a poem I once composed in your praise:
Do not forget how God has favored you
with noble, splendid brothers.
Men shield their eyes from you—
you are like fixed stars around a full moon.
Three solid hearthstones, the epitome of majesty,
fixed stars of Aquila.8
Lions defending their lair,
arrows of fate fired by an expert archer.
Death is blind to you,
Its sharp claws clipped.
May your enemy ever be your servant,
yoked, ignominious, the ally of defeat.
9.1
I will now begin to explain why some people disagree about Abū Tammām and the reasons for this, God willing. Some scholars are said to have avoided his poetry and found fault with it. I name no one. I mean to look out for, protect, and preserve scholars as a community. Do not be shocked that this actually happened. They mastered an extensive corpus of the poems of the Ancients in many recensions and identified authorities who had gone through the ancient poems and harnessed their motifs. Thus when they recite and explain them, specifying what is good and criticizing what is bad, they are simply following in the footsteps of others. The words of the Ancients resemble each other and are closely interconnected, even if they vary in excellence. Scholars therefore infer what they do not understand from what they do understand and conquer what is difficult by means of what is accessible.
9.2
They did not identify authorities or transmitters for the poetry of the Moderns from the age of Bashshār as well qualified as those they identified for the poetry of the Ancients. So they did not realize what Abū Tammām was capable of and could accomplish. They did not give him his due, but ignored him and opposed him, as God (Mighty and Glorious) says, «No; but they have cried lies to that whereof they comprehend not the knowledge»9 and as the saying goes, “Man is the enemy of that which he does not understand, for he who does not understand a thing opposes it.” When asked to teach the poetry of Bashshār, Abū Nuwās, Muslim, Abū Tammām, and others, these scholars demurred, saying “I do not not know this well” and reverted to abuse of Abū Tammām in particular, because he was their closest contemporary, and his poetry was the most difficult. What else could we expect of someone who says, “Study the poems of the Ancients with me,” but then, when asked about any aspect of the poems of the Moderns, is unfamiliar with it? What else could he resort to but insulting what he does not understand? If he were fair-minded, he would have studied it with the experts, as he had other poets, and he would then have been preeminent in his knowledge of it. Learning is not confined to one individual: no one has a special right to it.
10.1
Thaʿlab was venerated by everyone, but I think by the Banū Nawbakht above all. Each of them acknowledged Thaʿlab as their principal authority. The Banū Nawbakht told me that Thaʿlab said to them, “I spend much time with scribes, in particular Abū l-ʿAbbās ibn Thawābah. Most of their gatherings are devoted to discussions of the poetry of Abū Tammām, which I do not know. Make me an anthology!” So we made a selection and gave it to him. He took it to Ibn Thawābah, who approved it. “It is not something I selected,” Thaʿlab said to him, “the Banū Nawbakht selected it for me.”
10.2
The Banū Nawbakht said: Thaʿlab used to recite to us a verse by Abū Tammām and then ask, “What did he mean by this?” and we would explain it to him. “By God,” Thaʿlab would say, “he has done well and excelled!” This is a story they would tell of one of Abū Tammām’s leading critics.
11.1
I will discuss the other sort of critic after the following section about the Moderns, God willing. You should know (God support you) that from Bashshār’s era right up to today the lexicon of the Moderns seems to be moving toward more novel motifs, with a more accessible vocabulary, and more delicate speech, even if priority is given to the Ancients for their invention, innovation, natural talent, and self-sufficiency, as is right and proper. You should further know that they did not witness what the Moderns have witnessed, upon the observation of which they devised their images. So too the Moderns have not witnessed what the Ancients saw in their epoch and upon which they based their descriptions, as for example the evocation of deserts and open spaces, wildlife, camels, and tents. In these things the Moderns are forever second to the Ancients, just as the Ancients are forever second to the Moderns in what they have not seen. Abū Nuwās made this clear in his words:
To describe an abandoned campsite is a dullard’s eloquence.
Devote your descriptions to the daughter of the vine!
He later says in this poem:
You describe the abandoned campsite by hearsay.
Does someone who sees it for himself understand it as you do?
If you describe a thing derivatively
you will slip up and resort to fantasies.10
Since poets who live later sail in the wake of their predecessors, cast with their molds, draw on their idioms, and are nourished by their speech, it is rare for them to take a motif from a predecessor and not do it well.
11.2
We have discovered in the poetry of the Moderns motifs the Ancients did not utter and others they hinted at, which the Moderns then used and excelled in. In addition, their poetry is more suited to its time, and people employ it more in their gatherings, writings, pithy sayings, and petitions.
12.1
People admire how (God support you) within one verse Imruʾ al-Qays makes comparisons between two things and two other things, and they say, “No one can match him in this.” Here is how he describes a female eagle:
Bird hearts, moist and dry,
in her nest were like jujubes and withered dates.
He produced a most beautiful and excellent line.
12.2
Then Bashshār said:
The dust whirled up above our heads
and our swords were like a night whose stars had tumbled.
This from a blind man who did not have the power of sight and who did not actually see this. He composed his comparison by intuition and produced something excellent and beautiful, comparing within one verse two things with two other things.
12.3
Manṣūr al-Namarī followed suit, with the following:
A night of dust, with no stars or moon—
only your noble brow and the sharp spears, raised high, are visible.
12.4
And al-ʿAttābī said:
Their hoofs raised a canopy above their heads
