The Life and Times of Abu Tammam. Abu Bakr al-Suli

rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_161a58ab-57dc-5925-aaff-73760c06af16">8) how badly he has suffered at the hands of contemporary scholars. But the favor of the patron and his brothers encourages al-Ṣūlī to continue with the commission. In §§9.1–18, he describes how Abū Tammām was and continues to be faulted by one group of scholars, experts on ancient poetry, who deliberately avoided his poetry and modern poetry generally.¹⁶ In his rebuttal al-Ṣūlī shows how the Moderns improved upon the motifs of the Ancients.¹⁷ Al-Ṣūlī next identifies the second kind of critic of Abū Tammām: would-be litterateurs (§§19.1–26.3). He describes how this group criticizes Abū Tammām as a means of self-promotion. Al-Ṣūlī rebuts the criticism of one particular metaphor and lambasts the ignorance of critics in general and sets Abū Tammām’s borrowing alongside his inventiveness. The epistle ends (§§27–28) with the plan of the book, which is also intended as a corrective to the circulation of corrupt variants of verses by Abū Tammām. Al-Ṣulī intimates that his new and superior edition will supersede any other extant versions of Abū Tammām’s poems, in the same way as al-Ṣūlī’s edition of Abū Nuwās’s collected poems had done (§27).

      The epistle is followed by a long chapter on the status of Abū Tammām as recorded in instances of practical criticism, and then by chapters that describe Abū Tammām’s dealings with illustrious patrons. A judge, two generals, two high officials, two governors, and a prince represent elite support and establish the wide acclaim the poet received. The treatise concludes with shorter chapters on negative criticism and the end of the poet’s life. The Life and Times of Abū Tammām was in fact originally intended as a preface to the edition of Abū Tammām’s Collected Poems (§28).¹⁸

      In the first and longest chapter, “The Superiority of Abū Tammām,” and a later shorter chapter, “Criticisms of Abū Tammām,” al-Ṣūlī assembles competing opinions about the poet. To the philologists, who claimed poetry as their scholarly province, Abū Tammām’s verse posed a particular challenge. Al-Ṣulī records testimonies by the philologists Thaʿlab (§4.6, §§10.1–2) and al-Mubarrad (§4.6, §51.1–3, §91.2, §95.2) in which they either reserved judgment or begrudgingly acknowledged Abū Tammām’s merit. Other philologists remained puzzled and undecided, such as Ibn al-Aʿrābī (§123), Abū Ḥātim al-Sijistānī (§124), and Muḥammad al-Tawwazī (§125).

      Fellow poets were divided. Diʿbil al-Khuzāʿī even denied Abū Tammām the title of poet, excluding him from his book on poets and referring to him as an orator instead (§§122.1–2). Ibn al-Muʿtazz halfheartedly defended Abū Tammām’s rhetorical figures by claiming older precedents for them, notably in the Qurʾan, admitting his innovation not in kind but in degree. Many other poets, such as ʿUmārah ibn ʿAqīl (§§50.1–3), Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥāzim al-Bāhilī (§35), the court poets of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṭāhir (§64.3), ʿAlī ibn al-Jahm (§31, §179), Ibn al-Rūmī, and al-Buḥturī (§39), were admirers. Those most vocal in the poet’s defense were government scribes, such as al-Ḥasan ibn Wahb, who combined material support for the poet with vociferous defense of his odes.

      The short texts that make up the collection depict real-life situations. They contain fascinating information about the professional life of poets, how they supported or competed with each other, and the etiquette of literary gatherings. They even include circumstantial details, such as how a poet composed (with ink on papyrus, or by heart), what sort of tools he had at his disposal, or which hurdles he had to brave to find a sponsor or get a promised reward disbursed. Most importantly, they touch on many more aspects than are reflected in the chapter headings. Notable are the recurrent topics of poetry and poetics, such as imitation and innovation, briefly characterized in what follows.

      CRITICISM

      In this evolving phase of poetics as a discipline, criticism often took the practical form of abridging odes to include only the best verses, as al-Ṣūlī tells us was done by the poets ʿUmārah ibn ʿAqīl (§30, §§50.1–3) and Ibn al-Muʿtazz (§§52.1–3), the secretary al-Ḥasan ibn Wahb (§§61.1–4),¹⁹ and a Nuʿmānī scribe (§95.2). In his commentaries, al-Ṣūlī argues against criticism of specific metaphors, such as fever for generosity (§§21.1–6) and water for blame (§§22.1–10), and against criticism of motifs, such as the figs and grapes mentioned in the Amorium ode (§§20.1–6), a sword falling from the sky on one’s head as an image of bravery (§§71.1–9), or the fallen moon as an image of the irreplaceable loss of General Muḥammad ibn Ḥumayd al-Ṭūsī (§69.5 and §§69.10–28). This last verse, part of Abū Tammām’s lament for the general, is elsewhere condemned as a plagiarism (§§94.1–2). Thus al-Ṣūlī argues that criticism of the same verse as both a bad motif and a good theft shows that the criticism is gratuitous.

      MEANING

      The principal concepts that were to dominate the discipline of poetics were not yet defined. A good example is maʿnā: this term carries many meanings and nuances that are at times hard to distinguish. In The Life and Times of Abū Tammām, maʿnā stands, first, for the general meaning of a passage; second, for a smaller theme within a poem, such as exile from home; and third, for the particular way in which a poet formulated this. Al-Ṣūlī notes how, for example, Abū Tammām transformed a familiar theme of exile as a painful experience into an individual’s decision to enhance his appreciation through absence (§30).

      NOVELTY

      The most salient features of Abū Tammām’s skill as a poet, those that were emphasized time and again, were his novelty, inventiveness, and self-reliance (§11.2, §23.2, §26.1, §52.8, §103); his development of motifs (§51.1);²⁰ and his skill at improvisation (§§110.1–2).

      IMITATION

      Poetic experimentation and toying with older, existing motifs led to a debate about originality versus imitation and about authorship. Different terms, to wit, “taking,” “stealing,” “reliance” (§44.1), “emulating” (§69.13), “copying, transposing,” “imitating,” and “being inspired” (§55.1, §72.1)²¹ reveal as much about attitudes to the influence of one poet on another as they do about specific opinions on individual cases of borrowing. It had already been established that it was not the act of poetic theft itself that mattered for the evaluation, since such a thing was literally unavoidable in a continuous poetic tradition, but rather the manner in which it was carried out, considered in terms of eloquence and invention. Al-Ṣūlī refers in this context to a “rule” (§26.1, §52.8) or “condition” (§81.5) posited by experts,²² namely precedence in the authorship of a motif in terms of chronology, and among contemporaries, precedence in terms of quality (e.g., §13.4). A poet could thus “earn” the ownership of an existing motif if he outdid