Figure 1. Praise for Muḥammad. TS NS 294.62v. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
The internalization of practices of praise is reflected in medieval readings of certain biblical passages. When introducing the praise of Saul and David returning from battle, the text in 1 Sm 18:6 reads, “the women in all the towns of Israel came out singing and dancing to greet King Saul with timbrels, joy, and shalishim.” This last word was understood in the Targum and in most commentaries as the name of a musical instrument, but Ibn Janāḥ in al-Andalus translated it as “poems (Ar., ash‘ār); it is called thus because its station compared with other speech is the station of elites (Ar., ru’asā’; pl. of ra’īs) compared with other men.” The word shalish can also refer to a confidant of a king (2 Kgs 7:17) or his military officer (2 Kgs 9:25), hence a ra’īs.41
Abundant familiarity with ruler adulation is even apparent in work of the pietist Baḥya Ibn Paquda, who harbored significant animus toward political culture as an incubator of human hubris. In arguing that one must invest literary skill in composing praises for God, whether orally or in writing, the practice of madīḥ is evoked in detail and with the technical vocabulary of the literary arts: “If one were to render one’s thanks (shukr) and praise (ḥamd) toward [a ruler] for a kindness (ḥasn) he bestowed or a favor (faḍl) he granted, whether in poetry or prose (bi-naẓm aw bi-nathr), in writing or in speech (bi-kitāb aw khiṭāb), one would not omit anything from his rhetoric (balāghah) or eloquence (faṣāḥa): simile and metaphor, truth and falsehood, whatever is permitted for [the poet] to describe [the ruler]…. Accordingly, it is fitting to do with acts of obedience to God.”42 Similarly, Avraham Maimonides opines that a prayer precentor is required to stand when reciting pesuqei de-zimra (a liturgical section consisting of praises for God from the Psalms) because, “if a poet (shā‘ir) were to praise a leader (ra’īs min al-ru’asā) or a flesh and blood king in a seated position, he would anger the one praised (al-mamdūḥ) more than he would please him.”43
Panegyric was offered among Jews in the Islamic Mediterranean within many types of social arrangements and in connection with virtually any occasion. It was written by poets for paying patrons but also between friends of equal or similar social rank, between communal officials and their superiors and inferiors, between teachers and students, and between merchants. It could be addressed to a single mamdūḥ, a small group, or an entire community. Panegyrics were exchanged between confidants who knew each other intimately but also between individuals residing at vast distances who knew each other by reputation only. They could be written for a person’s appointment to a position of distinction, a marriage, the circumcision of a son, or the death of a relative (i.e., in addition to a lament over the dead, the poet would praise surviving relatives). One wrote panegyric when endorsing a political candidate, appointing a communal officer, requesting a favor, expressing gratitude, responding to an invitation to a party, assuaging anger, and even, paradoxically enough, when offering rebuke. Yehudah Halevi praised Abū Naṣr Ibn al-Yesh‘a of Egypt upon the death of his handmaiden (Heb., ammah; quite possibly a concubine); and when a dog bit the foot of a certain Ezra Ben al-Thiqqa, El‘azar Ben Ya‘aqov ha-Bavli invented the following: “Beasts rushed to kiss his shoe; they bit him for they did not know that princes wrap their heads with the strap of his shoe and the stars on high prostrate themselves before his feet.”44 The disposition to praise thus made up one aspect of the habitus, to use Pierre Bourdieu’s term, of Mediterranean Jews, “principles which generate and organize practices … objectively ‘regulated’ and ‘regular’ without being in any way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being the product of the organizing action of a conductor.”45
Even beyond the formal presentation of panegyric, praise was used as an agent that bound people together within webs of social relations. One might report to an addressee that a third party had uttered words in his praise. Notice the dynamics in the introduction to the Epistle to Yemen, in which Maimonides (d. 1204) responded to a letter from Ya‘aqov, son of the noted Yemeni scholar Natanel al-Fayyūmī. The introduction was written in Hebrew while the main content of the epistle was in Judeo-Arabic. Maimonides had not met his correspondent previously and addressed him thus: “To the honored, great, and holy master and teacher, Ya‘aqov, wise and kind, beloved and respected sage, son of the honored, great, and holy master and teacher, Natanel al-Fayyūmī, distinguished prince of Yemen, leader of its congregations, head of its communities.”
In addition to responding to the pressing issues of Ya‘aqov’s letter, Maimonides’ introduction addressed Ya‘aqov’s report that Jews in Yemen, “praise, aggrandize, and extol me and compare me with the illustrious geonim.” Maimonides also responded to the news that “our friend, our student, Rav Shelomoh, deputy of the priests, the wise, the intelligent, who indulges in hyperboles in praise of me and speaks extravagantly in extolling me, exaggerates wildly according to his desire, and waxes enthusiastic out of his love and kindness.”46 In response to all this praise, Maimonides insists upon his modesty, which was expected according to the unwritten social script. There is no reason to think that the praises referenced in the letter involved formal or poetic panegyric, although Maimonides was certainly the recipient of several literary panegyrics. The praise mentioned here belongs to a more general species of which this and formal panegyric were both a part. Interestingly, the cycle of praise involved not only Maimonides and Ya‘aqov but also those who praised Maimonides to Ya‘aqov; Ya‘aqov’s report of praise not only served as a kind of praise in itself but also helped bind him and Maimonides within a specific social and intellectual circle (a contemporary comparison might be the “bringing of regards” from a mutual contact when introducing oneself to someone new). Such practices facilitate the formation of bonds between people who do not know each other but imagine themselves as belonging to the same group.47 An individual could maintain ties simultaneously in several different or overlapping groups, which could be geographically proximate or diffuse or grounded in different types of social alignment (educational, literary, legal, mercantile). Throughout this book, we will witness the appearance and dissolution over five centuries of numerous groups in the Islamic East, the Islamic West, Christian lands, and in trans-Mediterranean contexts. These groups, their memberships and values, become visible to us through the exchange of panegyric.
Jewish Panegyrics Before the Medieval Period
The Bible, unsurprisingly, foregrounds the praise of God over the praise of human beings, though this praise is often modeled after royal panegyric as known in the Ancient Near East. Psalm 45 likely originated as a royal panegyric, specifically for the occasion of a king’s wedding; before turning to the bride, the poem extols the king’s handsome appearance, military power, and righteousness and evokes emblems of his power (his throne and scepter). The most sustained biblical passage written in praise of a man, though it is not direct praise delivered to the sovereign, is 1 Kings 5, where Solomon is lauded for extending his rule from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines, for possessing wisdom, for authoring proverbs, and for initiating the building of the Temple. We find other snippets of praise, as when Moses is described as “exceedingly modest” (Nm 12:3), or when Absalom is praised for his beauty (2 Sm 14:20, 25), or when the woman of Tekoa praises David, “My lord is like an angel of God” (2 Sm 14:7). In Ez 28:2–3, we find a sort of anti-panegyric,