Up to now, studies on the legacy of Syrian poet Abu al-`Ala' al-Ma`arri (d. AD 1058) have understandably fixated on Luzum ma la yalzam (Self-Imposed Necessity), a collection of difficult, gloomy, and skeptical poetry whose impression on readers through time can hardly be overstated. But the Luzum is only one episode in the tale of al-Ma`arri’s literary afterlife. Another is his Risalat al-sahil wa l-shahij (The Epistle of the Horse and the Mule), a winding prosaic meditation on contemporary Aleppo told by animals. The Risalah has historically been one of al-Ma`arri’s more popular texts in the Maghreb. Indeed, the work itself was brought back to modern scholarship from two manuscripts at the Royal Hasaniyyah Archives at Rabat, Morocco, and in pre-modern times it inspired creative responses by at least two authors with an impact in the Islamic West: Iraqi poet Ibn al-Habbariyah (d. AD 1116) and Andalusian vizier Muhammad ibn `Abd al-Ghafur al-Kala`i (d. AD 1237). My paper addresses the former, since his relationship to both al-Ma`arri and the Maghreb is not entirely clear and, therefore, all the more interesting. Although Ibn al-Habbariyah does not say so directly, his rajaz-verse collection of animal fables, Kitab al-sadih wa l-baghim (The Epistle of the Cock and the Gazelle), is in my opinion a response to al-Ma`arri’s Risalah, given a shared title structure and a direct reference to al-Ma`arri in Ibn al-Habbariyah’s Fulk al-ma`ani (The Firmament of Meaning) on a second animal-related topic — al-Ma`arri’s veganism. Regarding the Maghreb, manuscript copies of the Sadih wa l-baghim are held in most major Moroccan archives, which in addition to textual data indicates widespread transmission within the Islamic West itself. This makes sense given a general appetite in the Maghreb for literary animalia, like Ibn Zafar al-Qastilli’s Sulwan al-muta` fi `udwan al-atba` (Consolation for the Ruler During the Hostility of Subjects) or `Izz al-Din al-Muqaddisi’s Kashf al-asrar fi hukm al-tuyur wa l-azhar (Revealing Secrets of Rule From the Birds and Flowers), not to mention the dissemination of Kalilah wa-Dimnah throughout Iberia. While details are still emerging about why an obscure Iraqi figure like Ibn al-Habbariyah became so popular far to the west, they do add to our knowledge of textual movement from Mashreq to Maghreb. They also highlight a crucial yet overlooked element of al-Ma`arri’s oeuvre, namely animals, assuming that Ibn al-Habbariyah’s Kitab al-sadih wa l-baghim was indeed a response to al-Ma`arri’s Risalat al-sahil wa l-shahij.

Ibn Sharaf al-Qayraw?n? (d.1067) should be deservedly considered one of the most prolific city-elegists of the medieval Mediterranean world. Even if an original di?wa?n has not survived, Maghribi and Andalusian sources have preserved no less than seven mara?thi? (elegies) by Ibn Sharaf for Qayrawan. Interestingly, it is the Andalusian anthologist Ibn Bassa?m al-Shantari?ni? (d. 1147) who preserved most of Ibn Sharaf’s elegiac/nostalgic poems which I prefer to call Qayraw?n?yy?t. All in all, Ibn Bassa?m cites seven city-elegies by Ibn Sharaf, providing brief critical comments on specific verses he likes or, in a few cases, disproves of — especially lines burdened with what he sees as extreme ?ajar (angst) on the part of Ibn Sharaf. Among the seven city-elegies incorporated by Ibn Bassa?m, it is a la?miyya that he singles out as the poetic jewel of the Maghribi émigré. Thus, he dwells at length on some of its most eloquent lines, comparing them to similar verses by the likes of Abu? Tamma?m and Ibn Ha?ni? al-Andalusi? (d. 973), dubbed the al-Mutanabbi? (d. 965) of al-Andalus. In my presentation, I will undertake a close reading of the forgotten city-elegy’s elegiac/nostalgic verses and explore some of its most salient linguistic and rhetorical features. I will also discuss the elegiac and nostalgic representation (or lack thereof) of Qayrawan’s once majestic ‘cityscape’ and its iconic buildings. I will do so by comparing the la?mi?yya to the n?niyya of Ibn Rashi?q, as well as the relatively more studied city-elegies from al-Andalus and al-Mashriq which have received scholarly attention. I will further make the case that turning attention to the forgotten corpus of Maghribi city-elegies can dramatically change our overall understanding of the genealogy/development of the genre of ritha? al-mudun (city-elegies) far beyond the Mashriq and al-Andalus.

This paper investigates the question of legitimacy in al-Andalus by looking at the moment in which the encyclopedic adab anthology of al-‘Iqd, and the Umayyad caliphate of ‘Abd al-Rahman III simultaneously emerged. The politics through which both projects, separately and in relation to one another, inhabit genealogies of eastern traditions constitutes the main area of inquiry. The analysis traces the trajectories of cultural elements as they travelled to al-Andalus from eastern centers, to complicate notions of reuse, borrowing and restoration that plot and confirm claims of Arabo-Islamic cultural continuity. Recognizing forms of borrowing as dynamic processes, I show how in the coincidence of the two ventures, a uniquely Andalusi conception of legitimacy can be located and identified. In assuming an encyclopedic character, I argue, al-'Iqd as an adab anthology ushered new forms of readership that became central in negotiating aspects of Umayyad political power. I further show how through innovating a progressive theory of knowledge that seemingly adheres to broader cultural consensus, al-‘Iqd succeeded in shaping the Umayyad caliphate of al-Andalus. Through engaging with debates of origins, genealogies and reproduction, the paper hopes to present new opportunities for apprehending legitimacy as a realm of contestation and negotiation.

In a 1983 preface to Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, Albert Hourani acknowledges that he may have “distorted” the thought of the writers he considered, exaggerating the “modern” elements in their thought, in turn emphasizing a break with the past rather than continuities. His call to consider thinkers of a different kind – those still working within an inherited mode of thought grounded in the framework of institutions like the Azhar in Cairo, the Zaytuna in Tunis, or the Sufi brotherhoods – has been only partially heeded. The dominant story of the nahda remains one of oppositions (tradition vs. modernity etc.). Recent arguments suggest that with the nahdah, adab is redefined, shifted away from its original semantic range and refigured as a concept in line with modern globalized ways of reading that reimagine religious practices and textual traditions. This paper will suggest a different way to interpret adab, both as a textual tradition and an embodied mode of reading, in the 20th century through an analysis of al-Tuhami al-Wazzani al-Zawiyah. Published in 1942, it is an autobiographical work that retains its ties to a premodern tradition of Sufi life writing widespread in North Africa; al-Wazzani models his portrait of selfhood on predecessors dating back to at least the fifteenth century and in function the text follows the established practice of its genre. But, he also manipulates the form to record the pain experienced by his city under Spanish occupation. His search for spiritual fulfillment merges with Tetouan’s drive for independence and autonomy. Here, the category of adab, as both a way of writing and reading, is adapted and expanded to create a new hybrid literary form which becomes an act of resistance, a way to reclaim the city’s pre-colonial identity and to record its collective suffering. The people of Tetouan (al Ta?waniyun) join the autobiographical “I” of the narrator as a collective protagonist of equal importance, the story just as centrally a chronicle of the city’s traumatic past and present as the author’s development. Adab, for al-Wazzani, is a defense against the violence of his city’s foreign occupation. Yet it nevertheless becomes something hyphenated, for just as he draws on earlier literary structures, he both uses the modernized Arabic that was the result of language reforms catalyzed by the Arab world’s encounter with imperial Europe and incorporates his colonizer’s narrative techniques, internalizing the colonial violence within the practice of adab itself.