Consorts of the Caliphs. Ibn al-Sa'i

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ to Jihāt al-aʾimmah appears on the verso of folio 48. It states that the copying of the manuscript was completed on 4 Rajab, 900 [March 30, 1495] by one Muḥammad ibn Sālim al-Ḥāniʾ.⁶³ It also mentions the fact that the book has been supplemented with “the consorts of princes and important viziers” (maʿa mā uḍīfa ilayh min mashhūrī [sic] jihāt al-sādat al-umarāʾ wa-l-jullah min al-wuzarāʾ). This refers to the fact that in the latter part of the book, Ibn al-Sāʿī includes entries about the consorts of a vizier and of several Saljūq sultans.

      There are nine lines to each page in a legible Naskh hand. The text is in black ink. Red ink is used to indicate headings, thus the names and affiliations of the consorts; quotations, e.g. a horizontal line above the lām of (قالـــ) and other such verbs; the ends of paragraphs or subsections; and the beginnings and endings of verses. In only one place (the “Saljūqī Khātūn” heading) is the manuscript illegible, but the missing words can be divined from the entry itself. There is the occasional—and by no means untypical—omitted word that is then written in the margin. That the scribe was also hasty, or even sloppy, is evident from the fact that the tail end of one anecdote and the beginning of another pertaining to one consort is entirely misplaced in the entry about another consort, and from features such as the listing of ordinal numbers out of order, or the misnaming of famous authors. The scribe also appears not to have been very knowledgeable about the subject.⁶⁴

      Previous Edition

      There is one previous edition of the work, published as Nisāʾ al-khulafāʾ, al-musammā Jihāt al-aʾimmah wa-l-khulafāʾ min al-ḥarāʾir wa-l-imāʾ (lit. Women of the Caliphs, known as Freeborn and Slave Consorts of the Imams and Caliphs), first published by Dār al-Maʿārif in Cairo in 1962 as volume 28 in the “Dhakhāʾir al-ʿArab” series and reprinted in 1968 and 1993.⁶⁵ Manshَūrāt al-Jamal issued a handsome reprint in 2011.⁶⁶ The editor, Muṣṭafā Jawād (1905–69), like Ibn al-Sāʿī a son of Baghdad, had learned of the existence of the work from the French scholar Louis Massignon (1883–1962). He obtained a photograph of the manuscript from Ahmed Ateş of Istanbul University in 1952, then produced a photostat copy on which he based his edition. Jawād’s edition includes the manuscript pagination.

      Jawād had a broad and deep knowledge of Ibn al-Sāʿī and of Baghdad;⁶⁷ this is reflected not only in the edition, but also in his introduction about Ibn al-Sāʿī and his times, as well as his detailed footnotes identifying places, events, individuals, and references in other works. Jawād’s occasional faulty readings can be attributed to the quality of the manuscript reproduction. He is also more at ease with the political history of the 5th–6th/11th–12th centuries than with the literary history of the 3rd–4th/9th–10th centuries. For instance, he replicates a scribal error about Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī’s uncle;⁶⁸ he has Ibn Abī Ṭāhir report an event that happened after Ibn Abī Ṭāhir died; and he tries to make sense of the scribe’s (أبو جز) when it appears to be an error for (الجماز‎).

      This Edition

      In preparing this edition, I have had the benefit of access to a high-resolution full-color digital copy of the manuscript.⁶⁹ This has allowed me to correct some of Jawād’s misreadings and to include material that he missed or omitted. I have also benefited greatly from Jawād’s edition and accordingly signal in the notes when I have adopted his reading or accepted a word he has interpolated to improve the sense. In keeping with LAL practice, I confine the notes to information about editorial choices. I do not provide references to other sources. Thus, in the entry on ʿArīb, for example, Jawād lists other entries and references to her in other works. The only time I do this is when Ibn al-Sāʿī himself quotes another extant work; if the work is not extant, or the quotation undiscovered, I so indicate.

      The principles used in establishing the Arabic edition are as follows:

‍•	I have abided by the LAL policy of minimal and crucial voweling except in poetry and the Qurʾan. Fatḥah tanwīn is provided where deemed helpful.
‍•	All consonantal shaddahs have been included.
‍•	Waṣlahs only appear on conjoined alifs (e.g. preceded by wa- or fa-), in poetry, and in speech.
‍•	The manuscript has both إصفهان \ الإصفهانيّ and إصبهان \ الإصبهانيّ. I have adopted the latter as the standard forms.
‍•	The only punctuation used are periods at the end of paragraphs/sections and the occasional clarifying colon.
‍•	I have aspired to format, paragraph, and indent consistently and in such a way as to clarify syntax and narrative sequence. Following LAL policy, I have numbered paragraphs.
‍•	The entries themselves are also numbered for ease of reference.
‍•	Following LAL policy, I do not provide in-text references to the manuscript pagination.
‍•	Although I have “corrected” such things as irregular number use (أربع دواليب), these are in fact nothing more than a standard feature of Middle Arabic or at least non-formal Arabic. Other Middle Arabic features include disappearance of case (e.g. يزيد for يزيدا); unusual plurals (e.g. غانيات); avoidance/disappearance of hamzah (e.g. المستضية); agreement with nearest antecedent (e.g. جهات الخلفاء سأتبعهم); repetition of بين; words that are usually separate being written together (e.g. فيماذا); and use of ṣād for sīn (e.g. بالمصير). These are all recorded in the notes. The only silent changes have been the “restoring” of final hamzahs, e.g. in خلفا or عطا, and of alifs, e.g. to القسم‎.
‍•	In the poetry, I identify only the main meter family, not the particular variant used; these appear also in the Index of Verses. I am grateful to Tahera Qutbuddin for going over these.
‍•	The sigla used in the Arabic footnotes are: م‎ = MS Veliyeddin 2634 and ج = Jawād’s edition.

      In undertaking the edition, I benefited immeasurably from the knowledge, expertise, guidance, advice, and friendship of the project editor, Julia Bray.

      Shawkat M. Toorawa

      Note on the Translation

      The project of translating Ibn al-Sāʿī’s Consorts of the Caliphs was first suggested by Joseph Lowry to the academic alliance Radical Reassessment of Arabic Arts, Language, and Literature (RRAALL), of which he and three other Library of Arabic Literature editors are members—Michael Cooperson, Devin Stewart, and myself, Shawkat Toorawa.⁷⁰ Having successfully published a collaboratively authored book on Arabic autobiography in 2001,⁷¹ RRAALL was looking for a follow-up project. Lowry made the case that Consorts of the Caliphs captured our various and varied interests (the Abbasids, art and archaeology, ethnomusicology, gender, history, language, law, literature, the Saljūqs), that it was short, that it was divided into manageable parts, and that it was of inherent interest. By 2008, eight of us had translated consecutive portions and we had a complete if uneven working translation. In 2009, Lowry, Stewart, and I met in Philadelphia to even out the translation and subsequently dispatched it to Cooperson, who made many changes and suggestions. Then the project went quiet.

      In СКАЧАТЬ