Background, with Reference to the State of Arabic Poetry in the Twelfth/Eighteenth Century
In the course of our study of the intellectual life of Medina in the eleventh-twelfth/seventeenth-eighteenth centuries, we commenced in the third chapter with a brief overview of the intellectual life of other central Arab lands during the same period. This was followed by an examination of the important sources of education at that time, by means of which the Medinan intellectuals prepared themselves for the production of their written works in various literary fields. The examples of Medinan literary activity in the eleventh-twelfth/seventeenth-eighteenth centuries, which we took special note or, were works dealing with history and literary history. However, the Medinan intellectuals did also contribute to the literary aspect of Arabic and islamic culture by the production of some remarkable poetical compositions.
Before describing the activities of some well-known Medinan poets of the twelfth/eighteenth century, we must pause awhile to notice the state of Arabic poetry in general as it has been estimated by a number of critics. The twelfth/eighteenth century was a part of the literary age conveniently known as CAsr al-Mamālīk wa'l-CUthmāniyyīn, which started in 656/1258 (1), or CAsr al-duwal wa'l-imārāt, which started in 334/945, and continued down to the modern age (2). Some critics who look to the age from the point of view of the quality of its achievements, both in the field of Arabic language and its literature, it has also become known as the age of depression, as is explained by J.A. Haywood: "The literature of the Age of Depression was artificial and imitatives, lacking originality. In the prose, rhyme abounded. As for the poetry, much of which was eulogy, it was rhetorical in style and exaggerated in sentiment. Some poets included acrostics and chronograms in their poems" (3).
Nevertheless, in spite of this verdict of some critics regarding the decline of Arabic literature in the age of depression, we find others who have recognized some distinguished contributors to literature in this age. The critic Mārūn CAbbūd, for example, chose to mention Ibn al-Nahhās al-Halabī (4), CAbd Allāh al-Shabrāwī (5), and Ibn MaCtūq (6) as poets whose verses were marked by naturalness, harmony, and refinement (7). H.A.R. Gibb also points out other well-known contributors to poetic art in the course of his studies of Arabic language in the Ottoman period, where he states, "The outstanding figure in the Arabic literature of the Ottoman period was CAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1143/1731), not only for his theological and sufi treatises, but also as a poet and the originator of a new kind of mystical travel-literature in rhyming prose. Almost all the later 18th-century writers of Egypt and Syria came directly or indirectly under his influence, which reached even to the Maghrib" (8).
In his studies of the Egyptian writer Hasan al-CAttār (9), who was called the pionner (rā'id) of the literary renaissance (10), Muhammad CAbd al-Ghanī Hasan recorded the state of poetry and other genres of literature and science in the twelfth/eighteenth century in other Arab lands, but it seems that in his estimation it was in no better condition than it was in Egypt. He added, however, that in the same period (the eighteenth century), al-Sayyid JaCfar al-Saqqāf al-Baytī (11) did emerge as a writer of some eminence and became known as adīb Jazīrat al-Hujaz ("the man or letters of the eastern part of Arabia"). The later critic CAbd al-Rahīm Abū Bakr studied part of JaCfar al-Saqqāf al-Baytī's poetry and paid special attention to one of his eulogies (12) composed in honour of Sharīf MasCūd ibn saCīd (13), the Sharīf of Mecca. He concluded that al-Baytī was one of the best poets among his contemporaries in Hejaz during the twelfth/eighteenth century and he demonstrated how in his eulogy the poet sought to follow the example of one greatest CAbbāsid poets, Abū al-Tayyib al-Mutanabbī (14). Indeed, al-Baytī re-applied two different hemistiches of al-Mutanabbī's verse (15) in his own eulogy, viz.:
أشكُو إليه لَظَى قَلْبي ويبسمُ لي
واحَرَّ قَلْبَاه ممن قَلبُهُ شَبِمُ
لِي فيكَ معرفةُ القُربي أمتُّ بِها
إنَّ المعَارِفَ في أَهْلِ النُّهَي ذِمَمُ
("He is smiling at me while I complain to him about the blaze of my heart, Alas for a heart feverish on account of one whose heart is cold. I became related to you by way of Kinship and acquaintanceships are binding covenants for men of prudent minds").
If this imitation of some of al-Mutanabbī's lines by the eighteenth-century poet JaCfar al-Baytī is granted as an indication of poetic ability, we shall be reasonably justified in paying some particular attention to the role played by al-Baytī's verse in the revival of Arabic literature, not only in the Hejaz itself, but also throughout the Arabian Peninsula. His influence is not limited to the power of his eulogistic poems, the subjects of which range in his unpublished Dīwān from rulers like al-Imām Ahmad ibn al-Imām al-Qāsim ibn al-Husayn whom the poet visited in Yemen in 1149/1736 (16), to religious figures like CAbd Allāh ibn CAbbās (17) (the paternal uncle of the Prophet Muhammad)(18), and to the poet's contemporary intellectuals, such as Shaykh Zayn al-CĀbidīn al-Manūfī (19). Neither is it our concern here to discuss his elegiac poetry which he composed in honour of some members of the ruling family of the eighteenth-century Hejaz in which he lived, although we might notice in passing his elegies for al-Sharīf Humūd ibn CAbd Allāh ibn CAmr (who died in Medina) (20), and for his father Muhammad al-Baytī (who died in SanCā') (21) in which the poet pours out his heart through its sixty-five lines (22). However, the eulogy, the elegy, and erotic verse were the traditional subjects of poets throughout all ages of Arabic literature. We must ask ourselves the question whether, apart from these traditional genres of verse, there were any other significant genres through which the Medinan poet al-Baytī and others of his contemporaries were able to demonstrate their poetical talents in the twelfth/eighteenth century and what were the characteristics of this poetry? The answers to these questions form the subject matter of our study below.
CAbd Allāh ibn Muhammad CĀmirī ibn Sharaf al-Dīn al-Qāhirī al-ShafiCī was born in 1091/1680 and became Shaykh al-Azhar in 1137/1724 Among the books he wrote were Sharh al-Sadr bi-Ghazwat Ahl Badr, al-Ithāf bi-Ashrāf, and Diwān ShiCr. See M. al-MatbuCat, vol. I, p. 1099.
Shihab al-Dīnal-Musawī al-Huwayzī was a native of Basra, born in 1025/1616, and died in 1087/1676. Most of his poetical works were collected by his son called MaCtūq. (Al-AClām, vol. VIII, p. 179).
Al-CAttār, Hasan b. Muhammad, Egyptian scholar of Maghribine origin, boen in Cairo after 1180/1766. He studied at al-Azhar, and was one of the few Culama' who, after the occupation of Egypt by Bonaparte, entered into relations with the French scholars and took an active interest in the new learning… [He] died…in 1250/1835". (H.A.R. Gibb, art. "Al-CAttar", EI2, vol. I, p. 755).
The original lines of al-Mutanabbī, which he composed to reproach Sayf al-Dawla al-Hamdānī, were:
وَاحَرَّ قلباه ممَّنْ قلبُهُ شَبِمُ
ومَن بجسْمي وحَالي عِنْدُهُ سَقَمُ
وبَيننا لو رَعَيتُمْ ذَاكَ مَعْرِفةٌ
إنَّ المَعارِفَ في أهْلِ النُّهي ذِمَمُ
("Alas for a heart feverish on account of one whose heart is cold, and with whom there is a sickness in my body and estate… Between us-if only you were mindful of that - is an acquaintanceship, and acquaintanceships are pinding covenants for men or prudent minds". Tr. A.J. Arberry, Poems of al-Mutanabbī [Cambridge, 1967] p. 70, 74).
"CAbd Allah b. al-CAbbās… is considered one of the greatest scholars, if not the greatest, of the first generation of Muslims… He was born three years before the hidjra… [and] died… [in] 68/686-8 [in al-Tā'if]", (L. Veccia Vaglieri, art. "CAbd Allāh b. al-CAbbās", EI2, vol. I, p. 40f).
The personal experience of his father's death gave the poet the opportunity both express himself naturally and to choose the apropriate poetical form, whith its solid shape and majestic diction, through which to contain his experience, as is clear from the following extract:
وأصبح رَبْعُ العِزِّ بعدك بلقعا
وربع الأَسى والحزن مني عامِرُ
ولو نظرت عيناك يعدك ما دهى
أراملك الثّكلان، وهي سَوِافرُ
بواك يشققن القلوبَ تحرُّقاً
عليك بقلبٍ فاقد اللب حَائرُ
لبرّحك الحزن المغص لما ترى
ولكنما هيهات أنك نَاظِرُ
تركتهم في الأرض عولاً على الورى
وفرّقت الأموالَ عنك المفاخِرُ
سنبكيك حتى ينفدَ الدّمع والبُكا
وحتى توارينا لديكَ المَقَابِرُ
("After your departure, the home of glory became a wasteland which furnished me with sorrow and grief. If after your departure your eyes may look upon the bare estate which has been inflicted upon your bereaved ones - so full of wailing, with confused and desolate hearts bowed down at the sorrow of your death - the scene would agonize you with grief and pain; but it is impossible that you should ever be able to see that scene. Your quest for noble exploits kept you from material things, which led your bereaved ones to dependence on mankind in order to obtain them. Our tears at your departure are endless, until they run out and we are buried in our graves besided you"). (D. al-Baytī, p. 111).
شارع عبد المقصود خوجة
00966-12-6982222 - تحويلة 250
