Ashtiany-Isnads and Models of Heroes PDF

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Arabic & Middle Eastern Literature

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Isnam#ds and models of heroes: Ab Zubayd alTa'i, Tankh's sundered lovers and Ab l'Anbas alSaymar
Julia Ashtiany Bray
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Department of Arabic Studies, School of History, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AJ, UK Phone: 01334 463083 Fax: 01334 463083 Available online: 28 Mar 2007
To cite this article: Julia Ashtiany Bray (1998): Isnam#ds and models of heroes: Ab Zubayd alTa'i, Tankh's sundered lovers and Ab l'Anbas alSaymar, Arabic & Middle Eastern Literature, 1:1, 7-30 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13666169808718191
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Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1998
Isnds and Models of Heroes: Ab Zubayd al-T ' , Tan kh 's sundered lovers and Ab 'l-'Anbas al-Saymar
JULIA ASHTIANY BRAY
Source studies based on isndds have greatly increased our understanding of the diffusion and elaboration of narrative akhbar, particularly in the 4th/ 10th century. To the 'collector' sources identified by Zolondek, and more fully investigated since by scholars such as Fleischhammer, and to the lines of transmission and networks of retransmission identified by Sultan and others,1 we can now, thanks to Stefan Leder's recent work, add a growing appreciation of the ways in which certain rdwis re-shaped akhbar in the course of transmission.2 As our view of how 'Abbasid narrative texts circulated, evolved, were amalgamated and published comes into sharper focus, so new questions arise as to how we should go about analysing them as literature. These questions have hardly yet been formulated, and the paths to be pursued are not self-evident, but, where present, isndds may have a substantial part to play in shaping literary understanding. In this paper, I consider the isnads of three sets of akhbar, in conjunction with the main narrative characteristics of the matns and in relation to the models of hero presented in them. My first set, consisting of the two earliest known versions of a single khabar, both of which show certain parallels with Hamadhanl's maqdmdt, poses problems of diffusion and influence, which isndds help to define, if not to resolve. The last set, which consists of only one khabar, the Maqdma Saymariyya of Hamadhani, poses the same problem in reverse, as a problem of sources; here again the isndd suggests how the field of investigation might be narrowed or redefined. The central set of akhbar contains one sequence of stories taken from Abu 'All al-Muhassin al-Tanukhl's al-Faraj ba'd al-shidda, whose isndds and matns both reflect a series of revisions, and a pair of stories which occur, with substantial variants, both in Tanukhi's Nishwdr al-muhddara and in Faraj. The comparison of these synchronic variants shows a variety of ways in which models of heroes may be transformed, and suggests some hypotheses as to where Hamadhani may have found his models and how he may have used them.
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I Abu Zubayd and the Cowardly Liar of Pseudo-Jahiz

A khabar quoted in Kitdb al-Aghdm must have struck more than one reader as being a lineal forebear of the Hamadhanian maqdma.3 It concerns a Christian poet active under the first caliphs, Abu Zubayd Harmala b. al-Mundhir al-Tal. The caliph 'Uthman, by whom he is said to be always favourably received, one day invites him ("Come, you follower of Christ") to recite some poetry before a company of Muhdjirun and Ansdr.
Dr J. Ashtiany Bray, Department of Arabic Studies, School of History, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AJ, UK Tel: 01334 463083; Fax: 01334 463632.
1366-6169/98/010007-24 1998 Carfax Publishing Ltd
Julia Ashtiany Bray
When he has finished, the caliph teases him for including a description of a lion: "Never mention lions again as long as you live, for I'm sure you're an utter coward." "That I'm not," the poet rejoins, "but I once had such a terrifying encounter with a lion that it haunts me still; your reproaches are unmerited." He proceeds to narrate the incident at length, in elaborate saf, telling how he and his travelling companions, in the heat of the day, gratefully alighted in a shady and well watered wddv, how the horses, taking fright one after another, first alerted them to impending danger; how a lion sprang into their midst and began to pick off the company one by one, crunching them up and wallowing in their gore; but before Abu Zubayd can enlarge on his own role, the caliph cuts him short: "Silence, damn your chatter! You're scaring us poor Muslims stiff."4 This version derives from the Tabaqat al-shu'ara' of Ibn Sallam al-Jumahl (139-231/ 755-845), where it constitutes an anomalous and prominent element, being by far the longest khabar, and the only piece of sustained saj', in the work as it survives at present.5 Ibn Sallam gives its sole source as Abu '1-Gharraf [al-Dabbl].6 It is a matter for conjecture whether it should be dated, in the form in which it appears in Tabaqat, to Ibn Sallam's own lifetime, or to that of his nephew and transmitter, Abu Khalifa al-Fadl b. al-Hubab al-Jumahl (c. 205-305/820-917) 7 (it was Abu Khalifa's riwaya of Tabaqat that Abu '1-Faraj al-Isfahanl used in Kitab al-Aghdm).% If die khabar was elaborated by Ibn Sallam, or by Abu '1-Gharraf himself, it pre-dates Hamadhanl's maqamat by more than a hundred years; if it is the work of Abu Khalifa, it still pre-dates by over half a century the emergence, with HamadhanI (358-398/968-1008), of the maqdma proper. The key elements of this earliest version, which I will call version A, can be schematized as follows: (I) Preface, consisting of: (a) isndd (Abu '1-Gharraf) + (b) biographical information; (II) khabar proper, telling us: .(1) the poet is Christian; (2) his audience consists of prominent Muslims; (3) his poem happens to mention lions; (4) caliph calls poet liar and coward; poet justifies himself; (5) poet expands his justification in saf narrative; (6) caliph interrupts in mock terror: "You have frightened us Muslims". Items (l)-(4) and (6) constitute a frame to (5), the central narrative. (The version in Aghdni, which I will call version A(i), reverses (a) and (b), augments (b), lacks (2), and adds an appendix which underlines the poet's cowardice.) Version A anticipates the Hamadhanian maqdma in more than one respect. Firstly, the central narrative places saf in the mouth of a comic figure; secondly, the surrounding frame portrays this narrative as a recital, performed in a court setting, much as Hamadhanl's maqamat were to be. It is tempting to see the frame, although set in early Islamic times, as reflecting real performance practice at the time of the khabar's composition; but the information that Abu Zubayd was a courtier, min zuivwdri 'l-muluki wa-li-muluki 'l-'ajami khdssatan (I, (b)), and that his alleged audience consisted of the Muslim elite, evokes only a generalized tradition of aristocratic entertainment, and is of meagre evidential value. However, the textual history of Tabaqat itself, muddled though it is, may provide better evidence. Abu '1-Faraj al-Isfahanl apparently used a written text of Tabaqat, sent to him by Abu Khalifa;9 but there is some evidence, of varying quality, of the extent to which Abu Khalifa's text may also have been taught orally. Four distinct isndds are attached to his riwaya in surviving sources. The numerous citations in Marzubanl's (d.383/994) Muwashshah go back to Abu Khalifa via one intermediary.10 The abridged Medina manuscript of Tabaqat, which Shakir identifies as Egyptian and places around the beginning of the 5th/llth century,
Isnads and Models of Heroes
represents another path of transmission two steps removed from Abu Khalifa, and the Isfahani (Chester Beatty) manuscript appears to be an amalgamation of two more, separate, oral transmissions, each one step removed from Abu Khalifa and dating, according to Shakir, to around the first decades of the 4th/10th century.11 This would imply a wide geographical diffusion of Tabaqat during the course of a century, though it does not help us to estimate the importance of oral transmission in its diffusion, still less to assess the possible size of audiences (one anecdote shows Abu Khalifa giving private lessons, including readings of Tabaqat, to a single pupil).12 The oral recitation of scholarly material may not amount to performance in the fullest sense; but it can be argued that a spoken text has a different effect on its audience from a written one, even when the constraints of dictation are taken into account. On the above evidence, it is possible that the comic possibilities of spoke'h sapthe idea that it lends itself to clowning as well as to oratory and repartee, its traditional usesmay have impressed itself on Iraqi audiences, and may also have been transmitted, with the text of Tabaqat, to audiences elsewhere, some time before Hamadhanl's listeners were introduced to it.13 There is another version of the khabar, which is first attested probably slightly later than the latest dating that I have proposed for version A. I will call this version, version B. It appears in pseudo-Jahiz, al-Mahdsin wa 'l-adddd, and it differs from version A on the following main points: (I) (a) and (b) lacking; (II) (2): internal audience of Muslims lacking; (3) is replaced by (3'): caliph invites poet to describe lion; (5) sap is followed by (5'), a four-line poem in tawil; (6) is replaced by (6'): caliph interrupts, "You have thrown terror into Muslim hearts; from your description, I can almost see the lion about to spring at me." 14 In Mahasin, this version (like most of the material in the book) lacks any form of isnad. This could mean either that the author drew on an unacknowledged source, probably a written one, or that a later scribe omitted the isnads. We may nevertheless guess at the provenance of version B, a variant of which, quoted in the Lqtd'if al-akhbar of'All b. al-Muhassin al-Tanukhl (d.447/1055), has an abridged isnad claiming al-Kalbl (d.146/ 763) as its source.15 The Kitab al-Mu'ammarin of Abu Hatim al-Sijistanl (d. c. 250/864) quotes neither version A nor version B of the khabar, but cites al-Kalbl as a biographical source for Abu Zubayd.16 As can be seen from the above schema, version B erodes the comic contrast between Christian and Muslims, present in version A, and removes the element of surprise from the introduction of the lion theme. To explain this by positing that version B is simply a defective rendering of version A would not account for the inclusion of the poem, or, incidentally, for the fact that version B seems well adapted to its context, as we shall see presently. It seems more reasonable to suppose that the Abu Zubayd khabar had two distinct lines of elaboration and transmission, and that its diffusion, therefore, was not limited to the ambit of version A. In addition, we may note that the version in Latd'if, which I will call version A/B, preserves the audience of Muslim notables (though omitting to mention that Abu Zubayd was a Christian), together with the element of surprise, and retains in the frame elements of the phrasing of version A. Version A/B may thus represent an earlier text than version B, or a separate tradition, again indicating a fairly wide diffusion of the khabar..
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Version B contains features which, though distinct from those found in version A, also seem to point forward to the maqama. The verses with which Abu Zubayd interrupts and rounds off his own performanceonly then being cut short by the caliphare one such formal feature. More significant, perhaps, are those features which arise from the piece's context. Version B is not an isolated piece, but one of a pair, the story immediately preceding it being the last of a sequence illustrating mahasin alshajd'a, 'the virtues of valour', while the Abu Zubayd story is the first in a sequence illustrating 'the opposite', didduh. It displays obvious formal and thematic parallels, as well as more subtle conceptual ones, with the companion piece which precedes it, and which I will summarize: [No isnadl [Opening of frame:] During his wars with Ibn al-Ashcath, al-Hajjaj sends for a rebel prisoner, Shihab b. Haraqa al-Sa'dl, who pleads for his life by enumerating his own virtues in saj'. Al-Hajjaj demands that he relate some incident that will bear out his boasts. [Central narrative:] Still in saj', the prisoner tells how, with a band of his clansmen, he journeyed day and night, captured a loaded caravan and drove it off into the desert, where he encountered a she-ass, and, leaving his companions in order to pursue it, found himself led at eventide to a well of sweet water, beside which was pitched a tent containing a woman of surpassing beauty, Naima. She offers him hospitality, and a certain 'Amir appears on horseback, bearing a dead lion. (At this point, al-Hajjaj interrupts: 'That's enough saj' and rajaz; just tell the story.' The narrator proceeds in prose.)17 'Amir cooks die lion, and all three eat. The narrator hears his companions approaching on horseback, rejoins them and, spear in hand, demands that 'Amir surrender Naima. 'Amir issues a knightly challenge to single combat, and kills two opponents in succession after taunting them in verse. The narrator and his men then attack together; Naima joins the fray, and she and 'Amir kill 20 men. The narrator sues for peace; 'Amir reveals his identity and relationship to Naima and scornfully rejects the narrator's offer of a gift of laden camels: he and NaTma are content to dwell in solitude and dine on lions and other such creatures. The narrator and his companions depart. [Closing of frame:] Al-Hajjaj exclaims that this betrayal of hospitality is itself enough to merit death; the narrator argues that if al-Hajjaj can forgive him his rebellion, he should not punish him for a lesser crime. Al-Hajjaj releases and rewards him.18 The above piece and version B bodi consist of a frame, which presents the narrator and his internal audience, surrounding a central narrative which combines saj' and verse, contains the themes of a journey and a lion, and is interrupted by the internal audience. The two pieces share the further characteristic of being only oblique illustrations of their rubric: in the first story, it is 'Amir and Naima, not the narrator, who display valour, shaja'a, while in the second, Abu Zubayd's cowardice is not apparent from his narrative, but only from the caliph's ironic reception of it. The lion theme is brought to the fore in the frame of version B, giving retrospective prominence to the incidental lion dieme in the companion piece, while the Christian/Muslim contrast, which has no
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counterpart in the companion piece, is underplayed. These last correspondences may either be, as I have suggested, signs of the deliberate adaptation of the khabar to its context, or fortuitous parallels exploited by the simple device of juxtaposition. A more important parallel, however, between versions and its companion piece (and a feature also found in version A) is the way in which the frame plays upon the relationship between the narrator's real and alleged persona on the one hand, and on that between the narrator and the person to whom he tells his story on the other. Both narrators, given the chance to prove their claims to virtue, spin rigmaroles which impudently challenge their listener's indulgence.19 From the stringing together of two saj' tales with unheroic heroes/narrators in al-Mahdsin wa 'l-adddd, to the idea of a serial saj' narrator and an intermittently recurring anti-hero in Hamadhanl's maqamat, seems no great step. Indeed, the relationship between the heroes of these two tales and their audiences seems not so much to prefigure as to pre-empt the maqamat. There is, however, no proof that HamadhanI knew this pair of Stories. The chain of evidence for the transmission of version B is defective and problematic. The textual matrix in which it has been preserved in its earliest form dates, possibly, from not long before Hamadhanl's birth; the earliest version of A/B dates from some time after his death. Thereafter, version B is attested in only one later source, and then, like version A/B, as a singleton, not as part of a sequence.20 There is a greater likelihood that HamadhanI may have known version A alone, whose circulation is more fully and more continuously attested.21 Version A, like version B, inevitably calls to mind the Maqdma Asadiyya. However, despite similarities of situation and sequence between the maqdma and the khabar, close textual parallels are lacking, and it could well be argued that any likenesses may derive independently from reference to the numerous unsophisticated yarns about escapes from lions and other wild beasts which seem to have formed part of the staple of 'Abbasid storytelling, and at whose predictability, we may assume, both the maqdma and the khabar poke fun.22 To sum up so far: that HamadhanI had precursors, i.e. that earlier writers put together some of the elements with which HamadhanI is now usually credited as having been the first to combine, seems to me to be proved in the case of versions A and B of the Abu Zubayd khabar. It is difficult, however, to take the argument a step further, and prove that these examples were known to HamadhanI and influenced him directly. The necessary internal evidence is lacking: HamadhanI does not acknowledge his sources; the textual parallels are not specific enough23 and we cannot point to an intermediate source which would make such parallels convincing. The same situation applies for most of the maqamat. We can show parallels with earlier material, but usually only in the form of isolated motifs and discrete formulae belonging to the common stock of 'Abbasid narrative,24 for the process of assimilation has generally been too thorough to enable us to identify more complex or specific models or processes of derivation. Lacking any detailed knowledge of Hamadhanl's relationship to his sources, we also lack the means to show, in any but the most general way, how the maqamat were perceived, or were intended by HamadhanI to be perceived, by their original audience.25 However, in two exceptional instances, HamadhanI does name his sources, to the extent of including the names of real persons in his isndds. One of these exceptions is the Maqdma Saymariyya, whose isndd we shall consider at the end of this paper. Meanwhile, let us turn to some other models of 'Abbasid hero.
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II Tanukhl's Lovers of Sold Slave-girls

Who, in version A of the Abu Zubayd khabar, has the last word, Abu Zubayd or the caliph? How are we to imagine the reactions of the internal audience of Ansar and Muhajirun, whose 'fright' is invoked to stem Abu Zubayd's flow, but who are never drawn into the action? Are they, or indeed we, the real, external audience, dupes or accomplices of one or the other protagonist, Abu Zubayd or the caliph? These questions arise because their two characters are portrayed entirely through dialogue, and this dialogue reduces Abu Zubayd to a logical conundrum. He swears he is no coward, and at the end of the khabar the caliph seems ironically to agree. The only unambiguous clue to Abu Zubayd's character is the typical liar's formula he employs before launching into his recital, kalla ... wa-lakinni (Tin not, ... but ...'), simultaneously denying and conceding the charge against him. But not all 'Abbasid prose heroes are drawn in such abstract terms. In particular, the heroes of Abu 'All alMuhassin al-Tanukhl's (327-384/939-994) eclectic compilations al-Faraj ba'd alshidda and Nishwar al-muhadara are often presented as 'slice of life' characters. They generally tell their tale directly, sometimes through some unobtrusive 'witness' or another third party, without apparent narrative artifice, and in simple prose. An extreme example of the contrast between heroes like Abu Zubayd and such Tanukhian heroes is to be found in one particular story in al-Faraj ba'd al-shidda, F469.26 In this context the following points about the story should be noted particularly: (1) The story has an 'informal', i.e. non-scholarly isndd: 'I [Tanukht] was told by 'Ubayd Allah b. Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-SarawI:27 "My father told me"...'. A footing of intimacy subsequently seems to be implied, but is not shown, between the source, Sarawl's father, and the hero, or between the hero and an unnamed confidant (see (3) below). (Version A of the Abu Zubayd story has a 'scholarly' isndd, and claims no connection between the source, Abu '1-Gharraf, and Abu Zubayd.) (2) Despite this implied intimacy, we never learn the hero's name or when the story 'happened'. We are given only enough detail to understand the mechanism of the plot: 'There was once a wealthy young man of Baghdad whose father died and left him a fortune. He was deeply in love with a slave-girl ... bought her, and spent every penny he had on her until he was ruined.' (Abu Zubayd is a historical personagethough as a mu'ammar he is supposed to have lived to be 150; version A outlines his genealogy and career as well as supplying the details necessary to an appreciation of the khabar.) (3) Sarawl's father begins telling the story, but the narrative is soon taken over by the hero (qala 'l-rajul, with no specification of whom he is speaking to), and Sarawl's father never reappears. (Version A: Abu '1-Gharraf is the narrator of the frame, which is clearly demarcated from Abu Zubayd's boxed-in narrative.) (4) The distinction between external audience (Tanukhi's readers) and internal audience (the hero's confidant) is blurred. Towards the end, the hero himself becomes an internal audience when, before being reunited with her, he is told how his slave-girl fared after the two of them parted for the second time. The response of all three audiences are assumed to be identical. (Version A: there is an external audience, the listener/reader, and two internal audiences, the caliph, and the Ansar and Muhajirun. The caliph's reactions are shown, but his companions' are only referred to. It is not certain that the three audiences' responses are
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in step: the caliph is probably quicker-witted than either his companions or the listener/reader.) (5) The picture of the hero's character given by the first narrator is consistent with that given later by the hero himself. The reader accepts this version. (Version A: we are given contradictory accounts of the hero's character by the hero and by the caliph. We may initially be in doubt which to accept.) (6) The hero's character is developed, and his feelings are described. (Version A: the hero's character is static. His feelings are left to our imagination.) Finally, (7) Version A depicts an episode; the Tanukhl story shows a career, and does so at length and in unusual detail. Clearly its format, technique and assumptions about the relation of audience to narrative are quite different from those which govern version A. Many of these will hold good for the other Tanukhian material I shall discuss subsequently. So remarkable is the story as a chronicle of moral and emotional growthone might almost call it a Bildungsromanthat it deserves a fuller summary than I have given it so far: A rich young Baghdadi and his singing slave-girl love each other. He ruins himself for her; she bears their poverty cheerfully, but suggests that he might go out to work to support them. False shame makes him reject a friend's advice that the pair of them hire themselves out as musicians (anifa min dhalika). Instead he lets the slave-girl persuade him to take the easy way out and sell her. Once the sale is concluded, both of them repent; worse still, the money is stolen. The young man tries to drown himself, but is rescued, and lectured on the wickedness of suicide and despair by a simple old man. This brings about a gradual change of heart and behaviour. The young man now accepts a friend's advice that he find work as a katib. He takes passage out of Baghdad on a boat which he rightly guesses belongs to his slave-girl's new owner (he knows him to be a prince, but has never learned his name). Despite reverses, he perseveres in finding a way to advertise his presence to the slave-girl, who is also on board, and he wins the friendship of the prince, who promises to free the girl and marry her to her lover. Celebrations take place, and all seems set for the hero to return to his former life, when another disaster occurs. He leaves the ship in a drunken stupor, and it sails on without him. Still in ignorance of the prince's name, he finds himself penniless in Basra, where he has only one acquaintance. A newly acquired self-respect makes him ashamed to importune him (aniftu min dhalika); he decides instead to write to him, and buys a sheet of paper from a shopkeeper. The shopkeeper admires his hand and offers him work as his bookkeeper. He proves so honest and diligent that he is given a partnership and married to his employer's daughter. Some years pass, but he never ceases to love the slave-girl, and, it is later hinted, the marriage is never consummated. At last he is reunited with his beloved, who has also, he learns, remained faithful to him, though believing him drowned. Married to her, and rich once more, thanks to the prince, he readily agrees to the latter's request that the pair entertain him with music from time to time. Last but not least, he confesses all to the shopkeeper, divorces his daughter, and returns her marriage portion to her intact. Despite the tale's being an autobiography, its hero is not given to analysing his own
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character, or reflecting on his own behaviour or development. The latter is shown largely through the sequence of events. The bulk of the story, nevertheless, deals with the hero's feelings; but the vocabulary of the emotions is, on the whole, cliched and unparticularized ("I wept and slapped my face"; "I burst into violent tears, and the slave-girl was in an even worse state than I"), feelings being described chiefly in terms of their outward manifestations (notably the mutual sobs and swoons of heroine and hero).28 These devices do not seem to be intended to convey fine nuances or to individualize the emotions. Those ends are achieved by altogether different means, such as the use of anifa in contrasting contexts which enable us to gloss it as, respectively, foolish and honourable disdain, or such as the techniques used in the central passage, in which the hero discovers that the girl still loves him through the clues given by the direct speech of a third party, which mirrors her behaviour since the pair parted. He and the reader are then shown the exquisiteness of her sensibility (in her choice of songs once her new owner has persuaded her to sing), and finally, when her lover has revealed his presence and the prince has promised to marry them, we see how her spirits leap from despair to elation (non-cliched use of external description to convey specific emotions: the girl begins to sing with a will, and "called for wine and drank"). Tanukhl revised al-Farqj ba'd al-shidda several times, altering the text and sequence of material in a variety of ways, and Chapter XHI, the chapter on lovers, to which the story just discussed belongs, is one of the most heavily revised sections.29 Nevertheless, in all the versions I have been able to consult, those stories in the chapter which deal with the love of a man for a slave-girl who is bought by another man, but with whom he is finally reunited, are always grouped together in a sequence, whereas the order of the remaining stories in the chapter differs considerably from source to source.30 Clearly, Tanukhl wished the stories in this sequence to be appreciated not simply under the general rubric oifaraj or faraj applied to lovers' predicaments, but as a family of variations on a specific sub-theme. It is easy to see why. The opportunities for exploring character and behaviour afforded by the grouping are almost unrivalled in the whole of the book. The fact that the basic situation is given, and can be recognized from the opening words of each story, makes for clarity while allowing a multiplication of die angles of approach.31 In the first story in the sequence (F468) a deposed vizier, Ibn Maymun al-Aftas, whiles away his exile by telling his host about one of his earliest loves, in die days when he was a callow kdtib. Self-knowledge is not lacking, nor is the ability to see his own youthful behaviour in a comic as well as a pathetic light; this hero, unlike die hero of our first story, which follows it in the sequence, is well able to distinguish the turning-points in his career. The two heroes resemble each other, however, on one point: they both undergo a change, in part through their own efforts; the resolution of dieir predicament is thus not entirely dependent on die intervention of providence, but has been earned through moral effort. Most of the remaining heroes of the sequence arguably belong to a different tale-type,32 in which the hero is rescued gratuitously and without transforming himself. This common factor notwidistanding, diese heroes are differentiated, in terms of age, social standing, intelligence and charm (one elderly lover, in F472, displaying a repulsive combination of cunning, greed and self-pity). The heroines too are differentiated to some degree: some are self-denying (F469, 470, 471); one is nagging and rapacious (F475); one, asked if she prefers her old master to her new one, shows wonderful diplomacy (F474), while anodier tacdessly blurts out her longing for her lover.33 The focus of die stories is not exclusively on die hero and heroine; die purchaser, whedier his generosity in response to die lover's pleas is spontaneous or die
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result of a struggle, is a secondary, or sometimes equal, focus of psychological interest.34 With this redistribution of focus comes what could be seen as a further change of tale-type, in which the self-transformation of the benefactorrather than that of the herobrings about the hero's salvation. Broadly speaking, much the same techniques are used throughout the sequence to fix or unfold character, but, just as the psychological focus of the basic theme may be multiplied or transferred, so techniques of characterization which are subsidiary in one version may become primary in another. An example is that of mode of speech as a means of defining a character. In the first story we considered (F469), two humble characters, with appropriately simple diction, the old man and the shopkeeper, play crucial roles in the hero's self-transformation. Both are vividly depicted, and the shopkeeper's personality is developed beyond what is strictly necessary to a supporting role. Nevertheless, his function, like that of the old man, is essentially subsidiary, his steadfast generosity of spirit serving above all to provide a foil to the hero's moral growth. In F475 it is the hero who is a man of modest standing, a money-changer with a small working capital. A stock character, his speech is restricted to figures and calculations; but he transcends the stereotype in his willingness to lose everything for his slave-girl, thus acting, as it were, as his own moral foil. In the same story, the technique of mirroring one person's behaviour and character in the speech of others is carried to its extreme. The heroine never speaks and is not described, but is portrayed entirely through the few words the money-changer says about her part in his plight and through the lecture her purchaser gives her on living within the income he proposes to settle on her.35 Each of the above storiesa very small fraction, of course, of the total contained in Tanukhi's two great collections, and not to be taken as representing every aspect of thempresents its main actors consistently, whatever the combination of techniques and viewpoints employed. These are characters, unlike Abu Zubayd, that do not tease their audiences, internal or external. They are unambiguous except, fortuitously, in some instances where the 'Abbasid tone of voice, or vocabulary of gestures and manners, eludes the modern reader.36 Ill Tanukhi's Isnads Despite their univocal approach to the hero, these stories, taken as a sequence, display a pluralism which recognizes, indeed emphasizes, that themes, situations and characters require only slight changes of treatment for their potential for different development to manifest itself. We have seen how this operates at the level of the central narrative; it is also found at the level of the isndd and of any other material serving to frame the central narrative; moreover, it is built into the successive versions of the text, and tends to increase with each stage of revision. In all the versions of the text other than those that have been scribally mutilated, there is a notable difference in the types of isndd prefixed to the juxtaposed stories, one effect of which is to underline the diversity of milieux from which they derive.37 Of the isnads which I earlier loosely dubbed 'informal', three could be called 'professional' (F474: all lawyers/religious scholars; F468: a kdtib and a vizier; F476: all senior kdtibs, and all, incidentally, stated to be written sources; to which we might add F472: a qadi and two slave-dealers). A minority of isnads might be regarded as 'scholarly'; they go back to Abu '1-Faraj al-Isfahani and/or to frequently cited members of his circle of
16
Julia Ashtiany Bray
informants (F470: al-Hazzanl al-Riyashl; F471: al-Isfahanl, going back to Ibrahim al-Mawsill, 'dictated from memory', but not included in Aghdni; F473: central links c Umar b. Shabba and Abu Ghassan, last and first links 'a book' and 'a friend', both unspecified). This last group of isnads, as well as reflecting a distinct milieu, signals a difference in the format and treatment of the ensuing material. On the one hand, the first two stories introduced by them have scholarly postscripts, listing variants on the authority of further, named sources, while the third story consists of two variants placed in scholarly parallel. On the other hand, two of the 'informally' prefaced stories (F469, F472) bear traces of the 'scholarly' manner in the technical specifications of the songs they contain. There is thus an interplay between the non-scholarly and the scholarly presentation of one and the same theme. If we compare successive versions of the text, we find that, at various stages of revision, three of the stories receive additions. In one case, these consist merely of further scholarly postscripts introduced by new isnads (F470),38 but in two others, the changes take the form of, respectively, added and inserted narrative passages which substantially change the presentation of character and motive (F475, F476).39 Unfortunately, comparisons between Faraj and Nishwdr can be undertaken only with caution in respect of the stories we are considering, since the three stories in the sequence that are also attributed to Nishwdr belong to the lost section(s) of that work, and have survived, in that attribution, only in later sources.40 But if, moving now outside the scope of the sequence, we compare other stories which appear in both collections, we find in a certain number of cases that one telling of a story not only differs in style and density of detail from another, but also alters its import. A case in point is the tale of the wastrel's revenge (F248, N I 93), which will be discussed in the next section of this paper. From the purely textual point of view, the successive revisions of Faraj, and comparison of Faraj and Nishwdr where it can safely be undertaken, enable us to make a synchronic study of different versions of the same material (whereas in the case of the Abu Zubayd khabar, only diachronic' comparisons were possible). Furthermore, Tanukhl's isnads attach his material to specific milieux, and so carry what we could tentatively call broad indications of type (the 'scholarly' anecdote; the 'professional' anecdote). Though much of this material can no longer be checked against its sources, so that Tanukhl's part in shaping a particular version cannot be pinpointed, a comparison of these variants enables us to witness at least the. final stages of a process of synthesis. Sometimes this consists of no more than juxtaposition (e.g. scholarly postscripts); sometimes insertions are fully assimilated into the narrative; and, at times, when a story is recast, the process is one of actual transformation. It is precisely of processes such as these, with similar indications of the milieux if not the actual sources from which the material derives, that we would like to have evidence for Hamadhanl's maqdmdt.
IV Tanukhl's Versions of the Wastrel's Revenge

The processes of insertion or, conversely, pruning, of rearrangement, conflation or recasting, seem to have been handled with especial ease by one particular source of Tanukhl's, who figures both in Faraj and in Nishwdr, and whom we have already encountered: Sarawi, who usually gives his father or some anonymous neighbour as his own source. We first met him in connexion with F469, the 'Bildungsroman', an expanded and complex version of the sold slave-girl theme. He is the source of other
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stories of wealth lost and regained (F245, F246), of which stories of reformed wastrels who rebuild their fortunes form a special category (F271, F469). One of these, the tale of a wastrel's revenge, occurs both in Faraj, under Sarawl's name (F248), and in Nishwar, anonymously ( N I 93). Faraj is demonstrably, for the greater part, if not in its entirety, a later work than Nishwar,41 and, from what we know of Tanukhl's technique of compilation, the fact that the Faraj version of this particular story has a fuller isndd shows it to be later than the Nishwar version. Nevertheless, we will consider the Faraj version first.42 It falls into three parts, of which the second and third are roughly symmetrical: (I) Preface, narrated by Sarawl's father, introducing (a) the hero, "a young neighbour of ours in Baghdad from a family of kdtibs", who falls into abject poverty after wasting his inherited fortune, and (b) the internal narrator, 'one of his former companions who all abandoned him when he grew poor'. (II) First encounter of ruined wastrel and erstwhile companion: the latter feeds him, lends him clothes and takes him to see the singing-girl with whom he used to be in love; on discovering that he is no longer rich, she throws him out and pours a pot of stew on him from an upper window. The hero vainly repents his past folly; the narrator mocks his discomfiture and abandons him again. (Ill) Second encounter between hero and internal narrator: they meet by chance in the street, where the narrator is amazed at the hero's elegant and prosperous appearance. He fawns on him, and the hero invites him home, plies him with refreshments and entertainment, reminds him of the episode of the slave-girl, and makes a grateful eulogy of his new wealth, which he owes to unexpected legacies. He has turned his back on his former ways and embraced prudence and moderation; but the chief of all his new-found blessings is "never again having to see you or any of the friends who used to egg me on to waste my money", with which words the hero has the narrator smartly thrown out. True to his promise, he cuts the narrator dead whenever they meet again. In Faraj, this story, unlike most, does not form part of a sequence, with all that this would entail in the way of making visible the diversity of sources and variability of certain components; nor does it bear any specific thematic affinity to other stories in the collection, except in its opening sentence. It thus shows no obvious signs of derivation, so that it might easily be taken, within the context of Faraj, for a unique composition, with no evident direct precursors. In contrast, the salient feature of the Nishwar version, N I 93, is that, unusually for Nishwar, it forms part of a sequence,43 albeit a somewhat fluid one (N I 90-98 or 102),44 and its first episode is a variant of the preceding story, N I 92. This is underlined by its frame, which twice refers back to N I 92. If we except the frame, N I 93, like the Faraj version, falls into three sections: [Opening of frame:] Quasi-rubric links the story thematically with N I 92 and introduces the narrator; (I) Variant of N I 92: long description of the hero's final act of folly, instigated by the narrator; (II) Episode of the narrator, the hero, the singing girl and the stew (as Faraj, with minor differences of wording; the initial description of the hero's poverty is expanded);
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Julia Ashtiany Bray (III) The hero's revenge: in outline as Faraj, but much fuller (see below); [closing of frame:] Editorial comment by Tanflkhl: N I 92 and section I of N I 93 "strike me as extremely improbable".
The greater length of this version, with its extended pictures of the hero's behaviour before and after his reform, might be expected to exploit more fully the plot's affinity to the Bildungsroman model as seen in F469; but whereas F469 combined variety of setting and incident with a hero who learns from experience, the hero of the earlier, longer and more varied Nishwdr version of the wastrel's tale is markedly less edifying than the hero of the shorter, later Faraj version. Though I stress the respective dating of the two stories, the decisive factor in the recasting of the hero is not chronology as such, but a difference in attitude on the part of the compiler. Whereas Faraj has a simple programmeto show the pattern of a benevolent Providence in human affairs in Nishwdr, the approach to human behaviour, and to the status of stories illustrating it, is less clear-cut.45 Tanukhl's comment on credibility, at the end of N I 93, is typical of this difference; it simultaneously puts in question both the structural integrity of the story and the sum total of its truth contenta form of ambivalence not encountered in Faraj (either in the examples we have seen or in the work generally). Similarly, the hero's character, barely explored in Faraj, is developed in Nishwdr in a manner which suggests that the change that events have wrought in him is not from excess to moderation, but from one sort of excess to another. The passive, ductile wastrel has become a manipulator, able to bide his time and set a trap for his unsuspecting victim, and capable of both the brutalities and the subtleties of obsession. Before ejecting him, he informs his friend that he has been waiting a whole year for his revenge, and calls him by an obscene name; but first, he tortures him with a pretence of being a harmless bore: "Do you remember the old days?" he asked. "Yes," I answered. "Nowadays," he said, "I am only moderately rich; but the wisdom and experience that I have gained are dearer to me than my past wealth. Do you see these rugs and hangings of mine?" "Indeed I do," said I. "Well," said he, "they may not be as grand as the old ones, but people of a middling sort would think them fine enough." "Quite so," I replied. "The same goes for my tableware, clothes and horses," he pursued, "and for my food, my fruit and my wines." With this, he began to enumerate these items, adding, as he ticked each one off, "It may not be particularly costly, but it's handsome, appropriate and perfectly adequate." This went on until he had run through the entire list of his possessions, comparing every single one of them with those he used to own, and commenting each time, "This is just as good as what I had then." With both stories available for comparison, it is easy to follow the process of radical abridgment by which the Faraj version has been derived from Nishwdr. suppression of the frame and of the opening episode, to stabilize the story's structure and increase its credibility; suppression of the above dialogue and of the concluding obscenity, to remove the hero's moral ambivalence. Supposing, however, that we lacked the means to situate the two versions in relation to each other, through the available evidence as to sequence of composition, would we, knowing both versions, be able to conclude that the simpler version was in fact the derivate, and the more complex and sophisticated one the original? Or if, on the other hand, only the Faraj version had survived, would
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it be possible to postulate from it the existence of an original of so much greater vigour and complexity of characterization, and, in its first and last parts, of such different narrative structure and texture? The question is not merely speculative; it applies whenever, there being no clear chain of evidence in the form of acknowledged sources (as with most of Hamadharu's maqdmdt), we wish to go beyond identifying parallels to demonstrating actual influence.
V Hamadhanl's Remodelling of Monologue

In the above example, the transition from original to derivate involved only an operation of abridgment; but it is possible to imagine equally radical transformations being effected by other means. The similarity of situation between the last section of N I 93 and Hamadhanl's Maqama Madiriyya may be used as a hypothetical illustration. As with the Abu Zubayd khabar and the Maqama Asadiyya, we have no proof of any direct link; but given that HamadhanI and Tanukhl were contemporaries (HamadhanI would have been in his mid-20s when the older man died in 384/994), it seems legitimate to compare the way in which their two narratives treat a common theme. The situation of the guest at the mercy of a house-proud host may, in both cases, be a piece of direct social observation; it may be a literary topos available independently to both authors; or it may in fact have been borrowed by HamadhanI from Nishwdr. Whatever the case, the central narrative of the maqama is greatly simplified in comparison with the treatment the same situation receives in N I 93. It lacks the irony that characterizes the episode in N I 93, where the narrator is unaware that he is being manipulated and we are not forewarned by the frame that the scene will end in his discomfiture. The maqama is also a great deal simpler in terms of components and structure. Shorn of its frame, it consists merely of the host's eulogy of his possessions and of his guest's riposte, to which a minimum of external description provides the cues, whereas the corresponding episode of N I 93 contains a succession of small incidents and alternates description and dialogue. The Maqama MadTriyya's frame, as I have shown elsewhere, is of a particular type, associated, in Faraj and Nishwdr with stories of picaresque or romantic adventure, usually in numerous episodes;46 in other words, it is a narrative device, which can only derive from a narrative tradition, and not (as the central situation itself may do) from social observation. The joining of this frame to a story consisting of a single episode therefore also represents a simplification, this time demonstrably a simplification of literary precedent. So far, simplification, the rejection of non-essential incident, is what marks Hamadhanl's treatment of the situationa procedure comparable to that used in the Faraj version of the wastrel's tale, but farther reaching, and with an additional application in respect of the frame. The maqama, however, combines simplification with another procedure, that of amplification. The characterization of the host, telescoped in N I 93 ("This went on until he had run through the entire list") is expanded in the maqama to the furthest possible degree, his monologue occupying more space than does a whole succession of minor incidents and exchanges between host and guest in N I 93. Though this amplification shows us the 'hero' in greater cumulative detail, it does not make for greater depth or subtlety of characterization, being in essence as repetitive in content as it is in technique. Repetition is, of course, an established literary method of displaying obsession; but characters locked into a single outlook or mode of speech are not always monoliths: for many of Jahiz's bukhald', meanness partakes of a variety of intellectual passions, while on a level devoid of metaphor or irony, the
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money-changer hero of F475 hides a romantic heart beneath his talk of cash and capital. By contrast, expansion gives Hamadhanl's host detail without variety; he is simply a bore. This is, of course, because he is not a hero at all; he has undergone a change of role. Nothing happens to him; his fate is irrelevant; his only function in the plot is to trigger his guest's misfortunes.47
VI The Maqdma Saymariyya

In two maqdmas, Hamadham gives, if not a complete isndd, at least the name of a source; these are the Maqdma Bishriyya (in the text of the Constantinople 1298 edition, where it is classed with the mulah and not with the maqamdt), and the Maqdma Saymariyya (in both the Constantinople and the Muhammad 'Abduh editions).48 Only the Maqdma Saymariyya concerns us here. Its plot bears several affinities to the tale of the wastrel's revenge (F248/N I 93). I summarize: The hero, source and narrator, "Muhammad b. Ishaq, known as Abu 'l-'Anbas al-Sayman", has a tale to tell "with a moral and a lesson to it" ('ibra wa-Hza wa-adab) for those with ears to hear. He comes, with a fortune, from Saymara to Baghdad, where he consorts with people of wealth to whom he offers lavish hospitality. They make much of him, but abandon him when his money is exhausted. He repents his foolishness, and flees to distant parts Khurasan and Sijistan; Sind and India; Nubia, Yemen, etc. There he earns his living as a storyteller, beggar and litterateur, until he has collected together enough money and exotic merchandise to return to Baghdad in style. His former associates flock to him with hypocritical expressions of regret at his absence. (At this point, the medium switches from saf to simple prose with only intermittent rhyme.) He pretends forgiveness, and invites his friends to a banquet, meanwhile preparing his revenge. When all his guests are dead drunk, he summons a barber to shave off their beards, and has them loaded into baskets and carried to their homes, each with his shaven beard and a message reading, "Such is the reward of faithless friends". All are too ashamed of their bare chins to go to their places of work; their angry relatives besiege Abu 'l-'Anbas, and they themselves swear to shun him; but the vizier, who has heard who is responsible for the absence of one of his kdtibs, heartily approves, and Abu 'l-'Anbas himself cares not a whit for their enmity. The moral is, never trust time-serving friends. If we recast the above summary as a schema, it becomes evident that the structure of the Maqdma Saymariyya is considerably more complicated than that of most Hamadhanian maqdmdr. the time-scale is unusually extended, with the central narrative spreading over a number of episodes, and it has a moralizing frame of a type not found among the other maqdmdt. In the following plan, italics designate passages in saf, and underlining signals parallels with the tale of the wastrel's revenge (F248/N I 93): (a) Chain of 'transmission' from alleged source: 'Isa b. Hisham, from Saymari, the hero and narrator; (b) [Opening of moralizing frame:] the following is a warning to the wise; [events leading up to central narrative:] (I) days of prodigality and friendship; (II) poverty and solitude; hero's vain remorse; (III) travel and restoration of fortune;
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[central narrative-] (TV) return to Baghdad; feast and revenge; [extensions of central
narrative:] (V) visits of angry relatives; (VI) vizier's approval and reward; (VII) hero's continuing indifference to former friends; (c) [Closing of moralizing frame:] do not trust time-servers. In the Constantinople edition, the ratio of saj' to prose is 61 lines to 41, 49 although the opening episodes of the maqama actually contain fewer incidents than do the central and closing ones. It is the amplification of these episodes, through the accumulation of short clauses consisting of enumerations, iterations and amthdl, that leads to the imbalance. If the whole narrative had been written in saj' using the same technique, it would have been one of the longest, perhaps the longest, of Hamadhanl's maqamat. Formally, this technique is reminiscent of the Maqama Madmyya; but there is a difference of effect. In the Madiriyya, repetition served to fix the speaker's character, which, we noted, is all of a piece. In the Maqama Saymariyya, however, it is debatable whether Abu 'l-'Anbas al-Saymari has even one dimension to his character, in that part of the maqama which is written in 5a/. What is depicted in the opening episodes is not a personality, but a predicament; the lexical flowan impersonal outpouring such as is found, for example, in the Maqama Qarldiyya, which is a string of received critical opinions50has no basis in the type of speaker from which it emanates, and diffuses itself over externals and generalizations. This process of amplification, then, represents a still more radical underlying simplification than that found in the Maqama Madmyya: here, in the 5a/ section of the Saymariyya, the character of the hero is not merely reduced to a single dimension; it is indeterminatein contrast to the shrewd and trenchant characterization of the hero of the prose section of the maqama (who concludes: "I cared not a bit [for his friends' ill-will]; it was no skin off my nose; my withers were unwrung. It didn't hurt me; quite the opposite, indeed: Jacob 'felt a need in his soul which he had to satisfy', and so did I. Let this be a warning ...!"). In episode III (still within the saj' section), the hero's indeterminacy takes on the familiar, Protean quality which we associate with Abu '1-Fath al-Iskandarl, when Saymari, adept in several distinct forms of begging, and armed with the lore of various categories of scholars, professionals and deviants, scrounges, eulogizes and lampoons his way to wealth. What does this juxtaposition of styles and types of hero tell us about Hamadhanl's techniques of composition; and what value are we to place on the fact that Hamadhanl names the maqdma's 'source'? The lapse from saj' into prose strongly suggests that the maqama is unfinished, and that the technique employed by Hamadhanl, in this instance, was that of working up a prose sketch into saj'. This may have required him to go over the whole sketch several times, filling out a passage provisionally and then returning to it and working it up further, which would explain the presence of a few, relatively simple 5a/ clauses in the prose section of the piece. Whatever the actual process employed, its results are not merely stylistic; as we have seen, it also brings about, in the course of the saj' episodes, a progressive redevelopment of the persona of the hero, from little more than a lexical nexus to a polymorphic rogue on the lines of Abu '1-Fath al-Iskandari. If this hypothesis is convincing, we might ask why the hero of the prose section is both so firmly delineated and so different from the hero of the saj' section. A possible answer is to be found in the isnad. The narrator of the maqama, Abu 'l-'Anbas al-Saymari (213-275/828-888), was not only a real person, a nadim of al-Mutawakkil and subsequent caliphs, famous as a prankster and buffoon, but also an occasional poet
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and prose author with a substantial output.51 Surviving examples of his prose are limited to works on astrology; but of the titles attributed to him by the bibliographical/ biographical sources, Kitdb al-Ikhwdn toa-'l-asdiqd' is one of several whose contents probably consisted of anecdotes, and whose rubric could have accommodated the above story. Stories about Saymari also developed independently of attested incidents, and seem at an early stage to have acquired proverbial status;52 In the light of this, there are two possibilities: either the prose section of the Maqama Saymariyya, so distinct in style and conception from the opening sap section, is by Hamadhani, but conforms to the persona of its alleged source; or, more plausibly, it is not by Hamadhani, but is by, or anecdotally attributed to, SaymarT himself. If we accept the latter hypothesis, then the relationship between the two parts of the maqama may allow us some speculation as to Hamadhani's methods of using a model. Let us return to our earlier schema, and to the combined features, other than stylistic disjunction, that appear to be unique to this piece: the isndd naming a real person; the moralizing frame; the extended time-scheme of the central narrative and its pendant episodes. If episodes V to VII had been worked up into full-blown saj', the piece would, as remarked earlier, have outstripped even the Maqama Madmyya (which is 134 lines long in the 'Abduh edition). But the plot of the Madmyya contains very little incident, and most of that is retrospective (the host gives the history of his chattels). Episodes I to III of the Maqama Saymariyya are, somewhat similarly, self-descriptive retrospects leading up to the action proper. Given the technical parallels with the Maqama Madmyya up to this point, we might expect that, had the rest of the piece been put into saj', its plot would have been similarly simplified. As we have seen, the transformation of prose into saj' is accompanied by the transformation of the hero. This process complete, we might expect either the discarding, or a corresponding transformation, of the incompatible moralizing frame. Finally, we would expect Saymari to be eliminated from the isndd, leaving the audience to work out the maqdma's literary ancestry for themselves.
VII Isnads, Families of Akhbar, and Models

Let us now lastly consider the parallels between the Maqama Saymariyya and the Nishwdr version of the wastrel's revenge in the light of the whole body of material discussed in this paper, and attempt some general conclusions. The thematic parallels between the two pieces suggest, not that they are directly related, but that they belong to the same narrative family, a family of the kind to which the variants of the sold slave-girl motif in Chapter XIII of Faraj belonged. These stories bore witness, in their diversity, to the wide diffusion of the theme on which they were based; they were prefixed by isnads which (though they probably do not lead back to the origins of the theme itself) relate each variant to a distinct milieu, or signal the kind of treatment (scholarly, etc.) that the theme will receive. The Maqama Saymariyya shares some of these general features: Saymari is a personage to whom a distinctive body of anecdote attaches, and the plot of the maqama appears to have been widely diffused, as witness the parallels with other reformed wastrel stories, and the fact that the prose section contains an anachronism of a type often associated with numerous re-tellings.53 Above all, the Maqama Saymariyya and its prose canvas (like all the maqdmdt except the Maqama Bishriyya) are first-person narratives, and thus belong to a second, wider 'family' within the mid-'Abbasid narrative tradition. In the Tanukhian material that we have seen, and in mid-'Abbasid writing generally,
Isnadj and Models of Heroes
23
stories told in the first person by a 'witness', and autobiographical stories narrated by the hero, each have special features, which have not yet been sufficiently investigated. A hero who is described or introduced by an intimate witness bears a different relation to the external audience from the hero of a story whose source claims no personal connection with it. A hero who is also his own narrator may have a different relationship again to the reader, and, in telling us about himself, may tell us different things, and in a different way, from a hero who is described by others. 'Autobiographical' and witness isndds are found in a variety of forms (alone, or as part of an extended chain of transmitters), with various functions (as proems, as one of a series of boxed frames, or extending into the narrative), and are prefixed to a variety of material, both scholarly and informal. Such isndds are not an inert pedigree which could be removed without changing the story's import, its relation to the reader, or, indeed, in many cases, its overall narrative structure.54 Hamadhani's reduction of the 'autobiographical' or witness isnad to an invariable form should be considered against this background. Faraj and Nishwdr bear witness to a sophisticated understanding of the intertextuality of stories. The textual history of the material considered in sections II-TV above shows that this sensitivity to variation and cross-reference is, in addition, linked to a view of stories not as invariable once fixed in writing, but as open to continuing change, both with regard to the sum total of their components (elaboration of isndds, addition of postscripts), and in their relation to other stories (as part of a sequence or collection). (This is in no way contradicted by the scrupulousness with which, in Faraj, variants are credited to their sources, and 'published' versions reproduced with the greatest possible accuracy.) In other words, Faraj and Nishwdr represent open, not closed series. This is the dominant tradition with regard to 'Abbasid akhbdr, and any attempt to describe the maqdmdt as a series must also consider their relation to this tradition.55 In its turn, however, the concept of the open series or open work as one 'which allows the author to lengthen or shorten the whole without substantial alterations in the content... or in the aesthetic impression that it creates',56 and of the khabar as a mobile unit which 'is not a constituent part of an integrated overall compilation [and whose] absence would not necessarily change the character of the compilation' 57 must be modified where appropriate to take account of our findings regarding Faraj, where the addition or re-positioning of akhbdr in successive authorial revisions changes at least the local character of a given section or sequence. The evidence of the Tanukhian material also requires us to keep an open mind about the possible relationships between parallels and available models, and between genuine sources and derivates. As examples from Faraj and Nishwdr show, a source may be more complex than its derivate; as we have seen, HamadhanI may simplify an available type or model as well as amplifying it, and, as a literary pioneer, may not necessarily look to the most recent of available models to carry forward his experiments. To present-day prejudices, Hamadhani's inconsistent and ambiguous hero seems, almost by definition, more sophisticated, more intriguing, more likely to reward critical analysis, and above all more modern, than the heroes of Faraj and Nishwdr, but typologically, if not by birth, he harks back to an older model, to Abu Zubayd, the hero cast as a logical puzzlea fascinating but limited device compared to the variety of techniques of presenting and exploring character seen in Faraj and Nishwdr. Acknowledgements I should like to record my thanks to the staff of the Bibliotheque Nationale for their
24
Julia Ashtiany Bray
kindness in giving me permission to consult MSS Paris ar.3483 and 3484 at short notice, and for their speed in supplying microfilms, and to Dr Hars Kurio, Bibliotheksdirektor, Orientabteilung, Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, for supplying me with a microfilm of Ahlwardt 8737, 8738.
Notes and References

1. For bibliographical references to these authors and to works in this field up until the 1990s, see Werkmeister, W. (1983) Quellenuntersuchungen zum Kitb al-'Iqd al-Fard des Andalusiers Ibn 'Abdrabbih (246/860-328/940) (Berlin: Schwartz); Gnther, S. (1991) Quellenuntersuchungen zu den "Maqtil at-Tlibiyyn" des Ab l-Fara al-Isfahn (gest. 356/967) (Hildesheim: O1ms) and n.10 below. 2. See for example Leder, S. (1988) Authorship and transmission in unauthored literature: the Akhbr attributed to al-Haytham ibn 'Ad, Oriens, 31, pp. 67-81. 3. It is discussed as such by J. N. Mattock, (1984) The early history of the Maqma, Journal of Arabic Literature, XV, pp. 1-18. I was unaware, until after I had completed a first draft of this paper, that Mattock had already analysed in detail both this khabar and the other main item in this section of my paper. Like Mattock (The early history, p. 2), I came upon this material more or less by chance; and like him, my concern is as much to catch a glimpse of [Hamadhn's] technique in operation (idem, p. 11) as to establish a chronology. Though our methods differ, our conclusions tend to support each other. 4. Vol. XII (Cairo, 1329/1950), pp. 127-31 = Vol. XI (Bulaq, 1285), pp. 24-5. See Mattock's translation of the introductory passage, The early history, n. 12, pp. 10-11. 5. Tabaqt, ed. M. M. Shkir, II (Jidda: Dr al-Madan, n.d.), pp. 593-9. Blachre calls it 'un rcit apocryphe, mais d'une magnifique forme littraire, fix par IBN SALLM': Blachre (1964) Histoire de la littrature arabe, II (Paris: Maisonneuve), pp. 326-7. Ab Zubayd's reputation among 'Abbasid scholars rested mainly on his poems about lions and other animals. Material relating to him is quoted by many contemporaries of Ibn Sallm and Ab 'l-Faraj al-Isfahn, including Jhiz (d. 255/868-9), Bayn and Hayawn, Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), Shi'r, Mubarrad (d. c. 285/898), Kama, Ibn 'Abd Rabbih (d. 328/940), 'Iqd, and Ql (d. 356/967), Aml; none of these authors refers to the khabar in question. 6. Ibn Sallm cites him frequently as sole source for material on Jarr, al-Farazdaq and al-Akhtal; he totals more than 30 citations in Tabaqt. His role as a transmitter, if not an elaborator, of akhbr (cf. Blachre, loc. cit., who calls him 'un informateur bdouin suspect') therefore seems to have been of some importance. 7. Two anecdotes in Tankh's Nishwr refer to Ab Khalfa's ability to improvise in saj', see Nishwr al-muhdara, ed. 'A. al-Shlj (1391-3/1971-3), II (Beirut: n.p.), pp. 27-8: n.p. quoted in Yqt (1931) Irshd al-arb, ed. D. S. Margoliouth, VI(6) (London: Gibb Memorial Series), p. 137. Mattock (1984) prefers to take Ibn Sallm's date of death as the terminus ante quern for the piece (The early history, pp. 2, 10). 8. Shakir (n.d.), Introduction Tabaqt, pp. 38-41. 9. Shakir, Introduction Tabaqt, p. 41. 10. See Munr Sultn (1978) al-Marzubn wa 'l-Muwashshah (Alexandria), pp. 132-7, 338, and especially p. 136 for indirect, biographical evidence that al-Marzubn's source may have read the book to/with him. The isnds in Muwashshah are otherwise uninformative; they are of the akhbaran/haddathan type, which should correspond, respectively, to a process of qir'a and of sam' (see Gregor Schoeler (1985) Weiteres zur Frage der schriftlichen oder mndlichen berlieferung der Wissenschaften im frhen Islam, Der Islam, 62, pp. 38-67, especially pp. 61-2), but often reflect direct consultation of a written source; for striking examples of the latter, see al-Sarrj, (n.d.) Masari' al-'ushshq, ed. Karam al-Bustn, I (Beirut: Dr Sdir), p. 227 (... ql haddathan Ab 'l-Faraj ... al-Isfahn f Kitb al-Aghn...), Masri', I, p. 236 (haddatha [Fuln] wa-naqaltuh min khattih ...), and Tankh, al-Faraj ba'd al-Shidda, ed. 'A. al-Shlj, V (Beirut: Dr Sdir, 1398/1978), p. 97 (wa-anshadan [for verse, the counterpart of haddathan] al-Qd Ab 'l-Husayn ['Umar b. Ab 'Umar al-Azd, d. 328; Tankh was born 327] f kitbih ...). 11. Shkir, Introduction Tabaqt, pp. 27-30, 31-2. The Medina nonscript has an isnd of the akhbaran type, with no indications of qir'a/sam'; the Isfahani manuscript has an isnd of the quri'a 'al type. 12. Tankhl, Nishwr III, pp. 289-91, quoted in Yqt, Irshd VI(6), pp. 138-40.
Isnds and Models ofHeroes
25
13. See Mattock (1984) The early history, pp. 2, 4, 6 for closer analysis of the use of saj' in version A and in two pieces (including the 'companion piece to version B', discussed below) from pseudo-Jhiz, al-Mhasin wa-'l-addd. 14. Pseudo-Jhiz, Mahsin, ed. G. van Vloten (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1898), pp. 112-15. The dating of the piece is uncertain. It belongs to the first section of the book, which Ibrahim Geries argues must be modelled on, and postdate, Ibrhm b. Muhd. al-Bayhaq, al-Mahsin wa-'l-masw; the latter is dated by Geries, with some reservations, to the period of al-Muqtadir (295-320/908-932); see Geries (1977) Un genre linraire arabe: al-Mahsin wa-l-masw (Paris: Maisonneuve), pp. 71-4. For Mattock's dating, see Mattock (1984) The early history, p. 2; for his translation of the piece, see ibid., pp. 11-13. 15. 'Al b. al-Muhassin al-Tankh, Lat'if al-akhbr wa-tadhkirat l 'l-absr, ed. 'A. H. al-Bawwb (1413/1993) (Riyadh: Dr 'Alam al-Kutub), p. 60. (This is not a critical edition, and the attribution of the work is not certain.) 'Al b. al-Muhassin was the only son of the author of Faraj and Nishwr, on his life and importance as a source for Ta'rkh Baghdd, see Alfred Wiener (1913) Die Far ba'd a-idda-Literatur, Der Islam, IV, pp. 270-98, 387-420, especially pp. 391-3. 'Al al-Muhassin is also a major source for Sarrj, Masri', where he is cited 57 times; only three of the items go back to his father. 16. Mu'ammarn, ed. I. Goldziher (1899) Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philogie, II (Leiden: E. J. Brill) p. 98. 17. See Mattock's remarks on the use of saj' in this piece and on its possible relation to rajaz: The early history, p. 6; I suspect that the coupling of the terms has no significance other than as an idiom meaning 'come to the point'. For another example of the topos of the plain speaker bidding an ingratiating inferior 'spare me your saj'', see al-Husr (1925) Zahr al-db, ed. Z. Mubarak IV, (Cairo), p. 1115 where the interlocutors are Ziyd b. Abh and Ab ' l-Aswad al-Du'al. 18. Mahsin, pp. 107-112. See Mattock's translation and summary: The early history, pp. 6-8. The episode seems to be unique to Mahsin; it is not to be found, for example, in the al-Hajjj/Ibn al-Ash'ath sequence in pseudo-Ibn Qutayba, al-Imama wa'l-siysa. 19. Although he cites both pieces, Mattock does not establish a link between version B and its companion piece. He links the latter directly to Hamadhn's magmt through the way in which saj' is employed, and through the remark that "The story itself is inconsequential, and somewhat immoral, and, by virtue of these characteristics alone, it would not be out of place among [Hamadhn's] Maqmt'' (The early history, p. 6). 20. Ibn al-'Arab (560-638/1165-1240), Muhdart al-abrr, (Cairo, 1305), pp. 56-7. 21. Versions postdating Aghn are given below in chronological order: A(ii) = Ibn 'Askir (499-571/1105-76), Ta'rkh Dimashq, abridged 'A. Q. Badrn and A. 'Ubayd (1332) Ta'hdhb Ta'rkh-Dimashq, IV, (Damascus: al-Majma' al-'ilm al-'arab biDimashq) pp. 108-111 consists of (b); (a) as version A(i), with further augmentations; (1)-(5) as version A; A(iii) = Ab '1-Hajjj Ysufb. Muhd. al-Balaw (526-604/1132-1207), Alif b', I (Cairo, 1287), pp. 385-6: lacks (a), (b), (1) and (2) (NB this is a children's book, and the piece is cited for its vocabulary); A(iv) = Yqt (c. 574-626/1179-1229), Irshd, ed. Margoliouth, VI(4), pp. 107, 109-111: lacks (a) and augments (b) with material different from that in versions A(i), A(ii); A(v) = Sadr al-Dn 'Al-b. Ab '1-Faraj ... al-Basr (1964) al-Hamsa al-basriyya (dedicated 647/1249, see Brockelmann, GAL SI, p. 41), ed. M. Ahmad II (Hyderabad: D'irat al-Ma'rif al-'Uthmniyya), pp. 331-7: (a) gives source as Ab 'Amr b. al-'Al' al-Basr; lacks (b) and (1); A(vi) = 'Abd al-Qdir b. 'Umar al-Baghdd (1030-93/1621-82), Khiznat al-adab, II (Bulaq, 1299), p. 1555: preserves only the frame of version A, omitting the saj' recital; (a), (b) and text give sources as Ab Htim f Kitb al-Mu'ammarn, wa-Ibn Qutayba f Kitb al-Shu'ar', waghayruhum, ... al-Jumah... shib al-Aghn; (b) abbreviated from version A(iv); (2), (3) and (5) omitted. 22. Chapter DC of Tankh's Faraj is devoted to such stories. For lion stories, see Faraj, IV, pp. 410-412, 414, 416, 417, 423, 425, 427-431. 23. Mattock believes that close textual parallels can be demonstrated between version B and the Maqma Asadiyya (The early history, pp. 15-16), and that version B is the actual prototype of the maqma (idem, pp. 10, 11); he concludes, "It may be that we can here actually catch a glimpse of [Hamadhn's] technique in operation, if, that is, we are right in supposing him to have adapted and embellished current anecdotes in order to publish them in a distinctive literary form." 24. See e.g. Ashtiany, J. (1991) al-Tankh's al-Faraj ba'd al-shidda as a literary source, in: A. Jones
26
Julia Ashtiany Bray

(ed.) Ambicus Felix: Luminosus Britannicus. Essays in Honour of A. F. L. Beeston on his Eightieth Birthday (Reading: Ithaca) (pp. 108-28), pp. 108-15 and note 50 below. Moreh, S. (1992) Live Theatre and Dramatic Literature in the Medieval Arab World (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press) ought to be mentioned here. Unfortunately, his characterization of the Hamadhanian maqma (pp. 17, 105) is too sweeping to be linked usefully to his evidence for the existence of various kinds of dramatic performance during this period. In Shlj's five-volume edition of Faraj, the stories are numbered consecutively through volumes I to IV. References will be given in the form F ( = Faraj, ed. Shlj) + story number. The poems in volume V are not numbered; references to that volume will be given in the form F V + page number. In Shlj's eight-volume edition of Nishwr ( = N), the stories are numbered consecutively by volume; references will be given in the form N +volume number + story number. F469 is induded by Shl in Nishwr (N V 139) in a text recuperated from Sarrj (417-500/1026-1105), Masri', with Tankh's son as informant (see n. 15 above). c His full name, Ubayd Allh b. Muhd. b. al-Hasan b. (al-)Haff al-'Abqas al-Saraw 'the poet', which is nowhere given in its complete form, can be pieced together and confirmed from isnds such as the following: F V, p. 23; F342; F364; Faraj (Cairo, 1955), p. 216 ( = F248); Faraj, Oxford, Bodleian Ms. Pocock 64 fo. 55b ( = F420) and Paris, Bibliothque Nationale, Ms. ar. 3483, fo. 101b ( = F248). In Nishwr, Saraw figures chiefly as a poet and a source for verse, but in Faraj he is a source specializing in stories about unfortunate young men (see section IV below). On external description in mid-'Abbasid prose, see Stefan Leder (1987) Prosa-Dichtung in der ahbr berlieferung. Narrative Analyse einer Satire, Der Islam, LXIV, p. 23, and, especially, Kathrin Mller (1993) "Und der Kalif lachte, bis er auf den Rcken fiel", Ein Beitrag zur Phraseologie und Stilkunde des klassischen Arabisch (Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften). See Appendix A, (i). See Appendix A, (ii). The vogue of the sold slave-girl theme may be guessed from the fact that it also appears in the poetry of the period, see e.g. Ab Bakr al-Khwrazm in al-Tha'lib, Yatmat-al-dahr, ed. M. M. Qumayha (1403/1983), IV (Beirut: Dr al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya), Ch. 4, p. 271. I use the term loosely to refer to the general configuration of the plot, and without any suggestion that the stories in Faraj should be treated as folk literature. F476, in Escorial manuscript fos 304-5 (according to Shlj's apparatus), Paris ar. 3484, fos 241a-b and Berlin Ahlwardt 8738, fo. 142a only. Characterization of slave-girl and purchaser is omitted in Paris ar. 3483, fo. 259a and Pocock 64, fo. 132a. F472; F475; F476 (as in n. 33 above). The purchaser's speech is greatly expanded in Pocock 64, fo. 131a, and Paris ar. 3483, fos 258b-9a. Not all readers of subtexts are as expert as Michael Lecker; see his (1995) Biographical notes on Ab 'Ubayda Ma'mar b. al-Muthann', Studia Islamica, 81, p. 75. It is the great merit of Shlj's superbly indexed and annotated edition to have reinstated the isnds and identified the transmitters named in them. In texts such as the Cairo editions and the John Rylands manuscript, the abridgement of a high proportion of isnds gives the stories the air of timeless archetypes. Some important ideas on the isnds of Faraj (and on related thematic and structural aspects of the work) are to be found in Muhammad Hasan 'Abd Allh (1983) Kitb al-Faraj ba'd al-shidda li '1-Qd '1-Tankh. Dirsa fanniyya tahlliyya, 'lam al-fikr, (Kuwait), XIV, pp. 359-416. On the role of the isnds in Nishwr in situating Tankh's sources in the hierarchy of their profession, see Hartmut Fhndrich (1988) Die Tischgesprche des mesopotamischen Richters--Untersuchungen zu al-Muhassin at-Tanhs Niwr al-Muhdara, Der Islam, LXV, pp. 91-2. The first postscript is present in the Rabat manuscript and in Pocock 64, but absent from both Paris manuscripts; the second postscript is present in the Cairo and Rabat manuscripts, in Pocock 64 and in both Paris manuscripts. Both postcripts are missing from Ahlwardt 8738. See notes 35 and 33 above. F475 also has an expanded isnd in the Escorial manuscript, Pocock 64, Paris ar. 3483 and Ahlwardt 8738. These are F 4 6 9 = N V 139 (Sarrj, Masri', see n. 26 above); F470 = N V 72 (Ibn al-Jawz, Dhamm al-haw); F474 = N VII 154 (Ibn al-Jawz, al-Muntazam). The attributions to Nishwr are circumstantial and stylistic. Badr Muhammad Fahd (1966) al-Qd al-Tankh wa-Kitb al-Nishwr (Baghdad: Matba'at al-Irshd); Shlj, Introduction, Faraj, pp. 14, 39, 44, 48.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29. 30. 31.
32. 33.
34. 35. 36. 37.
38.
39. 40.
41.
Isnds and Models ofHeroes
27
42. Shlj's text of F248 appears to be based on the Zhiriyya and John Rylands manuscripts, but variants in the latter are not indicated in full. There are a large number of minor variants between his text and Paris ar. 3483, fos 101b-2a, but these do not affect the plot of the story, or the points under discussion below. Apart from a few careless scribal omissions, MS Ahlwardt 8738 agrees entirely with Shlj's text. This part of Faraj is one of those missing from Pocock 64. 43. Clear sequences of thematic/structural variants are a recurrent feature of Faraj, which seems to be accentuated in what I take to be its later stages of revision; see, for the present, my unpublished paper, "The motif index and medieval Arabic prose. A critique of Ulrich Marzolph's Arabia Ridens (1992)", given at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, February 1994. For a more general view, based on Shlj's edition without reference to other sources, see Antonella Ghersetti (1991) Il qd al-Tanh e il Kitb-fara ba'd al-sidda, Istituto Orientale di Napoli, Annali, LI, pp. 42-5, 50-1 (this article also gives the fullest overview of approaches to, and the most complete current bibliography of, Faraj; see now also Ghersetti's translation of Faraj, Ghersetti (1995), Il Sollievo dopo la distretta (Milan: Edizioni Ariele, which I have not been able to consult). Such sequences are rarer in Nishwr, whose title does not announce a theme, and which has no chapter headings marking off sub-themes; nevertheless, groups and sequences do occur, see Fahd, al-Qd 'l-Tankh, pp. 84-9 and Fhndrich, Tischgesprche, pp. 94-5. 44. The theme of the sequence emerges as that of heroic extravagance, but the links between the first three stories are tangential. 45. Tankh's prefaces to Faraj and Nishwr outline a loose programme for each book: that of Faraj is to give heart to those in distress (Faraj, I, p. 52), that stated in the first preface of Nishwr is to indict the paltriness of the present age and exalt the heroic stature of the past generation through a medley of akhbr embracing every sphere of human activity (Nishwr I, pp. 1-7, 8-11; cf. Fahd, al-Qd 'l-Tankh, pp. 18, 65). (For a different interpretation, see Tarif Khalidi (1994) Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 113-14). 46. See n. 24 above, first reference. 47. Fedwa Malti-Douglas analyses Ab '1-Fath's role and that of his host in terms of social functions, rather than of social functions mediated through narrative conventions and serving narrative ends (1985) Maqmt and Adab: "al-Maqma al-Madriyya" of al-Hamadhn, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 105, pp. 254-7. 48. D. S. Richards (1991) The Maqmt of al-Hamadhn: general remarks and a consideration of the manuscripts, JAL, XXII, p. 98, points out that in the two earliest dated manuscripts of Hamadhn's Maqmt Ftih 4097, dated 520/1126, and Aya Sofya 4283, dated 622/1225, the Bishriyya is classed as a maqma (Ftih 4097, fo. 26a; Aya Sofya 4283, fo. 14a). In both manuscripts, as in the printed editions, the Bishriyya and the Saymariyya are alone in having convennonal isnds. (I am grateful to Mr Richards for letting me consult his microfilms of the two manuscripts). 49. Sixty-one lines to 44 in the 'Abduh edition, where a reference to a cheating bookseller is added at the end. This passage is also found in MS Ftih 4097, fo. 34b. In MS Aya Sofya 4283, the end of the maqma is missing, and the remaining text (fos 19a-b, 21a-b) is intersected by fragments of other maqmt. 50. The ancestry of these opinions is discussed by Muhammad Qsim Mustaf (1984) al-Naqd al-adab f Maqmt Bad' al-Zamn al-Hamadhn, al-Mawrid, (Baghdad), XIII (iii), pp. 63-72. 51. Yqt, Irshd, VI(6), pp. 401-6, reproduces earlier sources including Ibn al-Nadm, Fihrist, Ta'rkh Baghdd, and some of the material in Aghn. Charles Pellat (1968) Un curieux amuseur Bagdadien: Ab l-'Anbas as-Saymar, Studia Orientalia in Memoriam C. Brockelmann, pp. 133-7 (Halle), adds further sources from Brockelmann, GAL SI, p. 396, but is largely based on Yqt and does not mention the Maqma Saymariyya. This bibliography is superseded by Pellat's article Ab 'l-'Anbas al-Saymar, EI2, Supplement, fasc. 1-2, pp. 16-17. See also F. Sezgin, GAS, VII, pp. 152-3. 52. See Pellat (1968) Un curieux amuseur ..., for reference to a story usually told about Juh, but attached to Saymar in Ibn 'Abd Rabbih, 'Iqd; see further anecdotes in Ab Hayyn al-Tawhd (d. 414/1023), (1408/1988) al-Bas'ir wa 'l-dhakh'ir, ed. W. al-Qdi, IV (Beirut: Dr Sdir), pp. 45, 108; VI, pp. 42, 60. 53. The vizier is named as al-Qsim b. 'Ubayd Allh, who served al-Mu'tadid and al-Muktaf, and so postdates the historical Saymar. A comparable anachronism occurs in the famous story of the Weaver of Words (h'ik al-kalm), of which some five versions seem to have been current by the first half of the 4th/10th century. The central dialogue of all the versions I have examined shows a marked similarity to a passage in a mid-3rd/9th-century ktib's manual, in which the five types of secretary are described (Dominique Sourdel (1952-4) Le 'Livre des Secrtaires' de 'Abdallh
28
Julia Ashtiany Bray al-Bagdd [fl. c. 255/869], Bulletin d'Etudes Orientales, XIV, pp. 123, 149-50). As Sourdel observes, in the two early 4th century versions of the stoiy (Ibn 'Abd Rabbih, 'Iqd, and Bayhaq, Mahsin), 'Amr b. Mas'ada is styled vizier instead of ktib, and his master is named as al-Mu'tasim instead of al-Ma'mn (1959-60) (Le Vizirat 'abbside de 749 936, I (Damascus: Institut Franais de Damas) p. 237). (The same anachronisms are found in al-Qalqashand (d. 821/1418), (1331/1913) Subh al-a'sh, I (Cairo: al-Matba'a al-Amiriyya, p. 142). Already in a version which is probably roughly contemporary with Baghdd's Livre des Secrtaires, 'Amr is referred to as vizier, but the anachronism is projected backward instead of forward, with the caliph named as al-Rashd (pseudo-Ibn Qutayba, al-Imma wa'l-siysa, ed. M. M. al-Marfa' II (Cairo: Matba'at al-Nl, 1322/1904), pp. 301-7). These anachronisms are absent from Tankh's version, F341, although his source was a contemporary of Bayhaq and Ibn 'Abd Rabbih, the qd Ab '1-Husayn 'Umar b. Abi 'Umar al-Azd (d. 328/940); they are also absent from a complex variant retailed by Saraw, F342. Note that the John Rylands manuscript of Faraj, as a result of pruning the isnds, often puts first-person narrative into the third person. See Appendix B. Serafin Fanjul, review of Fedwa Malti-Douglas (1985) Structures of Avarice: The Bukhal' in Medieval Arabic Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill), (1987) JAL, XVIII, p. 131. Leder, Authorship and Transmission, p. 67.
54.
55. 56. 57.
Appendix A (i) The Textof Faraj The textual history of Faraj has not yet been fully investigated. Wiener drew attention to discrepancies betvveen the contents of the Cairo edition of 19034 and the manuscripts examined by him ((1913) Die Fara ba'd a-idda-Literatai, Derlslam, IV, pp. 398400). Dominique Sourdel studied these discrepancies more closely, with particular reference to isnds and narrative passages absent from the Cairo edition of 1955 (which is a reset printing of Cairo 1903-4) and present in one or the other of Paris MSS ar.3483 and 3484, Damascus MS Zhiriyya adab 34, and Berlin MSS Ahhvardt 8737 and 8738 (see (1956) Une lettre inedite de "Alb. 's (317/929), Arabica, Tu, pp. 80-90; (1955-7) Fragments d'al-$ul sur l'histoire des vizirs 'Absides, BuUetin d'Etudes Orientales (Damascus), XV, pp. 98-108; (1957) Nouvelles recherches sur la devudme partie du 'Livre des Vizirs' d'al-Gahiyr, Melanges Louis Massignon iii, (Damascus), pp. 271-99); Le Vizirat 'abbside de 749 j' 936, passim; and review of Rouchdi Fakkar, At-Tanhi et son livre: la delivrance apres l'angoisse (Cairo: Institut Francais d'Archologie Orientale), in (1957) Arabica, V, pp. 88-90. Neither Wiener nor Sourdel examined the differences in the sequence of the stories and their distribution between chapters in different manuscripts and in the edition(s) available to them. Shljl's edition contains 492 stories, as against 360 in the Cairo editions, and restores the isnds, which are garbled, pruned or omitted in the Cairo editions. His text is based on the Cairo 1955 edition and on five manuscripts (see Faraj, Introduction, pp. 21-8); for Tart I' (extent unspecified), these are (a/the) Damascus Zhiriyya manuscript(s) (undated, but Shlj identifies its owner as having died 1262 AH; no catalogue number given; Shlj's readings do not always seem to coincide with Sourdel's); for 'Part II' (extent unspecified), on a Rabat MS (dated 849 AH; no catalogue number given); for the whole text, on Escorial MS 714 (dated 975 AH), Manchester John Rylands MS Arabic 667(306) (dated 1050 AH), and Cairo Dar al-Kutub MS b' 22959 (1945/ 2170, 13225 Add.) (dated 1212 AH). The different manuscript readings are clearly indicated by square brackets in the text and by footnotes, but the sequence/numbering
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29
of the stories, and their distribution between chapters, are not explained, though folio references are provided which show that ShaljT has on occasion departed from the sequence(s) followed by his sources. I myself have been able to consult the following texts: editions: Cairo, 1903-4/1955; Hasan b. As'ad Dihistani, Faraj-e ba'd az shiddat (a selective Persian translation with interpolations, made between 651 and 660 AH), ed. I. HakimI, from a manuscript dated 706 AH (Tehran 1355, repr. 1363); MSS: one of those used by Shaljl, Manchester John Rylands 667(306) (a poor and late copy, with many abridged isndds, especially in chapters I-VI); one manuscript not discussed by Wiener or Sourdel, and not consulted by ShaljT, the Oxford Bodleian MS Pocock 64 (undated, incomplete, and twice rebound out of sequence, but otherwise an excellent copy with very full isndds; its readings agree with, and very occasionally supplement, Paris ar.3483); four of the manuscripts discussed by Sourdel, three of which cover the whole text, these being: Paris ar.3483 (dated 1126 AH); Paris ar.3484 (dated 1214 AH; an inferior manuscript, which bears signs of scribal editing); Berlin MS Ahlwardt 8738 (first juz' dated 1012 AH). The readings of ShaljI's Rabat and Escorial manuscripts frequently agree with, sometimes differ from, and are sometimes supplemented by (very rarely supplement) Pocock 64/Paris ar.3483. (Ahlwardt 8738 presents a problematic picture, in terms of fullness of isndds and, to some extent, of sequence, having clearly been copied from a number of sources of varying completeness.) I interpret this evidence as pointing to at least one overall revision, and one or more partial revisions, of the text by TanukhT himself, which should be distinguished from scribal editing/mutilation of the text, as found in the text on which the Cairo editions are based, and in Paris ar.3484 and the John Rylands manuscript. On the evidence at present available to me, I would interpret Pocock 64/Paris ar.3483 as representing the last stages of revision by TanukhT; see, for the present, Ashtiany, Tanukhi's isndds paper presented to the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, Manchester, July 1994, and reproduced in the Proceedings for that year. Microfilms of three further mss from the collection of the late A. F. L. Beeston (Leiden Cod. Or. 61, Istanbul Siilemaniye (Reisulkuttab Mustafa Ef.) 864 & Sulemaniye (Ahmed III) 2629) have not been examined fully by me.
(ii) The 'sold slave-girl' sequence
In five/six of the sources I have consulted (Paris ar.3483 and 3484, Pocock 64, the Cairo editions, Ahlwardt 8738), the sold slave-girl stories form an unbroken sequence of nine items, equivalent to F468-F476 in ShaljI's edition. In four/five sources (Paris ar.3483, Pocock 64, the Persian translation, which lacks F472, F473, F47.5, F476, and in the Cairo editions), the sequence is closed by a tenth story, F479, a variant on the basic story-type illustrated in the sequence, in which a man meets, parts from, and at last unexpectedly wins a slave-girl. This item is lacking from ShaljI's Rabat and Escorial manuscripts, and from Paris ar. 3484 and Ahlwardt 8738; John Rylands 667(306) lacks both F476 and F479. (The sequence of the remaining items in the chapter agrees in Paris ar.3483, Pocock 64 and the Persian translation, although the latter lacks 11 out of the 15 stories in this section in the chapter. The last five items in Ahlwardt 8738 agree in sequence with Paris ar. 3483. There are considerable variations of sequence, and, in the case of Paris ar. 3484, the John Rylands manuscript, and ShaljI's Escorial and Dar al-Kutub manuscripts, omissions, in this section.)
30
Julia Ashtiany Bray
Appendix B
Hamadhdni's Maqamat Mss. and Sequence D. S. Richards points out that the sequence and rubrication adopted by 'Abduh and the Constantinople edition of Hamadhanl's Maqamat respectively do not correspond to those found in the earliest manuscripts, which have fewer items, few and different rubrics, and differ from each other as well as from the printed texts ((1991) The Maqamat of al-Hamadhanl: general remarks and a consideration of the manuscript JAL, XXII, pp. 97-8). It may be of interest to compare the order in which the maqamat discussed in this paper occur in the Constantinople edition, MS Fatih 4097, dated 520/1126, and MS Aya Sofya 4283, dated 622/1225 (bearing in mind that the sequence in this last manuscript may present local problems as a result of the breaks and lacunae described in n.48 above): Downloaded by [New York University] at 22:02 22 December 2011 (a) Constantinople edition: Asadiyya (6), Madiriyya (22), Saymariyya (43), Bishriyya (52, classed as first midha); (b) MS Fatih 4097: Asadiyya (9), Bishriyya (30), Madiriyya (33), Saymariyya (35); (c) MS Aya Soya 4283: [Asadiyya lacking], Madiriyya (5), Bishriyya (8), Saymariyya (9) (see Richards, Maqamat, pp. 95-6). This shows the mobility of the Maqamat as a series; Richards also suggests that they were transmitted as an open series, and that the 10 or so maqamat lacking from the Fatih and Aya Sofya manuscripts may be insertions of doubtful authorship. These factors, he notes, invalidate attempts to analyse the Maqamat as a chronologically or thematically ordered whole on the basis of the printed editions (Maqamat, pp. 98-9).

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This article was downloaded by: [New York University] On: 22 December 2011, At: 22:02 Publisher: Routledge

Arabic & Middle Eastern Literature

Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1998

JULIA ASHTIANY BRAY

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I Abu Zubayd and the Cowardly Liar of Pseudo-Jahiz

1366-6169/98/010007-24 1998 Carfax Publishing Ltd

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Isnads and Models of Heroes

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II Tanukhl's Lovers of Sold Slave-girls

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IV Tanukhl's Versions of the Wastrel's Revenge

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V Hamadhanl's Remodelling of Monologue

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VI The Maqdma Saymariyya

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VII Isnads, Families of Akhbar, and Models

Isnadj and Models of Heroes

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Notes and References

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29. 30. 31.

34. 35. 36. 37.

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55. 56. 57.

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(ii) The 'sold slave-girl' sequence

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