ARABIC BELLES LETTRES edited by Joseph E. Lowry and Shawkat M. Toorawa LOCKWOOD PRESS Atlanta, Georgia 2019 CHAMPIONING THE ERA: APPROACHING AL-KHAFĀJĪ’S RAYḤĀNAT AL-ALIBBĀʾ Ghayde Ghraowi Ottoman Arabic literary history remains in the vast shadow of the so-called “classical” age that precedes it by several centuries. While straight-faced post-rationalizations of cultural decline and decadence (inḥiṭāṭ) are now overwhelmingly invalidated, modern scholarship is still behind on approaching this wealth of literary material. This essay, which aims to fill in some gaps on adab production during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is a modest contribution to Arabic literary history. Towards these ends, I offer a study of the Egyptian scholar, magistrate (qāḍī) and belle-lettrist Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Khafājī’s (978–1069/1571–1659) literary anthology entitled Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ wa-zahrat al-ḥayāh al-dunyā (The Sweet Basil of the Intelligent and the Flower of the Life of this World). Virtually unstudied, the Rayḥānah is a literary anthology comprising contemporary or near-contemporary poets writing in Arabic. The work also includes extensive commentary by al-Khafājī himself, in addition to polemical reflections on poetics and contemporary politics alike. In what follows, I will first explain al-Khafājī’s background, the personal-political developments that shaped his worldview, as well as elaborate on the literary anthology as a genre of adab. Second, I provide a close reading of the muqaddimah (preamble) to the Rayḥānah. Finally, I sample who’s who in al-Khafājī’s literary landscape, emphasizing the varied social worlds of the poets included while remarking upon alKhafājī’s approach to biography and literary criticism. Through this analysis, I hope to strike a balance between approaching the anthology, a reference work, as a literary text while understanding it against its socio-political history. Ultimately, however, this essay aims to show that the Ottoman period witnessed lively literary production in Arabic that built upon the tradition that preceded it while developing a dynamic contemporary corpus in its own right. Badr Samāʾ al-ʿIlm: The Exalted Master of Knowledge and His Book Shihāb al-Dīn al-Khafājī was born around 977 AH/1571 CE near Cairo (likely Siryāqūs) to 147 148 Ghayde Ghraowi a scholarly family.1 He first studied “the Arabic sciences” with his maternal uncle Abū Bakr ibn Ismāʿīl al-Shanawānī (d. 1018/1610)—whom al-Khafājī calls “the Sībawayhi of his time.”2 He was also educated in both the Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī schools of Islamic law,3 which he studied under Shams al-Dīn al-Ramlī (d. 1003/1595) and Ibn Ghānim al-Maqdisī al-Khazrajī (d. 1003/1595), among others. He studied poetry with Muḥammad al-Ṣāliḥī al-Shāmī (d. 1012/1603) and Aḥmad al-ʿInāyātī (d. 1014/1605), the latter of whom appears in the Rayḥānah.4 Like many ʿulamāʾ trained in the religious and literary sciences, al-Khafājī produced several works across multiple genres. In his centenary biographical dictionary of notables (al-aʿyān) of the eleventh (Hijra) century, Muḥammad al-Muḥibbī (d. 1111/1699) writes that al-Khafājī “was the exalted master of knowledge in his age,”5 adding: “everyone I saw and heard from who knew [al-Khafājī] in his time recognizes that he had a singular talent in reporting and editing and in beautiful prose-writing (ḥusn al-inshāʾ).”6 Al-Khafājī’s works (a majority of which remains unedited) range from exegeses (as in his super-commentary [ḥāshiyah] of the tafsīr of the Qurʾan by Naṣr al-Dīn al-Bayḍāwī [d. 685/1286]) to lexicography and philology (as in his widely popular philological treatise on loanwords and colloquialisms in Arabic entitled Shifāʾ al-ghalīl fīmā fī kalām al-ʿarab min al-dakhīl). However, it is his literary anthology, the Rayḥānah, which constitutes his magnum opus, his most significant contribution to adab. But before diving into the text itself there are two subjects we must briefly broach. The first is al-Khafājī’s infamous dispute with the Şeyhülislām‎ (grand mufti) of Istanbul Yaḥyā Zekeriyāzāde (d. 1054/1644) in 1642. Certainly not an unknown figure to the Sublime Porte, al-Khafājī had previously served under Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623–40) as qāḍī in several Balkan provinces, the most prominent of which being Salonica (present-day Thessaloniki).7 This achievement is noteworthy as by al-Khafājī’s time “the highest judicial positions became the preserve of a few élite families.”8 By the early 1640s, he served 1. G. J. Van Gelder, “Shihāb al-Dīn al-Khafājī,” in Essays in Arabic Literary Biography 1350–1850, ed. J. E. Lowry and D. J. Stewart (Wiesbaden, 2009), 251–62, 252. Sh. Ḍayf, ʿAṣr al-Duwal wa-l-Imārāt: Miṣr (Cairo, 1990), 459. 2. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ wa-zahrat al-ḥayāh al-dunyā, ed. ʿA. M. al-Hilw (Cairo, 1967), ii, 449. 3. While his father was a Shāfiʿī scholar, al-Khafājī’s training in both the Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī madhāhib was a common pragmatic choice, considering the establishment of the former as the official Ottoman school and the avenues to imperial patronage implied therein. See Burak, The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Ḥanafī School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, 2015), 10–13. 4. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, 449–50. Much of al-Khafājī’s biography is reproduced in English in van Gelder’s brief yet excellent treatment of the subject in “Shihāb al-Dīn al-Khafājī,” 251–62. 5. Wa-kāna fī ʿaṣrihi badr samāʾ al-ʿilm. Al-Muḥibbī, Khulāṣat al-athar fī aʿyān al-qarn al-ḥādī ʿashar, ed. M. Ḥ. M. Ḥ. Ismāʿīl Shāfiʿī (Beirut, 2006), i, 371. 6. Wa-kullu man raʾaynāhu aw samiʿna bihi mimman adraka waqtahu muʿtarifūn lahu bi-l-tafarrud fī-l-taqrīr wa-l-taḥrīr wa-ḥusn al-inshāʾ. Al-Muḥibbī, Khulāṣat al-athar, i, 371. 7. Van Gelder, “Shihāb al-Dīn al-Khafājī,” 253. 8. C. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power (New York, 2009), 218. On the growth Championing the Era 149 as the qāḍī ʿaskar (military judge) in Egypt, only to be removed from that post the following year. In 1642, he returned to Istanbul, apparently in search of further patronage.9 However, as al-Muḥibbī recounts, “[Yaḥyā Zekeriyāzāde] shunned [al-Khafājī] on account of affairs of which he was accused [during] his days as a judge in Salonica and Cairo involving insolence and greed.”10 Al-Khafājī then retired to Egypt to teach and write, but his absolute scorn for the grand mufti and the Ottoman elite establishment consumed him. Indeed, this event enjoys ample mention, albeit somewhat cryptically, throughout the Rayḥānah, as al-Khafājī laments his age as the “victory of ignorance” (ghalabat al-jahl) and characterizes Istanbul as a place where one finds “the presentation of enemies in the clothes of ʿulamāʾ, although none remains there who can even correctly recite alFātiḥah.”11 While al-Khafājī’s histrionics are certainly motivated by personal bitterness, nonetheless his political experience as an Ottoman Arab subject informs much of the intellectual project behind the compilation the Rayḥānah, which in turn affects how we read the anthology as a reference work. Second, what a literary anthology is in this context requires some explanation, just as the monumental question of what constitutes adab does. In the modern sense, “adab” simply refers to literature (as in poetry and narrative fiction), but in the premodern sense adab remains a highly variable concept. Encapsulating notions of social etiquette and moral education as well as literary-linguistic knowledge, adab most aptly refers to conscious curating of cultural knowledge based on aesthetic merit and social function. Thus, as Bilal Orfali writes: “Regardless of the epistemological debate surrounding the term adab as a distinct category, form, style, or approach in Arabic literature, one can generally observe that many adab works are created from the author’s impulse to anthologize.”12 As I discuss below, the Rayḥānah emerges from al-Khafājī’s impulse to collect and preserve for posterity the best of his contemporaries’ verses, a project linked to the moral good of society. In his “sketch map of Arabic poetry anthologies,” Orfali divides the Arabic literary anthology tradition (prior to 1258) into ten categories: (1) poetry anthologies concerned with form; (2) encyclopedic anthologies; (3) theme and motif anthologies; (4) anthologies based on comparisons; (5) mono-thematic anthologies; (6) geographical anthologies; of the power of the Şeyhülislām‎ in the mid-sixteenth century and onwards (specifically with regard to the appointment of muftis), see Burak, The Second Formation, 41–42. 9. Al-Muḥibbī, Khulāṣat al-athar, 373. R. A. Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany, 1991), 25. 10. Fa-aʿraḍa ʿanhu li-ajl umūr intaqadat ʿalayhi ayyām qaḍāʾihi fī Salānīka wa-Miṣr min al-jurʾah wa-baʿḍ al-ṭamaʿ. Al-Muḥibbī, Khulāṣat al-athar, i, 373. 11. Wa-iẓhār al-ʿadāwah mimman huwa fī zīyy al-ʿulamāʾ maʿa annahu lam yabqa bihā aḥad yuḥsinu qirāʾat al-fātiḥah. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, ii, 330. Al-Fātiḥah is the opening sura of the Qurʾan. 12. B. Orfali, “A Sketch Map of Arabic Poetry Anthologies up to the Fall of Baghdad,” Journal of Arabic Literature 43 (2012), 29–59, 31. For an updated and extended discussion of adab see B. Orfali, The Anthologist’s Art: Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī and His Yatīmat al-dahr (Leiden, 2016), 1–33. 150 Ghayde Ghraowi (7) musical anthologies; (8) anthologies concerned with figures of speech; (9) chronological biographical anthologies; and (10) anthologies on one poet (also called dīwāns).13 While many of Orfali’s categories hold true for the “Post-Mongol” context, it is important to note the historical distinction of the Mamluk period (in Egypt and Syria, between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries) with regard to Arabic anthology literature. Described by Elias Muhanna as a golden age of Arabic encyclopedic literature,14 the Mamluk period (for the 250 years prior to the Ottoman conquest) witnessed, “more than any other period,”15 the flourishing of anthology compilation. Apparently, however, the anthology tradition dwindled after the Ottoman conquest,16 which makes the appearance of al-Khafājī’s work an important link in the corpus. Al-Khafājī’s Rayḥānah constitutes a geographical anthology, which presents the biographies and poetic works of his contemporaries (a total of 148 entries) in four sections (aqsām): Syria, the Maghreb, Egypt, and Rūm (containing only five entries). While this geopolitical conceptualization of the seventeenth-century corpus can give modern scholars contemporaneous views of Arabic literary production in the Ottoman Empire, al-Khafājī is primarily adapting this organizational principle from his main literary inspiration, Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1039). Al-Thaʿālibī’s Yatīmat al-dahr fī maḥāsin ahl al-ʿaṣr represents the preeminent model for the geographical anthology, as well as the first adab collection of contemporary poetry, transmitted mainly through the author’s personal reception of works both written and oral.17 Al-Khafājī follows a similar methodology for his anthology, and refers frequently to the Yatīmah as precedent. This feature of the Rayḥānah somewhat substantiates Bauer’s claim that sequels to the Yatīmat al-dahr, which were interrupted during the Mamluk period, resurfaced in the Ottoman 13. See Orfali, “A Sketch Map,” 29–59. 14. E. Muhanna, The World in a Book: al-Nuwayrī and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition (Princeton, 2018), 20. 15. Th. Bauer, “Anthologies, Arabic literature (post-Mongol period),” in EI3. For a more detailed discussion of Mamluk anthology production, see Th. Bauer, “Literarische Anthologien der Mamlukenzeit,” in Die Mamluken: Studien zu ihrer Geschichte und Kultur. Zum Gedenken an Ulrich Haarmann (1942–1999), ed. S. Conermann and A. Pistor-Hatam (Hamburg, 2003), 71–122. 16. Bauer (“Anthologies”) cites the existence of (uncritically) edited versions of Bahāʾ al-Dīn alʿĀmilī’s (d. 1030/1621) two anthologies (al-Mikhlāh and al-Kashkūl). These two works are of a different nature than the Rayḥānah, however. According to Bosworth, the Mikhlāh lacks any internal structure (chapters headings/divisions) and consists of everything from medicinal remedies to Prophetic maxims as well as assorted poetry from the Jāhiliyyah to the period contemporaneous with its author. The Kashkūl, the more popular of the two, falls along similar organizational lines, but contains poetic works in both Arabic and Persian. The point here is that al-Khafājī’s anthology is solely concerned with contemporary poets, and, organizationally, it more closely resembles a biographical dictionary. See C. E. Bosworth, Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī and His Literary Anthologies (Manchester, 1989), 16–19; see also D. J. Stewart, “Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad al-ʿĀmilī (1547–1621),” in Essays, ed. Lowry and Stewart (Wiesbaden, 2009), 27–48. 17. Orfali, The Anthologist’s Art, 40, 140–50. Championing the Era 151 era.18 Thus, in considering both the personal-political context of the Rayḥānah’s construction and its place within the Arabic literary anthology tradition, we can now turn to the text itself. Championing the Era: Al-Khafājī’s Muqaddimah to the Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ True to the tradition to which it belongs, the Rayḥānah opens with an elaborate preamble (muqaddimah),19 which reveals not only al-Khafājī’s motives behind the compilation, but also his own literary prowess in prose composition. Almost immediately, al-Khafājī aligns his project with other canonical anthologies and stresses the historical imperative such a project implies: Indeed, there has always been someone who championed his era and revived its dead, giving life to its verses worn out through the ages just like the compiler of al-Yatīmah (al-Thaʿālibī) and Qalāʾid al-ʿiqyān (al-Fatḥ Ibn Khāqān) and al-Dumyah (al-Bākharzī) and al-Dhakhīrah (Ibn Bassām) and ʿUqūd al-jumān.20 The enthusiasm of a man for his era, along with his standing upon the pulpit to champion it—these are the signs of chivalry, which are recited upon the tongue of honor.21 Al-Khafājī is not only identifying the Rayḥānah with great predecessors like the Yatīmah, but also expressing the noble mandate behind such an undertaking itself. Orfali has shown that a number of motives may lie behind a scholar’s decision to produce an anthology. Reasons ranging from the abundance of literary production to early (ancient) poetry’s role in Arabic philology contributed to the impulse to anthologize Arabic literature.22 As mentioned above, the Rayḥānah is generally modeled on al-Thaʿālibī’s anthology of contemporary poets, an approach that became “an important vehicle for publishing original literature” after the tenth century.23 The “enthusiasm of a man for his era,” as al-Khafājī puts it, reflects Orfali’s claim that “the anthologist was a gatekeeper to the realm of admired literature.”24 18. Bauer, “Anthologies.” 19. Bilal Orfali rightly points out that the muqaddimah constitutes an independent literary form of Arabic prose from the fourth/tenth century onwards. Bilal Orfali, “The Art of the Muqaddima in the Works of Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1039),” in The Weaving of Words: Approaches to Classical Arabic Prose, ed. L. Bahzadi and V. Behmardi (Beirut, 2009), 182. 20. Probably the Qalāʾid al-juman of Kamāl al-dīn al-Mawṣilī (fl. 13th c.) 21. Wa-qad intaṣara li-kull ʿaṣr man aḥyā maytahu wa-ʿammara min dāris ʿuhūdihi baytahu ka-ṣāḥib alYatīmah wa-Qalāʾid al-ʿiqyān wa-l-Dumyah wa-l-Dhakhīrah wa-ʿUqūd al-jumān wa-ḥamiyyat al-marʾ liʿaṣrihi wa-qiyāmuhu ʿalā manābir naṣrihi min āyāt al-futuwwah allatī hiya ʿalā lisān al-ḥamiyyah matluwwah. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 5. 22. Orfali, The Anthologist’s Art, 7–8. 23. Orfali, The Anthologist’s Art, 9. 24. Orfali, The Anthologist’s Art, 9. 152 Ghayde Ghraowi Given the personal-political circumstances behind its composition, it is not surprising that al-Khafājī goes on to lament the mediocrity of some contemporary poetry: The leaders (ruʾasāʾ) are poets who compose neither verse nor prose. There is not within them a [single] attribute of the poets save that they say what they do not do. If a eulogizer (mādiḥ) of one of them lies he trembles and is thrilled, and awards the mirage of his promise with lie upon lie. But the leaven promise does not ferment yeast.25 By the unnamed “leaders” al-Khafājī likely means the Ottoman official elite whom he despises so. The references to praise (madḥ) as lies reveal his suspicions of the so-called poets of his time. Indeed, later on he dramatically exclaims: “Verily, I ask God’s forgiveness for an era in which the sensitivities of its character are diminished!”26 Thus, part of al-Khafājī’s intention behind the compilation is to distinguish false poetry from truly beautiful works. As he states: “Not every altitude is a highland. Not every valley sprouts trees. Not every black thing is a date. Not every red thing is wine. Not every white thing is tallow. Not every red thing is meat. Not every plant rises up when it grows.”27 Apart from the question of its content, it is important to address al-Khafājī’s formal style of expression in his preamble, which applies to his commentary throughout the Rayḥānah. The preamble is composed in extremely ornate rhymed prose (sajʿ). As Van Gelder notes, “[the Rayḥānah] will exasperate many readers by its relentless flowery rhymed prose studded with arcane words and erudite allusions.”28 There is, however, a more structural method to his writing beyond ostentatious verbal fireworks.29 According to Orfali, since its development into an independent genre in the tenth century, the muqaddimah can be characterized by several common features: (1) adherence to rhyme and rhythmical balance (al-sajʿ wa-l-muwāzanah), (2) extensive use of figures of speech (badīʿ), (3) synonymity and prolixity (al-tarāduf wa-l-iṭnāb), (4) adaptation and inclusion (al-iqtibās wa-l-taḍmīn), (5) brilliant exordia (barāʿat al-istihlāl).30 One must keep in mind that Orfali is addressing al-Thaʿālibī’s muqaddimāt of the late tenth/early 25. Wa-l-ruʾasāʾ shuʿarāʾ lā yunẓimūn wa-la yanthirūn wa-mā fīhim min ṣifāt al-shuʿarāʾ illā annahum yaqūlūna mā lā yafʿalūna wa-idhā kadhiba mādiḥ aḥadihim ihtazza wa-ṭariba wa-jāza min sarāb waʿdihi bikadhib ʿalā kadhib wa-bi-l-waʿd al-faṭīr la yukhammaru al-khamīr. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 6. 26. A-lā annī astaghfiru Allāh min dahr kallat fīha murhafāt al-ṭibāʿ. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 7. 27. Fa-mā kull murtafiʿ najd wa-lā kull wādin yunbitu al-shīḥ wa-l-rand wa-mā kull sawdāʾ tamrah wa-lā kull ṣahbāʾ khamrah wa-lā kull bayḍāʾ shaḥmah wa-lā kull ḥamrāʾ laḥmah wa-lā kull nabt yaʿlū bi-namaʾihi. AlKhafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 13. 28. Van Gelder, “Shihāb al-Dīn al-Khafājī,” 257. 29. It is worth mentioning that the preamble tradition in the Ottoman Turkish literary canon follows structural methods as well, which have been studied by B. Tezcan in “The Multiple Faces of the One: The Invocation Section of Ottoman Literary Introductions as a Locus for the Central Argument of the Text,” Middle Eastern Literatures 12 (2009), 27–41. 30. Orfali, “The Art of the Muqaddima,” 181. Championing the Era 153 eleventh centuries, while al-Khafājī is writing some six centuries later. Thus, these features may not map perfectly onto a reading of al-Khafājī’s muqaddimah. However, given the importance of al-Thaʿālibī’s work to al-Khafājī, and its importance throughout the generations between the two,31 it is worth examining how the formal features of the latter’s muqaddimah fit within the former’s categorization. Like most muqaddimāt, as Orfali has shown, al-Khafājī’s opens with the convention of commendations. Deriving from the opening chapter of the Qurʾan (al-Fātiḥah), commendations begin with either the basmalah (“In the name of…”) or the ḥamdalah (“In praise of…”).32 Rendered below are al-Khafājī’s opening lines in both Arabic transliteration and English translation: ḥamdan li-man sarraḥa ʿuyūn al-baṣāʾir fī riyāḍ al-niʿam riyāḍ zahat fīha rayāhīn alʿuqūl wa-tafattaḥat bi-nasīm al-luṭf anwār al-ḥikam fa-jtanat minha aydī al-munā fawākih al-arwāḥ wa-qtaṭafat shaqīq al-shaqīq min bayni affāḥī al-ṣabāḥ wa-l-nadā ṭarraza burd al-nasīmi bi-balālih lammā raʾā majāmir al-zahr taḥta adhyālih. (Praise to him who let the eyes of insights wander in the gardens of goodness, gardens that blossomed with the sweet basil of the minds, and the blooms of wise sayings that opened with the breeze of benevolence. Thus, the hands of gifts harvested the fruits of the spirits and gathered the anemones from the midst of morning daisies. The dew embroidered the robe of the breeze with its moisture when it saw the coals of the flowers beneath the edges of its garment.)33 In bold we see the ḥamdalah commendation, while in the last four clauses we find underlined two rhyming patterns. While the first three lines do not employ sajʿ, they, instead, demonstrate muwāzanah, rhythmical balance in syntactic and morphological structuring. This execution of al-sajʿ wa-l-muwāzanah is noticeably similar to al-Thaʿālibī’s opening in Nathr al-naẓm wa-ḥall al-ʿaqd, which also begins with three unrhymed, rhythmically balanced lines followed by rhymed clauses.34 Another feature, adaptation and inclusion (al-iqtibās wa-l-taḍmīn), entails quoting or referencing lines of the Qurʾan, Hadith and/or poetry within the muqaddimah. We have already encountered this feature in al-Khafājī’s preamble in the lines above on the leader-poets who “say what they do not do.” This line is lifted directly from Sura 26 of the Qurʾan, al-Shuʿarāʾ (The Poets), verse 226 of which reads: “wa-annahum yaqūlūna mā lā 31. Muhsin al-Musawi mentions the precedent al-Thaʿālibī represents in the Arabic prose tradition up to al-Khafājī’s time: M. al-Musawi, “Pre-Modern Elite Prose,” in Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, ed. R. Allen and D. S. Richards (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2006), 101–33 at 105. 32. Orfali, “The Art of the Muqaddima,” 182–83. 33. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 3. 34. For more on the passage in question see Orfali, “The Art of the Muqaddima,” 195. 154 Ghayde Ghraowi yafʿalūn.” Unsurprisingly, excepts from poetry also abound in al-Khafājī’s muqaddimah, such as his reference to the tenth-century poet Ibn Hāniʾ al-Andalusī (d. 362/973): Thus they gathered for themselves the fruits of events, ripe with brilliant leaves, sharply green35 The lines above allude to the theme of gathering or harvesting fruit or flowers, an image closely associated with anthologizing. Throughout his muqaddimah, al-Khafājī links the notion of gardening and harvesting to the preservation of poetic heritage (as evidenced from his opening lines cited above). Al-Khafājī uses al-iqtibās wa-l-taḍmīn to more eloquently express the noble mandate behind adab compilation, as he does with these unattributed couplets: If a man told of the accounts of those passed then consider him indeed to have lived in the first age And consider him indeed to have lived his last age until resurrection, if he caused beauty to persist in memory. Thus, he has lived every age who lived it informed noble and patient: So seize the longest era!36 With al-Khafājī’s motivations clarified and his distinctive literary idiom sampled, we can now turn to the contents of his anthology in order to examine who’s who in al-Khafājī’s conception of a literary era as well as the socio-historical conditions that made such a conception possible. The Words and Worlds of the Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ Although the Rayḥānah represents a reference work, a compilation of transmissions of contemporary poetry, like most works in the anthology tradition, its originality lies in “the choice and arrangement of the reproduced texts, which reveals in turn the individual interest of the compiler.”37 Indeed, Hilary Kilpatrick has argued for approaching the 35. Fa-janaw lahum thamara l-waqāʾiʿi yāniʿan/ bi-l-ghurri min wariqi l-ḥadīdi l-akhḍari. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 4. 36. Idhā mā rawā l-insānu akhbāra man maḍā/fa-taḥsabuhū qad ʿāsha min awwali l-dahrī/wa-taḥsabuhū qad ʿāsha ākhira dahrihi/ilā l-ḥashri in abqā l-jamīla mina l-dhikrī/fa-qad ʿāsha kulla l-dahri man ʿāsha ʿāliman/ karīman ḥalīman fa-ghtanim aṭwala l-ʿumri. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 5. 37. Orfali, “A Sketch Map,” 32. Championing the Era 155 “literary method”38 behind what she calls adab encyclopedias39 if they are to “make sense as literature.”40 In the Rayḥānah, al-Khafājī also flirts with genres like the biographical dictionary (kitāb al-ṭabaqāt), travel accounts and autobiography (riḥalāt/siyar) and prose fiction (maqāmāt). In her work on biographical dictionaries, Wadad al-Qadi has noted that “late premodern” biographical dictionaries exhibit several common features.41 The one that most aptly relates to the Rayḥānah is the “proliferation of mixing chronicles with biographies.”42 According to al-Qadi, the development of biographical dictionaries based on a period of time was prerequisite to the emergence of the centenary dictionary, which, in my view, becomes fully realized in Arabic scholarly production after the Ottoman conquest.43 While the Rayḥānah has been referred to as a “biographical dictionary of poets,”44 this limits the affordances of this literary form. The Rayḥānah can perhaps best be described as a centenary geographical dictionary45 of contemporary poets, which features recurrent 38. H. Kilpatrick, “A Genre in Classical Arabic Literature: The Adab Encyclopedia,” in Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants 10th Congress, Edinburgh, September 1980, Proceedings, ed. R. Hillenbrand (Edinburgh, 1982), 34. Kilpatrick applies this term to understand the individual tastes of Arabic “encyclopedists.” Adab encyclopedias, she claims (35), “seek to provide the information necessary for the adīb, so that he may achieve the ideal of possessing ‘a polished understanding and the very stuff of knowledge.’” 39. In response to Kilpatrick’s naming the genre “adab encyclopedias,” Orfali (“A Sketch Map,” 41) writes, “Kilpatrick distinguishes between encyclopedias and anthologies, but she also realizes the difficulty of setting boundaries between the two…” 40. Kilpatrick, “A Genre,” 34. Shawkat Toorawa, too, takes organizing principles as an object of study in what he calls “bio-bibliographical works.” S. M. Toorawa, “Proximity, Resemblance, Sidebars and Clusters: Ibn al-Nadīm’s Organizational Principles in Fihrist 3.3,” Oriens 38 (2010), 217–47. 41. The four main features of late biographical dictionaries, according to Wadad al-Qadi, are: “greater tendency to structure dictionaries alphabetically rather than according to ṭabaqāt; the start of compiling general dictionaries that are not limited to any specific field, place, or time period; the proliferation of mixing chronicles with biographies; and the emergence of abridgements of earlier, long biographical dictionaries.” W. al-Qadi, “Biographical Dictionaries as the Scholars’ Alternative History of the Muslim Community,” in Organizing Knowledge: Encyclopaedic Activities in the Pre-Eighteenth Century Islamic World, ed. G. Endress (Leiden, 2006), 23–75, at 67. 42. Al-Qadi, “Biographical Dictionaries,” 70. Bauer (“Anthologies”), too, recognizes the merging of genres in the Ottoman literary production—particularly, commentary and travelogues (both of which are present and intertwined in al-Khafājī’s anthology).” 43. Consider, for instance, three of the most prominent examples of the centennial dictionary: Najm al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Ghazzī’s (d. 1061/1651) al-Kawākib al-Sāʾirah bi-manāqib ʿulamāʾ al-miʾah al-ʿāshirah; Muḥammad al-Muḥibbī’s (d. 1111/1699) Khulāṣat al-athar fī aʿyān al-qarn al-ḥādī ʿashar; and Khalīl alMuradī’s (d. 1205/1791) Silk al-durar fī aʿyān al-qarn al-thānī ʿashar. 44. N. Hanna, In Praise of Books: A Cultural History of Cairo’s Middle Class, Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Syracuse, 2003), 117. 45. While the work is a compilation of poets contemporaneous with al-Khafājī (and does not explicitly identify itself with a centennial-corpus), several entries include individuals who died before or in very close proximity to his birth. The range of biographies, thus, reaches nearly a century. 156 Ghayde Ghraowi commentary by its compiler consisting of personal reflections on aesthetics and contemporary socio-historical conditions alike. Alongside this point, with regard to the dual process of textualization and popularization, Konrad Hirschler has speculated that the socio-historical transformations that had taken place during the Mamluk period continue under Ottoman rule, suggesting that new factors, such as “the linguistic change at the elite level to Ottoman Turkish,” might have had repercussions for the textual production and reading practices during the era.46 Nevertheless, plenty of evidence supports the claim that during the Ottoman period Arabic textual production was abundant,47 access to education rose,48 literacy (or literacies) increased,49 and individual “deep reading” (muṭālaʿa)50 became a habitual practice. Views such as Hirschler’s may stem from the fact that Arabic-speaking authors produced little historical writing within the generation after the Ottoman conquest (the second half of the sixteenth century).51 While “linguistic change” played some part in a general disturbance or tension in cultural production in the first half of the sixteenth century,52 the aforementioned socio-intellectual developments persisted at least into the seventeenth 46. K. Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices (Edinburgh, 2012), 3–4. Margaret Larkin writes, however, that “[After the Ottoman conquest of the Arab lands,] the social and cultural trajectory that characterized the Mamluk era continued and intensified.” M. Larkin, “Popular Poetry in the Post-Classical Period, 1150–1850,” in Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, ed. Allen and Richards, 189–242, 230. 47. Hanna, In Praise of Books, 81; N. Hanna, “Culture in Ottoman Egypt,” in Modern Egypt: From 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century, ed. M. W. Daly (Cambridge, 1998), 87–112, at 94–95; M. Winter, “Historiography in Arabic During the Ottoman Period,” in Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, ed. Allen and Richards, 172; 48. Hanna, In Praise of Books, 51; N. Hanna, “Literacy and the ‘Great Divide’ in the Islamic World, 1300– 1800,” Journal of Global History (2007), 175–93, at 179. 49. See Hanna, “Literacy and the ‘Great Divide’”; and especially, D. Sajdi, The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant (Palo Alto, Calif., 2013), 6–10. Albert Hourani claims that by the eighteenth century (at least in Egypt) half the male population was literate. Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 254–55. 50. Khaled El-Rouayheb argues for the “emergence of a more impersonal and textual model of the transmission of knowledge in the central Ottoman lands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is not just that the time-honored, oral-aural ideal did not fully correspond to actual educational realities; the ideal itself appears to have been supplemented with a newly articulated ideal of the acquisition of knowledge through ‘deep reading.’” See Kh. El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century: Scholarly Currents in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb (Cambridge, 2015), 97–98. Also consider, as Bosworth (Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī, 21) has shown, that Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī intended the Mikhlāh and Kashkūl to be “read together as companions for solitude.” 51. M. Winter, “Historiography in Arabic,” 171–88, at 173–74, 181. 52. See H. Pfeifer, “Encounter After the Conquest: Scholarly Gatherings in 16th-Century Ottoman Damascus,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47 (2015), 219–39; also Burak, The Second Formation of Islamic Law, 101–21. Championing the Era 157 and eighteenth centuries.53 What would it mean, then, to incorporate a literary reading of the contents al-Khafājī’s Rayḥānah into a social history of the work itself? The privileged position of the Rayḥānah’s first entry in its first section (On Syria) belongs to Aḥmad al-ʿInāyātī (d. 1014/1605) who was actually al-Khafājī’s poetry teacher.54 “Friend of sincerity, confidant of virtue, brother of tenderness, and companion of generosity,” writes al-Khafājī of his old teacher, adding: “If al-Mutanabbī were to have seen him then he would say what is this but an enchanter (sāḥir).”55 Typical of al-Khafājī’s biographies, he provides unspecific details in his description of al-ʿInāyātī. However, he does paint a portrait of the man as a Sufi or ascetic: Now he is a blaze on the forehead of al-Sham (Damascus), a flower in its blooming gardens, a Venus in the brilliant sky of its perfection. And indeed, [alʿInāyātī] adorned his perfection in the clothing of asceticism (al-zuhd) and saw with his accurate vision his tattered robes himself. He did not concern himself with the occasion of tomorrow, content in the shadow of obscurity, whether life be hard or easy and saying in his vast meadows: chaste of heart, pure of garments. He did not choke on begging or on regretful hopes. He did not become attached to a home or settle down anywhere.56 53. It is important, here, to take stock and recognize the significance (in varying degrees) that textualization has had in earlier periods. As Jonathan Bloom claims, the introduction of paper in Islamic civilization in the eighth century had a transformative effect, “spurring an extraordinary burst of literary creativity in virtually all subjects from theology to the natural sciences and literature.” J. Bloom, Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven, Conn., 2001), 12. In a similar vein, Shawkat Toorawa argues that by the middle of the ninth century the written word had become the basis of cultural activity and progress. Toorawa goes further to assert, not unlike myself, that nonelite/ specialist readership emerged (in the ninth century) for which a “popular culture” was produced. “We know altogether too little about popular literature, its reach, and its readership, but, judging from the sheer number of titles and the calibre of writers associated with such writing,” Toorawa writes, “we can infer that the readership—or the demand at any rate—was significant.” Toorawa, Ibn Abī Tāhir Tayfūr and Arabic Writerly Culture: A Ninth-Century Bookman in Baghdad (New York, London, 2005), 33. That arguments about textualization and popularization exist with respect to the eighth and ninth centuries does not preclude my assertion of their prominence in the seventeenth century. If anything, these earlier readings, which cite similar consequences in literary production, reinforce my argument that the dual process produced these results later on. What distinguishes the seventeenth century, however, is the scale at which textualization/popularization are operating, making their effects on literary production all the more evident, as I hope to demonstrate below. 54. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, ii, 329; van Gelder, “Shihāb al-Dīn al-Khafājī,” 252. 55. Ṣadīq al-ṣidq wa-khidn al-ṣalāḥ shaqīq al-nadā wa-tirb al-samāḥi… law raʾāhu al-Mutanabbī la-qāla mā hādhā illā sāḥirun. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 18. 56. Wa-huwa al-ān fī jabhat al-shāmi ghurrah wa-fī ḥadāʾiqihā al-nāḍirah zahrah wa-fī samāʾ kamālihā alzāhiyyah zuharah wa-qad ḥallā bi-ḥulal al-zuhd kamālahu wa-raʾā bi-raʾyihi al-ṣāʾib asmālahu isman lahu lam yaḥtafil bi-amr ghadin qāniʿan bi-ẓill al-khamūl nakadan am raghadan qāʾilan fī khamāʾilihi al-riḥāb ʿaffa alsarīrah ṭāhirah al-athwāb lam yashraq bi-suʾāl wa-lam yaghaṣṣ bi-nadāmat al-āmāl wa-lam yaʾlaf sakanan wayatawaṭṭan maskanan. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 18–19. 158 Ghayde Ghraowi In illustrating his asceticism further, al-Khafājī cites a poem in which al-ʿInāyātī explains his mode of dress: If I am not great, then who is the one with strength? my poverty and moderation is a treasure, a refuge. I dressed in a garment of despair among the people and upon which is embroidered intellect and virtue. I do not see disgrace except when it is in love, as disgrace in love is powerful. The like of me is a nobleman whose wealth, like silk and linen, enslave the people. He who loves or he who hates, he who praises or he who ridicules, they are one and the same.57 The ubiquity of Sufism in the Ottoman Arab lands (and throughout the empire as a whole) is well documented in modern scholarship, which finds that membership in and adherence to a mystical order (ṭarīqah) constitutes a “widespread popular movement.”58 Al-ʿInāyātī must not have been particularly well known in his lifetime, a fact that he appears to lament in his own verse, transmitted by al-Khafājī, “It is a wonder that I am a poet/yet not a verse of mine is known to people.”59 Conversely, one of the most prominent figures included in the Rayḥānah is the Syrian ʿālim Badr al-Dīn al-Ghazzī (d. 984/1577), whom al-Khafājī calls “the incomparable one of the age (farīd al-dahr).”60 A poet, religious scholar and Shāfiʿī mufti, al-Ghazzī belonged to one of the most important Damascene households,61 and, indeed, “could be considered the foremost intellectual figure of his generation in Damascus.”62 Al-Ghazzī’s lifetime also occupies an important period, the initial decades of the Ottoman conquest. While the political legitimacy of the Ottomans was rarely questioned, in the “cultural asymmetries” (as Helen Pfeifer puts it) between Ottoman Turkish and Arabic the scales were heavily tipped towards the latter. Al-Ghazzī, in particular, played a significant role in one 57. Idhā lam aʿizza fa-man dhā yaʿizzu/wa-faqrī wa-qaniʿiya kanzun wa-ḥirzu/labistu mina l-yaʾsi fī l-nāsi thawban/ʿalayhi mina l-ʿaqli wa-l-faḍli ṭarzu/wa-lastu arā l-dhulla illā idhā kā-/na fī l-ḥubbi wa-l-dhullu fī-lḥubbi ʿizzu/wa-mithliya ḥurrun ʿabātun ghināhu/idhā staʿbada l-nāsa khazzun wa-bazzu/wa-siyyāni man ḥabba aw man qalā/wa-man rāḥa yamduḥu aw rāḥa yahzū. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 19. 58. D. Ze’evi, Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500–1900 (Los Angeles, 2006), 80 (emphasis in the original); Sajdi too, writes of the eighteenth century that “the majority of male citizens belonged to at least one Sufi order…” Sajdi, The Barber of Damascus, 46. See especially Dina La Gall, A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandīs in the Ottoman World, 1450–1700 (Albany, 2005). 59. Wa-min ʿajībin an akūna shāʿiran/wa-laysa lī fī l-nāsi baytun yuʿrafu. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 19. 60. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 138. 61. ʿU. M. Bāshā, Tārīkh al-adab al-ʿArabī: al-ʿaṣr al-ʿUthmānī (Beirut, 1989), 618. 62. Pfeifer, “Encounter,” 223; Also R. Elger, “Badr al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Ghazzī,” in Essays, ed. Lowry and Stewart, 99–100. Championing the Era 159 episode when he refused the visit of the newly appointed chief judge Kınalizâde ʿAlī in 1562.63 Perhaps this social snubbing was linked to al-Ghazzī’s feelings of resentment for struggling to find patronage in Istanbul in 1530.64 Neither of the aforementioned events appears in al-Khafājī’s description of the prominent Damascene poet. Instead, al-Khafājī lauds al-Ghazzī and his son, Najm al-Dīn (d. 1060/1650), the “lion cub (shibl al-asad)”: “The two of them are like the two knees of the camel through every severe concern.”65 The first lines of al-Ghazzī’s verse that alKhafājī cites are as follows: When the servant praises his Master, it is an inspiration from Allah to the servant. And that is something that always necessitates praise; True praise comes from none other than the one who inspires it.66 The couplets exemplify al-Ghazzī’s exhaustively religious themes, which likely contribute to al-Khafājī’s impersonal and “ambivalent” account of the great Damascene scholar. Indeed, as Ralf Elger notes: “Of Badr al-Dīn’s poetry, al-Khafājī says that it is of the kind that religious scholars produce, thus setting Badr al-Dīn apart from the true literati to whom he devotes most of his book. Certainly Badr al-Dīn was not among the literary figures who praised wine, love, and other worldly matters.”67 This ambivalence may also stem from the fact that al-Khafājī never knew al-Ghazzī, a logistical detail that does not apply to several of the following entries under review. One finds a more invested and vivid portrayal in al-Khafājī’s entry on his Egyptian colleague Yūsuf al-Maghribī (d. 1019/1610), known today mostly for his dictionary of colloquial Egyptian Arabic Daf ʿ al-ʾiṣr ʿan kalām ahl Miṣr (Removing the Burden from the Speech of the Egyptians). Al-Khafājī writes of al-Maghribī: [He was] the eminent one of Egypt, with regard to fingertips (writing) and eloquence (bayān); the Yūsuf of his age, in beauty and beneficence (iḥsān); he was born in Egypt, occupying himself in the production of adab; he demonstrated the measures of his poetry [in] every syllable (sabab); he shared, in part (naṣīb), in the trade of virtue; and fired at its genres every accurate (muṣīb) arrow; in 63. Pfeifer, “Encounter,” 223. 64. Elger, “Badr al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Ghazzī,” 101. 65. Wa-humā ka-rukbatay al-baʿīr fī kull maʿnayayn ṣārimin. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 138. 66. Idhā kāna ḥamdu l-ʿabdi mawlāhu innamā/yakūnu bi-ilhāmin mina llāhi li-l-ʿabdi/wa-dhālika mimmā yūjibu l-ḥamda dāʾiman/fa-lā ḥamda ḥaqqan min siwā mulhimi l-ḥamdi. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, i, 139. 67. Elger, “Badr al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Ghazzī,” 106. Al-Ghazzī’s religious poetry may belong to a more general trend after the Crusades and Mongol invasion, which Th. Emil Homerin links to a conservational attitude towards Islam and piety. Characteristic of this trend, which certainly may be seen in the case of al-Ghazzī, is invective verse against “government officials who tyrannized the populace in the name of religion.” Th. Emil Homerin, “Arabic Religious Poetry, 1200–1800,” in Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, ed. Allen and Richards, 83. 160 Ghayde Ghraowi nature, he was more gentle than the northern breezes (shamāl), which come in the last third of the night’s ends (adhyāl).68 Al-Khafājī maintains the sajʿ with each clause of al-Maghribī’s entry while providing slightly more detail about this scholar’s background. That al-Khafājī states rather tersely that al-Maghribī was “born in Egypt” is likely on account of his nisbah (filial/regional marker), which places his origins in North Africa (al-maghrib). Modern scholarship, furthermore, asserts that al-Maghribī was born in Egypt and speculates that the roots of his North African nisbah lie several generations behind him.69 Al-Khafājī also mentions their close friendship, claiming that, “He was very cordial with me in pleasant gatherings, and treated me with tender friendliness.”70 This mutual familiarity between the two men forms the basis of al-Khafājī’s transmissions of alMaghribī’s poetry. “Thus, he recited to me every beautiful utterance, correctly transmitted by the reciter of the time,” writes al-Khafājī, adding: “And he has a source of adab that is pure (ṣafī), a dīwān called ‘al-dhahab al-yūsufī.’”71 Al-Maghribī’s dīwān does not appear to be extant, making al-Khafājī’s transmissions all the more valuable. Take, for instance: I tell you this: if tomorrow someone laughs as they pass you, Do not be fooled by his laughter for it is [more] like sobbing.72 Two verses in particular spark al-Khafājī’s literary critical fuse, provoking an extended analysis: bulītu bihi faqīhan dhī jidālin yujādilu bi-l-dalīli wa-bi-l-dalāli ṭalabtu wiṣālahu wa-l-waṣlu ḥulwun fa-qāla nahā al-nabiyyu ʿani-l-wiṣāli I was worn out by an argumentative (jidāl) jurist 68. ʿAzīzu miṣrihi banānan wa-bayān wa-Yūsufu ʿaṣrihi ḥusnan wa-iḥsān nashaʾa bi-miṣr yataʿāṭā ṣināʿat aladab wa-thabbata bi-awtād shiʿrihi kull sabab yushāriku fī tijārat al-faḍl bi-naṣīb wa-yarmī li-aghrāḍiha kull sahm muṣīb bi-ṭabʿ alṭaf min nasamāt al-shamāl sarat suḥratan bi-laylat al-adhyāl. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat alalibbāʾ, ii, 32. 69. L. Zack, Egyptian Arabic in the Seventeenth Century: A Study and Edition of Yūsuf al-Maghribī’s Daf ʿ alʾiṣr ʿan Kalām ʾAhl Miṣr (Utrecht, 2009), 9–12; Bāshā, Tārīkh al-Adab al-ʿArabī, 49. 70. Wa-kāna kathīran mā yujāmilunī bi-ḥusn al-mujālasah wa-yuʿāmilunī bi-luṭf al-muʾānasah. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, ii, 36. 71. Fa-rawayna kull ḥadīth ḥasan wa-ṣaḥīḥ yusniduhu rāwī al-zaman…wa-lahu mawrid min al-adab ṣafī wadīwān sammāhu al-Dhahab al-Yūsufī. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, ii, 33. 72. Ūṣīka in shakhṣun ghadan/yaḍḥaku in marra bi-ka/lā taghtarir bi-ḍiḥkihi/fa-inna hādhā kal-bukā. AlKhafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, ii, 33. Championing the Era 161 [who] debates (yujādil) with evidence (dalīl) and coquettishness (dalāl) I sought his romantic union (wiṣāl) as the connection (waṣl) is sweet but he said the Prophet forbids such junctions (wiṣāl)73 Addressing his readers, al-Khafājī warns: “Know that all of this is not poetry [that] the men of letters (udabāʾ) approve of, and it is all poetry that has been loaded with badīʿ (rhetorical figures/tropes).”74 Somewhat disapprovingly, al-Khafājī is pointing out alMaghribī’s use of the trope identified a century later by ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1143/1731) as “derivative paronomasia (polyptoton)” or jinās al-ishtiqāq.75 In an intriguing digression, al-Khafājī comments briefly on the development of badīʿ in Arabic literature, citing its origination by Muslim b. al-Walīd (d. 208/823), followed thereafter by Abū Tammām (d. 231/845).76 “The best [type] of this craft is paronomasia (tajnīs) and double entendre (tawriya),” writes al-Khafājī, adding with sharp wit: “and in poetry, these [tropes] are like saffron—a little bit is pleasant, a lot kills.”77 Al-Khafājī, as Van Gelder notes, is “very obviously present in much of his anthology…[and] does not restrict his own voice to the introductory sections and the occasional comment.”78 Thus, the characterization of the Ottoman Arab poet as exhibiting an “essential lack of seriousness”79 and as being someone who “impoverishes language”80 is simply erroneous given the kind of contemporaneous reflection on and moderation of the rising use of rhetorical tropes by a figure as prominent as al-Khafājī. Furthermore, on the question of textualization and popularization, the case of Yūsuf al-Maghribī serves as a linchpin in my study of the Rayḥānah. Born to a family of craftsmen, al-Maghribī worked professionally as a maker of sword-holders (ḥamāyil sayf),81 but turned away from his craft, in order to purchase books and study at al-Azhar.82 As 73. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, ii, 34. (For the homoerotic subject matter of these verses, see below.) 74. Wa-ʿlam anna hādhā kullahu laysa bi-shiʿr tartaḍīhi al-udabāʾ wa-huwa kull shiʿr ukthira fīhi min al-badīʿ. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, ii, 35. 75. ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī defines jinās al-ishtiqāq as “[t]he use in one context of several words derived from the same root.” See al-Nābulusī, The Arch Rhetorician, or The Schemer’s Skimmer: A Handbook of Late Arabic badīʿ drawn from ʿAbd al-Ghanī an-Nābulusī’s Nafaḥāt al-Azhār ʿalā Nasamāt al-Asḥār, ed. and trans. P. Cachia (Wiesbaden, 1998), 30. 76. For a study of the intellectual origins of badīʿ see S. Stetkevych, “Toward a Redefinition of ‘Badīʿ’ Poetry,” Journal of Arabic Literature 12 (1981), 1–29. 77. Wa-aḥsan hādhihi al-ṣanʿah al-tajnīsu wa-l-tawriyah wa-humā fī al-shiʿr ka-l-zaʿfarāni qalīluhu mufriḥ wa-kathīruhu qātil. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, ii, 35. 78. Van Gelder, “Shihāb al-Dīn al-Khafājī,” 260. 79. M. M. Badawi, A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry (Cambridge, 1976), 7. 80. M. L. Al-Yousfi, “Poetic Creativity in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” in Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, ed. Allen and Richards, 60–73, 68. 81. Hanna, In Praise of Books, 114; Zack, Egyptian Arabic, 11. 82. Hanna, In Praise of Books, 114; Zack, Egyptian Arabic, 12–13. 162 Ghayde Ghraowi mentioned above, several historical factors, such as the spread of cheap paper83 and the increase in manuscript copying,84 the affordability of books and individualized reading (muṭālaʿa), made opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge more widely accessible.85 Al-Maghribī’s background as a craftsman-turned-scholar is also reflected in his major work, the colloquial Egyptian dictionary Daf ʿ al-iṣr. Al-Maghribī writes that he “undertook…to arrange this book in the most magnificent way,” with a view to “revising what comes from the commoners (ʿawāmm) among the Egyptians to return it to accuracy—this is Arabicization (taʿrīb).”86 The first of its kind in the Arab-Islamic intellectual tradition, al-Maghribī’s dictionary utilizes philological methodologies to trace the roots of colloquial expressions (not previously considered Arabic) to classical, correct (ṣawāb), roots, which he calls Arabicization. As Hanna notes, Daf ʿ al-iṣr appears at a time when the vernacular language starts to surface increasingly in written texts.87 However, as Hanna and others further contend, the textualization of vernacular Arabic was not the product solely of the “popular classes,” but rather an emergent “popular culture” to which scholars, craftsmen and artisans (and those who transcended individual professional markers, like al-Maghribī) all contributed.88 Given the case of al-Maghribī, it may not come a surprise that even lesser known figures,89 such as Muḥammad b. Badr al-Dīn al-Zayyāt and Muḥammad al-Suyūṭī al-Tājir, appear in the Rayḥānah. “A poet in the prime of his youth,” al-Zayyāt (true to his title) worked as an oil and grease seller, according to al-Khafājī, “until his aspiration herded him away from the pricing scales and towards the poetic scales.”90 Al-Khafājī must have known al-Zayyāt, as the two verses attributed to the young poet were recited to our anthologist personally. “From what he recited to me (fa-mimmā anshadanī):” 83. Hanna, In Praise of Books, 89; A. Raymond, Artisans et Commerçants au Caire: au XVIIIe Siècle (Damascus, 1995), 130, 174. 84. Hanna, In Praise of Books, 90. 85. Hanna, “Culture in Ottoman Egypt,” 95, refers to this as the “decentralization of knowledge and learning.” 86. Fa-qaṣada al-faqīr Yūsuf al-Maghribī… an yurattiba hādhā al-kitāb ʿalā abhaj tartīb wa-yuhadhdhiba ma yaqaʿu min ʿawāmm ahl Miṣr bi-an yurajjiʿahu li-l-ṣawābi wa-hādhā huwa al-taʿrīb. Yūsuf al-Maghribī, Dafʿ aliṣr ʿan kalām ahl Miṣr, ed. ʿA. M. Jawdah [Cairo, 2014], 36. 87. Hanna, In Praise of Books, 128. 88. Hanna, “Culture in Ottoman Egypt,” 100; See also Th. Bauer, “In Search of ‘Post-Classical Literature’: A Review Article,” Mamluk Studies Review, 11/2 (2007), 137–67, 152–54; Larkin, “Popular Poetry,” 234. 89. Contrast this with al-Thaʿālibī’s resistance to include the poetry of Khubzaʾaruzzī (d. 327/939), a bread rice baker, “because of his humble social origins and the ‘popular’ nature of his poetry.” Orfali, The Anthologist’s Art, 108–9; also, Toorawa, Ibn Abī Tāhir Tayfūr, 137. 90. Shāʿir kāna fī ʿunfuwān shabābihi… ḥattā taraʿʿat bihi himmatuhu ʿan mīzān al-siʿri ilā mīzān al-shiʿr. AlKhafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, ii, 97. Championing the Era 163 I turned my aim toward the great virtuous one in order to get from him the coveted wealth and treasure. They said: Humble yourself and you will achieve glory and exaltation, so I said to them: I already received this in greatness.91 Likewise, al-Khafājī provides an immensely interesting entry for Muḥammad al-Suyūṭī al-Tājir, “the merchant, from whom commerce profited in culture (ādāb).” Al-Suyūṭī was likely a book-trader, as al-Khafājī writes, “goods of shining adab were dispersed before him.” We also learn from his entry that al-Suyūṭī was a colleague of some sort with alKhafājī’s father as there were “friendly agreements” (ʿuhūd mawaddah) between the two men. The two lines of verse attributed to al-Suyūṭī in the Rayḥānah are likely the only ones still extant, because al-Khafājī claims his poetry “was erased by the years from the pages of thought.”92 The value of these verses’ transmission multiplies when we consider their subject matter, which al-Khafājī describes as “mujūn” (libertine): We have a companion who is an expert in jacking off (fī-l-ṣalji) that leads to him ejaculating (yumnī) without tire. If he sees a beardless youth (amrad) whose cheek is like a rose, he remembers the beauty-mole of what he has seen and milks (his member)93 We might expect al-Khafājī to dwell over these lines, but all our anthologist has to say refers to the word ṣalj, which he merely explains is from “an inferior colloquial language, and it means: gazing with lust.”94 However, we would be remiss to slight the content of these verses (as well as the last ones attributed to al-Maghribī). Homoeroticism (particularly in regard to young boys) in Arabic poetry is generally divided between the chaste and antinomian,95 the former represented by al-Maghribī’s verses about the debating jurist (faqīh) while the latter by al-Suyūṭī’s on masturbation. While neither one’s poems definitively serve as evidence of homoerotic sexual practices,96 al-Suyūṭī’s, in particular, 91. Ilā l-fāḍili l-ʿizziyyi wajjahtu maṭlabī/li-aẓfara minhu bi-l-dhakhīrati wa-l-kanzī/wa-qālū tadhallal tablughi l-majda wa-l-ʿulā/fa-qultu lahum qad niltu dhālika bi-l-ʿizzī. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, ii, 97. 92. Tājirun rabaḥat bi-l-ādāb minhu al-tijārah…fa-nushirat bayna yadayhi baḍāʾiʿ al-adab al-zāhir…wa-lahu shiʿr maḥathu min ṣuḥuf al-fikr al-sinūn. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, ii, 140. 93. Lanā ṣadīqun lahū fī l-ṣalji maʿrifatun/tufḍi ilā annahu yumnī bi-ghayri taʿb/idhā raʾā amradan ka-l-wardi wajnatuhu/tadhakkara l-shāma mimma qad raʾā wa-ḥalab. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, ii, 140. 94. Lughah ʿāmmiyyah radīʾah maʿnāha al-naẓar bi-shahwah. Al-Khafājī, Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ, ii, 140. Interestingly, al-Khafājī discusses the verbal derivative of ṣalj—ṣalaja—in his lexical work Shifāʾ al-ghalīl. He defines the word as “masturbating with the hand.” Al-Khafājī, Shifāʾ al-ghalīl fīma fī kalām al-ʿArab min al-dakhīl, ed. Muhammad Kashshash (Beirut, 1998), 200. 95. See E. K. Rowson, “Two Homoerotic Narratives from Mamlūk Literature: al-Ṣafadī’s Lawʿat al-Shākī and Ibn Dāniyāl’s al-Mutayyam,” in Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature, eds, J. W. Wright and E. K. Rowson (New York, 1997), 158–91, at 159. 96. K. El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800 (Chicago, 2005), 77. 164 Ghayde Ghraowi belong to a thriving trend of poetry on love for/gazing at young beardless boys (al-naẓar ilā l-amrad/maḥabbat al-amrad).97 In reference to the popular participation in poetry production characteristic of the period under study, Bruce Masters writes: “With everybody a poet, truly original poetry seems to have been lost in the din of competing couplets.”98 As a political historian, we can forgive Masters his inadvertent reproduction of the inḥiṭāṭ narrative. The socio-historical phenomenon he is describing, however, is a development that literary historians must take seriously in order to build a methodology for approaching this corpus of materials. In this article, I have tried to argue for a literary approach to a reference work that builds on the socio-political history of the period without reducing the text to that history. 97. Ze’evi, Producing Desire, 7; 78; El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality, 60–75. 98. Masters, The Arabs of the Ottoman Empire, 1516–1918: A Social and Cultural History (Cambridge, 2013), 109.