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The Arabic origins of the muwashshaḥāt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Jareer Abu-Haidar
Jareer Abu-Haidar
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies
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Extract

In a recent study entitled ‘The muwashshaḣāt: are they a mystery?’, I described the muwashshaḣāt as the product of the simple and natural attempt by the Arab literati to extend the proliferation or permutations of rhyme in Arabic prose to Arabic poetry. I pointed out also that in order to accommodate this proliferation of rhyme or to make it possible in poetry, Arabic verse forms had to undergo two notable and quite pervasive developments:

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Articles
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , October 1993 , pp. 439 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1993

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References

1 Al-Qantara, XIII(1), 1992, 63–81Google Scholar.

2 ibid., 72.

3 Ghāzī, S., Diwan al-muwashshaḣāt al-andalusiyya (henceforth Ghāzī), (Alexandria, 1979), I, 49Google Scholar.

4 An example of an governing the jussive is cited by al-Fayrūzābādī. But it occurs in a verse of poetry, where the use of the jussive is clearly dictated by poetic exigencyGoogle Scholar. Cf. Al-Qāmūs al- Muḣīt, art. an, and Wright, W., A grammar of the Arabic language (Cambridge University Press, 1951), II, 28, where the same example is usedGoogle Scholar. In the present context reading yanqadiya naḣbuh would entail four movent letters in two separate feet (taf‘īlas), and that is inadmissible in any metreGoogle Scholar.

5 Ghāzī, , I, 186, and Gómez, E. Garcīa, Las jarchas romances de la serie árabe en su marco (Madrid, 1965), 50–1Google Scholar.

6 The use of fettered instead of loose rhyme in Arabic is roughly tantamount to changing masculine rhymes into mute or feminine rhymes.

7 The poet should either have said fī 'l-ḣāli or li 'l-waqtiGoogle Scholar. See the correct idiomatic usage of these two terms in Al-Ḣarīrī, 47, and Al-Hamadhānī, 159, respectively. See notes 11 and 22 belowGoogle Scholar.

8 Ghāzī, , 1, 186. Jones, Alan, in his recent work, Romance k.harjas in Andalusian Arabic Muwaššah poetry (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1988), emended baṭal to read maṭal in the third ghuṣn quoted aboveGoogle Scholar.

The logic of baṭal, however, seems incontestable in the context, as it is meant to provide an element of antithesis, and reveal the paradoxical contrast between two attitudesGoogle Scholar:

‘When she saw that he was not in earnest (lit. ”that he was talking lightly“), While she was passionately in love’

Jones translates instead, reading maṭal:

‘When she has seen him delay fulfilment of his promise while she is smitten with passion’

The delay in the fulfilment of the promises of love is a charge which is more likely to apply to the woman, as indeed is the case in the introductory lines to kharja 15, which Jones does not refer to when making his emendation. Jones, like other scholars before him, seems also to have read the suffix pronoun in the fourth ghuṣn as referring to the lover, when in actual fact it refers to hope (al-amal). In this way the universal idea the poet sought to convey is reduced to an ordinary, if not a banal comment. Jones translates, reading ilayhi as a reference to the lover:

‘She has sung when the only hope has been to go out to him’

When this should in fact read:

‘She sang, and hope is (always) bound to be the ultimate retreat (refuge, resort)’ (op. cit. 27).

Incidentally, although in kharja 15 Jones gives the Arabic text as he nevertheless transliterates: la tumṭilīhi (sic), bi-laḣmi xaddayki, and translates, reading laḣm in lieu of lalhm:

‘Do not fail it, [i.e. the lover'S heart], in the promise you have made of the flesh of your cheeks’ (ibid., 118).

To readers who do not know Arabic this is apt to seem crude, and no doubt quite puzzling.

9 Briffault, R. S., The troubadours, transl. by author; ed. Koons, L. F. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965)Google Scholar. French original, Les Troubadours et le sentiment romanesque (Paris. 1945)Google Scholar.

See also on Barbieri'S work Boase, R., The origin and meaning of courtly love: a critical study of European scholarship (Manchester University Press, 1977), 11 and 17–18Google Scholar.

10 See on this my article, ‘The muwashshaᨣāt in the light of the literary life which produced them’. in Studies on the muwaššaḣ and the kharja. Proceedings of the Exeter International Colloquium, ed. Jones, A. and Hitchcock, R. (Reading: Ithaca Press. 1991), 115–22Google Scholar.

11 Maqāmāt al-Hamadhānī, ed. ‘Abduh, M. (Beirut, 1908). 164Google Scholar. All subsequent references to the Maqāmāt of al-Hamadhānī, unless otherwise stated, will be made to this editionGoogle Scholar.

12 164, n. 5.

13 96.

14 It should be pointed out here that, unlike the case in English, imperfect rhymes are not tolerated in Arabic.

15 176.

16 176, n. 2.

17 ‘Abd al-Hamīd, M. M.. who draws a lot on ‘Abduh'S comments in his edition of the maqāmāt of al-Hamadhānī (Cairo, 1923)Google Scholar, makes a practically identical comment on al-sabl, and, like ‘Abduh, does not question this arbitrary change of the vowel, n. 6, 218. See, however, W. Wright, ll, 384, where the suppression of internal vowels is discussed.

18 36.

19 36, n. 3.

20 Again neither ‘Abduh nor ‘Abd al-Hamīd comments on the inadmissibility of this change of the internal vowel. They both feel that their task is to explain the text and its obscurities to the reader. I have not seen the texts on which they based their respective editions, but I am as good as certain that al-Hamādhanī would not have used a term like al-muntazahāt in the maqāma al-Baṣriyya which both editors pass over without any comment (pp. 67 and 70 in ‘Abduh and ‘Abd al-Ḣamīd respectively). This term is in fact the product of modern journalese, and has no lexical or logical sanction, as the verb form intazzaha, from which it may be presumed to derive, does not exist. The verb is tanazzaha, and the appropriate term in the context is mutanazzahāt. If ‘Abduh and ‘Abd al-Ḣamīd had been at all critical, they would have been guided to the right derivative al-mutanazzahāt by the fact that the corresponding rhyme is almutawajjahāt, with tashdīd.

21 Istidrākāt Ibn al-Khashshāb ‘alā maqāmāt al-Ḣarīrī wa-intiṣār Ibn Barrī li l-Ḣarīrī (Istanbul, 1328 A.H.), 58–9Google Scholar.

22 Maqāmāt al-Ḣarīrī (Cairo, 1326 A.H.), 309Google Scholar. This edition contains also the work mentioned in the preceding note as an appendix, pp. 1–36Google Scholar. All references to the Maqāmāt of al-Ḣarīrī, will henceforth be made to this editionGoogle Scholar.

23 Istidrākāt Ibn al-Khashshāb, 59, and Maqāmāt al-Ḣarīrī, appendix, 23Google Scholar.

24 Islidrākāt. 59–60 and Maqāmāt al-ḣarīrī, appendix, 23–4Google Scholar.

25 218.

26 One can only surmise, although there is a lot in the texts to prove it, that both al- Hamadhānī and al-Harīrī were not averse to retaining a rollicking, frolicsome tone in their maqāmāt. Lame or impaired rhymes hindered the racy, and at the same time waggish, effect they sought to sustain.

27 66.

28 65 and n. 28 loc. cit. See also the Būlāq ed., 1317 A.H., 74Google Scholar.

29 Al-Ḣarīrī'S makeshift vocalization is prompted by the fact that the u vowel of the suffix pronoun , verbal as well as nominal, changes into an i vowel after a vowelless yā' or another i vowel.

30 60.

31 225, al-maqāma al-īlnariyya.

32 See Sh, J.. ‘Atiyya, Sullam al-lisān (Beirut, n.d.), 96Google Scholar, and Wright, W., A grammar of the Arabic language, II, 376Google Scholar.

33 100-4.

34 See n. 21 above.

35 As a result of the fettered rhyme, many parts, both in the ‘arūḍ and ḍarb positions, scan as mafā'īl, which is inadmissibleGoogle Scholar. See al-Ghalāyīnī, Musṭafā, Al-Thurayva al-muḍivva fī ‘l-durūs al-‘arūḍiyya (Beirut, 1931), 34Google Scholar.

36 105.

37 Al-Ghalāyīnī, , op. cit., 16, 19 and 42–3Google Scholar.

38 596-601. It would be noted that these strophes, like those quoted above from the Maqāma al-sāwiyya, have both the form and rhyme scheme of the Andalusian zajal.

39 See (e) above.

40 See n. 1 above.

41 67.

42 564.

41 367.

44 See n. 37 above.

45 482.

46 ‘Abbās, I, ed. Dīwān al-A‘mā al-Tuṭīlī (Beirut, 1963), introduction, p. Google Scholar.

47 Ghāzī, i, 5.

48 ibid., II, 673.

49 ibid., I, 68-9.

50 For further examples see Ghāzī, l, 84-90, 100-2, 105, 220-2, 276-81, 373, etc.

52 82.

52 132, 597 and 601 respectively.

53 Gḣāzī, i, 63.

54 This seems to have puzzled Ghāzī, and he vocalizes nā‘imu where he should have vocalized nā‘imi. Ghāzī also vocalizes ṭiflatin where the context requires ṭaflatin. Qarāḣ means ‘pure’, ‘unmixed’, yet the poet goes on to say in the same breath ‘mixed with honey’. It is quite customary to try and explain away such anomalies by claiming that the poet meant to say ‘it was pure, and then it was mixed with honey’. Such interpretations amount to little more than apologies.

55 Ghāzī, I, 101.

56 The alif in mā' like the alif in dā' replaces the original in and respectively, and neither of these terms qualifies as a mamdūdGoogle Scholar. Cf. Aṭiyya, , Suilam al-lisān, 94Google Scholar.

57 Ghāzī, i, 66.

58 196.

59 198.

60 193.

61 594.

62 449.

63 27.

64 64.

65 Ghāzī, I, 163.

66 Iḣsān Abbās, commenting on the fourth strophe of this same muwashshaḣ by Ibn al-Qazzāz (Ghāzī, i, 164), simply wonders whether any ‘coherent grammatical structure ‘ can be made out in the stropheGoogle Scholar. See his Tārīkh al-adab al-andalusī, ‘aṣr al-tawā'if wa ‘l-murābiṭīn (Beirut, 1962), 244Google Scholar.

67 Ghāzī, II, 114-15 and 238-40.

68 ibid., 625.

69 ibid., 626.

70 ibid., 1, 449.

71 70.

72 202, and n. 2, 202.

73 See article referred to in n. 10 above.

74 See the article referred to in n. 10 above, where it is pointed out that the term ṭawshīḣ meant ‘adornment’ or ‘literary embellishment’ in classical Arabic usage.

75 ‘The kharja of the muwashshaḣ in a new light’, Journal of Arabic Literature, IX, 1978, 1–13Google Scholar. See also my article entitled, ‘The case for the Arabic origins of the muwashshaḓāt, court poetry and burlesque in al-Andalus’, The Maghreb Review, vol. 18, nos. 1–2, 1993 (forthcoming)Google Scholar.

76 ‘The language and function of the Hispano-Arabic zajal’ in A miscellany of Middle Eastern articles, In Memoriam Thomas Muir Johnstone 1924-1983, ed. Irvine, A. K., Serjeant, R. B. and G., Rex Smith (Longman, 1988), 3–14Google Scholar.

77 See e.g. ‘Abduh'S edition, 165, 173 and 224, and ‘Abd al-Ḣamīd, 215 and 223