Essays in Arabic Literary Biography 1350-1850

14 Pages·2009·0.34 MB·English

Essays
in Arabic Literary Biography II:
1350–1850
Edited by
Joseph E. Lowry and Devin J. Stewart
2009
Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden
ISSN 0938-9024
ISBN 978-3-447-05933-6
Contents

Introduction.................................................................. 1
Wolfhart P. Heinrichs
ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-ʿABBĀSĪ (al-Sayyid ʿAbd al-Raḥīm)................................ 12
Th. Emil Homerin
ʿĀʾISHAH al-Bāʿūniyyah....................................................... 21
Devin J. Stewart
Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad al-ʿĀMILĪ .............................................. 27
Julia Bray
Dāwūd ibn ʿUmar al-ANṬĀKĪ ................................................... 48
Peter Gran
Ḥasan al-ʿAṬṬĀR............................................................. 56
Michael G. Carter
ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn ʿUmar al-BAGHDĀDĪ........................................... 69
Dwight F. Reynolds
BANŪ HILĀL................................................................ 77
Shawkat M. Toorawa
Āzād BILGRĀMĪ ............................................................. 91
Ralf Elger
Badr al-Dīn Muḥammad al-GHAZZĪ .............................................. 98
Michael Cooperson
ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-GHUZŪLĪ....................................................... 107
Beatrice Gruendler
IBN ABĪ ḤAJALAH........................................................... 118
Marina A. Tolmacheva
IBN BAṬṬŪṬAH ............................................................. 126
Devin J. Stewart
IBN ḤIJJAH al-Ḥamawī........................................................ 137
Erik S. Ohlander
IBN KATHĪR ................................................................ 147
Cynthia Robinson
Lisān al-Dīn IBN al-KHAṬĪB.................................................... 159
Joseph E. Lowry
IBN MAʿṢŪM................................................................ 174
Contents vi
Thomas Bauer
Jamāl al-Dīn IBN NUBĀTAH ................................................... 184
Livnat Holtzman
IBN QAYYIM al-JAWZIYYAH ................................................. 202
Arnoud Vrolijk
IBN SŪDŪN................................................................. 223
Dwight F. Reynolds
IBN ZAMRAK............................................................... 229
Kelly Tuttle
al-IBSHĪHĪ.................................................................. 236
Kristen Brustad
JIRMĀNŪS Jibrīl Farḥāt ....................................................... 242
Geert Jan Van Gelder
Shihāb al-Dīn al-KHAFĀJĪ...................................................... 251
Hilary Kilpatrick
MAKĀRIYŪS Ibn al-Zaʿīm and BŪLUS Ibn al-Zaʿīm................................ 262
Maribel Fierro (in collaboration with Luis Molina)
al-MAQQARĪ................................................................ 273
Christopher Melchert
MARʿĪ ibn Yūsuf ............................................................. 284
Elias Muhanna
Ilyās al-MAWṢILĪ ............................................................ 295
Ralf Elger
Muḥmmad Amīn ibn Faḍl Allāh al-MUḤIBBĪ....................................... 300
Lois A. Giffen
al-NAFZĀWĪ ................................................................ 309
Thomas Bauer
al-NAWĀJĪ.................................................................. 321
Maaike Van Berkel
al-QALQASHANDĪ........................................................... 331
Everett K. Rowson
al-ṢAFADĪ .................................................................. 341
Anthony H. Johns
Shams al-Dīn al-SAMAṬRĀʾĪ................................................... 357
Humphrey Davies
Yusūf al-SHIRBĪNĪ ........................................................... 371
Nelly Hanna
ʿAbd Allāh al-SHUBRĀWĪ ..................................................... 376
vii Contents
Aaron Spevack
Jalāl al-Dīn al-SUYŪṬĪ......................................................... 386
Kenneth L. Honerkamp
al-Ḥasan ibn Masʿūd al-YŪSĪ.................................................... 410
Monique Bernards
Muḥammad Murtaḍā al-ZABĪDĪ.................................................. 419
Glossary of Selected Terms...................................................... 429
Essays in Arabic Literary Biography, 1350-1850
Introduction
JOSEPH E. LOWRY and DEVIN J. STEWART
This volume contains biographical essays on Age,” “The Age of Expansion,” “The Golden
thirty-eight Arabic literary figures who lived Age,” “The Silver Age” and “The Age of the
between 1350 and 1850, a period of time almost Mamlūks,” this last covering five and a half
uniformly dismissed by scholars of Arabic lit- centuries, from 1258-1800. Gibb locates decline
erature as lacking in literary achievements. This early indeed: “the output was enormous…, but
negative judgment is so overwhelming and per- the qualities of originality, virility, and imagina-
sistent, and the terms in which it is expressed so tion, weak from the first, die away completely
provocative, that a brief survey of a few key by the sixteenth century” (142). Gibb was
pronouncements seems appropriate. echoing a conclusion found earlier in the century.
In the 1992 volume on Modern Arabic Lit- In his pioneering A Literary History of the Arabs,
erature in the Cambridge History of Arabic Lit- first published in 1907, R. A. Nicholson, a gifted
erature the editor writes in his introduction that scholar and translator, glumly finds that the pe-
“The Arabs had started their steady decline early riod in Arabic literary history stretching from
in the sixteenth century” (at 2; for full references the Mongol invasions (mid-13th century) to the
see the Bibliography). Although “historians of early twentieth century “forms, one must admit,
literature may have exaggerated the decline, the a melancholy conclusion to a glorious history”
period is no doubt characterized by the absence (442).
of creativity and loss of vigour;” it is an “age of Even now, the view of the period in question
commentaries and compendia.” Worse yet, by as sterile and dull persists. Robert Irwin, the
the eighteenth century, Arabic prose writing learned compiler of the recent Penguin anthol-
exhibited “an excessively ornate, artificial type ogy of classical Arabic literature (1999), though
of style,” literary work altogether “lacked seri- recognizing that the problem is not free from
ousness,” and those who “cared for content… nuance, notes that “there does appear to have
employed an undistinguished… style… devoid been a decline both in quantity and quality of
of literary merit.” Themes in creative writing original writing in that period,” “[h]orizons
were “conventional;” poetry, for example, con- seemed to have shrunk” and Arabic poetry and
sisted of “empty panegyrics,” “celebrations of fiction were “mostly conventional and back-
trivial social occasions” and “lifeless and pas- ward-looking” (448).
sionless love poems.” Unsurprisingly, then, the Clearly, the time has arrived for a reassess-
“Ottoman period marks the nadir of Arabic lit- ment.
erature,” the “literature of an exhausted, inward- It is true—cultural generalizations aside—
looking culture.” Incredibly, this dismissal of that difficulties confront the student of late pre-
over four centuries of Arabic literature repre- modern and early modern Arabic literature. The
sented progress in the field. majority of works from this period remain a vast
Three decades earlier, the great Arabist Sir and mostly unexplored and unedited corpus, a
Hamilton Alexander Roskeen Gibb divided his situation that both results from and reinforces
Arabic Literature into chapters on “The Heroic scholarly inertia. In addition, a dearth of secon-
Introduction 2

dary literature remains both a cause and an ef- Arabic writing more generally, came to be culti-
fect of the field’s failure to examine the litera- vated, studied, patronized and produced on a
ture of these centuries. A small number of sur- massive scale.
veys in Arabic, the very recent (2006) volume of Rule by Arabs, coupled with an Arabic
the Cambridge History of Arabic literature on scripture—the Qur’an, which served as the
the so-called “post-classical period,” a short basis of the emergent religion of Islam and so
study by C. E. Bosworth (1989) and a few scat- provided substantial ideological justification
tered articles are nearly all that is currently for Arab rule—led to the privileging of Arabic
available. In general, the literature and literary as a vehicle of literary expression. The divine
history of this time remain poorly understood, status of the Qur’an, a nearly unmediated re-
although the study of the period’s social history cord of God’s speech in Arabic, reinforced the
has begun to make advances. Finally, of particu- perception of Arabic as the language of pres-
lar note are the ideological factors that have tige (the Qur’an itself tells us that it is an Ara-
negatively conditioned modern Western scholar- bic Qur’an, in a clear Arabic tongue); the
ly attitudes to Islamic cultural production gen- Arabs’ political success reinforced its status as
erally in the late pre-modern and early modern the language of power.
periods. Thus, Arabic, seen as the exclusive, or at
These points, and others, conspire to make least superior, medium of divine communication
this introduction emphatically provisional. to humanity, became a marker of social status,
Nonetheless, the essays that make up this vol- and a wide range of persons of diverse interests,
ume aim to provide the kind of historical, bio- backgrounds, religious affiliations, cultural ori-
graphical and analytical detail that has been entations and so on learned and cultivated the
largely absent from earlier studies and that could Arabic language. Ambitious members of non-
form the starting-point for a more measured and Arabic speaking subject populations could hard-
better-informed reading of the texts themselves. ly pursue their material interests without know-
Whether the resulting picture will lead to a re- ing Arabic, and of course it was to the advantage
vised view of the aesthetic qualities of the litera- of elites and those who aspired to serve them to
ture of these centuries is unclear (it well might). promote Arabic as uniquely pure, rich in expres-
Yet the attempt in this volume to survey authors’ sive possibilities and, crucially, as an idiom ap-
literary production, situate it in local and also in propriate to a learned and eloquent ruling class.
larger contexts and identify the factors that It thus became not only important to read and
conditioned the literature produced by individual write Arabic well, but also to be able to speak it
writers during these centuries is long overdue. eloquently; conversely, infelicitous expressions
and solecisms betrayed the social climber as
awkward and unworthy of advancement and
Beginnings
reward. That social pressures and material incen-
The wider world might never have come to tives were connected with the mastery of Arabic
know about Arabic literature but for the can be seen in the roles played by many ethnic
appearance in the early seventh century of a new Iranians in the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries
Abrahamic faith—Islam—that mobilized the in the development of Arabic literary style and
inhabitants of Arabia. Arabic-speaking tribes- in the founding of the fields of Arabic grammar
men poured out of the Arabian Peninsula and and lexicography. It is ironic that these persons
adjacent territories spreading, by the mid-eighth helped to establish the ‘pure’ Arabic of the
century, from Spain to India. With the estab- Arabs and of Arabia as the standard of correct
lishment of an Arabo-Islamic state ruled by usage and thereby enhanced the ideologically
caliphs—first in Medina under the so-called driven privileging of the Arabic language in
Rightly Guided or Orthodox Caliphs (632-61), connection with Arab rule.
then in Damascus under the Umayyads (661- Of particular importance to the development
750) and finally in Baghdad under the Abbasids of Arabic literature and Arabic writing more
(750-1258)—Arabic literature, and all manner of generally was the encouragement of the early
3 Introduction
Abbasid ruling elites, who patronized the explo- The Arabic literature of later periods was, of
ration of the Arab and Arabian past and its lit- course, subject to the same kinds of forces, but
erary remains, the linguistic study of the Qur’an, in much different combinations, proportions and
Arabic linguistics and lexicography more gen- alignments, and with much different conse-
erally and the elaboration of religious sciences in quences. To make sense of post-Abbasid litera-
Arabic. They also contributed to the study of ture, these differences must be understood.
ancient Greek, Iranian and Indian philosophical, By the second half of the fourteenth century,
scientific and wisdom literature and funded where the essays in this volume begin, the con-
translations from these languages, sometimes text of Arabic literary production, and of Arabic
through Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic), into Ara- writing more generally, had undergone funda-
bic. This translation movement also contributed mental transformations. These developments re-
greatly to the development of a learned and sulted in part from vastly changed geo-political
technically sophisticated Arabic prose idiom. To circumstances and important innovations in the
this emergent literary language bureaucrats of development of religious institutions, both of
Iranian heritage also contributed. As chancery which altered the social and economic contexts
secretaries, they enriched Arabic prose by trans- in which literature was produced.
mitting the legacy of Persian statecraft in Arabic Of special significance was a fundamental
and developing an effective, edifying and change in the ethnic composition of the ruling
aesthetically ambitious prose style in their offi- elites, which decisively altered the environment
cial correspondence. for the patronage of Arabic writing. A series of
The Abbasid caliphs themselves were often mass migrations of Turkish and Mongol peoples
direct patrons and consumers of the most so- into the central Islamic lands in the eleventh,
phisticated works of belletristic literature, most thirteenth and fifteenth centuries resulted in the
famously of panegyric odes in which poets of domination of Arabic-speaking (and other) pop-
legendary talent made highly innovative uses of ulations by Central Asian groups for many cen-
pre-Islamic poetic forms and images. Caliphs, turies. These originally nomadic migrants ac-
ministers, and merchants of enormous wealth, quired political power across wide swaths of the
entertaining themselves in sumptuous palaces Muslim world: Iran, Iraq and Syro-Palestine in
and mansions by employing a vast array of intel- particular, but also Egypt, Anatolia and even
lectuals and litterateurs, have long attracted the India. The domination of Muslim societies by
gaze of historians of Arabic literature. Indeed, Central Asian peoples and the process of their
the pre-modern Arabic literary tradition itself assimilation culminated in the three great abso-
glorifies the refined literary culture of this period lutist empires that rose to prominence in the
in countless anecdotes that portray the wit and early sixteenth century: the Ottomans (late 13th
wisdom of the producers of such literature and century to 1924, Anatolia and Arabic-speaking
also their generous, receptive and, occasionally, regions), the Safavids (1501-1722, Iran) and the
even gifted patrons. Justifiably, scholars con- Mughals (1526-1858, India).
tinue to view the early Abbasid period (from ca. The Turks and Mongols, nomadic and often
750-1000) as a foundational epoch in the history of pagan (or at least eclectic) background, pos-
of Arabic literature—eloquent testimony to the sessed neither strong claims to legitimacy of
capacity of Abbasid literature to convince us rule in Islamic terms nor, initially, ties to local
even today of the precedence of its ruling and constituencies. In many instances, however,
cultural elites. these political deficits were remedied by
forging alliances with local scholarly-religious
elites, especially through the patronage of reli-
Change
gious institutions such as mosques, law col-
The factors that made Arabic literature into leges (madrasahs) and other establishments of
world literature in the early Abbasid period re- religious study, worship and contemplation.
sulted from a particular convergence of power, Sponsorship of such institutions lent visible,
politics, wealth, religion, culture, and language. symbolically effective support to the bearers of
Introduction 4

religious tradition, promoted ties to local net- bureaucrats had become partly incorporated into
works of civilian notables, and also induced the the larger group of clerically trained profes-
scholars to become dependent on the interest sionals. Thus, the class of the literate elite as a
and largesse of the alien rulers. Institutions of whole had become more homogeneous because
learning provided employment opportunities of a shared educational background, but also
for teachers of the religious sciences and ancil- more diverse because of the substantial increase
lary subjects as well as stipends for their stu- in its numbers.
dents—all such study began with a thorough The late pre-modern rise in the numbers of
grounding in Arabic language and literature as scholars was probably also accompanied by an
a propaedeutic to the fuller study of the Qur’an, increase in literacy, entailing a heightened famil-
Islamic law and other subjects. Support of iarity with the literary canon. There was also an
these institutions and their curriculum was a associated growth in economic opportunities for
hallmark of Muslim rule in this period, begin- this “civilian elite,” and it is perhaps useful to
ning especially under the Turkish Seljuqs in think of them, in the late pre-modern period, as a
Iraq and Iran (1040-1194) and continuing un- kind of upwardly-mobile upper-middle social
der the Turkish Zangids in Mesopotamia stratum. These developments, in conjunction
(1127-1251), the Kurdish Ayyubids in Egypt with the changed environment for patronage and
and Syria (1169-1250s), the Turkish and Cir- the expansion and support of educational institu-
cassian Mamluks in Syria and Egypt (1250- tions, meant that the ʿulamāʾ became primary
1517), and thereafter under the Ottomans (who bearers, producers and consumers of Arabic
overthrew the Mamluks in 1517), the Safavids literary culture. The (comparatively) narrow
and the Mughals. Thus, the focus of patronage literary elitism of the early Abbasid period was
shifted from the courtly and occasionally even replaced by a wider diffusion of learning, and an
qualifiedly ‘secular’ contexts of early Abbasid increased range of tastes, interests and abilities.
times to institutions that regularized the pro- Although courtly litterateurs did not cease to
duction and reproduction of religious know- exist, literature ceased to be the exclusive pre-
ledge, the foundation of which was the study of serve of courts and became more often a means
Arabic. of communication among the educated, even
The proliferation of educational institutions though mastery of the literary codes and canon
and opportunities both contributed to and re- remained a potentially important means of ac-
flected the growing numbers of professional quiring and differentiating status within the
religious scholars (ʿulamāʾ, ulema) from the scholarly community.
eleventh century on. These intellectuals, in- Increasing bureaucratization and attendant
cluding most of the writers studied in this vol- careerism, especially in the context of the com-
ume, worked not only as clerics, mosque offi- paratively well-organized absolutist states of the
cials, teachers of language and literature and sixteenth century and after, sharpened the com-
professors of the religious sciences, but also in petition for civilian posts. At the same time,
government as chancery secretaries, judges, scholars enjoyed considerable lateral profes-
notaries and even as advisors to and personal sional mobility, and those who had marketable
envoys of high government officials. In these skills or were particularly good at self-pro-
latter, governmental capacities they were often motion, or both, could successfully offer their
responsible for drafting official documents and abilities in lands far from their places of birth.
correspondence, in which, as under the early Arabic, a language of international scholarly
Abbasids, a fluid prose style, frequent and appo- exchange, enabled scholars to travel enormous
site literary allusion and fine penmanship were distances in pursuit of learning, employment and
val-ued. The early Abbasid chancery secretaries, patronage. Itinerant scholars were crucial for the
however, had remained culturally, socially and spread and cultivation of Arabic learning in the
intellectually distinct from those engaged in the centuries covered by this volume, especially
study of the emergent religious sciences. In the outside the dominantly Arabic-speaking lands.
late and post-Abbasid world these literate Arabophone scholars traveled to Istanbul, Isfa-
5 Introduction
han and Delhi, and to lesser centers of political luk and Ottoman times.
gravity, to seek employment or official approval Thus, Sufism, in conjunction with the inter-
and reward for their various projects. Those nationalization of scholarly and intellectual ca-
projects did not always involve belletristic litera- reer opportunities, along with the far-flung
ture in Arabic, yet a result of successful pursuit routes followed by Muslim traders, contributed
of patronage could often lead those scholars to to the spread of Islam, and with it of Arabic, into
become, directly or indirectly, teachers of the Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and other
Arabic literary tradition in the broad sense. non-Arabophone regions. Consequently, a wide
Some enterprising scholars traveled even further range of Arabic words and phrases became cur-
afield, to Southeast Asia, South India, sub- rent in vernacular Islamicate languages and liter-
Saharan Africa or even China, and brought with atures.
them knowledge of Arabic literary traditions Although the history of Arabic literature is
while working as teachers, civil servants, judges, closely connected with the religion of Islam,
or professors of religious law. many important writers of Arabic were non-
Various social networks contributed to the in- Muslims. Christians played a key role in the
ternationalization of the labor market for the early Abbasid translation movement, and Jews
educated, including private associations that in Arab lands developed a distinctive Arabic
filled the gaps left by inherent limitations in the literature written in Hebrew characters (Judaeo-
power of pre-modern states. Sunni jurists, for Arabic). In the period covered by this volume,
example, were affiliated with one of four com- Arabic writing by Christians, especially by cler-
peting professional associations (sometimes re- ics—as opposed to writing in the liturgical lan-
ferred to as ‘law schools,’ madhāhib, sg. madh- guages of Syriac and Coptic—seems to be on
hab) that, among other things, facilitated cross- the ascendant, as exemplified by the careers of
border travel, education and employment (they several of the authors studied here. This devel-
have been likened to guilds). opment continued and bore in important ways
Equally or even more important were the Sufi on the Arabic literary culture of the late nine-
orders (ṭuruq, sg. ṭarīqah), which played an in- teenth and early twentieth centuries.
creasingly central role in many areas of social life Finally, it should be noted that there is also
in the Muslim world in the late pre-modern period now some evidence that the general increase in
and to which many of the authors studied in this literacy encompassed an emergent class of arti-
volume belonged. Although these orders served a sans and merchants—apart from scholarly
pietistic function—ostensibly putting their adher- elites—who began both to consume and to pro-
ents in contact with an unbroken spiritual, char- duce works of literature. This trend makes itself
ismatic lineage stretching back to the Prophet felt in certain Mamluk-period literary works and
Muḥammad—they also functioned as, or in tan- continues to evolve throughout the Ottoman
dem with, social and commercial networks and period—though it must be emphasized that re-
generated significant cultural activity, including search on the social background to the produc-
Arabic writing of various kinds. The international tion and consumption of literature in these peri-
character of these orders led them to play a spe- ods is at a very early stage. Still, it seems that
cial role in the spread of Arabic learning and also Arabic literature acquired a much broader social
in the production of texts that aimed partly to base in the Mamluk and Ottoman periods than it
satisfy aesthetic goals in the context of worship had had earlier.
and theological speculation. Mystical poetry in
Arabic (as in Persian and other Islamicate lan-
Arabic literature, 1350-1850
guages) was a conspicuous site of literary play,
and the dense field of imagery and allusion in the During the centuries covered by this volume,
writings of the Sufis was equally at home in Fez Arabic was being written from Central Asia to
(North Africa) or Aceh (Sumatra). Sufi instruc- the southern tip of India, from the Balkans to
tion and social affiliations may also have contri- Ghana and Zanzibar and from Morocco to
buted to the general increase in literacy in Mam- Sumatra, furnishing a vast array of regions, cul-
Introduction 6

tures and peoples with a scholarly, literary and dwindled with the disappearance of the Arab
liturgical language. In most of these regions, ruling class. Making one’s living as a court poet
however, Arabic had to compete with other lit- in the Arabic-speaking world ceased to be viable
erary languages, such as Persian, Turkish, Urdu in the way it had been in the Umayyad and early
or Malay. The waning of Abbasid rule in the Abbasid periods.
ninth and tenth centuries and after led to the rise During this period three developments in
of local centers of political power, patronage and poetry are of special note: First, new poetic
cultural activity. Non-Arab rulers, outside forms come into being, or gain in popularity.
Arabophone lands, began to patronize literature Among these are two strophic forms, the
in their own languages. The appearance of muwashshaḥ and the zajal, that migrated from
Islamicate vernacular literatures, beginning in Muslim Spain. Granada, the last outpost of Mus-
the tenth century with Persian literature, spread lim rule and cultural life in Spain, had fallen to
to other regions, with Turkish, and later, Urdu, the Christian reconquest in 1492. Although
Swahili, Malay and other languages, all of Muslims were not officially expelled from the
which came to be written in the Arabic script. Iberian peninsula until 1609, large numbers of
Persianate forms of cultural expression, espe- them had already begun to migrate from Spain
cially in literature, enjoyed the special favor of to North Africa, Egypt and Syria in earlier cen-
the Turkish and Mongol ruling elites and left a turies, and Andalusian immigrant communities
particularly deep imprint on Turkish and Urdu in North Africa continued to cultivate their re-
literature. Bi- and even trilingualism were not gional literary, musical and other cultural tradi-
uncommon; Persian and Turkish authors could tions, maintaining a distinct identity.
be assumed to know Arabic and might them- Second, much poetry came to be self-
selves compose literary, scientific or religious referential or self-consciously intertextual, refer-
works in it. Simultaneously, such authors, when ring to earlier well-known poems, elaborating on
writing in their vernaculars, were affected at such poems by the use of specific forms invol-
many levels by the omnipresence of the Arabic ving complex (and playful) methods of quota-
religious and literary tradition, leading to a tion or variation, displaying virtuoso deploy-
complex, multi-lingual intertextuality. During ments of rhetorical devices, and so on. Various
this supposed period of decadence, it is therefore poetic techniques also developed to highlight
appropriate to speak of a flowering of Islamicate intertextual relationships between newer and
literatures in languages other than Arabic, fre- older poems, such as the takhmīs (quintain) a
quently in subtle and intricate dialogue with form that incorporated a pre-existing poem into
Arabic literary forms and genres. a larger poetic elaboration using variations of the
As in the earliest phases of Arabic literary underlying poem’s rhyme-scheme. Also, poems
history, poetry remains the prime vehicle of that seek to demonstrate the entire catalog of
artistic literary expression in this period. The rhetorical devices collectively termed badīʿ ap-
qaṣīdah, the polythematic ode that existed since pear (such a poem is called a badīʿiyyah, a
pre-Islamic times, continued to be composed, “badīʿ-poem”). These formal innovations con-
but many developments had taken place in re- tinue trends that were begun under the Abbasids.
gard to poetic form and practice in the inter- Third, and related to the first development, so-
vening centuries. In Abbasid times, the qaṣīdah called colloquial forms emerge, in which spoken
had evolved, with the pressures and opportu- (as opposed to formal, written) Arabic is em-
nities of patronage, into the panegyric form par ployed to varying degrees. The zajal, for example,
excellence, though shorter poems were also can employ a refrain in the colloquial language.
common, and monothematic poetry was com- Other forms seem to have been more strictly col-
posed on themes of love, asceticism, wine, hun- loquial, such as the dūbayt (named using the Per-
ting, nature and so on. However, the opportun- sian term for “couplet”), the qūmā, the kān wa-
ities for poets to have their grand panegyric odes kān or the mawwāl. By the fourteenth century, the
publicly performed, patronized and appreciated existence of colloquial, or mixed formal-
by the ruler and an audience of cognoscenti had colloquial poetic sub-genres had become a topic