Download PDF | (Early and Medieval Islamic World) Letizia Osti - History and Memory in the Abbasid Caliphate_ Writing the Past in Medieval Arabic Literature-I.B. Tauris (2022).
198 Pages
Introduction
The reader might object to our including al- S ū l ī amongst the greatest authors, ̣ but he is indeed one of them because he was innovative, and a unique fi gure amongst the men of those days: while there were, even in his own time, greater scholars than he in h ad ī th, and better in adab, what matters is that he ̣ was someone who united all these elements in the culture of that time, enjoyed such a standing in the caliphal palaces, and did not squander the useful lessons that came his way, but instead he wrote them down and passed them on to later generations, that they may benefi t from them. 1
Muh ammad Kurd ̣ Alī
In 1950, the great Syrian intellectual Mu h ammad Kurd ̣ ʿ Al ī collected the profi les of fi ft y-one ‘treasures of the ancestors’, from Ibn al-Muqaff a ʿ (d. 139/756) to Ibn Khald ū n (d. 808/1406). 2 He seems to have expected his thirteenth choice, Ab ū Bakr al- S ū l ī (d. 335/947), to be controversial: a boon ̣ companion of the Abbasid caliphs, who dabbled in several disciplines and whose work, while vast, was preserved in a piecemeal fashion and only partly used by later sources, is hardly as impressive a fi gure as the other names in this list. Still, Kurd ʿ Al ī is not overly apologetic: Ab ū Bakr al- S ū l ī deserves attention ̣ as a representative of various scholarly disciplines and facets of é lite culture, because of the unique way he combined these aspects within himself, and as an interpreter of the past for posterity. Th e last part of this statement may seem banal: there is little doubt that we see the fi rst centuries of Islam through an Abbasid fi lter – especially twentyfi rst century scholarship has given much thought to the question. 3 On the other hand, we are still processing the fi rst part of Kurd ʿ Al ī ’s remark: the prison of modern, mostly European interpretive categories makes it diffi cult to approach a fi gure like al- S ū l ī , who is either casually labelled a polymath, or ̣ pigeonholed into one discipline at the expense of others. 4 Th is book is an attempt to approach the question from the opposite direction: by exploiting, rather than downplaying, al- S ū l ī ’s versatility, it looks at material ̣ by and on this single – if complex – individual, and uses it to discuss specifi c issues in Arabic literature and historiography. Th e very expression ‘Arabic literature and historiography’ is key here: while al- S ū l ī ’s important contribution to, for instance, poetic criticism and ̣ administrative literature is universally acknowledged and studied, his role as an historian is more controversial and, as this volume will hopefully illustrate, is oft en approached with inadequate analytical tools. It is a typical problem for the study of third-fourth/ninth-tenth century Iraq: scholarship on history and scholarship on literature have no choice but to work on the same textual sources, but they interrogate the material in vastly diff erent ways and, rather than sharing results, they oft en coexist as non-communicating vessels. While this may have its merits, in the case of al- S ū l ī it seems a waste, especially in the ̣ parts of his work where he is both author and eyewitness. An obvious example is al- S ū l ī ’s use of his own poetry in the historical narrative: while it is a standard ̣ practice, up to al- S ū l ī ’s time, to include verses in ̣ akhb ā r , these verses are not usually – or possibly not ever – the author’s own. Th e poetry which al- S ū l ī ̣ chooses to include in his historical work, then, is unique and deserves consideration, regardless of its perceived artistic value and of modern literary sensibilities, not only as a stylistic quirk but also as a specifi c historiographical tool. To disregard it would lead to missing potentially important elements for the reconstruction of the past and of its memory. Nevertheless, attention to al- S ū l ī ’s life and work has almost always been ̣ fragmented along the perceived genres of his production. As far as I am aware, the only survey of his life and body of work as a whole is a Master Th esis by A h mad Jam ā l al- ̣ ʿ Umar ī , fi rst published in 1973, and in a later edition in 1984. 5 Most studies have been devoted to al- S ū l ī ’s scholarship on poetry: his ̣ recensions of ‘modernist’ poets ( mu h dath ū n ̣ ) have been published or taken into account in modern editions, and the principles of his literary criticism are part of the canon. 6 In particular, the Akhb ā r Ab ī Tamm ā m and its introductory epistle, which were edited and published already in the 1930s, have been the object of renewed scholarly interest in the twenty-fi rst century, especially aft er Beatrice Gruendler’s new edition and English translation. 7 Gruendler and others have studied the principles of al- S ū l ī ’s literary criticism but also his narrative techniques. In this latter investigation, they have confi ned themselves to what they describe as ‘literary akhb ā r ’ on poets – i.e. not part of the caliphal chronicles – and have not looked at accounts where al- S ū l ī is an intradiegetic ̣ narrator. By and large, these studies ignore one another. 8 Al- S ū l ī ’s largest and most complex work, the ̣ Kit ā b al-Awr ā q , has had an equally complex reception. To my knowledge, all parts of A wr ā q known to be extant are available in print, but they were retrieved from separate manuscripts at diff erent times. In the mid-1930s, James Heyworth-Dunne published three volumes, on the poets of the caliphal family, the modern poets, and the caliphates of al-R ā d ī and al-Muttaq ī respectively. ̣ 9 Th is latter part was translated into French by Marius Canard one decade later. More recently, Anas B. Khalidov has edited and translated into Russian the annals of the caliphates of al-W ā thiq to al-Muhtad ī (227–56/842–70). Both translations are equipped with lengthy critical introductions. 10 Finally, the turn of the century saw the edition of the last extant fragment, covering the caliphate of al-Muqtadir up to the year 318/931. 11 Th e section on al-R ā d ī and al-Muttaq ī has received the most modern ̣ attention and has been used alongside Miskawayh’s (d. 421/1030) Taj ā rib alumam as a source for the history of the mid-fourth/tenth century. On the other hand, the section on al-Muqtadir, which is the main source for the much better known S ī lạ by ʿ Ar ī b (d. c . 370/980), has largely gone unnoticed. 12 In short, while modern scholarship on medieval Arabic poetry and chancery oft en relies on al- S ū l ī ’s work, his chronicles are rarely cited in modern historiography. ̣ 13 In contrast, most of the material used in this volume belongs to the annalistic sections of the Awr ā q , and especially to the chronicles of al- S ū l ī ’s lifetime, ̣ where he produces his own evidence as eyewitness. Th is is the point where alS ū l ī ’s life and his work intersect, and where, as Kurd ̣ ʿ Al ī put it, he formulates lessons from the past for future generations. Th is intersection is the starting point for investigating al- S ū l ī not only as an author, but also as an individual ̣ and member of a specifi c cultural environment, as seen by contemporary and later scholars. It should be made clear from the start that this is not a life-and-times study. Th ere are, however, qualifi cations. Indeed, biography and authorship have made up an uncomfortable pair for the past several decades. Formalists spoke of the ‘temptation of the biographical in literary criticism’, i.e. what was seen as the unprofessional and unscholarly investigation into the gossip of biography and biographical interpretation. 14 While this debate has caused some soul searching in the fi eld of medieval Arabic studies and has known alternate fortunes in literary studies in general, 15 it seems particularly signifi cant when related to classical Arabic writing, not only as a by-product of longstanding artisanal practices of our discipline connected to the sheer quantity and complexity of the source material, but also because the material seems to require it. Premodern Arabic culture has in itself a biographical obsession – to be precise, a prosopographical obsession, which strives to organize and classify diff erent categories of famous and lesser-known individuals, most of whom were authors. It is also worth noting that this attention to biography is by no means limited to prominent personalities: in comparison to its European counterpart, medieval Arabic culture places an enormous importance on the lives of relatively unknown individuals – compiling vast collections of biographical profi les is, aft er all, totum arabum . Th is is why, before delving into al- S ū l ī ’s work, this volume begins with an investigation of his ̣ Nachleben . Chapter One looks at biographical information on al- S ū l ī in contemporary ̣ and later sources, illustrating how each author chooses from a common pool of material to produce a – sometimes signifi cantly – diff erent portrait. Th e chapter traces the development of al- S ū l ī ’s reputation aft ̣ er his death and gives an overview of the resulting persona. Th e analysis of this specifi c case contributes to recent debates on the role and signifi cance of life writing, both within the canon of classical Arabic literature and as a source for historical information. Given the general abundance of biographical material in premodern Arabic literature, the investigation of Chapter One may be conducted fruitfully on countless Abbasid personalities. Chapter Two, on the other hand, begins to explore areas which are unavailable for most of al- S ū l ī ’s contemporaries. It ̣ casts a second glance at the life of al- S ū l ī , this time using narratives in the ̣ fi rst person found in his works. Th is results in a self-portrait of sorts which can be contrasted with the image resulting from Chapter One. Al- S ū l ī ’s sense of ̣ self-worth and of his role in the world emerges clearly from these accounts, as do his principles and preoccupations. Th rough this analysis, the chapter discusses the concept (or lack thereof) of autobiography in premodern Arabic literature, in particular exploring Hilary Kilpatrick’s idea of a ‘fragmented autobiography’.
Chapter Th ree uses both al- S ū l ī ’s work and that of his biographers to explore ̣ his social network. It looks at his relationships with colleagues, pupils, and employers, within and outside the caliphal court. 16 This investigation sets al- S ū l ī ’s ̣ professional and intellectual personality against the background of his social circle, thus facilitating our evaluation of his role, as well as unpacking the practical aspects of the intellectual environment where al- S ū l ī operated. Th ̣ e chapter relies on narrative accounts as well as taking into consideration the individuals regularly cited by him, or by other sources in connection to him, testing concepts such as Shawkat Toorawa’s ‘proximity’ and ‘resemblance’, and tools of modern social network analysis as employed by, for instance, Monique Bernards. Chapter Four surveys al- S ū l ī ’s written production. It cross-references the ̣ bibliography provided by Ibn al-Nad ī m’s Kit ā b al-Fihrist with remarks by alS ū l ī and discusses how his work in diff ̣ erent disciplines is evaluated and used by later authors and by modern scholars, focusing especially on how the large amounts of poetry, oft en his own, present in much of al- S ū l ī ’s ̣ akhb ā r , is alternatively considered a strength or a weakness of his work as chronicler, connecting the question to the wider one of the Arabic prosimetrum and in particular the role of poetry within historical narratives. Th e resulting scholarly portrayal of al- S ū l ī calls for a reconsideration of how modern ideas of genres ̣ and disciplines may – or may not – be fruitfully applied to pre-modern Arabic writings. Th e focus is instead on one quality for which al- S ū l ī is praised: his ̣ ability to organize objects, both physical and intellectual, in the proper order.
The chapter examines remarks by al- S ū l ī on the subject as well as illustrating ̣ his principles in action: his library on the one hand, and the internal organization of his books (tables of contents, macro-structure, chapters and subchapters) on the other. Th is results in an argument linking the emergence of book culture, of which al- S ū l ī is an exemplary representative, with a new impulse towards ̣ organization, seen holistically as one global phenomenon including material and immaterial elements: classifi cation of knowledge, arrangement of archives, systematization of disciplines, etc. Th e complex intersecting organizational principles of the Kit ā b al-Awr ā q raises a fi nal question: what are the markers of al- S ū l ī ’s individual style, and do they convey a mature view on his time? Does ̣ this view go beyond that of a narrow-minded courtier? Chapter Five focuses in on the question of al- S ū l ī ’s value – or lack thereof ̣ – as an historian.
It looks at how his account of specifi c events and periods compares with that of other authors, thus bringing into focus his distinctive voice and vision. Th e chapter explores the diff erent ways in which al- S ū l ī ̣ intervenes in the narrative fl ow by inserting himself in the events he relates, not only as an eyewitness but also as a co-protagonist who is able to infl uence the very course of events by interacting with others. Is al- S ū l ī ’s style of ̣ intervention as eff ective as he implies it to be, and how does its strong performative aspect aff ect the value of his scholarship? Finally, the chapter looks at how al- S ū l ī evaluates the events he describes, and how he identifi ̣ es and organizes causal links between them. In particular, it addresses the commonly held view that his narrow perspective, while rich in details, does not allow him to recognize and make sense of crucial turning points in the history of the caliphate. Here it is argued that two levels of writing coexist in the Awr ā q , one personal (biographical) and one general (historiographical).
The former, far from being a hindrance to his understanding, imprints on the Awr ā q the mark of its author and, at the same time, illustrates the rigorous principles along which he makes sense of the past, uses it to interpret the present and, in turn, shapes its memory. Memory is of course another keyword. For the purposes of this investigation, my point of reference is the interplay between communicative memory – one type of collective memory as conceptualized by Halbwachs – and cultural memory. When Jan Assmann, in 1995, highlighted the diff erence between communicative and cultural memory, he set time as the discriminating factor: the temporal horizon of communicative memory is one century at most and ‘off ers no fi xed point which would bind it to the ever expanding past in the passing of time’. 17 Cultural memory, on the contrary, transcends the everyday and has fi xed points, i.e. fateful events of the past which function as ‘fi gures of memory’. 18
In Assmann’s – and Halbwachs’s – frame of reference, these diff erent types coincide with distinct practices and interpretive methods. In particular, communicative memory is tied to orality as an independent form of reproduction of the past. Even from the few examples discussed in this volume, it will be clear that such a distinction does not fully apply here. For one thing, it is well known that the relation between writing and orality in Arabic-Islamic culture has moved along diff erent tracks from those of Western European culture. 19 On the other hand, Assmann also talked of the ‘transition’ from ‘the area of everyday communication’ to ‘the area of objectivized culture’, arguing that, even aft er such transition, m é moire does not simply morph into histoire . Rather, objectivized culture has the structure of memory because it allows a group to reproduce its identity. Th e material discussed in this volume will hopefully illustrate how, in the Awr ā q , the typical objects of communicative memory as described by Assmann – ‘a joke, a memory, a bit of gossip, or an experience’ – are integrated into the wider narrative and related to the more distant past for evaluation and assessment.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق