oye GentleIllen Arabic Studies on Science and Literary Culture

More documents

Recommendations

Info

294 THOMAS BAUER 9. The text to be presented here can be attributed to Shihäb al-Dih A.l;1mad Ibn Fac;llAlläh (700-749/1301-1349) with a sufficient amount of probability. It is an urjüza muzdawija in the tradition of Siräj al-Dm al- Warräq. The dawädär Nä~ir al-Din, the governor Tankiz, and the Syrian hunt A hunting poem or a huntmg risäla could not be created until several conditions were fulfilled.~1) A rich and mighty personality arranges sumptuo~s hunting expeditions that are worthy of immortalization in the form of a literary work. (2) This person or another equally important person from his entourage, who also takes part in these excursions, has a good command of <strong>Arabic</strong> and is interested in <strong>Arabic</strong> literature. (3) A writer of poems andl.orprose literature isinterested in dedicating a literary portrayal of the hunt to this person, and even more cogently if the writer is allowed to take part in the hunt himself. (4) There is a broader general public that is interest~d in literary texts about hunting. Otherwise the genre of the tardiyya loses its relevance and neither patron. nor poet will expend any effort on .the creation of a new text. The absence ,ofone of these preconditions helps to explain the discontinuities _in the history of <strong>Arabic</strong> hunting literature. At the time of the creation of Shihäb al-Dms muzdawija, spectacular hunting safaris were conducted by the Sultan himself, by his governors or, more rarely, by other,leading Mamluk amirs.20For the Tur~sh Mamluks,_the hunt offered an opportunity to practise military skills in a time of peace. But contrary to Ibn Tughj, Sayf al-Dawla and 'A4ud al-Dawla, to whom al-Mutanabbi, Abü Firäs and their contemporaries directed their hunting poems, these Mamluks had little if any interest in <strong>Arabic</strong> p~etry. By and large, architecture had taken the representative function that poetry had fulfilled during the Abbasid period, and many amirs did not have enough command of the <strong>Arabic</strong> language to enjoy the subtleties of contemporary literature.On the other hand, poetry had acquired new functions as a privileged means of communication between the 'ulamä' and an opportunity to distinguish oneself, to show one'smastery of the <strong>Arabic</strong> language and the aesthetic code ofliterature, 20 See Nabn Mul)ammad CAbdal-'Aziz, Riyäejat al-~aydfi '~r salätin al-Mamälik (Cairo, 1999), pp. 127-203.
THE DAWÄDÄR'S HUNTING PARTY 295 and thus to prove worthy to be induded among the creme of the cultivated civilian elite. As a consequence, the time-honoured genre of panegyric poetry (madfhJ could survive, but in a more bourgeois form as literature directed by one 'älim to another 'älim in a communicative exchange on the same social and intellectuallevel. For hunting texts, the situation was more complicated, since more often than not (1) the leader of the hunting expedition, and (2) the person interested in hunting literature were not one and the same person. A major exception is al- Malik al-Af
Page 1 and 2: o ye GentleIllen <
Page 3 and 4: THE DAWÄDÄR'S HUNTING PARTY A MAM
Page 5: THE DAWÄDÄR'S HUNTING PARTY 293 1
Page 9 and 10: THE DAWÄDÄR'S HUNTING PARTY 297 i
Page 11 and 12: THE DAWÄDÄR'S HUNTING PARTY 299 l
Page 13 and 14: THE DAWÄDÄR'S HUNTING PARTY 301 p
Page 15 and 16: THE DAWÄDÄR'S HUNTING PARTY 303 o
Page 17 and 18: Table (cont.) THE DAWÄDÄR'SHUNTIN
Page 19 and 20: THE DAWÄDÄR'S HUNTING PARTY 307 g
Page 21 and 22: THE DAWÄDÄR'SHUNTING PARTY 309 ,
Page 23 and 24: THE DAWÄDÄR'S HUNTING PARTY 311 2

oye GentleIllen Arabic Studies on Science and Literary Culture

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?