Al-Ma'muni
ʿAbū Ṭālib ʿAbd al-Salām ibn al-Ḥasan al-Maʾmūnī was an Arab poet, noted for his epigrammatic writing.
Life
Al-Maʾmūnī's name indicates that he was descended from the caliph al-Maʾmūn. Though born in Baghdād, he soon moved to Rayy, where he studied with Ṣāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād; falling out with some of Ibn ʿAbbād's circle, he moved to Nīshāpūr, joining the court of Abu ’l-Ḥusayn al-ʿUtbī and his successor Abū Naṣr in Bukhārā through the patronage of Ibn Sīmjūr, a Sāmānid commander. There he met al-Tha'ālibī, who was later to write a biography and record the lion's share of al-Maʾmūnī's surviving verse. Although al-Tha'ālibī reports that al-Maʾmūnī aspired to win the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, this clearly never transpired, and he died of hydropsy in 383/993.Works
While he wrote in other forms, al-Maʾmūnī's oeuvre is most noted for its short, ekphrastic epigrams, showing Persian influence and characteristic of the Perso-Arabic literary concept of waṣf on themes such as buildings, utensils, fruits, and foods. The following, 'fī al-tannūr' is an example :Another example is this five-line verse in three-foot rajaz lines:
Epigram topics
Epigrams included by Bürgel but not in the Beirut edition:- 12. mā amara b-kitābatihi ʿalā khiwān / Was er auf ein Tablett zu schreiben befahl
- 33. fī al-turs / Auf den Schild
- 34. al-manāra / Auf das Minarett
- 36. mā amara bi-kitābatihi ʿalā fināʾi dār / Was er auf dem Vorhof eines Palastes als Inschrift anbringen ließ
- 37. mā amara bi-kitābatihi ʿalā fināʾi dār / Was er auf dem Vorhof eines Palastes als Inschrift anbringen ließ
- 49. al-ruṭab al-muʿassal fī barniyyat zujāj / Auf Datteln in Honig in einer Glasschale
- 50. al-ruṭab al-muʿassal fī barniyyat zujāj / Auf Datteln in Honig in einer Glasschale
- 93 al-muzawwara / Auf die Diät
Style
Al-Maʾmūnī's style is a good example of the general tendencies of Arabic poetry of the 4th/10th centuries, which, like the New Persian poetry that was emerging at the same time, tended towards florid and sophisticated forms resembling later European mannerism; no verse was complete without incorporating some conceit. Thus al-Maʾmūnī uses ostentatiously artful language and unusual words, sometimes creating a purposefully comical contrast between the banality of the content and the pathos of the expression. In Bürgel's estimation, al-Maʾmūnī's language is sometimes rather strained, as in epigram 45, but at other times manages to sound both natural and fresh, as in epigram 7. Though not much inclined to use hyperbole or the device of repeating the same word in different meaning, al-Maʾmūnī is fond of word-play and sound-play, making extensive use of assonance and alliteration. He often deploys antithesis, ranging from simple opposites such as standing and sitting, black and white, or gold and silver to complex forms.Metaphor is central to al-Maʾmūnī's epigrams, which often have a riddlic quality: while in some poems, the subject is named explicitly at the outset, others start with the metaphor, challenging the audience to guess the subject matter before being explicit. While all his descriptions are short and pointed and characterised by fantastical metaphors, each poem almost always contains one or more lines that make a literal statement about the subject, for example that the throne has iron posts and a leather cover, that the bucket is made in Damascus and that its handle creaks, or that there are brown and white feathers in the pen box.
Personification of inanimate objects is a key technique, sometimes achieved using the terms dhū/''dhāt, and ibn/ibna. Al-Maʾmūnī values harmonious choices of metaphors in his epigrams, for example using only tree-based metaphors in poem 4, and uses a rich array of linguistic techniques to express his comparisons: the usual particles ka kaʾanna, kaʾannamā, mithl and li; verbs from the roots sh-b-h and ḥ-k-y ; first-person verbs reflecting his personal perspective such as khaltu, ḥasibtu, raʾaitu, taʾammaltu; and direct "A = B" juxtaposition of his comparisons without particles. Al-Maʾmūnī's favoured form of metonymy is synecdoche, especially via adjectives, which also contributes to the riddlic character of the verse. He makes extensive use of the technique that the Persian critic of Arabic literature al-Jurjānī called tafṣīl'', whereby a natural unity is dissolved into a fantastic multiplicity: for example, epigram 64, on the melon, says that "لَهَا حلَّة من جلّنار وسوسن * مغمَّدة بالآس غِبَّ غمام". Much more rarely, he uses the opposite device of presenting a multiplicity as a whole. Like riddles, al-Maʾmūnī's epigrams frequently deploy comparison through subtraction: thus the candle-holder is "وحديقةٍتهتزُّ فيها دَوْحَةٌ * لم يُنْمِها تُرَبٌ وﻻ أمطار".
Primary sources
The main source for al-Maʾmūnī and his work is the Kitāb Yatīmat al-dahr fī mahāsin ahl al-ʿasṛ by Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī :- ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad Thaʿālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr fī shuʿarāʼ ahl al-ʿaṣr, 4 vols, , , , : iv, 84-112 .
- Muḥammad Muḥyī al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd محمد محي الدين عبدالحميد, يتيمة الدهر في في محاسن أهلالعصر, 4 vols, , , , iv, 149–79.
- ʻAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad Thaʻālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr fī maḥāsin ahl al-ʻaṣr maʻ al-tatimma wa-l-fahāris, ed. by Mufīd Muḥammad Qumayḥah, 6 vols, vols 1-4. .
Other editions and translations
- Johann Christoph Bürgel, Die ekphrastischen Epigramme des Abū Ṭālib al-Maʾmūnī: Literaturkundliche Studie über einen arabischen Conceptisten, Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, 1965/14.