This study examines a poem by the pre-Islamic poet al-Muraqqish al-A?ghar (d. ca. 570) and its associated khabar, or anecdote. The poem is the 56th ode in the Mufa??aliyy?t, which is an anthology of ancient Arab poetry compiled by al-Mufa??al al-?abb? (d.ca. 786). An anecdote pertaining to this poem is also found in the anthology. The poem consists of 22 lines and expresses the poet’s love for a woman named Fatimah, and his regret and shame for what he did to her. The main goal of this paper is to explore the relationship between the poem and its anecdote to determine the function of the anecdote regarding the interpretation of the poem. The anecdote, which provides the poet’s biographical information and the occasion for which the poem was composed, is inserted before the poem, as is the case with many other poems in the anthology. I will examine why the anecdote is included, why it was done in this way, and how its presence affects our understanding of the poem. For theoretical tools, I mainly use reader-response criticism, as in the works of Hans Robert Yauss and Iser Wolfgang, and also Hans-Georg Gadamer’s notion of “horizon.” Their undestanding of the reader’s role in the activity of reading can serve to clarify the function of the anecdote in the interpretation of the poem, because the critical reading of the poem seems to suggest a need for the anecdote. While the anecdote may allow the reader to envision a particular situation that this poem once described, we must remember that the anecdote was also inserted by a different author. As such, reading it along with the poem may add one dimension to the poem’s interpretation, but it may also limit other possible meanings. The poem may stand by itself to demonstrate its own inherent literary and aesthetic qualities, and may have been intended to do so. Thus, the compiler’s addition of the anecdote can be taken as an imposed influence that tends to direct interpretation in only one way, while the poet may have wished to allow wider possibilities.

This paper will explore the reception of the form of lampoon poetry known as naqaid of the eighth-century Umayyad poets Jarir and al-Farazdaq. Much scholarship on this poetry focuses on literal interpretation of the text by extracting details from it that corroborate historical events or reveal “facts.” This approach reads the poetry literally, mining it for the information it contains. When scholarship does take philological aspects of this poetry into consideration, it often does so in order to demonstrate its inferiority to pre-Islamic naqaid, focusing on the decline of the genre over time. This paper proposes a new reading of Jarir and al-Farazdaq’s naqaid. Rather than attempting to uncover historical facts or to recapture Umayyad-era Basra (Iraq—whence Jarir and al-Farazdaq), or even to shed light on the poets themselves, I propose to examine the reception of their naqaid by those who came later. I will show that subsequent historians and copyists preserved the naqaid selectively in accordance with their own ideologies. Specifically, I will explore how Abbasid historians preserved certain portions of the naqaid in order to present the Umayyad dynasty in an unfavorable light. The result of this approach is a text that has been re-interpreted and used as a vehicle of another era’s prejudices and ideologies. The naqaid as we currently know them are more a result of a later reconfiguration than a factual account of an impossible-to-know “original.” I divide the paper into two parts. In the first I will conduct a close reading of selections from Jarir and al-Farazdaq’s naqaid to identify specific elements that suggest a re-interpretation of the text by later generations. In the second part I will examine akhbar (“reports,” “stories”) sources that comment on some aspect of Jarir and al-Farazdaq’s naqaid, including the poetry itself, the venue of its performance, and the relationship of the audience to it. These akhbar showcase the new interpretation of the naqaid. This paper is significant not only for the new reading it brings to the naqaid, but also for framing the Abbasids’ role in shaping thought about Jarir and al-Farazdaq in particular, and the Umayyads in general, which in some cases persists to this day.

Since the time of major anthologizing efforts in the late 'Abbasid period, Classical Arabic scholars have tended to group together mujun (libertine) and hija' (invective) poetry. By reading hija' against the social and political backdrop of the 'Abbasid literary court, this paper seeks to complicate the taxonomy that holds both genres under a common rubric of irreverent literature. It will be argued here that the invective poem is not only distinct from mujun but also from the ethically nebulous world to which both poetic genres seem to appeal. Whereas this "light verse" celebrates transgression, hija' is in fact a highly didactic literature of social rules, a study of behavioral ethics within the act of insulting. The example of most direct interest to this paper is Al-Sahib Ibn 'Abbad, vizier and polymath of the fourth century Hijra, tenth century CE. Because Ibn 'Abbad's court was preeminent in his era and a highly contested space for bureaucrats and authors seeking fame, controlling it became a function of the vizier's own writing, including his poetry. Cannily using the guise of mujun sensibility – i.e., the excuse of frivolous play – Ibn 'Abbad issues hija' that is not only acidly slanderous, but also highly regulatory of sociopolitical life in his province. The language of indulgence and pleasure, favored throughout the Classical Arabic tradition of jocular poetry, in hija' becomes a tool for excoriating and manipulating an enemy: ridicule leads to a tacit call for forceful correction, a didactic claim unacknowledged by extant literary histories but crucial to 'Abbasid politics. This paper reads Ibn 'Abbad's use of multiple poetic styles, and his marking the differences between them, as a forceful ethical argument about the people with whom he came into contact in elite imperial culture. Through the technique of insult, the poetry privileges virtue, language, and mastery of the body, an Aristotelian effort at shaping ideal courtiers. Viewed in historical and theoretical light, Ibn 'Abbad's ability to poeticize key ethical rules parallels his broader political work, regulating the space and people under his vizierial authority.

In his book, Asrar al-Balagha (Secrets of Eloquence), Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani devotes a long chapter to discussing the two terms. Majaz Aqli (Mental Trope) and Majaz Lughawi (Linguistic Trope). These are two basic terms in classical Arabic rhetoric. Despite their importance, they are normally totally ignored in modern research. Sometimes they are even wrongly interpreted. In this presentation, I will attempt to analyze the exact approach of Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani to these two terms. Abd al-Qahir hints at the fact that the two terms are related to the metaphor. Some modern scholars have mistakenly understood that the mental trope indicates what was known as "the old metaphor" (A is ascribed to B although B does not have A in reality; such as "the hand of the death"; death has no hands in reality); while the linguistic trope indicates "the new metaphor" (A is used instead of B; such as "I saw a lion"; meaning that I saw a brave man). In this presentation, I will argue that the linguistic trope often indicates the "verb-metaphor"; while the mental trope is not related by any means to the metaphor.

Around the 11th century, Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani wrote a treatise entitled The Secrets of Eloquence (Asrar al-Balagha). It has been noted by modern scholars (namely Kamal Abu Deeb) that his approach to poetics is a psychological one. That is, he is concerned with the emotional impact a poetic statement has on the listener. Not much attention has been given to the nature and mechanisms of this emotional effect, however. I argue that upon closer analysis it becomes clear that the pleasure one experiences when listening to poetry is the result of a process of discovery. This is particularly evident in his discussion of tashbih (simile), which - according to al-Jurjani - forms one of the pillars of poetic speech and constitutes the basis on which metaphor is built. al-Jurjani argues that when two things are compared to each other, the listener is launched into a search for the similarity between the two things compared. The search for and the discovery of this similarity is what causes pleasure and wonder in the listener. In order for a comparison to allow for an experience of discovery, however, the original meaning being described has to be (or be made) strange or obscure. Furthermore, he argues that the more effort is required to discover the similarity, the more rewarding it is. al-Jurjani goes on to detail how discovery in a comparison can be made more arduous. As a result, he argues that the stranger and more farfetched the comparison, the greater the resulting pleasure. This is particularly significant in a critical tradition that generally regarded strangeness and obscurity as undesirable qualities in poetry and one that judged poetry based on its straightforwardness and closeness to reality. In this paper, I will present my analysis of al-Jurjani’s theory of simile and I will end by briefly describing its development in later authors that were very much influenced by him, namely al-Sakkaki and al-Khatib al-Qazwini.