Abstract
This chapter looks at the tale of ‘The Hunchback Cycle’ where there is an emphasis on the interchange between isrāf (excess) caused by jahl (lack of reason) and ultimately transgression as moral qubḥ and its consequences as physical qubḥ.
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Notes
- 1.
Nights 25th–32nd.
- 2.
While the story does not take place in an Abbasid court, it is inspired by Abbasid entertainment. Joseph Sadan maintains that the Abbasid courts were heavily inspired by the Sassanids not only in terms of armaments and artillery but also in means of entertainment and court conduct. It could be argued that the need for entertainment in the Caliphal court is a means of escape from the imposed decorum the position infers on its holder. See, Joseph Sadan, al-Adab al-ʻArabı̄ al-Hāzil wa Nawādir al-Thuqalāʼ: al-ʻĀhāt wa l-Masāwiʼ al-Insāniyya wa Makānatuhā fı̄ al-Adab al-Rāqı̄ (Köln: Manshūrāt al-Jamal, 2007), 66. The court’s jester (al-muḍḥik) and the boon-companion, familier du roi (al-nadı̄m) as Charles Pellat translates it, were jobs that were created as a result of this need in the Caliphal court. Al-muḍḥik, as the title implies, need not possess a literary gift or sharp wit, although it would certainly be of assistance if he happened to have these traits. Al-muḍḥik may have relied on what is now called ‘toilet humour.’ They had their name-action associations; anecdotes mention al-ṣafāʻina (the slappers) and al-ḍarrāṭı̄n (professional farters or fart-makers). For the former, see Aḥmad b. Yūsuf al-Tı̄fāshı̄ (580–651/1184–1253), Nuzhat al-Albāb fı̄ mā lā Yūjad fı̄ Kitāb, (London: Riyāḍ al-Rayyis, 1992) [The Promenade of the Hearts in What is not to be Found in a Book] which has an entire chapter on slapping. For more on this topic, see Sadan, al-Adab al-ʻArabı̄ al-Hāzil wa Nawādir al-Thuqalāʼ; see also Riyāḍ Quzayḥa, al-Fukāha wa l-Ḍaḥik fı̄ l-Turāth al-ʻArabı̄ al-Mashriqı̄ min al-ʻAṣr al-Jāhilı̄ ilā Nihāyat al-ʻAṣr al-ʻAbbāsı̄ (Sidon: Al-Maktaba al-‘Aṣriyya, 1998).
- 3.
More on this in Chap. 9. See also, Sarah R. bin Tyeer, ‘The Qur’an and the Aesthetics of adab’ in Qur’an and Adab: The Shaping of Classical Literary Tradition, ed. Nuha al-Shaʻar (Oxford University Press and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, Forthcoming 2016).
- 4.
al-Tanūkhı̄ was a famous figure of the second half of the tenth century, and worked as judge in Baghdad as well as other cities during the Būyid’s reign of ʻAḍud al-Dawla (367–372/978–983). See, Muhsin Mahdi, ‘From History to Fiction: The Tale Told by the King’s Steward,’ in The Arabian Nights Reader, ed. Ulrich Marzolph (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006), 302.
- 5.
Mahdi, ‘From History to Fiction: The Tale Told by the King’s Steward,’ 300.
- 6.
Ibid., 303.
- 7.
Alternatively, this dish is also known as zı̄rbā and/or zı̄rbāj and relies heavily on vinegar, and in some recipes both vinegar and cumin which explains the smell. See, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan b. al-Karı̄m al-Baghdādı̄, A Baghdad Cookery Book, trans. Arthur J. Arberry (Hyderabad: Islamic Culture, 1939), 16; cf. van Gelder, Of Dishes and Discourse: Classical Arabic Literary Representations of Food (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000), 72–3.
- 8.
Mahdi, ‘From History to Fiction: the Tale Told by the King’s Steward,’ 304.
- 9.
Ibid., 306–307.
- 10.
Ibid., 307.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Ibid., 312.
- 13.
Ibid., 314.
- 14.
Ibid., 305.
- 15.
Julia Bray expresses scepticism in the historicity of the story. See ‘A Caliph and His Public Relations’ in New Perspectives on Arabian Nights: Ideological Variations and Narrative Horizons, ed. Geert Jan van Gelder and Wen-Chin Ouyang (New York: Routledge, 2005), 30.
- 16.
Bray is critical though, on socio-political grounds, of al-Tanūkhı̄’s ‘more wishful than realistic’ thesis because, according to her, reward is not always the case.
- 17.
Mahdi, ‘From History to Fiction: The Tale Told by the King’s Steward,’ 301.
- 18.
For more on the importance and significance of cleanliness in the Arab-Islamic culture, see Abdel Haleem, ‘Water in the Qur’an’ in Understanding the Qur’an, 32–3.
- 19.
Night 27th.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
See Chap. 3 for the discussion on the meaning of ‘black’ and ‘darkened’ faces.
- 22.
al-Zamakhsharı̄, al-Kashshāf, 2:531 in reference to Q. 14:50, 39:24, 54:48.
- 23.
al-Rāzı̄, Mafātı̄ḥ al-Ghayb, 8:148–9 in reference to the Qur’an’s mentioning of radiant faces vs. darkened faces.
- 24.
Todorov, ‘Language and Literature’ in The Poetics of Prose, trans. Richard Howard (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), 24.
- 25.
Mahdi, ‘From History to Fiction: The Tale Told by the King’s Steward’, 317.
- 26.
Lange, Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination, 231.
- 27.
Ibn Qudāma al-Maqdisı̄, al-Mughnı̄ (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1405 A.H., 1985?), 9:111ff.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
See, Suhair al-Qalamāwı̄, Alf Layla wa Layla (Cairo: Dār al-Maʻārif, 1976).
- 30.
Intisar A. Rabb, ‘Islamic Legal Maxims as Substantive Canons of Construction: Ḥudūd-Avoidance in Cases of Doubt’ Islamic Law and Society 17 (2010):66.
- 31.
Ibid., 65.
- 32.
Sperber and Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition (Oxford: Blackwell 1986/1995) cited in Salwa M.S. El-Awa, Textual Relations in the Qur’an (New York and London: Routledge, 2006), 30.
- 33.
Night 26th.
- 34.
It is imperative to note here the correlation between morals and aesthetics in a literal sense in what is called ʻIlm al-Firāsa (physiognomy). In his book, al-Firāsa, Fakhr al-Dı̄n al-Rāzı̄ dissects and analyses facial and bodily characteristics and relates them to human temperament and behaviour. In Chap. 7, which concerns itself with faces, he says the following:
‘The ugly of face is seldom of good morals, this is because the mood necessitating to the outward appearance is the same for inward behaviour. Hence, if this mood is virtuous, perfection is observed outwardly and inwardly and if it is imperfect, it also manifests itself outwardly as inwardly.’ al-Firāsa, ed. ʻAbd al-Amı̄r ʻAlı̄ Muhannā (Beirut: Dār al-Maḥajja al-Bayḍā’, 2005), 188. It should be noted that physiognomy is not strictly an Arabic field; it was widely known and practised in ancient Greece, India, and China as well.
- 35.
Night 25th.
- 36.
Nights 297th–299th.
- 37.
Todorov, ‘Narrative—Men’ in The Poetics of Prose, 70.
- 38.
Gerhardt, The Art of Storytelling, 413.
- 39.
Night 29th.
- 40.
Night 30th.
- 41.
al-Musawi, The Islamic Context of the Thousand and One Nights, 199.
- 42.
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen maintains that ‘narrative of marvels (especially ‘wonder books’ as Campbell calls them) satisfy the very need they have created and, through the permanent absence of their subjects, ensure that the circuit of desire will never be completely fulfilled.’ See, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘The Order of Monsters: Monster Lore and Medieval Narrative Traditions’ in Telling Tales: Medieval Narratives and the Folk Tradition, ed. Francesca Canadé Sautman et al. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), 38–9. Cohen also maintains that the monstrous races act as a measure of man, see ibid., 45. While the hunchback does not belong to the monstrous races, he definitely evokes measurement in other characters through his deformity.
- 43.
Ibn Khaldūn, Muqaddima, trans. Franz Rosenthal, ed. N.J. Dawood (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989), 158–159; cf. Fareed Haj, Disability in Antiquity (New York: Philosophical Library, 1970), 109.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
al-Musawi, The Islamic Context of the Thousand and One Nights, 152.
- 46.
The English translation is Roy P. Mottahedeh’s. See, Roy P. Mottahedeh, ‘ʻAjāʼib in The Thousand and One Nights,’ 37. See also James Monroe’s discussion of tawriyya in reference to the maqāmāt and his reference to Seeger A. Bonebakker’s book on tawriyya, The Art of Badı̄ʻ az-Zamān al-Hamadhānı̄ as Picaresque Narrative (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1983), 96–7.
- 47.
Monroe maintains ‘…in the Thousand and One Nights, Shahrazād tells king Shahriyār, who is convinced that all women are evil, many tales involving the theme of men who have been married first to a wicked wife, in whose clutches they have suffered, and then to a good wife who ultimately saved them[.]’, 146.
- 48.
Ibn Khaldūn, 158–9.
- 49.
Ibn Khaldūn refers to this as the ‘knowledge of law’ that enables the monarch to carry independent thought.
- 50.
The term used in the story is ‘aghrab’. The terms ʻajı̄b and gharı̄b in adab are a recognised genre about aberrations of nature as God’s creation. Al-Qazwı̄nı̄’s (599–682/1203–1283) ʻAjāʼib al-Makhlūqāt wa Gharāʼib al-Mawjūdāt (Wonders of Creation) is the most famous work in this genre. The book categorised these wonders in their genera (plants, animals, and so on) and identified their abnormalities and their geographical locations. For this reason, ʻajāʼib and gharāʼib as a genre remains categorically linked to travel. The phraseology of ʻajı̄b and/or gharı̄b relates to that which defies ‘normal’ categories of its kind. However, it should not arbitrarily lend itself to the category of the Todorovian ‘fantastic’ as a genre. For this argument, see Kamal Abu Deeb, The Imagination Unbound (London: Saqi, 2007), 8ff. Also, examples pertaining to Qur’anic references of this term manifest in the Qur’an’s own reference to itself as ‘Qurʼānan ʻajaban’ in sūrat al-Jinn (72:1) as a quality of the Qur’anic language itself that transcends the categories of normal speech. Another usage of the term is ascribed to the quality of events that defy normal categories of causality in sūrat al-Kahf with respect to defying the normal categories of time and human mortality in the story of the people of the cave (the people of Ephesus).
- 51.
Quoted in Mottahedeh, ‘ʻAjāʼib in The Thousand and One Nights,’ 30–1.
- 52.
Ibid., 31.
- 53.
al-Musawi, The Islamic Context of the Thousand and One Nights, 203.
- 54.
The Muslim profession of faith, ‘lā ilāha illā Allāh, Muḥammad rasūlu Allāh’ (‘there is no God but Allāh, and Muāammad is the Messenger of Allāh’).
- 55.
Bonnie D. Irwin, ‘Framed (for) Murder: The Corpse Killed Five Times in the Thousand and One Nights’ in Telling Tales: Medieval Narratives and the Folk Tradition, ed. Francesca Canadé Sautman et al. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), 160.
- 56.
Sadan, al-Adab al-ʻArabı̄ al-Hāzil, 68–9.
- 57.
Muḥammad b. Isḥāq Al-Washshāʼ, Al-Ẓarf wa l-Ẓurafāʼ (Cairo: n.p, 1907), 32. Al-Washshāʼ also speaks about appearance-related attributes as part of the definition such as cleanliness, neat and stylish clothes, and use of perfumes.
- 58.
cf. Mahdi, ‘From History to Fiction: The Tale Told by the Steward to the King’, who also criticises the Orientalist use of tales as ‘mirror’ to practices in Arab-Islamic society.
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bin Tyeer, S.R. (2016). The Aesthetics of Reason. In: The Qur’an and the Aesthetics of Premodern Arabic Prose. Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59875-2_6
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