The Life and Times of Abu Tammam. Abu Bakr al-Suli

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      AL-ṢŪLĪ’S EPISTLE TO ABŪ L-LAYTH MUZĀḤIM IBN FĀTIK

       In the name of God, full of compassion, ever compassionate

      1

      Praise be to God! He is due our praise in return for His grace. He grants favor to all His creation, and begins ….¹ He has made the way to the truth of His message clear and made it easy to obey Him. He created all that we behold, all that our hearts are drawn to, all that we ponder as evidence of His divinity and witness to His oneness. God bless and keep Muḥammad, seal of His prophets and best of His emissaries, and his blessed kin.

2.1

      May God give you honor, prosperity, perfect happiness, and long life. May your deeds be pleasing to Him. May He preserve and keep you to adorn an age in which men such as you are rare. May He make your well-being a gift to men of culture. The last time we met, we talked at length about various areas of expertise, and argued about Abū Tammām Ḥabīb ibn Aws al-Ṭāʾī. You marveled at how people’s views of him diverge so starkly. Most people, the leading scholars in the field of poetry and the evaluation of speech and experts in prose and verse, too, give Abū Tammām the praise he deserves and accord him his rightful status. They hold him in the highest regard and are struck by his poetic originality.² Some even place him on a par with his predecessors, while others go so far as to say he is unique, without precedent or equal.

      2.2

      Yet there are others who fault him and attack much of his poetry, citing some scholar or other in order to have an authority for what are mere allegations since they are unverified and unsubstantiated. For my part, I considered both categories to be the same, given that neither group of scholars can understand Abū Tammām’s poetry or clarify his intent, let alone dare to recite a single poem of his, which of course would put them at risk, for they have not studied and learned its references nor heard its pithy speech, nor are they familiar with its motifs.

      2.3

      Still, I conceded your point, and undertook to provide you with a full exposition to avoid any possible doubt on your part. When I saw how happy and pleased you were with this proposal, I was spurred to do it well and quickly, and to offer it to you as a gift in the form of an epistle followed by a report of everything ever said about every aspect of Abū Tammām: what makes him so good; a list of those who understood him, and adored and praised him; arguments against those who did not understand him, found him sorely wanting, and faulted him; and a list of the people he praised, corresponded with, and visited for favors. It would include everything said about him, my goal being to clarify his preeminence and to refute those who fail to appreciate him properly. This made you even happier and more enthusiastic.

2.4

      Then I realized³ that there was something else you were hoping for, which you had not told me. Maybe you were reluctant to burden me or did not wish to increase my labors, for I am sore pressed and tormented by an unjust fate, ruthless authorities, and friends who turned against me. I asked you to make your wishes plain and to charge me fully with what you wanted. You told me that what would satisfy you completely and fulfill all your desires would be, once I had finished The Life and Times of Abū Tammām, to edit his poetry, vocalizing it and glossing it so that it no longer contained any difficult vocabulary or obscure passages that blunt comprehension’s blade or make one spit and cover one’s ears.⁴ I was quick to agree, my mind was made up, and after The Life and Times of Abū Tammām I appended an edition of his poetry, poems of praise and satire, boasting and love, description and lamentation. I began each of these genres with the rhyme letter alif and then bāʾ and continued in alphabetical order to make it easier for you to look things up should you so wish. I found no reason to disagree with you or depart from your will. I agreed to do this for you, no one else—I would not have done it for any other. It is not that I wish to with-hold knowledge from scholars or that I am unwilling to disseminate it among those who deserve it. I am revealing what was hidden and removing its cover. It is something in which I am a reliable and trustworthy expert.⁵

3

      I have found (God support you) that in our time most of those who wear culture as an ornament differ from what I was used to from the masters and learned scholars of the past. Nowadays someone studies one area of culture, receives his share of it and reaches a certain level. Then he thinks he will not be called a proper scholar or be thought of as a leader in his field without attacking other scholars, belittling the dead, and denigrating the living. He becomes so accustomed to voicing these attacks that they become the most important task he can perform, and they dominate his gatherings. He is not satisfied with the little bits of knowledge he has acquired but lays claim to it in its entirety. He keeps at bay anyone who would engage him in debate and expose his limited knowledge by besting him in an argument. He achieves this with the aid of people whom he has trained to pounce on those who ask a question or demand an answer. In this way he claims expertise in areas he has never thought of or put his mind to, or whose experts he has never met or was even known to have studied with. He thinks that if he does not know everything, he will not be considered a leading and preeminent scholar.

4.1

      Abū l-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Akbar al-Azdī l-Mubarrad and Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā l-Shaybānī Thaʿlab (God show them mercy) were two of the greats—men we knew, frequented, and gained much knowledge from. They were of high renown, recognized as scholars, and universally acclaimed. We never knew them to claim to be the most knowledgeable about ancient sagas, the rise and fall of dynasties, the study of who was first to do or say a thing, the stories of kings, or the history of Quraysh and the life of the Emissary (God bless him and keep him), his mission and campaigns, and knowledge of his kin and Companions (God show them mercy). Yet these are the most eminent subjects to study.

      4.2

      They did not claim to be the most knowledgeable about the history and genealogies of the Arabs, the battles of the pre-Islamic era, the history of Islam, the lives of the caliphs (God’s blessings upon them) and their viziers, their governors and supporters, the Dissidents, and movements which had sprung up in their own lifetime.

      4.3

      Nor did they claim preeminence in jurisprudence, upon which people depend, or in Hadith, on which the religion of Islam hinges, and the knowledge of its scholars, methods, transmitters, and their chronology and lifespans, such that they would know if a transmitter were placed in the wrong order in a sequence or were put in contact with someone he never met. Nor preeminence in the science of transmitters’ names and teknonyms, and knowing who among them is sound and reliable, and who weak and dubious.

      4.4

      They СКАЧАТЬ