target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_134ecae1-5c49-5ce2-9f30-fc20c08b4b2a">2). But he misses no opportunity to promote his own expertise as a commentator of poetry (§2.4, §78.5, §101.2), mentioning the popularity of his edition of Abū Nuwās’s Collected Poems (§27) and the failure of competitors to match his collection The Life and Times of al-Farazdaq with a similar work on Jarīr (§7.3).
Impressionistic and discursive, The Life and Times of Abū Tammām inaugurates a long line of poetic treatises that react to innovations in poetry. Along with Arabic grammar, premodern Arabic poetics never lost its dynamic character—ever unfolding in the wake of the seemingly inexhaustible creativity of its poets.
NOTE ON THE TEXT
The English translation is fairly free and idiomatic, supplemented by explanatory insertions implicit in the Arabic text but not obvious to the English reader. When the text uses a less recognizable form of an individual’s name, the more common name is also supplied for clarity. The phrase “Al-Ṣūlī:” introduces explanatory comments inserted by al-Ṣūlī. Citations of Abū Tammām’s poetry are identified in terms of their occurrence in the Diwān edited by ʿAzzām (4 vols., Cairo, 1951–65), and abbreviated as D in the endnotes to the translation. When poems are cited in abridged form this is indicated by an ellipsis at the end of the verse preceding an omission. Occasional (usually minor) variations in verses between The Life and Times of Abū Tammām and the Collected Poems are given in the endnotes, too, but are left unaltered in the accounts, as they were transmitted independently from the Collected Poems, and their differences attest to a different textual history.
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
1 Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 386. The orthography follows Woolf’s diary, whence the quote is taken.
2 The unpublished doctoral thesis by Naẓīr al-Islam [Naẓīrul-Islam] al-Hindī, “Die Akhbār von Abū Tammām von aṣ-Ṣūlī” (Breslau, 1940), includes a German translation of the prefatory epistle.
3 On his biography, see Meisami, “Abū Tammām,” in EAL, 1:47–49; Ritter, “Abū Tammām” in EI2, 1: 153–55; Gruendler, “Abū Tammām,” in EI3, s.v.; Larkin, “Abu Tammam”; and Sezgin, GAS, 2: 551–58; and on his works, see Stetkevych, Abū Tammām and the Poetics of the ʿAbbāsid Age.
4 Al-Marzubānī, Muwashshaḥ, 343–69.
5 Al-Āmidī, Muwāzanah, 1:6–56, and al-Ḥuṣrī, Zahr, 2:601–9.
6 On his biography, see Seidensticker, “al-Ṣūlī,” in EAL, 2:744–45; Leder, “Al-Ṣūlī,” in EI2, 9:846–48; Sezgin, GAS, 1:330–31; Osti, “Tailors of Stories” and “The Remuneration of a Court Companion.” See also the further articles by Osti on al-Ṣūlī as historian, “The Wisdom of Youth” and “In Defense of the Caliph”; on his interactions at the court, “Al-Ṣūlī and the Caliph”; on his famous library, “Notes on a Private Library”; and on his literary reception, “Authors, Subjects, and Fame.”
7 He is not otherwise attested (see al-Ṣūlī, Akhbār, preface, xviii) but must be identical with the military man to whom al-Ṣūlī’s enemy al-Ḥāmiḍ bequeathed his books in 305/917 to prevent other scholars’ access to them. Al-Ṣūlī mentions this bequest in §6.2. The dedicatee’s name appears variously as Abū Fātik al-Muqtadirī (Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, 2:406) and Ibn Fātik al-Muʿtaḍidī (al-Qifṭī, Inbāh, 3:141).
8 See introd., n. 6.
9 Four are lost; others survive partially in citations in the adab literature.
10 Of Abū Nuwās, Muslim ibn al-Walīd, al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Aḥnaf, Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ibn al-Rūmī, al-Ṣanawbarī, and others.
11 His collected akhbār of Sudayf ibn Maymūn, al-Sayyid al-Ḥimyarī, al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Aḥnaf, and the poets of Egypt have not survived; see Ritter, “al-Ṣūlī.”
12 For more detail, see Gruendler, “Verse and Taxes” and “Qaṣīda,” n. 20.
13 On practical criticism by literati contemporary with Abū Tammām, see Gruendler, “Abstract Aesthetics and Practical Criticism” and “Qaṣīda,” 350–51.
14 On this debate, see Gruendler, “Arabic Philology through the Ages.”
15 See introd., n. 7.
16 On the tension between philology and the emerging poetics, see Gruendler, “Meeting the Patron,” 75–80, and “Arabic Philology through the Ages.”
17 For a discussion of al-Ṣūlī’s reaction to this criticism, see Gruendler, “Meeting the Patron,” 75–80.
18 This has been published separately as Sharḥ al-Ṣūlī li-Dīwān Abī Tammām, edited by Khalaf Rashīd Nuʿmān, 3 vols., preceded by a study of Abū Tammām and al-Ṣūlī as his critic and commentator (ibid., 1:17–137). The edition by Muḥammad ʿAbduh ʿAzzām includes the commentary by al-Tibrīzī (see introd., n. 27).
19 See Gruendler, “Abstract Aesthetics and Practical Criticism.”
20 The first three qualities are variously referred to as ibdāʿ, badīʿ, ikhtirāʿ, iktifāʾ, ittikāʾ ʿalā nafsihī, yaʿmalu l-maʿānī wa-yakhtariʿuhā wa-yattakī ʿalā nafsihi, and his development of motifs as istikhrājāt laṭīfah wa-maʿānī ṭarīfah.
21 “Taking” is referred to in Arabic as akhdh, “stealing” as sariqah, “reliance” as lāʾidh bi-, “emulating” as muʿāraḍah, “copying, transposing” as naql, “imitating” as iḥtidhāʾ, and “inspiration” as ilmām.
22 Referred to as al-ʿulamāʾ bi-l-shiʿr, al-nuqqād li-l-shiʿr wa-l-ʿulamāʾ bihi or elsewhere as al-ḥudhdhāq bi-ʿilm al-shiʿr wa-alfāẓihī (§18).
23 The concept of “entitlement” within the theory of poetic borrowing (sariqah), whose first development was prompted by Abū Tammām, came into full bloom with al-Mutanabbī; see Heinrichs, “An Evaluation of Sariqa” and “Sariqa”; Ouyang, Literary Criticism, 146–54; ʿAbbās, Taʾrīkh, 252–336.
24 One list collected by al-Ṣūlī is labeled lawdh and naskh (§§44.1–10). A following selection quotes an unnamed author of a book on thefts (§§46.1–6), probably identical with the one by Abū l-Ḍiyāʾ Bishr ibn Yaḥyā the Scribe, quoted and critiqued in al-Āmidī’s Muwāzanah, 1:324–70; see n. 100 to the translation. A third section assembles the taking over (naql) of wording and meaning (or motif) (§§47.1–11). A fourth section displays stylistic matching or imitation (iḥtidhāʾ, taqdīr al-kalām, ʿamila maʿnāhu ʿalayhi) (§§48.1–4). Note that the terms iḥtidhāʾ and ʿamila kamā ʿamila min al-maʿna are elsewhere used more precisely for an item-by-item
