The Ritual of the Gift Exchange Between the Poem of Ibn Al-Abbar and the Army of the Sultan of Tunisia The subject of lamenting the lost land of Andalusia flourished during the period of the petty kings as a result of political instability. The Andalusian poets used to follow different passive and active methods to lament their lost land. One of these active methods was to call on other kings to help them fight their enemy. Ibn Al-Abbar (1199 – 1260), for example, was one of the rare poets who succeeded in using the panegyric ode, his “Adrik bi-Khaylik, Rescue by your horses,” to persuade the Sultan of Tunis to send his huge army to help Ibn Al-Abbar’s city of Valencia. The aim of my paper is to present how Ibn Al-Abbar employed the structure of the classical Arabic panegyric ode to negotiate with the Sultan. The main purpose of this negotiation was to initiate the ritual exchange in which the poet gives his poem as a gift to the Sultan emphasizing his political legitimacy with the aim of having the Sultan reciprocate by sending his army to protect Valencia. The subject will be analyzed generally in light of Marcel Mauss’s formulation of gift exchange and specifically as recent scholarship in classical Arabic poetry method has applied the ritual of gift exchange to the courtly exchange of qasida for prize.

This paper will investigate a body of lampoon poetry (hija’) by Umayyad poets Jarir (d. 728) and al-Farazdaq (d. 730). I will examine this poetry by focusing on the venue at which it was performed, Mirbad, in Basra, Iraq, in order to elucidate the changes the lampoon genre had undergone from pre-Islamic times through the Umayyad era. The Umayyad period was one of change as a new civilizational system brought with it new migration patterns as well as new sensibilities that affected the role of lampoon poetry in early Islamic urban centers. Whereas tribe and lineage had been the primary markers of identity in the pagan era, the new civilization encouraged migration to new Islamic cities and an ethos that valued ideas over blood ties, which brought about changes in how many people approached old customs, rituals and aesthetic systems, including poetry. I will investigate Jarir and al-Farazdaq’s performance of lampoon at Mirbad, in order to understand what role this poetry played in the Umayyad era, and how that was different from the role lampoon had played in earlier times. In the pagan era poets used lampoon to attack and dishonor competing poets’ tribes, but these attacks became increasingly out of place in the first Islamic century, not only because they were contrary to sensibilities against injuring another’s reputation, but also because to the new urban culture ties to tribe had waned in favor of other ties. People began to identify with their city, their region or their profession more than with their tribe. Using performance theory and drawing on Bauman (Verbal Art as Performance. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland, 1977) and Ali (Arabic Literary Salons in the Islamic Middle Ages: Poets, Public Performance, and the Presentation of the Past. Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame P, 2010) I will show how, responding to new audience demands, Jarir and al-Farazdaq used lampoon to attack each other in a mock style not to actually harm the other’s tribe, but to meet the expectations of their new audience in an increasingly urbanizing world by providing an entertaining spectacle for them, thus creating a niche for pagan era lampoon poetry in the new ecology of Islamic civilization.

The paper is an attempted contribution to the study of the Thousand and One Nights in terms of genre and formula. The object of investigation is the story of “King ‘Umar ibn al-Nu’m?n and His Family.” The longest tale in the Nights, it takes up approximately one-eighth of the entire work, and contains material of diverse generic provenance. Although manuscript evidence suggests that it was included in recensions of the Nights from a relatively early date, it is nonetheless distinct from much of the collection in its resemblance to the much lengthier popular epics. Its interest and appeal may in fact lie in its deviation from genre standards. In some respects it is s?ra (e.g., its relative length, formulaic conventions, certain character types; interlacing of narrative strands as opposed to embedding); in others it is typical of the Nights’ hik?y?t (less rhymed prose, romance themes, embedded stories, pious and learned digressions). Some of these formal differences between hik?ya and s?ra are well enough known to be taken for granted. In my paper I examine how these differences function in terms of plot and narrative discourse (especially voice and mood). Drawing on the works of those who have treated the epic in a comparative context (Bakhtin, Goody, Fusillo), I demonstrate how the two genres of hik?ya and s?ra coexist in the story of ‘Umar al-Nu’m?n, and specifically how each rests on a fundamentally different conception of knowledge. The intricately-plotted core tales of the Nights are clearly products of a learned milieu, their knowledge corresponding to that of the scholars and littérateurs, i.e. a subjective mental process or a fixed body of factual material. In general the s?ra is less clever in terms of plotting, but is suffused with a much more volatile concept of what can be known with certainty. Both of these narrative epistemologies are at work in the tale of ‘Umar al-Nu’m?n.

Since the groundbreaking work of Zak? Mub?rak, La prose arabe au IVe siècle de l'hégire in 1931, scholars of Arabic literature have placed the historical emergence of high-style literary prose of the 3rd-4th/9th-10th centuries in the Eastern Islamic world, culminating in the works of belletrists such as the letters of al-???ib b. ?Abb?d (d. 385/995) and the maq?m?t of Bad?? al-Zam?n al-Hamadh?n? (d. 398/1008). Typified by a new reliance upon rhyme and rhythm (saj?), poetic imagery, and ornate rhetorical devices, the prose of this period differs markedly from the forms that preceded it. While this transformation is well-known, the particular contexts in which this change from less-adorned prose to more ornate stylistics emerged has not been explained adequately. Drawing on theories from the field of performance studies, this paper examines the use of rhymed prose, imagery and other stylistic devices in the d?w?n of letters of the litterateur, al-???ib b. ?Abb?d. Rather than attributing the emergence of ornate prose to diffuse social, linguistic, or political factors (i.e. the influence of Persian language, the increased professionalization of the bureaucracy, or literary decadence) or the personal preferences of the author, this paper argues that belletrists employed the stylistics of ornate prose in particular performance contexts. For example, rhymed prose is far more frequent and regular in letters of Ibn ?Abb?d that were intended to be read aloud to large audiences, and less common in the communiques between government officials. Examining the frequency and regularity of rhymed prose and other literary devices across a range of personal letters and those intended for recitation in public spaces, this paper examines the particular performance contexts in which the elements of fourth/tenth century high-style ornate prose emerged and asks broader questions about the religious and cultural values associated with particular acts of literary performance in Arabic.