You that took my mind hostage

Man malak ʕaqlī rahīn

ﻧﻮﻉ ﺍﻟﺸﻌﺮ: صنعة توشيح
ﺍﻟﺸﺎﻋﺮ: ﻣﺠﻬﻮﻝ؛ ﻣﻮﺟﻮﺩ ﻓﻲ ﻣﻴﺰﺍﻥ درج ﻧﻮﺑﺔ الرصد وميزان بسيط نوبة الإصبهان
منطقته: ﺍﻷﻧﺪﻟﺲ
ﻋﺼﺮ: ﻗﺮﻥ ﺍﻟﺜﺎﻣﻦ-ﺍﻟﺨﺎﻣﺲ ﻋﺸﺮ

Type of poem: piece of a Muwaššaḥah[1]
Name of poet: unknown; found in Mīzān Darj of Nawbatu r-Raṣd and Mīzān Basīṭ of Nawbatu l-Iṣbihān
Region of poet: al-Andalus
Era: 8th-15th century

You that took my mind hostage I saw on your cheek in a dream[2] flowers and roses and lilies and jasmine I said to her: what is there on your cheek? She said to me: the moon[3] I said to her: what is there on your eyelids? She said to me: bright light[4] I said to her: what is there on your teeth? She said to me: many a pearl[5] Shining below your forehead guarded by eyebrows like marble[6] are flowers and roses and lilies and jasmine I said to her: are you the most handsome in truth? She said to me: I am handsome I said to her: so are you but dark-eyed?[7] She said to me: do not condescend! I said to her: are you taken by our union? She said to me: only in greed O you who arouses your lover's eyes from their dream to flowers and roses and lilies and jasmine [1] Muwaššaḥah or Tawšīḥ, Moaxaja in Spanish - "girdled" poetry, named owing to its strophic structure and with reference to the fashionable girdle, double belt, or scarf worn by women of high status in al-Andalus at the time - is a form of Classical strophic poetry, e.g. composed in Classical as opposed to vernacular Arabic, that originated in al-Andalus, specifically attributed to either Muqaddam b. al-Muʕāfah al-Qabrī in the 10th century, el Ciego de Cabra, the Blind Man of Cabra, near Córdoba, then named Qabrah or b. ʕabd Rabbih in the 9th/10th century, also from near Córdoba, the famous author of the ʕiqdu l-Farīd, The Unique Necklace. A Muwaššaḥah is always composed of half-verse pairs - as in Arabic poetry in general - in the form of strophes of three or more Bayt ("verse" (etymologically related to "tent, house") pl. Abyāt,) or Ġuṣn ("branch, twig", pl. Aġṣān,) and, at the end, a Qufl ("lock, bolt", pl. Aqfāl) or Simṭ ("string, thread" (particularly of a necklace,) pl. Sumūṭ.) The first - optional - Qufl is named the Maṭlah ("overlook, vantage"; "remainder of water in a basin", pl. Maṭlāt.) The last - obligatory - Qufl is named the Ḫarjah ("departure, exit", pl. Ḫarajāt - Jarcha in Spanish) - the latter being the most important, refined, and renowned part of a Muwaššaḥah, establishing the ultimate intention and premise of the poet; some Ḫarjah were composed in Romance or Mozarabic - Hispanic Vulgar Latin of the day and age - or Hebrew. Often, a Ḫarjah is composed from the perspective of a beloved person, often women but not always, or even an abstract object or interceding person, etc. pp. In contrast to Classical poetry, a Muwaššaḥah may be composed in a much larger ranges of metres than those documented - and thereby arguably fixed - by al-Ḥalīl b. Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī in the 8th century. The Classical range of genres - Faḫr, Madīḥ, Hijāʔ, and Riṯāʔ (exaltation, panegyric, satire, and lamentation,) Waṣf (description,) Ġazal (love,) etc. - is more limited in that the genres of Ḥamriyyah, Rabīʕiyyah, Rawḍiyyah, and Nawriyyah (poetry on wine, spring, gardens, and the blossoming of flowers) as well as love predominate; homoerotic poetry is also just as strongly present as it was in Classical poetry where often it is unclear whether the beloved person being referred to is female or male. Stylistically speaking, a Muwaššaḥah tends to have very spontaneous, concise, and direct yet witty qualities. Andalusian language, culture, identity, and also, of course, poetry - arguably the genesis of the first, true autochthonous and quite pluralistic (yet certainly tumultously so) Hispanic identity with all it entailed - across the centuries decidely set itself apart from that of the - comparatively miniscule in number anyway - Yemenites, Syrians, and Umayyads present in the peninsula beginning in the 8th century, whilst maintaining very strong ties to and influence from the ʕabbasid era heartlands of the Islamic World at the time, viz. Mesopotamia, where, among others, Persian influence was much stronger than peninsular Arabian. This also affected poetry: Arabic or Arabian poetry, Classical poetry, was - eventually - viewed as little but poetry on "towering camels" - there were, of course, no camels and no desert culture in al-Andalus and while Andalusian language identity was of course primarily Arabic - and Romance or Mozarabic and then Hebrew - it was not Arabian - and hence, a more uniquely Andalusian form of poetry was born: the Muwaššaḥah, the counterpart to Classical poetry and, later, the Zajal ("shout",) the counterpart to vernacular poetry. Much of what has been preserved is due to the 11th/12th century Ayyūbid-era Egyptian poet b. Sanāʔ al-Mulk, known also as al-Qāḍī as-Saʕīd, of Cairo, in his Dār aṭ-Ṭirāz, The House of Brocade, containing the vast majority of the body of old Andalusian Muwaššaḥah along with a great deal of history and analysis thereof. In addition to this, the repertoire of Classical Andalusian Music (Ṭarabu l-Ālah) in the Maġrib encompasses a large number of Muwaššaḥāt, though only fragments thereof. Both the Muwaššaḥah and the Zajal, in altered form, have continued to enjoy a great deal of popularity, including in modernity and post-modernity, in the Arab world, such as in Lebanon in the form of extemporaneous poetic duels and have exerted considerable influence on the poetry of Western Europe from France to England, possibly including the poem of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as Hispanic poetry and song to this day and age. [2] The poet is invoking the trope of Ṭayfu l-Ḫayyāl. The trope of "Ṭayfu l-Ḫayyāl" - lit. apparition, ghost, spectrum of/in the (one's) imagination, mind, being, spirit, shadow - is of major significance in love (ġazal) poetry with origins in cultural and poetic traditions and tropes stretching back to ancient days and difficult to translate owing to context. As such, it simply refers to a vision, in the sense of a being inasmuch as the "visionary" experience thereof, in a dream, the words for which in Arabic do also have connotations of and relations with the notion of a vision as well as things that are hoped for and wished for, as opposed to simply seen without any other implicit meaning. Specifically, a beloved person, whether dead or alive, that one has previously departed from or vice versa, very often owing to tribal, political, social, etc. circumstances less so than volition - or simply fate - which is seen as torment and yet also blissful. The origins of this trope go as far back as to the tradition of the pre-Islāmic - moreso semi-nomadic/nomadic - Arabs to stop and halt by the traces of the former campsite of their beloved to engage in remembrance thereof, as if to momentarily bring their being, their spirit back - at least within the confines of their minds, Ṭayf can be taken as to mean either of spirit or mind - and then weep, such as in the famous poem of Imruʔu l-Qays: "Let us stop and weep for the memory of my beloved and where once she had dwelt / by Siqṭi l-Liwā, between the deserts of Duḫūl and Ḥawmal" - and, of course, making these places a recurring object and subject of travel in actual reality and poetry. By the Umayyad and certainly ʕabbāsid era and the inevitable evolution of Arabic poetry that came along with them, this was further developed into the trope of "Ṭayfu l-Ḫayyāl" in the nascent genre of love (ġazal) poetry. [3] The poet is likening the face and particularly the cheeks of the person being addressed to the face of the full moon, e.g. intensely bright, possessed of such intense light that it outshines the sun and all other stars in complete darkness. The trope of describing friends, loved ones, etc. in terms of the stars, the moon, their daily, nightly courses, rising, setting, etc. is very common in Arabic poetry. [4] viz. large eyes with intensely bright white of the eye, a quality much praised in Arabic poetry and among Arabs, both signifying tremendous beauty and health as well as connoting, more loosely, purity, and less loosely, virginity; cf. Ḥūriyy. [5] e.g. bright, white, pure, healthy, flowing copiously like milk. [6] viz. eyebrows that are streaked like marble. [7] A symbol of both much beauty as well as passion and emotional intensity in Arabic, particularly the intense contrast between black and white. The person being addressed responds to the charge of merely possessing the most prized physical attribute for their eyes to possess as they stated to be merely handsome as opposed to the most handsome, after the preceding Qufl wherein the eyes of the person addressed were already described as shining, beckoning flowers. © 2017, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 Lucía Andrea Illanes Albornoz | email: lucia@luciaillanes.de Background stock photo copyright: rixie / 123RF Stock Photo Created with {,Neo}Vim, hosted by OVH & Hurricane Electric DNS, served by nginx & SSI on Ubuntu. HTML 5.0 badge taken from bradleytaunt/html5-valid-badge: HTML5 valid badge for your website (PNG & SVG formats)