Singing
Poetry and the Burgeoning of Historiography
upon the Murder
of al-Mutawakkil
Historiography
on the patricide/regicide of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (d. 861) developed from a
stage of simple description to a burgeoning of mytho-historical narrative. It
would appear that what began as a palace scandal—profaning to a putatively sacral community already torn by civil war—developed into a redemptive tragedy with perennial
appeal. In a patronage society governed by loyalty to one’s patron or father, this transformation should count
as nothing less than conspicuous. This article examines the role of a major
Abbasid poet, al-Buḥturī (d. 897), in shaping public perception by cultivating
genuine sympathy for the Abbasids and planting the seeds of questions that
would be addressed in historical narratives. In particular, I discuss the
importance of literary salons or gatherings as a social institution where
poetry and historical narratives were recited orally as a means of transmitting
knowledge to future generations. These gatherings provide a likely forum where
mythic questions of poetry could inspire narrative.*
In the century after the patricide
of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil ʿalā Allāh (d. 861), historiography of the event evolved in
written form from an early stage of simple description to a more influential
one of mytho-historical narrative. El-Hibri’s
important analysis of al-Ṭabarī’s (d.
923) narrative demonstrates the latter stage well. He argues that, despite the [2]
implication of the heir al-Muntaṣir (d. 862) in
the murder, literary devices were used to illustrate the fatal flaws of
father, then son, as well as the key virtues that ultimately redeem them both.[1] In a
figurative idiom drawing on the Arabic poetic tradition, al-Ṭabarī
addressed several questions about the injustice of fate, the assigning of blame
and the impermanence of power.[2] This artful ledger of sins and graces betrayed a
preoccupation with the patricide as an event of mythic importance for Abbasid
society. This, however, was not the case in the beginning.
Ibn Qutayba (d. 889) was the closest historian to the murder,
yet his narrative conveys the least information. He does not even mention the
involvement of a son or the guards: “He was killed in
the year 247 [861 AD], three days after the Fiṭr
holiday.”[3] Ibn Qutayba makes no mention of the setting, the
possible perpetrators or al-Fatḥ b. Khāqān’s
simultaneous murder, which are all amplified in later historiographies. It
seems conspicuous that a public event of the Abbasid era, not to mention the
first regicide of the Abbasid epoch, would receive such short shrift from a
leading historian and littérateur of that era. His sentence to posterity should,
however, be counted as revealing compared to that of his contemporary Abū
Ḥanīfa al-Dīnawarī (d.
895), who remains absolutely silent. In short, the situation poses a conundrum:
Could it be that in the earliest phases there was no public knowledge of the
event? It is difficult to imagine, with scores of courtiers employed in the
palace, indeed a number who may have even witnessed the regicide first hand,
that there was a dearth of informants or “leaked” information. To the contrary,
there was probably ample incentive for informants to take their place in
history by talking.
Al-Yaʿqūbī’s (d. 897) text, with more
gumption than al-Dīnawarī’s and Ibn Qutayba’s,
gives a bit more detail, bordering on a “plot,”[4] but
still in the realm of “story” because it omits any meaningful sense of causality. Nevertheless, he does not reveal
informants, though—given the conventions of transmission—it would diminish his credibility [3]
somewhat. Perhaps for this reason, he holds himself to the details most
believable to his audience:
Al-Mutawakkil had mistreated his son, Muḥammad
al-Muntaṣir, so they [the Turks] incited him
[the son], and plotted to attack him [the father]. When it was Tuesday, the 3rd
of Shawwāl of the year 247 [Dec. 861 AD], a band of Turks
entered . . . while he was in a private gathering and attacked him. They killed
him with their swords. And they killed al-Fatḥ b.
Khāqān along with him.[5]
Al-Yaʿqūbī’s single report is a quantum leap
from Ibn Qutayba’s sentence, but the
account does not spell out causes or the motives of the caliphal guard,
who are solemnly sworn to die for their master. Rather, one receives a cryptic
reference to the son’s “mistreatment,” but nothing to
justify blood vengeance. The relationship between events has yet to crystallize
into a full-blown plot. More importantly, no literary devices are used to
comment on moral, existential and communal issues. What begins with Ibn Qutayba
and al-Yaʿqūbī in the late ninth century as a cryptic palace scandal
develops a few decades later, in the early tenth century, into a mythic
narrative about glory, tragedy and redemption. In this paper, I will draw on El-Hibri’s theory that historical
narratives answer deep-seated societal questions and will
propose a determinant role for poets in defining the existential questions that
historical reports need to address.[6]
This article will examine al-Buḥturī’s
poetic role, in particular, as a catalyst for cultivating sympathy for the
Samarran tragedy. His poems after the patricide, broadcast from within the
palace, spread news of the incident and helped mythologize events that might
otherwise have remained the painful facts of a palace scandal, which profane an
ostensibly sacral community already torn by
two civil wars. I will argue that [4] al-Buḥturī’s intense activity sowed seeds in the
form of archetypal questions that later elicited a response in the form
of rhetorically-rich narratives that burgeoned and diversified to address these
questions. In addition, I will suggest a likely forum where the performance of
poetry could influence the literary invention of narrative; this forum was as a
social institution in Abbasid culture, the
literary gathering or salon (referred to usually in the plural as mujālasāt, muḥāḍarāt, mudhākarāt, or musāmarāt).
Since the written tradition is largely dependent on oral informants, this formulation contributes to an
understanding of how written narratives burgeoned from 861 to the first
half of the tenth century, when al-Ṭabarī
passed away.
The Poet’s Business
Al-Buḥturī
played a special role for the Abbasid dynasty. More than any other
contemporary, he used his personal stature as a poet-hero, while giving vent to
discontents, to build and maintain the public image of the Abbasids as sacred
and generous rulers in response to the political claims of the Alids, who were of the Prophet’s blood. Throughout the tumultuous
era at
The post-patricide era, though, was an ordeal for the
Abbasids and their entourage. The murder was merely the inauguration of an era
of decline. Al-Muntaṣir himself reigned for only six
months, but the tumult at the court continued long after. Later historiography
judged the Turkic guards as traitors who began their mischief as early as the
ascension of al-Mutawakkil, when they appointed the Caliph virtually
irrespective of the Abbasid royal family,[8] and
indeed intimidated their master, forcing him to flee, abortively, to Damascus.[9] When
they succeeded in co-opting [5] al-Muntaṣir against
his father, the crisis was more than a single crime. The event propelled the
palatine guards to a new level of temerity. The death of al-Mutawakkil ended a
golden era and initiated one of intense horror and insecurity.
In the nine years following al-Mutawakkil’s
regicide, four caliphs suffered overthrows or violent deaths: al-Muntaṣir
(r. 861-862), al-Mustaʿīn (r. 862-866), al-Muʿtazz
(r. 866-869), and al-Muhtadī (r. 869-870).[10] A
new beginning was thought to have arrived with the next caliph, al-Muʿtamid
(r. 870-892). He was named “al-Saffāḥ II,”
after the founder of the Abbasid dynasty.[11] He
reigned for twenty-two years, despite Turkic threats at home and the fierce
Zanj revolt in the southern marshland.[12] His
success was bolstered by his Herculean brother al-Muwaffaq, dubbed “al-Manṣūr II” for
his legendary courage, strength and acumen.[13]
Modern historians, however, note that the “recovery” of
the caliphate still suffered from a basic weakness that was never overcome.[14] As
Kennedy notes, the relative stability did not come about because an Abbasid
caliph “defeated and humiliated the Turks, . . .
but rather they were assured a place in a new regime and integrated once more
into the [6] structures of the state.”[15] For al-Buḥturī and other courtiers, the post-Mutawakkil period between 861 and
892, stood in sharp contrast to the golden era before it. Al-Buḥturī
mythologized the Samarran era, both its blissful and mortifying stages, through
an intense program to shape public perception. This move had major consequences
in Abbasid society by appealing to mythic sensibilities about human cycles of
glory, sin, and redemption. He sublimated the Samarran era into a myth,
translating Samarran memories into the poetic idiom of nostalgia as found in
the elegiac nasīb, the opening
section of the classical ode (qaṣīda).
Al-Buḥturī
accomplished this aim with two complementing poetic endeavors. The first was an
ongoing practice of allegorically embedding the archetypal joys and horrors of
Joy and Horror at
We are told that the Arabic
place-name
This nasībic mode of
communication in Arabic culture is archetypal.[18]
Specific historical losses and yearnings become emblems of all losses
and yearnings. Jaroslav Stetkevych notes that the poetic idiom enables
historical denotative allusions to “open up to new
ever different poetic uses.”[19] The human experience of grief and yearning, under the
theme of barren ruins, traitorous lovers and lost abodes reverberates between
the specific and the universal to “express the full
weight of contemporary events.”[20] For example, almost two centuries after al-Buḥturī, a
poet-knight named Usāma b. Munqidh (d. 1188) would suffer great losses when
his family and birthplace were destroyed in
There are several post-Mutawakkil
poems by al-Buḥturī that
implicitly or explicitly render
Will Time ever retrieve for me
my days in white palaces and
courtyards?
There’s no union with them momentarily,
nor do they have a minute for a visit.
A moment of merriment is not renewed
in memory without renewing my ardor
for them.
A yearning, among many, left me awake
at
night, as if it were one malady among many.[26]
In these four lines, al-Buḥturī
adheres to a pattern of time consciousness, both measured time and Time acting
as a fateful force antagonizing delicate
human life. Though the coup in the background has been averted, al-Buḥturī
draws attention to this event as an exception to a rule: the glory of the past
is irretrievably lost, and Time isolates people from their beloved forebears.
Descendents remain alone to fend off the horrors of Fate; the more the poet
recalls the dead, the more it increases his ardor. The throes of Fate will
continue unhampered. In that vein, the defeat of Bughā
al-Shirābī receives recognition as an exception:
Fate to me has one grace for which
to be thanked.
It quelled what
lies in the heart as enmity.[27]
It was a trope of the time, as historians narrate it,
that a caliph could not adequately achieve victory in any struggle without
backing from one or another faction of Turkic
guards. Put more bluntly, Turkic factions manipulated caliphs against
other factions.[28] Even the most cunning of rulers found themselves allied with opportunistic guards, who were only
nominally “protecting” them while jockeying
for advantage against rivals. Alliances at the court were characterized by
sudden betrayals. One can find that in the nasīb of
another ode to al-Muʿtazz the poet uses the elegiac idiom to foreground the
potential treachery of allies. The motif here is that of the elusive Ganymede
(poem 262):
He modified and broke his promise,
and fancied faithlessness but would
not show it.
Better than most, he will let the heart
be captivated by his frolic and
earnest.
Magic sparkles in his eye,
[9] and
flowers are plucked from his cheek.
He soothes the heart, though he makes
the mind a liar and betrays his
promise,
with a face rivaling the moon in beauty
and a
frame molded as a bough in form.[29]
The motif of the elusive beloved, absolutely
self-interested, allows al-Buḥturī to
impress upon the nobility yet another dimension of the horrors at
There is, in addition, an important effect in the
architectural appearance of
Most
importantly, the palace city was designed to become a gargantuan graveyard in
consonance with nasībic mood and imagery. Al-Muʿtaṣim
founded the palace city in the first half of the ninth century, and al-Muʿtaḍiḍ (r.
892-902) moved the court back to Baghdad in the [10] later half. We are told that most caliphs were
buried in the caliphal city.[32] It
is reported though that most caliphs were buried in unmarked graves within
their palaces.[33] In effect, this would render the entire city a
precinct hallowed in the lyrical idiom of the nasīb. One
anonymous poet fused his impression of
Whoever-Sees-It-Delights has become
ruined; what a pity.
Halt you both, let us weep for the memory of beloved and campsite.[34]
In his geographic work, Yāqūt (d.
1229) expressed the nasībic effect of
The city that was once called “whoever sees it delights” was transfigured into “whoever sees it grieves.” Raised to the level of
mythology, the tragedies at
Mythologizing in Narrative
This article began with a question
on how historiography on the patricide evolved from a stage of sketchy
description to mytho-historical narrative. It has been shown how al-Buḥturī
generates sympathy for intergenerational
strife while summoning visions of reconciliation. But how do these
archetypal issues seep into the narrative tradition? What cultural [11]
practices would make the influence possible?
I will first argue here that written knowledge of the
past categorically relied on the oral performance of those texts from memory in
assembly. Second, it will be demonstrated that al-Buḥturī’s
poetry was not marginal, but widely memorized and recited by littérateurs
(udabāʾ). Third, there
are several indicators that al-Buḥturī
became the expert on the patricide because of his perspective as court poet and
eye witness. While some resent his association with the momentous event, others
such as al-Masʿūdī (d.
ca. 956) provide an outlet for his narratives. In either case, his association
is affirmed. Needless to say, poets are expected to employ artistry and
artifice, but this does not seem to detract from the appeal of the narrative to
the historian, which validates El-Hibri’s and
Morse’s findings that the goals of historiography were
symbolic and persuasive.[37] Rather, the poet’s
skill seems to add to the ontological weight of the narrative.
Islamic knowledge, according to one scheme, was
divided into two fundamental categories. One
was reasoned (ʿilm maʿqūl), the other was
orally transmitted (ʿilm manqūl).[38] The former included Greek philosophy and astronomy, and the
latter encompassed the canonical texts of Islam, such as the Qurʾān, Ḥadith,
and law, in addition to supporting disciplines that helped in understanding the
sacred texts of Islam, such as grammar,
classical poetry and anecdotes (kalām al-ʿarab).[39] Ibn Khaldūn distinguished
between reasoned and transmitted (cultural)
knowledge based on the role of memory: If lost, the former could be regained by
contemplation, whereas the latter had to be conveyed from [12] one
generation to the next orally. If lost it could never be regained.[40] In no uncertain terms, while books could aid memorization and
performance, transmitted knowledge must never languish there. Ibn Khaldūn states, “Know that the storehouse for knowledge is the human soul.”[41] He in fact stresses the dependence of writing on orality to the extent
that he deems orthography solely a notational system for documenting spoken
words.[42] By this reasoning, since writing can
never adequately capture the nuances of recitation, written texts must be
taught by performed example.
Moreover, it would appear that oral performance
offered scholars the unique advantages of a face-to-face interaction the
quality of which was subject to review. For example, al-Ṣūlī was
criticized, despite his erudition and expertise, for teaching texts he never
heard recited.[43] Learned society offered its members the opportunity
to gain credit and rank by displaying knowledge and forming bonds with others
that would bear witness to the transfer of cultural information. This method of
education stressed knowledge as much as the personal bonds between speaker and
listener. Oral knowledge linked people through a mode of communication that
conveyed information specifically from mouth to ear. Hodgson, on the subject of
historical reports, identifies the importance of personal witness in
guaranteeing the integrity of each link in a continuous human chain.[44] Bulliet likewise explains that the authority to
communicate Ḥadith-knowledge rested in
personally hearing it from someone who personally heard it in a chain going
back to the Prophet himself or a companion.[45] A
student aspiring to a career as a scholar would strive for the privilege of
joining that historic chain. He would essentially become a permanent member of
this cosmic chain by witnessing the oral event, what Bulliet calls “ear
witness,” and by passing on the tradition to future
generations.[46] In al-Ṣūlī’s
case, without his aural reception being [13] witnessed by others,
he lacked the license to transmit.
The pressure to memorize and perform,
according to Ibn Khaldūn,
ought to begin in childhood. He advises parents and teachers to encourage
children to commit classical poetry and anecdotes to memory, so that a “loom” forms in the student’s mind that enables him
to “weave” speech like that of the Arabs.[47] He applauds the people of
Not only was there a cultural incentive to
perform texts from memory, we have specific indications that the poetry of
al-Buḥturī was worthy of memorization and performance. Al-Buḥturī’s diwan
and anecdote collector was Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī (d. 947). In his collection of lore on
the life of al-Buḥturī, he portrays the prestige of the poet in a anecdote of “first-encounter” when he was fifteen
and the poet seventy-one.[50] He reports that he was at the educational circle (majlis) of
al-Mubarrad the Basran grammarian (d. 898) when an elderly long-bearded man
greeted the grammarian. The teacher stopped dictating to the class, and older
students rose, hovered around the visitor and asked him if they could recite
poetry to him. The celebrity indulged the adoring students and listened to
their poetry recitations. In doing so, he verified the memory of each student.
Soon al-Ṣūlī realized it was al-Buḥturī himself, but had no memorized poetry to recite to him. Al-Mubarrad
consoled him, saying he could find the poet later at a certain place. Al-Ṣūlī the teenager seized the opportunity and worked with a friend to
memorize some poetry, then checked his retrieval in the
presence of a seasoned elder. Later, he found the poet at a literary gathering
(mujālasa). When the occasion arose, he recited what he knew and finally received
al-Buḥturī’s blessings. At the end of the anecdote,
al-Ṣūlī noted that in a single
evening students performed twelve full odes in the presence of the poet.[51][14]
There are key features in this piece of
lore that have been embedded to make it appealing and believable. First, poetry
is shown to be the currency of social
interaction: competition, peer pressure, embarrassment, honor and
self-recovery. They all factor into the value of poetry in society. Second,
within this competitive environment, the anecdote illustrates that memorized
poetry allows al-Ṣūlī to participate in an historic transfer of
knowledge and thereby become one of an elite that will serve as curators of
al-Buḥturī’s corpus upon his death. At the age of
physical maturation (bulūgh), he is acquiring verbal proficiency (balāgha).
Poetry, memorized and delivered, qualifies him to become a transmitter of
cultural texts that will remain important in perpetuity. Third, al-Ṣūlī’s anecdote reflects the place of honor
that al-Buḥturī occupied in Abbasid
society. The poet is someone for whom al-Mubarrad, who was famed for his
arrogance, would interrupt class.[52] He is someone around whom devotees flutter, anxious to win his
approval. Most importantly, the protagonist, al-Ṣūlī,
goes to great lengths after his initial failure to seek the poet’s blessings.
In death, al-Buḥturī
continued to be a cultural icon. His work and legacy were promoted by seven
reciters of high standing in Abbasid culture, the youngest of whom, ʿAlī b. Ḥamza
al-Iṣbahānī (d. 985), is said to have lived 88 years after al-Buḥturī. Al-Ṣūlī
collected the poet’s verse and organized it according to the end-rhyme,
and ʿAlī b. Ḥamza al-Iṣbahānī did the same, but organized them according to themes (aghrāḍ).[53]
Moreover, his poetry was considered part of the classical canon that was
memorized by would-be scholars for centuries. Ibn al-Athīr (d.
1239) adds to his own credentials when he declares that al-Buḥturī’s
poetry was a cornerstone of his early learning.[54]
After memorizing Qurʾān and a corpus of Ḥadīth by heart, he focused on memorizing poetry, particularly that of Abū Tammām (d. 842), al-Mutanabbī (d.
965) and al-Buḥturī.[55] Likewise, al-Samʿānī (d. 1166) [15] reports that he memorized “more than a thousand lines” of al-Buḥturī’s work.[56] He notes that in his day al-Buḥturī’s diwan was “widely known,” mashhūr.[57]
At literary gatherings it is thus likely that the
mention of al-Buḥturī indexed a repertoire of anecdotes about the patricide,
and these narratives indexed his poetry on the topic. The two were culturally
and mentally linked. Al-Buḥturī was
in fact widely believed to be a witness to the murder, a belief promoted by his
elegy on al-Mutawakkil in which he describes the attack in the first person.[58] This
poem gave him the needed credentials to speak on the subject as an expert
witness. When Ibn Khallikān (d. 1282) describes al-Buḥturī’s
long standing rapport with al-Mutawakkil and the vizier Fatḥ b.
Khāqān, he casually notes that “he is
famous as regards what happened to them (fī
amrihimā).”[59] The
striking point here is that Ibn Khallikān,
writing long after the whole incident, associates the poet with the murder.
Similarly, al-Buḥturī’s
rivals resented his fame and association, but even they could not ignore the
cultural link. They could, however, mock him,
as Abū al-ʿAnbas al-Ṣaymarī does when he laments Jaʿfar al-Mutawakkil and the absence of anyone to avenge him:
How grieved is this world over Jaʿfar,
over the hero, the bright-faced king!
Over a slain man from the clan of Hāshim
who lived between the throne and the
pulpit.
By God, Lord of the House and pilgrimage rites,
by God, if even al-Buḥturī were
slain,
An avenger from
would surely rise to avenge him,
One of a thousand bastards
from the Clan of Biting Crap, [16]
Led by every one
of his base brothers,
each
riding an old one-eyed ass.[60]
The antithesis in this piece is not only humorous, but
revealing: The leader of an empire remains unavenged, whereas the resented poet
would be duly avenged by a band of brothers mounted on one-eyed asses. The
august Hāshimite finds no one to avenge him, but for the poet,
the “crap biters” display their machismo. No doubt,
these juxtapositions do not flatter al-Buḥturī, but
they illustrate the inextricable association between al-Buḥturī and
the patricide.
Among the alluring narratives most likely recited
about the patricide was al-Buḥturī’s
putatively eyewitness account. The first written register is found in a
historical work by al-Masʿūdī, Murūj
al-dhahab [Meadows of gold], from the tenth century. This
narrative seems to have traveled far. A variation reappears in the Arab west in
a book by the Andalusian writer, Ibn Bassām
al-Shantarīnī (d. 1147), in al-Dhakhīra fī maḥāsin
ahl al-Jazīra [Treasure-trove
on the virtues of the people of the (Iberian)
In light of El-Hibri’s and
Morse’s findings, my interpretation of al-Masʿūdī’s
narrative told by al-Buḥturī will
stress his persuasive techniques and goals. Thus, the authority of the poet,
the sequence of events, [17] the props,
the dialogue, are all taken as strategies meant to meet literary
expectation and to serve homiletic purposes, whether explicit or implicit. As
for the explicit “moral of the narrative,”
al-Masʿūdī concludes with a predictable sermon about the
unpredictability of life, the cycles joy and sorrow and the impermanence of
human power contrasted with the divine.[62]
While such rhetoric may be unsurprising for a pious scholar, it implicitly
serves as a commentary for comprehending Oedipal
struggle at the navel of Muslim power.
The most prominent strategy, and the one introduced
first, is reliance on the authority of the poet, a persona known for
transforming a sordid palace scandal into a meaningful tragedy. The narrative
in al-Masʿūdī’s
text announces its beginning with the phrase, “al-Buḥturī
relates a narrative, saying (ḥaddatha al-Buḥturī qāla).”[63] This technique serves to feature the
poet as the man with privileged intelligence, echoing an older meaning of the term khabar (report).[64] The authority of the poet resurfaces in
the narrative when the historian punctuates the presentation with reminders
such as “al-Buḥturī said” and “he
said.”[65] Al-Masʿūdī uses
these narrative techniques in the first instance to distance himself from the
narration, but in the second instance, the distance allows him to assume
another even more literary voice. In fact, after he releases the audience from the literary grips of the narrative,
he finally says, conscious of his rhetorical charm, “And
we mention here only a smidgen of what we mentioned [in other works]. This is
what we selected for now, since it is the most eloquent expression and the
easiest to memorize.”[66] The historian precisely at this point seems to be
self-conscious of his literary impact, wanting the text to be eloquent, that
is, easy to memorize by heart.
It seems that later generations of
littérateurs appreciated the importance
of the poet’s voice. In the
The beginning of the narrative deflects responsibility
from al-Muntaṣir by blaming Fate, the caliph’s
misjudgments and the palatine guards.[68] This
narrative initially creates a tension by focusing on al-Mutawakkil’s
violations of established conventions, indeed of good judgment. By his own
will, the caliph brought danger into his immediate proximity. Moreover, there
is strong commentary in this tenth-century narrative about his over-reliance on
guards in matters that should be entrusted to no one but the most tested and competent personnel. These
implicit criticisms, El-[19] Hibri notes, can also be seen in al-Ṭabarī’s
ninth-century narratives. The vizier al-Fatḥ, a
parvenu who rose from slavery by luck, suffers reproach for unwise counsel and dangerous adulation.[69] Furthermore, al-Mutawakkil’s dependence
on Turkic guards is viewed in retrospect as foolish and ominous. Their use of
force during the Samarran period is roundly condemned. As El-Hibri notes, in
contrast to Persian rebellions that had potentially noble causes, the palatines
“do not rebel in order to restore a moral, pietistic, or social ideal, but merely to realize
immediately material and political gains.”[70]
These soldiers, with rare exception, are figured into narratives as the
quintessential traitors. The royal family is technically dependent on them for
protection, but in reality they serve no practical purpose but to sow discord
and sap the state’s resources.[71] In
al-Masʿūdī’s narrative on the authority of al-Buḥturī,
there is then sharp criticism when the poet portrays the caliph vainly
purchasing the murder weapon and recklessly handing over his life to an
untested guard. About a century after the dreadful event and al-Ṭabarī’s
later narratives, al-Buḥturī’s depiction
must have seemed to audiences the epitome of caliphal tragedy: A powerful
ruler in need of aid, but surrounded by strangers. Al-Buḥturī’s
narrative points to that realization, as the caliph senses the fate he has
brought upon himself.
In the second half of the narrative,[72] the
reproach of al-Mutawakkil [20] escalates, depicting him as inverting the
normal order of things: He virtually abdicates by freakishly putting his face
in contact with the dust in front of his subordinates. Normally, caliphs
conspicuously exhaust resources to evince privilege in ceremony. The will to
hold and exercise power is an a priori condition of the caliphate. Here the
caliph reduces himself with a conventional gesture of humility or mourning,
essentially giving up the will to be king, and thus to live. Al-Buḥturī, in the [21] narrative, is alarmed, taking the display as a
voluntary step toward death. The king
relinquishes what makes him unique and sovereign. The next omen stems from
another odd response from al-Mutawakkil. In the face of song and music, he does
not rejoice, but turns inward and weeps.
The last omen seals his fate. He receives an exquisite
present from his wife. However the standard practice for rulers in courtly
anecdotes is to ask one of the poets present
to compose a piece (qiṭʿa) that would forever capture the sublime moment and travel back to
the gentle ears of the gift giver. This practice reciprocates delight with
delight in perfect social symmetry. Instead what ensues is an anti-social,
almost grotesque, response that absolutely precludes delight. He receives two
gifts, a red cloak [durrāʿa] and a red silk gown [miṭraf or muṭraf ].
The first is clearly designated as a ceremonial cloak [khilʿa]—not
to be worn outside the proper occasion. The khilʿa was usually finely brocaded, embroidered
with gold and, in the front, studded with rubies.[73] The
second gift is a red silk gown, usually made of an oversized piece of cloth
used as a wrap with bold borders that are embroidered.[74] The
gown was used for any dignified visit, while the coat was reserved exclusively
for high ceremonial. Thus the latter denoted a more auspicious occasion.[75] In
essence, al-Mutawakkil makes a mockery of Abbasid sartorial conventions, which
he himself instituted. Now he wears the ceremonial cloak without ceremony and
drapes over it another less prestigious outer garment. Al-Buḥturī
is careful to stress the point to the audience: “He
put on the cloak on the inside and then wrapped himself in the gown.”
The situation
devolves further. We are also told that he heedlessly allowed the gown to rip
while moving about. An object snags his gown, which coils and tightens around
him (note the metaphor), pulls him and finally tears. With cinematic effect,
the coil-and-rip scene encodes the interplay of misjudgment and Fate. He makes
an aberrant, incomprehensible choice of attire, then
Fate seemingly snags him causing the whole outfit to coil and constrict him.
The outfit, symbolic of his persona, is rent graphically “end
to end.” The incident prefigures his demise, enabling him to
face his destiny and visualize his burial. A gown for high-class living is
therefore transformed into one of burial. In other narratives, the garment
became such a locus of cultural attention that it appeared in al-Ṭabarī’s
version in the more paradisiacal color of green [22] often used on the
tombs of heroes.[76] Likewise, Ibn al-Jawzī (d.
1201) readjusts the prop as the gift of his mother[77]—the
one who gave him life would give him the symbol of his death.[78]
After the ripping of the gown, the cruelest event in the sequence is his
instruction to Qabīḥa’s
servant. The wife gives him a beautiful gift meant to bring him joy, but he
sends the destroyed fabric back with gloomy anticipations of his own
destruction. Al-Buḥturī
reacts to the disturbing scene with a formulaic phrase used upon hearing news
of someone’s death. Symbolically, the Caliph has met his fate.
Thereafter, al-Mutawakkil became severely drunk. The
drinking scene seems to have been an important element that was preserved in
subsequent retellings of the same and variant narratives.[79] The
intoxication scene redeems the hubristic father by creating the impression of
an artful peaceful death despite fatal flaws. Along these lines, one poet
captures al-Mutawakkil’s redemptive death in verse:
This is how the death of a nobleman
should be,
among pipes, guitars and wine.
Among two cups that quench his thirst completely,
one cup
for his joy and another for his Fate.[80]
The father, in brief, dies tragically but nobly. In
al-Masʿūdī’s view, though al-Mutawakkil lived
unlike other men, he tasted the betrayal of Fate and death like all men. He
reveals his homiletic aims when he says, [23]“Who therefore is
deluded by this world and trusts it and thinks he is safe from betrayal and
catastrophe, except a delusional fool? . . . Not even the careful
soul is safe.”[81] By this point, a palace scandal has become a locus of
reflection on deep-seated questions.
Conclusion
Thus we return
to the question of how written historiography on the patricide
evolves from cryptic sentences to captivating mytho-historical narrative. There
appears be to be a convergence of factors that make it likely that poetry
inspired the growth and relevance of narratives. We are faced first with a
scandal, repulsive by Abbasid standards, that elicits al-Buḥturī’s
mythicizing program. Second, the poet had enjoyed sufficient stature among the
Abbasid nobility so that his literary creations (poetry and narrative) merited
performance in assembly from memory. Over the course of some thirty years,
al-Buḥturī lyricized and mythicized the troubles of the court and
evoked cultural sympathy in a series of odes. He portrayed his texts as
canonical presentations of the Abbasid collective past. Third, Abbasid society
demanded and rewarded the performance of traditional knowledge, thus providing
littérateurs ample opportunity to recite and witness poetry
and narratives surrounding the patricide.
In the wake of the sudden appearance of narrative
detail in al-Ṭabarī, one
has to come to terms with the origin of these details. Could it be that al-Ṭabarī’s
informants, a generation or two after the event, have more information to record in writing? Did al-Ṭabarī discover chains of narration whose reports had remained secret? It is
unlikely that al-Yaʿqūbī, al-Dīnawarī and Ibn Qutayba found no public narratives about the
patricide, whereas decades later al-Ṭabarī and
al-Masʿūdī have discovered new information and secret chains of
narration. The burgeoning of mytho-historical narratives suggests rather the
gradual growth of a strain of narratives, which were publicly performed in
gatherings for decades before they were actually preserved and conserved in the
written annals of history. A likely scenario would involve the dissemination of
patricide narratives inspired by topical poetry delivered in literary
gatherings.
* Research
for this article was conducted with the support of a Fulbright-Hays Training
Grant, part of the Doctoral Dissertation Research Program of the US Department
of Education. I am indebted to the Fulbright commissions of
[1] Tayeb
El-Hibri, Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Harun al-Rashid and the
Narratives of the Abbasid Caliphate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 188, 192, 198.
[2] Ibid., 198.
[3] Abū
Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Muslim b. Qutaybah, al-Maʿārif, ed. Tharwat ʿUkāshah (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1992),
393.
[4] The
terms “plot” and “story” are used in the most literary technical sense: The former
is “a sequence of events conveying a sense of causality,” and
the latter is simply “a sequence of events.”
[5] Aḥmad b. Abī
Yaʿqūb al-Yaʿqūbī,
Tārīkh
al- Yaʿqūbī, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār
Ṣādir, 1960), 2:492.
[6] See
also Ruth Morse, Truth and Convention: Rhetoric, Representation, and Reality
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Morse’s
study of medieval monastic historiography corroborates El-Hibri’s
findings for Abbasid historiography. She argues that the Christian
historiographers were guided not by positivistic sensibilities of what really
happened, but by conventions of rhetoric, or shared habits of persuasion
between orators (writers) and listeners (readers). Thus she sees medieval
historiography, much like hagiography, serving as a model or example of what
should be or might be (ibid., 87). Morse, most
importantly, attempts to redress presentist biases in reading medieval
historiography which project positivism anachronistically onto medieval
narratives (ibid., 128).
[7] Muḥammad b. al-ʿImrānī, al-Inbāʾ fī tārīkh al-khulafāʾ (Leiden: Netherlands Institute [Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī], 1973), 136.
[8] Abū Jaʿfar
al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh
al-Ṭabarī: Tārīkh
al-rusul wal-mulūk, 11 vols., Dhakhāʾir al-ʿArab,
30 (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif,
1960–69), 9:154.
[9] al-Ṭabarī,
The History of al-Ṭabarī
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985–),
vol. 34, Incipient Decline, trans. and annot. Joel L.
Kraemer, xii–xiii; al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 9:210. On al-Mutawakkil’s
trip to
[10] al-Ṭabarī,
The History of al-Ṭabarī
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985–),
vol. 35, The Crisis of the ʿAbbāsid
Caliphate, trans. and annot. George Saliba, 1.
[11] Ibn
al-ʿImrānī, al-Inbāʾ, 137.
[12] al-Ṭabarī,
The History of al-Ṭabarī
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985–),
vol. 36, The Revolt of the Zanj, trans. and annot. David Waines, xvi.
[13] Ibn
al-ʿImrānī, al-Inbāʾ, 137.
[14] Marshall
G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World
Civilization, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974) 1:488;
Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphate (London: Longman,
1986) 175.
[15] Kennedy,
The Prophet, 175.
[16] See
Samer Mahdy Ali, “Reinterpreting Tragic Cycles of History,” Journal
of Arabic Literature 37 (2006): 46–67.
[17] Abū al-ʿAbbās b.
Khallikān, Wafayāt
al-aʿyān, ed.
Iḥsān ʿAbbās, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dār
al-Thaqāfah, 1968–72), 1:42; Shihāb
al-Dīn Yāqūt [b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥamawī], Muʿjam
al-buldān, 5 vols.
(Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, n.d.), 3:173–78.
[18] Jaroslav
Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid., 62.
[21] Ibid., 52.
[22] Ibid., 62.
[23] Ibid., 52. See also Usāma b.
Munqidh, al-Manāzil wal-diyār, ed.
Muṣṭafā Ḥijāzī
(Cairo: Ministry of Culture [Wizārat al-Thaqāfa],
1994), 200.
[24] Abū
ʿUbāda al-Walīd al-Buḥturī, Dīwān, 5 vols., ed. Ḥasan Kāmil
al-Ṣayrafī, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Dār
al-Maʿārif, 1977), poems 262, 395, 771, 750.
[25] Ibid.,
5:2793.
[26] al-Buḥturī, Dīwān, 3:2015,
ll. 1–4.
[27] Ibid., l. 5.
[28] Kennedy,
The Prophet, 174.
[29] al-Buḥturī,
Dīwān,
2:656, ll. 1–5
[30] Robert
Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 398.
[31] Ibid., 406.
[32] Ibn al-ʿImrānī, al-Inbāʾ,
137; Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān,
178.
[33] al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī,
34:223; Yāqūt, Muʿjam
al-buldān, 3:178.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid., 176; cf. Julie Scott Meisami, “The
Palace-Complex as Emblem: Some Samarran Qaṣīdas,” in A
Medieval Islamic City Reconsidered: An Interdisciplinary
Approach to
[36] In Meisami, “The Palace-Complex,” 69–70.
[37] According
to Ibn Rashīq, poets were notorious for their artifice and
mendacity, as would be expected in an artistic profession. He tells one anecdote
in which this view is framed as a complaint: A wise man was once asked about
poets. He said, “What can you say about these folk? Modesty is
honorable except among them, and lying is dishonorable except among them.” See
al-Ḥasan b. Rashīq al-Qayrawānī, Kitāb al-ʿumda
fī ṣanʿat
al-shiʿr wa
naqdih, ed. al-Nabawī Shaʿlān, 2
vols. (
[38] George
Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions
of Higher Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1981), 75–80. Kraemer notes that other terms were used for
remembered knowledge, such as knowledge of the forebears (ʿulūm
al-awāʾil),
knowledge of the Arabs (ʿulūm al-ʿarab), human knowledge (ʿulūm al-insāniyya); see Joel L. Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam: The Cultural
Revival during the Buyid Age (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), 10.
[39] ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad b. Khaldūn, Muqaddima,
ed. ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Wāḥid Wāfī (
[40] Ibid., 1025–26.
[41] Ibid., 1235.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Muḥammad b. Isḥāq b. al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist (
[44] Hodgson,
The Venture of Islam, 1:352.
[45] Bulliet,
Islam, 15.
[46] Ibid., 19–21. See Munir Ud-Din Ahmed, “The Institution of the Mudhākara,” in Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, suppl. 1. (No. 17,
Deutscher Orientalistentag, 21–27 July, 1968 [1969], 595–630.
He describes a more informal session wherein Ḥadith
students would share reports from memory
before or after formal class. The institution attests not only to the value
placed on memorizing knowledge, but on being able to process it and use it.
[47] Ibn
Khaldūn, Muqaddima, 1252.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Ibid.
[50] Abū Bakr
b. Yaḥyā al-Ṣūlī, Akhbār
al-Buḥturī wa Dhayl al-Akhbār, ed. Ṣāliḥ al-Ashtar
(
[51] Ibid.
[52] Ibid.,
49.
[53] Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, 6:28. In addition to his two collectors, there were at least five men who orally transmitted
his poetry. They were: Muḥammad b.
al-Mubarrad (d. 898), Muḥammad b. Khalaf b. al-Marzubān (d.
921), al-Huṣayn b. Ismāʿīl
al-Maḥāmilī (d. 941), Muḥammad
b. Aḥmad al-Ḥakīmī (d. 947), and ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar b. Darastawayh al-Naḥwī (d. 958). Abū
Bakr al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād, 14
vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb
al-ʿArabī, [1966?])
13:447.
[54] Ibn
Khallikān, Wafayāt
al-aʿyān,
5:389.
[55] Ibid.
[56] ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Samʿānī, al-Ansāb, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Yaḥyā al-Yamānī, 13 vols. (
[57] Ibid.
[58] For
an interpretation of al-Buḥturī’s ode
pair, stigmatizing and then praising al-Muntaṣir,
see Samer Mahdy Ali, “Praise for Murder? Two Odes by al-Buḥturī
surrounding an Abbasid Patricide,” in Writers
and Rulers: Perspectives on Their Relation from Abbasid to Safavid Times,
Series Literaturen im Kontext, 16, ed. Beatrice Gruendler and Louise
Marlow (Wiesbaden:
Reichert, 2004), 1–38.
[59] Ibn
Khallikān, Wafayāt
al-aʿyān,
6:30.
[60] Abū al-Faraj
al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-aghānī, 24 vols.
(Cairo: Al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma lil-Kitāb, 1992–93), 21:35.
[61] See
Ali, “Reinterpreting Tragic Cycles of History.”
[62] Abū al-Ḥasan al-Masʿūdī, Murūj
al-dhahab, ed. Muḥammad Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, 4 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-Islāmiyya, n.d.
[1948?]), 4:121–23.
[63] Ibid., 118.
[64] Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition, ed. H. A. R. Gibb et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2006), 2:1289–90, s.v. “Khabar.”
[65] al-Masʿūdī, Murūj
al-dhahab, 4:118.
[66] Ibid.,
4:121.
[67] Abū al-Ḥasan al-Masʿūdī, Murūj al-dhahab, Ms. Spr. 48 (Staatsbibliothek, Berlin), fol. 595a.
[68] al-Masʿūdī,
Murūj al-dhahab, 4:118:
Al-Buḥturī said: We gathered that night with boon-companions (nudamāʾ) at
al-Mutawakkil’s gathering (majlis) and we began to mention
the topic of swords. One of the people present said, “O
Commander of the Faithful, I heard that a man from
Al-Mutawakkil ordered that a letter be written to the
Governor of Basra asking him to buy it at whatever price. The letter was sent
through the post and a letter from the Governor of Basra returned saying that a
man from
Al-Buḥturī
added: While we were still with al-Mutawakkil, ʿUbayd
Allāh suddenly entered with the sword. He let him know
that it was purchased from its owner in
When morning came, he said to al-Fatḥ [his
vizier and lover], “Bring me a slave-boy whose courage and valor you
trust. Charge him with this sword, so he may hold it over my head [sic],
never parting from me by day so long as I reign.”
He said: Talking did not resume until Bāghir
the Turk came and al-Fatḥ said, “O
Commander of the Faithful, this is Bāghir the Turk.
He was recommended to me for his courage and valor. He is fit for what the
Commander of the Faithful wishes.” Al-Mutawakkil
called him and charged him with the sword, and commanded him according to his
wishes. He offered to elevate his station and increase his income. Al-Buḥturī
said: By God, that sword was not drawn nor unsheathed
from the time it was charged to him until the night that Bāghir
struck him with that sword.”
[69] El-Hibri, Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography, 193.
[70] Ibid., 210.
[71] Ibid.
[72] al-Masʿūdī,
Murūj al-dhahab,
4:119: Then al-Buḥturī
said: I saw a strange thing in al-Mutawakkil the night that he was slain. We
were mentioning haughtiness and what kings used to do by way of insolence. We
engaged the topic, but he abstained. Then he turned his face toward the Qibla [
Al-Buḥturī
said: I took it as a bad omen for him, and downplayed what he did when he
sprinkled dust on his head and beard. Then he sat down to drink. When one of
the singers sang a tune, he liked it. He turned to al-Fatḥ and
said, “O Fatḥ, there is no one who hears this
song who is noble except you and me.” Then he started
to weep.
Al-Buḥturī
said: I suspected a bad omen in his weeping and said [to myself], “Here
comes the second one.” While we were in the midst of that, a servant came—one
of Qabīḥa’s [the Caliph’s wife’s]
servants—carrying a towel. Inside of it was a robe of honor
sent to him by Qabīḥa. The messenger said, “O
Commander of the Faithful, Qabīḥa says to you, ‘I had
this ceremonial coat [khilʿa]
made for the Commander of the Faithful and I liked it, so I sent it to you that
you may wear it.’” He [al-Buḥturī]
said: In it was a red outer cloak [durrāʿa] the
like of which I have never seen, and a red silk gown [muṭraf]. It
was so delicate it looked like [Egyptian] silk from Dabīq.
He [al-Buḥturī]
said: He put on the cloak on the inside and then wrapped himself in the
gown. I chased him to warn him of a jutting object that might cause his gown to
catch. Al-Mutawakkil moved into it and the gown coiled around him. It [the
object] thus pulled him once and ripped the gown from end to end.
He [al-Buḥturī]
said: He took it, wrapped it and gave it to the servant of Qabīḥa to
take it [to her]. He said, “Tell her, keep this gown with you so that it may be a
burial shroud when I die.”
I said to myself, “Verily,
we are from God, and to Him we return. By God, this reign is over.”
Al-Mutawakkil then became severely drunk. He said: It was his custom that if he
keeled over when drunk, the servants at his head set him upright. As we were
doing that—and some three hours of the night had passed!—Bāghir suddenly approached
accompanied by ten soldiers of the Turks. Swords were in their hands
sparkling in the light of the candle. They then attacked us and headed toward
al-Mutawakkil so that Bāghir climbed the throne with other Turks. Fatḥ
cried out, “How dare you! Your master!”
When the slave-boys and others present, as well as
[his] boon-companions, saw them, they fled in haste. No one else remained in
the gathering except Fatḥ. He
fought them and pushed them. Al-Buḥturī said: Then I heard al-Mutawakkil’s
death-cry [ṣayḥa]. Bāghir
had struck him with the sword with which al-Mutawakkil had charged him. He
struck him on the right side, cut him open to his waist, then turned him over
to reach the left side and did the same.
Al-Fatḥ approached, pushing them away, and
one of them stabbed him with his sword in his stomach and it exited his back.
He nevertheless remained steadfast, neither leaning nor dying. Al-Buḥturī
said: I never did see a man with a stronger spirit nor
more noble. He threw himself on al-Mutawakkil, and they died together.
They were rolled together in the carpet in which they
died. They were cast aside in that state all night and most of the day until
the caliphate rested in al-Muntaṣir. He gave
orders that they be buried together. It is said that Qabīḥa
wrapped him in the exact gown that was ripped.
[73] M. M. Ahsan, Social Life under the Abbasids, 170–289 AH, 786–902 AD
(London: Longman, 1979), 39.
[74] Ibid.,
40–41.
[75] Ibid.
[76] al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 9:224.
[77] Abū al-Faraj
b. al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam fī tārīkh al-mulūk wal-umam, ed. Muḥammad and
Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā, 18 vols.
(Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1992–93),
11:356.
[78] The
introduction of al-Mutawakkil’s mother in this story has little or nothing to do
with “historicity” or even
literary consistency among historians in the same tradition. Al-Masʿūdī prefers
to introduce the mother in a different way: He prefaces the murder story of
al-Mutawakkil by saying ominously, just lines from al-Buḥturī’s
alarming story, “In the year 247 [861], Shujāʿ, the
mother of al-Mutawakkil, died . . . then al-Mutawakkil died six
months after her death.” See al-Masʿūdī, Murūj
al-dhahab 4:118. Obviously, the literary force of the mother’s
role is more important than slavish consistency.
[79] ʿAbd
al-Malik al-Thaʿālibī, Thimār
al-qulūb fil-muḍāf
wal-mansūb, ed. Muḥammad Abū
al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm, Dhakhāʾir al-ʿArab, 57 (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1985), 190; al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 9:226; Ibn al-ʿImrānī, al-Inbāʾ, 119; ʿAlī b. Anjab b. al-Sāʿī,
Tārīkh
al-khulafāʾ al-ʿabbāsiyyīn, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Yūsuf al-Jamal
(Cairo: Maktabat al-Ādāb, 1993), 79.
[80] al-Thaʿālibī, Thimār al-qulūb, 191.
[81] al-Masʿūdī, Murūj
al-dhahab, 4:121.