style="font-size:15px;"> At the heart of the matter is what is meant by the word “courtly” that is so often affixed to Andalusian Jewish culture. If it means tastes for wine drinking, garden settings, and an attraction to things worldly—then the Andalusians were more courtly than their counterparts in the Islamic East.97 If it refers to Jews who held actual positions within Islamic courts, then this is a phenomenon that is well attested throughout the Islamic Mediterranean.98 If it refers to a set of intellectual values that blends traditional Jewish learning with contemporary intellectual currents (whether termed “secular” or “Islamic”), then this, too, is something we find among Jews from Córdoba in the West to Baghdad in the East. But if it refers to the political practices associated with Islamic courts—a penchant for hierarchic structures, pronouncements of rank, and an imperial perspective—then Andalusian Jewish culture might be considered less courtly than its Eastern counterpart.
Oral and Written Elements of Panegyric Culture in al-Andalus
Generally speaking, the Hebrew poetic culture of al-Andalus had strong oral components.99 Even Mosheh Ibn Ezra, who describes his own generation as a period of decline, testifies to the continued oral circulation of poetry through poetry transmitters (Ar., ruwā’; sing., rāwī). In fact, he characterizes oral transmission as superior to written recording, or at least that the latter is rendered unnecessary when the machinery of oral transmission is in place. Writing of the finest poets, he states: “I did not record any of the best poetry of this superlative group or an exalted word of their superior words, for they are well known and preserved in the mouths of the poetry transmitters (alruwā’). For the light of the morning obviates the need for lamps, and the sun obviates the need for candles!”100
A number of other pieces of evidence point to oral and even improvisational elements of this poetic culture in the generations prior to Ibn Ezra. Hebrew liturgical poems were certainly heard, and we imagine that many poems composed for weddings and funerals, which often contained praise, were recited aloud. In an epistle to his patron Ḥasdai Ibn Shaprut, Menaḥem Ben Saruq mentions, regarding laments that he had composed over the patron’s father, that “all Israel lamented [them] each day of mourning” (one presumes orally).101 As Schirmann notes, the Judeo-Arabic superscription preserved in a Geniza fragment to a well-known poem by Dunash Ben Labrat reads: “Another poem by Ben Labrat about the sound of the canals…. [here the scribe lists other subjects of the poem]. He described this at a gathering (majlis) of Ḥasdai the Andalusian.”102 Yehosef the son of Shemuel ha-Nagid relates, in a superscription to a poem, how his father improvised fifteen poems on the theme of an apple at a small social gathering (maqom ḥevrato).103 Oral recitation at a small gathering is also suggested by a superscription in the dīwān of Yiṣḥaq Ibn Khalfūn: “And he wrote to him while drinking his medicine [i.e., wine] and his friends were with him at the gathering (majlis).”104 Again, such gatherings are reminiscent of the majlis uns, or the mujālasa, and, notably, there is no evidence for the presence of a patron paying professional poets.
Abū Walīd Marwān Ibn Janāḥ presents an anecdote that highlights a mixture of oral and written elements in Andalusian Hebrew poetic culture. While a young man, Ibn Janāḥ visited the poet Yiṣḥaq Ibn Mar Shaul and tried to impress his host by reciting one of Yiṣḥaq’s poems. Ibn Janāḥ relates that he opened with the words segor libi (the enclosure of my heart) and then: “when I recited this poem before its author, he responded to me qerav libi (the innards of my heart)! I said to him, ‘I have not seen it (like this) in any of the books but rather segor libi. If so, whence this change?’ He said to me, ‘When Ya‘aqov and his sons recited this, he sent it from his city to Córdoba, and when it reached the transmitter (rāwī) Rav Yehudah Ben Hanija and with him Rav Yiṣḥaq Ibn Khalfūn, the poet had difficulty with the verse and changed it.’”105
Ibn Mar Shaul blames not the incompetent distortions of copyists but rather the intentional alterations made by the learned. Here we witness that a short poem was recited, then committed to writing, sent over a distance, and subsequently modified by a reciter whose version of the poem was copied in (apparently several) books and became the accepted standard. Transmission thus incorporated both oral and written aspects.
Ibn Janāḥ’s anecdote calls attention to what I consider one of the most crucial aspects of Andalusian Jewish intellectual society. Only rarely do we find intellectuals gathered together; for the most part, they appear separated by distances and had meetings only occasionally.106 This is the picture that emerges when reading the history of Hebrew poetry in al-Andalus as described by Mosheh Ibn Ezra. For the most part, Ibn Ezra describes an ever-shrinking constellation of intellectuals, often moving from place to place and spread out across al-Andalus. He does not describe a series of discrete Jewish courts, each with competing poets orbiting around a patron, but rather a coterie of scattered authors who exchange poems over distances. He mentions authors according to their generations, and then according to their cities, but hardly describes any organized court. The closest he comes pertains to the poets surrounding Ḥasdai Ibn Shaprut (further below), but any Jewish court culture must have been extremely short-lived; it seems to have been unique to the period of the Umayyad caliphate and was perhaps repeated, to some extent, in various Taifa states; but certainly by Ibn Ezra’s generation, there barely seems to have been a trace of stable circles organized around patrons. This is how Ibn Ezra describes the generation of poets preceding his own:
Among the poets of Toledo were Abū Harūn Ibn Abī al-‘Aish, and after a period Abū Isḥāq Ibn al-Ḥarīzī. Among the poets of Seville were Abū Yūsuf Ibn Migash, originally of Granada and later of Seville, and Abū Zakariyya Ibn Mar Abun. And among the last of the generation in Granada was Abū Yūsuf b. al-Marah. Among the people of firm speech and clear poetry was my older brother Abū Ibrāhīm; he, may God have mercy on him, possessed gentle expression and sweet poetry due to his fluency in knowledge of Arabic expression (‘arabiyya). He died in Lucena in 1120/21. And in the east of al-Andalus there was at this time Abū ‘Umar Ibn al-Dayyan…. How deserted the earth is after them! How dark it is for their loss! Thus it is said, “The death of the pious is salvation for them but loss for the world. Our ancestors preceded in this with this saying, “the death of the righteous is good for them but bad for the world” (b. Sanhedrin 103b).107
Regarding his own generation, Ibn Ezra continues:
Those of their generation who are at the end of their days, and those who come after them and follow in their paths, are an exalted small group108 and a beautiful coterie that understands the goal of poetry. Although they were adherents of different schools (madhāhib) and [attained] distinct levels of speech, they came to [poetry’s] gate and path, administered its purity and eloquence; they reached the extreme of beauty and splendor, nay they were mighty in likening and similitude. It has been said that men are like rungs of a ladder; there are the high rungs and the low and those in between. But all of them, in whatever cities they dwelled, were in the circle of beautifying, precision, and mastery.
He goes on to mention numerous figures by name, several of whom had migrated from one city to another, and concludes: “These skilled people (naḥarīr), I met all of them (except for a few) and selected their most famous and obscure [verses]. The poet [Abū Tammām] said concerning this, ‘The coterie (isāba) whose values (adābuhum) are my values, though they are apart in the land, they are my neighbors.’”109
These intellectuals constituted a group largely by virtue of the literary and other intellectual ties maintained among them. If I might be permitted some anachronism, Andalusian Jewish courts were largely “virtual” and owed their existence to a web of connections and occasional moments of encounter. In Chapter 2, we will consider the role of panegyrics exchanged throughout such networks as “gifts.” For
