Analysis of al-Baytī's Technique in Constructing this Epic Verse
The poet employed many literary devices in his work and our aim here is to indicate the methods he has used and how successfully he has applied them within the limits of his structure.
When we examine the way the poet has chosen or employed the words in his poem, we shall see that his aim was to express through the diction of his verse the fearful problems which his city was suffering. So in the first hemistich of the first line (1), he refers to Medina as al-Dār, thus resembling the city to a house, the guardian of which was absent. In the second line (2), he called the city Tayba ("the perfumed"), one of the names which the city gained after the Prophet settled in it, marking a new era in its history.
Further, in the second hemistich of the second line (3), al-Baytī takes us with him to view the city which is peacefully resting, when its citizens are suddenly terrified by the appearance of its enemies. He does not name these inimical people explicitly, but uses the figure of speech known as istiCāra (4) (metaphor), alling them kilāb al-barr, i.e a species feared as wild animals. The city, which had been built through many centuries, thus came under threat and jeopardy, not only from the Bedouin (whom the poet intended by his reference to the dogs of the desert), but also from the governor of the city, whom the poet referred to as rāCīhā ("its shepherd"). Through this combination of figurative allusions used in this hemistich, al-Baytī conveyed to his reader or listener how the city was in a state of fright, like sheep trapped between the (wayward) protector and the enemy (the dogs).
In the sixth line (5), al-Baytī called the city dimna (i.e. remnants of a dwelling) and then he followed with the passive verb sulibat ("was looted"), having as its object bashāsha ("happy prospect"). Again, in the second hemistich, he uses another passive verb, ulbisat ("was dressed"), so that by constructing the two verbs in the passive form, the poet compares, again using metaphor, the city to a bride who has been forced to take off her fine clothing and to be dressed instead in ragged garb (al-mahl), a condition made worse by the use of bāqihā ("the remains") of this clothing, in his description of the neglected condition of things in the city. The figure of speech is obviously deliberate and intended to picture the devastation that befallen a land normally decked in green herbage on account of its efficient and economic means of agriculture, but now fallen prey to a people who were unaccustomed to agricultural pursuits.
Al-Baytī employed his words in such a way as to produce the desired meaning which would impress his readers by its indirect allusions, where plain and direct statement of facts would not have given such opportunity to the readers' faculty of imagination. We should recognize, however that the poet's eloquent descriptions evidenced in the lines of his verse are a natural and not a superficial achievement, as any assessment of the poet's work must acknowledge (6). The metaphorical descriptions used by al-Baytī were intended to illuminate the disturbing reality of the tragic state of his native home during this period of eighteenth-century unrest. So, when he wished to emphasize to the Ottoman authority the important religious status of the city of Medina in the minds of the Muslim people, an importance which demanded that it should not be left to the careless wiles of an ignorant governor, he cried out.
("Oh Banū CUthmān, an eye of your empire has been injured by the hand of the governor").
The poet here employs the word "eye" (Cayn) metaphorically to draw a more tangible comparison with the experience of any ordinary person who would feel intense pain and suffer great inconvenience on account of an injury to his eye. The situation is further shown to be aggravated by the fact that the person who tampers with this vital organ of the body held, in fact, the office of guardian, but had abused that office by turning to aggressive action against his ward. So in this device the port discredited both the Ottoman authority an the local governor for failing to provide the city with the care it deserved and the protection it required like the eye as an essential part of the human body.
We further see that when al-Baytī borrowed some fragments from a predecessor's verse, he demonstrated his ability to integrate the borrowed words within his own work in such a way that it was in full harmony with his own view and functioned adequately to convey the meaning which he himself intended to express in his lines. So when he borrowed a part of the well-known opening verse of al-Būsīrī's (8) poem al-Burda (9), which he had composed in praise of the Prophet Muhammad, we notice that in its original context in al- Būsīrī's verse the lines were intended as a eulogy of the Prophet's city, while in al-Baytī's verse the lines were intended as an elegy for the same city. By his use of these words from al-Būsīrī, al-Baytī recognized the continuing popularity of his predecessor’s verse among all the different Arabic-speaking people. It was in his first hemistich of the fourteenth line that al-Baytī employed the words from al-Būsīrī (10), viz:
("People used to eulogize the Neighbours of Salam (12), but today the elegies have increased for it [i.e. for the city of Medina]").
In order to draw more attention to the tragedy of his city, the poet referred back to events in Islamic history, one of which was the death of the Caliph CUthmān in Medina, near to the Prophet's Mosque. This event he called yawm al-dār (the day of the house). Another event he referred to was the death of the Prophet's grandson al-Husayn, a tragedy which he called yawm Karbalā' (13). In his estimation, even these two events were less important than what was occurring in Medina during al-Baytī's own time, as he put it in the twentieth line of his poem:
("A disaster which the Muslims became exposed to, making them forget about the events of Karbalā' and al-Dār").
In other places also al-Baytī used his historical knowledge of the disastrous events which had taken place in the past or in his own time as a foil to offset the events described in his own verse. These historical allusions demonstrate something of the depth of the education of the Medinan intellectuals of that period. As an example, al-Baytī refers to four great events of the past in the three lines which follow:
("It [the event of Medina] reminded us of the behaviour of Tīmūr (16) in Aleppo which turned the forelocks of her [Aleppo’s] youths to grey, and his [Tīmūr’s] day in Baghdad when he was invading it, and the day of Jinkiz (17) when he fired it [Baghdad] with the Tatars, and it was like to Nebuchadnezzar’z (18) behaviour recorded before in [the history of] Egypt and Jerusalem").
In order to add solemnity to the tone of his epic poem, al-Baytī also made use of religious terminology, including names of places like al-Rawda (a part of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina) (19), legal terms like sharC Allāh (20), or certain groups of people who played some part in Islamic history or ancient times, like al-Ansār (21), Ashāb Badr (22), Ahl al-Tayālis (23), and others. Above all, the poet incorporated some quotations from Qur'ānic verses, which show the influence of the religious education which he received in his early youth. Thus, in the first hemistich of his thirty-second line, al-Baytī wrote,
("And every one with a diseased heart (25) came to them. They who are going to nurse their disease are moving swiftly with them [i.e. the group who intend to trap the other party]").
("In their hearts is a disease, and God has increased their disease").
The Qur'ānic wording falls between two verbs used to describe the action: jā'a (came) and SaCā (moved swiftly). These serve the purpose of the poet in discrediting these unscrupulous people who followed the group who brought the dispute in the city to a dangerous head by their trickery. So al-Baytī describes their negative character by allusion to the Qur’ān's contempt for a people diseased at heart. Thus, these contemporaries of al-Baytī who sought to devote their perverse talents to the service of the warring party are implicitly criticized by the poet for their behaviour towards their fellow citizens.
Al-Baytī also employed some Arabic and Persian proverbs as devices serving the construction of his poem and strengthening its effects. First, we see how the poet employed in the first hemistich of line one-hundred and twenty-six an Arabic proverb (26), which appears in the following form:
("You slept longer then CAbbūd and neglected the city, until the announcer of its death arose").
As already mentioned, the poet preferred to impress his picture by indirect rather than by direct methods and so he would transform ordinary sentences into more colourful and imaginative phrases, which would be swifter to convey his message and more lasting in appeal. So, by the use of this proverb, al-Baytī achieved his purpose of depicting the Ottoman authority as those whose character was marked, particularly during the eighteenth century, by carelessness and ignorance, which was demonstrated in their neglect of Medina’s affairs. If the proverb illustrates how a person who is concerned (i.e. CAbbūd) may neglect his duties, then in the case of the governing authority the situation was much worse. Al-baytī refers to a government which claimed to represent and protect the people, but which acted in a totally irresponsible manner and showed its lack of ability in its assumed office. The result, as the poet put it, was the death of the city, as the situation deteriorated to a very low level.
The Persian proverb (28) comes in the closing part of the poem, in the second hemistich of the one-hundred and sixty-first line, when the wanted to draw down the curtain on his lively and well-constructed epic poem. He wished to delay no longer in discrediting the people who were operating behind the veil of public events which the poem described. Indirectly, he compared their deeds with those of other people who tried to heal the breach, so he devoted the first hemistich of his line to the people he wanted to praise and the second hemistich of his line to the people whose attitude would be their own condemnation in time to come:
("They are the protectors of the home, not a group who are not worth their salt (30). Their disgraceful attitude will be enough for them").
Conclusions:
After our analysis of the contents and the construction of al-Baytī's poem, it will be proper here to draw some brief conclusions about the characteristics of the poem, because it is important to try to view it within the context of the contemporary literature and in relation to other works which might in some ways be similar to it.
First, we may ask the question whether al-Baytī's composition falls into the category of other works denominated long poems. If we consider the subject of the poem as the measure which defines the poem's length, then, according to the old Arabic critic al-Khalīl ibn Ahmad (31), there are certain subjects which are favourable for a lengthy poetical treatment, for instance that of intimidation or attraction, or the theme of settling disputes between tribes, like the famous poems of zuhayr (32), al-Hārith ibn Hilliza (33). Since lengthy treatment is also appropriate to illustrious events (34), then, according to this classification of al-Khalīl, al-Baytī's poem would fall into the category of long poems, because its subject deals with a famous event in Medina social history during the eighteenth century and its hortative purpose is evidently to try to arouse the responsible authorities to quell the troubles of the city and restore peace, since al-Baytī addressed both the Ottoman authority in Istanbul and the local governor, the Sharīf of Mecca.
The modern critic Herbert Read has, however, taken another lead in distinguishing the long poem from the short one, which he called the lyric poem: "We might define the lyric as a poem which embodies a single of simple emotional attitude, a poem which expresses directly an uninterrupted mood or inspiration. A long poem, it would follow as a corollary, is one which unites by artifice several or many such emotional moods: though here the artifice might imply a single dominating idea which in itself might be an emotional unity" (35). The poem we have been discussing is devoted to one theme (or idea), which was the nature of the dispute in Medinan society during the twelfth/eighteenth century. This idea clearly dominates the development of the poem, althoug it is divided into many parts. These separate parts include the reasons behind the outbreak of discord, the negotiations which took place between the two sides involved in the dispute, how one side attacked its rival by surprise during the night, how contact was made between the chief of the mosque and the leader if the Harb tribe, and how the latter fled to the city and took up station in the mosque itself in support or this chief against his rival. In spite of these various elements in the poem, however, when transition is made from one part of the poem to another, it is clear that one mood of anger and despair pervades all these units. Hence, even by modern literary criteria, the work is to be calssified as a long poem.
When earlier in our discussion we sought to define the malhama (epic) in Arabic literature we noted how D.S. Margoliouth emphasized "that only the rejez metre was suited to such a composition" (36). However, a metrical analysis of al-Baytī's work demonstrates that he did not choose this metre, but rather the basīt metre, which was also suitable for a composition expressing highly emotional attitudes in the course of recording details of the historic events (37). This metre enables the poet to describe powerfully the details of the event without descending to the level of a plain historical record. The reader of listener is caught up with the rhythm that pervades the poem throughout. Furthermore, al-Baytī's employment of artistic devices is achieved with great naturalness, enabling his audience to envisage the events in a memorable way. Al-Baytī's poem is not didactic verse, but is intended primarily to describe a historic event and this the poet does with great artistry.
However, the poem does occasionally suffer under the strain of the adopted ryhme form, as in line twenty-five (38) when he had to close a line with the active participle muhsīhā ("its enumerator"), which he derived from the preceding verb ahsāhunna (enumerated them"). The rhyming word here does not add any new meaning which we do not already have in the verb which is the original of the derived word and so the line hangs lamely. Furthermore, al-Baytī does adjust some of his words to suit the rhythm, as in line eighty-five (39), where the word maCahā ("with it") is modified to maChā (40). Again, in the last line of his poem, line one-hundred and sixty-three, he removed the original shadda (emphasis, or doubling) of the final letter of the word al-khalīy ("the carefree person") so that it read instead al-khalī (41).
If al-Baytī's composition looks like a developed poem in its linguistic and syntactical characteristics, it also provides us with the recurring picture of human beings in their constant struggle to preserve the good in society and undergoing dispute and clash where necessary in order to establish the right and seek a final resolution of conflict. Even if the poem failed to follow the accustomed course of producing one superior hero, who "differs from other men in the degree of his powers" (42), which may have been one of the important characteristics of epic verse in its wider concept, it is still without doubt that al-Baytī's composition in this field was a significant achievement both in reviving and advancing the standard of the malhama in the tradition of Arabic poetry.
"Term in rhetoric used in the sense of metaphor… [which is, according to CAbd al-CAziz al-Djurdjānī (d. 392/1001)], 'based on establishing a close similarity, on [the existence of] an affinity between the proper and the borrowed expression, on the blending of the [new] term with the concept [to which it is applied], etc". (S.A. Bonebakker, art. "IstiCāra". EI2 vol. IV, p. 248-252).
Herbert Read emphasizes the central importance of a poet's use of metaphor as follows: "We should always be prepared to judge a poet, to the exclusion of all other qualities, by the force and originality of his metaphors". (Collected Essays in Literary Criticism, 2nd ed. [London, 1951] p. 98).
"AL-Būsīrī, Sharaf al-Dīn Abū CAbd Allāh Muhammad b. SaCīd b. Hammād al-Sanhādjī, an Egyptian poet of Berber origin, born on 1 Shawwāl 608/7 March 1212 at Būsīr… or near to Dalās… in Upper Egypt… He spent ten years in Jerusalem, and then resided at Medina and Mecca before settling at Bilbays… Where he held a minor administrative job (mubāshir …). He died at Alexandria, at a date which varies in the sources between 694 to 696/1294-7". 9Art. "al-Būsīrī", EI2, Suppl. Fasc. 3-4, p. 58f).
"The name of a celebrated poem by al- Būsīrī… According to the legend he composed it when he was cured of a paralytic stroke which had seized him by the Prophet's throwing his mantle over his shoulders as he had done on a previous occasion for kaCb b. Zuhayr". (R. Basset, art. "Burda", EI2, vol. I, p. 1314).
("Is it because of the remembrance of the Neighbours of Salam, you mixed tears which dropped from your eye with blood?") See Muhammad Zaghlūl Salām, al-Adab fī al-CAsr al-Mamlukī, vol. 1 (Cairo, 1971) p. 272).
"Tīmūr Lang (Tamerlane), the conqueror of Asia, born near Kash in Transoxiana on the 25th ShaCbān of the year of the mouse, 739 A.H. (8th April 1336)… [He] died on the 17th (19th) January [1404/15th) (17th) ShaCbān 807] aged 71". (L. Bouvat, art. "Tīmūr Lang", EI, vol. IV, p. 777-9).
Al-Khalīl ibn Ahmad is looked upon as the inventor of the Arabic system of metre. He was also the compiler of the first Arabic lexicon, entitled Kitāb al-CAyn. He died in A.D. 791. (R.A. Nicholson, op.cit., p. 75, 343).
"Zuhair Ibn Abí Sulmá, of the tribe of Muzaina, is with Imru 'u' l-Qais and Nábigha Dhubyání, one of the great poets of the Arab tribes. He had the moralist's temperament, his verses were marked by seriousness, by a sententious and didactic tendency". (C. Huart, op.cit., p. 15).
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