Bedouin and 'Abbāsid Cultural Identities

The Arabic Majnūn Laylā Story

Ruqayya Yasmine Khan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000701203
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

This literary-historical book draws out and sheds light upon the mechanisms of "the ideological work" that the Arabic Majn?n Layl? story performed for 'Abb?sid urbanite, imperial audiences in the wake of the disappearance of the "Bedouin cosmos."

The study focuses upon the processes of primitivizing Majn?n in the romance of Majn?n Layl? as part of the paradigm shift that occurred in the 'Abb?sid empire after the Greco-Arabian intellectual revolution. Moreover, this book demonstrates how gender and sexuality are employed in the processes of primitivizing Majn?n. As markers of "strangeness" and "foreignness" in the 'Abb?sid interrogations of the multiple categories of ethnicity, culture, identity, religion and language present in their cosmopolitan milieus. Such "cultural work" is performed through the ideological uses of alterity given its mechanisms of distancing (e.g., temporal and spatial) and nearness (e.g., affective). Lastly, the Majn?n Layl? love story demonstrates, in its text and reception, that a Greco-Arabian and Greco-Persian subculture thrived in the centers of 'Abb?sid Baghdad that molded and shaped the ways in which this love story was compiled, received and performed.

Offering a corrective to the prevailing views expressed in Western scholarly writings on the Greco-Arabian encounter, this book is a major contribution to scholars and students interested in Islamic studies, Arabic and comparative literature, Middle East and gender studies.

1
Song culture, Kitāb al-Aghānī (book of songs) and the love story of Majnūn Laylā

The earliest full version of Majnūn Laylā¹ love story is found in the tenth-century multi-volume Arabic-language compendium titled Kitāb al-Aghānī² or Book of Songs. There is also a ninth-century rendition in a compendium called Kitāb al-Shi‘r wal Shu‘arā or Book of Poetry and Poets by the polymath and literary critic Ibn Qutayba³ who has about four or five pages of Arabic material on this love story. But the earliest, fullest Arabic version is in the Kitāb al-Aghānī and it is the principal source that later renditions and versions of Majnūn Laylā drew upon. I frame my analysis upon and around the Aghānī rendition of the Majnūn Laylā romance in this book, though I also occasionally draw upon the much shorter ninth-century story.

On the authorship and composition of the Kitāb al-Aghānī, it is the magnum opus of Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, a “celebrated man of letters, a historian with sociological interests, a musicologist, and a poet,”⁴ who was born in Baghdad (b. 897 CE) and undertook most of his education in Kufa and Baghdad. He received patronage from various sources, but primarily from the Būyid court. In addition to the Aghānī, al-Iṣfahānī also authored a historical work and books on genealogy as well as edited the diwāns (anthologies) of some noted poets.⁵ He died in Baghdad somewhat after 971 CE in ill health.⁶

Al-Iṣfahānī was one of the leading lights of the literary and artistic entourage patronized by the Būyid court. The Būyid court was dominated by a dynasty of Iranian and Persian background that politically usurped control amid the chaos of Baghdad in 945 CE. For a man like al-Iṣfahānī, who had been observing with horror and pain⁷ the repercussions of the fragmentation and breakdown in tenth-century ‘Abbāsid political authority in Baghdad, the establishment of Būyid rule in Baghdad was associated with the return of stability and added prosperity and he welcomed it. Al-Iṣfahānī led perhaps an uninhibited, rather unkempt “bohemian way of life,”⁸ yet, his eccentricities, as Hilary Kilpatrick has pointed out in her magisterial monograph on the Kitāb al-Aghānī, were more than made up by “qualities such as wit, a sharp tongue and skill in satire, and gifts as a raconteur combined with vast culture and multifarious learning.”⁹ Kilpatrick also notes that al-Iṣfahānī “belonged to the Shi‘i tendency closest to the Sunnis.”¹⁰ It may be noted that al-Iṣfahānī belonged to the same Zaydiyya branch of Shi‘ism with which themselves Būyid rulers identified.

The Būyids (sometimes spelled as Buwahids) were originally from Daylam, an area of Iran (i.e., Daylam related to the “Dolomoties” a term used by Procopius, the historian who wrote about the wars of Justinian).¹¹ As for the ‘Abbāsid court, during first two centuries (beginning 750 CE), it began acquiring texts in Greek medicine, philosophy, astronomy and other non-Qur’anic sciences, and thus, large, widely supported translation projects into Arabic blossomed in the new capital, Baghdad.¹² It seems that the Daylamis had remained largely autonomous during the Sassanian era and also during the first several centuries after the Islamic conquest of Iran. “But in the latter part of the ninth century and particularly at the beginning of the tenth, as a result of the missionary efforts of the Caspian Zaydī sayyids, with whom the Daylamites for most of the period were in alliance, Zaydī Shiism gained a strong foothold in Daylam.”¹³

Būyid ‘Abbāsid memorialization and the commissioning of the Kitāb al-Aghānī

The production of the Kitāb al-Aghānī or Book of Songs, a multi-volume compendium by al-Iṣfahānī, functioned to invoke and memorialize the golden era of the early ‘Abbāsid caliphate during a time when the late ‘Abbāsid caliphate was anything but that. Given the Persianized Iranian ethos of the Būyids, it is interesting to ponder the meanings of their investiture in the compilation of the Kitāb al-Aghānī at that time. The project of writing the Kitāb al-Aghānī undertaken by al-Iṣfahānī at the Būyid court was preceded, as alluded to earlier, by a period of acute historical and political crisis. The decade preceding the Būyid seizure of power in the mid-tenth century witnessed a scene of complete chaos under the brief reigns of the original ‘Abbāsid caliphate line (especially under the caliph al-Qāhir and less so under al-Rāḍi). As Nadia El Cheikh has noted: “The fourth/tenth century witnessed the beginning of the disintegration of the ‘Abbāsid Empire. Provincial governors became independent, and the caliphal administration in Baghdad fell into the hands of the Shi‘i Buyids.”¹⁴ It is against this setting that, as Kilpatrick remarks, “the grandiose conception of the Kitāb al-Aghānī as a panorama of Arabic music and culture from the pre-Islamic period to the end of the third/ninth century should be seen.”¹⁵ One critical aspect here – to which we will return shortly – is that during this same time of chaos – ‘Abbāsid song culture had fallen into serious decline due to a halt in patronage.¹⁶

Importantly, both al-Iṣfahānī as the compiler of this compendium and the patron who commissioned him to do it were fond of the song-and-singing-girl cultures that Kitāb al-Aghānī – as a multi-volume collection of famous songs – recorded and upon which it commented. This benefactor of al-Iṣfahānī was one cultured patron named Muḥammad al-Muḥallabī, an important vizier in the Būyid court, who was part of a vibrant and diverse intellectual circle in the Būyid court. It took al-Iṣfahānī fifty years to complete the Kitāb al-Aghānī,¹⁷ and he refers to his patron elliptically thus: “The reason why I embarked on writing it [sc. the Aghānī] was that one of our chief officers of state [raī’s min ru’asā’inā] asked me to compile it for him.”¹⁸ Kilpatrick points out that “while little information is extant about musical life in Buyid Baghdad, al-Muḥallabī was appreciative of singing and singing girls, and music was an indispensable part of the informal gatherings at which he and his closest companions indulged in witty conversation, poetry and fine wines, abandoning their usual decorum.”¹⁹

The immediate pretext for al-Iṣfahānī’s project arose from a need to rectify the situation concerning an existing, outdated Kitāb al-Aghān ī, which had become discredited among court, elite circles. This earlier compilation dated back to what would have been perceived as the glorious era of the height of the ‘Abbāsid caliphate, under the caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (reign 786–809 CE) of the famed 1001 Nights era, and many songs in this prior one were linked with an even earlier era, the late Umayyad to early ‘Abbāsid transitional era, and with the renowned musician of this transitional time, i.e., Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī. Al-Iṣfahānī believed, like his patron, that this prior one had become corrupted and was no longer genuine.²⁰ By rewriting the Kitāb al-Aghānī, al-Iṣfahānī was aiming to reclaim these much earlier song materials and resituate this compendium onto a court trajectory from whence the first Kitāb al-Aghānī had originated. Therefore, the imperial project of re-writing the Aghānī could be regarded as a reclamation by the Būyid court of literary/musical materials, in a sense, to legitimate their usurpation of rule in Baghdad through the potential and promise of resurrecting the glorious era of the early ‘Abbāsid caliphate. Was the making of the second Kitāb al-Aghānī, in effect, a Būyid imperial venture of cultural appropriation, legitimation and even, memory-making and preservation?

According to Kilpatrick, al-Muḥallabī was a committed patron and he was loyal to the “encouragement of culture [and efforts such as this] … made the Buyid period so important for Arabic intellectual history.”²¹ Furthermore, the vitality of the Būyid period for philosophical advances also is noteworthy. Greek epistemological and philosophical systems in the Muslim world that embraced Aristotle, Galen, and Ptolemy continued into the Būyid age and after:

By the time of the establishment of Būyid rule in Baghdad in 334/946, the urban cultivated elites had developed into various and at times competing groups, both within the religious sciences and outside them, including traditionists, theologians, jurists, grammarians, belletrists, scientists, and also falāsifa, the philosophers. The existence of at least one philosophical majlis (learned circle) especially focused on the Aristotelian corpus in fourth/tenth-century Baghdad is well attested, and by the early Būyid age falsafa was acknowledged as a proper field by both its practitioners and detractors.²²

Certainly, some of the most celebrated figures of Islamic cultural history were patronized by the Būyids and al-Iṣfahānī was one such famed recipient of this patronage.

Songs, song culture and Al-Iṣ fahānī’s rendition of Majnūn Laylā

The Aghānī’s structure and framework is formed by a collection of one hundred songs (al-aṣwāt al-mi’ a al-mukhtāra), selected more than a century before al-Iṣfahānī’s time, during the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd. These “hit” songs, gathered together by famous musicians of the court of Hārūn, primarily the well-known musician Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī (whose lifetime spanned the Umayyad and ‘Abbāsid time periods) and his son, Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī. These songs were essentially popular and well-liked poems that were set to music.²³ The Aghānī is organized in terms of pseudo-biographical entries, stories and/or vignettes devoted to the various poets who composed these verses and in each entry or story on a particular poet, each poem by that poet that became a “hit song” is framed with a heading “ṣawt” which literally means voice or sound, but here denotes “song.” In the ninety-four-page chapter or entry on Majnūn Laylā, there are approximately fifty songs with the subheading “sawt.” Al-Iṣfahānī evidently had a high regard for Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī and was much influenced by the musician’s son Isḥāq al-Mawṣilī who actually served in the early ‘Abbāsid court of Hārūn al-Rashīd.²⁴ Indeed, the literary convention of using the “List of Top Hundred Songs” as the starting point seems to have been due to such a list attributed to Ibrāhim al-Mawsili’s son, Isḥāq al-Mawṣilī.²⁵

Ultimately, al-Iṣfahānī undertook an imperial courtly exercise but it would seem to also have been an exercise of passion and dedication. Such a deep dedication is demonstrated in and through the half-century time period he invested to produce this multivolume compendium, in effect, a rewriting and recasting of the older, aforementioned Kitāb al-Aghānī associated with the early ‘Abbāsid court of Hārūn al-Rashīd. The goal was to restore not just the earlier Book of Songs, but also to restore the eroded song culture linked with the songs or poems (i.e., poems set to songs) in this work – a song culture with which al-Iṣfahānī keenly identified. A school of elegiac love poets known as the ‘Uḍhrī poets were especially important for the celebration and preservation of this song culture, given the amenability, in particular, of their love poems to be set to lyrical music.

We take up the term ‘Uḍhrī in relation to the love story of Majnūn Laylā in Chapter Two, but suffice it to note here that the Kitāb al-Aghānī contains a lot of material that may be labeled ‘Uḍhrī in the form of vignettes and stories about the ‘Uḍhrī poets, and of course, their poetry. This is not surprising given that an ‘Abbāsid-era compendium devoted to Arabic poems set to music (or songs) would especially pay attention to love poems and love stories, as just remarked, and, especially to those of a lyrical type. It is also not surprising given that the very idea of a recognized genre cluster (with some that are more recognized than others) of ‘Uḍhrī love stories comes to be standardized probably during the ‘Abbāsid period.²⁶ From among these ‘Uḍhrī love stories, Majnūn Laylā is surely among the most famous. As regards the connections between love poems and song cultures,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Song culture, Kitāb al-Aghānī (book of songs) and the love story of Majnūn Laylā
• 2 On the term ‘Uḍhrī and its symbolic universe for understanding Majnūn Laylā
• 3 The night in the Ghayl – love, meaning and language
• 4 Umayyad and ‘Abbāsid constructs of masculinities in the love story of Majnūn Laylā
• 5 A lost “Bedouin Arcadia” – the tree man and the Umayyad tax man
• 6 Majnūn as the knight-errant: language and the significance of errancy (Huyām)
• 7 ‘Abbāsid culturally primitivist readings of Laylā as object and subject
• 8 ‘Abbāsid readings of the ‘Uḍhrī romances: female unchastity and the love triangle
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index