitable that writers would focus upon it in the process of cultural negotiations of that time. The particular approaches of the different critics were determined by the context in which each worked. Thus, Ibn Sallām’s focus upon authentication was a response to the shu'ūbi tampering with the Arabic poetic tradition, an effort to undermine the authority of the Arabs in Arabic-Islamic society. Once Ibn Sallām’s effort proved successful, alJāḥ iẓ and Ibn Qutayba, similarly concerned to prove the value of preIslamic Arabic poetic tradition, took a new approach to the literary defence of their culture, seeking to prove the value of Arabic poetry in itself, though each writer worked from his own perspective – al-Jāḥ iẓ with the rationalist assumptions of a Mu'tazilite, Ibn Qutayba with a traditionalist appeal to ṭab'. And Ibn al-Mu'tazz, in part from his concern to defend the legitimacy of the rule of the 'Abbasids, focused on legitimising muḥ dath

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poetry through an emphasis upon its use of the Arabic poetic tradition. Yet we have seen how these writings, despite the extent to which their purposes might be considered non-literary, actually broadened the scope of literary study. These beginnings, as Said would argue, though not always clearly understood, were first steps towards the development of medieval Arabic literary criticism. The beginnings of medieval Arabic literary criticism, as I have demonstrated, were prompted by complex circumstances, diverse impulses and divergent priorities, and like any complex form ‘ [they] have a logic of [their] own’.176The terms which these critics chose and defined, and the area of inquiry that they covered, though never quite free of the affects acquired during the critics’ involvement in other cultural discourses, set the tone and provided the basis for further inquiry, oral and written, into all matters related to poetry, as is evident in the works of Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, Qudāma and al-Ḥ ātimī. The three terms denoting the general areas of discussions of poetry, al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, naqd alshi'r and sina'at al-shi'r, with all the issues that they imply, came to delineate the field of literary criticism in the following centuries. The specificity of these terms intended by Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, Qudāma and al-Ḥ ātimī, to the extent that they are plausible and possible, however, did not obtain. Later discussions of poetry came to centre on two figures, Abū Tammām and alMutanabbī, and were characterised by controversy. In these two major controversies over poetry in the history of Arabic literature, the terms and the areas they imply, though used in a less precise fashion than by the early critics, served as the foundation for refinement and expansion. NOTES 1.

L ite rally: th e s p r in g o f th o s e g o in g d o w n th e w a te rin g -h o le in th e s c ie n c e o f criticism . 2. T h is is a lite ra l tra n sla tio n o f th e w o r d 'ilm b a s e d o n its u se in m o d e r n A ra b ic . T h e u se o f th is w o rd in c lassical A r a b ic m a y m e a n d iffe r e n t th in g s, n o t n e c e ss a rily ‘ s c ie n c e ’ in th e m o d e r n se n se o f th e w o rd , d e p e n d in g o n th e c o n te x t w ith in w h ic h it is u se d . F o r a c o m p r e h e n s iv e an alysis o f su c h u ses, se e F ra n z R o se n th a l, Knowledge Trium phant, a n d M u h sin M a h d i, ‘ S c ie n c e , p h ilo s o p h y , a n d r e lig io n in al-Fā r āb ī ’s e n u m e r a tio n o f th e s c ie n c e s ’ . 3. P ie rr e C a c h ia , A n Overview o f Modern Arabic Literature (E d in b u rg h : E d in b u r g h U n iv e rs ity Press, 1990), 88. 4. Q u s ṭ āk ī al-Ḥ im ṣ ī, M a n h a l al-wurrād fī 'ilm al-intiqād (A le p p o : M a tb a 'a t a l-'A sr al-Jadīd , 1907), 1: 10. 5. Ib id ., 11. 6. Ib id ., 31. 7. T h e a u th o r m e n tio n e d o n ly th e n a m e o f al-S h arīf a l-M u rta ḍ ā. 8. A l-Ḥ im ṣ ī m a d e a r e fe r e n c e to K a te b C e le b i a n d h is b o o k K a s h f alẓ u n ū n in M a n h a l (1: 36). 9. al-Ḥ im ṣ ī, M a n h a l, 1: 10.

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10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

A b ū al-Ṭ ayyib a l-L u g h a w ī , M arātib, 80. Ib id . T h e d e fin itio n o f ‘A r a b ’ h a s g o n e th r o u g h m a jo r c h a n g e s t h r o u g h o u t th e c e n tu rie s. In th e b e g in n in g it m e a n t ‘ r a c e ’ , a n d n o w it m e a n s ‘ c u lt u r e ’ . D u r in g th e first c e n tu ry o f Islam , it p rim a r ily m e a n t ra ce ; h o w e v e r, th e d e fin itio n o f ‘A r a b ’ w as n o lo n g e r as c o n c r e te b y th e s e c o n d c e n tu r y o f Islam . H o w e v e r w e m a y c h o o s e to lo o k a t it, it is p o s sib le to say th a t th e A ra b s as a ra c e a c q u ir e d w o rld p o w e r b e g in n in g w ith th e e a rly Isla m ic c o n q u e s ts a n d e n d in g w ith th e e n d o f th e U m a y y a d ru le , a n d th a t th e A ra b s as re p re s e n ta tiv e s o f a c u ltu r e r e m a in e d in p o w e r. W e lle k , History, 8. E a g le to n , Criticism and Ideology, 18. Ib n S a llām a n d h is b o o k , Ṭ abaqā t f u ḥ ūl al-shu'arā', a re th e s u b je c t o f th e fo llo w in g stud ies: S alīm Ḥ ām id A m īn , ‘A l-R u ṣ āfī w a ṭ a b a q ā t als h u 'a r ā ' ' , Al-aqlā m 210 (1972): 81–6; Z iy ād K ā m il, 'I b n S a llā m w a zā h ira t al-n aḥ l fī a l-sh i'r al-jā h ilī ’ , Al-m aw qif al-adabī 116 ( D e c e m b e r 1980): 58–73 a n d ‘N a ẓ ariyyat a l-sh i'r 'in d a Ib n S a llā m ’ , Al-m aw qif aladabī 120 (A p r il 1981): 151–9; H . K ilp a trick , ‘ C rite r ia o f c la s sifica tio n in th e T a b a q ā t o f Ib n S a llā m ’ , Proceedings o f the N in th Congress o f Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants, e d . R. P e te rs (A m ste rd a m , 1978); M a ḥ mūd M u ḥ a m m a d S h ā kir, B arnāmaj ṭabaqāt f u ḥ ūl al-shu'arā ’ (C a iro : M aḥ m ūd M u ḥ a m m a d S h ā k ir, 1980); Ḥ asan 'A b d a llāh S h a ra f, Al-naqd f ī al-'aṣ r al-wasīṭ : wa al-muṣ ṭ alaḥ f ī tabaqā t Ibn Sallā m (B e iru t: D ā r al-Ḥ a d ā th a, 1984); M u n īr S u lṭ ān , Ibn Sallā m wa ṭabaqāt al-shu'arā (A le x a n d r ia : M u n s h a ’a t a l-M a 'ā rif, 1977); a n d 'A lī Ja w ā d a l-T ā h ir, ‘Ṭ a b a q ā t a l-sh u 'a rā ’ m a k h ṭ ūṭ a n w a m a ṭ b ū 'a n ’ , Al-mawrid 8:3 (1979): 25–46. In a d d itio n , Ṭ abaqāt Ibn Sallā m u su a lly m a k e s an im p o r ta n t p a rt o f all se rio u s h isto rie s o f classical A r a b ic lite ra ry critic ism . T h e y a re to o n u m e r o u s to b e e n u m e r a te d .

16. With regard to the controversy over the title of this book, whether it is Tabaqātfuḥ ūl al-shu'arā’ or Ṭ abaqāt al-shu'arā', see Sulṭ ān, Ibn Sallām wa tabaqāt al-shu'arā'; Shākir, Barnāmaj Ṭ abaqātfuḥ ūl al-shu'arā'; and

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

al-Ṭ āh ir, ‘Ṭ a b a q ā t a l-sh u 'a rā ’ m a k h ṭ ūṭ an w a m a ṭ b ū 'a n ’ . I a m o f th e o p in io n th a t th e r e is e n o u g h e v id e n c e to s u p p o r t b o th re a d in g s , f o r tabaqāt b o o k s w e re q u ite p r e v a le n t d u r in g Ib n S a llām ’ s tim e. M o r e o v e r, th e c o n c e p t o f f u ḥ ūla w as also k n o w n in th e fo r m o f a b o o k b y Ib n S a llā m ’s te a c h e r al-Aṣ m a 'ī , F u ḥ ūlat al-shu'arā'. T h is issu e, h o w e v e r, is n o t c e n tr a l to th e th esis o f th is b o o k . S h ā k ir p r e fe r s th e r e a d in g ṣ an ā 'a. S ee Ib n S a llām , Ṭ abaqāt, 1: 5, fo o t n o te 1. Ib n S a llām , Ṭ abaqāt, 1 : 5. Ib id ., 6–7. 'Alī Akbar Nafīsī, Farhanq-e N a fīs ī (Tehran: Ketabfurū shī Khayyām, AH 1343), entry on gahbad. Ib n S a llā m , Ṭ abaqāt, 1: 5. Ib id ., 7. Ib id . A b ū 'U t h m ā n 'A m r b. B a ḥ r al-Jā h iẓ , Al-bayān wa al-tabyīn, e d . 'A b d alS a lām M u ḥ a m m a d H ā r ū n (C a iro : M a k ta b a t a l-K h ān jī , 5th e d n , 1985), 4: 30. al-Iṣ b a h ān ī , Al-aghān ī (D a r a l-S h a 'b ), 3: 989. Iḥ sā n 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh al-naqd al-adabī 'ind a l- 'arab: naqd al-shi'r min al-

BEG IN N IN G S qarn althān ī ḥ attā al-qarn althāmin al-hijrī (B e iru t: D ā r a l-T h a q āfa, 27.

1978), 15. S e e , fo r e x a m p le , R i f 'a t R a m zī 'A b d a l-M u ṭ ṭ a lib , Tawthīq al-sunna f ī alqarn al-thān ī al-hijrī: u susuhu wa ittijāhatuhu (C a iro : M a k ta b a t alK h ā n jī , 1981); Ṣ a lāḥ al-D īn b. A ḥ m a d a l-Id lib ī , M a n h a j naqd al-matn 'ind 'ulam ā ’ al-ḥ adīth al-nabawī (B e iru t: D ā r al-A fā q al-Jadīd a , 1983); G . H . A . J u y n b o ll, M uslim Tradition ( C a m b rid g e : C a m b r id g e U n iv e rsity P ress, 1983); M u ḥ a m m a d 'A jjāj al-K h a ṭ īb, A l-sun na qabl al-tadwīn (C a iro : M a k ta b a t W a h b a , 1963) a n d Uṣ ūl al-ḥ adīth: 'u lū m uhu wa muṣ ṭ alaḥ u h u (B e iru t: D ā r al-F ikr al-Ḥ a d īth , 1967); Ṣ u b ḥ ī al-Ṣ āliḥ ,

'Ulūm al-ḥ adīth (Beirut: Dār al-'Ilm li al-Malāyīn, 1965); and Akram Diyā’ al-'Umarī, Buḥ ūth fī tārīkh al-sunna (Baghdad: University of Baghdad, 1967). 28. 29. 30.

a l-Q ifṭ ī, A l-in bāh, 3: 143. C h a r le s P e lla t, ‘Ib n S a llām ’ , Encyclopaedia o f Islam, 2 n d e d n (L e id e n : E. J. B rill; L o n d o n : L u z a c & C o ., 1971), 3: 927. Ib n S a llā m , Ṭ abaqāt, 1: 7-8 , 24 a n d 46. F o r a c o n v e n ie n t su m m a ry o f th ese p o in ts, see S u lṭ ān , Ibn Sallām, 187–9. F o r th e e n u m e r a tio n o f re a so n s o f fa b r ic a tio n in Ḥ a d ī th lite ra tu re , se e a l-K h a ṭ īb , A l-sunna qabl al-tadwīn, 185–218; al-Ṣ āliḥ , 'Ulū m al-ḥ adīth, 266–9; a n d a l-'U m a rī ,

Buḥ ūthfī tārīkh al-sunna, 1-29. 31. Addition from al-Khatīb al-Baghdādī, Kitāb al-kifāya fī 'ilm al-riwāya, ed. Abū Bakr Aḥ mad b. 'Alī (Ḥ aydarābād: Maṭba'at Majlis Dā’irat al32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

46.

M a 'ā r if a l-'U th m ā niyya, 1970); a n d al-Rāz ī , Al-jarḥ wa al-ta'dīl (B e iru t: D ā r a l-U m a m , n .d .). S e e a l-K h a ṭ īb, A l-Sun na qabl al-tadwīn, 228. Sam i'tu al-Awzā 'ī yaqū l: K u n n ā nasm a'u al-ḥ adīth f a na'riḍ u h u 'alā asḥ ābinā kamā yu'raḍ u al-dirham al-zā ’i f ( 'alā al-ṣ ayārifa) fa m ā 'arifū m inhu ajkhdhnā bihi wa ma ankarū taraknā (al-Q āḍ ī al-Ḥ asan 'A b d alR a ḥ m ā n a l-R a m a h u rm ū zī [d. 360/970], Al-m uḥ addith al-fāṣ il bayn alrāwī wa al-wā'ī, e d . M u ḥ a m m a d A jjāj a l-K h a ṭ īb [B e iru t: D ā r al-Fikr, 1971], 318). A c c o r d in g to al-Khaṭ īb, this a c c o u n t is a lso f o u n d in Alja r ḥ wa al-ta'dīl, 1: 21 a n d Al-kifāya, 431. a l-R a m a h u rm ū zī , Al-m uḥ addith al-fāṣ il, 312. Ib n S a llā m , Ṭ abaqāt, 1: 7. A b ū Aḥ m a d 'A b d a llā h b. 'A d ï al-Jurjān ī (227/890–365/975), Al-kām il fī ḍ u 'a fā ’ al-rijāl (B e iru t: D ā r al-Fikr, 1985), 114. Ib n S a llā m , Ṭ abaqāt, 1: 48. 'A b d a l-M u ṭ ṭ a lib , Tawthīq al-sunna, 222. al-Rāzī , Al-jarḥ wa al-ta'dīl, 1:6 . Ib id . Ib id ., 10. Ib id ., 1: 10, 32, 55, 126 a n d 219. Ib id ., 1: 219. Ib id ., 1: 35. T h e w o rd nuqqād a p p e a rs in th is w o rk . S e e W a lī al-D īn M u ḥ a m m a d b. 'A b d a llā h a l-K h a ṭ īb a l-'U m a r a l-T a b rīz ī , M ishkā t al-maṣ ābī h, e d . M u ḥ a m m a d N āṣ ir al-D īn a l-A lb ā n ī (D am ascu s: a l-M aktab al-Islām ī li al-Ṭ ib ā 'a w a a l-N a sh r), in tr o d u c tio n , 1: 3. T h e te rm ja h ābidhat al-fuhamā ’ is u s e d in th is w o rk . S e e a l-Q āḍ ī 'Iy ād A b ū al-F ad l Iyā s b. M ū sā al-Yaḥ su b ī al-Sabtī , M ashāriq al-anwār 'alā ṣ iḥ aḥ al-ā thār (al-M a k ta b a a l-'A tīq a a n d D ār a l-T u rā th , n .d .) , 2. In this w o rk , b o th nuqqād a n d ū lī al-naqd wa al-taḥ rīr are u se d . S e e A b ū 'A b d a llā h M u ḥ a m m a d b. A ḥ m a d b. 'U th m ān a l-D h a h a b ī , M īzān al-

123

124

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47.

48.

49. 50. 51. 52.

53.

i'tidāl f ī naqd al-rijāl, e d . 'A lī M u ḥ a m m a d al-B ijāw ī (C a iro : D ā r Iḥ y ā ’ alK u tu b a l-'A ra b iy y a , 1963), 1 a n d 3. In th is w o rk , b o th nuqqād a n d ū lī al-naqd wa al-taḥ r ir are u s e d as w ell; fo r th e a u th o r q u o te s a l-D h a h a b ī v e rb a tim . S e e Ib n Ḥ a ja r al'A s q a lān ī , L isān al-mīzān (B e iru t: M u 'a ssa sa t a l-A 'lām li al-M aṭ b ū ' ā t, 5 a n d 7. T h e te rm nuqqād is f o u n d in th is w o rk . S ee M u ḥ a m m a d Ṭ āh ir b. 'A lī a l-H in d ī al-F itn ī , Tadhkirat al-mawḍ ū'āt ( B e iru t a n d D am ascu s: A m īn D am a j a n d 'A b d al-W akīl, 1960), 3. S u lṭ ān , Ibn Sallā m, 137. Ib n al-N a d īm , Al-fihrist, 35. Ib id ., 59. Ib id ., 116; M u ḥ a m m a d J a b b ā r a l-M u 'a y b id , ‘ N u ṣ ūṣ m in k itā b ṭ a b a q ā t a l-sh u 'a rā ’ li D i'b il a l-K h u zā 'ī ’ , Al-mawrid 6:2 (1977): 111-4 2 , p . 111, fo o t n o te 1. Ib n a l-N a d īm , Al-fihrist, 150.

54. Ibid., 151. 55. Ibid., 152; and al-'Umar, Buḥ ūth fī tārīkh al-sunna, 53. For a fuller discussion of the life and works of al-Haytham b. 'Adī, see Stefan

56. 57.

58.

59.

60.

61. 62. 63.

64. 65.

66.

L e d e r , D as Korpus al-Haitam ibn 'Adi (st. 207/822): Herkunft, Uberlieferung, Gestalt früher Texte der ahbar Literatur (F r a n k fu rt a m M ain : K lo s te r m a n n , 1991). T a r if K h a lid i, Arabic H istorical Thought in the Classical Period ( C a m b rid g e : C a m b r id g e U n iv e rs ity P ress, 1994), 46. A l-A ṣ m a 'ī is r e p o r te d to h a v e said: ‘ B a s h s h ār is th e last o f p o e ts (Bashshār khā timat al-shu'arā ) '. S e e al-Iṣ b a h ā n ī , Al-aghänī (Dār alkutub), 3: 989. T h e r e is n o r e p o r t o f Ib n S a llām ’ s d iscu ssio n o f B a s h s h ār ’ s p o e try ; h o w e v e r, Ib n S a llām w as r e p o r te d ly fa m ilia r w ith B a s h s h ā r ’s w o rks. S e e al-Iṣ b a h ā n ī , Al-aghān ī (Dār al-kutub), 3: 984. 'A b d a l-'A zīz al-D ū rī , A l-jud h ū r al-tārīkhiyya li al-shu'ū biyya (B e iru t: D ā r al-Ṭ alī 'a , 1962), 26. S e e a lso K h a līl I b rā h īm J ifāl, A l-sh u 'ūbiyya wa aladab: ab'ād wa maḍ mū n āt min al-'aṣ r al-jāh ilī ḥ attā al-qarn al-rāb i' al-hijrī (B e iru t: D ā r al-N iḍ āl li al-Ṭ ib ā 'a w a al-N a sh r w a a l-T aw zī ', 1986). Ḥ a m m ā d al-Rāw iya, Ḥ a m m ā d 'A jr a d a n d Ḥ a m m ā d b. a l-Z ib riq ān w e re a c c u s e d o f zandaqa to g e th e r w ith th e p o e ts B a s h s h ār b. B u rd , A b ū N u w ā s a n d A b ū a l-'A tā h iya. al-Iṣ b a h ā n ī , Al-aghān ī (D ā r a l-K u tu b ), 4: 89 a n d 90. Ib n S a llām , Ṭ abaqāt, 1: 25. Al-Jāḥ iẓ ’s life a n d w o rk s a re th e s u b je c t o f th e fo llo w in g stud ies: ẓ āh ā al-Ḥ āj i r ī , Al-Jāḥ iẓ : hayātuhu wa atharuhu (C a iro : D ā r a l-M a 'ārif, 1969); A ḥ m a d M u ḥ a m m a d al-Ḥ ūf ī , Al-Jāḥ iẓ (C a iro : D ār a l-M a 'ā rif, C a ir o , 1980); a n d C h a r le s P e lla t, The Life and Works o f Jāḥ iẓ , tr. D . M . H a w k e ( L o n d o n : R o u t le d g e 8c K e g a n P a u l, 1969). al-Jāḥ iẓ , A l-ḥ ayawān, 3: 268. F o r th e h isto ric a l c irc u m s ta n c e s th a t le d to th e w r itin g o f Al-bayān wa al-tabyīn, see M u ḥ a m m a d a l-S a g h īr B a n n ā n ī , A l-naẓ ariyyāt al-lisāniyya wa al-balāghiyya wa al-adabiyya 'in d al-Jāḥ iẓ min khilāl Al-bayān wa altabyīn. T h is b o o k is re v ie w e d b y Ja 'fa r D a k k al-B āb in Al-turā th al-'arabī 6:21 ( O c t o b e r 1985): 152–71. S e e 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh al-naqd, 94– 104; M ish āl 'Āṣ ī, M a fāhīm al-jamāliyya wa al-naqd f ī adab al-Jāḥ iẓ (B e iru t: D ār a l-'Ilm li a l-M alāyīn , 1974); I d rīs B ilm a līḥ , A l-r u 'y ā al-bayāniyya 'ind al-Jāḥ iẓ (al-D ār a l-B ayd ā ’ : D ā r al-

BEG IN N IN G S

67. 68. 69. 70.

71.

72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

T h a q āfa, 1984); al-Shāh id al-Bū shīk h ī , M u ṣ alaḥ āt naqdiyya wa balāghiyya f ī kitāb al-bayān wa al-tabayyun li al-Jāḥ iẓ (B e iru t: D ār a l-A fā q, 1982); A ḥ m a d F ash l, Ā rā ’ al-Jāḥ iẓ al-balāghiyya wa ta ’thīruhā f ī al-balāghiyyīn al'arab ḥ attā al-qarn al-khāmis al-hijrī (A le x a n d r ia : a l-H a y ’ a al-M iṣ riyya al'Ā m m a lī al-K itā b, 1979); F aw zī al-Sayyid 'A b d R a b b ih i ' Īd, Al-maqāyīs al-balāghiyya 'ind al-Jāḥ iẓ f ī al-bayā n wa al-tabyīn (B e iru t: D ā r a l-T h a q āfa li al-N a sh r w a al-T aw zī ', 1983); W a d ī 'a T ā h ā N a jm , Al-Jāḥ iẓ wa al-ḥ āḍ ira al-'abbāsiyya (B a g h d a d : M a ṭ b a 'a t al-Irshā d, 1965). F o r a c o m p le te list o f m o d e rn w o rk s a n d r e fe r e n c e s to al-Jāḥ iẓ , se e M u ḥ a m m a d J a b b ū r a l-M u 'a y b id , c o m p ., ‘A l-m a rja ' fī al-Jāḥ iẓ ’ a n d ‘R aw ḍ at al-yā sm īn fī m a n ta rja m a li al-Jāḥ iẓ ’ , Al-mawrid 7:4 (1978). S e e a l-Id lib ī , M a n h a j naqd al-matn. al-Jāḥ iẓ , Al-bayān, 3: 27. al-Jāḥ iẓ , R asā ’il al-Jāḥ iẓ , c o m p , a n d ed . 'A b d al-Salā m M uḥ am m ad H ā rū n (C a iro : M a k ta b a t a l-K h ā n jī , 1979), 3: 40. F o r th e life a n d w o rk s o f Ib n Q u ta y b a , see Ish a q M u sa H u sse in i, The Life and Works o f Ibn Qutayba (B eiru t: A m e ric a n U n iversity Press, 1950); 'A b d al-Ḥ a m īd S in d al-Jundī , Ibn Qutayba: al-ālim al-adīb (C a iro : alM u ’assasa al-M iṣ riyya al-'Ā m m a li a l-T a ’līf w a a l-T a rja m a w a al-Ṭ ib ā 'a w a al-N ashr, 1963); G . L e c o m te , Ibn Qutayba, l'homme, son œuvre, ses idées (D a m a s, 1965), A d d e n d a , Arabica 13 (1966): 173–96 a n d ‘ L e s D isc ip le s d ire c ts d ’Ib n Q u ta y b a ’ , Arabica 10 (1963), 282–300; M uḥ am m ad Z a g h lū l S a llām , Ibn Qutayba (C a iro : D ār a l-M a 'ā rif, 1980); a n d J. S te tk e v y c h , ‘ Ib n Q u ta y b a w a m a b a 'd a h u : al-q aṣ īd a a l-'a ra b iy y a w a alaw ju h al-b alāg h iy y a ’ , tr. M u ṣ ṭ a fā R iyāḍ , F u sū l, 6:2 (1986): 71–8. B e tw e e n Ib n S a llā m ’s Ṭ abaqāt f u ḥ ūl al-shu' arā ’ a n d Ib n Q u ta y b a ’s Alshi'r wa al-shu'arā', a c o u p le o f w o rk s w e re k n o w n to h a v e b e e n c o m p ile d u n d e r th e sa m e title, fo r e x a m p le , th o s e o f A b ū Ḥ assā n alḤ asan b. 'U t h m ā n al-Ziyā d ī (d. 242/857) [Ib n a l-N ad ī m , Al-fihrist, 124], a n d D i'b il a l-K h u zā ' ī (d. 235/850) [Ib n al-N a d īm , Al-fihrist, 124]. B o th b o o k s a re n o lo n g e r e x ta n t. P arts o f D i'b il a l-K h u zā 'ī ’s w o rk , h o w ever, have b e e n r e c o n stm c te d fro m v ario u s so u rces b y M uḥ am m ad J a b b ū r a l-M u 'a y b id a n d p u b lis h e d as ‘N u ṣ ūṣ m in k itāb ṭ a b a q ā t als h u 'a r ā ’ li D i'b il a l-K h u zā 'ī ’ , Al-mawrid, 6:2 (1977): 111-4 2 . F ro m th e e x c e r p ts o f D i'b il’s w o rk , it is c le a r th a t Ib n Q u ta y b a ’s w o rk b e a rs v ery little r e s e m b la n c e to it, f o r D i'b il d iv id e s his w o rk a lo n g th e lin e s o f g e o g r a p h ic a l re g io n s , w h e r e a s Ib n Q u ta y b a fo llo w s m o r e o f a c h r o n o lo g ic a l o r d e r , th o u g h n o t always c o n siste n tly . Ib n Q u ta y b a , Al-shi'r wa al-shu'arā ’, 75–6. Ib id ., 779. Ib id ., 105. Ib id ., 110. Ib id ., 110–34. Ib id ., 110. Ib id ., 112. Ib id ., 113. Ib id ., 114. Ib id ., 127. Ib id ., 800. Ib id ., 801. Ib id ., 801. Ib id ., 801–2. Ib id ., 802–3.

125

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LITERARY CRITICISM IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC-ISLAM IC C U LTU R E 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

Ib id ., 805. Ib id . Ib id ., 807. Ib id ., 817. Ib id ., 825. Ib n Q u ta y b a ’s c o n c e p t o f jaw da h a s b e e n d iscu sse d e x te n s iv e ly in all w o rk s o n A r a b ic lite ra ry critic ism . It m a y b e s u m m e d u p in th e fo llo w in g : p o e tr y is r a n k e d a c c o r d in g to f o u r c a te g o rie s; w h a t is g o o d in b o th fo r m a n d c o n te n t ( al-lafẓ wa al-m a'nā), w h a t is g o o d in fo r m b u t n o t in c o n te n t, w h a t is g o o d in c o n te n t b u t n o t in fo rm , a n d w h a t is b a d in b o th fo r m a n d c o n te n t. 93. Ib n Q u ta y b a , Al-shi'r wa al-shu' ar ā ’, 95– 101. 94. Ib id ., 74–7. 95. Ib id ., 59. 96. Ib id ., 72–3. 97. Ib id ., 82. 98. Ib id . 99. Ib id ., 59. 100. J āb ir 'U ṣ fū r, ‘ Q ir ā ’a m u ḥ d a th a fī n ā q id q a d īm : Ib n a l-M u 'ta z z ’ , F u ṣ ūl: 11–23. 101. Ib id ., 100– 1. 102. Ib id . 103. Ib n M a n ẓ ūr c o m m e n te d o n A b ū N u w ā s ’ m e th o d s as follo w s: ‘ H e w o u ld c o m p o s e a p o e m a n d le a v e it f o r days, th e n h e w o u ld revise it, ta k in g o u t w h a t h e m u st a n d r e ta in in g o n ly th e b est. N o t e v e ry flig h t o f h is fa n c y p le a s e d h im . H is a p p e tite fo r p o e tr y c a m e w ith w in e a n d h e c o m p o s e d o n ly w h e n h e w as stim u la te d . H e w as o n e o f th o s e p o e ts w h o w e re n e it h e r slow n o r fast b u t in b e tw e e n ’ . S e e Ib n M a n ẓ r alM iṣ rī , Akhbār A b ī N uw ās, e d . M u ḥ a m m a d 'A b d al-Rasū l I b rā h īm (C a iro : 'A b b ā s a l-S h irb ī n ī , 1924), 55. 104. 'A b b ā s, T ārī kh al-naqd, 115. 105. F o r th e p o litic a l a n d r e lig io u s d ia le c tic s s u r r o u n d in g th e c o n c e p t o f ṭ ab', see 'U ṣ f ū r, ‘ Q ir ā ’ a m u ḥ d a th a ’ . 106. Ib n a l-M u 'ta zz, R asā ’il Ibn al-M u'tazz, c o m p , a n d e d . 'A b d a l-M u n 'im a l-K h afājī ( C a iro , 1964), 21. 107. E x tr a c te d fr o m v a rio u s s o u r c e s a n d p u b lis h e d as p a rt o f R asā ’il Ibn alM u'tazz. T h e c o m p le te te x t, h o w e v e r, is n o t e x ta n t. 108. 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh al-naqd, 118. 109. F o r a stu d y o f th is w o rk , se e S. A . B o n e b a k k e r , ‘R e fle c tio n s o n th e K itāb al-Badī ' o f Ib n a l-M u 'ta z z ’ , A tti del Terzo Congresso di Studi Arabi e Islamici (R a v ello , 1966): 191–209. 110. al-Jāḥ iẓ , Al-bayān, 4: 55–6. 111. A b ū al-Ḥ asan M u ḥ a m m a d b. A ḥ m a d Ib n Ṭ a b āṭ a b ā a l-'A la w ī , 'Iyār alshi'r, e d . 'A b d a l-'A zīz al-M ā n i' (al-R iyād: D ā r a l-'U lū m li al-Ṭ ib ā 'a w a al-N ash r, 1985), 13. 112. T h e w o rk s in th is g e n r e k n o w n fr o m th e p e r io d are: Sariqāt al-Kumayt min al-qur’ān wa ghayrihi (a l-K u m a y t’ s a p p r o p r ia tio n s fr o m th e Q u r ’ān a n d o t h e r w o rks) b y A b ū M u ḥ a m m a d 'A b d a llā h b. Y a ḥ y ā alK in ā sa (d. 207/822); Sariqāt al-shu'arā ’ wa mā ittafaqū 'alayhi (th e a p p r o p r ia tio n s o f p o e ts a n d in sta n c e s o f c o in c id e n c e ) b y Ib n al-S ikkī t (d. 240/855); Ighārat Kuthayyir 'alā al-shu'arā ’ (K u th a y y ir’s r a id in g o f p o e ts) b y a l-Z u b a y r b. B a k k ā r b. 'A b d a llā h a l-Q u ra sh ī (d. 256/870); Sariqāt al-shu'arā ’ (a p p r o p r ia tio n s o f p o e ts) b y A ḥ m a d b. A b ī Ṭ a y fūr

BEG IN N IN G S

113. 114. 115.

116. 117. 118. 119. 120.

121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134.

135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140.

141.

142. 143.

(d. 280/893); Sariqāt A bī N uw ās (A b ū N u w ā s’ s a p p ro p r ia tio n s ) b y M u h a lh il b. Y a m ū t; a n d Sariqāt al-shu'arā ’ ( a p p ro p ria tio n s o f p o e ts) b y Ib n a l-M u 'tazz. al-Ā m id ī , Al-m uwāzana, 1: 249–59; Ib n a l-M u 'ta zz, Rasā 'i l 36–7. Ib n a l-M u 'ta zz, R asā ’il, 24. U sā m a b. M u n q id h , Al-badī f ī naqd al-shi'r, e d . A ḥ m a d A ḥ m a d B a d a w ī a n d Ḥ ām id 'A b d al-M ajīd, rev. I b rā h īm M u ṣ ta fā (C a iro : Muṣ tafā alB āb ī al-Ḥ a la b ī , 1960), 8. Ib n Ṭ a b āṭ a b ā is th e s u b je c t o f a stu d y b y M u ḥ a m m a d b. 'A b d alR a ḥ m ān al-R abī ', Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā al-nāqid (al-R iyā d, 1979). Y ā q ū t, M u 'ja m al-udabā ’, 17: 144. Ib id . 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh al-naqd, 133. T h e r e a re tw o e d itio n s o f 'Iyār al-shi'r. It w as first e d ite d b y M u ḥ a m m a d Z a g h lū l S a llū m a n d Ṭ āh ā al-Ḥ āj i r ī in 1956. T h is e d itio n is said to b e fu ll o f e rro rs a n d m is re a d in g s. T h e n e w e d itio n is b y alM ān i', w h ic h is m y so u rce . al-R abī ', Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, 18. A lso k n o w n as A l-shi'r wa al-shu'arā ’. S ee al-M ā n i '’s in tr o d u c tio n to 'Iyār al-shi'r, 24. Y āq ū t, M u 'ja m al-udabā ’, 17: 143–4. Ib n Ṭ abāṭ abā, ' Iyār al-shi'r, 10. Ib id ., 5. Ib id ., 10. Ib id ., 11. Ib id ., 8. Ib id ., 12. Ib id ., 12 a n d 126. Ib id ., 12. Ib id ., 126. Ib id ., 12. Ib n Ṭ abāṭ abā’s th e o r y o f p o e tic c o m p o s itio n is b a s e d o n his c o n c e p tio n th a t p o e tr y is e sse n tia lly c o m p o s e d o f tw o parts: fo r m (lafẓ ) a n d c o n te n t (m a 'n ā). A c o m p o s itio n m a y b e c a lle d e x c e lle n t w h e n b o th e le m e n ts a re m e s h e d in to a fin e b le n d . S e e his d iscu ssio n o f al-abyāt al-mustakrahāt al-alfāẓ (67), al-abyā t allatī aghraqa qā ’ilu h a f ī ma'ān īhā (76), al-ash'ār al-muḥ kama (82) a n d al-ash'ār al-ghaththa ( 110). Ib n Ṭ a b ā ta b ā , 'Iyār al-shi'r, 12. Ib id . Ib id . Ib id ., 19. Ib id ., 126. Q u d ām a b. J a 'fa r , h is life a n d w o rk s a re th e s u b je c t o f th e fo llo w in g stud ies: I. Y. K ra ch k o vsk y , ‘ Q u d ā m a b. J a 'f a r ’ , B ulletin de l'Academie (Imperiale) des Sciences de St. Petersburg, 7 ser. (1930): 63–78; a n d B a d a w ī Ṭ a b ā n a, Q u d āma b. Ja'far wa al-naqd al-adabī (C a iro : M a k ta b a t alA n g lū al-M iṣ riyya, 1954). A b ū H a y y ān al-T aw ḥ īd ī , Al-baṣ ā’ir wa al-dhakhā ’ir, e d . I b rā h īm alK īlān ī (D a m a scu s: D ā r al-Fikr, 1961–4 ), 2: 117, 219, 260– 1, 273 a n d 619– 21. Ib n R a sh ī q, Al-'um da, 1: 8 a n d 134. Q u d ām a b. J a 'fa r , N aqd al-shi'r, e d . S. A . B o n e b a k k e r (L e id e n : E. J. B rill, 956), 1.

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LITERARY CRITICISM IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC-ISLAM IC C U LTU R E 144. Ib id ., 2. 145. Ib id ., 122–3. 146. T h is trea tise is lost, b u t Ib n a l-M u 'ta z z ’ s e p istle is e x ta n t a n d h a s b e e n p u b lis h e d . 147. S e e Y ā q ū t, M u 'ja m al-udabā', 17: 12. T h is w o rk is u n fo r tu n a te ly lost. 148. H e w as a lso a p o e t: se e a l-Q ifṭ ī, Al-m uḥ ammadū n, 230; a n d a l-T h a 'ā lib ī , Yatīmat al-dahr, e d . M u ḥ yi al-D ī n 'A b d al-Ḥ a m ī d (C a iro : a l-M ak tab a alT ijā riyya a l-K u b rā , 1956), 3: 108–9. 149. Ib n M u n q id h , Al-badī ' f ī naqd al-shi'r, 8. 150. A b ū H ilā l al-'Askarī ’ s K itāb al-ṣ in ā 'atayn is im p o r ta n t in th e h isto ry o f A r a b ic lite ra ry c ritic ism b e c a u s e fo r th e first tim e b o th p o e tr y a n d p ro se a re d is cu s se d u n d e r th e sa m e r u b r ic , th a t o f c ra ft (ṣ in ā 'a) in its A ris to te lia n sen se. T h e c o n c e p t th a t lite ra ry d is c o u rse , a n d sp e c ific a lly p o e try , is a c ra ft is n o t n ew . It w as a lre a d y p r o p o u n d e d b y Ib n S a llām a n d b y al-Jāḥ iẓ sh o rtly a fte r h im . In th is sen se, al-'Askarī ’s w o rk c o n tr ib u te s n o t h in g to th e c o n c e p tu a lis a tio n o f p o e try . I n d e e d , K itāb al-ṣ ina'atayn is g e n e r a lly r e g a r d e d as b e lo n g in g to th e re a lm o f r h e to r ic a n d as h a v in g little to c o n tr ib u te to th e fie ld o f lite ra ry c ritic ism ( 'A b b ā s, Tarīkh al-naqd, 355–7). S im ila rly , h is u se o f th e te rm naqd o ffe r s little n ew . A b u H ila l, h o w e v e r, m u st b e c r e d ite d w ith th e system atic a rtic u la tio n o f a n issu e th a t was p r e v a le n t a m o n g h is p re d e c e s so rs : th a t p o e tr y a n d p ro se c a n b e d iscu sse d as th e sa m e p h e n o m e n o n , th a t is, lite ra ry d is c o u r se (kalām). A b ū H ilā l ’ s c r ite r io n – al-balāgha – b a s e d o n w h ic h a lite ra ry c o m p o s itio n is ju d g e d , d o e s n o t d iffe r in e ss e n c e fr o m th e p r in c ip le u n d e r ly in g th e d is tin c tio n b e tw e e n g o o d (jayyid/ḥ asan) a n d b a d ( radī'/sayyī') c o m p o s itio n (A lṣ in ā ’atayn, 53 a n d 151). A c c o r d in g ly , a jahbadh is o n e w h o re c o g n is e s kalām balīgh (19 ), a p ro c e s s w h ic h co n sists o f th e r e c o g n itio n o f e rro rs (53) a n d s h o r tc o m in g s (168) o f lite ra ry d is c o u rse , a n d sp e c ific a lly p o e try . 151. F o r th e life a n d w o rk s o f A b ū H ilāl a l-'A sk a rī , see G . K a n a zi, ‘A b ū H ilāl al-'Askarī ’s a ttitu d e to w a rd s p o e tr y a n d p o e ts ', Journal o f Semitic Studies 20 (1975): 73–81; ‘ O r g a n ic u n ity in K itāb al-ṣ in ā 'atayn o f A b ū H ilā l al-'Askarī ’ , Semitics 3 (1973): 1– 17; a n d Studies in the K itāb alṣ in ā 'atayin o f A bū H ilā l al-'Askarī ( L e id e n : E. J. B rill, 1989). 152. Ib n Ḥ a zm , Al-taqrīb, 207. 153. Ib n R a sh īq, Al-'um da, 1: 16. 154. Ib n R a sh īq ’s w o rk is a lso k n o w n as K itāb al-'um da f ī ṣ in ā 'at al-shi'r in alS u y ūṭ i, Bughya, 1: 504 a n d a l-Q iftī , Inbāh, 1: 298. A l-Q iftī , h o w e v e r, a d d s wa naqdihi wa 'uyū bihi to th is title. It is k n o w n as Al-'um da f ī ma'rifat ṣ in ā 'at al-shi'r in Ib n K h a llik ā n (Wafayāt, 2: 85). 155. A lth o u g h Ib n R a sh īq ’s A l-'um da is fa r m o re c o m p r e h e n s iv e th a n th e o t h e r w o rk s, it c o n ta in s a la r g e se c tio n o n badī'. Al-'Askarī ’ s Alṣ in ā 'atayn stan d s o u t in th a t it d e a ls n o t o n ly w ith p o e tr y b u t a lso w ith p ro se . 156. B o th al-Ḥ ātim ī a n d al-'Askarī e x p r e s s th is in te n tio n in th e ir w o rks. S e e A b ū 'A ll M u Ḥ a m m a d b. al-Ḥ asan al-Ḥ ātim ī , Ḥ ilyat al-muḥ āḍ ara f ī ṣ ina'at al-shi'r, e d . J a 'f a r al-K attā n ī (B a g h d a d : D ā r al-R ashīd, 1979), 1: 124; a n d A b ū H ilāl al-'Askarī , K itāb al-ṣ in ā 'atayn: al-shi'r wa al-nathr; e d . M u fīd Q a m īḥ a (B e iru t: D ā r a l-K u tu b al-'Ilm iyya, 1984), 10. T h is in te n tio n , h o w e v e r, is n o t e x p lic it in Al-'um ada o r Al-badī '. 157. P r io r to al-K attā n ī ’ s e d itio n , S. A . B o n e b a k k e r a lso p u b lis h e d e x c e r p ts fr o m th e m a n u s crip t: M aterials fo r the History o f Arabic Rhetoric from the

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158. 159.

160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176.

Ḥ ilyat al-M uḥ āḍ ara o f Ḥ ātimī, Istitu to O r ie n ta le d e N a p o li, S u p p le ­ m en to n o . 4, A g li A n n a li, v o l. 35 (1975), fa s c ic o lo 3, N a p o li, 1975. al-Ḥ ātim ī , Ḥ ilyat al-muḥ āḍ ara, 1: 10. S u c h as tajnīs, taṭ bīq, isti'āra, ishāra, wahm, tashbīh, tablīgh, taṣ dīr, tashīm, taqsīm, taqrīb, tarṣ ī, tawshīḥ , muwāzana, muqābala, istiṭrāḍ , mumā thala,, mukāf a ’a, mubālagha, iltifāt a n d musāwah ( 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh al-naqd, 254). al-Ḥ a tim ī , H ilyat al-muḥ āḍ ara, 1: 130. Ib n M a n ẓ ūr, Li s ān al - arab (ḥ . ḍ . r.). Ib n Manẓ ūr, Lisān al-arab; a n d L a n e , Arabic-English Lexicon (ḥ . ḍ . r.). L a n e , Arabic-English Lexicon (ḥ . ḍ . r.). al-Ḥ ātim ī , Ḥ ilyat al-muḥ aḍ ara, 1: 123 a n d 2: 1. A b u 'A lī a l-M u ḥ assin b. 'A lī a l-T a n ū k h ī , Nishw ār al-muḥ ādara, ed . 'A b b ā d al-S h aljī (B e iru t: D ār Ṣ ād ir, 1971), 1: 7. B o n e b a k k e r , M aterials, 14. al-Ḥ ātim ī , Ḥ ilyat al-muḥ āḍ ara, 1: 195. Ib id ., 2: 1. Ib id ., 1: 190. Ib id ., 2: 76. Ib id ., 1: 58, a n d 2: 28 a n d 69. Ib id ., 1: 30. Ib id ., 1: 69. Ib id . 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh, 603. E d w a rd S aid , Beginnings: Intention and M ethod (N e w Y o rk: C o lu m b ia U n iv e rsity Press, 1985), xvi.

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Fanfare of Controversy Abū Tammām and al-Mutanabbī

I am the one in whose compositions the blind man peers, The one whose utterance causes the deaf to hear. I get my fill of sleep, unmindful of rebellious words, Whereas their burden keeps [other] creatures sleepless and at odds.1 al-Mutanabbī In a poem that he composed in praise of Sayf al-Dawla, al-Mutanabbī (303/ 916–354/965)’ aware that his poetry had created a stir among the elite circles, gloated with these lines which alluded to the debates over his artistry that were taking place during his lifetime. These debates, animated at times, passionate or vehement at others, followed him wherever he went – and he travelled the expanse of the Arabic-Islamic world – yielding considerable material all of which was devoted to the discussion of his poetic composition. When the dust settled somewhat in the following centuries, Yūsuf al-Badī'ī (d. 1073/1662) a Syrian man of letters, summed up the controversy over al-Mutanabbī in a book which he called Al-ṣ ubḥ almunbī 'an ḥ aythiyyat al-Mutanabbī (enlightening [others] of the standing of al-Mutanabbī). Interestingly, while speaking of al-Mutanabbī, al-Badī'ī often makes mention of the controversy that surrounded Abū Tammām (d. 231/845 or 232/846), whose poetry is often compared with that of alBuḥ turī (204/818–284/897). It seems that by the eleventh/seventeenth century there was a kind of consensus in literary circles that these three poets – Abū Tammām, al-Buḥ turī and al-Mutanabbī – were viewed as the most important representatives of Arabic poetic artistry, even though opinions regarding their poetry remained as varied as their critics.2 There is no denying that much of the controversies centred in Abū Tammām and al-Mutanabbī were motivated by interpersonal politics at the courts where they were active. But the continuation of the controversies beyond the lifespan of these poets points to the fact that the discussions on

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their artistry touched upon serious, important critical issues whose appli­ cation was not limited to their compositions, but extended to encompass the characteristics, artistic as well as moral, of all muḥ dath poetry. In addition to producing sizeable critical material, the discussions which emerged from the two controversies led to the crystallisation of what would become known as 'amūd al-shi'r al-'arabī in the fifth/eleventh century, a set of conventions that became normative in the composition of Arabic poetry until perhaps the beginning of the modern period in the twentieth century. These controversies clearly set the tone and direction for further discussions of poetry; in fact, they formed the two main cores of critical activity of the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries. The issues raised here and the discussions that ensued picked up the threads of the intellectual inquiries into poetry and its composition begun in the second/ eighth and third/ninth centuries, adding to them, developing them and consolidating them, even though these threads are not always easy to discern. This is due primarily to the nature of controversy, in that discuss­ ions born of any controversy are often expressions of sentiments derived from personal affection for or animosity towards a poet, not to mention literary taste, professional priorities and the dictates of courtly politics. Paradoxically, these are precisely the impulses that set in motion the major trends of medieval Arabic literary criticism, delineating its scope. T H E C O N T R O V E R SY O VER A B Ū TAM M ĀM (A L - Ṣ Ū L I AND A L -ĀM ID I )

When Qudāma declared his purpose in writing Naqd al-shi'r; he made two significant statements. He first stated that such a book was necessary because confusion reigned supreme in discussions of poetry. He made no reference whatsoever to the controversy over the poetry of Abū Tammām, who by then had been the centre of the literary, and even intellectual, community’s attention for almost a century. The only instance in which Abū Tammām is mentioned in Naqd al-shi'r is one in which a line of his poetry is given as an example of lack of harmony between meaning and rhyme ('uyūb i'tilāf al-ma'nā wa al-qāfiya).3 Qudāma stated secondly that people had fallen short of compiling a book on what he termed naqd al-shi'r. By this statement, and by a process of exclusion, Qudāma was dismissing all the works that had been produced during the controversy over Abū Tammām’s poetry, and all the works that may be termed literary criticism by his predecessors. Qudāma’s statement may be interpreted to mean that he was more interested in establishing a theoretical framework within which good poetry could be objectively distinguished from bad poetry, and accordingly that the controversy over Abū Tammām, and by extension the controversy over old and muḥ dath

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poetry, were not at issue for him. His conscious dismissal of these activities in this work deserves a closer examination, for elsewhere Qudāma partici­ pated in this controversy; he responded to Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s treatise on Maḥ āsin shi'r Abī Tammām wa masāwīhi in a separate treatise.4 Qudāma, therefore, must have been familiar with the works of al-Ṣ ūlī,5 who had compiled the authoritative anthology of Abū Tammām’s poetry. Al-Āmidī (d. 370/980) ,6on the other hand, was familiar with the works of both Qudāma and al-Ṣ ūlī (d. 255/868–335/946), and is reported to have written a treatise in response to Qudāma known as Kitāb al-radd 'alā Qudāma fī naqd al-shi'r (response to Qudāma b. Ja'far in Naqd al-shi'r)7 or Kitāb tabyīn ghalaṭ Qudāma b. Ja'far (on demonstration of the error of Qudāma b. Ja'far) ,8a work dedicated to Abū al-Fatḥ Ibn al-'Amīd in 365/976,9 which unfortunately has not survived. Al-Āmidī mentioned Qudāma only once in Al-muwāzana bayn shi'r Abī Tammām wa al-Buḥ turī (balanced comparison between the poetry of Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī) , when he contested Qudāma’s definition of al-mu'āzala.10 As for al-Ṣ ūlī, al-Āmidī made only one reference to his works, when he checked a rendition of a line of Abū Tammām’s poetry against al-Ṣ ūlī’s copy11 – clearly because alĀmidī’s position with regard to the poetry of Abū Tammām, explicit or implicit in both the form and content of Al-muwāzana, was exactly opposite to that of al-Ṣ ūlī.12 The dates of al-Ṣ ūlī and al-Āmidī’s works raise some curious questions as well, for why would al-Ṣ ūlī and al-Āmidī feel the need to address the prob­ lematics raised by Abū Tammām’s poetry a century after his death? And why would his poetry be juxtaposed to that of al-Buḥ turī and put in a framework of conflict when historical sources tell us that al-Buḥ turī, although his style was different from Abū Tammām’s, was in fact a student and admirer of Abū Tammām?13Why was Abū Tammām attacked when there are numerous accounts telling us that there were poets who admired his art?14 In Al-ḥ araka al-naqdiyya ḥ awl Abī Tammām (the critical movement surrounding Abū Tammām), Muḥ ammad al-Rabdāwī observes that during the lifetime of Abū Tammām, the poets’ criticism of his poetry was more prevalent than after his death.'5 Al-Rabdāwī explains that by the fourth/ tenth century, the poets had become more concerned with al-Mutanabbī, who was the centre of a new controversy. While al-Rabdāwī’s assessment of the situation is correct historically, one question remains to be answered: after the attention of the poets had shifted from Abū Tammām to alMutanabbī, why did al-Ṣ ūlī and al-Āmidī, for example, produce their major works on Abū Tammām in the fourth/tenth century? Al-Rabdāwī divides the critics of Abū Tam mām into three main categories: grammarians and lexicographers, kuttāb and poets. During the

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third/ninth century, grammarians and lexicographers, barring remarks dispersed in their works, did not make a major contribution to the discussion of Abū Tammām’s poetry. Ibn al-'Arabī’s comments on Abu Tammām, for example, were often dismissed because they were consi­ dered prejudiced. Al-Mubarrad’s (d. 285/898) opinions, preserved in Alkāmil and al-Ṣ ūlī’s various works, though favourable to Abū Tammām, did not add to the discussions of Abū Tammām’s poetry. Most of the kuttāb, like al-Ḥ asan b. Wahb, 'Awn b. Muḥ ammad, Muḥ am­ mad b. Sa'īd al-Raqqī and Muḥ ammad b. 'Abd al-Malik al-Zayyāt, under­ standably favoured Abū Tam m ām , for they were the object of his panegyrics. One exception was Ibrāhīm b. al-Mudabbir who, being a poet himself, had obvious reasons to attack Abū Tammām’s poetry.16 Similarly, other poets’ criticism of Abū Tammām stemmed mainly from jealousy, or rather, professional competitiveness.17 Di'bil al-Khuzā'ī, a poet contem­ porary of Abū Tammām, competed with the latter for the favours of alḤ asan b. Rajā’ who, unfortunately for Di'bil, was an admirer of Abū Tammām. It is reported in Kitāb al-aghānī that al-Ḥ asan b. Rajā’, though miserly, was generous towards Abū Tam m ām .18 The narrator of the account, Muḥ ammad b. Sa'd Abū 'Abdallāh al-Raqqī, then the kātib of alḤ asan b. Rajā’, said that he also awarded Abū Tammām 10,000 dirhams19 during the two months of Abū Tammām’s sojourn in Baghdad. At the court of al-Ḥ asan b. Rajā’, Di'bil came into a headlong confrontation with al-Jarjarā’ī’s group, Abū Tammām fans, over the poetry of Abū Tammām. When he was silenced (ufḥ ima), he reportedly said: ‘We are not denying the merits of this man, but you raise him above his position, prefer him to those who preceded him, and you attribute to him what he has appropriated’. In response, al-Jarjarā’ī’s group said to him: ‘His [meaning Abū Tammām’s] excellence has made you a fault-finder and reprover ( 'ā'ib wa 'ātib)'.2° On another occasion, and upon hearing some poems, Di'bil described their effects on him: ‘ [it feels] better than recovering [from an illness] and coming out of despair (aḥ sanu min 'āfiyatin wa ba'dayā’sin).’ As soon as he was informed that Abū Tammām was the composer of these poems, he quickly quipped: ‘Perhaps he appropriated them’.21 However, he was ready to acknowledge Abū Tammām’s superior skills after Abū Tammām had died. Upon hearing some poems by Abū Tammām, he said: ‘By God he excelled!’ and ‘May God have mercy on him! If he had given me something of his poetry I would have said he was the best poet (ash'ar al-nās)'. 22 Di'bil’s hostility towards Abū Tammām made Di'bil omit the latter from his Ṭ abaqāt al-shu'arā', a fact that even medieval writers noted.23 Di'bil’s hostility may be understood in the context of his professional, as well as

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personal, competition; for Abū Tammām almost monopolised the poetry market. Al-Iṣ bahānī reported that none of the poets was able to make a dirham when Abū Tammām was alive, and that when he died, they divided what he would have received among themselves.24This anecdote may be an exaggeration of reality; however, it not only conveys Abū Tam mām’s immense popularity but also explains why some, not necessarily all, poets had a keen interest in criticising him. Besides the poets, the transmitters of poetry (ruwāt al-sh'ir) were also engaged in lively discussions of Abū Tammām’s poetry. They brought into their discussion the poetry of al-Buḥ turī, which they used to contrast with Abū Tam mām’s: whereas Abū Tammām represented the epitome of muḥ dath poetry, al-Buḥ turī was perceived to embody the elements of traditional poetry. The difference in the styles of their poetry, called the old and the new, was the basis of the subsequent development of two critical trends: that which supported the old style and later developed the concept of 'amūd al-shi'r, and that which propagated the new badī' poetry. Taking sides in this controversy, however, was not motivated by aesthetic reasons alone; another factor also added fuel to the fire. Like the poets, transmitters of poetry, who were active in the third/ninth and fourth/ tenth centuries, were also competing for livelihood. Al-Āmidī has preserved in Al-muwāzana some excerpts from the works belonging to the third/ninth century on sariqāt, the originals of which are lost. We learn from Al-Āmidī of three names: Ibn al-Munajjim (d. 275/888) who, according to Al-Āmidī, wrote a work in which he picked out the sariqāt of both Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī; Ibn Abī Ṭ āhir (214/829–280/894) who compiled Sariqāt al-shu'arā’ (appropriations of poets) and Sariqāt alBuḥ turī min Abī Tammām (al-Buḥ turī’s appropriations from Abū Tammām);25 and Abū al-Ḍ iyā’ Bishr b. Yaḥ yā who also compiled Sariqāt alBuḥ turī min Abī Tammām (al-Buḥ turī’s appropriations from Abū Tammām). Historical sources have also preserved the titles of works of a similar type from the fourth/tenth century. In addition to al-Ṣ ūlī and alĀmidī’s works, which will be discussed in detail, we learn that Ibn 'Ammār (d. 314/926 or 315/927 or 319/931), known to have made anthologies of the poetry of Ibn al-Rūmī, Abū Nuwās and Abū al-'Atāhiya,26 compiled Kitāb akḥ tā' Abī Tammām (Abū Tammām’s errors), to which Al-Āmidī responded in a separate treatise known as Al-radd 'alā Ibn 'Ammārf īmā khaṭṭa’a f īhi Abā Tammām (response to Ibn 'Ammār with regard to what he had found fault with in [the poetry of] Abū Tammām). Although these figures were discussed by al-Rabdāwī under the rubric of kuttāb, all three of them were known as transmitters of poetry. Al-Ṣ ūlī and Ibn 'Ammār were too well known as transmitters of poetry to need further

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documentation. Al-Āmidī was known to have worked as a kātib for Abū Ja'far Hārūn b. Muḥ ammad al-Ḍ abbī27 and Abū Ja'far b. 'Abd al-Wāḥ id alHāshimī, the Basran judge,28 and as a warrāq (copyist) in Baghdad known for his beautiful calligraphy. His employment as a scribe and his profession as a copyist, however, did not exclude him from being a professional transmitter of poetry as well; in fact, there is ample evidence in the sources that support this claim. Al-Qiftī, for example, mentions that ‘he became the leading figure in the transmission of ancient poetry and of accounts concerning it in al-Baṣ ra when he was at the end of his life (intahat riwāt alshi'r al-qadīm wa al-akhbar fī ākhir 'umrihi bi al-baṣ ra ilayhi).’29 Yāqūt further remarks that he excelled at both knowledge of poetry and its transmission (jayyid al-dirāya wa al-riwāya) .30 Moreover, there is evidence that Al-Āmidī was already a professional rāwī from as early as 317/929. In Al-muwāzana, alAmidī says the following while discussing the poetry of Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī: I examined the poetry of Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī in the year 317 and I selected what I deemed good, and picked out from it good samples (maḥ āsin). I have since then examined their poetry over the years. Every time, I added from al-Buḥ turī’s poetry items I had not selected before. I do not recall that I have added more than thirty lines to what I had originally selected from Abū Tammām’s poetry.31 The significance of identifying this group as professional transmitters of poetry is twofold: it establishes the context for and reveals the underlying purposes of the controversy. In his introduction to Dīwān Abī Tammām, Muḥ ammad Abduh 'Azzām points out that these transmitters (including al-Ṣ ulī, Al-Āmidī, al-Marzūqī and al-Khaṭ īb al-Tabrī zī), who not only transmitted poetry but also took it upon themselves to explain this poetry, often attacked one another.32 'Azzām and Muḥ ammad 'Alī Abū Ḥ amda33 see in this bickering the rivalry between the Basran school represented by al-Ṣ ūlī, al-Iṣ bahānī and al-Marzūbānī, and the Kufan-turned-Baghdadi school represented by Abū Mūsā al-Ḥ āmid (d. 305/917), Abū Isḥ āq al-Zajjāj (d. 310/922), al-Akhfash (d. 315/927) and al-Āmidī34who, 'Azzām observes, used Abū Tammām as a subject for debate and antagonism (khuṣ ūma).35Almuwāzana, written in 355/984, was aimed at the transmitters of poetry; for Al-Āmidī’s contention is that the controversy over Abū Tammām and alBuḥ turī’s poetry was occasioned by the activities of the ruwāt ash'ar almuta ’akhkhirīn. And the purpose of all this is best illustrated by an account found in Al-aghānī. In Abū Tammām’s biography, al-Iṣ bahānī observes the following:

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In our time, there are people who are over zealous about his [that is, Abū Tammām’s] poetry. They so overvalue him that they prefer him to any poet who preceded him or came after him. There are others who single out bad (radī') compositions in his poetry. They make these known to the people while concealing his merits (maḥ āsin), so that people who are ignorant of their true intentions may say: ‘They must have attained such a high level of learning and distinction by excellent education (adab f āḍ il) and penetrating intellect (' ilm thāqib)'. This is how many people make a living these days. They try to attain prestige by slandering people and exposing their shortcomings.36 In a comment on the success of his collection of Abū Nuwās’s poetry (Dīwān Abī Nuwās), al-Ṣ ūlī said the following about anthologies compiled by others: ‘A copy of these were sold for a dinar before mine was produced (ukhrija), but are now sold for only a few dirhams.’37 More important, he hoped that they would eventually disappear from the market.38 The underlying purpose of selection ikhtiyār, as used by al-Ṣ ūlī for example, is the making of anthologies. In fact, their livelihood depended on the marketability of their merchandise, as was already known during the time of Khalaf al-Aḥ mar. Al-Ḥ ātimī has recorded the following anecdote in Ḥ ilyat al-muḥ āḍ ara: Al-Mubarrad reportedly said: Khalaf al-Aḥ mar had an amazing memory and was skilful (ḥ asan al-taṣ arruf ) in poetic styles (asālib alshi'r). Despite his ability and his extensive knowledge, he was considered a poet of little output (muqillan) because he used to attribute his poetry to the ancient poets such as Abū Du'ād, alShanfara, Ta’abbaṭ ā Sharrā and even poets who were not famous. He came to al-Kufa and dictated to the people of al-Kufa poetry of Abū Du'ād, attributing to him much that he had not said, and for that he received abundant gifts (al-birr al-jazīl). He then repented, returned to them and told them what he had done, namely, attributing to poets poetry they had not composed. He told them that much of what he had attributed to Abū Du'ād was not of his composition; rather, he had attributed to him what he (Khalaf) himself had composed.39 Al-Ṣ ūlī’s defence of Abū Tammām, then, was not completely free of practical considerations, for he had to prove the superiority of his product, and by extension the superiority of the subject of his product – Abū Tammām – to sell his merchandise better. Similarly, Al-Āmidī’s purpose in

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writing Al-muwāzana was to establish the principles for an authoritative rāwī, which in turn led to the discussion of the authoritative knowledge of poetry; for only by establishing his credibility as an expert on poetry would he be able to establish his credibility as the authoritative rāwī whose merchandise was to be sought after. He begins his work with a challenge to ruwāt ash'ār al-'arab,40equates these transmitters consistently with 'ulamā’ bi al-shi'r,41and ends with a ‘blanket’ selection of the poetry of Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī, which is intended to be comprehensive (taqa'f īhi al-iḥ āṭ a) and which he ‘would arrange in alphabetical order [of rhymes] so that it would be more accessible [to the reader] and more easily remembered’.42 This may partially explain why the two most important works known to us on Abū Tammām, al-Ṣ ūlī’s Akhbār Abī Tammām (accounts of Abū Tammām) and al-Āmidī’s Al-muwāzana, were produced in the fourth/ tenth century, during which the attention of the poets turned to alMutanabbī. The works of al-Ṣ ūlī, which Qudāma dismissed as not pertinent to naqd al-shi'r, and of al-Āmidī, become more meaningful when interpreted within the context of the preoccupation of their authors. Qudāma’s disdain for this kind of work, however, did not prevent the transmitters of poetry, such as al-Ṣ ūlī and al-Āmidī, from using the terms naqd al-shi'r, al-'ilm bi al-shi'r and ṣ ina'at al-shi'r in their works. Their use of these terms, and their expansion of their meanings, in fact, would help to establish them, both as terms and as practices, in the Arabic literary tradition. In Abū Tammām’s biography, Ibn Khallikān has preserved the following anecdote: It was reported that Yaḥ yā b. 'Alī said: Muḥ ammad b. Mihrawayhi preferred Di'bil to Abū Tammām, so I asked him, ‘Why do you deem him superior?’ His answer did not convince me. I then cited excellent poems (maḥ āsin) by both Abū Tammām and Di'bil. Abū Tammām’s excellent poems were more numerous and better, and Di'bil’s inferior compositions (masāwī ) were greater and worse. But he was obstinate in his opinion. I then recited the following lines to him: O, Abū Ja'far, do you make judgements on poetry while you have not the tools of the judges? Indeed the naqd of a dīnār is difficult except to the moneychanger; how much more so is naqd al-kalām, We have seen that in poetry you do not distinguish between the spirits and the bodies, Indeed the one who knows the antique from the new when the sword is drawn is a blacksmith,

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Do not measure Di'bil against Ḥ abīb, for the pad on a camel’s foot is not its hump.43 This anecdote summarises the critical activities that were surrounding a major poet like Abū Tammām in the literary, perhaps even intellectual, circles during the first half of the fourth/tenth century. Although this is not the only anecdote that has come down to us with regard to the controversy over the poetry of Abū Tammām,44 it is of particular interest here. The few lines that Yaḥ yā b. 'Alī composed impromptu provide us with specific information about the kind of activity that both Yaḥ yā b. 'Alī and Mihrawayhi thought they were performing when they compared Abū Tammām’s and Di'bil’s merits and shortcomings. According to Yaḥ yā b. 'Alī, this is precisely naqd al-kalām, of which the analogy is naqd al-dīnār. According to this anecdote, naqd al-kalām means making a judgement on poetry (an taḥ kumf ī al-ash'ār), and not merely by intuition but according to a set of skills, which he calls tools (ālāt al-ḥ ukkām), that must be at one’s disposal. Naqd al-kalām here specifically refers to comparing two poets, or rather their merits and shortcomings (maḥ āsin wa 'uyūb). Al-Ṣ ūlī records similar anecdotes in which specific reference is made to this kind of critical activity, in the various akhbār books he has compiled on poets, including Abū Nuwās,45 al-Buḥ turī, Abū Tammām, Ibn Harama,46Isḥ āq al-Mawṣ ilī, alSayyid al-Ḥ imyarī47 and the poets contained in Kitāb al-shu'arā’ (book of poets) .48His letter to Muzāḥ im b. Fātik, which constitutes the introduction to Akhbār Abī Tammām,49 is of particular importance. This letter is both unique and significant; unique because it is the only introduction to any of his akhbār books in which his partiality to the poet is evident, and significant because it is the only work in which he places a great deal of emphasis on naqd al-kalām. In Akhbār al-Buḥ turī (accounts of al-Buḥ turī) and Akhbār al-shu'arā' (accounts of poets), no such introduction is found. This introduction is the document on the basis of which later scholars noted his partiality to Abū Tammām. And his partiality to Abū Tammām is precisely the reason behind his discussion of 'ilm al-shi'r and naqd al-shi'r and his definition of the necessary qualifications for the critic (nāqid).50 'Ilm al-shi'r51 and al-'ilm bi al-shi'r,52 occurring in the forms of adjectives derived from it – a'lam al-nās bi al-shi'r,53 ālim bi al-shi'r and al-'ulamā ’ bi alshi'r54 – more frequently than naqd and its derivatives, is attributed, affirma­ tively or negatively, to a group of people engaged in discussion of poetry: I wish Abū Tammām would be dealt with by people who are res­ pected in 'ilm al-shi'r and who possess good enough knowledge to find fault with his poetry; but he is dealt with by people who do not

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know what is good (in poetry), and who could only claim to disapprove of the bad.55 Al-Ṣ ūlī identifies two groups of people who criticised Abū Tammām’s poetry: those who were not versed in 'ilm al-shi'r;56 and those who deliberately found fault with his poetry for personal reasons.57 In the discussion of the first group, he states that none of those versed in 'ilm alshi'rwould fail to appreciate Abū Tammām’s poetry. 'Ilm al-shi'r to al-Ṣ ūlī is a necessary professional qualification, as his work demonstrates, ‘so that [unqualified] people would not dare to make a judgement on poets, on their diction, and on what is good or bad respecting them’.58 'Ilm al-shi'r is not grammar, lexicography59 or prosody;60 rather, it means a certain skill and knowledge grounded in memorisation of and familiarity with poetry in the sense that al-Aṣ ma'ī and other Ḥ adīth scholars meant by dirāya wa riwāya. The person who professes a favourable opinion with regard to a line of Abū Tammām’s poetry is described as one who possesses dirāya. This knowledge serves as the basis for judging the excellence or deficiency of poetry, not to mention its composition, as these juxtapositions indicate: 'ilm al-shi'r to tamyīz al-kalām minhu (min al-shi'r), and al-muqaddamf ī 'ilm alshi'r wa tamyīz al-kalām minhu to al-kāmil min ahl al-naẓ mf īhi.61 Similarly, alṢ ūlī often pairs al-nuqqād bi al-shi'r with al-'ulamā' bi al-shi'r,62 and by doing so in three anecdotes related in Akhbār al-Buḥ turī63 and Akhbār A bī Nuwās (accounts of Abū Nuwās), Ḥ usayn rightly observes, al-Ṣ ūlī offsets i' lm al-shi'r with naqdand 'ulamā’ with nuqqād.64 In the first, al-Ṣ ūlī, in his rendition of a conversation that 'Alī b. al'Abbās had with al-Buḥ turī, juxtaposes nāqid to mumayyiz, and naqd to tamyīz, just as he juxtaposes 'ilm al-shi'r to tamyīz al-kalām elsewhere: 'Alī b. al-'Abbās related to me the following: ‘I ran into al-Buḥ turī one day with a notebook in my hand. He said: “What is this?” I said: “The poetry of al-Shanfara.” He said: “Where are you going?” I said: “To Abū al-'Abbās Tha'lab.” He said: “I met this Abū al-'Abbās of yours a few days ago at Ibn Thawāba’s. I did not find him to be a nāqid of poetry or a mumayyiz of diction. He was admiring something he had recited, which to me was not the best of poetry.” I said: “As for its naqd and tamyīz, that is another craft (ṣ inā'a) ”.’65 In the second, found in al-Ṣ ūlī’s discussion of Abū Tammām’s poetry while examining al-Akhṭal’s poetry, naqd is explicitly juxtaposed to 'ilm and tamyīz: I do not think that the poetry of Abū Tammām, being good and having people’s consensus on that, will suffer any loss if people attack it. I excuse a certain group of eminent scholars ('ulamā'

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mutaqaddimīn) because they possess no ' ilm in matters related to poetry, its naqd, and its tamyīz. I know this is not their craft. In slandering Abū Tammām during their time and his time, have they not reduced their own stature (waḍ a'ū anfusahum minhu)? People look upon them as if they were delirious.66 And in the third, which concerns Abū Tammām’s knowledge of poetry, alṢ ūlī states that Abū Tammām understood poetry and that he used to yanqud it and express approval of what is good in it even though it does not correspond to his style.67 Naqd, though not explicitly defined by al-Ṣ ūlī, may be inferred to mean a certain critical judgement that involves knowledge of poetry and ability to distinguish between what is good and bad, while 'ilm al-shi'r encompasses both naqd and tamyīz and means additionally the know-how of composing poetry. Whether we call the critical activity 'ilm or naqd, it entails also recognising sariqāt, which is deemed by al-Ṣ ūlī to be the function of the nuqqād and 'ulamā'. In a discussion of Abū Tammām’s appropriations, alṢ ūlī mentions that al-nuqqād li al-shi'r and al-'ulamā’ bihi have prescribed the manner in which appropriations should be judged, and who should take credit for originality.68 'Ilm bi al-shi'r; as well as naqd al-shi'r as used by alṢ ūlī,69 means also making a judgement as to who is the originator of the idea and who the borrower. Al-Ṣ ūlī’s emphasis on tamyīz is understandable; his standing as a transmitter of the poetry of Abū Tammām, irrespective of his admiration for the poet, depended on his ability to recognise poetry worthy of preservation. Al-Āmidī argues similarly for the necessary qualifications of professionals in his trade and therefore for his merchandise. Al-muwāzana, the first book in which an explicit juxtaposition of the poetry of Abū Tammām with that of al-Buḥ turī occurs, is in effect a lengthy treatise on the art of transmission of poetry. Al-Āmidī’s partiality to al-Buḥ turī and prejudice against Abū Tammām, which were long discussed by medieval biographers,70 genuine as they were, may also be considered a ploy to get his points across. Al-Āmidī uses al-Buḥ turī as a yardstick – al-Buḥ turī himself did not seem to regard his poetry as opposed to that of Abū Tammām – to discredit Abū Tammām; for the real issue for al-Āmidī was not al-Buḥ turī’s poetry but Abū Tammām’s. Al-Āmidī’s conceptualisation of both 'ilm al-shi'r and naqd al-shi'r emerges within the context of his polarising treatment of Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī, and is manifest in his explicit reference to and use of the terms 'ilm al-shi'r and naqd al-shi'r, and in the issues which he actually discusses within the framework of Almuwāzana. Slightly different from al-Ṣ ūlī but quite similar to Qudāma, who

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considers naqd al-shi'r part of al-'ilm bi al-shi'r; al-Āmidī’s mention of naqd alshi'r occurs within the context of his discussion of ' ilm bi al-shi'r. Al-'ilm bi al-shi'r; according to al-Āmidī, is equivalent to the art of transmission of poetry, involving many theoretical and practical issues that are also the concern of literary criticism. Although al-Āmidī does not explicitly define what he means by al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, he constantly pairs ' ilm bi al-shi'r with riwāyat al-shi'r; and al-'ulamā bi al-shi'r with ruwāt al-shi'r. AlĀmidī’s only discussion of ' ilm bi al-shi'r occurs after a long discussion of the poetry of Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī. The strategic position of the section on al-'ilm bi al-sh'ir is eye-catching. It is positioned after the section on shortcomings (masāwī') of their poetry and before the section on their merits (maḥ āsin). Can we thus assume that al-'ilm bi al-shi'r is the knowledge of the shortcomings, his theoretical discussion of them serving to confirm his position as an authority on the matter? The discussion of the technical issues raised by al-Āmidī in the section preceding the exposé of al-'ilm bi al-shi'r is found in two places: in his statement regarding his methodology; and in the actual analysis of these issues within the overall framework of the book. In the former, he states that he will discuss the main characteristics of the poetry of Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī: the defects (masāwī ), including sariqāt, errors, and inferior compositions (sāqit) of their poetry. This section will then be followed by a comparison (muwāzana) between their poetry, a selection of their poems that are deemed unparalleled, a section on simile, and finally a ‘blanket’ selection of their poems (ikhtiyār mujarrad). In practice, however, only the section on defects precedes the theoretical section on al-'ilm bi al-shi'r. As for the merits (maḥ āsin), they are discussed after the section on al-'ilm bi alshi'r, in a section entitled faḍ l. The three elements deemed to be defects (masāwī') are sariqāt, errors and inferior compositions. The sariqāt are easily identifiable; they comprise all that each poet appropriated from others and incorporated into his own poetry. Sariqāt, according to al-Āmidī, are of two kinds: sariqāt al-ma'ānī (meaning) and sariqāt al-alfāẓ (wording), the former deemed more deplorable than the latter.71 The errors usually refer to departures from the customary use of the language.72 As for inferior compositions, they com­ prise lines the meanings of which are ambiguous. Ambiguity, according to al-Āmidī, is caused by Abū Tammām’s indulgent and infelicitous explora­ tion of the badī ' artifices.73 Lines suffering from this defect are further divided by al-Āmidī into: repulsive metaphor (qabīḥ al-isti'ārāt) ,74repugnant paronomasia (qabīḥ al-tajnīs)15 and unpleasant antithesis (ma yustkrah min al-mutābāq). 76 However, the compositions condemned are not confined to lines containing complex badi'features; rather, they might suffer from any

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of the following defects: contemptible diction (al-radhīl min alfāẓ ihi); inferior ideas (al-sāqiṭ min ma'anīhi); unpleasant and complicated organisa­ tion and arrangement (al-mustkrah al-muta'aqqid min nasjihi wa naẓ mihi);77 odd diction and unpleasant wording (ḥ ushī al-kalām wa mā yustkrah min alalfāẓ );78not to mention the defects in metre and rhyme (al-ẓ iḥ āf and iḍ tirāb al-wazn). 79 Other prosodic defects, such as al-iqwā', al-ikfā', al-sinād and alītā', are mentioned but not discussed.80 Al-Āmidī analyses al-Buḥ turī's poetry in the same manner, though the section on al-Buḥ turī is considerably shorter. This section comprises alBuḥ turī's appropriations (sariqāt al-Buḥ turī),81 what al-Buḥ turī appropriated from Abū Tammām especially (mā akhadhahu al-Buḥ turī min ma'anī Abī Tammām khāṣ ṣ atan),82al-Buḥ turī's errors in meanings (akhṭ ā’ al-Buḥ turī min al-ma'ānī) ,83 and defective metres (fī iḍ ṭ irāb al-wazn) in his poetry.84 In addition to the sections parallel to those on Abū Tammām, al-Āmidī adds a section in which he refutes what others have claimed to be defects in alBuḥ turī's poetry (wa hādhā mā 'ība bihi al-Buḥ turī wa laysa bi 'ayb).85 It is possible to infer that al-Āmidī's conception of al-'ilm bi al-shi'r is the knowledge of all the above issues, a knowledge that qualifies one first to make judgements on poetry, and on the basis of such judgements to decide the superiority of one poet over another, as he demonstrates in the latter part of Al-muwāzana. This interpretation of al-Āmidī's conception of al-'ilm bi al-sh'ir finds support in the passage preceding his mention of the term al'ilm bi al-shi'r. Should you seek the reasons which justified my preference, I would point to the preceding sections, in which my knowledge made it possible for me to describe their styles and specify their defects (masāwī'), which consist of stealing meanings from others and attributing them to themselves (intiḥ āl), of their faulty ideas and diction, of their failures in antithesis (ṭibāq), paronomasia (tajnīs) and metaphor (istiā ' r a ), and of their inferior composition and disarranged metre (radā ’at al-naẓ m and iḍ ṭ irāb al-wazn).86 These are the criteria which al-Āmidī uses to set good poetry apart from bad without having actually to define what good poetry is. Good poetry is recognised by a process of elimination of that which is defective. The purpose of 'ilm bi al-shi'r further to distinguish good poetry from the even better and bad from the even worse (arfa'uhu wa ad wa'uhu), 87 as well as to provide an explanation of the reasons for such judgements.88 If al-'ilm bi al-shi'r is the knowledge of these criteria, then what is naqd alshi'r according to al-Āmidī? The term naqd appears only twice in Almuwāzana: first, in the context of his discussion of two lines of poetry by al-

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Buḥ turī ; and second, in the context of his discussion of al-'ilm bi al-shi'r. In the first instance, he responds to the claims made by critics of al-Buḥ turī that the poet committed an error. Al-Āmidī defends al-Buḥ turī by saying that even if there was an error, this was offset by the excellence of his composition, the evenness of the texture of his poetry (jawdat naẓ mihi and istiwā’ nasjihi), the appropriateness of the words to the content (wuqū' alfāẓ ihi īf mawāqi'ihā), and the fact that his meanings were justifiable in naqd and blend well into the form (ma'ānīhi taṣ iḥ ḥ fī al-naqd wa takhluṣ ma' al-sabk). By contrast, Abū Tammām’s poetry is rejected as spurious under examination and inspection (yatabahraj shi'ruhu 'ind al-taftīsh wa al-baḥ th), his ideas proving erroneous during explication and elucidation (wa la taṣ ṣ iḥ ḥ ma'ānīhi 'alā al-tafsīr wa al-sharḥ ).89Three things are relevant to the use of naqd here: it is used with the verb ṣ aḥ ḥ a (to be correct or straight); it is parallel to taftīsh and baḥ th; and it is used in connection with the discussion of ma'ānī. To sum up, the word is used to mean examination of the text in order to determine whether the meaning is correct, sound, or possibly straight. In the second instance, in his discussion of the criteria of good poetry and why a certain poet deserves esteem, he says: Examine the poems of these two (Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī) and reflect on the reasons for your esteem for one over the other. This activity is the closest means to your knowing how you stand in respect of 'ilm al-shi'r and its naqd (fa hādhā al-bāb aqrab al-ashyā' laka ilā an ta'lam ḥ ālaka fī al-'ilm bi al-shi'r wa naqdihi).90 Tempting as it may be to think of naqd as equivalent to al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, they are in reality paired only in this instance, while al-'ilm bi al-shi'r is used consistently throughout the book. It is perhaps, then, more reasonable to consider naqd here as more immediately relevant to the process termed by Al-Āmidī as tafḍ īl; preference. Doubtless, the criteria involved in making preferential judgements may be precisely those of al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, but it is perhaps not too hair-splitting to say that while al-'ilm bi al-shi'r means the knowledge of the criteria of tafḍ īl, naqd denotes the actual process of arriving at this judgement. This argument in itself has no direct bearing on the definition of the field, but it has important implications in the use of the word naqd to designate a field within the parameters of which poetry may be discussed. Unlike 'ilm bi al-shi'r, the word does not imply fully the knowledge, and perhaps scholarship, involved in the process of making a critical judgement; rather, it denotes the actual judgement. This perhaps explains why scholars of the third/ninth, fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries preferred to use 'ālim bi al-shi'r, 'ulamā bi al-shi'r and ahl al-'ilm bi

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al-shi'r. It seems that al-Āmidī’s forceful argument for al-'ilm bi al-shi'r had taken root during the latter half of the fourth/tenth century, for ever since then no argument of the same kind was deemed necessary. As a matter of fact, these terms were used consistently in works of the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, together with the term naqd, which would gain further currency in the works surrounding al-Mutanabbī, and slowly replaced al-'ilm bi al-shi'r and ' ilm al-shi'r. From the evidence in later sources, it is further possible to conclude that the meaning of the terms al'ilm bi al-shi'r and naqd had already become quite stable by the time of alĀmidī and al-Marzubānī (d. 374/984). Al-Marzubānī, although a student of al-Ṣ ūlī’s, did not participate in the controversy over the poetry of Abū Tammām; he rather concentrated on collecting as comprehensively as possible material relevant to the discussion of poetry. A rāwiya91 and prolific compiler, al-Marzubānī compiled many works on poetry, including Al-muwashshah (the adorned [book])and a number of other titles that are sadly lost, making it impossible to assess fully alMarzubānī’s contribution to the definition of the terms used to designate the field, not to mention the field itself. Al-mufīd (the beneficial [book]) and Kitāb al-shi'r (the book of poetry), two of these lost works, may have been pertinent to the discussion of the literary critics and their practices in medieval Arabic-Islamic society, in addition to Al-muwashshaḥ , which is fortunately available. Although al-Marzubānī’s work, Al-muwashshaḥ , falls under the rubric of what Al-Āmidī and al-Ṣ ūlī would term al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, al-Marzubānī felt no need to discuss the matter: the term al-'ilm bi al-sh'ir does not appear in this work, though its derivatives are used to designate those who possessed special knowledge of poetry. They appear in various places in this book: al-'ulamā ’ bi al-shi'r,92 ahl al-'ilm bi al-shi'r,93 ahl al-'ilm,94 and a'lam al-nās bi al-shi'r.95The roles of those so designated do not differ from those delineated in Al-muwāzana. They range from the one who decides who is a better poet than the other96 to the one who discusses the main themes of poetry.97 On one occasion, al-'ilm bi al-shi'r is offset with naqd and riwāya (kāna a'lam al-nāsi bi al-shi'r wa anqadahum lahu wa aḥ san alruwḥ t).98Naqd, however, appears in three places. In one anecdote, al-Marzubānī recounts al-Walīd b. 'Abd al-Malik’s disagreement with his brother Maslama over two poems, one by al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī and the other by Imru’ al-Qays. The two brothers are not able to agree on which of the following poems is better (ajwad): al-Nābigha’s Kilīnī li hammin, which al-Walīd favours, or Imru’ al-Qays’ Wa laylin ka-mawji ‘l-baḥ ri, which Maslama deems better. At the end of a long discussion of why Imru’ al-Qays’ lines are superior to those of al-Nābigha, al-Marzubānī says the following about Imru’ al-Qays’ lines: 'T o the umarā ’ al-kalām wa al-

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ḥ udhdhāq bi naqd al-shi'r wa tamyīzihi, there is only one blameworthy (mu'āb) thing in [these lines]’. He then explains that the line fa qultu lahu lamma tamaṭ ṭ ābi ṣ ulbihi (I said to him when mounted his back) did not constitute an independent unit, for he did not explain what he intended in qultu lahu (I said to him) in it, but in the following line." What is clear from the above passage is that naqd is tamyīz and that in the present situation it specifically means to identify shortcomings in any poetic composition. In another anecdote, al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī reportedly said to Ḥ assān b. Thābit100on two lines of his poetry, ‘you are a poet, but you reduced the number of your swords [referring to lana al-jafanāt al-ghurr, jafanāt being in a plural pattern that denotes small numbers], and you boasted of whom you gave birth to, not of who gave birth to you’. Al-Marzubānī then records al-Ṣ ūlī’s remark on al-Nābigha’s comment, ‘look at the sublime naqd implied in al-Nābigha’s pure diction and the elegant texture (dībāja) of his poetry.’ Al-Nābigha’s naqd is based on two considerations: one relating to lexicography and the other to conventional meaning. Naqd is used here to denote recognising errors. Al-Marzubānī would affirm that the error101 committed by Ḥ assān b. Thābit was inexcusable according to madhhab nuqqād al-shi'r. The most revealing anecdote related by al-Marzubānī, however, is the one which concerns al-Akhfash and his discussion of Jarīr’s satire of alFarazdaq, where al-Marzubānī uses a series of adjectives to qualify alAkhfash. He says in a parenthetical clause (jumla i'tirādiyya) that al-Akfash, a renowned grammarian and lexicographer, was a'lam al-nās bi al-shi'r wa anqaduhum lahu wa aḥ san al-ruwāt dīnan wa thiqatan (of all people the most highly qualified in al-'ilm bi al-shi'r and its naqd, and the most pious and reliable of transmitters).102This statement brings together the conclusions we have reached concerning the efforts made by both Al-Āmidī and al-Ṣ ulī. By juxtaposing these three adjectival phrases with one another first, and by leaving these phrases without elaboration, barring the fact that al-Akhfash was known to be a grammarian and lexicographer, he made a more precise interpretation for each phrase, be it in this specific instance or in the book at large, virtually impossible. No line between al-'ilm bi al-shi'r and naqd alshi'r can be drawn. Al-Marzubānī’s 'ulamā ’ bi al-shi'r and nuqqād al-shi'r all seem to indicate in one way or another ruwāt al-shi'r. Like al-Ṣ ūlī and al-Āmidī, al-Marzubānī was primarily a rāwiya, and it is to the ruwāh that he ascribed the authority to judge poetry. He quoted ruwāt al-shi'r as authorities on poetic judgement in more instances than can easily be counted. Suffice it to say that at a certain point he mentioned that the ruwāh used to correct the poetry of the ancients (fa qad kānat al-ruwāh qadīman tuṣ liḥ min ash'ār al-qudamā') . The function that he saw for ruwāt al-

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shi'r is precisely that which Qudāma ascribed to the nāqid. Like al-Ṣ ūlī and al-Āmidī, al-Marzubānī’s preoccupation with the craft of his profession as a transmitter is perhaps the reason behind the absence of any discussion of al-Mutanabbī (303/916–354/965), who created another storm in the literary circles of the fourth-century Islamic empire, a storm that would continue to rage through to the twentieth century. Although al-Marzubānī did not explicitly discuss the qualifications of these 'ulamā', nuqqād and ruwāh, it is clear from the topics contained in Almuwashshaḥ that they do not differ from what al-Āmidī had established, the essence of which is picking out the defects in poetry, as indicated by the full title of the book (ma’ākhidh al-'ulamā ’ 'alā al-shu'arā’, meaning the faults that the 'ulamā’ found with poets), and an explicit statement in the introduction to the effect that the scope of Al-muwashshaḥ was to mention the defects of poets which men of learning had indicated (dhikr 'uyūb alshu'arā’ al-lattī nabbaha 'alayhā ahl al-'ilm). However, this conclusion regarding al-Marzubānī’s conception of naqd al-shi'r cannot be final, especially in view of the absence of his other two works, Al-mufī d and Kitāb al-shi'r, which he stated were complementary to Al-muwashshaḥ . In these books, based on information available, he discusses the merits of poetic compositions, as well as the biographies of poets. His approach in these works may imply that literary history (akhbār al-shu'arā ) , and textual examination (involving 'uyūb and nu'ūt) belonged to the same line of literary pursuit. In the absence of the actual texts of these works, it is impossible for us to determine whether these would also be included in the field which they termed al-'ilm bi al-shi'r or naqd al-shi'r. T H E C O N T R O V E R S Y OVER A L -M U T A N A B B ī ( A L - Ṣ Ā Ḥ IB B. ' A B B ĀD , A L - Ḥ Ā T I M Ī , IBN WAK Ī AND A L - Q ĀD Ī A L - J U R J ĀN Ī )

Perhaps the single most fascinating – and controversial – poet in the entire history of Arabic literature, al-Mutanabbī has never ceased to rouse passions in his audience up to this date. Even the moderns are at times unable to escape from the enigma of his poetic persona. When 'Abbās Ḥ asan attempted to promote Ahmad Shawqī (1868–1932) to the status of leading poet, amīr al-shu'arā’, among all Arabs and throughout history, he pitted Shawqī against al-Mutanabbī in Al-Mutanabbī wa Shawqī wa imārat alshi'r103– an unfortunate, unnecessary project that was doomed to fail from its inception. Ḥ asan’s attempt only goes to show the status of this poet in the minds and hearts of all Arabs. Although al-Mutanabbī’s status as the supreme Arab poet gained wide acceptance soon after his death, he was nevertheless the centre of a controversy among his contemporaries, as well as scholars of later periods. Historians of Arabic literature explain that the

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main reasons for this controversy were two: his arrogance, and his wonderful works of art in which he combined the characteristics of the poetry of both Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī. It was at his hands that the marriage between these ‘opposite’ poetic styles – Abū Tammām’s ‘affected’ style embodied in his excessive use of metaphors and other badī' artifices, and al-Buḥ turī’s ‘natural’ style manifest in his closer adherence to classical Arabic poetic conventions, or moderate use of badī' artifices – took place.104 The members of the intellectual community in fourth/tenth-century Arabic-Islamic society were divided into two groups with regard to alMutanabbī and his poetry: the ardent admirers of his craft, and the obstinate opponents who never failed to criticise it. The polarisation of the argument over al-Mutanabbī has produced a voluminous literature on his poetry, a literature too large to be summed up in a few sentences.105 This literature was produced by his opponents who sought to discredit him by picking out his shortcomings, and his admirers who defended him by explaining the difficulties inherent in his poetry. The most prominent of al-Mutanabbī’s defenders is Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002), who was both a personal friend106and an admirer. Both Ibn Jinnī’s two works on the poetry of al-Mutanabbī, Tafsīr dīwān al-Mutanabbī al-kabīr (large elucidation of the diwān of al-Mutanabbī) and Tafsīr ma'ānī dīwān al-Mutanabbī (elucidation of the meanings of the diwān of al-Mutanabbī), are important in the history of Arabic literature, especially with regard to the development of the genre of commentary on poetry.107 Ibn Jinnī’s pioneering works on al-Mutanabbī’s poetry – the so-termed sharḥ – generated a series of works of the same genre. In Kashf al-ẓ unūn, Hāj ī Khalīfa (also known as Kateb Celebi) quotes a certain scholar saying: ‘I found over forty shurūḥ (singular sharḥ ) of his [meaning al-Mutanabbī’s] poetry.’108 These shurūḥ may be divided into three categories: elucidations of the complicated lines in alMutanabbi’s poetry, such as Ibn al-Qaṭ ṭ ā’ al-Ṣ iqillī’s (d. 515/1121) Sharḥ almushkil min shi'r al-Mutanabbī (explanation of that which is ambiguous in the poetry of al-Mutanabbī) and Ibn Sīda’s (d. 458/1065) Sharḥ mushkil abyāt al-Mutanabbī (explanation of that which is ambiguous in the lines [of poetry] of al-Mutanabbī); praise for his poetry, such as Abū al-'Alā’ alMa'arrī’s (d. 449/1058) Al-lāmi' al-'azīzī, or Mu'jiz Aḥ mad wa ma'ānī shi'rihi (that which is inimitable by Aḥ mad and the meanings of his poetry); and commentaries written in response to Ibn Jinnī’s two works, such as Ibn Furrajah’s Al-tajannī 'alā Ibn Jinnī (incrimination of Ibn Jinnī) and Al-fatḥ 'alāfatḥ Abī al-Fatḥ (exposing the exposition of Abū al-Fatḥ ), Abū al-Faḍ l al'Aruḍ ī’s Al-mustadrak 'alā Ibn Jinnī f īma sharaḥ ahu min shi'r al-Mutanabbī

(em endation[oferrors]byIbnJinnīinhisexplanationofthepoetryofalM utanabbī), andal-W āḥid īd’s(d.385/995)Al-radd'alāIbnJinnīfi sharḥ

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dīwān al-Mutanabbī (response to Ibn Jinnī in [his] explanation of the diwān of al-Mutanabbī).109 In the context of his discussion of the commentaries on al-Mutanabbī’s poetry, referring specifically to Sharḥ al-Wāḥ idī, the subject of his study, and the responses generated by the commentaries of Ibn Jinnī, al-Ayyūbī observes that all these works subscribe to a critical method (manhaj naqdī).110 It is apparent that the position taken by the authors of these shurūḥ was as polarised as that of the critics. It is not clear whether these works should be included in the corpus of naqd and al-'ilm bi al-shi'r

literature, but theydo contain some critical comments.111There isevidence in the classical sources, the biographical dictionaries and the shurūḥ themselves, to support the idea that they were indeed seen as related to naqd activities. Some biographical dictionaries contain statements in which the commentator is linked to naqd, or the term naqd is used in the title of a book connected with sharḥ . In the biography of Ibn Furrajah, for example, al-Qifṭ ī states that ‘he was a leading authority (imām) on the Arabic language, a virtuous man of great importance; his poetry was sweet, and he produced naqd concerning the meanings of the poets (wa lahu naqd fī al­ ma'ānī 'ala al-shu'arā) '.112 Ibn Jinnī was known to have written a work in response to Ibn Wakī ’s Al-munṣ if (righting the wrong) entitled Kitāb alnaqd 'alā Ibn Wakī ' fī shi'r al-Mutanabbī wa takhti atihi (book of critique of Ibn Wakī' on the poetry of al-Mutanabbī and of that in which he erred).113 The term naqd and its derivatives occur often in the shurūḥ works as well. Addressing Ibn Jinnī, al-Waḥ īd says, ‘If naqd al-shi'r and passing judgements on it [poetry] had a chief of police (muḥ tasib), he would have prohibited you, o, old man, from practising them because they are not your jo b ’.114 In another instance, al-Waḥ īd also says: ‘Naqd does not need traditions, for they carry no weight in naqd.’115 He also uses the phrase nuqqād al-sh'ir to designate those who found fault with poetry.116Ibn Furrajah uses the word naqd in the references which he makes regarding al-Ṣ āḥ ib b. 'Abbād117 and al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī.118 The occurrence of the term naqd and its derivatives in these shurūḥ is perhaps not accidental, especially in the light of the fact that some of the critical issues are indeed discussed here; it implies a certain self-image which the authors of these works had as properly qualified to discuss these critical issues. Nevertheless, these works contribute little to the definition of the terms and practices of literary criticism, due mainly to the nature of shurūḥ works. First, the role of sharḥ is at best preliminary to the critical process, for it enhances understanding the text, which constitutes the first step toward naqd as stated by al-Ṣ ūlī. Second, the terms naqd or al-'ilm bi alshi'r occur only in incidental comments on particular passages in the

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shurūḥ , and when they do occur, they are not accompanied by any discussion of their purport, but reflect the notions extant in critical works. Third, none of the writers who have contributed to the theoretical frame­ work of this area of study ever cites a sharḥ or lists a shāriḥ among the nuqqād or 'ulamā’. Contrarily, al-Ḥ ātimī’s (d. 388/998) Al-mūḍ iḥ a and Al-risāla alḥādtimiyya, al-Ṣ āḥ ib b. 'Abbād’s (d. 326/938–385/995) Risāla fi al-kashf 'an masāwī al-Mutanabbī wa 'uyūbihi (treatise on the disclosure of the short­ comings of al-Mutanabbī and his defects), Ibn Wakī' al-Tinnīsī’s (d. 393/ 1003) Al-munṣ if and al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī’s (d. 392/1002) Al-wasāṭ a, which may be viewed as the core of the critical inquiry into al-Mutanabbī’s poetry, provide much more information on the discussions of literary criticism as a field, and the qualifications of critics. As in the works that emerged during the controversy of Abū Tammām, the lines between purely personal feelings, professional concerns and critical values are often blurred. Al-Ḥ ātimī wrote his two works on al-Mutanabbī, Al-risāla al-mūḍ iḥ a f ī dhikr sariqāt Abī al-Ṭ ayyib al-Mutanabbī wa sāqiṭ shi'rihi (illustrative treatise on the mention of the appropriations of Abū al-Ṭ ayyib al-Mutanabbī and that which is worthless of his poetry),119generally known as Al-mūḍ iḥ a,120and Alrisāla al-hātimiyya (list of lines of poetry the ideas of which al-Ḥ ātimī claimed al-Mutanabbī had appropriated from Aristotle), under circumstances that are best described by al-Tha'ālibī: When Abū al-Ṭ ayyib (al-Mutanabbī) came to Baghdad from Egypt, he disdained praising the vizier al-Muhallabī, refusing to praise anyone but kings. This grieved al-Muhallabī and he incited the poets of Baghdad against him. They besmirched (nālū min) his honour and vied with one another in ridiculing him. Among them were Ibn al-Ḥ ajjāj, Ibn Sukkara al-Hāshimī and al-Ḥ ātimī. They said unpleasant things to him, mocked him and made fun of him. But he did not reply to them, nor did he pay them any attention.121 The intention of the author in Al-mūḍ iḥ a is no secret. Al-Ḥ ātimī confesses at the beginning of the book that he wrote it for al-Muhallabī who, injured by al-Mutanabbī’s indifference, requested that he contend with alMutanabbī with regard to the latter’s poetry. Al-Ḥ ātimī’s acquaintance with al-Mutanabbī preceded his days at the court of al-Muhallabī. In al-Ḥ ātimī’s biography, Yāqūt – citing al-Ḥ ātimī in Al-hilbāja – reports that he served at the courts of Sayf al-Dawla when he was 19, and that he met Abū 'Alī alFārisī and perhaps al-Mutanabbī there, and that he had experienced at first hand the sting of al-Mutanabbī’s arrogance.122 When they met again in Baghdad, al-Ḥ ātimī scarcely needed any encouragement to unleash his hostility towards al-Mutanabbī. The dramatic articulation of the imagined

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debates which he had with al-Mutanabbī over the latter’s poetry, in which debates the author claimed to have prevailed, came down to us in the form of Al-mūḍ iḥ a.123This work comprises a colorful rendition of the discussions the author had with al-Mutanabbī in four meetings. In these accounts, alMutanabbī is portrayed as a meek idiot who was unable to defend himself, let alone refute the author. This is the context in which naqd and its derivatives are used. The most immediate meaning of naqd, and intiqād – a term hitherto unknown – as used by al-Ḥ ātimī is the picking out of defects and short­ comings in poetry. 'I took upon myself to trace his flaws, clip his claws, circulate his secrets, publicise his designs, and find fault (muntaqid) with his compositions as extensively as possible.’124The negative connotation of the word muntaqid is in accordance with the tone of the complete work, and with the themes that the title of the work implies: to pick out the sariqāt of al-Mutanabbī and his inferior compositions. The use of the term is not novel, and al-Ḥ ātimī adds nothing to the definition of the terms. The same may be said of nuqqād al-kalām, often equated with arbāb al-bayān,125which is used to denote those who could recognise good poetic compositions, the elements of which are identified as brevity of expression, originality (badī') in composition, accuracy in meaning and soundness in wording (lafẓ ). Almūḍ iḥ a, therefore, is not a work of great revelation and contributes little to already extant notions. The author’s enumeration of the types of sariqāt may be exhaustive, but what he has to say adds nothing to what has already been expounded by his predecessors.126 Furthermore, al-Ḥ ātimī makes no mention of al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, perhaps because of his awareness that in a work of such a personal nature, no claim to 'ilm may, or should, be made. Similarly, al-Ṣ āib b. 'Abbād’s127 work, Risāla fī al-kashf 'an masāwī alMutanabbī,128was written in a bitter spirit. Al-Tha'ālibī mentions that when al-Mutanabbī left Baghdad and went to Ibn al-'Amīd, al-Ṣ āḥ ib b. 'Abbād – then an inconsequential young kātib in Isbahān, hoping that praise from a poet of al-Mutanabbī’s stature would accelerate his career – wrote to alMutanabbī, invited him to his court and offered to share his fortune with him. Al-Mutanabbī, too arrogant to associate himself with an unimportant official at that time, did not even bother to reply.129 Al-Ṣ āḥ ib, who was as vain as al-Mutanabbī, promptly made al-Mutanabbī the target of his ridicule. Al-Ṣ āḥ ib’s spitefulness in this work was noted by both alTha'ālibī130and Ibn Furrajah. Ibn Furrajah, embarrassed by it, went so far as to hint that the trans­ mission of this work should be discontinued.131 He criticised Al-kashffor two things: that what the author had faulted (yanqud) in al-Mutanabbī’s poetry (a specific line) was erroneous; and that al-Ṣ āḥ ib’s approach had nothing

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to do with ' ilm (laysa min ṭarīq al-'ilm).132 The implication of Ibn Furrajah’s comments is that al-Ṣ āḥ ib’s work was considered to be within the realm of naqd; and that naqd was a certain kind of ' ilm, the integrity of which al-Ṣ āḥ ib violated. Al-Ṣ āḥ ib’s work, however, contains useful information regarding the field designated by the terms naqd and ' ilm al-shi'r. As the title of the work indicates, the author’s intention was to expose alMutanabbī’s defects and shortcomings ( 'uyūb wa masāwī'). This, according to al-Ṣ āḥ ib, was provoked by a certain frequenter of his assembly (majli s) who claimed that al-Mutanabbī’s poetry had no defects.133 When al-Ṣ āḥ ib disagreed, he challenged al-Ṣ āḥ ib to put down in writing whatever defect he could find, and, rising to the occasion, al-Ṣ āḥ ib compiled this treatise, discussing 'ilm al-shi'r and naqd al-shi'r at the same time. His use of these terms reflects how these terms were used in general but contributes next to nothing to what had already been known during the fourth/tenth century. Most ironic of al-Ṣ āḥ ib’s statements is that ' ilm al-shi'r or naqd al-shi'r is a lofty science ( ' ilm) that cannot be easily attained. He observes that of the 'ulamā’ and udabā’ (like al-Mubarrad and Tha'lab) only Ibn al-'Amīd was truly competent in this science! Ibn al-'Amīd, al-Ṣ āḥ ib asserts, knew poetry as it should be known (ya'rif al-shi'r haqq ma'rifatihi) and dealt with it in expert fashion (yantaqiduhu naqdjahābidhatihi) .134Al-naqd, in al-Ṣ āḥ ib’s use, meant the following things: picking out impropriety in the use of a word or a sentence (naqd al-ḥ urūf wa al-kalimāt);135 spotting prosodic errors136 or defects,137 and grammatical errors;138 recognising an inappropriate antithesis ( qābala al-madḥ bi al-lawm);139 identifying instances of improper address;140 uncovering obscurities and unnecessary complications of structure (ta'qīd);141 distinguishing good poetry from bad (iḥ sān and isā’a or jayyid wa radī') ,142 selecting poetry accordingly;143 and identifying sariqāt.144 In al-Ṣ āḥ ib’s use of these terms, the line between naqd al-shi'r and ' ilm alshi'r is hardly distinguishable. Al-Ṣ āḥ ib, however, explicitly linked naqd al-shi'r to fault-finding ( 'ayb). Quoting several examples from the poetic tradition to support his claim that naqd al-shi'rwas a complex skill, he cited the following lines, destroying in one single statement the claim al-Āmidī made for al-'ilm bi al-shi'r as a practice pursued with integrity:145 O, you who find fault with my poetry, slow down For your finding fault with poetry is a fault. Al-Mutanabbī managed not only to offend some potential patrons, but other poets as well, such as Ibn Wakī' al-Tinnīsī, who was acquainted not with the poet himself but with those who were acquainted with alMutanabbī.146 Al-munṣ if 147 was the work of a poet annoyed at those who,

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upon their acquaintance with al-Mutanabbī, turned ardent admirers and promoted his poetry tirelessly.148 It was also possibly the work of a poet whose purpose was, as Muḥ ammad Riḍ wān al-Dāya and Blachère suggest, to ingratiate himself with Ibn Ḥ inzāba (d. 390/1000), whom al-Mutanabbī had refused to humour.149 Whatever Ibn Wakī '’s reason might be, it is obvious from his work that the author is at pains to discredit al-Mutanabbī by enumerating all his sariqāt. His charges were deemed serious enough that Ibn Jinnī devoted an entire work, Al-naqd 'alā Ibn Wakī' fī shi'r alMutanabbī wa takhṭi'atihi, 150to refuting them. The subtitle of the published edition of Al-munṣ if reads f ī naqd al-shi'r. There is no evidence in the sources that this addition is warranted, and this the editor himself admits. Nevertheless, Ibn Waki' does discuss naqd al-shi'r in several places, though his conception of naqd al-shi'r does not depart from what had been established already. He must be credited, however, for his explicit inclusion of the discussion of badī' artifices [aqsām al-shi'r. mathal sā’ir, tashbīh bāhir; isti'āra lafẓ uhā f ākhir,151 and asmā ’ f ī al-shi'r. altaqsīm, al-muqābala, al-tashīm, al-mutammi', al-tablīgh, al-īghāl, al-ighrāq and alghuluww]152in what he alternately termed 'ilm al-shi'r153and al-ma'rifa bi naqd al-shi'r.154 His need for these technical terms in his work was minimal, and the prominence he gave them is an indication of his concern with narrow technicalities.155 In Ibn Wakī ’s work, the term naqd is more immediately associated with recognising a sariqa,156and making a judgement on whether a sariqa is well handled,157 in addition to explaining how a sariqa is accom­ plished.158 Fortunately for medieval critical inquiry into poetry, these works, albeit motivated by subjective concerns, triggered indignation in some fairminded scholars, such as Al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī,159 leading to yet another attempt to bring some dignity to the field. In response to the confusing and confused discussions of al-Mutanabbī, al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī, compiled a work that to this date provides the most even-handed and comprehensive treatment of the art of al-Mutanabbī and the controversy surrounding it. Yaqūt documents the circumstances under which al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī’s work came into existence:160 ‘when al-Ṣ āḥ ib made his treatise known as Iẓ hār masāwī al-Mutanabbī (disclosure of the faults of al-Mutanabbī), al-Qāḍ ī alJurjānī wrote Kitāb al-wasāṭ a bayn al-Mutanabbī wa khuṣ ūmihi f ī sh' rihi (mediation between al-Mutanabbī and his adversaries on his poetry)’. Alwasāta, according to Yāqūt, made a decisive impact on the controversy over al-Mutanabbī’s poetry, demonstrating its author’s ‘versatile knowledge of literature and the Arabic sciences, his competence in memorisation, and his strength in naqd,161 thus linking al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī with naqd. This link is confirmed by Ibn Furrajah who, in his discussion of whether al-Mutanabbī

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excelled in appropriating another poet’s idea into his poetry in Al-fatḥ , cited al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī’s favourable opinion – with which he disagreed – and said: ‘May God have mercy on him! This is a surprise coming from him, for he is renowned for his knowledge of poetry, his learning in fine meanings and his being at the highest peak of naqd.’162 It is worth noting that while Yāqūt used naqd in a general sense, Ibn Furrajah’s use referred to sariqāt in particular. As well as responding to al-Ṣ āḥ ib b. 'Abbād’s Al-kashf, al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī was responding to all those who had professed an opinion on alMutanabbī, including al-Ḥ ātimī and Ibn Jinnī, but perhaps not Ibn Wakī'.163Al-wasāṭ a indeed addresses the stir caused in literary circles by the poetry of al-Mutanabbī. Ahl al-adab, according to al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī, are divided into two distinct groups with regard to the poetry of al-Mutanabbī: absolute supporters who found excuses to justify or explain away his errors and shortcomings;164and absolute opponents – whom he called 'ā ’ib –who sought to undermine him by concealing his merits and exposing his shortcomings.165Both groups were doing an injustice to the art of poetry. Justice – as demanded by one who was in fact a judge – required that truth be told, for truth could not and should not make or demolish the poet, whether it reflected on him favourably or negatively. If the merits of the poet outweighed his faults, then his stature would remain intact despite his errors and shortcomings.166 This is the objective approach that al-Qāḍ ī alJurjānī applied to his work, which stands out against the works that were in circulation then. This was not the only respect in which al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī reveals the limitation of what by the fourth/tenth century had become known as naqd. In fact, earlier in the book, in the context of his discussion of the effects of literary discourse (kalām) and how it works, he leaves no room for doubting that those engaged in discussing its elements167 focused only on the negative aspects of literary composition; by juxtaposing two classes of literary composition – good and bad – with the critical discussion of only the bad, he implies that good compositions had not yet become the subject matter of discussion. The existing practice of the art of tamyīz al-kalām, according to al-Jurjānī, was of two kinds: the inferior one which relied on picking out prosodic, grammatical and lexical errors, and the superior one that focused on the badī' features of the text without paying attention to the overall structure of the work.168 These practices fell short of what he envisaged for tamyīz al-kalām, a critical process that required special skills.169 Like those to whom he was responding, Al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī dealt with only the critical issues that had already been raised in the works preceding Alwasāṭ a. Likewise, the sense in which he used the term naqd remained very

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similar to that which had been employed in these works as well. His inclusion of the discussion of badī' artifices in the field defined by the term naqd is implied in his handling of the material, unlike that of Ibn Wakī's, which was explicit. On the other hand, Al-wasāṭ a is like Al-munṣ if in that its main concern is the question of sariqāt. The terms naqd and nāqid are mostly used in the context of the discussion of sariqāt issues. For example, al-nāqid al-baṣ īr and al-'ālim al-mubarriz are the only ones who could expose a sariqa, and one might be considered one of the jahābidhat al-kalām and nuqqād al-shi'r if one is able to recognise a sariqa, classify it, and make a favourable or unfavourable judgement on it.17° T H E CALM A F T E R T H E ST O R M ( I B N R A S H Ī Q , A L -M A R Z Ū QĪ AND IB N SH A R A F )

The definition of both the terms and practices of 'ilm al-shi'r and naqd alsh'ir, as I have demonstrated above, took shape and began to settle by the end of the fourth/tenth century. By the fifth/eleventh century, no new ground was broken, but instead scholars involved in the discussion of Arabic poetry expounded and refined the notions already developed, and focused on the consolidation of the field, not so much in terms of theorising about poetic composition but more in terms of providing a cohesive framework for the critical issues that have been discussed thus far. However, the uses of al-'ilm bi al-shi'r and/or 'ilm al-shi'r became few and infrequent, whereas naqd al-shi'rgained wider currency. Ibn Rashīq’s (370/ 980–456/1063 or 463/1070) Al-'umda is the ultimate product of this period: it constitutes an attempt at consolidating the efforts made by various Arab scholars up to his time. Ibn Rashīq’s use of the term naqd falls within the parameters set by his predecessors, though he emphasises that naqd is ṣ inā'a.171 Although the scope of Al-'umda exceeds that of sariqāt, the word naqd is still very much used to denote the ability to recognise a sariqa and to identify its origin. This use of the term is obvious in Kitāb al-'umda,172 but is even more pronounced in Qurāḍ at al-dhahab (composition of gold [that is, poetry]),173 a book specifically composed on sariqāt, and in which nāqid and 'ulamā' nuqqād are used to denote those who are capable of identifying a sariqa. Two other works, however, contribute a new approach to this field, though they do not differ substantially in content: al-Marzūqī’s introduction to his commentaries on Abu Tammām’s collection of pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry known as Dīwān al-ḥ amāsa; and Ibn Sharaf al-Qayrawānī’s (d. 460/1067) Masā ’il al-intiqād (questions of criticism). Al-Marzūqī (d. 421/1029) is perhaps best known for his codification of 'amūd al-shi'r,174though the concepts underlying this set of poetic principles

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were already known and practised. As a matter of fact, the conceptualisation of 'amūd al-shi'r was complete by the time of al-Qādī al-Jurjānī.175 AlMarzūqī’s efforts, as Iḥ sān 'Abbās rightly observes, would not have been possible without the works of his predecessors. What al-Marzūqī did was to incorporate the ideas of Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, Qudāma, al-Āmidī and al-Qāḍ ī alJurjānī in a cohesive framework. His articulate presentation of the material is what gave 'amūd al-shi'rits persuasive force in the Arabic critical tradition. The concept of 'amūd al-shi'r is of such importance to the fundamental understanding of medieval Arabic literary criticism that an exegesis for alMarzūqī’s famous introduction to his sharḥ of Abū Tammām’s Al-ḥ amāsa was compiled by Muḥ ammad al-Ṭ āhir 'Āshūr in the eighth decade of the twentieth century.176 The fact that al-Marzūqī’s landmark work is the introduction to his sharḥ of Abū Tammām’s anthology may initially imply that sharḥ is the subject matter of his discussion. A careful examination, however, reveals that the concern of al-Marzūqī is really the principles behind the selection of poetry: anthologising. Al-Marzūqī confirms that anthologising belongs to the field of naqd. In his critical introduction to Sharḥ al-ḥ amāsa (explanation of Al-ḥ amāsa), al-Marzūqī lays down the purpose of his discussion of 'amūd al-shi'r – which he also calls qawā'id al-shi'r and juxta­ poses to sharā 'iṭ al-ikhtiyār,177 The purpose is to be able to judge whether a poet excelled or failed in meeting requirements of 'amūd al-shi'r. This set of principles will also enable one to understand the consensus of opinion regarding al-Mufaḍ ḍ al’s anthology, Al-mufaḍ ḍ aliyyāt.178 Doubtless, the underlying principle in any type of selection is the distinction between good, mediocre and bad poetry. The terms naqd and intiqād are used in this context. Naqd primarily means the distinction between good, mediocre and bad poetry,179 as well as selection. In his comment on al-Mufaḍ ḍ al’s anthology, al-Marzūqī says, addressing the patron: ‘You wondered how the nuqqād were able to reach a consensus that there is no anthology of short and long poems (ikhtiyār al-muqaṭṭa'āt wa al-muqaṣ ṣ adāt) purer than the one al-Mufaḍ ḍ al had collected, recorded and selected (naqada)'.180 It seems unlikely that the word naqada should mean anything else, for it is known that al-Mufaḍ ḍ al’s anthologies contain no critical comments. Further textual evidence is available to support this interpretation. His mentions of nuqqād or nāqidūn usually fall within the context of his discussion of ikhtiyār. He speaks, for example, of the schools of the nuqqād al-kalām – whom he also designates as jahābidhat al-shi'r, al-'ulamā’ bi ma'ānīhi and almubarrizīn f ī intiqādihi181 – in sharā'iṭ al-ikhtiyār,182and ikhtiyār al-nāqidīn.183 However, this is not the only meaning of naqd in al-Marzūqī’s use of the word. As well as incorporating the notion of distinguishing between good

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and bad poetry in his framework, naqd is also used to denote a process in which actual correction of a fault or defect takes place. Abū Tammām, alMarzūqī comments, was so well versed in poetry that ‘the ways of selection were not concealed to him, nor were means of iḥ sān and istiḥ sḥ n. You see him come to a good line where there is a word that blemishes it, so he mends its defect himself and replaces the word by its sister in his naqd.’184 Naqd can mean two things here selection or the actual process of correct­ ing an error. Ibn Sharaf al-Qayrawānī,185 a contemporary and competitor of Ibn Rashīq,186added a few other details while conforming to the parameters set by his predecessors. In his only surviving work, Risālat al-intiqād?187 (also known as Rasā’i l or Masā ’il al-intiqād) ,188in which, despite the limitation of the maqāmāt as a form for critical essays,189 he consciously emulates Almaqāma al-qarīḍ iyya by Badḍ ' al-Zamān ,190Ibn Sharaf discusses some impor­ tant issues pertinent to naqd al-shi'r. This treatise consists of two distinct parts, and it reports the discussions that took place in two majlis: the first part is an account of major Arab poets and their accomplishment with a brief summation of their style, and the second part focuses on the defects ( 'uyūb) of poetry. It is in this context that naqd is used. Although Ibn Sharaf identifies naqd as ‘excellent understanding of what is good and bad in [poetry] (jawdatfahmf ī radīyyihi wajayyidihi)’, his actual practice deals mainly with the defects and sariqāt.191 The defects which he discusses are in turn divided into two groups: the first includes errors in description,192 in expressing intent,193 or in word order194 and the other refers to defects related to the form in that the wording may be vulgar,195 convoluted,196 inappropriately combined,197 set in unsuitable order,198 and causing prosodic blemishes,199 or to content which may consist of clumsy wording200or inauspicious opening,201 or a rough reproach of the beloved,202 or finally sariqāt.203 In this work, Ibn Sharaf appears to have had a research method in mind (manhaj al-baḥ th), though it is only implied in his comments. He says: ‘Abū al-Rayyān [the hero of the maqāma] says: Excellent poets are many and each has defects. I will show you some for the purpose of providing some general information on them only, but not for expounding a method for research (manhaj min manāhij al-baḥ th).'204 Most important, however, is the inclusion of two additional areas in the scope of naqd. First, the descriptive accounts of poetic styles, as he has demonstrated in the first part of his treatise, are not merely implied in the structure of the work but explicitly said to be naqd. In the opening paragraph of the second section, the narrator says: ‘I said to Abū al-Rayyān in a majlis held shortly after this one [meaning the one related in the earlier part of the treatise]: “O, Abū al-

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Rayyān, I see that you possess penetrating naqd (naqdan muṣ īban) and a wonderful aim (marmā) and I wish to learn something of it”.’205The second new area is that merits should be included in any discussion of poetry. Ibn Sharaf mentions that picking out errors and defects as well as merits is a large part of the function of naqd.206However, this is an area that Ibn Sharaf does not explore, for according to him, it is a large subject because good poetry can be ranked in an infinite number of ways.207 Al-Tawḥ īdī,208 in one section of his epistle on the sciences, quotes Ibn Qutayba’s categorisation of poetry – even though he attributes this categorisation to Ibn al-Mu'tazz209 – into four types based on the notions derived from the bipolar assessment of poetry, good or bad, in the discussion of which critics had thus far been engaged. The preceding discussion of the practices of critics during the controversies over the poetry of Abū Tammām and al-Mutanabbī often caused an overemphasis on the idea of criticism as finding faults, and made it more difficult for a literary critic to be seen as an objective judge, employing criteria that were of broad application rather than trumped up to serve partisan, nonaesthetic purposes. Al-Tawḥ īdī’s awareness, however faintly it may be reflected in this epistle, significantly points to the fact that literary criticism, however mired in conflicting notions of its practices, was emerging as an area of study dealing with poetry. These conflicting notions responded, in turn, to the different impulses and priorities of those writers whom we would call critics: legitimising their roles as transmitters of poetry, defending their own poetic practice against that of rivals, and engaging in literary debates from various other personal motives. Nevertheless, alTawḥ īdī’s reference here summarises the gist of medieval Arabic literary criticism: that distinguishing good poetry from bad poetry, regardless of the impulses and priorities of the critics, was the heart of the matter, the central issue around which other critical issues were constructed. The efforts of the critics, from al-Aṣ ma'ī to Ibn Sharaf, yielded fruits, willy-nilly, and paved the way for the emergence of a literary critical tradition in Arabic-Islamic culture. More important, the two issues that were the focus of the critical debates surrounding the poetry of Abū Tammām and alMutanabbī – how to make sense of their artistic innovations, and how to deal with their, as well as other muḥ dath poets’, appropriations from the Arabic poetic tradition – led to, first, the codification of Arabic poetics manifest in what al-Marzūqī termed 'amūd al-shi'r and, second, to treating the so-termed sariqāt phenomenon as a question of what modern critics would call ‘intertexuality’ or ‘anxiety of influence’. In the first instance, the codified Arabic poetics became the core of medieval Arabic literary

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criticism, and in the second, ‘intertexuality’ became subject matter of art, not morality. Arabic literature’s gain from these controversies is undeniable. Al-Mutanabbī’s compositions, which kept critics ‘sleepless and at odds’, indeed bore fruits; his two satirical lines, as it turned out, were prophecy! NOTES 1.

2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

T ra n s la tio n b y P ie rr e C a c h ia . A ls o tra n sla te d b y A . J. A r b e r r y in Poems o f al-M utanabbī: A Selection with Introduction, Translations and Notes ( C a m b rid g e : C a m b r id g e U n iv e rs ity P ress, 1967) as: I a m h e w h o s e a c c o m p lis h m e n ts e v e n th e b lin d c a n se e , a n d w h o s e w o rd s h a v e m a d e e v e n th e d e a f to h e a r; I sle e p in su b lim e u n c o n c e r n f o r th e w o rd s w h ic h w a n d e r a b r o a d w hilst o th e r m e n are sleepless o n th eir a cco u n t, c o n te n d in g m ightily. Y ū s u f a l-B ad ī 'ī , Al-ṣ ubḥ al-munbī 'an ḥ aythiyyat al-M utanabbī; e d . M u ṣ ṭ a fā al-S aqā , M u ḥ a m m a d S h ī ta a n d 'A b d u h Z iy ā d a 'A b d u h (C a iro : D ā r a l-M a 'ā rif, 1963), 117–81. Q u d ā m a, Naqd al-shi'r, 140– 1. Y ā q ū t, M u 'j am al-udabā', 17: 13. A s a c ritic , al-Ṣ ūlī is th e s u b je c t o f a stu d y b y Ṣ u b ḥ ī N ā sir Ḥ u sayn , A b ū Bakr al-Ṣ ūlī n āqidan (M .A . th esis, U n iv e rs ity o f B a g h d a d , 1975). Al-Ā m id ī a n d Al-muwāzana a re th e s u b je c t o f th e fo llo w in g w orks: M u ḥ a m m a d 'A lī A b ū Ḥ a m d a , Abū al-Qāsim al-Ā midī wa K itāb almuwāzana (B e iru t: D ā r a l-'A ra b iy y a , 1969) a n d Al-naqd al-adabī ḥ awl A bī Tammām wa al-Buḥ turī f ī al-qarn al-rāb i' al-hijrī (B e iru t: D ā r al'A ra b iy y a , 1969); M u ḥ a m m a d M u ḥ a m m a d al-Ḥ u sa yn ī , A bū Tam m ām wa muwāzanat al-Ā midī (C a iro : al-M ajlis a l-A 'lā li R i'āy a t a l-F u n ū n w a al-Ā d āb w a a l-'U lū m a l-Ijtim ā 'iyya, 1967); a n d S u z a n n e S te tk e v y c h , ‘A b ū T a m m ā m fī M u w āzanat al-Ā m id ī : ḥ a ṣ r a l-m u ’assasa al-n aq d iy y a li s h i'r al-b ad ī ' ' , F u ṣ ūl, 6: 2 (1986): 42–57. Al-Ā m id ī’s Al-muwāzana is a lso d iscu sse d in th e v a rio u s b o o k s o n A r a b ic lite ra ry critic ism . S e e , f o r e x a m p le , 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh al-naqd, 154–85; M u ḥ a m m a d M a n d ū r, A lnaqd al-manhajī 'ind al-'arab (C a iro : D ā r N a h ḍ a t M iṣ r li al-Ṭ a b ' w a alN a sh r, n .d .), 99– 162; a l-R a b d āw ī , A l-ḥ araka, 166–249; a n d S u z a n n e S te tk e v y c h , Abū Tam m ām and the Poetics o f the 'A bb āsid Age ( L e id e n : E. J. B rill, 1991): 49–89. a l-Q ifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 287. Ib id ., 288; al-Suyūṭ ī, Bughya, 1: 501; a n d Y āq ū t, M u 'ja m al-udabā', 8: 76 a n d 86. Y ā q ū t, M u 'ja m al-udabā', 8: 77. al-Ā m id ī , Al-m uwāzana, 1: 277. Ib id ., 205. 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh al-naqd, 162. A b ū B a k r al-Ṣ ūlī , Akhbār A b ī Tammām, e d . K h a līl M a ḥ m ū d 'A s ā kir, M u ḥ a m m a d 'A b d u h 'A z z ḥ m a n d N a ẓ īr al-Islām ī a l-H in d ī (B e iru t: alM a k ta b al-T ijā rī li a l-T ib ā 'a w a al-T aw zī ' w a al-N ash r, n .d .), 67; a n d alIṣ b a h ān ī , Al-aghān ī (D ā r a l- S h a 'b ) , 24: 8,204. al-Iṣ bahānī, A l-aghānī (D a r a l-S h a 'b ), 17: 6,236. M u ḥ a m m a d a l-R a b d āw ī , A l-ḥ araka al-naqdiyya ḥ awl A b ī Tammām (C a iro : D ā r al-Fikr, 1967), 134. a l-R a b d āw ī c a m e to th is c o n c lu s io n b a se d o n tw o a c c o u n ts r e la te d b y a l-M as'ū d ī a n d Ib n a l-M u 'tazz.

FANFARE OF CONTRO VERSY 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

a l-R a b d āw ī , A l-ḥ araka, 47. H e r e p o r te d ly ga ve A b ū T a m m ā m an aw ard , o b v io u s ly q u ite su b sta n ­ tial fr o m th e c o n te x t, a lth o u g h its a m o u n t w as n o t s p e c ifie d . S e e alIṣ b a h ān ī , Al-aghān ī (D ār a l-S h a 'b ) ,17: 6241. A l-Iṣ bahānī, A l-aghānī (D ā r a l-S h a 'b ), 17: 6,241 Ib id ., 6,231. Ib id ., 6,235. Ib id ., 6,249. al-Ā m id ī , Al-muwāzana, e d . al-Sayyid A ḥ m a d Ṣ a q r (C a iro : D ā r alM a 'ā rif, 1961), 1: 19. A l-Iṣ bahānī, A l-aghānī (D ā r a l-S h a 'b ), 17: 6,235. F ro m th e titles o f th ese w o rk s, it se e m s th a t al-B u ḥ tu rī , n o t A b ū T a m m ā m , w as th e m a in s u b je c t o f his d iscu ssio n . a l-R a b d āw ī , A l-ḥ araka, f o o t n o te 1; Ib n a l-N a d īm , Al-fi hrist, 218; Yā q ū t, M u 'ja m al-udabā ’, 3: 232. Y ā q ū t, M u 'ja m al-udabā , 8: 86; a n d a l-Q ifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 288. al-Ā m id ī , Al-muwāzana, 1: 23. al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 288; see a lso 285 w h e r e th e fo llo w in g o c c u rs: ‘wa lahu ittisā ' tāmm fī 'ilm al-shi'r wa m a'ān īhi riwāyatan wa dirāyatan wa hifẓ an wa ṣ annafa kutuban fī dhālika ḥ asanatan' . Y āqū t, M u'jam al-ud abā’, 8: 75. al-Ām idī, A l-m uw āzana, 1: 52. S ee M u ḥ a m m a d 'A b d u h 'A z z ā m , I n tr o d u c tio n to D īwān A b ī Tammām (w ith c o m m e n ta r y o f a l-K h a ṭ īb a l-T a b rīzī [C a iro : D ā r a l-M a 'ā rif, 1964], 1: 8–32). A b ū Ḥ a m d a , Al-naqd, 41. F o r m o re d e ta ils, se e A b ū Ḥ a m d a , Al-naqd, 53–47. Ib id .; a n d 'A z z ā m , I n tr o d u c tio n , D īwān A bī Tammām, 18–28. Al-Iṣ bahānī, Al-aghānī (D ā r a l-S h a 'b ) , 17: 6,227–8. al-Ṣ ūlī , Akhbār A b ī Tammām, 55. Ib id . L ite rally: P e rh a p s in a sh o r t w h ile th e y w ill b e lo st a n d w ill n o lo n g e r b e se e n o r d e s ire d . A b ū 'A lī M u ḥ a m m a d b. al-Ḥ asan al-Ḥ ātim ī , Ḥ ilyat al-muḥ āḍ ara, ed . J a 'fa r al-K attān ī (B a g h d a d : D ā r al-R ashīd, 1979), 2: 36–7. al-Ā m id ī , Al-muwāzana, 1: 5. Ib id ., 10, 24, 31, 49, 50 a n d 51. Ib id ., 1: 54. Ib n K h a llik ān , Wafayāt , 2: 20. F o r a d e ta ile d stu d y o f th e c ritic a l a ctiv itie s th a t s u r r o u n d e d th e c o n tro v e rs y o v e r th e p o e tr y o f A b ū T a m m ā m , see a l-R a b d āw ī , Alḥ araka. al-Ṣ ūlī , Akhbār A bī Tammām, 55. Ib n K h a llik ān , Wafayāt, 4: 356. Ib id . Y ā q ū t, M u 'ja m al-udabā ’, 20: 111. F ro m th e q u o ta tio n s w h ic h Ḥ u sayn cite s fr o m th e m a n u s c r ip t o f Akhbār A b ī N u w ās, it se e m s lik e ly th a t it c o n ta in s v a lu a b le in fo r m a tio n w ith r e g a r d to naqd, b o th as a c o n c e p t a n d as a p ra c tic e . T h is is lik e ly b e c a u s e th e c o m p ila tio n o f Akhbār Abī N uw ās p r e c e d e d th a t o f Akhbār Abī Tammām. T h is is s u p p o r te d b y te x tu a l e v id e n c e in th e la tte r, w h e r e th e a u th o r re fe r s to th e f o r m e r (55). U n fo rtu n a te ly , I h a v e n o t b e e n a b le to o b ta in a c o p y o f th is w o rk . I b e lie v e it is still in its m a n u s c r ip t fo r m a n d h a s n o t b e e n e d ite d o r p u b lis h e d .

159

160

LITERARY CRITICISM IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC-ISLAM IC C U LTU R E 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

93. 94.

Ḥ u sayn , Abū B akr al-Ṣ ūlī, 75–8, K h a la f R a sh īd N u 'm ā n , e d . Sharḥ dīwān A bī Tammām b y al-Ṣ ūlī, 122. al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār A bī Tammām, 4, 27, 38 a n d 125. al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār al-shu'arā ’, e d . J. H e y w o rth D u n n e ( L o n d o n : L u z a c & C o ., 1934), 1. al-Ṣ ūlī, A khbār A bī T am m ām , 67; a n d Akhbār al-Buḥ turī, e d . Ṣ āliḥ alA s h ṭ u r (D a m a scu s: al-M ajm a' al-'I lm ī , 1958), 99. al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār al-Buḥ turī, 62. al-Ṣ ūlī, A kh barA M Tammam, 38. Ib id ., 30. Ib id ., 38. Ib id . Ib id ., 9– 12. al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār al-Buḥ turī, 135. al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār Abī Tam m ām , 4. Ib id ., 100– 1. al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār al-Buḥ turī, 135. Ḥ u sayn , A b ū B akr al-Ṣ ūlī, 76. T h e re st o f th e a n e c d o te is a b o u t th e n a r r a to r ’s d is a g r e e m e n t w ith alB u ḥ turī , w h ic h is o f n o c o n s e q u e n c e h e r e . al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār Abī Tam m ām , 174. H u sa y n , A bu Bakr al-Ṣ ūlī, 77 (c ite d fr o m D īwān A bī N uw ās ) . al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār Abī Tam m ām , 100–101. Ḥ usayn, Abū Bakr al-Ṣ ūlī, 77 a n d 174 (c ite d fr o m D īw ā n A b ī N u w ā s); a n d al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār al-Buḥ turī, 135. Y ā q ū t, M u 'j am al-udabā, 8: 84, 85 a n d 87–8. al-Ā m id ī , Al-muwāzana, 1: 325. Ib id ., 135–243. Ib id ., 134–5. Ib id ., 245–64. Ib id ., 265–71. Ib id ., 271–5. Ib id ., 276–81. Ib id ., 282–6. Ib id ., 287–90. Ib id ., 46. Ib id ., 292–303. Ib id ., 304–50. Ib id ., 350– 60. Ib id ., 386–8. Ib id ., 360–85. Ib id ., 388. Ib id ., 391 a n d 394. Ib id ., 396. Ib id ., 35. Ib id ., 395. Ib n K h a llik ā n , Wafayāt, 4: 354; a l-Q ifṭ ī, Inbāh, 3: 180; a n d Y ā q ū t, M u'jam al-udabā', 18: 268. A b ū 'U b a y d M u ḥ a m m a d 'I m r ā n b. M ū sā a l-M a rzu b ā n ī , A lmuwashshaḥ , e d . 'A lī M u ḥ a m m a d al-B ijāw ī (C a iro : D ā r N a h ḍ at M iṣ r, 1965). 197 and 273. a l-M a rzu b ān ī , Al-muwashshaḥ , 231. Ib id ., 85.

FANFARE OF CONTRO VERSY 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100.

101. 102. 103. 104. 105.

Ib id ., 193. Ib id ., 85, 197 a n d 231. Ib id ., 273. Ib id ., 197. Ib id ., 37. W e p ossess s h in in g sh e a th s th a t g litte r in th e n o o n su n , A n d fo r o u r v a lo u r b lo o d d rip s fro m o u r sw ords; W e g a v e b ir th to B a n u a l-'A n q ā ’ a n d th e tw o so n s o f M u ḥ a rriq , N o b le a re o u r (m a te rn a l) u n c le s a n d o u r d e s ce n d a n ts! al-M a r z u b ā n ī, Al-muwashshaḥ , 83. Ib id ., 193. T h e fu ll title o f th is w o rk is Al-M utanabbī wa Shawqī wa imārat al-shi'r: dirāsa wa naqd wa muqārana (C a iro : D ār a l-M a 'ārif, n .d .). 'A b b ā s, T ārī kh al-naqd, 252. T h e critics o f a l-M u ta n a b b ī a n d th e ir view s a re d iscu sse d b y M u ḥ a m m a d 'A b d al-R a h ā a n S h u 'a y b in Al-M utanabbī bayn n āqidīhi f ī al-qadīm wa al-ḥ adīth (C a iro : D ā r a l-M a 'ā rif, 2 n d e d n , n .d .). F o r an in s ig h tfu l d is cu s sio n o f th e se activities, se e 'A b b ā s, T ārī kh al-naqd,

252– 335. 106. Y ā q ū t, M u 'j a m al-udabā', 12: 89. 107. T h e s e titles a re ta k e n fr o m an ijāẓ a ( lic e n c e f o r tran sm issio n ) w h ic h h e ga ve to A b ū 'A b d a llā h al-Ḥ u sayn b. Aḥ m a d b. N a ṣ r in 384 (Y ā q ū t, M u'jam al-udabā', 12: 110). T h e s e tw o w o rk s a re k n o w n as Sharḥ (alS u yūṭ ī, Bughya, 2: 132). In o t h e r b io g r a p h ic a l so u rce s, th e first is k n o w n as al-Fasr (Ib n al-N a d īm , Al-fihrist, 95; Ib n K h a llik ān , Wafayāt, 3: 247) a n d th e la tte r K itāb m a'ān ī abyāt al-M utanabbī (Ib n a l-N a d īm , Alfihrist, 195). A l-Q ifṭ ī lists th e fo r m e r as 'A l-ṣ abr’ f ī sharḥ shi'r alM utanabbī (a l-Q ifṭ ī, Inbāh, 2: 337). 108. S ee M u ḥ a m m a d Ḥ asan Ā l Y ā sīn , In tr o d u c tio n , A l-k a s h f 'a n masāwī ’ almutanabbī, 17, fo o t n o te 10. 109. T h e s e c a te g o r ie s w e re d e v ise d b y Yā sīn al-Ayyū b ī , b u t th e e x a m p le s are m in e . S e e Yasīn al-Ayyū b ī , ‘A l-n a q d w a al-n aẓ ra a l-sh u m ū liyya fī sh a rḥ al-W āḥ id ī ,’ Al-m aw qif al-adabī 181, 182 a n d 183 (M ay, J u n e a n d J u ly 1986): 54–74, p. 54. 110. al-Ayyū b ī, ‘A l-n a q d ’ , 54. 111. 'A b b ā s, T ārī kh al-naqd, 276–93. 112. J a m ā l al-D ī n 'A lī b. Yū s u f a l-Q ifṭ ī, Al-m uḥ ammadū n min al-shu'arā', e d . Ḥ a m d al-Jā sir (C a iro : D ā r a l-K u tu b al-M iṣ riyya, 1970), 1: 267. 113. Y ā q ū t, M u 'ja m al-udabā', 12: 113. 114. 'A b b ā s, T ārī kh al-naqd, 289 ( q u o tin g Ib n J in n ī ) . 115. Ib id ., 290 ( q u o tin g Ib n J in n ī ). 116. 'A b b ā s, T ārī kh al-naqd, 290; Ib n J in n ī , Al-sharḥ , 2: 65. 117. Ib n F u rra ja h , Al-fatḥ 'alā al-fatḥ , e d . 'A b d al-K arīm a l-D ujaylī (C a iro : D ā r al-Ḥ u rriyya, 1974), 71. 118. Ib id ., 80. 119. A b ū 'A lī M u ḥ a m m a d b. al-Ḥ asan al-Ḥ ātim ī , Al-risāla al-mūḍ iḥ a fī dhikr sariqāt A b ī Ṭ ayyib al-Mutanabbī wa sāqiṭ shi'rihi, e d . M u ḥ a m m a d Y ū s u f N a jm (B e iru t: D ā r Ṣ ād ir a n d D ā r B e iru t, 1965). 120. T h is w o rk is a lso k n o w n as K itāb al-mūḍ iḥ a f ī masāwī al-mutanabbī in Y ā q ū t, M u 'ja m al-udabā ’, 18: 155; Jabhat al-adab in a l-Q ifṭ ī, Inbāh, 3: 103; a n d Al-risāla al-ḥ ātimiyya in Ib n K h a llik ḥ n , Wafayḥ t, vol. 3: 362 a n d Almūḍ iḥ a, 367. 121. a l-T h a 'ālib ī , Yatīmat al-dahr, 1: 136.

161

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LITERARY CRITICISM IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC-ISLAM IC C U LTU R E 122. M u ḥ a m m a d Y ū s u f N a jm , I n tr o d u c tio n , al-Ḥ ātim ī , Al-mūḍ iḥ a, (k a f). A l-M u ta n a b b ī ’s d a te s a t th e c o u rts o f S a y f al-D aw la o v e r la p p e d th e d a te s o f A b ū 'A lī al-Fā risī . A l-M u ta n a b b ī se rve d S a y f al-D aw la b e tw e e n 337 a n d 345, a n d A b ū 'A li c a m e to A le p p o in 341. 123. F o r analysis o f th is w o rk in te rm s o f th e c ritic a l issu es th a t it raises, see 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh al-naqd, 263, 'A d n ā n Q ā sim , D irāsāt naqdiyya, (T rip o li: a l-M u n s h a ’a a l-S h a 'b iy y a li al-N a sh r w a A l-T a w zī ', 1979), 185–209. 124. al-Ḥ ātim ī , Al-mūḍ iha, 3. 125. Ib id ., 20–21. 126. 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh al-naqd, 256. 127. F o r th e life a n d w o rk s o f al-Ṣ āḥ ib b. 'A b b ād , se e M u ḥ a m m a d Ḥ assā n Ā l Y ā sīn , A l-Ṣ āḥ ib b. 'A bb ād: ḥ ayātuhu wa adabuhu (B a g h d a d : M a ṭ b a 'a t a l-M a 'ā rif, 1957); K h a lī l M a rd a m , Al-Ṣ āḥ ib b. 'Abbād (D a m a scu s: M a ṭ b a 'a t a l-T a ra q q ī , 1932); B a d a w ī Ṭ a b ā n ā , Al-Ṣ āḥ ib b. 'Abbād al-wazīr al-adīb al-'ālim (C a iro : a l-M u ’ assasa al-M iṣ riyya al-'Ā m m a li a l-T a ’līf w a

al-Tarjama wa al-Ṭ ibā'a wa al-Nashr, 1964). 128. Al-Ṣ āḥ ib b. 'Abbād, Risāla fī al-kashf 'an masāwī al-Mutanabbī, ed. Muḥ ammad Ḥ asan Āl Yāsīn (Baghdad, 1965). Yāsīn also wrote a series 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145.

o f a rtic le s in th e D a m a s c e n e A l-m a'rifa, in w h ic h h e d iscu sse d th e c ritic a l issu es c o n ta in e d in Al-kashf. a l-T h a 'ālib ī , Yatīmat al-dahr, 1: 138. Ib id . Ib id ., 72. Ib id . Ib n 'A b b ā d, Al-kashf, 30. Ib id ., 31. Ib id ., 31, 33 a n d 35. Ib id ., 35. Ib id . Ib id ., 37. Ib id ., 34. Ib id ., 45. Ib id ., 51 a n d 54. Ib id ., 44. Ib id ., 41. Ib id . Ib id ., 33.

146. 'Abbās, Tārīkh al-naqd, 294. 147. Ibn Wakī' al-Tinīsī, Al-munṣif fī naqd al-shi'r wa bayān sariqāt alMutanabbī wa mushkil shi'rihi, ed. Muḥ ammad Riḍ wān al-Dāya 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159.

(D a m a scu s: D ār Q u ta y b a , 1975). 'A b b ā s, T ā r ī h al-naqd, 294. Ib n W a k ī ', Al-m unṣ i f 3. Y ā q ū t, M u 'ja m al-udabā', 12: 113. Ib n W a k ī ', Al-m unṣ i f 49–65. Ib id ., 65. Ib id ., 56. Ib id ., 65. 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh al-naqd, 297. Ib n W a k ī ', A l-m unṣ i f 285 Ib id ., 78–9. Ib id ., 7. F o r th e life a n d w o rk s o f a l-Q ā d ī al-Jurjā n ī , se e M a ḥ m ū d N ā d al-S am r,

FANFARE OF CONTRO VERSY A l-Q ādī al-J urjān ī al-adib al-nāqid (B e iru t: a l-M aktab al-T ijā ri li alṬ ib ā 'a w a a l-T aw zī ' w a al-N ash r, 1966); 'A b d u h Q a lq īla, A l-Q āḍ ī alJu rjān ī wa al-naqd al-adabī (C a iro : a l-H a y ’a al-M isriyya a l-'A m m a li alK itāb, 1973) a n d A l-Q āḍ ī al-Jurjā n ī 'A l ī b. 'A b d al-'A ziz (B e iru t: alM a k ta b al-T ijā ri li al-Ṭ ib ā 'a w a al-T aw zī ' w a al-N ash r, 1966). 160. Y ā q ū t, M u 'j a m al-udabā ’, 14: 24–5. 161. Ib id . 162. Ib n F u rra ja h , A l-fatḥ , 80. 16 3 . T h e r e is n o e v id e n c e o f al-Q āḍ ī al-Jurjānī’s fa m ilia rity w ith Ib n W a k ī's w o rk . F ro m th e q u o ta tio n s in Al-m unṣ i f ta k e n fr o m Al-wasāṭ a, it seem s m o re lik e ly th a t th e la tte r w as w ritte n b e fo r e th e fo rm e r . 164. a l-Q āḍ i al-Jurjā n ī , Al-wasāṭ a bayn al-M utanabbī wa khuṣ ūmihi, e d . M u ḥ a m m a d A b ū al-Faḍ l I b r ā h īm a n d 'A lī M u ḥ a m m a d al-B ijāw ī (C a iro : D ār Iḥ y ā ’ a l-K u tu b a l-'A ra b iy y a , 1951), 3. 165. Ib id ., 3. 166. Ib id ., 4. 167. It w as al-Q āḍ ī al-Jurjānī’s o p in io n th a t lite ra ry d is c o u r se , b e it p ro s e o r p o e try , w as o f tw o k in d s, th a t w h ic h w as w e ll c o n s tr u c te d ( al-muḥ kam al-wathīq wa al-jazl al-qawī wa al-munassaq al-muḥ kam wa al-munammaq al-muwashshah) a n d th a t w h ic h w as d e fe c tiv e ( al-mukhtall al-m a'īb, alf āsid al-muḍ tarib) e ith e r in its fo r m (la n g u a g e , g r a m m a r a n d p ro so d y ) o r c o n te n t (th a t r e q u ir e s d e e p p r o b in g b e fo r e it is u n d e r s to o d ) . S ee a l-Q āḍ ī al-Jurjā n ī , Al-wasāṭ a, 413. 168. Ib id . 169. G e n u in e c ritic ism , a c c o r d in g to al-Q āḍ ī al-Jurjānī, w as o f tw o kin ds: th a t w h ic h w as o b v io u s, in v o lv in g fin d in g g r a m m a tic a l, p r o s o d ic a n d p h ilo lo g ic a l e rro r, a n a ctiv ity w h ic h a n y la y m a n c o u ld p e r fo r m , a n d th a t w h ic h w as o b s c u r e a n d d iffic u lt, r e q u ir in g sp e c ia l skills (al-Qāḍ ī al-Ju rjānī, Al-wasāṭ a, 414). 170. Ib id ., 183. 171. Ib n R a sh īq, A l-'um da, 117. 172. Ib id ., 94 a n d 280. 173. Ib n R a s h īq , Qurāḍ at al-dhahab, e d . a l-S h ā d h lī A b ū Y a ḥ y ā (T u n is: alS h a rik a al-T ū n isiyya li a l-T aw zī ', 1972), 14– 19. 174. F o r m o r e d e ta ile d d iscu ssio n s o f 'A m ū d al-shi'r al-'arabī, see, fo r e x a m p le , M a n s u r A jam i, The Neckveins o f Winter (L e id e n : E. J. B rill, 1984); ‘A m ū d al-Shi'r, le g itim iz a tio n o f tr a d itio n ’ , Journal o f Arabic Literature 12 (1971): 30–48; A ḥ m a d Ḥ a m rū n i ( A lg e r ia ), 'J u h ū d a l-n aq d al-a d ab ī al-n aẓ a rī w a al-taṭ īq ī ’ , Al-fikr 23: 5 (F e b ru a ry 1978): 33–40; a n d S u z a n n e S te tk e v y c h , A bū Tammām, 257–356. 175. 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh al-naqd, 322 a n d 405. 176. M u ḥ a m m a d al-Ṭ āh ir 'Ā sh ū r, Sharḥ al-muqaddima al-adabiyya (T r ip o li a n d T u n is: al-D ā r a l-'A ra b iy y a li al-K itāb , 1978). 177. A b ū 'A lī A ḥ m a d b. M u ḥ a m m a d b. al-Ḥ asan a l-M arzū q ī , Sharḥ dīwān al-ḥ amāsa, e d . A ḥ m a d A m īn a n d 'A b d al-Salā m H ār ū n (C a iro : 1967), 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183. 184.

1: 3. Ib id ., Ib id . Ib id . Ib id . Ib id ., Ib id ., Ib id .,

1: 4.

1: 5. 1: 11. 1: 14.

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LITERARY CRITICISM IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC-ISLAM IC C U LTU R E 185. F o r th e life a n d w o rk s o f Ib n S h a ra f, see M u ḥ a m m a d Ṭ āh ā al-Ḥ āj i r ī , Ibn Sharaf al-Qayrawān ī (B e iru t: D ā r a l-N a h ḍ a a l-'A ra b iyya , 1983). 186. Ib n K h a ld ū n , Al-muqaddima, 518. 187. H is o t h e r w o rk s in c lu d e A bkār al-afkār, a c o lle c t io n o f p o e tr y a n d p ro se ; A 'lām al-kalām, a n o th e r c o lle c t io n (see D īwān Ibn S haraf alQayrawān ī, e d . Ḥ asan D h ik r ī Ḥ asan [C a iro : M a k ta b a t al-K u liyya alA zh ra iy y a , 1983]); a n d his d īw ā n o f p o e tr y (Yā q ū t, M u 'ja m al-udabā',

19: 43). 188. F o r a h isto ry o f th e p u b lic a tio n o f th is te x t, see 'A b d a l-Q u d d ū s A b ū Ṣ ālih , ‘ M a sā ’il a l-in tiq ā d li Ib n S h a r a f al-Q a yra w ā n ī ’ , A l-ādāb 9: 3 (1961), 42. In a d d itio n to C h a r le s P e lla t’s F r e n c h tra n sla tio n , an Italian tra n sla tio n b y U m b e r to R izz ita n o m a y b e f o u n d in R S O 31

( 1956): 51–72. 189. 'A b b ā s, T ārī kh al-naqd, 461. 190. O n e o f th e q u e s tio n s r e la te d to th is trea tise is th a t th e r e is n o w ay to d e te r m in e w h e t h e r it c o m p r ise s o n e maqāma o r m o re . Y ā q ū t re fe r s to it in th e s in g u la r fo rm , risāla, a n d Ḥ asan Ḥ u sn ī 'A b d a l-W a h h āb, w h o e d ite d th e trea tise u n d e r th e title M asā ’il al-intiqād, sp e a k s o f it as ‘ th e w e ll-k n o w n maqāma:’ in th e s in g u la r fo r m as w e ll (see R asā ’il albulaghā ’, 343). H o w e v e r, Ib n B assā m m e n tio n s th a t Ib n S h a r a f h a d w ritte n so m e maqāmā t, im ita tin g B a d ī ' a l-Z a m ān (see Ib n B assā m alS h a n ta rīn ī , Al-dhakhīra f ī mahāsin ahl al-jazīra, e d . Iḥ sā n 'A b b ā s [ T r ip o li a n d T u n is: al-D ā r a l-'A ra b iy y a li al-K itāb, 1978], 4: I: 154). 'A b b ā s re m a rk s th a t Ib n B assā m ’s sta te m e n t in d e e d in d ic a te s th a t Ib n S h a r a f h a d w ritte n m o re th a n o n e maqāma, th o u g h h e c o n je c tu r e s th a t p e r h a p s th e y w e re n o t all o n th e sa m e su b je c t (see 'A b b ā s, T ārī kh al-naqd, 461). W h ile 'A b b ā s’ p o in t is w e ll ta k e n , it c a n n o t b e c o n c lu siv e u n til f u r t h e r e v id e n c e is fo u n d . T h e te x t its e lf p re s e n ts a p r o b le m in th is r e g a rd . U n lik e a l-H a m a d h ān ī ’s maqāma, w h ic h trea ts o n e e v e n t at a tim e, Ib n S h a r a f s maqāma d e a ls w ith tw o issu es in tw o parts. W h ile th e first p a rt o f Ib n S h a r a f s trea tise m a y b e tr a c e d to alH a m a d h ā n ī ’ s Al-maqāma al-qarīḍ iyya (al-H a m a d h ā n ī , M aqāmāt, 1), th e s e c o n d p a rt h as n o p ro to ty p e . A l-H a m a d h ān ī w ro te a n o th e r maqāma o n ma'ān ī al-shi'r, n a m e ly , Al-maqā ma al-shi'riyya (a l-H a m a d h ān ī , M aqāmāt, 222); s h o u ld w e e x p e c t Ib n S h a r a f to h a v e w ritte n o n e o f th e sa m e k in d ? 191. R asā ’il al-bulaghā ’, 332. 192. Ib id . 193. Ib id ., 333. 194. Ib id ., 334. 195. Ib id ., 336. 196. Ib id . 197. Ib id ., 337. 198. Ib id . 199. Ib id . 200. Ib id . 201. Ib id . 202. Ib id . 203. Ib id ., 340. 204. Ib id ., 343. 205. Ib id ., 325. 206. Ib id ., 343. 207. Ib id .

FANFARE OF CONTRO VERSY 208. al-T aw ḥ īd ī , R asā 'il, 115. 209. A l-Tawḥ īdī, m e n tio n s th a t p o e tr y is o f f o u r k in d s, a c c o r d in g to Ib n alM u 'ta z z: th a t o f w h ic h b o th fo r m a n d c o n te n t a re e x c e lle n t; th a t o f w h ic h b o th fo r m a n d c o n te n t a re b a d ; th a t o f w h ic h fo r m is e x c e lle n t b u t c o n te n t is b a d ; a n d th a t o f w h ic h fo r m is e x c e lle n t b u t c o n te n t b a d . I k n o w th ese c r ite ria to b e o f Ib n Q u ta y b a , n o t Ib n a l-M u 'tazz. P e rh a p s al-Tawḥ īdī, m a d e a m ista k e (al-Tawḥ īdī,, R asā 'il, 115).

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Against All Odds The Making of a Tradition

The moment when a material or intellectual practice begins to 'think itself', to take itself as an object of intellectual inquiry, is clearly of dominant significance in the development of that practice; it will certainly never be the same again. Terry Eagleton Before al-Ṣ āḥ ib b. 'Abbḥ d could delve into al-Mutanabbī’s failures in his art as a poet, he painstakingly expounded what he meant by ' ilmal-shi'r, an art which he described as lofty but elusive.1 He wrote thirteen pages of his introduction to Risāla fī al-kashf 'an masāwī ’ al-Mutanabbī in which he claimed not only adequate knowledge of ' ilm al-shi'r, but also the authority of a specialist. To support his claim, al-Ṣ āḥ ib conjured up every possible piece of evidence that he could muster from the literary tradition. He first affirmed that he had learnt 'ilm al-shi'r from a great master in naqd, namely Ibn al-'Amīd; he then stripped authority in this kind of endeavour from the grammarians and lexicographers and invested it in the kuttāb instead; and he finally usurped the role of the critic by actually examining alMutanabbī's poetry and picking out its defects. Al-Ṣ āḥ ib’s notions with respect to poetic criticism were neither new nor insightful. However, his treatise, especially in a retrospective assessment of his work on alMutanabbī, is a curious reflection of the predicament of classical Arabic literary criticism, for it embodies and reveals all the problems of the field that had been clamouring for a solution, but did not find any that was definitive or decisive in the period between the third/ninth and fifth/ eleventh centuries. In arguing for an authoritative voice in ' ilm al-shi'r and naqd al-shi'r for himself, al-Ṣ āḥ ib first lodged the authority in Ibn al-'Amīd particularly, and later in the kuttāb generally.2This act in itself creates two problems for his argument. First, Ibn al-'Amīd was not renowned as a critic. Whatever he said about poetry in his majlis is not known to have been reported or recorded, except by al-Ṣ āḥ ib. Al-Ṣ āḥ ib’s attribution to Ibn al-'Amīd of such

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expert knowledge can be viewed only as the act of a politically ambitious young man who would say anything to please his patron. Yet al-Ṣ āḥ ib’s claim that Ibn al-'Amīd was master of naqd, in fact quoting his discussions of issues related to naqd, would not have been possible without some grounding in the practice of the intellectual circles of his time. It reveals by implication the seemingly widespread practice of naqd in medieval ArabicIslamic society. Al-Ṣ āḥ ib’s statement thus reveals that naqd includes many of the discussions of poetry that were taking place in the lively literary circles in the various Islamic centres, whether these activities were held by a vizier and kātib like Ibn al-'Amīd, by a poet like Abū Tammām or al-Mutanabbī, or in study circles. Unfortunately, a great many of the details of these activities have not been recorded, and without the details of these discussions our assessment of classical Arabic literary criticism must remain tentative. Second, by paraphrasing al-Jāḥ iẓ ’s pronouncement that al-Aṣ ma' ī alAkhfash and Abū 'Ubayda were not the authorities on 'ilm al-shi'r, but naming instead the kuttāb Ḥ asan b. Wahb and Muḥ ammad b. 'Abd al-Malik al-Zayyāt,3 al-Ṣ āḥ ib was performing a self-serving act, for since al-Jāḥ iẓ , the terms 'ilm al-shi'rand naqd al-sh'irhad undergone significant developments, and citing him at this late stage was no more than an attempt to undermine the works of Ibn Ṭ abātabā, Qudāma, al-Ṣ ūlī and al-Āmidī. Al-Ṣ āḥ ib’s act was no more than manipulation of historical material to support his position as a critic, for al-Ṣ āḥ ib himself was a kātib. More significant, however, was his explicit linking of naqd with 'ayb (shortcoming, defect, fault). In the section in which he invoked examples from Arabic poetry on intiqād al-ash'ār, he quoted the already-cited two lines, in which 'ayb or its derivatives were specifically used to mean naqd. His efforts in finding fault with al-Mutanabbī’s poetry can only confirm this notion of naqd, whether his opinion was critically justifiable or otherwise. These were precisely the problems of classical Arabic criticism. Since the inception of the notion that poetry was a literary phenomenon worthy of intellectual inquiry in itself, the supposed field of poetic studies had run into one difficulty after another. The conflicting views, and consequently the terms used to designate this field, fluctuated between ilm al-shi'r, al-'ilm bi al-shi'r and naqd al-shi'r, or even ṣ inā't al-shi'ra t times. The meanings of these terms went through several changes according to the priorities of the authors, priorities that often dictated the views of these authors towards poetry itself. For Ibn Sallām, al-'ilm bi al-shi'r meant authentication of the Arabic poetic tradition, understandably so because Ibn Sallām was addressing the problems of a society that was being transformed from a mainly oral one to a literate one, not to mention a society that was in the process of assimilating its various racial components – a process that had to

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wrestle with opposing forces. One of these struggles was the shu'ūbiyya controversy between Arabs and non-Arabs – a cultural and societal crisis in the third/ninth century that involved both the place of non-Arabs and the relevance on non-Arabic culture in the Arabic-Islamic empire. Al-Jāḥ iẓ and Ibn Qutayba were no outsiders to the early polemics of this evolving ArabicIslamic culture and society, and their views of poetry, and consequently their treatment of it, could not escape the necessity of addressing the more pervasive and pressing questions of political and ideological dialectics. Poetry was used as a source of information and pride, and their treatment of it was accordingly that of extracting information from it (al-Jāḥ iẓ ) or documenting this tradition (Ibn Qutayba). The involvement of Ibn alMu'tazz in the politics of the 'Abbasid Caliphate dictated that his assessment of poetry be on the basis of the poet’s political affiliations – his association with the 'Abbasid court. When Ibn Ṭ abātabā and Qudāma attempted to effect changes with regard to the pervasive notions of al-'ilm bi al-shi'r and naqd al-shi'r in the first half of the fourth/tenth century, their efforts were thwarted by the polemics rising from the debates surrounding two major poets, namely Abū Tammām and al-Mutanabbī. These debates were motivated either by professional reasons, as in the case of al-Ṣ ūlī and al-Āmidī, or by personal reasons, as in the case of Di'bil al-Khuzā'ī vis-à-vis Abū Tammām, or alḤ ātimī, al-Ṣ āḥ ib and Ibn Wakī' al-Tinnīsī vis-à-vis al-Mutanabbī. The works of these authors focused mainly on finding faults or picking out appropriations as the means to discredit the poets. As a result, ' ilm al-shi'r and naqd al-shi'r became closely associated with 'ayb. Although these debates produced two major works, al-Āmidī’s Al-muwāzana and al-Qāḍ ī alJurjānī’s Al-wasāṭ a, they also determined the direction of these works and the technical issues discussed in them, for they were both written in response to the issues raised in the debates over the credibility of Abū Tammām and al-Mutanabbī as poets. Consequently, their dealing with the issues, especially errors and defects, was inevitable. The negative associations of al-'ilm bi al-shi'r and naqd al-shi'r were precisely what prompted al-Tawḥ īdī to coin a new term for the field, namely, al-kalām 'alā al-kalām4 (discourse on discourse).5Al-Tawḥ īdī used this term to designate any discussion of literary discourse free of the political and personal notes of naqd al-shi'r and 'ilm al-shi'r; be it prose or poetry.6 His achievement would not have been possible without the efforts of Abū Hilāl al-'Askarī and al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī’s, who dealt with both in their discussion of the artistic features of the literary discourse in Al-ṣ inā'atayn and Al-wasāṭ a. Al-Tawḥ īdī's statement that al-kalām 'alā al-kalām is difficult7 must be viewed in the light of the many problems of ' ilm al-shi'r and naqd al-shi'r. However, al-Tawḥ īdī's

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attempt remained a unique historical initiative that did not gain currency in Arabic critical writings.8 In addition to the problems raised by the term and the exact scope that it designates, the authors of works in this field faced yet another serious dichotomy. For while they purported to claim authority in this field, they themselves came from divergent backgrounds, ranging from poets (Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, Ibn al-Mu'tazz, al-Ḥ ātimī, Ibn Wakī' al-Tinnīsī, Ibn Rashīq and Ibn Sharaf) to grammarians/lexicographers (al-Aṣ ma'ī, Ibn Sallām, Tha'lab, Ibn Jinnī, Ibn Furrajah, Abū Hilāl al-'Askarī , 'Abd al-Qāhir alJurjānī and al-Marzūqī), theologians (al-Jāḥ iẓ – though he defies all classifications – and al-Bāqillānī), kuttāb (al-Ṣ āḥ ib b. 'Abbād), and transmitters of poetry (al-Ṣ ūlī, al-Āmidī, al-Marzubānī). The effect of their respective professions on their arguments is not difficult to imagine. For example, while al-Ṣ ūlī and al-Āmidī claimed authority for the transmitters of poetry, al-Ṣ āḥ ib claimed it for the kuttāb. But despite these difficulties, Arabic writers were able, as we have seen, to discuss and even solve some of the major questions related to their field, especially the technical ones, such as the relationship of form and content ('Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī)9 and the question of sariqāt – seen as a matter of artistic appropriation and adaptation, not immoral thievery (al-Qāḍ ī alJurjānī).10 In their conflicting interests, they were able to transcend the limitations of the field as they defined it, and discuss the intellectual processes of poetic composition, such as creativity and imagination.11 Their achievements in this area are well documented and studied. Most important, they were also able to define the qualifications of a critic, at least in theoretical terms, and to consolidate this field by providing a practically – not necessarily theoretically – cohesive framework for all the issues related to the discussion of poetry leading to the evolution of a selfreferential critical tradition. In the preceding chapters, a number of ambiguous or often misunderstood terms have been traced and pinned down, and the professional and intellectual concerns of the scholars who used them have been examined. These were necessary preliminaries to the ultimate purpose of this study: the disentangling of the main strands that went into the making of genuine literary criticism as understood today. Two further issues, the definition of an ideal critic and the establishment of a self-conscious critical tradition, manifest in the development of a cohesive framework, are crucial to our understanding and evaluation of this area of study. We will now re-examine the writings of medieval Arabic critics, focusing on their contributions to the codifying of these issues.

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D E F I N I T I O N OF T H E F IE L D AND IT S S P E C I A L I S T

In his book on al-Marzubānī,12Munīr Sulṭ ān classifies the critical anecdotes contained in Al-muwashshaḥ according to the persons to whom they are attributed. These persons are in turn divided into four groups: al-'ulamā ',13 grammarians,14transmitters15and critics. Among the critics, Sulṭ ān includes poets, caliphs, women and ‘specialists’. Ibn Sallām, Ibn al-Mu'tazz, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā and Qudāma are listed under the last category. Sulṭ ān ’s classification of al-Marzubānī’s sources indicates two things. First, it reveals the modern perception of classical Arabic literary criticism, a perception made possible only retrospectively, for Sulṭ ān’s singling-out of Ibn Sallām, Ibn al-Mu'tazz, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā and Qudāma as specialists-critics is a notion held by modern scholars and is warranted by no textual support from the classical sources. Indeed, Ibn Sallām may well be considered a language scholar (grammarian or lexicographer) or religious scholar, even as Ibn alMu'tazz may be seen as a caliph and a poet, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā as a poet, and Qudāma as a kātib, based on the evidence found in classical Arabic sources, not excluding Al-muwashshaḥ itself. And second, it points to the absence of a cohesive conception in classical writings of critics as a defined group of specialists. Sulṭ ān’s need to classify those whom al-Marzubānī quotes in Almuwashshaḥ may indeed reflect the lack of such classification in alMarzubānī’s work itself. The task of identifying critics as a group of specialists in the classical period of Arabic literature is not made easy by the practitioners of criticism, especially those involved in the controversies over the poetry of Abū Tammām and al-Mutanabbī who, while attempting to claim authority to themselves by manipulating evidence to support their arguments, managed instead to undermine their own authority. Al-Ṣ ūlī and al-Āmidī, who controlled the arena of discussions of poetry to a great extent during the controversy over Abū Tammām, subordinated their practice to their professional priorities. They focused on poets of an older generation like Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī, not of a contemporary like al-Mutanabbī, and were thus unable to influence the literary trends of their time. During the controversy over the poetry of al-Mutanabbī, alMutanabbī’s ‘ardent critics’ set out to expose his defects at any cost; and in their discussion of his poetry, they quoted statements made by their predecessors as long as these statements supported their claims regarding the shortcomings of al-Mutanabbī’s poetry. Nevertheless, medieval Arabic critics, in addition to solving some major critical issues, were able to do two things for their field: to define the literary critic theoretically and to consolidate the various attempts in such a way that we now have a body of material that we call the classical Arabic critical tradition.

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The Literary Critic From as early as the third/ninth century, notions regarding critics as a group of people possessing special knowledge about poetry began to emerge with the growing interest in the study of poetry. The credit must go to Ibn Sallām, who identified a group of people whom he called al-'ulamā' and ahl al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, distinguished from the religious and language scholars,16and considered specialists in poetry. He further identified some of the tools of an 'ālim of poetry: he must possess specialised knowledge needed to assess poetry, this being a craft (ṣ inā'a and thaqāfa); he must deal with the text directly (al-mu'āyana wa al-istimā' lahu); and he must possess sufficient experience (al-mudārasa). Ibn Sallām’s notions served as the foundation for later discussions of the qualifications and authority of the specialist on poetry. All critics, from al-Jāḥ iẓ of the third/ninth century to al-Marzūqī of the fifth/eleventh century, contributed directly or indirectly, positively or negatively, to the development of the conception of the literary critic so that by the fifth/eleventh century one may find a definition of what being a literary critic constituted in theory: his qualifications and his authority. The historical process, how medieval Arabic critics discussed, debated and negotiated the definition of the literary criticism, comprised two major steps: first, exclusion of unqualified persons; and second, identification of the necessary requirements for specialists. Exclusion of Non-specialists While grappling with identifying the attributes of the specialist, Arabic critics in the Middle Ages practised what seemed perhaps the first step, the easy way out, by excluding those whom they deemed unqualified, a process that continued to take place through the centuries. Al-Jāḥ iẓ was among the first to exclude grammarians and lexicographers from the realm of 'ilm alshi'r, though this process appeared only in his criticism of the ruwāt al-lugha – or naḥ wiyyūn, ruwāt al-ash'ār and ruwāt al-akhbār17 – and their attitude towards poetry, where he says: I sought 'ilm al-shi'r from al-Aṣ ma'ī and I discovered he knows only the obscure forms of the language. Then I went to al-Akhfash and I discovered that he is competent only in grammar. Then I swerved to Abu 'Ubayda and he transmits only that which is related to accounts concerning the poets, battles and genealogy. I obtained what I wanted only from the udabā’ among the kuttāb, like al-Ḥ asan b. Wahb and Muḥ ammad b. 'Abd al-Malik al-Zayyāt.18

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Al-Jāḥ iẓ ’s comments on the practice of the grammarians and lexico­ graphers with regard to poetry is an important step towards the definition of 'ilm al-shi'r as a realm independent of grammatical, lexicographical and prosodic studies that requires its own specialist. Ibn al-Mu'tazz, in the context of his discussion of al-badī ', excludes another group of scholars. He makes an observation regarding two groups of people who were involved in the discussion of poetry, poets and nuqqād among the muta’addibūn (men of letters)19 and al-'ulamā' bi al-lugha wa al-shi'r al-qadīm (scholars of language and ancient poetry), then states that al-badī', both as a literary phenomenon and as a discipline of poetic study, is known only to the first group. Ibn al-Mu'tazz was performing a sifting process in Kitāb al-badī', for the discussion of poetry here diverged from the practice of his prede­ cessors, who confined their discussion to ancient poetry, authenticating it,

documenting it, selecting samples of it for preservation, and using it to help them study the Qurā ’n and Ḥ adīth. Unfortunately, Ibn al-Mu'tazz did not offer any insight as to what he meant by nuqqād, for elsewhere he used 'ulamā',20 'ālim21 and ahl al-'ilm,22 all in the same way that his predecessors had used them, to denote those who possessed knowledge of poetry, without specifying exactly what this knowledge consisted of. Al-Ṣ ūlī further distinguished between al-ruwāt bi al-shi'r and al-'ulamā’ bi al-shi'r while discussing the poetry of Abū Tammām. Here, he quotes 'Ubayd Allāh b. 'Abdallāh b. Ṭ āhir to the effect that al-ruwāt knew how to explain poetry but they could not discern the merits of poetic diction.23AlṢ ūlī, despite his great respect for his teachers, Tha'lab and al-Mubarrad, did not consider them al-'ulamā ’ bi al-shi'r.24Al-Ṣ ūlī was of the opinion that only one who met the criteria he put forth, which shall be discussed later, should be considered an 'ālim bi al-shi'r. In Al-wasāṭ a, al-Jurjānī makes an acute observation about those who were practising naqd during his time, especially those who were engaged in the discussion of al-Mutanabbī’s poetry. He comments that they belonged to either of the following two groups: grammarians and lexicographers who had no insight into the craft of poetry (ṣ inā'at al-shi'r) and who exposed their own shortcomings and ignorance by participating in a kind of activity called intiqād;25 and ma'ānī experts (concerned only with the content or meaning) who possessed no knowledge of grammar or language, who disapproved of the obvious and begrudged what was clear.26 The Problem of the Poet Insofar as exclusion was possible, one group of professionals constantly remained a problematic issue: the poets. In fact, just as in today’s world of literature and literary criticism, poets were regarded, by themselves as well

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as others, as practitioners of the craft who possessed both expertise and experience where matters relevant to poetry and poetic compositions were concerned. Many poets, like al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī, Abū Tammām and alMutanabbī, all claimed authority in knowledge of poetry, and therefore authority as critics; indeed they presided over discussions of poetry, be it their own composition or others’. Medieval Arabic critics were aware of this problem and discussed it at length, but without resolving the issue. Al-Ṣ ūlī writes: This science belongs to the people who are specialised in it. They are not the ruwat or the kuttāb only, nor the accomplished poets only, for some of them excel in one art and as soon as they leave it are in trouble; and some others know poetry in its entirety and recognise it.27 In this statement, al-Ṣ ūlī seems to include the following three categories of professionals in the field which he delineated as al-'ilm bi al-shi'r. transmitters of poetry, kuttāb and poets. However, al-Ṣ ūlī’s book abounds in contradictions on this score; at one point, he argues that the ruwāt al-shi'r are not al-'ulamā’ bi al-shi'r. If there were no others, these statements might be reconciled by assuming that not all ruwāt are meant in one, whereas they are in the second. But in yet another instance he dismisses the ruwāt completely, saying: ‘If naqd al-shi'r and the knowledge of the veracity of poetry is by 'ilm and riwāya, then any one of the 'ulamā’ who compose poetry would have been the best poet’.28 Elsewhere he dismisses the kuttāb and bulaghā from the realm, saying: ‘If this (naqd al-shi'r) were possible through bulaghā and kitāba, then you would have thought that whoever composes poetry from among the kuttāb is the best poet. But it has become clear that naqd al-shi'r is not for those people as some thought it would be.’29 In yet another instance, he affirms that the 'ulamā' al-mulūk wa ru’asā’ al-kuttāb are those who are the most versed in literary discourse, both poetry and prose.30 From the ambiguity of al-Ṣ ūlī’s statements, it is perhaps possible to infer that there was a state of confusion with regard to criticism and who the critic was. Although he realised that criticism was a discipline that must be separated from poetic composition, in practice this was not the case. On the contrary, the line between these two disciplines, that of poetic composition and that of poetic evaluation, was not firmly drawn. This created a dilemma for al-Ṣ ūlī. At one point he asserted that criticism was best entrusted to the poets: ‘Indeed (criticism) belongs to those who are trained in literary discourse (rādū al-kalām), compose poetry, know it, deal with its meanings, travel along its road, transmit it and distinguish the good from the bad’.31 The contradiction in al-Ṣ ūlī’s position may in part be due

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to his admiration for Abū Tammām, who was not only an outstanding poet in his opinion but also an outstanding critic, commanding respect as such, and above all whose anthologies were immensely popular.32 When al-Ṣ ūlī and al-Āmidī argued over the poetry of Abū Tammām, one of the issues raised in the controversy was Abū Tammām’s skill as a poet and its relationship to his extensive knowledge of poetry. While al-Ṣ ūlī used Abū Tammām’s knowledge of poetry to support his argument that Abū Tammām was unlikely to make errors that would place him in a position offensive to the tradition,33 al-Āmidī argued that knowledge of poetry did not necessarily make one a poet.34 During the debates over al-Mutanabbī, this issue was again raised, for like Abū Tammām, al-Mutanabbī was well versed in the Arabic poetic tradition. At face value, this argument seems to concern only the poet, but its antithesis bears some relevance to critics as well, for it was argued that if knowledge of poetry did indeed make a poet, then scholars like al-Aṣ ma'ī and al-Khalīl would have been the best poets, and it is self-evident that it is not necessarily so. On the other hand, the poets who were under attack responded that only ahl al-ṣ inā'a (people belonging to the profession) were qualified to make judgements on their works as art or literature. In the controversies over Abū Tammām and alMutanabbī, the lines between the two were never clearly drawn, for a great number of their critics were indeed poets – albeit of a lesser stature. It was not until the fifth/eleventh century, and specifically by al-Marzūqī, that a more decisive statement was made on this matter. Needless to say, his argument must be considered in the light of the incongruity into which he got himself: while he maintained that the best of poetry was that which was in accordance with 'amūd al-shi'r, he chose the anthology of Abū Tammām, whose poetry was anything but in accordance with 'amūd al-shi'r. The wide acclaim35that Abū Tammām’s anthology gained, while his poetry provoked more condemnation, necessitated an explanation, for at least on a theoretical level Abū Tam m ām ’s knowledge of poetry should have determined the direction of his poetry. Here is how al-Marzūqī explains the paradox: Abū Tammām selected what he did for one reason only, that is, it is good (poetry). But he composes poetry according to his inclination. And the difference between what is desired and what is good is obvious. The evidence for that is that the one who knows clothes may desire that which is not good even in his opinion, and may admire that which he does not desire.36 The separation of Abū Tammām the critic from Abū Tammām the poet was meant to solve the problem created by al-Marzūqī’s stance toward Abū

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Tammām’s Dīwān al-ḥ amāsa. To support his position, al-Marzūqī cites an anecdote related by al-Ṣ ūlī: Al-Ṣ ūlī reported that he heard al-Mubarrad say: I heard al-Ḥ asan b. Rajā’ say: I have never seen anyone who is more knowledgeable on matters related to poetry, including what is good of it – ancient and modern – than Abū Tammām. He is said to have said when he went through the poetry of Ibn Abū 'Uyayna among the poetry of the 'Moderns’ of which he was making a selection that all of it was selectable. [He said] this in spite of the fact that his [Ibn Abī 'Uyayna’s] poetry is the furthest-away thing from his own poetry.37 By the same token, poets are not necessarily critics, 'for it is clear that the one who distinguishes poetry may not compose it, and the one who composes good poetry may not know its naqd'.38 The case in point is of course al-Buḥ turī who, according to al-Marzūqī’s sources, ‘admired only poetry which agreed with his nature (ṭ ab') and his own poetic composition in form and content’.39 The question of the authority of the poet as critic remains, as a matter of course, unresolved and insoluble at this date. This, however, did not prevent those scholars who wrote on poetry from identifying the qualifications necessary in the making of the specialist in matters related to poetry, be they relevant to its composition or its evaluation. These requirements, as enumerated by medieval scholars of Arabic poetry are in effect very similar to those we seek in a specialist of any field. Definition of the Critic Beginning with Ibn Sallām who identified two prerequisites for a critic, specialised knowledge and experience, critics who dealt with the subject after him added to these two conditions, and by the fifth/eleventh century the features of a critic were distinct, and his practice defined. In fact, there was some kind of consensus among scholars and critics that certain conditions be met when one dabbled in literary criticism. These conditions involve two sets of requirements, one having to do with the qualities of the critic, and the other the necessary steps in a critical process. At the outset, talent is an absolutely indispensable quality. Among the scholars who advocated that critics had to possess talent,40 and that mere memorisation (riwāya) and knowledge ( 'ilm) were not sufficient,41 only Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā discussed the nature of talent at length. 'Abbās calls to attention that Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā relied mainly on his taste (ṣ afā' al-dhawq) in his critical judgements, resulting in 'Iyār al-shi'r's lack of a solid theoretical framework.42 However, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā did not rely solely on an unrefined

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intuition; rather, he qualified this intuition with a set of rules that were intended to ‘educate’ this gift, though talent remained the core of both poetic composition and evaluation. That Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā believed that talent could be nurtured is immediately evident in the title of his anthology Tahdhīb al-ṭab' (the pruning of the talent). Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s conceptualisa­ tion of ṭab' is a departure from both the notions offered by his predecessors; al-Jāḥ iẓ ’s ṣ inā'a and Ibn Qutayba and Ibn al-Mu'tazz’s ṭab'. In Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s conception, ṭ ab' – albeit God-given – could be refined. The principle underlying his conceptualisation of al-fahm al-thāqib (penetrating understanding) and al-fahm al-nāqid (discerning grasp) with regard to the evaluation of poetry is precisely his understanding of the amenability of ṭ ab' to education. This is what al-Rabī' calls al-dhawq al-mu'allal (reasoned taste),43 the faculty that would be favourably receptive to fine poetry.44 The critic must also possess specialised knowledge of poetry and prose, insightful knowledge of the appropriations of poets, their ideas and motifs.45The powerful opening of al-Āmidī’s discussion is his emphasis that al-ilm bi al-shi'r is a specialisation that not everyone is entitled to claim (khuṣ ṣ a bi'an yadda'īhi aḥ ad). To support his argument, al-Āmidī makes an analogy of al-'ilm bi al-shi'r with expert knowledge in other crafts – for poetry is a craft.46 Al-Āmidī argues that mere familiarity through use with any of the mentioned objects is not sufficient for one to be an expert, for expertise requires not only familiarity but a more skilled knowledge.47 For this is the only foundation based on which bad poetry can be distinguished from good poetry, and even better poetry can be distinguished from good poetry.48Since people resort to the experts on crafts for an assessment, they must resort to those who are ahl al-ma'rifa bi sinā'at al-shi'r for an assessment of any poetic composition.49 Additionally, the critic must have sufficient training in the field, for talent alone is not sufficient, not even for the most intelligent.50Al-Khalīl b. Aḥ mad (d. 175/791), for example, was considered a most talented person, but when he dabbled in theology he failed miserably because he was not trained in it.51 Training (durba) must consist of, first, direct dealing with the text (mu'āyana),52 for merely hearing and learning ready-made opinions are not sufficient. Thus, the mere fact that someone owns a collection of poetry does not qualify him to be a critic. Second, frequent inspection of poetry is necessary so that knowledge of poetry and its themes would be ascribed to him;53 and third, close involvement (mulābasa) with his work is required. The critic must devote all his attention to the pursuit of this art (al-inqitā' ilayhi), for knowledge of any kind could be obtained only by exclusive devotion to it (la yudrikuhu ṭ ālibuhu illā bi al-inqitā’ ilayhi wa alikbāb 'alayhi wa al-jidd f īhi wa al-ḥ irs 'alā ma'rifat asrārihi wa ghawāmiḍ ihi).54

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And fourth, adherence to the opinions of the scholars who have reached some kind of consensus (jamā'a) is required, for learning from them was the only means to ensure one’s knowledge of this craft (poetry).55 The critic must have a set of essential tools that may be summarised in a statement made by Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā: The summation of these tools is: the perfection of the intellect by means of which the opposites may be distinguished, maintaining balance (justice), preference for what is good, avoidance of what is ugly, and placing things in their proper positions.56 Even though these are the tools of poetic composition (adawāt al-shi'r) that Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā enumerates in 'Iyār al-shi'r, they may also serve as tools for the critic, for if by these tools the poets can compose poetry, then by the same tools the critics can recognise good poetry. It follows from his notion that ṭab' is susceptible to education, that the above-mentioned tools must also be acquired through learning. The components of this education are proficiency in the language, expert knowledge of grammar, acquaintance with the various types of adab, familiarity with the pre-Islamic ayyām, with the genealogy of the tribes, their virtue and vices, and comprehensive knowledge of the Arabic poetic tradition.57 Qudāma added objectivity to the list of requirements for the critic, both by explicit statements and by rising above the emotionally charged controversy over Abū Tammām on both theoretical and practical levels. His even-handedness and cool-headed and balanced discussion of poetry – whether old or muḥ dath – maintained respectability for the field which he termed naqd al-shi'r. Later, al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurj ānī explicitly advocated objectivity and justice in the practice of criticism, for prejudice – and very few of us are free of it – could make us manipulate skills to support a biased point of view, and this pitfall could be prevented only by a sense of justice,58without which all other qualifications would prove inadequate. One quality that almost all critics insisted on is open-mindedness. Scholars point out that Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā’s model for good poetry was at one with the pre-modern standard, but this in no way meant that he was a complete conservative, for he realised that some of the customs (sunan) of the ancient poets were no longer practical or understandable,59 and that whatever the moderns (muḥ dathūn) were doing was not only valid but also worthwhile artistically, provided that they overcame the difficulties engendered by novel situations and found new ways of expression.60 The open-mindedness advocated by Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā was claimed by al-Ṣ ūlī, alĀmidī and al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī in their respective works as well. Most important, however, is that the critic, having fulfilled the

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requirements, must be assigned authority in the field and have his opinions respected. At the end of his letter to Muzāḥ im b. Fātik, al-Ṣ ūlī mentions that his work on Abū Nuwās had made a great impact on the people’s appreciation of Abū Nuwās’ poetry, and consequently on the fate of the anthologies compiled by others which, according to al-Ṣ ūlī, would soon go out of circulation. Al-Ṣ ūlī was boasting not only about the excellent quality of his work but also about his authority on the subject. His authority, according to him, is not questionable, thanks to the commercial success of his works, though they were only selections, not the entire body of the works of Abū Nuwās. The implication of this assertion is that al-Ṣ ūlī, as an authority on poetry, basing himself on a set of standards by which he abided, had every right to choose what was to be preserved for posterity. Al-Qāḍ ī alJurjānī also asserted what al-Ṣ ūlī claimed for himself, stating that, provided necessary conditions were met, the opinion of the critic had be adhered to; for the critic was the judge (al-ḥ ākim al-musaddid and al-qāḍ ī al-mutawassiṭ).61 Having completed his training, the critic may then move on the critical process, and proceed to pass a judgement on poetry. However, he must observe three things: he must separate the text from the poet and focus on the text62 – the faith of the poet having no bearing on the quality of his poetry;63 he must understand the text fully;64 and he must justify his judgement and support it with evidence (ḥ ujja wa dalīl).6 The Problem of Talent and Training Al-Marzūqī’s argument that a good poet did not necessarily make a good critic was not unqualified, for in his view being a nāqid required much more than a poetic talent; rather, a specific set of tools – as I have elaborated above – was also essential. For this set of tools, which he called ālāt al-naqd, is the only measure that can ensure accuracy in both understanding and judgement. The process of naqd according to al-Marzūqī was a deliberate effort that required knowledge and training,66 not a haphazard process, and the nāqid-anthologist was thus required to be able to justify his decision: I say this because what the skilful nāqid selects may be agreed upon; but there may occur in it that about which, should he be asked about the reason for his selection of it and the proof (dalāla) for it, he could only answer by saying: ‘This is a judgement of my inborn intuition (ṭab'ī)', or ‘go to someone else who has training and knowledge in such matters and he will judge the way I do’. Not so that which naqd (critique) finds abominable and ikhtiyār (selection) discards, because with everything of that sort the defect [contained] in it can be pointed out and its bad quality can be proved.67

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Naqd68as such must necessarily fulfil the requirements of justice, and once all the above conditions have been fulfilled, then the judgement is irrefutable. Al-Marzūqī’s argument, however, did not go uncontested. Ibn Sharaf alQayrawānī took a completely opposite position and argued for the notion that naqd was a talent because many 'ulamā’ bi al-shi'r and ruwāt al-shi'r had no insight into naqd or the understanding of what is good (poetry) and what is otherwise. On the other hand, there were those who had no knowledge of poetry but who could understand that which is abstruse (ghawāmiḍ ), harmonious (mustaqīm) and self-contradictory (mutanāqid).69 Otherwise, the notions that Ibn Sharaf put forward do not differ a great deal from what his predecessors, al-Ṣ ūlī, al-Āmidī, al-Jurjānī and alMarzūqī, had put forth. He advocated careful examination of poetry with much reflection, cautioning against making hasty judgements (in'ām alnaẓ ar wa istikhdām al-fikr wa al-ibti'ād 'an al-'ajala),7° and use of proper or correct methods (minhāj al-ḥ aqq) which demands unbiased opinions so that, for example, one does not prefer the ancient poetry solely because it is ancient, or reject the contemporary solely because it is new.71 E M E R G E N C E OF A C R IT IC A L T R A D IT I O N

When Maḥ mūd Muḥ ammad Shākir first brought out his edition of Ibn Sallām’s Ṭ abaqātfu ḥ ūl al-shu'arā’ in 1952, the inclusion of the word fuḥ ūl in the title caused no small controversy, leading him to publish a book, Barnāmaj ṭabaqāt fuḥ ūl al-shu'arā' (1980), in which he responded to the negative press that his endeavour had received. He was addressing a specific issue raised by 'Alī Jawād al-Ṭ āhir in an article published in Almawrid in 1979. Al-Ṭ āhir criticised the inclusion of the word fuḥ ūl in the title because, according to him, there is no evidence in classical sources to support it, even though it appears as part of the title in the manuscript of Ibn Sallām’s work in Shākir’s possession.72However, Shākir’s reading is not entirely unfounded. For one thing, the underlying principle of Ibn Sallām’s conception of ṭabaqāt is precisely that of fuḥ ūla, a notion that Ibn Sallām inherited from his teacher al-Aṣ ma'ī,73 author of Kitāb fuḥ ūlat alshu'arā’.74Thanks to al-Aṣ ma'ī's student Abū Ḥ ātim al-Sijistānī (d. 249/862), we now have a treatise dating back to the early third/ninth century that deals exclusively with poetry. Scholars of medieval Arabic literary criticism all include this in the corpus of Arabic critical tradition, though they do not hesitate to criticise its content and framework. They are right to do so because Fuḥ ūlat al-shu'arā’ is wanting in a cohesive theoretical framework, not to mention clarity in what it tries to convey. Ṣ alāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid, for example, points out that no-one can arrive at a clear picture of what al-

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Aṣ ma'ī meant by fu ḥ ūla even after having read the whole treatise several times.75 The concept of fuḥ ūla – a quality first ascribed to a virile he-camel– according to 'Īsā al-'Ākūb, must lexically encompass three features: quality, abundance and endurance.76When it is used to characterise a poet, it must imply that his poetic compositions are prolific, lengthy and superior to those of others.77 Al-Aṣ ma'ī’s conception of fu ḥ ūla, however, cannot be as neatly summarised. In addition to these qualities, al-Aṣ ma'ī also discusses other issues in the context of fuḥ ūla, be it in positive or negative terms. The faḥ l, according to al-Aṣ ma'ī, must compose poetry similar to that of the ancients,78using a language that is correct both lexically and grammatically (faṣ īḥ ); must excel in description (na't);79 must be versatile in his use of metres and rhymes;80 must be prolific;81 must be from the pre-Islamic period;82 and must be free of sariqāt.83 On the other hand, he must not indulge in satire and ridicule,84 deal with moral themes (sāliḥ )85 or compose only short poems.86 In al-Aṣ ma'ī’s approach, the poet is virtually identified with his poetry. His judgements – at times moral – are based on the qualities of the poets, not poetry itself. O f the notions which he discusses in relation to fu ḥ ūla, only three are relevant to poetry as a literary expression: resemblance to ancient poetry, description (na't) and the metres. These principles are in turn arbitrary and in the long run aesthetically inconsequential. Rather, they reveal his training as a lexicographer and grammarian limited by his training and discipline. Even his understanding of faṣ āḥ a is in line with his preoccupation as a language scholar who regarded language as something necessarily static87 and sacred, for it is this language, preserved in its purest form in the pre-Islamic poetic tradition, that must be called upon to help to understand the Qur’ān and Ḥ adīth. Anything that registers a change in this language or falls outside the pre-Islamic time frame is either unacceptable or sacrilegious. This is precisely why he is not able to discuss Jarīr, al-Akhṭal, and al-Farazdaq, not to mention the muḥ dath poets, such as Bashshār b. Burd (d. 168/784), Abū Nuwās (140/756–208/823), Abū al'Atāhiya (d. 211/826) and Abū Tammām, who were his contemporaries. Despite all the theoretical problems of al-Aṣ ma'ī’s work, it must in the end be considered in a proper historical perspective and its importance recognised. After all, al-Aṣ ma'ī’s work was the first in the entire body of Arabic literature that isolated poetry as a literary phenomenon worthy of study in itself. In the final assessment, al-Aṣ ma'ī deserves to take credit for the questions which he raises in this work: what makes the poetry of a certain poet stand out, and what are the criteria on the basis of which this can be determined? Al-Aṣ ma'ī may not have given the answers we are

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looking for, but by asking the questions and by attempting to answer them within a certain conceptual framework, he truly laid the cornerstone for an area of inquiry that would develop into something quite remarkable in the following centuries. It was al-Aṣ ma'ī who first tried to remove poetry from its subservient role to other disciplines of learning, Qur’ān and Ḥ adīth studies especially. As a student of al-Aṣ ma'ī, Ibn Sallām inherited both al-Aṣ ma'ī’s concept of fu ḥ ūla and his ‘static’ view of language.88However, Ibn Sallām developed the concept and expanded it. He devised a ṭabaqāt scheme based on fu ḥ ūla and further divided it into a hierarchy. He then placed the poets in this hierarchy, each according to the degree of his fuḥ ūla. In addition, he discussed the origin of poetry, the change of the function of poetry in Arab society, the collection and documentation of this poetry, and his isolation of some of the themes of this poetry: panegyrics (madīḥ ), satire (hijā'), boasting, (fakhr) and erotic prelude (nasīb). These are all topics for literary history and criticism that no-one had discussed in writing before. Although critical thinking was not lacking in pre-Islamic or early Islamic times – alAṣ ma'ī, al-Mufaḍ ḍ al al-Ḍ abbī and Abū 'Ubayda, for example, all discussed poetry critically at times – it was Ibn Sallām who realised that there was something special about their comments89and collected their sayings in his book. His contribution to the definition of the field is more far-reaching than he has been given credit for. At the very least, he seemed to have solved the question of the authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry, for by the time of al-Qurashī, who inherited his theoretical framework including that of the ṭabaqāt in Jamharat ash'ār al-arab,90the subject had ceased to be an issue. The prosodic issues raised by Ibn Sallām were adopted by Tha'lab (200/ 815–291/904), a student of Ibn Sallām,91 in Qawā'id al-shi'r (the rules of poetry).92 Tha'lab’s work, however, lacks the originality of Ibn Sallām and his awareness of the pressing issues relevant to the crisis of his time, the problematics of the authenticity of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. Tha'lab rather inherited some of the issues that Ibn Sallām raised; he enumerated, added to the themes mentioned by Ibn Sallām, and discussed other rhetorical features of poetry. However, Tha'lab was not able to transcend the grammarian-lexicographer’s view of poetry. Tha'lab divides the poetic discourse into a division used by grammarians to codify discourse. The main themes of poetry (qawā'id al-shi'r) are four, amr (command), nahy (prohibition), khabar (report) and istikhbār (inquiry),93 which are in turn divided into panegyrics (madīh),94 satire (hijā'),95 boasting (fakhr),96 erotic prelude97 (tashbīb),98 and elegy (marthiya),99 as well as apology (i'tidhār).100 He makes these the uṣ ūl (principles) and then makes the themes (madīh, hijā ’, fakhr, rithā') the furū' (branches), an exercise that adds nothing to our

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understanding of poetry and poetic discourse. Despite his failure to deal critically with the issues which he raised, he brought to attention some problems that became some of the central issues which critics would discuss extensively in later periods, such as simile (tashbīh), metaphor (isti'āra), exaggeration (ifrāṭ f ī al-ighrāq) and antithesis (mujāwarat alaḍ dād), paronomasia (al-muṭ ābaq, by which he meant jinās) and the quality of strength inherent in the words themselves (jazālat al-lafẓ ). On the other hand, al-Jāḥ iẓ , who did not devote his energies to the discussion of poetry, made more contributions to the evolution of an independent field of poetic studies, albeit indirectly. These lay in his emphasis on two theoretical principles based on which a field may gain its integrity and independence: the necessity for specialisation and specialised terminology. His insistence on specialisation is found in Kitāb al-ḥ ayawān, where he reports this statement by Ibn Isḥ āq: If there is anyone who wants to know everything, then his family must seek a medical cure for him . . . If someone is intelligent and has a good memory, then let him target two or three things, but let him not stop studying or discussing (with others), and let him pay as much attention as possible to whatever other pursuits he hears of, so that he be learned in specialised areas (khawāṣ ṣ ) but not com­ pletely unaware of the rest of what people know and dabble in.101 This notion regarding specialisation is reiterated in Risāla ilā al-mu'allimīn, in which he said: A man may be versed in one or two kinds of knowledge ( 'ilm), then he thinks that he can burden his intellect with anything he wishes and he will rush into it, as happened to al-Khalīl b. A ḥ mad who, having mastered grammar and prosody, claimed knowledge of theology (kalām) and of the tunes/rhythms (awzān) of songs. He acted out of ignorance and reached a state that nobody reaches unless forsaken by God.102 As for terminology, he says: Arabs have set phrases, derivatives, paradigms and connected discourse used to denote their meanings and wishes. These words also have other uses in which they carry other connotations. Whoever does not know them is inept in interpreting the Qur’an and Ḥ adīth, the documentary proofs (shāhid) and proverbs, and if he dabbles in theology and other kinds of learning when he is not equipped to do so, he will get himself and others into trouble.103

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Al-Jāḥ iẓ ’s insistence on the need for specialisation must have struck a sympathetic note in his student Ibn Qutayba, for Ibn Qutayba persistently insisted upon it as well. It was always the opinions of specialists, al-'ulamā',104 dhawū al-'ilm105 and ahl al-tamyīz wa al-naẓ ar,1°6 that he quoted, rejected or rebutted. Otherwise, Ibn Qutayba continued to discuss the issues raised by al-Aṣ ma'ī, Ibn Sallām, Tha'lab and al-Jāḥ iẓ . He discussed poetry in the light of grammatical, lexicographical and prosodic accuracy, for example. He elaborated on the issues related to form and content raised by al-Jāḥ iẓ . His formulation of the relations between form and content and their relevance to poetic composition became an important theoretical framework – and a problem – in the discussions of poetry until 'Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī’s (d. 471/1078) theory of composition (al-naẓ m) demolished the dichotomy between form and content that Ibn Qutayba had put forth in Al-shi'r wa alshu'arā ’. Ibn Qutayba further expounded on the question regarding the dichotomy of takallufand ṭab' previously raised by al-Jāḥ iẓ , and gave some thought to psychological factors that motivated or dictated the direction of poetic compositions.107 Most importantly, Ibn Qutayba’s laid down three principles for the field of poetic studies, principles that would later be adopted, incorporated and expanded. His emphasis on the concept of jawda as an aesthetic founda­ tion for any judgement made with regard to poetry was later developed by Qudāma and became one of the poles in his conceptualisation of naqd alshi'r. His emphasis on tamyīz rather than memorisation and transmission (ḥ ifẓ wa riwāya)108 broke new grounds for discussion of poetry. And his inclusion of selection for anthologies ( ikhtiyār)l09 as part of the theoretical foundations of the judging of poetry had a great impact on later works, for, in the following century, selection became an important part of the activities connected with naqd al-shi'r. The actual departure from normative practice came really with Ibn alMu'tazz. Kitāb al-badī', being the first theoretical treatment of ‘ornamenta­ tion’, not only opened up ‘some interesting possibilities for the contem­ plation of the nature of the modern as a stage in the process of development of poetry’, but also identified ‘a distinct space within the poetic corpus and thinking of certain linguistic and intellectual processes as belonging within this space, and placing other processes outside it’.110 Risāla fi maḥ āsin shi'r Abī Tammām wa masāwīhi, thus, was able to initiate a dialogue among those who discussed Abū Tammām’s poetry after him, including Qudāma, al-Ṣ ūlī and al-Āmidī. Ibn al-Mu'tazz succeeded to a great extent in separating judgements of the poets from judgements of their poetry, especially in Kitāb al-badī', departing from the practice of all those who had previously dealt with poetry systematically – al-Aṣ ma'ī, Ibn

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Sallām and Ibn Qutayba had made no distinction between the two. He thus paved the way for Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā and Qudāma to focus on poetic composition itself. Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, being a poet, concerned himself with the composition of poetry; all his works, as important as they are in the history of classical Arabic literary criticism, were written to serve the poet and his craft, his intended audience being not those whom he called nuqqād, or 'ulamā’ but the poets. Nevertheless, his works dealt with the principles based on which good poetry may be recognised,111 and with many technical issues, such as simile, the unity of the poem, the relationship between form and content, and above all the ‘scales’ in which to weigh poetry (as indicated by the title), which are all issues directly relevant to literary criticism. Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā further incorporated other criteria that are not immediately relevant to the aesthetics of poetic compositions. They rather belong to social etiquette and moral values, including propriety in address and expression (muwāfaqatuhu li al-ḥ āl allattī yu'idd ma'nāhu lahā), truthfulness in expression, and allusion – subtle or explicit.112 Qudāma, known above all for his book on land tax (Kitāb al-kharāj ), was able to give currency to the term naqd al-shi'r in his book of the same title. In fact, when al-Khwārazmī spoke of naqd al-shi'r in his Mafātīḥ al-'ulūm, he was specifically referring to Qudāma’s work.113Judging by evidence found in al-Khwārazmī, Qudāma was able to establish naqd as a separate discipline of learning with specialised technical terms, for al-Khwārazmī devoted a section to naqd al-shi'r, using Qudāma’s terms, such as nu'ūt (merits) and 'uyūb (defects), in this section and the section on naqd al-kalām. However, despite the fame that Qudāma derived from this work, its approach to poetry did not gain currency. The truth of the matter is that Qudāma’s en­ deavour, despite its comprehensive, methodical and meticulous approach, failed to convey the depth of the emotional response to poetry in his carefully devised logical scheme for discussing poetry.114Instead he turned naqd into a logical and intellectual process with scholastic principles for which he created technical terms,115 but failing to explain the passions roused in the heated debates over the poetry of Abū Tammām. Nevertheless, Qudāma added force to the trend that was working towards establishing integrity for the field on both the theoretical and the practical levels. On the theoretical level, he delineated the field of naqd alshi'r, its purpose and its theoretical framework.116 Most importantly, he codified technical terms for each poetic feature that he discussed,117 terms which were adopted in later works and served as the core for further additions and modifications.118 On the practical level, he applied an objective approach to all poetry, old and new; restricted himself to

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constructive criticism; and remained aloof from the passionate debates over Abū Tammām. His aloofness, however, served as a double-edged sword; for although it preserved the integrity of the critic, it removed criticism from issues of immediate concern, with the result that Arabic literary criticism lagged behind the actual poetic experience. In contrast to Qudāma’s cool-headedness, al-Āmidī argued passionately for the notion that criticism was a specialised area of knowledge. More important was, however, his realisation that the works of his predecessors (Ibn Sallām, Ibn Qutayba, Ibn al-Mu'tazz, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, Qudāma, al-Ṣ ūlī, Di'bil al-Khuzā'ī, al-Qutrabbulī and Ibn 'Ammār) were all part of a field that he termed al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, all of which served as sources of his study of poetry in Al-muwāzana, whether in his quotations or responses.119 This is one of the reasons why 'Abbās considers al-Āmidī the first specialised Arab critic in the history of Arabic literature.120 The main corpus of his works supports 'Abbās’ contention: of all the works known to have been compiled by him, only three are not directly related to the discussion of poetry,121 while the rest are.122 The critics’ practice of quoting and responding to works written on poetry and poets, starting with Ibn al-Mu'tazz, was now becoming a trend in works of literary criticism. This practice indeed contributed much to the delineation of the field. Al-Āmidī, by responding to works by Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, Qudāma, Ibn 'Ammār and others, defined the scope of the literary activity that he termed 'ilm al-shi'r, which was paradoxically delineated by the scope of these works. The thread that linked these works served as the foundation for later critics, especially al-Marzubānī and Ibn Rashīq, who devoted their efforts to bringing together all the discussions related to poetry, compiling and categorising them within a consistent theoretical framework. The efforts of these two critics constituted the cornerstone of the emergence of the classical tradition of literary criticism in Arabic literature. al-Marzubānī Al-Marzubānī's works have been undervalued in modern scholarship on classical Arabic literary criticism. This fact may be understandable for two reasons, namely the loss of a large number of his works and the apparent compilatory nature of his extant works, a feature that Yāqūt observes.123The list of al-Marzubānī’s works alone occupies three of the four pages of his biography, but only Mu'jam al-shu'arā’ (biographical dictionary of poets), Ash'ār al-nisā' (poetry of women), Al-muwashshaḥ , and Al-muqtabas f ī akhbār al-nuḥ āh (on grammar) have survived. A careful look at the titles of alMarzubānī’s works will convince a student of classical Arabic literary criticism that without these texts, our assessment of al-Marzubānī as a main

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figure in Arabic criticism cannot be conclusive; for al-Marzubānī himself mentions that the extant Al-muwashshaḥ was written as a complementary work to Kitāb al-shi'r and Al-mufīdf ī akhbār al-shu'arā’ ,124which are lost. From the titles of these works, as preserved in the various biographical dictionaries, and judging by the content of Al-Muwashshaḥ , it is possible to conclude that Kitāb al-Shi'r,125 Kitāb al-muwashshaḥ 126 and Kitāb al-mufīd 27 were meticulous and exhaustive compilations of the issues related to poetry discussed by his predecessors. Although al-Marzubānī’s contribution to the creative process of literary criticism may be minimal, his industry in collecting all the anecdotes relating to the merits and shortcomings of poetic composition was instrumental in the emergence of the field. Al-Marzubānī’s single most important contribution is perhaps his realisation that three genres which had attracted writers and commentators, akhbār al-shu'arā', 'uyūb al-shi'r and faḍ ā’il al-shi'r, really belonged to one larger area, the subject matter of which is poetry. By explicitly stating that these three genres complement one another, he not only defined the scope of poetic criticism but also broadened it. His notion of criticism was indeed similar to that of the moderns, encompassing literary history, literary theory and textual analysis, albeit in its simplest form. Although our appreciation of al-Marzubānī as a literary critic cannot be complete until his other works are recovered, the extant Al-muwashshaḥ may provide us with keys to his conception of what he was doing. Al-muwashshaḥ , as the author clearly states in his introduction to this book, is a collection of what the ahl al-'ilm said with regard to the errors and shortcomings of poetic composition, whether by the ancients or the moderns. It is divided into three main parts, and each in turn is divided into two sections, one consisting of a general discussion of a number of defects and the other of accounts concerning these defects as they appear in the works of major poets. Section I of Part One comprises a collection of various discussions on prosodic errors (ikfā ', ītā', sinād and ziḥ āf ) , and Section II consists of anecdotes concerning defects found in the compositions of pre-Islamic poets. Although Section I – which may be considered mainly theory – contains only the discussion of prosodic errors, other defects were identified in Section II, where application of the theory is most prominent. Section I of Part Two consists of discussion of a number of defects previously discussed by Qudāma in Naqd al-shi'r128and Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā in 'Iyār al-shi'r,129and for these he provides illustrations from the works of the poets of the Islamic era in Section II. Section I of Part Three is divided into two subsections: the first comprises discussions of defects in meaning,130and in its harmony with diction131 and rhyme, and in the harmony between diction

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and metre;132 and the second consists of anecdotes concerning the best of all poets (ash'ar al-nās), and the errors committed by the A'rāb (desert) poets. For all these defects, al-Marzubānī again provides us in Section II with examples, the bulk of which came from the works of muḥ dath poets. On the surface, al-Marzubānī’s work may seem to be an ordinary compilation of material already explored. Not only is this kind of superficial reading of al-Marzubānī’s work misleading, but it also does a great injustice to the work. The structure of Al-muwashshaḥ is pregnant with significance, be that for theory or for practice. The division of the book into three main sections, pre-Islamic, Islamic and muḥ dath – a framework that is still used now – indicates al-Marzubānī’s realisation that the nature of poetic composition had changed, though his lines of demarcation are arbitrary. Within a chronological order, and set against the defects that he enumerated prior to each section on the poets, the implication is that alMarzubānī was of the opinion that defects and shortcomings were increasing gradually as time went on. Whereas the pre-Islamic poets com­ mitted prosodic errors only, the Islamic ones committed those in addition to the defects enumerated in Section I of the Part Two, and the muḥ dath poets committed all the defects he had enumerated in the entire book. What is more significant is the methodology of the author. He first provides a theoretical framework in which he expounds the issues that he was to discuss later in the poetry of the major poets; he then provides an actual diagnosis of the defects in the poetry itself. Moreover, it is in his work that for the first time in the history of Arabic literature all the anecdotes on the pre-Islamic practice of criticism and the early Islamic ones have been collected in one place. The awareness that these anecdotes belong with the discussions of Qudāma, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā and al-Ṣ ūlī is significant. In the same manner that the moderns see the value of the comments contained in these anecdotes as the beginning of literary criticism in the Arabic literary tradition, al-Marzubānī’s efforts in collecting these anecdotes tell us that this was his view of these anecdotes as well. For this reason, he quotes everyone who has uttered an opinion on poetry regardless of who he was, including al-Aṣ ma'ī, Tha'lab, Ibn Sallām, Ibn al-Mu'tazz, Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, alṢ ūlī, Qudāma, Aḥ mad b. Abī Ṭ āhir, Muḥ ammad b. Dāwūd al-Iṣ bahānī (d. 277/888), Aḥ mad b. 'Ubayd Allāh b. Muḥ ammad b. 'Ammār Abū al-'Abbās al-Thaqafī (d. 314/926) and A ḥ mad b. 'Āṣ im Abī Sahl al-Ḥ ulwānī (d. 333/ 945).133 Al-muwashshaḥ thus documents in one single volume all that was said about poetry from as early as pre-Islamic times up to his date.134 The scope that al-Marzubānī established goes beyond what his pre­ decessors did. The knowledge of this aspect of al-Marzubānī’s work is important, for it helps us to understand al-Marzubānī’s conception of the

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field. Clearly, his intention was not to promote or decry any poet,135 but rather to bring together a great number of statements which he must have seen to belong to the same field. Indeed, what he has recorded in Almuwashshaḥ is the main source for modern studies on the beginnings of classical Arabic literary criticism. Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī'36 In his study of the inimitability of the Qur’ān (I'j āz al-qur’ān), al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013) discussed poetic discourse as well, for it was considered the manifestation of the eloquence of the Arabs. By proving that the quality of poetic discourse was indeed inferior to that of the Qur’ān, al-Bāqillānī intended to establish by objective reasoning the inimitability of the Qur’ān. Al-Bāqillānī’s concept of faṣ āḥ a discussed in detail in this work has since been one of the cornerstones of Arabic literary criticism. Al-Bāqillānī’s work, however, contributed little to the discussion of poetry, for his discussion of poetry consisted of enumerating the badī’ features, with the purpose of discrediting the notion that Arabic poetry was a superior form of literary expression, not to mention the necessity to dissociate poetry from the Qur’ān. The inimitability of the Qur’ān, al-Bāqillānī argued, lay in the fact that Arabic poetry pales by comparison with it. Accordingly, the section on poetry in I'j āz al-qur’ān was devoted to proving that Arabic poetry was inferior as a literary expression. His thesis was that poetry contained nothing new, as Ibn al-Mu'tazz demonstrated in Kitāb al-badī', and that everything was found in the Qur’ān. The badī' features that he enumerated could easily be traced to Ibn al-Mu'tazz and Qudāma. Al-Bāqillānī’s intention of subverting poetry, and reducing it to the status of supporting material in his theory of the inimitability of the Qur’ān, was mild in comparison with the stand taken by Ibn Ḥ azm (d. 456/ 1064), who went so far as to say that poetry should be prohibited because it encouraged moral corruption; for it could be exploited for making a living and for exciting unworthy – and undesirable – passions. Ibn Ḥ azm’s opinions were obviously not unprecedented. In al-Nahshalī al-Qayrawānī’s (d. 405/1015) Al-mumti' f ī 'ilm al-shi'r wa 'amalihi,137 we may already see a reaction to theologians’ negative views of poetry. Al-Nahshalī began the book with a section in which he asserted the virtue (faḍ l) of poetry,138 and its legitimacy,139 but left it to his student Ibn Rashīq to address the issue raised by the likes of Ibn Ḥ azm: that poetry was a potential danger to one’s moral uprightness, being employable as a means of livelihood.140 Ibn Rashīq’s efforts in Al-'umda gave classical Arabic literary criticism its definitive scope, not necessarily by providing it with a meticulously argued theoretical framework, but by giving it a consistent format within which all

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the critical issues that had been thus far discussed could be articulated. The title of Ibn Rashīq’s authoritative work, Al-'umda (the pillar), may provoke a wry smile at the author’s vanity, but it must in the end signal to us the author’s awareness of the importance of his endeavour and his consciousness of what he perceived to be an independent and integral field of intellectual inquiry falling within borders to be established by his work. The variations of the subtitle of the book found in historical sources, ranging from ‘on the merits of poetry and its etiquette (fī mahāsin al-shi'r wa ādābihi)’, as appears in Al-'umda itself,141 to ‘on the poetic craft (f ī ṣ an'at al-shi'r) ' in al-Qifṭi142 and al-Suyūṭ i,143 to ‘on knowing the craft of poetry, picking out its errors and its defects (fī ma'rifat ṣ ina'at al-shi'r wa naqdihi wa 'uyūbihi)’ in Ibn Khallikān,144are only indications that the various genres of writing on poetry, naqd al-shi'r, 'ilm al-shi'r and ṣ inā'at al-shi'r, have all been incorporated into one work, namely, Al-'umda, and consequently con­ solidated into one genre. Its actual importance is reflected in statements made on the work in important sources. Al-Qifṭ ī, like Ibn Rashīq’s other biographers, points out at the beginning of Ibn Rashīq’s biography that he was the author of Al-'umda, but unlike others, he alone made the following revealing statement about the book: Among his works is Kitāb al-'umda f ī ṣ inā'at al-shi'r in four volumes. It contained what other works of this genre (naw') had not contained. He indeed excelled in carrying out his task. The book was mentioned before the judge 'Abd al-Raḥ īm b. 'Alī al-Baysānī (better known as al-Qāḍ ī al-Fāḍ il), and he said: this is the crown of the books compiled in this genre.145 Having read this work, a modern scholar may wonder at al-Qifṭ ī’s statement, for Ibn Rashīq’s book does not deal with any issue that has not already been discussed by his predecessors, and in discussing these issues he had not many revolutionary insights to add either. As a critic, Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī’s share in critical originality is small,146and our admiration for him stems from his personality, not his originality in thinking.147Al-'umda is no more than ‘a comprehensive book in the sense that it exhibits the critical issues which had appeared in the Eastern part of the Islamic Empire until the time of Ibn Rashīq’.148This is precisely Ibn Rashīq ’s contribution to classical Arabic literary criticism. 'Abbās calls attention to the fact that the critical issues of the classical critical tradition had already been raised by the time of al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī.149 What distinguished Al-'umda from Alwasāṭ a, however, is that while al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī dealt with major critical issues around one figure, al-Mutanabbī, Ibn Rashīq was free of such a concern and dealt with the critical issues on an abstract level. This does not

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mean that Ibn Rashīq does not discuss the poetry of al-Mutanabbī, but he does that in the context of the discussion of poetry, not the other way around. Al-'umda is a comprehensive – not exhaustive – treatise devoted to the discussion of poetry, both as a literary discourse and social practice. It is intended to provide the reader with a broad grounding in understanding the poetic enterprise.150It thus encompasses all the issues that the scholars preceding Ibn Rashīq had expounded in their various works. Ibn Rashīq does not claim originality in his work; rather, he considers Al-'umda a platform on which he brought together the divergent opinions with regard to poetry.151 He collects the already extant discussions of poetry and presents them in accordance with his conception of how these issues were related to the poetic enterprise, and to one another. Ibn Rashīq’s conception of these interrelated issues forms the theoretical framework of Al-'umda. Al-'umda may be viewed as comprising the following main sections, arranged according to the order of Ibn Rashīq’s discussion of them. First, in defence of poetry, he responds to the negative reception and sharp criticism of poetry and poets by religious scholars like al-Bāqillānī and Ibn Ḥ azm during the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries. Second, on the history of the poetic enterprise and issues relevant to the development of Arabic poetry, Ibn Rashīq records the accounts concerning the origin of Arabic poetry and documents the discussions of old and new poetry, famous poets and their ranks, be they arranged according to a chronological order or according to their artistic merits. Third, on poetry as a literary phenomenon, he discusses the various aspects of poetic composition on the basis of the definition given by medieval ‘critics’ to poetry: composition of diction, metre, meaning and rhyme. This definition of poetry entails that two aspects relevant to poetic composition be discussed: the nature of this composition, whether it was natural or affected (maṭbū' wa maṣ nū'), and its manifestation as a literary phenomenon comprising form (lafẓ ) and content (ma'nā). Under the broader context of these two issues, Ibn Rashīq discusses issues related to the formal aspect of poetic composition,152 the actual process of composition,153 some technical issues including the badī' artifices, and the themes (aghrāḍ ) dealt with in poetry.154 And fourth, on general issues relevant to discussions of poetry, such as knowledge of the accounts concerning the battles that took place in pre-Islamic Arabia, genealogies, errors committed by poets and transmitters of poetry, and plagiarism. Although Ibn Rashīq did not add to the issues already raised by critics preceding him, his arrangement of previously discussed materials is novel. It indicates the author’s acute awareness that these issues may be

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considered to fall within the same line of intellectual inquiry regarding poetry. Ibn Rashīq’s conception of the field of discussion of poetry seems close to the modern conception of literary criticism, in that it encompasses three main areas of study: history, theory and textual analysis involving the discussion of technical issues. Thus it becomes clear that between the third/ninth century and the fifth/eleventh century, significant develop­ ments took place in the Arabic writings concerned with poetry. Two of these achievements are especially worthy of mention: first, the definition of a literary critic on a theoretical level (Ibn Sallām, al-Ṣ ūlī, al-Āmidī, al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī, al-Marzūqī and Ibn Sharaf al-Qayrawānī); and second, the emergence of a self-referential critical tradition (al-Marzubānī and Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī). It is the twining of these two strands that constitutes the core of the classical Arabic critical tradition, an effort recognised by historians of Arabic culture and literature. In their account of al-Marzubānī’s life and works, his biographers observe that his works, including Kitāb al-shi'r and Al-muwashshaḥ , were known. Kitāb al-shi'r, we are told, ‘contains in a comprehensive fashion’155 ‘everything there is on the art of poetry’,156 and Al-muwashshaḥ is a compendium on defects that experts found in poetry.157 In Ibn Rashīq’s biography, Al-'umda is said to contain ‘what no other work of this kind [meaning works on ṣ inā'at al-shi'r] contained’.158The biographers of these two authors seem aware of al-Marzubānī and Ibn Rashīq’s efforts in consoli­ dating the field of critical inquiry into Arabic poetry. The recognition of these biographers, however, is a response to what Terry Eagleton would call ‘self-reflexiveness’ in al-Marzubānī’s and Ibn Rashīq’s works on the art of Arabic poetry. Their works exhibit symptoms of ‘an intellectual practice’ that was beginning to “think 'itself” ,159 to contemplate its boundaries, its goals, its components and, above all, its methodology. It was this ‘selfreflexiveness’ that caught the attention of biographers and other historians of Arabic-Islamic culture in later periods, beginning with Yāqūt and al-Qifṭ ī in the seventh/thirteenth centuries, who would respond to this ‘selfreflexiveness’ and echo it in their writings, be that in their readiness to use the terms coined by the critics, or their recognition that the works and practices of the critics indeed belonged to the same area of intellectual inquiry.160Al-Marzubānī and Ibn Rashīq created the ‘significant moment’ at which medieval Arabic literary criticism emerged as a tradition. NOTES 1. Ib n 'A b b ā d , Al-kashf, 31. 2. Ib id . 3. Ib id ., 31–2. 4. A l-T a w ḥ īd ī m e n tio n s in Al-m uqābasā t (n o . 60) th a t h e w o u ld w rite a

19 2

LITERARY CRITICISM IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC-ISLAM IC C U LTU R E se p a ra te treatise (risāla) o n al-kalā m 'alā al-kalām. T h e r e is n o e v id e n c e in th e so u rc e s th a t h e h as ( 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh al-naqd, 228). 5. a l-T aw ḥ īd ī , Al-m uqābasāt, 239–40; a n d Al-imtā', 2: 131. 6. A b ū Ḥ ayyān al-Taw ḥ īdī, A k h lāq al-wazīrayn: akhlāq al-Sāḥ ib b. 'A bbād wa Ibn al-'Amīd, e d . I b rā h īm al-Kī lā n ī (D a m a scu s: D ā r al-Fikr, 1961), 6. 7. al-Taw ḥ īdī, Al-imtā ', 2: 131. 8. S e e 'A b b ā s, T ārīkh al-naqd, 228. 9. S e e Aḥ m a d M a ṭ lū b, A ' b d al-Qāhir al-Jurjān ī: balāghatuhu wa naqduhu (K uw ait: W ik ā la t al-M aṭ b ū ' ā t, 1973). 10. S e e G u sta v v o n G r u n e b a u m , ‘T h e c o n c e p t o f p la g ia rism in A r a b ic th e o r y ’ , Journal o f Near Eastern Studies 3 (1944): 234–253; M u ḥ a m m a d M u sta fā H a d d ā ra, M ushkilat al-sariqāt f ī al-naqd al-'arabī : dirāsa taḥ līliyya muqārana (B e iru t: a l-M aktab al-Islā m ī , 1979); a n d B a d a w ī Ṭ a b ā n a, Al-sariqāt al-adabiyya: dirāsa fī ibtikār al-a'māl al-adabiyya wa taqlīdihā (C a iro : M a ṭ b a 'a t a l-A n g lū al-M iṣ riyya, 1969). 11. S e e , fo r e x a m p le , K a m a l A b u D e e b , Al-Jurjān ī ’s Theory o f Poetic Imagery (W a rm in ste r: A vis & P h illip s, 1979); a n d ‘ al-Jurjān ī ’ s c la s sifica tio n o f I s ti'ār a w ith sp e c ia l r e fe r e n c e s to A r is to tle ’ s c la s sifica tio n o f

metaphor’,Journal ofArabic Literature 2 (1971): 48–75. 12. Munīr Sulṭ ān, Al-Marzubānī wa al-muwashshaḥ (Alexandria: al-Hay'a al-Miṣriyya al-'Āmma li al-Kitāb), 1978. 13.

14. 15.

16.

T h e s e in c lu d e : Ib n 'A b b ā s (d. 68/687) a n d his stu d e n ts su c h as A b ū al-A sw ad a l-D u ’alī ; A b ū 'A m r b. a l-'A lā ’ (d. 154/770 o r 156/772 o r 159/ 775) a n d h is stu d e n ts su c h as Yū n u s b. Ḥ a b īb (90/709– 182/798), alA ṣ m a 'ī , a n d A b ū 'U b a y d a M a 'm a r b. a l-M u th a n n ā . T h e s e in c lu d e a l-M u b a rra d (B asra, d. 285/898), T h a 'la b (K u fa) a n d N ifṭ aw ayh i ( B a g h d a d , 244/859–323/935). T h e s e in c lu d e : th e b e d o u in tra n sm itte rs (A b ū a l-B ayd ā ’ al-R iyāḥ ī, A b ū a l-K h a ṭ ṭ āb a l-B u h a d a lī , A b ū M ilḥ im al-S h a yb ā n ī , K h a s h s h āf alA 'r āb ī , A b ū B a rz a a l-A 'rāb ī a n d I b rā h īm b. M u ta m m im b. N u w a y r a ) ; Ḥ ijāz ī tra n sm itte rs (Ib n A b ī 'U ta y q , Ib n B a sh īr a l-M ad an ī , a m a n fr o m B a n ū 'Ā m ir, S u k a y n a , 'A q liy y a a n d 'A z z a ); K u fa n tra n sm itte rs (alM u fa ḍ ḍ al a l-D a b b ī [d. 213/828], A b ū 'A m r a l-S h a yb ān ī , Ḥ a m m ā d alR āw iya, K h u b āb b. W āṣ il G h a ṭ a fā n , A b ū al-B ilā d m a w lā o f I b rā h īm b. 'A b d a llā h b. Ib rā h īm b. 'A b d a llā h a l-T a lḥ ī, M u ḥ a m m a d b. M ālik th e tra n sm itte r o f a l-K u m a yt a n d al-Ṭ irim m ā h, M u ḥ a m m a d b. K u n ā sa a n d th e tran sm itte r o f A 's h ā H a m a d h ā n ) ; B asran tran sm itters (K h a llā d b. Y a zīd al-B ā h ilī a l-A rq a ṭ , 'A lī b. M u ḥ a m m a d b. 'A b d a llā h b. A b ī S a y f al-M ad ā ’in ī , A b ū a l-K h a ṭ ṭ āb a l-A k h fa sh , C o m p a n io n s o f 'A b d a llā h b. A b ī Isḥ āq, K h a la f al-A ḥ m a r, a l-'U tb ī , A b ū 'A b d al-R aḥ m ā n b. 'A b d alA 'l ā a l-S u lla m ī al-B aṣ rī a n d Q a 'n a b b. al-M u ḥ riz al-B ā h ilī a l-B aṣ rī ); B a g h d a d tra n sm itte rs (A b ū 'A lī a l-H u b ārī , A b ū al-Ḥ asan a l-A th ra m , al-M uẓ a ffar b. Y aḥ yā a n d Ib n 'A līl a l-'A n azī ) ; ju risco n su lts-tra n sm itters (S a 'īd b. al-M usayyib, S h u 'b a A b ū B a k r b. 'A y y ā sh, a l-S h a 'b ī A b u 'Ā m ir b. S h u r a ḥ īl b. 'A b d fro m al-K u fa, a n d S h u 'b a b. al-Ḥ ajjāj fr o m alB a ṣ r a ) ; tra n sm itte rs o f p o e tr y (A b ū 'A lī al-Aṣ fa r al-Ḍ a rīr, M u ḥ a m m a d b. K u n ā sa, M u ḥ a m m a d b. S u h a y l, al-Ṣ ā’ib b. D h a k h k w ā n ) ; a n d tran s­ m itte rs w h o w e re a lso p o e ts (Isḥ āq al-M aw ṣ ilī , A b ū al-Ḥ asan 'A lī b. Y a ḥ y ā b. M a n ṣ ūr a l-M u n a jjim , A b ū B a k r M u ḥ a m m a d b. Y a ḥ y ā al-Ṣ ūlī ) . ‘W e f o u n d th a t tra n sm itte rs o f 'ilm e r r in p o e try . O n ly a sp e c ia lis t in p o e tr y kn ow s w h a t is c o rre c t. L a y m e n ( 'āmma) m ay th in k th a t a l-S h a 'b ī p ossessed k n o w le d g e o f p o e try a n d th e b a ttles o f th e A ra b s. Y e t this lin e w as re la te d b y h im a n d it is c o r r u p t (fā sid ).’ Ib n S a llām , Tabaqāt, 1: 60.

A G A IN S T A L L O D D S: T H E M A K IN G O F A T R A D IT IO N

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 3ο. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

al-Jāḥ iẓ , Al-bayān, 4: 23. Ibn 'Abbād, Al-kashf, 31-2; and al-Jāḥ iẓ , Al-bayān, 4: 23. Ibn al-Mu'tazz, Al-badī , 76. Ibid., 1. Ibid., 57. Ibid., 28. 'Ubayd Allah b. 'Abdallah b. T āhir had a discussion with Faḍ l alZubaydī on the poetry of Abū Tammām. Al-Zubaydī reportedly said of a particular line: ‘A group of al-ruwāt li al-shi'r faulted it’ . 'Ubayd Allāh b. 'Abdallāh retorted with this statement. See al-Ṣ ūlī, AkhbārAbī Tammām, 101. al-Ṣ ūlī, AkhbārAbī Tammām, 7-10. al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī, Al-wasāṭ a, 434. Ibid., 438. al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār Abī Tammām, 10. Ḥ usayn, Abū Bakr al-Ṣ ūlī, 77. Ibid., 77- 8· Ibid. Ibid., 76. Ibid., 77. al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār Abī Tammām, 17. al-Āmidī, Al-muwāzana, 1: 24. al-Marzūqī, Sharḥ al-ḥ amāsa, 1: 13. Ibid. Ibid., 1: 14. Ibid., 1: 13. Ibid. al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār А bī Tammām, p. 38; al-Ām id , Al-muwāzana, 1: 391; and al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī, Al-wasāṭ a, 414. Husayn, Abū Bakr al-Ṣ ūlī, 77. 'Abbās, Tārīkh al-naqd, 133. al-Rabī', Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā al-nāqid, 65. According to Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, poetry is fine when it is firm in description, complete in meaning, smooth-flowing in wording and elegant in texture ([al-muḥ kamat al-wasf al-mustawfāt al-ma'ānī, al­ salisat al-alfāẓ al-ḥ asanat al-dībāja ] , Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, 'Iyār al-shi'r, 50); or that which flows easily and in an orderly manner like prose, in that its rhymes are not forced, its meanings are not affected, and in that its expression is flawless ([allatī qad kharajat khurūja al-nathr suhūlatan wa intiẓ āman falā istikrāha f ī qawāf īhā wa lā takallufa f ī ma'ānihā wa lā 'iyya li aṣ ḥ ābihā f īhā], Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, 'Iyār al-shi'r, 82). The single most important element in the determination of whether poetry is fine or otherwise is the balance (i'tidāl) between its content and form, including metre. al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār Abī Tammām,38; and al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī, Al-wasāṭ a, 414. al-Āmidī, Al-muwāzana, 1: 391 and 394. Ibid., 390. Ibid., 391. Ibid. al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī, Al-wasāṭ a, 414. al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār Abī Tammām, 125. al-Āmidī, Al-muwāzana, 1: 393. Ibid.

193

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54. 55· 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

73.

74.

75. 76. 77. 78.

79.

80. 81.

82.

Ibid., 396. Ibid., 395. Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, 'Iyār al-shi'r, 7. Ibid., 6. al-Qādī al-Jurjānī, Al-wasāṭ a, 414. Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, 'Iyār al-shi'r, 82 and onwards. Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, l' yār al-shi'r, 12-13. al-Qādī al-Jurjānī, Al-wasāṭ a, 177. al-Jāḥ iẓ , Al-bayān, 2: 6ο. al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār Abī Tammām,, 172. Ibid., 4. Ibid., 15 and 49; and al-Āmidī, Al-muwāzana, 1: 395-496. al-Marzūqī, Sharḥ al-ḥ amåsa, 1: 15. Ibid. Ibid. Rasā ’il al-bulaghā ’, 325. Ibid., 235. Ibid., 325-6. For a detailed analysis o f this controversy, see Munīr Sulṭ ān, Ibn Sallām wa ṭabaqāt al-shu'arā’ (Alexandria: Munsha’at al-Ma'ārif, 1977), 146- 76. Al-Asma'ī and his works are the subject of the following studies: 'Abd al-Hamīd al-Shalqānī, Al-Aṣ ma'ī al-lughawī: ṣ ūra 'irāqiyya fī al-qarn althānī al-hijrī (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'ārif, 1982); and Aḥ mad Kamāl Zakī, alAṣ ma'ī (Cairo: al-Mu’assasa al-Miṣ riyya al-'Āmma, 1970). The present edition of Fuḥ ūlat al-shu'arā ’ is based on Ibn Durayd’s redaction. Ed. and tr. Charles C. Torrey (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Jadīd, 1971). Introduction to Kitābfu ḥ ūlat al-shu'arā ’, 1. 'Isā al-'Ākūb, ‘Fuḥ ū lat al-shu'arā’ 'ind al-Aṣ ma'ī’, Al-mawqif al-adabī [Special issue: Turāthunā al-naqdī] 181, 182, 183 (May, June and July 1986): 1 12-13. al-Aṣ ma'ī, Fuḥ ūlat al-shu'arā ' 24. Al-Aṣ ma'ī reports that M u'āwiya b. Abī Sufyān said: ‘summon Tufayl (al-Ghanawī) for me, for his poetry resembles the poetry o f the ancients even more than that of Zuhayr. He is a fa ḥ l ' (al-Aṣ ma'ī, Fuḥ ūlat al-shu' arā ’, 10). Fuḥ ūla is ascribed to Ṭ ufayl al-Ghanawī because he excelled at description, especially o f horses (wasf al-khayl), an art in which alNābigha, Aws b. Hajar and Zuhayr b. Abī Sulmā excelled as well (alAṣ ma'ī, Fuḥ ūlat al-shu'arā', 10). Al-A'shā was a fa ḥ l because he ‘composed in every metre and rhyme’ (al-Aṣ ma'ī, Fuḥ ūlat al-shu'arā’, 12). Al-Ḥ uwaydira (al-Hādira al-'Absī) would have been considered a fa ḥ l if he had composed five more odes similar to the one he already had (al-Aṣ ma'ī, Fuḥ ūlat al-shu'arā', 15). Ja rīr, al-Farazdaq and al-Akhṭal were not fu ḥ ūl, and consequently not discussed by al-Aṣ ma'ī, because they were from the Islamic, not the pre-Islamic period. Al-Aṣ ma'ī says: ‘if they had lived during the j āhiliyya, they would have been important poets. However, they are islamiyyūn, and I will not say a word about them’ (al-Aṣ ma'ī, Fuḥ ūlat alshu'arā ’, 12). To support his position, al-Aṣ ma'ī cites Abū 'Amr b. al'Alā ’s statement, ‘if al-Akhtal had lived one day in the j āhiliyya period,

A G A IN S T A L L O D D S : T H E M A K IN G O F A T R A D IT IO N

83. 84. 85.

86.

87. 88. 89.

90.

91. 92.

I would not have preferred anyone to him’ (al-Aṣ ma'ī, Fuḥ ūlat alshu'arā’, 12). Al-Aṣ ma'ī makes the following comment on al-Nābigha al-Ja'dī: ‘The first part of his poetry is eloquent, and the last is appropriated, and it is not good’ (al-Aṣ ma'ī, Fuḥ ūlat al-shu'arā’, 19). al-Aṣ ma'ī, Fuḥ ūlat al-shu 'arā’ 2. Labīd b. Rabī'a was not a fa ḥ l because he was a good man, he asserts; for if poetry entered the realm of goodness, it became soft (lāna), implying that it became weak: al-Aṣ ma'ī, Fuḥ ūlat al-shu'arā’, 15. Wisdom (' aql) also has an adverse affect on poetry. It is reported that Hassān, upon hearing a poem by 'Amr b. al-'Ās, said: ‘he is not a poet but an 'āqil (al-Aṣ ma'ī, Fuḥ ūlat al-shu'arā, 19). Ja rāda b. 'Umayla al-'Anazī was not considered fa ḥ l although his poems resembled those of the fu ḥ ūl because they were short (alAṣ ma'ī, Fuḥ ūlat al-shu'arā, 15). 'Abbās, Tārīkh al-naqd, 15. Ibid. Kamal Abu Deeb, ‘Literary criticism’, 'Abbasid Belles-Lettres, vol. 2 of The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 346. Abū Zayd al-Qurashī, Jamharat ash'ār al-'arab fī al-jāhiliyya wa al-islām, ed. 'Alī Muḥ ammad al-Bijāwī (Cairo: Dār Nahḍ at Miṣ r li al-Ṭ ab' wa alNashr, 1st edn, 1967), Introduction, 1: 1-66. Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-udabā ’, 5: 107; al-Suyūṭ ī, Bughya, 1: 396; and al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 138. 'Abbās questions the attribution of Qawā 'id al-shi'r to Tha'lab ('Abbās, Tārīkh al-naqd, 82-6). He is of the opinion that this work predates Tha'lab. Being a contemporary of Qudāma, 'Abbās reckons, Tha'lab should have been familiar with some of the notions contained in Qudāma’s work, yet Qawā 'id al-shi'r betrays no trace o f such familiarity. 'Abbās’ argument finds support in th

e classical sources, forQudāmawasknowntohavemetTha'lab. InQudāma’sbiography, Yāqūt mentions that Qudāma was personally acquainted with Tha'lab, andthatheaskedthelatterabout certainthings- sa’alahufī ba'ḍ al-ashyā’ (Yāqūt, Mu'jamal-udabā’, 17: 12). 'Abbās seeks further support for his argument from a statement made by al-Ṣ ūlī in Akhbār Аbī Таттāт: ‘They [Tha'lab and al-Mubarrad] did not claim superiority in the knowledge of the poetry o f the modern (muḥ dathīn), in distinguishing the outstanding from the mediocre or worse, in the knowledge of the istiraqāt of poets and their appropriations from one another, and those who excelled and those who failed’ ('Abbās, Tārīkh al-naqd 83; and al-Ṣ ūlī, Akhbār Abī Таттāт, 9). The accounts which 'Abbās quotes to support his argument provide no definitive proof that Tha'lab did not compile Qawā 'id alshi'r. The first indicates that Qudāma had asked Tha'lab, who was perhaps already established as a scholar by that time, questions concerning poetry. It does not necessarily entail that Tha'lab had already defined the area of inquiry that would be termed by Qudāma as naqd al-shi'r. This may be further supported by Qudāma’s claim that naqd al-shi'r was entirely unknown before his work was written. In the second, al-Ṣ ūlī excludes from Tha'lab’s qualifications knowledge of muḥ dath, not of all poetry. This statement, therefore, may still be accurate even if Qawā 'id al-shi'r can be authentically attributed to

195

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Tha'lab, for nowhere in this work does he deal with any of the muḥ dath poets. 'Abbas further observes that Qawā 'id al-shi'r must date from the beginning of the third century. Tha'lab was born in the year 200 and his intellectually formative years must have been the first quarter of the third century, and it is possible that Qawā 'id al-shi'r is one of his early works. Whatever our opinion may be with regard to the authorship of (Qawā 'id al-shi'r, there is no doubt that this work is a continuation o f the line o f inquiry into poetry started by al-Aṣ ma'ī and Ibn Sallām. 93. Tha'lab, Qawā 'id al-shi'r, 35. 94. Abū al-'Abbās Ahmad b. Yaḥ yā Tha'lab, Qawā 'id al-shi'r, ed. Ramaḍ ān 'Abd al-Tawwāb (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'rifa, 1966), 37. 95. Tha'lab, (Qawā 'id al-shi'r, 38. 96. Ibid. 97· Ibid., 39. 98. See also Ibn Sallām, Ṭ abaqāt, 1: 4. 99. Tha'lab, Qawā 'id al-shi'r, 39. 100. Ibid. ιοί. al-Jāḥ iẓ , Al-ḥ ayawān, 1: 59. 102. al-Jāḥ iẓ , ‘Risāla ilā al-mu'allimīn ’ in Rasā ’il a-Jāḥ iẓ , 3: 44. 103. al-Jāḥ iẓ , Al-ḥ ayawān, 1: 153-4. 104. Ibn Qutayba, Al-shi'r wa al-shu'arā', 1: 59, 62, 68, 168, and 238. 105. Ibid., 225. 106. Ibid., 59. 107. For a detailed discussion of these issues, see 'Abbās, Tārīkh al-naqd, 109-12. 108. Ibn Qutayba, Al-shi'r wa al-shu'arā ’, 1: 81. 109. Ibid., 84 and 85. 110. Abu Deeb, ‘Literary criticism’, 346. 111. Muḥ ammad 'Abd al-Raḥ mān al-Rabī' rightly observes that Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā was not as interested in providing rules (qawā 'id) for poetic composition as in giving examples of excellent poetry. See Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā al-nāqid, 65. 112. Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, 'Iyār al-shi'r, 24. 113. See al-Khuwārazmī, Mafātīh al-'ulūm, 60-2. However, these and other technical terms used by Qudāma in Naqd al-shi'r appear mostly in the section devoted to naqd al-kalām or muwāda'āt kuttāb al-rasā ’il, a section devoted to official writings (46-50). 114. 'Abbās, Tārīkh al-naqd, 210. 115. Ibid., 194. 116. Defining poetry as composition combining metre, rhyme, diction (lafẓ ) and meaning (ma'nā), and identifying three levels of it - good, mediocre and bad - he divides the elements of poetic composition to be examined into eight categories, four individual and four compound; the former include diction, meaning, rhyme and metre, and the latter harmony (i'tilāf) between diction and meaning (that is, form and content), between diction and metre, between meaning and metre, and between meaning and rhyme. These are discussed in two main sections, the first concerned with the пи'ūt (merits) and the second the 'uyūb (shortcomings). He then defines good poetry and bad poetry in accordance with this scheme: that which contains all the merits is the best (nihāyat al-jawda), that which contains all the

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117.

118. 119.

120. 121. 122.

123.

124. 125.

126.

127.

shortcomings is the worst (nihāyat al-radā ’a), and that which combines both merits and defects is in between and should be judged accordingly. For a lexical, historical and critical analysis of the technical terms used by Qudāma in Naqd al-shi'r, see Idrīs al-Nāqûrī, Al-muṣṭ alaḥ alnaqdī fī naqd al-shi'r (Tripoli: al-Munsha’a al-'Āmma li al-Nashr wa alTawzī' wa al-I 'lān, 1984). Examples abound in al-Marzubānī’s Al-muwashshaḥ , al-Ḥ ā timī’s Ḥ ilyat al-muhādara, al-'Askarï’s Al-sinā 'atayn and Ibn Rashlq’s Al-fumda. Al-Āmidī responded to Qudāma in Al-muwāzana, then in a separate treatise entitled Tabyīn ghalaṭ (Qudāma b. Ja'far fī kitāb naqd al-shi'r (Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-udabā ’, 8: 86; and al-Suyūṭ ī, Bughya, 1: 501), also known as Kitāb al-radd 'alā Qudāma bi naqd al-shi'r (al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 287). Furthermore, he responded to other works, each in a separate treatise: Kitāb mā fī 'iyār al-shi'r min al-khaṭa ’ (Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-udabā ’, 8: 85; and al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 88), also known as Kitābfī iṣ lāḥ mā fḥ mi'yār al-shi'r li Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā (Ibn al-Nadīm, Al-fihrist, 172; and Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-udabā', 8: 85); Kitāb al-radd 'alā Ibn 'Ammār f īmā khaṭṭa ’a fī hi Abā Tammām (Ibn al-Nadīm, Al-fihrist, 172; Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-udabā ’, 8: 86; al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 288; and al-Suyūtī, Bughya, 1: 501). 'Abbās, Tārīkh al-naqd, 154. These are: Al-aḍ dad, Shiddat ḥ ājat al-insān ilā an ya'rif nafsahu, and the dīwān of his poetry. These are: Al-mu'talif wa al-mukhtalif min asmā ’ al-shu'arā ’, Farq mā bayn al-khāṣ ṣ wa al-mushtarak min ma'ānī al-shi'r, Tafḍ īl shi'r Imri’ al-Qays 'alā shi'r al-jāhiliyyīn, Nathr al-manẓ ūm, Ma'ānī shi'r al-Buḥ turī, Kitābfī anna al-shā 'irayn la tattafi q khawāṭ iruhumā (Ibn al-Nadīm, Al-fihrist, 172; Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-udabā', 8: 86; al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 288; and al-Suyūtī, Bughya, 1: 501). Yāqūt assesses him as follows: ‘He compiled many books on the accounts of poets, nations, men and entertaining anecdotes. He is excellent in organisation. It is said that he was better than al-Jāḥ iẓ in compilation’ (Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-udabā ’, 18: 270). al-Marzubānī, Al-muwashshaḥ , 1. From what Yāqūt and al-Qifṭ ī report, we know that this book is a ‘comprehensive collection (jāmi') of information on its [poetry’s] merits, metres, shortcomings, various kinds (ajnās wa ḍ uū b), the choice parts of it, the etiquette to be observed by poets (qā ’ilīhi wa munshidīhi) and an expose of what was misattributed and appro­ priated’ (Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-udabā ’, 18: 270; and al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 3: 182). This work is reportedly ‘on the errors in language (kasr wa laḥ n) and defects ('uyūb) found in poetry and condemned by the 'ulamā ’ (Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-udabā ’, 18: 270; and al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 3: 182. Almuwassa' in Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-udabā ’, 18: 271). This book is reported to be ‘on the accounts concerning poets and their conditions in pre-Islamic and Islamic times, their religions and sects’, on which al-Qifṭ ī comments as follows: ‘It is as useful (mufī d) as its name indicates on the accounts concerning poets who were not prolific, their kunyas and their poetic styles’ (al-Qifṭ ī, I

nbāh, 3: 182). 128. These are: prosodic defects including takhlī' and ziḥ āf; defects of meaning includingfasād al-taqsīm,al-takrīr, dukhūl aḥad al-qismaynīf al-ākhar, mā lā yuḥ tamal tarkuhu, fasād al-muqābalāt, defects in the harmony between diction and metre including tafsīl; defects in the

197

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129.

130.

131. 132. 133.

harmony between meaning and metre including maqlūb and mabtūr and far-fetched similes and exaggerations. These are: lines in which diction falls short of meaning; lines in which diction is infelicitous (mustakraha) and rhymes are uncertain (qaliqa); lines the meaning of which are remote and ambiguous. He also includes the necessities (ḍ arūrāt) that lead to strained expression in this Part. Such as ‘departure from customary usage’, ‘attribution of a quality to an inappropriate object’, faulty interpretation (fasād al-tafsīr) and contradiction (tanāquḍ ). Such as ikhlāl and its opposite. Such as ḥ ashw, tathlīm, tadhnīb and taghyīr. For details on these quotes, see Munīr Sulṭ ān, Al-Marzubānī wa almuwashshahḥ (Alexandria: al-Hay’a al-Miṣ riyya al-'Āmma li al-Kitāb,

1978).

134. Al-Aṣ ma'ī, however, is not quoted. But this is understandable, for alMarzubānī is al-Ṣ ūlī’s student, and he belonged to the Baghdadi school which was the competitor and opponent of the Basran school in which al-Āmidī was a major figure. 135. Al-Āmidī, for example, cites these sources for the purpose of supporting his arguments in the context of al-muwāzana between Abū Tammām and al-Buḥ turī. 136. For the life and works o f Ibn Rashīq, see Nūr al-Dīn Bilqāsim, ‘Naẓ ariyyat al-shi'r 'ind al-'arāb min khilāl Al-'umda li Ibn Rashīq ’, Alfikr 23:5 (February 1978): 88-97; Aḥ mad al-Badawī Ja lāl, ‘Ibn Rashīq bayn al-masīla wa al-qayrawān ’, Al-fikr 23:5 (February 1978): 68-75; and Qamar Kīlānī, ‘Ibn Rashīq wa al-sariqāt al-shi'riyya 'aṣ ran wa nahjan’ , Al-fikr 23:5 (February 1978): 41-61; 'Abd al-Ra’ūf Makhlūf, Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'ārif, 1964) and Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī wa naqd al-shi'r: dirā sa naqdiyya taḥ līliyya (Kuwait: Wikālat al-Maṭ ābi', 1973); Muḥ ammad Salāma Yūsuf Raḥ ma, Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī wa arāuh al-bayāniyya wa al-naqdiyya (Cairo: Matābi' al-Ahrām alTijāriyya, 1973); and Ahmad al-Tawīlī, ‘Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī’, Alfikr 23:5 (February 1978): 111-15. 137. There are three editions of this work: Muḥ ammad Sallām Zaghlūl, Almumti' fī san'at al-shi'r (Alexandria: Munsha’at al-Ma'ārif, 1977), an edition criticised for its editorial inaccuracies (see Muḥ ammad Muṣ ṭ afā Haddāra, ‘Al-mumti' fī san'at al-shi'r li al-Nahshalī , 'Ā lam alkutub 3:2 [Ju ly 1982] : 216-29) ; Munjī al-Ka'bi, Al-mumti'fī 'ilm al-shi'r wa 'amalihi (Tripoli and Tunis: al-Dār al-'Arabiyya li al-Kitāb, 1978); and Mahmūd Shakir al-Qattān, Ikhtiyār al-mumti' fī 'ilm al-shi'r wa 'amalihi (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'ārif, 1983). All quotes are from Ikhtiyār al-mumti'. 138. al-Nahshalī al-Qayrawānī, Ikhtiyār al-mumti', 1: 63. 139. Ibid., 84. 140. Al-Nahshalī’s book, despite its intriguing subtitle, fī 'ilm al-shi'r wa 'amalihi (on knowing and making poetry), contains mostly adab-like anecdotes; it does not contain any critical issue that has been discussed by his predecessors. 141. Ibn Rashīq, Al-'umda, 1: 16. 142. al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 298. 143. al-Suyūṭ ī, Bughya, 1: 504. 144. Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, 2: 85. 145. al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 304.

A G A IN S T A L L O D D S : T H E M A K IN G O F A T R A D IT IO N

146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153.

154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160.

'Abbās, Tārīkh al-naqd, 445. Ibid., 446. Ibid., 444. Ibid., 335. Ibn Rashīq, Al-'umda, 1: 16. For details o f Ibn Rashīq’s treatment o f these issues, see 'Abbās, Tārīkh al-naqd, 444-59; and Makhlūf, Ibn Rashīq wa naqd al-shi'r. These are either elements of a poem, such as metre and rhyme, or the form of a poem, such as ode and rajaz, or long and short poems. Under this section, Ibn Rashīq discusses four things: a) impromptu compositions (badīha wa irtijāl); b) education and qualifications o f a poet; c) the process of composing a poem; and d) parts of a poem, including the introductory part (mabda') , transition to another theme (khurūj ), and ending ( nihāya). Including erotic prelude, panegyrics, elegy, reproach, threat, satire and apology. Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-udabā ’, 18: 270. al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 3:27. Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-udabā ’, 18: 271; and al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 3: 182. al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 304. Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology, 18. See Appendix VI.

199

Conclusion

T o d efen d the righ t o f criticism to exist at all is to assum e that criticism is a structure o f th ou gh t an d know ledge existin g in its own right, with som e m easure o f in d ep en d en ce fro m the art it deals with. N o rth ro p Frye It has b een the practice o f A rab scholars, classical or m od ern , to exam in e the genesis o f the term used to designate the field o f their study, fo r it is the precise lexical m ean in g o f the term that served as the fo u n d atio n fo r the conceptualisation o f the field , and it is precisely this fou n d atio n that can be ex p a n d ed into a w orld o f com p lex rules. T h e w ords naqd an d intiqād are no excep tio n . E ver since they w ere ad o p ted as the term s to designate criticism , and specifically literary criticism in the twentieth century, the root-w ord (nq-d) has b een p laced u n d e r intense scrutiny. V irtually all scholars o f classical A rabic criticism m ust accou n t fo r the choice o f this w ord to designate the field and explain its use against the b ack gro u n d o f the classical critical tradition. T h is practice, as ju x ta p o se d to the practice o f the m edieval scholars - am o n g w hom only Q u d ām a b. J a 'f ar (d. 337/948) defined this term to m ean distinguishing good from bad poetry - is significant. It bespeaks the m od ern sch o lars’ consciousness o f the fact that this term was not used in the classical literary tradition in the way that it is today. Its sporadic use in classical A rabic w ritings, however, ju stifies the m o d e rn s’ enterprise. T h e m od erns are q uick to call attention to the fact that the lexical m eanings o f the w ord naqd do reflect the two techn ical senses o f the w ord as used by Ibn Sallām (d. 232/846) an d Q u d āma. T h is practice, thou gh ju stifiab le an d valid, fails to take accoun t o f the history o f the developm en t o f this term an d at the sam e time falls short o f p rovid in g the b ro ad er historical an d cultural con text w ithin w hich this term was used by Ibn Sallām and Q u d ām a. A closer look at the evolution o f the defin ition o f this term in som e m ajor A rabic lexico n s brin gs to ligh t that its path m ay have b een the very ro ad alon g w hich the use o f this term in critical w ritings travelled, fo r the span o f a culturally m ost sign ifican t century separated Q u d ām a from Ibn Sallām, and it was Q u d ām a’ s work,

201

C O N C L U S IO N

Naqd al-shi'r, w hich was the lan d m ark in w hich the term naqd acq u ired a new dim ension, ex p a n d in g its basic m eanin g. T h e earliest reco rd ed use o f the w ord naqd is fo u n d in the P rop h etic T ra d itio n .1 T h e re naqd, as a n ou n , m eans ‘ cash ’ . T h is usually is the prim ary m eanin g o f the w ord that appears in the classical A rabic lexico ns. In alJa w h a rī ’ s (d. betw een 3 9 3 / 1003 an d 400/1009) Al-ṣ iḥ āḥ f ī al-lugah (that w hich is correct o f lan gu age ), fo u r o th er m eanin gs relevan t to the term are fou n d . It m eans cash, and to give cash is naqada an d to take cash is intaqada. It can also m ean to pick out the fake (zayf) coin from the gen u in e, and th erefore w hen one says dirham naqd on e m eans that it is a go o d coin o f full w eight (wāzin). F orm 111 o f the verb, nāqada, can m ean to discuss a m atter with som eone. A n d the verb also m eans to look at som ething or som eone at len gth .2 O th er lexicons reco rd ed an ad dition al m ean in g o f the w ord, though m aintaining these fo u r basic m eanin gs as well. In al-Azharī ’ s (282/89 5-370/ 980)

Tahdhīb al-lugha

(refin em en t o f the lan gu age),

an

addition al

m eaning, nam ely ' to fin d fau lt’ , was cited. Al-Azharī cited the follow in g account: ‘It is rep o rted that A b ū al-D ardā ’ said, “if you fin d fau lt (naqadta) with p eop le they will fin d fau lt with you, and [even] if you leave them alon e (after that) they will n ot leave you a lo n e ”.’ A n d he added: ‘T h e m ean in g o f naqadtahum is to fin d fau lt with them ( 'ibtahum or aghabtahum) ’ .3 Ibn F āris’ (d. 395/1005) M ujm al al-lugha (sum m ary o f the la n g u ag e )4 reflected only the basic fo u r m eanings o f the term fo u n d in Al-ṣ iḥ āḥ . His M aqāyīs al-lugha (m easures o f the lan gu age ), however, contains the follow in g addition al denotation: to distinguish the go o d fro m the b ad .5 In al-Saraqusṭ ī’s (c. 400/ 1009) Kitāb a l-a f'a l (the b o o k o f verbs), the follow in g entry is fo u n d : naqada al-dīnār naqdan, m ean in g that he tapped the d in ar with his fin g e r to test w hether it was go o d (naqarahu li-yakhtabirjaw datahu ).6 In the fifth /eleven th century, the w ord tamyīz m ade its first ap p earan ce in con n ection with the defin itio n o f the term naqd. By then, tamyīz had already b een in use in works o f literary criticism in con ju n ction with the w ord naqd. In Al-muḥ kam f ī al-lugha (that w hich is accurate in the lan gu age), Ibn Sīd ā (d. 458/1065) d efin ed naqd as follows: ‘ al-naqd wa altinqād : tamyīz al-darāhim wa al-danānīr ', m ean in g distin guishin g m on ey.7 Since then, these two w ords have becom e in separab le. U sin g the w ord tamyīz to d efin e

naqd in A rabic

lexico grap h y and

critical writings

necessarily indicates that the con n otation s o f tamyīz are p ertin en t to the d efinition o f naqd. T h e derivatives from the w ord tamyīz' s ro o t (m-y-z) have fo u r m eanings. M āza al-shay’ m eans he separated o r set aside on e part o f the thing from an oth er (f aṣ ala ba'ḍ ahu min ba'ḍ ) ; he ju d g e d or m ade p art o f the thing to excel, or to have excelled , an oth er (faḍ ḍ ala ba'ḍ ahu 'alā ba'ḍ );

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and he separated o r severed the evil from the go o d ( māza al-khabīth min alṭayyib). As fo r F orm 11 o f the verb, mayyaza al-ashyā', it m eans he separated things after know ledge o f them , h en ce he distinguished, discrim in ated or d iscern ed them . Fu rther, māza bayn al-ashyā ’ m eans mayyaza baynahā: he distinguished, discrim inated betw een o r discern ed the things. W hen the maṣ dar (verbal nou n) is used in a p h rase like ‘ sinn al-tamyīz', as used by legal scholars, the p hrase m eans the age o f discrim ination: the age at w hich on e knows w hat things are b eneficial to oneself. A n d acco rd in g to som e, tamyīz is a faculty in the b rain w hereby m eanin gs are elicited. T h e active participle, mumayyiz, then den otes that w hich can distinguish o r discrim in ­ ate, an d h ence, a rational an im al.8 T h e association o f this term with the w ord tamyīz conveys that the process o f discern m en t necessarily involved know ledge and rational thinking. In the sixth/tw elfth century, the w ord naqd cam e to m ean distinguishing g o o d from bad, even in relation to coins. In Asās al-balāgha (the fo u n d atio n o f elo q u en ce), al-Zam akhsharī (d. 5 38/1144 ) stated that naqada al-naqqād al-darāhim m eant he distin guished w hat was go o d fro m w hat was bad (mayyaza jayyidahā min radi'ihā). M ore im portan t, al-Zam akhsharī reco rd ed the m etaph orical usage o f the w ord in various literary w orks up to his time. U n d e r the section on its m etaph orical ( majāz) usage, al-Zam akhsharī d ocu m en ted the three m eanin gs o f the verb naqada an d its derivatives. W hen the nou n nuqāda is used, it m eans one is from am o n g the select p eop le, den otin g that he is the best am o n g his tribe (huwa min nuqādat qawmihi: min khiyārihim) . In Asās, this defin itio n is follow ed im m ediately by the p hrase ‘ naqada al-kalām wa huwa min naqadat al-shi'r wa nuqqād ih i', w hich m eans ‘he d iscern ed discourse and he is am o n g those w ho can discern p oetry’ . T h e im plication o f this ju x ta p o sitio n is that naqd con n otes a selection process w hereby the best is identified. Al-naqada is a collective n ou n used to den ote lowly p eo p le. T h is is a m etap h or derived from the im age o f an in fe rio r b reed o f sheep dam aged by a w o lf with a croo ked tail (al-naqada ilayhim k a ’annahum al-naqad wa qad ratha f īhā al-dhi'b al-a'qad). T h e literary m ean in g o f the phrase is ‘ the w o lf with a twisted tail has m ade m ischief am ong them, the sheep’ . This definition is im m ediately follow ed by the p hrase ‘ wa intaqada al-shi'r 'alā qā 'ïlīhi '. T h e im plication o f the latter statem ent is ‘ to m ake m isch ief or to act corru ptly towards so m eo n e’ s p o etry ’ . As fo r F o rm 1 o f the verb, it m eans that one looks at som ething at length secretly o r discreetly (wa huwa yanqud bi 'aynihi 'alā al-shay': yudīm al-naẓ ar ilayhi bi ikhtilās hattā la yufṭan lahu). T h e w ord nāqid is used in this con text to im ply that nāqid is on e w ho exam in es a thing discreetly.9 In the eig h th /th irteen th and n in th /fo u rteen th centuries, n eith er Ibn

C O N C L U S IO N

203

M an ẓ ūr in L isān al-'arab10 n o r al-Fīrū zāb ādī (d. 8 17 / 1415) in Al-qāmūs almū ḥ īt (the all-encom passing d ictio n ary)11 in clu d ed the m etaph orical m ean in g o f the w ord. Al-Zabīdī (d. 12 0 5 / 1791), however, listed in Tāj al­ 'arūs (the crown o f the bride) all the d efin itions previously reco rd ed in clu d in g those o f al-Zam akhsharī , an d ad d ed the follow ing: naqada alkalām nāqashahu (naqda a discourse m eans ‘he discussed it’ ), alon g with w hich he listed intaqada al-shi'r 'alā qā 'ilīh ï 12(he called the poets to accoun t con cern in g his com position ). L a n e ’ s definitions, w hich in effect are translations o f Ibn M an ẓ ūr ’ s in L isān al-'arab, m ay fu rth er assist us in d eterm in in g w hich o f the above is the m ost suitable defin ition o f naqd an d intiqād in term s o f activities related to poetry. N āqid, naqqād, nuqqād an d naqada, acco rd in g to L an e, are term s used to d enote a p erson w ho picks, o r separates, m oney, an d puts forth the bad; the one w ho picks, or separates, go o d m on ey from bad; an d the on e w ho exam ines m oney, to pick, o r separate the go o d fro m the bad. A s fo r nāqid and nuqqād al-shi'r, the fo rm er den otes a person w ho picks out the faults in poetry and the latter den otes a person w ho habitually does so. As fo r the phrases min nuqqādihim an d huwa min naqadat al-shi'r; they denote persons w ho pick out faults in p oetry.13 T h e w ord naqada thus closely corresponds to the E nglish ‘p ick ’ , an d on e m ay say: to pick the best poetry, to pick on poetry, and to pick out the forged . T h e re is no evidence in A rabic lexico grap h y that naqada al-kalām and intaqada al-shi'r 'alā qā ’ilīhi refer to critical exam ination o f literary discourse, be it poetry or p rose, and w hat this exam in ation m ay entail. F rom the m eanings used in association with these term s, however, on e m ay in fer that they m ay possibly m ean any o f the follow ing: separatin g the fake from the genu in e, m isattributed poetry fro m accurately attributed poetry (th ird / ninth century); distinguishin g the go o d fro m the bad (fo u rth /ten th century and onwards) by exam in in g it at len gth ; fin d in g fau lt with poetry by acting corru ptly and m aking m ischief; selectin g the best o f poetry; an d discussing m atters related to poetry. M oreover, no term designatin g a p erson w ho p erform s such activities exists in these dictionaries, though nāqid in the singular form appears twice, in al-Zam akhsharī ’s Asās al-balāgha and al-Zabīdī ’s Tāj al ' arūs. Al-nāqid, acco rd in g to both al-Zam akhsharī an d al-Zabīdī , denotes a p erson w ho steals a lo n g lo o k at a thing. H ow ever, it does not necessarily re fe r to anyone practising any critical activity related to poetry. As fo r the p ersons who pursu e this kind o f activity, they are referred to in the plu ral form o f the n ou n an d are said to b elo n g to naqadat al-shi'r or nuqqī dihi. We do not get the sense that there is a co h eren t and consistent view o f the w ord naqd used as a techn ical term in A rabic lexicography.

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Naqd al-shi'r, an d oth er term s, al-'ilm bi al-shi'r o r 'ilm al-shi'r, used by critics to designate discussions o f poetry - b arrin g works d ealin g directly with poetry - w ere poin tedly absent in oth er classical A rabic w ritings as well. In the works on the classification o f the sciences, no entry m ay be fo u n d fo r al-'ilm bi al-sh'ir, 'ilm al-shi'r o r 'ilm al-naqd, and in the b io grap h ical d ictionaries no w riter w ho dealt with poetic criticism was describ ed as al'ā lim bi al-shi'r o r al-nāqid. T h e w orks on the classification o f the sciences accou n ted fo r the area co n cern ed with poetic com position m ainly u n d e r the rub ric o f 'ilm al-adab or 'ulū m al-lisān. H owever, the co n cern with poetry was con fin ed to its value as an A rabic linguistic model14 o r its com p o sitio n .15 In w orks outside the classification o f the sciences, the discussion o f poetry was divided into three m ain areas: the areas co n cern ed with the form al aspects o f poetry (gram m ar, lan gu age an d lexico graph y) d o cu m en ted u n d e r the sciences o f the A rabic lan gu age; the accounts co n cern in g the poets listed with the historical works; an d the theoretical aspects, especially those con n ected with A risto tle’s Poetics an d Rhetoric, in clu d ed in the various p h ilosop h ical sciences. In later periods, as in K ateb C e le b i’s (10 16 -6 7 / 1608-57) K ash f al-ẓ u n ū n, any discussion related to poetry was listed u n d er 'ilm al-adab, w hich covered all the A rab ic literary arts, in clu d in g gram m ar, lexicograp h y, rh etoric an d poetry. T h e im plication o f classical A rabic writings seem s obvious: despite their attem pts, the literary theorists - to bo rrow W olfhart H e in rich s’ term - w ere u n ab le to establish an in d ep en d en t field o f in tellectu al in qu iry devoted to the discussion o f poetry and the n otion o f a specialist possessing absolute authority on the subject. T h e absence o f this area o f in tellectu al inquiry, and o f the recogn ition o f the critic as a specialist in the works co n cern ed with d ocu m en tin g the achievem ents o f A rabic-Islam ic culture, req u ires an explan ation , fo r evidence in classical w ritings indicates a dichotom y in the cu ltu re’s view o f this area o f study: w hile the works on the classification o f the sciences and b io grap h ical d iction aries fail to accoun t fo r the field o f literary criticism and the literary critic, the literary theorists d efin ed the scope o f literary criticism an d the qualification s - albeit only theoretically o f the literary critic. T h e explanation o f this ph en om en o n in classical A rabic culture m ay provide us with keys to the u n d erstan d in g o f the n ature and the d evelop m en t o f classical A rabic literary criticism . W ithout such u n d e r­ standing, ou r evaluation o f classical A rabic literary criticism , an d its in flu en ce on the developm en t o f A rab ic poetry, will rem ain inconclusive. In an article p u b lish ed p rio r to his m ain w ork on classical A rab ic literary criticism , 'A b b ās draws ou r attention to the fact that the incentives fo r A rab w riters to deal with poetry in their w orks had to be taken into con sideratio n in any attem pt to write a history o f this area o f learn in g .16 Since then, he has

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written, in m y op in ion , the m ost authoritative history o f classical A rabic literary criticism . 'A b b ās’s work, however, focuses on the developm en t o f the m ajor critical issues and the in flu en ce o f the d ivergen t b ack gro u n d o f the w riters on th eir views, ap p ro ach es an d treatm ent o f the subject. N ow that we have a com preh en sive view o f the n ature an d d evelop m en t o f classical A rabic literary criticism , it is necessary that we exam in e the reasons b eh in d such a course o f developm en t, fo r un d erstan d in g these reasons will help us to exp lain the deficien cies o f classical A rabic literary criticism w hat H einrich s identifies as the failu re to un d erstan d co m p lex structures, the developm en t o f poetry, an d the true exten t o f the segm ents o f reality that are treated in p oetry.17 A n explan ation o f these deficien cies m ay be fo u n d in o u r exam in ation o f the cultural and individual reasons that m otivated the literary theorists to single out poetry as a subject o f study. O r in E ag le to n ’s words, ‘ to in qu ire into the history o f criticism itself: to pose the question o f u n d e r what conditions, and fo r w hat ends, a literary criticism com es ab o u t’ . In the p reced in g chapters, I have told the story o f m edieval A rabic literary criticism as it ‘e m erg e[d ] into existen ce ... on the basis o f determ in ate conditions’ .18 T h ro u g h o u t the th ird /n in th , fo u rth /ten th and fifth /eleven th centuries, A rabic w riters w ho devoted som e o f their w orks to poetry h ad to deal with com p lex and in terrelated issues arising from the dialectics o f an em ergin g Arabic-Islam ic culture in gen eral, in clu d in g those relevan t to the view o f poetry, and from the profession al an d p erson al p riorities o f the literary theorists w ho, com in g fro m diverse backgroun ds, envisaged the area o f literary criticism in particular. D u ring the em erg en ce o f the A rabic-Islam ic identity in the th ird /n in th century, the w ould-be A rabic-Islam ic culture w itnessed in tense tension resulting from the process o f assim ilating the various ethnic elem en ts into a cohesive new society, and the d ivergen t cultures into an in tegral fram e­ work. T h e process o f assim ilation p ro d u ced p olem ics over pow er, polem ics that perm eated all aspects o f the culture, in clu d in g know ledge in gen eral and poetry in particular. T h e problem atic result created by these polem ics was p arad oxical, fo r w hile n o place was given to poetry - as a literary p h en o m en o n - in the dialectics o f pow er, poetry as a form o f know ledge was utilised in the debates over the authority o f a certain gro u p in society. T h ose w ho w ere w riting on A rab ic poetry - b ein g w hat Said term s ‘ circum stantial realities’19 - w ere n o t able to escape the course dictated by their id eo logical p riorities - p riorities d eterm in ed by ‘ those m odes o f feeling, valuing, receivin g an d believin g w hich have som e kind o f relation to the m aintenance and rep ro d u ctio n o f [cultural and] social p o w er’20 - o r their ‘person al history: [their] edu cation , the dem and s o f [their] calling,

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the req u irem ents o f [their]

au d ie n c e ’ .21 Ibn Sallām ’s co n cern with

resp o n d in g to the shu'ū biyya attacks on the in tellectual achievem ents o f the A rabs led to his p reoccu p atio n with the auth en tication o f pre-Islam ic and early Islam ic poetry, w hich in turn d eterm in ed his view o f an d ap p ro ach to poetry. Ibn Q utayba (d. 276/889), p reo ccu p ied with the question o f the authority o f tradition and the legitim acy o f traditionalists, arg u ed fo r the notion o f ṭab' in poetic com position, a notion d eeply ro o ted in the A rabic tradition. Ibn al-Mu'tazz (d. 296/908) further involved poetry in the polem ics over the righ t o f the 'A bbasids to rule. T h e discourse on poetry was part an d p arcel o f the ‘ co m p lex unity it fo rm [e d ] with ad jacen t discou rses’ ,22 w hich cou ld not be d ivorced from ‘ the realities o f pow er an d au th ority’ .23 A t the sam e tim e, in the ‘process o f readju stm en t betw een poetry and the w orld in and fo r w hich it [was] p ro d u c e d ’ ,24 the social fu n ction o f poetry was b ein g m od ified as well. T h e gradual ch an ge in the em phasis o f the fu n ction o f poetry that took p lace over the th ird /n in th an d fo u rth / tenth centuries was necessarily related to its involvem ent in the dialectics o f a new cu lture that was em erg in g in the th ird /n in th century. By the fo u rth / tenth century, the fu n ction o f poetry was red efin ed , an d poetry was assigned two functions in society, on e in tellectual an d the o th er social. W hile pre-Islam ic and early Islam ic poetry m ain tain ed its fun ction as a veh icle o f know ledge, especially o f the A rab ic lan gu age, muḥ dath poetry becam e p red om in an tly associated with en tertain m en t fo r the elite, lead in g to the in creasin g em ploym en t o f poetry as the m eans o f livelih o od by poets. U n d e r these circum stances, the n otion that poetry was a craft g ain ed footin g in the overall con cep tion o f poetry, lead in g to the in creasin g m annerism o f classical A rab ic poetry. T h e two aspects relevan t to the notion that poetry was craft - its social fun ction an d artistic priorities ge ared evaluation o f poetic com position towards p reo ccu p atio n with the originality o f the poet, and toward his skilful m an ipulation o f poetic techniques. T h e fo rm er yield ed n u m ero u s works on the ap p rop riation s (sariqā t) o f the poets, cu lm in ating in the controversy over al-M utanabbī . Ibn 'A b b ad (d. 385/995), al-Ḥ ā timi (d. 388/998) an d Ibn W akī ' (d. 39 3/ 1003), fo r exam p le, all devoted works to al-M utanabbī ’s appropriation s. As fo r the latter con cern , it sign alled the shift o f poetic study from fo cu sin g on p oetry’ s role in political polem ics to the m inute aspects o f technical accom plishm ents, m anifest in the in creasin g use o f the hair-splittingly d ifferen tiated artifices o f al-badī '. W orks by al-Ḥ ā timī , A b ū H ilāl al-'A skarī (d. 395/1005) and Ibn R ashīq (d. 456 /106 3 or 463/1070) all attest to the obsession with narrow technicalities. H ow ever, cultural factors w ere n o t alon e in d irectin g the course o f the d evelop m en t o f classical A rabic literary criticism . As a m atter o f fact, those

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involved in attem pting to establish the field, o p eratin g w ithin ‘co n cealed structure[s] o f values w hich fo rm [e d ] an d u n d erlie [u nd erlay their] factual statem ents’ ,25 con tributed m uch to the failu re to d efin e the field and its fun ction m ore precisely. H ein rich s iden tifies fo u r im pulses that dictated the direction o f the developm en t o f classical A rab ic literary theory, nam ely ‘the con cern s o f the philologists [lexico grap h ers?], the priorities o f the transm itters an d collectors o f poetry, the p reo ccu p atio n o f the K oranic exegetes, and the ch allen ge o f badī ' p o etry ’ .26 T h ese im pulses conflicting with on e an oth er at times - resulted in two m ain features o f classical A rabic poetic criticism : first, the absence o f a con solidated d efinition o f field d esignated by a l- 'ilm bi al-shi'r, 'ilm al-shi'r an d naqd alshi'r, and h ence the ab sence o f a cohesive vision o f its fun ction ; an d second, the absence o f a shared defin itio n o f an authoritative specialist. T h e d efinition o f the area co n cern ed with poetic com position an d its fun ction necessarily em erg ed u n d e r the shadow o f the profession al an d person al priorities o f the grou p s o f scholars em bo dyin g the afo rem en tio n ed im pulses. W hile the lan gu age scholars, such as al-Aṣ m a 'ī an d Ibn Sallām, focu sed on the linguistic aspects o f poetry, the transm itters an d collectors o f poetry, such as al-Ṣ ū lī and al-Ā m idī , con cen trated rath er on the m erits o f the p oet w hom they ch am pio n ed an d the defects o f others, the religiou s scholars, such as al-Bāq illānī (d. 4 0 3 /10 13 ), on the literary superiority o f the Q u r’ān to poetry, an d the poets, such as D i'b il al-Khuzā 'ī (d. 235/850), alḤ ā timī (d. 388/998) and Ibn W akī ' (d. 39 3/10 0 3), on the badī ' artifices and appropriations. U ndou btedly, each o f these gro u p s claim ed authority fo r itself. M oreover, because o f the nature o f the poetic en terprise, the elite envisaged them selves as the authorities on the subject. C aliphs, am īrs, viziers and kuttāb all professed opin ion s on poetry w hich fo r obvious reasons w ere rarely contested. T h e result o f these con flictin g interests is n ot difficult to im agine. T h e attem pts to establish poetic criticism as an in d ep en d en t an d in tegral discipline o f learn in g w ere n ot destined fo r success. F o r on e thing, al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, 'ilm al-shi'r and naqd al-shi'r did n ot acq u ire precise definitions; they cou ld m ean anything ran g in g fro m gram m ar, lexico grap h y an d prosody to distinguishing g o o d poetry fro m bad poetry, reco gn itio n o f ap p rop riation s and the discussion o f badī ' artifices. A n d fo r an other, only very few o f the critics com m and ed respect, fo r they busied them selves with fin d in g fau lt with the poets. In their m u n d an e p reoccu patio n s, they n eglected a m ajor area o f inquiry that cou ld have b een o f great b en efit to their field , n am ely the ph ilosoph ical explan ation s o f the nature o f the literary effo rt fo u n d in, fo r exam ple, A ristotle’ s Poetics an d Rhetoric. T h is does n ot m ean that classical A rabic literary criticism was com pletely lackin g in its aw areness o f

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the notions with reg ard to poetry p resen t in p h ilosop h ical treatises. H ow ever, the in flu en ce o f the latter on the fo rm er rem ain ed m inim al d u rin g the p erio d covered by this book, fo r two reasons: the vast d ifferen ce betw een the G ree k and A rab ic poetic experien ces, an d the priorities o f the p h ilosop h ers, w hich w ere not co n cern ed with the discussion o f poetry as a literary p h en om en o n . It has becom e clear from my analysis in the p reced in g chapters that d u rin g the early p erio d o f its developm en t, the p erio d covered by this book, literary criticism was n ot able to sever its em bryon ic ties with literatu re in ge n e ral and poetry in particular, an d con seq uen tly its fu n ction rem a in ed tied to the fu n ction o f poetry in society, an d its defin itio n lim ited to its view o f that function. W hile the critics o f the th ird /n in th century stru ggled with questions relevan t to the political fun ction o f poetry, the critics o f the fo u rth /te n th an d p ost-fou rth /ten th cen turies focu sed on the aspects o f poetry as a craft, con cen tratin g on m inute technical issues, resu lting in their failu re to exp lain the course o f the artistic d evelop m en t o f classical A rabic poetry. T h e state o f flu x in the defin itio n o f the term s naqd, intiqād, nāqid, nuqqād and naqada in A rabic lexico grap h y, especially their use in relation to discussion o f literary texts, is in part the responsibility o f the critics w hose use o f the term s ran g ed am o n g the above-enum erated possible m eanin gs. T h e inability o f the critics ‘ to agree ab out the pu rp ose o f criticism o r its effectiven ess’27 sign alled that, despite literary criticism ’ s effective treatm en t o f m any techn ical issues, it was n ot able to ju stify its existence as a structure o f thou ght and know ledge in d ep en d en t o f poetry, and con seq uen tly was n ot reco gn ised as such. Yet, a con cep tion o f literary criticism as an in d ep en d en t area o f in tellec­ tual inqu iry did exist in m edieval Arabic-Islam ic culture. F rom the evidence o f classical A rabic w ritings, the literary theorists stru ggled to delin eate an in d ep en d en t field o f literary pursu it that dealt with poetry exclusively. T h e ir attem pts b egan with the realisation that poetry was a literary p h en o m en o n w orthy o f study in itself. Al-Aṣ m a'ī and Ibn Sallām - the p ion eers o f this trend o f thin kin g - w rote books that w ere devoted to poetry. Ibn Sallām fu rth er co in ed the term al-'ilm bi al-shi'r to den ote the field o f poetic study, and al-nāqid to designate the p erson w ho possessed e x p e rt know ledge to en gage in it. Ibn Sallām ’s term , al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, thou gh it m eant m ainly the kn ow ledge involved in reco gn isin g poetic forgeries, was used by Ibn Ṭ ab āṭ ab ā an d Q u d ām a to designate a discipline co n cern ed p rim arily with the discussion o f poetry. It was envisaged by them as containing various areas o f intellectual inquiry all relevant to com position or evaluation o f poetry: m etres, rhym es, w ordin g, con ten t and the fin al ju d g e m e n t on a p oem accord in g to its m erits an d shortcom ings vis-à-vis the

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theoretical p rincip les go vern in g the elem ents o f poetic com position , a process that Q u d ām a term ed naqd or 'ilm jayyidihi min radī'ihi. T h e coin age o f the term a l-'ilm bi al-shi'r o r 'ilm al-shi'r was a significant step towards the conceptualisation o f the discussion o f poetry as an in d ep en d en t field o f know ledge. U sing the term 'ilm in con jun ction with shi'r in the fo u rth / tenth century, as J āb ir 'U ṣ f ūr points out, in dicated that a process o f conceptualisation with reg ard to the study o f poetry, involving d efin in g artistic characteristics applicable to poetry alon e, was taking p la ce.28 T h ro u g h o u t the fo u rth /te n th century, A rab ic w ritings w itnessed the struggle o f this conceptualisation o f poetic studies to establish itself as a viable discipline o f learn in g with precise scope an d p u rp ose, req u irin g specialised skills and com m an d in g authority on its subject, an d to take a place in the g en eral fram ew ork o f know ledge. T h e struggle was n ot entirely futile, fo r in the fifth /eleven th cen tury it yield ed a cohesive fram ew ork fo r the area o f poetic studies. It is possible to detect fro m Ibn R ashīq ’s A l-'umda the basic elem ents o f literary criticism , w hat R en é W ellek id en tified as literary history, literary theory an d textual analysis. T h ese efforts, like the efforts o f all w riters on poetry discussed in this book, w ere tentative an d rarely acknow ledged at the time. F o r this reason, close analysis and m uch extrapo lation has b een req u ired to discern the threads w hich w ould grad u ally weave them selves into the fabric o f a critical tradition that has con tinu ed to today. N evertheless, A rabic-Islam ic culture, against all odds, yield ed a som ew hat cohesive are a o f poetic studies that we m ight call literary criticism today. It, as an ‘in tellectu al p ractice’ , b egan to ‘ think “its e lf” , ‘ to take itself as an ob ject o f in tellectu al in q u iry’29 in the fifth /eleven th century, sign allin g its em ergen ce as a tradition. T h e com ­ prehensiveness and integrity o f this area o f in tellectu al in qu iry seem able to stand the test o f time; they are con firm ed , u p o n intense scrutiny, by m od ern literary theories. M edieval A rabic literary criticism , even thou gh it did not adequ ately ‘d efen d [its] righ t to exist’ by establishing itself as ‘a structure o f know ledge an d thou ght in d ep en d en t o f [p o e try ]’ ,30 but instead p ro d u ced know ledge o f the sort that, in S a id ’s term s, fell ‘n eith er into the p rep ared m olds p rovid ed by the d om in an t culture n o r into the w holly predictive form s m an u factu red by a quasi-scientific m eth o d ’ ,31 asserted its existen ce as an im portan t co m p o n en t in m edieval A rabicIslam ic culture. Poetry, alth ou gh it was the ob ject o f m edieval A rabic literary criticism , ‘was n ot its sole po in t o f gen esis’ , in fact, A rab ic literary criticism ‘had its own relatively autonom ous life, its own laws and structures: it form s an in ternally com p lex system articulated with the literary system rath er than m erely reflexive o f it’ .32 M ore im portant, it rem ains relevan t to literary studies in the A rab w orld today, n ot only as a co m p o n en t in the

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history o f Arabic-Islam ic culture, but as an im portan t part o f the cultural h eritage that continues to in fo rm , in spire and shape the A rab p resen t.33 As its history b ecam e ‘com preh en sive only in the light o f m o d ern literary th eory’ , this history also serves to ‘illum inate and in terp ret the p resen t situ ation’ .32 NOTES

1. See A. J. Wensinck, J. P. Mensig and J. B. Brugman, Al-mu'jam almufahras li alfāẓ al-ḥ adīth al-nabawī (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963-9), 6: 532. 2. Ismā'ïl b. Hammād al-Jawharī , Al-ṣ iḥ āḥ , or Taj al-lugha wa siḥ āḥ al'arabiyya, ed. Ahmad 'Abd al-Ghafūr 'Aṭ ṭ ār (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al'Arabī bi Miṣ r, n.d.),1: 541-2. 3. Wa fī ḥ adīth А bī al-Dardā ’ annahu qāl: “in naqadta al-nāsa naqadūka wa in taraktahum lam yatrukūka". Ma'nā naqadtahum, ayy 'ibtahum wa aghabtahum (Abū Manṣ ūr Muḥ ammad b. Aḥ mad al-Azharī, Tahdhīb al-lugha, ed. 'Abd al-Salām Hārūn; revised Muḥ ammad 'Alī al-Najjār [Cairo: al-Maktaba al-'Arabiyya, 1964-7], 9: 36). 4. Abū al-Husayn Aḥ mad Ibn Fāris, Mujmal al-lugha, ed. Zuhayr 'Abd alMuḥ sin Sulṭ ān (Cairo, n.d.), 3: 880. 5. Naqd al-dirham wa dhālika an yukshaf 'an ḥ ālihi f ī jawdatihi aw ghayr dhālika. (Abū al-Husayn Aḥ mad Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha, ed. 'Abd al-Salām Hārūn [Cairo: Muṣ ṭ afā al-Bābī al-Halabī, 2nd edn, 1972], 5: 467). 6. Abū 'Uthmān Sa'īd b. Muḥ ammad al-Ma'ārifī al-Saraqusṭ ī, Kitāb ala f'āl, ed. Zuhayr 'Abd al-Muḥ sin Sulṭ ān; revised Muḥ ammad Mahdī 'Allām (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-'āmma li Shu’ūn al-Maṭ ābi' al-Islāmiyya, 1975), 4: 216. 7. 'Alī b. Ismā'īl b. Sīda, Al-muḥ kam wa al-muḥ īt al-a'ẓ am f ī al-lugha, ed. Muḥ ammad 'Alī al-Najjār (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥ alabī, 1st edn, 1973) , 6: 193· 8. Edward William Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon (Cambridge: The Islamic Text Society, 1984), 2: 2,747-8. 9. Abū al-Qāsim Mahmūd b. 'Umar al-Zamakhsharī, Asās al-balāgha (Beirut: Dār Ṣ ādir, 1965), 650. 10. Jam āl al-Dīn Muḥ ammad Ibn Manẓ ūr, Lisān al-'arab (Cairo: alMu'assasa al-Miṣ riyya al-'āmma li al-Ta’līf wa al-Anbā’ wa al-Nashr, n.d.), 4: 436-7 11. Majd al-Dīn Muḥ ammad b. Yāqūt al-Fīrūzābādī, Al-qāmūs al-muḥ it (Beirut, al-Mu’assasa al-'Arabiyya, 1970) 1: 354; and Tartīb al-qāmūs almuḥ t, rearranged and ed. al-Tāhir Aḥ mad al-Zāwī (Cairo: 'Ῑ sā al-Bābī al-Ḥ alabī, 2nd edn, 1971-3), 4: 422-3. 12. Muḥ ammad Murtaḍ ā al-Ḥ usaynī al-Zabīdī, Tāj al-'arūs, ed. 'Abd alSattār Aḥ mad Farrāj (Kuwait: Maṭba'at Hukûmat al-Kuwait, 1965present), 9: 230-5. 13. Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, 2: 2,837. 14. Ibn Khaldūn, Al-muqaddima, 570. 15. Kateb Celebi, Kashf al-ẓ unūn, 1: 44-5. 16. Iḥ sān 'Abbās, ‘Naẓ ra jad īda fī al-naqd al-qadīm ’, Al-adāb 9: 21 (1961): 10-12. 17. Wolfhart Heinrichs, ‘Literary theory: the problem of its efficiency’, Arabic Poetry, Theory and Development, Third Levi Della Vida Biennial

CONCLUSION

Conference, ed. G. E. von Grunebaum (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

1973), 35.

Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology, 17. Said, World, 34-5. Eagleton, Literary Theory, 15. Wellek, History, 8. Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology, 18. Said, World, 39. T. S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry, 18. Eagleton, Literary Theory, 5. Heinrichs, ‘Literary theory’, 30-1. Said, World, 140. J ābir 'U ṣ fūr, Mafhūm al-Shi'r, Dirāsa fī al-turāth al-naqdī (Cairo: Dār alThaqāfa, 1978), 25-7. Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology, 18. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 5. Said, World, 182. Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology, 17. 'U ṣ fūr, Mafūm, 10. Wellek, History, 1: v.

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APPENDIX I

Accounts of Critics in Biographical Dictionaries 'A B D A L -M A L IK B. Q URA YB A L -A S M A 'I (D .

2 16 /8 3 1)

Al-A ṣ m a 'ī's b io grap h y appears in section on e o f ch ap ter two o f Al-fihrist, w hich is on on B asran gram m arian s an d lexico grap h ers (60). A cco rd in g to Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Aṣ m a 'ī was known fo r m em orisation o f poetry an d its m eanings, gen ealogy an d gram m ar (ḥ āfīẓ al-shi'r, al-ma'ān ī, 'ilm al-nasab, wa al-naḥ w). In M arātib al-naḥ wiyyīn, ‘ he was am o n g the scholars the m ost th orou gh with reg ard to lan gu ages, an d the m ost kn ow ledgeable ab out poetry, and the readiest to quote it fro m m em ory (kāna atqan al-qawm li allugha wa a'lamahum bi al-shi'r wa aḥ ḍ arahum ḥ if ẓ an)’ (80). M oreover, al-A ṣ m a'ī, according to A b ū Ṭ ayyib, ‘learn ed naqd al-shi'r from K h alaf al-Aḥ m a r’ (80). T h e content o f al-A ṣ m a'ī's b io grap h y in o th er b io grap h ical diction aries does not d iffer a great deal from that w hich appears in M aratib al-naḥ wiyyin. Al-Sīrāfī (Akhbār; 51 and 58), Ibn al-Anbārī (Nuzha, 112 ), al-Qifṭ ī (Inbāh, 2: 198), an d al-Suyūṭ ī (Bughya, 1: 112) all stress his know ledge o f poetry, his ability to determ in e the m ean in g o f obscure w ords (gharī b) , his expertise in gram m ar and his great capacity fo r m em orisation . Kitābf u ḥ ū lat al-shu'arā' is n ot m en tio n ed in these b io grap h ical dictionaries. M U Ḥ AMMAD B. S A L L ĀM A L -JU M A Ḥ I (D .

232/8 46 )

In M arā tib al-nahwiyyīn, he is known to b e lo n g to the school o f K h a la f alAḥ m ar, an d is con sid ered prim arily a transm itter o f poetry (110 ). T h is is con firm ed by al-Zubaydī , w ho places him am o n g the Basran lan gu age scholars in Ṭ abaqāt al-lughawiyyīn (80), an d by Ibn al-Nadīm, w ho lists him with historians, n arrators o f traditions, genealogists an d authors o f b io grap h ies an d anecd otes in A l-fihrist (12). Ibn al-Nadīm says that he was on e o f the historians and n arrators o f tradition, m en tio n in g in the sam e breath Ibn Sallām ’ s Ṭ abaqāt al-shu'arā '. In the sixth century, b e g in n in g with Ibn al-Anbārī , we find him qu alified as ‘on e o f the p eo p le o f adab' (Nuzha, 157), know n to have ‘possessed know ledge o f poetry an d historical accounts ( 'ilm bi-al-shi'r wa-al-akhbār)’ , w hich w ere con sid ered ‘ (two) o f the 'u lū m al-

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adab'. T h is view o f Ibn Sallām is reflected in later w ritings. In Yāq ū t, ‘he was one o f the notable p eo p le o f adab (ahl al-adab) an d has com p osed a b o o k on Ṭ abaqāt al-shu 'arā ', rep eatin g th ereafter the an ecd ote related by Ibn alA n b ārī (M u'ja m al-udabā', 18: 204-5). In al-Qifṭ ī, ‘he was on e o f the p eo p le o f lan gu age and adab, he has com p iled a b o o k on Ṭ abaqā t al-shu'arā ' (Inbāh, 3 : 143). In Ibn Sh u h bah , he is known as ‘al-m uqrī ’ al-ikhbārī al-ḥ ā fiẓ ’ w ho ‘transm itted from Ḥ am m ād b. Salam a an d com p iled books, am o n g w hich is Ṭ abaqāt al-shua'rā” an d w ho is con sid ered trustworthy ( Ṭ abaqāt, 1: 123). A cco rd in g to al-Suyūṭ ī, ‘al-Zubaydī m en tio n ed him in the fifth ṭabaqa o f the Basran lan gu age sch o lars’ (Bughya, 1: 115). 'A M R B . B A H R A L - JĀ Ḥ I Ẓ (D .

255/8 6 8)

N o biograp h y o f al-Jā ḥ iẓ is fo u n d in the d iction aries o f gram m arian s and lexico grap h ers. H e is con sid ered a virtuoso in both literary an d scientific pursuits by m ost o f his bio grap h ers and, m ore im portantly, a M u'tazilite. Ibn al-Nadīm places his b io grap h y in the section on the b e g in n in g o f the theological m ovem ent, in clu d in g the b io grap h ies o f the th eologian s o f the M u'tazila and the M u rji'a (Al-fihrist, 108). In Ibn al-Anbārī , ‘he was an elegan t and eloq u en t (faṣ īḥ an balīghan) learn ed m an o f literature w ho w rote in the various types o f the scien ces’ , an d ‘was on e o f the leaders o f alM u'tazila, and a student o f A b ū Isḥ ā q al-Naẓ ẓ ām ’ (Nuzha, 192). In Yāq ū t, ‘A b ū 'U th m ān al-Jā ḥ iẓ was on e o f the follow ers o f al-Naẓ ẓ ām an d he had extensive know ledge in th eo lo gy’ (M u 'j a m al-udabā', 16: 75-6 ). In Ibn K h allikān, ‘he was the fam ou s Basran scholar, au th or o f books in every scien ce/art (fann) , from w hom the sect know n as al-Jā ḥ iẓ iyya fro m am o n g the M u'tazilites derives its n a m e ’ (Wafayāt, 3: 470-1). 'A B D A L L Ā H B. M U SLIM IB N Q U T A YBA ( d .

276 /8 8 9 )

Ibn Q utayba’s biography appears in Al-fihrist in the section on gram m arians and lexico grap h ers con n ected with both B asran an d K ufan schools. Ibn alN ad īm notes that Ibn Q utayba was ‘an authority on lan gu age, gram m ar, obscure w ords in the Q u r’ān and its m eanings, poetry an d ju ris p ru d e n c e ’ (85). Elsew here, he is celeb rated especially fo r his know ledge in lan gu age, gram m ar and poetry, an d to a lesser exten t his versatility in various ‘sciences’ , mufanninan f i al-'ulū m (Ibn al-Anbārū , Nuzha, 20 9 -11). A cco rdin g to Yāqū t, ‘he was the au th or o f m any sound w orks in the various bran ch es o f the sciences’ , a statem ent rep eated by al-Qifṭ ī, w ho fu rth er q ualifies him as the ‘Dīnawarī secretary, the gram m arian, the lexicographer and (religious) sch o lar’ (Inbāh, 2: 143). Ibn K hallikān describes him as a gram m arian and lexico g rap h e r (Wafayā t, 3: 42), an d al-Suyūṭ ī adds that ‘ he was a lead in g authority in historical traditions an d ayyām al-nās (pre-Islam ic b attles)’

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(Bughya, 1 : 63). His book, al-Shi'r wa shu'arā ’ (known as Ṭ abaqāt al-shu'ar ā ’in Ibn K h allikān and al-Suyūṭ ī), is m en tio n ed am o n g his works but receives no special attention. A B Ū A L - ' A B B Ā S A Ḥ MAD B. YAHYĀ T H A ' L A B ( d . 2 9 1 / 9 0 3 )

T h a 'la b is known p rim arily as a gram m arian an d lexico grap h e r. H is know ledge o f poetry falls within his train ing in these two disciplines: I [i.e. T h a 'la b ] b egan to take an in terest in A rabic studies, poetry and lan gu age in the year sixteen (2 16 /8 3 1). By the tim e I was twenty-five years old I was skilled in A rabic, having m em orised all o f the books o f al-Farrā ’ so that n ot a single letter escaped m e. I was m ore co n cern ed with gram m ar than with o th er things until I knew it accurately and becam e in tent on poetry, rh etoric and obscure words. (Ibn al-Nadīm, Al-fihrist, 81; Yāq ū t, M u'ja m al-udabā', 5: 109) In A b ū al-Ṭ ayyib’ s an d al-Zubaydī ’ s accounts, T h a 'la b ’ s m ain ach ievem en t was his know ledge o f gram m ar (M arātib, 15; Ṭ abaqāt al-naḥ wiyyīn, 14 1). AlZubaydī , however, credits him with a few o th er distinctive qualities, in clu d in g m em orisation (ḥ ifẓ ), kn ow ledge (' i lm), kn ow ledge o f obscure words (gharīb), transmission o f old poetry and know ledge o f K ufan gram m ar (14 1). Ibn al-Nadīm inclu des his b io grap h y in the section on K u fan gram m arian s and lexico grap h ers (80). T h ese notions reg ard in g T h a 'la b are reiterated by Ibn al-Anbārī (Nuzha, 228), Yāqū t (M u 'j a m al-udabā ' 5: 102), al-Qifṭ ī (Inbāh, 1 : 138), al-Suyūṭ ī (Bughya, 1 : 396) and Ibn K h allikān (Wafayāt, 1 : 102). A m o n g his works, Kitāb al-f a ṣ īḥ is sin gled out in Wafayā t fo r its place in A rab ic studies. Qawā 'id al-shi'r, on the o th er hand , is n ot m en tio ned in any o f the above so u rces.1 I BN A L - M U ' T A Z Z ( D. 2 9 6 / 9 0 8 )

H is b io grap h y is not fo u n d in m ost o f the b io grap h ical diction aries surveyed here, in clu d in g Al-fihrist. In Nuzha an d Wafayā t, he is know n as a p rin ce and a caliph fo r on e n igh t first, an d a p o et second. A cco rd in g to Ibn al-Anbārī , ‘he had m any virtues. H e ex celled in adab an d was a p rolific and go o d p o e t’ (Nuzha, 233-4). In Ibn K h allik ān, ‘he was an elo q u en t m an o f letters and a talented and able p o e t’ (Wafayāt, 3: 76). M U Ḥ AMMAD IBN T A B ĀT A B Ā ( D. 3 2 3 / 9 3 4 )

Ibn Ṭ ab āṭ ab ā is know n p rim arily as a poet, and his b io grap h y is n ot fo u n d in the b io grap h ical d iction aries surveyed. Ibn al-Nadīm does, however, in clu d e a sm all paragrap h on him in the section on kings an d secretaries, in w hich he m entions that his b io grap h y will be in clu d ed in the section on

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poets and poetry ( 1 5 1 ) , but there is n o entry fo r him u n d e r the section as prom ised. Ibn al-Anbārī m en tions that Ibn Ṭ ab āṭ ab ā was an 'ā lim bi al-shi'r (Nuzha, 370). E lsew here, as in Yāq ū t, Ibn Ṭ ab āṭ ab ā is shā 'ir mufliq an d 'ālim muḥ aqqiq (M u 'j a m al-udabā ’, 17: 143). Al-Qifṭ ī does n ot in clu d e him in Inbāh but in al-Muḥ ammadū n, in w hich Ibn Ṭ abāṭ ab ā is said to be ‘on e o f the lead in g authorities on adab', an d to have ‘com posed books on literature and poetry (Al-muḥ ammadū n , 2 6 ) . Q UDĀ MA В. J A ' F A R ( Б . З З 7 / 9 4 8 )

Ibn al-Nadīm places his b io grap h y in the section on kings, secretaries, p reach ers, letter-writers, tax adm inistrators an d public reco rd ers, w hich is part o f the ch ap ter on historians, genealogists an d students o f historical traditions and literature ( 1 4 4 ) . We learn fro m Ibn al-Nadīm, as well as from oth er sources, that he was also known in the ph ilosop h ical circles o f Yaḥ yā b. 'A d ī . Ibn al-Nadīm tells us that he was on e o f the distinguished p h ilo ­ sophers, and that in addition to his elo q u en ce he was n oted fo r his know­ led ge o f logic ( 1 4 4 ) . A m o n g the works w hich Ibn al-Nadīm en um erates are the book on the land tax, Kitāb al-kharāj , and Naqd al-shi'r. M ore significantly, Yāqū t states that ‘Q u d ām a b. J a 'f a r was fam ous fo r his elo q u en ce an d naqd al-shi'r; fo r w hich he com p osed books, “ wa ishtahara fī zamānihi bi al-balāgha wa naqd al-shi'r wa ṣ annafa f ī dhālika kutuban

(M u'jam al-udaba', 17: 1 2 ) ’ .

Naqd al-shi'r in this con text d oes n ot re fe r to Q u d ām a ’ s fam ous book, but to a certain area o f know ledge related to the discussion o f poetry. A B Ū BAKR M U Ḥ AMMAD B. YAḤ YĀ B . A L - ' A B B Ā S A L - Ṣ Ū L Ῑ ( 2 5 5 / 8 6 8 - 3 3 5 / 9 4 6 )

Al-Ṣ ū lī is known prim arily fo r his efforts in collectin g the poetry o f the m ajor poets, notably A b ū T a m m ām an d al-Buḥ turī . H is b io grap h y is, however, in clu d ed in Al-fihrist in the section on cou rt com pan ion s, associates, m en o f letters, singers, bu ffo on s, slap-takers an d jesters. From the b io grap h ical dictionaries, we also learn that he was known as the au th or o f Adab al-kuttāb and o th er books, an d as a m an o f letters, cou rtier, collector o f poetry, chess-player an d kā tib (Ibn al-Nadīm, Al-fihrist, 1 6 7 ; Ibn al-Anbārī , Nuzha , 2 7 3 - 4 ; Yāqū t, M u'ja m al-udabā', 2: 1 0 9 - 1 0 ; Ibn K h allik ān, Wafayāt, 4: 3 5 6 - 9 ; Ibn Sh u h b ah , Ṭ abaqāt, 2 7 6 ) , bu t n ot as som eo n e involved in the discussion o f poetry. H is two works, Akhbār Abi Tammām an d Akhbār al-Buhturī, w hich are con sid ered im portan t critical works today, w ere con sid ered no m ore than collections o f poetry. A L - H A S A N B. B IS H R A L - Ā M ID Ῑ ( D . 3 7 0 / 9 8 0 )

T h e b io grap h y o f al-Ā m idī , a con tem p orary o f Ibn al-Nadīm, appears in the sam e section as that o f al-Ṣ ū lī in Al-fihrist, the section on cou rt com pan ion s,

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associates, m en o f letters, singers, bu ffo on s, slap-takers an d jeste rs (172). T o

l-Qifṭī,Yāqūtandal-Suyūṭl, al-Āmidī isprimarilyagrammarian(Inbāh, 1: 278;Mu'jamal-udabā’,8:75; Bughya, 1: 500). Ibnal-Nadīmmentionsthathe istheauthorof- amongothers- Kitābal-radd'alāIbn'Ammārfī makhaṭṭa’a fī hi Abā Tammām,Kitābiṣlāḥ māfī 'iyār al-shi'r li Ibn TabāṭabāandAlmuwāzana(Al-fihrist,172).Al-Qifṭīaddsanother,Al-radd'alaQudāmafī naqd al-shi'r(Inbāh, 1: 278), knownalsoasKitābtabyīnghalaṭ Qudāmab.Ja'farfī naqdal-shi'r(al-Qifṭī,Inbāh,1: 288;Yāqūt, Mu'jamal-udabā’,8:76;al-Suyūṭī, Bughya, 1: 501). Al-Qifṭī alsomentionsal-Āmidī’s‘extensiveknowledgein poetry andits meanings ('ilmal-shi'r wama'ānīhi); inits transmission, [skilledandmasterful] knowledge(dirāya) andmemorisation’,andstates that‘al-Āmidīhadcomposedgoodbooksonthatsubject [meaning'ilmalshi'r]’ (1: 285and287). Al-muwāzanais extensive andgoodinits kind (kitābunkaīirunḥasanunfīfannihi); Kitābal-mukhtalifwaal-mu’talif fī asmā’ al-shu'arā’isagreatbook(kitābunjalīlun);andKitābal-radd'alaQudāmafī naqdal-shi'risalsogreatandcharming(zarīf ). a

M U Ḥ A M M A D B . ' I M R Ā N B . M Ū SĀ A L - M A R Z U B Ā N Ῑ ( D .

37 4 /9 8 4 )

T o all his b io grap h ers, al-M arzubān ī ’s literary vocation was that o f a transm itter o f the A rabic poetic tradition (rāwiya) and, historian, thou gh he was also know n as a kātib an d a M u'tazilite (al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 3: 180; Yāqū t, M u'ja m al-udabā ’, 18: 268; Ibn K h allik ān, Wafayā t, 4: 354; an d Ibn S h u h b ah , Ṭ abaqāt, 223). H is inclusion in al-Qifṭ ī’ s dictionary o f gram m arian s and lexico grap h ers req u ired an ap ology from the au th or w ho, th ou gh he con sid ered him a non-specialist in the fields o f gram m ar an d lexico grap h y, in clu d ed him in their m idst because he com p iled b io grap h ical diction aries on them (Inbāh, 3: 180). Al-M arzubānī ’s bio grap h ers observe that his works, in clu d in g Kitāb al-shi'r and Al-muwashshaḥ , w hich are pertin en t to literary criticism , w ere well know n (al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 3: 182; Yāq ū t, M u'ja m al-udabā ’, 18: 270 -1). Kitāb al-shi'r, acco rd in g to Yāq ū t, ‘ contains, in a com preh en sive fashion, its [i.e. p o etry’s] m erits, the m ention o f its excellen t ch aracter­ istics, shortcom ings, m etres, categories, types, anthologies, the etiquette o f its com posers and reciters, an d expo sition o f the fo rg e d an d plagiarised (wa huwa j ām i' li f a ḍ ā ’ilihi wa dhikr maḥ sinihi wa awzānihi wa 'uyū bihi wa ajnāsihi wa ḍ urūbihi wa mukhtārihi wa adab qā ’ilīhi wa munshidīhi wa bayān manḥ ū lihi wa masrḥ qihi wa ghayr dhālika)’ (M u'jam al-udabā ’, 18: 270), and accord in g to al-Qifṭ ī, ‘contains everything there is on the art o f poetry (yashtamil 'alā mā yata'allaq bi ṣ in ā 'at al-shi'r) ’ (Inbāh, 3: 27). As fo r Almuwashshaḥ (Al-M uwassa' in Yāq ū t, p robably an erro r on the p art o f the editor, or a typographical e rro r), Yāqū t considers it a w ork ‘on w hat the experts on poetry d isapproved o f in som e poets, fo r their b reak in g

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gram m atical rules, using lan gu age incorrectly, an d fo r shortcom in gs in their poetry (fīmā ankarah al-'ulamā ’ 'alā ba'ḍ al-shu'arā' min kasr wa laḥ n wa 'uyū b al-shi'r)' (M u'jam al-udabā', 18: 271), an d al-Qifṭ ī views it as a w ork ‘in w hich there is m en tion o f w hat experts [o f poetry] fo u n d fau lt with in num erous kinds o f poetic craft (fī hi dhikr al-ma’ākhidh min al-ulamā ’ 'alā alshu'arā ’ fī 'iddat anwā ' min ṣ in ā 'at al-shi'r) ’ (Inbāh, 3: 182). A L - Ṣ ĀH IB B . ' A B B Ā D

(3 2 6 /9 3 8 -3 8 5 /9 9 5 )

T h is fam ous Buyid vizier’s im portan ce as a political figu re an d his versatility in literary pursuits are the two characteristics w hich his b io grap h ers stress. Ibn al-Nadīm, fo r exam p le, places him in the section on kings, secretaries, p reach ers, letter-writers, tax adm inistrators an d public reco rd ers (150). H ow ever, w hat qualifies him as a critic in m od ern scholarship, his w ork on al-M utanabbī ’s poetry Al-kashf 'an masāwi ' shi'r alMutanabbī, and his activities in the circles o f his co u rt are m en tio n ed only bu t not describ ed (Ibn al-Nadīm, Al-fihrist, 150; Ib n al-Anbārī , Nuzha, 326; al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 2 0 1-3 ). N o m en tion o f this epistle is m ade in Ibn K h allikān ’s Wafayāt an d al-Suyūṭ ī’s Bughya. A B Ū ' A L Ῑ M U Ḥ AMMAD B. A L - Ḥ ASAN B. A L -M U Ẓ Ẓ A FAR A L -H Ā T IM Ῑ ( D .

388/99 8)

Al-Ḥ ā timī is prim arily know n as a gram m arian an d lexico g rap h e r (al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 3: 103; Yāq ū t, M u'jam al-udabā', 18: 154; Ibn K h allik ān, Wafayāt, 3: 362, Ibn Shu hbah, Ṭ abaqāt, 94; an d al-Suyūṭ ī, Bughya, 1: 87), a p o et (al-Qifṭ ī, Almuḥ ammadūn, 230; and al-T ha'ālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr, 3 :10 8 -9 ), an d som etim es also fo r his contributions to adab (Yāqū t, M u'jam al-udabā , 18 :15 4 ; al-Suyūṭ ī, Bughya, 1: 87). H is claim to fam e, all his b io grap h ers note, is his w orks on poetry, especially his depiction o f his m eetings with al-M utanabbī, his attack on and trium ph over the poet, in w hat is know n today as Al-risā la al-mū ḍ iḥ a. Elsew here it is know n as Jabhat al-adab (al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 3: 103 an d Al-muḥ ammadū n, 230), or al-Risāla al-ḥ ā timiyya (Ibn K h allikān, Wafayāt, 3: 362), o r Almū ḍ iḥ a (al-Suyūṭ ī, Bughya, 1: 87). Al-Qifṭ ī m en tions that Ḥ ilyat al-muḥ āḍ ara is one o f the best books on the art o f poetry (Al-muḥ ammadū n, 230). Yāq ū t gives a m ore com plete list o f his works in clu din g, in addition to Hilya, Alḥ ilbāj a fī san'at al-shi'r, Kitāb sirr al-ṣ in ā 'a f i al-shi'r, Kitāb al-ḥ āli wa al-'āṭ il f i alshi'r, Kitāb al-majāzf ī al-shi'r, Kitāb m untaza'al-akhbār wa maṭbū ' al-ash'ār, Kitāb al-mi'yār wa al-muwāzana (M u'jam al-udabā', 18: 156). H is literary output, b a rrin g his book on lan gu age, Kitāb mukhtaṣ ar al-'arabiyya (not com pleted: Yāq ū t, M u'jam al-udabā ’, 18: 156), com prises Kitāb 'иуū п al-kātib, an d three others the nature o f w hich is n ot revealed to us, Al-risāla al-nājiyya, Kitāb almughassil and Kitā b al-sharāb, w hich seem to con cen trate on the discussion o f poetry. N o specific com m en t is m ade on his w orks on poetry.

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I B N W A K Ῑ ' A L - T Ῑ N N Ῑ SῙ ( D . 3 9 3 / 1 О О 3 )

H is b io grap h y is fo u n d only in Ibn K h allik ān ’s Wafayat, w here he is know n as a p o et ( Wafayāt, 2 :10 4 ). H is fam ou s w ork on literary criticism A l-M unṣ i f is not m entioned. A B Ū A L-H A SA N 'A L I B. ' ABD A L - 'A Z Ῑ Z A L -Q Ā Ḍ Ῑ A L -JU R JĀ N Ῑ (D . 3 9 2 / 1 O O 2 )

H e is know n p rim arily as a ju d g e an d a ju risco n su lt and, to a lesser extent, as a poet. H is w ork on al-M utanabbī, w hich gain ed critical acclaim d u rin g his lifetim e, was a respon se to al-Ṣ ā ḥ ib ’ s w ork on al-M utanabbī acco rd in g to Yāqū t. Yā qū t says: ‘W hen al-Ṣ ā ḥ ib com p osed his fam ous w ork ex p o sin g the shortcom ings o f al-M utanabbī , al-Qādī A b ū al-Hasan com p osed Kitā b alwasā ta bayn al-Mutanabbī wa khuṣ ūmihi f ī shi'rihi. H e is ex cellen t an d innovative (in this b o o k ), he discussed (issues) at len gth , in a satisfying m an n er, and accurately. H e h eld the rein (amad) o f decisive d isco u rse’ (M u 'j a m al-udabā', 14: 25). T h e b io grap h y o f al-Qā ḍ ī al-Jurjān ī in Yāqū t’s M u'ja m is a verbatim quotation fro m al-Tha 'ālibī ’ s Yatīmat al-dahr (4: 4). Yāq ū t m entions additionally that al-Qā ḍ ī al-Jurjān ī ‘gave p ro o f o f his extensive know ledge o f literature an d the A rabs, his ability to m em orise, an d his pow er o f n a q d' (M u 'j a m al-udabā', 14: 24-5). H is b io grap h y is also fo u n d in A b ū Isḥ ā q al-Shīrāzī al-Shāf i 'ī , Ṭ abaqāt al-fuqahā ’ (ed. Iḥ sān 'A b b ās [B eirut: D ār al-Rā 'id al-'A rabī , 1970]). A B Ū H IL ĀL A L -Ḥ ASAN B. ' A B D A L L ĀH A L - ' A SK A R Ῑ (D . 3 9 5 / 1 0 0 5 )

A b ū H ilāl al-'A skarī ’s b io grap h y is fo u n d only in al-Qifṭ ī, Yāqū t an d alSuyūṭ ī. H e is p rim arily know n fo r his achievem ents in lexico grap h y. In M u 'j a m al-udabā', fo r exam p le, Yāq ū t poin tedly m en tions that h e is A b ū H ilā l-Lughawī al-'A skarī (8: 258). H is b io grap h ers are q uick to observe that he was m ore accom plish ed in the various fields o f adab and p o etry (Yāqū t, M u 'j a m al-udabā', 8: 259; al-Suyūṭ ī, Bughya, 1: 506). H is book, Kitā b ṣ in ā 'atay al-naẓ m wa al-nathr, is con sid ered innovative (kitāb badī) (al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1 : 183) an d very useful (mufī d jiddan ) (al-Suyūṭ ī, Bughya, 1: 506). A L - Ḥ A SA N IB N R A S H Ῑ Q A L-Q A YRA W Ā N Ῑ

(3 7 0 / 9 8 0 - 4 5 6 / 1 063

OR

4 6 3 / 10 7 0 )

T h e first thing al-Qifṭ ī, Ibn K hallikān an d al-Suyūṭ ī rem ark about Ibn Rashīq - a p rolific and excellen t poet, m an o f letters, gram m arian , lexico g rap h e r an d prosodist (Yāq ū t, M u 'j am al-udaba, 8: 110 -

11)

- is the fact that he is the

au th or o f Kitāb a l-'u mda fī ṣ in ā 'at al-shi'r (al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1 : 300; Ibn K hal­ likān, W a fayā t, 2: 85; an d al-Suyūṭ ī, Bughya, 1: 504). T h is bo ok, in al-Q ifṭ ī’s estim ation, belon gs to the adab ge n re in gen eral an d the A rab ic lan gu age in particular. A cco rd in g to al-Qifṭ ī, it is part o f his larg e r efforts in asserting7

219

APPEN DIX I

the superiority o f the the A rabic lan gu age (Inbāh, 1: 303), an d it ‘ contains w hat no oth er w ork o f this kind [m ean in g sinā 'at al-shi'r] co n tain ed ’ (304). Ibn K h allikān ’s ren d ition o f the title o f the book, A l-'um da f ī ma'rifa t ṣ in ā 'at al-shi'r wa naqdihi wa 'uyū bihi, is significant; fo r the m en tion o f the w ord naqd in this con text w ou ld m ake it the secon d book, besides Q u d ām a b. J a 'f a r ’ s Naqd al-shi'r; that contains the w ord in its title. M U Ḥ AMMAD B. A B Ῑ S A 'Ῑ D IBN SH A RAF AL-QAYRAW ĀN Ῑ ( D .

4 6 0 / 10 6 7 )

Ibn Sharaf, the sources tell us, is a lesser-known con tem p orary o f Ibn R ashīq al-Qayrawān ī, but was his m ajor com petito r fo r the favours o f the patrons. Ibn S h a ra f is know n as a m an o f letters (adīb) an d a p o et (shā'i r ) (Yāq ū t, M u'ja m al-udabā , 19: 37; al-Kutubī, Faw āt, 3: 359; an d al-Suyūṭ ī Bughya, 1: 114). A m o n g his b io grap h ers, only Yāq ū t m entions his M as' il alintiqād, w hich he calls Ris ālat al-intiqād. H ow ever, parts o f M asā ’il are p reserved in Ibn Bassām ’ s Al-dhakhīra. In Ibn Bassām ’s description o f M asā'il, the w ord naqada is used. Ibn Bassām says that M asā'i l ‘is in the form o f a maqāma, in w hich he (Ibn Sharaf) naqada a gro u p o f pre-Islam ic and Islam ic poets (wa hiya 'alā ṭirā z maqāma naqada fī hā shi'r ṭ ā'if āt min shu'arā ’ al-jāhiliyya wa al-islām)' (Ibn Bassām al-Shantarīnī , Al-dhakhīra, 4: 1: 19 6 2 11). We also learn that h e h eld extensive discussions o f poetry with Ibn R ashīq, especially in con n ectio n with the issues con tain ed in A l-'umda; his M asā'i l al-intiqād is said to be a direct respon se to A l-'umda (Yāqū t, M u'jam al-udabā', 8: 1 1 1 ; al-Kutubī , Faw āt, 3: 359). A lth o u gh the details o f these debates have n ot b e en reco rd ed n o r has their n ature b een specified, we do know that Ibn R ashīq ’s responses in clu d ed the follow in g epistles: Sujū r alkalb, Qaṭ al-anfās, N ajḥ al-ṭalab, R a f ' al-ishkāl wa d a f ' al-muḥ āl an d Kitāb faskh al-mulaḥ wa naskh al-lumaḥ , w hich are no lo n ger extant. NOTE

1. Qawa'i d al-shi'r survived in two manuscripts explicitly attributed to Tha'lab (Ramaḍ an 'Abd al-Tawwab, Introduction to Qawa'i d al-shi'r [Cairo: Dār al-Ma'rifa, 1966], 5-19).

APPENDIX II

Attributes of Critics in Biographical Dictionaries al-A ṣ m a'ī (d. 216 /8 31) al-Sīrāfī

'ilm al-lugha wa al-shi'r

(d. 368/978)

asad al-shi'r wa al-gharīb wa al-m a'ānī

Akhbār

a'lam m in (Abū 'U bayda) fī al-naḥ w

al-Zubaydī

awthaq al-nā s fī al-lugah

(d. 37 1/9 8 1)

kān a al-shi'r li al-Aṣ m a'ī

Ṭ abaqāt

(known for) ḥ ifẓ wa riwāyat al-shi'r

A bū Ṭ ayyib al-Lughaw ī

kāna atqan al-qawm li al-lugha wa a'lam ah u m bi

(d. 38 1/9 9 1)

al-shi'r w a aḥ ḍ arahu m ḥ ifẓ an

Marā tib

ta'allam a n aq d al-shi'r m in K h a la f al-Aḥ m ar

Ibn al-Nadīm

n a ḥ wī lughaw ī B a ṣ rī

(d. 377-403/987-1007) Al-fihrist

ḥ afiẓ al-shi'r, al-m a'ānī , 'ilm al-nasab wa al-naḥ w

Ibn al-Anbārī

ṣ āḥ ib al-naḥ w wa al-lugah wa al-gharīb wa ...

(d. 577/1172)

a'lam bi al-shi'r m in al-Aṣ m a'ī wa K h a la f

Nuzha

n aḥ wī

al-Qifṭ ī

ṣ āḥ ib al-lugah wa al-naḥ w

(d. 6 4 6 /1248) Inbāh al-Suyūṭ ī

aḥ ad a ’im m at al-lugha

(d. 909/1495) Bughya Yāq ū t

N o entry

(d. 626/1228) M u'jam Ibn K h allikā n (d. 6 8 1/128 3) Wafayā t

N o entry

APPENDIX I I

221

Ibn Sallām

al-Jā ḥ iẓ

(d. 232/846)

(d. 255/868)

N o entry

N o entry

lughaw ī B a ṣ rī

N o entry

rāwī

N o entry

lughaw ī B a ṣ rī

m in m utakallim ī al-M u'tazila

m in ahl al-adab

'alim bi al-adab

adīb

m in a ’im m at al-m u'tazila

m in ahl al-lugha wa al-adab

N o entry

lughaw ī B asrī

N o entry

m in ahl al-adab

ak h ad h a al-naḥ w 'an al-akhfash ak h ad h a al-kalām 'an al-Naẓ ẓ ām fī 'ilm ika ... fī al-adab

N o entry

al-baṣ rī al-'ālim al-m ashhū r ilyahi tuntasabu al-firqa al-m a'rū fa bi al-jā ḥ iẓ iyya m in al-M u'tazila

222

L I T E R A R Y C R I T I C I S M IN M E D I E V A L A R A B I C - I S L A M I C C U L T U R E

Ibn Q u t a b a (d. 276/889)

al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/978) Akhbār al-Zubaydī (d. 371/981) Ṭ abaqāt AbūṬ ayyibal-Lughawī (d. 381/991) Marātib

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 377-403/987-1007) Al-fihrist

n aḥ wī lughaw ī

Ibn al-Anbārī

fā ḍ il fi al-lugah wa al-naḥ w wa al-shi'r

' ālim bi al-lugha wa al-naḥ w ... wa al-shi'r

(d. 577/1172) Nuzha al-Qifṭ ī

n aḥ wī lughaw ī

(d. 646/1248) Inbāh al-Suyūṭ ī

n aḥ wī lughaw ī

(d. 909/1495)

r a ’s fī al-'arabiyya wa al-lugha

Bughya Yāqū t

ṣ āḥ ib al-tasān if fi fu n ū n al-'ulū m

(d. 626/1228) M u'ja m Ibn K h allikān (d. 68 1/128 3) Wafayāt

n aḥ wī lughaw ī

223

A P P E N D IX I I

T h a 'lab

Ibn al-M u'tazz

(d. 291/903)

(d. 296/908)

N o entry

N o entry

kāna ... m in al-ḥ ifẓ w a al-'ilm ... wa riwāyat al-shi'r wa m a 'rifat al-naḥ w

N o entry

n aḥ wī

N o entry

naḥwīlughawīKūfī riwāyatal-naḥwwaal-shi'rwaal-lugha

N o entry

im ām al-kūfiyyīn fī al-naḥ w wa al-lugha

b āri' fī al-adab, ḥ asan al-shi'r

m ashhū r bi ... riwāyat al-shi'r al-qadīm

im ām al-Kūfiyyīn fī al-naḥ w wa al-lugha m a 'rū f bi ... riwāyat al-shi'r al-qadīm

N o entry

im ām al-Kūfiyyīn fī al-naḥ w wa al-lugha

N o entry

n aḥ wī lughaw ī , im ām al-Kū fiyyīn

N o entry

im ām al-Kū fiyyīn fī al-naḥ w wa al-lugha

adīb balīgh shā 'ir m uq tadir

224

L IT E R A R Y C R IT IC IS M IN M E D IE V A L A R A B IC -IS L A M IC C U L T U R E

Ibn Ṭ ab āṭ aba (d . 323/934)

al-Sīrāfī (d.368/978) Akhbār

Noentry

al-Zubaydī

N o entry

(d. 371/9 8 1) Ṭ abaqā t A b ū Ṭ ayyib al-Lughaw ī

N o entry

(d. 3 8 1/ 9 9 1 ) Marā tib Ibn al-Nadīm

m in ikh b āriyyīn ... wa aṣ ḥ āb a ḥ ā dīth wa adab

(d. 377-403/987-1007) A l-fihrist

d h ik ru h u fī al-shi' r wa al-shu' arā ’

Ibn al-Anbārī

'alim bi al-shi'r

(d. 577/ 1172) Nuzha al-Qifṭ ī

N o entry

(d. 646/1248) Inbāh al-Suyūṭ ī

N o entry

(d. 909/1495) Bughya Yāq ū t

shā 'ir m ufliq ' alim m u ḥ aqqiq

(d. 626/1228) M u'jam Ibn K h allikān (d. 6 8 1/128 3) Wafayā t

N o entry

225

A P P E N D IX I I

Q u d ām a b. J a 'f a r

al-Ṣ ū lī

(d. ЗЗ7/948)

(255/868-335/946)

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

m in kuttāb

m in al-udabā ’ al-ẓ u ra fā ’

aḥ ad al-bulaghā ’ al-fuṣ aḥ ā ’ al-falā sifa

N o entry

kān a ' ālim an bi fu n ū n al-adab ... n ad īm an ja m a ’ 'a s h 'ār (al-kulafā ’ )

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

aḥ ad al-bulaghā ’ al-fuṣ aḥ a ’ al-falāsifa

kātib m a 'rūf

kātib

ik h b ārī adīb kātib

Ishtah ara bi al-balāgh a wa n aq d al-shi'r

n adīm al-khulafā ’

N o entry

aḥ ad al-udabā ’

226

L IT E R A R Y C R IT IC IS M IN M E D IE V A L A R A B IC -IS L A M IC C U L T U R E

al-Ā m idī (d. 370/980)

al-Sīrāfī (d.368/978) Akhbār

Noentry

al-Zubaydī

N o entry

(d. 371/9 8 1) Ṭ abaqāt A b ū Ṭ ayyib al-Lughaw ī

N o entry

(d. 38 1/9 9 1) M arā tib Ibn al-Nadīm

m in n u d am ā ’ ... u d ab ā ’

(d. 377-403/987-1007) A l-fihrist Ibn al-Anbārī

N o entry

(d. 577/1172) Nuzha al-Qifṭ ī (d. 646/1248) Inbāh al-Suyūṭ ī

im ā m fī al-adab, lahu sh i'r hasan wa ittisā 'tām m fī 'ilm al-shi'r riwāyatan wa d irāyatan wa ḥ ifẓ an n aḥ wī

(d. 909/1495) Bughya Yāqū t

n aḥ wī kātib

(d. 626/1228) M u'ja m Ibn K h allikān (d. 6 8 1/128 3) Wafayāt

N o entry

227

A P P E N D IX I I

al-M arzubānī

al-Sā ḥ ib b. 'A b b ād

(d. 374/984)

(326/938-385/9 95)

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

wā ḥ īd zam ān ihi ... fī al-balāg h a wa al-fasṣ āḥ a w a al-shi'r

N o entry

m utafan n in fī al-'u lū m

rāwiya m ukth ir

al-wazīr al-m ashhūr ṣ an n afa kitāban fī al-lugha al-'arabiyya

N o entry

ak h ad h a al-adab 'a n Ibn F āris

al-rāwiya al-ikhbārī al-kā tib

m uqad d am an fī ṣ in ā 'at al-kitāba

m in khiyār al-m u'tazila

rāwiya li al-adab, ṣ āḥ ib ak h b ār

akhadah al-adab 'an Ibn F āris ṣ an n afa fī al-lugah kitāban ...

228

L IT E R A R Y C R IT IC IS M IN M E D IE V A L A R A B IC -IS L A M IC C U L T U R E

al-Hātimī (d. 388/998)

al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/978) Akhbār al-Zubaydī

N o entry

N o entry

(d. 37 1/9 8 1) Ṭ abaqāt A b ū Ṭ ayyib al-Lughaw ī

N o entry

(d. 38 1/9 9 1) Marā tib Ibn al-Nadīm

N o entry

(d. 377-403/987-1007) A l-fihrist Ibn al-Anbārī

N o entry

(d. 577/1172) Nuzha al-Qifṭ ī (d. 646/1248)

n aḥ wī lughaw ī kā tib adīb fā ḍ il wa shā 'ir m utarassil

Inbāh al-Suyūṭ ī

m in ḥ u d h d h āq ahl al-lugha wa al-adab

(d. 909/1495)

ḥ asan al-taṣ a rru f fī al-shi'r

Bughya Yāqū t

m in ḥ u d h d h āq ahl al-lugha wa al-adab

(d. 626/1228) M u'jam Ibn K h allikān (d. 68 1/128 3) Wafayāt

al-kā tib al-lughawī al-baghdādī

229

A P P E N D IX I I

Ibn W akī ' al-Tinnīsī

al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjān ī

(d . 39 3/1003)

(d. 392/1002)

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

adīb arīb kām il q ā ḍ ī al-ray

al-shā 'ir al-m ashhū r

al-faqīh al-shāfi'ī adīb shā 'ir

230

L IT E R A R Y C R IT IC IS M IN M E D IE V A L A R A B IC -IS L A M IC C U L T U R E

A b ū H ilāl al-'A skarī (d. 395/1005)

al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/978) Akhbār al-Zubaydī

N o entry

N o entry

(d. 371/9 8 1) Ṭ abaqāt A b ū Ṭ ayyib al-Lughaw ī N o entry (d. 38 1/9 9 1) M arā tib Ibn al-Nadīm

N o entry

(d. 377-403/987-1007) A l-fihrist Ibn al-Anbārī

N o entry

(d. 577/1172) Nuzha al-Qifṭ ī (d. 646/1248)

al-fā ḍ il al-kām il ṣ āḥ ib al-taṣ ān if al-adabiyya

Inbāh al-Suyūṭ ī

m aw ṣ ūf bi al-'ilm wa al-fiqh

(d. 909/1495)

wa al-ghālib 'alayhi al-adab wa al-shi'r

Bughya Yāq ū t

lughaw ī

(d. 626/1228)

w aṣ afah u bi al-'ilm wa al-fiqh

M u'jam

al-ghālib 'alayhi al-adab wa al-shi'r

Ibn K h allikān

N o entry

(d. 6 8 1/128 3) Wafayā t

231

A P P E N D IX I I

Ibn R ashīq al-Qayrawānī

Ibn S h a ra f al-Qayrawān ī

(370/980-456/1063 or 463/1070)

(d. 4 6 0 /1067)

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o entry

N o t entry

al-fā ḍ il al-adīb

N o entry

shā'irnaḥwīlughawīadībḥādhiq'arūḍī

m in ju lla t al-udabā ’ wa fu ḥ ū lat al-sh u'arā ’

shā'iradībnaḥwīlughawḥādhiq'arūdī

al-adīb al-kātib al-shā 'ir

aḥ adal-afāḍil al-bulaghā’

N o entry

APPENDIX I I I

al-'Āmirī’s Classification of the Sciences

APPENDIX IV

al-Ghazzālī’s Classification of the Sciences

APPENDIX V

Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā’s Classification of the Sciences T h e re are three schem es to the classification o f sciences by Ikhw ān al-Safā , w hich ad orn a p h ilosop h ical, thou gh problem atic, fram ew ork: First, the form al schem e is the structure w ithin w hich the epistles are arran ged , and sum m arised by a fih rist p reced in g the actual texts. Ikhw ān alṢ afā divide their fifty-two epistles into fo u r categories: m athem atical an d p ed ag og ical (riyā ḍ iyya ta'līmiууа); physical an d n atural (jismāniyya ṭabī'iyya); spiritual and intellectu al ( nafsāniyya 'aqliyya) ; an d m etaphysical an d divine (nāmūsiyya ilāhiyya). M odifying the A ristotelian schem e, they in co rp o rate m athem atical sciences and logical sciences into on e category an d split the n atural sciences into two categories, ex p a n d in g them to en com pass the jism āniyya ṭabī'iyya and nafsāniyya rūḥ āniyya categories. Secon d , the theoretical schem e is fo u n d in epistle no. 7, an epistle on the theoretical sciences. T h is epistle deals with the theoretical sciences, their divisions, h ierarch y an d the classification o f their ways an d schools (al-ṣ anā 'i' al-ilmiyya al-naẓ ariyya wa kammiyyat aqsāmihā wa kayfiyyat marātibihā wa īḍ āḥ ṭarā ’iqihā wa madhāhibihā) . In this epistle the Ikhw ān ad o p t a distinctive ap p roach as they deal with ph ilosop h ical sciences as well as oth er areas o f know ledge, m ainly religiou s an d linguistic, follow in g m ore closely their claim to have in clu d ed all branch es o f kn ow ledge (funū n al-

'ilm wa gharā ’ib al-ḥ ikam wa ṭarā ’i f al-adab wa ḥ aqā ’iq al-ma'ānī). H e re, they first divide the sciences ( 'ulū m/ṣ anā 'i ') into two m ain groups; the first relevant to the spiritual se lf (nafs rūḥ āniyya), w hose p u rp o se is the attainm ent o f happiness in the h ereafter, an d w hich they call 'ulū m, an d the oth er p ertin en t to the physical body (jasad jism ānī) , w hose p u rp o se is the attainm ent o f h appiness in this w orld an d w hich they call ṣ an ā 'i'. T h e subject m atter o f the secon d gro u p is fu rth er ex p o u n d ed in epistle no. 8 w h ere Ikhw ān al-Ṣ afā devote a section (faṣ l) to the discussion o f the various types o f the sciences (ajnās al-'ulū m), in clu d in g al-riyāḍ iyya (practical); alshar'iyya al-waṣfiyya (legal an d prescriptive); an d al-falsafiyya al-ḥ aqīqiyya (ph ilosoph ical an d in dispu table).

APPENDIX V

235

Al-riyāḍ iyya sciences by their defin itio n are the sciences in ten d ed to serve earthly needs ( 'ilm al-ādā b allatī wu ḍ i'a aktharuhā li ṭalab al-ma'āsh wa ṣ alāḥ al-dunyā). T h ese sciences are nine: 'ilm al-kitāba wa al-qir ā ’a (writing an d rea d in g ); ' ilm al-lugha wa al-naḥ w (lexicograph y an d gram m ar); ' ilm al-ḥ isāb wa al-mu'āmalā t (arithm etic an d accou n tin g); ' i lm al-shi'r wa al-'arūd (poetry and prosody); ' ilm al-zajr wa al-fa'l (om ens an d au gu ries); ' ilm al-sihr wa al'azā 'im wa al-ṣ anā ' i (m agic, talism ans, chem istry an d m ech an ics); ' ilm alḥ ir a f wa al-ṣ anā 'i' (crafts); ' ilm al-bay' wa al-shir ā ’ wa al-tijārā t wa al-ḥ arth wa al-nasl (trade, com m erce, agricultu re and an im al hu sban dry); an d ' ilm alsiyar wa al-akhbār (ch ronicles an d h isto ries). A l-'ulū m al-shar'iyya are the sciences fo u n d e d fo r the p u rp o se o f attaining the h ereafter, an d they are six: ' ilm al-tanzīl (revelation) [the authoritative kn ow led ge], b e lo n g in g to the Q u r’ān reciters (ḥ afaẓ a wa qurrā') ; ' ilm al-ta'wīl (in terp retatio n ), practised by the lead ers o f the com m unity, the caliphs an d the prophets; 'ilm al-riwāyāt wa al-akhbār (transm ission an d history), practised by the muḥ addithū n; ' ilm al-fiqh wa sunan al-aḥ kā m (ju risp ru d en ce), practised by the fu q ah ā ’ (jurisconsults); 'ilm al-tidhkār wa al-mawā'iẓ wa al-zuhd wa al-taṣ aw w u f (rem em bran ce o f G od , serm ons, asceticism an d sufism ), practised by the w orshippers and ascetics; and 'ilm ta ’wīl al-manāmāt (in terpretation o f d rea m s), practised by the mu'abbirūn (interpreters o f dream s). Philosophical sciences are categorised acco rd in g to the basic Aristo­ telian schem e: m athem atics, in clu d in g arithm etic, geom etry, astrology and m usic; logical sciences, u n d e r w hich they listed Poetics an d the Rhetoric, am ong others; natural sciences; an d m etaphysics, in clu d in g the know ledge o f G o d and the Essences. M etaphysics is fu rth er divided into kn ow ledge o f G od ; 'ilm al-rū ḥ āniyyāt, w hich is the know ledge o f essences (ma'rifa t alja w āhir); ' ilm al-nafsāniyyāt, w hich is the know ledge o f souls an d spirits (alnufūs wa al-arwāh) ; ; ilm al-siyāsa (p olitics), w hich in clu des w hat is practised by the p rophets, the kings, the m asses an d the se lf (nabawiyya, mulūkiyya, 'āmmiyya an d khāṣ ṣ iyya dhātiyya); an d ' ilm al-ma'ād (resu rrection ). A n d third, there is a schem e in h ere n t in their vision o f the structure o f an ideal society, w here their classification o f p eo p le acco rd in g to their societal roles serves im plicitly an o th er classification o f the sciences; fo r affiliation with any o f these sciences d eterm in es a p e rso n ’s ro le in society. In the con text o f their explication o f the spiritual kin gd om (mamlaka rūḥ āniyya) b eq u eath ed to them by the P ro p h et (ṣ āḥ ib al-nāmūs) in epistle no. 9, w hich is prim arily on ethics (akhlāq wa ādāb), they categorise m em bers o f their p u rp o rted kin gd om into the follow ing: the reciters (qurrā ’) o f the revelation and those w ho preserve it fro m ob literation and teach it to their descendants; the transm itters o f the P ro p h e t’ s (ṣ āḥ ib al-

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n āmūs) accounts and tradition (ḥ adīth) an d preservers o f his bio graphy; the juriscon su lts (fuqahā ’) w ho extrapo late, study an d u p h o ld the rules o f the Law (n āmūs); the in terpreters o f the w ords o f the revelation; the figh ters (mujāhidū n); the successors to the P rop h et; the ascetics, the w orshippers in the m osques, the m onks (devotees) an d priests in the tem ples, the o ra to rs/ p reach ers (khuṭabā ’) at the podium s, an d the serm on-givers; an d those w ho in terp ret the revelation (not the w ords o f the revelation) an d are well ro o ted in the m etaphysical an d divine sciences, an d those w ho know the secrets o f the Law. T h ese are the g u id ed leaders an d the wise caliphs w ho ju d g e and ru le ju stly by T ru th - al-ḥ aqq (Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā , Rasā ’il, 1 : 249).

APPENDIX VI

Recognition of Literary Criticism in Non-critical Writings IN BIOGRAPH ICAL DICTIO NARIES

B io grap h ical dictionaries m irro r the activities o f the critics, an d despite the absence o f a w ell-defined field o f literary criticism o r a reco gn itio n o f the critic as a specialist, an aw areness - albeit not necessarily fully-fledged - o f an em erg in g trend in the discussion o f poetry m ay be detected. In m ost cases, however, the bio grap h ers d ocu m en t w ithout m uch com m en tary the notions con tain ed in the w orks o f these critics as they p ortray their subjects and describe th eir works, reflectin g the term s w hich the critics them selves used, as well as their practices an d how they relate to o n e another. Reflection o f Terms Used by Critics Al-A ṣ m a'ī, we are told, ‘learn ed naqd al-shi'r fro m K h a la f al-Aḥ m a r’ (Abū Ṭ ayyib al-Lughaw ī, Marā tib, 80). Ibn Sallām is said to have ‘possessed know ledge o f poetry and historical accounts (' ilm bi-al-shi'r wa-al-akhbār ) ', w hich ‘are (two) o f the 'ulū m al-adab ' (Ibn al-Anbārī, Nuzha, 157). Ibn Ṭ ab āṭ abā is know n as an ' ālim Ы al-shi'r (Ibn al-Anbārī , Nuzha, 370), a derivative o f al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, w hich is in d eed the term that Ib n Ṭ ab āṭ ab ā h im self uses to designate his w ork in 'Iyār al-shi'r. Q u d ām a b. J a 'f ar, accord in g to Yāqū t, ‘was fam ou s fo r his elo q u en ce an d naqd al-shi'r, on w hich he has com p osed books [wa ishtahara f ī zamānihi bi al-balāgha wa naqd al-shi'r wa ṣ annafa fī

dhālika kutuban] ' (Yāq ū t, M u'jam al-udabā',

17: 12).

C learly, naqd al-shi'r in this co n text refers to his practice, n ot his book. AlĀ m idī is said to possess ‘ extensive know ledge in poetry an d its m eanin gs ('i lm al-shi'r wa ma'ānīhi): in transm ission, [skilled an d m asterful] know­ led ge (dirāya) an d m em orisatio n ’ (Yāqū t, M u'ja m al-udabā', 17: 12). A n d alQ ā ḍ ī al-Jurjān ī ‘gave p ro o f o f his extensive know ledge o f literature an d the A rabs, his ability to m em orise, an d his pow er o f n a q d ' (Yāq ū t, M u'ja m aludabā ', 14: 24-5).

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Description o f Works by Critics M oreover, the description o f the w orks by critics in these b io grap h ical d ictionaries ech oes the practices o f the critics. Al-Ā m id ī rep o rted ly ‘ com ­ p osed go o d books on that subject [m ean in g ' ilm al-shi'r] (al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1 : 285) : K itābal-radd 'alaIbn 'Ammārfī mā khaṭṭa 'a fīhi Abā Таттāт[refutation

of Ibn 'Ammār in connection with the faults he found withAbū Tammām], Kitāb iṣlāḥ mā īf 'iyār al-shi'r li Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā [correctio n o f som e o f the contents o f Ibn Ṭ abāṭ ab ā ’ s 'Iyār al-shi'r] , Al-muwāzana (Ibn al-Nadīm, Alfihrist, 172), and Al-radd 'alā Qudāma fī naqd al-shi'r [refutation o f Q u d ām a in N aqd al-sh'ir] (al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 278), w hich is also know n as Kitāb tabyīn ghalaṭ Qudāma b.Ja 'fa r fī naqd al-shi'r [elucidation o f the erro rs o f Q u d ām a b. J a ' far in Naqd al-shi'r] (al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 288; Yāq ū t, M u'ja m al-udabā', 8: 76; al-Suyūṭ ī, Bughya, 1 : 50 1). T h ese w orks are in tro d u ced by al-Qifṭ ī as works on ' i lm al-shi'r, and describ ed in the f ollowing manner

(al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1: 287): Al-muwāzana is extensive and good in its kind [kitābun kabīrun ḥ asanun fī fannihi]; Kitāb al-mukhtalif wa al-mu’talif fī asmā' al-shu'arā’ (differences and similarities in the names of poets) is a great b o o k (kitābun

ja l īlun); an d Kitā b al-radd 'alā Qudāma fī

naqd al-shi'r is also g reat and

ch arm in g (zar īf ). T h e use o f ' i lm al-shi'r as a category fo r al-Ā m id ī ’ s books, an d the use o f the w ord fa n n in his evaluation o f Al-muwāzana, im ply that 'ilm al-sh'ir d enotes a specific area o f literary activity. In al-Qifṭ ī’s statem ent with reg ard to al-Ā m idī ’s kn ow ledge o f poetry, 'i lm al-shi'r is q u alified by three accusatives o f specification: transm ission (riwāya), m em orisation ( ḥ ifẓ ) an d [skilled] know ledge (dirāya). T h e dirāya elem en t o f 'ilm al-shi'r is precisely the con cern o f al-Ā m id ī in Al-muwāzana. In th eir account o f al-M arzubānī ’ s life an d works, his b io grap h ers observe that his works, in clu d in g Kitāb al-shi'r an d Al-muwashshaḥ , w ere well known (al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 3: 182; Yāqū t, M u'ja m al-udabā ; 18: 270- 1). Kitāb alshi'r; accord in g to Yāqū t, ‘contains, in a com preh en sive fashion, its [i.e. p o etry’ s] m erits, the m en tio n o f its excellen t characteristics, shortcom ings, m etres, categories, types, an thologies, the etiquette o f its com posers an d reciters, an d exposition o f the fo rg e d an d plagiarised [wa huwa j āmi ' li f a ḍ ā 'ilihi wa dhikr maḥ āsinihi wa awzānihi wa 'uyū bihi wa ajnāsihi wa ḍ urūbihi wa mukhtārihi wa adab qā 'i l īhi wa munshidīhi wa bayān manḥ ū lihi wa masrūqihi wa ghayr dhalika] ' (Yāq ū t, M u'ja m al-udabā', 18: 270), an d acco rd in g to alQifṭ ī, it ‘contains everything there is on the art o f poetry [yashtamil 'alā ma yata'allaq bi ṣ inā 'at al-shi'r] ’ (al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 3: 27). As fo r Al-muwashshaḥ (known as Al-m uwassa'in Yāq ū t, p rob ab ly an erro r on the p art o f the editor, or a typographical e rro r), it is ‘on w hat the experts on poetry disapproved o f in som e poets, fo r their b reak in g gram m atical rules, usin g lan gu age

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incorrectly, and fo r shortcom ings in their poetry [fī ma ankarahu al-'ulamā ’ 'alā ba'd al-shu'arā ’ min kasr wa laḥ n wa 'uyū b al-shi'r] ’ (Yāq ū t, M u'ja m aludabā ’, 18: 271), an d in it ‘ there is m en tion o f w hat experts [o f poetry] fo u n d fau lt with in n u m ero u s kinds o f poetic craft [fī hi dhikr al-ma ’ākhidh min al-ulamā ’ 'alā al-shu'arā ’ fī

'iddat anwā ' min ṣ in ā 'at al-shi'r] ’ (al-Q ifṭ ī

Inbāh, 3 : 182). Yāq ū t an d al-Qifṭ ī seem aware o f al-M arzubān ī ’s efforts in collecting all the discussions with reg ard to poetry. Kitāb al-shi'r an d Almuwashshaḥ w ere con sid ered im portan t in the A rabic-Islam ic literary tradition, and al-M arzubān ī was view ed as a transm itter an d historian o f this tradition. It seem s obvious that his efforts in con solidatin g the field o f critical inquiry into A rab ic poetry was reco gn ised by his bio graph ers. Ibn R ashīq ’ s claim to fam e, Kitāb al-'umda fī ṣ in ā 'at al-shi'r (Yāqū t, M u'jam al-udabā ’ 8: 1 1 0 - 1 1; al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1 : 300; Ibn K h allikān, Wafayā t, 2: 85 and al-Suyūṭ ī, Bughya, 1 : 504) - a b o o k b elo n g in g to the adab gen re in gen eral an d A rabic lan gu age in particular, design ed to assert the superiority o f the A rab ic lan gu age (al-Qifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1 : 303) - in al-Qifṭ ī’s estim ation ‘ contains w hat no oth er w ork o f this kind (m ean ing ṣ inā'at al-shi'r) co n tain ed ’ (alQifṭ ī, Inbāh, 1 : 304). Significantly, Ibn K hallikān ren d ers the title o f the b o ok as Al-'um da fī ma'rifa t ṣ inā'at al-shi'r wa naqdihi wa 'uyū bihi, m aking it the second book, besides Q u d ām a b. J a 'f a r ’s Naqd al-shi'r, that contains the w ord naqd in its title. Ibn S h a r a f's M asā ’i l al-intiqād (known as R isālat al-intiqād in Yāq ū t), parts o f w hich are preserved in Ib n Bassām ’ s Al-dhakhīra, is describ ed as ‘a maqāma, in w hich he (Ibn Sharaf) naqada a gro u p o f pre-Islam ic and Islam ic poets [wa hiya 'alā ṭirāz maqāma naqada fī hā shi'r tā ’ifāt min shu'arā ’ al-jāhiliyya wa al-islā m] ’ (Abū al-Ḥ asan Ib n Bassām al-Shantarīnī , Al-dhakhīra fī

mahāsin ahl al-jazīra, ed. Ihsān 'A b b ās [T ripo li an d Tun is: al-Dār al-

'Arabiyya li al-Kitāb, 1975], 4: 1: 19 6 -2 11). Activities that Constitute Literary Criticism M ore im portantly, these w orks - as m anifestations o f literary activities - are d eem ed to be relevant to on e an other. Al-Q ā ḍ ī al-Jurjān ī ’ s Al-wasāṭ a is rep orted ly a respon se to al-Sā ḥ ib ’s w ork on al-M utanabbī (Yāq ū t, M u'jam al-udabā ’, 14: 25; al-T h a'ālibī , Yatīmat al-Dahr, 4: 4): ‘W hen al-Ṣ ā ḥ ib com ­

p osed his fam ous w ork exp o sin g the shortcom ings o f a l-M utanabbī, al-Qāḍī Abū al-Ḥ asan composed Kitābal-wasāṭa baynal-Mutanabbī wa khusūmihifī shi'rihi. He is excellent andinnovative (inthis book), he discusses (issues) at length, inasatisfyingmanner, andaccurately’ (Yāqūt, Mu'jamal-udabā’, 14:24-5). Ibn S h a ra f al-Qayrawānī rep o rted ly held extensive discussions o f poetry with Ibn R ashīq, especially in con n ection with the issues con tain ed in Al-

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'umda; in fact, M asā ’il al-intiqād is said to be a d irect respon se to Al-'umda, to w hich Ibn R ashīq resp o n d ed with the n o lo n ger extan t epistles know n as Sujū r al-kalb, Qaṭ ' al-anfās, N ajḥ al-ṭalab, R a f ' al-ishkāl wa d a f ' al-muṭ ā l, an d Kitāb faskh al-mulaḥ wa naskh al-lumaḥ (Yāqū t, M u'jam al-udabā', 8: 1 1 1 ; an d M u ḥ am m ad b. S h ākir al-Kutubī , Faw ā t al-wafayāt, ed. Iḥ sān 'A b b ās [Beirut: D ār S ādir, 19 73-8], 3: 359). IN W O R K S B Y A U T H O R S O F C L A S S IF I C A T IO N O F T H E S C IE N C E S

A u th ors o f w orks on the classification o f the sciences, such as al-Fārāb ī, A vicenna, Ibn Ḥ azm, al-Tawiḥ īdī an d al-Khwārazm ī , m ore read ily reco gn i­ sed such literary activities outside their classificatory works. In the case o f al-Fār ābī , A vicenn a and Ibn Ḥ azm, this reco gn itio n is fo u n d m ainly in their com m en taries on A ristotle’s Poetics an d Rhetoric, in fact, they related Poetics to A rab ic poetry, an d hin ted at the possibility that p rin cip les in Poetics m ay be ap p lied to the study o f A rab ic poetry, reflectin g the term s that w ere already in circu lation am o n g critics an d m en o f letters. W hile discussing Poetics, al-Fārābī , fo r exam p le, m en tions that there is a gro u p o f 'ulamā ’ w ho possess a special kind o f kn ow ledge with reg ard to poetry, an d w ho reco rd ed the poetic tradition o f the A rabs, in terpreted it an d categorised it. H e says: ‘W e will describe poetic com positions an d how they vary. We say: Poetic com positions vary eith er in m etres o r in m eanin gs. As fo r the variance with reg ard to m etres, (the authoritative know ledge) b elo n gs to the m usicist (ṣ āḥ ib al-mūsīqā) an d prosodist (ṣ āḥ ib al-'arūḍ ). As fo r varian ce with reg ard to m eanings, (the authoritative know ledge) belon gs to the on e w ho knows symbols (rumūz), w ho in terprets (or explain s) poetry, w ho exam in es its m eanings, an d w ho collects it fro m a nation o r a gro u p , as the experts o f poetry from am o n g the A rabs and the Persians ( 'ulamā ’ bi ash'ār al-'arab wa al-furs) o f ou r tim e, w ho com p iled books accord in gly an d divided poetry into satire (ahāj ī), pan egyrics (madā 'iḥ ), self-glorification (mafākhir), riddles (alghāz), h u m o u r (muḍ ḥ ikāt) , love poem s (ghazaliyyāt) , descriptions (wasfīyyāt) an d w hatever they have d o cu m en ted in the books. T h ey are not difficult to fin d an d thus they relieve us fro m m en tio n in g them at le n g th ’ (al-Fār ābī , Risā la, 15 1-2 ). H e re he reveals his aw areness o f the literary activities taking place in the in tellectu al circles o f his tim e. Al-Tawḥ ī dī ’s epistle on the sciences also reveals the sam e aw areness. In on e section he quotes Ib n Q utayba’ s categorisation o f poetry into fo u r types, thou gh attributing it m istakenly to Ibn al-M u'tazz. Al-Taw ḥ īdī m entions that poetry is o f fo u r kinds acco rd in g to Ibn al-M u'tazz: that o f w hich both form an d con ten t are excellen t; that o f w hich both fo rm an d con ten t are bad; that o f w hich fo rm is excellen t bu t con ten t is bad; an d that o f w hich form is excellen t bu t con ten t bad (al-Tawḥ īdī , Rasā 'il, 1 15).

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A vicenn a alludes to the desirability o f em u latin g A risto tle’ s w ork fo r A rab ic poetry at the en d o f his com m entary, an d expresses his intention, w hich was n ever fu lfilled , to write a b o o k on 'ilm al-shi'r al-muṭlaq (universal science o f p oetry), o r 'ilm al-shi'r (science o f p oetry), that w ould be o f great range and detail [ taḥ ṣ īl wa tafṣ īl] (Badawī , A risṭ ūṭ ālīs, 198). M ore im portantly, A vicenn a in corp orates som e notions o f A rabic poetics in his ren d itio n o f A ristotle’s Poetics. A vice n n a’s ren d ition o f A risto tle’s Poetics has b e en edited by 'A b d al-Raḥ m ān Badaw ī an d publish ed as part o f al-Shifā ’ [C airo: al-Dār al-Miṣ riyya li al-Ta’līf wa al-Tarjam a, 1966] and as p art o f A risṭ ūṭ ālīs, Fan n alshi'r, m a' al-tarjama al-'arabiyya al-qadîma wa shurū h al-Fārābī wa Ibn Sīn ā wa Ibn Rushd [C airo: M aktabat al-N ahḍ a al-Miṣ riyya, 1953]; an d by D. S. M argoliouth in A ristoteles: De arte poetica (Analecta Orientalia ad Poeticam A ristoteleam, 1887). Poetry, acco rd in g to A vicen n a in the in tro ductory section o f this w ork, w here he discusses ‘poetry, poetic gen res an d G reek poetic g e n re s’ , m ust contain three elem ents: im age-evoking discourse [kalām mukhayyīl] , m etre [ wazn] an d rhym e [taqfiya] (Badaw ī, A risṭ ūṭ ālīs, 161). T h e last elem ent, A vicen n a rem arks, is p ecu liar to A rab ic poetry, thou gh not the only one, fo r som e aspects o f m etre are also specifically A rabic poetic features, such as taṣ rī' [m aking the first hem istich o f a line rhym e with the second hem istich] an d j i nās [paronom asia]

(Badaw ī,

A risṭ ūṭ ālīs, 163). Ibn Ḥ azm also m entions 'ilm al-shi'r - by w hich he m eans transm itting poetry, in terpretin g its m eanings, distinguishing betw een go o d an d bad poetry, and know ledge o f its divisions (aqsām), m etres and structure (naẓ m) - in M arātib al-'ulū m, and in an o th er com m en tary on A ristotelian L o g ic, Altaqrīb li ḥ add al-manṭiq [clarification o f the co n cep t o f logic; o r literally, to b rin g (one) closer by clarifyin g the concepts involved] (ed. Iḥ sān 'A b b ās [B eirut: D ār M aktabat al-Ḥ ayāh, 1959]), w here he brin gs Rhetoric (Kitā b albalāgha) an d Poetics (Kitāb al-shi'r) closer to the m ore fam iliar A rabic literary tradition. T h ese two books are obviously o f n o im portan ce to Ibn Ḥ azm, fo r the sections on each b o o k occupy only a page an d h a lf o f the total 207 pages o f the text. A lth o u gh his stance towards poetry rem ains critical, he m entions that he considers Naqd al-shi'r by Q u d ām a b. J a 'f a r and works by A b ū 'A li al-Hātim ī to be in the area o f 'ilm al-shi'r (Ibn Ḥ azm, Altaqrīb, 207). Al-Khwārazm ī, on the oth er hand, uses the term naqd, both as a term and as a practice, in his discussion o f the arts o f secretaries (ch apter fo u r o f the first maqāla) and in his discussion o f poetry an d p rosody (ch apter five o f the first maqāla). In the first instance, al-Khwārazm i m entions the term s used by the ep istolograp h ers (kuttāb al-rasā ’il) in the are a o f w hat he calls naqd al-kalām wa waṣf n u 'ū tihi wa 'uyū bihi (naqd al-kalām, the d escriptio n o f

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its go o d features and its sh o rtco m in gs), an area co n cern ed m ainly with the artistic aspects o f prose, w hich com prise the features such as tasjī , tarṣ ī', tadrīs, ishtiqāq, muḍ āra'a, tabdīl, mukafā 'a, muṭ ābaqa, isti'ā ra, muqā balat, fa s ād muqābalāt, jaw dat tafsīr, fa s ād al-tafsīr, jaw dat al-taqsīm, fa s ād al-taqsīm, ikhlā l, 'aks al-ikhlā l - all untranslatable term s designatin g n arrow technicalities. H e then m entions al-mubā lagha, w hich contains al-irdāf then al-tamthīl as kinds o f п и 'ūt al-kalā m (epithets o f discou rse). T h erea fter, he lists the shortcom ings o f discourse (' uyū b): al-takrīr an d al-intiqāl (al-Khwārazm ī , M afātiḥ al-'ulū m], 47-8). M any o f the above-m entioned techn ical term s are fo u n d in Q u d ām a b. J a 'f a r in N aqd al-shi'r; alth ou gh the term s as used by alKhw ārazm i re fe r to features p ertin en t to prose. In the second instance, the w ord naqd occurs in al-Khwārazm i’s discussion o f the term s used in con n ectio n with poetry. T h is p art is fu rth er divided into five sections: the first two are on prosody, the third an d the fou rth on rhym es, an d the fifth on naqd al-shi'r wa muwāḍ a'at nuqqādihi (naqd o f poetry and the term s used by its nuqqad). In this section we have altashbīh, al-isti'ā ra, al-mujānasa, al-muṭ ābaqa, al-madhhab al-kalāmī, al-iltifā t, altajāhul, al-i 'nā t, al-tasr ī', and al-tasmīt, the first five features o f w hich are dealt with in Kitāb al-badī ' by Ibn al-M u'tazz. T h e au th or then m en tions the p rosod ic shortcom ings o f poetry ( 'uyū b al-shi'r), w hich are al-iqwā', al-īṭ ā', al-sinād and al-ikfā . T h is gro u p in clu d es the com m on defects w hich the lan gu age scholars, b e gin n in g with al-Aṣ m a 'ī , articulated in their criticism o f A rab poets.

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— Bughyat al-wu'āhfī ṭabaqāt al-lughawiyyīn wa al-nuḥ āh, ed. Muḥ ammad Abū al-Faḍ l Ibrāhīm, 2nd edn (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr, 1979). Ṭ abāna, Badawī, Qudāma b. Ja 'f a r wa al-naqd al-adabī (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anglū alMiṣ riyya, 1954). al-Ṭ ā hir, 'Alī Jawād, 'Ṭ abaqāt al-shu'arā’ makhṭ ūṭ an wa maṭbū'an ’, Al-mawrid 8:3 (1979), 25–46. al-Tanūkhī, Abū 'Alī al-Muḥ assin b. 'Alī, Nishwār al-muḥ āḍ ara, ed. 'Abbūd al-Shaljī (Beirut: Dār Ṣ ādir, 1971). al-Ṭ awḥ īdī, Abū Ḥ ayyān, Akhlāq al-wazīrayn: akhlāq al-Ṣ āḥ ib b. Abbād wa Ibn al-'Amīd, ed. Ibrāhīm al-Kīlānī (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1961). — Al-baṣ ā’ir wa al-dhakhā ’ir, ed. Ibrāhīm al-Kīlānī (Damascus: Maktabat Aṭlas wa Maṭba'at al-Inshā, 1964). — Al-imtā 'w a al-mu’ānasa, ed. Aḥ mad Amīn and Aḥ mad al-Zayn (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-'Aṣ riyya, n.d.). — Al-muqābasāt, ed. Muḥ ammad Tawfīq Ḥ usayn. (Baghdad: University of Baghdad, 1970)· — Rasā 'il Abī Ḥ ayyān al-Tawḥ īdī, ed. Ibrahīm al-Kīlānī, 1st edn (Cairo, n.d.). al-Tha'ālibī, Abū Mansūr, Yatīmat al-dahr, ed. Muḥ yi al-Dīn 'Abd al-Ḥ amīd (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Tijāriyya al-Kubrā, 1956). Tha'lab, Abū al-'Abbās Aḥ mad b. Yaḥ yā, Qawā 'id al-shi'r, ed. Ramaḍ ān 'Abd alTawwāb (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'rifa, 1966). 'Umar, Aḥ mad Mukhtār, Al-baḥ th al-lughawī 'ind al-'arab (Cairo: 'Ālam al-Kutub, 1976)· al-'Umarī , Akram Ḍ iyā’, Buḥ ūthfī tārīkh al-sunna (Baghdad: University of Baghdad, 1967). 'U ṣfūr, J ābir, Mafhūm al-shi'r: dirāsa fī al-turāth al-naqdī (Cairo: Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1978). — ‘Qirā’a muhḍ atha fī nāqid qadīm: Ibn al-Mu'tazz’ , Fuṣ ūl4:3 (1984), 34–63. Walī al-Dīn, Muḥ ammad b. 'Abdallāh b. Khaṭ īb, Miskhāt al-maṣ ābīḥ , ed. Muḥ ammad Nāṣ ir al-Dīn al-Albānī (Damascus: al-Maktab al-Islāmī li al-Ṭ ibā'a wa al-Nashr, 1961). Watt, W. Montgomery, ‘al-Ghazzālī’ , Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn, vol. 2 (Leiden: E. J. Brill; London: Luzac & Co., 1965), 1,038–41. — The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazzālī (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1982). Wellek, René, A History of Modern Cri ticism 1750- 195o, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Wellek, René and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1942). Yāqūt al-Ḥ amawī, Mu'jam al-udabā ’ (Irshād al-arīb ilā ma 'rifat al-adīb), ed. D. S. Margoliouth [1907–27] (Beirut: Dār Iḥ yā’ al-Turāth al-'Arabī, 1979). Yev, M. M., ‘Mas’alat taṣ nīf al-ma'rifa al-'ilmiyya fī al-sharqyan al-adnā wa al-aqṣ a fī al-qurūn al-wusṭ ā: al-Fārābī, al-Khwārizmī and Ibn Sīnā’, Al-turāth al-'arabī 5:26 (1981), 193–203. al-Zabīdī, Muḥ ammad Murtaḍ ā al-Ḥ usaynī, Tāj al-'arūs, ed. 'Abd al-Sattār Aḥ mad Farrāj (Kuwait: Matba'at Ḥ ukūmat al-Kuwait, 1965–present). Zakī, Aḥ mad Kamāl, Al-Aṣ ma'ī (Cairo: al-Mu’assasa al-Miṣ riyya al-'Āmma, 1970). al-Zamakhsharī, Abū al-Qāsim Maḥ mūd b. 'Umar, Asās al-balāgha (Beirut: Dār Ṣ ādir, 1965). al-Zubaydī, Abū Bakr, Muḥ ammad b. al-Ḥ asan, Ṭ abaqāt al-naḥ wiyyīn wa allughawiyyīn, ed. Muḥ ammad Abū al-Faḍ l Ibrāhīm (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'ārif, 1973).

Index

A b ān b. 'A bd al-Ḥ amīd, 69 'A bbās, Iḥ sān, 6, 120, 204–5 'Abbasid period, poetry in, 67, 69 A bd Allah b. Rawāḥ a, 34 'A bd al-Ḥ amid al-Kā tib, 64 'A bd al-Malik b. Marwān, 64, 70, 71, 72, 79, 80, 81 'A bd al-Muṭ ṭ alib, R i f 'a t Fawzī, 98–9 A bū al-'A lā ’ al-Ma'arrī , 77, 147 A bū 'Am r b. al-'A la’, 96 A bū al-Aswad al-Du’alī, 12 A bū al-'Atāhiya, 105, 106, 134, 180 A bū Bakr (al-Siddiq), 68 A bū al-Ḍ iyā’ Bishr b. Yaḥ yā, 134 A bū D u 'ād, 136 A bū D ulāma, 69 A bū al-Faḍ l al-'Aruḍ ī, 147 A bū Firās al-Ḥ am dāni, 69, 90 A bū Hilal al-Askari al-Ḥ asan b. 'Abdallah, 77, 91, 117, 168, 218 A bū Isḥ āq al-Zajjāj, 135 A bū Ja'far b. 'A bd al-Wāḥ id al-Hāshimī, 135 A bū Ja'far H ār ūn b. M uḥ ammad al-Ḍ abbī, 135 A bū Mū sā al-Ḥ āmid, 135 A bū Nuwās, 69, 73, 90, 105, 106, 109, 134, 136, 139, 178, 180 A bū al-Qāsim Sa'd b. 'A bd al-Raḥ m ān, 112-13 A bū Rayyān, 157 A bū Sa'īd 'A bd al-Raḥ mān b. M ahdī, 98 A bū T am m ām, 13, 18, 65, 74, 75, 77, 109, no, 121, 130-46, 147, 174-5, 180, 184 authority o f the critic, 170 A bū al-Tayyib al-Lughawī, 10, 12, 92 Abū Tayyib al-Mutanabbī see al-Mutanabbī A bū 'Ubayda M a'm ar b. al-Muthannā, 98,

133, 171 ādāb (literary arts), 73, 81, 82 frameworks of, 38–42 ahl al-'ilm, 94 ahl al-ṣ inā 'a, 174 ahl al-sunna (traditionalists), 108 A ḥ mad b. Ḥ anbal, 108 'Ā ’isha, 64, 66 Akhbār al-shu'arā, 186 al-Akhfash, 135, 171

al-Akhṭal, 56, 57, 70, 72, 74, 79, 80 A lī b. al-'A bbās, 139 A lī b. A bī Ṭ ālib, 12, 68 'ālim, definition of, 171 'ālim bi al-shi'r see al-'ilm bi al-shi'r al-Ām idī, A bū al-Qasim al-Ḥ asan b. Bishr, 13, 77, 91, 131–46, 174, 176, 185, 191, 207, 215–16 al-'Ā mirī, 27-8, 29, 30, 31, 68, 232 'amūd al-shi'r, 155, 157, 174 'Antara, 34 anthologies, 136, 183 Arabic-Islamic identity, 58 Aristotle, 25-31, 40, 104, 204, 207 art appreciation, 2 al-A'shā, 96 al-Aṣ m a'ī, 'A bd al-Malik b. Qurayb, 6, 13, 81,

92, 93–4. 97–8. 101, 107,111,171, 179–81, 207, 212 Avicenna (Ibn Sina), 28–30, 31, 240, 241 'Awn b. Muḥ ammad, 133 al-Awzā 'ī, 98 al-Azhari, A bū M anṣ ūr, 201 al-badī ', no, 118, 206 al-Badī'ī, Yū suf, 130 al-Baghdādi, 'A bd al-Qādir, 63 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 3, 19 al-Balkhi, A bū Zayd, 27 al-Bāqillāni, 28, 39, 60, 188, 207 Bashshār b. Burd, 69, 74, 77, 96, 106, 109 bayān (clarity o f speech), 103, 150 Belsey, Catherine, 3 biographical dictionaries, reasons for, 11–12 biographies, 12–13 Bishr b. Marwān, 71 book-making, 65 bookseller’s market, 66 boon-com panions, 80, 81 boon-com panionship, 68, 80–1 al-Buḥ turī, 7, 73, 109, 130, 134, 135, 137, 139, 140–1 calligraphy, 135 Celebi, Kateb, 91, 147, 204 critical tradition, em ergence of, 179–91

INDEX criticism, literary see literary criticism critics, literary see literary critics cultural imperialism, 4 culture em erging, 205 non-Arabic, 168 transformations in, 93 D hū al-Rumma, 72 dialogism, 3 dialogue, between critics, 116–17 D i'bil al-Khuzā'ī, 10, 90, 133-4, 137, 138, 168, 185, 207 dirāya, 139 discourse, 40 on discourse, 168 durba (training o f critics), 176, 178–9 al-Dūri, 'Abd al-'Aziz, 101 Eagleton, Terry, 4, 9, 14–15, 166, 205 eclectic framework, 35–7 Eliot, T. S., 17, 19, 25, 55, 93 eloquence, 103 encyclopaedic frameworks, 38–42 entertainm ent, poetry and, 67, 77–83 fa ḍ ā’il al-shi'r, 186 al-Fārābī, 25–7, 29, 30, 31 al-Farazdaq, 56, 57, 65, 70, 72, 77, 78–9, 111 al-Fārisi, Abū 'A lī, 63, 149 al-Fatḥ b. Khāqān, 69, 73, 74 al-Fīrūzabādī, Majd al-Dīn, 11, 203 f i ṭna (perception), 96 al-Fitnī, 'Alī al-Hindī, 99 forgery, poetic, 101, 136 Foucault, M ichel, 14, 19, 60 Frye, Northrop, 200 fu ḥ ūla, 179–81 concept of, 105 gahbad, 95 al-Ghazzālī, A bū Ḥ amid M uḥ ammad, 32, 33, 4 1, 42, 59–60, 233 grammar, 12 and A bū Tam m ām, 133 and logic, 22–4, 29–30 and poetry, 1–8 G reek sciences, 25, 27 Ḥ adīth, 93, 97, 98, 99, 101, 139, 181 fabrication of, 98 Ḥ ammād 'Ajrad, 69, 101, 106 Ḥ ammād al-Rāwiya, 98, 101 Ḥ ammād b. al-Zibriqān, 101 al-Ham adhāni, Badī' al-Zamān, 55–6, 57, 82 H am dānid courts, and poetry, 69 al-Ḥ arīrī, 91 H ārūn al-Rashīd, 73, 81 al-Ḥ asan b. Rajā ’, 74, 133, 175

253 al-Ḥ asan b. W ahb, 74, 133, 167, 171 Ḥ assān b. T h ābit, 34, 66, 145 al-Ḥ ātimī, A b ū 'Alī M uḥ ammad b. al-Ḥ asan b. al-Muzzafar, 13, 77, 82, 117–20, 121, 136, 149–50, 206, 217 Heinrichs, W olfhart, 7, 204 heteroglossia, 3–4 ḥ ikam (wisdom), 104 al-ḥ im ṣ ī, Q usṭ ākī, 90–2 Hishām b. 'Abd al-Malik, 70, 72, 81 Hudhayl, 107–8 al-Ḥ u ṭay’a, 71 Ibn 'Abbād, al-Ṣ āḥ ib b., 70, 150–1, 166, 206, 217 Ibn 'A bbās, 61 Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi, 39, 68 Ibn A bī Ḥ afsa, Marwān, 69, 77 Ibn Abī Ṭ āhir, 134 Ibn A bī Ṭ ālib, 'A lī, 12, 68 Ibn A bī U ṣ aybi'a, 175 Ibn al-'A m īd, 27, 91, 132, 166 Ibn 'Am m ār, 134, 185 Ibn al-Anbārī, 10, 12 Ibn al-'Arābī, 133 Ibn Farīg h ū n, 38 Ibn Fāris, A bū al-Ḥ usayn Aḥ mad, 201 Ibn Furāt, 22 Ibn Furrajah, 147, 148, 150–1, 152 Ibn Ḥ ajar al-Asqalānī, 99 Ibn Harama, 138 Ibn Ḥ azm, 32–5, 59–60, 68, 117–18, 188 Ibn Ḥ ubaba, 59 Ibn Ḥ ujja al-Ḥ amawī, 91 Ibn Ḥ usayn, al-Ṭ āhir, 74 Ib n Jinnī, 147 Ibn Khaldū n, 41–2, 62, 75, 91 Ibn Khallikān, 13, 137–8, 189 Ibn Khaṭ al, 59 Ibn M anādhir, 69 Ibn Manzū r, 92, 202–3 Ibn al-Mubārak, 98 Ibn M udabbir, Ibrāhīm, 133 Ibn al-Munajjim, 134 Ibn M unqidh, Usāma, 112, 117, 118 Ibn al-Muqaffa', 90 Ibn al-Mu'tazz, 10, 110–12, 117, 120, 132, 157, 168, 172, 176, 183, 185, 206, 214 Ibn al-Nadīm, 38, 66, 80, 100 Ibn Q āḍ ī Shuhba, Ahm ad, 11 Ibn al-Qaṭ ṭ a ’ al-Siqillī, 147 Ibn Qutayba, 'Abdallāh b. Muslim, 10, 13, 39, 61, 64, 65, 81, 90, 105–10, in , 112, 120, 157, 168, 177, 206, 213–14 and specialisation, 183 Ibn Rajā ’, al-Hasan see al-Ḥ asan b. Rajā ’ Ibn Rashiq al-Qayrawānī, 13, 18, 56, 58, 61, 68, 77, 117, 118, 154–8, 188–91, 206, 209, 218–19 Ibn al-Rūmī, 134

LITERARY CRITICISM IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC-ISLAMIC CULTURE

254

Ibn Sa'd, 100 Ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥ i, M uhammad, 6, 1o, 12, 57, 61, 75, 76, 94-102, 120, 167, 170, 171, 175, 181, 191, 200, 206, 207, 208, 212-13 legacy of, 105 Ibn Sharaf al-Qayrawānī, 77, 191, 154–8, 179, 219 Ibn Sīdā, 'Alī, 201 Ibn Sina see Avicenna Ibn Sīrīn, 66 Ibn Sukkara, 149 Ibn Ṭ abāṭ abā, Muhammad, 77, 111, 112-15, 121, 175-7, 184, 186, 208, 214-15 Ibn Thawāba, 139 Ibn W ahb, al-Ḥ asan see al-Ḥ asan b. W ahb Ibn Wakī ' al-Tinnīsī, 149, 151, 168, 206, 218 Ibn al-Ziba'rī ('Abd A llāh), 59 Ibrahim b. al-Mudabbir, 133 ideology definition of, 15 framework, 25 political, 66 ikhtiyār, 136, 183 Ikhwān al-Ṣ afā (Brethren o f Purity), 25, 35–7, 235–6 'ilm al-sharī'a (Islamic law), 62, 107–8, 112–15, 139, 166 'ilm al-shi'r, 17, 107, 108, 113, 138, 139, 151, 166– 8, 171, 185, 204, 207 al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, 17, 93, 137, 138, 139, 140–1, 142–4, 167, 185, 204, 207, 208 ahl al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, 1 4 3 , 144, 171, 172 a'lam al-nās bi al-shi'r, 138, 144 ālim bi al-shi'r, 138, 172 al-'ulamā ’ bi al-shi'r, 114, 138, 139, 142, 144,

145, 149, 173, 179, 184

'ulamā ’ bihi, 140 Im ru’ al-Qays, 56, 75-6, 106, 144–5 al-Iṣ bahānī, Abu al-Faraj, 71, 78, 96, 134, 135–6 Islam, rise of, 58 isnād (chain o f transmission), 103 'iyār, 114 jahābidha nuqqād, 99 jahābidhat al-kalām, 95, 154 jahābidhat al-ma'ānī, 95, 104 jahābidhat al-shi'r, 155 jahbadh, 94–5 al-Jāḥ iẓ , 'Am r b. Baḥ r, 9, 65, 96, 102–5, 108, 120, 168, 171, 172, 182, 212 Jarīr, 57, 65, 69, 71, 72, 74, 77, 78–9, 81 al-Jarja rā ’ī, 133 al-Jawharī, 201 al-Jurjānī, 'A bd al-'Azīz see al-Qāḍ ī al-Jurjānī al-Jurjānī, Abd al-Qāhir, 169 Ka'b b. Mālik, 34 Ka'b b. Zuhayr, 59 Ka'ba, 59

kalā m (discourse), 153 al-kalā m 'alā al-kalā m (discourse on discourse), 168 al-Katāni, Ja'far, 118 Khalaf, al-Aḥ mar, 92, 93, 95, 98, 136 Khallād b. Yazīd al-Bāhilī, 95 al-Khaṭ īb al-Tabrīzī, 135 khuṭab (public address), 104 al-Khwārazmī, 39–40, 240, 241, 242 Kilito, Abdelfattah, 55 al-Kindī, 26, 31 knowledge and judgin g, 139 kinds of, 33 in poetry, 137 poetry as, 57, 205 specialised, 176 superiority in, 105 kuttāb (civil servants), 56, 64, 133, 134, 166 lafẓ , 190 language preservation of, 93 purity of, 63 o f scholars, 207 studies in, 97 lexicography, 12, 62 and A bū Tam m ām, 133 linguistics changes, 109–10 poetry in, 63 literary criticism, 13 authority of, 4 as autonomous, 209 and boon-com panions, 81 cultural contexts of, 13–15 definition of, 1 dismissal of, 131 fields of, 170–9, 207 as history o f ideas, 14 as independent area, 8 as invisible, 42 naqd al-shi'r see under naqd recognition of, in non-critical writings, 237–42 as specialist knowledge, 185 see also 'ilm al-shi'r, al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, literary critics; naqd’, ṣ inā 'at al-shi'r, 117–20; and under poetry literary critics 'ālim, definition of, 171 essential tools, 177 nāqid, 91, 94, 95-6, 140, 202, 203 non-specialists, exclusion of, 171–2 nuqqād, 99, 105, 112, 114, 115, 139, 140, 148, 149, 154. 172, 184, 203 objectivity of, 177 open-m indedness of, 177 qualifications of, 169

INDEX talent, 175, 178–9 training, 176, 178–9 see also al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, literary criticism literary history, 7 literary theory failure of, 204–5 limitations of, 3 modern, 8 literary tradition, role of, 110–12 literary value, 102–5 logic, and grammar, 22–4, 29–30 ma'ānī, 143 ma'ārif, 81 magical arts, 38 maḥ āsin wa 'uyūb, 138 al-Mahdī, 74 Mālik b. Anas, 99 al-Ma’mūn, 81, 108 ma'nā, 190 Mandur, Muḥ ammad, 6 M anṣ ūr al-Namarī, 69 maqāmāt (assemblies) (al-Hamadhānī), 55, 57 M argoliouth, D. S., 241 al-Marzubānī, M uḥ ammad b. 'Im rān, 10, 11, 13, 18, 144, 145, 170, 185–8, 191, 216–17 al-Marzūqī, 135, 154–8, 171, 175, 178–9, 191 Mattā b. Yū nus, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29 al-Mawṣ ilī, Isḥ āq b. Ibrāhīm, 80, 138 meaning appropriation of, 114 in poetry, 113 memorisation, 65, 92, 119, 139 pitfalls of, 104 al-miḥ na (crisis), o f muḥ dath poets, 114–15 money-changer, 95 M onroe, James, 55 m orphology, 63 al-Mubarrad, 11, 133, 136, 151, 175 al-Mufaḍ ḍ al al-Ḍ abbī, 101, 102, 155 muḥ āḍ ara, ornam entation in, 119 muḥ addith (Ḥ adīth scholar), 93, 97, 98 al-Muhallabī (vizier), 149 M uḥ ammad A bduh Azzām, 135 M uḥ ammad 'A lī A bū Ḥ amda, 135 Muḥ ammad b. 'Afd al-Malik al-Zayyāt, 133 M uḥ ammad b. Mihrawayhi, 137, 138 M uḥ ammad b. Sa'd al-Raqqī, 133 muḥ dath poetry, 56, 57, 101, 206 authentication of, n o legitimisation of, 120–1 superiority of, 106-7 muḥ kam mutqan poetry, definition of, 113 mujūn (immoral lifestyle), 106 mumawwaha poetry, definition of, 113 al-munādama see boon-com panionship Muslim b. al-Walīd, 65 mutakallif (affectation), 107

255 mutakhayayyar (selected), 107 Mutammim b. Nuwayra, 59 mutamayyiza (distinguished), 104 M utammim b. Nuwayra, 59 al-Mutanabbī, 18, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, 90, 121, 130, 132, 146–54, 166, 189, 190, 206 authority o f the critic, 170 al-Mu'taṣ im, 74, 108 al-Mutawakkil, 73, 108 M uzāḥ im b. Fātik, 138, 178, 179 al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī, 56, 77, 145, 173 al-Nahshalī al-Qayrawānī, 188 naqd, 91-2, 96, 104, 114, 139, 143, 144, 145, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 175 al-baṣ īr bi naqd (al-shi'r), 114, 115 al-buṣ ara’ bi al-ma'ānī, 114 definition of, 140, 155–6 earliest use of, 201 al-fahm al-nāqid, 114, 175 'ilm al-intiqād, 91 intiqād, 91–2, 114, 140, 144, 146, 150 intiqād al-ash'ār, 167 jahābidha nuqqād, 99 muntaqid, 150 naqada, definition of, 202, 203 al-naqd al-adabī, definition of, 1 naqd al-kalām, 138 naqd al-shi'r, 17, 92–3, 115–17, 121, 131, 139– 41, 142–3, 146, 151, 152, 156, 166–8, 173, 177, 184, 189, 204, 207 nāqid, 91, 94, 95–6, 140, 202, 203 al-nāqid al-baṣ īr, 154 nuqāda, 202 nuqqād, 99, 105, 112, 114, 115, 139, 140, 148, 149, 154, 172, 184, 203 nuqqād al-alfāz, 104 nuqqād al-kalām, 95, 105, 150, 154, 155 nuqqād al-ma'ānī, 95 nuqqād al-shi'r, 145 al-nuqqād bi al-shi'r, 139 see also al-'ilm bi al-shi'r, 'ilm al-shi'r, ṣ inā'at al-shi'r al-Nāshi’ al-Akbar, 115 nisba adjectives, 12 Norris, Christopher, 22, 42 oratorical tradition, 96, 103 oratory, 104 ornam entation, in poetry, 119 patronage, 55, 70 philosophers, 23 and religion, 36 role of, 36 philosophy and political ideology, 29 and religion, 28 as ultimate science, 26

256

LITERARY CRITICISM IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC-ISLAMIC CULTURE

poetry, 41 ambition in, 73 ambivalence towards, 58 attribution of, 92, 96 authentication of, 92–102 chronology of, 105 civilisation and, 41 com petency in, 73 condem nation of, 59 court affiliation, 67, 70–1, 130 as craft, 75, 94 cultural contexts of, 13–15 defects in, 141 defence of, 190 discussion of, 101 and education, 60, 64, 73 and entertainm ent, 67, 77–83 expertise in, 82 forgery, 101, 136 functions of, 17, 24, 55–83 H am dānid courts and, 69 as historical source, 39 inevitability o f change, 56 inferior, 141 isolated for study, 180 jawda, 107, 183 as knowledge, 205 m onetary value of, 72–4 opposition to, 42 and politics, 67, 110 preservation of, 107 scepticism concerning, 34 as science, 31 as song lyrics, 77–8 as source o f knowledge, 37 as textual adornm ent, 65 transmission of, 92 in Umayyad period, 67, 70–1, 79 see also poets poets essential tools of, 177 professional, 68–77 role of, 172–5 as spokesmen, 66 status of, 55 in urban centres, 68–77 see also poetry political ideology, 66 and philosophy, 29 politics, and poetry, 67, 110 pornography, 38 Prophet, T h e (Muḥ ammad), 59–60 prose, errors in, 186 prosody, 113 as dispensable, 116 al-Qaḍ i al-Jurjāni, 91, 152–3, 155, 168, 169, 177, 178, 189, 191, 218 al-Qalqashandī, 64, 65

al-Qifṭ ī, 10, 13, 135, 148, 189, 191 Q u d āma b. Ja'far, 115–17, 121, 131–2, 137, 184, 186, 200, 208–9, 215 Q u r’ān, 59, 93, 97, 181, 188 and bayā n, 103 inimitability of, 188 poetry and, 60 al-Qutrabbulī, 185 al-Rabdāwī, Muḥ ammad, 132 al-Raqqāshī, 69 al-Raqqī, M uḥ ammad b. Sa'd, 133 al-Rāzī, A bū Bakr, 22 al-Rāzā, A bū M uḥ ammad 'A bd al-Raḥ m ān, 99 religion, and philosophy, 28 religious framework, 31–5 religious knowledge, poetry as source for, 59 religious scholars see scholars, religious religious studies, 97 Rijāl (transmitters o f Ḥ adīth), 97 ruwāt (transmitters), 99, 172 ruwāt khullaṣ (faithful transmitters), 104 ruwāt al-shi'r, role of, 134–5, 145 al-Sābī, H ilāl, 69, 73–4, 80 Sa'd b. N āshib, 34 Said, Edward, 2, 4, 19, 90, 93, 121 Sāliḥ b. 'Abd al-Quddū s, 34 Salm al-Khāsir, 69, 73, 74 samā ' (transmitted learning), 107 al-Saraqustī, 201 sariqāt, in , 134, 154, 156, 157 definition of, 140, 150 forms of, 141 Sayf al-Dawla al-Hamdāni, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75–6, 77, 81, 149 al-Sayyid al-Ḥ imyarī, 138 scholars, religious intellectual qualifications of, 63 language of, 207 and poetry, 64 see also 'ulamā ’ sciences, 40 classification of, 24, 27, 32, 37, 204, 232–6, 240–2 poetry and, 116 Shākir, Maḥ mūd M uḥ ammad, 179 al-Shanfara, 136, 139 sharḥ , 147, 155 al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍ ā, 91 Shawqī, Ahm ad, 146 shayāṭ īn (myths o f the m uses), 59 al-Shaybānī, 64, 65 Shihāb al-Dīn al-Ḥ alabī, 91 shi'r, definition of, 57 shu'ūbiyya movement, 60, 97, 103, 168, 206 shurūḥ , 148 Sībawayhi, 34

INDEX al-Sijilmāsī, 7 al-Sijistānī, 28, 36, 40, 179 ṣ inā 'a (craft in poetry), 75, 94 ṣ inā'at al-shi'r, 17, 117–20, 121 al-Sīrāfī , A bū Sa'īd, 10, 12, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 song lyrics, poetry as, 77–8 specialisation, 182 boundaries of, 11 concept of, 9 need for, 13 al-Ṣ ūlī, Abu Bakr M uḥ ammad b. Yaḥ yā, 65, 80, 81, 131–46, 172, 173, 174, 178, 191, 207, 215 Sulṭ ān, M unīr, 99, 170 al-Suyūṭ ī, 11, 12, 63, 189 Ṭ a ’abbaṭa Sharrā, 136 tab', 109, 176 maṭbū ' (naturalness), 107, 109 maṭbu'ūn (born poets), 106 ṭabaqa, definition of, 100 ṭabaqāt (biographical dictionaries), 10, 105, 181 first use of, 99 al-Tabrīzī, Wall al-Dīn M uham mad b. ‘A bdallāh al-Khaṭ īb al-'Umarī, 99, 135 tafḍ īl (preference), 143 al-Ṭ āhir, 'Alī Jawād, 179 al-takassub bi al-shi'r, 70 tamyīz, 104, 140, 183 earliest use of, 201 tamyīz al-kalām, 105, 139, 153 al-Tanūkhī, al-Qāḍ ī, 119 Ṭ arafa b. al-'Abd, 56, 109 al-Tawḥ īdī, A bū Ḥ ayyān, 17, 22, 23, 27, 38, 40,

41, 115, 157

Tawq al-ḥ amāma (Ibn Ḥ azm ), 35 technical issues, 141, 169 texts, corrupt, 104 textual analysis, 7 al-Tha'ālibī, A bū M anṣ ūr, 69, 70, 71–2, 81, 150

257 Tha'lab, A bū al-‘A bbās Ahm ad b. Yahyā, 13, 139, 151, i 8 i , 182, 183, 214 theoretical foundations, 112–20 theory, 7 times divisions, 100 tradition, authority of, 105–10 'ulamā ’ 99, 114, 140, 146 see also religious scholars 'U m ar b. al-Khaṭ ṭ āb, 57, 66, 68, 106 Umayyad period, poetry in, 67, 70–1, 79 umma (nation), 61, 108 urban centres, professional poets in, 68–77 ‘Urwa b. al-Ward, 34 Usāma b. M unqidh, 112, 117, 118 'U thm ān b. 'Affan, 68 'uyūb al-shi’r, 186 al-Waḥ īd, 148 al-Wāhidī, 147 al-Walīd b. 'A bd al-Malik, 70, 80, 81, 144 al-Wāhidī, M uḥ ammad b. 'Umar, 100 al-Wāthiq, 108 W ellek, René, 2, 6, 7, 14, 209 western influences, 4–5 Yaḥ yā b. 'A lī, 138 Yāqū t al-Ḥ amawī, 149, 152, 191 Yazid b. M u'āwiya, 70, 71 Yūnus b. Ḥ abīb, 96, 98 al-Zabīdī, M uḥ ammad M urtaḍ a al-Ḥ usaynī, 10, 203 al-Zamakhshart, A bū al-Qāsim Maḥ mū d b. 'Um ar, 202 zanādiqa, 106 al-Zayyāt, Muḥ ammad 'A bd al-Malik, 74, 133, 167,171 al-Zubaydī, A b ū Bakr M uḥ ammad b. alḤ asan, 12, 34 Zuhayr b. A bī Sulmā, 56, 109