MESA Banner
Organic Unity in the “Personified Letter” of Ibn Ḥijja al-Ḥamawī (d. 837/1434)
Abstract
Does classical Arabic literature have “organic unity”? Do poems or prose hang together with integrity and wholeness, or are they “orient pearls at random strung,” in the words of Sir William Jones’s rendering of Hāfiẓ’s “Shīrāzī Turk” ghazal? Once hotly debated in the 20th century, the question of unity has waned in the last twenty years, that is, except for Qurʾānic Studies, where proof of unity within a given sūra continues to mount. In literature, scholars now set aside unity and probe questions of power and society instead. In this paper, I revive debates about unity by asking not whether we moderns think it exists in premodern Arabic belles lettres, but on whether premodern Arabic critics thought so. To do this, I explore the section on ḥusn al-khitām, “seemly endings,” from Khizānat al-adab wa-ghāyat al-arab, a commentary-plus-anthology by Mamluk poet and state secretary Ibn Ḥijja al-Ḥamawī (d. 837/1434). There, one finds what Ibn Ḥijja calls a risāla mujassada, a “personified letter,” which is full of puns on human body parts and which mimics a brief section from “al-Maqāma al-Baghdādiyya” by Abū al-Qāsim al-Ḥarīrī (d. 1122). Ibn Ḥijja built a whole career upon besting his alleged rivals, including rivals of a different era. No wonder, then, that the ghost of al-Ḥarīrī haunts him here and elsewhere. As to the letter itself, Ibn Ḥijja describes it using the word mujassada, “personified” or “incorporated,” in a strikingly modern way that is rare for classical Arabic. Moreover, the letter tries to show, by invoking the human body and structuring itself as such, that the best way to end a text is by linking it naturally—organically, like a body—to its beginning. Therefore this letter, which to my knowledge is unstudied and untranslated, is one of the clearest examples that premodern Arabic critics had some concept, if unstated or unpacked, of organic literary unity.
Discipline
History
Language
Literature
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Egypt
Islamic World
Mediterranean Countries
Syria
Sub Area
None