Download PDF | (Islamic History and Civilization) A. Maurice Pomerantz - Licit Magic_ The Life and Letters of al-ib b. Abbd (d. 385_995)-BRILL (2017).
327 Pages
Acknowledgments
This book began as a dissertation in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Prof. Wadad Kadi, my doctoral adviser, was instrumental in both helping me conceive of the project and encouraging its development and completion. I am sincerely grateful to her for the model of scholarship and learning that she represented. I would also like to thank the two readers of the dissertation, Beatrice Gründler (formerly Yale, now Freie Universität Berlin) and Tahera Qutbuddin (University of Chicago) for their excellent comments on the final draft. I am grateful for their comments, suggestions, and corrections. Professors Fred Donner, Heshmat Moayyad, the late Farouk Mustafa, and John Perry all provided useful direction.
Over the course of writing the dissertation and the publication of this book, much in life has changed and I fear that I am not able to mention all of the wonderful friends and colleagues who were of assistance to me during the graduate school years and afterwards. In Chicago, I would especially like to thank Aditya Adarkar, Evrim Binbas, Jonathan Brown, Alyssa Gabbay, Ken Garden, Li Guo, Paul Heck, Mustapha Kamal, Joseph Logan, Scott Lucas, Judith Pfeiffer, Michael Provence, Muhannad Salhi, and Aram Shahin. In New York, Lara Harb, Marion Katz, Matthew Keegan, Arang Keshavarzian, Mehdi Khorrami, Tamer el-Leithy, Zachary Lockman, Jeannie Miller, Everett Rowson, and Evelyn Birge Vitz were great companions and interlocutors even when I did not want to talk about my dissertation. In Abu Dhabi, I found still further intellectual companionship from Alide Cagidemetrio, Paulo Horta, Philip Kennedy, Taneli Kukkonen, Cyrus Patell, Erin Pettigrew, Werner Sollors, Justin Stearns, Mark Swislocki, Bryan Waterman, Katherine Williams, Deborah Williams and Robert Young. I count myself as very lucky to have colleagues such as these, and many others besides. Recent years brought me into the orbit of the stellar scholars on the editorial board of the Library of Arabic Literature. I would like to personally thank this group, including Sean Anthony, Julia Bray, Michael Cooperson, Phil Kennedy, Joseph Lowry, James Montgomery, Devin Stewart, and Shawkat Toorawa. You all continue to inspire me. Many thanks, too, to Wilferd Madelung and Sabine Schmidtke and for giving me access to their recently published book, and to Hasan Ansari and Marina Rustow for encouragement during the year I spent in Princeton. I have been most fortunate in my professional life for having found my colleague and friend Bilal Orfali. Bilal was a constant support during the revision of this “orphan” manuscript. I am always amazed at his positive energy and critical judgment. Through Bilal I have come to know a wonderful circle of scholars and friends in Beirut—Nadia El Cheikh, Ramzi Baalbaki, and John Meloy among others and I am eternally grateful for their hospitality and friendship. In the preparation of the book manuscript, Everett K. Rowson was especially generous in reading and saving me from many a slip. I am indebted to him for this and for giving me a chance in New York many years ago. I owe him dearly. Valerie Turner and the ever-competent Tara Zend were also very helpful in the final stages in preparing the manuscript. I have been extremely fortunate in my life for many things. The first and foremost are my parents, Jay and Farida Pomerantz. Their unyielding love and support is still a source of wonder. I would also like to thank Anne Pomerantz for providing the kind of advice only a big sister can give. Although this work has always taken me far away, among the Pomerantz, Schwartz, and Kirasirov families, I continue to find a place called home. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Masha for more than these pages allow. While making revisions to this book, we welcomed the beautiful Sasha into the world. It is to Masha and Sasha that I dedicate this past work and look forward to our happiness in the future.
An Introduction to Ibn ʿAbbād and His Letters
I wrote these letters while I was at the edge of a pool that was as blue as the clarity of my love for you, and as delicate as my blame. If you had seen it, you would forget the waters of Maʾrib or the drinking spots of Umm Ghālib. Anemone flowers met me like weakened blood-spattered Abyssinian warriors, with only their last breath of life remaining. Trees soared above me, [they looked] as if houris had loaned them their clothes and dressed them in striped Yemeni brocades. Oranges were like spheres of coarse paper covered in gold, or the breasts of virgins. Those present grew bored with the length of this letter, so I turned away from the many things that I had desired to say. This short letter expresses longing for a friend who did not attend a pleasurable gathering. The writer first gently blames the addressee for not meeting him at a delightful moment when he and his companions had gathered. His description of the setting of his writing includes a reflecting pool, flowers, trees, and fruits, and thus creates an image of a paradisiacal garden amidst which the writer sits. 2 The descriptions of the pool’s reflective surface, the lilting of anemone flowers, and the rough texture of orange skins conjure a sense of immediacy for the reader. In the closing lines of the letter, the writer apologizes for its brevity. The words that he writes are but a summary of what he wished to say, but could not, as his companions tired of his composing in their midst. Readers knowledgeable of the poetic tradition of descriptive (waṣf ) poetry popular in the fourth/tenth century can find much in this letter that is familiar. As Andras Hamori notes, waṣf is typified by a rich descriptive language. Waṣf often transforms everyday objects to suggest diverse possibilities for perceiving the world. Waṣf poetry “eliminates time, or causes the poet to surrender to time with his whole being.” 3 Ibn ʿAbbād employs in each metaphor a similar set of poetic devices that heighten the perception of time’s passing. He contrasts natural objects (water, flowers, trees, and oranges) with elements that possess a greater perdurance. For instance, the pool of water is contrasted with that of Maʾrib or Umm Ghālib—two legendary sources of water in the distant, indeed, legendary past. 4 The lilting of the anemone flowers (shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmān) evokes the image of Abyssinian warriors on the verge of death; this calls to mind the blood of the legendary Lakhmid king al-Nuʿmān b. Mundhir who was trampled to death.
The trees, too, have borrowed their clothes from the angelic brocades of houris, and the oranges resemble rough-skinned spheres of eternal gold, or breasts of heavenly virgins. These descriptions transform Ibn ʿAbbād’s experience of the world into a more lasting and nobler sphere of contemplation. The description comes not in the form of an occasional poem as Hamori describes, but a letter composed at a particular moment in time by a specific writer intended for a distinct person. The basic epistolarity of this text is evident from its frame. The letter begins from the first line with a ḥāl clause which mentions the state of the composer while he composes: “I hung these letters while sitting by a pool of water.” The momentariness of the similes, the clarity of the water, the dying anemones, the paradisiacal foliage, and the golden oranges all underscore the communicative investment of the writer who adorns the letter in this fashion. Indeed, the extent to which he pays attention to his absent friend in the course of drafting this letter leads his companions at the moment he composes it to grow bored with his literary attentions. The letter seems to have removed its writer from the social space that he inhabits. If the description of the letter effaces time, much of its structure speaks to the time spent in constructing it. The first long phrase beginning with ʿalaqtu and ending with the rhyme lak and ʿitābak, reinforces the theme of this short missive, which is to gently express longing for his absent friend. Further rhymed couplets provide structure to the letter and emphasize each of the separate images in turn: the water of friendship (maʾrib/ghālib); the image of the battling Abyssinians (dimāʾuhā/dhamāʾuhā); the trees (athwābuhā/abrāduhā); and the oranges (dhuhibat/khuliqat). The letter ends with a cluster of three verbs in the first-person singular (waqaftu; kafaftu; ṣadaftu), each of which anticipates the final word of the passage (tashawwaqtu) indicating the writer’s yearning for reunion. The writer’s desire sets the final dominant theme of the letter. The letter is predicated not simply on the moment of writing, but also on a second moment when he imagines the addressee receiving it, and that moment in which its meaning inevitably changes. And indeed, we can see that the letter in a sense acts in a proleptic fashion, anticipating the mode in which it will be received by its intended reader. Its descriptions conjure specific imagery meant to work on the mind of the receiver, and substitute shared intimacies on paper for the intimacies lost at the moment of writing. Amidst a lush garden of tropes, the writer’s “I” is presented as a figure observing the minute details of the landscape.
The writer’s desire to delight, entertain, and reach beyond the text into that which he has neither the space nor time to represent on the page touches a melancholy tone as it signals the impossible richness of what might have transpired between them. The letter becomes a token of their social relationship interrupted by absence. It seeks to transport the clear water of their friendship and slake these friends’ thirst for communication and thereby make up for their lost intimacies. In this sense the letter is a bittersweet complaint expressing regret for an opportunity squandered, a moment between friends—a meeting that never happened. From a distance of a thousand years, the reader confronts a different narrative of loss. We wonder whether the addressee received this letter, how was delivered to him? What was the context in which this letter was read? What effect did it have on its reader? Did he respond? In all of these cases, we have no answer.
al-Ṣāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād: Finding a Context
We know more about the reasons for this letter’s preservation than we do about the circumstances in which it was composed. This letter was included in an anthology of belletrists of the fourth/tenth century compiled by Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1039) entitled Yatīmat al-Dahr fī maḥāsin ahl al-ʿaṣr, as exemplary of a style of writing esteemed by a growing readership of literati at the time of its writing. Fourth-/tenth-century readers and writers valued occasional prose epistles because they had currency and power in a world of expanding courtly etiquette. If this speech conjures a locus amoenus of courtly bliss, learning the powerful tropes and symbols in highly-crafted letters such as this one was a common pursuit for courtiers of the fourth/tenth century. This letter, however, was not simply the occasional elegant missive between courtiers. It is important that al-Thaʿālibī included this letter in his anthology, as it is representative of the elegant writing of one of the leading prose stylists and literati of the time: Abū l-Qāsim al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād (d. 385/995). 6 Ibn ʿAb bād was one of the most famous literary figures in the Islamic world when his letter was included in al-Thaʿālibī’s anthology. In his anthology written roughly a decade after Ibn ʿAbbād’s death, al-Thaʿālibī (who had never met Ibn ʿAbbād) described him in glowing terms and lauded his great rhetorical skills and his patronage of poets and belletrists. 7 Ibn ʿAbbād likely wrote this particular letter during the period 373–85/983– 95 when he served as the vizier of the ruler Fakhr al-Dawla (d. 387/997). This was the apex of the Buyid dynasty’s power and Ibn ʿAbbād employed the great material wealth of the expanding Buyid state to promote the vizier’s literary pursuits and theological interests. His court was among the most vibrant locations of Arabo-Islamic learning in the fourth/tenth century; an invitation to Fakhr al-Dawla’s presence was a significant event in the life of any littérateur. The letter thus symbolized the great might and prestige of the leading Islamic dynasty of the time. Moreover, Ibn ʿAbbād was not simply a patron of literati—his own widely ranging polymathic intellectual interests covered the important intellectual topics of his day and shaped the contours of his court, making it one of the liveliest centers of learning in the age. He participated in discussions and wrote scholarly tracts in which he investigated a large number of fields ranging from Arabic poetry and prose, lexicography, grammar, dialectical theology (kalām), Qurʾānic interpretation, to medicine and astronomy. His intellectual interests inflected the court’s practice of patronage and influenced the study of these topics throughout the region he administered. Ibn ʿAbbād composed widely diverse types of letters that reflected the varied actions of his role as both a vizier and intellectual. The particular letter cited above is a courtly missive written to a “friend” and thus falls into the larger class of “letters to companions” (ikhwāniyyāt). Yet this “friend” remains unidentified in the letter. Could he have been an important scholar? A high-ranking military official? Answers elude us. We do know that at the time of writing this missive, Ibn ʿAbbād had already achieved renown as an epistolographer. Scribes and copyists valued his letters as models of eloquent expression and preserved them in various corpora after his death. They saved more than four hundred complete letters and fragments in four independent works; combined, these comprise the second largest selection of chancery documents composed by one author from the first four centuries of Muslim rule. 8 Along with the contemporary esteem and posthumous fame of their author, these documents present a significant body of materials through which to consider the development of chancery practices in the fourth/tenth century. Ibn ʿAbbād’s letters also include formal administrative and governmental correspondence (sulṭāniyyāt). These letters demonstrate the varied functions of the vizier in the rule of western Iran in the fourth/tenth century. They reveal the vizier’s portrayal of himself as an administrative agent and demonstrate the ways in which he employed the letter form to praise, blame, flatter, and censure. In short, letters were a voice through which the vizier could speak to his administrators and, sometimes, his subjects. Thus, letters were not simply literary objects but were also the central mode of communication in fourth-/tenth-century Iran. Ibn ʿAbbād’s letters on behalf of the Buyid state were the voice of one of the most vibrant Islamic states of the time. We can imagine invitations to his court were hard to turn down.
Ibn ʿAbbād and Arabo-Islamic Epistolography
Letters were a necessary concomitant of the complex organization of the Islamic state almost from its very beginnings. Arabic papyri from the first/seventh century of Islam clearly indicate not only the basic features of the letter form, but also show a sensitivity to the letter as a space for refined linguistic expression. 9 Epistolography was an art and practice that developed in tandem with statecraft. States fostered the growth of chanceries for pragmatic purposes of command and control—communication across long distances required standardization. Letter writers, however, soon moved beyond the simple relay of information. Though letters might first have been “stand ins” for the direct verbal transmission of news, through their organization and length, they could persuade in ways that differed from the oral poetry and speeches of tribal cultures. As Gregor Schoeler notes, letter-writing was an important aspect in the complex movement from oral to written culture and one that was intimately bound up with the state. For Schoeler, “the literary genre in which Arabic artistic prose had first manifested itself was the risāla, the epistle or letter…Arabic artistic prose, properly speaking came into being therefore in the chancery bureaux of the state.”10 For a culture based on the mutual knowledge of a shared religious revelation, learning to mobilize the power of written Arabic spurred a dramatic transformation. Letters of ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Yāḥyā (d. 132/750)11 and ʿAbdallāh b. al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 139/756) survive as important witnesses to the sophisticated ways that writers deftly handled the resources of the Arabic language.12 As Wadād al-Qāḍī has observed, the letters of ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd already seem to contain most of the hallmarks of later Arabic prose: ...high selectivity of diction; acute awareness of the lexical and morphological potential of the Arabic language; heavy exploitation of the possibilities of parallelism; intense consciousness of the acoustic value of word sounds, phrase pauses, and sentence endings; extensive use of similes and metaphors for constructing images and scenes; and clear organized structuring.13 With the exception of the sajʿ metrics introduced in the third/ninth century, most of the rhetorical devices of Arabic prose are present in writings from the first half of the second/eighth century. The scribes of the Umayyad age— knowledgeable in Qurʾān and Arabic poetry—forged a linguistic style that became a common idiom for many centuries thereafter. No less vital than their other achievements, the creation of an Islamic language of governance was a product of the late Umayyad period.
Style is never merely aesthetic play. Rather it often reinforces latent meanings which can have significant consequences for the understanding of the message. For instance, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd’s letters were more than simply statements by the caliphs—his letters often frame the rulers as they wanted to be understood. In the case of the Umayyads, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd presents the ruling caliphs as the heritors of the Prophet—his letters mobilize this ideology to encourage obedience to the ruler. For some, the eloquence in which these messages were framed became powerful proof of the validity of the Umayyad caliphs’ claims. As letter-writing developed during the second and third/eighth and ninth centuries, epistolary devices began to incorporate a range of types of expression. While we cannot document the spread of the letter form in full here, it is sufficient to note the the breadth of letter types; A. Arazi and H. Ben-Shammai survey in their Encyclopaedia of Islam article, “Risāla,” forms such as the chancery letter, the friendly letter, the theological letter, the monograph, and even the travelogue (riḥla).14 Letters clearly presented a rival form of expression to poetry, which had long been the esteemed courtly mode of expression. Writers exploited the letter form in new ways as the Islamic state and society expanded. Letter-writing became a skill shared by learned elites throughout the medieval Islamic world, especially among courtiers.15 As the second and third/ eighth and ninth centuries progressed, the crafting of an elegant letter became the mark of an educated person.16 Caliphs, their wives, poets, and slave girls all wrote prose letters.17 Moreover this passion for letter-writing transcended the court very early on—merchants and other long-distance travelers also aspired to write letters.18 Despite this plethora of written communication by letter that so informed much of the first three centuries of Islam, there are no collections of letters that have come to light prior to the fourth/tenth century. 19We might first propose that the reason for this absence was simply the fact that it was not common to collect letters prior to the fourth/tenth century. Yet in his Fihrist Ibn al-Nadīm (d. between 380 and 388/990–1 and 998) identified more than seventy collections (dīwāns) of letters compiled in the second and third/eighth and ninth centuries. 20Why were so few of these writers’ letters passed on? During this time the value attached to epistolary prose of a certain kind fluctuated. There is a sense that a distinctive chancery mode of writing emerged during the third/ninth and especially fourth/tenth centuries—one that might rival poetry. Official prose writing appears to have adopted styles that distinguished it from common correspondence. As Klaus Hachmeier notes, scribal manuals of the fourth/tenth century were more concerned with stylistics than those of the previous century. 21 While it is somewhat problematic to argue solely on the basis of prescriptive manuals, they do suggest a trend that seems evident to readers of letters in the fourth/tenth century: the prose style employed by secretaries was markedly different from that employed by other writers. Indeed, over the course of the third and fourth/ninth and tenth centuries, the eloquence of leading secretaries became an ideal to which other writers aspired. As Shawkat M. Toorawa notes, Ibn al-Nadīm provided three lists of the “most eloquent men of the time” (bulaghāʾ al-ʿaṣr) of the third/ninth century in which the names of state secretaries (kuttāb) figure prominently to the exclusion of other notable prose writers. 22 The same trend continued in the following century, when the notion of eloquent writing is presented as identical to that of the leading Buyid state epistolographers. On one occasion, Ibn ʿAbbād said the following: The world-class scribes and eloquent men of this age are four in number: al-Ustādh Ibn al-ʿAmīd [Abū l-Faḍl d. 360/970)]; Abū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Yūsuf [d. end fourth/tenth century]; Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣābī [d. 384/994]; and if you wish, I will mention the fourth [i.e., myself]. While Ibn ʿAbbād’s example suggests a certain degree of pride in his status (iʿjāb bil-nafs), it was not an entirely inaccurate assessment of a commonly held opinion. The most famous writers of the age were chancery scribes. If the writers of the end of the fourth/tenth century saw themselves as different from prose writers of the past, it is because in large measure they were. To any reader, the basic rhythm and sound of the epistolary prose of these writers is distinctive. In the fourth-/tenth-century chancery style, rhymed and rhythmic prose (sajʿ) became the backbone of a letter’s organization. What was once an occasional, incidental ornament—what one kātib stated was supposed to be like the “embroidered hem on a garment” or “salt for food”—became, in the chancery writing of the fourth/tenth century, a repetitive organizing structure. 24 In its regular end rhymes, the chancery letter became akin to a poem in prose.
No less innovative was the use of badīʿ poetic language, tajnīs, 26 and complex parallelisms between phrases (izdiwāj), 27 imagery, and rhetorical figures that accompanied the new aesthetics. 28 One might be inclined to say that if the third/ninth century was a historical moment in which Arabic poetry witnessed the great influx of badīʿ figures exemplified in the works of such poets as Abū Tammām (d. 232/846), the fourth/tenth century witnessed no less a transformation when prose writers employed these same figures and language. 29 Cultivating this new chancery style took dedication on the part of the writer. The change was not merely stylistic, but reflected broader patterns in education—scribal training became something one studied intensively. The leading families of secretaries who had composed the state prose of the Abbasids during the second and third/eighth and ninth centuries, such as the Banū Wahb and the Banū Thawāba passed on their learning and expertise within their families. 30 However, scribes of the third and fourth/ninth and tenth centuries found it necessary to apprentice for a time with the leading stylists of their age. Ibn ʿAbbād, whose father and grandfather were both administrators, served as an apprentice to Abū l-Faḍl b. al-ʿAmīd, from whom he received most of his training in epistolography. Apprenticeship in the art of letter writing during this time was necessary because the new chancery prose style was challenging for even the most talented of linguistic experts. According to one story, even the extremely knowledgeable grammarian Abū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/979) was not quite up to the task of writing a chancery letter, stating that it required “practice” (durba) which he lacked and political instincts (siyāsa) that were “foreign” to him. 31 Abū Isḥāq al Ṣābī (d. 384/994), one of the great epistolographers of the fourth/tenth century, was asked by a scholar why the number of great prose writers was less than the number of poets. In reply, al-Ṣābī pointed out that the act of writing ornate prose letters was technically far more demanding than the writing of poems. 32 While it was true that wider circles of littérateurs and intellectuals were likely capable of emulating the writing styles of leading government officials—for whom they often worked for a time as copyists—without years of experience they would remain amateurs. For all this, however, the fourth/tenth century was one of experimentation in genres and styles; this experimentation suggests that chancery writers were only one group of innovators in a literary field brimming with bold talent and novel expressions. Chancery writers such as ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Yūsuf (d. 375/985), 33 Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣābī (d. 384/994), 34 Ibn ʿAbbād, and Qābūs b. Wushmgīr (d. 402/1012), were paragons of literary style. But was their writing any more sophisticated than their non-chancery writing peers Abū Bakr al-Khwarizmī (d. 383/993), 35 Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (d. 398/1008), 36 or Abū Ḥayyān alTawḥīdī (d. 414/1023)? 37 Were the descriptions of the expertise of the chancery letter writers really evidence of their supreme mastery of literary prose? Or, given the chance, might any good courtier have produced prose equal to that of the master scribes of the era? Many courtiers such as Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī thought that the expertise of the master scribe Ibn ʿAbbād was little more than an example of false pride. Whatever the reality of these perceptions, these issues surrounding letters and letter-writing point to a literary system that greatly valued the power of eloquent words and the men who produced them. It is to this literary system that we now turn.
Ibn ʿAbbād Inside and Outside His Letters
In the literary universe of the fourth/tenth century, Ibn ʿAbbād was among the brightest stars. He is a frequently mentioned figure in a wide variety of different sources. Reports featuring Ibn ʿAbbād can be found in histories of the Buyid period, for example the Tajārib al-Umam by his contemporary Miskawayh (d. 421/1030), and in the works of scholars of the following century, for example the Dhayl tajārib al-umam of al-Rūdhrāwarī (d. 488/1095). These works provide both a chronological framework for Ibn ʿAbbād’s tenure as vizier as well as a sense of his role in the political life of the Buyid state. 38 Biographical compendia and anthologies, most notably, Muḥaḍarāt al-udabāʾ of al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī (d. early fifth/eleventh century) and the Muʿjam al-udabaʾ of Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī (d. 626/1229) also provide important details on Ibn ʿAbbād’s early life and literary activities. 39 Court littérateurs, however, give us the most vivid accounts. Numerous reports (akhbār) concerning him and his court are included in the works of two major fourth-/tenth-century court littérateurs: Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī and Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī. These two belletrists, both contemporaries of Ibn ʿAbbād, differ markedly in their presentation of Ibn ʿAbbād and his court. Their divergence in views concerning Ibn ʿAbbād demonstrates not only the complexities of his personality, but also the changing modes of courtly representation in the fourth/tenth century, and the problems of utilizing sources emanating from the courtly milieux. Al-Thaʿālibī was a courtier and anthologist and a contemporary of Ibn ʿAbbād. Although they did not meet, he surely encountered many of the vizier’s courtiers while living in Nīshāpūr and Bukhārā at the time of Ibn ʿAbbād’s vizierate. Al-Thaʿālibī was residing in Jurjān when, eighteen years after the vizier’s death in 403/1012, he wrote the final version of the section of his anthology devoted to Ibn ʿAbbād and his court. The section on Ibn ʿAbbād in the Yatīmat al-dahr includes al-Thaʿālibī’s collection of many of Ibn ʿAbbād’s poems, letters, and witticisms; it also describes his court and courtiers in elaborate detail. In the introduction to this section, al-Thaʿālibī describes Ibn ʿAbbād as the epitome of the courtly intellectual: He is the chief of the East and the record of glory [itself], the white blaze of the era and the fount of justice and beneficence. There is no objection in praising him to the extent that every creature prasies him. Were it not for him, there would be no market for excellence in our time.
Al-Thaʿālibī compares the vizier to the Abbasid caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 193/809), who was legendary for his generosity to poets and scholars. 41 In alThaʿālibī’s formulation, it was not simply Ibn ʿAbbād’s generosity that attracted poets to his court, but his very eloquence. As al-Thaʿālbī states: His days were all devoted to ʿAlids, scholars, littérateurs, and poets. His presence [viz., the court] was the place where they put down their saddles, and was the seasonal market of their excellences, as well as the pasture of their hopes. His high purpose was celebrated in its glory and was continuously recreated through his beneficence and the excellent one whom he made a client, and the beautiful speech that he fashioned and made his client hear. Since he was a “mercurial rarity” in rhetoric and the central pearl in the necklace of time in bountiful giving, every eloquent utterance and bon mot from the horizons and distant lands was brought to him.
For al-Thaʿālibī, Ibn ʿAbbād’s court was not only a source of eloquence, but also a center for intellectual dialogue: His presence [viz., his court] became a source for the excellences of speech and the glorious rarities of minds, the jewels of cerebra. His scholarly circle was a meeting place for the pouring out of minds, the flowing forth of diverse sciences, and the pearls of innate talents. He achieved in rhetoric that which was magic and nearly attained the level of inimitability. His speech traveled the course of the sun; it ordered the areas of the East and West.
Al-Thaʿālibī, as he did throughout his anthology, identified the isnāds or chains of transmission for the reports he received. 45 For his section on Ibn ʿAbbād, al-Thaʿālibī relied mainly on the former courtiers of the vizier. He derived his knowledge about Ibn ʿAbbād and his court from twenty-two independent reports (akhbār) related from nineteen individuals. 46 Al-Thaʿālibī’s akhbār on Ibn ʿAbbād cover diverse characteristics, though they generally emphasize the vizier’s courtly grace (ẓarf), humor, learning, and literary eloquence. At times these accounts record eloquent statements by the vizier; for instance, Abū Saʿd Naṣr b. Yaʿqūb recounts the following:Ibn ʿAbbād used to say in the evenings to his courtiers, if he wanted to make them at ease and to delight them, “By day I am your ruler, while by night we are brothers.”
Pivoting from the first person plural that he used in his letters to signal his power, to the inclusive first person plural he used to include his brethren, the vizier’s statement emphasizes his capacity to transition elegantly from the stance of rulership to beneficence—and to do so through a graceful rhyme in which the singular power of sulṭān becomes the plural ikhwān. Other accounts emphasize the vizier’s generosity and eloquence by focusing on his relationships with individual courtiers. One long report related on the authority of a certain ʿAwn b. al-Ḥusayn al-Hamadhānī l-Tamīmī describes how the courtier Abū l-Qāsim al-Zaʿfarānī saw the multitude of silk robes worn by Ibn ʿAbbād’s courtiers, so he retreated alone to a corner so as to appear as if he were composing a letter. Seeing this, Ibn ʿAbbād grew curious about al-Zaʿfarānī’s intention and encouraged him to read the missive aloud. The letter he read was a poem of praise for the vizier which ended with a description of how the “retinue of the court” (ḥāshiyat al-dār) walk around in a variety of silk garments, except for him. Ibn ʿAbbād, hearing the courtier’s request, responded: I have read in the Akhbār of Maʿn b. Zāʾida that a man said, “Place me on a mount!” So he commanded that a camel, horse, mule, donkey, and slave girl be brought to him. Then he said to him, “if I had learned that God had created another mount besides these [five] I would have given it to you!” Ibn ʿAbbād then fitted al-Zaʿfarānī with a cloak (jubba), shirt (qamīṣ), pants (sarawīl), turban (ʿimāma), kerchief (mandīl), and shawl (miṭraf), invoking the famed example, stating that if he had known of any other item fashioned of silk he would have given it to al-Zaʿfarānī. Evoking the example of Abū l-Walīd Maʿn b. Zāʾida al-Shaybānī (d. 152/769–70), who was both a military leader and a literary patron, also demonstrates that Ibn ʿAbbād was a political figure capable of deploying his rhetorical eloquence and literary knowledge in courtly settings. Al-Thaʿālibī’s reports are generally favorable toward Ibn ʿAbbād. Although al-Thaʿālibī does include several examples of hijāʾ poetry he does so with the caveat that “kings are still praised and blamed” (lā zālat al-amlāk tuhjā wa-tumdaḥu), thus indicating that if al-Thaʿālibī had heard something negative, he would not have recorded much of it in his work. 49 The positive accounts of Ibn ʿAbbād’s court related by al-Thaʿālibī were largely eclipsed in subsequent histories of the period by vivid reports of the court of Ibn ʿAbbād authored by the famously disgruntled littérateur Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī. The majority of al-Tawḥīdī’s reports about Ibn ʿAbbād issue from his work, Akhlāq al-wazīrayn, composed sometime before the year 373/983, and presented to the Buyid vizier of Baghdad, Ibn Saʿdān. At the time of its authorship, Ibn ʿAbbād was still a major political figure and the chief rival of Ibn Saʿdan. 50 Al-Tawḥīdī’s account of Ibn ʿAbbād and his court was ostensibly the product of the three years (from 367/977 to 370/980) he spent at the vizier’s court in Rayy. 51 Unlike al-Thaʿālibī, who never saw the court of Ibn ʿAbbād, al-Tawḥīdī wrote as a man with vivid memories of his time in Rayy and his encounters with the vizier. Al-Tawḥīdī came to the court in 366/976, shortly after Ibn ʿAbbād assumed the office of vizier for Muʾayyid al-Dawla. 52 He came to the court of Ibn ʿAbbād with the hope that the vizier would appreciate his great talent as a littérateur and scholar. Instead, when he arrived in Rayy, he found himself among the crowds of men waiting outside the door of the palace hoping to find a permanent place. 53 Unable to gain entrance to the court, al-Tawḥīdī found himself forced to work as a copyist for more than nine months, all the while working to gain a position at court. 54 At the end of this period, which must have been during the year 367/977, al-Tawḥīdī did gain access and ultimately witnessed many events in Ibn ʿAbbād’s court. At the end of 370/980 an impoverished al-Tawḥīdī returned to Baghdad after enduring what he later portrayed as numerous humiliations at the court of Ibn ʿAbbād, and with only the memories of his time spent with companions in the court of Rayy as his compensation. 55 Three years later, in 373/983, al-Tawḥīdī again attempted to find a place in one of the Buyid courts, just as major transformations were occurring in the structure of government in Baghdad. The new vizier, the former marshal of the Turkish guards, Ibn Saʿdān, took the reins of the administration, after the dynasty’s most illustrious ruler, ʿAḍud al-Dawla, passed away. 56 In the aftermath of these momentous changes, shifting political alliances enabled new men to enter court circles. Aided by his longtime friend and patron, Abū Wafāʾ al-Muhandis, al-Tawḥīdī sought to take advantage of the new opportunities and after several attempts, finally secured a place in the court of the vizier Ibn Saʿdān. 57 At some point thereafter, Ibn Saʿdān invited al-Tawḥīdī to become his private nightly confidant—a position of honor reserved for no other courtier. 58 Ibn Saʿdān was eager to learn about Ibn ʿAbbād, and encouraged al-Tawḥīdī to tell him more about the great vizier of Rayy. 59In the course of one of their nightly conversations (recorded by al-Tawḥīdī in his Kitāb al-Imtāʿ wa-l-muʾānasa (The book of delight and conviviality), al-Tawḥīdī mentioned that he had already written a work about the “morals” of Ibn ʿAbbād and a previous vizier of Rayy, Abū l-Faḍl b. al-ʿAmīd (d. 360/970).However, he feared the political and personal consequences for himself if he were to reveal the work in public. 60 The vizier, Ibn Saʿdān, told him not to worry, the work would remain a secret between the two of them. In the event that al-Tawḥīdī presented him with a copy, he promised that “no eye would see [it] and no tongue would mention [it],” and thereby he encouraged him to complete it. The resultant work, Akhlāq al-wazīrayn, offers an entirely different view of Ibn ʿAbbād and his court from that of al-Thaʿālībī. Al-Tawḥīdī begins his work with an introduction that states, like al-Thaʿālibī’s work, that he relied on sources for his account: I do not allege anything about Ibn ʿAbbād for which I have no witness (lā shāhid lī fīhi) and no one to champion my vision of it. And I do not mention anything about Ibn al-ʿAmīd for which I do not have evidence to accompany it (lā bayyina lī maʿahu) and no proof for my allegations against him. And I also sought the truth from men besides the two [viziers], if their speech presented an excellence or shortcoming. Similarly, I measured them against that for which they were known among the people of the time and its practice, and for that which they had become famous in self-adornment, because my goal is to state that which I knew thoroughly by experience, and that which I preserved by relating it from others. Al-Tawḥīdī explicitly contrasts his own candid writing with the common courtly praise of patrons like that which al-Thaʿālibī later recorded in his anthology: It would have been easy for me to say that there was no one like them [Abū l-Faḍl b. al-ʿAmīd and Ibn ʿAbbād] from the ancients and the moderns, and there would not be anyone until the Day of Resurrection who would match them in the patronage of men, the forbearance of the ignorant, carrying out rewards and punishments, and spending money, and every kind of treasure of jewels and necklaces. Indeed they reach in glory a proud height; they carried the day in every grace and area of knowledge; the people of the earth all bowed down to them; no shortcoming marred them in any way; they did not suffer from any incapacity; they were both akin to the watchword of the imām of the Rāfiḍa [Imāmī Shīʿīs] and his well-known infallibility; and no exception entered into their description—whether it happened to be in the area of art or knowledge, values or dealings, leadership or politics, their fathers or mothers, or their uncles—agnate or consanguine.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق