arabic literature in post-classical period ch19

8/13/2019 Arabic Literature in Post-Classical Period Ch19

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P A RT V I

C R I T I C I S M

Cambridge Histories Online Cambridge University Press, 2008


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C H A P TE R 1 9

C R I T I C I S M I N T H E P O S T - C L A S S I C A L

P E R I O D : A S U R V E Y

introduction

Criticism is concerned with the evaluation of literary works, often as an aca-demic discipline, and so is somewhat different from the other topics in this

volume. Poetry, prose, drama and the various genres the editors have placedunder these headings are traditions rather than disciplines. This is to say thatpoets and ris alawriters consider other works in their tradition, but do notspecifically cite, support and rebut the positions taken in those works. Theauthors of works on criticism, on the other hand, play by different rules,paying close attention to their predecessors and the conventions of theirdiscipline. They are not producing literature, but very consciously writingabout it.

In the post-classical period the disciplines that deal with criticism are largelya continuation of the subjects and methods established in the previous fivecenturies. Accordingly, this literature includes a lot of rehashing and reorga-nizing of older material. It would not, however, be fair to say on this accountthat authors in the post-classical period made no contribution to Arabic lit-erary criticism. As modern scholars must surely admit, one can contribute agreat deal by explaining old issues in new ways, and, indeed, three of the mostimportant works of Arabic criticism appear at the outset of this period.

Around1200, Muh. ammad al-Sakkaks (d.1229)Mift ah. al-ul um(The Key

of the Sciences) appears in Central Asia. In theMift ah. al-Sakkak distils theconsiderable Arabic tradition on bal agha(eloquence) and builds a generalsystem of semantics which he calls ilm al-bal agha (literally, the science ofeloquence). Al-Sakkaks system became the basis for studying Arabic styleand is still used today.

Shortly after al-Sakkak, D.iya al-Dn Ibn al-Athr (d. 1239) began writingin Syria. Ibn al-Athrs most famous work isal-Mathal al-s air(The CurrentSaying in the Conduct of Secretaries and Poets) which is a sort of literary

compendium in which the author provides clear and forceful statements onliterature and style. The work of Ibn al-Athr is perhaps the last great statementof critical sensibility in pre-modern Arabic literature.

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And finally, in the last half of the thirteenth century H.azim al-Qart.ajann(d. 1285) producedMinhaj al-bulaghaetc. (A Way for the Eloquent and a Lightfor Men of Letters) in Spain. Al-Qart

.ajann applied Hellenistic philosophy

to Arabic literature in a way that earlier writers had not. Philosophers likeal-Farab had tried to explain Aristotles ideas in Arab terms, but they did notreally show how Hellenistic ideas might be used to explain something that

was thoroughly Arab like theqas.da. This was al-Qart.ajanns contribution,and it is an impressive statement of intellectual synthesis.

Accordingly, the post-classical period begins with a burst of intellectualactivity in the area of criticism. It is important to note, however, that thisparticular activity was probably more of an epilogue to a story that had just

finished than a promise of things to come. Al-Sakkak, Ibn al-Athr and toa lesser extent al-Qart.ajann wrote to distil the work of the tradition thatpreceded them, and the authors who followed them did pretty much thesame thing. For this reason we must begin our discussion of criticism in thepost-classical period with a brief examination of its precedents.

criticism in the classical period

We should first, however, explain the use of the term criticism in connectionwith the Arabic tradition. The term criticism goes back to a Greek wordfor judgement, but this does not mean that Greece was full of critics. WhatGreece was full of was philosophers, and we have come to refer to philosophicaldiscussions of literature as criticism. This is because philosophers discussion ofthe good as it related to drama seemed similar to the decisions of the kritikos,the figure who judged the plays performed at public festivals. Criticism itself,however, was never a classical discipline or even a sub-topic of philosophy. It ismuch more a modern term used to cover the sometimes far-ranging discussionof aesthetics and hermeneutics.

Accordingly, we should be able to use the term criticism to consider thepre-modern Arabic tradition in the same way as we use it to consider thepre-modern European tradition. Neither tradition included a discipline ofcriticism. Both traditions, however, had a number of disciplines within whichpoetry and language were discussed. In the Arab/Islamic context the generalcategory under which this discussion fell was the aforementionedbal agha.

It may be helpful to think of the Arabic critical tradition as a pyramid.

At the top of the pyramid sit works in which the critical activity, the act ofmaking a judgement and supporting it, is particularly prominent. An exampleof this would be Abul-Qasim al- Amids (d.987)Muw azana bayn al-t. a yayn(Weighing (the merits of) the two T.a poets (i.e. Abu Tammam and al-Buh. tur)) which appears in the tenth century. Al- Amid uses theMuw azana



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to argue that the conservative style of al-Buh. tur (d. 897) is better than theconvoluted style of Abu Tammam (d.846).

As the pyramid shape suggests, works like the Muw azanaare rare. Mostof the works that are included in the critical tradition do not face evaluativeissues head-on, but rather explore topics that underlie them. These worksform the lower courses of the pyramid and so represent the bulk of the criticalliterature. The most important of these are probablyadabworks such as al-Umda f mah.asin al-shir(The Basis for (the Study and Criticism of) the FinePoints of Poetry) by the North African author Ibn Rashq (d.1064or10701).

As the title suggests, the subject of theUmdais poetics and literary theory. Init Ibn Rashq brings together a fairly wide range of topics concerning poetry

and critical standards. Ibn al-Athr, whom we have already mentioned, wrotein the tradition of writers like Ibn Rashq.

While authors like Ibn Rashq were collecting the various elements of anArabic poetics, other authors were collecting the poetry on which this poet-ics was based. Accordingly, collections of poetry, like the H.amasa of AbuTammam, formed another part of the critical literature. At the same time,other authors were writing commentary on this poetry, and this brought theshur uh. (commentaries) literature into the picture.

Although someshur uh. authors were interested in allegorical interpretation,most of them were content to parse words and explain the subtle nuancesof Arabic style. In considering style they relied on the grammatical tradition

which considered not only the normative workings of Arabic, but also thespecial features that characterized the best poetry and prose. The close gram-matical analysis of elements like metaphor (isti ara) and metonymy (kinaya)became known as ilm al-bal agha(the study of eloquence) or ilm al-bay an(the study of lucidity). The best example of this is certainly Abd al-Qahir

al-Jurjans (d.1078

)Asr ar al-bal agha(The Secrets of Eloquence).The importance of the Koran to intellectual life provides a key reason for theconcentration of Arab scholars on grammatical analysis. From the beginningof the Islamic period Muslim scholars plumbed the depths of the Koran. They

were interested not only in understanding what the text had to say, but also inproving that the Koran conveyed its message more eloquently than the verseof any poet. The belief in theij azor inimitability of the Koran spawned anentire genre of critical works the most famous of which is probablyDal ailal-ij az(The Proofs forij az) by the same al-Jurjan cited above. Writers like

al-Jurjan wrote to demonstrate that the style of the Koran really was beyondthe abilities of any Arab writer.

The notion of ofij azbrought the influence of theology to bear very directlyon the critical tradition. Not surprisingly, the same could not be said forthe philosophical tradition which stood somewhat removed from works on



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criticism. Arab philosophers worked primarily with material originating withthe Greeks that they sought to explicate and analyse but not really to integrate

within the indigenous Islamic sciences. For this reason Arab works on Aristotleand Plato remained largely separate from the discussion of literary theory. Thisis why theMinhajof al-Qart.ajann, to which we have already referred, is sosignificant.

Accordingly, we can identify seven types of works in the Arab critical tradi-tion. These are: naqd works, like theMuw azana; adabworks, like the Umda;anthologies, like theH.amasa; commentaries on poetry; bal aghaworks, likethe Asr ar; ij azworks like Dal ail al-ij azand philosophical works. We willnow see how each category develops during the post-classical period.

naqdor applied criticism

We will look first at the top of the critical pyramid: works of applied crit-icism. As in the previous periods, these works form a relatively small partof the critical discussion. There are four with which we will be concernedhere: Ibn Manz.urs (d. 1311) Abu Nuw as f tar khihi(Abu Nuwas: His Lifeand Poetry, his Private Life and his Jests and Buffoonery), Yusuf al-Bads

(d. 1662) al-S.ubh. al-munabb (The Dawns Revelation of al-MutanabbsPrestige), Ibn al-Mustawfs (d. 1239) al-Niz.am (The Course for Commen-tary on the Poetry of al-Mutanabb and Abu Tammam) and Ibn al-Athrsal-Istidr ak(The Rectification in Reply to Ibn al-Dahhans Treatise EntitledPassages that the Kind Poet Took from the T.a Poet).

Ibn Manz.urs work is a fairly straightforward collection of stories aboutAbu Nuwas (d.c.813), while the other texts examine some of the critical issuesinvolved in the poetry of Abu Tammam and al-Mutanabb. The first thing

we notice about these works is the titles: all of these authors are still writingabout Abbasid-period poets! This was typical of the critical literature in thisperiod; whether writing about a poet or illustrating one of the fine pointsof metaphor, scholars usually referred to classical (i.e. sixthtwelfth centuryapproximately) poets and not to those from their own time. The main excep-tion to this is the anthology literature in which several authors do consider later

writers.The next thing we notice is that three of the four works mentioned here are

concerned with al-Mutanabb. This is not surprising since al-Mutanabb was

probably the most commented-upon poet in the Arab tradition. Althoughquite a notorious figure, Abu Nuwas did not attract the sort of scholarly andliterary interest that al-Mutanabb did. It is important to understand, however,that later writers were not onlymoreinterested in al-Mutanabb than in AbuNuwas, but that they treated the two authors differently.



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Ibn Manz.urs work is largely a collection of stories that had already beentold elsewhere. The fact that the stories are not original is not unusual. What is

worth noting, however, is that Ibn Manz.ur includes no real critical discussionofAbuNuwas poetry. He makes no reference to sariqa(plagiarism), a standardgauge for evaluating poetry. He also says nothing about the poets use ofbad (use of figurative language), which was another standard topic in discussionsabout style. It is clear then that the poetic style of Abu Nuwas is not really atissue here. Rather, Ibn Manz.ur is interested in the person of the poet or hislife and buffoonery, as he explains in his title. He is interested in the poet asclown rather than craftsman.

The works on al-Mutanabb are quite different. Ibn al-Mustawf refers to his

Niz.am as asharh. , but it differs from the shur uh. we will consider later because ofits expanded focus. Mostshur uh. are fairly straightforward, line-by-line expla-nations of a single authors work. The Niz.am, on the other hand, considersthe poetry of both Abu Tammam and al-Mutanabb. Ibn al-Mustawf doesnot explicitly compare the two bodies of work, but, by putting them together,he draws our attention to the critical issues that emerge in both. These criticalissues boil down essentially to obscurities in the style of the two poets. Ibnal-Mustawf tells us that in his day, almost three centuries after al-Mutanabb

and Abu Tammam lived, people still engaged in long arguments about thetwo poets work. The author notes that both poets have their partisans, butdoes not take a side himself. He says that whichever poet one prefers, the factremains that both of them are difficult to understand. Accordingly, he hascomposed theNiz.amin order to explain their poetry.

1

As he promises, Ibn al-Mustawfs main interest here is hermeneutics. Inthis regard the work reads very much like asharh. . The author proceeds line byline; first he considers problematic vocabulary, then moves on to grammatical

issues and explanations of figurative language. In all of this Ibn al-Mustawfrefers constantly to the work of earlier scholars. TheNiz.amdiffers from othershur uh. only in the authors concern for the transmission (riw aya) of the poetrythat has come down to him. Ibn al-Mustawf takes great pains to establish thecorrect reading of each line he examines. He begins by going through a listof authorities with whom he has checked the authenticity of Abu Tammamand al-Mutanabbsd w ans and then cites these authorities when consideringeach line.

Ibn al-Mustawf remarks occasionally that a line of poetry is good or bad,

but does not make his own opinions very prominent. The same could not besaid of Ibn al-Athr. Writing in thirteenth-century Damascus (and dying inthe same year as Ibn al-Mustawf), Ibn al-Athr is one of the main figures of

1 Ibn al-Mustawf,Niz.am, p. 192.



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the Arabic critical tradition. We shall consider most of his work, includingal-Mathal al-s air, which is the most famous, under the heading of adab

works, but hisIstidr akfits better under the heading ofnaqd.As the title announces, Ibn al-AthrsIstidr akis a rebuttal (radd) to anotherwork, namely, al-Ma akhidh al-kindiyya min al-ma an al-t. aiyya by Ibnal-Dahhan (d. 1174). The Ma akhidh is not extant, but the title and Ibnal-Athrs discussion show that the author criticized al-Mutanabb (the Kindpoet) for plagiarizing from Abu Tammam (the T.a poet). Ibn al-Athr arguesthat al-Mutanabb did not plagiarize. However, it is not really his specificrebuttals that are the most significant, but rather the general comments oncriticism with which Ibn al-Athr opens the Istidr ak. First, he weighs in againstpartisanship (taas. s.ub ) among litterateurs. This would seem to have been acommon charge in the critical literature because Ibn al-Athr points out thatIbn al-Dahhan made the same attack at the beginning of his work.2 WhenIbn al-Athr refers to partisanship, however, it would seem that he is thinkingin particular of attacks on al-Mutanabb, since it is always in his defence ofthe poet that he brings up the issue. In this way he echoes the concerns ofearlier authors, like al-Qad. l-Jurjan (d. 1002) and his Kit ab al-was at.a baynal-Mutanabb wa-khus. umihi(The Book of Mediation between al-Mutanabb

and his Adversaries) a work written to defend al-Mutanabb from his critics.More generally, however, we could say that Ibn al-Athr believed that par-

tisanship was simply unsystematic or unsubstantiated criticism. In one case,for instance, he refers to partisan attacks against al-Mutanabb and goes on tooffer a fairly systematic defence. He suggests first of all that, in order to judgea poet, one must poll the audience. He claims that people in the East (i.e. theeastern part of the Islamic world) believed that al-Mutanabb was a great poetwhile people in the West were split on the issue. With a sort of mathematical

logic Ibn al-Athr then argues that if we put the East together with half of theWest we will have a majority. Accordingly, themajoritybelieve al-Mutanabbis a great poet,quod erat demonstrandum.3

In addition to the critics of al-Mutanabb, Ibn al-Athr also attacks thosewho believed that pre-Islamic poetry was better than later poetry. He suggestsnot only that this group is partisan, but also that they are simply following

what others have said and not thinking for themselves. If they look closely atthe pre-Islamic period, Ibn al-Athr claims, they will find that poets do notfully understand the Arabic language and so are not really masters of theirverse. For this reason they make mistakes, and their work is uneven.4 He

2 Ibn al-Athr,Istidr ak, p.2.3 Ibid., p.3.4 Ibid., p.25.



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argues in particular that pre-Islamic poets did not understand the subtleties offigurative language and so could not produce the more complicated imagery

of al-Mutanabb and Abu Tammam.

5

Ibn al-Athr strongly criticizes the traditional position that older is better.His comments in this regard add a new element to the discussion of plagia-rism, one of the mainstays of critical commentary. The general explanation ofplagiarism had been that it was acceptable to take a theme from an earlier poetas long as you improved upon it and thus made it your own. Ibn al-Athr doesnot dispute this, but he attacks the simplistic notion that earlier poets havesome claim to precedence and invention. He argues that many ideas circulateamong the general population and should be accessible to all poets. The fact

that one poet uses a particular idea first should be of no consequence. In orderto really lay claim to an idea the poet must use it in a unique and inventive

way; only then does the poet really possess an idea that can be plagiarized.6

Another position that Ibn al-Athr criticizes is the notion that one cancompare only lines of poetry that are similar. Thus, some claimed that if twolines did not both describe the beauty of the beloved, for example, one couldnot consider their relative merits. Ibn al-Athr claims this is nonsense. Onecan always, he argues, look at the style and fluidity of two lines and decide

which one is better.7

The discussion of style in theIstidr akis brief, but theauthor considers this at great length in his other works, particularlyal-Mathalal-s air.

Like any writer, Ibn al-Athr tries to make his own arguments more per-suasive by making those of his opponents less so. But one does not get thesense that he is setting up straw men when he describes the positions he isattacking. On the contrary, one gets the feeling that people were still arguingabout al-Mutanabb in Ibn al-Athrs day. This becomes even clearer when we

compare theIstidr akwithal-S.ubh. al-munabb, the seventeenth-century workby Yusuf al-Bad mentioned above. The S.ubh. includes several centuries ofcomments about al-Mutanabb. It recounts the attacks on al-Mutanabb byvarious critics and Ibn al-Athrs defence of him; it relates stories about thepoets life, along with his most famous lines and earlier scholars comments onthose lines. By the seventeenth century, however, al-Bad has become moreof a historian than a critic. He recounts the controversies of the past, but doesnot really take part in them. As a result, the S.ubh. shows little of the vitality wesee in theIstidr ak. All of this suggests that the old controversies surrounding

Abbasid-age poets may have still been strong enough to keep people arguing

5 Ibid., p.90.6 Ibid., pp.712.7 Ibid., p.57.



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in the thirteenth century, but not in the seventeenth. Although the classicswould always be read, they could not keep people debating forever.

adab works

Adab works are generally considered to be the heart of the critical tradition.These works provide the definition and discussion of most terms associated

with poetry and Arabic style. Althoughadab works cover many of the topicsthatwefindinthe bal aghatradition,theydifferfromthattraditioninanumberof ways. Perhaps most importantly, adab works focus on poetry, while bal agha

works are more generally concerned with the semantics of language.

The most important adabauthor of the post-classical period is Ibn al-Athr.His most famous work isal-Mathal al-s air, but he also wrote two others onthe same subject, namely, al-J ami al-kabr etc. (The Great Compendiumon the Art of Making Verse and Prose) and Kifayat al-t. alib etc. (What theStudent Needs to Know about Criticizing the Work of Poets and Secretaries).

Although they differ in size and structure, all three of these works cover roughlythe same topics. They detail the body of knowledge an educated person shouldpossess, that is, grammar, philology, history (i.e. proverbs and tales, amthal

andakhbar), principles of rule (ah.k am sult. aniyya), Koran,h.ad th, rhyme andmetre. They examine the structure of the Arabic language, the special featuresof eloquent style, the genres of poetry and plagiarism.

Ibn al-Athr does not present very much on these topics that is new. Hisdiscussion of an Islamic or Arabpaideiais geared towards the secretaries with

whom he was intimately familiar, since he worked in government ministriesfor most of his life. Ibn al-Athrs comments in this regard echo those ofearlier authors such as Ibn Qutayba (d. 884) in hisAdab al-k atib(Conduct

for Secretaries). His presentation of Arabic language follows the standardtreatment of the subject. It is broken down for analysis in three ways: firstinto sound (lafz.) and idea (mana), then into single (mufrad) and composite(tal f) elements, and finally into literal (haq qa) and figurative (maj az) usage.Ibn al-Athr discusses style by identifying figures of speech like paronomasia(tajns) or metaphor (isti ara) and then citing examples in poetry or prose.This sort of presentation was fairly standard and goes back toKit ab al-bad by the poet and caliph Ibn al-Mutazz (d. 908). Finally, as we noted in thenaqd works, plagiarism was a common measure for evaluating a poet; while

Ibn al-Athr may explain this topic differently, he does not really change theterms of the debate.

Accordingly, Ibn al-Athr does not create new topics or structure for criticaldiscussion. Rather, his contribution lies in the independent and argumenta-tive attitude he displays throughout his work. One of the areas in which this



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attitude is apparent is his discussion of sound (lafz.) as an element of style.The dichotomy of sound and idea had been a sort of fault line which split the

critical community. Some early authors, such as al-Jah. iz.(d.868

9

), made thefairly intuitive argument that the essential beauty of poetry lay in the waythe poem sounded and so in itslafz. . Later and more analytical authors, how-ever, argued that, all by itself,lafz. was neither good nor bad. Rather, it was inthema an (ideas) conveyed bylafz. that the real beauty of a poem lay. By thetwelfth century this second position had become fairly standard.

The notion thatma an were the most important part of style led schol-ars to take less interest in the actual sound of poetry, and it was this ten-dency to which Ibn al-Athr objected. He did not argue for the primacy of

lafz.; by his time the idea that good poetry consisted of nice-sounding wordswould have been fairly unsophisticated. Rather, he argued that the audienceshould pay closer attention to the way poetry sounded. Towards this endhe outlined some general aesthetic principles for the sound of Arabic words:he specified that phrases in which most of the consonants had no vowels

were unappealing and that words whose consonants were all enunciated inthe same part of the mouth (i.e. all labials, dentals or palatals) sounded worsethan those with consonants pronounced in different ways.8 These arguments

did not originate with Ibn al-Athr, but his inclusion of them within his writ-ings represented a check on those who would completely discount the auralelement of poetry.

A more striking example of Ibn al-Athrs challenge to the status quo washis argument that prose was superior to poetry. In his first work on style,al-J ami al-kabr, he cites a number of reasons for this. He points out firstthat official correspondence, not to mention the Koran, uses prose rather thanpoetry. He further explains that pre-Islamic Arabs produced a lot of poetry but

little prose, thus suggesting that prose was the more difficult, and so superior,medium. In a similar vein Ibn al-Athr points out that the prose writer mustunderstand the disciplines that govern the Arabic language, while the poetmay be ignorant of these. Finally, he claims that poetry may be made intoprose (a common topic in manuals on style), but prose may not be madeinto poetry. This shows, he suggests, that prose possesses some special quality

which the poet cannot replicate.9

Ibn al-Athr argues the same position in al-Mathal al-s air,10 anditisobviousthat his arguments are not being discussed purely on a theoretical plane. After

all, the author was himself a consummate prose writer, and thus we would

8 Ibn al-Athr,Mathal, vol. I, p. 172.9 Ibn al-Athr,J ami, pp.736.

10 Ibn al-Athr,Mathal, vol. IV, p.5.



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expect him to argue that his metier was the best. It is still striking, however, tofind one of the major critical voices of the post-classical period arguing that

prose was better than poetry. We may probably attribute this to the same guildmentality that had motivated thekutt abclass to advertise their talents sincethe days of al-Jah. iz.. (See Musawis contribution in this volume, Chapter 5.)Nevertheless, the fact that Ibn al-Athr makes his arguments in such clear andexplicit terms shows that by the thirteenth century the image of prose-writinghad progressed significantly.

Another indication of the raised profile of prose is Ibn al-Athrs discussionof rhymed prose (saj). Although earlier writers had referred to saj, Ibn al-

Athr claims he is the first to explain the style in detail. Most importantly, he

discusses the periods ofsaj, explaining that in the best style they are of equallength,11 like this verse from the Koran:

wal- adiy ati d.abh.anfal-muriy ati qadh.anfal-mugh r ati s.ubh.anfa-atharna bihi naqanfa-wasatna bihi jaman (Adiy at,vv.15)

By the [steeds] that run, with panting [breath]

And strike sparks of fire,And push home the charge in the morning,And raise the dust in clouds the while,And penetrate forthwith into the midst [of the foe]en masse12

It is interesting to note that the equal periods which Ibn al-Athr praiseshere serve to lend this passage the rhythms of verse. Although shorter, thephrase here is like a very short line (bayt) of poetry; so the section (e.g. thefirst three lines of Sura100,Adiy athere) thus reads like a short monorhyme

poem. Accordingly, Ibn al-Athr has imposed the traditional form of poetryon his aesthetics ofsaj, and one might well be tempted to ask whether theauthor really sees any difference between poetry and prose. It would appearhowever that he did, in that he refers to sajas an element of prose rather thanthe constituent quality of the best prose. He compares sajto internal rhyme(tars.) in poetry.

13 Internal rhyme may add elegance to a poem, but, like otherfigures of speech, it should be used sparingly. Thussajfor Ibn al-Athr is anornament to prose.

His ideas on prose itself are a bit more difficult to pin down, but we canget some sense of them from the way he compares prose to poetry. As we have

11 Ibid., vol. I, p. 55.12 Koran, tr. Yusif Ali (Brentwood,1989), p.1,684.13 Ibn al-Athr,J ami, p. 254.



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already mentioned, Ibn al-Athr thought prose required a more thoroughunderstanding of language than poetry. On another occasion he claims that,

in Arabic, prose allows for extended presentations, while poetry does not. Itis interesting to note that Ibn al-Athr claims this is not true for all poetry,but only for Arabic. The Persian poet Firdaws, he observes, has no problemrecounting the long tale of that nations history in verse.14

In general Ibn al-Athr believed the same rules of style and decorum appliedequally to poetry and prose. At the same time, however, it would seem thathe considered prose to be a more flexible medium than poetry and one which

was more appropriate for complex thought. Ibn al-Athr also clearly believedthat the prose writer practised his craft with more conscious intention than

the poet, since he points out in various places that the prose writer needsto understand Arabic grammar, while the poet does not. While these ideasare not really new, what is different is that Ibn al-Athr claims so explicitlythat prose is superior to poetry. The claim is perhaps overstated for rhetoricalpurposes, but nonetheless it shows a recognition that not only the genre ofpoetry but also the skills of the poet were limited. Thus, we hear from Ibnal-Athr the fairly explicit argument that poetry was no longer the only diw anof the Arabs and that the poet was no longer their only spokesman.

As we have already mentioned, the work of Ibn al-Athr displays a criticalattitude that is almost aggressive. It is not surprising then that other writersresponded to his statements with works of their own. The Baghdadi scholarIbn Abl-H.add (d. 1257), for instance, wrote al-Falak al-d air al al-mathalal-s air(The Star that Eclipses the Prevailing Standard) while Ibn al-Athr wasstill alive because he thought Ibn al-Athr had dismissed the work of otherscholars too easily.15 About a century later the Egyptian scholar Khall ibn

Aybak al-S. afad (d.1363) wroteNus.rat al-thair al al-mathal al-s air(Helping

One Who Rebels Against the Prevailing Standard) because he found Ibnal-Athr to be proud and arrogant.16

Ibn Abl-H.add and al-S. afad do not make the sort of broad critical pointsthat Ibn al-Athr himself made in his response to Ibn al-Dahhaninthe Istidr ak.Rather, they go throughal-Mathal al-s airpoint by point and rebut or qualifyIbn al-Athrs positions on very specific issues. They criticize, for instance,his interpretation of certain lines of poetry or his use of specific grammaticalterms. In this wayal-Falakand Nus.rat al-thairare quite similar to the mainintellectual products of this period, namely, commentary (sharh./h.ashiya) and

rebuttal (radd), in which authors take texts apart word by word and line by

14 Ibn al-Athr,Mathal, vol. IV, p.11.15 Ibn Abl-H.add,al-Falak, vol. IV, p.32.16 al-S. afad,Nus.rat al-thair, p.42.



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line. Ibn Abl-H.add and al-S. afad use pedantic analytical methods to attacka colleague whose own attacks they found indecorous. They do not, however,

make any substantial critical arguments.

lateradabiwriters

Authors continued to write adab-type works until the end of the sixteenthcentury; they vary in both scope and approach. Some authors described thesocial context in which poetry was delivered and ignored issues of style andlanguage. InThamar at al-awr aq(Fruits of the Pages), for instance, the Syrianscholar Ibn H.ijja al-H.amaw (d. 1434) collected stories that recounted the

circumstances under which poets recited particular lines or passages. In thisway his presentation resembles that of al-Is.fahansKit ab al-aghan(The Bookof the Songs).

A more particular example of this sort of presentation is the Egyptian Alal-Azds (d. 1216) Bad ai al-bad aih (Striking Instances of ExtemporaneousVerse) in which the author collects stories of poets who composed poetryextemporaneously. This sort of composition was calledirtij alor bad ha, andal-Azd divides instances of it into five categories. The first includes passages in

which the poet composes a poem in answer to a question (bad aih al-ajwiba).In the second the poet completes a line started by another poet (bad aih al-ij aza). Under the third category al-Azd looks at instances in which poetscompose a poem together with one composing the first hemistich (mis.r a) ofeach line and the other composing the second. Under the fourth category helooks at poems on the same subject and rhyme, and under the fifth he covers

whatever examples did not fit under the first four. Earlier authors had referredtoirtij alandbad ha, but al-Azd was the first to categorize this sort of poetry.

While al-H.amaw and al-Azd were concerned with context, most of theircolleagues were more concerned with the text itself. Accordingly, most lateradab works discussed style and poetics exclusively, and they did so in twobasically different ways. Some, like Ibn al-Athr, focused on style. In al-Iks r

f ilm al-tafs r(The Elixir on Hermeneutics), for instance, Sulayman al-T.uf(d.1316) considers most of the topics covered in al-J ami al-kabr. He beginsby outlining the disciplines one must understand in order to study poetry andprose. Then he describes the dichotomy oflafz. andmana, the definition ofeloquence (bal agha/fas ah.a) and finally the various figures of speech.

In all of this al-T.uf follows Ibn al-Athr very closely. He even takes upthe issue of whether prose is superior to poetry. What is interesting aboutthe Iks r, however, is that al-T.uf puts all of this into the context oftafs r,the interpretation of the Koran. He compares tafs rto taw land points outthat while both activities involve interpretation,tafs ris specifically concerned



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with the interpretation of language. Accordingly, we might assume theIks rwill tell us how to interpret the Koran. It does so indirectly but it says much

more about Arabic style.Otherauthors focused more on the poetics exclusive to poetry. In al-Miy ar fnaqd al-ash ar(The Yardstick for Criticizing Poetry), for instance, Muh. ammadal-Andalus (d.1596) outlines the basic elements of poetry. He identifies themessentially as prosody and figures of speech and argues that one must under-stand both in order to judge between one poem and another. Al-Andalus stitle and presentation are a very conscious echo of two earlier Arab worksof criticism, namely, Iy ar al-shir (The Gauge of Poetry) by Ibn T.abat.aba(d.934) andKit ab naqd al-shir(The Book for Criticizing Poetry) by Qudama

ibn Jafar (d. 948), in which the earlier authors set out to do more or less thesame thing.

It is interesting to compare the Miy arwith al-T.ufs Iks r. Both authorscover the figures of speech in roughly the same way. What distinguishes them,however, is the fact that al-T.uf discusses the figures in the context of Arabicgrammar, while al-Andalus considers them in the context of Arabic prosody.This was in many ways the distinction between works concerned generally

with style and those concerned more with poetry. Those authors who focused

on poetry looked at bad and prosody; those interested in style in generallooked atbad and Arabic grammar.

TheMiy arconsiders poetics strictly in terms of the most tangible aspectof poetry, namely, language and sound. Other authors, however, consideredthe creative process more broadly. InMuqaddima f s.ina at al-naz. m wal-nathr(The Introduction to the Art of Poetry and Prose), for instance, Muh. ammadal-Nawaj (d. 1455) makes several points about composition. He advises thepoet to write when he is in a good mood and collect whatever ideas occur to

him. Then he gives this step-by-step programme for composition:Decide [first] on the opening and closing (al-mabdawal-maqta) because this is thehardest part of a poem. [Then, independently] choose the content of the letter or theform (masabb) of theqas.dabecause it will be easier [to do this first]. [Then] put [theopening and body of the text] together first, and edit it second. Editing consists ofreviewing discourse (kal am) after you have said it whether this is poetry or prose. 17

The basic advice here is nothing new. Earlier authors (e.g. Ibn al-Rashq)had stressed the importance of the opening line and suggested that poets first

composed lines separately and then strung them together. What is interest-ing in al-Nawajs instructions, however, is the emphasis he places on editing.Earlier authors had identified editing as an important part of composition,

17 al-Nawaj,Muqaddima, p. 31.



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but did not describe the process at length. Al-Nawaj, on the other hand,specifies that editing consists of changing words, omitting sections and clari-

fying obscure passages. He then goes on to recount the stories of various poetsand the manner in which they edited their work. All of this stands, of course,in sharp contrast to the notion of extemporaneous poetry (irtij al), which wesaw in al-AzdsBad ai, and the image of the poet tossing out lines extempo-raneously and thus without review. Given the complexity of classical poetry,the situation described by al-Nawaj seems closer to the truth.

Although al-Nawaj makes some interesting points about composition, theMuqaddimais a fairly short work. A much more comprehensive example oftheadabworks that focus on poetry isNad.rat al-ighr d. f nus.rat al-qar d. (The

Splendour of the Blossom on the Victory of Poetry) of the Baghdadi scholarAbu Al al-H.usayn (d. 1258). Nad.rat al-ighr d. is divided into five sections.Al-H.usayn calls the first onewas.f al-shir wa-ah.k amuhu(the description andrules of poetry). In it he covers the main topics of Arabic style such as thedefinition of eloquence, the distinction between literal and figurative usage,and the figures of speech. The second section is devoted to d.ar ur at al-shir(poetic licence), the non-standard usage that helps poets meet the demandsof rhyme and metre. The third section, entitledfad.l al-shir(pre-eminence of

poetry), is an apologia in which al-H.usayn defends poetry from the traditionalreligious criticism based on the Korans censure of poets. The fourth sectionis calledmah.asin al-shir wa-uy ubuhu(faults and virtues of poetry) and coversgood and bad points about poetry; while the last one, entitled adab al-shair(the conduct of a poet), considers generally how a poet should compose poetryand how a critic should judge it.

Because Nad.rat al-ighr d. is so comprehensive it is useful to compare itto Ibn al-Athrs al-Mathal al-s air. Al-H.usayns first section, for instance,

corresponds generally to Ibn al-Athrs discussion of style. They differ, how-ever, in the fact that Ibn al-Athr bases his discussion on the grammaticaldistinction between single and composite elements (mufrad/tal f), while al-H.usayn does not organize his presentation according to grammatical cate-gories. Accordingly, Ibn al-Athr shows a greater knowledge of grammaticalanalysis than al-H.usayn. This is interesting because Ibn al-Athr often com-plains that grammarians do not understand poetry. Apparently, his hostilityto the grammarians attitude towards literary texts did not prevent him fromlearning their methods.

The subject of al-H.usayns second section,d.ar ur at al-shir, is absent fromal-Mathal al-s air. This is not surprising since the d.ar ur atwere an issue onlyto poets, and Ibn al-Athr makes the point repeatedly that he is interested ineloquence wherever it appears, not only in poetry. For this reason he does notfeel compelled to defend poets from religious criticism (although he certainly



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would not have supported it), as al-H.usayn does, nor is he very muchconcerned with the way poetry is written, which al-H.usayn considers at

length. Finally, Ibn al-Athr argues that prose is superior to poetry, while al-H.usayn, though never claiming that one is better than the other, is clearlymore interested in poetry.

Ibn al-Athr and al-H.usayn represent two different sensibilities in theapproach to criticism in the post-classical period. If we may introduce anotherimage to help classify critical works, let us place these works on a scale thatmeasures the authors interest in grammar. Accordingly, a work like al-Nawaj s

Muqaddimawould lie at the lower end of that scale since al-Nawaj does notconsider any grammatical issues. We could placeNad.rat al-ighr d. farther up

the scale since al-H.usayn deals slightly with grammar in his discussion ofstyle. Then, we could place the work of Ibn al-Athr still farther up the scalesince he places style firmly in a grammatical context.

We shall see the top end of this grammatical scale in the works onbal aghawhich will be considered below.

bal agha

Works onbal aghaare an important part of the critical tradition. In terms ofthe topics that they cover, bal aghaworks are quite similar to adab works. Bothdiscuss definitions of eloquence and describe the figures of speech. But whileadab authors focus on the special form of language that is characteristic ofpoetry and fine prose,bal aghaauthors are concerned more with the semanticsof communication.Adab authors are interested only in what has been said

well, whilebal aghaauthors are interested in the way things are said in general.The basis forbal aghain the post-classical period is the works of Abd al-

Qahir al-Jurjan, namelyAsr ar al-bal agha and Dal ail al-ij az. Al-Jurjan isperhaps the most important critic of the position that the beauty of poetry layin its sound (lafz.). InDal ail al-ij az, for instance, al-Jurjan argued that it wasnot the way an expression sounded that mattered, but rather the ideas (ma an )it conveyed. For al-Jurjan those ideas included every nuance of expression.Did the author use an independent pronoun in addition to a conjugated verb?Did they place the subject before the predicate or the predicate before thesubject? Did they repeat anything for emphasis? Al-Jurjan argued that it wasin the arrangement (naz. m ) of these ideas, which were essentially grammatical

structures, that eloquence lay.18

Al-Jurjan also criticized the importance oflafz. in his concept ofmana al-mana, the idea of the idea. InAsr ar al-bal aghahe points out that figurative

18 al-Jurjan,Dal ail al-ij az,passim, e.g. p.81.



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expressions do not rely only on grammatical structures, but also on ideationalones. For example, the poet might say he has a gaunt, young camel, in orderto suggest that he is generous. The poet can do this because the expressiongaunt, young camel conveys a nexus of ideas. It suggests the young camelhas not been fed because its mother has been slaughtered, that the mother hasbeen slaughtered in order to feed the poets guests, and finally that the poethas a lot of guests because he is generous. Accordingly, the real message andeloquence of gaunt, young camel has nothing to do with the meaning of the

words themselves, but with the associated images they imply. Al-Jurjan usesthe concept ofmana al-manaas the basis for his discussion of simile andfigurative language.19

Thebal aghaauthors of the post-classical period organized al-Jurjans ideasin order that they might be more easily taught. One of the first to do this

was Fakhr al-Dn al-Raz (d. 1209) inNihayat al-j az f dir ayat al-ij az(TheHeight of Concision in the Study ofIj az). Perhaps the most important pointto notice here is that al-Raz puts al-Jurjans ideas into the context ofij az al-qur an. Although al-Jurjan had referred toij azand certainly placed it in one

works title, he did not discuss the subject at any length. Al-Raz, on the otherhand, considers the inimitability of the Koran in detail and ties al-Jurjans

ideas to this discussion rather than analyses of poetry. Later authors did thesame, and, as result, we find that students ofij azmade more use of al-Jurjans

work than students of literature.Al-Raz organized al-Jurjans discussion around the idea of single (mufrad)

and composite (jumal) elements. He placed the grammatical constructionsal-Jurjan considered in his discussion ofnaz. m under the heading of compositeelements, sincenaz. minvolved several grammatical features working together.

Al-Raz placed the figurative usage (e.g. metonymy and metaphor) that al-Jurjan included in his discussion ofmana al-manaunder the heading ofsingle elements because the meaning of phrases like gaunt, young camelhad nothing to do with grammatical relationships. Expressions like this weregrammatically independent; their meaning was linked to other elements atthe level of ideas and so did not depend on grammatical structures.

Within this single/composite organization al-Raz included some subjectswhich al-Jurjan did not discuss. These were what we might call the minorfigures of speech (mah.asin al-kal amorbad ), like antithesis (t. ibaq) or inter-nal rhyme (tars.). Al-Jurjan focused his attention on metaphor, simile and

metonymy because of the way these figures could generate a complex nexusof images. Many other authors, however, treated all the figures the same anddevoted as much attention to a relatively minor figure like internal rhyme(tars.) as to metaphor. Al-Jurjan criticized this sort of presentation and left

19 Ibid., p.308.



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bad out of his work all together. For his part, al-Raz acknowledges that thebad categories are less significant than grammatical structures and figurative

language but maintains nevertheless that the figures are an important elementof Arabic style.20

About fifty years after al-Raz another author tried to distil the work ofal-Jurjan. This was the aforementioned al-Sakkak (d.1229) whoseMift ah. al-ul umhas a much broader scope than Nihayat al-j az. Al-Sakkak divides the

Mift ah. into three chapters: the first describes morphology (s.arf); the secondis on grammar (nah.w), and the third presents ilm al-ma an (the study ofsyntactical subtlety) and ilm al-bay an(the study of figurative usage), whichis the material based on al-Jurjan and al-Raz. The inclusion of this material

with morphology and grammar shows that al-Sakkak intended theMift ah. asa sort of encyclopedia for Arabic semantics. This is different from al-Razspresentation inNihayat al-j aznot to mention al-Jurjans approach inDal ailal-ij azandAsr ar al-bal agha.

Al-Sakkaks ilm al-ma an and ilm al-bay an correspond roughly to al-Razs sections onjumaland mufradrespectively, but the later author organizesthis material according to different principles. Al-Sakkak first distinguishesilm al-ma an from grammar, both of which consider grammatical struc-

tures. He explains that the grammarian is interested in normative usage andso is concerned only with making a phrase grammatically correct. The stu-dent of ilm al-ma an, on the other hand, is concerned with whether thephrase is appropriate to a particular situation and whether it is well or poorlysaid.21

Al-Sakkak goes on to distinguish ilm al-ma an from ilm al-bay an. Ilm al-ma anis based on the literal use of language and so is governed by grammaticalstructures which are not open to interpretation. The use of a separate pronoun

with a conjugated verb, for instance, must always convey a sense of emphasis.Ilm al-bay an, on the other hand, is concerned with the nexus of ideas thatal-Jurjan described as mana al-mana. These ideas have no literal referent,and so understanding the meaning of figurative language is open to a certainamount of discussion. In al-Sakkaks words the subject ofilm al-bay anis theconveying of one idea in a number of ways (r adat mana w ah.id bi-t.uruqmukhtalifa). What he means is that grammatical rules do not governilm al-bay an, and so there is less certainty in explaining what figurative expressionsmean.22

Accordingly, ilm al-bay an isthestudyoftherelationshipsbetweenideasthatconvey meaning in figurative language. Perhaps the most important of these

20 al-Raz,Nihayat, p. 21.21 al-Sakkak,Mift ah. , p. 161.22 Ibid., p.162.



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relationships is similarity since this governs the imagery that lies at the heart ofpoetry and prose. Al-Sakkak acknowledges the importance of similarity and

devotes the first part ofilm al-bay anto analysing it. The section is essentiallya collection of the rules and principles that govern comparison. Al-Sakkaknotes, for instance, that subjects are normally compared with something that ismore prominent; thus the poet may compare the red in a womans cheeks withthe more prominent red of a rose. At the same time, however, poets often breakthese rules in order to challenge their audience with a more striking image. Inone line, for example, al-Sakkak notes that the poet has compared the stars tothe life of the prophet. He observes that it would have been more conventionalto compare the prophets life to the stars since the stars are tangible and so easier

to understand than the concept of someones life which can be understoodonly intellectually. The poet has reversed the standard order, however, in orderto produce a more striking line.23

Al-Sakkaks definitions ofilm al-ma an and ilm al-bay an became the basisforthelater bal aghatradition. In the fourteenth century the Damascene authorKhat.b Dimashq al-Qazwn (d. 1338) summarized al-Sakkaks presentationinTalkhs.al-mift ah. (The Summary of the Key). Al-Qazwn began theTalkhs.

with a prolegomenon in which he defined eloquence and linked it toma an

andbay an. He then divided the body of his work into three chapters, namely,ilm al-ma an, ilm al-bay anandilm al-bad (the study of rhetorical figures).

Al-Sakkak, like al-Raz, had considered thebad but not made the figures apart of his system. Al-Qazwn does not define thebad any differently fromal-Sakkak and al-Raz, but the manner of his presentation serves to raise theirstatus. In theTalkhs., ilm al-bad take its place as a full partner alongside ilmal-ma an andilm al-bay anin the study of style.

The study ofma an, bay an and bad became known as ilm al-bal agha,

and it is the formal establishment of this trivium that is al-Qazwns maincontribution to Arabic letters. It is important to note, however, that al-Qazwndoes more than formalize a curriculum that already existed. He also shiftsthe emphasis of that curriculum, and the raised profile of the bad is oneindication of this. Another is the fact that al-Qazwndoesnotincludeasectiononij az al-qur anin theTalkhs. and closes the work with a short section onliterary plagiarism. All of this shows a marked shift from the presentation intheMift ah. . Al-Sakkak had consideredma an andbay anas part of a generalsemantic system and so removed the discussion from the context of style andpoetry. Al-Qazwn, however, returns the discussion to a more literary footing.He bringsilm al-bal aghacloser to the concerns of poets and critics.

23 Ibid., p.343.



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Al-Qazwn was not the only one to present the topics ofilm al-bal agha. Inthe thirteenth century, for instance Abd al-Wah. id ibn al-Zamlakan (d.1253)

wroteal-Tiby an f ilm al-bay an(The Exposition for the Study of FigurativeUsage) in which he divides the material more or less along the lines of al-Raz.Shortly after Ibn al-Zamlakan, the grammarian Badr al-Dn ibn Malik (d.1287) wroteal-Mis.bah. (The Lamp) which followed the organizing principlesof al-Sakkak.

Then, in the fourteenth century, two other authors tried their hand atthe task. In Yemen Yah. ya ibn H.amza al-Muayyad al-Alaw (d. 1346) wroteal-T.ir az(The Adornment for the Secrets of Eloquence and the Sciences ofIj az), while Muh. ammad ibn Bahadur al-Zarkash (d. 1393) composed al-

Burhan f ul um al-Qur an(The Proof for the Sciences of the Koran) in Egypt.The Burhan is a fairly general work in which the author includes varioussubjects connected with Koranic studies. Al-Zarkash includes topics fromilm al-bal agha, but his work is not devoted exclusively to style. TheT.ir azofal-Muayyad, on the other hand, focuses on bal aghaand specifically, as thetitle suggests, on the ideas of al-Jurjan in theAsr arandDal ail al-ij az. Al-Muayyad follows generally the organization of al-Raz and Ibn al-Zamlakan,but his presentation is more substantial. He takes great pains to define his

terminology and is particularly interested in the topic of hyperbole and theissue of how far a poet may stray from the truth.

Like al-Raz, Ibn al-Zamlakan and al-Muayyad tried to organize the ideasof Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjan so that students might digest them more easily. Few,however, had the chance to see their work because by the fifteenth century twoscholars from central Asia, namely al-Sayyid al-Sharf al-Jurjan (d.1413) andMasud ibn Umar al-Taftazan (d.1389), had written a series of commentarieson al-QazwnsTalkhs. and al-SakkaksMift ah. that became extremely influ-

ential and served to monopolize the study of ilm al-bal agha. Al-Jurjan andal-Taftazans work became the basis for hundreds of glosses, supercommen-taries, epitomes and versifications. This body of scholarship, based ultimatelyon al-Sakkaks organization of theMift ah. , became the main curriculum forliterary studies in the pre-modern Islamic world.

the bad

The incorporation ofilm al-bad within ilm al-bal aghareflects the impor-

tance of thebad in the discussion of Arabic style. In the early Islamic periodthe termbad was used to refer to elements of poetry that seemed new orstriking and thus attracted attention. In Kit ab al-bad , for instance, Ibn al-Mutazz refers to certain types of abstract imagery and wordplay as bad because they marked a departure from the more straightforward style of older



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poets. Accordingly, in the early period the bad categories were a sort of bell-wether for literary taste. As time went on, however, the literary community

came to assume that poetry would include striking turns of phrase and ceasedto be startled by them. Scholars simply catalogued bad figures and definedthem with ever increasing precision. In this waybad ceased to be an indica-tor of literary sensibility and became more like the compulsory programmein figure skating or gymnastics. It was something the audience came to expectand poets felt compelled to provide.

Critics in the post-classical period consideredbad in a number of ways.First, as we have just seen, bad elements were included in bal aghaworks,but the most important figures that is, metaphor, metonymy and simile

were treated as part ofilm al-bay an. The situation was similar inadabworks.Althoughadabauthors did not consider simile and metaphor separately fromthe other figures, bad was still not the focal point of their discussion. Authorslike Ibn al-Athr did consider them; like many authors, he referred to them asmah.asin al-shir(the fine points of poetry), but only as one of many criticaltopics.

A few authors devoted entire works to bad . At the end of the twelfthcentury, for instance, Usama ibn Munqidh (d. 1188) wroteal-Bad f l-bad

(The Striking [Work] on Rhetorical Figures) in which he covered ninety-five figures of speech. Usamas notion ofbad , however, is not very rigid ortechnical. In addition to the semantic or syntactical manipulation we usuallyassociate with figures of speech he also includes topics like what al-Mutanabbhas taken from Aristotle24 and plagiarism.25 Accordingly for Usamabad hasa more general sense: it is a general term for poetics.

The most extensive works devoted exclusively tobad areTah.r r al-tah.br film al-bad (Culling a Fair Composition on the Study of Rhetorical Figures)

andBad al-Qur an(Rhetorical Figures in the Koran) by the Egyptian authorIbn Abl-Is.ba (d. 1256). The work of Ibn Abl-Is.ba tells us a lot about thedevelopment of writing onbad . First, the author tells us that he has arrangedhis presentation around Qudama ibn JafarsKit ab naqd al-shirand Ibn al-Mutazzs Kit ab al-bad because these are the bases (us. ul) for criticism andbad .26 Then he goes through an extensive list of other sources which includenot only works on thebad but poetry and prose in which the figures appear.Finally, Ibn Abl-Is.ba goes through the bad elements themselves. In theTah.r rhe considers 130figures, whileBad al-Qur ancovers a few less since

Ibn Abl-Is.ba can leave out here whatever has to do with rhyme or metre.

24 Usama,al-Bad , p. 370.25 Ibid., p.264.26 Ibn Ab l-Is.ba,Bad , p.13.



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of their aesthetic. It is a highly precious and self-conscious demonstrationof wit.

the philosophical approach

Like many of the medieval disciplines, ilm al-bal aghahas been seen as dis-playing signs of Greek influence. Al-Sakkak, for instance, probably owes hismethods of categorization in the Mift ah. ultimately to the importation ofGreek ideas. The author himself, however, certainly did not read Plato and

Aristotle. Whatever contact there was between Arab scholars and Greek texts

had taken place long before, and by the time of al-Sakkak Greek thought hadbeen pretty much absorbed into the Muslimpaideia.

The Muslim philosophical tradition (falsafa) presents, of course, an excep-tional case.Falsafaauthors made quite conscious use of Greek ideas and wereinterested in explaining Greek thought in Greek terms. In the field of crit-icism in particular this meant that philosophers like al-Farab (d. 950) andIbn Sna (Avicenna) (d. 1037) were content to use Aristotles own examplesto explain arguments from thePoeticsandRhetoric. They made little effort to

apply Aristotles ideas to issues established inadabandbal aghaor to illustratetheir presentations with examples from Arabic poetry. For this reason philo-sophical criticism must have seemed particularly obscure to people raised onal-Mutanabb and al-Jah. iz..

The post-classical period, however, is marked by a greater effort to makeGreek ideas on criticism more meaningful to an Arab audience. The Talkhs.kit ab al-shir(The Summary of [Aristotles] Poetics) by Ibn Rushd (Averroes)(d. 1198) is a good example of this. At the beginning of the Talkhs. Averroesspeaks in terms that would probably have been familiar only to philosophers,

but by the end of the work he uses terms that students ofadaband bal aghawould be able to understand.

Averroes proposes to consider Aristotles comments on panegyric (mad h.)since he claims this is the main part of the poetics that has come down tohim.30 He begins by explaining that poetry has three constituent elements,namely,muh.ak a (mimesis), wazn (metre) and lah.n(song).

31 Of these threeterms wazn and lah.n would probably have been understood byadab andbal aghaauthors, butmuh.ak awould cause some problems. The termmuh.ak a

would probably not have been understood beyond thefalsafaaudience, and yetAverroes does not take much time to explain it. It will be interesting to compare

30 Ibn Rushd,Talkhs., p. 32.31 Ibid., p.57.



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his presentation in this regard with the Minhajof H.azim al-Qart.ajann, thenext work we will consider.

Averroes goes on to specify that panegyric, in particular, is made up ofsix elements. In addition to muh.ak a, wazn and lah.n it also includes ad at(character), itiq ad(believability) and naz. ar(demonstration).

32 The main ideahere is that the poet should refer to the character ( ad at) of the person he ispraising in a manner that is believable (itiq ad). Furthermore, the poet shoulddemonstrate (naz. ar) the character of his subject by describing things he hasdone. In explaining all of this, which takes up the first quarter of his Talkhs.,

Averroes makes no effort to demonstrate how these observations might applyto an Arab context by citing Arabic poetry. It is almost as if he realizes the

material is irrelevant to a traditional audience.In the rest of theTalkhis., however, Averroes proceeds differently. He advises

at several points that poets should use realistic descriptions in order to havethe greatest effect on their audience. He specifies that in some cases poetsuse similes to describe tangible objects, like a mountain or a womans face,and in others they use them to describe abstract concepts like justice or faith.In this part of his presentation Averroes begins to cite Arabic poetry andverses from the Koran to illustrate his discussion. The material presented

here would be very familiar to adab or bal aghaauthors. Such authors alsodistinguished those similes in which the terms of comparison were tangiblefrom others in which they were abstract; they would certainly have recognizedthe lines of al-Mutanabb and Abu Tammam that Averroes cites to illustratethis distinction.33

Averroes also considers Arabic style in a way that would satisfybad authors.Towards the end of the Talkhs., for instance, he brings up the notion of balance(muw azana) and points out that the poet may lend this quality to his work by

including related elements, like the sun and moon, night and day or bow andarrow.34 He goes on to claim that it is features like this and he names severalmore that distinguish poetic style from conventional. This is, of course, closeto the original notion ofbad in which Ibn al-Mutazz specified a number ofstriking elements that were particular to poetry. Averroes may use differentterms than the bad authors, but he would seem to have some of the samethings in mind.

About a century after Averroes, H.azim al-Qart.ajann (d. 1285) tried hishand at applying Aristotle to Arabic literature. Al-Qart.ajann was not pri-

marily a philosopher, but rather a scholar and litterateur with a good grasp

32 Ibid., p.69.33 Ibid., pp.924.34 Ibid., p.120.



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of Greek ideas on poetics. Accordingly, al-Qart.ajann does not write an epit-ome or commentary on thePoetics, but rather an independent work on style

which incorporates some of Aristotles ideas. That work, namely,Minhaj al-bulagha, is divided into four sections, and these are devoted to lafz. , mana,naz. m (structure) and usl ub (style) respectively. None of these are technicalphilosophical categories, and so, on the surface at least, theMinhajwould befamiliar to an audience of non-philosophers.

Al-Qart.ajanns section on lafz. has not survived. We can see from his sectionon ma an, however, that he is interested in issues very different from those thatinterested most Arab critics. For al-Qart.ajannma an are not grammaticalstructures, but rather the ideas themselves that authors use in their work. He

is really talking here about content, pure and simple, and he explores thisin a number of ways. Most importantly, he explains the concept of mimesis,something to which we have also seen Averroes refer. Al-Qart.ajann discussesthis at length. Generally, he tries to explain that the poets main activity is torepresent (muh.ak a) something to his audience in the same way that a sculptors

job is to make a statue in the form of his subject. He goes on to discuss howthe audience takes pleasure in hearing the description of something and howthat pleasure compares to seeing the thing in real life.

Al-Qart.ajann goes into the various mechanics of intellection and percep-tion that affect his notion of mimesis. At one point, however, he suggests thathis most effective argument is an image from nature:

One can only compare the best sort of mimesis in poetry to the best sort of imagery tobe found in nature. I would say [one of the] best images is . . . when a tree hangs over

water and its fruit and foliage are reflected in its clear surface. The juxtaposition of thestreams wooded banks and their reflection in the water is one of the most impressiveand pleasing sights. The mimetic quality in this is like the beautiful juxtapositionthat occurs when something that exists is placed next to its likeness in the manner of

figurative language in analogy or metaphor.35

Al-Qart.ajann considers other aspects of poetic content as well. He distin-guishesshir(poetry) fromkhit. aba(rhetoric) on the basis that the poets maingoal is to make his audience picture something (takhy l), while the rhetormust lay out proofs which convince (iqna) his audience that something istrue. Accordingly, al-Qart.ajann explains that the poet is not limited to truestatements in the way that the rhetor is. The poet may use false statements ifthey serve his purposes (i.e.takhy l) and seem to be true. This is why varioussorts of exaggeration, when appropriate, are permissible in poetry.

Much of what al-Qart.ajann discusses in the second part of the Minhajis inspired more by Hellenistic than Arab thought. There are still, however,

35 al-Qart.ajann,Minhaj, p. 127.



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a number of issues that non-philosophers could appreciate. Al-Qart.ajannsdiscussion of exaggeration, for instance, would certainly have been of inter-

est to other critics, even if they could not always follow some of his refer-ences to syllogisms. Furthermore, in considering mimesis he explains, likeAverroes, that it is easier to understand the description of tangible objectsthan of abstract concepts. This would be a very familiar argument tobal aghaauthors.

In the third and fourth sections of theMinhajal-Qart.ajann considers pla-giarism, the manner in which poets should compose poetry, and the demandsof rhyme and metre, which are all standard topics of critical discussion. Al-Qart.ajann may have a more analytical way of explaining these issues than

other authors, but the gist of his arguments is basically the same. All of thismakes the Minhaja fairly comprehensive work on criticism that can standalongside Ibn al-Athrsal-Mathal al-s airor al-H.usaynsNad.rat al-ighr d. as atextbook. Accordingly, al-Qart.ajannsMinhajis really less a work about Hel-lenistic poetics than a critical work which includes a section, albeit substantial,inspired by Aristotle.

Shortly after al-Qart.ajann two other authors show evidence of Hellenisticthought in their works. These are Abu Muh. ammad al-Sijilmas (d. 1304)

withal-Manza al-bad etc. (The Striking Course in Categorizing the Formsof the Rhetorical Figures) and Ah. mad ibn al-Banna (d. 1321) withal-Rawd.al-mar etc. (The Pleasant Garden on the Craft of the Rhetorical Figures).

As their titles imply, both of these works are essentially about thebad . Al-Sijilmas classifies the figures of speech under ten main categories (hence thereference totajnswhich can also mean classification) and then into varioussub-categories. Ibn al-Banna, on the other hand, breaks the figures up intotwo main groups. First, he considers those in which sounds correspond to their

intended meaning in an unusual way. This is similar to what other authors haveconsidered under figurative language. Then he discusses the way that groupsof sounds convey meaning and these are some of the same topics discussedunder the grammatical structures ofilm al-ma an.

The material in al-SijilmassManzaand Ibn al-BannasRawd. is essentiallythe same as what we see in other critical works under the heading ofbal agha,bay anorbad . What makes these works somewhat different, however, is the

way that these authors define poetry and explain simile and metaphor. Bothof them refer to poetry (i.e.shir) askal am mukhayyil(discourse that evokes

images) and use the terms ofmuh.ak a to discuss simile. Ibn al-Banna, inparticular, argues that the essential elements in poetry aretakhy landmuh.ak aandthat,assuch,poetrycanexistineitherverse(manz.um )orprose(manthur).He points out explicitly that he differs in this regard from other authors (hementions Ibn Sinan al-Khafaj (d.1074) here in particular) who claim that the



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requisite elements of poetry are rhyme and metre and that poetry and verseare the same thing.36

Ibn al-Bannas comments here reflect the main contribution of Hellenistic-inspired works to the Arab critical tradition. These authors affection for

Aristotle encouraged them to focus on the mimetic and imaginative functionsof poetry instead of the more formal properties of rhyme and metre. Sucha definition of poetry, however, never really caught on, and so the works ofal-Qart.ajann, al-Sijilmas and Ibn al-Banna remain outside the mainstreamin the post-classical period.

commentary

All of the authors we have considered up to this point devoted large parts oftheir work to citing examples of poetry and commenting on them in some way.Some writers devoted entire works to this activity, and so we see a fair numberof commentaries on poetry during this period. The commentary is indeed aquintessentially post-classical format. The back-and-forth between text andcommentator reflects both the central position texts held in the Middle Agesand the classroom environment in which they were studied.

During the post-classical period many authors wrote onshaw ahid, the var-ious examples of poetry that earlier writers had used to illustrate their argu-ments rather than focus on a single poet or work. For example, Abd al-Rah. mal-Abbas (d. 1555) and Jalal al-Dn al-Suyut. wrote commentaries on theshaw ahidcited in al-Qazwns Talkhs.. Although commentaries, al-Abbasand al-Suyut.s works were substantial in their own right and were actuallylonger than the works on which they were based.

Other scholars continued to write commentaries on individual poems or

pieces of prose. Most authors were particularly concerned with style and sowere drawn to the showytourdeforceofworkssuchastheMaq amatofal-H.arror theRis ala(Treatise) of the eleventh-century Spanish writer Ibn Zaydun (d.1070). For the most part these commentaries were fairly straightforward. Theycited a line of text and glossed or parsed its vocabulary and grammar. Thenthey explained what the line meant, and considered whatever figures of speechthe author had managed to fit into it. Finally, they cited similar lines fromother poets and considered whether one poet had plagiarized from the other.

These were the standard concerns of commentary.One work which stands out in all of this is al-Ghayth al-musajjam (TheFlowing Downpour) of Khall al-S. afad to whom we have already referred.

36 Ibn al-Banna,Rawd. , p. 82.



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Al-S. afad writes the Ghayth in order to gloss Lamiyyat al-ajam (The LamPoem of the Persians), a long poem by Muayyad al-Dn al-T.ughra (d.1121).

Like other authors, al-S. afad goes through the individual lines of al-T.ughraspoem, but his remarks go far beyond the typical commentators discussion. Al-S. afad opens with a substantial introduction which includes a short summaryof al-T.ughras life and a general apologia for literary study. His line-by-linecommentary is extensive and covers a great number of topics which range fromthe derivation of metre to the relationship between the imaginative processesin poetry and dreams.37 Accordingly,al-Ghayth al-musajjamis something of ascholars grab bag. Al-S. afadusesthetextofal-T.ughraspoemasaspringboardto consider a wide variety of literary issues.

prosody

As we have already mentioned, most critics considered rhyme and metre tobe the definitive elements of Arabic poetry. Although rules for these elements

were set by the eighth century, poets did not always conform to them, andso over time new verse forms developed. These new verse forms fall into twobasic groups. The first group includes forms like the muwashshah.a(adorned)

in which poets use proper, inflected Arabic (i.e. fus.h.a) in different rhymeschemes, while the second includes forms like thezajalin which poets did notuse standard Arabic. In the post-classical period we see the first critical worksdevoted to these new verse forms.

The first of these is Ibn Sana al-Mulks (d.1212)D ar al-t. ir az(The House ofEmbroidery). Ibn Sana al-Mulk is mainly concerned with themuwashshah.a,a strophic verse form as opposed to the standard monorhyme of the classical

Arabic qas.da. He claims that the most important part of the muwashshah.a

is the kharja (envoi), the last stanza of the poem, and that this may be ina language other than Arabic.38 About a century after Ibn Sana al-Mulk wefind al-Atil al-h.al wal-murakhkhas. al-ghal (The Plain [but] Adorned andthe Rigorous [yet] Relaxed [Verse]) of S. af al-Dn al-H.ill (d. 1349). Al-H.illrefers to themuwashshah. , but is more interested in forms like thezajalwhichuse colloquial Arabic. Finally, in the fifteenth century we see Ibn H.ijjal al-H.amawsBul ugh al-amaletc. (Reaching the Hope in the Art of the Zajal),

which deals with most of the same material considered by al-H.ill.The interesting aspect of these works lies in the authors attitudes toward

colloquial Arabic. While Ibn Sana al-Mulk is more interested in metre and

37 al-S. afad,al-Ghayth al-musajjam, vol. II, p. 243.38 Ibn Sana al-Mulk,D ar al-t. ir az, p. 43.



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rhyme than the form of the language, al-H.ill finds the non-standard languagemore interesting. He points out that thezajaland other verse forms vary from

region to region because of the different dialects that are used. He explains thateach dialect has its own music and beauty39 and describes the non-standardverse forms with a playfulness that seems to poke fun at the rigidity offus.h.a:

The inflection of the [non standard] forms may be sickly, their lofty diction (fas. ah.a)may be poor, and the sound they make may be weak. [In these forms] the inflectionthat is usually permitted is forbidden and the pronunciation that is usually healthybecomes sickly. The more profligate they are, the better; the less grammatical they are,the greater their craft. They are common, but difficult; they are low, but esteemed.They allow the illiterate to show up the learned [because] the learned would find itdifficult to practise them.40

Al-H.ill has his tongue firmly in cheek here. It is interesting, nonetheless,to consider the world he describes, a world in which, it would appear, fus.h.acounts for nothing and street-corner buskers have taken over the palace salons.It is, to be sure, a playful description, but it still suggests that al-H.ill recognizedtwo literary worlds, thefus.h.aand the colloquial. In his day the suggestion thatthe latter would unseat the former could be represented only as a sort of farce.

But his description of that farce, not to mention his own interest in thezajalform, may prefigure modern notions about the place of colloquial poetry.

conclusion: arabic letters in the eyes of ibn khaldun

TheMuqaddimaof Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) is a good reference point for anytopic in the Arabic tradition. In the MuqaddimaIbn Khaldun surveys notonly poetry and prose, but also the various disciplines that were used to study

them. Accordingly, by way of concluding let us compare some of Ibn Khaldunsobservations with our own.

Ibn Khaldun recognizes the three-part composition ofilm al-bal aghaandthe role of al-Sakkak in establishing this. He goes on to suggest that the studyofbal aghavaried from the eastern part of the Islamic world to the western.Scholars in the East (i.e. starting in Iraq and moving east) followed al-Sakkakand considered language as an entire system in which all parts should beconsidered together. Those in the West (i.e. Syria and North Africa), however,tended to look at striking turns of phrase (thebad ) exclusively and ignorethe basic grammatical elements that made up much of al-Sakkaks system.41

39 al-H.ill,At. il, p. 12.40 Ibid., p.6.41 Ibn Khaldun,Muqaddima, vol. IV, p.1,265.



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This observation, which has found its way into many modern historiesof Arab criticism, requires a certain amount of qualification. Ibn Khalduns

characterization of the eastern part of the Islamic world is fairly accuratesince the main authors in the bal aghatradition (i.e. al-Raz, al-Sakkak andal-Taftazan) all lived in central Asia. His characterization of works in the West,however, is somewhat misleading. For one thing, North Africa is perhaps bestrepresented by Hellenistic-inspired writers, such as al-Qart.ajann, and theclose analysis found in these authors was quite different from the discussioninbad works. For another, scholars in Egypt and Syria, who were responsiblefor almost half of all critical works in the post-classical period, were not inany way devoted exclusively to thebad . Rather, they produced a variety of

works that ranged from the bal aghawork of al-Qazwn to al-H.ills work onthezajal.

Ibn Khaldun is best known for his ideas on cyclical history, and in hisdiscussion of Arabic poetry he outlines a similar sort of cyclical movement.He suggests that in the pre-Islamic period poets were very good because poetry

was their main concern, but with the advent of Islam the quality of Arabicpoetry declined because people became more interested in issues of theologyand law. As these issues were settled, however, the Arabs turned their attention

once again to poetry, and so produced the classical poets of the Abbasid age. Itis only later that poetry goes into decline; to illustrate the process Ibn Khalduncites the overuse of thebad in his day.42

Ibn Khalduns arguments fit nicely within the periodization we see in criticalworks. It was fairly standard to divide Arabic poetry into pre-Islamic (j ahil )and Islamic and then a number of periods within the Islamic era. Ibn Khaldunscycles of pre-Islamic, early Islamic and developed Islamic match this pretty

well. The up-and-down movement of his cyclical explanation, however, is

unique. It differs from the traditional view that the Abbasid-period poets werenot as good as the j ahil ones, as well as from Ibn al-Athrs argument thatlater poets were actually better than their predecessors.

While Ibn Khaldun refers to a cycle of decline after Abbasid poetry, mostcritics do not refer to anything at all. As we have already mentioned, thereis a dearth of references in this literature to poets later than al-Mutanabb .This is particularly striking in works of critics from the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies which were separated from the salons of Sayf al-Dawla by morethan five hundred years. The only exceptions to this are anthology writers,

who collect later poetry but make few critical comments, and the thirteenth-century author Imad al-Dn Ibn al-Athr, to whom we have already referred.InKanz al-bar aa Imad al-Dn takes the classification of Arab poets up to

42 Ibid., pp.1,31214.



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Ayyubid times. The later poets to whom he refers, however, are exclusivelySyrian.43

In discussing poetry Ibn Khaldun makes one point again and again. Heargues that literary sensibility is not something that can be taught; rather itneeds to be acquired through practice and exposure to example. Accordingly,he suggests that learning poetry, whether to compose or appreciate it, is likelearning to speak a language. The student of Arabic, for example, may referto grammar books, but can only master the language by hearing it. Similarlythe poet or critic can only master the crafts of poetry and eloquence by longexposure to good literature. Such sentiments are fairly standard. Even anauthor like al-Sakkak, who was devoted to setting up systems and making

rules, allowed that it wasal-dhawq al-sal m(good taste) that mattered in theend. This position does, however, beg the question: if one could learn aboutliterature only by exposing oneself to it, then what was the point of talkingabout it? Indeed, what was the point of criticism?

For some authors the point was clearly to support their own positions andattack the positions of others. Ibn al-Athr, for example, wrote hisIstidr aktodefend the poetry of al-Mutanabb from the attacks of Ibn al-Dahhan andthen became the object of similar attacks because ofal-Mathal al-s air. This

sort of antagonistic criticism reflects the early phases in the emergence of anArab critical tradition. One of the first works in this tradition was, after all,theKit ab al-bad of Ibn al-Mu tazz, himself abad poet writing to defendthe use ofbad . In the same way Ibn al-Athr not only attacks the critics ofal-Mutanabb, but also argues that prose, which is his chosen medium, is reallysuperior to poetry. A century later al-H.ill defends thezajalform, which heused in addition tofus.h.a, and the use of colloquial. Thus for many authorscriticism served as an apology for their own work.

Other authors wrote to provide an archive for the Arab tradition. Sincepoetry was the d w anof the Arabs, many scholars wanted to establish andmaintain that d w an. In the beginning they collected entire poems, but astime went by, they focused on the highlights of those poems, namely, bad andplagiarism (sariq at). The bad iyyapoems, which marked the tastes of the post-classical period, offered in some ways the opportunity for scholars to includetheir own work in the Arab archive. The bad iyyawere ready-made classics.Not only were they filled to the brim with the figures of speech admired bythe tradition, but they came with their own commentaries and so their owncritical literature. Accordingly, the bad iyy atwere a sort of conversation in

which critics could respond to the tradition they studied.

43 Ibn al-Athr,Kanz al-bar aa, p. 442.



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Finally, some authors were not interested so much in the contents of theArabd w an, but in the medium. They were interested in the Arabic language

itself. To some extent this was due to the sacred quality that Arabic commandedby virtue of the Koran. To some extent it was also due to the fact that properArabic (fus.h.a) was, like Latin in Europe, an imposing monument of rules andforms that students had been conditioned to venerate. Whatever the reason,there is a clear fascination with language in many of these works. These authorsseldom tire of explaining the fine points of Arabic grammar or the syntax ofevery line of poetry. The systems ofilm al-ma an andilm al-bay anserved toextend syntax to intention and imagery, with the result that all aspects of thepoem could be parsed and explicated. For many authors this was enough. It

was enough to explain how the great engine of the Arabic language functioned.One can look at criticism in the post-classical period as a glass that is half

empty or half full. The focus of poets and critics on the bad , for instance, maybe seen either as the death knell of Arabic style or as a keen appreciation of thesubtleties of language. One might complain that mainstream critics did notappreciate the philosophers notion of mimesis or wonder at the similaritiesbetween the description of the imaginative process in al-Jurjans Asr arandal-Qart.ajannsMinhaj. One might lament the fact that Arab critics did not

refer to the rise of drama and prose narrative or see Ibn al-Athrs apology forprose and al-H.ills defence of colloquial poetry as a growing interest in newforms.

As we said at the outset, the post-classical period is mainly concerned withorganizing the heritage of the classical. If we give these authors the benefitof the doubt, however, we may recognize here also some harbingers of themodern period.

Cambridge

arabic literature in post-classical period ch19

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