In this paper I offer a close reading of Mulayḥ b. al-Ḥakam’s (d. 7th century) first qaṣīda, as collected in in the Baghdadi philologist and poetry collector as-Sukkarī’s (d. 275/888) diwan of the tribe of Hudhayl. The tribe resided (and according to Wellhausen still resides) in the Hejaz, Saudi Arabia. My research is based on Farrāj and Shākir’s 1963 edition Kitāb Sharḥ ashʿār al-Hudhaliyyīn. Mulayḥ’s poems have been translated into German by Bräu (1927), based on an edition of Wellhausen (1884). Bräu expressed surprise that the Arabic philologists showed little interest in these poems, even though they are teeming with rare words (gharāʾib). I argue, however, that this is incorrect: Mulayḥ al-Hudhalī’s poems are frequently quoted in Ibn Manẓūr’s (d. 711/1311) Lisān al-ʿarab. It has further been stated that Mulayḥ is scarcely treated by classical and post-classical scholars alike (Farrāj 1963; Hussein, 2011). But the lexicographer Ibn Manẓūr’s revitalized interest in Mulayḥ’s poetry beyond the thirteenth into the fourteenth century suggests otherwise. It attests to a continuous engagement with his work in the philological tradition. Further, it indicates that Mulayḥ’s choice of words represents a unique register of Arabic that was deemed worthy of recording. The Hudhalī diwan represents, according to Goldziher (1897) one of the earliest efforts of the Arabic philologists in preserving the Arabic poetic tradition. Further, it is the only extant diwan of a pre-Islamic tribe and therefore doesn’t exclusively represent their best poet’s writings, which compilers were usually interested in. To the contrary, it reflects the average tribal poet’s literary output and hence, was labeled mediocre by Bauer (1992). In my interpretation of the poem, I frequently resort to Ibn Manẓūr’s Lisān al-ʿArab, who explains Mulayḥ’s rare words while citing verses from his eleven poems. Further, I offer to pause on linguistic features of the poet’s work, especially the use of simile (tashbīh) of the kind that involves a mafʿūl muṭlaq construction. That way, I seek to remedy previous injustice done to Mulayḥ's poetry.

Despite the comprehensive research on the ghazals of Hafiz-e Shiraz (d. 1390), femininity and gender representations have remained understudied areas in his poetry. His poems occasionally delve into the sensual aspects of love, and the feminine is depicted in earthly terms. However, even in these moments, there is often a deeper spiritual undertone since his ghazals basically reflect the core principles of Sufism, such as the concepts of annihilation (fana) and subsistence (baqa) as two complementary ideas in the mystic’s ultimate union with the divine. Fana, the absolute annihilation of the human ego before God, has a specific spiritual meaning in Sufi mysticism. It is regarded as a free act of divine grace which might enthral man and take him out of himself. Many Sufis refer to this experiential cycle as ‘death’, in the sense of dying to one’s own qualities to dwell in the divine attributes. This spiritual annihilation of the self is often closely correlated with the feminine representations of the beloved in many of Hafiz’s ghazals. The feminine is often represented as the beloved, embodying qualities such as beauty, grace, and spiritual depth. Influenced by Ibn Arabi’s feminization of God, Hafiz often feminizes the beloved. Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) feminized the beloved God, assuming that man’s longing for woman is a mirror image of God’s longing for the human being. This ‘unity of being’, Lutfi argues, is actualized by the perfect man, who is at once male and female, reflecting the image of the androgynous Godfigure. Occasionally together with the appearance of fana in Hafiz’s ghazals, the feminine attributes of the beloved, with whom the lyric “I” seeks union, get established. In those ghazals with feminine properties or overtones, the speakers would never perfectly attain fana unless they approach the female counterpart to the full extent. This paper investigates some of Hafiz’s ghazals, which demonstrate femininity and gendered depictions of the beloved, with regard to their subtle interplay with the concept of fana towards the mystic’s ultimate union with the divine. As a theoretical foundation, I employ gendered discourse analysis to investigate the feminine meanings generated in the ghazals. I also draw on Ibn Arabi’s recognition of the feminine attributes of the divine. Finally, I suggest that the femininity in his verses serves as a multifaceted symbol, representing both human love and the seeker’s longing for spiritual union with the divine feminized beloved.

Scholars have long explored echoes of Qur’anic vocabulary and themes in classical Arabic literature, from implicit moral and aesthetic values (bin Tyeer 2016) to explicit images, quotations, and even a pastiche of the Qur’an (Zubaidi 1983, Qutbuddin 2017, McAuley 2017, Stewart 2017, and other contributions in the edited volume, The Qur’an and Adab). In this paper I build on this scholarship but pivot to structural features found in classical Arabic poetry. Specifically, I turn to the oft-occurring Qur’anic end-clauses known as fawāṣil, such as inna -llāha l-ʿazīzu l-ḥakīm, which Neuwirth (1981) referred to as “Schlusskola” and Stewart (2017) as “cadenced tag-phrases.” I argue that many of the sententia found in early Islamic and Abbasid poetry follow the cadence of these fawāṣil by being both parenthetical and summative, acting both as a pause and a coda. I draw most of my examples from classical Arabic works of criticism, homing in on the verses that critics adduce under the poetic devices of tadhyīl (“appending a supplement”), istishhād (“adducing a [mock] proof”), tamthīl (“uttering a [mock] parable/moral”), and tashbīh (“uttering a similarity statement”). The poets I engage with range from al-Farazdaq (late 7th c.) to Bashshār ibn Burd (8th c.), Abū Tammām (9th c.), Ibn al-Rūmī (9th c.), and even the famed exegete-philologist, al-Zamakhsharī (12th c.). My initial research suggests that this development was an Islamic-era one, informed by Qur’anic rhythm, but the structure in question was not absent in pre-Qur’anic poetry. However, whereas the pre-Islamic examples exhibit a truth-bearing coda, the post-Islamic ones exhibit a mock-truth one.

Mawhibat-i ʿuẓmā (The Great Gift) by the Indian scholar Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Khān Ārzū (d. 1756) is considered the first comprehensive Persian elaboration of the science of meanings (ʿilm-i maʿānī), one of the three branches of Arabic–Islamic rhetoric. A theory with Arabic roots, the science of meanings was applied to Persian poetry in Ārzū’s work. Since no organic description of the Persian language in terms of pragmatics and semantics had ever been written, Ārzū was a pioneer in this field. Ārzū modeled Mawhibat-i ʿuẓmā after the Arabic works on rhetoric that had served as textbooks in the madrasas of Mughal India. A close reading of Mawhibat-i ʿuẓmā, however, reveals that the Arabic works that served as primary sources are not acknowledged in the text. Using philological analysis methods, this paper traces the unacknowledged Arabic sources of Mawhibat-i ʿuẓmā. A comparative textual analysis of Mawhibat-i ʿuẓmā with the major works of Arabic rhetoric reveals that Mawhibat-i ʿuẓmā draws primarily from al-Muṭawwal (The Long Commentary on al-Qazwīnī’s Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ) by al-Taftāzānī (d. 1390). There is also textual evidence that Ārzū translates into Persian parts of the marginal glosses on al-Muṭawwal by Sayyid Sharīf Jurjānī (d. 1413). The paper suggests that a comparison of the Persian text with the Arabic sources may improve some of the readings offered in the published text of Mawhibat-i ʿuẓmā, which was edited by the eminent Iranian scholar Sīrūs Shamīsa on the basis of a barely legible photocopied lithograph (Ārzū 2002). Examples of suggested corrections are presented and discussed. In addition, the research evaluates how the Arabic sources were elaborated, adapted, translated, and paraphrased in Ārzū’s Mawhibat-i ʿuẓmā. Primary Sources: Ārzū, Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Khān (2002), ʿAṭiyya-yi kubrā. Mawhibat-i ʿuẓmā (The Supreme Gift and The Great Gift). Ed. by Sīrūs Shamīsā. Tehran: Firdaws, 1381. al-Taftāzānī, Saʿd al-Dīn Masʿūd (1911). Kitāb al-Muṭawwal fī Sharḥ Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ li-Saʿd al-Dīn Masʿūd al-Taftāzānī al-Hirawī wa bi-hāmisha Ḥāshiya al-Mīr Sayyid Sharīf (The Long Commentary on the Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ with Sayyid Sharīf Jurjānī’s Marginal Glosses). Istanbul: Aḥmad Kāmil, 1330 (Repr. Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Azhariyya li-l-turāth).

What is the classical Arabic literary canon? Does such a thing even exist? We tend to take the existence of the canon for granted, yet such a nebulous concept is notoriously difficult to define and delimit. A so-called ‘classical’ literary canon is even more problematic; the classical canon is comprised of a very select number of works whose ‘canonical’ status presumably remains more or less fixed for centuries, or even millennia. This paper aims to take a step back from some of these common assumptions and reconsider the existence and nature of the classical Arabic literary canon: what it is, how it was constructed, and the ways in which it evolves over time. Using the ‘canonical’ Naqāʾiḍ poetry of the Umayyad-era poets Jarīr (d. 111/729) and al-Farazdaq (d. 110/728) as a starting point and case study, this paper will trace the trajectory of this well-known (but seemingly little-read, at least in the modern era) poetic corpus from the time of its original composition to the present day in order to shed light on the following questions: what makes a work of literature canonical in its own time? What were the processes of selection at work in the canonization of a particular classical Arabic poet, author, or dīwān? Once canonized, how does a work maintain its canonical status, sometimes for hundreds of years? And how can scholars today work with, think through, and redefine the classical canon? While this paper does not propose to provide any definitive answers to these sweeping questions, it will suggest that the classical Arabic literary canon was initially and continues to be a literary, political, and sociocultural phenomenon that serves as a repository for a limited body of literary works that were carefully selected to act as a form of enduring cultural memory, more or less impervious to the passage of time. The names and works that make up the classical Arabic literary canon may have remained relatively stable for centuries, but the purposes for which the memories that these works embody are employed change and fluctuate over time.

The ‘riches versus poverty’ debates in the Islamic tradition have been attested in the sources from the late 8th – early 9th centuries CE. Centered on the merits of poverty (al-faqr) and wealth (al-ghinā) and the question of precedence of one condition over the other with regard to spiritual rewards, they display a spectrum of views on the relationship between wealth, poverty, and religious merit among medieval Muslim scholars. On one end of it was the position that exalted poverty and emphasized the vanity of worldly possessions and the dangers associated with the accumulation of wealth. At the opposite end was the view that endorsed wealth, considering it either as a reward or a gift from God, while highlighting the disadvantages of poverty. While these debates range across the boundaries of various Islamic intellectual traditions and literary genres, this paper focuses on the ‘riches versus poverty’ debate within the Sufi tradition, as discussed in classical Sufi manuals from the 10th to the 12th centuries CE. The close association of poverty with piety and the exaltation of poverty as a condition inducive to acquiring spiritual rewards has been characteristic of the Sufi tradition, with poverty (faqr) being traditionally included among the stations (maqāmāt) on the Sufi path. However, some Sufi figures, such as Aḥmad Ibn ‘Aṭā’ (d. 309/922), reportedly argued for the precedence (faḍl) of wealth over poverty, thereby challenging the status of poverty as religious ideal. This paper examines how the authors of the classical Sufi manuals presented this intra-Sufi debate against the background of the consolidation of the Sufi tradition and the need to reconcile a religious ideal of poverty with historical reality. In particular, the paper highlights the shift towards the ‘spiritualization’ of poverty (equating poverty to spiritual detachment rather than lack of material possessions) and the restriction of its relevance as a virtue to specific groups/contexts, both these tendencies manifest in the account of the debate in al-Ghazālī’s (d. 505/1111) Revival of the Religious Sciences (Iḥyā’ ‘ulūm al-dīn), the latest among the analyzed sources. Through this case study of riches and poverty, the paper will shed light on the processes of negotiation of religious virtues and moral orientations within the Sufi tradition and the medieval Muslim societies.