Let us conclude by commenting on the epistolary function of one of the most famous Hebrew poems of al-Andalus, a panegyric by Abū Faḍl Ibn Ḥasdai for Shemuel ha-Nagid. The poem is nicknamed the shirah yetomah, the “orphan poem,” taking on the sense of the Arabic cognate yatīma, meaning “orphan” but also “unique, one of a kind, unparalleled.” The poem is a highly classicized panegyric that evokes pre-Islamic themes and lavishes praise upon the addressee’s wisdom, writing, and generosity. It opens with the theme of the “night phantom” (Ar., ṭaif lail) who visits the poet during his sleep; just as the poet is imagining an erotic encounter with his beloved, an encounter marked foremost by arousing scents, he awakens to find that there is naught save the “scent that revives souls … like the name of Shemuel ha-Nagid,” thus figuring the mamdūḥ’s broad reputation as his “scent.”135
According to Mosheh Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ḥasdai sent this poem from the east of al-Andalus to the Nagid, then in Granada—and indeed, the content of the poem intimates separation and longing. For all its literary brilliance, the poem ultimately belongs to an established epistolary genre, shafā‘a (commending someone to someone else, a “letter of introduction”), whereby the author asks the Nagid to offer protection for two refugees.136 Ibn Ḥasdai did not request monetary payment from the Nagid but rather the performance of a favor; the poem was Ibn Ḥasdai’s “payment in advance” to the Nagid for fulfilling the request. The give-and-take of this relationship is captured succinctly toward the end of the poem:
Take this poem most pleasing, a gift of love (teshurat ahavah) pure and of old,
adorned in her jewels as a bride, wrapped in her ornaments as a maiden.
You are her betrothed yet she will remain forever a virgin!
She has a father but is still an orphan!
In your hands I entrust, my lord (lit. gaon), two brothers, desolate exiles,
whose inheritance is as though they were strangers, their land is (destroyed) like Admah (cf. Hos 11:8).
Were it not for your shade, they would wander to the ends of the earth!
The dedication of the poem is immediately followed with the charge, as though constituting the poem as the Nagid’s possession demanded his reciprocation.
By way of a nearly contemporary comparison, the Geniza manuscript TS 20.24r (Figure 5) is a shafā‘a sent to Fustat by three notables of Granada, described as “the city of our master Shemuel ha-Nagid and his son Yehosef.” The document is written in large, clear letters in the style of some official Arabic correspondence. The opening lines, which consist of blessings for the recipients’ welfare, are presented in rhyme. The letter describes (in very vague terms) the unfortunate circumstances under which the person being recommended fled “exiled before a whetted sword and a drawn bow” and commends him as “modest, demure (baishan), and subtle of speech ([ba‘al] devarim rakkim).”137 Just as Ibn Ḥasdai’s poem offered “payment” through a panegyric in meter and rhyme, this letter also contained a poem (though not a panegyric) and was crafted as a beautiful material object for appreciation and possibly for display. Literary ornamentation and physical adornment were similar means of causing value to inhere within the material object of the letter or poem and thereby show esteem for the recipient and, quite possibly, obligate him to reciprocate.
Figure 5. Shafa‘a (letter of introduction) sent from Granada. TS 20.24r. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
Again, in the shirah yetomah, Ibn Ḥasdai did not request monetary payment but rather the performance of a favor. The Nagid’s response poem, a panegyric composed according to the same meter and rhyme and playing on the same themes, assures Abū Faḍl that the requested protection has been granted.138 These praise poems were not intended primarily as publicly performed panegyrics, and the authors were certainly not paid for their compositions. Yet it would be wrong to assume that the poems did not possess value, in some sense, a point that will be expanded upon in Chapter 2, on the function of panegyrics as “gifts.” Further, the function of the poems as correspondence does not preclude their circulation or even their oral performance. The Nagid shared the poem with his son, at least, who included it in the dīwān, and the poem was cited with respect by later authors. Although assertions about the performance of the poem beyond these points is guesswork, it is evident that Ibn Ḥasdai’s panegyric contributed to the construction of the Nagid’s public image, probably in his lifetime and certainly for posterity.
In sum, the evidence that we have for panegyric practices among Andalusian authors points to a highly developed culture of textuality—with poems serving as or accompanying letters and circulating beyond the hands of their recipients—and also to an oral culture of sorts, but one only partly meeting the expectations of courtly performance in the sense of a poet appearing before a patron with the hope of remuneration. I have suggested that the dedication of panegyric pertained more often to the circumstance of separation between men rather than their unification. We have limited evidence for panegyric performance at public gatherings, possibly including political rituals, and slightly more for its recitation in small gatherings, but most of our record attests to panegyric being exchanged through writing. Again, the oral dimensions of panegyric practice might be underrepresented in the surviving corpus, and even those texts whose primary purpose was to be read might have been performed subsequently. In any case, panegyrics clearly enjoyed a broad circulation that confirms their essential role in constructing the images of their mamdūḥs.
Throughout this chapter, I have highlighted what I see as some basic points of continuity in Jewish panegyric practice across the Islamic Mediterranean—a mixture of oral and written elements, the use of panegyric in exchange relationships, and its role in the promotion of public images and claims to legitimacy. I see the rise of Jewish panegyric writing in al-Andalus more as a continuation of the Eastern practice than a new courtly function. Still, I do not mean to minimize the differences between the world of the academies and the contours of social relations among intellectuals in al-Andalus. In subsequent chapters, we will investigate further the idealized representations of mamdūḥs among the various regions and subcommunities of the Jewish Mediterranean. Al-Andalus was clearly not the world of the great academies of Baghdad, but what the gaons and the Andalusian intellectuals shared were elements of social exchange based on informal, and ultimately unenforceable, bonds.
CHAPTER 2
Poetic Gifts: Maussian Exchange and the Working of Medieval Jewish Culture
The propositions that are known to be true and require no proof for their truthfulness are of four kinds: perceptions, as when we know that this is black, this is white, this is sweet, and this is hot; … conventions, as when we know that uncovering nudity is ugly and that recompensing a benefactor with something of greater honor is beautiful.1
—Maimonides, The Treatise on Logic
The previous chapter discussed issues related to the