What 'Isa ibn Hisham Told Us. Muhammad al-Muwaylihi

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      32 Al-ʿAqqād, Rijāl ʿaraftuhum, 82–4.

      33 One of the articles by Zakī Mubārak published in al-Risālah (10:995ff.) contains a section called “The Captive of Poverty and Hardship.”

      34 Mubārak, al-Risālah, 10:1049.

      35 Al-Muwayliḥī, ʿIlāj al-nafs.

      36 Al-Muwayliḥī, Al-Muʾallafāt al-kāmilah.

      37 This history of the text should be regarded as a much-updated version of the section in my earlier study and translation of the text: Allen, A Period of Time, 32–48.

      38 For fuller details on the two men’s involvement in Egyptian and Ottoman politics, see Allen, A Period of Time, 1–14.

      39 I must take the opportunity here to express my gratitude to my colleague and friend, Professor Gaber Asfour. While he was serving as Secretary-General to the Supreme Council for Culture in Cairo, I arranged for him to meet (now Dr.) Marie-Claire Boulahbel, at the time a French doctoral student writing a dissertation under my supervision on the works of Ibrāhīm al-Muwayliḥī at INALCO in Paris. He provided her with a CD-ROM of the complete run of issues of Miṣbāḥ al-sharq in the Dār al-Kutub newspaper archive that she subsequently catalogued and of which I now possess a copy. I need to express my gratitude to her as well for making access to the materials that much easier. All my subsequent research on the works of the Muwayliḥīs has been based on the ability to consult the original articles in the newspaper.

      40 While Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq includes examples of the maqāmah genre in his famous work, Al-Sāq ʿalā al-sāq fī-mā huwa al-Fāryāq, al-Muwayliḥī uses the sajʿ style as an opening feature to all his articles. For a virtuoso translation of al-Shidyāq’s work, see Humphrey Davies’s recent translation of al-Shidyāq, Leg Over Leg.

      41 The complete text has been published in Ibrāhīm al-Muwayliḥī, Al-Muʾallafāt al-Kāmilah, 161–202. My English translation of the text has appeared in the journal Middle Eastern Literatures, 15, no. 3 (December 2012): 318–36; 16, no. 3 (December 2013): 1–17. It would seem that the father was willing to subordinate the publication of his own story to that of his son, in that, after publishing an initial three episodes in June–July 1899, he was willing to wait an entire year before publishing the remainder (while his son was traveling to Paris to report on the Exposition universelle).

      42 Al-Muwayliḥī was clearly not enamored of English weather: “To Almighty God is the complaint about London weather! The sun has vanished and the moon is nowhere to be seen. Do you have any information to share with me about the sun or news of the moon? It has been such a long time, and I can only hope that God will compensate me for London weather with better in Paris. Farewell.” Miṣbāḥ al-sharq 112, July 13, 1900.

      43 Miṣbāḥ al-sharq 116, 117, 118, 121, 123, 126, 130, and 133.

      44 Miṣbāḥ al-sharq 192, February 14, 1902.

      45 Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm, Layālī Saṭīḥ, 29.

      46 Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Maʿārif, 1907.

      47 Where original articles are combined to make a single chapter in the book version, the beginning of the second original article can easily be identified by its opening with a characteristic passage of sajʿ.

      48 While conducting research for my Oxford doctoral thesis in Cairo in 1966, I had occasion to ask many Egyptians for their opinions of Ḥadīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām. Their reactions were very similar to my own regarding the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, namely that, while it was and is recognized to be a great work, the very fact that it had been a “set text” for important examinations (and thus involved dealing with considerable linguistic complexities at a certain age), had radically affected their views of it.

      49 An exception to this situation is Stewart, “Sajʿ in the Qurʾan: Prosody and Structure.”

      50 Quoted in L. Venuti, Translation Studies Reader, 2004, 49.

      WHAT ʿĪSĀ IBN HISHĀM TOLD US

      Miṣbāḥ Miṣbāḥ al-sharq 21, September 8, 1898¹

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      Three things shine in glorious splendor on this earth:

      The noonday sun, Abū Isḥāq, and the moon.²

      ʿĪsā ibn Hishām told us that in his dreams he saw three rulers conversing over their meal. As you will see, this is what he dreamed:

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      BUṬRUS (making a show of his refinement, full of good cheer, and feigning elegance) Where, O where, I ask, are those orators of olden times, men of eloquence, poets who could sing paeans of praise, littérateurs who would record people’s names for all time? Where are Ibn al-Walīd and Abū Tammām, Firdawsī and al-Khayyām, Euripides and Homer, Horace and Virgil? Who will record the part we have played in this great victory and our share of the glory? Who will note down the marvelous record in the archives of time and make the white pages of our history glow with stories of the conquest of Sudan, the lands of the blacks? At this moment, the Sirdar³ and we ministers resemble Julius Caesar himself when he sent back from Asia the news of his rapid victory to a Roman senate which must have been much like our own tripartite meeting here. Caesar used just three crisp words: “Veni, vidi, vici.”⁴

      MAẒLŪM (astonished and baffled) Tell me for heaven’s sake, my friend, why on earth are you speaking in Latin? What does it mean?

      BUṬRUS It’s not Latin! It’s pure Arabic. Whenever victories, campaigns, and battles are to be recorded, such are the demands of description and panegyric. But I can describe it for you in another way which might be more appropriate:

      “To your Egypt has her Khartoum been returned.”

      The year 1316.⁵

      Our fortune has been fulfilled, and destiny has come to our aid. The conquest of the Sudan has occurred during our blessed and orderly period in office. Now the tyrant has gone, Maẓlūm. So all praise be to God who has reserved these gifts for us and afforded us such a wonderful conclusion to events!

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      MAẒLŪM (who still seems baffled, like a miser who has just lost a ring on the ground) I can understand that you’re talking about the Sudan. But why this jubilant celebration that’s making you rhapsodize like a soothsayer? What benefit will we Egyptian ministers get from this victorious conquest?

      BUṬRUS (arrogantly) We’ve now become ministers who are in charge of twenty-four million people. That’s the benefit we get from it all. Our names are to be proclaimed over huge areas, and we will have wide dominion in a place where the earth is virgin and the soil is pure gold.

      MAẒLŪM (disdainfully and in utter contempt) The only advantage that I can see would involve us getting a salary raise СКАЧАТЬ