The Abbasid Construction
of the Jahiliyya:
Cultural Authority in the Making

Address:
Dr. Rina Drory
Department of Arabic
Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv 69978, ISRAEL

tel. +972-3-640-9723 (Department)
fax: +972-3-642-2141
E-mail: rdrory@spinoza.tau.ac.il

© 1996-1997 Rina Drory

Sometime in the mid-sixties of the eighth century CE, an historic event
concerning the canonization of classical Arabic poetry took place, which
was to substantially affect medieval -- and eventually our -- knowledge
and perception of pre-Islamic poetry. A medieval source recounts that
the Caliph al-Mansûr (reigned 754-775) overheard his son, the Crown
Prince al-Mahdî reciting an ode by the pre-Islamic poet al-Musayyab, in
front of his tutor al-Mufaddal al-Dabbî, a celebrated philologist and con-
noisseur of pre-Islamic poetry (d. ca. 785). He stood there unnoticed until
the boy had finished his reciting, then went to one of his chambers and
called for the boy and his teacher. The Caliph al-Mansûr told al-Mufaddal
of his appreciation of the boy's recitation of the ode, and added, "if you
would select for your pupil the best works of poets whose poetry is
rare,(¹) you would be performing a great service ". And this, concludes
our source, is exactly what al-Mufaddal consequently did.(²). This account
of the origins of the highly regarded anthology of early (mainly pre-

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Islamic) poems, called al-Mufaddaliyyât after its compiler,(³) is signifi-
cant in more than one respect. Why would the Caliph al-Mansûr, son of
a Berber woman -- who had spent his youth in the city, and who con-
spicuously conducted his daily royal routine after the Persian model,(⁴)
take such great pleasure in an ode celebrating the values of a remote,
Bedouin lifestyle? What messages were conveyed by pre-Islamic odes
that made him so eager to include them in his son's curriculum? Bearing
in mind that the Abbasids were notorious for their infatuation with Per-
sian, and especially sedentary, urban culture while condescending to
"genuine Arabic" (i.e., nomadic) culture, and that official Islam impugned
poetry in general as well as anything that smacked of pre-Islamic values,
it seems warranted to inquire into al-Mansûr's reasons for having ancient
Arab poems compiled. Was he perhaps motivated by nostalgia for an
idealized "Arabic past"?

The high regard for pre-Islamic poetry reflected in this anecdote indi-
cates the special status accorded to the pre-Islamic past in the Abbasid
cultural repertoire of self-images. An increasing preoccupation with pre-
Islamic erudition is discernible in eighth century Iraq, especially in its
second half after the Abbasids came to power. "Discovering" and pro-
cessing images of a distant past seem to have become major, though not
unique, endeavors in this period. They comprise part of an overall project
of constructing "Arab" ethnic identity in the context of the power
struggles roiling the contemporary cultural arena. The pre-Islamic past
becomes an icon of "Arab" ethnic identity. Pre-Islamic poetry, which in
classical Arab literature was long assigned the function of authentically
representing the past, becomes a central prop for that icon, and conse-
quently, a focus of literary attention and activity.

One major question that arises here concerns the social framework
within which this project emerged: what social groups had vested inter-
ests in producing, promoting and advancing this project, and how pre-
cisely did they go about it? Other, related questions are: what role did
existing images of the past play in that project; what cultural and literary
options for the construction of images of the past existed, and how are
we to explain the remarkable success of the option which involved the
creation and privileging of scholarly bodies of knowledge of the
Jahiliyya? Who were the cultural agents concerned with constructing

(⁴) See Sadan 1979. That Persian was already in use in the early days of the Abbasid court
is evidenced in an anecdote concerning al-Mansûr's brother, Abû al-`Abbâs al-Saffâh. See Ibn
al-Mu`tazz, tabaqât, 40.

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THE ABBASID CONSTRUCTION OF THE JAHILIYYA

images of the Jahiliyya past, and what was the nature of their cultural
activity and professional authority? What manipulations were performed
on traditional models for the preservation of the past and on existing
bodies of knowledge; and were any new bodies of knowledge con-
structed?

Such questions guide a research project about the Jahiliyya which I
am conducting at present. It examines the large body of information about
the Jahiliyya presented in classical Arabic literature from a different per-
spective than that of the traditional academic concern of fixing "a true
historical picture" of pre-Islamic times.(⁵) Rather, it approaches the col-
lection, formulation, organization and eventually the institutionalization
of the knowledge of Jahiliyya in classical Arab literature as a cultural
preoccupation with it instructive for its own (i.e., eighth century) time
and place.

Understanding the way in which Jahiliyya was conceptualized and
shaped in the late Umayyad and early Abbassid period involves, in fact,
dealing with several concomitant processes of change: the changing
function of the pre-Islamic past, which, from its condemnation as an age
of wrong belief, dominated by conflicting tribal interests and rivalries,
came gradually to be seen as a unified Arab past, in which the "true"
values of Arab ethnic identity were manifested, and even emphasized as
against Persian values; a new function of ancient Arabic poetry, which,
relied on as a primary source of information about that past, passed from
being a living practice into functioning as a stable archive; a new image
of knowledge, as reproduction through iterative improvisation was re-
placed by literal transmission, recording and management by scholarly
expertise; and, finally, a new cultural model for managing knowledge,
whose claim to authority is based on the application of professional ex-
pertise founded in scholarly practices.

This last issue, "expertise in poetry" (al-`ilm bi'l-shi'r), is the subject
of the present discussion. I want to examine the groups of cultural agents
who competed for authority over Jahili poetry, and offer some hypotheses
as to their vested interests in the subject and how these interests fit into
the contemporary cultural field. Finally, I would like to discuss both the
strategies for inventing "expertise in poetry" as a legitimate field of learn-
ing, and the models of literary activity and practice by which "expert"

35

RINA DRORY

agents canonized Jahili poetry and, eventually, constructed the accepted
body of knowledge about the Jahiliyya.

Three groups competed for professional authority in dealing with pre-
Islamic poetry: poets, transmitters and scholars. The received premise of
most research on them posits a harmonious chronological sequence of
the three agencies. The sequence begins with poets who compose the
poetry and commit it to memory; it continues with transmitters, usually
tribally affiliated (ruwât), who take custody of the poetry and preserve
it likewise by memorization; and concludes with scholars who gather the
poetry from the various tribal transmitters and commit it to writing, editing
it into diwans and anthologies. I find this linear description of an automatic
succession of stages too neat. A careful reading of the evidence (mostly
anecdotal) about the transmission of ancient poetry, strewn among vari-
ous Arabic sources, indicates a historical process of struggle among the
three groups, rather than a harmonious succession. Poets, transmitters
and scholars, all claim professional competence for preserving the ancient
poetry and authority over its transmission. The debate is actually about
authority over the past, since the poetry was the principal vehicle for
representing the past. This was one of its central and traditional functions
as early as the days of Jahiliyya, and a major source of conflict between
the Jahili poets and the Prophet Muhammad.

Let us examine the three groups involved in the preservation of this
poetry.

a) Poets (Shu`arâ')

The poets' obligation to describe tribal feats is reflected in the following
tradition, in which the poet Ru'ba b. al-`Ajjâj (d. 762) is requested to exalt
the valiant deeds in the battle between the Tamim and Azd tribes, and
he responds: yâ Banî Tamîm, atliqû min lisânî [Oh Sons of Tamim, let

36

THE ABBASID CONSTRUCTION OF THE JAHILIYYA

loose my tongue],(⁶) i.e., their victory would enable his speech. The poet
attached to a tribe or patron receives from them defense and recompense
in exchange for immortalizing their exploits.

On the other hand, what poets say is stamped in the collective mem-
ory for generations, and in this respect, poets are also "creators" or
"shapers" of reality. The dialectical relation between "reporting on" re-
ality and "creating" reality is the source of the poet's power.(⁷)

Poets had also other roles in the Jahili period, such as diplomatic arbi-
tration, conflict resolution, and intermediating in ransom of hostages. The
hierarchy among poets was determined by their comparative wages and
the comparative regard for them by seasoned poets. Each learned the
profession by mutual instruction or by guidance from the more senior
poets of the tribe, and the poet was also a transmitter (râwiya) of the
veteran poets' odes.

In the Umayyad era, in the first half of the eighth century, it seems
that at least some of the poets -- those about whom there is more or less
detailed information in the Arab sources, such as about al-Farazdaq --
disengaged from the tribal framework, and served in official capacities
for governing authorities such as kings, governors, and scribes. The poets
participated in local politics, utilizing their tribal affiliations in their odes
and civic activities. It appears, however, that both poets and rulers ma-
nipulated the poets' tribal credentials to promote their own personal pol-
itical agendas over tribal interests, though the poets translate their agendas
in their poetry into the language of tribal membership. On the other
hand, the frameworks of tribe and patron already offer them less protec-
tion than before.(⁸) In fact, they are now dependent on rulers and are
vulnerable to punishment by them, for crimes such as excessively
lampooning rival poets and other personages and for unethical behavior.
Apparently, rulers grew weary of the inter-poet feuds,(⁹) for the use of
poetic satire (hijâ') was quite prevalent, and this mockery bordering on
threat became a virtually unchecked privilege, which governing author-
ities naturally found disquieting.(¹⁰) The overuse of hijâ' testifies to a
decline in the poet's status (we will see this clearly in the story of Dhû
al-Rumma which follows). One may say with caution that the poets' orig-
inal function is fading, for the role of transmitting the past is no longer
in their hands, and their tribal sponsorship is lapsing with their transition

(⁸) E.g. al-Jumahî, Tabaqât, 1: 339.

(⁹) E.g. al-Jumahî, Tabaqât, 1: 434.

(¹⁰) E.g, al-Jumahî, Tabaqât, 1: 236.

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RINA DRORY

to the new urban administrative centers. The poets' new functions, mean-
while, have yet to be established.

The deterioration of their authority as experts on odes of the past is
evinced by an anecdote about the Umayyad Caliph Yazîd b. `Abd al-Malik
(reigned 720-724). He was curious to know who composed the ode sung
him by his beloved mistress hubâba. Rather than send for a poet, he calls
for al-Zuhrî, a scholar of hadîth, in order to identify the ode's author.
Al-Zuhrî, indeed, is able to name the author of the ode as al-Ahwas.(¹¹)

The poets active in the new urban centers of culture are well-ac-
quainted with Jahili poetry given their education, but no longer seem to
possess the authority to transmit these poems. They are part of the tribal
heritage, and tribal transmitters (ruwât) are now entrusted with this task,
perhaps since they are not involved in extra-tribal politics like the poets.
Al-Farazdaq, for instance, was considered expert in the poetry of Imru'
al-Qays, the famous pre-Islamic poet, because of a blood-tie between
them,(¹²) but this expertise was not the reason for his fame.(¹³)

Or take the case of Dhû al-Rumma, a Bedouin poet visiting Basra,
whose authority to assess the correctness of a verse of poetry was re-
jected. Bilâl b. Abî Burda, the governor of Basra, "a transmitter, a man
of eloquence and a literateur [râwiyatan fasîhan adîban]" we are in-
formed, was reciting a verse from the Jahili poet hâtim of the Tay tribe.
Dhû al-Rumma challenged a word, but the governor rebutted, "this is
how I received it from the transmitters of Tay". Appealing to the trans-
mitters of the Tay tribe to which the Jahili poet belongs, he prefers their
testimony as to the authenticity of a text over that of a poet. Dhû al-
Rumma's observation of the error, deriving from his practical acquaint-
ance with the way the word is used in similar contexts, counts less than
the simple avowal of duly constituted transmitters. When the scholar Abû
`Amr b. al-`Alâ' entered and was asked to offer an opinion, he corrobor-
ated the governor's position, and dismissed the poet's reliability. The poet
Dhû al-Rumma expressed his frustration by resorting to lampoons and
even threats against the scholar.(¹⁴)

(¹²) al-Anbârî, Sharh al-Mu`allaqât, 13; Ibn Qutayba, Shi`r, 48; Ibn `Abd Rabbihi, `Iqd, 6: 397.

(¹³) So is the case with the Abbasid poets Abû Nuwâs (cf. Ibn al-Mu`tazz, Tabaqât, 201)
and Salm al-Khâsir (ibid., 105).

(¹⁴) al-Jumahî, Tabaqât, 2: 569-570. However, despite this, Hammâd al-Râwiya reco-
gnized the expertise of Dhû al-Rumma before Bilâl, and remarks that "he was able to distin-
guish the diction of Jahiliyya from the diction of Islam [`arafa kalâm ahl al-jâhiliyya min
kalâm ahl al-islâm]" (Wakî`, Akhbâr al-Qudât, 2: 32, al-Isbahânî, Aghânî, 6: 88).

38

THE ABBASID CONSTRUCTION OF THE JAHILIYYA

b) Transmitters (ruwât)

The second group involved in passing on ancient Arabic poetry is that
of the transmitters (ruwât) which evolved as a distinct profession along-
side the poets. Unfortunately, the Arab sources do not furnish us with
much information about them, usually referring to them as anonymous
coteries conveying tribal knowledge -- "the transmitters of the tribe
Tay'", (ruwât Tay) for example, or just "the Arab or Bedouin transmit-
ters" (ruwât al-`arab).(<sup>16</sup>) Occasionally, some names of Bedouin trans-
mitters are preserved, but with scant biographical data. From the little
which can be gleaned from Arab sources, it seems that sometime in the
early Umayyad era, they received their own professional designation --
ruwât -- which differentiated them from poets. There are no clear occu-
pational frontiers dividing the poets from the tribal transmitters, and many
of the transmitters were poets themselves, or at least they were fully
competent to compose odes. This is a very important point for compre-
hending their vocation. They memorized odes and transmitted them
orally, thus serving as a "living archive" of ancient Arabic poetry. In ad-
dition, they revised old versions, completed or interpolated poems, and
identified authors of individual verses or complete odes. Their mnemonic
methods were based on ma`ânî, topoi, ideas and metaphoric images, as
has been claimed in recent research,(¹⁶) rather than on memorizing entire
texts word-for-word and faithfully reproducing them as if their precise
contents were fixed. Collective memory provided the guide as to what
was to be recalled, and it set the boundaries of permissible adjustments,
deviations and even reworking of the poems. Such tampering was not
just a neutral by-product of organizing and preserving the literary ma-
terial; it was also motivated by economic and political interests as well
as matters of prestige. It was acceptable, though not fully legitimate, to
compose or rework poems in order to prove claims involving genealogy,
which was essential for establishing economic and other rights. Khalaf
al-Ahmar, a transmitter of a later generation whom I will soon discuss,
remarked, "even in antiquity, the transmitters revised the poetry of
poets".(¹⁷)

(¹⁶) Cf. Arazi, «De la voix», 377-389. ; al-Shilqânî, al-`Arab al-Ruwât, 179-258.

(¹⁷) waqad kânati 'l-ruwâtu qadîman tuslihu min ash`âri 'l-qudamâ'. He says this while
quarreling with his student al-Asma`î regarding three verses of the poet Jarîr. Khalaf believes
that their transmission, as found in Abû `Amr b. al-`Alâ', is erroneous, but he agrees that it will
find its way into circulation, since "the transmitters made a habit, even in antiquity, of revising
the poetry ". Al-Marzubânî, al-Muwashshah, 198-199.

39

RINA DRORY

The transmitter's attitude towards ancient poetry is illustrated by the
following anecdote. Ibn Daud, son of the highly-praised Jahili poet
Mutammim b. Nuwayra, arrived in Basra "for the same reasons a Bedouin
would come there: to trade some livestock and food." The Basrian
scholars were favourable with such Bedouins whom they regarded as
excellent informants of pristine Arabic and repositories of fine poetry.
Two scholars accosted Ibn Daud in order to hear his father's poems. After
receiving remuneration, Ibn Daud recited his father's poems, and upon
exhausting them, he began improvizing his own poems in his father's
style, mentioning the same places and battles referred to in his father's
poems. Only after he had gone on for some time, did the scholars realize
that he was, in fact, contriving the poems himself.(¹⁸)

Around the mid-eighth century, certain transmitters of an unusual pro-
fessional profile became prominent. They belonged to a new breed of
ruwât, still occupied with the transmission of poetry, but in a manner
unlike the tribal transmitters. They constitute an intermediate generation
between the tribal transmitters and the scholars, whom I will discuss later.
The most representative and, indeed, famous, of this group are Hammâd
al-Râwiya (Kufian, 694-772) and Khalaf al-Ahmar (Basrian, 733-796).
They differ from the tribal Arab transmitters in that they are urbanized,
second generation of Iranian converts to Islam (mawâlî, and thus derived
from a cultural background utterly unlike that of the tribal Arab trans-
mitters. Clearly, their transmission of poetry was not an inherited family
occupation, and they chose this profession as a way to integrate them-
selves into the emerging Islamic society: to achieve a certain status and
be accepted at the courts of rulers, especially that of the Caliph, who
surrounded himself with experts in assorted fields of learning as a type
of upscale entertainment. (I will expand on this in the section on scholars).
Hammâd, for example, became a transmitter rather by accident. As told
in his biography in Kitâb al-Aghânî he joined up with a band of high-
waymen in his youth, and one night found among his plunder a "volume
of the Ansâr poems" (juz' min shi`r al-ansâr). Hammâd read it, became
infatuated, and learned it by heart. Consequently, he continued to learn
poetry as well as ancient Arab history, until he became an expert.(<sup>19</sup>) He
is portrayed as an opportunist, a bohemian fond of wine and suspected
of apostasy, preferring the company of poets to that of scholars, and who
gained access to the Umayyad court by exploiting his erudition on ancient
Arab poetry. The Umayyads thoroughly enjoyed his companionship, of-
ten requesting that he recite poems or recount the glories of Arab wars
and their lore (ayyâm al-`arab wa-`ulûmuhâ), rewarding him generously

(¹⁹) al-Isbahânî, Aghânî, 6: 87.

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THE ABBASID CONSTRUCTION OF THE JAHILIYYA

for his services.(²⁰) He seems to have used the paradigm of traditional
tribal transmitter to guide him, but expanded it to the point of exagger-
ation. Instead of displaying the tribal transmitter's wonted expertise in
the poetry of one poet or the poetry of a certain tribe, Hammâd exhibited
phenomenal erudition, even megalomaniacal. The Umayyad Caliph al-
Walîd b. Yazîd (reigned 743-744) asked Hammâd, "What made you
worthy of the title râwiya?" and Hammâd replied, "That I can recite the
poems of every poet you know or have heard of, as well as the poems
of many you do not know nor have heard of; in addition to which, I can
distinguish ancient from new poetry." Al-Walîd retorted, "That is indeed
a vast store of learning! What quantity of poems lies in the treasury of
your memory?" Hammâd answers, "Enormous. For every letter in the
dictionary, I can recite before you one hundred odes, besides short poems,
and all this just from Jahili poetry, before I take into account the poems
of Islam ". Al-Walîd tests him, and Hammâd recites thousands of pre-
Islamic poems.(²¹)

Hammâd introduces us to a type of transmitter independent of the
tribal transmitting parameters, one who ignores the traditional partition
of knowledge among tribes. He is autonomous, claiming authority over
all Arabic poetry, and not just that of a specific tribe or time. In this re-
spect, he operates like a scholar. He also makes a scholarly distinction
between poetic eras: we encounter for the first time the classification of
poetry into pre-Islamic and Islamic periods, and the first conception of
Jahili poetry as a separate category. On the other hand, he arrogates to
himself the liberty of the tribal transmitter to revise, refine, and retool
poems as befits the occasion, and even to invent his own poetry which
he attributes to known poets. It appears that Umayyad rulers did not care
if he did so (Bilâl b. Abî Burda knows that Hammâd himself composed
verses of poetry about Bilâl's father, Abû Mûsâ al-Ash`arî, that he at-
tributes to the poet al-Hutay'a, but says, "let [the poems] go and circulate
among people until they are renowned (walâkin da`hâ tadhhabu fî
al-nâs wasayyirhâ hattâ tashtahira. Ibid., 89). Hammâd's two-fold ap-
proach for preserving ancient poetry is also evident in his employment
of two methods of preservation, written and oral transmission. On the
one hand, he poses as an "oral transmitter ", flaunting his prodigious
memory, as we have seen; on the other hand, unlike most tribal trans-
mitters, he supplements his memory by recourse to written texts, the real
basis of his expertise, but which he stages as oral aptitude. Hammâd
himself admits how once when the Umayyad Caliph al-Walîd b. Yazîd
sent for him, and he assumed that he would be asked about the poems

(²¹) al-Isbahânî, Aghânî, 6: 71; see also ibid., 91-92, 93.

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RINA DRORY

of the Thaqîf and Quraysh tribes, he consulted "the books of Thaqîf and
Quraysh" to prepare for the Caliph's questions.(²²)

Khalaf al-Ahmar (ca. 733-796), disciple of Hammâd al-Râwiya, basi-
cally transformed the knowledge of Hammâd into scholarly knowledge
by teaching it at a mosque. He approached Hammâd in Kufa, learned
under him (although not with Hammâd's full cooperation (²³)), and later
moved to Basra where he taught his own disciples (²⁴). He worked both
as a scholarly transmitter of ancient poetry and as a poet-transmitter,
himself composing poems,(²⁵) and found it a simple matter to copy the
styles of many poets, both ancient and contemporary.(²⁶)

c) Scholars (`ulamâ')

Many of the scholars were mawâlî, that is, the offspring of non-Arab
families who had converted to Islam. In this respect they were part of a
general phenomenon characteristic of the contemporary culture, for the
non-Arab mawâlî were the ones who actually constructed Arab identity
for the Arab community through a colossal effort of collecting and or-
ganizing knowledge belonging to "the Arab (and Islamic) sciences." Like

(²³) wakâna danînan biadabihi. Ibn al-Anbârî, Tabaqât al-Udabâ', 53.

(²⁴) The Arab sources indicate that he was the first to turn this kind of knowledge into
knowledge passed by way of formally established instruction: awwal man ahdatha
al-sammâ`. He is said to be the teacher of al-Asma`î (Marâtib al-Nahawiyyîn, 80; Tabaqât
al-Udabâ', 53; Tabaqât al-Shu`arâ', 148).

(²⁵) Marâtib al-Nahawiyyîn, 80; Tabaqât al-Udabâ', 53; Tabaqât al-Shu`arâ', 148, 201;
Ibn Qutayba, Shi`r, 496; Abû Nuwâs transmitted his Dîwân. Marâtib al-Nahawiyyîn, 81.

(²⁶) Marâtib al-Nahawiyyîn, 80; Tabaqât al-Shu`arâ', 163; Tabaqât al-Udabâ', 53.

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THE ABBASID CONSTRUCTION OF THE JAHILIYYA

the poets, or at least the leading group among them, they were affiliated
with the royal courts, and were regular guests at the palaces of rulers in
their capacity as "edifying entertainers." Their relations with the rulers
were based on their rendering of intellectual services, insofar as they
placed their professional learning in the various disciplines at the disposal
of the ruler, who would pick and choose among those topics in which he
was interested. Most of the anecdotes from which one can infer the na-
ture of relations between scholar and ruler reveal that, at least in the
domain of literature, dialogue was held, in which the ruler posed a ques-
tion relevant to the scholar's specialization, and the scholar's reply "in-
structively" entertained the ruler. The model of the "inquiring" ruler,
educated by a wise retainer, a counselor proficient in all areas, is a model
familiar from Persian literature of the era. The classic example is Kalîla
wa Dimna, structured as a series of dialogues between the "student"
king and the "instructor" philosopher, in which the king asks and the
philosopher answers. It does not seem to me unreasonable to assume that
this was the pattern of actual behavior in the relations between Arab
rulers and scholars, and not just a literary fiction.

It is difficult to know what engendered the rulers' thirst for knowledge
and prompted them to engage the services of the scholar. However, some
of these scholars had worked as tutors to the royal families, molding their
spiritual world and turning them into consumers of the knowledge that
they provided. Moreover, the Arab past and ancient Arab poetry were
topics of special interest, particularly for the Umayyad rulers, since they
regarded the tribal Arab legacy as their patrimony. The cultivation of
Arab-Bedouin culture seemed to them like a familial duty.

The mawâlî scholars, progeny of non-Arab converts of the previous
one or two generations, were well-versed in the well-established cultures
recently annexed to Islamic learning. The cultural vocation of "scholar-
ship" which was familiar from their own heritage, was an expedient
means to assimilate into the new Muslim society. The rulers' Arab senti-
ments, amplified in reaction to the Persian and Byzantine cultures of their
subject peoples, were indulged by the scholars, who drew on that cultural
model of "scholarship" ostensibly available in their backgrounds. They
gathered a corpus of knowledge that had been preserved in tribal and
local frameworks, reorganized it, and presented it as "the body of auth-
orized knowledge" on the Arab past. The new Arab rulers adopted pat-
terns of royal demeanor from the conquered cultures, which included the
cultivation of wisdom and scholarship. Non-Arab intellectuals thus came
to realize that the new cultural game was the "invention of knowledge"
via scholarship, and that one could succeed in the royal court by tendering
some body of knowledge or other, especially the Arab-Islamic. They
worked accordingly, fabricating Arab-Islamic learning as called for, and
in this fashion placed Arabism and Islam on the cultural map of the era.

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Strategies of Defining "Expertise in Poetry" as a Scholarly Field in
the Context of the Struggle for Cultural Authority

In any event, some claims are raised which indicate certain strategies
on the ideological plane regarding the "invention" of a field of learning.
I would like to direct attention to some of these claims. "The knowledge
of ancient poetry" is enunciated as a field of expertise, whose profes-
sionals are qualified to distinguish "original" from "fabricated" poetry,
and hence to amass the authentic corpus of ancient poetry. This is an area
of exclusivist professional proficiency, quite detached from branches of
related, competing learning. Ibn Sallâm harshly criticizes methods of work
in rival scholarly fields such as belong to the general discipline of hadîth
(`ilm al-hadîth), and traditions of Arab antiquity (`ilm al-akhbâr), and he
declares that their methods are particularly unsuitable for handling
ancient poetry. Ibn Sallâm condemns those who "collect and transmit
everything," all literary material that reaches them, without any selection,
writing it down and thus promoting its unsupervised dissemination. He
singles out for special censure the historian and compiler of ancient tra-
ditions Ibn Ishâq (d. 767), whose collected materials constituted the basis
for writing the earliest biography of Muhammad.(²⁷) Ibn Ishâq is up-
braided for incorporating in his books every poem that he came across,
including poems ascribed to individuals who never wrote any poetry, as
well as poems by women(!), and poems ascribed to the two mythologi-

THE ABBASID CONSTRUCTION OF THE JAHILIYYA

cal Arab tribes `˙Acd and Thamûd. Ibn Ishâq is not even ashamed to admit,
contends Ibn Sallâm, and even states expressly: "I possess no knowledge
of poetry; whatever has reached me, I pass on!"(<sup>28</sup>) In Ibn Sallâm's
critique of Ibn Ishâq, he is able to distinguish between the historical past
and the mythological past of Arab history, and he describes Ibn Ishâq's
serious treatment of poems supposedly deriving from the legendary `˙Acd
and Thamûd tribes as ludicrous; further, he attacks Ibn Ishâq's work as
irresponsible, since by virtue of his professional authority, people accept
literary materials he relays as authentic without question. Most interesting
among Ibn Sallâm's claims is that while he aspires to separate the true
from the false like scholars of hadîth, he offers rational historical, analy-
tical criteria for such discrimination which would have been unacceptable
to scholars of hadîth, since they determined the reliability of a text by
the reliability of its transmitters, rather than by "objective" criteria. Ibn
Ishâq, whom we customarily see today as the premier historian of the
era, is described by Ibn Sallâm as a kind of archivist or undiscerning
compiler of folklore.

If Ibn Ishâq does not pass muster, then what is the method for the
expert in poetry to distinguish the genuine from the counterfeit, and even
the good from the bad, which Ibn Sallâm hints at without stating ex-
plicitly? What are the professional criteria for the expert in poetry? Here
the curious reader who expects enlightenment will be disappointed. No-
where does Ibn Sallâm define the rules of the profession in a clear and
express manner. He speaks of the profession as an almost instinctual
practice, without spelling out its principles, as if there is an intuitive facility
among the experts, a sort of "sixth sense." Ibn Sallâm, who was so sharp
in his analytical critique of Ibn Ishâq, turns completely obtuse when try-
ing to render a positive definition of expertise in poetry: "In poetry there
is a kind of professional knowledge (sinâ`a, skill, techné as in Greek
philosophy), which only its possessors recognize, just as is the case with
other types of knowledge and in other professions, like occupations which
require keenness of the eye, the ear, the hand or the tongue."(²⁹) He
chooses examples of a practical nature, drawn from outside the ambit of
scholarship, mostly from commerce: the recognition of precious gems
which is the expertise of the dealer in stones, the realization of valuable
coins in the profession of the money-changer, or the trained discrimina-
tion among strains of dates, marketable goods, or slavegirls and livestock.
Ibn Sallâm argues that verbal descriptions of slavegirls or livestock do not
reveal grounds for differentiating the more from the less valuable: only
the expert eye does; similarly, only an expert in music can recognize the
different qualities in two singers singing the same melody. This profes-

(²⁹) al-Jumahî, Tabaqât, 1: 5-7.

45

RINA DRORY

sional wisdom is delicate and complex, and beyond the capacity of mere
words to express. It cannot be analytically described; it simply is present.
"And such is the case in poetry," Ibn Sallâm quite tautologically con-
cludes, "those who know poetry are those who have expertise in it".(³⁰)

"Expertise in poetry," invented as a legitimate field of learning,
emerged out of the appropriation of professional authority for ancient
poetry from the two other professional groups which dealt with such
poetry and who had been considered the keepers of this knowledge: the
poets and transmitters. Apparently, the poets themselves no longer pose
a credible threat to the scholars in this era, since their social functions no
longer include any clear-cut role in preserving ancient poetry. We know
of poets who were eminent experts in ancient Arabic poetry, like Abû
Nuwâs, yet who made their names in fields other than preserving that
poetry. Therefore, a deligitimizing campaign was directed primarily
against the transmitters, particularly the last generation, who, as we have
seen, operated as both "transmitters" and "scholars." The main targets
were Hammâd al-Râwiya and Khalaf al-Ahmar, whom we discussed earl-
ier. They were accused of introducing fabrications into the ancient an-
thology, presenting their own poems as if composed by celebrated ancient
poets, as well as modifying the versions of ancient poems. In short, they
were denounced as unreliable in their transmitting. This claim resurfaces
often, and its piquant flavor spurred its wide circulation, both then and
in current research. Thus when cited today, it is accepted as a self-evident
description of the historical situation. In my opinion, it must be ap-
proached first and foremost in terms of its function in the struggle over
professional authority to which we are witnesses here. The claim was
enlisted to stress that the scholars use a different model than the trans-
mitters in their work. The customary flexibility in the transmitters'
methods for preserving ancient poetry had been successfully challenged
by the scholars' paradigm of conserving ancient poetry as an archive of
texts with fixed contents, in which the task of preserving the "correct"
version is paramount.

Biographies of scholars who dealt with ancient poetry mention that
the scholars lacked talent for poetic composition.(³¹). Yet the purpose of
such negative evaluations is not to deprecate the scholars, but rather to
defend them from potential charges that they tamper with the versions
of the poems, revising or restructuring them, that is to say, to defend their
professionalism according to the scholarly criteria.

In conclusion, I would like to return for a moment to two of the figures
with whom I opened the paper: the tutor al-Mufaddal al-Dabbî, and the

(³¹) al-Marzubânî, al-Muwashshah, 558; Ibn Qutayba, Shi'`, 10-11.

46

THE ABBASID CONSTRUCTION OF THE JAHILIYYA

ode-reciting boy, the Crown Prince al-Mahdî, now Caliph. In Hammâd
al-Râwiya's biography, the following story appears:

A group of transmitters and scholars expert in the history of the Arabs, their
wars, their poems and their language, gathered in the palace of the Caliph al-
Mahdî. One of the chamberlains appeared and called for al-Mufaddal al-Dabbî
to enter. After a while, the secretary re-emerged with al-Mufaddal and
Hammâd. The face of Hammâd was downcast and lugubrious, the face of al-
Mufaddal radiant and jubilant. The secretary declared before those assembled:
`The Caliph informs you that he has bestowed upon the poet Hammâd twenty-
thousand dirham as a reward for his fine poem, and has annulled Hammâd's
status as transmitter, since he added to the poems he was transmitting some-
thing which had not been in them; and the Caliph bestows upon al-Mufaddal
fifty-thousand dirham as a reward for the accuracy of his transmission. He who
wishes to hear fine poetry shall listen to Hammâd, and he who is interested in
a faithful transmission shall receive it from al-Mufaddal!' Those in attendance
inquired into the meaning of the matter, and were told: 'the Caliph al-Mahdî
asked al-Mufaddal, "Why did Zuhayr Ibn Abî Sûlmâ, the Jahili poet, open a
certain poem of his in the middle of an issue [in contravention of the poetic
norm]? What caused him to neglect the proper version for opening the poem?"
al-Mufaddal replied, "No information on this has been conveyed to me, but I
assume that he deliberated as to what to recite, or perhaps he intended to de-
claim some other poem, and changed his mind suddenly, and simply said 'Let's
move on to another topic...' [which is the first line of the poem in question],
that is, he abandoned his thoughts and began to recite about al-Harim [the
personality about whom the poem was composed], and thus it came about that
the poem seems abrupt in its opening." Then the Caliph called to Hammâd and
asked him the same question. Hammâd rejoined, "Zuhayr did not speak thusly,
but rather thusly" and then Hammâd quoted three lines as if they were the
supposedly missing opening of the poem. [The Caliph] al-Mahdî fell silent, con-
sidered his response, and then compelled Hammâd to answer under oath what
the truth was regarding those lines, and who added them to the poem of Zuhayr.
Hammâd had no choice but to confess that he had composed those lines, and
therefore al-Mahdî payed him as he did.(³²)

This story clearly illustrates, in my opinion, who emerged victorious in
the struggle for authority in transmitting ancient poetry. For the Abassid
Caliph al-Mahdî, schooled by al-Mufaddal in the new model of expertise
in poetry, Hammâd's model of transmission, which had made him a
favorite among the Umayyad caliphs, is already ineffective. Al-Mahdî
regards Hammâd's professional competence to be at most that of a poet,
and by no means that of a "faithful transmitter," i.e., a scholar, who,
unlike traditional tribal transmitters, does not dare tinker with the original
version of the poem. He regards it as a definitive and final text, whose
unusual aspects may be rationalized, but not revised, which is precisely

47

RINA DRORY

the course of action al-Mufaddal took. From a living tradition, perpetually
reconstituting ancient works in light of the exigencies of the present, the
texts of ancient poetry became like archival documents, representing the
tableau of a distant past.

Rina DRORY
(Department of Arabic Language
and Literature, Tel Aviv University)

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