The Life and Times of Abu Tammam. Abu Bakr al-Suli
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from Abū Tammām (§44 and §§46–48).24 Al-Buḥturī was a younger poet whom Abū Tammām took under his wing, but al-Buḥturī’s fame among contemporaries would soon match Abū Tammām’s. Al-Buḥturī poured the ideas that he borrowed from Abū Tammām, as al-Ṣūlī shows, into a more natural language than that of his mentor. Audiences and critics would compare the two, and each poet had his particular supporters, but al-Ṣūlī makes the point that in terms of creativity, al-Buḥturī was clearly second to Abū Tammām.
POETIC THEMES
Most classical Arabic poems belong to a fixed set of larger genres, such as panegyric or lament, each of which included a catalog of common themes. Al-Ṣūlī also lists some themes that the Moderns rendered more successfully than the Ancients did (§§11.2–18). He assembles several series of motifs that show the versatility of poets when they return to the same themes over time, such as metaphors involving water (§§22.1–10), sounds that, though inarticulate, move their listeners (§§100.1–6), responsibility for endeavor but not success (§§25.1–6), and people who do not even merit a lampoon (§§24.1–30). One series lists poems describing robes (§§92.1–5).
ABRIDGMENTS
Finally, the work features selections and abridgments of Abū Tammām’s most famous poems in all genres (panegyric, apology, lament, boast, satire, love lyric), placed in the context of their first recitation and subsequent discussion in literary circles. It presents a lively picture of how hotly these were debated and how highly remunerated.
FACTIONS
Al-Ṣūlī throws light on the two factions that attacked Abū Tammām. Language-centered philologists and transmitters made up one faction (§§9.1–2, §§69.6–9, §87.1), as confirmed by Ibn Abī Ṭāhir (§53). Self-promoting amateurs made up the other (§§19.1–4). Al-Ṣūlī dismisses their arguments as gibberish (§§70.1–3).
CONCLUSION
The Life and Times of Abū Tammām also affords a window on the academic world of Baghdad in the first half of the fourth/tenth century. In the course of his argument, al-Ṣūlī pronounces on professional ethics and his own scholarly etiquette. He lauds al-Mubarrad and Thaʿlab for not overstepping the limit of their competence by remaining faithful to their discipline (§§4.1–8, esp. §4.6), and he condemns religious and other biases against, or slander of, poets (§§86.1–7). He boasts of his own scholarly propriety, making a show of not criticizing colleagues openly (he toys with not naming them), but then does so, claiming a sense of scholarly duty. For example, after declaring that God would not ask him to explain scholars’ and poets’ unwarranted criticism of Abū Tammām (§69.9), he proceeds to do so a paragraph later, with “I will mention this” (see §9.1, §23.3, §24.1, and §28).
Al-Ṣūlī demonstrates great respect for the intellectual property of others (§46.1). Inversely, he complains that scholars like Abū Mūsā l-Ḥāmiḍ25 did not treat him with the same respect, and used his works without giving him credit (§§6.1–2). 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