On Ibn Quzmān’s Zajals: Distinguishing Love From Lust in the Age of Dating Sites
Not much is known about the life of Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿIsà ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Quzmān. He was born in the late 11th century and lived in Córdoba, under the rule of the Almoravids, an ethnic grouping of Berber extraction that governed Andalus during the first half of the twelfth century. He’s undoubtedly one of the most acclaimed Andalusi poets. The manuscript of his Diwan contains 149 extant poems. Some, however, are left incomplete or are missing folios — leaving scholars of Arabic literature with much to reckon with.
What are Zajals?
Zajals were a strophic form of poetry that originated in Andalus and was couched in colloquial Arabic. The genre was characterized by its distinctive rhyme scheme. Moreover, many scholars have suggested that the genre was influenced by — or even derived from — a native Romance genre.
The Lover
This piece will focus on a Zajal #10 — one of the most famous (and complex) of Quzmānī zajals. Titled “The Lover,” the zajal is a love poem directed toward a woman named “Nujaymah,” as the refrain makes amply clear. This explicit mention of the lover’s name is — in and of itself — an extreme violation of the courtly love convention of keeping the lady’s name secret. Furthermore, as it is musically repeated — at the end of each strophe — through intentional rhyming, it becomes all the more remarkable. This is one of the many ways in which Quzmānī zajals challenge the classical tradition of ‘Udri love poetry.
In The Lover, each strophe is riddled with logical contradictions. In the first strophe, the idea of eternal love is being challenged, which is very prominent in traditional ‘Udri love poetry, as Quzmān wonders if the melody would even exist if he were not so infatuated by this woman. This highlights the temporality and the transient nature of his love. Throughout the length of the poem, Quzmān employs a variety of uncourtly descriptions and associations which also challenge poetic conventions. It is inescapable — on close reading — that the zajal is riddled with a number of contradictions: while in strophe four he admits that God created Nujaymah, in strophe seven, he — quite blasphemously — elevates her to the stature of the divine. And, yet again in strophe nine, he yearns for a sexual union with his beloved. It should also be noted that he inverts their social status, by submitting to her, as her slave. This is all very intriguing: Was Ibn Quzmān aware of these contradictions? Are these absurdities intentional? And if they are, are they — as we suggest later — instructional in their purpose?
The answers to the above questions can vary. Perhaps, we suggest, that Ibn Quzmān very intentionally derived a literary persona that would be subject to such absurdity and ridicule. Perhaps: by embracing the cardinal sins of intoxication, fornication, and sodomy (themes which occur commonly in Quzmāni corpus) and by riddling his zajals with contradictions, Quzmān was preaching to his audience. This isn’t necessarily explicitly instructional in its sense, but instead, relies on the reader’s judgment to unmask Quzmān’s work. It hinges on uncovering the “truth” through the identification of said absurdities and contradictions. In an age where Tinder governs our distinctions of love and lust, perhaps through his focus on transient and eternal love, he is inviting us to distinguish between rhetorically embellished lust — marked perhaps in this age by fifty character bios and impulsive swiping — with the idea of eternal love. At this point, we find ourselves humbled, pining towards the threshold of understanding Quzmān’s literary genius.
But we do invite our readers to consider: How does one distinguish love and lust — and what is Nujaymah the subject of? Can a modernistic reading of “The Lover” — one that is indisputably tinted by impulsive swiping on dating apps — redefine Andalusi ideals of eternal love? How have human societies perceived love and lust across ages and civilizations, and what is distinctive about our modern-day notion of them?
These are, indisputably, and as usual, difficult questions to answer. But we ask you to make an attempt — no matter how feeble — in deconstructing age-old ideas and paradigms, through your modernistic interpretations and help us make pre-modern Arabic literature accessible, engaging, and relevant.
