Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic Islamic Culture: The Making of a Tradition

266 Pages·1997·41.727 MB·English

by  Wen-chin Ouyang

Literary Criticism
in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Culture

Literary Criticism in
Medieval Arabic-Islamic
Culture
The Making of a Tradition
WEN-CHIN OUYANG
EDINBURGH U NIVERSITY PRESS
In memory of my father,
Chi-chang Ouyang
(1929-95)
© Wen-chin Ouyang, 1997
Transferred to digital print 2009
Edinburgh University Press
22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in Baskerville
by Koinonia, Bury, and
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 0 7486 0897 4
ISBN 978 1 4744 7149 7 (EPDF)
The right of Wen-chin Ouyang
to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act (1988).
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Note on Transliterations, Translations and Dates viii
Introduction 1
1 Knowledge and Cultural Dialectics 22
The Aristotelian Framework (al-F(cid:0)r(cid:0)b(cid:0), al-'(cid:0) mir(cid:0) and Avicenna) 25
The Religious Framework (Ibn (cid:0) azm and al-Ghazz(cid:0)l(cid:0)) 31
An Eclectic Framework (Ikhw(cid:0)n al-Saf(cid:0)) 35
The Encyclopaedic and adab Frameworks (Ibn al-Nad(cid:0)m,
Ibn Far(cid:0)gh(cid:0)n, al-Khw(cid:0)razm(cid:0) and al-Taw(cid:0) ïd(cid:0)) 38
2 Functions of Poetry in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Society 55
Ancient Poetry as Source of Knowledge 61
The New Role of Poets and Poetry 66
3 Beginnings
The Early Meanings and Practices of Literary Criticism
( 'ilm al-shi'r, naqd al-shi'r and inā'at al-shi'r) 90
Dialectics of Culture and Politics
Authentication of a Poetic Heritage (Ibn Sall(cid:0)m) 94
The Question of Literary Value (al-J(cid:0)(cid:0) i(cid:0)) 102
The Authority of Tradition (Ibn Qutayba) 105
The Role of Literary Tradition (Ibn al-Mu'tazz) 110
Laying the Theoretical Foundation (Ibn (cid:0) ab(cid:0)(cid:0)ab(cid:0), Qud(cid:0)ma
and al-(cid:0) (cid:0)tim(cid:0)) 112
4 Fanfare of Controversy: Ab(cid:0) Tamm(cid:0)m and al-Mutanabb(cid:0) 130
The Controversy over Ab(cid:0) Tamm(cid:0)m (al-(cid:0) (cid:0)l(cid:0) and al-(cid:0)mid(cid:0)) 131
The Controversy over al-Mutanabb(cid:0) (al-(cid:0) (cid:0)hib b. 'Abb(cid:0)d,
al-(cid:0) (cid:0)tim(cid:0), Ibn Wak(cid:0)' and al-Q(cid:0)(cid:0) (cid:0) al-Jurj(cid:0)n(cid:0)) 146
The Calm after the Storm (Ibn Rash(cid:0)q, al-Marz(cid:0)q(cid:0) and Ibn Sharaf) 154
vi LITERARY CRITICISM IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC-ISLAMIC CULTURE
5 Against All Odds: The Making of a Tradition 166
Definition of the Field and Its Specialist 170
The Literary Critic 171
Exclusion of Non-specialists 171
The Problem of the Poet 172
Definition of the Critic 175
The Problem of Talent and Training 178
Emergence of a Critical Tradition 179
al-Marzub(cid:0)n(cid:0) 185
Ibn Rash(cid:0)q al-Qayraw(cid:0)n(cid:0) 188
Conclusion 200
Appendix I Accounts of Critics in Biographical Dictionaries 213
Appendix II Attributes of Critics in Biographical Dictionaries 220
Appendix III al-'(cid:0) mir(cid:0)'s Classification of the Sciences 232
Appendix IV al-Ghazz(cid:0)l(cid:0)’s Classification of the Sciences 233
Appendix V Ikhw(cid:0)n al-(cid:0) af(cid:0)’s Classification of the Sciences 234
Appendix VI Recognition of Literary Criticism in Non-critical
Writings 237
Bibliography 249
Index 252
Acknowledgements
This book is an attempt at expressing in a language that is not my own the
always exhilarating but often chaotic strands of my intellectual
explorations into culture and literature. As in any intellectual journey,
those who have touched my life and influenced my thinking are too
numerous for me to acknowledge here. Family, friends and colleagues
have all wittingly or unwittingly participated in this journey. I cannot thank
my family and friends enough for encouraging and supporting me
unfailingly and unconditionally throughout my academic career. I would
like to thank George Saliba, Jeanette Wakin and Ehsan Yarshater for
reading and commenting on my work when it was still a dissertation. I
would also like to thank Jane Feore and Ivor Normand at Edinburgh
University Press for being patient, supportive and helpful, and Kenny
Morrata for going through the manuscript with a fine-tooth comb and
smoothing out my writing. I am grateful to Wolfhart Heinrichs for
recommending this book for publication and for making invaluable
suggestions for the improvement of this work. I owe a special debt to
Wadad al-Qadi, who is the elder sister I never had, a role model and
mentor. She came into my life when I most needed someone like her, and
has since been one of my guiding lights. Above all, I am grateful to Pierre
Cachia, who has been a father, mentor, teacher and friend to me ever since
I arrived at Columbia University as a first-year graduate student in 1982. I
would not have been able to write this book without his guidance and
support. He patiently and meticulously read and edited my various
manuscripts, and, more importantly, he urged and encouraged me to
submit it for publication. Without his ‘whipping’, to borrow his own word,
my work would perhaps still be hibernating in the cosy inner belly of my
computer.
Note on Transliterations, Translations
and Dates
The system adopted for rendering Arabic names and terms in Latin
characters is the same as that now used in many English-language
publications, such as the International Journal of Middle East Studies or the
second edition of Encyclopaedia of Islam. I have followed this system
consistently in the case of titles of works cited, technical terms, personal
names and passages quoted. Arabic declension is not observed except on
the rare occasions when it is crucial to the understanding of the passage. In
the case of place-names, however, I have followed a double system. Little-
known localities have been given in strict transliterations, but well-
established ones have been designated by their common names, for
example, Damascus rather than Dimashq.
In addition to passages quoted, titles of works and technical terms have
been provided with English translations. These translations, however, appear
only once in the body of the text. In the case of titles and technical terms,
they appear when these titles and terms are mentioned for the first time.
Arabic titles and terms are extremely difficult to render into English, as
their implications and nuances are often lost in translation. In most cases, I
have given literal translations, and in some cases I have added explan(cid:0)
ations. When they are not central to the arguments presented, some
technical terms, especially those dealing with narrow technicalities
peculiar to the Arabic language, are quoted without translation simply
because they are untranslatable. For those who are interested in these
terms, they many consult Pierre Cachia’s The Arch Rhetorician or The
Schemer's Schema (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997).
Dates are provided in parentheses for literary and political figures
mentioned at least once where they appear for the first time in the text.
Some of these dates are repeated in each chapter when the time-frame of
the figures discussed is significant to the clarity of the arguments
presented.
Introduction
When I was being interviewed for the position I currently occupy at the
University of Virginia, one of the members of the search committee asked
me what the main area of my research was. When he heard that it was
‘medieval (third/ninth to fifth/eleventh centuries) Arabic literary criticism’,
he cocked one eyebrow and retorted: ‘There was no medieval Arabic
literary criticism, was there?’ This was not the first time I received such a
response.
My interviewer’s response is not atypical among scholars of the classical
period, whether or not their field is the Middle East. In fact, very few
people in the West outside the very small circle of scholars who specialise in
classical Arabic literature have heard of, or are willing to acknowledge,
something called medieval Arabic literary criticism. Their scepticism is
explicable and understandable in light of the emergence of literary
criticism in what is commonly perceived as the West (mainly Europe and
the United States) in the modern period, which culminated in the
twentieth century in its establishment as an independent discipline of
intellectual inquiry dealing with knowledge and requiring specialised skills.
More problematic, however, is documentation, or the lack thereof, of such
a discipline in classical Arabic writings.
Literary criticism, which I take to mean ‘not only judgments of individual
books and authors, "judicial” criticism, judgment, practical criticism,
evidences of literary taste, but mainly what has been thought about the
principles and theory of literature, its nature, its creation, its function, its
effects, its relations to the other activities of man, its kinds, devices and
techniques, its origins and history’,1 is designated in the Arabic language
today by the term al-naqd al-adab(cid:0). However, al-naqd al-adab(cid:0) as a term
delineating the general area of literary study is a very recent phenomenon
in the history of Arabic literature; it is a twentieth-century concoction that
has gained wide currency in the last few decades, but was not known as such
in classical Arabic writings. Without a name to define it, any assertion of its
existence in the classical period is understandably suspect.
Yet it would be an error to dismiss the possibility of such a discipline in
medieval Arabic writing, nameless though it may have been, especially
2 LITERARY CRITICISM IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC-ISLAMIC CULTURE
considering the complicated history of the emergence of literary criticism,
its theoretical frameworks and methodology in the West. Widely practised
at present in four major forms – book review and literary journalism,
academic history of literature, literary appreciation and interpretation as
found principally but not solely in academic writings, and literary theory2 –
literary criticism has until very recently had to struggle to establish itself as
an independent, cohesive and legitimate discipline of intellectual inquiry.
In fact, as late as the 1980s, literary criticism was still deemed by some to be
in crisis because of ‘theory’s inability to justify itself as a knowledge of texts
and their meanings’.3 The causes of such a crisis are many, as Edward Said
efficiently sums it up:
criticism is considered essentially as defined once and for all by its
secondariness, by its temporal misfortune in having come after the
texts and occasions it is supposed to be treating. Just as it is all too
often true that texts are thought of as monolithic objects of the
past to which criticism despondently appends itself in the present,
then the very conception of criticism symbolizes being outdated,
being dated from the past rather than by the present.4
Criticism, literary or otherwise, therefore, is often viewed as a kind of
second creation which must necessarily be supported by literature, the first
creation, for its raison d’être, its purpose being to explain literature and
expose the intricate workings of art. Appreciation for art, however, has
always been precariously subjective, making any regulated, objective and
systematic approach to it virtually impossible. ‘The problem is one of how,
intellectually, to deal with art and with literary art specifically. Can it be
done? And how can it be done?’5 In an age where the methodology of exact
sciences reigns supreme in any kind of intellectual inquiry, literary
criticism must necessarily argue for its integrity by grounding itself in the
methodology of exact sciences, as Warren and Austin propose when faced
with the question: One answer has been: it can be done with the methods
developed by the natural sciences, which need only be transferred to the
study of literature’.6
This line of argument, needless to say, has its own share of problems.
While critics argue that literary criticism is a kind of science, they are also
aware that it is not. Wellek and Warren, acknowledging that literary study is
‘not precisely a science’, settle for the notion that it ‘is a species of
knowledge or learning’7 and that its practitioner, the critic, ‘translates his
experience of literature into intellectual terms, assimilates it to a coherent
scheme which must be rational if it is to be knowledge’.8 Further, borrow(cid:0)
ing methodology from disciplines such as linguistics, psychoanalysis,