Epistolarity as a Nahda Climate

JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE

Journal of Arabic Literature Executive Editor M UHSIN JASSIM ALMUSAWI, Columbia University

Assistant Editor ELIZABETH M. HOLT, Bard College

Editorial Board FEDERICO CORRIENTE, University of Saragossa JAMES T. MONROE, University of California, Berkeley SUZANNE PINCKNEY STETKEVYCH, Indiana University, Bloomington

Review Editor S AMER A LI, University of Austin at Texas

VOLUME XL

Contributions to the journal should be sent to: Editor for Islamic Studies, Brill Publishers, P.O. Box 9000, 2300 PA Leiden, The Netherlands, or to the Editor, Muhsin al-Musawi, Journal of Arabic, Columbia University, 615 Kent Hall, 1140 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027 (USA).

Officework financial assistance is kindly provided by the American University of Sharjah, the MEALAC Department, and the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.

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Epistolarity in a Nahḍah Climate: The Role of Mayy Ziyādah’s Letter Writing* Boutheina Khaldi Yale University

Abstract It is the purpose of this article to study Mayy Ziyādah’s (d. 1941) epistolary art as an extension of her salon in the years of its formation, 1913-1936. While her salon gathered together the most distinguished Nahḍah elite, her epistolary art consolidated an enormous network that included intellectuals from all over the Arab world, Europe, and North and South America. Her epistolary art made use of the eighteenth-century French salon model, but it also drew on a solid tradition of Arabic chancery art that reached its peak between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. Her letters as well as the letters addressed to her demonstrate how central her role and function as salonnière and littérateure were to the Nahḍah climate of ideas. The article also provides a typological reading of this art, placing it in the context of French and Egyptian models. Keywords Mayy Ziyādah, salon, epistolarity, Nahḍah, Enlightenment, Republic of Letters

When I write I am the speaker and when I read I am the listener.**

It is almost impossible to understand the actual contribution of Mayy Ziyādah1 and her salon to the Nahḍah without a thorough and detailed analysis of her * In an earlier version this essay was part of my doctoral dissertation done under the supervision of Prof. Suzanne Stetkevych. My gratitude goes to her for her excellent guidance and to Prof. Muhsin al-Musawi for his insightful remarks and wealth of knowledge. ** Mayy Ziyādah, “Risālah min Mayy Ziyādah ilā Jabr Ḍ ūmiṭ,” 14 August, 1921, in Salmā al-Ḥ affār al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā: Rasāʾil Makhṭūṭah lam Tunshar (19121930) [Mayy Ziyādah and the Luminaries of Her Time: Selected Unpublished Letters (19121930)] (Beirut: Muʾassasat Nawfal, 1982), p. 168. 1 Mayy Ziyādah was a prolific writer, essayist, poet, public speaker, and sharp critic. She was born in al-Nāṣirah (Nazareth) in Palestine to a Lebanese Maronite father and a Palestinian Greek Orthodox mother. Her father, Ilyās Zakhkhūr Ziyādah, (d. 1929) moved from Shaḥtūl, his hometown in Lebanon, to work as a teacher in Nazareth. While there, he met her mother, Nuzhah Muʿammar, (d. 1932), a cultured woman, and married her. Mary (known as Mayy) Ziyādah was their only child. She went to a French convent school for girls in Nazareth and then to a boarding convent school for girls in ʿAyn Ṭ urah in Lebanon. The education she received in these schools was mainly in French. At an early age Mayy Ziyādah cultivated a love for French © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009

DOI: 10.1163/157006409X431604

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correspondence with her salon2 clientele and others. While we have enough information about the attendees of her salon, very little was written on her epistolary art, an art that is central to sociability as it builds on reciprocal exchange and sets up an egalitarian base that challenges claims of superiority, hierarchy or absolutism. Letter writing in Mayy Ziyādah’s hands assumed the literature, especially Romantic poetry. The influence of Romantic poets, such as Alphonse de Lamartine (d. 1869), on her was reflected in her first collection of poems, written in French, Fleurs du Rêve [Flowers of Dream] (1911) under the pseudonym Isis Copia. It was published in Cairo after Mayy Ziyādah’s parents had left for Egypt in 1908 to look for a better life. Mayy Ziyādah’s work was acclaimed by some critics who knew French but did not gain her wide recognition as expected. As a corollary, Mayy Ziyādah began to write in Arabic in her father’s newspaper al-Maḥ rūsah (Egypt, The Protected), and in other newspapers. To improve her Arabic, the Egyptian editor of al-Jarīdah and Ustādh al-jīl (The teacher of the generation), Aḥmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid (d. 1963), advised Mayy Ziyādah to read the Qurʾān and offered her a copy as a gift. This encouraged her to pursue her education in literature and Islamic philosophy at the Egyptian University. Mayy Ziyādah tried her hand at translation. She translated into Arabic the French novel by Brada, Le Retour du Flot (Rujūʿ al-Mawjah, 1925), the German novel by Max Müller, Deuche Liebe (Ibtisāmāt wa Dumūʿ, 1912), and the Scottish novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Refugees (Al-Lājiʾūn, 1917). Mayy Ziyādah’s translations reflect her mastery of other foreign languages. Besides French, she was also acquainted with Italian and Spanish. Through her extensive contributions to newspapers, she became a well-known figure in Egypt and she launched a salon, which existed from 1913-1936. For a detailed biography on Mayy Ziyādah, see Salmā al-Ḥ affār al-Kuzbarī, Mayy aw Maʾsāt al-Nubūgh [Mayy or the Tragedy of Genius], 2 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat Nawfal, 1987), vol. 1. 2 Every Tuesday evening, and for twenty-three years (1913-1936), Mayy Ziyādah held a literary salon in Egypt that attracted the most important and effective intellectuals of her time. Al-ʿAqqād in his book Rijāl ʿAriftuhum (Cairo: Dār al-Hilāl, 1963) mentions thirty regular attendees: Aḥmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Fahmī, the Syrian doctor and writer Shiblī Shumayyil (d. 1917), the Syrian poet Sulaymān al-Bustānī (d. 1925), amīr al-shuʿarāʾ (the prince of poets) Aḥmad Shawqī (d. 1932), Khalīl Muṭrān, Anṭūn al-Jumayyil, the Syrian editor of al-Ahrām Dāwūd Barakāt (d. 1933), the Egyptian calligrapher of the king of Egypt and the lawyer Najīb Hawāwīnī (d.?), the Egyptian journalist Tawfīq Ḥ abīb (d.?), the Coptic Egyptologist Tawfīq Iskarūs (d.?), Amīn Wāṣif (d.?), the Islamic philosopher and writer Muṣtạ fā ʿAbd alRāziq (d. 1946), the writer and poet Muṣtạ fā Ṣādiq al-Rāfiʿī (d.1937), the Egyptian woman activist Hudā Shaʿrāwī (d. 1947), the Egyptian woman activist Iḥsān al-Qūsī (d.?), the Syrian editor of La Liberté Edgar Jallād (d.?), Salīm Sarkīs, the editor of al-Muqtaṭaf Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf (d. 1927), the Egyptian poet Ḥ āfiẓ Ibrāhīm (d. 1932), the Egyptian poet Ismāʿīl Ṣabrī (d. 1914), the governor of the province of Qaliyubiyyah Idrīs Rāghib (d. 1922), the Syrian doctor and journalist Fuʾād Ṣarrūf (d.?), the editor of al-Balāgh (Report) ʿAbd al-Qādir Ḥ amzah (d?), the Egyptian writer and scholar Manṣūr Fahmī (d. 1959), Ṭ āhā Ḥ usayn, the Egyptian woman writer Malak Ḥ ifnī Nāṣif (d. 1918), her brother Majd al-Dīn Ḥ ifnī Nāṣif (d.?), and her husband ʿAbd al-Sattār al-Bāsil (d.?). The list excludes many others, along with occasional visitors, Arabists, and Orientalists. See Al-ʿAqqād, Rijāl ʿAriftuhum, pp. 209-210. This is not the complete list of attendees. There are others mentioned by Mayy such as Salīm bek Muḥammad and Sheikh al-Laythī. See Ziyādah, “Ismāʿīl Ṣabrī Pasha,” in Salmā al-Ḥ affār al-Kuzbarī, comp, and ed., al-Aʿmāl alKāmilah [The Complete Works of Mayy Ziyādah], 2 vols. (Beirut, Muʾassasat Nawfal, 1982), 2: 446; Also: Rashīd Riḍā, and his nephew Muḥyī al-Dīn Riḍā, Walī al-Dīn Yakun, Zakī Mubārak, Salāmah Mūsā, Aḥmad Zakī Pasha, Ḥ aṣan Nāʾil al-Marṣafī, Emil Zaydān, Ḥ amdī Yakun, Asʿad

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characteristics of her literary art which can be summed up as: persuasion, logic, wealth of knowledge, and mastery of classical and modern literature conveyed in an effective language. It is little wonder that in her hands epistolarity received an impetus that was much needed since the fifteenth century.3 Mayy Ziyādah’s correspondence makes up a significant chapter in Nahḍah intellectual life and also in the formation of an informed public opinion. Her epistolary art demonstrates a combined awareness of Arab epistolary art, which grew within this tradition out of chancery craft and reached its peak in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,4 and that of the French Enlightenment. Mayy Ziyādah’s epistolary art expands her salon to the press and to a wide reading public, making this public part of the distinctive salon climate of ideas. This art promoted sociability and reciprocity which were central components to Nahḍah intellectual life. On many occasions, letter writing grows out of conversation and social exchange which take place in the salon. Each correspondence initiates or follows up on an idea, a position, or an attitude. Both conversation and epistolarity convey a spirit of interaction, especially on matters of intellectual interest. This climate originated through and by the salon, alongside a number of other sites of exchange, namely the Academy and well-recognized journals. In her article on the French salonnière Madame de Sévigné (d. 1696), Mayy Ziyādah stipulates that “correspondence is a written conversation.”5 The lost conversations of salon sessions can be found in correspondence, the written correlative of conversation, as suggested by Mayy Ziyādah’s writer-speaker, reader-listener Khalīl Dāghir, Ibrāhīm al-Miṣrī, Fatḥī Raḍwān and temporary guests who attended her salon when they visited Egypt like Anistas Mary al-Karmalī (1921), Amīn al-Rayḥānī (1922), Jabr Ḍ ūmiṭ (1923), a group of Indian writers (1923), the poet Khalīl Mardam (1926), the prince Muṣtạ fā al-Shihābī (1931), the American novelist Henry James and his brother William James (1928), the Italian Orientalist Maria Nallino (1928), sister of Carlo Alfonso Nallino (d. 1938), and many others. See al-Kuzbarī, Mayy aw Maʾsāt al-Nubūgh, 1: 290-291, 310, 313. The caliber of attendees, their correspondence, writings, and conversations all attest to the powerful and pivotal role of Mayy Ziyādah’s salon, its organization, continuity, and seriousness. Mayy Ziyādah, “Madame de Sévigné wa ʿAṣruhā,” (Mme de Sevigné and Her Time), alMuqtaṭaf, July, 1918 and in al-Kuzbarī, comp, and ed., Al-Aʿmāl al-Kāmilah, 2: 415. 3 I refer in particular to al-Qāḍī Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qalqashandī’s (d. 821/1418) voluminous compendium Ṣubḥ al-Aʿshā fī Ṣināʿat al-Inshāʾ [Dawn for the Benighted Regarding Chancery Craft]. See Muhsin al-Musawi, “Pre-Modern Belletristic Prose,” The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature. Arabic Literature to the Post-Classical Period, eds. Roger Allen and D.S. Richards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 101-133; see also his “Vindicating a Profession or a Personal Career? Al-Qalqashandī’s Maqamah in Context,” Journal of Mamluk Studies, Chicago Univ., 7 ( Jan. 2003), pp. 111-135. 4 Al-Musawi, “Pre-Modern Belletristic Prose,” pp. 101-133. 5 Mayy Ziyādah, “Madame de Sévigné wa ʿAṣruhā,” (Mme de Sevigné and Her Time), al-Muqtaṭaf, July, 1918 and in al-Kuzbarī, comp, and ed., Al-Aʿmāl al-Kāmilah, 2: 415.

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remark appearing at the beginning of this article. If the salon conversation draws attendees together in a network of reciprocity and exchange, epistolarity ties the literati together regardless of distance and time limits. Dena Goodman makes a similar point in her study of the Republic of Letters6 in France. She argues that “The Republic of Letters had begun among men who were spread out across Europe and held together by an epistolary network.”7 The relevance of this Republic, viz., the network of literati, to Mayy Ziyādah’s salon is clear, though, unfortunately, no scholar has yet applied the term with its enlightenment connotations to the Arab milieu. I find it pertinent throughout this comparative study, not only because of the inevitable engagement with Europe and especially French culture but also because of its relevance to an Arab tradition that has been known for prioritizing the humanist pursuit.8 Mayy Ziyādah’s letters often demonstrate an active engagement with a penchant for a creative reconstruction of a social and cultural milieu that was no less powerful than its French counterpart. Letter writing evolved as a means to establish practices that were soon to become a foundation for the new order. Like the French model of the Republic of Letters which transcends borders, or as the modern French writer Paul Dibon says; “it transcend[s] space and time,”9 Mayy Ziyādah’s network included Arabists, Orientalists, Arab notables, expatriates, and men of letters in the “Republic of Letters.” To understand the reasons behind the attention that was accorded to Mayy Ziyādah’s letters in her time, a contextual comparison with French culture is worthwhile. This will enable us to maintain a comparative and historical perspective on the French Enlightenment and the Egyptian / Arab Awakening. While the press had a powerful function in the “Republic of Letters” as the disseminator of ideas and criticism in a public sphere, correspondence among the salon clientele was no less powerful. Mayy Ziyādah’s salon attendees, as well as correspondents from Baghdad, Syria, Rome, France, Germany, Spain, North America, Latin America, and many other places, participated in an activity that sounds surprising to us nowadays despite the ease of electronic messaging. To sustain the comparative approach, it is good to remember that in France, according to Dibon, epistolary exchange remained for a 6 The Republic of Letters or République des Lettres was coined by the French scholar Pierre Bayle (d. 1706) at the end of the seventeenth century to refer to a community or network of intellectuals, hence the word “Republic,” who sustained an exchange of information through correspondences, circulation of books and journals, academies, salon visits, etc. 7 Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters, A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 28. 8 See George Makdisi, The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West: with Special Reference to Scholasticism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990). 9 As cited in Goodman, The Republic of Letters, p. 15.

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long time “the primary means of coordinating the life of the Respublica Literaria, of making its activities known to its citizens, of heralding the appearance of books . . . and of spreading news about research in progress.”10 This reciprocity functions as a rigorous dynamic in disseminating knowledge, rejuvenating reason, and activating a critical sense that runs counter to systems of coercion and control. A worthwhile example is the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the journal al-Muqtaṭaf which Mayy Ziyādah brought up in 1925. Unless we understand the significance of the journal al-Muqtaṭaf to the Awakening, with its emphasis on reason, logic, science, and transformation, we may fail to fathom the nature of the journal’s success, and the role of Mayy Ziyādah’s correspondence in making it possible. The idea to celebrate the anniversary of al-Muqtaṭaf, which she championed, emerged from her salon. In addition to convening with the Egyptian illuminati in her salon, she corresponded with writers and poets all over the Arab world, Europe, and America who could not attend, inviting them to contribute to the anniversary issue. Her correspondents responded positively to her call to make the celebration of al-Muqtaṭaf a successful Arab cultural and social event.11 Letters that reached scores of people were not mere invitations. They showed how each correspondence was part of the Nahḍah project. Hence, her salon was the spirit and soul of a public sphere: “If the salons were the heart of the Enlightenment, letters circulated through them like its life blood,”12 argues Goodman. This applies to Mayy Ziyādah’s letters because they convey her sense of sociability and collegiality in respect to the journal al-Muqtaṭaf, which held a special place in Egyptian and Arab intellectual society. It is necessary to point out that while championing scientism, the editor of al-Muqtaṭaf Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf (d. 1927) fought superstition and obsolete thought without neglecting the Arab tradition. Mayy Ziyādah’s celebration of Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf ’s journal al-Muqtaṭaf proved to be a triumph in letter writing not only because of the amount of correspondence involved in the occasion, but also because of the participants’ contribution with ideas and comments to the celebration. Such an exercise in networking emerged as an intellectual pursuit of great relevance to both Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf and Mayy Ziyādah as his disciple. 10

Ibid., p. 17. Ḥ usayn ʿUmar Ḥ amādah, Aḥ ādīth ʿan Mayy wa Asrār Ghayr Mutadāwalah min Ḥ ayātihā [Interviews on Mayy and Unknown Secrets about Her Life] (Damascus: Dār Qutaybah, 1983), p. 127. 12 Dena Goodman, “Enlightenment Salons: The Convergence of Female and Philosophic Ambitions.” French Revolution in Culture, spec. issue of Eighteenth-Century Studies 22, no. 3 (spring, 1989), p. 340. 11

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In comparative terms, the anniversary itself helped, therefore, stimulate a climate of ideas which was reminiscent of what took place in eighteenthcentury France when salons and periodicals invigorated a cultural milieu. Mayy Ziyādah, however, was unlike French salonnières. She not only provided space and organization, but she actually supported ideas and projects that led to a dynamic exchange. Mayy Ziyādah was more active than the French salonnière Anne-Catherine Helvétius (d. 1800), for example, whose salon “provided the social base for his [her husband13’s] writing.”14 Mayy Ziyādah’s contribution was geared, instead, to a community of intellectuals. A writer in her own right and a discerning littérateure, Mayy Ziyādah was able to bring intellectuals of many inclinations and views together. The emphasis on the letter as an extension of, or an alternative venue to, salon conversation is clear in Mayy Ziyādah’s network of correspondence. Her letters moved beyond the salon circle to spread its news not only to Egyptian and Arab readers but also to her friends who lived outside the region. The significance of the letter to the salon should be seen in relation to the salonnière’s intent and purpose as an advocate of enlightenment in Egypt and the Arab world. As Jürgen Habermas argues, “If conversation shaped the discursive space within the salon, the letter moved the Enlightenment out of the private world of the salon into the public world beyond it.” He adds that letters were used “to bridge the gap between the private circles in which they gathered and the public arena that they sought to shape and conquer.”15 Letter writing helped keep the members of the salon as well as the citizens of the “Republic of Letters” connected with each other. What began as a limited enterprise would soon become public. As all intellectual figures were engaged in the Nahḍah project and were called on to execute it, readers, including family members, were also active participants in this “Republic.” They were equally involved in the project through their purchase of journals and magazines. A number of matters pertaining to the significance of letter writing can be discussed here. An excellent example is Mayy Ziyādah’s response to a letter by the writer and Nahḍah intellectual Fuʾād Ṣarrūf (d. 1985), dated 24 October, 1934. Fuʾād Ṣarrūf had asked Mayy Ziyādah if she were ready to listen to him while rehearsing his lecture which he planned then to deliver in Palestine. He chose to ask her, and not anyone else, for feedback. Mayy Ziyādah appreciates his recognition of her as his “trial” audience: “It is truly 13

Philosopher Claude Adrian Helvétius (d. 1771). Ibid., p. 343. 15 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into the Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, c1989), p. 340. 14

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nice of you to accept me as your preliminary public.”16 Mayy Ziyādah, Fuʾād Ṣarrūf, and their contemporaries were aware of a growing public. This awareness that a public worthy of recognition and capable of participation had come of age emanates not only from letter writing as a network of collaboration and cooperation but also from a basic acknowledgement among Arab literati of the significance of reciprocity to discussion. One recurrent theme in the correspondence between Mayy Ziyādah and her clientele is the aspiration to transform the outside world into one similar to what is envisioned in the salon: a social entity based on communication, understanding, and reciprocity. There was a basic belief among Arab intellectuals during the Nahḍah, the so-called secularists, that a coterie of intellectuals can bring about change and create a society that has more affinity with modern European life without giving up its nationality and tradition. Even secularists, like Faraḥ Anṭūn (d. 1922), were keen on sustaining a line of thought that accommodates Islam as religion and philosophy.17 A balanced navigation between these two attitudes is also noticeable in Mayy Ziyādah’s correspondence and articles. Her activity as a salonnière is not confined to her role as a catalyst that gathers together every positive impulse. It goes beyond this to the art and practice of conversation and epistolarity that were once aspects of a successful female society in pre-Islamic and Islamic societies as well as in Muslim Spain.18 Mayy Ziyādah’s role as a model should not be taken lightly for both conversation and epistolarity function rigorously in creating a climate of ideas and criticism. This climate runs counter to eras of absolutism and concentration of power.19 It is a climate where reason and rational thought replace absolute power. The emergence of a public sphere beyond the absolute power of the church and the court in Europe, for instance, led to a cultural growth which was also behind the Enlightenment. The change in Egypt followed similar lines. By the end of the nineteenth century, intellectuals began to target both the British colonial administration and the Ottoman Al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, p. 436. Fauzi M. Najjar, “Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and the Egyptian Enlightenment Movement.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Nov., 2004), pp. 195-213. 18 Iḥsān ʿAbbās, Tārīkh al-Adab al-Andalusī: ʿAṣr al-Ṭ awāʾif wa al-Murābiṭīn (ʿAmmān: al-Shurūq, 2001); Iḥsān ʿAbbās, Tārīkh al-Adab al-Andalusī: ʿAṣr Siyādat Qurṭubah (ʿAmmān: al-Shurūq, 2001); Ḥ asan Ibrāhīm Sharqāwī, Al-Andiyah al-Adabiyyah fī al-ʿAṣr al-Ḥ adīth (Cairo: Dār al-Ṭibāʿah al-Muḥamadiyyah, 1988); ʿAlī Muḥammad Hāshim, Al-Andiyah al-Adabiyyah fī al-ʿAṣr al-ʿAbbāsī fī al-ʿIrāq ḥattā Nihāyat al-Qarn al-Thālith al-Hijrī [Literary Circles in the Abbasid Age in Iraq until the End of the Third Century] (Beirut: Manshūrāt Dār al-Āfāq, 1982). 19 Ibid; Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, pp. 51-56; Daniel Gordon, Citizens without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670-1789 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 3. 16 17

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Sultanate as sources of evil. Intellectuals began to appear in Egypt as a power to reckon with through their means of collaboration and address to the public. Institutions like the Egyptian University, the press, coffeehouses, and salons became effective venues of solidarity and consolidation of opinion. Conversation, letter exchange, and publications gradually assumed a powerful role in the making of cultural history. They flourished in Egypt and the Arab world in a relatively short time not only through contact with France but also through a tradition of Belles Lettres that was once central to Arabic literary thought and the cultural milieu. The multi-volume national biographies by Yāqūt al-Ḥ amawī20 (d. 1229) and Ibn Khallakān21 (d. 1282) tell us much about this tradition in which littérateurs established a dynamic core in a society very receptive to new ideas.22 On the other hand, and as part of this navigation between tradition and other cultures, the leading “Republic of Letters” was once a European model for a public that took over the space reserved for the nobility, the court, and the church, achieving legitimacy through discussion platforms including correspondence. The same procedure is quite noticeable in Egypt. The salon in general, and Mayy Ziyādah’s salon in particular, became a nucleus for a “Republic of Letters.” More, perhaps, than the extensive discussions in the salon, correspondence among its clientele conveyed how significant this venue was for the community of intellectuals who were conceived of as the Nahḍah elite. Indeed, the history of the Awakening cannot be fathomed or analyzed without an understanding of the practices and institutions which are the material of cultural history, especially in relation to the intellectual elite. In many ways this role is reminiscent of the intelligentsia’s role in France. In Dena Goodman’s synthetic reading of the French Enlightenment, especially its cultural milieu: “Cultural history focuses on social and discursive practices and institutions: both the ground on which particular discursive actions take place and those actions themselves.” 23 She further explains: “Ideas are not of a different order from the practices and institutions that constitute them, and those practices and institutions are not without meaning.”24 By “practices and institutions”, she refers to what Habermas has already discussed as “rational communication” that was “a threat to any and all relations of domination.”25 The letter was no less 20

See his Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ (Dictionary of Writers, 1226). See his Wafayāt al-Aʿyān (The Obituaries of Eminent Men, 1256-1274) which is often referred to as The Biographical Dictionary. 22 See Peter Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760-1840 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979). 23 Goodman, The Republic of Letters, p. 2. 24 Ibid. 25 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 35. 21

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powerful than conversation, as an alternative venue for discussion. Habermas goes as far as to say that no great eighteenth-century writer ever published without submitting “essential ideas for discussion . . . in lectures [or letters] before the académies and especially in the salons.”26 This process aimed not only at gaining legitimacy and recognition but also at working collectively through discussion and correspondence. In their delicate navigation between indigenous cultural norms and new venues that were consolidated by the press, i.e. between the traditional majlis and modern coffeehouses and salons, these fraternal channels revived an old tradition that have long resided in a collective unconscious. Hence, the stupendous growth of an intellectual elite that comprised religious dignitaries like Muṣtạ fā Ṣādiq al-Rāfiʿī (d. 1937) and secularists like Salāmah Mūsā (d. 1958). Their role took a two-way direction influencing and being influenced by collaboration in this “Republic of Letters.” Whether we speak of the Lebanese-Syrian immigrants to Egypt, who were among the first-rate intellectuals of the period under discussion, the Mahjar coteries, or the coteries around specific figures and journals, intellectuals were able to participate and take the lead in the Nahḍah. As their Enlightenment predecessors did in Europe, they also embarked on their project through the salon and its venues (discussion, letter writing, academia, collaborative projects, and the press). A significant dynamic in this salon formation is the letter, for it is most often salon-based. There are many reasons behind this: without the letter, there are no networks of correspondence, no long distance communication, no news, no recapitulations, and no book reviews. Furthermore, without the letter, there is no climate of intimacy or sustenance of sociability among its clientele. On many occasions, the letter carries further what takes place in the salon. In 1923 the Syrian writer and Professor Jabr Ḍ ūmiṭ (d. 1930) visited Mayy Ziyādah’s salon and offered a speech. In her letter of 28 June, 1923 Mayy Ziyādah wrote to him to thank him for accepting the invitation and for his two letters which “came as a continuation of [his] interesting and elegant speech.”27 As already noticed, “the cosmopolitan Republic of Letters . . . was taking shape in Paris as a community of discourse that took itself seriously in new ways.”28 Belonging to a Republic of this sort entails an intellectual citizenship with rights and obligations and leads to literary and cultural production, and subscription to a collective ideal towards which every citizen strives. The Awakening spirit in Egypt had this dynamic in which the salon and its epistolary extension played a central role. They were more involved in 26 27 28

Ibid. Al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, p. 223. Goodman, “Enlightenment Salons,” p. 329.

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cultural formation than the academy whose tight hierarchical organization and membership imposed a limited network of concerns, commitments, and undertakings. Both salon and epistolarity should be seen as a collective endeavour to establish a nation-state. They created this Republic of Letters which, in Dena Goodman’s apt conclusion, became in eighteenth-century France, for instance, “a form of writing that brought writers and readers together to interact on a footing of equality.”29 Everything is discussed in letters and everything becomes the property of the public. “The public that read and debated this sort of thing read and debated about itself,”30 argues Habermas in relation to the climate of discussion with its dialogue forms, letter exchange, and publication. On the other hand, Mayy Ziyādah’s role as a “preliminary public” is only another phrase for the intellectual community and its leading elite. In a letter dated 19 February, 1919, ʿAbd al-Qādir Ḥ amzah (d. 1941) the editor-in-chief of the journal al-Ahālī (The People) informed Mayy Ziyādah that she was one of thirty intellectuals and savants in Egypt chosen to contribute to the journal with three articles that deal with national issues. She was chosen, he explains, for her “passion for research and her willingness to serve the public.”31 Prince Shakīb Arsalān, known as “amīr al-bayān” (the prince of eloquence), (d. 1946) in a letter from Lausanne, Geneva, dated 24 June, 1923, asked Mayy Ziyādah if she had received his new book Anaṭūl Frans fī Mabādhilihi (Anatole France in his Private Life) which he had sent her and asked if she liked it.32 In a letter dated 29 November, 1925, the Italian Orientalist Ettori Rossi (d. 1955) wanted Mayy Ziyādah to review the article he wrote on her before getting it published in Orienti Moderno. He told her that after reading the article “you will either pull me by the ear or express your contentment.”33 In a letter dated 22 July, 1933, the Translation Committee of the Encyclopaedia of Islam asked Mayy Ziyādah to provide them with her “sound opinion” about the translation into Arabic of the Encyclopaedia which encompasses the works and research of prominent Orientalists on Islam.34 For a successful salonnière like Mayy Ziyādah, letter writing was not a cursory undertaking nor was it merely a substitute for conversation, “an absence made present,” as theorists of the epistolary genre often argue.35 Correspond29

Ibid., p. 340. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 43. 31 Al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, p. 72. 32 Ibid., p. 220. 33 Ibid., p. 309. 34 Ibid., p. 416. 35 Janet Gurkin Altman, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1982), p. 14. 30

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ence in her salon was to take place in addition to the weekly salon sessions. Letter writing either carries on what has already been discussed, prepares for another dialogue, conveys news and ideas, or cements a collegial climate that could override differences in opinion or perspective. In a letter dated 8 December, 1923, the writer and journalist Ḥ amdī Yakun (d.?) was happy that Mayy Ziyādah was pleased with his book al-Layālī al-ʿAshr (The Ten Nights) and he asked her opinion about the preface to his new book Munkar wa Nakīr 36 which was published in al-Muqaṭtạ m.37 Similarly, Shaykh Muṣtạ fā Ṣādiq alRāfiʿī’s letters to Mayy Ziyādah may well serve this premise. While he was known for his affection for Mayy Ziyādah, he was more worried about her assessment of his writings. As a discerning intellect and acute salonnière, Mayy Ziyādah was obviously taken very seriously by her fellow literati. Although al-Rāfiʿī’s book Rasāʾil al-Aḥ zān (Epistles of Sadness) was accorded a good public reception, he requested her opinion about it. He sent her the book without hearing from her. Such was the letter content of 15 May, 1924. The book was obviously sent early in the month as his letter of 6 May, 1924, indicates. On 5 March, 1923, he sent her his books hoping that they “derive from her attention some perfection.”38 In other words, he was inviting her to respond to his letter with another one. This means that Mayy Ziyādah’s comments and insightful remarks were sought after in the Nahḍah climate of ideas. Book exchange was no less important than the letter itself. The book was sent with an expectation of a comment, a review, or even an article. This exchange of opinions, comments, and books, as expressed in and through letter writing, involved some reciprocity of presentation and reward. Moreover, like letters which were circulated and discussed in the salon, books were also a subject of discussion and gossip. Their circulation or exchange stimulated discussion and created a climate of ideas. They were the material that overflowed the physical space of the salon to capture the attention of columnists, editors, and publishers. Letter exchange demonstrates a number of concerns and dispositions that shed more light on both the role of Mayy Ziyādah as a very well-recognized intellectual in her own right and on the power of her salon in paving the ground for an active Awakening. Journal editors such as Aḥmad Ḥ asan al-Zayyāt (d. 1965), the editor of al-Risālah, Emily Zaydān (d?), the editor of al-Hilāl, Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf, the editor of al-Muqtaṭaf, Anṭūn al-Jumayyil (d. 1947), the editor of al-Zuhūr (The Flowers) and then al-Ahrām (The Pyramids) and scores of others used both to attend her salon and to correspond with her. 36 37 38

Munkar wa Nakīr are the two angels who examine the dead in their graves as to their faith. Al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, p. 243. Ibid., p. 210.

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The most distinctive aspect of this correspondence is the high esteem accorded to Mayy Ziyādah. But this recognition involves something else: the desire and demand for her contribution or comments. The climate of ideas which was so peculiar to the Awakening evolved as it did because of this interaction and exchange. The demand for Mayy Ziyādah’s contribution came from academic societies and institutions inside Egypt and outside it. These exchanges extended the salon beyond its physical time and space and integrated it into a large public space, especially as editors found in the salon, and its rejuvenating climate and contacts, an impetus for a more contemporaneous engagement. Like the editors of eighteenth-century France, Egyptian editors and their counterparts who visited Mayy Ziyādah’s salon benefited from this atmosphere. In a letter of 16 January, 1935, Aḥmad Ḥ asan al-Zayyāt requested her contribution to his journal al-Risālah, speaking anxiously of al-Ahrām and al-Muqtaṭaf as his rivals in her love.39 In this letter the request is based on recognition of her role as “the only woman writer which the new Awakening has produced.”40 He adds, “al-Risālah will suffer as long as it is deprived of your support.” He concludes his request by asking her to consider herself the “proprietor” of the journal.41 The stage actress and journalist Rūz al-Yūsuf (d. 1958) addressed Mayy Ziyādah in a letter dated 16 March 1926 as one of “a sublime status in the world of journalism and literature.”42 Rūz al-Yūsuf describes herself as a novice in need of the support of a great luminary. This should not be surprising for editors from Italy, Spain, Germany, the United States, and Latin America made similar requests. This network of communication bound enlightenment circles in Egypt and elsewhere together. Mayy Ziyādah played a significant role to consolidate this communal endeavour. She took it upon herself to bring many intellectuals of different perspectives together. More important was her role in bringing together the novelist and playwright Tawfīq al-Ḥ akīm (d. 1987) and Ṭ āhā Ḥ usayn (d. 1973), and Ṭ āhā Ḥ usayn and Aḥmad Ḥ asan al-Zayyāt after an aggravated literary dispute. In a letter dated 23 February, 1935, Aḥmad Ḥ asan al-Zayyāt wrote to Mayy Ziyādah complaining about Ṭ āhā Ḥ usayn’s silence despite Mayy Ziyādah’s attempt to conciliate them.43 Letters also convey to us something about the extensive space of the salon and the pivotal role Mayy Ziyādah played as a salonnière. In a letter dated 9 November, 1923, the Islamic 39 Al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, p. 442; see also “Risālah min Ḥ asan al-Zayyāt ilā Mayy Ziyādah,” 17 July, 1918, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, p. 448. 40 Ibid., p. 442. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., p. 328. 43 Ibid., p. 444.

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philosopher and thinker Muṣtạ fā ʿAbd al-Rāziq (d. 1946) considered her encouraging words to him to be of great significance in setting him on the right track of public and university lectures. Her correspondence elicited his gratitude: “I was so hesitant when preparing to offer my first lecture at the Egyptian University, but God provided me with your letter as a spiritual succor from among those celestial overflows which angels of mercy bring down to us to fill in the spirit with faith and light.” He adds: “I do not expect infidels to be guided by my research in Islamic philosophy. I certainly hope that my efforts receive your approval and that of the defenders of science and thought like you.”44 Since such names were among the most prolific names of the period, their recognition of Mayy Ziyādah and admiration for her salon, and the “Republic of Letters” which emanated from it, should only draw us more towards her salon and its letter writing network as a Nahḍah productive sphere. Her epistolary art is a feat by itself. The admiration for her art is not surprising as Mayy Ziyādah herself was in the habit of improving her writing and also of understanding the epistolary art, its requirements, and needs. When Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf mentioned that he preferred her letters to her articles, she responded by a letter dated 14 July, 1918, with a careful consideration of the difference between epistolarity and impersonal scholarship. She speaks of herself, the one who writes letters, as her “real self ” which is different from the “adopted one” that appears to the public. “But when I intend to address you, there are no dictionaries nor are there languages. I push my books far away, clean my desk, touch my pen with playfulness and breathe deeply then I follow this with laughter as I imagine you in front of me either smiling or sarcastic.” She concludes: “Then I write not as one who writes, but as ‘one who thinks aloud,’ as our friend Mme de Sevigné used to say.”45 Mayy Ziyādah and the intellectuals of her time were aware that the letter is audience-oriented communication and will sooner or later be published because the moment the writer sends it to a destinataire, he / she is no longer sure that it will be kept private.46 Written with the passion of “the heart’s blood,” the letter, Habermas argues, paves the way for romantic sensibility and led to the autobiographical novel.47 Mayy Ziyādah adds that when writing an 44

Ibid., p. 342. Ibid., p. 53. 46 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 49; See also “Risālah min Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf ilā Mayy Ziyādah,” 26 October, 1918, in al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, pp. 67-68. 47 Cited from Gelbert in Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, pp. 49-50. 45

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article or a book she checks dictionaries and searches for the exact information in a number of languages “to be sure of what I am saying to the public.”48 Mayy Ziyādah’s improvement of the epistolary art itself was testified to by many, but for the sake of this argument let me mention two of the well-known notables in the “Republic of Letters”: the Iraqi journalist and polymath Anistas Mary al-Karmalī (d. 1947) and the Syrian writer and Professor Jabr Ḍ ūmiṭ. In a letter dated 29 September, 1921, Anistas Mary al-Karmalī admits that “I read your letter several times a day to learn, even if a little, how to follow your lead.”49 In a letter dated 17 April, 1923, Jabr Ḍ ūmiṭ expresses the same idea: “I am not able to measure up to your writing and imitate your letters.”50 As the interactive correspondence involves a dynamic exchange, writers are often compelled to expand and increase their readings to match their addresser’s knowledge. Many a writer used to admit how surprised he/she was by the range of Mayy Ziyādah’s readings.51 In other words, Mayy Ziyādah’s letters are not mere communication mediums. They are the epitome of the epistolary art.

Letter Writing: Typologies One way of studying epistolarity in depth as a salon annex practiced successfully by Mayy Ziyādah is to employ some useful classifications of letter writing. As the letter was once the most effective manifestation of the state organization of the postal service, a fact that Arabic literary and chancery tradition highlights,52 its proliferation and wide impact is seen by theorists of the European Enlightenment discourse as no less significant than printing, especially as correspondence in its enlightening phase happened to occur before the emergence of the press.53 As an effective means of sociability, communication also meant placing emphasis on the public. Neither knowledge per se nor subordination to divine instructions and monarchic orders was highlighted in comparison with this element in the formation of the spirit and soul of the Republic of Letters.

Al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, p. 53. Ibid., p. 172. 50 Ibid., p. 117. 51 Salmā al-Ḥ affār al-Kuzbarī, Mayy aw Maʾsāt al-Nubūgh, 1: 312. 52 It is worth mentioning that Abū Muḥammad al-Qāsim ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥ arīrī (d. 1122), whose Maqāmāt (Assemblies) were once taught to young trainees to perfect their Arabic, was also in charge of the postal service (Ṣāḥib al-Barīd) in Baṣrah. 53 See Goodman, The Republic of Letters, p. 17. 48 49

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In the Egypt of the Nahḍah, epistolarity assumed great importance in the preparation for the salon as a microcosmic ideal society for an “awakened” nation led and fostered by the select few. Epistolarity survived and flourished in reciprocity and collaboration to help open up new vistas and venues of lively communication of intellectual vigour in post-Ottoman Egypt. In cases where societies are less drawn to oral exchange or face-to-face contact, epistolary relations allow for formalized and, even, a controlled discourse. Especially Egypt and the Arab East, there was until 1952 a strong legacy of social distinctions that made reciprocity impossible. Interaction on equal footing was a problem by itself. We know that Mayy Ziyādah used to exert some effort to encourage writers like ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Māzinī, who resented society life, to partake in the salon discussions.54 Training in elegant and refined discourse and conversation was a replication of epistolary practice. But the more epistolary art, the better the training in salon conversation. Both salon conversation and epistolarity help in the growth of an effective discourse that transcends social ranks and paves the way for social and cultural change. The relevance of conversation, correspondence, and the epistolary art to Mayy Ziyādah’s salon emanates also from her acute awareness of the role of epistolarity. In her “Our Epistolary Art: Yesterday and Today,” written in 1915, Mayy Ziyādah shows how specific letters in classical Arabic have assumed a high place in literature for their clarity and brevity. She also mentions chancery correspondence as one effective venue of communication.55 She objects to a specific trend in letter writing which is replete with excessive greetings and stock images, where verbosity defeats the purpose and disables communication. The letter calls for a revival of effective writing as good as Voltaire’s that makes the French speak of his style as “Voltaire’s language.” The allusion to Arabic tradition, chancery writing, and the French literary milieu are important trajectories, as they reflect Mayy Ziyādah’s cultural formation with its rich knowledge of Arabic and European cultures. The emphasis on epistolarity also highlights her concept of the addressee as the recipient whom the addresser should have in mind and respect. Both writer and recipient should maintain a status of mutual respect and equality. The reciprocity on which the project of Enlightenment was based,56 and as the new term of exchange among equals, transcends rank in a Nahḍah discourse and spirit as perceived by Mayy Ziyādah, the attendees of her salon, and her correspondents. As Dena Goodman rightly notices in supporting 54 See al-Muqtaṭaf 10, no. 1 ( January, 1942); Raḍwān, ʿAṣr wa Rijāl, p. 361; Ḥ amādah, Aḥ ādīth ʿan Mayy, pp. 78-79. 55 Al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, 2: 527-528. 56 Gordon, Citizens without Sovereignty, p. 69.

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Elizabeth C. Goldsmith’s Exclusive Conversation, there is a similarity between this type of epistolary exchange and the “constant circulation of gifts” that “simultaneously binds a society together and animates it.”57 Both epistolarity and gifts tend to achieve a sociability of the highest order. When applied to literature, the letter functions in a manner similar to the panegyric poem as analyzed by Suzanne P. Stetkevych,58 a fact that is perceivable in dedications and exchange of letters among men of letters, a point which Muhsin al-Musawi dwells on.59 Related to this transactional and reciprocal order there is a significant departure in the Nahḍah period, as in the Republic of Letters, from patriarchal or hierarchical structures. The addresser and the addressee are now assumed to be on equal footing. The premise in The Republic of Letters is egalitarian in the first place. Goodman states: “The emphasis on reciprocal service and friendship expressed and embodied in epistolary exchanges was a constant theme throughout the history of the Republic of Letters.”60 The egalitarian aspect of the salon discussion and epistolarity presumes exchange, for an answer to each letter is expected. Mayy Ziyādah herself expresses the same view in the welcoming speech she gave in her salon in 1923 on the occasion of Jabr Ḍ ūmiṭ’s visit to Egypt. She quoted the Hungarian writer Max Nordaw (d. 1923) who states that “To thank someone is not only to acknowledge his / her old favor, but also to gain his / her favor.”61 Mayy Ziyādah thanked her clientele for their attendance, hoping that by doing so, they would feel obliged to continue to attend her salon. In accordance with the binding ethics of gift exchange, response and greetings are expected. Susan E. Whyman maintains in relation to the salon networks in late-Stuart England that “The social code mandated reciprocity and not to return a favor would be offensive. Society was based upon the exchange of mutual benefits and gift-giving bound subjects together.”62 The same applies to turn-of-the-century Egypt. In her writings Mayy Ziyādah speaks of the salon, press, and new spirit as the new dynamic forces that are bound to bring about the much needed transformation. Her emphasis on letter writing should be seen in terms of her 57

Quoted in Goodman, The Republic of Letters, p. 113. See Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Ode (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002), pp. 18, 34, 42, 73, 76-79, 181-184, 208, 271, 277. 59 See Muhsin J. al-Musawi, “Dedications as Poetic Intersections,” Journal of Arabic Literature 31, no. 1 (2000), pp. 1-37; also, with further details, in his Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 130-161. 60 Goodman, The Republic of Letters, p. 96. 61 Al-Kuzbarī, Mayy aw Maʾsāt al-Nubūgh, 1: 306. 62 Susan E. Whyman, Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys 1660-1720 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 28. 58

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awareness of the role of the art in the French Republic of Letters and her extensive readings in French. Hence, what is applicable to the Europeans, especially the French Enlightenment, may well apply to Egypt of the early twentieth century. In the case of Mayy Ziyādah’s web of correspondence as enlightening communication that expanded the orbit of her salon, letters took the following forms: first, the person-to-person letter that may be termed as “private”; second, there is the “circulated letter” that is intended for potential members of the salon and their associates; third, there is the “open letter” or “public letter” that purports to reach a wider audience, which may appear in a journal or magazine; fourth, there is the “literary correspondence” that concerns itself with reporting literary events and news by a reporter or literary correspondent. All these forms were used and practiced by Mayy Ziyādah and have a number of goals and objectives that fit well with the Awakening project.

A) The Private Letter The private letter constitutes a large portion of Mayy Ziyādah’s correspondence. Her letters to notables and scholars tend, however, to be inclusive enough to deal with personal issues, troubles and preoccupations, and intellectual issues of great significance to the understanding of the interaction between private and public life. Mayy Ziyādah’s letters to the renowned German Orientalist Joseph Schacht (d. 1969) are a case in point. Mayy Ziyādah encourages Schacht to be more outgoing with her. This led him to express his wish to see her soon. In his letter of 31 January, 1934, which was in French,63 he reviews his rift with the Orientalist scholar Fisher, “who is known for his conspiracies” and his “antagonism to Islam.”64 He also mentions a number of concerns and issues that reflect on life in Egypt and the Arab world. In other words, he covers personal, public, and common concerns among the elite which also include Orientalism and the West in juxtaposition with tradition. By doing so, he and the addressee are “contributing to the process of enlightenment” to quote Habermas on the letter and the public sphere.65 On the other hand, in her letters to Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān (d. 1931) Mayy Ziyādah does not give up her position on marriage. Jibrān obviously supports a woman’s right to have extramarital affairs that could go beyond social and religious prescriptions as unfold in his novel al-Ajniḥ ah al-Mutakassirah (Broken Wings, 63 Some of Joseph Schacht’s letters to Mayy Ziyādah are in Arabic. See al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā. 64 Al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, p. 423. 65 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 51.

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1912). In a letter dated 12 May, 1912, Mayy Ziyādah argues back, explaining to him that there are facts which should not be overlooked. Her argument is not trivial, as she also tries to justify her own understanding of women’s liberation. Navigating between this commitment and the presence of rules and customs, Mayy Ziyādah wrote in a way that was bound to elicit Jibrān’s appreciation of her frankness and tact. She says: I disagree with you with respect to marriage. I respect your ideas and I honor your convictions because I know that you are sincere in fostering them and loyal in defending them. I agree with you in respect to the freedom of women. Women must have the freedom to choose their husbands and follow their predilections and not that of their relatives and neighbors. If they themselves select their partners, they will be totally bound by the obligations of that partnership. You call these “heavy chains” forged by generations and I say: “yes, heavy chains but they are forged by nature which made a woman ‘what she is’ and even if the mind succeeds in breaking the chains of conventions, it will not succeed in breaking the chains of nature because the laws of nature are immutable. . . . I greatly feel the shackles women are chained with but if we permit to Salmā Karāmah, the protagonist of the novel, or to any one that resembles Salmā to meet with a selfless and noble friend, is it right for every woman who does not find in marriage the happiness that she dreamt of when she was young to choose a male friend other than her husband and to meet with him without the knowledge of her husband?66

This recognition of customs and social codes demonstrates Mayy Ziyādah’s neat combination of the cultivation of affection and sentiment with economic and social considerations which Habermas dubs “marriage for reason.”67 In this delicate situation between love and necessity, the letter does not function as a pouring out of the soul to an intimate friend. It is audience-oriented communication that lies at the base of epistolary fiction as noticed earlier. Like Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf and others,68 Mayy Ziyādah knows beforehand that letters are a public property. In another letter to Jibrān dated 6 December, 1921, Mayy Ziyādah touches on the personal side of their relationship, which she herself cannot promote without Jibrān taking practical steps to come over to Egypt. She is explicit in accusing him of aiming too far in this relationship without enough preparation on his part.69 She cherishes this relationship as a friendship, while he 66 Ṭ āhir al-Ṭ annāḥī, Aṭyāf min Ḥ ayāt Mayy [Visions from Mayy’s Life] (Cairo: Dār al-Hilāl, 1974), pp. 114-116. 67 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 47. 68 “Risālah min Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf ilā Mayy Ziyādah,” 26 October, 1918, in al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, p. 67-68. 69 Al-Ṭ annāḥī, Aṭyāf min Ḥ ayāt Mayy, p. 130.

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would like to make more of it. Mayy Ziyādah explains her position in eloquent terms. Her admiration for his talent coupled with the distance factor led her to envision him in real and ethereal terms.70 On the other hand, this impression is challenged by Eastern customs that do not allow young women to travel as they may wish or meet whomever they may like.71 In this subtle combination of literary wit, tact, and caution, Mayy Ziyādah says what she wants to say without jeopardizing her position in this “audience-oriented subjectivity” of correspondence where the composed letter is “pretty enough to print.”72 The private letter as sheltered by distance is capable of expressing what is otherwise impossible. In another letter to Jibrān dated 15 January, 1924, Mayy Ziyādah is more explicit about her love for him, a feeling that she is able to express precisely because it unfolds in writing and not in person.73 One can say that Mayy Ziyādah’s letters, as well as the letters addressed to her, stand as twin channels in an enlightenment discourse; a revelation of one’s inner self, an “imprint of the soul,”74 to use Habermas’ quote from Gelbert, and a decisive objectifying experience that establishes the self in a public milieu. As we know about the second side, the objectifying element, it may be worthwhile to see the subjective side, the letter as a “visit of the soul,” or, as he adds, as a piece “written in the heart’s blood, to be practically wept.”75 The dimensions of selfobservation and emotional expression, as well as the psychological dimensions of subjectivity are important in this respect. Although we tend to speak of the Awakening as the enlightenment project of reason and science, the romantic side was never absent, as the poetry of the period indicates.76 The romantic self, with its troubles, anxieties, and repressions, is always there. The letter also gave birth to large narratives and autobiographies in Arabic. In a literary sphere, this sort of letter exchange, argues Habermas, “explained the origin of the typical genre [of the diary] and authentic literary achievement of the century: the domestic novel, the psychological description in autobiographical form.”77 Although we have some glimpses of what Mayy Ziyādah used to pass among her salon attendees to write on—a photo, a picture, a poem or something 70

Ibid., p. 129. Ibid., p. 130. 72 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 49. 73 Al-Ṭ annāḥī, Aṭyāf min Ḥ ayāt Mayy, p. 144; ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Sharārah, Mayy Ziyādah (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1965), pp. 212-213. 74 Cited in Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 49. 75 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 49. 76 See J. Brugman, An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984). 77 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 49. 71

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else—78 we have no clue whether she also encouraged a practice of fictitious letter exchange among her clientele. Her French model, Madame de Staël, did so, however. Habermas mentions that she “cultivated to excess that social game in which after dinner everyone withdrew to write letters to one another.”79 Habermas maintains that she “became aware that the persons themselves became sujets de fiction for themselves and the others.”80 In other words, to feign writing fiction helps in preparing the literati for both fictional and realistic literature. The personal letter as such is important to understanding Mayy Ziyādah as a person strongly divided between a social “I” and a personal one. The letter also deserves attention because of the amount of refinement, humor, and knowledge involved in it. Behind the playfulness, there is an excellent grasp of social conventions and a conviction that a woman should control her passion. This amalgam of intimate and public feelings and interests is of great significance to fathom the enlightening search to go beyond imposed limits without jeopardizing social or religious expectations. The letter allows more freedom than actual meetings. In the case of Mayy Ziyādah, who never met Jibrān in person, the letter becomes a substitute for face-to-face contact. It also recreates Jibrān in the image of a lover. Mayy Ziyādah admits that distance and unfamiliarity with Jibrān’s actual person encourages her to speak up and confess her love. She also generates through imagined images of him as a distant lover images that may not fit well with his actual image of himself. In more than one sense, the letter expands the limited physical space of the salon beyond its communicative side. If the salon is the space for gatherings, discussions, and gossip, its epistolary annex expands the sphere in the same manner as the living room and the salon complement each other despite their different functions in the same house. The living room as a family room is not the same as the salon. The letter carries the familiar, and even conjugal, spirit of this room. But apart from the subjective element, the letter also originates from the salon, the source of familiarity with littérateurs and the originator of discussion and exchange of ideas on an intimate level. Hence, the letter like this one to Jibrān brings the two sides together and sounds very much like an epistolary novel in eighteenth-century England. Habermas makes a more definite connection between this space, the epistolary art and fiction. He argues: Living room and salon were under the same roof; and just as the privacy of the one was oriented toward the public nature of the other, and as the subjectivity of 78 79 80

Al-Ṭ annāḥī, Aṭyāf min Ḥ ayāt Mayy, p. 34. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 50. Ibid.

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the privatized individual was related from the very start to publicity, so both were conjoined in literature that had become “fiction.” On the other hand, the empathetic reader repeated within himself the private relationships displayed before him in literature; from his experience of real familiarity (Intimität), he gave life to the fictional one, and in the latter he prepared himself for the former.81

B) The Circulated Letter Letters were also shared, read aloud, and passed around. In a letter dated 2 January, 1921, the Iraqi journalist and polymath, Anistas Mary al-Karmalī told Mayy Ziyādah how when he read her letter to Sheikh al-Dujaylī, the latter brought a group of intellectuals who were fans of Mayy Ziyādah’s literature and asked al-Karmalī to reread aloud Mayy Ziyādah’s letter to them: “They wanted me to feed them on what you prepared for me [her letter] for they announced to me their hunger. Otherwise death is better than depriving them from this delicious and tasty food. So I yielded to their request.”82 The letter became almost an incentive for the group to meet and debate and, understandably, quote her. Furthermore, the letter in this respect brings people together, nourishes minds, elevates tastes, and encourages emulation and competitiveness. In his letter of 15 February, 1921, to Mayy, Jabr Ḍ ūmiṭ expressed his admiration for her most recent letter to him. He told her that he would show it to his students “who are studying the letters of the sheikh and prince of writers Muḥammad Ibn Mūsā al-Khawārizmī” ([d. 850]) and that he “will make copies for all the students.” Jabr Ḍ ūmiṭ is certain that after reading hers, his students will “abstain from reading al-Khawārizmī’s great letters.”83 To compare Mayy Ziyādah to the well-known masters of epistolary art and to prefer her to them is of significance. Certainly it is not merely to flatter Mayy Ziyādah that Jabr Ḍ ūmiṭ writes so. Apart from her recognized command of the epistolary art, she has the appeal of contemporaneous writing too. Another example is Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf in his reply to Mayy Ziyādah’s letter of 18 July, 1919. He thanked her for wishing him a happy birthday and informed her that he handed her letter to his wife to read. “Upon reading it, she kissed [him] and she assured [him] that she is happy he has found a person he is pleased to associate and correspond with.” Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf added: “and to benefit from, too.”84 In another letter of 15 February, 1921, Jabr Ḍ ūmiṭ thanked Mayy 81 82 83 84

Ibid., pp. 50-51. Al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, p. 120. Ibid., p. 124. Ibid., p. 88.

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Ziyādah for her charming letter and told her that he gave it to his daughter to read on her trip to Zaḥlah to visit her sister. He reveals his intentions: “I hope it will make her envy you, for envy is sometimes praiseworthy, and may be an incentive to emulate you.” Jabr Ḍ ūmiṭ’s daughter gave the letter to her sister to read and her sister gave it in turn to her friends. Mayy Ziyādah’s letter traveled to Zaḥlah and then returned to Beirut. Jabr Ḍ ūmiṭ’s wife read it and then “circulated it again in quarters and houses [only to] come back after three or four days.”85 Such letters to Mayy Ziyādah convey a good amount of information about her. This correspondence was impossible perhaps without a deep and thorough recognition that made Mayy Ziyādah a household name. Without it being so, it can hardly be imagined that each one of these solid intellectuals and rigorous writers would make her letters available for circulation among his family and their circles of friends and associates. Through this circulation, the letter becomes the venue of intimacy, competitiveness, and knowledge.

C) The Public Letter The potential of the public letter depends on its survival and durability, and the reputation of both addresser and addressee. Mayy Ziyādah’s letters to Jibrān, for example, found their way to the public without doing serious damage to Mayy Ziyādah’s person. She was known as a refined lady who was very respectful of customs despite her wish to be more open towards a number of issues related to women such as seclusion and segregation, travel without family attendance, and freedom to participate in social and political life. In her public letters she is keen on making her perspective known. Her published letters, letters to editors, her own responses to readers, and rejoinders are public manifestations of what her salon would like to realize in life. According to theories of structural transformation, the sense of oriented subjectivity applied publicly turns into an enlightening process. In Habermas’ words: “from the outset the familiarity (Intimität) whose vehicle was the written word, the subjectivity that had become fit to print, had in fact become the literature appealing to a wide public of readers.”86 This explanation gains further support in Mayy Ziyādah’s other avenues of letter-writing that connect her no less closely with the reading public, particularly in the establishment of a literary public through journals, book clubs, and academic lecture series. Mayy Ziyādah was 85 86

Ibid., p. 122. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 51.

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involved in the constitution of a public that grew out of early institutions like salons and coffeehouses. What held this emerging public together was the press and its elevation of debate to a professional cultural dialogue which was central to the Nahḍah. Mayy Ziyādah’s articles and, specifically, her letters to the editor hold great importance in this respect. These letters are too many to be surveyed here but we can focus on a very few that show her enlightening role. One thing that should be kept in mind is the increasing role of letters to the editor. Apart from turning journals into a public forum and a meeting ground whereby the reading public switches roles, from object to subject, correspondence with the editor and its incorporation in a journal signifies the emergence of “a common body of shared opinion,” as Michael Ketcham argues in Transparent Designs.87 Mayy Ziyādah’s contribution to legions of journals enabled her to participate in full in the Awakening discourse. She is, firstly, a powerful participant in endowing gazettes and journals with the same power as was the case in eighteenth-century France or England. In her hands Egyptian journals turned into a shared platform, for as Goodman says of the French Enlightenment, “a gazette is nothing but a letter multiplied with the help of printing.”88 On the other hand, the nature of Mayy Ziyādah’s letters and critiques with their person-to-person address have the power of a focused criticism of issues at hand, like women’s rights, education, curriculum, Arabic language, historiography, book reviews and many other cultural concerns that Habermas associates with the Enlightenment. Habermas explains in his The Structural Transformation: “as instruments of institutionalized art criticism, the journals devoted to art and cultural criticism were typical creations of the eighteenth century.”89 This applies as well to Mayy Ziyādah and her age with its multiplying body of journals, especially if we have in mind her published correspondence or commentaries. In a formal letter to the editor of al-Muqtaṭaf, Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf, dated 1914, Mayy Ziyādah reminds him of the obligation of the press towards the reading public. It is the “messenger between the writer who writes for the public and the public.”90 She lambastes some journalists who, instead of wielding the 87 Michael Ketcham, Transparent Designs: Reading, Performance, and Form in the “Spectator” Papers (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985), pp. 125-132; see also Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 42. 88 Cited in Goodman, The Republic of Letters, p. 170. 89 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 41. 90 Mayy Ziyādah, “Risālah wa Ḥ āshiyah: Naqd al-Kutub” (A Letter and a Footnote: Book Criticism), Bayna al-Jazr wa al-Madd: Ṣafaḥāt fī al-Lughah wa al-Ādāb wa al-Fann wa al-Ḥ aḍarah [Between Ebb and Flow: Papers on Language, Literatures, Art, and Civilization] (Cairo: Majallat al-Hilāl, 1924), p. 90 and in al-Aʿmāl al-Kāmilah, 1: 467.

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press to educate the public and to sharpen its public awareness, prefer to fill their columns with trivial news like a neighbor’s fight or a robbery incident.91 She urges him and other editors to review new books they receive from writers and to keep their readers abreast of the “intellectual and literary events which are the most accurate measures of the development of the nation.”92 She argues that the press has a national obligation towards the public: The journalist must, he does not have any other choice, mention in his journal every book sent to him. But to neglect a book is to wrong the writer, the reader, and the public as the latter has the right to be informed about the literary production of its members. The press itself will be harmed by this negligence for, by keeping silent, it invites criticism and will go on record as being deficient and indifferent.93

According to the Enlightenment theorists in Europe, attention to the public was foremost among Enlightenment priorities. Aimed at displacing the monarchic order and its limited circle, this attention to the public is the driving force behind the Republic of Letters.94 In a footnote (ḥāshiyah) to her letter to Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf, Mayy Ziyādah takes issue with îusayn Efendī Labīb, the academic and historian who thinks that nationalism is only a duplication of the nineteenth-century European idea of progress. She argues instead that Egyptian nationalism was a result of a national opposition to foreign encroachment or rule, stating that public opinion is not a coherent body politic that chooses or endorses monarchs as it once did in Europe. There is a select few that impose their will. She states that “every coup always stems from a private opinion, an individual, which becomes then the opinion of a group or leaders who control the nation by their influence or persuasion or coercion.”95 Mayy Ziyādah is not different from her salon clientele. Nor is she different from European intellectuals. Jacques Necker states the same idea. Public opinion for him: originates only from the effect of a small number of men who speak after having thought and who endlessly create, at different points in society, centers of instruc91

Ibid., pp. 97-98. Ziyādah, “Risālah wa Ḥ āshiyah,” Bayna al-Jazr wa al-Madd, p. 91 and in al- A‘māl alKāmilah, p. 467. 93 Ibid.; see also “al-Naqd al-Ṣaḥīḥ” (True Criticism) in Jamīl Jabr, ed., Mayy Ziyādah fi Ḥ ayātihā wa Adabihā [Mayy Ziyādah in her Life and Literature] (Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿah alKāthūlīkyiyyah, 1960), pp. 72-73. 94 Goodman, The Republic of Letters, pp. 2-7. 95 Mayy Ziyādah, “al-Raʾy al-ʿĀmm fī ʿAhd Muḥammad ʿAlī” (Public Opinion in the Time of Muḥammad ʿAlī ), Bayna al-Jazr wa al-Madd, p. 94 and in al- Aʿmāl al-Kāmilah, 1: 470. 92

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tion from whence their reasoned truths and errors spread from person to person until they reach the confines of the city where they become established as articles of faith.96

In these published letters addressed to editors we also come across more formal ones, for example the letter which she sent to Aḥmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid, the owner and editor of al-Jarīdah. This letter is dated 1914 on the occasion of the commemorative ceremony on the fortieth day following the death of the intellectual Fatḥī Zaghlūl (d. 1914), the brother of the nationalist leader Saʿd Zaghlūl. Although Mayy Ziyādah was on friendly terms with him as he was one of her mentors and a regular attendee of her salon, she did not send him a private letter, a personal expression of condolence. She opted instead for a public letter because she wanted to engage the whole public in the controversy over the ceremonial funeral and the exclusion of women. This issue is not merely her personal concern; it is the concern of the whole patrie. Mayy Ziyādah, to quote Nina R. Gelbart, “wanted immediate, frequent, frontal, and reciprocal contact with a broad social spectrum of readers” to discuss the issue.97 The address runs as follows: “The Respected Honorable Managing editor of al-Jarīdah.” The letter is a clear-cut expression of her position on women’s issues. The commemorative ceremony precluded women from attending and Mayy Ziyādah was to debate and question this exclusion that deprived women of an opportunity to participate in public ceremonies and also to receive adequate knowledge of procedures and practices that were for a long time confined to men: “My question is why did women not have a share in this commemorative celebration?”98 She further asks: “if Egypt was to mourn its young man, then Egypt like all God’s lands, I believe, consists of men and women.” She adds: The celebration was not confined to governmental officials, or lawyers and scholars. It was public, attended by the Muslim and the Christian, Easterner, and Westerner. But you precluded one sex: the same sex that gave birth to the mourned and his companion and partner, his mother and his wife. You precluded the sex which lives in isolation in times of total victory and triumph, when man is victorious and triumphant. But when he suffers from despair and pain and when the

96 Cited in Benedetta Craveri, The Age of Conversation, trans. Teresa Waugh (New York: New York Review Books, 2005), p. 362. 97 Nina Rattner Gelbart, “The Journal des Dames and Its Female Editors: Politics, Censorship, and Feminism in the Old Regime Press,” in Jack R. Censer and Jeremy D. Popkin, eds., Press and Politics in Pre-Revolutionary France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 73-74. 98 Mayy Ziyādah, “Taʾbīn Fatḥī Zaghlūl Pasha” (The Commemoration of Fathī Zaghlūl Pasha), al-Jarīdah (1914) and in al-A‘māl al-Kāmilah, 2: 479.

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coldness of death befalls him, he comes back to the sex which is created only to be miserable, that is the female sex.99

It is clear that Mayy Ziyādah also chose the public letter rather than the private one as her only available means of publicly (i.e., officially, formally) expressing her condolences; she does in writing what she is forbidden to do in person as substitution or compensation. Mayy Ziyādah’s criticism of this exclusion is constructively delivered, for to exclude women is to deprive them of what they have to learn. Paradoxically, men of the educated class were not hesitant in accompanying women to attend plays, but on more solemn occasions there is a deliberate exclusion. In this manner, she is able to alert the male elite to the need to be aware of their full responsibility against what she considers outworn practices and habits. Modernity means also positive participation of women. Reason, not imitation, should be the arbiter. She says: It is strange that you deprive women of attending a meeting that may elevate her soul to the most sublime effect and call her attention to the veneration of knowledge and the importance of erudition, and teach her to honor the homeland and its men. You allow her, nevertheless, to attend the opera house to watch plays, some of which may have a good impact upon her but are still less beneficial than attending a meeting. You may say that women do not understand the meanings of such a commemorative ceremony as men do. My answer is: we took great interest in the speeches and poems you delivered in the ceremony and we used the faculties of criticism and appreciation when we read them. This shows a great readiness on our part which you seem to deliberately overlook or ignore out of laziness and negligence.100

The letter to the editor expands salon conversations and draws the attention of editors, especially from among its attendees, to hypocrisy and double standards that contradict their proclaimed opinions. The commemorative ceremony of Fatḥī Zaghlūl’s death was the talk of the Egyptian elite at that time. What Mayy Ziyādah targets here is a deeply rooted patriarchal practice. The letter becomes again, therefore, an intervention against a system of thought which the Awakening is undermining and provides women with access to the public sphere that they are physically denied. By attempting to question it, its bases, and its survival in an age whose elite opts for women’s rights, she puts the intelligentsia face to face with the politics of exclusion. In his rejoinder Aḥmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid was at a loss as to how to justify the practice: “the honorable writer is right and I do not know why the committee of which I am a 99 100

Ibid. Ibid., pp. 479-480.

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member excluded women . . . unless it is the custom we are used to. Had I been asked to invite ladies to this ceremony, I would have been very hesitant. Perhaps I would have refused their participation. I cannot provide cogent answers.” He adds: “The funeral ceremonies are public and are open to men and women. I have nothing new to add to this except that we have not broken the fetters of this custom.”101 He admits that there is no reason to exclude women from such a ceremony. He lays the blame on a transitional period which is still chaotic. But he thanks Mayy Ziyādah for defending women’s rights. Published letters help to expose unresolved issues and challenge the elite to cope with practices that demand a definite stand and position if progress is to be pursued. The participation in, and the attendance of, the funeral ceremony which was denied to women is made available through the terms and objectives of epistolarity. Conversation and correspondence establish reciprocity and new ethics of equity because they “can take place only among equals” as Stephen Miller contends.102 Both the letter and the editor’s response rise to the challenge, accept the position of each other as equals and open the issue, henceforth, to public discussion. The function of the salon, epistolarity, and the press is in keeping with the transitional period with its many unresolved concerns and commitments. This understanding is worth keeping in mind when we apply it to readers’ responses to Mayy Ziyādah’s articles and commentaries as she was actively involved in journalism. This was also noticed by Arabists and Orientalists outside Egypt.103 What is of significance to our classifications of epistolarity is the fact that readers who change into writers, addressees into addressers, sustained reciprocity which is basic to sociability as the desired outcome of the “Republic of Letters”. In one of her letters to Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf dated 12 May, 1921, Mayy Ziyādah did not agree, for example, with him on the difference between ʿabd (slave) and raqīq (slave). Mayy Ziyādah thought that the adjective raqīq was less harsh than ʿabd. Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf thought the opposite. So she suggested to him to ask readers of al-Muqtaṭaf under the inquiry and suggestions section. Soliciting readers’ opinion, rather than consulting the Arabic lexica, is by itself another marker of sociability. The reader, not established authority, is to be involved in issues that, for long, were solved through reference to established authority. She contends, “Let us see if they have a different opinion, if they 101

Ibid., p. 481. Stephen Miller, Conversation: A History of a Declining (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 18. 103 See al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā; Joseph Zaydān, ed., Al-Aʿmāl al-Majhūlah li Mayy Ziyādah [The Unknown Works of Mayy Ziyādah], intro. Ghādah al-Sammān (Abū Ẓ abī: Cultural Foundation Publications, 1996). 102

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know the difference between the two words, and which name feudal lords used to refer to their subjects and peasants.”104 Mayy Ziyādah encourages readers’ contribution to these inquiries because she thinks that “By responding to my inquiry the reader will ‘benefit me and other readers.’”105 To ensure the reader’s participation, Mayy Ziyādah only corroborates what Habermas would later say, that the public “was now held together through the medium of the press and professional criticism.”106 This medium, in Habermas’s view, is an outgrowth of early institutions like coffeehouses, salons, and table societies.107 As this kind of correspondence constitutes a large portion of Mayy Ziyādah’s mammoth correspondence, let us speak of Mayy Ziyādah’s response in al-Akhbār (1915) to the reader, B. R., who attacked an American writer,108 from whose letter Mayy Ziyādah translated, publishing excerpts. In his letter, the American writer praises Shiblī Shumayyil (d. 1917) for destabilizing old habits of thought and challenging obsolete concepts.109 The reader, B. R., seems to equate old and obsolete thought, as targeted by Shiblī Shumayyil and the American writer, with religion.110 Mayy Ziyādah assures B. R. that the American writer is not an atheist like Shiblī Shumayyil but a believer.111 What the American writer is targeting instead is superstition and extravagance that turn religion into excessive practices. She says: Why cannot we call extravagant and immoderate a woman who when she loses her kerchief, for example, resorts to Saint Antonius, entreating him earnestly to take her kerchief away from the hands of the devil and put it directly in her pocket in exchange for some incense she buys for few cents and offers him the following day? Why cannot we call extravagant and immoderate a Muslim woman who resorts to saints and tricksters? Why cannot we call extravagant and immoderate Indians who burn a living woman beside her dead husband? I think that these

Al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, p. 139. Ibid. 106 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 51. 107 Ibid. 108 Shiblī Shumayyil published a letter in French addressed to the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (d. 1831) in which he attacked the Germans and the Americans for not helping the Allies to defeat Germany. Mayy Ziyādah sent Shiblī Shumayyil’s letter to an American writer who visited Egypt. She wanted to know his opinion about the letter. The American writer responded to her letter and promised her to send Shiblī Shumayyil’s letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt. 109 See Mayy Ziyādah, “Ilā Haḍrat B. R.,” (To Mr. B. R.), al-Akhbār (1915) and in al-A‘māl al-Kāmilah, 2: 535; see also B. R., “al-Afkār al-Qadīmah: Murāsil al-Ānisah Mayy” (Obsolete Ideas: The Correspondent of Miss Mayy), al-Aʿmāl al-Kāmilah, 2: 532. 110 Ibid. 111 See Ziyādah, “Ilā Haḍrat B.R.,” p. 536. 104 105

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childish beliefs and abominable customs and the like deserve to be referred to as extravagant and immoderate.112

In other words, Mayy Ziyādah tries to elevate the debate to the levels of Enlightenment whereby science and religion are brought together after being freed from excess and extravagance. She takes issue with the reader B. R. who believes that modern science, anything associated with the new as opposed to the old, is harmful to the human race. He adduces as an example, to buttress his viewpoint, the Germans who used poison gases in World War I to put an end to the lives of many innocent people whether prisoners of war, or youth, or old men and women.113 Mayy Ziyādah warns against such generalizations. She points out that science which can be a “harmful and destructive tool in the hands of Germans and others, has been a beneficial tool in the hands of thousands of people and tens of nations.”114 She adds, “It is necessary for a religious person not to be ignorant. Religion is one thing and science is another. Religion refines our soul and science is indispensable to our life.”115 Mayy Ziyādah strongly believes that “war should be waged only to defend a homeland when attacked by an enemy.” She thinks that unfortunately “Many people do not understand religion as it is, but each one of us understands it according to his own educational level and inclination.”116 This is why presidents of governments, for instance, often benefit from this misunderstanding and drag their nations into war for their own interests.117 Mayy Ziyādah makes it crystal clear that Religion does not have anything to do with our wars today. Yes, people open wars in the name of God and ask him for support and play the hypocrite with Him, He who is above hypocrisy, saying: “you are our God” until, when they have put an end to a life God gave life to and have destroyed homes and torn apart bodies and crushed hearts, they return to their churches and temples and fall on their knees praying to the Exalted God, the God of mercy, love, and compassion and reciting the following: “O God, we exalt You.”118

As in Enlightenment France, so too in Nahḍah Egypt, by volunteering to submit to the tribunal of public opinion, writers made that tribunal an 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

Ibid. B. R., “al-Afkār al-Qadīmah,” p. 533. Ibid., p. 537. Ibid. Ibid., p. 536. Ziyādah, “Ilā Ḥ aḍrat B. R.,” p. 537. Ibid., p. 536.

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institution of their republic. At the same time they activated their readership, gave the public a role to play. Open-ended and interactive forms of writing, such as letters, correspondences, and dialogues, encouraged an active readership. Literary journals, as we noticed, counted on their readers’ contributions.119 The role of letters in their varieties, especially the ones addressed to editors or in response to readers, is not separate from the appearance of the newsletter, the gazette, and the journal. In eighteenth-century France the “epistolary genre became the dominant medium for creating an active and interactive reading public,” says Dena Goodman in view of what Bernard Bray has identified as epistolary contributions between 1747 and 1793.120 She surmises that the “letter was transformed into the newsletter and then into the journal.”121 The connected network holding these activities together should never be absent from one’s mind. Under the purposeful drive of a personality like Mayy Ziyādah, there is more than one reason to relate these activities to each other. The French hold on Mayy Ziyādah is evident in her frequent references to French men of letters. Even in the most unexpected places, like a reference to festivities, where we do not expect a reference to John Jacques Rousseau, he is nonetheless mentioned. This recurrence should be conceived of as part of her literary legacy which is also the legacy of the Arab intellectuals of the Nahḍah. In “Rasāʾil al-ʿĪd wa Taḥiyyātih” (Holiday Letters and its Greetings), she celebrates ‘Īd letters and explains why they bring happiness despite our knowledge that the greetings in them are clichés. We should accept and enjoy this makebelieve, she argues: “Therefore let Rousseau sometimes cry and sometimes attack the society which hurt him, let people like him continue their researches and reiterate their complaint. As for us, let us laugh during the feast at least! Let us be as happy with our letters, like orphans of the murdered with their toys.”122 The reference to Rousseau should recall his epistles of opposition to the architects of the Republic of Letters, his critique of women as an effeminizing power to a male society, and his distrust of the whole idea of sociability.123 His mention here shows that Mayy Ziyādah is so well-versed in the French Enlightenment that she can move back and forth smoothly between Egyptian Arab culture and French culture. The letter functions, therefore, on more than one level. It also draws our attention to the erudition of its writer and his/her possible role. 119

Goodman, The Republic of Letters, p. 40. Ibid., n. 2, p. 137. 121 Ibid., p. 137. 122 Zaydān, Al-Aʿmāl al-Majhūlah li Mayy Ziyādah, p. 96. 123 Joan B Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London, 1988), pp. 66-89. 120

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Apart from her acquaintance with the French cultural life in her numerous comparisons, analogies, and allusions,124 the comparative method is frequently followed especially in her salon conversation, letters, and articles, as if it were a natural bent enforced by upbringing and consolidated by need. She never asked herself if her readers were necessarily acquainted with her foreign references. Focused on an intellectual elite, her model of a public space remained restricted by her European referent. Regardless of her sincere commitment to this vision of creating a public voice, the amount of reference to foreign culture might have prevented her discourse from reaching out to the rest of society. Whether real or imaginary, the style of response in the letter form which Mayy Ziyādah follows, especially in her al-Ahrām contributions, was already tested. Mayy Ziyādah proved to be successfully attuned to a sense of reciprocity and communal life in a Republic of Letters that makes extensive use of epistolarity in its old and new forms. The editor of the French Nouvelliste du Parnasse used to say: “it is not without reason that we have chosen the epistolary style; beyond the fact that this style is free and relaxed, certain tricks [tours] that are common to it give sharpness [éclat] and vivacity to reflections.”125 Mayy Ziyādah, for instance, uses the epistolary form126 for the very same reasons mentioned above: to answer, respond, or to thank her male entourage for their book gifts, as her published letter to the Egyptian historian and politician ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Rāfiʿī (d. 1966) upon receiving the third volume of his Tārikh al-Ḥ arakah al-Qawmiyyah: ʿAṣr Muḥammad ʿAlī (The History of the Nationalist Movement: The Age of Muḥammad ʿAlī) indicates. She thanks the author and appreciates his style, his national spirit, his concern with the past for the sake of the present, his objectivity, his meticulousness, his patience, and his effort to round up history.127 By thanking ʿAbd al-Raḥmān

124 Mayy’s articles and speeches abound with names of French men of letters and philosophers such as Voltaire, Mme de Staël, Mme de Sévigné, Rousseau, Bonaparte, d’Alembert, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, and Alphonse de Lamartine, to mention but a few. Muḥammad al-Tābiʿī criticized Mayy Ziyādah for her display of knowledge. He says: “Whenever she writes or delivers a public address she cites a Latin proverb, a Chinese aphorism, an Arabic verse, a famous word from the English Shakespeare or the Italian Dante, or the French Lamartine or the German Goethe.” Cited in Kāmil Shinnāwī, Alladhīna Aḥ abbū Mayy wa Ubīrīt Jamīlah [Those Who Loved Mayy and the Opera of Jamīlah] (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, [1972]), p. 52. 125 Cited in Goodman, The Republic of Letters, p. 166. 126 Epistolary form will be discussed in the next chapter on style: “Style as Persuasion: Pleading the case for the New.” 127 Mayy Ziyādah, “Kalimat al-Ānisah Mayy fī Tārīkh al-Ḥ arakah al-Qawmiyyah” (Mayy’s opinion about The History of the Nationalist Movement), al-Ahrām 57, no. 16583 (4 February, 1931), p. 1 and in Joseph Zaydān, ed., Al-Aʿmāl al-Majhūlah li Mayy Ziyādah, p. 415.

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al-Rāfiʿī, Mayy Ziyādah is encouraging the reader to engage in the Awakening project by reading his book and following his example. Another response in an epistolary form takes a different direction. Mayy Ziyādah once received an anonymous response to her “Khiṭāb min Sayyidah Miṣriyyah” (A Letter from an Egyptian Lady).128 She starts her response, published in al-Ahrām (1931), by saying: I do not know the reason that prevented the honorable Sheikh who wrote to me yesterday in al-Ahrām from mentioning his name. In the article which his honor addressed, I agree with the Egyptian ladies and share their verdict on fate. But I tried to be fair to reality and I said, and I repeat, that the mother is the one who educates the nation.129

Mayy Ziyādah does not elaborate on what he has proclaimed but her discussion reveals some points of difference, like the sheikh’s criticism of women’s concern with their looks. She writes back that “the adornment for which the sheikh reproaches us is necessary for women. . . . Education does not conflict with the idea of beauty. . . . And the house whose woman does not cultivate a sense of beauty is deplorable.”130 She also explains that what she means by power is not a military power, but “the literary idea behind the sense of power,” or “the idea that perceives what is right and therefore creates it in souls, and breeds it in the nation.”131 Then she explains her view of freedom and servitude as an inner psychological state: “For a free man is free even if fettered,” but a “slave is a slave even if surrounded by the manifestations of freedom and independence. Was not Plato even in his servitude as great as he was when ransomed from hostage by a friend to become free?”132 Another public letter is addressed to the German Hugo Eckener who invented the airship “Graf Zeppelin” in 1931.133 Mayy Ziyādah addressed him in al-Ahrām in the same year, but her letter is to the public as her esteem is a public esteem, and her admiration is the admiration of a public. Mayy Ziyādah celebrates his achievement because he is a model of perseverance and an example to be followed and to benefit from.134 She concludes that celebratory letter 128 Mayy Ziyādah, “Khawāṭir Mutanāthirah” (Scattered Thoughts), al-Ahrām 57, no. 16553 (5 January, 1931), p. 4; see also Al-A‘māl al-Majhūlah, pp. 448-449. 129 Ibid., p. 448. 130 Ibid., p. 449. 131 Ibid., p. 448. 132 Ibid. 133 Mayy Ziyādah, “Almānyā fī al-Samāʾ: al-Minṭād “Graf Zeppelin” (Germany in the sky: The Airship “Graf Zeppelin), al-Ahrām 75, no. 16647 (13 April, 1931), p. 1 and in al-A‘māl al-Majhūlah li Mayy Ziyādah, p. 451. 134 Ziyādah, “Almānyā fī al-Samāʾ,” p. 452.

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with: “Go far, roam, be in each round and trip a messenger between the known and the unknown! Go and fly and sing and spread the message of this world all over the horizon but never be a curse but be always peace and blessing to humanity!”135

D) Literary Correspondence Literary correspondence is no less relevant to salon activities and to its concomitant practices, conversation and epistolarity. Literary correspondence, as its name suggests, concerns itself with the reporting of literary events and news by a reporter or a literary correspondent. The appearance of the literary correspondent is not confined to Egyptian cultural life. In eighteenth-century France, it was a phenomenon not only because it was closely connected to the increasing interest in literary news and the anecdotes of men of letters and salonnières, but also because the public expected news that would enliven life and enlighten the community. Despite the strong hold of censorship, French intellectuals were keen on promoting this enterprise.136 They were constrained by censorship but the effort continued throughout the eighteenth century. If we draw more on comparisons between eighteenth-century France and early twentieth-century Egypt in terms of the intellectual elite and its role in the Awakening, we should remember that censorship was no less practiced in Egypt, as instituted by the British in 1909 to curtail nationalist activities.137 Every published article was reviewed and edited in one way or another. In one of her articles Mayy Ziyādah admits the existence of censorship even in the least expected works, as in literary pieces like her “Our Epistolary Art: Yesterday and Today,”138 published in 1915. In this piece, she is pleasant and humorous but at the same time she makes her point and shows the inadequacy of censors and their inability to cope with new concerns. She says:

135

Ibid., p. 453. Goodman, The Republic of Letters, p. 161. 137 Censorship was once non-existent in Egypt; indeed lack of censorship and freedom of expression which was granted to journalists had led Syrian writers to escape Ottoman censorship and leave for Egypt. See Caesar Farah, “Censorship and Freedom of Expression in Ottoman Syria and Egypt,” in William Haddad and William Ochsenwald, eds., Nationalism in a NonNational State: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1977), pp. 151-194; Beth Ann Baron, “The Rise of a New Literary Culture: The Women’s Press of Egypt, 1892-1919,” Ph. D. diss., (University of California, Los Angeles, 1988), p. 27. 138 Al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa Aʿlām ʿAṣrihā, 2: p. 527. 136

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I hear you, Mr. Censor, scolding me with your pen nearing the sentence I am writing now to wipe it out. So listen to me! You are not a German soldier nor am I a French soldier nor is this page the church of Ramos. So be tolerant and do not delete anything from my sentence . . . I am saying all this to make you forget to delete that wicked sentence! May God make you forget it!

Here as elsewhere, she has the seventeenth and eighteenth-century French experience in mind.139 Mayy Ziyādah knew from her French readings, perhaps, that a “literary correspondent was . . . less than equal to the person with whom he corresponded.”140 As a reporter of news and events, the correspondent adds to specific columns. He / she does not create the politics of the journal. In journalism the correspondent, until recently, was less recognized than the editor. Hence, she derides being a literary correspondent, though she decided only once to be so. In “Taʾbīn Bāḥithat al-Bādiyah”141 (The Commemorative Celebration of Malak Ḥ ifnī Nāṣif, the Desert Seeker), she writes: “I will be the correspondent of al-Maḥrūsah [her father’s weekly] for the first time, but my ‘report’ deserves to be under the title ‘The Feminist Movement in our Country.’ ”142 The commemoration was organized by Hudā al-Shaʿrāwī with the help of other women. It took place on November 1st, 1919 at the Egyptian University. About 500 Muslim and Christian women, Syrian and Egyptian, attended the ceremony as Mayy Ziyādah reports.143 The commemoration committee agreed to enlarge a photograph of Malak Ḥ ifnī Nāṣif, hang it on the wall of one of the Egyptian University’s rooms and name the room after her.144 In return Hudā al-Shaʿrāwī promised to donate 150 guineas annually to the University.145 The women also 139 On censorship in France, see Mayy Ziyādah’s letter to Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf, 1920, in al-Ṭ annāḥī, Aṭyāf min Ḥ ayāt Mayy, pp. 68-72. 140 Goodman, The Republic of Letters, p. 163. 141 Malak Ḥ ifnī Nāṣif (1886-1918), known as Bāḥithat al-Bādiyah, was a teacher, writer, and poet from a well-known upper class literary family. She was among the first women to attend the Saniyyah School and become a school teacher for girls. She was actively involved in the Egyptian women’s movement let by Hudā al-Shaʿrāwī, but her feminism was not as secular and Westernoriented as Hudā al-Shaʿrāwī. She published her articles in Aḥmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid’s al-Jarīdah and her speeches in a book entitled al-Nisāʾiyyāt (1910) (Women’s Affairs). In 1911 Malak Ḥ ifnī Nāṣif spoke at the National Congress and issued a set of feminist demands including women’s right to education and work. For a thorough study of Malak Ḥ ifnī Nāṣif, see Margot Badran, “The Feminist Vision in the Writing of the Three Turn-of-the-Century Egyptian Women,” Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies) 15, no. 1/2 (1988): 11-20. 142 Mayy Ziyādah, “Taʾbīn Bāḥithat al-Bādiyah” (The Commemoration of the Desert Seeker), al-Maḥ rūsah 44, no. 3227 (3 November, 1919) published under “al-Ḥ arakah al-Nisāʾiyyah ʿIndanā-3-”; see also Al-Aʿmāl al-Majhūlah li Mayy Ziyādah, p. 194. 143 Ibid., p. 195. 144 Ibid., p. 197. 145 Ibid.

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agreed to send a telegraph to the mother of Malak Ḥ ifnī Nāṣif and another one to her husband ʿAbd al-Sattār al-Bāsil to convey their condolences.146 By providing pieces of news as well as comments about the commemoration event, Mayy Ziyādah functions as a purveyor of knowledge especially in relation to women’s issues. Mayy Ziyādah acclaims women’s success in organizing the event. She states: I have seen in this commemoration evidence of success and a desire for advancement that makes me indulge in the happy hope that the Awakening of the Egyptian woman will not be a straw that flares and then dies down as many foreigners describe some of the Egyptian projects. I rather believe that the Egyptian woman has a brilliant future in Egypt.147

Mayy Ziyādah also pays special thanks to Hudā al-Shaʿrāwī, the commemoration committee chair and organizer hoping that she continues to render the noblest services to her nation and that women follow her example.148 These pieces not only corroborate Mayy Ziyādah’s writings on Malak Ḥ ifnī Nāṣif as a woman activist but also broaden her correspondence to reach the larger public who, in her view, should be the main beneficiary of a cultural enlightenment. Thus, we read in the same coverage of the commemoration: “Had those who derided the mention of women attended this ceremony, they would have changed their minds.”149 She adds: Do Egyptian men know the worth of the Egyptian woman, the treasures of love in her heart, her intelligence, and her readiness for advancement? I hope we have been able to show her distinguished faculties and that man aspires to become worthy of her understanding and appreciation.150

Ironically, the correspondent changes into editorialist. Instead of objective reporting, she concludes with an idea: the need for people to change their obsolete views about the community of women. This conclusion builds on positive coverage. Its premise, that women are not as they are portrayed by social customs, is made clear. The letter expands the ongoing discussion of women’s rights in the press and the salon. It also enables readers to elevate discussion and put it in cultural and social terms. It is no longer a discussion of religious authority on the subject. 146 147 148 149 150

Ibid. Ibid., p. 194. Ibid., p. 198. Ibid., pp. 195-196. Ibid., p. 198.

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The letter as annex to Mayy Ziyādah’s salon covers all preceding issues, encapsulates them in an enlightenment discourse, and makes them available to editors, readers, and the public. This “annex” and its press activities turn the salon and its discussions into the public property of a “Republic of Letters.” In this “Republic of Letters” there emerged a distinctive epistolary style, unconcerned with outworn demonstrations of verbosity. Its focus was on clarity of meaning conveyed in a focused discourse.

Journal of Arabic Literature 40 (2009) 37-70

brill.nl/jal

Narrative and the Reading Public in 1870s Beirut* Elizabeth M. Holt Bard College

Abstract This paper reads narrative published in the journals of 1870s Beirut in the context of an emerging bourgeois readership and argues that the significance of this archive to modern Arabic fiction has been neglected by critics. Taking the intensification of the silk trade with France following the civil war of 1860 as a point of historical departure, this paper traces the nexus of multiple influences upon narrative forms published in the burgeoning press of this period. Reading two serialized novels of 1870 alongside one another, this paper reveals the centrality of suspense to the proliferation of the press and the novel form. Anticipation, anxiety and hope pervade the pages of these periodicals as readers and writers negotiate changing notions of class and gender. The final portion of the paper returns to the question of influence, exposing the overdetermined narrative weave that connects these early serialized Arabic novels to not only the European novel, but also the heritage of popular Arabic storytelling epitomized by A Thousand and One Nights. Keywords History of the press, Arabic novel, Periodicals, Beirut, The Nahḍah, Serialization

Narrative published in the periodicals of 1870s and 1880s Beirut represents an archive of overwhelmingly understudied material, despite the centrality of these journals to the Nahḍah. In large part this scholarly omission is due to a literary critical focus on the individual author and the bound volume, rather * I would like to thank the many readers of this paper for their helpful comments and suggestions, and in particular wish to express my gratitude to Muhsin al-Musawi, Jason Frydman, Rashid Khalidi, and the anonymous readers of the Journal of Arabic Literature review board. The generous support of a Fulbright IIE grant, as well as multiple grants from Columbia University’s Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures made possible much of the research into archives held by the American University of Beirut, Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth, the American University in Cairo, Columbia University, Princeton University, Harvard University and New York University. An earlier version of this paper was presented in November 2007 at the Middle East Studies Association Conference in Montreal under the title “Circulating the Arabic Serial: The Economics of Form and the Production of a Bourgeois Reading Class in 1870s Beirut,” and at the Columbia Middle East and North Africa Work in Progress Workshop. The feedback that I received on these occasions was greatly appreciated. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009

DOI: 10.1163/157006409X431613

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than a broader focus on debates surrounding the reader or the various forms of prose fiction printed in journals. Another factor is the academic trend that takes Egyptian novels written around the turn of the twentieth century as the beginning of modern Arabic narrative. This article redresses this critical gap, tracing the production of a bourgeois reading class across the pages of these journals, and revealing the engagement of narrative published in periodicals of the period with this readership’s emergent narrative desires. The aftermath of the Druze-Maronite War of 1860,1 marked in part by the intensification of the raw silk trade with France and the establishment by missionaries from the United States of new educational institutions such as the Syrian Protestant College, deeply affected the social fabric of late nineteenth-century Beirut and its environs. As the booming 1860s came to an end, an unprecedented spate of new Arabic journals began to publish in Beirut in 1870 and 1871, quickly flooding what had until then been a relatively untapped periodical market. Among these new journals were al-Jinān, al-Zahrah, al-Naḥlah, al-Bashīr, al-Jannah, al-Najāḥ, al-Nashrah al-Usbūʿiyyah and al-Junaynah. Working with extant copies of this periodical archive, this article considers how editors and authors interacted with readers in the pages of these journals. Interpellating their readers through parenthetical addresses, the deployment of suspense, the proffering of morals and useful information, the printing of advertisements and announcements, and the inclusion of instructions for subscription, editors sought to identify and attract a growing readership to the relatively new form of the Arabic periodical. As journals printed letters, essays, trade updates and short stories penned by their growing audience, while also holding writing competitions and trivia contests, some of these readers themselves became writers, with Jurjī Zaydān perhaps the most famous among them. In order to maintain and expand their readership in a highly competitive market, editors in 1870s and 1880s Beirut capitalized on the very form of the periodical. Editors serialized longer narratives in regular installments. Many of these longer narratives took the form of fictional novels and novellas that hinged on suspense, enticing their audiences to become regular readers of and subscribers to a given periodical. Narratively, this tactic finds parallels with the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French and English traditions of serialized fiction, published both in periodicals as well as in number books. Its origins are overdetermined, however, for it can also be traced through the legacy 1 For a detailed analysis of the events surrounding the 1860 war between Druzes and Maronites in Mount Lebanon, see: Ussama Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

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of popular Arabic tales such as A Thousand and One Nights and the story of ʿAntar, collections that turn on the regular interruption of the narrative. Drawing upon these rich narrative sources, original prose fiction, both short and long, appeared in the pages of 1870s and 1880s Beirut journals alongside editorials, news articles, trade updates, and essays on history, science, and morals, as well as advertisements and announcements, and the occasional poem. Subscribers received periodicals in the mail, linking them both formally and experientially with the epistolary form. Each issue of a journal would likely be shared with friends and members of the household, creating a growing network of readers, and no doubt listeners, connected not only by personal relationships but also by an expanding press that placed Beirut at the nexus of diverse local, regional, and international influences, including Arab, French, English, American and Ottoman. The audience of these journals represented a newly emerging public. At its epicenter was a class of bourgeois readers who participated in the inauguration of Beirut as a center of education, publishing and commercial activity. The journals that appeared in 1870 and 1871, and the fiction printed in their pages, were produced by and productive of this public. Jürgen Habermas’s observations regarding the relationship of the European bourgeois reading public to fiction prove pertinent to the Arabic reading public converging upon Beirut.2 He writes: “the public held up a mirror to itself . . . through entering itself into ‘literature’ as an object . . . The public that read and debated this sort of thing read and debated about itself.”3 Indeed, the literature printed in the journals coming out of Beirut in the early 1870s enacted a debate over the comportment proper to its newly emerging bourgeois audience. Formally, the novels, novellas and short stories of this period posed as a mirror of society by incorporating realist literary devices and addresses to the reader. Early in the decade, these tales note that they occur on precise, calendrical dates in the late 1860s and 1870. In keeping with conventions of European realism, authors routinely give only the first letter of a character’s family name, or place dots in its place, as if to preserve the reputation and anonymity of their characters. These literary devices reinforce the sense that these characters are very much a part of the bourgeois public reading and debating about itself in the pages of the Beirut-based journals of 1870 and 1871.4 2 Jens Hanssen has also noted the relevance of Habermas’s work to late nineteenth-century Beirut. See: Jens Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut: the Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 53. 3 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (1962; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 38. 4 By the mid-1870s, much of this specificity was replaced by a deliberate vagueness regarding

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One precursor to these periodicals were the proceedings of al-Jamʿiyah alʿilmiyyah al-Sūriyyah or the Syrian Scientific Society, which met on thirteen separate occasions between January of 1868 and May of 1869. The proceedings of each meeting were published and sent to members, some of whom lived outside of Beirut, in cities such as Alexandria and Tripoli. As Salīm Shaḥādah outlined in the introduction to his narrative Naqḍ al-ʿuhūd (Breaking Promises) presented at the organization’s first meeting of 1869, the society placed itself at the intersection of orature and writing, calling upon its members to “compose . . . useful speeches to be read to those present and later printed and distributed.”5 The society itself as well as its library were no doubt sources of inspiration to editors, journalists and readers who would go on to participate in the burgeoning periodical culture of Beirut beginning in the early 1870s. Indeed, central literary figures such as Salīm al-Bustānī and Yūsuf al-Shalfūn were active members of the society. With a reading room open to members during the day, the society’s library held a collection that boasted, in addition to books in Arabic and foreign languages, issues of Arabic and French journals “for the use and enjoyment of its members,” which could be checked out, one at a time, for up to fifteen days.6 Among the journals sent to the society were the Arabic newspapers Ḥ adīqat al-Akhbār, al-Jawāʾib, Wādī alNīl, and al-Mubashshir al-Tūnisī, and the French-language publications L’Indépendance Belge, La Revue des deux mondes, and L’Illustration.7 Khalīl al-Khūrī’s seminal weekly Ḥ adīqat al-Akhbār, founded in 1856 in Beirut, and Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq’s newspaper al-Jawāʾib, founded in 1861 in Istanbul but distributed widely,8 listed foreign and local news and traderelated announcements, with Ḥ adīqat al-Akhbār also serializing fiction in the location and date of narrative events, a vagueness to which authors such as Salīm al-Bustānī repeatedly draw the reader’s attention. While there is some debate on this point, this shift suggests a growing need for negotiations with the censor, who from 1876-1880 was Khalīl al-Khūrī, founder of Ḥ adīqat al-Akhbār. For more on censorship in this period, see Donald J. Cioeta, “Ottoman Censorship in Lebanon and Syria, 1876-1908,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2 (May, 1979), 167-186. See also Fīlīp dī Ṭ arrāzi, Tārīkh al-ṣiḥāfah al-ʿArabiyyah (Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿah al-adabiyyah, 1913), especially vol. 2, 3-68; and Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 31-38. 5 Yūsuf Qizmā Khūrī, ed., Aʿmāl al-jamʿiyah al-ʿilmiyyah al-Sūriyyah (Beirut: Dār al-Ḥ amrāʾ, 1990), 147. All translations from Arabic texts are my own unless otherwise noted. 6 Ibid., 191; 2. 7 Ibid., 191. 8 For more on the history of the Arabic press in late nineteenth-century Beirut, see: Fīlīp dī Ṭ arrāzi, Tārīkh al-ṣiḥafah al-ʿArabiyyah, especially vol. 2, 3-68; Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 31-38; Ami Ayalon, “Private Publishing in the Nahḍah,” International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol. 40 (2008): 561-77; Jurjī Zaydān, Tarīkh adāb al-lughah al-ʿArabiyyah vol. 4 (Cairo: Dār al-Hilāl, 1957), written in 1914, especially 56; 208-17; and 242-46.

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translation, such as an Arabic rendering of Fénelon’s influential novel Mawqiʿ al-aflāk fīwaqāʾiʿ tilīmāk (translated from the French original Les Aventures de Télémaque) during much of the 1860s. In his 1859 lecture “Khuṭbah fī ādāb al-ʿArab” (A Lecture on the culture of the Arabs),9 Buṭrus al-Bustānī draws his audience’s attention to the founding of Ḥ adīqat al-Akhbār, noting that its printing press al-Matbaʿah al-Sūriyyah was “the first Arabic press specializing in journals,” which he hopes “will become stronger” with time.10 Al-Bustānī’s aspirations for the future of the periodical press in Beirut are in keeping with his conviction, articulated in his seminal “Khuṭbah fī ādāb al-ʿArab,” that “there is no doubt that journals [ jurnālāt] are among the greatest means to civilize people and to increase the number of readers if they are used properly.”11 This sentiment is shared by the American Protestant weekly al-Nashrah al-Usbūʿiyyah, revealing perhaps the interaction that al-Bustānī had with the mission as one of its converts. The publication notes in 1871, its first year, that journals are “among the greatest means of success” and contribute to “the spread of civilization and knowledge.” This declaration is followed by a chart listing the ratio of citizens per journal in a number of countries, with the Ottoman Empire coming in second to last after Russia. America, France and England were held out as examples of salutary citizen-to-journal ratios,12 in keeping with those countries’ influence upon prominent members of the Beirut bourgeoisie such as al-Bustānī, his son, and others. Indeed, in the wake of the civil war of 1860, Beirut witnessed the founding of a number of institutions of learning and scholarship that would increase the number of possible periodical readers as well as writers in the next decade. New schools opened their doors, including al-Madrasah al-waṭaniyyah or the National School founded by Buṭrus al-Bustānī in 1863 and the Syrian Protestant College (later to become the American University of Beirut) founded by American Presbyterian missionaries in 1866, while an 1869 Ottoman law called for the construction of an imperial Lycée, which would be known as al-Madrasah al-sulṭāniyyah or the Sultanate School.13 The aforementioned 9 Credit is due to Stephen Sheehi for bringing the importance of this khuṭbah to the attention of contemporary scholars in his recent study Foundations of Modern Arab Identity (Miami: University Press of Florida, 2004). 10 Buṭrus al-Bustānī, “Khuṭbah fī Ādāb al-ʿArab,” in al-Jamʿiyah al-Sūriyyah li-l-ʿulūm wa-l-funūn 1847-1852, ed. Yūsuf Qizmā Khūrī (Beirut: Dār al-Ḥ amrāʾ, 1990), 115. Lecture originally published in Beirut by al-Maṭbaʿah al-Amīrkāniyyah in 1859. Lecture given on February 15, 1859. 11 Ibid. 12 Al-Nashrah al-Usbūʿiyyah 1:29 (1871), 2-3. 13 On educational and scholarly institutions during this period, see: Jens Hanssen, “Chapter IV: The Birth of an Educational Quarter: Zokak el-Blat as a Cradle of Cultural Revival in the Arab World,” in History, Space and Social Conflict in Beirut: The Quarter of Zokak el-Blat, eds. Hans Gebhardt, Dorothée Sack, Ralph Bodenstein, Andreas Fritz, Jens Hanssen, Bernhard Hillenkamp,

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Syrian Scientific Society was founded in 1868 and was partly modeled on the earlier al-Jamʿiyyah al-Sūriyyah li-l-ʿulūm wa-l-funūn or Syrian Society for the Sciences and Arts, which met from 1848 through 1852, which itself was modeled on an earlier society known as Majmaʿ al-tahdhīb, which loosely translates as the Assembly of Culture or Refinement, founded in 1847.14 These learned societies participated in the creation of an educated bourgeoisie, but by 1869 they had fallen short of accommodating this class’s emerging needs. As Salīm Farīj, a member of the Syrian Scientific Society noted at what would be the group’s final meeting: We see that a large number of societies . . . have fallen. For it is easy for all of us to meet at the beginning of the matter, but we find it less easy to keep the obligations of these meetings . . . I hope that this society’s path will not be like those earlier ones that have fallen.15

Though new learned societies and salons would emerge, the Syrian Scientific Society, like its predecessors, dissolved, in part due to the shared sentiment that it was becoming increasingly difficult to continue to regularly meet in person. Several months later witnessed the beginning of the 1870 boom in new journals, with former members of these learned societies playing central roles in the new periodical industry as editors, writers and readers. The center of cultural gravity shifted in Beirut in the late 1860s and early 1870s from the learned society, in which members belonged to a community of writers, readers and orators with whom they met in person, to that of the periodical, a form that relied on print and mechanical reproduction to generate a readerly sense of simultaneous experience. In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson observes: The newspaper is merely an ‘extreme form’ of the book, a book sold on a colossal scale, but of ephemeral popularity. Might we say: one-day best-sellers. The obsolescence of the newspaper on the morrow of its printing . . . for just this reason, creates this extraordinary mass ceremony: the almost precisely simultaneous consumption (‘imagining’) of the newspaper-as-fiction . . . The significance of this mass ceremony . . . is paradoxical. It is performed in silent privacy, in the lair of the skull. Yet each communicant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by thousands.16

Oliver Kögler, Anne Mollenhauer, and Friederike Stolleis (Beirut: Orient Institute, 2005): 14374; and Ṭ arrāzi, Tārīkh al-ṣiḥafah al-ʿArabiyyah, vol. 2: 1-8. 14 See al-Jamʿiyah al-Sūriyyah li-l-ʿulūm wa-l-funūn, Khūri, ed., 5-6. 15 Aʿmāl al-jamʿiyah al-ʿilmiyyah al-Sūriyyah, Khūri, ed., 192. 16 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1983), 34-5.

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The market for periodicals published in Beirut in 1870 had not reached the thousands conjured up in Anderson’s depiction of the newspaper, nor were the journals and newspapers being printed at the sometimes twice-daily rate witnessed in the European press in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the profound changes that the form of the newspaper or journal inaugurated in the lives of its readers and the sorts of imaginings it invited through a shared, “mass ceremony” of reading, point to the deep shift taking place with the explosion of press activity in Beirut in the early 1870s. Readers anticipated that journals and newspapers would print material that would be “useful” to them as they participated in a burgeoning public sphere. As will be discussed later in this article, editors in 1870s Beirut would sometimes fail to meet these unstable expectations and would consequently announce a change of editorial direction. This preoccupation with the usefulness of reading resonates with Enlightenment notions that find their nineteenth-century complement in the British Utilitarian movement. As Richard Altick explains in his seminal study of the mass reading public, The English Common Reader, prior to the nineteenth century, books were “instruments of utility . . . through them, men could learn the things they needed to know as businessmen and functionaries in civil government.” He continues: reading was inextricably linked with ‘improvement’ . . . the demand was for handbooks of improvement, lessons in diligence and thrift, instruction in domestic relations, guides to godliness, popularized histories (always with useful lessons), translations, travel books, and books on science.17

Prior to the nineteenth century, periodicals did not hold a privileged space in the annals of useful reading. Yet in nineteenth-century England, Altick points to the growing focus on their role as instruments of progress: “even more important than books and pamphlets in the utilitarian program of enlightenment were newspapers.”18 The perceived ‘useful’ role played by the European press in the lives of European readers served as a model for journals such as al-Jinān in the 1870s. Arabic journals of this period reference foreign newspapers as sources for material, and there is evidence that a number of French and English periodicals were read by residents of Beirut in the late nineteenth century.19 In a short 17 Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800-1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 26. 18 Ibid., 131. 19 Among the journals cited by al-Najāḥ in 1871 are La Liberté, Le Moniteur universel, La Turquie, L’Indépendance Belge, L’Univers illustré, La Cloche, Paris journal, Figaro, Gaulois, La Couronne de Paris, La Patrie, and The Times. In addition to publications of the Roman Catholic

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essay concerned with the importance of reading entitled “Time is Gold” appearing in issue 9 of al-Jinān’s first year, its author ʿAbd al-Qādir Bey directs the journal’s readership to the value of their time, cautioning them against wasting it. Citing a line of verse, “if your life were capital be warned against squandering it on what is not necessary,”20 the author notes that “some people ignore this matter and thus waste their time on entertainment [malāhī] and playing backgammon and cards and the like and sitting around coffeeshops in which there is no use.”21 He contrasts this with gatherings in Europe, in which one member “asks those seated one by one about what they have read that day in the way of books and newspapers and what they benefited from that day.”22 This orderly recapitulation of the day’s news and events resonates with the proceedings of the Syrian Scientific Society in 1868 and 1869, where members were encouraged to provide the group with useful updates on their newspaper reading. It also exposes the connection bourgeois residents of Beirut felt with a community of periodical readers across the Mediterranean in Europe after whom they modeled their own relationship with the Arabic and foreign press in 1870 Beirut. “Time is Gold” is followed in the pages of al-Jinān by another brief essay expounding upon, as its title states, “The Usefulness of Reading.” In this twocolumn article, Ilyās Effendī Ḥ abālīn notes that “it is said of us [Syrians] that we are rarely interested in anything other than the material aspect,” and that what is generally considered useful is that which “is a means to amass much money quickly.”23 He points out the need among Syrians for an “interest in eloquent books and refined newspapers which improve the value of pens,”24 citing al-Jinān as a prime example of this sort of edifying material. In discussions of the habit of reading, there is some equivocation across these early journals between a notion of usefulness that translates into material wealth, and a usefulness that aims to engender proper individual comportment through the acquisition of knowledge and cultured refinement. Ḥ abālīn’s concerned tone stems from “our lack of speed in [acquiring the habit] of reading Church, al-Bashīr in 1870 and 1871 frequently references Le Moniteur universel, suggesting it was available with some regularity in early 1870s Beirut. Daniel Bliss mentions reading copies of several foreign papers in Beirut, among them The Observer, The Congregationalist, and The Record. See Letters from a New Campus, 1873-74 (Beirut: American University in Beirut Press, 1994), 55; 62. Additionally, journals of the period regularly mention The Levant Herald, and cite Arabic journals published outside Beirut, such as al-Jawāʾib, Wādī al-Nīl, and al-Furāt. 20 Al-Jinān 1:9 (1870), 277. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 278. 24 Ibid.

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periodicals [al-manshūrat al-durriyyah].”25 This assertion itself, as well as the misspelling of ‘periodical’ as durriyyah rather than dawriyyah, suggest that the press in 1870 Beirut was very much in its formative stages. As in al-Jinān’s “Time Is Gold,” the implied comparison is with the perceived “progress” of the European press and its readership. Ḥ abālīn explains: cultural [adabī] reform gives rise to material progress . . . the people who are the most prosperous in terms of wealth and progress in material luxury are those who have reached the highest rungs of the intellectual ladder for they, due to the pleasure [they take in] dwelling upon essential events and scientific secrets, have produced from the reading of newspapers important material and financial results.26

The Arabic periodicals that emerged in 1870 Beirut offered themselves as edifying alternatives to a game of backgammon at the coffeeshop. A new form of socialization that centered upon the cultivation of the habit of reading at times held out the promise of not only edification but also wealth and progress along a European model. This move away from idle games to the habit of reading was indeed a prominent feature of the moneyed classes of Victorian England, as Altick attests. However, as he details, their wealth was not so much the result of their reading habits as an enabler of them: ‘Cards, of course, were forbidden, and, while a game of bagatelle might be allowed, billiards, even in the home, were never mentioned.’ In so scrupulous an atmosphere, the reading habit flourished. The place of the evening reading circle in Victorian middle-class family life is so well known that it need be merely mentioned here. How widespread the institution was, and how deeply it influenced the tastes of the children who grew up in such homes, is attested in countless memoirs. However, only the relatively well-to-do minority of the middle class, the merchants, bankers, professional men, manufacturers, and so on, could spend full evenings with their families and their books.27

The perceived reading habits of the European bourgeoisie provided readers of journals published in Beirut in 1870 with a model for comportment and a sense of imagined connection with their European counterparts. As Anderson points out, the bourgeoisie “was a class which, figuratively speaking, came into being as a class only in so many replications.”28 He develops this point, explaining that members of the bourgeoisie came

25 26 27 28

Ibid. Ibid. Altick, 86. Anderson, 77.

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to visualize in a general way the existence of thousands and thousands like themselves through print-language. For an illiterate bourgeoisie is scarcely imaginable. Thus in world-historical terms bourgeoisies were the first classes to achieve solidarities on an essentially imagined basis.29

In late 1870, al-Jinān featured an announcement regarding subscriptions for the coming year that reinforced the connection established in its pages between the attainment of bourgeois status and the cultivation of the habit of reading. The announcement praised the journal’s readership for their attainment of a “fine level among the levels of the age of civilization and knowledge, for many had entered the garden [ jinān] of culture [adab] and useful news by spending glittering gold and the essence of their precious time reading newspapers.”30 Salīm al-Bustānī’s fiction, serialized in al-Jinān, specifically addressed itself to the use value of the narratives for which its late nineteenth-century Arabic readership exchanged its “glittering gold.” Matti Moosa, in his chapterlength study of Salīm al-Bustānī’s fiction, highlights this central preoccupation with the “useful.”31 This theme repeats not only in the pages of his 1870 novel al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām (Love in Damascus Gardens), but also in the many other novels, short stories, anecdotes, and essays published in the journal before Salīm al-Bustānī’s untimely death in the late summer of 1884. In al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām’s penultimate installment, al-Bustānī explains to his readership the pedagogical use of novels: “we must show our faults and the faults of others for ourselves and for others by means of writing novels [riwāyāt], and show what is ugly and what is good by means of the description of the individuals whose stories we tell.”32 Fiction is here figured as an arena in which one can approach and consider a society’s faults as they appear in the descriptions of fictitious characters, usefully serving as an outlet for autocritique and an impetus to reform. Several pages earlier in this installment, we as readers discover that Sulaymān, the novel’s protagonist, is not a native of Beirut, but rather moved to the city from Baghdad around 1864 because of the stories he had heard of the city’s stunning progress. The narrative leverages this outsider’s vantage point when he describes his disappointment at the sectarian divisions cutting across the city of Beirut and the surrounding region. The text offers an illuminating portrait of the sectarian reading habits in and around the city of Beirut in the late 1860s: 29

Ibid. Al-Jinān 1:22 (1870), 687. 31 Matti Moosa, The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997), 165. 32 Al-Jinān 1:22 (1870), 702. 30

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[We] read newspapers and books of different tastes and inclinations, and as a result each of us is entrenched in the inclination of the people whose newspapers and books we read. And if we wanted to read others it would not be permitted by the leaders of our faction, rather it is planted in our thoughts that they are loaded with lies. And so our country has become divided into many divisions, especially because it has depended for the most part on reading French newspapers. And these newspapers are from many different factions . . . [with] the result that our factions almost outnumber theirs.33

Here, the divisions separating readers of French newspapers act as a cipher for the factionalization persisting in and around Beirut in the late 1860s, following the civil war of 1860. Though Buṭrus al-Bustānī’s pamphlet-like publication Nafīr Sūrīya, appearing regularly in 1860 and 1861, addressed itself to “the sons of the nation,” the repeated call for unity in the wake of the events of 1860 suggests that divisions still ran deep. Arabic newspapers such as the Beirut-based Ḥ adīqat al-Akhbār, the Istanbul-based al-Jawāʾib, and the Cairobased Wādī al-Nīl were available and read in 1860s Beirut and its environs, yet the factionalized readership that Sulaymān describes, dependent upon the French press for news, represents a moment before the emergence of a locally based and imagined public sphere. The explosion in Arabic periodical publication in 1870 and 1871 in Beirut marks the emergence of this locally based and imagined public sphere. The journals published in the early 1870s in Beirut reveal that while the city and the region remained divided into factions, readership of the city’s new journals extended across sectarian lines, giving rise to an atmosphere of civic debate. For instance, the Jesuit-published journal al-Bashīr, founded in September of 1870, regularly quotes in its first years from articles published in al-Jannah, al-Jinān, al-Jawāʾib, and the American Protestant journal al-Nashrah alUsbūʿiyyah, which replaced the earlier and more irregular al-Nashrah al-Shahriyyah in 1871. In the last weeks of 1871, al-Nashrah al-Usbūʿiyyah announced that the Jesuits would be publishing a tract or risālah, and that the Protestant missionaries would be publishing their own response.34 While the Jesuit authors responsible for publishing al-Bashīr and their Protestant counterparts involved in putting out al-Nashrah al-Usbūʿiyyah often take profound issue with each other, nonetheless their debate in print suggests a departure from the factionalized portrait Sulaymān paints of late 1860s reading habits in Beirut. What emerges in this period is instead a city of bourgeois readers, connected to Europe through the press but also engaged in heated, printed discussion with their local bourgeois counterparts from Beirut as well as other 33 34

Ibid., 700. Al-Nashrah al-Usbūʿiyyah 1:49 (1871), 8.

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cities in Greater Syria and the Arab world. The emerging press, then, plays a role in consolidating a constituency of bourgeois readers. In May of 1871, the bi-weekly journal al-Najāḥ ran an allegorical short story entitled “al-Waṭan wa-l-ittifāq” (“Nation and Agreement”) that dramatized the relationship between Beirut’s periodicals and their readership. In the story, the fatherly character al-Waṭan (or ‘nation’) discusses his use of the newspaper as a “mouthpiece” [lisān] for his message of unity.35 He articulates one of the central roles envisioned for the burgeoning press of 1870s Beirut: the formation, addressed above, of what Anderson calls a “mass ceremony” of readers. However, “al-waṭan” at this time is a loose signifier, in many ways paralleling the contours of the reading public of Arabic newspapers printed in Beirut. For as the noted author Fransīs Marrāsh explains in an article entitled “alWaṭan” in the journal al-Zahrah in 1870, “a person’s nation [waṭan al-marʾ] is his home in relation to his quarter [maḥallatihi]. And his quarter in relation to his city [madīnatihi]. And his city in relation to his quṭr. And his quṭr in relation to the rest of the aqṭār [plural of quṭr].”36 The very difficulty of translating a late-nineteenth century use of quṭr, a word that can mean region, district or country, continues to resonate in the early twenty-first century. That Marrāsh is a resident of Aleppo, writing in a journal published in Beirut, further dramatizes his assertion on the next page of this essay: “we are a people without a nation.”37 Denouncing the use by many of his peers of foreign languages and the adoption of “strange foreign customs,”38 Marrāsh calls for the use of Arabic as a way to bridge the differences between his people. Despite his frustration at this self-modeling after foreigners, however, Marrāsh nonetheless holds “the French nation [al-ummah al-faransāwiyyah]”39 out as a template for unity among his people. Yet the factionalization of French newspapers and their readership discussed in the pages of al-Jinān suggests that the French nation might not have been the glimmering model that Marrāsh seemed to have in mind. The fiction that Salīm al-Bustānī serialized in al-Jinān offered itself as a compelling means through which the newly forming bourgeois readership in Beirut and its environs could sort through this conflicting network of “strange foreign customs” while still benefitting from ideas such as nationalism and progress. Salīm al-Bustānī’s fiction, like the laudatory language of the al-Jinān announcement contained in issue 22 of 1870 that praised the audience’s use 35 36 37 38 39

Al-Najāḥ 1:39 (1871), 619. Al-Zahrah 1:24 (1870), 186. Ibid., 187. Ibid. Ibid., 188.

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of both their money and their time, invited bourgeois readers to imagine and participate in local models of proper reading habits and intellectual comportment. In so doing, it provided a bridge between the idealized model of Europeans and their literary practices, and the newly forming reading public of late nineteenth-century Greater Syria. Reading appears in al-Huyām fī jinān alShām as not only a path to individual edification, but also as a public activity reminiscent of the meetings of the learned societies and models of reading espoused in the short articles appearing in al-Jinān in its first year. When Sulaymān, the story’s protagonist, finishes his dinner one night and leaves the tobacco smoke-filled dining room of the Damascus hotel where he is staying, he joins a French woman and several other foreign ladies in the hotel’s sitting room. There they spend the evening talking, singing, “and reading some books and newspapers ( jarāʾid ).”40 Other men join them following their postprandial smoke. The male protagonist favors the company of foreign women who enjoy reading and edifying discussion over that of men from whose mouths “the hateful smell of tobacco springs.”41 The narrator instructs the bourgeois reader in the meaning of this mixing of the sexes “according to the foreign manner.” He notes that “the attainment by one unaccustomed to it of that sort of closeness with the fairer sex would make him very proud and boast of this distinction and imagine things that perhaps were unlikely to occur.”42 The narrator educates his male audience members in the proper manner of conduct for this situation, placing the emphasis not on the romantic implications of such an encounter but rather on the enlightening conversation and opportunity for reading that it afforded. This scene may well have come to mind when readers of al-Jinān encountered, six issues later, ʿAbd al-Qādir Bey’s narration of a European intellectual gathering, featuring a measured discussion of the day’s journals and news. Indeed, al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām reveals reading to be the very impetus behind the European hotel guests’ presence in Syria, exposing the web of connections imagined through reading that link the international bourgeoisies. In the course of his evening discussions with the European travelers, Sulaymān discovers that he shares with them a desire to visit the ruins of Tadmur, the Arabic name of the ancient city Palmyra. After their visit to the ruins, Sulaymān and the foreigners, along with their contingent of servants and guides, battle against and are ultimately captured by a Beduin tribe. They are rescued from their captivity by Sulaymān’s beloved, Wardah. Wardah is in the

40 41 42

Al-Jinān 1:3 (1870), 91. Ibid. Ibid., 90.

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position of moderator and translator between the French-speaking foreigners and the Beduin leaders who have captured and taken a particular liking to her. The Beduin do not understand what the foreigners are doing in the region; Wardah explains, “the travelers have come to our country to look upon it, because in it are ancient ruins that clarify the histories that they read.”43 Indeed, these foreigners are such avid readers that one of them, Madame Bilrūz, read a book as she rode her dromedary into battle four issues earlier. Sulaymān shares a love of reading history with the foreign travelers. When the group first comes within view of the ruins of Tadmur, Sulaymān notes, “it reminded me of what I had read in histories.”44 The usefulness of this sort of reading, popular among both European and local audiences, becomes clear when Monsieur Bilrūz narrates to the group the history of Tadmur upon their arrival at the ancient ruins. These histories serve as travel guides, an emerging genre in Europe at this time, with the first Baedeker guide to Syria and Palestine published in 1876. In keeping with this trend, the issues of al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām concerned with the visit to Tadmur read as a guide for those who might wish to make the journey themselves. A thorough itinerary is provided, replete with names of villages, landmarks, cardinal directions, and travel times, as is a list of the needed provisions, proper mounts, requisite number of servants, and required arms and tribal guides. Monsieur Bilrūz’s lecture offers a detailed history of Tadmur and its famous queen Zanūbiyyā, complete with citations from the Bible.45 Sulaymān’s first impressions of the ruined city, appearing earlier in the novel, serve as an introduction to the information Monsieur Bilrūz’s speech provides. While in the pages of al-Jinān the reading of books and journals is figured as a useful means of edification and proper bourgeois comportment, in alZahrah’s 1870 serialized novel al-Shābb al-maghrūr (The Conceited or Tempted Youth), reading is primarily a private activity for entertainment and relaxation. This duality is central to debates surrounding the proper comportment of the emerging bourgeoisie across Beirut and its environs in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Indicative of the uncertain status of bourgeois reading habits, an illicit, clandestine aspect haunts the entertaining and relaxing side of read43

Al-Jinān 1:12 (1870), 377. Al-Jinān 1:6 (1870), 184. 45 Salīm al-Bustānī appears to have found the history of the ancient city of Tadmur particularly relevant to readers of al-Jinān in the early 1870s; the following year he set his first serialized historical novel in that ancient city during its days of splendor, calling it Zanūbiyyā after the city’s queen and one of the novel’s protagonists. Following in al-Jinān’s footsteps, the Protestant weekly al-Nashrah al-Usbūʿiyyah, first appearing in January of 1871, inaugurated a series of descriptions and histories of ancient and biblical cities of the Levant and Holy Land in its fourth issue with a history of Tadmur. 44

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ing in al-Shābb al-maghrūr, exposing anxiety surrounding issues of class and gender in and around Beirut at the time. The readers of al-Zahrah’s 1870 novel al-Shābb al-maghrūr are introduced in its first installment to an unnamed narrator who travels in June of 1866 from Beirut to Damascus, where like Sulaymān he too stays in a hotel. He soon meets Khalīl, and much of the novel is his narration of Khalīl’s tale to a fellow traveller on the return trip from Damascus to Beirut. This traveller turns out to be Faḍlū, whose fiancée Anīsah is a character in Khalīl’s tale, for she befriended Khalīl while she and Faḍlū were staying in Damascus. Khalīl eventually leaves the city despite Anīsah’s protestations, travelling around Syria before returning to Damascus with a woman he has fallen for named Ghirrah and her mother Fitnah. From that point forward, the novel is the story of the narrator’s attempts to help bail Khalīl, the conceited, tempted youth of the novel’s title, out of the debts he has incurred as a result of Ghirrah and her mother’s penchant for extravagance, which turns out to be his demise. He is left bankrupt and wandering the streets of Damascus in the penultimate installment of al-Shābb al-maghrūr. Though he came from a wealthy family living in Beirut, the speed with which he falls into debt and ill repute stands as a striking warning to readers of the vulnerable, fragile position of a tempted bourgeois youth given to delusion in late nineteenth-century Syria. Not only do anxieties surrounding bourgeois status hover over al-Shābb almaghrūr, so to does the intersection of literacy with changing gender relations. In al-Shābb al-maghrūr’s second installment, the narrator returns to his hotel room in Damascus to get dressed for the evening outing he has just arranged with a man from Aleppo whom he met over dinner. As he begins to change his clothes, he narrates: I turned to my bed, and it appeared as if it were saying to me, ‘Come here, delight in the relaxation of sleep and the pleasure of dreams.’ There was, furthermore, beside the bed a book containing some literary stories [qiṣaṣ adabiyyah], which I heard calling to me as if its pages were saying ‘Here is calmness and pleasurable reading (muṭālaʿah).’46

He undresses and crawls into bed with the book, and must beg his new friend’s forgiveness when the latter comes knocking a few moments later. This image of reading as evening entertainment appears again in the thirteenth issue of al-Shābb al-maghrūr. At this point in the serialized novel, the un-named narrator of the second issue has faded from view, as he follows along with us the first-person narrative of Khalīl, a man he met in a Damascus garden while out 46

Al-Zahrah 1:2 (1870), 16.

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for a walk. Earlier in the installment, Khalīl left his keys for his neighbor Anīsah, the young, engaged woman who is most upset at Khalīl’s imminent departure from Damascus. She lets herself in after Khalīl has gone to sleep; when he awakes in the night, he finds her sitting beside his bed, reading. She explains: “‘In order to entertain myself I picked up this book to read (uṭāliʿa).’ ”47 The initial meeting of Khalīl and Anīsah traces back to a letter Khalīl dropped one night while passing Anīsah on the stairs. Searching everywhere in his room, Khalīl finally finds it by his door; however, the letter now bears a black seal with the letter nūn on it, while he always seals his letters in red. The next morning he finds out the names of his neighbors, Faḍlū and Anīsah, and shortly thereafter Anīsah greets him in the hallway and then comes to his room in order to borrow something with which to re-light their fire, which has died out. During a conversation that stretches across several installments of the novel, Khalīl repeatedly thinks she is about to bring up the letter, creating an air of suspense around the mysterious circumstances of its reappearance. Finally, in the tenth issue, she does. Swearing that she never read it, Anīsah explains that she was interested in it because she thought it might be “the writings of a woman.”48 He insists that she must have read it, citing the changed seal; she laughs, telling him that she did that so that he would come and speak to her. Far from the edifying nature of reading depicted in the pages of alHuyām fī jinān al-Shām, reading here becomes a clandestine activity, staged by the engaged Anīsah and communicated via a coded language of seals, serving as what she terms “‘a means of flirtation’ ” with her neighbor Khalīl.49 Letters, albeit of a less clandestine sort, play a central role in the continuation of the plot of al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām. Sulaymān had spied upon and quickly fallen in love with Wardah in a garden in Damascus before encountering her on the sight-seeing excursion to Tadmur. Later in the novel, the two have just managed to escape from the Beduin tribe that captured them nearby Tadmur when Wardah is captured again, this time by a band of robbers, before being taken aboard a pirate ship. The narrator learned of these events when he met Sulaymān one day on Mount Lebanon. Following this initial meeting, Sulaymān sends a series of letters to the novel’s author updating him on his progress, with the final letter coming from Italy where Sulaymān and Wardah finally married. In a sophisticated meta-narrative device, these letters are sent to a character called Salīm al-Bustānī.

47 48 49

Al-Zahrah 1:13 (1870), 104. Al-Zahrah 1:10 (1870), 80. Ibid.

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Reading these two sometimes epistolary novels side-by-side focalizes the formal similarity between an installment of a novel and a letter, both of which might arrive in the same post.50 The anticipation familiar to readers from receiving letters is here tied to that experienced as one awaits the next issue of al-Zahrah or al-Jinān. In al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām, written correspondence is the very means by which the plot is sustained after the narrator and protagonist part following their meeting in Issue 16 beneath a cedar on Mount Lebanon overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The two exchange not only letters, by means of the French and Austrian mail, but also telegrams, as Sulaymān’s travels take him in the direction of Izmir, then on to Crete and finally Napoli. The letters and telegrams are crucial to the novel’s plot and character development. It is through his signature at the end of a letter that we discover that the narrator of al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām is none other than Salīm al-Bustānī, and, in the final installment, that the protagonist who has up this point remained nameless is Sulaymān Khālid. The two employ letters and telegrams not only to communicate about Sulaymān’s travels during his search for his beloved Wardah, but also to enable Sulaymān to conduct economic transactions while far away from the financial institutions of Beirut. Their correspondence thus enables the tale to continue, as Salīm sends Sulaymān funds, and Sulaymān sends Salīm, and thus al-Jinān’s expectant readership, the latest news of his adventures in pursuit of Wardah. At one point in the nineteenth installment of al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām, Salīm has not heard from Sulaymān for three months, despite the many letters Salīm has sent to every port he can imagine his friend may have arrived in. Salīm begins to fear for his friend’s fate, and the story al-Jinān’s readership has been following threatens to come to an unresolved end. Finally, Salīm comes upon a group of sailors on the shore of the Mediterranean just north of Beirut, and discovers that they were on a ship with Sulaymān, and so the narrative continues. The narrative threat represented by a suspension of news via letter or telegram reappears in the novel’s final installment. Al-Jinān’s readership discovers that they, along with their narrator, had been awaiting news of the tale’s conclusion. As Salīm explains: “the beauty of a novel is in the quality of its ending. After thinking about that for a long time I was determined not to publish this novel” without news of how Sulaymān’s search for Wardah finally concluded.51 The update comes in a letter from Sulaymān and Wardah in 50 On the dynamics of epistolarity in intellectual circles of the Nahḍah, see Boutheina Khaldi’s “Epistolarity in a Nahḍah Climate: The Role of Mayy Ziyādah’s Letter Writing” in this issue of the Journal of Arabic Literature, which addresses Mayy Ziyādah’s letter writing as an extension of her salon in early twentieth-century Egypt. 51 Al-Jinān 1:23 (1870), 732.

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Napoli that ties together the remaining loose narrative strands. Letters and telegrams in the pages of al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām thus provide a narrative form and structure within the serialized novel which allows Salīm al-Bustānī to stage the relationship between reader and text, using familiar epistolary models to educate readers and potential future writers in the production of narrative suspense. Among the journals that may have arrived in the mail in 1870 alongside al-Jinān was, of course, al-Zahrah. While the early issues of al-Zahrah’s alShābb al-maghrūr drew attention to the relationship between this circulation of letters and the creation of narrative suspense, the novel then shifts its emphasis to a more acute romantic tension. In the eleventh installment, the female neighbor Anīsah begs the protagonist Khalīl not to leave, so that they can have fun together. Khalīl warns her that “‘this sort of entertainment (tasliyah) might give birth to thinking on my part of which you are unaware.’ ”52 She responds that this is not a fear, and they discuss what might happen if it does become an issue, to which she responds that they will have to then refrain from their evening chats. He decides that it would be better for him to travel as planned, and she says: “‘If you do, I will be encompassed by intense boredom.’ ”53 The conversations taking place over the past several issues between Khalīl and Anīsah, punctuated both by weekly breaks and the looming mystery of the changed seal, create a sense of illicit romantic tension that leaves the reader uncertain yet anticipating what will happen next. The novel’s bourgeois readership is implicitly asked to imagine a situation in which Khalīl does not travel as planned. The text insinuates the thoughts Khalīl might have in that event, and as the possibility is left suspensefully hanging over four issues, al-Zahrah’s readers would have spent nearly a month speculating as to what was to come of this affair. Both al-Shābb al-maghrūr and al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām sustain an atmosphere of suspense over the course of the year 1870. Over and over again, installments end with a character in mid-sentence, or a dramatic scene is played out over the course of a number of issues. The emergence of frame tales and embedded narratives keeps the readership unsure of what might come next and of what new characters might appear, while also creating pregnant pauses in the narrative. Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund direct us to the “delight in ‘more to come,’ ” which readers of the Victorian serial encountered at the end of each issue.54 Their study links this delight to a nineteenth52

Al-Zahrah 1:11 (1870), 88. Ibid. 54 Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund, The Victorian Serial (Charlottesville, NC: University Press of Virginia, 1991), 6. 53

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century confidence in progress, a word (taqaddum) that appears frequently in al-Jinān’s first issue.55 Building off the work of N. N. Feltes in his Modes of Production of Victorian Novels, Hughes and Lund direct us to the manner in which the serial form “harmonized in several respects with capitalist ideology,” not least of all in the “assumption of continuing growth.”56 Their observations are no less pertinent to Beirut in early 1870, when the silk trade was still booming, banks and schools were flourishing, and novel ideas of bourgeois life were filling the public sphere. In her book The Serious Pleasures of Suspense: Victorian Realism and Narrative Doubt, Caroline Levine treats the nineteenth-century debate around suspense among Victorian authors and thinkers, making an argument about the interactions of a bourgeois readership with suspense-generating texts such as the serialized novel. In a survey of previous theorizations of suspense, Levine explains: It has become something of a commonplace to presume that suspense fiction reinforces stability, activating anxiety about the social world only in order to repress that anxiety in favor of unambiguous disclosures and soothing restorations of the status quo. But it was not always so. This book makes the case that Victorian writers and readers understood suspenseful narrative as a stimulus to active speculation.57

While the regular repetition of the coda “the remainder is to come” at the end of each installment of a serialized novel such as al-Shābb al-maghrūr or alHuyām fī jinān al-Shām may well have resonated with comforting notions of progress and continuing economic growth in the 1870s Beirut where they were published, Levine’s intervention suggests that the suspense generated in the pages of these texts simultaneously invited readers to actively wonder about, and also perhaps to fear what was to come. Also noting that the serial form and the deployment of suspense produced a sense of speculation and anxiety among bourgeois readers, Feltes goes on to identify within this audience a reader who in turn produces a degree of uneasiness among authors and publishers: the unknown reader.58 Feltes highlights the centrality of the serial’s relationship with its readership in creating what he 55 For more on the multiple Ottoman and European discourses of reform informing narratives of progress in late nineteenth-century Beirut and Mount Lebanon, see Makdisi, especially “Chapter 2: The Gentle Crusade,” and “Chapter 5: Reinventing Mount Lebanon.” 56 Ibid., 4. 57 Caroline Levine, The Serious Pleasures of Suspense: Victorian Realism and Narrative Doubt (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003), 2. 58 N. N. Feltes, Modes of Production of Victorian Novels (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 94.

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terms in the Victorian context a “mass bourgeois audience.”59 While the scale of publication was considerably smaller in late nineteenth-century Beirut than in London, there is in evidence a similar concern in the Beiruti periodicals of this period with fostering a growing readership. Attempting to expand their readership, while also keeping their audiences interested and in suspense, Beirut-based journals along with their audiences sought to identify and define who their readers were. The list of subscribers printed on the inside cover of a journal such as al-Jinān only begins to address this question, for any literate member of a subscriber’s household might read the journal, just as a subscriber might pass an issue on to a friend or read an interesting story or anecdote aloud at a gathering. Indeed, al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām stages a scene of the narrator reading aloud from a page of his journal to a close friend, suggesting just the sort of social setting in which written stories might be shared aloud.60 From the first installment of al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām, the novel’s readership is parenthetically addressed by al-Bustānī as he defines words within the text, perhaps most notably when we are informed that “illiterate [ummī]” means “not knowing how to read or write.”61 This definition in particular betrays an anxiety over the uncertain linguistic levels of an audience new to the periodical and the narrative form of the novel, yet also reveals a willingness on al-Bustānī’s part to accommodate and nurture this growing readership. In “Khuṭbah fī ādāb al-ʿArab”, Salīm al-Bustānī’s father Buṭrus spoke of the state of literacy in the city of Beirut in the first half of the nineteenth century. While allowing some room for the dramatics of rhetoric, his anecdotal comments convey his sense of the low literacy level in the city only two generations earlier: “I would walk in the markets of this city . . . and search with effort for one who was able to read . . . or as they say decipher a name.”62 As the serialized installments of al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām gain momentum over the course of the year 1870, Salīm al-Bustānī’s engagement with his audience’s lexical abilities falls away in the text. In a later issue, the parenthetical address to the reader reemerges for a brief moment; however, this time its concern is not at the level of the readership’s vocabulary, but rather their literary acumen, offering a different slant on the ability to “decipher a name.” Unsure of an audience’s ability to identify a character due to a shift in narrative voice, the twentieth installment provides the reader with a parenthetical gloss:

59 60 61 62

Ibid., 17. Al-Jinān 1:23 (1870), 732. Al-Jinān 1:1 (1870), 27. Buṭrus al-Bustānī, 113.

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“as for the Captain General (or Wardah’s beloved).”63 A reader’s failure to make out that the Captain General is none other than Wardah’s beloved by this point in the twentieth installment would have meant that nearly all of the previous installment would have read as an unrelated adventure tale rather than as a critical scene in the love story that the novel has been tracking since the second installment. This parenthetical address thus serves to not only identify a character, but also provides a lesson in literary form, directing the emerging readership to the internal cohesion of the novel and the art of deciphering the names within it. The category of the unknown reader also resonates with anxiety surrounding the uncertain place of women within the growing readership in and around Beirut. Though Roger Allen can confidently state in the context of 1880s and 1890s serialized fiction in Egypt that “women were, as in the European model, primary readers of serials,”64 for early 1870s Beirut-based periodicals, this was considerably less clear. A short story entitled “Hanrī wa Amīliya” ran in issues 12 and 13 of al-Jinān in 1870 and was attributed to one Adīlayd Bustānī. The story was narrated in the third person, and at the very end of the second and final installment the author leaves behind the world of the narrative to address the readers of al-Jinān, writing: “If there are some ladies joining the gentlemen in reading al-Jinān, the gentlemen are entitled to something from the pure, refined pen of the ladies. And thus has the door to al-Jinān [the gardens] been opened to the ladies.”65 The language of this invitation to literary submissions is ambiguous, for it leaves the reader to wonder if in fact the preceding story is the first story “from the pure, refined pen of the ladies.” It leaves open the possibility that perhaps the unusual name of Adīlayd Bustānī has been adopted by Salīm al-Bustānī, an advocate of women’s education and, as we have just seen, an advocate of women’s participation as readers and now writers in the burgeoning press of 1870s and 1880s Beirut. The possibility that Adīlayd is a pen name is reinforced by the story itself, in which a woman goes out for a walk dressed as a man so as to fool an audience of onlookers. Wardah of al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām, figured as a Syrian woman who can read and write not only Arabic but also French, likewise masquerades as a young man in the pages of the novel. The open door of al-Jinān’s lettered world leaves male readers unsure as to whether there are already women readers and writers among them, or if they are still hovering at the threshold. This 63

Al-Jinān 1:20 (1870), 634. Roger Allen, “Literary History and the Arabic Novel,” Twayne Companion to Contemporary World Literature: From the Editors of World Literature Today, Pamela A. Genova, ed. (New York: Twayne, 2003), 115. 65 Al-Jinān 1:13 (1870), 407. 64

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note of uneasiness and equivocation resonates with the uncertainty surrounding Feltes’ notion of the unknown reader, yet it is interesting to note that in narratives in both al-Jinān and al-Zahrah, it is specifically a female reader who produces a pronounced sense of anxiety in the text. Al-Jinān’s solicitation of the work of women writers directs us to a key phenomenon at the heart of the explosion of journalistic activity in Beirut, Mt. Lebanon and Greater Syria, and later Egypt, at the end of the nineteenth century: the transformation, as Clifford Siskin discusses in another context, of readers into writers. This transformation highlights the formative significance for modern Arabic literature of the early press in Beirut and the narrative forms it adopted and chartered. As Siskin observes in the case of the proliferation of English periodicals in the mid-eighteenth century: when we keep in mind the historical sequence I’ve described above—the rise in writing occurring after the rise in the literacy rate—we realize that one fundamental form of change at issue was the transformation of reader into writer. [. . . F]ormerly passive [readers] become participants in, and partial producers of, what they consume.66

Indeed, in a one-page announcement of the new journal al-Jinān in December of 1869, Buṭrus al-Bustānī writes that a primary factor motivating the journal’s founding was the desire to “activate authors to present to us what they have in the way of useful lessons.”67 In early May of 1871, al-Najāḥ ran a short story sent in by one of its readers entitled “Wadīʿ and Nuzha,” while several weeks later it published a short poem written by an eleven year-old reader, as well as an advertisement for a new novel entitled Ḥ ifẓ al-widād wa nakth alʿuhūd [Preserving Love and Breaking Commitments], placed by its author Jirjī Yanī.68 The weekly American Protestant journal al-Nashrah al-Usbūʿiyyah, first published in 1871,69 printed not only articles and sermonizing narratives in serial form as well as lists of religious books available for purchase through the journal, but it also regularly awarded prize money for essays from its readers, and printed the names of the winners of their Biblical trivia contest. The final page of issue 23 of 1872 ran a call for essays on honesty, while two weeks later issue 25 announced a monetary prize for the best essay on the spread of

66 Clifford Siskin, “Epilogue: The Rise of Novelism,” Cultural Institutions of the Novel (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 427. 67 Included at the beginning of the bound volume of al-Jinān (1870) held at the American University in Cairo. 68 Al-Najāḥ 1:33 (1871), 523-25; al-Najāḥ 1:38 (1871), 601; 604. 69 See Ayalon and Ṭ arrāzī for more on the early publishing efforts of the American mission.

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gambling.70 Letters from readers were also regularly published in al-Jinān, al-Zahrah, al-Najāḥ, and al-Nashrah al-Usbūʿiyyah as well as in other journals of the period. These publications clearly envisioned their expanding audiences as not only readers but also potential future writers, with circulation for many of the period’s journals extending far beyond Beirut and Mount Lebanon to Baghdad, Cairo, Istanbul, Tunis, and even Manchester, Marseilles, Calcutta, and eventually New York. Some readers would go on to found their own journals in Beirut, Alexandria, Cairo, New York and no doubt elsewhere, such that the literary themes and forms printed in the pages of early 1870s journals such as al-Jinān and al-Zahrah became part of the literary education of writers throughout the Arabic-speaking world. While many critics of modern Arabic literature make reference to 1870s and 1880s Beirut in their histories of the modern novel, there is a strong tendency to relegate this tremendously rich and yet seldom read body of journals to a passing comment about a Syrian émigré’s past. A superficial glance is cast at 1870s and 1880s Beirut as critics rush on to Egypt at the turn of the century, which in the process crystallizes as the literary epicenter of early modern narrative fiction.71 Paul Starkey’s recent study reflects this critical current; he writes: The period covered by the present chapter, 1880-1933, represents a crucial one in the emergence of modern Arabic narrative in the form of the novel and short story as usually understood in the West. Perhaps more than any other chapter, it will be dominated by developments in Egypt—though . . . Syrian émigrés also played a crucial, contributory role.72

A sustained focus on the literary forms published in the Beirut journals of the 1870s and 1880s uncovers the literary formation of many of these Syrian émigrés—readers who in turn became writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Syria and Egypt as well as in diasporic Arab communities in Europe and the Americas. Too often these pivotal decades are distilled down to a brief mention of Salīm al-Bustānī without sustained attention to the literary forms or intellectual atmosphere of 1870s and 1880s Beirut. This phenomenon is evinced by Roger Allen when he explains that Egypt, “now quickened by the new arrivals from Syria, became the fullest and most often 70

Al-Nashrah al-Usbūʿiyyah 2:23 and 2:25 (1872). In English, the work of Sabry Hafez, John A. Haywood, Matti Moosa, Shmuel Moreh, and Stephen Sheehi represents the notable departures from this mold. In Arabic, the work of Shākir Muṣtạ fā, Muḥammad Yūsuf Najm, Ibrāhīm al-Saʿāfīn, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Yāghī concerns itself with the literary history of late nineteenth-century Beirut. 72 Paul Starkey, Modern Arabic Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 97. 71

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cited example of intellectual developments in the early decades of the twentieth century. Our concentration in what follows on trends in Egypt reflects this tendency.”73 We see a similar critical bent in the work of M. M. Badawi, particularly in his overwhelming focus on Egypt in the sections of both Modern Arabic Literature and the West and A Short History of Modern Arabic Literature addressing the origins of the Arabic novel.74 A trademark in this literary-critical trend is a discrete focus on Jurjī Zaydān as perhaps the example par excellence of the Syrian émigré’s contribution to the history of the Arabic novel. It was not until 1883, however, that Zaydān left Beirut for Egypt. Indeed, Zaydān, who serialized a large number of original Arabic novels in his Cairobased journal al-Hilāl begun in 1892, identifies himself as part of a lineage of writers, with the Syrian author Fransīs Marrāsh and Salīm al-Bustānī preceding him in the literary project of the modern novel.75 Yet as ʿAbd al-Muḥsin Ṭ aha Badr argues in his seminal study of the Egyptian novel, it is difficult “to pinpoint the source out of which Jurjī Zaydān developed the plot of his novels, because the taste of popular audiences is in accordance in all environments with their preference for adventure and their celebration of elements of suspense and surprise.”76 Ibrāhīm al-Saʿāfīn develops this point further in his study of the Syrian novel, originally written under the supervision of ʿAbd alMuḥsin Ṭ aha Badr as a doctoral dissertation later published in book form.77 Al-Saʿāfīn argues that “[the narrator] knew with certainty that his audience’s taste had been raised on popular literature going back for generations,” and that this audience had a unique “connection . . . with this narrative heritage.”78 This assertion becomes one of central importance when the focus shifts from the individual author and his or her work and takes into consideration the importance of a collective narrative heritage to a newly forming reading public. While Salīm al-Bustānī and other authors of the period may be building off their familiarity with the form of the European serial novel in their deployment of suspense, pieces in the journals reference another suspense-generating narrative form perhaps more familiar to their readers: that of the popular Arabic narrative tradition, particularly works such as the story of ʿAntar and Alf Laylah wa Laylah (A Thousand and One Nights).79 73

Roger Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 72. M. M. Badawi, Modern Arabic Literature and the West (London: Ithaca Press, 1985), and A Short History of Modern Arabic Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 75 See Zaydān, 208-09. 76 ʿAbd al-Muḥsin Ṭ aha Badr, Taṭawwur al-riwāyah al-ʿarabiyyah al-ḥadīthah fī Miṣr (18601938) (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1976), 99. 77 I thank Muhsin al-Musawi for informing me of this scholarly connection. 78 Ibrāhīm al-Saʿāfīn, Taṭawwur al-riwāyah al-ʿarabiyyah al-ḥadīthah fī bilād al-Shām: 18701967. (Beirut: Dār al-Mināhil, 1987), 26; 25. 79 For a comparative perspective on the relationship of A Thousand and One Nights to the 74

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In 1870, al-Zahrah wove this narrative heritage into an anecdote precisely about its audience’s acute awareness of the working of suspense. The anecdote tells of a man who attended a storyteller’s circle every night to listen to the story of ʿAntar. One evening, “the storyteller read until ʿAntar was captured by the Persians who imprisoned him and bound his legs and there he stopped speaking.”80 The man who had been listening to the story “went home sad and depressed,”81 eventually beating his wife out of frustration. Later that night he wandered in the markets trying to decide what to do, and finally it occurred to him to go to the home of the storyteller. There he begs the storyteller to get ʿAntar out of prison, telling him that he will pay him as much as he regularly collects from an evening’s audience “for I am unable to sleep.”82 The storyteller agrees, “taking the book and reading him the rest.”83 This anecdote printed in al-Zahrah reveals that the circulation and commodification of the story of ʿAntar, like the serialized novel al-Shābb al-maghrūr that appears at the end of the issue, hinges on a form of narrative suspense that has a long history in the region. A Thousand and One Nights and similar collections of tales work their way in not only through portraits of coffeehouse storytellers, but also in the advertising sections of journals in this period. In 1859, Buṭrus al-Bustānī painted a portrait of the storyteller who frequented Beirut’s coffeeshops:84 “one with a hoarse voice and a good memory who has memorized some of the tales from the stories of Sindbad the sailor and Banī Hilāl and what is most similar to those among the stories present in the book A Thousand and One Nights.”85 New Arabic editions of the collection also appeared over the course of this period, and were advertised for on the back page of al-Jannah, a trade journal founded in 1870 by Buṭrus al-Bustānī and available in joint subscription with novel in the nineteenth century, and to Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq in particular, see Rebecca Carol Johnson, Richard Maxwell, and Katie Trumpener, “The Arabian Nights, Arab-European Literary Influence, and the Lineages of the Novel,” Modern Language Quarterly 68:2 ( June 2007): 24379. See also Muhsin Jassim al-Musawi, Scheherazade in England: a Study of the Nineteenth-Century Criticism of the Arabian Nights (Washingston, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1981). 80 Al-Zahrah 1:35 (1870), 275. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 84 For more on changes in public space during this period in Beirut, see Hans Gebhardt, Dorothée Sack, Ralph Bodenstein, Andreas Fritz, Jens Hanssen, Bernhard Hillenkamp, Oliver Kögler, Anne Mollenhauer, and Friederike Stolleis, eds, History, Space and Social Conflict in Beirut: The Quarter of Zokak el-Blat (Beirut: Orient Institute, 2005), especially the contributions of Ralph Bodenstein and Jens Hanssen; For a more theoretical approach to the changes in the organization of space during this period, see Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 85 Al-Bustānī, 114.

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al-Jinān as well as Khalīl Sarkīs’s Lisān al-Ḥ āl upon its founding in 1877. The printed copies of A Thousand and One Nights circulating among storytellers and the periodical reading class alike suggest an interest in the collection among literate members of the growing reading public, a public that as we have seen was increasingly shaping the content of journals as readers and writers. Prominent narrative techniques of A Thousand and One Nights appear repeatedly in the novels and short stories of the 1870s and 1880s written in Beirut, among them the frame tale, the embedded narrative, and the repetition of a suspense-generating break between installments of a story. In her book-length study of A Thousand and One Nights, Ferial Ghazoul points out that Shahrazad, the infamous female narrator of this collection of tales, is simply awarded a privilege that can be withdrawn at any moment, and it is precisely the feeling that she may not manage to please her audience—and, therefore, the hovering possibility of her condemnation [to death]—that makes The Arabian Nights a suspense story throughout its course.86

There is a burden upon Shahrazad, night after night, to “please her audience.” In Husain Haddawy’s translation of A Thousand and One Nights, based on the text of the fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript edited in 1984 by Muḥsin Mahdī, the first night ends with Shahrazad in mid-story, “leaving the King Shahrayar burning with curiosity to hear the rest of the story.”87 The preoccupation that writers and editors such as Yūsuf al-Shalfūn and Salīm al-Bustānī had with appealing to their readerships in 1870 echoes Shahrazad’s concern with “pleasing her audience.” Salīm al-Bustānī left his readers in suspense from the first issue of al-Jinān, a tactic familiar from Shahrazad’s manipulations of the king Shahrayar. The repetition of “the remainder will come” in the pages of an issue of al-Jinān held out a promise that left readers in suspense, and was, in form, not unlike the narrative technique propelling the proliferation of one night of storytelling into A Thousand and One Nights. Al-Shalfūn’s announcement at the end of al-Shābb al-maghrūr suggests that this serialized novel was unable to please its readership: Given that the novel al-Shābb al-maghrūr has come to an end, and many asked that we include a useful history in serialized form, from this point forward we will run the history of the war of the kings of al-Tabābaʿah in Yemen before Islam, taken from the book Jamharat al-ʿArab (The Arab Populace), as it is likely that it will appeal to our esteemed subscribers. We likewise advise them that we will 86 Ferial J. Ghazoul, Nocturnal Poetics: The Arabian Nights in Comparative Context (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1996), 85. 87 Husain Haddawy, trans. The Arabian Nights (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990), 18.

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change the form of this our newspaper at the beginning of the new year by including useful foreign and local news that it will appeal to the reader to peruse, in accordance with what space will allow for, as we seek to spread public benefits to the audience.88

It was the end for the novel in the pages of the journal. Indeed, al-Zahrah never did see the new year, meeting with a sort of “condemnation to death.” Al-Shalfūn joined forces with Luwīs Ṣābūnjī, whose own 1870 journal alNaḥlah had likewise proved itself an unviable enterprise. The two published together a new journal entitled al-Najāḥ, which was also short-lived. In August of 1871, Ṣābūnjī, himself a Catholic priest, published the following announcement in the Jesuit journal al-Bashīr: We inform the dear audience that from the date of the first of this present month of August we have completely quit work on the journal [ jurnāl ] al-Najāḥ. And we have desisted entirely from involvement in its publication [. . .] from now on we will not pen a line or write an article in it. And we will not ever publish a political summary in it as we did previously. And we will not translate the novel [The Count of ] Monte Cristo, which we had taken upon ourselves the responsibility of translating from French to Arabic while correcting those impolitenesses transgressing religion. In order to lift all responsibility from ourselves for the journal al-Najāḥ as well as responsibility for the impolite language in the novel Monte Cristo, the reading of which is forbidden to all Catholics by Rome due to its excessive crudeness against religion, we have issued this announcement without delay, written the 16th of August in the year 1871.89

Like al-Zahrah and al-Naḥlah before it, al-Najāḥ did not fulfill its readership’s emergent narrative desires. The inability of novels such as al-Shābb al-maghrūr and the Arabic translation of The Count of Monte Cristo to conform to audience expectations for fiction’s proper use and tone reveals the dynamic relationship between editors and authors and their readership in the early years of Beirut’s burgeoning press. Readers’ reception of narratives and of the journals publishing them deeply influenced the sorts of stories that would be told as the Beirut-based press continued to expand and influence readers across the Arabic-speaking world. Many journals were successful in manipulating the suspense-generating model of serialization, putting out publications that harmonized with the demands of their readership or niche within the growing Arabic periodical market, both within and beyond Beirut and its environs. Among these journals was the Jesuit al-Bashīr, which began publishing in September of 1870, 88 89

Al-Zahrah 1:43 (1870), 314. Al-Bashīr 1:51 (1871), inside front cover.

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less than a year before Ṣābūnjī would announce the failure of his second journalistic enterprise. In addition to news of the Catholic Church and events in France, al-Bashīr’s first five issues ran a fictitious, moralizing tale in serial form, entitled “Ḥ ikāyat qandīl al-maʿbad” (The Story of the Sanctuary’s Lamp). Translated from the French, each installment, including its last, ended with the coda “the remainder will follow.”90 Leaving the tale “Ḥ ikāyat qandīl al-maʿbad” hanging unresolved, al-Bashīr’s editors desisted from publishing fiction that year, instead printing articles on French and official Church news as well as Church bulletins and papal addresses, which it would often serialize over several issues. The journal would continue to publish into the twentieth century. While al-Bashīr eschewed the publication of fiction after its first early issues, Moosa observes of 1870s and 1880s Beirut that, generally speaking, fiction played a central role in the economic practicalities of the burgeoning press: “the readers were apparently pleased by what they read; many of them bought the journals primarily for the fiction they presented.”91 While one evening of storytelling gains Shahrazad one day of life, for the journals being published in 1870s and 1880s Beirut, a compelling installment of a novel might help to not only retain readers but also to create new ones. Critic ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Yāghī points out that al-Jinān’s inclusion of serialized fiction set a precedent that, through its popularity, created a demand for narrative among Arabic journal readers.92 While other Arabic periodicals before them had serialized translated European novels, al-Jinān’s al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām and al-Zahrah’s al-Shābb al-maghrūr share the distinction of being the first original Arabic novels published in serialized form. In the case of missionary journals such as al-Bashīr and al-Nashrah al-Usbūʿiyyah, as well as publications such as alJinān aiming for a less religiously based model of social betterment, a growing readership represented a larger audience for their message of change and progress. Yet it also crucially translated into increased economic viability, for as Ayalon notes of 1870s and 1880s Beirut, “the press, like other commercial areas, involved competing for a limited market.”93 The influence of A Thousand and One Nights on the early decades of modern Arabic prose is a point over which there is much debate in Arabic literary critical circles. Intriguingly, the critics who tend toward a focus on Egypt in their histories of the early Arabic novel do not identify A Thousand and One 90

Al-Bashīr 1:1 (1870). Moosa, 97. 92 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Yāghī, Al-Juhūd al-riwāʾiyyah min Salīm al-Bustānī ilā Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Beirut: Dār al-fārābī, 1999), 38. 93 Ayalon (1995), 37; see also Ayalon (2008). 91

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Nights as a central influence on modern Arabic prose in the late nineteenth century. Allen, for instance, argues that “another source of possible inspiration, the world’s greatest collection of narratives, A Thousand and One Nights, was . . . left out of the picture—at least during the early stages in the development of the novel in Arabic.”94 He likewise quotes Charles Vial in the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam as stating that “‘the modern qiṣsạ h [novel] owes nothing to Arab tradition. It is linked neither with the folklore of The Thousand and One Nights nor with tales of chivalry nor with narratives of adab.’ ”95 After a discussion of various prose forms from the ʿAbbasid period including A Thousand and One Nights, Badawi for his part writes: It cannot be claimed that any of these works contain even in a most rudimentary form the seed of a novel. Yet they all include certain narrative elements which could have served as a basis for novelistic development for the men who sought to infuse new life into Arabic literature in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This, however, did not happen.96

Badr in his study of the development of the modern Arabic novel in Egypt likewise does not see “popular literature” as playing a constitutive role in the early novel, despite its “fertile narrative and storytelling material, for not one of the intelligentsia was interested in it, but rather left it for the common people.”97 Critics more steeped in the Syrian context, and in particular the serialized literary output emanating from Beirut in the 1870s and 1880s, see the issue somewhat differently. Of Salīm al-Bustānī’s fiction, Moosa observes: “the tone and narrative of his stories are reminiscent of The Thousand and One Nights.”98 Shmuel Moreh too identifies an influence of A Thousand and One Nights on Salīm al-Bustānī’s writing, somewhat disdainfully explaining that “the style is one in which the plot is related by a sequence of verbs, which describe events without entering into details, and the reader’s attention is engaged with the unfolding of a surprising and bizarre series of happenings.”99 Sheehi goes into more detail on the subject, writing that “many of [Salīm al-Bustānī’s] plots turn on happenstance or coincidence, reminiscent of high and low literature from The Story of ʿAntarah, the maqamat genre, and al-Tanukhi’s Faraj baʿd 94 Roger Allen, The Arabic Novel: An Historical and Critical Introduction 2nd ed. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 13. 95 Ibid. For more on the use of the term qiṣsạ h for novel, see Allen’s discussion in Chapter 1. 96 Badawi 1985, 129. 97 Badr, 58. 98 Moosa, 161. 99 Moreh, 74-5.

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al-Shiddah to The Epic of Beni Hilal, A Thousand and One Nights, or even karakruz, the popular shadow-puppet plays.”100 These three critics, all close readers of the serialized fiction of Salīm al-Bustānī, the most widely read author of original Arabic fiction during this period, appear to concur on the influence A Thousand and One Nights had on his work. Though the influence of narratives such as the story of ʿAntar and A Thousand and One Nights on the modern Arabic novel is much debated in Arabic literary critical circles, there is little debate on the impact that the European novel had on the emergence of the Arabic novel. In the context of late nineteenth-century readers of Arabic, Zaydān explains that rather than the old tales like ʿAntarah and A Thousand and One Nights, . . . [they] found the novels translated from the Europeans more believable, making them more appropriate to the spirit of the age, and so they welcomed them. Then the [Arabic] writers proceeded to compose their own works . . . in imitation of the Europeans101

Likewise, in his discussion of the early Syrian intellectuals, Muḥsin al-Mūsawī cites Shākir Muṣtạ fā as writing that the “‘modern [Arabic] novel, born with the birth of modern Syrian society, . . . was something new. It was not within the capacity of the [Arabic] heritage (al-turāth) . . . to meet the needs of the new, developing bourgeoisie.”102 The narrative aspirations of a bourgeois reading class become clear in these accounts. Its members, though familiar with the older popular narrative heritage, found it insufficient for “the spirit of the age” during “the birth of modern Syrian society,” and looked to Europe for models. European novels available in Arabic translation in Beirut in the 1870s and 1880s were works such as Alexandre Dumas, père’s Le Comte de MonteCristo (The Count of Monte Cristo), Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and Jules Verne’s Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon), while François Fénelon’s Les Aventures de Télémaque (The Adventures of Telemachus) was published serially in translation in the late 1860s in Ḥ adīqat al-Akhbār. Adventure stories that follow the travels of their protagonists, these novels share much in common with tales such as those included in A Thousand and One Nights, as noted by al-Musawi103 and scores of other critics. This was per100

Sheehi, 79. Zaydān, 208 102 Muḥsin Jāsim al-Mūsawī, al-Riwāyah al-ʿArabiyyah: al-nashaʾah wa-l-taḥawwul (Cairo: Al-Hayʾah al-Miṣriyyah al-ʿāmah li-l-kitāb, 1988), 23. 103 See for instance, Muhsin Jassim al-Musawi, Scheherazade in England: a Study of the Nineteenth-Century Criticism of the Arabian Nights (Washingston, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1981). 101

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haps among the reasons that their translation so appealed to an Arabic-reading audience familiar with but weary of the story collection. Indeed, Yāghī points in his study of modern Arabic narrative to the manner in which “the spirit of A Thousand and One Nights was reflected in the adventures of Robinson Crusoe,” drawing a parallel between the circulation of translated versions of A Thousand and One Nights in Europe beginning in the early eighteenth century and the popularity of Defoe’s novel in Arabic translation in the nineteenth century.104 In a similar vein, Allen directs the reader of The Count of Monte Cristo to the enormous number of references it makes to the Sindbad cycle, a group of stories often associated with A Thousand and One Nights, as well as to other aspects of the collection itself.105 A discussion of the bound, Jesuit-sponsored Arabic translation of Jules Verne’s Cinq semaines en ballon which appeared in late-nineteenth century Beirut, with a second edition already in print in 1883, will illustrate the intricate narrative weave in the Beirut journals of the 1870s and 1880s that shaped and was shaped by a newly forming bourgeois reading public. This translation joins a host of shorter pieces featuring hot air balloons in numerous journals. These merge discourses of scientific progress, contemporary economic relations, and the “formal realism”106 of the modern novel with locally rooted modes of suspense and the fantastic, effecting a complex triangulation. On the one hand, the journals of 1870s and 1880s Beirut employ a popular Arabic narrative armature that not only appealed to Defoe, Dumas, and Verne, but also conformed to narrative conventions familiar to a local readership. On the other hand, these journals lean on European models deemed appropriate to “the spirit of the age” by Zaydān and others who formed part of a developing bourgeoisie that was, as this essay has argued, articulating itself into textual existence in the pages of these periodicals. The first line of the Arabic translation of Verne’s novel reads, “on the fifteenth day of the month of January in the year eighteen hundred and sixtytwo, the well-known English newspaper by the name of The Daily Telegraph ran the following short piece.”107 What follows is an announcement regarding the decision of one Samuel Ferguson to travel by hot air balloon, seeking to

104

Yāghī, 18; 20-1. Roger Allen, “Sindbad the Sailor and the Early Arabic Novel,” Tradition, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Arabic Literature: Essays in Honor of Professor Issa J. Boulatta, Kamal AbdelMalek and Wael Hallaq, eds. (Boston: Brill, 2000): 78-85. 106 Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 32. Originally published 1957. 107 Jules Verne, Al-Riḥlah al-jawiyyah fī al-markabah al-hawāʾiyyah, Yūsuf Sarkīs, trans. (Beirut: Matbaʿat al-abāʾ al-mursalīn al-Yasūʿiyyīn, 1883), 3. 105

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discover the “heart of Africa” and the “source of the Nile.”108 The Daily Telegraph’s editors announce too that they will be reporting on the events; their readers thought, at first, that this announcement must be some sort of “fairytale” (khurāfah).109 Verne’s novel then tells us that a series of stories ran in the international European press mocking Ferguson, but before the end of the first chapter the order is placed in a Lyon factory for the manufacture of a piece of silk in the dimensions of the balloon. Al-Zahrah, in what was to be one of its last issues, ran a story in late 1870 on hot air balloons, detailing the travels of two Frenchmen above the clouds darkening Parisian skies.110 While the journal had begun to publish current events in a serious tone, it may have been as difficult for readers of al-Zahrah as for those of The Daily Telegraph to decipher the veracity of this “strange occurrence.” Al-Bashīr also published a story on hot air balloons that same month, the third in a series on the uses of hot air balloons to the French forces during the Franco-Prussian War.111 The following year (1871), al-Bashīr ran three more stories on hot air balloons. They outlined developments in the construction of balloons, detailed preparations one must make before travel (complete with a reference to the silk fabric needed), and also included a column on the dangers to which one might be exposed as a rider in hot air balloons.112 Two of al-Bashīr’s articles were reprinted the next week in the pages of al-Najāḥ.113 In al-Zahrah, al-Bashīr and al-Najāḥ’s columns on hot air balloon travel as in the pages of the Arabic translation of Jules Verne’s Cinq semaines en ballon, the fate of passengers hangs upon the strength of the balloon’s construction. They are literally suspended in mid-air, held up only by a cleverly engineered piece of silk fabric, unsure of the future but placing their faith in the stunning advances of the time. In the wake of the stories and articles on hot air balloons featured in al-Zahrah, al-Bashīr, and al-Najāḥ in 1870 and 1871, al-Nashrah al-Usbūʿiyyah ran a short, anecdotal piece on the final page of the last issue of 1871 entitled “miracle” (muʿjizah). The story that followed told of a young French shepherd girl who was one day tending the flocks when a wooden chair fell from the sky and landed in a nearby bush. Seeing the chair, some thought it a gift from heaven. Others told them that they were mistaken in their theory of the chair’s provenance, for no chair from heaven would be of such poor craftsmanship. A 108 109 110 111 112 113

Ibid., 4; 3. Ibid. Al-Zahrah 1:50 (1870), 400. Al-Bashīr 1:8 (1870), 63; al-Bashīr 1:9 (1870), 70; al-Bashīr 1:11 (1870), 87. Al-Bashīr 2:25 (1871), 198; al-Bashīr 2:50 (1871), 448-49. Al-Najāḥ 1:62 (1871), 990-91.

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few days later, the local journals printed the fact that a hot air balloon had passed by overhead that cloudy day, and as it had been flying too low it needed to drop some extra weight. The production of consumer goods, advances in science, and an air of the fantastic are all here brought into play. Readers of Yūsuf Sarkīs’s translation of Jules Verne’s Cinq semaines en ballon alongside the many articles and stories on hot air balloon travel found in the journals of 1870s Beirut may well have identified with the reactions of the European newspaper readers in the opening pages of Verne’s novel, unable to tell fact from fiction. However, unlike in the world of A Thousand and One Nights, where readers are asked to suspend their disbelief in the magical powers of jinn, in the tales of hot air balloon travel, it is scientific advances that become imbued with a tinge of the fantastic. The hot air balloon provides us with a foil through which to understand the role of A Thousand and One Nights in the changing narrative modes of 1870s and 1880s Beirut. The French missionary presence in the region which played a central role in the early history of the Arabic press in Beirut, as well as the wealth funding the new bourgeois lifestyles proliferating during this period, can be traced to the silk industry.114 Like the press, the exportation of raw silk was dominated by Christian families with ties to foreign consulates and missionaries, particularly after the events of 1860 that led to increased foreign and especially French intervention in the region. The best known silk factories in the region were run or financed by French companies, and the vast majority of silk produced in the region was for export to the south of France, where the silk would be refined. The Jesuits who published Sarkīs’s translation of Cinq semaines en ballon, too, were from the south of France. Indeed, they were from Lyon, the site of the silk balloon manufacturers in the first chapter of Vernes’s novel. The many hot air balloons filling the novels and journals published in Beirut during the 1870s and 1880s were the product, then, of exported raw silk from Beirut, finished in French factories in cities like Lyon. Silk is transformed from raw material to the stuff of modern tales verging on 114 For discussions on the role of the silk industry in transforming nineteenth-century Beirut, see: Leila Tarazi Fawaz, Merchants and Migrants in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2007); Akram Fouad Khater, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Gaston Ducousso, L’industrie de la soie en Syrie et au Liban (Beirut, 1913); Boutros Labaki, Introduction à l’histoire économique du Liban: Soie et commerce extérieur en fin de période Ottomane, 1840-1914 (Beirut: Lebanese University Press, 1984); Maurice Chehab, Dawr Lubnān fī tārīkh al-ḥarīr; and the aforecited volume History, Space and Social Conflict in Beirut: The Quarter of Zokak el-Blat, published by the Orient Institute of Beirut.

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the fantastic that are then imported as finished goods by the burgeoning presses of late nineteenth-century Beirut. The exposed narrative weave, with threads criss-crossing the Mediterranean, is not unlike the warp and weft of Arabic popular tales showing through in glimmers in the pages of the 1870s and 1880s Arabic press. Now here, in an editor’s efforts to retain his emergent bourgeois readership, now there, in that readership’s fondness for suspense and the fantastic as it finds its place within the spirit of the age.

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brill.nl/jal

Reviving the Past: al-Shartūnī’s Kitāb Maṭāliʿ and the Theory of Compilation in the Nahḍah Abdulrazzak Patel

Abstract The Arab Renaissance (nahḍah) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries represents one of the most crucial periods in the development of Arabic literature and culture. This period witnessed a significant revival by nineteenth-century Arab poets and critics of their own literary and cultural heritage in the wake of Western influence. This article examines Saʿīd al-Shartūnī’s thesis on poetry, which is part of his larger manual on style and eloquence, Kitāb Maṭāliʿ. Studying al-Shartūnī’s ideas and approach within his immediate nineteenth-century context reveals him as a compiler who synthesises for a new generation of students the tradition of Arabic criticism as found in the great classics of the medieval period. In so doing, this article exposes broader literary structures underlying writing, reading and interpretation in the nahḍah. Keywords Al-Shartûnî, Nahḍah, poet, poetry, compiler, compilation, critic

The Arab Renaissance (nahḍah) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries represents one of the most important periods in the history of Arabic literature and culture. The nahḍah brought with it new perceptions of the traditional literary heritage and attempts at adaptation to new conditions and realities. Increased contact with Western literature posed one of the greatest challenges to Arab writers. As prose underwent significant changes with the emergence of new literary and journalistic genres, Arab writers perceived a threat to their poetry. They realised it had to be revived if it was to prosper, and that the trivial concerns which typified some of the poetry of the immediate past had to be replaced by more serious concerns. Arabic poetry, however, is so deeply rooted in the history of Arab-Islamic culture that to discard it for new or foreign literary models and concepts would have involved parting with centuries of literary tradition. Thus, Arab poets and critics of the nahḍah, or the neoclassicists as they became known, turned to a livelier age of ArabIslamic civilisation for inspiration.1 They returned to the classical heritage of 1

Neoclassicists are so called because they represent a trend in modern Arabic poetry which

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009

DOI: 10.1163/157006409X431622

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Arabic poetry as articulated in the high Abbasid period (tenth century) through the works of al-Mutanabbī, al-Buḥturī, Abū Tammām, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī, al-Sharīf al-Raḍī and others.2 The main aim of the neoclassical poets was to adhere to the form of the classical qaṣīdah (meter, rhyme, theme), but to modernize and broaden its content in order to bring poetry closer to real life.3 The most eloquent representatives of the neoclassical trend in Egypt were Maḥmūd al-Bārūdī (1839-1904), Aḥmad Shawqī (1868-1932) and Ḥ āfiẓ Ibrāhīm (1872-1932).4 In their efforts to rediscover the classical heritage of Arabic poetry, they were aided by a growing consciousness of the Arab past that was continuously being rediscovered and edited throughout the nineteenth century in the works of Arab Christian and Muslim literati. Leading nahḍah figures like Nāṣif al-Yāzijī (1800-71), Rifāʿa al-Ṭ ahṭāwī (1801-73), Buṭrus al-Bustānī (1818-83) and Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849-1905) were instrumental in this regard. Convinced by the need to revive Arabic intellectual and literary traditions for the progress of their societies, these scholars edited and printed some of the great classics of Arabic literature and encouraged their close associates to do the same. It was in these classical masterpieces that the neoclassical poets and critics found their inspiration, functional models, and source material. Among the Christian intellectuals of the nahḍah who took an active interest in classical poetry and criticism was the Lebanese linguist and literary figure Saʿīd al-Shartūnī (1849-1912). He was born in the town of Shartūn in Mount Lebanon and grew up illiterate like many of his contemporaries. Sources concur that he would have remained unknown were it not for a strange incident that marked the beginning of his literary career. At the age of thirteen he apparently pelted a woman climbing the fig tree in his garden with a stone. The women died because of the injury, and al-Shartūnī fled to ʿAbiyah in 1862 to avoid retribution. Here the American missionaries admitted him into their seminary, which marked the beginning of his education. He studied for two years with the missionaries before moving to the Sūq al-Gharb school

sought essentially to go back to the model of classical Arabic poetry. Neoclassical poetry flourished mainly in the later part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries, an era Badawi refers to as one of neoclassicism. M.M. Badawi, A Short History of Modern Arabic Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 11. 2 R.C. Ostle, “Poetry, modern,” in Encyclopaedia of Modern Arabic Literature, 2: 607. 3 For an informative overview of the emergence and development of neoclassical poetry in modern Arabic literature, see S. Somekh, “The Neo-Classical Arabic Poets,” in The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, vol. 6, Modern Arabic Literature, ed. M.M. Badawi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 36-81. 4 Ostle, “Poetry, modern,” 607.

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(1864-1865) near Beirut where he completed his education and most likely received his training as a teacher.5 Al-Shartūnī devoted himself to a lifetime of scholarly activities while teaching at leading schools and institutions in Beirut, Damascus and Cairo. His first appointment came at the Greek Catholic school for higher education at ʿAyn Ṭ rāz in the Mount Lebanon region (est. 1790s), where he stayed for five years before moving to teach in Damascus for a period until 1875. Here he gained the respect of the Jesuit priests, who then sent him to Beirut, where he would spend the next decades of his life teaching and pursuing intellectual activities.6 When the Jesuit seminary at Ghazir was moved to Beirut in 1875 as the Jesuit College (today Université Saint-Joseph) al-Shartūnī was called upon to teach Arabic and work as proof-reader which he did for almost twenty-two years.7 At the same time, al-Shartūnī worked in Beirut at the Greek Catholic Patriarchate school (al-Madrasah al-Paṭrikīyyah) (est.1865). This institution attracted students from Syria and Egypt and included among its teachers important nahḍah figures like Nāṣif al-Yāzijī.8 Al-Shartūnī also taught at the School of Wisdom (Madrasat al-Ḥ ikmah), the leading Maronite school of Beirut, founded in 1874 by the Maronite Bishop of Beirut, Yūsuf al-Dibs. This school numbered among its graduates several of the leading literary and political figures of modern Lebanon, including the influential writer and politician Shakīb Arslān (1869-1947) and the writer and critic Mārun ʿAbbūd (1886-1962) who were both al-Shartūnī’s students.9 The junior Arslān figures prominently among al-Shartūnī’s network of close associates as do other leading intellectuals of the nahḍah such as Buṭrus alBustānī and Muḥammad ʿAbduh. The strong friendship between al-Bustānī and al-Shartūnī manifested itself in the various linguistic disputes that erupted between the so-called conservative group of scholars which included alShartūnī and al-Bustānī, and the reformists such as Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq (1804-87).10 Early in his career (early twenties), al-Shartūnī began to associate with ʿAbduh, who appears to have remained his mentor as well as close friend 5 Rashīd ʿAṭīyah, “al-Shaykh Saʿīd al-Shartūnī,” al-Muqtaṭaf 41 (1912): 426; and “Saʿīd alShartūnī Ṣāḥib Aqrab al-Mawārid,” al-Hilāl 21 (1912): 187-189. 6 Yūsuf A. Dāghir, Maṣādir al-Dirāsāt al-Adabīyah: al-Fikr al-ʿArabī al-Ḥadīth fī Siyar Aʿlāmihi (Beirut: Jamʿīyat Ahl al-Qalam fī Lubnān, 1956), 2: 482. 7 Lūwīs Shaykhū, Tārīkh al-Ādāb al-ʿArabīyah fī al-Rubʿ al-Awwal min al-Qarn al-ʿIshrīn (Beirut: Maṭbaʿat al-Ābaʾ al-Yasūʿīyīn, 1926), 67. 8 Anīs al-Maqdisī, al-Funūn al-Adabīyah wa-Aʿlāmuhā fī al-Nahḍah al-ʿArabīyah al-Ḥ adīthah (Beirut: 1963; reprint, Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm lil-Malāyīn, 1980), 59. 9 Aḥmad al-Sharabāṣī, Amīr al-Bayān, Shakīb Arslān (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1963), 1: 412. 10 Adrian Gully, “Arabic Linguistic Issues and Controversies of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Journal of Semitic Studies 42, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 113-115.

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throughout his life.11 Saʿīd had two younger brothers, Rashīd al-Shartūnī (1864-1907) and Tawfīq al-Shartūnī (1890-1962), and was the father of one son and three daughters. His brothers and two daughters, Anīsah (1883-1906) and ʿAfīfah (1886-1906), also excelled in the world of literature.12 Although Anīsah and ʿAfīfah died in their early twenties, both were among the first group of women writers in Arabic in the nineteenth century. They contributed numerous articles of a literary and social nature to leading journals of the day, such as al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Rawḍah.13 The deaths of Saʿīd’s daughters in quick succession, however, took a toll on his health which deteriorated considerably. He died in 1912 after establishing himself among the leading literati of the nahḍah.14 His legacy remains in the great body of work he left on lexicography, grammar, rhetoric, poetry and more. Below I focus on his contributions to poetry.15 Al-Shartūnī’s interest in poetry is reflected in a number of manuals and collections which he wrote and edited. His thesis on poetry—published as part of his larger pedagogical work on style and eloquence Kitāb Maṭāliʿ al-Aḍwāʾ fī Manāhij al-Kuttāb wa-l-Shuʿarāʾ (Book on the Ascensions of Light Concerning the Established Methods of Writers and Poets, 1908), deals with various aspects of the poetic art using the catechetical format.16 His other work on poetry and prose, Kitāb Ḥ adāʾiq al-Manthūr wa-l-Manẓūm (A Book on the Gardens of Prose and Poetry, 1903), is a compilation of selected texts from earlier classics like al-Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn, the Nahj al-Balāghah, and Kitāb al-Aghānī.17 Al-Shartūnī also published an edition of Shihāb al-Dīn alMūsawī’s (d. 1676)18 pre-modern collection of poems entitled Diwān Ṭ irāz al-Bulaghāʾ wa-Khātimat al-Fuṣaḥāʾ (Register of the Classes of Eloquent Ones and of the Last of the Fluent Ones, 1885).19 His other works on poetry include 11 Ahmad al-Sharabāṣī, “Bayna Muḥammad ʿAbduh wa Saʿīd al-Shartūnī,” Al-Adīb 31, no. 10 (October 1972): 3. 12 Y.I. Sarkīs, Muʿjam al-Maṭbūʿāt al-ʿArabīyah wa-al-Muʿarrabah (Cairo: 1928; reprint, Baghdad: Maktabat al-Muthannā, 1965), 1: 1111-1112. 13 ʿUmar Riḍ̣a Kaḥḥālah, Aʿlām al-Nisā fī ʿĀlamay al-ʿArab wa-al-Islām (Beirut: al-Muʾassasat al-Risālah, 1977), 1: 99-105, and 3: 300-306. 14 ʿAṭīyah, “al-Shaykh Saʾīd,” 430. 15 For more on al-Shartūnī and his other works, see Abdulrazzak Patel, ʿSaʿīd al-Shartūnī: a humanist of the Arab Renaissance (nahḍah)ʾ, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Exeter 2007). 16 Saʿīd al-Shartūnī, Kitāb Maṭāli ʿal-Aḍwā ʾ fī Manāhij al-Kuttāb wa- al-Shu ʿarā ʾ (Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿah al-Adabīyah, 1908), 190-254. 17 Saʿīd al-Shartūnī, Kitāb Ḥ adāʾiq al-Manthūr wa-al-Manẓūm (Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿah alʿUmūmīyah, 1903), 2-29, 40-85. 18 Also known as Ibn Maʿtūq. 19 Saʿīd al-Shartūnī, ed., Dīwān Ṭ irāz al-Bulaghāʾ wa-Khātimat al-Fuṣaḥāʾ li-Shihāb al-Dīn al-Musawī (Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿah al-Adabīyah, 1885).

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a commentary on Jarmānūs Farḥāt’s (1670-1732) large collection of poems known as Dīwān Jarmānūs Farḥāt (1894), which he revised and published at the request of the Jesuit missionaries.20 Al-Shartūnī also contributed several articles on poetry and criticism to scholarly journals of the day like the piece on Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī in al-Mashriq and another entitled al-Mufaḍalah Bayna al-Shuʿarāʾ in al-Muqtaṭaf.21 This article examines al-Shartūnī’s thesis on poetry which is part of his large manual on style and eloquence Kitāb Maṭāliʿ. The main aim of this article is to shed light on al-Shartūnī’s role as a compiler of Arabic literary criticism as it relates to classical poetry. By understanding al-Shartūnī as a compiler, we are able to read his approach as an indication of broader literary structures underlying writing, reading, and interpretation in the nahḍah, and to take what he includes in his compilation from earlier canonical texts as a gauge of poetry’s position. The article begins with an overview of Arabic literary theory and criticism. This will be followed by an attempt to locate al-Shartūnī’s ideas and approach within his immediate historical context, before examining the manual as outlined.22

Arabic Literary Theory and Criticism During a period of nearly four centuries, which began with the Ṭ abaqāt Fuḥūl al-Shuʿarāʾ (Classes of Champion Poets) of Muḥammad ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥī (d.845), and culminated in the monumental Miftāḥ al-ʿUlūm by Yūsuf alSakkākī (d.1228), dozens of treatises were dedicated to Arabic literary theory and criticism. Some authors dealt specifically with poetry, some with poetry and prose, and others still with general style and eloquence. Below I mention a number of works particularly relevant to this paper. The arrival of Greek works in Arabic created a desire for the systematic presentation of basic analytical and aesthetic poetic ideas. A good example is the Naqd al-Shiʿr (Poetic Criticism) by the logician Qudāmah ibn Jaʿfar (d. 958). According to Heinrichs, Qudāmah tries to erect a firmly structured edifice of literary theory founded on the four basic elements of poetry: wording, meaning, meter and rhyme (lafẓ, maʿnā, wazn, qāfiyah), and in so doing 20 Saʿīd al-Shartūnī, ed., Dīwān Jarmānūs Farḥāt (Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿah al-Kāthūlīkīyah lil-Ābaʾ al-Yasūʿiyyīn, 1894), 5. 21 Saʿīd al-Shartūnī, “Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī,” al-Mashriq 4 (1901): 1066-1072; and “alMufaḍalah Bayna al-Shuʿarāʾ,” al-Muqtaṭaf 32 (1907): 97-103, 130-140, 276-281, 390-395. 22 I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for the Journal of Arabic Literature for several suggestions and corrections.

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was able to pronounce well-founded judgments on the value of a given poem. Although Qudāmah’s work was not disregarded by later authors (for instance, Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī and Ibn Sinān al-Khafājī), it had no immediate successors.23 Mention should also be made of ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī’s (d.1078) two monumental works on style and eloquence, Dalāʾil al-Iʿjāz and Asrār al-Balāghah, with which Arabic literary theory and criticism is generally thought to have reached its peak.24 The first work examines the syntactic stylistics of the Qurʾān, and the second deals with poetic similes, metaphors, imagery and analogies.25 Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī (d.1064 or 1070) produced one of the most famous works on the art of poetry known as Kitāb al-ʿUmdah fī Maḥāsin al-Shiʿr wa-Adabihi wa-Naqdihi (The Pillar Regarding Poetry’s Embellishments, Proper Usage, and Criticism). The significance of this work lies in its extensive treatment of poetry. Ibn Rashīq deals at length with both the formal aspects of poetry (meter, rhyme, and form), and the informal (definition, principal themes, figures of speech, poetry vs. prose, and plagiarism).26 Indeed, it was this that led Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406), in his famous Muqaddimah, to remark: “. . . Poetry and how to learn it is exhaustively treated in Kitāb al-ʿUmdah . . . Those who would like to study the subject thoroughly must turn to al-ʿUmdah. It contains all one could wish.”27 A later work, which made an invaluable contribution to literary criticism, was Ḍ iyāʾ al-Dīn ibn al-Athīr’s (d.1239) al-Mathal al-Sāʾir fī Adab al-Kātib wa-l-Shāʿir, dedicated to the know-how of the writer and the poet. Ibn al-Athīr ingeniously tackles various aspects of theory and criticism such as the qualities of the writer, the merits of poetry and prose, figures of speech, similes, plagiarism, and much more.28 According to Heinrichs, Ibn al-Athīr’s works show him as an independent mind who brings new life for a while to the already ossifying discipline of literary theory.29 23 Wolfhart Heinrichs, “Literary Theory: The Problem of its Efficiency,” in Arabic Poetry: Theory and Development, ed. G.E. von Grunebaum (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1973), 30-32. 24 Heinrichs, “Rhetoric and Poetics,” in Encyclopaedia of Modern Arabic Literature, 2: 655. 25 ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī, Asrār al-Balāghah, ed. Hellmut Ritter (Baghdad: Maktabat al-Muthannā, 1965); and Dalāʾil al-Iʿjāz, ed. Aḥmad Muṣṭafā al-Marāghī (Cairo: Maktabah al-Maḥmūdīyah, 196-?). 26 Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawānī, Kitāb al-ʿUmdah fī Maḥạ̄ sin al-Shiʿr wa-Adabihi wa-Naqdihi, ed. Muḥammad Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥ amīd (Cairo: al-Maktabah al-Tijārīyah al-Kubrā, 1963). 27 Vicente Cantarino, Arabic Poetics in the Golden Age: Selection of Texts Accompanied by a Preliminary Study, Studies in Arabic Literature, vol. 4 (Leiden: Brill,1975), 141. 28 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Mathal al-Sāʾir fī Adab al-Kātib wa-al-Shāʿir, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyah, 1998). 29 Wolfhart Heinrichs, “Ibn al-Athir, Ḍ iyāʾ al-Dīn,” in Encyclopaedia of Modern Arabic Literature, 1: 315.

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The commentaries on Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics by al-Fārābī (d. 950), Ibn Sīnā (980-1037), and Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) contributed to the development of Arab literary theory. According to Hamarneh, what can be discerned from their works is a gradual shift of emphasis that facilitated the development of a comprehensive theory of poetry more suited to Arabic poetry. Yet, this shift was not enough to produce a theory of Arabic literature based on the concepts developed by the philosophers, as their object was not poetry but philosophy.30 It is, however, worth mentioning Ḥ āzim al-Qarṭājannī (d. 1285) who used both Arab and Islamic Aristotelian traditions to produce one of the most significant works on Arabic literary criticism known as Minhāj al-Bulaghāʾ wa-Sirāj al-Udabāʾ (Course for the Eloquent and Beacon for the Literate).31 Literary theory and criticism in the pre-modern period was apparently less vibrant than it would later become. Cachia states that by the eighteenth century, Arab literary criticism had been reduced to blanket judgements, usually unsupported, on the literary qualities of men of learning who earned a place in biographical dictionaries, and to ever more elaborate treatises on rhetoric, especially on that branch of it known as badīʿ, which concerned itself mostly with tropes that exploit not imagery but the forms of words. He adds that in prose and poetry alike, it was the ability to juggle words that was most highly prized.32 Nineteenth-century literary criticism is generally thought to be derived from either classical Arabic or European models.33 Moreh asserts that critics and poets of this period were not in a position to demonstrate theoretical and critical ability. Most of their critical works, he adds, were articles and poems reflecting their superficial understanding of Western and classical Arabic criticism, demanding veracity of expression of the poet’s ideas and emotions.34 Cachia mentions that for the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, hardly any significantly new literary criteria were formulated. The most substantial works continued to be handbooks of rhetoric, while other apparently innovative productions of the period, including Shākir Shuqayr’s Miṣbāḥ al-Afkār fī Naẓm al-Ashʿār (The Lamp of Ideas Concerning the Composition 30 Walid Hamarneh, “Arabic Theory and Criticism,” in The John Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1994), 34. 31 Ibid., 35. 32 Pierre Cachia. “The Critics,” in The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, vol. 6, Modern Arabic Literature, ed. M.M. Badawi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 417. 33 Hamarneh, “Arabic Theory,” 35. 34 Shmuel Moreh., “The Neoclassical Qasīda: Modern Poets and Critics,” in Arabic Poetry: Theory and Development, ed. G.E. von Grunebaum (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1973), 157.

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of Poems, 1888) and Shākir al-Batlūnī’s Dalīl al-Hāʾim fī Ṣināʿat al-Nāthir wa-l-Nāẓim (Manual for the Bewildered on the Art of the Prosaist and the Poet, 1885) were in the same (conservative) spirit.35. Yāghī expresses similar views with respect to critics in Mount Lebanon during the nahḍah. He describes them as “members of the conservative trend who fervently adhered to classical models of criticism.” The pioneer of this trend, he points out, was Iskandar Abkāriyūs who produced a series of writings on literary criticism over three decades, beginning with, Nihāyat al-ʿArab fī Akhbār al-ʿArab (The Ultimate Goal in the Narratives of the Arabs, 1851). Ten years later this work was followed with an enlarged edition, Tazyīn Nihāyat al-ʿArab fī Akhbār al-ʿArab (Embellishment of The Ultimate Goal in the Narratives of the Arabs, 1861), and in 1858 he wrote Rawḍat al-Adab fī Ṭ abaqāt Shuʿarāʾ al-ʿArab (Meadow of Adab Concerning the Classes of Arab Poets, 1858). Almost twenty years later he produced another treatise entitled Munyat al-Nafs fī Ashʿār ʿAntar ʿAbs (The Object of Desire in the Poems of ʿAntar ʿAbs, 1881). Abkāriyūs’s endeavours marked the beginning of a series of writings by scholars who shared the same conservative taste for earlier models of criticism. Yāghī highlights that al-Batlūnī’s, Dalīl al-Hāʾim, which was written with the pedagogical aim of educating students in poetry and prose, displays similar conservative tendencies.36 At the beginning of the twentieth century, Lūwīs Shaykhū completed a multi-volume work entitled Kitāb ʿIlm al-Adab (The Study of Literature, 1897-1913), which dealt with the arts of composition (inshāʾ), prosody (ʿarūd ̣), oratory (khiṭābah) and poetry (shiʿr). According to Yāghī, these critics were part of a conservative movement which wanted to revive (iḥyāʾ) the original Arabic heritage (al-turāth al-ʿArabī al-aṣīl ) and return to “the sources of pure Arabic expression”.37 These critics took recourse to classical literary criticism because neoclassicism as a movement was essentially bent on rediscovering the early heritage of Arabic poetry. In this context, Badawi notes that the true precursor of the modern poetic revival was the Egyptian al-Bārūdī, in whose work is abundantly clear a conscious return to the classicism of early medieval Arabic poetry, especially of the Abbasid period. This neoclassicism marks the first stage in the modern literary revival—a stage in which the modern Arabs asserted their own cultural identity in the wake of foreign influence. He adds that Bārūdī’s appearance might have been delayed had it not been for certain factors. One of these was the growing realization of the excellence and

35 36 37

Cachia, “Critics,” 420. Hāshim Yāghī, al-Naqd al-Adabī al-Ḥ adīth fī Lubnān (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1968), 1:42-44. Ibid., 43-44, 60-63 passim.

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relevance of the ancient poetic heritage, which was being continually revived in the works of Arab literati in the nineteenth century.38 The forerunners of neoclassicism such as Nāṣif al-Yāzijī and Buṭrus alBustānī were extremely significant in this regard since it was in their editions of the classical masterpieces that the neoclassical poets found inspiration. Both al-Yāzijī and al-Bustānī produced editions of Dīwān al-Mutanabbī. Al-Yāzijī’s edition included a commentary on al-Mutanabbī’s Dīwān whom he regarded as “the leader of all poets”.39 Moreover, al-Yāzijī wrote three smaller dīwāns of his own in which he dedicated panegyrics to Prince Bashīr al-Shihābī. These poems, Somekh indicates, are evocative of the lucid style and rich diction of the great Abbasid poets such as al-Mutanabbī and Abū Tammām. By composing poetry thus, al-Yāzijī’s work suggested that the Arabic poetry of the late nineteenth century might revive the strength and vigour it had displayed in the Abbasid period.40 Although al-Bārūdī and other neoclassical poets very much stuck to the norms of classical poetry, their loyalty to tradition was less when it came to subject matter. Changes in the Arab world towards the end of the nineteenth century brought greater awareness among neoclassical poets that the content of their poetry should reflect current topics and concerns, without discarding traditional form. Somekh states that neoclassicists wanted their poetry to be traditional in form and contemporary in content; to express the outlook and concerns of their age while adhering to the compositional principles of another. He describes this as “the implicit ideology of Arabic neoclassical poetry”.41 Neoclassical poets and critics, therefore, neither had the desire nor the need to come up with new literary theories, since the moulds of literary criticism that served classical Arabic poetry would for the most part serve them. Of course, not all critics of the period sought inspiration in the past. Ouyang writes that while traditionalists continued to comment on poetry in accordance with classical principles, modernised Arab intellectuals began translating works on literary criticism from European languages and incorporating the ideas from these works into their own writings on Arabic literature.42 However, the initial influence of Western critical theories was minimal. Most poets during the peak of neoclassical poetry (1870-1930) continued to use 38 M.M. Badawi, A Critical Introduction to Modern Arab Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 15. 39 Anīs al-Maqdisī, al-Funūn al-Adabīyah wa-Aʿlāmuhā fī al-Nahḍah al-ʿArabīyah al-Ḥ adīthah (Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm lil-Malāyīn, 1980), 91, 106. 40 Somekh, “Neo-Classical Arabic Poets,” 43. 41 Ibid., 39. 42 Wen-Chin Ouyang, Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Culture: The Making of a Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 5.

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conventional meters, rhymes and themes. Only later did the influence of Western literary criticism make a significant impact, in the Romantic (191050) and modern periods (1950 onwards).43 Hamarneh outlines three main trends that characterised Arab literary criticism until the 1950s. First, a strong conservative trend was seen in the resuscitation of tradition and the following of traditional poetic rules. A second trend, influenced by the work of Orientalists and led by such figures as the Egyptian Ṭāhā Ḥ usayn (1889-1973), was to reinterpret literary traditions according to modern Western rationality. A third trend emphasised the individuality of the poet and the centrality of imagination under the influence of Western, especially English Romanticism.44 How does al-Shartūnī’s contribution fit into this background of Arabic poetic conditions?

Al-Shartūnī’s Kitāb Maṭāliʿ and the Theory of Compilation Al-Shartūnī’s thesis on poetry is an integral part of his Kitāb Maṭāliʿ. This work is divided into three main sections, with the thesis on poetry at the end. In the first section, al-Shartūnī deals with “the different forms of sentence structure used with various ideas” (ʿilm al-maʿānī); in the second, he addresses “. . . the different ways of expressing the same idea eloquently and clearly” (ʿilm al-bayān) and in the third, he tackles “embellishment of speech and rhetorical figures” (ʿilm al-badīʿ). In these three sections, al-Shartūnī is effectively dealing with the tripartite system of ʿilm al-balāghah (the Arab art of rhetoric or the science of eloquence), and his inclusion of poetry alongside these sections clearly suggests that for him, as for the critics, poetry is a branch of rhetoric/ eloquence (balāghah).45 Moreover, the separation of eloquence into three principal parts here is no different from earlier works. Al-Sakkākī first used this system (d. 1226 or 1229) in the third part of his encyclopaedia of the sciences, Miftāḥ al-ʿUlūm, an organisation which still applies.46 43 Ostle, “Poetry, modern,” 606-607. Ostle points out that these dates should be considered as general chronological indicators rather than precise points of change, as these various models of modern Arabic poetry have overlapped and co-existed. 44 Hamarneh, “Arabic Theory,” 24. 45 Cantarino indicates that literary critics produced multiple treatises dealing with ʿilm albayān, ʿilm al-faṣāḥah, ʿilm al-balāghah, ʿilm al-badīʿ, and ilm al-maʿānī, all meaning various aspects of rhetorical oratory and eloquence that might be studied by taking poetry as the basis of information. Cantarino, Arabic Poetics, 61. 46 Saʿīd al-Shartūnī, Kitāb Maṭāli ʿal-Aḍwāʾ fī Manāhij al-Kuttāb wa-al-Shu ʿarā ʾ (Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿah al-Adabīyah, 1908), 138-186; and A Schaade-[G.E. Von Grunebaum] “Balāghah” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed.

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The content of al-Shartūnī’s thesis on poetry is organized under twentyfour headings and displays an unequivocal taste for classification and taxonomy.47 The headings indicate he will not only deal with the various informal aspects of poetry, for instance, definition, themes and plagiarisms, but also with the formal aspects of meter and rhyme. This marks his departure from those earlier literary critics who rarely dealt with prosody and rhyme because they considered these aspects to fall within separate disciplines devoted to prosody and rhyme theory rather than poetry as such.48 Nevertheless, the scope of al-Shartūnī’s thesis is consistent with the fuller canonical treatments of the art found in Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih’s (d. 940) al-ʿIqd al-Farīd (The Unique Necklace) and Ibn Rashīq’s al-ʿUmdah, which can only suggest that al-Shartūnī like these critics regarded himself as capable of writing perceptively about all aspects of poetry. In terms of contents, al-Shartūnī’s Maṭāliʿ can broadly be classified as a work on rhetoric and poetics. However, one needs to acknowledge Heinrich’s observation that the terms “rhetoric” and “poetics” clearly refer to disciplines in the classical and Western tradition and, as such, they may be applied to the Arab situation only with a grain of salt. Closest to “rhetoric”, he states, is the “science of eloquence” (ʿilm al-balāghah), which comprises the three fields of syntactical stylistics, theory of imagery and rhetorical figures. This science achieved its definitive formulation in the later Middle Ages (seventh to thirteenth century). For Heinrichs “poetics” would have its closest counterpart in the “critique of poetry” (naqd al-shiʿr) as a theory of criticism rather than a normative guideline of how to compose good poetry. This branch of literature flourished in the tenth and eleventh centuries and was later absorbed into the “science of eloquence”. Heinrichs thus concludes that poetics and rhetoric form one large field of intellectual pursuit, or one meta-discourse dealing with literature. Furthermore, he makes an important point which particularly applies to al-Shartūnī’s Maṭāliʿ. He states that one might thus replace the two terms (poetics and rhetoric) by speaking of “literary theory”. It should be noted, however, that “theory” here mostly means “taxonomy” (i.e. definition, exemplification and hierarchical classification of various cases.)49 The main aim of al-Shartūnī’s work is pedagogical. He uses a question and answer technique throughout his Maṭāliʿ, almost in the form of a dialogue between a teacher and a student in a classroom scenario. This technique is 47 Main headings include: definition of poetry; verse and prose; the writer and the poet; poetic licenses; poetic themes; meters; rhyme; plagiarism; versification and prosification. Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 257-258. 48 See Cantarino, Arabic Poetics, 46. 49 Heinrichs, “Rhetoric and Poetics,” 651.

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extant in the works of al-Shartūnī’s contemporaries. Shākir Shuqayr’s Miṣbāḥ and Shaykhū’s ʿIlm al-Adab are good examples of this technique in the nahḍah.50 Al-Shartūnī articulates the rationale behind his work based on two main factors that further underline his pedagogical intent. First, he blames the negative influence of learning foreign languages for the inability of students to comprehend older writings on style and eloquence. Second, he attributes the problematic nature of available manuals on style and eloquence to the traditional presentation of material in them (i.e. too abridged or verbose).51 Having articulated the rationale behind his work on these factors, he claims to remedy the situation by adopting different methods of organisation and presentation. He states: “The methods of organising the material in earlier works have been left to the interpretative judgement of the individual (ṭuruq naẓm al-kalām matrūkah li-hidāyat al-fiṭrah wa-irshād al-ṭabʿ wa-taḥkīm alḥāl ).”52 Moreover, his work will focus on the purpose of poetry and writing: “For the best literary work (muṣannaf ) in any discipline ( fann), is the one that [enables] the student to come to terms with the purpose ( gharaḍ ) of that discipline. It presents material clearly and uses solid expressions in order to facilitate the student’s grasp of the subject.”53 Al-Shartūnī’s Maṭāliʿ also seems to have strong conservative54 inclinations. He writes: The requirement of schools for a comprehensive literary work (muṣannaf ) that incorporates the methods (manāhij) of the eloquent ones (bulaghāʾ) and that aids the natural talent (ṭabʿ) in the writing of poetry (shiʿr) and composition (inshāʾ) has enticed me to produce a single work which brings together as a summary the secrets of their discourses [ fuṣaḥāʾ]55 which I have acquired through long years of study and toil. Thus, when I embarked upon this work, I focused on the purpose (gharaḍ ) of poetry and writing and on the needs of this era in order to produce a manual that will help the student attain proficiency in these disciplines quickly.56

Al-Shartūnī’s point that he wishes to bring together material from the writings of earlier ʿeloquentʾ personalities into a single work is extremely significant, 50

Yāghī, al-Naqd, 1: 62. Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, preface. 52 Matrūkah has the meaning of leaving something behind as heritage. Taḥkīm al-ḥāl is a term used in Islamic law meaning: to start from the present state of a court’s findings. 53 Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, preface. 54 By conservative in this paper, I mean those critics who seek to obtain the main substance of their works from classical Arabic criticism. 55 Al-Shartūnī uses fuṣaḥāʾ here as synonym for bulaghāʾ. Both terms refer to those earlier personalities who were known for their eloquence, mastery, and skilful use of the ʿcorrect literary languageʾ. 56 Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, preface. 51

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since this same notion motivates authors of similar manuals in the nahḍah. In Rawḍat al-Adab, after expressing admiration for the poetry and language of the Jāhilīyah period, Abkāriyūs states: “Their [poetry] is full of gems and niceties, and their language pure from blemishes. So I brought together in one work the subtleties and rarities of their poetry.”57 In Dalīl al-Hāʾim, al-Batlūnī asserts: “I was requested by teachers and school authorities to write a book (sifr) that captures the essence of the art of composition (inshāʾ), and helps students compose poetry and prose (naẓm and nathr). Therefore, I have brought together the great writings of distinguished scholars in these two arts in a single work.”58 Likewise, in ʿIlm al-Adab, Shaykhū states: “I was commissioned . . . to put together a book which explains the principles and techniques of writing to school students . . . Thus, after studying the great writings of the eloquent ones . . . I have gathered the fruits of their works.”59 Three things are clear from the foregoing discussion: First, the main aim of al-Shartūnī’s work is pedagogical. Second, al-Shartūnī and other critics of the nahḍah display a strong conservative taste for earlier writings. Finally, the idea of bringing together valued writings of the past into one single work underlies al-Shartūnī’s manual as it does the writings of his contemporaries. Although al-Shartūnī’s actual sources remain to be uncovered, he makes explicit references to several authors in the main part of Maṭāliʿ, which tentatively suggests criteria not very different from his contemporaries. For instance, he acknowledges taking segments directly from Ibn Khaldūn and ʿAbd alQāhir al-Jurjānī in the section entitled khātimah (conclusion).60 In the thesis on poetry, he explicitly states that the whole section on poetic themes is taken from Qudāmah ibn Jaʿfar, and makes a passing reference to al-Jāḥiẓ and Ibn al-Athīr. Al-Shartūnī, nevertheless, falls short of revealing the sources for his literary theories and taxonomies, which makes it difficult to form a definite opinion on actual literary criteria. In addition, he remains silent on the various other texts that make up his thesis.61 This method is not unique to al-Shartūnī. In his survey of literary criticism in Mount Lebanon during the nahḍah, Yāghī shows that al-Batlūnī draws 57

Yāghī, al-Naqd, 1:43. Ibid., 1:44. 59 Ibid., 1: 44-45. In volume one Shaykhū deals with the art of composition (ʿilm al-inshāʾ) and prosody (ʿīlm al-ʿarūd ), and in volume two with oratory and poetry. 60 He acknowledges Ibn Khaldūn in his discussions of al-adab and al-dhawq, and al-Jurjānī in his treatment of al-naqd. Al-Shartūnī, al-Maṭaliʿ, 139-141 and 172-174. He also quotes material from his own works: Najdat al-Yarāʾ (151), Kitāb al-Muʿ īn (152, 181-189), and al-Shihāb al-Thāqib (163). 61 For section taken from Qudāmah, see Maṭāliʿ, 199-205; for references to al-Jāhiẓ and Ibn al-Athīr, see 193-194. Even when al-Shartūnī acknowledges these scholars, he does not specify the actual works. 58

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material almost entirely from Ibn al-Athīr’s al-Mathal al-Sāʾir, Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih’s ʿIqd, Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddimah, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm al-Ḥ uṣrī’s Zahr al-Ādāb and ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Māwardī’s Adab al-Dunyā wa-l-Dīn (The Ethics of Religion and of this World).62 Shākir al-Shuqayr also obtains material from these sources for his Miṣbāḥ al-Afkār. In ʿIlm al-Adab, Shaykhū accumulates material from Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddimah, Ibn Rushd’s Talkhīṣ Kitāb Arisṭūṭālīs fī al-Shiʿr (A Summary of Aristotle’s Poetics), Jamāl al-Dīn alSuyūṭī’s (d.1505) al-Muzhir fī ʿUlūm al-Lughah wa-Anwāʿihā (The Luminous Work Concerning the Language Sciences and Their Categories) and Ibn Rashīq’s al-ʿUmdah.63 For Yāghī nahḍah critics turned to these works because they were concerned with the same issues that were raised by earlier scholars like Ibn al-Athīr, Ibn Khaldūn and Ibn Rashīq.64 Conservative writers and critics of the nahḍah, thus, had little interest in pursuing literary criteria other than that provided by the Arab past. Moreover, their literary endeavour rests upon a principle of ʿderivationʾ from a norm established by earlier prominent writers. This confirms the views of Hamarneh, Moreh, Cachia and Yāghī with respect to the conservative and derivative nature of nineteenth-century criticism. But does this mean we should dismiss the work of al-Shartūnī and his contemporaries, simply as derivative and unoriginal collections of material already explored, as these scholars seem to imply? Not only is this reading misleading, it also does an injustice to their works, as I will show below. Yāghī’s survey, just like Hamarneh, Moreh and Cachia, fails to emphasise that these critics differed in the amount of material they selected and abridged from previous writings, and to a lesser extent in the manner of presentation. Moreover, the recourse of neoclassical critics to tradition cannot simply be attributed to conservative tastes or to concerns with the same issues as their predecessors. It could be argued that these compilations—for that is what many of their sources really are—were the only recourse for critics who were seeking to assert their own cultural identity and nourish their pride through neoclassicism. Allen explains that manuals and compilations, such as al-ʿAskarī’s (d. 1009) Kitāb al-Ṣināʿatayn: al-Kitābah wa-l-Shiʿr (The Book on the Two Arts: Prose and Poetry), Ibn Rashīq’s al-ʿUmdah, Ibn al-Athīr’s al-Mathal, and al-Suyūṭī’s al-Muzhir provided the most available source for Arab scholars in the nineteenth century who, in the light of cultural developments that were affecting the Middle East region, set themselves to re-examine the Arabic liter-

62 63 64

Yāghī, al-Naqd al-Adabī, 1: 48-49, 62. Ibid., 57, 62. Ibid., 57.

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ary heritage.65 One such figure, he points out, was the Egyptian, Ḥ usayn alMarṣafī (d.1890), who wrote al-Wasīlah al-Adabīyah ilā al-ʿUlūm al-ʿArabīyah (The Literary Way to the Arabic Sciences, 1872-75). Al-Marṣafī’s work, he concludes, is thus “a genuine piece of neo-classicism, a nineteenth-century capstone gesture that recreates for a new generation of Egyptian students the tradition of Arabic criticism as reflected in the great collections that we have just described.”66 Besides, one cannot ignore the idea of canon here, which is the thrust of any neoclassicism. The reliance of neoclassical critics on these texts is no doubt a reflection of their canonical status. One might define canonical texts as “Those highly valued texts . . . which a community privileges for self-definition, authority, and authentification, and which are the focus of an ongoing interpretive debate.”67 Hence, by engaging with the existing canon, the neoclassical critic grounds his or her individual work in a historical tradition that can provide legitimacy and therefore authority in a world destined for radical change under Western influence. The canon also serves an ideological function- as unification, as symbol/sign of national pride and achievement, as construction of a “glorious past”, as an identity—in line with the neoclassicism of the period. Besides engaging with the existing canon, the approach of neoclassical critics discloses broader literary structures underlying writing, reading and interpretation in the nahḍah. In order to appreciate these structures, we need to view their method and the generic form of their text in light of the idea of the compilator (compiler) and compilatio (compilation). Martin Irvine’s study on the making of textual culture in medieval Western societies provides some fascinating insights. As a conclusion to his outline of Isadore of Seville’s place in the developing model of grammatica, he investigates one further question: what does the form of Isadore’s works—the compilation and encyclopaedia— reveal about the function of writing, the nature of authors, and textuality in early medieval society?68 65 Roger Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage: The Development of its genres and criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 391-392. 66 Ibid., 392. 67 Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: Grammatica and Literary Theory 350-1100, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, vol. 19 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 15. 68 Isadore of Seville (560-636), his Etymologiae Sive Origins became the most widely used grammatical encyclopaedia of the Middle Ages. Irvine indicates that this work has often been written off or denigrated by modern scholars as a derivative, unoriginal compilation, but this was the very reason for its popularity throughout the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Isadore’s method and the generic form of his texts, he argues, discloses broader literary structures underlying writing, reading, and interpretation in renaissance communities. Irvine, Making of Textual Culture, 241.

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He explains that the form of textuality at work can be understood through the notion of the writer as compilator, one who selects material from a larger cultural library, and whose resulting compilatio is received as an interpretive arrangement of the discursive traditions in which the writer intervenes. The compilator makes explicit the writer’s function at the level of textuality and sets up a dialogue between prior texts and the interpretative discourse of his own community, isolating or bringing into focus a pattern in the larger network of texts that forms the library. In short, he adds that the notion of the compilator opens up the question of the intertextual dimensions of writing, both the awareness of this principle by medieval writers and readers themselves and the historical conditions for writing and interpretation that function impersonally and unconsciously.69 Irvine points out that in the Middle Ages there were several definitions used to express the idea of writing as compiling. Paul the Deacon’s glossary, De verborum significatu, defines compilare as “to bring together or put together into one.” Other widely used terms for the same idea were in unum redigree or colligere, “to collect into one,” or “to excerpt the flowers of the authors.”70 There were also common metaphors used: “the bee as collector of nectar from flowers of diverse fields, the gathering of timber from a forest (silva).”71 The organizing principle of compilatio clearly governs the composition of new texts in the nahḍah. In fact, there are remarkable similarities between the definitions used by Arab and Western writers to express the idea of compiling from past writings. For example, al-Shartūnī said: “To bring together . . . the secrets of their discourses into a single book”, and Abkāriyūs stated: “I brought together in one work the subtleties and rarities of their poetry.”72 Moreover, al-Shartūnī’s statement that the methods of organising material in past writings have been left to the interpretative judgement of the individual (ṭuruq naẓm al-kalām matrūkah li-hidāyat al-fiṭrah wa-irshād al-ṭabʿ wa-taḥkīm alḥāl ) makes clear al-Shartūnī’s role at the level of textuality.73 The writer as compilator intervenes in the selection and arrangement of past traditions and 69 Isadore defines the compilator as a mixer which aptly applies to his own practice. According to Irvine, the awareness of mixing prior discourse is evident in the works of nearly all medieval writers. The encyclopaedic compilation, which Isidore’s Etymologiae both exemplifies and typifies, is thus a transgeneric literary form or macrogenere that links a large field of medieval writings. Ibid., 241-243. 70 Ibid., 243. 71 Ibid., 243, 428. Irvine mainly deals with grammatical compilations (i.e. linguistic and literary theories/opinion) rather than literary types (anthologies and collections of stories, poems, sermons, hymns). 72 Al-Batlūnī and Shaykhū also expressed the same idea, as stated in the previous section. 73 Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, preface.

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texts and thus provides his own interpretative arrangement. In this he is to be guided by al-fiṭrah (instinct), ṭabʿ (innate taste/talent) and taḥkīm al-ḥāl (judgement) which all give the meaning of the individual interpretation. The resulting compilation, in this instance al-Shartūnī’s Maṭālīʿ, would be received as an interpretative selection and arrangement of texts already valued in the larger cultural library. From a reception theory point of view the reader shares appreciation—or at least familiarity—with the corpus used/compiled. The Arab and Western compiler’s method and scope for interpretation is almost identical in nature. The compiler reduces, expands, adapts and incorporates the material (i.e. the text, texts or traditions) according to his judgement. Al-Shartūnī uses the question and answer technique, which is no different to the colloquy or catechetical format used by compilers of early Western medieval treatises. A brief comparison between al-Shartūnī’s text and the Ars Victorini clearly reveals this: What is a defect (ʿayb) in rhyme? When rhyme occurs counter to its established rules then it is a defect. How many defects of rhyme are there? Nine: al-sinād, al-taḍmīn, al-īṭāʾ, al-iqwāʾ, al-ikfāʾ, al-taḥrīd, al-iqʿād, al-ijāzah, and al-iṣrāf. 74 What is Latinity? The observance of speaking incorruptly according to the Roman language. In how many ways is Latinity established? Three. What are they? Systematic principles, authority, convention.75

The concept of writer as compilator and the organizing principle of compilatio are not altogether alien to earlier Arabo-Islamic writings. Compilations constitute a major literary genre in the Arab adab tradition itself. Countless earlier Arabic works, such as Ibn Qutaybah’s (d. 889) ʿUyūn al-Akhbār (Choice Narratives), Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī’s al-Aghānī, Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih’s ʿIqd, al-Ḥ uṣrī’s Zahr al-Ādāb and Ibn Rashīq’s al-ʿUmdah, embody the notions of compilator and compilatio. The same idea is also clearly discernable in the canonical traditions of Islam.76 Imam Bukhārī (d. 870), the compiler of one of the two most authentic books of prophetic traditions (aḥādīth), Saḥīḥ alBukhārī, brought together 7,275 traditions in his work after collecting over 300,000.77 Likewise, Imām Abū Muslim (d. 875), the author of the other 74

Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 230. The compiler of the Ars Victorini rearranged and reduced the information in the earlier sources into the colloquy or catechetical format. In this instance the fullest definition of latinitas which Diomedes and Charisius derived from Varro. Irvine, Making of Textual Culture, 77 76 For an excellent survey of a wide variety of compilations in the Islamic sciences and Arab adab tradition, see Allen, Arabic Literary Heritage, chap. 5 passim, and 388-392. 77 Muḥammad al-Bukhārī, Saḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, trans. Muhammad Muhsin Khan (Al-Riyāḍ: Dār al-Salām, 1997), 1:18-19. 75

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most authentic book, Saḥīḥ Muslim, compiled his book of 4,000 traditions from a total collection of 300,000.78 The preceding discussion stresses the importance of considering al-Shartūnī and his contemporaries as compilators rather than as “innovative critics and writers”. There is an implicit awareness of this principle among writers and their audiences in the nahḍah, especially because of the existing parallels in the Arabo-Islamic religious and literary heritage. The niche for the compiler’s “originality”, according to this view, is in providing the audience with one’s own interpretative selection and arrangement of (canonical) texts already valued in the larger cultural library rather than in producing new material or devising new theories. Hence, the resulting compilatio is received as the author’s own “original” work. Below, I examine al-Shartūnī’s thesis on poetry from the writer-as-compilator perspective. In the process, I hope to shed light on the particular texts and traditions that make up his work in view of the idea of the canon.

Al-Shartūnī’s Definition of Poetry Al-Shartūnī defines poetry as: “The representation of [the mind’s] images (taṣwīr al-khayālāt al-fikrīyah), and the portrayal of the soul’s states (tamthīl alwān al-nafs), [which colour it] in the state of pain and pleasure (fī al-alam wa-l-ladhdhah). The best of it is when those images and states appear like sensed objects to the senses so that the poetry [acts as] a channel through which the feelings of the poet are conveyed to the soul of the listener.”79 Al-Shartūnī then provides brief examples from the poetry of al-Buḥturī, Abū Tammām and Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī, among others, in which he says images appear like sensed objects ( ṣuwar al-maḥsūsāt).80 Al-Shartūnī’s concept of poetry emphasizes the following key elements. Poetry is imaginatively representational; it is best when the mind’s images and the soul’s states appear like sensed objects81 (maḥsūsāt) to the senses (i.e. mimetic representation); pain and pleasure are part of this mimetic process and, finally, poetry must appeal to human emotions. This concept of poetry is particularly interesting since it represents an attempt to define poetry 78 Muslim Ibn al-Hajjāj, Saḥīḥ Muslim, trans. ʿAbd al-Ḥ amīd Siddīqī (Lahore: M. Ashraf, 1980), 1: vi. 79 Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 190. 80 Ibid., 190-193. 81 Sensed objects is used here to denote objects perceptible through the senses or objects of the senses.

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beyond the purely formal (traditional) definition of “rhymed, metrical discourse indicating a meaning”, common in classical and medieval works on literary criticism.82 In fact, al-Shartūnī’s definition shares much with the Islamic philosopher’s concept of poetic discourse. His description of poetry as imaginatively representational (taṣwīr al-khayālāt) is clearly visible in the work of Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) who defines poetry as “imaginatively representational discourse (mukhayyil ) comprising of rhythmically balanced utterances which among the Arabs are also rhymed.”83A century later, Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) succinctly stated: “Poetic utterances are imaginatively representational discourses (mukhayyil ).”84 Al-Qarṭājannī, who represented the nexus at which the two traditions—native and revised Aristotelian—met, defined poetry as “imaginatively representational and metrical discourse, characterized in Arabic by the inclusion of rhyme.”85 Moreover, al-Shartūnī’s concept of poetry possesses strong psychological and philosophical resonances, which are rare in classical Arab literary criticism. For al-Shartūnī, poetry is built on an intellectual process with complex psychological underpinnings intended to influence the soul of the listener. Central to this process is khayāl (imagination, representation). What alShartūnī means by khayāl is explained at the beginning of his Maṭāliʿ as “the intrinsic faculty of the mind which stores up images of sensed objects ( ṣuwar al-maḥsūsāt)86 even after their absence.”87 The same concept of khayāl is detectable in medieval Arabic psychology. In Kitāb al-Najāh, for instance, Ibn Sīnā describes the function of [al-quwwah] al-khayāl wa-l-muṣawwirah (the faculty of representation) as follows: “It is to preserve what the (faculty of fantasy) or 82

Adnan Abbas, Arabic Poetic Terminology (Poznan: UAM, 2002), 221. Ibn Sīnā, al-Shifāʾ al-Manṭiq 9: al-Shiʿr, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī (Cairo: al-Dār al-Miṣrīyah lil-Taʾlīf wa-al-Tarjamah, 1966), 23. 84 Ibn Rushd, Talkhīṣ Kitāb Arisṭūṭālis fī al-Shiʿr, in Arsiṭūṭālīs Fann al-Shiʿr, ed. ʿAbd alRaḥmān Badawī and Mattā ibn Yūnus (Beirut: Dār al-Thaqāfah, 1973), 201. 85 Hamarneh, “Arabic Theory and Criticism,” 34. According to Cantarino, takhyīl and mukhayyil designate the mental process by which the poet can cause his mimetic representations to be imaginative, effective, and creative. Cantarino, Arabic Poetics, 86. Although al-Shartūnī does not use these terms, his use of the phrase taṣwīr al-khayālāt al-fikrīyah and his concept of poetry as a whole, as I show, clearly signifies a mental process by which the poet creates images and represents them in order to have an effect on the listener’s soul. 86 The objects cognised through the outer senses are called maḥsūsāt (percepts) and those by the inner senses wijdāniyat (intuitions). What is perceived by external senses first and then by internal senses is the form of the sensed objects, and what is perceived by internal senses alone is the meaning of a thing. For descriptions of these terms, see M.S. Sheikh, Dictionary of Muslim Philosophy (Institute of Islamic Culture, Lahore, 1970) under al-quwwāt al-mudrikah. 87 Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 1. 83

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sensus communis has received from the individual five (external) senses even in the absence of the sensed objects.”88 Hence, when al-Shartūnī states that the best poetry is when (the represented) images and states appear like sensed objects (maḥsūsāt) to the senses, he speaks of mimetic representation resulting from a complex psychological process.89 Al-Shartūnī’s notion of “best poetry” thus underscores the importance of mimetic representation. This line of thought is clearly discernible in Ibn Rushd’s Talkhīṣ. He states: “[mimetic] exposition is the pillar . . . of this art; for there is no delight in remembering the object intended to be recalled when there is no mimetic process involved. Rather, there will be delight and acceptance of it only when it is [artistically] imitated. Because of this, man will not find pleasure in the contemplation of existing objects themselves, but he will in their imitations (images) and reproductions with tints and colours.”90 88 Ibn Sīnā, Kitāb al-Najāh fī al-Ḥ ikmah al-Mantiqīyah wa-al-Tabiʿīyah wa-al-Ilāhīyah, ed. Mājid Fakhrī (Beirut: Dār al-Āfāq al-ʿArabīyah, 1985), 201; and Ibn Sīnā, Avicenna’s Psychology: an English translation of Kitāb al-Najāh, Book II, chapter VI with Historico-Philosophical notes and textual improvements on the Cairo edition, trans. and ed. Fazlur Rahman (Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1990), 31. Much of the Arabic terminology al-Shartūnī uses to define poetry and the faculty of representation (e.g. ṣūrah, maḥsūsāt, ṣuwar al-maḥsūsāt) is clearly discernable in Ibn Sīnā’s Kitāb al-Najāh, 200-202. 89 Images and states appear like sensed objects to the senses when there is artistic imitation of that image or state through an image of another sensed object. This is known as mimetic representation which Ibn Sīnā states consists in the presentation of something similar to the object, not of the object itself (i.e. original image, state, idea). Cantarino, Arabic Poetics, 137, 214, 219220. The psychological process can be explained in two stages. The first (an auxiliary one) is the creation of images from sensed objects, itself achieved through a combination of the following smaller psychological functions: the sensed objects (maḥsūsāt) are received by the five external senses; coalesced as forms by the sensus communis, then forwarded to the faculty of representation where they are retained as images (of sensed objects) for future use. The second is the actual mimetic representation itself, achieved through the following process: at the time of inspiration the faculty of imagination not only revives the stored images in the faculty of representation, but restructures them, and creates new combinations which did not exist in this form in reality in order to affect the soul of the listener. The images are then transmitted by the imagination through the motion of thinking to the “common sense” which constitutes the connecting link between external and inner sensual perception. As a result, the images and states are represented as something perceived in the external world by all the senses, or as al-Shartūnī’s notion of best poetry would have it: ʿthey appear like sensed objects to the senses.ʾ My description of this psychological process here is based on the function of the faculties of representation (al-mutaṣawwirah) and imagination (al-mutakhayyilah) outlined in Sheikh, Dictionary of Muslim Philosophy, under al-quwwāt al-mutaṣawwirah and al-quwwāt al-mutakhayyilah. For a description of this mimetic process, see Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, 2d ed. trans. Franz Rosenthal (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), 3: 72. 90 Cantarino, Arabic Poetics, 86. Ibn Sīnā equally emphasises the importance of mimetic representation, see Mansour Ajami, The Alchemy of Glory: The Dialectic of Truthfulness and Untruthfulness in Medieval Arabic Literary Criticism (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1988), 57.

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Equally, al-Shartūnī’s reference to pain (alam) and pleasure (ladhdhah) denotes the emotions experienced by the poet in the contemplation of mimetic representation. Here he understands the act of mimesis in relation to human emotion much in the same way as the Islamic philosophers. Ibn Sīnā speaks of the enjoyment or sadness experienced in the contemplation of the mimetic representation. Ibn Rushd, on the other hand, highlights the importance played by delight in the origin and development of the mimetic and poetic arts.91 For al-Shartūnī, mimetic representation should be such that poetry [acts as] a channel through which the feelings of the poet are conveyed to the soul of the listener. He subscribes to the view of the Islamic philosophers, Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd, that poetic mimesis has to appeal to human emotion in order to achieve the poetic aim. The philosophers referred to the poetry that met this criterion as “imaginatively creative” (mukhayyil ).92 Al-Shartūnī’s concept of poetry might be the fruit of conscious or unconscious psychological and philosophical considerations. Nevertheless, it clearly displays all the hallmarks of the Islamic philosophersʾ concept of poetry based on Aristotle: imaginative representation, poetry as a mental and mimetic process of creating and representing images, the emotions of pleasure and pain experienced by the poet and its ability to appeal to human emotions. The Islamic philosophers developed Aristotle’s concept of imagination (phantasia) and the poet’s creations as imaginative.93 Al-Shartūnī explains that all discourse (kalām) that conforms to his aforementioned definition, regardless of rhyme and meter, can be regarded as poetry. However, convention (isṭilāḥ) dictates that poetry be metrical rhymed speech (al-kalām al-mawzūn al-muqaffā). He furthermore comments that all speech in meter and rhyme can therefore be described as poetry, but taste (dhawq) requires that the speech also has poetic meaning (maʿānī).94 Al-Shartūnī highlights the formalistic definition of poetry common among most classical literary critics (discourse in metre and rhyme) and unrhymed verse was thus excluded.95 Al-Shartūnī then subscribes to the minimalist, yet formalistic, definition of poetry that gained popularity among critics of the later Abbasid period. They gave poetry a definition that, besides rhyme and 91

Cantarino, Arabic Poetics, 86. Ibid., 85. 93 Salim Kemal, “Arabic Poetics and Aristotle’s Poetic,” British Journal of Aesthetic Studies 26, no. 2 (Spring 1986): 113-114, 120-121; and W.P. Heinrichs, “Takhyīl,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed. 94 Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ , 190. 95 Shmuel Moreh, Modern Arabic Poetry 1800-1970: The Development of its Forms and Themes under the Influence of Western Literature, Studies in Arabic Literature, vol. 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 125. 92

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meter, included meaning (maʿnā)—perhaps as a way of excluding the casual use of metrical rhythm. Ibn Ṭ abāṭabā, Qudāmah ibn Jāʿfar, and Ibn Rashīq among many others, for instance, stressed that poetry is a “rhymed, metrical discourse indicating a meaning”.96 Although al-Shartūnī’s actual definition testifies to a broader (psychological/philosophical) concept of poetry, he is unwilling to escape from the formalistic definition of Arabic poetry based on rhyme, meter, discourse and meaning. This is perhaps not surprising since even the Islamic philosophers could only reiterate the formalistic elements of poetry in their definitions. Ibn Sīnā (980-1037) even went as far as denying Arabic unrhymed discourse the title of poetry: “Poetry is imaginary speech (kalām mukhayyal ) consisting of utterances (aqwāl ) which have a harmonious, equal rhythm; . . . We almost do not call that which is unrhymed poetry.”97 The neoclassical poets and critics defined poetry in almost the same manner as earlier critics. It was their reluctance to escape the formalistic concept of poetry that was partly responsible for making poetry more resistant than prose to change during the nahḍah. This is articulated by Jayyusi when she states: “The early pioneers of the Arab literary renaissance experimented and excelled mainly in the field of prose. Their attempts at poetry were limited and unsuccessful. This is perhaps proof that poetry needs a longer time than prose to rid itself of any unwholesome traditions that have been infused in it over the years, even if attempts at revival should be made in prose and poetry simultaneously. For poetry, with its more rigid form, resists longer the attempts made at penetrating it, the unwholesome traditions becoming a part of the poetic art.”98 The continuation of the formalistic concept of poetry among neoclassical critics and poets also helped maintain a more rigid distinction between poetry and prose during the nineteenth century, just as in previous times.99 Earlier literary critics considered the rhymed metrical element of poetry as most important for distinguishing poetry from prose and therefore evoked this element religiously in their comparisons between verse and prose, a standard feature in the works of many critics. That al-Shartūnī evokes the rhymed metrical element of poetry in his comparison is therefore to be expected—no doubt as a rather conservative attempt to hold on to tradition. 96

Abbas, Arabic Poetic Terminology, 221. Moreh, Modern Arabic Poetry 1800-1970, 26. 98 Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry, Studies in Arabic Literature, vol. 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1977),1: 20. 99 Only in the twentieth century, under Western influence, did the boundaries between poetry and prose eventually change, with the rise of ʿprose poetryʾ. Moreh, Modern Arabic Poetry 1800-1970, 8. 97

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The Difference between Verse and Prose Arab critics have traditionally attached great importance to the comparison between verse and prose in their works. Both have supporters who announce their preference based on the relative external qualities and linguistic perfection inherent in each one. According to Cantarino, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Mubarrad (d. 898) was the first to show an explicit interest in the relative merits of verse and prose. This he did in an epistle written to Aḥmad ibn al-Wāthiq, to answer his question about which kind of eloquence is better (ablagh), that of poetry (shiʿr) or that of the orator, the plain prose and rhymed discourse. Hence, after enumerating their merits and coming to the initial conclusion that each was equally effective, he decided in favour of poetry because of the additional linguistic difficulty of adhering to meter and rhyme.100 Almost two centuries later, Ibn Rashīq took up the issue in his monumental al-ʿUmdah. For him, poetry had an obvious pre-eminence over prose. However, whereas al-Mubarrad’s aim was to demonstrate which kind of eloquence was better, Ibn Rashīq’s interest lay in the literary merit and excellence (faḍl) of each. Cantarino notes that his position on the matter was clear: “Each kind of speech had various degrees of quality. Each could be outstanding, mediocre, or even bad. His argumentation, however, took an interesting turn away from al-Mubarrad’s position, in which only linguistic difficulties of rhyme and meter were stressed.”101 Treatises continued to deal with the merits of poetry and prose, but with some variations of a linguistic and stylistic nature. Cantarino points out that the discussion went unchallenged as one of the traditional pillars of Arabic literary criticism in Ibn al-Athīr’s al-Mathal al-Sāʾir, in Ibn Abū al-Ḥ adīd’s reply (d. 1257) al-Falak al-Dāʾir, and again with Ibn Rashīq’s authority in al-Suyūṭī’s al-Muzhir.102 Al-Shartūnī reiterates widely held attitudes on the difference between poetry (verse) and prose found in earlier Arabic treatise. He first lists several opinions in favour of poetry. For example, he mentions the superiority of poetry over prose based on the aesthetic beauty that rhyme and meter bring to speech. He states: “Poetry (shiʿr) is stylistically more beautiful [than prose] and gives wisdom to the mind.”103 This argument in favour of poetry is embedded in medieval works such as the Sirr al-Faṣāḥah (The Secret of Proper Discourse) by al-Khafājī (d.1072). Al-Khafājī states: “Whoever prefers the ʿjoinedʾ may very well say that meter embellishes poetry and gives the speech a beauty which the 100 101 102 103

Cantarino, Arabic Poetics, 42-43. Ibid., 43-44. Ibid., 44. Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ , 193.

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prose discourse does not possess.”104 Al-Shartūnī also lists a number of views in support of prose. For instance, he deems prose (nathr) superior over verse (naẓm)105 because it gives more freedom and is more rewarding. He states: “Prose covers an extensive subject matter and provides an extensive scope for writing and thus gives more satisfaction to the heart [than poetry].”106 Al-Shartūnī’s thoughts on the expansive subject-matter of prose are clearly discernible in earlier works. Al-Khafājī notes: “As to what we could say about the pre-eminence of prose over ʿjoinedʾ speech, it is this: that in prose discourse many things are taught which are not in the ʿjoinedʾ [category]”107 Al-Shartūnī thus offers no definite preference for either poetry or prose, but presents a number of opinions in favour of each based on earlier works, suggesting he saw advantages and disadvantages in both. This is perhaps not surprising since even critics like Ibn al-Athīr found themselves in difficulties when they came to discuss the merits of prose relative to poetry despite their obvious preference for the former. However, al-Shartūnī writes at a time when prose is moving away from the traditional rhymed (sajʿ) form towards a more functional style owing to cultural developments affecting the Arab world.108 Poetry is still resistant due largely to the endeavours of neoclassicists. It is therefore worth considering the views of al-Shartūnī’s contemporaries. In Dalīl al-Hāʾim, al-Batlūnī compares between poetry and prose based on early critics.109 He falls short of expressing clear preference for either, but is critical of what he says is the dominance of the rhymed style of poetry in prose (i.e. rhymed prose), which reflects his taste for a more direct prose style (simple prose).110 Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī takes up the matter in a series of articles on poetry that appeared in his journal al-Ḍ iyāʾ during the 1890s. Whereas al-Shartūnī and Batlūnī, like earlier critics, focus mainly on the relative external qualities and linguistic perfection inherent in each one, al-Yāzijī’s discussion takes an interesting turn in that he delineates the boundaries between the two ( farq) 104

Cantarino, Arabic Poetics, 155. Naẓm here denotes verse and is used to reflect the bound/joined nature of poetry (manẓūm), as opposed to the free/scattered (manthūr) nature of prose. 106 Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 193. 107 Cantarino, Arabic Poetics, 156. 108 Rhymed prose (sajʿ), a term used to distinguish ornate prose, from the unadorned or ʿfreeʾ (mursal ). Al-Ḥ arīrī’s Maqāmāt most eloquent example of sajʿ style in the medieval period, a style which continued to hold its grip on prose well into the nineteenth century, most notably in the works of Nāṣif al-Yāzijī (1800-71) who wrote his Majmaʿ al-Baḥrayn in imitation of al-Ḥ arīrī. For more on rhymed prose, see E.K. Rowson, “Sajʿ,” in Encyclopaedia of Modern Arabic Literature, 2: 677-678; and Pierre Cachia, “The Development of a Modern Prose Style in Arabic Literature,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 52, no. 1 (1989): 66. 109 He relies mostly on Ibn Khaldūn, see Yāghī, al-Naqd, 48. 110 Ibid., 52-54. 105

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based on their internal qualities also.111 He does this well enough, but as with al-Shartūnī and al-Batlūnī he expresses no explicit preference. Neoclassicists aimed not as earlier critics to demonstrate which speech, poetry or prose, was better. Showing explicit preference for prose might be misconstrued at a time when poetry is seen as a symbol of national and cultural revival. Faced with new realities and challenges writers could more readily express preference for direct prose over rhymed and even discard the latter specifically because “prose does not carry the emotional and aesthetic weight of a national culture as does poetry.”112 When it comes to the specific question of poetry and prose, however, neoclassical critics might be better understood to emphasise the differences between the two in order to maintain clear boundaries: lest the radical changes affecting prose, which most seem happy to accommodate, might also impact on poetry and dislodge it from the glorious classical heritage. This is perhaps one of the reasons why the majority of critics also continued to distinguish between the specific function of the writer and the poet.

The Writer and the Poet After emphasising that both prose and poetry are difficult to accomplish except for the person who possesses certain qualities, al-Shartūnī briefly outlines the qualities of a writer and a poet. He starts with the qualities of a writer: He is endowed with the acumen of natural talent (dhakāʾ al-ṭabʿ), possesses an abundance of knowledge ( ghazārat al-māddah) and has at his disposal the tools that were mentioned at the beginning of the work (i.e. Maṭāliʿ ). He is one who has devoted himself to inshāʾ, penetrated its doors, trodden its paths. He is the painter (muṣawwir) who depicts everything he sees and hears, expressing it with eloquent speech and with the best of descriptions. He excels in the art of writing (kitābah), and is well-versed in the [linguistic/literary] styles used by the leaders of eloquence (aʾimmat al-balāghah).113

He describes the qualities of a poet: “He is gifted with the acumen of natural talent (dhakāʾ al-ṭabʿ) and has at his disposal many tools. He has the creative power of imagination (quwwah takhayyulīyah mukhtariʿah), coupled with the 111 He talks for instance of the different ways in which poetry and prose influence the soul, the capacity of each to give expression to the soul, the manner of this expression, and their respective aims. Ibid., 175-180. 112 Jayyusi, Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry, 20. 113 Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 194.

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sincerity of feeling ( ṣidq al-ḥiss). He is proficient in the art of verse (naẓm) and able to uphold the linguistic and literary styles employed by the leaders of eloquence (aʾimmat al-balāghah).”114 It is evident from al-Shartūnī’s comments that both writers and poets must possess natural talent (ṭabʿ). What he means by natural talent is described in detail at the beginning of his Maṭāliʿ. Al-Shartūnī states that ṭabʿ incorporates five rational faculties which he describes as follows: (1) al-dhakāʾ (intelligence/ intuition) quickens the perception of knowledge; (2) al-khayāl (imagination) stores up images ( ṣuwar), images of sensory objects (al-maḥsūsāt)ʾ even after their absence; (3) al-dhākirah aw al-ḥāfiẓah (memory) stores the information perceived through the mind; (4) al-ḥiss (sense) is the feeling of pleasure (alladhdhah) and pain (al-alam) from the soul; and (5) al-dhawq (good linguistic/literary taste) which is the ability to distinguish between excellent and non-excellent discourse.115 Al-Shartūnī’s breakdown of tabʿ into five faculties represents an attempt to analyse natural talent in a psychological fashion, much in the same way as the Islamic philosophers analysed the psychology of the soul. In Kitāb alNajāh, Ibn Sīnā examines the five internal senses (al-ḥawāss al-bāṭinah) as follows: (1) al-ḥiss al-mushtarak (sensus communis) receives all the forms which are imprinted on the five senses and transmitted to it from them; (2) [quwwat] al-khayāl wa-l-muṣawwirah (faculty of representation) preserves what the sensus communis has received from the individual five senses even in the absence of the sensed objects; (3) [al-quwwah] al-mutakhayyilah (faculty of imagination) combines certain things with others in the faculty of representation, and separates some things from others as it chooses; (4) al-quwwah al-wahmīyah (estimative faculty) perceives the non-sensory intentions that exist in the individual sensed objects; (5) and al-quwwah al-ḥāfiẓah al-dhākirah (retentive faculty) retains what the estimative faculty perceives of non-sensory intentions existing in individual sensed objects.116 Al-Shartūnī not only follows the same manner of analysis, but also adopts Ibn Sīnā’s definitions of the faculty of representation and the retentive faculty. Moreover, his definition of dhakāʾ clearly equates to Ibn Sīnā’s description of dhakāʾ as “the power of intuition is quickness of apprehension”.117 Thus, the main components of al-Shartūnī’s concept of natural talent are drawn from medieval Arab psychology. The fact that he requires the writer and the poet to 114

Ibid. Ibid. 1-2. 116 Ibn Sīnā, Kitāb al-Najāh, 200-202; and English translation in Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, 31 117 Ibn Sīnā, Kitāb al-Najāh, 206. 115

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have such natural talent clearly reveals his interest in the psychology of literature. Al-Shartūnī’s description of the poet as “the possessor of the creative power of imagination (quwwah takhayyulīyah mukhtariʿah)”118 is also particularly significant here because it is based on one of the key faculties of the mind in medieval psychology. It is the faculty that Ibn Sīnā describes above as alquwwah al-mutakhayyilah (the imaginative faculty). Al-Shartūnī’s concept of the poet is therefore firmly rooted in the Islamic Aristotelian tradition.119 Besides talent al-Shartūnī states that the writer is required to have the following “tools”. He mentions: First, thorough knowledge of the vocabulary habitually used in the most eloquent of discourses. Second, knowledge of the Arabic language, including morphology and grammar. Third, historical knowledge of nations and states, famous scholars, Arab proverbs, accounts of the Ayyām and stories particular to nations; for instance, the story of the arrest of Daniel and the conversion of St. Paul to Christianity. Fourth, geographical knowledge of countries. Fifth, an excellent memory and knowledge of the writings on prose and poetry and sixth, knowledge of the science of eloquence (ʿilm al-bayān).120

Al-Shartūnī’s inclusion of both natural ( ṭabʿ) and acquired elements (ālāt) underscores his view that the writer must have extensive learning as well as natural talent. This requirement is found in Ibn al-Athīr’s al-Mathal al-Sāʿir. After emphasising that natural talent is the absolute essential prerequisite (malāk), Ibn al-Athīr lists the following eight qualities (ālāt), which are essential for the writer: First, knowledge of the Arabic language, its grammar and morphology; second, thorough knowledge of the vocabulary habitually used in the most eloquent of discourses; third, acquaintance with proverbs, accounts of the Ayyām and similar stories; fourth, a sound grasp of writings in poetry and prose; fifth, thorough knowledge of the system of state and administration; sixth, memorization and mastery of the Qurʾān; seventh, knowledge of the traditions of the Prophet and their use in light of the Qurʾān and eighth, mastery of prosody and rhyme.121 Ibn al-Athīr also speaks about knowledge of ʿilm al-bayān which he says is the most important requirement ‘because the orator (khaṭīb) and poet (shāʾir) also need this science.’122

118

See al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 194. Same line of thought clearly evident in the works of Islamic philosophers, such as al-Farābi and Ibn Rushd. Cantarino, Arabic Poetics, 114, 178-179, 181. 120 Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 2. 121 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Mathal al-Sāʾir, 1: 21-23. 122 Ibid., 43. 119

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In this section, al-Shartūnī attempts to combine the Aristotelian tradition represented by Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd, with the native Arabic tradition represented by Ibn al-Athīr. Al-Shartūnī contrives a combination of the two traditions wherever possible which clearly reveals him as a compiler, who selects and arranges past traditions and texts to provide his own interpretative arrangement. In fact, al-Shartūnī adopts the same approach in dealing with the definition of the poet. Having described the poet based on the Aristotelian tradition above, he presents the traditional pre-Islamic definition in the next section of his work on the “status of the poet for the Arabs”. He describes the special position enjoyed by the poet in the pre-Islamic era as the defender of the tribe’s honour, spokesman and important figure alongside the horseman and wise person. Al-Shartūnī states: “Hence, it was common practice for the Arabs to congratulate each other when a poet grew among them. For future generations would receive his poems, and the eloquent ones would honour his memory . . . Thus his poetry does not die over the ages, but goes on increasing in splendour.”123 The concept of the poet as spokesperson is replicated in several treatises on poetry and criticism across the centuries. According to Cantarino, few documents revealed the poet’s importance to the tribe as clearly as Ibn Rashīq’s alʿUmdah: “For [a poet] was a defence to their good repute, a protection [against insults] to their merits, one who would immortalize their deeds and extol their fame. [The Arabs] used to congratulate each other only on the birth of a boy, when a poet rose among them, and in the foaling of a mare.”124 Al-Shartūnī’s view of the poet, however, is better understood in relation to his immediate historical context. During the later part of the nineteenth century, changes in the Arab world meant the poet needed to cater for a wider audience who would read his poetry in the printed dīwāns, newspapers and journals of the day. This brought a greater awareness among neoclassical poets that the content of poetry should indeed reflect current concerns relevant to the wider community, though without abandoning the form of the classical poem (qaṣīdah). The function of the poet as spokesman, who centred his poetry on real events and societal issues, was thus rediscovered by neoclassical poets to meet new challenges and realities.125

123

Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 195. Cantarino, Arabic Poetics, 23. 125 M.M. Badawi, “Convention and Revolt in Modern Arabic Poetry,” in Arabic Poetry: Theory and Development, ed. G.E. von Grunebaum (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1973), 187. 124

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Poetic Themes The social function of the poet, and therefore the poetry itself, led early critics to draw up a schemata of the general content of its major themes (aghrāḍ ), such as panegyric (madīḥ), elegy (rithāʾ), invective (hijāʾ), vainglorious ( fakhr), love/erotic poetry (nasīb/ghazal ) and description (waṣf ).126 Al-Shartūnī explicitly states that all of the sections on poetic themes is taken from Qudāmah ibn Jaʿfar. Although he does not specify, the relevant work is Qudāmah’s Naqd al-Shiʿr. The question therefore becomes one of strict comparison between the two sections in Maṭāliʿ and Naqd to see what al-Shartūnī adds, omits, and changes. Al-Shartūnī states that the sections (abwāb) of poetry are praise (madḥ), elegy (rithāʾ), invective/satire (hijāʾ), erotic (nasīb), vainglorious ( fakhr) and descriptive (waṣf ), and comments that these are the themes dealt with by poets most frequently, although poetic ideas (al-maʿānī) are innumerable. Qudāmah similarly explains that there is no limit to the number of poetic ideas, but restricts himself to “the principal genres (aghrāḍ ) of the poets”, namely, those that they “tread” most frequently: panegyric (madīḥ), satire (hijāʾ), elegy (marāthī), simile (tashbīh), description (waṣf ) and eroticism (nasīb).127 The main difference here is that al-Shartūnī excludes simile (tashbīh), as did theorists after Qudāmah, on the grounds that it is really a tool for description (waṣf ). More importantly, al-Shartūnī uses the term “sections” (abwāb) as a synonym for Qudāmah’s aghrāḍ, which had become the usual term denoting “themes” in the works of the medieval theorists. The word abwāb, however, is the standard term in the dīwāns of neoclassical poets. Moreover, the themes of classical Arabic poetry al-Shartūnī mentions above feature prominently in the dīwāns of neoclassical poets, while their dīwāns are often split into sections (abwāb) dedicated to each one of these themes.128 Al-Shartūnī first discusses praise (al-madīḥ) and sets poetic truth ( ṣidq) as one of its conditions. He states: “This requires [the poet] to praise a person for the qualities he has or might possess, for instance, to praise the brave for their courage, and the generous for their generosity.”129 Al-Shartūnī’s statement in favour of poetic truth is based on an anecdote attributed to the Caliph ʿUmar 126 Mounah Abdallah Khouri and Hamid Algar, eds., An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry (University of California Press, 1974), 4. 127 Qudāmah ibn Jaʿfar, Naqd al-Shiʿr, ed. Seeger Adrianus Bonnebaker, Publications of the De Goeje Fund, no. 17 (Leiden: Brill, 1956), 10. 128 Aḥmad Shawqī, al-Shawqīyāt, 4 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktabah al-Tijārīyah al-Kubrā, 1971); and Ḥ āfiẓ Ibrāhīm, Dīwān, ed. Aḥmad Amīn, Aḥmad al-Zayn, and Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī, 2 vols. (Cairo: al-Hayʾah al-Miṣrīyah al-ʿĀmmah lil-Kitāb,1980). 129 Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 199.

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ibn al-Khaṭtạ̄ b (534-44) in praise of Zuhayr’s truthfulness. Qudāmah quotes this anecdote in the paragraphs on the quality of praise (naʿt al-madḥ) to assert his own preference for truth in poetry, as follows: “How beautifully spoke ʿUmar in describing Zuhayr! He said that (Zuhayr) was not praising a person except for the qualities which he possessed.” Thus, in this context Qudāmah comments: “It is necessary only to praise persons for what [the qualities] they possess or might possess.”130 Al-Shartūnī retains Qudāmah’s comments here but omits the anecdote. Using the usual question and answer approach, al-Shartūnī asks: “What are the cardinal (human) virtues (al-faḍāʾil al-basharīyah)?” He lists them as intellect (al-ʿaql ), courage (al-shajāʿah), justice (al-ʿadl ) and decency (al-ʿiffah), and provides examples from the sayings of Zuhayr. Al-Shartūnī’s discussion is significantly abridged from Qudāmah’s section on praise (madḥ)̣, in which Qudāmah identically describes the four cardinal virtues and quotes Zuhayr. Al-Shartūnī breaks down the four cardinal virtues (al-ʿaql, al-shajāʿah, al-ʿadl, al-ʿiffah) into several smaller categories. His system of classification, as well as the parts listed under each virtue, are borrowed verbatim from Qudāmah. For example, he quotes Qudāmah’s six combinations of the cardinal virtues two by two as follows: al-ʿaql with al-shajāʿah, al-ʿaql with al-sakhāʾ, al-ʿaql with al-ʿiffah, al-shajāʿah with al-sakhāʾ, al-shajāʿah with al-ʿiffah, and al-sakhāʾ with al-ʿiffah.131 Al-Shartūnī streamlines the sections on elegy (rithāʾ) and invection (hijāʾ) in Qudāmah’s Naqd by summarising his words and even the examples on occasion. Elegy, al-Shartūnī states, requires the (poet) to praise the deceased for the same qualities he was praised for when alive. The discussion on love/ erotic poetry (nasīb) is in much the same spirit and he uses Qudāmah’s definition that nasīb requires [the poet] to mention the women’s character/nature (khulq) and their noble manners (akhlāquhunna).132 The only discussion not borrowed from Qudāmah is the section on vainglorious ( fakhr), since Qudāmah does not deal with this theme in his work. Al-Shartūnī states that fakhr involves the poet describing himself with excellent qualities, for instance, courage, generosity and noble descent.133 AlShartūnī’s inclusion of fakhr, however, is wholly consistent with conventional poetic themes while his description ties in with the traditional concept of fakhr found in the dīwāns of the neoclassicists.134 According to Somekh, many 130 131 132 133 134

Qudāmah ibn Jaʿfar, Naqd al-Shiʿr, 28. See al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 199-201 and Qudāmah ibn Jaʿfar, Naqd al-Shiʿr, 29-31. Maṭāliʿ (203-203), and Naqd (44-54). Al-Shartūnī, 205. Hamarneh points out that there were initially four genres of poetry: panegyric (madḥ),

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of al-Bārūdī’s poems provide the most luminous examples in modern times of the traditional concept of fakhr, namely, “private self-praise in matters of ḥasab/nasab (ʿnoble ancestryʾ).”135 The foregoing comparison shows that al-Shartūnī’s departure from Qudāmah’s text is mainly in the selection and presentation of material. Using the question and answer technique, he picks out certain sections, points, and examples, and drastically reduces Qudāmah’s original text into one section of his work. Al-Shartūnī’s discussion on the themes of poetry, for instance, amounts to approximately six pages, while Qudāmah’s discussion on praise (madḥ) alone exceeds this length. Moreover, besides the defects of praise (ʿuyūb al-madḥ), al-Shartūnī discards the categories dealing with the defects of hijāʾ, rithāʾ and ghazal in Qudāmah’s work. In this sense, al-Shartūnī’s departure from Qudāmah is better understood by the differing aims of their works. Al-Shartūnī’s work is unequivocally pedagogical, while Qudāmah’s aim was to set a standard for the criticism of poetry. The difference in aims begs the question as to what was the particular appeal of Qudāmah’s work? The attraction for al-Shartūnī undoubtedly lies in its canonicity. A contemporary of al-Mutanabbī, Abū Tammām and other famous poets of the high Abbasid period, Qudāmah is the critic equivalent of these classical poets. He became proverbial for his knowledge of “eloquence”136 and many of his terms and ideas, such as his definition of poetry as “discourse that is metered, rhymed, and conveys meaning” served in Allen’s words “as a prescriptive yardstick, to be invoked by students of Arabic poetry for many centuries.”137 Thus, al-Shartūnī as compiler not only appropriates authority through Qudāmah, but makes accessible an authoritative canon—a symbol of Arab pride and achievement, in an era of tension and change. In this, his approach is clearly neoclassical in nature.

Poetic Meters Not all earlier literary critics dealt with the formal aspects of poetry (meter, rhyme and form) because they considered these to fall within separate disciplines devoted to prosody and rhyme theory rather than poetry. However, invective (hijāʾ), love (ghazal), and vainglorious (fakhr). These later became six by the addition of elegy (rithāʾ) and descriptive (waṣf ) and remained dominant until the nineteenth century. Hamarneh, “Arabic Theory,” 31. 135 Somekh, “The Neo-Classical Arabic Poets,” 55. 136 Heinrichs, “Rhetoric and Poetics,”653. 137 Allen, Arabic Literary Heritage, 372.

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works such as Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih’s ʿIqd and Ibn Rashīq’s al-ʿUmdah, which represent the fullest canonical treatments of the art of poetry, discuss both the formal and informal aspects. Like these authors, al-Shartūnī devotes a substantial portion of his work to the formal aspects of poetry. It is easily the largest section and accounts for at least a third of his treatise. In particular, he focuses on the conventional Arabic meters, which highlights the relative importance of this aspect in Arabic poetry. The material therein is derived almost entirely from Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih’s ʿIqd, but this is unacknowledged. Al-Shartūnī not only uses the same definitions but also the same examples. The main difference is in the selection and arrangement of some of the material. Al-Shartūnī streamlines Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih’s definitions by incorporating them into the question and answer technique, and he uses only a small fraction of the numerous examples in ʿIqd.138 But why did al-Shartūnī choose Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih’s text for his discussion on meters? The concept of writer as compilator, and the organizing principle of compilatio is inherent in Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih’s work itself. He gathers material from the earlier compilations of al-Jāḥiẓ, Ibn Qutaybah, and others. In the section on meters, for instance, Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih systematicallỵ assembles definitions of various technical terms and concepts used in the Arabic science of prosody from the time of al-Khalīl (d. 786) and Akhfash (d. 793). The result is a compendium of Arabic literature and culture totalling twenty-five volumes. The range of subject matter is vast, including poetry, religion, dress and metrics. 139 Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih’s ʿIqd is therefore a compilation of Arabic texts already valued in the larger cultural library. The ʿIqd contains the work of great masters like al-Khalīl and Akhfash on conventional poetic meters and thus provides a ready-made model, perfect for al-Shartūnī, whose explicit aim is to bring together material from works of earlier respected writers. He therefore falls within and continues the tradition of Arabic compilation. Moreover, alShartūnī’s treatment of meters is wholly consistent with the approach of neoclassical poets who sought to maintain the same traditional principles of poetic composition (i.e. meter, rhyme) that ʿIqd and similar works had treated exhaustively. This is why they composed in the traditional meters of classical Arabic poetry. In fact, none of the leading neoclassicists had any serious intention of digressing from the norms of classical poetry, never mind radically 138 See al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 211-225; and Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, al-ʿIqd al-Farīd, ed. Muḥammad Saʿīd al-ʿIryān (Beirut: al-Maktabah al-Tijārīyah al-Kubrā, 1970), 6: 254-287. 139 C. Brockelmann, “Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed.

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transforming conventional meters—such ideas only gained credence in the later part of the twentieth century.140

Plagiarism The term sariqah describes a particularly interesting phenomenon in Arab literary criticism. It means “stealing, copying”, and conveys the idea of plagiarism, though not with the same negative connotations this term carries in modern scholarship. Plagiarism was common practice among even the most distinguished classical Arab poets. Critics therefore spent little time searching out novel forms or even originality in poetry. In contrast, they introduced into their works the concept of “plagiarism”, which took three main forms: al-naskh (to take words and meaning as they are); al-salkh (skinning, to copy part of the meaning) and al-maskh (to transform words and meaning in order to conceal the theft).141 However, the wider issue of what exactly constituted plagiarism, namely, the taking of wording alone or also the meaning, remained a matter of controversy among critics. Al-Shartūnī states that plagiarism (al-sariqah al-shiʿrīyah) occurs when the poet takes a poetic idea (maʿnan) from another poet. Furthermore, he comments: “There are layers of meanings (ideas) in the intellect which come intuitively to the writer and settle in his mind. The writer then dresses these ideas with expressions and this is known as ʿthe construction of thoughtʾ.”142 Al-Shartūnī’s ideas here are consistent with Ibn Rashīq who bases his discussion on the three types of plagiarism, as follows: “Whoever takes a poetic concept along with its wording as it is, he is a thief; if he only makes some changes in the wording, he is a ʿskinnerʾ, but if he transforms the conceptual content somewhat to hide it or totally changes its form, this is a sign of his skill.”143 Commenting on whether the taking of wording (lafẓ) and meaning (maʿnā) together, or merely the taking of meaning alone constitutes plagiarism, alShartūnī states that if the thief is skilful in stealing, he will disguise his theft. He explains: “This person is like the one who steals silk from Zayd, then cuts it to fit his own body, sews it, wears it, and adorns himself with it, even though it does not belong to him. However, no one will know that this dress belongs to Zayd. While if the thief is unskilled, he is like the one who steals ʿAmr’s 140 141 142 143

Somekh, “Neo-Classical Arabic Poets,” 37-38. Abbas, Arabic Poetic Terminology, 216-217. Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 236. Cantarino, Arabic Poetics, 57.

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dress and wears it without making any modifications but everybody who had seen ʿAmr wearing the dress will know this.”144 Here al-Shartūnī gives no clear answer as to what exactly constitutes plagiarism: the taking of wording and meaning, or meaning alone? His metaphorical explanation, however, based on two of the three types (levels) of plagiarism delineated by earlier critics, implies that for him the taking of both wording and meaning constitutes plagiarism. Al-Shartūnī uses Zayd to illustrate almaskh (to transform words and meaning to conceal theft) and ʿAmr to illustrate al-naskh (to take words and meaning as they are). Moreover, he sees the poet’s ability to disguise and transform the theft, especially the form, as a reflection of his skill, which suggests that it is not so much the use of plagiarism that is important for al-Shartūnī but the correct use of it. Al-Shartūnī illustrates the three types of plagiarism with examples from Arabic poetry.145 He borrows this part of his discussion together with the examples from Ibn al-Athīr’s account of plagiarism in al-Mathal al-Sāʾir.146 The main difference is in the number of examples presented. Ibn al-Athīr’s treatment of al-salkh, for instance, is forty pages with dozens of examples— al-Shartūnī however presents a fraction of these because of the pedagogical intent of his work (i.e. students of his time were unlikely to be able to deal with such a volume of poetry). Al-Shartūnī draws material freely from Ibn al-Athīr’s al-Mathal al-Sāʾir which is no doubt a reflection of the authority that the author and work command. Ibn al-Athīr is generally considered the greatest stylist of his age, and admired as a theorist on account of his critical power, piercing insights and objectivity of thought. More importantly, his al-Mathal al-Sāʾir is generally regarded as an Arab classic in its own right.147 The work encompasses the various stylistic and rhetorical issues central to the thinking of Arab critics since the ninth century. Thus, the al-Mathal al-Sāʾir, not only has unmistakable canonical status but is also an invaluable source of older material which no doubt makes it ideal for al-Shartūnī.

Conclusion Viewed from our modern concept of originality and authorship, al-Shartūnī’s treatise can easily be dismissed as unoriginal and derivative. He presents the main literary issues that Qudāmah ibn Jaʿfar, Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, Ibn al-Athīr, 144 Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 237. Here al-Shartūnī appears to use silk to represent wording and body to denote meaning. 145 Al-Shartūnī, Maṭāliʿ, 237-238. 146 Ibid., 237-240; and Ibn al-Athīr, al-Mathal al-Sāʾir, 2:311-352. 147 Allen, Arabic Literary Heritage, 390.

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Ibn Rashīq and other authorities had expounded in their works. Al-Shartūnī, however, is better understood not for his creativity but within the poetic conditions of his age and from the “writer as compilator” perspective. His views are consistent not only with classical poetry and criticism, but also with the tacit ideology of the neoclassical poets. The various categories he selects for discussion bear witness to the literary priorities of the nahḍah. Al-Shartūnī’s definition of the poet as spokesman and comparison between poetry and prose not only reflects the continuing presence of tradition in his work, but is clearly indicative of neoclassical thinking. His treatment of poetic themes is consistent with the neoclassical poets who continued to operate within the framework of traditional themes (abwāb) in the nahḍah. The influence of the tacit ideology of neoclassical poets, namely, adherence to the form of the classical qaṣīdah but modernisation of its content is clearly evident in the section on conventional meters. Besides, al-Shartūnī considers himself as a compilator and his compilatio as a platform on which he brought together and revived the various canonical traditions and texts with regard to poetry and writing. Like the Western medieval compilatio, his compilation thus represents a transgeneric literary form or macrogenre that links a range of earlier traditions and texts. Although he does not have much to add to the issues already raised in past writings, his arrangement of these traditions and texts into the colloquy or catechetical format is novel as far as classical and medieval Arabic works are concerned. It constitutes the interpretative backbone of his work and shows the writer’s critical awareness that these traditions and texts may be treated within the same intellectual line of inquiry regarding poetry and writing. As a compilator engaging with the existing canon, al-Shartūnī appropriates authority and legitimacy for his work, while performing a pedagogical function by synthesising anew the tradition of Arabic criticism as found in the great compilations of the medieval period for a new generation of students. He also achieves an ideological aim by generating an image of unity, identity, and continuity with the past and his immediate present. His compilation of the textual canon contributes to the neoclassical revival of canonical poetic forms and dīwāns of the Golden Age, making him an integral member of a neoclassical community of poets, writers, and critics with a shared methodology and common literary, pedagogical and ideological interests. In this sense, his compilation represents a microcosm, a special arrangement of the larger cultural library of highly valued texts which the community privileges for self-definition, authority, and authentification. The compiled canon thus fulfils a pedagogical and ideological function as a construction of a glorious past, which serves to foster and emphasize national ideas, pride and achievement.

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Al-Shartūnī’s work suggests that the Arab neoclassical compilation represented more than just a trans-generic literary form that linked an array of past writings. It served as an invaluable means/method to revive the Arab literary heritage (turāth) that precedes the centuries of foreign domination and control. It also created a unified image of this heritage as a means of cultural and national revival. Hence, the idea of the compilator and the nature of compilatio was ideal, if not indispensable, for the Arab nahḍah in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These factors cannot be overlooked in any further study of the literary or intellectual culture of the period.

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brill.nl/jal

A Victory Celebration after a Military Defeat? Al-Mutanabbī’s ʿAyniyyah of 339/950* Majd Yaser Al-Mallah Grand Valley State University

Abstract This paper analyzes al-Mutanabbī’s ʿAyniyyah, one of the poet’s early odes in the court of Sayf al-Dawlah al-Ḥ amdanī (d. 356/967), presented to the emir in the year 339/950. The ode in question is composed after a battle that the historical sources refer to as “ghazāt al-Muṣibah” (the battle of the disaster), a major military defeat that Sayf al-Dawlah suffered at the hand of the Byzantines. Taking into account the akhbār (anecdotes) and historical documents associated with this ode, the paper argues that al-Mutanabbī composes his poem in the context of celebrating victory in court ceremonial. The main purpose was to legitimize Sayf al-Dawlah’s position in the community by means of his military victory despite the fact that the emir was defeated in this battle. The paper analyzes the poem’s structure, rhetorical strategies and allusions, showing that al-Mutanabbī’s poetic build-up is rooted in the Jāhilī pre-Islamic ethos of blood vengeance, used as a call for a new beginning and a quest for the Muslim polity’s fertility and renewal. Keywords Al-Mutanabbī, Sayf al-Dawlah al-Ḥ amdānī, Court ceremonial, Ideology of victory, Blood vengeance, Muslim Polity, Al-Muṣībah battle

Introduction Muʿjam al-Buldān, the renowned geographical encyclopedia of Yāqūt alḤ amawī (d. 626/1229), describes the two towns Kharshanah and Ṣārikhah, which appear in the poem that I will discuss, as follows: Kharshanah is “a town located near Malāt ỵ a in the land of the Byzantines. It was conquered by Sayf al-Dawlah and mentioned by al-Mutanabbī and others in their poetry” (2:359). For Ṣārikhah, the author gives the following identification: “A town located in the land of the Byzantines. Sayf al-Dawlah invaded it in the year 339, and al-Mutanabbī recited on that occasion: ‘Al-Marj was emptied * An earlier version of this paper, titled “Ceremonial and Politics in Al-Mutanabbī’s Panegyric Poetry,” was presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association in San Francisco (2004). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009

DOI: 10.1163/157006409X431631

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for him and in Ṣārikhah minbars were raised for him, / and Friday prayers were held there as well’ ” (3:388). If one were to read only these identifications in Muʿjam al-Buldān, which is probably the most respected Arabic classical source on geography, one would think that these towns were the setting of one or two of Sayf al-Dawlah’s glorious victories. The fact of the matter, however, is that the line quoted by Yāqūt is line 14 of the poem that we will discuss here, a poem that was presented to Sayf al-Dawlah after he suffered a major military defeat at the hands of the Byzantines in the year 339/950. Knowing that the classical historians are clear about Sayf al-Dawlah’s defeat in this battle, usually referred to as the battle of al-Muṣībah (the disaster), it becomes even more curious why Yāqūt defines these towns the way he does. I would like to suggest, therefore, that Yāqūt’s definitions show the effect of al-Mutanabbī’s poetry on a major source and author in the Arab-Islamic tradition. There is no doubt that, in this particular case, the overall perception of Sayf al-Dawlah is based on the poetry of al-Mutanabbī. If this poetry had such an impact on Yāqūt, one must consider seriously that Sayf al-Dawlah was viewed in the tradition as a heroic and victorious leader at least partly because al-Mutanabbī presented this image in his poetry. This image of Sayf al-Dawlah continues to dominate the general perception of the emir in Arabic culture until the present day. Sayf al-Dawlah has been raised, especially nowadays, to the status of a heroic figure who was the medieval champion of Arab nationalism, thanks to the poetry of al-Mutanabbī. Since the tradition views Sayf alDawlah in this light, we must consider, when reading the definitions of Kharshanah and Ṣārikhah in Yāqūt’s work, and later as we read the poem itself, that there was a dominance of an “ideology of victory,” to use Michael McCormick’s terminology,1 not only in al-Mutanabbī’s poetry, but perhaps in the tradition as well. This “ideology of victory” guided and mandated, I will argue, al-Mutanabbī’s poetic effort to legitimize Sayf al-Dawlah’s position, regardless of whether a victory occurred or not. My argument stands in stark contrast with a number of studies that use poetic texts as “historical documents” of the military conflicts with the Byzantines. Hādī Nahr, for example, argues that poetry can be more accurate than history because historians exaggerate and forget, while the poetry of al-Mutanabbī provides “a complete account of [the poet’s] life, psychological state, and morality, and we can even consider his war poetry a historical document of the battles that Sayf al-Dawlah led against his Byzantine enemies” (297-8). Muḥammad al-Tūnjī makes a similar argument, although he provides other reasons for putting the poet in a better position than that of a 1

See Michael McCormick’s Eternal Victory: Triumphal rulership in late antiquity, Byzantium, and the early medieval West. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.

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historian. Not only does the poet play the role of a historian by recording battles, but also, al-Tūnjī contends, he provides vivid description of the battle or the military campaign to which the historian usually has no access: So, we can say that war poetry was not new for al-Mutanabbī, when he began recording the battles against the Byzantines. What is new, however, is that the poet recited complete poems for such battles—something he did not do before the wars of Sayf al-Dawlah, which is why we felt that we should distinguish these odes from his other war poems. His Sayfiyyāt, which we are discussing now, are historical documents that are unique to al-Mutanabbī. Indeed, no poet before him would be able to compete with al-Mutanabbī, in the realism and the number of such [war] odes. He mentions specific details of these battles which historians overlook (91)2 [emphasis mine].

Al-Tūnjī argues that the poet systematically recorded these battles as a historian would do.3 The only difference is that the poet “mentions specific details” which are generally overlooked by “ordinary” historians. In his book on the “poetry of conflict” between Byzantines and Arabs, Naṣrat ʿAbd al-Raḥmān tries to provide a history of the conflict with the Byzantines from the second/eighth to the fourth/tenth century, incorporating poetry for its factual content. In essence, the author believes that this poetry of war records and describes battles with the Byzantines. Here is what he writes when he does not find any poetry that describes Muslims’ defeats: I did not find any poetry that depicts the battles in which the Arabs were defeated nor did I find any that talks of the misery that plagues the borders. I do not want to accuse the poets of being merely panegyrists for the sake of money, although the matter is suspicious, since they would not receive any money if they talked about the defeats (209).

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s observation of the scarcity of poetry that depicts defeat is accurate, but the reasoning that he gives needs further discussion and analysis. What leads ʿAbd al-Raḥmān to this conclusion is his preoccupation with the idea that these poems provide “historical documents.” Ordinary historical documents, of course, mention both victories and defeats, which is what ʿAbd al-Raḥmān expected to find. These odes clearly have a function other than objectively recording history. In fact, if these odes are simply historical documents, then why did the tradition not preserve them as such? And why do they require prose akhbār (anecdotes) to explain the events they describe? For similar views on this, see also ʿIliyyān 29. Kīwān also argues that al-Mutanabbī’s importance lies in his ability to “record historical events” (7). 2 3

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The analysis of this ode goes beyond the “historical documents” argument. Instead, this article builds on Stefan Sperl’s and Suzanne Stetkevych’s scholarship, which shows the political and ritual functions of such poetry. As Suzanne Stetkevych points out in “Abbāsid Panegyric and the Poetics of Political Allegiance,” “the panegyric was the true proving ground of poets” (35)—certainly in this case, presenting a panegyric in light of the defeat, and only within the first two years of al-Mutanabbī’s arrival in Sayf al-Dawlah’s court, is the ultimate test to the poet’s abilities. This paper will argue that this ode is composed within the context of the court ceremonial of celebrating victory, that it is composed to legitimize the ruler’s position in the community by means of his military victory. The paper will explore the poet’s rhetorical strategies and poetic allusion that he uses to celebrate a “victory” despite Sayf al-Dawlah’s defeat in this battle. The analysis will show, in addition, that al-Mutanabbī’s ode is a call for vengeance and vindication, a quest for renewal and reinvigoration for the Muslim polity. My reading of this ode, the akhbār (anecdotes), and the history associated with this battle will reveal that this ode does more than merely record a battle. The analysis will reveal how the poet handled this very complex predicament by portraying Sayf al-Dawlah as a victor, but at the same time demanding a different outcome in the next battles. In addition, I will show that the poet composes this ode in accordance with the “ideology of victory” to which I alluded earlier and which I will discuss in more detail later. I will argue that by portraying the defeat as a ritual test or contest, a rite of purification through which the weak and cowardly have been eliminated, the poet declares Sayf al-Dawlah and the Ummah strengthened, renewed, purified, and reinvigorated by the experience. In a poetic sense, defeat here is depicted as a prelude to victory. With these ideas in mind, I would like to move to the discussion of the poem itself.

Translation and Analysis of the Ode Al-Mutanabbī recites:4 1. Others may be deceived by the majority of men, who are cowardly when they fight, but brave when they speak!

4 See appendix for Arabic text. This translation is based on the recension and commentary of al-ʿUkbarī 2:221-34.

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2. They are zealous defenders unless you test them, But after being misled, trials cause [you] to withhold [your trust]. 3. What is life for me after knowing that life is not [pure] as I would have it be, but defiled? 4. The beauty of a face does not lie in a handsome nose, for a noble man’s nose is cut off if his power is diminished. 5. Should I cast glory off my shoulder and yet seek [glory]? and should I leave the rain in my sheath and still seek pasturage? 6. And Mashrafī swords are still honored; they are the cure of every noble man or else his ailment. 7. The true horseman steadies his steeds when they flee in the mountain pass, even though blood spurts from their sides. 8. And when the cavalry abandon him, there is no fear in his heart; and when they anger him, his mouth does not utter foul words. 9. All [other] kings are protected behind their army, but Ibn Abī al-Hayjā’5 is the one who protects his army. 10. He led an army whose horses’ deepest drink is to moisten their bits,6 and whose slowest gait is the gallop. 11. No town can stop him from conquering another town; like death, his thirst is never quenched, and his hunger never sated. 12. Until he stood upon the walls of Kharshanah, the Byzantines, their crosses and churches, were steeped in misery. 13. Their wives were to be captives, their offspring killed, their goods plundered, and their crops burnt. 14. Al-Marj was emptied for him [i.e., Sayf al-Dawlah] and in Ṣārikhah minbars7 were raised for him, and the Friday prayers were held there as well. 15. Eating [the Byzantine] corpses emboldened the birds against them, until they almost attacked the living! 16. Had their Apostles seen him,8 they would have built their laws upon their admiration for him. 17. Upon the appearance of black storm clouds,9 the Domesticus blamed his eyes for thinking they were merely scattered clouds. 5

Ibn Abī al-Hayjā’ refers to Sayf al-Dawlah. Al-ʿUkbarī’s commentary explains that the horses only wet their bits when they drink because Sayf al-Dawlah’s campaigns are so fast that there is no time to drink fully (2: 224). 7 A minbar (singular) is a mosque pulpit. 8 Reference to Sayf al-Dawlah. 9 Reference to Sayf al-Dawlah’s army. 6

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18. In [the clouds],10 there are armed warriors whose young men are like mature men, upon steeds whose one-year-olds are like two-year-olds. 19. Al-Luqān leaves dust in their noses, and the river Ālis leaves gulps of water in their throats. 20. As if [these steeds] meet up with [the Byzantines] to walk right into them, And stabbing opens more room in their bodies. 21. While the darkness of war is raging, the eyes of [these steeds] are guided by the fire of the [clashing] steel while the spear-points serve as candles. 22. Before the heat of summer and the cold of winter, these fast sleek steeds attack and trample the bodies of the enemy. 23. If one unbeliever calls to another, they are separated by a thirsty spear that separates each rib from its sister. 24. The son of Phocas11 escaped from the spears, but those who were captured were nobler than he, and those slain in battle were braver. 25. And he who fled from the white blades did not escape, because they left fear in his stomach. 26. He remains in safety for a time, but becomes mad; he drinks wine for a year, but his skin remains pallid [from fear]. 27. How many a soul of Byzantine generals was held, for the sharp-edged swords, by trusted [chains], who have no weakness.12 28. [The chains] fight against his steps when he tries to walk, and drive off sleep when he lies down to rest. 29. Fate comes in the morning and remains standing until he13 orders it, “return!” then it withdraws. 30. Say to the Domesticus, “the ones you captured have betrayed the emir, and so [God] has punished them for what they did. 31. “You found them asleep in the blood [of your slain warriors], as if stricken by your slain men. 32. “They are weak, so the enemy refrains from laying a hand on them, and if they [the weaklings] attempt to attack the enemy, the enemy withdraws [rather than fight weaklings].

10

The clouds here refer to Sayf al-Dawlah’s army as indicated in the previous line. Reference to Byzantine Domesticus. 12 According to al-ʿUkbarī’s commentary, this is an image of the captured generals. The word amīn actually refers to the chain which ensures the imprisonment of these generals, so that they can be executed by the sword if there is a need for that. 13 Reference to Sayf al-Dawlah. 11

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33. “Don’t think that those whom you captured had a breath of life, and no one but hyenas eats the dead. 34. “Why didn’t you fight at the sides of the wadi when lions came up one by one and not in groups. 35. “Every tall horse splits you with its spear, and blows take from you more than they leave.14 36. “But God placed the soldiers against you to rid them of any coward when they return. 37. “So each battle after this one will be a victory for Sayf al-Dawlah, and each soldier will be a follower of his.” 38. Noble men walk in the footsteps of others like them, but you create what proceeded and invent [noble deeds]. 39. How can the times blame you, when you were a heroic knight while others were weaklings and cowards. 40. When someone’s rank is above the sun, then nothing can raise him higher or put him down. 41. Charging behind [his enemy] did not abandon his heart, even if comrades and followers did. 42. Would that kings awarded according to merit so that the base would not covet kings’ favors. 43. You were content with them15 that you went to battle while they [merely] watched, and that you struck the sword blades while they [merely] listened. 44. He had revealed to you his deceptive conduct, He that you enjoyed, he who lacked honesty. 45. Fate is forgiving, the sword is waiting [for another round], and their land is both your summer and spring abode. 46. Mountains will not protect the Christians, even if the young white-footed goats become Christian. 47. And I did not praise you for your persistence in dreadful times, until I tested you, when warriors fight with swords. 48. For it is possible to think that a foolish man seems brave, and one might mistake a man shaking from anger for a coward.16 49. All can carry armor, and many animals have claws, but not all of them are lions! 14

i.e., More of you fall in battle than survive. This refers to either the rival poets or the soldiers who were looking at Sayf al-Dawlah but not fighting. 16 As explained in al-ʿUkbarī’s commentary, this means that while some are unable to distinguish the brave from the coward, this cannot happen here because al-Mutanabī saw firsthand the bravery of Sayf al-Dawlah. 15

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In his discussion of al-Mutanabbī’s time in Sayf al-Dawlah’s court, Blachère mentions this ode and points out the paradox of how the poet worked to turn the defeat into a victory (275). Although it might appear that al-Mutanabbī is engaged in a process of historical deception, we must first and foremost keep in mind that al-Mutanabbī composes this ode as a poet, not as a historian. This article, therefore, will analyze the means by which the poet articulates Sayf al-Dawlah’s legitimacy through court ceremonial, through a celebration of “victory.” The ode is divided into two major sections, which, for the purposes of our analysis, I will refer to as Part I (lines 1-8) and Part II (lines 9-49). I argue that al-Mutanabbī’s use of ṭibāq in “jabunū” (they were cowardly) and “shajuʿū” (they were brave) in the very first line is intended to set up the whole structural and rhetorical build-up of the poem. In other words, the ode consistently plays on oppositions, contrast, and paradox, with the ultimate goal of making the case for Sayf al-Dawlah. The ode, then, moves progressively from Part I (lines 1-8), which reveals the elements of defeat and death to Part II (line 9-49), which reveals elements of victory and life—this structure, consequently, explains the poet’s decision to allude to the agents of defeat in Part I, while focusing on Sayf al-Dawlah in Part II as the ultimate victor and the legitimate leader of the community. The poet’s main strategy is to make the contrast between the “cowards” who are only good for talk and Sayf al-Dawlah, who is a man of action and courage. Al-Mutanabbī’s first line is central to the ode’s overall strategy. To begin with, I must reference Gian Biagio Conte’s argument in his study The Rhetoric of Imitation about the centrality that “both philologist and, more especially, poet” place on “the rhetorical role played by poetic memory in the choice of opening lines” (71) [emphasis mine]. I will argue that al-Mutanabbī’s unique, and in many ways unusual, choice of the letter ʿayn for his qāfiyah (rhyme) immediately conjures up an allusion to another ode that uses the same rhyme. I am referring specifically to a poem that ʿAbbās ibn Mirdās composes after the Prophet’s famous Ḥ unayn battle. The poem appears in Ibn Hishām’s Sīrah and is a depiction of the Prophet’s victory despite the difficulty that he faced in Ḥ unayn (66-67). There are two arguments that would support my assertion that al-Mutanabbī’s ode makes an intertextual connection to that of ʿAbbās ibn Mirdās. First, Sayf al-Dawlah’s court audience was well-versed in a large body of poetry, suggesting they could easily identify the poet’s intertextual reference. Michael Zwettler makes a similar argument in his article on “The Poetics of Allusion in Abu l-ʿAtāhiya’s Ode in Praise of al-Hādī,” argues that “An-Nuʿmān I was well known to literate Muslims of the eighth century” and so, he continues, “it is not difficult, therefore, to construe an intertextual pattern here” (12) [emphasis mine]. Given that Sayf al-Dawlah surrounded him-

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self with the most educated scholars and poets, we can take this point a step further and argue that it is probably easier for Sayf al-Dawlah’s audience to identify a connection to the Prophet’s sīrah poetry. Second, there are some obvious similarities between the two battles, most notable is the “near” muṣībah (disaster) in the case of Ḥ unayn and the actually ghazwat al-Muṣibah (battle of Disaster) in the case of Sayf al-Dawlah. But what is more important is the poet’s choice of alluding to Ibn Mirdās’s poem despite the fact that Ibn Mirdās speaks of the Prophet’s victory in Ḥ unayn—this move alone foreshadows alMutanabbī’s interpretation and re-invention of ghazwat al-Muṣībah battle in Part II of this poem. Al-Mutanabbī’s rhetorical devises point to a specific strategy that the poet uses to vindicate the emir. He begins the ode with what appears to be a generic string of ḥikam (singular: ḥikmah, wisdom). On close reading, however, the poet uses various rhetorical devices (ṭibāq, jinās, etc) to formulate a favorable argument for Sayf al-Dawlah. Line 1 uses ṭibāq between jabunū and shajuʿū to mock those who are cowardly when they fight (in qātalū jabunū), but brave when they talk (in ḥaddathū shajuʿū). Line 2 also uses jinās in tujarribahum (you test them) and tajārib (trials) to convey, first, the disappointment with the “agents of defeat” who need to be tested to discover their true intentions. But through the play on words, the poet emphasizes that the blame cannot be placed on the emir, for only through trials can one discover the reality of these individuals. Line 3 is marked by its melancholic tone, the newly acquired realization, in the aftermath of the defeat, that life is no longer innocent and pure. Line 4 makes what appears to be a general statement about noble appearance versus noble action. Al-Mutanabbī “veils” his discussion of the defeat in what appears to be general lines of ḥikmah (wisdom, aphorism). However, these are not hollow ḥikam, since they explain to the public, and justify to some extent, what happened in this battle. To al-Mutanabbī, the emir was not the one who was defeated; therefore people must uphold him as their leader and continue to pledge allegiance to him. Lines 5 presents a rhetorical question posed in the first person. It is intriguing that the poet uses al-majd (glory) and al-ghayth (rain) as metaphors for the sword (sayf ). Al-Mutanabbī does not use the word sayf in the fifth line or even Part I, keeping it for selected lines in Part II, where Sayf al-Dawlah (the sword of the state or regime) is more explicitly invoked. Here, rather, he uses these two metaphors for the sword to highlight two central ideas. First, the poet offers the sword’s “glory” as an answer to the predicament in which the polity finds itself. It is a call for action instead of the passivity that caused defeat and humiliation. Second, the poet uses al-ghayth to highlight the community’s quest for life and fertility through the action of the sword in battle. The fact

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that the poet poses this rhetorical question reminds us of the personal nostalgia that appears typically in the nasīb section of a classical ode. There is no “heroic” or “military” tone here, but rather a subdued quest for action and fertility that is carried out and developed fully in Part II. Line 6 continues the same line of argument through careful word play in the first hemistich: the use of “Mashrafī swords” is not haphazard. Here the poet plays on the need for action by referring to the meaning of the root of “Mashrafiyyah”, which is sh-r-f. The same root produces the word “sharaf ” (honor), which suggests a similar message used in the previous line (the use of al-majd for the sword). It becomes evident now that glory and honor are qualities that must be achieved through action, through the sword. In the second hemistich, the poet uses ṭibāq in the dawāʾ(remedy) and wajaʿ (ailment) to highlight the paradox of the sword’s power. Again, it is a call for action to be carried through the sword, serving as a solution or remedy for the community at large. Lines 7 and 9 provide a transition from Part I to Part II. The melancholic tone of the first few lines of the poem seems to be changing as the poet shifts focus to Sayf al-Dawlah’s heroism. While the first few lines allude carefully to the defeat of the “cowards”, the poet suggests in the last lines of Part I that Sayf al-Dawlah emerges victorious even if his followers are not. Keeping in mind that the poet is presenting the ode in the context of declaring or celebrating victory, the poet is not concerned with writing history. Sabine MacCormack, in her book on Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, points out that “the late Roman panegyrists were deliberately not writing history, and most of them did not aim at completeness, even as regarded the emperor’s good qualities” (6). Instead, she adds, “they deployed their skills to interpret a particular situation for a particular purpose, place and time” (6). In his book Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West, Michael McCormick expresses similar ideas by giving numerous examples of delaying “the [victory] ceremony and [scheduling] it at the emperor’s political convenience” (20). Some emperors, he adds, used particular incidents “almost half a decade after the fact” (41). We can argue, therefore, that al-Mutanabbī’s interpretation of history is contingent upon political circumstances. Having explained why the “cowards” were defeated, the poet moves to another important part of the explanation, that is, the role of the emir in this battle. Al-Mutanabbī argues that Sayf al-Dawlah was a true fāris (knight), a hero, when all his cavalry were running away from battle. The poet uses this event to define a “true” fāris in line 7 as the one who is able to control his cavalry when they are bleeding and about to run away from battle. Al-ʿUkbarī provides some anecdotal context for line 7. He explains that fāris al-khayl (the

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horseman) refers to Sayf al-Dawlah “because he displayed courage and perseverance in this battle.” Al-ʿUkbarī goes on to explain what happened: When his soldiers were about to be defeated, [Sayf al-Dawlah] made them persevere in one of the Byzantine mountain passes known as ʿAqabat al-Sayr, and these are very narrow and difficult mountain roads. Then, Sayf al-Dawlah descended to a nearby river, and when the night came his companions fled and left him alone (2:223).

This remark, along with a body of classical historical accounts and akhbār (anecdotes) suggests that later authors were influenced by the poem’s allusion to Ibn Mirdās’s ode and also saw a connection between this battle and the battle of Ḥ unayn. Here is how Ibn al-ʿAdīm (d. 660/1262) depicts Sayf al-Dawlah’s defeat in his book on the history of Aleppo: And of [Sayf al-Dawlah’s battles] is one in which he raided in the year 339. He had a huge army and so [initially] he won and gained tremendous booty. But when he returned to Darb al-Jawzāt . . . the Byzantines gathered and attacked Sayf al-Dawlah; hence, many of the Muslims were killed and many were taken prisoner. No one returned alive except Sayf al-Dawlah on his horse. So, [the Byzantines] recognized him, followed him, and cornered him in a great mountain that had a wadi below it. [Sayf al-Dawlah] was afraid he would be taken prisoner if he stopped or if he turned back, so he urged his horse forward jumping into the wadi before him to kill himself rather than be taken prisoner. The horse, however, landed on his feet, and Sayf al-Dawlah came out safe. This battle was called “ghazāt al-Muṣībah” (the Battle of the Disaster). And in it, much of [Sayf al-Dawlah’s] armor and possessions were taken from him. It is even mentioned that five thousand pages written by Abī ʿAbd Allāh b. Muqlah, who was committed to the Ḥ amdānids, may God rest his soul, were destroyed in that battle. And Sayf al-Dawlah, in it, had reached Samandū, burned Ṣārikhah and Kharshanah (1:121-2).

What is particularly interesting about this passage is the “miraculous” escape of Sayf al-Dawlah. A closer look at line 9 is crucial to understanding the subtexts of Ibn al-ʿAdim’s account and the other anecdotal material that is preserved with this ode. The poet’s plays on the irony at hand: bi al-jayshi tamtaniʿu al-sādatu (kings are protected behind their armies) and wa al-jayshu bi Ibn Abi al-Hayjāʾ yamtaniʿu (the army is protected by Ibn Abī al-Hayjā’ [Sayf al-Dawlah]). That paradox is not lost on later commentators and historians, who seem to make the connection between Sayf al-Dawlah’s actions and similar ones during the time of the Prophet Muḥammad. The main assertion in line 9 is that unlike other leaders who hide behind their army, Sayf al-Dawlah protects his army. We cannot help but recall similar motifs when the Prophet Muḥammad stood firm during the battle of Uḥud (and almost lost his life),

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and his victory after a near defeat in Ḥ unayn. Recalling this past places Sayf al-Dawlah’s defeat in the context of the Prophet’s battles, suggesting that if the Prophet himself experienced defeat but came back and emerged victorious, then Sayf al-Dawlah can also emerge victorious after this “minor” setback. The same motif that draws on the Prophet’s experience is repeated in the anecdote that accompanies the ode in al-Yāzijī’s commentary: In this battle, Sayf al-Dawlah passed through Samandū and the Ālis, a great river about one day’s journey from Ṭarsūs. He then turned to Ṣārikhah, one of the Byzantine cities, where he burned its wall and churches as well as the wall of Kharshanah and its environs. He stayed in place for a few days, then crossed the Ālis, returning back. When night came, most of the army left. [Sayf al-Dawlah] traveled at night until he passed Kharshanah and its environs. He ended up at Bat ṇ Liqān in the middle of the following day where he encountered the Domesticus with thousands of cavalry. When the Domesticus saw the front line of Muslim cavalry, he thought that it was merely a small body of troops. Fighting erupted between the two sides, and the Domesticus was defeated. Many of his knights were killed, and more than eighty of his generals were taken captive. Then, Sayf al-Dawlah returned to his army until he reached a mountain-road known as Miqtaʿat al-Athfār. At this point, the enemy surprised him on the top of the mountain, so [Sayf al-Dawlah’s] troops went down and took on their protection, and when he descended after his troops passed through, the enemy attacked him and some of the horsemen were wounded. So Sayf al-Dawlah went to the Baradā, a river in Ṭạ rsūs, and the enemy took the mountain road of al-Maṣir, which is a long one that he could not go up, because it was narrow and there were many enemy soldiers there. So he refrained, taking an easier way that was described by some guides. But the enemy came at the end of the day from behind him, so he fought until evening and the night became dark. Sayf al-Dawlah’s army went to the summit of the mountain to seek the main part of the army. So when his troops abandoned him, he went to catch up with the main part of the army under a mountain road close to the lake of al-Ḥ adath; so he stopped there while the enemy took the two mountains on both sides. Sayf al-Dawlah started calling men to fight, but no one did. Also, those who escaped from al-ʿAqabah during the day did not return and those who were below were unwilling to rescue or help. Moreover, the men had lost discipline and had become tired of traveling, so Sayf al-Dawlah ordered them to kill the generals and the rest of the captives, who were in the hundreds, then he left. And Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Mutanabbī passed by a group of Muslims toward the end of the night. He saw that some of them were sleeping among the corpses because of fatigue, while others [i.e., other Byzantines] were shaking them to see if they were alive. The ones that moved were killed on the spot. So [al-Mutanabbī] composed [this poem] describing that (2:89).

The motif of the great leader who is betrayed by the cowardice and “takhādhul ” (fatigue, dissension, desertion) of his troops is very clear in this anecdote. The same happened previously to the Prophet in two battles that ingrained the memory of the Muslim community. In Uḥud, the Muslims started out

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with an almost guaranteed victory that turned into a defeat because some of the men left their positions and did not listen to the Prophet’s instructions (al-Ṭ abarī 7:113).17 There is a great similarity here. Sayf al-Dawlah begins with a victory, and ends with a defeat. There is also a striking similarity to the battle of Ḥ unayn, which almost cost the Prophet and his followers a major defeat at a very crucial time of the Prophet’s message. In Ḥ unayn, Muslims were surrounded and surprised by the enemy. Great chaos erupted in the army and the Prophet stood firm and pulled some people around him and ended up victorious (Lammens, “Ḥ unayn” 578).18 In the case of the poem at hand, Sayf al-Dawlah is also left alone, but his companions abandon him completely, leading to a major defeat. Because we cannot view the anecdotes surrounding Sayf al-Dawlah’s battle as historical accounts, it is possible they were generated after the poem and possibly in response to it. The heroic image that is present in both al-ʿUkbarī’s anecdote and that of Ibn al-ʿAdīm may very well be a response to this poem, i.e., both authors might be influenced by the ode. It is worth noting, in this regard, that al-ʿUkbarī died in 616/1219 while Ibn al-ʿAdīm died a few decades later in 660/1262. Historically, it is thus not inconceivable that Ibn al-ʿAdīm’s portrayal of Sayf al-Dawlah “miraculous” escape is influenced by the poetic commentators and possibly al-Mutanabbī’s poem itself. Part II of this qaṣīdah, if read without knowing that this ode was presented after a military defeat, sounds very much like a “standard victory ode.”19 The entire section speaks of Sayf al-Dawlah’s military victory and ability to lead in battle. I will analyze this section by relying on Paul Connerton’s discussion of how societies deal with past events to justify or legitimize present ones. Connerton contends that “all beginnings contain an element of recollection. This is particularly so when a social group makes a concerted effort to begin with a wholly new start” (6). The author goes on to make the following argument: In imagining what a historic beginning might be like, the modern imagination has turned back again and again to the events of the French Revolution. This historic rupture, more than any other, has assumed for us the status of a modern myth. It took on that status very quickly. All reflection on history on the conti17 For more on this, see also Robinson, “Uḥud” 782-83. It is worth mention here, in addition, that Uḥud is one of the only two battles mentioned in the Qur’ān 3:144. 18 The battle of Ḥ unayn is the second battle mentioned in the Qur’ān 9:25-26, and is the only battle to be mentioned there by name. 19 A “standard victory ode” to me is one that is presented after an actual historical victory. See in my article “A Standard Victory Ode: Al-Mutanabbi’s Lāmiyyah of 342/953” in the Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Intellectual and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, Issue 2, Fall 2004. The ode that we are dealing with in this chapter is then not a standard one because its themes and structure diverge slightly, given the historical circumstances.

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nent of Europe throughout the nineteenth century looks behind it to the moment of that revolution in which the meaning of revolution itself was transformed from a circularity of movement to the advent of the new. For those who came after, the present was seen as a time of fall into the ennui of a post-heroic age, or as a permanent state of crisis, the anticipation, whether hoped for or feared, of a recurrent eruption (6-7).

These ideas are particularly helpful in reading Part II of this ode. By depicting Sayf al-Dawlah’s habitual victory, the poet attempts to call for a new beginning after this disaster, to vindicate Sayf al-Dawlah by referring to his history of victories as a point of a new departure for the whole community. Al-Mutanabbī’s strategy is to remind the audience of Sayf al-Dawlah’s “glorious” history of victories, and also to turn his initial call to action in Part I (lines 5 and 6) into a central theme of Part II. Therefore, I will argue that the poet calls for a “new beginning”, to use Connerton, by emphasizing imagery of fertility and blood vengeance. Part II is the core of the poem, in which the poet lays out the principles of the emir’s claims to legitimacy. While Part I comprises the first 9 lines, Part II consists of the remaining forty lines. Attending to this structure exposes that in the poem’s core, Sayf al-Dawlah is a victorious emir. The defeat, referred to briefly in Part I, is an isolated event. Part II begins by alluding to Sayf al-Dawlah’s military might and leadership in battle. Lines 10-14 depict the emir’s extraordinary power and victory over his Byzantine enemies. There is a clear shift in focus from Part I: the tone is more assertive and celebratory, but the themes are also different. Line 10 marks the beginning of a “military victory” tone that plays on the image of cavalry and its movement in battle. More telling is line 11, which makes an association between the emir’s “unusual” powers and the infinite powers of death, recalling Sperl’s depiction of ancient kings in the Middle East as possessing “mythic powers” (23-25).20 The themes and imagery in the next three lines (12-14) are more celebratory, more in line with the “ideology of victory” to which I referred earlier. Ultimately, this “ideology of victory” is what governs these ceremonials and what compels the poet to describe Sayf al-Dawlah in such terms. On the surface, lines 12 and 13 provide the audience with concrete examples of Sayf al-Dawlah’s military success. The akhbār (anecdotes) that surround the Battle of the Disaster confirm that Sayf al-Dawlah took Kharshanah and Ṣārikhah during his campaign. But a closer look at the lines reveals that the poet invokes images of “sexual dominance” in a call for both vengeance and 20 Also see, Suzanne P. Stetkevych’s book on The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode (Indiana, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).

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fertility for the community at the expense of the Byzantines. In Abū Tammām and the Poetics of the ʿAbbāsid Age, Suzanne Stetkevych makes the following argument: The underlying sexual metaphor of conquest ( fatḥ-opening) by the sword (phallus) is thus expressed in vegetable terms; the death and destruction of the Infidel city is seen as reviving and renewing the Islamic caliphate (201).

Building on Stetkevych’s analysis of Abū Tammām’s famous ʿAmmūriyyah ode, we can argue that al-Mutanabbī, despite Sayf al-Dawlah’s defeat in this battle, is also using similar imagery and diction to frame Part II in the context of a “victory.” Lines 12 and 13 are prime examples, where the poet asserts that Sayf al-Dawlah stood upon the walls of Kharshanah (aqāma ʿalā arbāḍi Kharshanatin) as an indication of taking over the city. It’s curious that al-Mutanabbī uses the verb aqāma (stood upon), which is derived from the root q-w-m. Interestingly, words such as qāʾim (upright) and qāʾim al-sayf (hilt of a sword), which come from the same root, imply a veiled sexual image here. This image is even more conspicuous if we take into account two additional words in the same line: arbāḍ (city walls) and the name of the city itself, Kharshanah. They both share a “feminine” marker or connection that advances the “sexual dominance” motif. The word arbāḍ (singular, rabaḍ ) comes from the root r-b-ḍ, and it is no coincidence that the word rabaḍ (or rabḍ or rubḍ ) also means “wife, mother or sister” (Hava 237). The obvious feminine name of the city (Kharshanah), in addition, leads us to the same conclusion. In the second hemistich of line 12, the poet’s use of the word ṣulbān (crosses) as the main marker of the Byzantines frames the conflict in the larger context of a “religious and ideological” battle where Sayf al-Dawlah’s legitimacy is derived from his ability to protect Islam and defeat the Byzantines. Line 13 continues the poet’s focus on images of sexual dominance and fertility, in an apparent contrast to the images of death conjured up by the cowards in Part I. Similar to Roman and Byzantine victory ceremonials, and also other standard victory odes, al-Mutanabbī conjured up images of captured prisoners (specifically women), shedding of blood, and the display of booty— all are, as McCormick points out, central elements that show the victory of the monarch.21 In this line, we see these elements poetically repeated with an even more effective punch than merely displaying prisoners, shedding the blood of the enemy by carrying the head of the defeated leader, or actual display of booty. Here the poet makes the argument that the enemy’s women, offspring, 21 For a more detailed discussion of these elements and McCormick’s study, see my article, “A Standard Victory Ode: Al-Mutanabbī’s Lāmiyyah of 342/953.”

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and goods were predestined for Sayf al-Dawlah to imprison, kill, and take respectively. While there is an invocation of the ancient Middle Eastern king with “mythic powers”, as Sperl puts it, there is also a call for revenge. Line 14 also plays on the issue of fertility and life through the use of the word marj (meadow) and also the feminine name of the second city, Ṣārikhah. In addition, there is a juxtaposition to line 12 and a continuation of the play on the “religious or ideological” battle—here the erection of manābir and the performance of the Friday prayer indicates Sayf al-Dawlah, and Islam’s, victory over the Byzantines and Christianity. The next section, lines 15-29, marks a continued emphasis on military prowess intermingled with a consistent invocation of fertility imagery. Lines 17-22, for example, depict Sayf al-Dawlah’s strong and victorious army, but the metaphor used to describe the army is telling. Lines 17 and 18 portray Sayf al-Dawlah’s army as a cloud of rain. The obvious meaning is to portray the army’s size, but this image of rain can also be read as a symbol of fertility and life. Military prowess, therefore, brings fertility and life to the polity, evidenced in a few lines that use military diction that can also be interpreted in the context of “sexual domination”, as discussed earlier. Examples of such diction include al-ṭaʿn (stabbing with a spear) in line 20, al-asinnah (spear-heads) and al-qanā (spears) in line 21, al-sihām 22 (arrows) in line 22, aẓmā (spear) in line 23, shifār al-bīḍ (white blades) in line 25, and al-bātirāt (sharp-edged swords) in line 27. Suzanne Stetkevych argues, when discussing Abū Tammām’s ʿAmmūriyyah ode, that such “masculine imagery” is used “to advocate action and initiative” (203). As a call for action and revenge, al-Mutanabbī presents this “masculine imagery” in juxtaposition to the “feminine imagery” that we discussed in lines 12-14, but also in the context of the Byzantine’s “humiliating defeat” that is marked by captivity (lines 23, 27, 28), fear (lines 24-26), or death (line 29). Such images appear typically in “standard” victory odes, yet al-Mutanabbī uses them here despite his patron’s defeat in this particular instance.23 Al-Mutanabbī concludes the poem with a section that appears to be different from the rest of Part II, but upon close examination, I will argue that it is consistent with images and themes of sexual domination and fertility that appear throughout Part II. The poet begins this section by providing an explanation for the defeat, offering the most direct discussion of the catastrophe at hand. While the poet seems to openly admit a form of defeat, a close reading will 22 I translated this word in line with al-ʿUkbarī’s sharḥ, so I took it as al-sahām, but the same root also includes al-sihām and that is actually a possibility that is included in the commentary. 23 See, Al-Mallah.

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show that al-Mutanabbī’s interpretation offers nuanced political maneuvering. In line 30, the poet’s declaration that the Muslim captives betrayed the emir invokes a similar betrayal that the Prophet Muḥammad suffered during the battle of Uḥud. Ibn Hishām’s account documents the Prophet’s sense of betrayal when left bleeding without protection: “How can a people succeed when they have tinged their Prophet’s face [with blood]” (Ibn Hisham, 3: 21). The poet relies on the sīrah literature and also on audience’s and community’s collective memory of similar events that happened to the Prophet during the battles of Uḥud and Ḥ unayn. In the case of the Prophet and also Sayf al-Dawlah, the blame is placed on those who were cowardly and did not perform their obligation toward the leader. Lines 31-36 mark an important shift in pronoun—the poet now addresses the Byzantines directly to give a sense of “defiance” in spite of the defeat. While this section explains the defeat as a result of the “cowards” who were captured in battle, the poet also utilizes fertility and blood vengeance imagery as he did earlier in Part II. For example, we see the image of blood in line 31, followed by a scathing description of the “weaklings” who were captured by the Byzantines (lines 32 and 33). After suggesting that the Byzantine’s victory is due to the “cowardly weaklings” in Sayf al-Dawlah’s army, the poet returns to “masculine imagery” in line 35 (cutting with a spear). Line 36 continues the quest for fertility and life for the community by suggesting that the elimination of the “weaklings” is divinely ordained to strengthen Sayf al-Dawlah’s army. Crucial to the poet’s argument, this line frames the defeat as a ritual test and contest in which the weak and cowardly are eliminated as a purification of the army, Sayf al-Dawlah, and the Ummah—leading to the eventual reinvigoration of the community. The ode’s conclusion (lines 37-49) provides direct madīḥ (praise) for Sayf al-Dawlah, written in a strong military tone with a play on “masculine imagery” that urges the emir and the community to seek fertility and life through victory and vengeance. Line 37 is both a demand and a promise that the next rounds will be in Sayf al-Dawlah’s favor after the polity has been purified from the “weaklings and cowards.” It is curious that the poet uses the emir’s name, Sayf al-Dawlah (the sword of the state or regime), for the first time at the conclusion of this ode. There is a call for vengeance in the first hemistich of line 37, followed by the first mention of the emir’s name, which happens to mean sword. The “masculine imagery” that is conjured through the use of sayf (sword) is consistent with the Jāhilī ethos of blood vengeance that Suzanne Stetkevych points out in her book on Abū Tammām. In her discussion of Ḥ amāsiyyah 10 by Saʿd ibn Nāshib, Stetkevych argues that “since only blood can wash away the stain of blood, the poet declared that he will take up the

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sword” (299). Al-Mutnabbī’s tone in these later lines of the poem, coupled with his use of Sayf al-Dawlah’s name, is essentially a call to “wash away” the humiliation of defeat through victory and the fulfillment of the quest of blood vengeance. Line 39 consoles Sayf al-Dawlah by portraying him as a fāris (horseman, knight), who should not be ashamed by the actions of others. The poet plays on the dichotomy between fāris in the first hemistich and ʿājiz (weak) in the second, which he uses to describe those who caused the defeat. The word ʿājiz, which also means impotent, conjures up the other side of the “masculine imagery”, suggesting that the poet saw the battle, the actions of Sayf al-Dawlah and those who betrayed him, in those terms. The next few lines (40-44) set Sayf al-Dawlah apart as a leader who displays the qualities of a fāris. Line 43 continues to portray Sayf al-Dawlah as a man of action in battle while others merely watch or listen. Lines 45-49 seal the poem with a “confident” prediction of the future victories that Sayf al-Dawlah will experience in his military encounters with the Byzantines. Al-Mutanabbī’s call for a new beginning, to use Connerton, is rooted in a quest for fertility that is derived from victory and blood vengeance. Line 45 captures this “new beginning” by using a “masculine image” in the first hemistich, al-sayfu muntaẓirun (the sword is waiting), followed by a “feminine word,” arḍ (earth) in the second hemistich. In addition to arḍ, the whole line is rich with images of fertility and life, including the careful choice of muṣṭāfun wa murtabaʿu (summer and spring abode), both conjuring up renewal and life for the emir and the polity as a whole. The last four lines serve as a threat to the Byzantines (line 46), but also as an affirmation of Sayf al-Dawlah’s ability to govern and be the legitimate leader of the community (47-49). Looking closely at lines 47-49, we see that the poet employs some of the same rhetorical devices that he used at the beginning of the ode, standing in juxtaposition to the first few lines of the ode. Line 47 includes an interesting shift to the first person pronoun, revealing the poet’s firsthand knowledge of Sayf al-Dawlah’s ability in battle. But the line also includes an interesting rhetorical play on ḥamidtuka (I praised you) and balawtuka (I scrutinized you), which are tied together through the use of ḥattā (until) at the beginning of the second hemistich in line 47. In the first hemistich, then, the poet declares his praise for the emir’s perseverance during challenging times, emphasizing the severity of the challenge, by using a very strong word hawl (awe, dread) before declaring the emir’s perseverance during such times. The second hemistich indicates that the poet only praised the emir after “scrutinizing” him during battle. Lines 48 and 49 use some of the same rhetorical devices used in the early part of the qasīdah in order to relate the poem’s conclusion to

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the opening lines by setting up a contrast between Sayf al-Dawlah and the “cowards” who caused the defeat. For example, the poet uses ṭībaq in shujāʿ (brave) and jabān (cowardly) (line 48), followed by a powerful image that demonstrates the difference between people who merely carry armor and those who actually fight with it. The ode opens with a discussion of deception, talk of bravery that is not backed up with real action in battle. It ends, on the contrary, with a definition of true bravery and horsemanship that is embodied in the person of Sayf al-Dawlah. Thus, the poem’s ultimately legitimizes the emir’s position in the community, in the wake of a serious blow to his leadership and stature in the community. The ode plays on images of death and loss by mocking the “cowards and weaklings” who caused the defeat in Part I, followed by a strikingly different tone and set of imagery in Part II, which is dominated by “masculine and feminine imagery”, calling for fertility through victory and blood vengeance. The poem sets Sayf al-Dawlah apart from those “weaklings” who caused the defeat, and consoles him in the difficult times that ensue. By shifting focus from the actual defeat and redirecting attention to the glorious action of Sayf al-Dawlah, al-Mutanabbī declares the emir the best leader the community can have. The poem, from start to finish, appears to define what a leader should not be, a coward, and by the same token asserts what he should be, a Sayf (sword)!

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Kiwāb, ʿAbd al-ʿAtī. Jānib al-Thawrah wa-l-ʿAqīdah fī Shiʿr al-Mutanabbī. Al-Fayyum: Dār al-ʿIlm li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzīʿ, 1998. Lammens, H. “Ḥ unayn.” Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition. Vol. 3. 1971. MacCormack, Sabine. Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. McCormick, Michael. Eternal Victory: Triumphal rulership in late antiquity, Byzantium, and the early medieval West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Nahr, Hādī. Maʿa al-Mutanabbī fī Shiʿrihi al-Ḥ arbiyy. Baghdad: Mat ḅ aʿat al-Jāmiʿah, 1979. Robinson, C. F. “Uḥud.” Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition. Vol. 10. 2000. Sperl, Stephen. “Islamic Kingship and Arabic Panegyric Poetry in the Early 9th Century.” Journal of Arabic Literature 8, 1977: (20-35). Stetkevych, Suzanne. “ʿAbbāsid Panegyric and the Poetics of Political Allegiance: Al-Mutanabbī’s ʿId-poem to Sayf al-Dawlah.” Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Language and Literature. Ed. J. R. Smart. Richmond, U.K.: Curzon, 1996. ———. Abū Tammām and the Poetics of the ʿAbbāsid Age. Leiden: Brill, 1991. ———. The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Classical Arabic Ode. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2002. Al-Ṭạ barī. The History of al-Ṭ abarī (Tārikh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk). Vol. 7. Trans. W. Montgomery Watt and M. V. McDonald. New York: State University of New York Press, 1985. Al-Tunjī, Muḥammad. Al-Mutanabbī: Māli’ al-Dunyā wa Shāghil al-Nās. Beirut: al-Sharikah al-Muttaḥidah li al-Tawzīʿ, 1975. Al-ʿUkbarī, Abū al-Baqā’. Dīwān Abī al-ṭayyib al-Mutanabbī bi Sharḥ Abī al-Baqā’ al-ʿUkbarī (al-Tabyān fī Sharḥ al-Dīwān). Ed. Muṣt ạ fā al-Saqqā, Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī, and ʿAbd al-Ḥ āfiẓ Shalabī. Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifah, n.d. Al-Yāzijī, Nāṣīf. Al-ʿArf al-ṭayyib fī Sharḥ Dīwān Abī al-ṭayyib. Vol. 1 & 2. Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1964. Zwettler, Michael. “The Poetics of Allusion in Abu l-ʿAtāhiya’s Ode in Praise of al-Hādī.” Edebiyat. 3: 1, 1989: (1-29).

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Appendix of Arabic Text: Al-Mutanabbī’s Ode to Sayf al-Dawlah

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Review Shakir Mustafa’s Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: An Anthology. Series, Middle East Literature in Translation. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2008. Pp.xxiii+202. Reviewed by Saadi A. Simawe, Grinnell College, Iowa The translator/editor of this relatively slim anthology of contemporary Iraqi fiction deserves our congratulations. For it is a daunting task to edit and translate single-handedly from Arabic 34 selections of fiction by 16 contemporary writers. Despite the heroic effort, the anthology is not, and it does not claim to be, comprehensive. Yet, it represents the major themes and narrative techniques that dominate contemporary fiction writing in Iraq. The selections from each writer illustrate the themes and the narrative techniques employed by the author. The criteria Professor Mustafa used in his selection of fiction writers included in the anthology are several, most important is his desire to compensate for the limited availability of Iraqi fiction in English and represent Iraq’s diverse groups. Although all the works of fiction translated in the anthology were originally written in Arabic, their writers were not necessarily Arab or Muslim. There are two Iraqi Jews, two Iraqi Turkmen, and one Iraqi Assyrian Christian. Moreover, five are women. Mustafa further selects based on what will appeal to his English speaking audience (xix). The introduction explains the challenge of producing Iraqi literature. The crucibles of fascism, wars, genocidal sanctions, invasion and occupation in the last thirty years of Iraq’s history have killed many writers, but failed to kill the writing spirit (xv-xvi). The introduction then lists the new techniques necessitated by oppressive realities. Under repression, Iraqi writers rediscovered parable, which was an ancient narrative form. Professor Mustafa is correct in identifying parable as one of the renewed techniques used by Iraqi writers “to communicate subversive visions” (xvi), but he does not venture into the reasons for parable. Being the basic discursive device used by prophets in their uphill battles against entrenched realities, parable proved to be highly pointed, very hard to misappropriate, and aesthetically appealing. Hence, parable’s appeal to Iraqi writers under oppression. Other narrative techniques have become convenient masks for Iraqi writers, such as magic realism, and fantasy in general because of the relative freedom of expression it affords under repression. The selections in the anthology illustrate the above-mentioned masks of narrative technique, especially in works by Iraqi writers who never left Iraq: Muhammad Khodayyir, Lutfiyya alDulaimi, Mahdi Isa al-Saqr, and Mayselun Hadi. Even a cursory reading of the selections from their fiction reveals a common narrative element that indicates their fear or distrust of reality. This may explain, at least in part, these authors’ flights into the fantastic. Muhammad Khodayyir represents the extreme escape from the real into a heavily symbolic world where even a very close reading of his “Yusuf ’s Tales” would fail to establish convincing links between the world of the story and the outside world. What does this twelve stone-tier printing house, which is described as if it were one of the world’s seven wonders, really represent? And who is Yusuf the Printer? Despite the enigmatic nature of characters and events, the storyteller never loses the reader because he never forgets to entertain. From the very beginning of his career as a short story writer, Khodayyir emphasized architecture and elaborate geometrical patterns; his recent fiction forms © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009

DOI: 10.1163/157006409X432667

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a brilliant labyrinth of shapes and lines. This great author is obsessively interested in verbal arabesque. The other writers from inside Iraq are definitely less symbolic. Lutfiyya al-Dulaimi, for instance, in her “Shahrazad and her Narrators,” uses the legendary Shahrazad, the narrator of the One Thousand and One Nights, as a mask to launch her feminist critique of male scholarship, especially on the history of women, as generally false primarily because it is motivated by sexual fantasies. Despite the poignant encounter between the great scholar, who spent his life researching the “history” of Shahrazad, he fails to see her reality. She chastises him for imagining a desirable Shahrazad appealing to the multitudes and for submitting to the shackles of male desire (34). More important, the story is not only a critique of male scholarship on women; rather, it is a sweeping critique of all male scholarship on history. In her long dialogue with the scholar on the false and true in writing and scholarship, Shahrazad tells him that male scholarship is based on fabrications and lies to support the politics of power, but creative writing usually goes “beyond your familiar world.” She goes on to make her point understood by elaborating on the problem of male-created cultural memory, which serves as fact (36). Mahdi Isa al-Saqr, a firmly realistic fiction writer, finds it expedient in his recent fiction to convey particular messages using the fantastic. In his significantly titled piece “Breaking Away” from the real, as the thematic context suggests, the narrator tells of his interactions with an old painter of forests and landscapes. To the old painter, what he paints becomes the real and he learns to enter the painted reality whenever he wants to enjoy green trees, singing birds, and murmuring rivers, as if he were in a paradise. At one point, he invites the narrator to enter with him a painted forest. The skeptical narrator initially could not believe, but later he describes the experience of entering the painting in terms of spiritual experience (52). Evidently, here is a mystical experience that enables the painter, who later teaches the narrator the secrets of entering painted realities, to create an imaginary, peaceful world—a contrast with the ruined realities of Iraq. Initially, it seemed an exercise in Sufism, but later we see that the painter has a Bible on the table next to his bed (54). So he becomes a Christian mystic whose paintings are for him windows unto the other world, a more permanent and peaceful world. It is interesting to note that when the painter was sick, he tells the narrator that death offers a vista onto a painted paradise (54). Hence, to the painter, death and painting are two ways to heaven. One of the happiest selections is Mayselun Hadi’s fiction. I share the editor’s enthusiasm when he states in his editorial note that Mayselun is “One of the most promising talents to appear on the Iraqi literary scene in the past two decades” (68). Definitely, she offers a new, happy, funny voice in the all too serious world of Iraqi fiction. In the midst of blood and ruin and death, she is able to find a source of laughter.? It takes great talent to transcend historical circumstances and celebrate the essence of our humanity. In the three selections by Hadi, “The Realm of the Real,” “The Calendars,” and “Outage,” she creates humor that melts many stoic Iraqi faces into smiles. In an attempt to compare the selections from Iraqi fiction written in exile with the selections of Iraqi fiction written inside, I need first to identify the main factors that I consider crucial. The first factor is the audience; the second one is the freedom of imagination the Iraqi writer enjoyed while out of the repressive reality called Iraq. Major themes in the fiction produced inside Iraq are primarily open-ended symbolism, mysticism, humor, and historical revisionism, which are the most convenient masks for a people who have been denied freedom of imagination. Iraqi writers, outside Iraq, as the selections from their writings clearly indicate, have been able to write soul-searching critiques of Iraqi society, its government, and the western powers that have been accomplices in the Iraq regime’s criminal acts. Abdul Sattar Nasir’s “Good-bye, Hippopotamus,” and Ibrahim Ahmed’s “The Arctic Refuge” are very effective selections of that critique; the first is an excruciating cry against one’s own country’s torture and imprisonment, and the other is a

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light satire on the gap and discrepancy in Western declared human rights and practice. Samira Al-Mana’s “Sexual Complacency” and Salima Salih’s “Those Boys” treat themes that are unthinkable inside Iraq: in Al-Mana’s story, the protagonist is an Iraqi woman who has been living in London for the last three decades, yet she still feels concerned about what is going on in her homeland, especially the corruption that attempts to create, by power of wealth and nepotism, “great” authors out of mediocre ones. She was excited to read a harsh review in the Guardian of a translation of a mediocre book by a wealthy and attractive Arab widow (96-97). The protagonist was very happy and saw in the review a sign of hope, since the reviewer did not succumb to the “ravishing influence” of the widow and “the delicacies” of Middle Eastern food (97). This sentiment reveals the woman’s disgust and moral indignation over the state of corruption in Iraq. Ironically, the woman sees symptoms of that unjust power even in her most intimate relationship, since she contemplates her alienation from her children and the malaise of suburban London (97). Her only remaining interlocutor being her husband, when she approached him enthusiastically, he half-heartedly dismissed her concerns. That “nonchalant, lukewarm” response triggered moral indignation, and she lashed out at the two, her husband and the corrupt woman writer. At that moment, she felt as if the dilettante was responsible for all the corruption and bribery in her country of origin and even for her emigration and exile (97). In the face of her husband’s repeated dismissals, the woman felt him to be not only insensitive about her intellectual needs, but morally obtuse concerning issues of corruption. She aims to depart and before doing so, deprives him of touch and demands that he keep his distance (97). After several desperate attempts to reconcile, the husband almost gave up, but the woman took advantage of his desperation and gave him a lecture on her intellectual needs in midlife (99). As the wife lectured him, he sneaked his hand under the cover and seized one of her feet and began massaging it. The wife suddenly freed her leg and continued to voice her upset and lecture him on her need for companionship over ideas (100). Mid-massage, however, the woman understandably forgot the lecture and wanted the massage to continue. Cynical readers may see the ending as confirming the stereotype that women are basically emotional and sexual beings, but before accepting this reading, they should read objectively page 99 and see the man melting on his knees, begging to be touched. In the end, the woman actually felt that her sexual desire betrayed her, but, in lovemaking, there should be no losers, only winners. Hence, the Arabic title of the story “Tawāt ̣u’ fi al-jins,” which in English means “collusion or connivance in sex.” The English title “Sexual Complacency,” does not fully indicate the inner conflict inherent in the Arabic word “tawāt ̣u’.” Salima Salih’s “These Boys” is a passionately conceived story of two Muslim boys growing up differently in Germany. The perspective from which the story is written is most unique and interesting: It is that of Nurruddin’s mother, who lives in Germany. She gives readers, in a few printed pages, amazing details of the two boys’ struggle, hurt, and resilience, in their attempts at carving up spaces for their different identities manifested in their dark skins, language, and other very hard-to-define Muslim mannerisms. But this kind mother narrator raises very intelligent questions, questions that shed light on the boys’ tenacity and strength such as “[w]ho steeled these boys against temptations of new experiences and against the influences of a new environment. Not just their mothers . . .” (133). What is interesting is that although these two boys were born to Muslim families, they prayed to the one Allah, they grew up differently, unintentionally complicating the Western simple view of Islamic culture as being eternally monolithic. Other examples in the selections of the stories written by Iraqis living abroad clash with Western stereotypes of the Arabs and Muslims. Samir Nakkash’s “Tantal” is a very well composed story that portrays the peaceful co-existence of Jews and Arabs before the establishment of Israel. Shmuel Moreh’s “A Belly Dancer from Baghdad,” will not confirm the stereotype of a belly dancer, because the Iraqi Muslim belly dancer, Fawziyya, works hard to redeem herself by

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protecting her daughter, paying for her medical education. The narrator, who is an Iraqi Jew, tells us of her hope that her daughter will “liberate” her from “this humiliating job,” enabling her to “repent and go to Mecca for the hajj” (200). Two major stereotypes are shattered in Samuel Shimon’s “The Street Vendor and the Movies,” a delightful story about Iraqi youth’s fascination with American western movies, a fascination that debunks the myth that perpetuates the hate of all Western things in the Middle East. The author’s deft characterization of the fluid religious diversity of Iraqi society makes one wonder where do the seeds of discord and hostility come from? The last, by no means the least, selection I would like to briefly discuss is Mahmoud Saeed’s powerful treatment of fascism in his short story “A Figure in Repose.” The source of fear and horrors in this story comes from the tight secrecy, the cleanliness and silence of the corridors, and the deformity of the guards and workers (166). Efficiency is a hallmark of fascism and totalitarianism. Sameness and repetition are terrifying aspects of the story that the author uses effectively. By way of conclusion, I would like to emphasize the importance of this anthology as a crucial cultural exchange between Iraqi writers and readers of English. This book should be considered a work in progress to be improved on, expanded, cleaned up of errors especially in the introduction, “Iraqi Fiction Today.” More importantly future editions should include more contemporary Iraqi fiction writers, and add more selections. As a textbook, Professor Shakir Mustafa’s book will be a great help for undergraduate students in surveys of Modern Arabic literature; it can be useful as well in teaching Modern Iraqi literature. Further, due to its double nature, that is, being a textbook and at the same time a reference book, it will fit at all levels of the curriculum, from undergraduate to graduate surveys and seminars. With some revision and testing in the classroom, Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: An Anthology can become as much a classic in Arabic literature as Richard Chase’s The American Novel and Its Tradition (1957) has been in American literature.