Masters of Song Among the Arabs: Ibrahim al-Mawsili

Masters of Song Among the Arabs

In Rayy I abide — through the villages of Rayy I roam;
I do not see myself, to the end of time, departing the villages of Rayy.

It matters to the man of letters to read such verse and to know that it is of Ibrahim al-Mawsili's composing and his singing, before he knows who this Ibrahim was — that his family name was Maymun and became al-Mawsili; and that this Mawsili was not from Mosul at all, but journeyed there and fell in with bands of vagabonds who waylaid the highway, he waylaying it with them; they would gather in their takings, and then drink, and carouse, and sing — and so he came to be named after that town.

It matters to the man of letters to know that there was no one like him in his time in singing and in the invention of melodies, and that when he sang, with Mansur — the one known as Zalzal — playing for him, the whole gathering would quake.

It matters to us to know this before we know that he was, say, of Persian origin, born at Kufa in the year 125 A.H., and that he died in Baghdad in the year 188 A.H. And perhaps this Ibrahim grows in worth in our eyes once we know that al-Mahdi was the first caliph to hear him, and that he fell upon his heart with full force. Between Ibrahim and al-Mahdi there are stories upon stories. Al-Mahdi did not drink, and wanted our singer to abstain from drink; and Ibrahim, for all his Iraqi ways, embraced both schools at once, applying to himself the saying of Ibn Abd Rabbih in both its halves:

Our creed in music is a creed of Medina,
and in our drinking of wine, Iraqi.

He told of himself, saying:
"Al-Mahdi did not drink, and he wished me to keep to his company and give up wine, but I refused him. I would absent myself from him for days, and when I came to him I came to him tipsy. This enraged him against me, so he beat me and imprisoned me."

He used to visit Musa and Harun, al-Mahdi's two sons, drinking with them until they were drunk; and whenever one of the informers — and they are many in every time and place — rose to carry word of them to al-Mahdi, he would order Ibrahim given hundreds of lashes, while Ibrahim said to him: "My crime is not among the crimes that

How often the brethren roused me, night still upon them,
and the night's drowsiness abiding like a settled lodger,
when the stars had sunk and hung dangling in their abysses —
for that which is pressed when its vines have ripened.

make it lawful for you to shed my blood. By God, were your two sons' secret beneath my foot, I would not lift it from it even if it were cut off."

And Ibrahim was al-Rashid's boon companion too. He accompanies him on one of his journeys, and vanishes between the earth's hearing and its sight. When, after some days, he returned to al-Rashid, the latter asked him: And where were you in your absence? He answered: My tale is a strange one, O Commander of the Faithful. A charming wine-seller met me, fair of face, delightful in company, and I stayed with him. When I wished to rejoin the Commander of the Faithful, he adjured me to stay, and brought out for me wine finer and better than any I have seen; so I stayed three days, and gave him some dinars I had with me, and a robe, and said of him:

A toast to the house of a wine-seller where I made merry,
in the midst of Rusafa, a day and then two days more;
I kept pawning my garments and drinking it down —
a golden wine aged two full years in the jar —
until, when all of them were gone from me,
I came back to him at usury: a jar upon a debt.

Nor was this the first time Ibrahim broke an engagement with the Commander of the Faithful; such things, and weightier, happened to him often.

He was a taker of risks, an adventurer, in an age that knew the most splendid of living risks and adventures. And what adventure is greater than this: our friend — on his way to the palace of the caliphate at al-Rashid's invitation — passes a basket let down from one of the lofty, famous palaces of Baghdad, and in the window a slave-girl awaiting the promised beloved, and behind her girls burning, yearning!!... And Ibrahim asks himself: why should he not be this happy beloved? So he seats himself in the basket and is drawn up to "paradise." As for al-Rashid — he will know how to make his excuses to him for this failing. But hardly had the gazelles seen the strange face from afar than they shied from him and said: What has brought you in upon us, O enemy of God? — And who was it you meant to bring in, O enemies of God? And why should he be worthier of her than I??

Ibrahim was graceful of wit and charming of speech, one who prized the cup and the fair face; and there he was, at the wine with them, while the slave-girls let loose their voices in divine praises and in the songs of the greatest singers — al-Gharid, Ma'bad, al-Mawsili. It was not long before they knew him, and learned of al-Rashid's invitation to him.

They said to him:
"By God, you shall not leave this place before a week is out; too long have you been kept from us." — But death awaits me!... — To the devil with it... one of them answered. At last he manages to slip away and come before al-Rashid — after the summons had been proclaimed through the whole realm to produce al-Mawsili and exact punishment from him. And no sooner had the caliph heard his strange story than he longed to go in his company to that warm and happy nest.

And there the two of them are found out. For Ibrahim, seized by the thrill of the wine, calls out to the disguised Rashid: "O Commander of the Faithful!"... And the beautiful slave-girls spring up in alarm from behind the curtain — and behold, they are slave-girls of the caliph himself, with whom he had been angry, and whom he had shut up in that palace.

Ibrahim was the boon companion of kings and caliphs, and the link between estranged hearts, tearful eyes, and grieving souls. When al-Rashid fell out with his beautiful concubine Maridah — and how often has the love of slave-girls enthralled the hearts of their masters and lords — the pillars of the realm were shaken: the Barmakid vizier rose to issue orders to the poet al-Abbas ibn al-Ahnaf, that he manage the affair with his wisdom; and there he was, wringing his brain to say:

Go back to the loved ones you have forsaken;
the love-smitten man but seldom keeps aloof.
For if estrangement draws out long between you two,
forgetfulness creeps in upon it, and the prize grows hard to win.

The verses are carried to Ibrahim, that he may breathe life into them with his own breath; he sings them before al-Rashid, whose heart softens and whose feeling grows tender; he goes to Maridah to win back her favor; the waters return to their courses, the vizier goes back to his work with his mind at ease, and the affairs of the state run on in good order — after Maridah has ordered thousands of dirhams in reward for al-Abbas and for Ibrahim.

Ibrahim was the fresh-blooming flower of the salons and their fragrant basil; no gathering was without him, and no assembly of cheer or delight convened in his absence. Al-Rashid grew angry with him one day, put him in chains, and imprisoned him at Raqqa; then one day he sat down to drink in a salon he had adorned and beautified, and said to Isa ibn Ja'far: Has our gathering any flaw? He said: Yes — the absence from it of Ibrahim al-Mawsili.

So he ordered him brought, and listened to his singing, and rewarded him with two hundred thousand dirhams, after saying to him: "You have made my day happy, and I shall make you happy with the gift; I have bestowed on you all that is pleasant and wholesome." When he was imprisoned, mirth and joy were imprisoned with him, as Abu al-Atahiya put it:

Mirth and joy are locked away, and there is
nothing on earth to take delight in, or rejoice.

Song had a great power over the souls of the men in authority in those days; and if we chose to credit all the tales related in the books of letters, we would be astounded at what caliphs, emirs, and notables spent for the sake of a poem they favored or a piece of song that pleased them. Music has been, from the most ancient ages, and remains to the present time, the great mover of cold feelings and the rouser of dormant spirits. Among the finest things said in this sense are the words of Ibn Abd Rabbih in his 'Iqd:

O you who grudge us the voice of the warbling bird,
I never supposed such stinginess in any man.
Were the ears of all the people of the earth together
to hearken to that voice, it would neither lessen nor grow.
Then do not grudge my hearing the wearing of it —
a voice that courses through the body as the soul does.

And his words again, in another place:

". . . and by melodies one may attain the good of this world and the next. For among their effects, they prompt men to noble traits of character . . . and a man may weep by them over his sin, and his heart be softened of its harshness, and he remembers the blessings of the Kingdom and pictures them in his inmost mind."

This power of the beautiful voice over souls the ancient Arabs knew truly and well; and so al-Mawsili would soften the temper of Musa ibn al-Hadi, who was cantankerous and hard to satisfy — if he was pleased he poured out his gifts, and if he was angered he banished and wounded. Al-Mawsili once sang before him verses of Ibn Sakhr al-Hudhali, full of tenderness and sweetness:

Truly, at the memory of you a trembling comes over me,
as the sparrow shivers when the raindrops wet him.

He struck his hand to the breast of his robe and tore it down a cubit, then said:
Well done, by God — give me more!
So he gave him more, saying:

O love of her, increase my ardor every night;
O solace of dreams, your appointed time is the Resurrection.

He struck his hand to his robe and tore it down another cubit or thereabouts, and said to him: More, confound you! Well done, by God — your award is granted, O Ibrahim. So he added:

I forsook you till it was said: he knows not passion;
and I visited you till it was said: he has no patience.
O estrangement from Layla, you have driven me to the limit
and gone beyond what estrangement ever reached.
Now, by Him who makes weep and makes laugh, by Him
who gives death and gives life, by Him whose command is the command:
you have left me envying the wild beasts, when I see
two mates among them whom no terror startles.

Musa raised his voice and said to him: Well done — God bless your father! Ask whatever you will. He said: My lord — the spring of Marwan at Medina. At that his eyes rolled in his head till they were like two great jars, and he said: You son of a vile mother! Did you mean to make a scandal of me in this gathering, so that people would say: he delighted him, and so let him name his own reward — making me an evening's tale and gossip?!

O Ibrahim al-Harrani! Take this fool by the hand when I rise, and bring him into the privy treasury; and if he takes everything in it, leave it to him... But Ibrahim was a man of modest wants, and took no more than fifty thousand dinars!!...

And Ibrahim has delightful tales with devils and jinn, and with his sweetheart Dhat al-Khal, which we put off to another issue.