Prologue
The era that formed the backdrop to the life of Ibn ǦanÄḥâthe late tenth century and early eleventh centuriesâwas a very convulsive one, a historical period that taunted people like him who believed that they had been born in the right time and place, being raised and educated as they were in the opulence of the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba (929â1031). Fate, in fact, mocked the inhabitants of Cordoba like never before, taking advantage of a rotten inheritance that dated back to the origins of the caliphate. By 1009, a succession of useless, ambitious monarchs was exhausting the upper classes, whose only concern by 1031 was their own economic gain. The increase in, first, the Slav element under Ê¿Abd al-RaḥmÄn III (929â961) and, then, the Berber element under Chamberlain Almanzor (976â1009) was intended to decrease the role of the Arab nobility in the palace, which was exactly what ended up bringing down the institution of the caliphate in 1031 in an attempt at economic recovery. This led to the revival of a tribal mentality that immediately divided the country into three large parts (á¹awÄʾif): Arab, Berber and Slav. This new conception of power fed constant internal struggles that weakened the border and allowed Christian troops to advance from the North and North Africans from the South. The people of al-Andalus, regardless of the religion they professed, found themselves trapped in a dead-end street. Instead of all the inhabitants fighting for the same state and sharing the same fate, as had been the norm until the middle of 1013, the radical change in situation meant that the emphasis fell back on the triumph of one religion or another.
In this context, the opuscules and epistles of Ibn ǦanÄḥ, which were written in the Zaragoza of the TuǧībÄ« dynasty beginning in 1013, deserve to be considered among the great repertoires of eleventh-century Andalusi literature, bringing together as they do all the characteristics of the prose of his Muslim contemporaries. Ibn ǦanÄḥ was also a product of the Caliphate of Cordoba and its educational policies, and he endured the terrible civil war unleashed there. He is a full-fledged author of the fitna generation, as anti-classicist as Ibn Hazm (994â1064) and Ibn Å uhayd (992â1035). This generation is notable for challenging the legacy of the caliphate that it emulated, perhaps out of a mixture of nostalgia for what they experienced and resentment for what they suffered. KitÄb al-mustalḥaq, of course, is a work that sets out to revise, complete and question particular points in the treatises by Ḥayyūǧ, the most classic of the Andalusi works written during the caliphate and the benchmark for studies of the Hebrew language throughout the Arabic-speaking world during the medieval period, while at the same declaring it traditional by emulating its format and contents. Like all the works of this period and place, it is addressed to an anonymous recipient. Its contents, ideas and approaches are brilliant, the product of an education received in the Cordoba of Caliph HiÅ¡Äm II (976â1009 and 1010â1013), and in many respects unsurpassable even today. Moreover, some of Ibn ǦanÄḥâs epistles are a faithful reflection of the gatherings so enjoyed by the educated ranks of Andalusi society when, after having received oneâs iǧÄza or licence (a reward for the extraordinary memory that almost everyone possessed thanks to the educational model of the time), one received the genuine approval of the true masters because, in the words of Henri Pèrés, âles sarcasmes alors dégonflaient les réputations surfaites, lââ¯admiration récompensait le talent ou le génieâ.1
The eleventh century was clearly a period of political and social fragmentation. To some extent, this is reflected in the patrimony and legacy that has reached us from that era. Despite their importance, works from the period have generally survived in the form of fragments that are either manuscripts or cited in later anthologies, a phenomenon true of all works from al-Andalus. The complete version of KitÄb al-mustalḥaq used for this edition is not the original version, as first conceived by its author, or his last revision of the text, but it does combine all the fragments and versions that we know of today.
KitÄb al-mustalḥaq has all the ingredients required by an early eleventh-century Andalusi work, although it is written using Hebrew lettering and focuses on a topic that was not of interest to the Muslims of the time. Ibn ǦanÄḥâs KitÄb al-mustalḥaq is a clear example of how form and content are not legitimate grounds for exclusion, although for many years, some Hebraists have appropriated material from the book while Arabists have disregarded it, more out of ignorance than high-handedness, with both groups unfairly claiming the right to determine its proper place.
Pèrés (1953:27): âsarcasm at that time deflated overrated reputations; admiration rewarded talent and geniusâ.