Beautifying the Ugly and Uglifying the Beautiful

bin Tyeer, Sarah R.

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-59875-2_9

Sarah R. bin Tyeer³

Part of the book series: Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World ((LCIW))

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Abstract

This chapter continues to examine the category of qubḥ and its relationship to the aesthetics and creative process in pre-modern Arabic prose with a focus on the Maqāmāt of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī in particular. The chapter orbits around discussing the established aspects of qubḥ in the maqāma al-Dīnāriyya, which adopts hijāʾ as its vehicle of expression. The chapter argues that the Maqāmāt themselves are the carrier of al-Hamadhānī’s technique, which is the ne plus ultra of taḥsīn al-qabīḥ wa-taqbīḥ al-ḥasan as an assessment of eloquence.

Parts of this chapter appear in ‘The Literary Geography of Meaning in the maqāmāt of al-Hamadhānı̄ and al-Ḥarı̄rı̄’ in The City in Pre-modern and Modern Arabic Literature, ed. Gretchen Head and Nizar Hermes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming)

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Notes

1.
Maqāmāt Abı̄’l-Faḍl Badı̄‘al-Zamān al-Hamadhānı̄ (Lakh’naw: Maṭbaʿat Maṭlaʿ al-Nūr, 1876). There are no editors’ names on the copy and no editorial footnotes explaining word meanings.
2.
One maqāma (al-Shāmiyya) is removed from the ʿAbduh edition, which makes them fifty-two. For a discussion on the debatable issue of the real number of the Maqāmāt, see Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama: A History of a Genre, 39–40.
3.
The parts ʿAbduh removed are mainly similes of wind-breaking (faswat al-tinnı̄n; faswat al-sūd; ḍarṭa fı̄ l-sujūd; ḍarṭat al-ʿarūs) and two other insults (khajlat al-ʿinnı̄n; dibbat al-raqqūm). Ibn Manẓūr explains the ʿinnı̄n as the man who is either impotent and/or is not sexually attracted to women (not to be confused with sexual orientation) and the same expression in the feminine (ʿinnı̄na) is used for women as well. See Lisān al-ʿArab, 4: 448. The other insult dibbat al-raqqūm is very likely an expression intended to convey an insult equivalent to ‘creep’ in English. According to Lane, dibbat (d-b-b) is inclusive of all the crawling and creeping things because dabba is the verb used for the creeping of reptiles in particular. According to Ibn Manẓūr, arqam means ‘dangerous (marked) snake’ (akhbath al-ḥayyāt). See Lisān al-ʿArab, 3:108–9. ʿAbduh explains in the preface that he removed parts of the Maqāmāt with the reason that tastes change across ages and these expressions find no reception in his times (li-kull zamān maqāl). With respect to al-maqāma al-dı̄nāriyya, one needs only to look at the types of courtly entertainment before and during al-Hamadhānı̄’s time to understand ʿAbduh’s statement. The presence of al-ḍarrāṭı̄n (fart-makers) for instance, as part of the culture of humour does not make al-Hamadhānı̄’s expressions come across as ‘out of place’, in his time. However, with the disappearance of this taste and culture, they may seem alien and distasteful for the non-specialist reader.
4.
See Rosella Dorigo Ceccato, ‘Drama in the Post-Classical Period: A Survey’ in Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, ed. Roger Allen and D.S. Richards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 354 for a reference to the other genres that al-Hamadhānı̄ alludes to; see also James T. Monroe, The Art of Badı̄ʿ az-Zamān al-Hamadhānı̄ as Picaresque Narrative for a discussion on the Maqāmāt’s parodic nature especially of the ḥadı̄th as a genre. See, Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama: A History of Genre, 46 for a criticism of Monroe’s argument.
5.
According to Ḥasan, al-Jāḥiẓ was the first to classify their tricks according to their professional nicknames in his al-Bukhalāʾ, also the Damascene, al-Jawbarı̄ in his al-Mukhtār fı̄ Kashf al-Asrār ‘demystified’ the tricks of the mendicants with a detailed analysis of the usage of chemical substances (from herbs, trees, animals) they used to feign deformity. For more on this and also a bibliography, see Ḥasan, Adab al-Kudya fı̄ l-ʿAṣr al-ʿAbbāsı̄, 42ff.
6.
See also Monroe’s discussion of the religious denouncing of begging, 46–7.
7.
See Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s discussion of God’s speech to Adam in his chapter on beauty (al-ḥusn wa l-jamāl) in Rawḍat al-Muḥibbı̄n wa Nuzhat al-Mushtāqı̄n, 189–195. He explains the juxtaposition of hunger with nakedness in the verse on account of hunger being the humiliation and the nakedness of the inside while nakedness as the hunger and humiliation of the outside, in the same manner thirst is juxtaposed with hot temperature as the heat of the inside (thirst) with the heat of the outside (hot temperature). These conditions are explained as a consequence of the expelling of Adam and Eve from paradise.
8.
For more on this, See, Ahmed Alwishah and David Sanson, ‘The Early Arabic Liar: The Liar Paradox in the Islamic World from the Mid-Ninth to the Mid-Thirteenth Centuries CE,’ Vivarium 47 (2009): 97–127.
9.
Monroe also makes this observation, that ʿĪsa is a liar, but for entirely different reasons pertaining to time and space inconsistencies, which he calls ‘Ashʿaristic’ to relate them to his overall argument referred to earlier in the introduction. See Monroe, The Art of Badı̄ʿ az-Zamān al-Hamadhānı̄ as Picaresque Narrative, 108–14.
10.
Ebrahim Moosa, ‘Textuality in Muslim Imagination,’ 60.
11.
Ibid.
12.
Ibid., 61.
13.
See, James T. Monroe, The Art of Badı̄ʿ az-Zamān al-Hamadhānı̄ as Picaresque Narrative for a discussion on the Maqāmāt’s parodic nature especially of the ḥadı̄th as a genre. See Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama: A History of a Genre, 46, for a criticism of Monroe’s argument.
14.
Hämeen-Anttila describes al-Hamadhānı̄’s language as ‘ornamental but lacks the baroque over-elaboration of later periods[,] in comparison to al-Harı̄rı̄,’ See, Maqama: A History of a Genre, 52.
15.
van Gelder, ‘Beautifying the Ugly and Uglifying the Beautiful,’ Journal of Semitic Studies 68, no. 2 (2003): 321–51.
16.
van Gelder, ‘Beautifying the Ugly,’ 321.
17.
See Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama: A History of a Genre for a thorough discussion of the history of the maqāma starting with al-Hamadhānı̄ and his successor al-Ḥarı̄rı̄ and the development of the maqāma from the 12th–14th century in the East then the development of the genre in Spain and North Africa as well.
18.
Monroe, The Art of Badı̄ʿ az-Zamān al-Hamadhānı̄ as Picaresque Narrative, 38.
19.
Bosworth, The Medieval Islamic Underworld, 1: 30; cf. Ḥasan, Adab al-Kudya fı̄ l-ʿAṣr al-ʿAbbāsı̄, 145.
20.
Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama: A History of a Genre, 20.
21.
For a discussion on the origins of the terms kudya, shaḥādha, and sāsān, see Ḥasan, Adab al-Kudya fı̄ l-ʿAṣr al-ʿAbbāsı̄, 11–23.
22.
Taḍmı̄n has three meanings: (1) ‘inclusion’ as observed in ‘the incorporation in a poem of a line, or part of a line, by another poet by way of quotation rather than plagiarism;’ and/or (2) ‘enjambment’ which means ‘the syntactical dependence of a line on a following line’ and finally (3) ‘implication’ that is conveyed ‘as a form of brevity […] or the connotation of word or expression.’ van Gelder, ‘Taḍmı̄n’ in EI ². It is the first and third meanings that are used by al-Hamadhānı̄ in the Maqāmāt as made clear by the various editors of the Maqāmāt, which classifies his work as highbrow, also, to be able to trace these taḍmı̄ns requires erudition and that is the reason, as Hämeen-Anttila maintains, it was/is considered an enjoyable ‘bonus’ for the reader, 52.
23.
Sources document Bedouin (aʿrāb) mendicants’ eloquence that only used sajʿ (rhymed prose) in their speech. One should not define real mendicants’ ‘eloquence’ here as one that is comparable to the language of Abū’l-Fatḥ at least as seen in the examples of the Bedouin’s usage of sajʿ, which drew the attention of some literati such as Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, for instance because of the graceful nature of the language and the decorative and metaphorical aspects of it as such. For more on this, see Ḥasan, Adab al-Kudya fı̄ l-ʿAṣr al-ʿAbbāsı̄, 162–4.
24.
Prendergast, viii.
25.
See, al-Hamadhānı̄, Rasāʾil, ed. Ibrāhı̄m Al-Ṭarābulsı̄ (Beirut: Al-Maṭbaʿa al-Kāthūlı̄kiyya li-l-Ābāʾ al-Yasūʿiyyı̄n, 1890).
26.
Ḥasan, Adab al-Kudya fı̄ l-ʿAṣr al-ʿAbbāsı̄, 151.
27.
See for example al-Qarı̄ḍiyya, al-Jāḥiẓiyya, and al-ʿIrāqiyya for explicit references to poetry, metaphor and writing. Other maqāmāt such as al-Māristāniyya and al-Ḥulwāniyya deal with criticism on philosophical and theological debates (the Muʿtazilite doctrine; the issue of precedence of Will to Ability or vice versa and the essence of Truth, respectively).
28.
Prendergast, 20.
29.
Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 106.
30.
Ibid.
31.
Maqāmāt, 16.
32.
Maqāmāt, al-maqāma al-Balkhiyya, 18.
33.
Ibid., 83.
34.
Ibid., 60.
35.
Prendergast, 56.
36.
Lenn E. Goodman, ‘Hamadhānı̄, Schadenfreude and Salvation Through Sin,’ JAL 19, no. 1 (1988): 27–39.
37.
Abdullah al-Dabbagh, Literary Orientalism, Postcolonialism, and Universalism (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010), 25.
38.
Al-Ḥarı̄rı̄, maqāmāt, ed. Yūsuf Biqāʿı̄ (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Lubnānı̄, 1981), 17–18.
39.
Al-Ḥarı̄rı̄, maqāmāt, 15–16.
40.
Ibid., 15.
41.
Umberto Eco, ‘On the Ontology of Fictional Characters: A Semiotic Approach,’ Sign System Studies (2009) 37: 1, 2, 87.
42.
Ibid., 109.
43.
Ibid., 240.
44.
Ibid., 190–95.
45.
Ḥammādı̄ Ṣammūd, al-Wajh wa l-Qafā fı̄ Talāzum al-Turāth wa l-Ḥadātha (Tunis: al-Dār al-Tūnisiyya li-l-Nashr, 1988), 32.
46.
Ibid.
47.
Prendergast, 68.
48.
Monroe also refers to Abū’l-Fatḥ’s deliberate seduction of others through language, 96.
49.
Prendergast, 55.
50.
Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama: A History of a Genre, 50. For a discussion on the entire structure of the Maqāmāt of al-Hamadhānı̄, see also 45–51.
51.
Philip F. Kennedy, ‘Islamic Recognitions: An Overview’ in eds. Philip F. Kennedy and Marilyn Lawrence, Recognition: The Poetics of Narrative: Interdisciplinary Studies on Anagnorisis (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 47.
52.
Maqāmāt, 50.
53.
Prendergast, 53.
54.
Prendergast, 75.
55.
al-Dabbagh, Literary Orientalism, Postcolonialism, and Universalism, 25.
56.
cf. Monroe, 110.
57.
The work is estimated to have been written between the years (407–412/1016–1021) based on the dedication to the Ghaznavid courtier Abū’l-Ḥasan Muḥammad b. ʿĪsa al-Karājı̄. See Bilal Orfali, ‘The Works of Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibı̄,’ JAL 40, no. 3 (2009): 292.
58.
Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama: A History of a Genre, 27.
59.
al-Thaʿālibı̄, Taḥsı̄n al-Qabı̄ḥ wa Taqbı̄ḥ al-Ḥasan, ed. ʿAlā’ ʿAbd al-Wahhāb Muḥammad (Cairo: Dār al-Faḍı̄la, 1994), 21.
60.
Ibid., 30–31.
61.
Ibid.
62.
See, Lara Harb, ‘Poetic Marvels: Wonder and Aesthetic Experience in Medieval Arabic Literary Theory.’ (Unpublished PhD Dissertation, New York University, New York, 2013).
63.
See Chap. 5.
64.
Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarı̄, Kitāb al-Ṣināʿatayn, ed. ʿAlı̄ Muḥammad al-Bijāwı̄ and Muḥammad Abū’l-Faḍl Ibrāhı̄m (Cairo: ‘Īsā al-Bābı̄ al-Ḥalabı̄, 1971), 16–60.
65.
ed. ʿIzza Ḥasan (Damascus: Majmaʿ al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya, 1969), 1:116.
66.
Ibn Rashı̄q, al-ʿUmda, ed. al-Nabawı̄ ʿAbd al-Wāḥid Shaʿlān (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjı̄, 2000), 1:382–99.
67.
Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, al-ʿIqd al-Farı̄d, ed. ʿAbd al-Majı̄d al-Tarḥı̄nı̄ (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1987), 4:272.
68.
Kitāb al-Ṣināʿatayn, 59.
69.
al-ʿUmda, 1:395–6.
70.
al-ʿUmda, 1:394–7.
71.
al-Nuwayrı̄, Nihāyat al-Arab fi Funūn al-Adab, ed. Mufı̄d Qamḥiyya et al. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2000), 1:50.
72.
Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarı̄, Kitāb al-Ṣināʿatayn (Cairo, ‘Īsā al-Bābı̄ al-Ḥalabı̄, 1971), 59 quoted in van Gelder’s ‘Beautifying the Ugly and Uglifying the Beautiful,’ 327.
73.
For more on this, see van Gelder ‘Beautifying the Ugly’ for examples and bibliography.
74.
Hämeen-Anttila contends, ‘Al-Hamadhānı̄ created his Abū’l-Fatḥ to be a chameleon character, now an Arab, now something else. This idea of a character of many identities was by no means anything new. In invective poetry, we often find the idea of an ever-changing identity,’ 43.
75.
van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 33.
76.
Twenty-eight insults in the body of the maqāma and three in ʿAbduh’s footnotes.
77.
Monroe makes a reference to the similarities found in various places in the Maqāmāt of al-Hamadhānı̄ and ṭufaylı̄ literature, 126; see also Fedwa Malti-Douglas’s discussion of al-maqāma al-maḍı̄riyya in ‘Maqāmāt and Adab: Al-Maqāma al-Maḍı̄riyya of al-Hamadhānı̄,’ Journal of the American Oriental Society 105, no. 2 (1985): 247–58.
78.
Diʿbil b. ʿAlı̄, Dı̄wān Diʿbil b. ʿAlı̄ al-Khuzāʿı̄, ed. ʿAbd al-Ṣāḥib ʿUmrān al-Dujaylı̄ (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Lubnānı̄, 1972), 260. Cf. Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarı̄, Dı̄wān al-Maʿānı̄, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Muḥammad Maḥmūd al-Tarkazı̄ al-Shinqı̄ṭı̄ et al (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qudsı̄, 1933), 1:184.
79.
Based on ʿAbduh’s diacritical mark.
80.
According to ʿAbduh in the first edition (1889), the last Wednesday in the lunar month was regarded as the longest day of the month in the sense that time was believed (felt) to never pass on that day, i.e. moved slowly. In the second edition (1908), ʿAbduh also maintains this explanation but he adds that it might be the last Wednesday of the lunar month of Ṣafar in particular because it was believed that all affairs and businesses seem to be counterproductive on that day.
81.
Dı̄wān al-Maʿānı̄, 1:177.
82.
Ibid., 178.
83.
The particle is a problematic one in Arabic grammar as pointed by ʿAbduh’s explanatory footnote in reference to the Kufan grammarian Yaḥyā b. Ziyād al-Farrā’ (d. 207/822) who is reported to have said, ‘I shall die and something unresolved remains in me because of ḥattā’ (amūt wa fı̄ nafsı̄ shayʾ min ḥattā). The issue perhaps could be explained using the famous example ‘akalt al-samaka ḥattā raʾsihā, ḥattā raʾsuhā, ḥatta raʾsahā.’ (I ate the fish to its head, and its head, even its head). In every case, the meaning is different and accordingly the case ending is different because of the usage of ḥattā. See Ibn Abı̄ Saʿı̄d al-Anbārı̄, Asrār al-ʿArabiyya, ed. Fakhr Ṣāliḥ Qadāra (Beirut: Dār al-Jı̄l, 1995), 242.
84.
Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. T. S. Eliot (London: Faber and Faber, 1954), 4. This term is used to describe the emotional effect and not to make comparisons with Imagism as a movement.
85.
Dı̄wān al-Maʿānı̄, 1:185.
86.
Kamal Abu-Deeb maintains that a ‘recognized turning point was reached about 350/960 with the celebrated epistles of the Būyid vizier Ibn al-ʿAmı̄d, encapsulated in the sajʿ formula that ‘chancery prose [kitāba] began with ʿAbd al-Ḥamı̄d and was sealed by Ibn al-ʿAmı̄d.” ‘Saj‘ʿ in EAL, 2:677–678.
87.
Dı̄wān al-Maʿānı̄, 1:189.
88.
al-Jāḥiẓ, ‘Risāla fı̄ l-Jidd wa l-Hazl ‘in Majmūʿ Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiẓ, ed. Muḥammad Ṭāha al-Ḥājirı̄. (Beirut: Dār al-Nahḍa al-ʿArabiyya, 1983), 80.
89.
For more on this, see, Sarah R. bin Tyeer ‘The Qur’an and the Aesthetics of adab’ in Qur’an and adab: The Making of Classical Literary Tradition, ed. Nuha al-Shaʿar, (Forthcoming, 2016).
90.
Ḥikāyat Abı̄’l-Qāsim al-Baghdādı̄, 19.
91.
Moreh, Live Theatre and Dramatic Literature in the Medieval Arab World, 96.
92.
Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama: A History of a Genre, 98.
93.
ʿAbbās, Tārı̄kh al-Naqd al-Adabı̄ ʿInd al-ʿArab, 99.
94.
Krystyna Skarzyńska-Bocheńska, ‘Some Aspects of al-Jāḥiẓ’s Rhetorical Theory,’ Occasional Papers of the School of Abbasid Studies 3 (1990): 104.
95.
van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 11.
96.
Similarly, the Thousand and One Nights boasts of a literary portrayal of some professions and menial jobs and their cultural status. See, Muhsin J. Al-Musawi, The Islamic Context of the Thousand and One Nights for a discussion on class issues within the Thousand and One Nights and also several various professions and their social statuses.
97.
Prendergast, 167.
98.
van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 6.
99.
As van Gelder maintains, ‘[t]he functions of hazl and jidd in hijāʾ are complex, more than in other poetic modes. Mock-panegyric, mock-love-poetry or mock-elegies turn into satire or invective; but mock hijāʾ still is hijāʾ[.]’, The Bad and the Ugly, 51.
100.
‘Amusement (of others than the victims) is one of the main functions of hijāʾ.’ van Gelder, ‘hijāʾ’ in EAL, 1:284.
101.
Cf. Hamdi Sakkut, 85.
102.
Ḥamdı̄ Sakkūt, The Arabic Novel, trans. Roger Monroe (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2000), 1:85.
103.
al-Jāḥiẓ, Kitāb al-Tarbı̄ʿ wa l-Tadwı̄r, 96–7 quoted in Krystyna Skarzyńska-Bocheńska, ‘Some Aspects of al-Jāḥiẓ’s Rhetorical Theory,’ 102.
104.
al-Hamadhānı̄, Rasāʾil, ed. Ibrāhı̄m al-Ṭarābulsı̄ (Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Kāthūlı̄kiyya li-l-Ābāʾ al-Yasū‘iyyı̄n, 1890), 510.
105.
See Nādir Kāẓim, al-Maqāmāt wa l-Talaqqı̄ (Beirut: al-Muʿassasa al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Dirāsāt wa l-Nashr, 2003), 75–6.
106.
Attributed to the Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911–80) in an assertion that ‘to a semiotician the medium is not ‘neutral.” Daniel Chandler, Semiotics (Routledge, New York, 2002), 81.
107.
Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama: A History of a Genre, 335.

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Sarah R. bin Tyeer

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bin Tyeer, S.R. (2016). Beautifying the Ugly and Uglifying the Beautiful. In: The Qur’an and the Aesthetics of Premodern Arabic Prose. Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59875-2_9

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