We now turn to al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs frustrating and enigmatic second diwan, Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt (Compulsories). As others, including al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« himself, have noted but not adequately explained, Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt is the product of a completely different poetic stance and circumstance. It was composed after the poetâs retreat from his largely failed literary foray to Baghdad to a life of seclusion and withdrawal in his provincial hometown of MaÊ¿arrat al-NuÊ¿mÄn. To my mind it is therefore essential to examine Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt in contrast to Saqá¹ al-Zandârather than, as others have done, in comparison with the zuhdiyyÄt (ascetic poems) of the early Ê¿AbbÄsid poet AbÅ« al-Ê¿AtÄhiyah.1
With his withdrawal from society al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« was forced ipso facto to reject the Classical Arabic qaṣīdah tradition, that is, the largely panegyric three- or later two-part structure of praise and supplication. At the same time, as Bint al-ShÄá¹iʾ notes, he freed himself from the political and social constraints involved in writing poetry in a patronage system.2 Inasmuch as al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« intends in Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt to display his technical virtuosity and throw down a challenge for would-be rivals and competitors, the work maintains an explicit performance dimension. Nevertheless, as the title conveys, the poems are not sparked by the obligations and challenges of the outside world, but rather by technical prosodic obligations and challenges that are entirely self-imposed. In other words, al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« is forced by this withdrawal to formulate a âpoetics of disengagementâ. Deprived ofâor rejectingâthe sociopolitical world and the performative/performance-driven qaṣīdah that it generates, al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« attempts to de-activate or deconstruct the qaṣīdah by substituting for its worldly motivations a radically abstract, intensified, and compensatory programmatic construction based on the prosodic requirements of double rhyme and alphabetical order. Understanding the aesthetics of the luzÅ«miyyah form, I argue (building along the lines of Sperlâs study), calls for a reading closely attentive to the âmicropoeticsâ of rhyme: its role in word choice in terms of syntax and morphology, and the resultant effect on the motifs and structure of both the individual line and the poem. Thus my âpoetics of disengagementâ in practical terms falls under the rubric of Stylistics, particularly as propounded by Roman Jakobson. At the same time, the seemingly inevitable use of proper names from the Arabic-Islamic poetic and folkloric tradition, grounds these highly original poems in the bedrock of Arab-Islamic mythos and mythopoesis. Al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« may have wanted to demolish the qaṣīdah as literary form, but its motifs and rhetorical figures constitute the spolia from which his new work is constructed. While this approach serves effectively to read single or small groups of luzÅ«miyyahs, we are still left to aesthetically gauge the success of Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt as a compelling programmatic whole.
We must keep in mind that in rejecting the classical tradition, in which the preeminent poetic genre was the qaṣīdat al-madḥ, al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« is rejecting all those poets of that tradition who served as both his models and competitorsâchief among them, the Ê¿AbbÄsid master-panegyrists AbÅ« TammÄm, al-BuḥturÄ«, and above all, al-MutanabbÄ«. Not only is their influence clear from reading al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs Saqá¹ al-Zand, but his fervent devotion to al-MutanabbÄ« is credited by some anecdotes to his expulsion from the circle of al-SharÄ«f al-Murtaá¸Ä in Baghdad (Chapter 4, Intro.) and, even in his period of ascetic reclusion he composed commentaries on these three poets.3
Al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« further explains his withdrawal from the world of the qaṣīdah and of worldly affairsâwhich, according to the present argument, are the same thingâin his introduction to Luzum MÄ LÄ Yalzam. He opens the introduction affirming his decision to compose a work in which he aims âat speech that is true and unblemished by lies or deviation from what is right, [â¦] in which there is praise of God, [â¦] a reminder for the forgetful, a wake-up call for the sleeping and negligent, and a warning against the great world which perpetrated such folly upon our forebears.â4 In doing so, he will arrive at a speech that is âstripped of liesâ (qawlun Ê¿urriya min al-mayni).5 We should keep in mind here that a principle of Performative Theory (Speech Act Theory), which I and others have applied to the interpretation and evaluation of the classical Arabic qaṣīdah, is that the performative statement or âspeech actâ has no true/false value. Rather, it is a statement whose successful utterance effects a change of status and binds the participants in the act to an established set of mutual obligationsâfor example, the qaṣīdah as pledge of allegiance to a ruler.6
However, what is crucial to take note of here is al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs claimâor recognitionâthat in abandoning the worldly poetry of the qaṣīdah, he is ipso facto condemning his subsequent poetic productionâAl-LuzÅ«miyyÄt in particularâto mediocrity. Thus, al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« concludes his introduction to LuzÅ«m MÄ LÄ Yalzam picking up from where his preface to Saqá¹ al-Zand (see Part 1, Intro.) left off:
I said previously that I rejected poetry as a newborn camel rejects its fetal membrane and an ostrich chick its eggshell, and [I rejected] the genre of poetry in which lying was considered permissible and in which the poet resorted to all sorts of suspicious things. As for poetry that consists of admonition to him who listens and a wake-up call to him who slumbers and an order to be on guard against the deceitful world and its people who were created for nothing so much as cheating and deceiving, God willing it will be among those things for which reward is sought. And I add to my previous apology that whoever follows this manner of poetry will produce weak poetry because he strives for what is truthful and seeks speech that is pious. It is for this reason that much of the poetry of Umayyah ibn Abī al-Ṣalt al-Thaqafī7 and those in Islamic times who followed his distinctive manner is weak. It is related that al-Aṣmaʿī said words to the effect that: Poetry is one of the doors to falsehood, so if something else is desired from it, it will be weak.8
Thus it seems inevitable to al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« that what he gains in piety, veracity, and virtue, he loses in poetic excellence or aesthetic quality. In this regard, it appears that his demanding self-imposed rhyme program in Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt is largely compensatory. On the one hand he substitutes the technical lexical and prosodic metric of his rhyme scheme for the traditional Ê¿amÅ«d al-shiÊ¿r, the classical standard for the aesthetic evaluation of poetry. At the same timeâin terms of our understanding of the qaṣīdah tradition of valorizing the performative success of the poem in its sociopolitical settingâthe luzÅ«miyyah as poem is understood as, above all, a response to the challenge of al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs self-imposed rhyme requirements rather than a poem sparked by the challenge of a real-world event. The challenge to the poetic imagination is lexical and prosodic rather than experiential.
Al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs scheme is highly complex: it requires not only double rhymes in each letter of the alphabet, but also all four possible vowel endings (a, i, u, and the nonvowel, sukÅ«n), as al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« states in his introduction to LuzÅ«m MÄ LÄ Yalzam:
In this work I have imposed upon myself three constraints: the first is that it be ordered according to the alphabet [from first] to last; the second is that the rhyme consonant be followed by each of the three vowels plus sukÅ«n; and the third is that each rhyme consonant be preceded by a [normally] nonobligatory second consonant, such as yÄʾ or tÄʾ or another consonant.9
In other words, he has not composed a series of poems and then organized them alphabeticallyârather, the complex, elaborate, and all-encompassing rhyme scheme has determined the composition of the poems. However, we have to go further with our argument. On closer examination it becomes evident that al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« is not merely rejecting the performative poetics of the panegyric qaṣīdah tradition, but he is proposing and promoting an entirely new poetic aesthetic standard or criterion. We can now understand that in rejecting the qaṣīdah and the political-performative world to which it belongs, al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« had, ipso facto, to reject the standard of evaluation for that poetryâwhich, in effect, I argue, was its performative success. Al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs new (Postclassical, in my view) aesthetic requires that the poet be measured by his total mastery of his most basic poetic toolsârhyme, meter and language (Ê¿ilm al-lughah, including syntax, morphology, and lexicon). This is borne out in the many other programmatic works of al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«, no longer extant, but described, for example, by YÄqÅ«t al-ḤamawÄ« in IrshÄd al-ArÄ«b. Chief among them in the present context, is his JÄmiÊ¿ al-AwzÄn, which presents the same tour-de-force of meters as Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt does of rhyme.10
Of particular note in the context of the challenge of Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt to produce rhymes in every letter of the alphabet are al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs disparaging remarks about the shortcomings of his illustrious predecessors in this regard: Of the greatest JÄhilÄ« poets, what is related of Imruʾ al-Qaysâs poetry has nothing rhymed in á¹Äʾ, áºÄʾ, shin, khÄʾ and such letters, and the diwan of al-NÄbighah al-DhubyÄnÄ« has nothing rhymed in á¹£Äd, á¸Äd, á¹Äʾ, etc. Of the Ê¿AbbÄsid masters, al-BuḥturÄ« has nothing rhymed in khÄʾ, ghayn, or thÄʾ in the recognized recension of his diwan; and as for the incomparable al-MutanabbÄ«, he did not use the rhyme consonants (sg. rawÄ«) with all possible end-vowels.11 My point is that in devising his programmatic rhyme project, al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« is at the same time establishing a new aesthetic yardstick by which poets will now be measured: the poetâs demonstrated ability to rhyme in all the letters of the alphabet and with all three end-vowels plus sukÅ«n. This criterion is not part of classical Arabic poetics and aesthetics, but such metrics and schemes become pervasive in the Postclassical period.12
At this point we can go beyond our initial discussion of the poetry of Saqá¹ al-Zand and al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs concern for demonstrating his âauthorityââthat is, his mastery of the poetic tradition, its language, conventions, etc.âand his âauthenticityââthe creation of poems that are original contributions to that tradition. For we now find al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« arrogating to himself as poet a level of authority, both moral and aesthetic, heretofore unknown. He claims the right to promulgate new aesthetic and moral standards for poetry, and, further, on the basis of these new standards, to serve as arbiter of the poetic tradition, as he points to the moral (lies, mendacity) and aesthetic (missing rhyme-letters) shortcomings in the oeuvre of recognized master poets from the JÄhiliyyah to the High Ê¿AbbÄsid period. Not merely the new principles that his newly claimed authority has established but also his own poetic production based on those principles will then serve as the measure for poets to come.
Several scholars have made important contributions toward formulating a new aesthetic for the interpretation and evaluation of al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs literary accomplishment in Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt, precisely in the terms that are of concern to the present study: the close reading of the âmechanicsâ of individual luzÅ«miyyahs.13 While such close studies may seem to make it difficult to âsee the forest for the treesâ, to my mind any assessment of the full literary structure is impossible without understanding the inner workings of its constituent parts, and then their relationship. Given that there are some 1,600 poems in the collection, this is a daunting task. What is of importance to me is that these studies, although they do not employ the term, approach the poetic texts in a manner we could term âStylisticsâ. By this I mean, following Roman Jakobsonâs groundbreaking, âPoetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry,â14 that the analysis of the text is on the principle that all linguistic features of the text are meaning-producing; thus, for example, in the case at hand, Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt, the formal aspects such as phonology, morphology, syntax, meter, and, of course, rhyme, all generate meaning in the text. How or whether these constituent parts contribute to a coherent and successful project is a further challenge, beyond the scope of the present study.
In my estimation, the starting-point for a contemporary reading and evaluation of al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt in general, and Part 2 of the present study in particular, is Stefan Sperlâs study in Mannerism in Arabic Poetry.15 He has produced a wide-ranging study of al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs recasting of the themes, motifs, and proper names of the classical qaṣīdah structure into the morally and prosodically reconceived luzÅ«miyyah poem and Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt project. Leaving behind both the Romantic and âphilosophicalâ approaches that characterized literary studies of Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Sperl focusses his analyses of select poems on the medium of speech itself.16 He understands al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs project with comprehensive and systematic approach to rhyme as analogous to works such as Johann Sebastian Bachâs (d. 1750) systematic exploration of all the major and minor keys in The Well-Tempered Clavier.17 Key to our readings in the present study is his statement that,
Furthermore, al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs rules do not only affect the external shape of the LuzÅ«miyyÄt. They have great influence on the texture of individual poems. This is evident even on purely theoretical grounds. The reinforced qÄfiya restricts the lexical choice of rhyme words; by imposing a certain vocalic pattern, it also limits the range of morphological patterns a rhyme word can assume. Both factors have inevitable repercussions on phonology and syntax and all of these affect the semantic structure.18
See Ḥusayn, TajdÄ«d DhikrÄ AbÄ« al-Ê¿AlÄʾ, 227 and refs; Stefan Sperl, Mannerism in Arabic Poetry: A Structural Analysis of Selected Texts (3rd Century AH/9th Century ADâ5th Century AH/11th Century AD) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 97â99.
Ê¿Abd al-RaḥmÄn [Bint al-ShÄá¹iʾ], MaÊ¿a AbÄ« al-Ê¿AlÄʾ fÄ« Riḥlat ḤiyÄtih, 237.
These, all titled in puns on the poetsâ names, are DhikrÄ á¸¤abÄ«b, on AbÅ« TammÄm ḤabÄ«b ibn Aws al-ṬÄʾī; Ê¿Abath WalÄ«d, on AbÅ« Ê¿UbÄdah WalÄ«d ibn Ê¿Ubayd AllÄh al-BuḥturÄ«, and MuÊ¿jiz Aḥmad, on Aḥmad AbÅ« al-Ṭayyib al-MutanabbÄ« (otherwise entitled Al-LamiÊ¿ al-Ê¿AzÄ«zÄ« after its patron, the emir of Aleppo, Ê¿AzÄ«z al-Dawlah, assuming they are the same work). See YÄqÅ«t al-ḤamawÄ«, IrshÄd al-ArÄ«b, in ṬaÊ¿rÄ«f al-QudamÄʾ, 107, 111. Although YÄqÅ«t remarks that some of these were not willingly composed by al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«, they nevertheless reveal his range of poetic expertise. See also Moustapha Saleh, âAbÅ«âl-Ê¿AlÄʾ al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« (363â449/973â1057): Bibliographie critique,â Bulletin dââ¯Ãtudes Orientales 23 (1970): 275â276.
Zand, 1:2; al-KhÄnjÄ«, 1:9.
Zand, 1:2; al-KhÄnjÄ«, 1:9.
See again, Al-Mallah, âDoing Things with Odes,â and Al-Mallah, In the Shadows of the Master, 81â111; See also. S. Stetkevych, Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, esp. chap. 6, âThe Poetics of Political Allegiance,â 180â240.
A poet of the time of the Prophet Muḥammad, traditionally considered a ḥanÄ«f. The poetry attributed to him is characterized by âlegendaryâ and âreligiousâ elements, otherwise familiar from the qiá¹£aá¹£ al-anbiyÄʾ (stories of the prophets). See J.E. Montgomery, âUmayya b. Abi âl-á¹¢alt,â EI2.
Zand, 1:41â42; al-KhÄnjÄ«, 1:31â32.
Zand, 1:32; al-KhÄnjÄ«, 1:23.
See the descriptive list of al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs works in YÄqÅ«t al-ḤamawÄ«, IrshÄd al-ArÄ«b, in TaÊ¿rÄ«f al-QudamÄʾ, 101â112; and esp. 106 for al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs JÄmiÊ¿ al-AwzÄn.
Zand, 1:31â32; al-KhÄnjÄ«, 1:22â23.
I hope to expand upon this topic on a later occasion. Meanwhile, see S. Stetkevych, âFrom JÄhiliyyah to BadÄ«Ê¿/iyyah,â 211â230, passim, and S. Stetkevych, âRhetoric, Hybridity and Performance,â 207â231, passim.
In a brief study of two poems, Anthony Verity offers insights concerning the strong effects that can be produced by the unrelenting rhyme patterns, lack of imagery, and other features. See A.C.F. Verity, âTwo Poems of Abuâl-Ê¿AlÄ Al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«,â Journal of Arabic Literature 2 [1971], 37â47. Referring to the rhetorical aspects of Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt, he remarks, âWhen recited, these lines take on a new dimension. As the noble sound rolls off oneâs tongue, each couplet rhyming inexorably with the last, the very regularity invests the words with a kind of inevitable (emotional) truthâ (p. 42). Concerning the sometimes jarring parataxis, as opposed to logical progression, of al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs style in Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt, he notes, âPerhaps we should not look for an intellectual progression of ideas, but examine how the images (which trigger off an emotional reaction) act upon each other by juxtapositionâ (p. 40). Finally, in interpreting the lapidary, paratactic structure and compelling and heavy rhyme of certain poems, Verity discusses them in terms of âpublic ritual cursing,â âsolemn communication,â and the poet âassuming the persona of official magician pronouncing anathema [on] his enemiesâ (pp. 45, 46). Among other points he makes, in the course of analyzing particular poems, but which we will find applicable in the poems at hand, is the direct impact that can be produced by the very absence of imagery (p. 46).
Although not as explicitly concerned with âstylisticâ matters, Smoorâs very close reading and analysis of al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs anomalously long 50-verse TukannÄ« LuzÅ«miyyah in the context of extensive comparisons with his Saqá¹ al-Zand and Al-DirÊ¿iyyÄt (Armor Poems, usually included with Saqá¹ al-Zand) offer vast information on al-MaÊ¿arrÄ«âs poeticsâlanguage, imagery, themes, etc., and the place of Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt among his poetic works. See Pieter Smoor, âThe Delirious Sword of MaÊ¿arrÄ«: An Annotated Translation of his LuzÅ«miyya NÅ«niyya in the Rhyme-Form: âNÅ«n MaksÅ«ra Mushaddadaâ,â in Festschrift Ewald Wagner zum 65. Geburtstag, vol. 2: Studien zur arabischen Dichtung, ed. Wolfhart Heinrichs and Gregor Schoeler (Beirut: Franz Steiner, 1994), 381â424. On Stefan Sperlâs important study, see above note 1, and below. See also on the problematics of Al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt, Suzanne Stetkevych, âIshkÄliyyÄt al-LuzÅ«miyyÄt: Naḥw QirÄʾah JadÄ«dah li-MashrÅ«Ê¿ AbÄ« al-Ê¿AlÄʾ al-MaÊ¿arrÄ« al-ShiÊ¿rÄ«âLuzÅ«m MÄ LÄ Yalzam: qÄfiyat al-dÄl maÊ¿ al-bÄʾ namÅ«dhajan,â in Conference Proceedings: Third International Conference, The Arabic Linguistic and Literary Accomplishment, as Treated in Foreign Studies, King Saud University and The King Faisal Prize Organization, Nov. 10â12, 2020 (Riyadh: King Saud University, 2020), 1â19.
Roman Jakobson, âPoetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry,â in Roman Jakobson, Language in Literature, ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1987), 121â144. See further, his âSubliminal Verbal Patterning in Poetryâ in Jakobson, Language in Literature, ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1987), 250â261.
Sperl, Mannerism in Arabic Poetry, 97â154.
Sperl, Mannerism in Arabic Poetry, 99.
Sperl, Mannerism in Arabic Poetry, 102.
Sperl, Mannerism in Arabic Poetry, 102.