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Lucía Andrea Illanes Albornoz


Desarrolladora de sistemas | Ingeniera de sistemas


𒄿𒉡𒄴𒅁𒊭𒄴𒇷𒅁𒁀𒊭𒆷𒁀𒌅𒀭𒈹

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Delights that please the eye

Sarāʔiru l-aʕyān

ﻧﻮﻉ ﺍﻟﺸﻌﺮ: موشحة عن التصوف
ﺍﻟﺸﺎﻋﺮ: محمد بن علي بن محمد بن عربي الحاتمي الطائي الأندلسي الشهير بمحيي الدين بن عربي
منطقته: ﺍﻷﻧﺪﻟﺲ
ﻋﺼﺮ: ﻗﺮﻥ ﺍلثاني-ﺍلثالث ﻋﺸﺮ

سرائر الأعيان لاحت على الأكوان للناظرين
والعاشق الغيران من ذاك في حران يبدي الأنين

يقول والوجد أضناه والبعد قد حيّره
لمّا دنا البعد لم أدر من بعد من غيّره
وهيّم العبد والواحد الفرد قد خيّره

في البوح والكتمان والسرّ والإعلان في العالمين
أنا هو الديّان يا عابد الأوثان أنت الضّنين

كلّ الهوى صعب على الذي يشكو ذلّ الحجاب
يا من له قلب لو أنّه يذكو عند الشباب
قرّبه الرّبّ لكنّه إفك فانو المتاب

وناد يا رحمن يا برّ يا منّان إنّي حزين
أضناني الهجران ولا حبيب دان ولا معين

فنيتُ بالله عمّا تراه العين من كونه
في موقف الجاه وصِحتُ أين الأين في بينه
فقال يا ساهي عاينتُ قطَّ عين بعينه

أما ترى غيلان وقيس أو من كان في الغابرين
قالوا الهوى سلطان إن حلّ بالإنسان أفناه دين

كم مرّةٍ قالا أنا الذي أهوى من هو أنا
فلا أرى حالا ولا أرى شكوى إلاّ الفنا
لستُ كمن مالا عن الّذي يهوى بعد الجنى

ودان بالسُّلوان هذا هو البهتان للعارفين
سَلَوْهم ما كان عن حضرة الرحمن والآفِكين

دخلتُ في بستان الأنسِ والقربِ كمكنسه
فقام لي الريحان يختال بالعجب في سندسه
أنا هو يا إنسان مطيِّبُ الصَّبِ في مجلسه

جِنّان يا جِنّان اِجْنِ من البستان الياسمين
وحلّل الريحان بحرمة الرحمن للعاشقين

Type of poem: Muwaššaḥah[1] on Ṣufism/divine love
Name of poet: Muḥammad b. ʕalī b. Muḥammad b. ʕarabī al-Ḥātimī aṭ-Ṭāʔī al-Andalusī, famously known as Muḥyi d-Dīn b. ʕarabī
Region of poet: al-Andalus
Era: 12th-13th century

Delights that please the eye appear above all worlds[2] to eyes of staring eyes
But the lover that is jealous[3] deprived, from this, in thirst pain begins to rise

He says in burning passion that wore him out and the thereafter[4] has left him speechless
When the thereafter drew near and I can't tell thereafter whom has made him jealous
And the slave's in burning thirst while the singular, the one[5] has let him choose

In disclosing and concealing and secret and revealing[6] in all the worlds that be
I am the only judge O worshipper of idols you are but greedy!

All that's love is hard to whomever that complains: the humiliation by the barrier![7]
O you that has a heart if only you'd shone brightly in the eyes of your companion
The lord then brings him near but therein lies a lie: for return[8] is all but fleeting

And he cries out: O most Merciful! O benevolent, O giving! O how I am in sorrow!
I languish in your absence and no friend have I near not a single soul

I passed from life to God from where my eye was met with his being
In the lofty state of dignity where I recovered from my pain in his union
So he[9] said then: O neglectful! Have I truly seen an eye with his eye?[10]

As for when you see Ġaylān[11] and Qays[12] or whom it be amongst the passing[13]
They said: love is a sovereign if it falls upon a person creed made him pass[14]

How many times they said: I am the one that loves the one whom that is I
And I did not see them deviate and I saw not one complaint that union was not theirs
I'm not like those that turned away from him that loves after reaping its harvest

For he[15] submits to solace this is but defamation to those that are familiar
They have no thought, no more of the Majestic Merciful and the deceivers

I turned into the garden[16] of solace and presence[17] that swept me away
And there rose for me the myrtle it listened with wonder in its prideful silk
I am He[18] O human that soothes your passion in his company

Gardener, O gardener! gather from the garden some jasmine
And grant then the myrtle[19] in the shelter of the merciful to the lovers
[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] viz. above and prior to all potential and possible yet ultimately illusionary worlds, kinds of existence and being, universes, etc., the reality of which is fleeting and only becomes apparent and unveiled to the mystic when granted so by the Divine.
[3] viz. possessive jealousy; jealous to solely possess or be loved by solely or be possessed by solely.
[4] viz. departure of the beloved, abandonment thereby.
[5] viz. God.
[6] viz. in matters of secrets concealed, divulged, and revealed to and shared between lovers, especially when the beloved is Divine.
[7] viz. the humiliation experienced by whom is separated from their beloved by any kind of barrier, originally the physical barrier-cloth placed before or in the doorway of a house that one would be stood before, more loosely speaking: any kind of separation one imposes between one's beloved and oneself.

Taken from a short poem by b. Abī Fatn:

الموت أهون من طول الوقوف على
باب, عليّ لبوّاب عليه يد

ما لي أقيم على ذلّ الحجاب كأن
قد ملّني وطن أو ضاق بي بلد

Death is easier than all time spent standing at
the door, where over me the doorkeeper has power

Why am I stood, enduring the humiliation of the barrier, as though
my country has tired of me or my homeland became my anguish
[8] also: repentance.
[9] Instance of Iltifāt: shifting among first to, here, third person for purposes of rhetoric, congruent with the wider meaning and context of these Aġsān. The speaker is addressing himself from the perspective of his reflection (or third person, being himself) in a state of mystical excitation in and from a vision.
[10] That is to say: in union there remains separation, for the eye of the one that meets the eye of the beloved turns out to be separate from the other and thus cannot thereby truly perceive the most profound of truthful reality. The eye may see but solely from its perspective whereas the perspective of the eye that is seen is closed and cut off from the eye that is seeing. Only if the seeing eye and the eye that is seen were to meet in true union would the two disappear in perfect unity of being.
Only in direct experience of transcendent reality whereby all that remains of the self is annihilated and all senses are extinguished is union attained and mysteries are revealed.

This brings to mind Parmenídēs of Eleá:

Τὼς γένεσις μὲν ἀπέσϐεσται καὶ ἄπυστος ὄλεθρος.
Thus is becoming extinguished and passing away not to be heard of.
or alternatively:
Thus beginning has ended and ending is unknown.
[11] Abu l-Ḥāriṯ Ġaylān b. ʕuqbah b. Nuhays b. Masʕūd al-ʕadawī ar-Rubābī at-Tamīmī known as Ḏu r-Rummah ("of the frayed cord", possibly referring to a cord amulet,) who lived in the 7th-8th century and composed, inter alia, love poetry in the genres of Nasīb and Ġazal.
That is to say: one of two famous lovers and love-poets.
[12] Either or both of: 1) Qays b. al-Mulawwaḥ, who lived in the 7th century, known as Majnūn from the Arabian love story Majnūn Laylā turned Persian narrative romantic poem by Niẓāmī Ganjavī in the 12th century 2) Qays b. Ḏarīḥ, who also lived in the 7th century, known as Majnūn Lubnā from the Arabian love story Qays wa-Lubnā (Qays and Lubnā.)
That is to say: another of two famous lovers and love-poets.
[13] viz. primarily: those that have passed on or passed away, secondarily: the opposite: those that remain or have lived enough to become old, tertiarily, though usually primarily: those absent from salvation or those who remain in torment.

This first sentence asks: as for those mentioned passing away or remaining [absent from salvation or in torment]...
[14] viz. worldly, earthly love, as opposed to divine love, when taken as one's faith, creed, or religion, destroys to whom it has passed and in whom it dwells.

This second sentence answers: ...that is what has made them pass on or away or have them remain [absent from salvation or in torment] viz. destroyed them.
[15] He that does indeed turn away from those that he has loved after having reaped its harvest or tasted its fruit e.g. commenced to love and be loved and benefitted thereby to then turn away.
This may (or may not) also refer to the greater harvest of Divine vs. merely worldly love.
[16] viz. entered, entered into, entered into the affairs of, turned towards, turned into, joined with, became one with, converted to the creed of, etc.
[17] viz. the solace of intimate divine presence.
[18] viz. God.
[19] viz. and grant them long-lasting, perennial, eternal love, as myrtle is perennial - as per, from the same Nafḥu ṭ-Ṭībi min ġuṣni l-Andalusi r-Raṭīb (The Breath of Perfume from the Branch of Flourishing Al-Andalus) of Aḥmad al-Maqqārī in which this poem appears:

فسأل بعض عن معناه فقال بعض الحاضرين أراد به العذار وقال آخر إنما أشار إلى دوام العهد لأن الأزهار كلها ينقضي زمانها إلا الريحان فإنه دائم فاستحسن الشيخ هذا أو وافق عليه.

And some [of those gathered] asked as to the meaning [of the then-popular Zajal this Ḫarjah was taken from] so then some of those present said: [what is] meant by this is excuses and others said that rather [this] refers to the permanence of the promise/vow/covenant [between the lovers] because flowers all end in time except for myrtle for it is perennial and so the Šayḫ [b. ʕarabī] approved of this or agreed upon it.
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