Luminaries of Song Among the Arabs: Ishaq ibn Ibrahim

In this essay of mine I take up three points concerning Ishaq al-Mawsili: his literary and scholarly standing; his art of song and his command of it; and his likeness to his father and his walking in his footsteps.

Ishaq enjoyed a familiarity with the caliphs such as his father Ibrahim fell short of attaining. His scholarly and literary standing interceded for him, so that they preferred him above the rest of the poets and singers — so much so that he would come in to al-Ma'mun with the jurists, not with the singers. The singers would enter each carrying his lute; only Ishaq entered with no lute. His familiarity reached such a point that he was no longer content to come in to al-Ma'mun in his enclosure wearing a quilted robe and a taylasan, after the fashion of the jurists' dress; rather, one day — old age having taken full hold of him — he asked leave to enter the enclosure on Friday in a black durra'a and a black taylasan. Al-Ma'mun smiled and said to him: "Not all that at once, Ishaq..." — and bought it back from him for a hundred thousand dirhams, so that he should not grieve. Yet Ishaq often grieved. It happened once that he learned that al-Rashid would not permit him to enter his presence except in the company of Ibrahim, the nephew of Salama — the latter having contrived a scheme upon al-Rashid so as to laugh at Ishaq and humble him. So Ishaq went to al-Fadl ibn al-Rabi', complaining, weeping, threatening to abandon song and divorce it forever. No sooner did al-Rashid learn of this and grasp the trick of Salama's nephew than he said to al-Fadl: "Tell him: let him come whenever he pleases and keep apart from him; he need not come with him, and no honor to him." This Ibrahim, the nephew of Salama, was one of al-Rashid's clients, and he envied Ishaq, so the two often quarreled and fell out. Ishaq once reviled and taunted him; whereupon he lay in wait for him as he was going along a road and struck him on the head with a rod tipped with a pick, and that was the cause of the weakening of his eyesight. When the news reached al-Rashid he swore that Ibrahim should never come into his presence; and though they pleaded long on his behalf, he swore he would not be reconciled with him until Ishaq was.

Al-Rashid's love for Ishaq went so far that he forbade him to sing for anyone but himself. He was jealous of him before other men, and would reproach him for sitting with al-Fadl and singing for him; and Ishaq would swear to him by the tomb of al-Mahdi that he had never sung for al-Fadl nor sat with him except for study and conversation, and al-Rashid would take comfort in his word and order that he be rewarded and treated generously. Once Ishaq and Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi disagreed over some matter of melodies, of partition and division, and Ibn al-Mahdi said: "To whom shall I take you for judgment, when the people between us are donkeys!!" And Ibrahim, who spoke these words, used to eat heartily with the singers until Ishaq appeared; then he would humor him and seek his favor, while Ishaq rebuked and opposed him. It was said: Ishaq was Ibrahim's bane, as everything has its bane. The stories are many of the place Ishaq held in the eyes of the caliphs and the princes. Al-Wathiq said one evening, having resolved upon a morning drinking-bout on the morrow: "Let none of the singers leave tonight." They all held back from opposing him — all but Ishaq, who said to him: "No, by your life, I will not stay the night!" And al-Wathiq could do no more than say to him: "Then by my life, will you not come early, Abu Muhammad?" All this while the singers sat by, bursting with rage. The morrow came, and there was Ishaq walking with Ahmad ibn Abi Du'ad, matching him in his dress and his black robes, his tall cap like his tall cap. No sooner did the singers see it than they rose up in fury against Ishaq, and Amrawayh said: "Look, you people! A khaynakar (Persian, meaning the clownish singer) goes in to the Caliph with the Chief Judge! Have you ever heard of luck more astonishing than this?" And Ishaq came forward and sat in the row of the boon companions, not stirring from it; only when al-Wathiq bade him sing did he step out a little, and a lute was brought, and he sang, then returned to the row of the companions. From all the foregoing it is clear that no one dared to touch him or to lower his dignity — or even dared to be slack in his presence. It was said: when the singers gathered without Ishaq among them, they sang carelessly, their minds elsewhere; but when Ishaq was present there was nothing but earnestness. They dwindled to nothing before him, becoming beside him less than the dust, melting before him as lead melts in the fire. Someone questioned Zurzur ibn Sa'id the singer, saying: "Tell me of Ishaq — how did he manage when he was present with you before the Caliph, he being cut off and failing, while your throats had not their like in the world?" He said: "By God, he would keep on, with his skill and his gentleness, his deliberateness and his grace, until we became beside him less than the dust." And Zurzur was asked another time: "Why do you abase yourselves before Ishaq with such abasement, when there is not one of you whose voice is not sweeter than his,

and there is no meanness in your craft?" He said: "Do not say that. By God, if you saw us with him you would pity us; you would see us melt as lead melts in the fire."

And it becomes clear to whoever reads Ishaq's life that he was not the possessor of a peerless voice, that he should be pampered so; rather, all the singers, it appears, had finer voices than his. There was a flaw in his voice that compelled him to introduce into song what is called takhnith, to suit it and match it; there was in his throat a recoil from the string. Ibn Hamdun said: Ishaq was the first to bring takhnith into song, and it was not known before; he contrived by his skill — since his throat clashed with the string — to answer it with a measure of takhnith, which sounded better to the ear. Nor did the caliphs' care for Ishaq weaken even after his sight failed and he grew old.

Ishaq the singer

It may seem strange that we should find that Ishaq hated singing, and hated whoever asked him to sing — he, the singer of far-flung fame! He would always repeat: "I would rather my head were struck fifteen lashes — I could not bear more than that — than be told: Sing."

The great singers bore witness for him and esteemed him to the full, as we have seen. Muhammad ibn al-Muhassin ibn Mus'ab analyzed his singing and said: "His craft was sound in its principles, his melody marvelous in construction, his division even in its measures; he united in his craft two qualities: strength of natural gift and smoothness of path. The singers nicknamed him 'the Stung One,' because he begins with a cry in the finest tone with which any man ever opened his mouth; then he brings his tone back, rolling it and letting it descend, until he lowers it from that intensity to a softness that balances it; then he does the like again, passing from intensity to softness and from softness to intensity — and this is the hardest thing that occurs in song and the rarest thing known of the craft."

And Ibn Yahya said of him: "Ishaq was the most learned man of his age in song... He set himself against Ibn Surayj and Ma'bad and held his own with them; and Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi contended with him in this craft and did not reach him; nor was there, after Ishaq, his like." Ishaq was once asked: "Which is the finer: your melody in 'Khalili 'uja,' or the melody of al-Wathiq?" — al-Wathiq being thoroughly learned in song — and he said: "My melody is finer in division and greater in workmanship; his is the more striking, because he made its refrain out of its own division, and none can perform it but one in full command of himself." There is nothing arbitrary in this answer; there is in it precision and analysis, such as shows the height of Ishaq's standing in the art of song. The critics preferred some of his melodies to the melodies of Ibn Surayj and Ma'bad, who are among the imams of the singers of old, while Ishaq said modestly: "By God, I took the reins of their two mounts and shook them and made them kneel — but I did not reach them." He would compose melodies as a miracle to the singers, so that they could not imitate them or take them from him. His songs did not number more than two hundred.

The son is the secret of his father

And Ishaq was the secret of his father, following his footsteps and walking by his principles. Like him, he prized beauty and the cup, poetry and song, and did not excel in one without the other. He had amorous escapades which, if they fell short of his father's adventures in number, fell nothing short of them in drollery and license. He would send messengers in quest of aged wine to the princes and the caliphs themselves. Ali ibn Hisham once sent him wine and said: "I have sent you a drink harder than rock, older than time, and clearer than raindrops." And Ishaq was tender toward the cupbearers of wine and its sellers — especially the women who sold it.

He said — and here his lightness of spirit shows itself: "I came in to al-Rashid one day in a turban I had wound about my head, and he said: 'What is this turban? As if you were from Anbar.' The next day he summoned us to him, and I held back until all the singers had gone in before me; then I entered last of them, having bound my waist with a sash of red silk and put on a garish costume and taken in my hands a pair of clappers; and I came forward strutting, striking the clappers and singing:

Listen to a charming song
of Anbar workmanship —
a light and graceful song
that flies along the strings.

And he stretched out his hands toward me until he almost rose to his feet, and kept saying: 'Well done — by my life, well done! Well done!' — until I sat down... Then he drank to it the rest of his day and called for nothing else, and ordered me twenty thousand dirhams."

We have said that Ishaq was the secret of his father: he prized poetry as he did, and was a man of feeling like him — yearning for the beautiful melody, drawn to the bright, radiant face, stirred by the moaning of the waterwheels, and drinking until rapture took him, so that he was carried off drunk upon men's shoulders.

He sang to al-Ma'mun two verses on the pleasures, saying:

Sweeter than the strumming of the strings and their refrain
is the repeated sound of lip striking upon lip;
and the drunkenness of love slakes my bones and my joints
better than drinking, from the cups, of vintage wine.

And al-Ma'mun said to him: "Shall I not tell you of something sweeter than that, and finer? Leisure, and youth, and wealth!!"

I bear witness that al-Ma'mun was the better poet!!

And finally, before I wipe my pen, it is fitting that I mention that Ishaq united in his person religion and the world. He transmitted hadith and met its masters, such as Malik ibn Anas, Ibn Uyayna, Abu Mu'awiya al-Darir, Rawh ibn Ubada, and others of the sheikhs of Iraq and the Hijaz. He read the Qur'an under al-Kisa'i, al-Farra', and Ibn Ghazala, and recited poetry with al-Asma'i and Abu Ubayda.

He was born in the year 150 A.H. — the year of the birth of the Imam al-Shafi'i and of the death of the Imam Abu Hanifa — and he lived eighty-five years, and then died in Baghdad at the beginning of the caliphate of al-Mutawakkil.