The Poetics of the Obscene in Premodern Arabic Poetry

Ibn al-?ajj?j and Sukhf

S. Antoon

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137391780
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Poetry
• Index: Literature

The book is the first study of the 10th century Iraqi poet Ibn al-Hajjaj who popularized a new genre of obscene and scatological parody (sukhf) and is considered the most obscene poet in Arabic literature. Antoon traces the genealogy of this fascinating genre in and examines its rise by placing it in its sociopolitical context.

CHAPTER 1

Ibn al-Ḥajjāj and Sukhf: Genealogies

I saw that the fruits of poets’ thoughts are [like] offspring, akin to each other, and like nations, their poems are scattered upon the earth. Except for the poems of the unique littérateur Abū ʿAbdullāh Ibn al-Ḥajjāj, for they are a strange nation that spreads on its own and a wondrous offspring . . . no one’s mind was able to master their likeness.

—Ibn Nubāta al-Miṣrī (686–768/1287–1366)¹

If I die, by God, you will not see

anyone who can rival me in my style

The people of poetry have all concurred

that those who write are not my equals²

[I]

I am the one and only in my style

It is impossible that there be another³

[II]

. . .

Were it not for me, sukhf would never

have been read, nor ever written in a book⁴

[III]

. . .

[I am] A man who claims prophethood in sukhf

Who dares to doubt prophets?⁵

[IV]

Such is my poetry, its leaves

are spread and turned over again

There is not a noble man on earth

without a book of them

He acknowledged that I am the prophet

of sukhf and he is merely a poet⁶

[V]

Poets, especially premodern Arab poets, were never at a loss when it came to literary boast and self-aggrandizement. So much so that that itself is a common topos. However, only few leave a mark on their age. Even fewer are those whose poetry outlives them and remains influential in later ages. One is reminded of al-Mutanabbī’s (303–354/915–965) oft-quoted line:

I am the one whose eloquence the blind could see

and whose words forced the deaf to hear⁷

[VI]

Hyperbole aside, al-Mutanabbī’s fame and influence are truly proverbial both in the realm of scholarship as well as in contemporary Arab culture (both literary and popular). For he had secured his permanent spot in the canon and the cultural archive of the Arabs. The same cannot be said of his contemporary, erstwhile enemy and ultimate “other,” Ibn al-Ḥajjāj (330–391/941–1001).⁸ The latter’s boasts about literary immortality and about pioneering a new mode of poetry (hence the repeated boast of being the prophet of sukhf )⁹ rang true in his time and for centuries after his death, but seem to have almost expired in the modern period. Canons, as well as the cultural archives to which they belong, are, of course, not fixed entities. They reflect and are shaped by dominant ideologies and sociohistorical contexts and forces.¹⁰ Many a poet is often consigned to oblivion and “disappeared” under layers of amnesia into a dark and distant corner of the archive. While the number of premodern Arab poets who eagerly await, and are deserving of, scholarly attention is not negligible, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Ibn al-Ḥajjāj and sukhf represent one of the most serious cases of cultural amnesia and academic neglect. Matters were not so a millennium ago.

Premodern Views: The Lightheartedness of the Age

When Ibn al-Ḥajjāj died in Jumādā al-Thāniya (al-ākhira) 391 AH, May of 1001 CE,¹¹ his friend, the famous poet and naqīb of the Ṭālibids, al-Sharīf al-Raḍī (359–406/970–1015) composed a moving elegy, some of whose lines are as follows:

I cried over you for the extraordinary famous verses

Their words perfumed with [elegant] meanings

. . .

Never did I think that death

could blunt the edges of that tongue

. . .

Be gone just like tender youth [did]

when it let you down the day you met the women

Let the age cry for you

For you were its lightheartedness¹²

[VII]

Beyond the social conventions that occasion the composition of such elegies and the literary conventions that predetermine, to a large extent, their content, this one bears an added significance. That a highly respected religious figure and major poet such as al-Raḍī would accord Ibn al-Ḥajjāj and his poetry such honor underscores the positive approach and appreciative attitude toward Ibn al-Ḥajjāj and sukhf in his own time, one that contrasts sharply with the negative and neo-Victorian manner in which Ibn al-Ḥajjāj’s legacy was largely dealt with in the modern period.

Another contemporary, the great essayist and master of adab Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (315–411/927–1023) wrote the following in his Kitāb al-Imtāʿ walmuʾ ānasa (The Book of Enjoyment and Conviviality):

As for Ibn al-Ḥajjāj . . . he is of a frivolous style, far from seriousness, exquisite in jest (hazl). Reason has neither share nor counterpart in his poetry. But his wording is sound and his speech flowing. His qualities are far removed, in their dignity, from his harmful habits. He and Ibn Sukkara share this obsession [with sukhf ]. When he composes in seriousness (jidd), he squats like a dog and when he composes in jest (hazl), he is like a snake.¹³

Considering al-Tawḥīdī’s legendary bitterness, jealousy, and cantankerousness, this is a very generous evaluation. He does sound deceptively conservative in his characterization of sukhf in this passage, but his own works abound with numerous obscene and scatological anecdotes and excerpts of poetry that would fall under the sukhf category. One need only leaf through al-Baṣāʾir wal-dhakhāʾir (Insights and Treasures) for example, or Mathālib al-wazīrayn (The Faults of the Two Viziers) to find some of the most obscene passages ever written in Arabic letters.¹⁴ Moreover, al-Risāla al-baghdādiyya (The Baghdad Epistle), previously thought to have been penned by Abū ‘l-Muṭahhar al-Azdī, but recently attributed to al-Tawḥīdī,¹⁵ is the sukhf prose text par excellence.¹⁶ Its narrator and main character Abū ‘l-Qāsim al-Baghdādī appears to have been modeled after Ibn al-Ḥajjāj’s persona. The latter’s poetry is excerpted therein as well. I emphasize persona because the sources tell us that unlike the extreme obscenity and shocking all-out irreverence of his poetry, Ibn al-Ḥajjāj was nothing like that in his social conduct and “private” life as far as we know. In al-Imtāʿ wal-muʾānasa,¹⁷ al-Tawḥīdī preserved an intriguing and telling account of the first encounter between Ibn al-Ḥajjāj and the vizier, patron, and famous adīb Ibn al-ʿAmīd (d. 360/970), one of the great figures of the Būyid age¹⁸ and a recipient of many of Ibn al-Ḥajjāj’s panegyrics:

by God I am amazed by you. As for my liking of you, it is not recent. For I used to comb your dīwān and yearn to meet you and say: What kind of man says these words? [He must be] the most reckless, frivolous and obsessed of all . . . You are indeed one of the miracles of God’s creatures and the marvels of his worshippers. By God none will believe that you are the very same man who composed your dīwān and that it is yours with all this contradiction which exists between your poetry and the seriousness of your person.¹⁹

This speaks volumes about Ibn al-Ḥajjāj’s fame and the respect he enjoyed, but also the “buzz” that he had created among the cultural elite. In another standard work and the major anthology of the second half of the fourth/tenth century, al-Thaʿālibī’s (350–429/961–1038) Yatīmat al-dahr (The Solitaire of the Age), I...