Read on Twitter
A thread on how a reception studies approach can help us understand racialization in premodern Arabic literature…
(warning, it's long)
(warning, it's long)
Anyone who studies Classical Arabic literature knows that it is extremely intertextual. This is especially true of poetry, which often gets taken from its original context and put into anthologies or cited in prose works for myriad reasons. It's all very meta, always...
...With that in mind, I want to tell you the story of the itinerary of one poem, written by the Iraqi-based muhdath poet Ibn al-Rumi. One night, Ibn al-Rumi went to a party hosted by an ‘Abbasid potentate. In an elegy to his host, the poet praises not only his patron...
...but also a Black courtesan (sawdā’) whom he allegedly met. He describes her beauty in terms that echo a lot of old tropes, as well as some that were to become clichés later, like the bit about the girdled ebony branch (trans. Geert van Gelder):
...Ibn al-Rumi also includes a very graphic “recollection” of a sex scene with this woman, but he ends by assuring his host that he enjoyed fantasizing about the man’s property “without touching or tasting her,”
وصفتُ فيها الذي هويتُ على ال
وهم ولم تُختَبر ولم تُذَق...
Creep.
وصفتُ فيها الذي هويتُ على ال
وهم ولم تُختَبر ولم تُذَق...
Creep.
...This poem ends up excerpted prominently in an interesting place, a commentary on al-Hariri’s maqamat written by the 13th-century Jerez-based scholar Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Muʾmin al-Sharīshī...
...In his gloss on al-Hariri’s use in his ninth maqama of the phrase “from Ferghana to Ghana,” a sort of Arabic “hither and yon,” al-Sharīshī gives a lengthy description of what the land of Ghana is like. Here’s my shortened translation:
...And then, he includes a long section of poetic proofs of the value of Ghanaian concubines. The first lines he adduces are from Ibn al-Rumi’s ode. All the poems used are about “black” women, not Ghanaian women, despite the specificity above, giving lie to Kumail-sorry Kumail...
(Here's the Arabic if you want it:)
...This "lapse" is interesting, because al-Sharishi was careful to add this specific account of Ghana. His commentarial predecessor, al-Panjdihi, on whom he bases much of his work, did not include this description. Al-Sharishi also had extensive scholarly contacts in Sijilmasa...
...and he gives that a nod above (thanks @lit_as_adab for telling me this!). So, al-Sharishi’s use of poems about black women in general to account for the relationships local traders form with Ghanaian concubines tells us something about how racial logic works...
...Racialization encourages one to speak of the particular in broad, essentializing terms. This is compounded here by gender essentialism too. And if we hadn’t followed this poem beyond its origins, we might’ve thought it was all just about that one courtesan at that one party!
All of this research is for a forthcoming paper. I'll keep you all updated as publication nears.
Hope this was kinda cool in any case.
Hope this was kinda cool in any case.
Also keep an eye out for @Lit_as_Adab's brilliant forthcoming article on al-Panjdihi in the Journal of Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, which I just passed a lovely afternoon reading.
Moving this up bc someone asked me what reception studies means! And a reminder to read Stuart Hall's brilliant work on this, too: https://twitter.com/RachelSchine/status/1352743733515546624?s=20
poss. relevant to the #raceb4race people, #medievaltwitter, etc.
