hedonist, and al-Mutanabbī (d. 354/965), self-declared prophet and supreme panegyrist. Yet Abū Tammām is virtually unknown in the West. This is largely because his poetic style is very difficult, resulting in a dearth of translations of his verse. Furthermore, Abū Tammām excelled in the composition of the panegyric, a genre that does not sit well with current sensibilities and expectations about the nature and purpose of poetry. Still, classical Arabic poetry, including the panegyric as a major genre, was understood to be a powerful and prestigious form of communication, and a specific audience response was the declared goal of much of this poetry. The present book aims to remedy the dearth of translations and the obscurity of genre and poet by making many passages of Abū Tammām’s odes available in English and by presenting these excerpts within their performance context, showing how these poems “worked”—that is to say, why they were written, which issues they treated, and how their audience reacted to them.
At first glance Abū Tammām3 seems an unlikely candidate for a poetic career. Born in the Syrian countryside, and of Greek Christian background (his father owned a wine shop in Damascus), he engaged in menial occupations until he eventually took up the study of poetry. His success was slow in coming. His first patrons were local Syrian dignitaries whom he lampooned when his praise poems did not yield the desired result—payment. Panegyrics constituted the main source of income for a professional poet, though some deemed (the threat of) lampoons a more effective tool.
Abū Tammām’s next patrons were generals in the army of Caliph al-Maʾmūn (r. 197–218/813–33). They became long-standing supporters and were the recipients of many of Abū Tammām’s odes throughout their lives. Abū Tammām’s career reached its peak under Caliph al-Muʿtaṣim (r. 218–27/833–42). The poet celebrated al-Muʿtaṣim’s reign in famous odes, such as those on the conquest of the Byzantine border fortress Amorium, on the quelling of the Bābak revolt, and on the execution of General Afshīn for high treason.
Another group of patrons comprised regional rulers, some from as far away as Khurasan (northeast Iran), where Abū Tammām traveled to present them his odes. Government scribes and high-ranking civil servants also patronized the poet. In the last year of his life, Abū Tammām was appointed head of the postal service in Mosul through the good offices of one such patron. When Abū Tammām died, his loss was mourned by this patron and by many fellow poets.
Unlike many poets of the time, Abū Tammām did not serve an apprenticeship with any other poet, but studied his predecessors’ work in book form (§65.2, §86.3). From such books he also compiled a number of anthologies, among them, The Book on Bravery (Kitāb al-Ḥamāsah). Abū Tammām is said to have put this book together in a patron’s library when he was snowed in during his travels.
Abū Tammām’s poetry captured the atmosphere of his time. In it he promoted and developed an avant-garde aesthetic that mirrored the intellectual and artistic flourishing of the day. It also reflected the greater cultural openness of the Abbasid dynasty, which programmatically imported foreign science and offered non-Arabs far greater opportunities for professional and social advancement than had previously been the case under the Umayyads (41–132/661–750). The Abbasid elite took pains to acquire and demonstrate their erudition. In Baghdad, grammarians and poets were important cultural forces. Poets no longer hailed solely from Arab tribes, nor did they need to follow the standards of linguistic purity generally held to be the preserve of the Bedouin. They now came from many backgrounds, especially Persian and Byzantine, and created new genres that reflected contemporary material and intellectual life. Baghdadi sophistication came to compete with the cultural ideal of Bedouin purity of language. Abū Tammām forcefully promoted a new avant-garde aesthetic that introduced more craftsmanship and rhetorical finesse into poetry. His verse most obviously displays the features of what came to be known as the “New Style” (badīʿ). Even his critics recognized that he had invented an impressive array of poetic motifs.
Abū Tammām relied greatly on his own ingenuity in introducing what some thought were incongruous elements into his particular brand of the New Style. He created logical twists, paradoxes, and antitheses, and specialized in the personification of abstract concepts. But he merged these with an archaic Bedouin lexicon and older poetic motifs. As a result, his poetry sounded very different from what had come before. It echoed the tradition but gave it a new feel, so much so that it shocked. It quickly became both wildly controversial and wildly popular. Some found it daring. Others deemed it strange. Abū Tammām was the talk of his time; whether one liked his verse or not, one had to be prepared to discuss it (§10.1). Al-Ṣūlī says as much himself, referring to Abū Tammām and other modern poets: “Their poetry is also more suited to its time and people employ it more in their gatherings, writings, pithy sayings, and petitions” (§11.2).
One social group that figures prominently in al-Ṣūlī’s book is the scribes, who are ubiquitous as financial supporters and artistic partisans of Abū Tammām. In the far-flung lands of the Abbasid caliphate, these highly educated clerks became the mainstay of government. They came from many different backgrounds, and not all of them were Muslims, but their skills, sorely needed to run the empire, outweighed factors such as religious persuasion or ethnic provenance. In fact, non-Arabs (mostly Persians and Aramaic-speakers) flourished in administrative service. They swiftly climbed the social ladder, and some established veritable dynasties. Financially secure in their government employment, and enjoying the social status that came with their wealth, they were in a stronger position than were the poets and scholars on whom rulers called at their whim. These scribes acted as sponsors of poets, as go-betweens who secured stipends and rewards for them, and as amateur critics of poetry. Their profession necessitated training in sundry subjects of elite culture beyond basic competence in the Arabic language and script; some scribes even tried their hand at poetry themselves. The difference, however, was that they were not dependent on poetry as a source of income. Thus they judged it according to their taste and were open to new fashions, a liberty that the philologists could not afford, because their authority hinged on their expertise in the ancient corpus.
The tumultuous state of Abū Tammām’s reception is conveyed in the fresh and refreshingly opinionated voice of Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā l-Ṣūlī (d. 335/946 or 336/947). He was writing a century after the events he records, but matters were not yet completely settled, though the debate had shifted from the Ancients (awāʾil) versus the Moderns (muḥdathūn) to the pitting of individual modern poets against one another. In introducing and commenting on Abū Tammām’s life and poetry, al-Ṣūlī laid the groundwork for a tradition of serious poetic criticism of Abū Tammām’s work. Al-Ṣūlī’s contemporary al-Āmidī (d. 371/981–82), in his book Weighing Up the Merits of Abū Tammām and His Disciple al-Buḥturī (al-Muwāzanah bayn shiʿr Abī Tammām wa-l-Buḥturī), champions the latter. Some half a century later al-Marzubānī (d. 384/994), in his Embroidered Book (al-Muwashshaḥ), collects Abū Tammām’s poetic shortcomings.4 Al-Āmidī also includes in his book the record of a long debate between supporters of the two poets. A shorter debate is cited by al-Ḥuṣrī (d. 413/1022) in his Flowering of the Literary Arts (Zahr al-ādāb).5
AL-ṢŪLĪ
Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī6 was a man steeped in the culture of his time, positioned through descent and education at the very top of society, and gifted with an aesthetic perception that enabled him to compose nuanced portraits of literary life both of the earlier third/ninth century and his own day. His Turkish ancestor Ṣūl had governed the region of Jurjān southwest of the Caspian Sea and adopted Islam under the general Yazīd ibn al-Muhallab (d. 102/720). Subsequent family members were mostly officials in the chancery, with the exception of al-Ṣūlī’s uncle Ibrāhīm ibn al-ʿAbbās (d. 243/857 or later), who excelled both as a poet and a secretary.
Al-Ṣūlī studied with the leading scholars
