The Ijaza in Poetry

Fine literature is nourishment for souls; they must draw provision from it to fill an emptiness that arises in their being. And to lighten the weight of this emptiness we find that all of us, whether we labor in the literary field or are kept from it by the cares of home life, take pleasure in returning from time to time to savor it; for it is our literature, and no one is to be blamed for finding pleasure in contemplating the literature of his nation, nor for taking from it food for a soul that yearns for something to fill a void within it — a void which, as the days pass, nothing will stop but breaths of that literature.

Our fine literature has many facets, all of them attractive, all delightful, all restful to the soul. But there is one facet, somewhat forgotten, upon which I stumbled in the course of my searching, and in it I found a pleasure without equal. I do not doubt that you will share this pleasure of mine as I set before you samples of what I have managed to come upon; these samples are but miniature pictures of an art among the arts of poetry in which the poets and poetesses of the Arabs stand alone above all others: the art of the ijaza in poetry.

The ijaza in poetry is one of the loveliest arts of the science of rhetorical embellishment, and it was most widespread at a time when princes and poets prized its practice and counted it a means of whetting wits and displaying talents. A poet would recite half a line of verse and ask another poet to complete that line on the spot; or, likewise, a poet would recite a line and ask another to complete it with lines suited to it in sense and in structure. In this kind of poetic exchange appear the poet's power and genius, his alertness and quickness of wit in composition, and his gathering of many meanings into few words. Here are no year-long odes, which the poet composes and spends a whole year polishing, pruning away whatever mars their beauty of feeble diction and jarring rhyme; no ivory towers into which the poets retreat, fleeing their ordinary world to be alone there and give themselves over to composing... No — no year-long odes here, and no ivory towers; the whole matter is a kindled mind and a ready wit, fed by soundness of taste and a fertile poetic gift.

Al-Mu'tamid ibn Abbad sat one day in a certain place where he saw a pool whose water glided gently, raising little wrinkles on the water's surface. The sight stirred his genius and he said: "The wind has woven chain-mail upon the water..." Then he turned to his companion Ibn Ammar and said, "Complete it." His companion pondered long — which emboldened al-Mu'tamid's slave girl, known as al-Rumaykiyya, to complete it, saying: "What an impregnable coat of mail — if only it would freeze!" Al-Mu'tamid marveled at the excellence of what this girl had produced, and she rose very high in his eyes.

What happened to al-Rumaykiyya happened also to another slave girl named al-Abbadiyya, who was a woman of letters, witty, a writer and a poetess. Al-Mu'tamid saw her one day asleep and said:

She sleeps while he whom she has made lovesick lies wakeful;
she can endure without him, and he cannot endure.

And she answered him, saying:

If this lasts, and this remains his lot,
he will perish of longing before she is aware.

Thus in completing his verse she joined an intelligence and a readiness of wit without parallel.

These two examples make clear what I meant by the brief ijaza. But there is an ijaza more intricate than this: the completing of lines of verse with other lines. Among the charming things related of it is that Sayyid Abu al-Abbas al-Sharif accompanied the qadi Abu al-Barakat on one of his journeys in Andalusia. When they came to a village, weariness overtook them and the midday heat grew fierce; so they dismounted and ate of the early figs, and Abu al-Barakat stretched out beneath a tree, sheltering in its shade. Then he turned to Sayyid Abu al-Abbas and said:

What has the soul to say of my state?
My life is spent in settling and in journeying.

And there he stuck fast; so he said to Abu al-Abbas, "Complete it, my man." And he said upon the instant:

Such are the souls that glory keeps company:
they will not rest content with any station short of their hopes.
Let it press on through wilderness and desert until
it attains its desire — or death in its wandering.
Death is lighter than life in an age
that raises the base man high and pulls down the noble and exalted.

Whoever considers this poetic completion closely will see that Abu al-Barakat, in asking Abu al-Abbas to complete the line he had improvised, bound him with several bonds — among them the meter, the rhyme, and fitness to the occasion — and no one can master their conditions and keep to them in extempore verse except one on whom the Lord has bestowed quickness of wit and fineness of feeling.

Among the charming things told of such splendid completions is the following, related of the Imam and qadi Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi, qadi of Seville, who said: A man of letters came in to me while before me was a fire overspread with ash. I said to him, "Say something on this," and he said:

The forelocks of the fire have whitened after their blackness,
and it has veiled itself from us in a garment of ash.

Then he turned to me and said, "Come, complete it" — and I completed it, saying:

It has grown gray as we have grown gray, and our youth has departed,
as though we had been keeping a tryst.

It appears, moreover, that the art of the ijaza long held sway over the minds of poets and princes, so that they composed and completed verses even in their dreams. Among the fine things related in this regard is that Abu al-Murajja Muhammad ibn Harb completed verses in his sleep — he dreamed that a man recited to him this line:

I seek the bounty of the days while fate is my destroyer;
we draw provision from them, while fate holds their gift in pledge.

And he completed the verse with lines of which he retained these:

O seeker of this base world — surely
it will hurl you down one day if you mount its back.
Guard your soul; do not lean upon the world, and if it refuses,
recite over it the closing verses of Ta-Ha.
Leave the garden of hopes and of greed, for
when guidance curbs the soul, it masters it.
For one day, without fail, a calamity will strike
and loosen from us a knot, and scatter it.

It is a fine and admirable thing that a man should be able to answer verse with other verse made up of a small number of lines; but what shall be said of a whole poem composed as an ijaza to another poem — composed, moreover, on a critical occasion, like the one that befell a certain poet of the Sultan al-Malik al-Adil? He said: Among the strangest straits into which I was ever cast — save that God in His bounty gave aid and granted victory, and helped my flagging wit until it cut like the polished sword — is this: I was in the service of our lord the Sultan al-Malik al-Adil at Alexandria; the assembly was thronged with its people and honored by the Sultan's gathering and his retinue. Our lord the Sultan came out to his assembly and took his seat, then handed the vizier of his state a letter with broken seals. He opened it, and in it were verses from al-Malik al-Mu'azzam urging him to return to the lands of Syria to crush the enemies. Here are some of them:

Water your lances from the throats of your foes,
and mount steeds lean as desert demons;
gather of the heroes every valiant lord —
victory is bound to that resolve of yours;
rise and hasten to him who hopes to meet you;
my happiness lies with al-Adil, the king who —
so remain to me, my sovereign, in bliss —

and let your horsemen plunder those who obey another,
and strike with your sword whoever breaks your staff;
your resolve sets upon every man who hates you;
you have risen a heaven above the star Simak;
for of all things his desire is to meet you;
he masters kings and keeps company with the spheres;
and of all things I am made your ransom.

When the vizier had finished reading this poem, the Sultan said: "We want someone to answer it with lines on the same rhyme!" The vizier turned to me — I was at his right — and said: "O our lord, your servant here is the horseman of this field." Then he cut a strip from a scroll that lay before him and threw it to me, and reached for an inkstand and turned it toward me. The Sultan said to him: "What — like this, in such circumstances and at such a moment?" He answered: "Yes; I have tried him and found him of kindled wit and present mind." Then the Sultan said to me: "In any case, come up here, that the din of the company may be cut off from you," and he pointed to a place at the right of the chamber. So I rose, my legs failing under me and my mind in disarray, for the awe of the assembly in my breast and the number of those present watching me, waiting for the moment of gloating over me. But no sooner had I sat down than my wits came back to me, and in the swiftest time I said:

From al-Malik al-Mu'azzam there arrived a treasure
that filled the threads with its splendid pearls:
lines of verse majestic as the stars —
therefore their pages adorned the spheres.
A marvel! They came like a garden, though
the fire of your blazing mind had not withered them with its heat.
Cares were lifted from the heart, even as
the brightness of your face dispels the darkness.
Why should I not be absent from Syria? What need
has it of me, while you are there?
Or how should I fear, when all the lands
love the glory of your thrusting lances?
I came to Egypt only to secure its frontiers;
for that — may I be your ransom — I bore the loss of the sight of you.

...held your brother, the winning arrow among the shafts;
...for a time, and grant to other lands your watering;
my longing spurs me on to meet you;
and my desire therein — how I crave it — is your love;
forever; and may whoever is your enemy be your ransom;
and may you live to serve your father in good fortune.

Sweet they were — and rightly; and why not, when they —
I am like the clouds: I visit one land, watering it —
and if I turn back to Syria, it is only —
and I strive to give you my love with all my might —
may you never cease to vanquish whoever opposes our king —
and may I live to see your surviving son a father.

Then, says the author of the verses: I made a fair copy of the poem and returned. When the Sultan saw that I had returned he said to me, "Have you done anything?" — thinking that to do the work in that brief moment was an impossible feat, and that to attain the aim in it was inconceivable. I said, "Yes, I have done it." He said, "Recite to us." The people fell silent, eyes fixed and ears strained; men thought of me what they thought, and waited to see what would come. But no sooner did the recitation of its lines follow one upon another than hands clapped in admiration, and al-Malik al-Mu'azzam showered me with such favor and esteem as I have found no equal to.

With this splendid ijaza I close the collection of samples that space now allows me to present. Few though they are, they cast light on this branch of literature, which points to the kindled minds of the poets of Arabic and their unequaled preeminence in a field that none may enter save one endowed by his Lord with rare intelligence and a ready wit.