When Sulaymān [al-Mustaʿīn] established himself in Cordoba … those that remained of the ʿĀmirid poets (shuʿarāʾ ʿāmiriyyīn) that were still residing in Cordoba at that time began to compose panegyric for him in the hope of tapping the stores of his generosity. So they composed in his praise good poems in which they appealed to religion (dīn) and manly virtue (murūʾa), and most of them recited them openly in his public audience. He listened with manifest delight, but then defrauded them in accepting the panegyric, for he neither rained down generous rewards upon them nor even sprinkled. Because of this the dispersal of the group [of poets] from Cordoba was completed and most of them abandoned his protection. Thus every trace of culture (adab) was erased there and was vanquished by barbarism, and the Cordobans reverted from their customary humanism to blatant vulgarity, and nobility was abandoned.
Ibn Ḥayyān, apud Ibn Bassām 1989, I, i:501
∵
This passage, which describes the state of literary patronage in Cordoba immediately after the ʿĀmirid period, is telling of what Andalusi poets had come to expect under ʿĀmirid patronage: a two-way relationship, in which the patron provided a captive audience for their panegyrics, and in turn rewarded them amply. As Stetkevych puts it, ‘the role of a panegyric qaṣīda in a ritual exchange of poem and prize is … a sacred trust upon which courtly culture is founded’.2 When al-Mustaʿīn did not fulfil his side of the bargain, the dīwān of ʿĀmirid poets was forced to find patronage elsewhere. As the passage quoted above goes on to say, Ibn Darrāj was one of the poets to leave Cordoba at this time, finding patronage at the Tujībid court in Zaragoza.3 Ibn Ḥayyān credits this diaspora for the flourishing of Arabic literature at Taifa courts in the eleventh century, led by such charismatic and creative individuals as Ibn Shuhayd and Ibn Ḥazm. But, as this passage implies, the only place that Andalusi poets could have come to expect such a level of patronage, and where the seeds for the later flourishing were sown, was at the ʿĀmirid court. In fact, for Salma Khadra Jayyusi, the ‘ḥijāba period’ was the start of ‘the greatest literary age of al-Andalus’.4
While there is little textual evidence for al-Manṣūr’s artistic patronage, there is substantial evidence in the primary sources to demonstrate active literary patronage during his ḥijāba. Indeed, a new ‘courtly’ style of courtier was born from al-Manṣūr’s policy of surrounding himself with an informal dīwān of boon companions (nudamāʾ), a practice which likewise reached its full development at Taifa courts, as Cynthia Robinson has discussed.5 The focus in this chapter will be on the development of an ʿĀmirid literary culture, since a study of the influence of literary patronage on the cultural environment of the ʿĀmirid court suggests ways in which the visual arts produced for these same patrons may be read. These personal and intimate gatherings with members of the Cordoban elite, who tacitly legitimised their regime, developed bonds of loyalty to al-Manṣūr and his sons; these were also the target audience of the messages contained in the decoration of the objects which furnished the spaces in which they gathered. These objects will be discussed in detail in the following chapters, while the relationship of poetic imagery to particular ʿĀmirid objects or visual motifs is discussed in Chapter 8.
1 Elegance and Eloquence: the Literary Court
The literature patronised by the ʿĀmirid court falls into two types: public poetry, that is panegyric which was composed for the express purpose of recitation during the types of ceremonial occasions discussed in the previous chapter; and private poetry, created and sung in intimate majālis hosted by al-Manṣūr and his sons, as we will discuss below. This atmosphere of literary patronage invites a broader consideration of the place of books and learning at this period.
Every ceremony in al-Rāzī’s Annals ends with a short paragraph containing a phrase similar to the following example: ‘During [the ceremony] the orators and poets stood extemporising and reciting many long and excellent [orations and poems], and among the best of what the poets recited that day was …’.6 Al-Rāzī then relates the ‘greatest hits’ of the panegyric poems recited on that occasion. In this way, a substantial quantity of panegyric poetry from the last years of al-Ḥakam’s reign has been preserved. Studies of this poetry show that it was ‘essentially political’, and that poets used it to make statements about ‘[Andalusi] foreign policy and [its] expansionist plans vis-à-vis the Islamic world’.7
The rhetorical vehicle for these political statements was the panegyric qaṣīda, which was transferred to al-Andalus from the Abbasid court ‘as an integral element of courtly ceremony and the insignia of authority’.8 This is reflected not only in the incorporation of panegyric recitation as an essential element of Andalusi ceremonial, but also in the practice of muʿāraḍa, ‘imitation’ or ‘response’ to a well-known, earlier, usually Abbasid poem.9 Such was the case in the qaṣīdas recited at the ʿīd al-fiṭr ceremony of 363/974: al-Muhannad’s offering imitated a poem by Abū al-ʿAtāhiya, and that of Ibn Shukhayṣ was based on poetic quotation from Abū Tammām.10 Thus, Cordoban poets strove to identify ‘qaṣīda with qaṣīda and caliphate with caliphate’ – in other words, to identify poetically with their Muslim rivals, all the better to compete with them politically.11 The court poet’s presentation of a panegyric qaṣīda was thus ‘an act of allegiance that [was] both politically and ritually obligatory and, as a bodily performance, [was] part of the iconography of power’.12
As al-Manṣūr adopted the forms of caliphal ceremonial and diplomatic relations in the articulation of his court, so he adopted the all-important element of panegyric poetry. The transmission of much of Ibn Darrāj’s dīwān indicates that these poems were publicly recited, in gatherings like those recorded in the Anales Palatinos. Al-Manṣūr was skillful in his manipulation of public poetry, in the audience hall as well as on the battlefield, and his military entourages usually included poets ‘so that they might record his high deeds’.13 He was accompanied on his campaign against Count Borrell of Barcelona in 375/986 by no fewer than forty poets, whose names have been preserved by Ibn al-Khaṭīb as illustrative of the ‘pomp and splendour with which [the ḥājib] generally marched, and the cultivation of letters during his administration’.14 His own political propaganda depended in large part on the panegyrics that these poets composed about him, which were widely circulated, projecting a particular image that he himself designed.15
It is apparent from what Makkī calls his ‘vivid realism’ that Ibn Darrāj also accompanied al-Manṣūr on several campaigns: in poem 111, for example, which was written about al-Manṣūr’s campaign against León in 995, he gives a vivid description of the Muslim armies marching through the hardships of winter and his impressions of the horrors of war.16 In poem 4, he says unequivocally, ‘With my own eyes I saw, on the day of the battle of Clunia …’ (l.33); in poem 126, ‘I saw how you made a star fall and I was a witness of what they call the lion race’ (l.23).17 Ibn Darrāj was also employed to write in rhymed prose the official account (risāla) of the Santiago campaign in 387/997, a work which was considered by contemporary critics to be a masterpiece of Arabic prose. Ibn Ḥazm relates that at the end of the campaign, al-Manṣūr summoned his most favoured poet-scribes, Ibn Darrāj and Abū Marwān al-Jazīrī, and ordered them to write immediately their accounts of the battle. While al-Jazīrī complied, Ibn Darrāj waited a few days, and in consequence his work was the ‘object of the greatest admiration … as much for its accuracy as for its magnificent literary style’.18 Though now lost, it is possible that it is partly preserved in Ibn ʿIdhārī’s account of this campaign, which is ‘much more detailed, with a profusion of toponymic and geographical facts, precise dates and details which we do not encounter in [his] accounts … of the other campaigns’.19
The ḥājib’s intention in employing poets in such capacities was clearly that he be praised and his exploits celebrated, but this begs the question: what was his intended audience? While military victories continued to be announced to the population at large from the minbars of the congregational mosques,20 a document written in complex rhymed prose was intended solely for an educated audience. Likewise, panegyrics were recited in gatherings of the state’s elite, at ceremonies such as those discussed in the previous chapter, where al-Manṣūr received homage from his conquered enemies. We should also bear in mind that poetic celebrations of al-Manṣūr’s military successes would resonate among his political rivals, and we find in Ibn Darrāj’s poems exaggerated and propagandistic statements vis-à-vis the Abbasids and Fatimids.21 For these reasons, Stetkevych characterises ‘the qaṣīda as an object’ as ‘one of the “royal insignia”’.22
To fulfil these ceremonial functions – but also for more private reasons, as we shall see – al-Manṣūr maintained a circle (dīwān) of poets laureate, the shuʿarāʾ ʿāmiriyyīn of Ibn Ḥayyān’s passage above, or the ‘pensioned poets’ as they are called by Ibn al-Khaṭīb.23 This seems to have come into being around 991–2.24 This group was formed by the most educated men of the day, who also held official posts at court. In addition to those names that have already been mentioned (Ibn Darrāj, Ṣāʿid al-Baghdādī, al-Jazīrī), the following persons can be associated with the ʿĀmirid dīwān: courtier-poets of al-Ḥakam’s reign such as al-Muṣḥafī and Hārūn al-Ramādī;25 patricians (and fathers of poets) such as Abū Marwān ibn Shuhayd and Aḥmad ibn Ḥazm;26 al-Sharīf al-Ṭalīq, an Umayyad prince of the blood, whom Ibn Ḥazm called ‘the best Andalusi poet of his time’;27 savants such as Ibn al-ʿArīf (tutor to al-Manṣūr’s sons), Ibn Dhakwān (grand qāḍī of Cordoba), Abū Hafṣ ibn Burd (author of Sanchuelo’s succession risāla),28 and ʿĪsā ibn Saʿīd (ḥājib to al-Muẓaffar). The Ṣaqāliba in al-Manṣūr’s retinue were also highly educated, and Ibn Ḥayyān preserves the names of those who authored books or treatises;29 later, when several of them became rulers of Taifa states, they sponsored their own literary circles (Conclusion).30 In sum, ‘the poets, theologians, orators and rhetoricians who flourished under [al-Manṣūr’s] reign … were as numerous as the sands of the ocean’, and in a chapter entitled ‘the state of literature under Hishām’, the caliph’s name is not once mentioned by al-Maqqarī.31
Access to this group was gained by competitive application. A prospective member’s credentials were his education and wit, his talent at composing and preferably extemporising quality poetry, and his courtly comportment – qualities which Robinson embodies in the concepts of ‘elegance’ and ‘eloquence’.32 However, he was still required to pass through a formal tribunal, as the experiences of both Ibn Darrāj (958–1030) and Ṣāʿid al-Baghdādī (c. 950–1026) demonstrate. Ibn Darrāj al-Qasṭallī – whose kunya implies an association with Castile, but who may in fact have been a Ṣanhāja Berber – faced a tribunal composed of poets, literati and intellectuals, in which he was required to improvise a panegyric in al-Manṣūr’s honour. The panel considered his offering too perfect and accused him of plagiarism. In refutation of this charge, he improvised a second poem (preserved in his Dīwān as poem 100), with which he was successful. He was generously rewarded by al-Manṣūr, appointed to the position of kātib in the Dīwān al-Inshāʾ (Chancery), and on 3 Shawwal 382/2 December 992 ‘his name was inscribed in the register of official poets’.33 The brilliance of his poetic skill led to Ibn Darrāj being commissioned to compose the funeral elegy for Ṣubḥ, on her death in 998;34 eventually his reputation was such that he was known as ‘the Mutanabbī of al-Andalus’, after the Abbasid poet who lived 915–965.35
Ṣāʿid al-Baghdādī’s ‘trial’ was even more notorious. One of the cultured men attracted to Cordoba at this period from the Islamic East, he arrived from Baghdad in 990, where he was known as ‘al-Lughawī’, ‘the Philologist’.36 Before being awarded a place on al-Manṣūr’s dīwān, he was put to the test by a ‘cabal … of high officials, secretaries of the Chancery, literati and poets’,37 led by Ibn al-ʿArīf, al-Zubaydī and al-ʿĀṣimī, who posed questions of Arabic grammar and philology.38 As seems to be something of a topos, Ṣāʿid was also accused of plagiarism, and his skill was tested by being required to improvise a poem in description of an elaborately-laid tray:39
“A large tray, containing compartments ornamented with every variety of elegant designs … On the roof of the compartments were toys of jasmine made in imitation of females, and under the roof a reservoir of transparent water, the bottom of which was paved with pearls instead of common pebbles; in the water was a snake swimming. [Upon showing this object to the poet, al-Manṣūr said,] ‘Look at that tray, the like of which I assert was never placed before any other king but me. If the charge brought against you be false, prove it by describing to me in verse both the tray and its contents’. [To meet this challenge, Ṣāʿid recited a composition that al-Manṣūr deemed beautiful but incomplete. He called Ṣāʿid’s attention to a detail he had failed to notice:] a ship, in which was a maiden rowing herself with oars of gold. Immediately Ṣāʿid started reciting new verses on the motif he had previously overlooked and, finally, al-Manṣūr regarded the poem worthy of the object described. For his ability to render images in poetic words, Ṣāʿid received a gift: one thousand dinars and one hundred robes.”
Francisco Prado-Vilar subjects this episode to an interesting analysis that has implications for our later discussions about al-Manṣūr’s engagement with the workings of the luxury arts industry (Chapter 6) and how the iconography of the objects he commissioned visualised specific messages about the ʿĀmirids’ role (Chapter 8). This anecdote ‘reveals a model of viewing courtly portable objects that privileges close observation and attention to detail’ – it shows al-Manṣūr engaging with the materiality and physicality of the object before him, ‘find[ing] pleasure in the discovery of nuances and variations on the commonplace’.40 It also highlights a privileged interrelationship between objects and poetry. As Prado-Vilar puts it, ‘When interpretation entered the public stage, the vehicle was poetry because it was understood that the essential challenge posed by the visual was a challenge to the limitations of language itself. Only the poet, the master of language, could attempt to come close to capturing the full significance of the object’.
Arcades at the Aljafería, Zaragoza, late eleventh century
© Kent RawlinsonIt is not surprising that the admission process to the ʿĀmirid dīwān was so tightly controlled and jealously guarded by those who were already in it, since it meant the making of one’s career and was accompanied by generous remuneration. It presumably also ensured that only poetry and literature of the highest calibre was seen to be patronised by the court. However, it also symbolised admission to al-Manṣūr’s closest circle, for a poet who passed the tribunal thus became one of the ḥājib’s nudamāʾ (boon companions), with whom he chose to relax in intimate majālis on his return from campaign. While the patronage of court panegyrists can be interpreted in the context of ʿĀmirid ‘appropriation’ of caliphal ceremonial, this second, more private, level of the dīwān would appear to have been a personal innovation by al-Manṣūr.
2 Private Poetry
As Cynthia Robinson has discussed, in her work on the Taifa court of the Tujībids of Zaragoza and its home among the intricately-decorated halls of the Aljafería (Figure 14), by the early eleventh century, the primary forum for interaction between king and courtier had become the majlis al-uns, ‘elegant and intimate soirées at which wine was drunk, physical and spiritual beauties contemplated, and lyrical poetry and song improvised and sung’.41 Such was the environment out of which arose the treatises on adab by Aḥmad al-Aṣghar ibn Burd, grandson of the ʿĀmirid kātib;42 Ibn Ḥazm’s work on ‘courtly love’; and the poems of Ibn Shuhayd in which the poet adopts the role of the ‘loving subject’.43
These new ‘courtly’ relationships were not forged according to traditional virtues, but rather by ‘the possession of certain qualities which could be cultivated (knowledge, elegance in person, deportment and speech)’.44 This differentiated them from the traditional relationships between caliph and courtier-poet, and thus allowed the creation of an ‘alternate nobility’. The main protagonists of this ‘courtly’ interaction were the kuttāb of the Dīwān al-Inshāʾ, members of Cordoba’s patrician families. As discussed in Chapter 1, al-Manṣūr was conscious of needing the support of these ‘mandarin dynasties’ and cultivated their support by finding new positions of power for them in the administration. The development of a private aspect to the relationship between ruler and courtier was perhaps the most important way in which the ʿĀmirids sought to build support for their position. What Robinson describes as the ‘ʿĀmirī rulers’ perspicacious currying of the favor of “old nobility”’ through ‘ties of loyalty’,45 and of occasionally solidifying those relationships through marriage,46 bound the Cordoban elite to the ʿĀmirid dynasty. Though this bond was forged in the intimate setting of literary majālis, it was publicly and regularly affirmed through the practice of caliphal-style ceremonial.
The new privileging of written culture in al-Andalus can again be compared to the cultural coming-of-age of the Abbasid court in the late eighth/early ninth centuries, when writing and literature were growing in sophistication and importance, increasing in complexity and ‘metaphorical encoding’, and reflected in the newly self-conscious practice of history-writing.47 Von Grunebaum attributes this development to the increasing urbanisation of Abbasid society, which led to what he calls ‘the ritualisation of life’,48 that is, the codification of an intricate social etiquette as embodied, for example, in the Kitāb al-Muwashshāʾ.49 It is generally accepted that the Abbasid culture of ẓarf, ‘elegance’, was introduced to al-Andalus in the ninth century by figures such as Ziryāb, who brought to Cordoba ‘not only the courtly music traditions of Baghdad but also the art of elegant living, with its manners, fashions and etiquette’.50 Ẓarf also accompanied the adoption of the ‘courtly’ persona in al-Andalus, and literary anthologies show that the ‘cult of physical elegance and verbal eloquence’ was firmly entrenched at the Taifa courts. However, Robinson argues that the foundations of this ‘cult’ were laid at the ʿĀmirid court.
Vignettes of these ‘relationships of loyalty’ are preserved by the sources. One source which Robinson uses extensively in her discussion is the Kitāb al-Badīʿ fī Waṣf al-Rabīʿ, written c. 1040 by al-Ḥimyarī and dedicated as a gift to the Taifa ruler of Seville, al-Muʿtadid ibn ʿAbbād.51 This anthology of lyric verse drew on the ‘private’ correspondence of ʿĀmirid courtiers, and the qualities and accomplishments which these men praised in each other help us to define a portrait of the ideal courtier: for example, a qaṣīda written by Abū Hafṣ ibn Burd to Ṣāʿid al-Baghdādī lauds his general knowledge (ʿilm), elegance (ẓarf), knowledge of and prowess in literature (adab), agreeableness (ṭīb), and linguistic skills (lughāt).52 ʿĀmirid nudamāʾ were thus ‘united by their nobility, their intelligence, their education and their peerless dominion over that most noble tool of their trade, the Arabic language’.53
The context for the propagation of these ‘courtly’ virtues was al-Manṣūr’s majlis, a word qualified in the texts by al-uns or al-muʾnis, meaning (abstractly) a gathering or (physically) a place, for leisure, sociability or intimacy. Such gatherings had long since given rise to their own lyrical genre – the khamriyya.54 The favoured setting was a locus amoenus which evoked nature but was usually an artificial, cultivated environment which accorded better with the tastes of contemporary urban society. The favoured time was night – all night – and wine was passed round by a wine-pourer (sāqī) or Ganymede, a young boy selected for his looks, and ‘specially trained to perform his office with flirtatious charm and in accordance with prescribed rules of etiquette’.55 The sāqī played an important role in creating the requisite atmosphere, and was often the subject in games of poetic improvisation with which the participants entertained themselves; other entertainment was provided by dancers and singers, accompanied by musicians.
If we look at the scenes on the front of the Pamplona casket (Figure 120), we can start to visualise what these gatherings might have looked like. Together with the anecdotal testimony of poetry and literature, the material evidence can help to build a picture of the physical setting of the ʿĀmirid majlis. It is said that on his return from campaign, al-Manṣūr liked to relax in the palace of al-Madīnat al-Zāhira, or in one of the various nearby ʿĀmirid munyas (Chapter 4), ‘surrounded by cool gardens, filled with the murmur of fountains, fragranced with the perfume of flowers’.56 He was joined in these leisure hours by his nudamāʾ, members of his dīwān who had likely also accompanied him on campaign. As at the Aljafería, the settings were probably pavilions surrounded by gardens, where the distinction between inside and outside was blurred. The luscious vegetation framed by architectural ornament which is presented as the main decoration on both al-Manṣūr’s fountain basin (Figure 114) and the Braga pyxis (Figure 15) seems to capture the sense of looking out through the arches of a pavilion at a verdant garden. These gardens were watered by fountains and canals, and perhaps ‘inhabited’ by sculptures of animals, which could also provide a source of inspiration for improvised verses. A poem by al-Jazīrī, for example, describes one of these ‘salons’:
“In the centre of the hall is a large basin of green water in which the turtles continually make sounds.
The water pours from the jaws of a lion whose mouth could only be more terrible if it spoke.
It is of scented aloeswood (nadd) and around its neck one sees a handsome necklace of pearls …
In this hall, a king, whose riches are without number, has gathered all happiness for his people.”57
Pyxis, datable 1004–8, ivory; Braga Cathedral, Portugal
Photo: Bruce White / Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, reproduced with permission of the Tesouro-Museu da Sé de BragaSimilarly a poem by Ṣāʿid al-Baghdādī alludes to the presence of water animals, presumably turtles, as ‘aquatic troops, inexpertly suited in their armour and displaying cuirasses and shields’.58 This rather militaristic imagery accords with the ʿĀmirid self-image as mujāhid, visualised especially on their marble fountain basins (Chapter 8).
Several such basins have survived, which must originally have furnished these settings (Figures 113–118, 128–135, 156–158). Their production contexts, materials, inscriptions and decoration will be discussed in more detail in Chapters 6–8, but for now it is significant to note their obvious original function as fountain basins, indicated not only by their size and shape, but also by the holes carved into many of them for input and output pipes. The three largest basins also have a plain, uncarved area on each of their short sides, between the eagles, which indicates that a fountain-head was once affixed here, one on each end (Figures 116, 131, 132, 158). These fountain-heads were presumably in the shape of animals, such as the lion of aloeswood described in al-Jazīrī’s poem, or the twelve which ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III commissioned to adorn his green marble basin from the Byzantine emperor (Figures 10, 108–109). The prevalence of iconography relating to water on these and other surviving marbles associated with the ʿĀmirids – for example, the designs of ducks, fishes and turtles on the small basins from Seville and Granada (Figures 164–168) and in the borders of the three large basins, or the aquatic plants which seem to be waving as if in the current of a stream – is appropriate for objects whose function was associated with water. They also suggest a relationship between lions and water, which will be discussed in Chapter 8.
An eleventh-century risāla by Ibn Jabīr, courtier of the Banū Dhū al-Nūn, then Taifa rulers of Toledo, describes fountain basins which appear to have been similar in form and decoration to the extant ʿĀmirid basins, in a palatial setting which helps us to conjure a picture of how the ʿĀmirid basins were originally installed and viewed (Figures 108–109). This risāla presents an eye-witness account of the festivities held by al-Maʾmūn (r. 1043–1075) in honour of the circumcision of his grandson, and to which the highest men of the state were invited:59
“In this salon there were some ponds at whose corners were raised up figures of lions forged in gold with great art which startled those who looked at them with their sombre faces, and they threw forth water from their mouths into the ponds with the softness of drops of rain or phials of silver. In the [middle] of each pond was a basin of marble in the form of an altar, of great size, of wondrous form and extraordinarily engraved, for on each of their sides they were worked with figures of animals, birds and trees. The water of the two basins surrounded two trees of silver, tall and of extraordinary form and finished manufacture, which were fixed in the middle of each basin with the most refined technique. The water mounted up them from the basins and cascaded down from the highest point of their branches like light rain or dew. Upon entering it produced a murmuring which inclined the soul, and it went up to the top of a heavy column, produced by pressure, then slipping down from openings and moistening the figures of birds and fruit with a tongue which was like a polished phial, and whose beauty ignited the gaze.”
It should be remembered that the ceremonial and perhaps even some of the physical furnishings at al-Maʾmūn’s court very likely inherited a model that had been developed under the ʿĀmirids. We can imagine, then, that the palace halls and gardens where al-Manṣūr liked to relax with his nudamāʾ would have been watered by such basins, and the existence of al-Jazīrī’s verses demonstrates that such objects were seen and remarked upon. As a result, these gatherings became a form of ‘private display’, in which the nudamāʾ – those members of the Cordoban elite whose personal loyalty to the ʿĀmirids tacitly legitimised their regime – were the target audience of the messages contained in these objects’ decoration.
During these private gatherings, the ḥājib is portrayed in intimate têtes-à-têtes with his companions while strolling among his palace gardens: on one occasion, for example, al-Manṣūr requested that the poet he was with improvise a description (waṣf) on a certain aspect of the garden’s beauty.60 Ibn Shuhayd recalled how, in the ‘halcyon days’ of his childhood, savants and literati gathered at al-Madīnat al-Zāhira for durūb al-ʿulūm, ‘paths to enlightenment’, conversations on subjects such as adab (culture), khabr (history), fiqh (jurisprudence) and ṭibb (medicine).61 New lyrical genres developed, especially the nawriyya, descriptions of flowers which often ended with a few lines of panegyric, a genre that was particularly favoured by al-Manṣūr’s son, ʿAbd al-Malik.62 Furthermore, al-Manṣūr himself participated in the activity of poetic composition and recitation: on one occasion the ḥājib recited verses from a qaṣīda by Abū Nūwās (c. 747–c. 813), the archetypal poet of the wine-party genre.63 He is also known to have corresponded in verse with his courtiers,64 and to have composed at least one short poem on the subject of his own bravery, to which we shall return in Chapter 8.65
On occasion, al-Manṣūr’s gatherings became quite raucous. Blachère portrays a place where ‘anything goes’, of ‘long banquets where they ate well and drank better … One even sees high officials getting up to dance and singing bacchic songs’66 – such as the time when Abū Marwān ibn Shuhayd became ‘so carried away with wine and mirth’ that he disported himself, in spite of his age and his gout, with three young serving women.67 According to Robinson, al-Manṣūr’s majālis had a larger attendance than those of the Taifa period and may have included women, in contrast to the purely homosocial world of Taifa courts.68 The majālis hosted by Ibn Shuhayd (grandson of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III’s boon companion) in the eleventh century were notorious for their debauchery, and they shared many elements with al-Manṣūr’s drinking parties, not least the participation of many of the same people.69 However, Robinson argues from the differences between them that al-Manṣūr’s era represented ‘a point of transition, an initial stage in the development of the persona of the “courtly” king’.70
How do these ʿĀmirid majālis compare, then, to the private conduct of the caliphal court? As Robinson notes, ‘The lyrical, or pleasurable, realm clearly existed during the caliphate, and was prized’.71 Indeed, the caliphal panegyrist Ibn ʿAbd Rabbihī (858–940) is known to have composed lyrical poetry on themes of ‘boys, wine and love’,72 whilst al-Muṣḥafī composed lyrical poetry which showed the first glimpses in al-Andalus of the ‘loving subject’ – some of his verses were even addressed to his protégé, al-Manṣūr.73 This raises the intriguing possibility that, just as with the institution of the ḥijāba itself, the development of a private facet to the conduct of the court might have begun under al-Muṣḥafī. Another poet, Yūsuf ibn Hārūn al-Ramādī (d. 1022), whose career spanned four reigns, is known to have excelled in poetic description (waṣf), though not much of his poetry has survived.74 Al-Ramādī was also a notorious satirical poet, who kept falling foul of his own verses, which may be one reason why so little of his poetry was transmitted by later writers.
The difference between the two scenarios lies in the presence or absence of the sovereign. Al-Muṣḥafī’s compositions are situated in the context of majālis al-uns attended by his nudamāʾ, but the caliph’s absence from the festivities is implied. As Monroe notes, ‘The caliphal dignity had brought great pomp to state ceremonies, and to maintain this pomp the caliph kept aloof from mingling with poets on too free a level’.75 It seems, then, that during the caliphal period, the lyrical genre and the first appearance of ‘courtliness’ belonged exclusively to the private ‘sub-culture of literati (kuttāb), who also did their duties in the public sphere’ – but these two spheres did not meet.76 On the other hand, it was in this very ‘sub-culture’ that al-Manṣūr had built his early career (Chapter 1): his first rung on the ladder was as kātib, and his prominent position at al-Ḥakam’s court would have allowed him to mix with the very circles of educated nobility who were engaged in developing the new literary genres. It is therefore not surprising that al-Manṣūr’s tastes in literature and the way in which he chose to relax in private should reflect the social environment in which he was raised. This was his peer-group and what bound him to it was exactly what kept the caliph apart from it:77 intimate majālis would threaten the divinely-ordained hierarchy that was affirmed through caliphal ceremonial. Al-Manṣūr exploited this ceremonial as a useful stage on which to act out the public face of his role as de facto ruler; however, he could retire backstage at the end of the act, something the caliph could not do because, in a sense, he was the theatre itself.
3 A Culture of Learning
As Ballestín notes, the majority of the court officials, fuqahāʾ and kuttāb of al-Andalus shared the same culture that al-Manṣūr had imbibed from a young age, and thus literary discussion formed part of their daily existence.78 Echevarría, more cynically, associates the formation of a literary circle at al-Zāhira with al-Manṣūr’s aim to ‘gain the friendship of the influential intellectual class, at the same time as controlling its meetings, which were celebrated in his halls, and preempting his critics’.79 Nevertheless, it seems clear that al-Manṣūr had a genuine love of literature, and its interplay with the world around. Al-Ḥumaydī stated that ‘he loved science, he dedicated himself to literature and he entertained those who dedicated themselves to both subjects and taught them; he was grateful and he paid them’.80 Indeed, the ʿĀmirid period was an intensely and self-consciously literary time, the start of ‘the greatest literary age of al-Andalus’.81
Despite al-Manṣūr’s purge of the ‘philosophical’ content of al-Ḥakam’s library (Chapter 1), there was flourishing literary patronage at this period, during which Andalusis began to record their own history, as evidenced by Ibn Ḥayyān’s great lost works. But he is not the only one to have written histories of al-Andalus, nor to have written books dedicated to al-Manṣūr. It was also at this period that ʿĪsā ibn Aḥmad al-Rāzī (d. 989) compiled the chronicle of the reign of al-Ḥakam II, which has survived in the fragment translated into Spanish as the Anales Palatinos; he also wrote the only Andalusi equivalent of manuals of office, the Kitāb fī’l-wuzarāʾ wa’l-wizāra and Kitāb fī’l-ḥujjāb, sometimes referred to as Kitāb al-ḥujjāb li’l-khulafāʾ bi-l-Andalus, both now lost.82 It is significant that a book about Andalusi ḥājibs should have been written during al-Manṣūr’s tenure of that office. Al-Manṣūr’s own librarian, Ibn Maʿmar, was the author of a lost dynastic history of the ʿĀmirids (Chapter 6).83 In Rabīʿ I 385/April 995, Ṣāʿid al-Baghdādī dedicated to the ḥājib the Kitāb al-Fuṣūṣ fī al-Lughāt wa al-Akhbār, a ‘chrestomathy of classical texts in prose and verse, with a commentary from a grammatical and literary perspective’, which he wrote sitting in the courtyard of the congregational mosque of the ʿĀmirid palace-city, al-Madīnat al-Zāhira.84 According to the sources, it was commissioned in order to outdo the Kitāb al-Nawādir, or Philological Rarities, which had been written ‘in praise of the Umayyad dynasty’ by Abū ʿAlī al-Qālī al-Baghdādī (901–967) and dedicated to al-Ḥakam.85 It is significant that al-Manṣūr also engaged in the time-honoured royal practice of commissioning works of literature, and especially so if such works were deliberately intended to outdo those produced under Umayyad patronage.
Other works are known to have been written during the ʿĀmirid period: unsurprisingly, one of these was the first book written in al-Andalus to be completely dedicated to the subject of jihad the Kitāb qudwat al-ghāzī, written by Ibn Abī Zamanīn (d. 1008).86 During al-Manṣūr’s ḥijāba the works of Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī (d. 996) arrived in al-Andalus, one of the jurists who would strongly influence the interpretation of Maliki law in al-Andalus.87 Learned men who had come to prominence under al-Ḥakam II continued to work and flourish under al-Manṣūr. These included the physicians and pharmacologists, Ibn Juljul (d. 994), who had been involved in the translation of the De Materia Medica, and himself wrote an important work on the history of medicine, the Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ wa’l-hukamā’ (Generations of Physicians and Wise Men);88 and al-Zahrāwī (d. 1013), known in the West as Abulcasis, who wrote a monumental medico-pharmacological encyclopedia, Kitāb al-taṣrīf li-man ʿajiz ʿan al-taʾlīf.89 The Egyptian, Aḥmad ibn Faris, who had formed part of the corps of astronomers and astrologists around al-Ḥakam II, remained active until 981; and as Juan Vernet has discussed, al-Manṣūr also made use of astrology and horoscopes.90 One book may even have been dedicated to Hishām II, implying that the caliph may not have been entirely aloof from certain subjects: the Kitāb fī tartīb awqāt al-ghirāsa wa’l-maghrūsāt, a practical agricultural treatise containing ‘advice on growing specific varieties of productive trees, vegetables and other plants, along with suggestions on matters of domestic economy like the cutting of wood and methods for preserving harvested fruits, [suggesting] that it was composed for the use of the gardeners associated with Cordoba’s suburban estates’.91 It is surely significant that of the ten earliest extant Andalusi manuscripts written in Maghribi scripts, all of them date from the ʿĀmirid period, with one exception – a ninth-century manuscript that was owned by a faqīh who died during the ʿĀmirid period.92 These manuscripts, and further aspects of scribal and intellectual activity at this period, are discussed in Chapter 6.
Apart from the poets and verse forms discussed above, other forms of literature flourished at this period – one particularly famous book, the Kalīla wa Dimna, might have had an impact on the way that certain motifs in ʿĀmirid art were visualised (Figure 173). Indeed, their visualisation might allude to the literary illustrations in a witty and intentional way that would have been understood and appreciated by the educated members of al-Manṣūr’s closest circle.
To an extent, the developments in ‘courtly’ tastes and demeanour which took place under al-Manṣūr mark the coming-of-age of a sophisticated and cultured society, and reflect the developments at the Abbasid court a century earlier. However, unlike his predecessors in power, al-Manṣūr was himself a member of the educated nobility that began to formulate these tastes, and this placed him in the unique position of directly overseeing their development. Al-Manṣūr and his sons therefore deliberately fostered the ‘cult of elegance and eloquence’ in order to forge bonds of intimacy and affection with those whose approval they required to legitimise and maintain their ḥijāba. As Robinson argues, this policy was so successful that it was imitated by the Banū Hammūd, the Shiʿi Berber dynasty who came to power briefly in Cordoba before settling in Málaga, as well as other Taifa dynasties.93 It is also seen in the fact that many of these elite nudamāʾ supported and were even implicated in Sanchuelo’s bid to inherit the caliphate from Hishām II (Chapter 1). At the same time, these gatherings permitted the ʿĀmirids to reinforce the messages of legitimation embedded in the physical settings of their majālis and in the objects that furnished them. This highly refined and educated audience could fully understand the interplay between the imagery in the poetry sung at these gatherings and that visualised on the objects. This ʿĀmirid literary culture, then, provides the framework we need to understand the more fragmented material evidence, to which we now turn.
The text of this passage is also given by Blachère 1933, 108, n. 3, and discussed at p. 109. This translation is from Stetkevych 1997, 11.
Stetkevych 1997, 43.
Viguera 1983.
Khadra Jayyusi 1992a, 326.
Robinson 2002, 2007. I would like to express my gratitude to Cynthia Robinson for her generosity over the years in providing me with drafts of her unpublished work on this subject, some of which remains unpublished.
Stetkevych 1997, 3, from the ʿīd al-fiṭr celebration from 363/974 (Anales, §180; her translation). For other similar passages, cf. Anales, §§33, 68, 82, 127, 143, 198, 237.
García Gómez 1949, 5, and Stetkevych 1997.
Stetkevych 1997, 28.
To form his response, the poet may adopt the same rhyme and metre as the original, employ the same rhyme-words, incorporate or quote an entire hemistich (tadmīm), in addition to borrowing particular motifs and metaphors. See Stetkevych 1997, 28–29.
Stetkevych 1997, 30–34.
Stetkevych 1997, 22.
Stetkevych 1997, 22.
Al-Maqqarī, 189–190.
Ibn al-Khaṭīb 1974, II: 106–107, quoted in al-Maqqarī, 189–190. Though as Garulo 2008, 316, points out, the list provided by Ibn al-Khaṭīb is not necessarily totally reliable: he includes al-Ramādī, though this was just two years after the downfall of al-Muṣḥafī, when al-Ramādī is likely to still have been persona non grata with al-Manṣūr, for his partisanship of al-Muṣḥafī. Garulo asks: ‘Es lo que tenemos aquí un intento posterior de recuperar una figura relevante de la poesía andalusí, restableciéndolo en el lugar que le correspondería por su arte, en el entorno del poder?’ Ibn Darrāj is also listed among the Barcelona poets, though he did not come to prominence at al-Manṣūr’s court until around 992. Echevarría 2011, 197, believes his inclusion in the list for the Barcelona campaign implies that he was actually contracted earlier than we have come to believe.
Echevarría 2011, 198, citing De la Puente 1997, 390.
Makkī 1963–64, 70.
Makkī 1963–64, 67. Poems 4 and 126 were both written about a campaign against Castile in 994, in which the forts of both San Esteban de Gormaz and Clunia fell to al-Manṣūr’s armies. Another campaign at which Ibn Darrāj seems to have been present was that against the Christian coalition in 1000: see poem 105, Makkī 1963–64, 78.
Ibn Ḥazm, apud al-Ḥumaydī 1966, 104 (biog. 186), cited by Makkī 1963–64, 70–71; cf. Blachère 1933, 102. On al-Jazīrī, see Continente 1969.
Makkī 1963–64, 71. In total Ibn Darrāj wrote three poems about the Santiago campaign (poems 102, 120 and 128), which Makkī discusses at pp. 72–3.
Ghālib’s victories are announced in this way throughout the Anales, see §§194 and 241; and as mentioned in the previous chapter, this was also how al-Manṣūr proclaimed the news of Zīrī ibn ʿAṭiyya’s victory over Abū’l-Bahār in 384/994.
On the ‘imperialist propaganda’ in Ibn Darrāj’s panegyrics that ‘argued for the reconquest of the eastern Islamic regions from the Fatimids’, see Monroe 1971a, 4ff.
Stetkevych 1997, 22.
Ibn al-Khaṭīb 1974, II, 106. He says that the 40 poets whom al-Manṣūr took with him on his Barcelona campaign were min al-shuʿarāʾ al-murtaziqīn bi-dīwāni-hi. ‘Murtaziqīn’ has the sense of ‘hired’ or ‘kept’ (Hans Wehr) with general overtones of good fortune and the receipt of gifts, though Edward Lane’s dictionary gives the definition of murtaziqa as ‘those who receive subsistence money, pay, or settled periodical allowances of food’. It is therefore appropriate to translate it here as ‘salaried’ or ‘pensioned’.
Echevarría 2011, 197.
On al-Muṣḥafī, see Nykl 1946, 49–51. On al-Ramādī, see Nykl 1946, 58–60; Khadra Jayyusi 1992a, 330–331; and Garulo 2008.
On Ibn Shuhayd, see Nykl 1946, 47–49. Dickie 1964, 250 and 1975, 16, comments that the Banū Shuhayd were one of the principal Cordoban families, on whom also see Meouak 1999, 129–139. On Ibn Ḥazm, see Puerta Vílchez 2013b; on the relationship between the Banū Ḥazm and al-Manṣūr, see Behloul 2002, 225–229.
On whom see Nykl 1946, 61–64; García Gómez 1945; Terés 1956, 420; Monroe 1974, 11.
On whom see Nykl 1946, 121–122.
Ibn Ḥayyān apud al-Maqqarī, 200. Cf. also al-ʿAbbādī 1953, especially pp. 13–14.
Al-ʿAbbādī 1953, 15–24; for example, on Mujāhid’s cultural patronage in Denia, see Sarnelli Cerqua 1964.
Al-Maqqarī, 200.
Robinson 2002, 11.
Blachère 1933, 101–102; La Chica Garrido 1979, 15–16; Echevarría 2011, 197.
Marín 1997, 442. Al-Manṣūr walked barefoot at the head of the funeral cortège, presided over the elegy and offered alms of 500,000 dinars before her tomb: Dhikr Bilād 1:184–5 [2:196].
Echevarría 2011, 197. Ibn al-Khaṭīb 1974, II, 107 calls Ibn Darrāj the ‘Mutanabbī al-Andalusi’. See ‘al-Mutanabbī’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd Edition.
Blachère 1930, 16, 18–19.
Blachère 1930, 20–24. The anecdotes relating to Ṣāʿid’s ‘tribunal’ are found in al-Maqqarī, 200–207, who gives Ibn Bassām as his source (cf. Ibn Bassām 1989, I:4:8–56).
Al-Zubaydī (on whom see Fagnan 1904, 488, n. 3; HEM II:218, n. 1) was personal tutor to Hishām, and one of the Maliki fuqahāʾ who officiated at the purge of al-Ḥakam’s library (on which see Bayān II:314–315 [translation, 487–488]; Wasserstein 1990–1991, and my discussion in Chapter 5). On al-ʿĀṣimī, see Fierro 1986, especially 70–71.
Cf. Blachère 1930, 22–23, and al-Maqqarī, 204–205 (Analectes, II: 55–56), most recently cited and discussed in Prado-Vilar 2005, 156.
Prado-Vilar 2005, 156–7.
Robinson 2002, 8.
On whom see Robinson 2002, 94 n. 15, 110. Aḥmad ibn Burd was one of the most brilliant literati at the Taifa court of Almería, and claimed to have learned everything he knew about literature and its ‘craft’ (ṣanaʿat al-kalam) from his grandfather, Abū Hafṣ ibn Burd, a member of the ʿĀmirid dīwān. See also Nykl 1946, 121–122.
Robinson 2002, 105–116. The concept of the ‘loving subject’ is already seen in the work of Mutanabbī, and is probably therefore another ‘borrowing’ from Abbasid poetry: my thanks to Julie Meisami for pointing this out.
Robinson 2002, 109.
Robinson 2002, 106, 121.
See my genealogy of the Banū Abī ʿĀmir (Appendix 1): some examples are al-Manṣūr’s unnamed daughter who was married to ʿĪsā ibn Saʿīd; and ʿAbd al-Malik al-Muẓaffar’s wife, Khayāl, who later remarried al-Qāsim ibn Ḥammūd, the first ‘caliph’ of that dynasty which rose to prominence in Cordoba during the Taifa period. Al-Muẓaffar’s son, Abū ʿĀmir, was an intimate of Ibn Ḥazm: cf. Ibn Ḥazm 1953, 43; 50; 143–144; 248–249; also the discussion in Martinez-Gros 1997, 31–49.
See the introduction to Stetkevych 1991.
Von Grunebaum 1955, esp. 280–281.
Written by Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Yaḥyā ibn al-Washshāʾ (d. 936): Robinson 2002, 68 n. 38.
Holod 1992, 42, citing al-Maqqarī, 83–90.
On al-Ḥimyarī, see Nykl 1946, 123–124, and Robinson 2007, 110.
Robinson 2002, 114–115, citing Ibn Bassām 1989, I, 1:108–109. On compositions ‘on lyrical themes of love and pleasure’ dedicated by Ibn Darrāj to both Ṣāʿid al-Baghdādī and ʿĪsā ibn Saʿīd, see Robinson 2002, 115–116 and n. 80 (Ibn Bassām (1989): I, 1:57–62).
Robinson 2002, 115.
See Scheindlin 1986, 19–33; Von Grunebaum 1955; Hamilton 1988; Behrens-Abouseif 1997.
Scheindlin 1986, 20.
Blachère 1930, 20; also Robinson 2002, 119 n. 90, citing Ibn Bassām 1989, I, 1, tarjama of Ibn Shuhayd.
Continente 1969, 131–132; Ruggles 2000, 124. See the full citation of this poem at the start of Chapter 8.
Bayān II:297 [translation, 460].
Text transmitted by Ibn Bassām (1975), V:vii:147–148, and translated with commentary in Robinson 1995, 448–459.
Robinson 2002, 118, citing Ibn Bassām 1989, I, 4:12.
Robinson 2002, 116–117, citing Ibn Bassām 1989, I, 1:186.
For a majlis al-uns hosted by ʿAbd al-Malik, which also preserves several nawriyyāt, see Bayān III:18–21 [translation, 25–28].
Robinson 2002, 118, citing Ibn Bassām 1989, I, 4:13. On Abū Nūwās, see Scheindlin 1986, 25.
On the poetic correspondence between al-Manṣūr and Abū Marwān ibn Shuhayd, see Dickie 1964, 248–249; Ibn Bassām 1989, IV, 1:18–19.
Bayān II:293 [translation, 455]; Dhikr Bilād 1:185–186 [2:197]; Terés 1956, 419.
Blachère 1930, 20 (citing al-Maqqarī, 177). Nykl 1946, 48, says that at al-Manṣūr’s majālis, the ‘enthusiasm of the guests [would reach] the highest point and the viziers would rise in turn and dance’.
Dickie 1964, 249; Robinson 2002, 119. This seems, from Nykl 1946, 47–48, to be a conflation of two separate incidents.
Robinson 2002, 119–120. She gives no sources for this statement, though Nykl 1946, 54–55, relates an occasion when a female singer entertained al-Manṣūr’s majlis; and also mentions that the poetess, ʿAʾisha bint Aḥmad (d. 1009) improvised panegyric verses at an audience with al-Muẓaffar (pp. 64–65). She was said to be unequalled among free women, in ‘knowledge, literary talent and poetry’.
See Dickie 1964, 260–261, for the list of those involved in Ibn Shuhayd’s literary movement.
Robinson 2002, 120.
Robinson 2002, 104.
Robinson 2002, 100. On Ibn ʿAbd Rabbihī, see Monés 1969, 223–224; Khadra Jayyusi 1992a, 328–330; Monroe 1974, 8.
Ibn Khāqān 1983, 159–160.
See Monés 1969, 225–227; Monroe 1974, 8; Khadra Jayyusi 1992a, 330–331; Garulo 2008. While in prison (in 972?), al-Ramādī is known to have written an important collection of awṣāf (descriptions) of different birds, a familiar motif of freedom. Garulo 2008, 312, says that this book, the Kitāb al-ṭayr, was dedicated to the young Hishām with the hope that he would intercede with his father al-Ḥakam to obtain al-Ramādī’s release. Unfortunately, the tactic was unsuccessful.
Monroe 1974, 10.
Robinson 2002, 100.
Monroe 1974, 10, suggests something similar when he says ‘al-Manṣūr … was not of royal blood and could therefore mingle more intimately with his courtiers’.
Ballestín 2004a, 31.
Echevarría 2011, 198.
Cited by De la Puente 1997, 389–90.
Khadra Jayyusi 1992a, 326–327.
Meouak 1994–5, 163. He comments that such texts or manuals of office are comparatively common in the Islamic East, in particular at the Abbasid period.
Echevarría 2011, 16–17. This figure will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 6.
Asín Palacios 1933, 2, n. 4, see also al-Maqqarī, 202.
See ‘al-Ḳali’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd Edition, and Khadra Jayyusi 1992a, 324. On the relation between the Fuṣūṣ and Nawādir, see Blachère 1930, 23–24. According to al-Maqqarī, 201, al-Manṣūr showed Ṣāʿid a copy of the Nawādir, and the poet said, ‘If thou givest me permission, I will compose a book in thy praise that shall be more valuable than this’.
Echevarría 2011, 173–4. Ibn Abī Zamanīn was a religious man famed as a mystic, who also wrote poetry. This treatise had a strong religious content, highlighting the practice of jihad to put man in contact with God. It also included a section on the distribution of booty.
Echevarría 2011, 216.
‘Ibn Djuldjul’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd Edition; Vernet (1968).
Hamarneh 1965, esp. 309, and Hamarneh and Sonnedecker 1963.
Calvo 2012, 152 with references; Vernet 1970.
Anderson 2013, 114, citing López y López 1990.
Listed and discussed in Bongianino 2017, 41–50.
Robinson 2002, 124–133.