public function, being derived from a Greek root meaning “public festival.”22 In the classical world, a panegyric could be delivered in poetic or prose form and was recited publicly in conjunction with an event such as an emperor’s birthday, the celebration of a victorious battle, or a religious holiday. Recent studies on panegyric in the classical world have treated the poet-patron relationship, shifting images of model leadership, and the role of panegyric in the propaganda of the state.23 The purposes of panegyric extended far beyond a poet’s offering flattery in the hopes of monetary compensation. Panegyrics afforded leaders the opportunity to fashion their public personae, a central practice of state propaganda. Yet the presenting of ruler images cannot be seen as a top-down process only; leaders also functioned as screens upon which the values and aspirations of a cultural group could be projected.24 Poets sometimes wielded surprising amounts of power and could even use panegyric (and invective) to sway rulers.
Literary representations of leaders tend to pass over individual characteristics in favor of fairly stable and conventional images. They change slowly and are culturally determined and contingent upon historical circumstances. For this reason, seemingly minor shifts within a highly conventional corpus of praise literature can be of great value—both to literary scholars and to historians—not because they reveal much about the biographies of the actual leaders in question but because they represent shifting ideals of leadership itself. Pliny praises Trajan for his humanitas and civitas, stressing his ability to understand and interact with everyday citizens despite his divinity. During the Tetrarchic period, the emperor becomes more removed from his people. Eusebius peppered his portrait of Constantine with references to the biblical Moses, whose combined political and religious leadership made him an apposite paradigm of the Christian emperor.25 Medieval Byzantine panegyrists were sure to include the emperor’s place of origin, his education, his zeal for orthodoxy, and, rather uniquely, as T. Dennis put it, “imperial perspiration” (employing such expressions as “the sweat of virtue”).26
As in the classical world, panegyric (Ar., madīḥ, praise) played a pronounced public function in the medieval Islamic world. Praise was an established genre in pre-Islamic poetry and occupied an ambivalent place when directed toward the Prophet Muḥammad following the advent of Islam. In numerous anecdotes, Muḥammad is portrayed as rebuking, even maiming, a panegyrist who praised him, though composing panegyric in the Prophet’s honor was also one of the charges of Ḥassān Ibn Thābit, essentially the poet laureate of the new umma (nation); such panegyrics were essential in creating the image of the Prophet in the early Islamic community, which readily recognized poetic praise as a political mode. Poets became famous for their intricate poems dedicated to his honor (known as the burda, or “mantle” tradition), and more popular laudatory poems were recited at festivals such as the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday.27
As Islam expanded to become an imperial presence in the Near East, panegyric took on specific ceremonial functions. As has been noted by numerous scholars of classical Arabic poetry, including Beatrice Gruendler and Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, the primary experience of Arabic panegyric was oral/aural such that the written poetic texts that have reached us are memorializations produced subsequent to a public event—usually a religious holiday, a caliph’s inauguration or birthday, the celebration of a military victory, or the like. Royal panegyrics, which were often performed in the context of a majlis ‘ām (Ar., public assembly), had several audiences: the addressee whose favor the poet sought to curry, the circle of competing poets whom the poet tried to best, and a wider public upon whom the poet (and the addressee) sought to impress a model of just and legitimate government. Many anecdotes have reached us concerning such issues as the “blocking” of the performance—the spatial positioning and physical postures of poet and addressee at the time of recitation—rituals of remuneration, the role of the audience, or the shaming of rival poets.28
Arabic panegyric played a fundamental role in the promotion of state propaganda and the caliphal image. In addition to possessing general praiseworthy characteristics such as generosity and valor, caliphs and governors were praised for the nobility and purity of their lineage, their suppression of religious dissidents, their power to thwart enemies, and the eloquence of their tongues and pens in classical Arabic. Paramount in the establishment of political legitimacy were the twin values of territorial expansion through military conquest and the safeguarding of territory for the proper observance of Islam. Poets often concluded panegyrics with hopes for the addressee’s long life, for it was through him that the best of all political circumstances were sustained.
In addition to the formal presentation of panegyric in a majlis ‘ām, praise could be encountered in a great many contexts, including written addresses, public processions, and “familiar gatherings” (sing., majlis uns) where the caliph or another man of power surrounded himself with favorites in a less public yet highly ritualized setting.29 Further, as Samer Ali has stressed, a useful distinction can be made between the majlis, the “royal salon,” and the mujālasa, a salon based on the majlis but whose participants were of the “middle strata, which included men of overlapping professions, such as merchants, absentee landlords, military personnel, and courtiers, as well as pious and literary scholars.”30 The difference is captured beautifully in the forms of the words: majlis, from the fa‘la form, “to sit,” and mujālasa, from the fā‘ala, “to sit with someone,” suggesting reciprocity, sociability, and a higher degree of egalitarianism.31 As we will see in Chapter 1, this distinction obtains in the various performative contexts of Jewish panegyric.
When one addressed a man of power—either through writing or in person—one was expected to bless and praise him appropriately. The Arabic roots that occur most often in connection with these practices are d‘w—“to invoke with blessings”—and mdḥ, “to praise.” The praise genre is called madīḥ or madḥ; the person offering praise, the panegyrist, is called the mādiḥ, and his addressee was simply called the mamdūḥ, “the one praised.” Because of the range of social relationships that used praise as a mediating device, in this book I generally refer to the addressee of a panegyric as its mamdūḥ, rather than more restrictive and overdetermined terms such as “patron” or “Maecenas,” though I will use “patron” in specific senses.
There is little doubt that Jews had firsthand knowledge of Arabic panegyric practices wherein poems were performed orally, both in the Islamic East (mashriq) and in the Islamic West (maghrib). We hear occasional anecdotes about Jews appearing within Muslim courts where panegyric could be heard with frequency. In addition to such known Jewish courtiers as Ya‘aqūb Ibn Qillīs (Egypt), Sulaiman Abū al-Munajjā (Egypt), and Ḥasdai Ibn Shaprut (al-Andalus), the great Arab rhetorician al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 869) records Arabic verses of three Iraqi Jewish poets in his Kitāb al-bayān that would likely have been transmitted in a courtly setting (though these are not panegyrics themselves).32 Hai Ben Sherirah Gaon (939–1038) considered a legal question about the permissibility of Jews drinking wine while listening to music in the company of non-Jews and ruled that this is generally a severe offense but is permissible for “those who stand before the ruler and work for the protection of the Jews.”33 Although the responsum does not mention either offering or hearing panegyric for the ruler, the scene described suggests a majlis uns, a familiar gathering, where some version of praise might be heard. The small amount of panegyric for Muslim rulers written by Jews reflects intimate knowledge of praise conventions.34
We know that the Jewish exilarch (rosh galut) in Baghdad, essentially the mundane head of the Jewish Diaspora, was granted audience before ‘Abbasid caliphs. Natan ha-Bavli (tenth century) describes how the exilarch was given entry by the caliph’s chamberlain (ḥājib; lit., “one who veils”) and was allowed to “see [the caliph’s] face.” In one anecdote reported by Natan, the exilarch Mar ‘Uqba appeared before the caliph in a certain garden
